Welcome to Real Truth for today with Pastor Jeff Schrieve, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Texarkana, Texas. Now, here's Pastor Jeff.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Well, good morning, and welcome to Real Truth for today. I wanted to read to you From Lamentations, Chapter 3, a very interesting passage of scripture. Very famous, passage of scripture. But lots of people don't know what Jeremiah the prophet said before he said, the famous words that I'm about to quote. Life was really hard. And, Jeremiah was lamenting. That's the book, Lamentations. And Israel has been wiped out by the Babylonians. And, he said this beginning in verse 12 of chapter three. He, meaning God, bent his bow and set me as a target for the arrow. He made the arrows of his quiver to enter into my inward parts. I have become a laughing stock to all my people, their mocking song. All the day he has filled me with bitterness. He has made me drunk with wormwood. He has broken my teeth with gravel. He has made me cower in the dust. My soul has been rejected from peace. I have forgotten happiness. So I say, my strength has perished, and so has my hope from the Lord. He's about as low as you can get. And then he says this. Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness. Surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me. This I call to mind. Therefore I have hope. What is that? The Lord's loving kindnesses indeed never cease. For his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore I have hope in him. Listen, I don't know what might be going on in your life, but I know this. The Lord loves you. And his loving kindnesses indeed never cease. And his compassions never fail. And they are new every morning. They're new this morning. And we can say to the Lord, thank you for your faithfulness, Lord. You're my portion, and I have hope in you. Well, it is a privilege for me to welcome to the program a familiar guest, Rod Martin, founder And CEO of Martin Capital, anti communist, part of the team that started PayPal, and he has his website, rodmartin.org. we want to talk about a host of things that, you've been reading about in the news. And so, Rod, welcome to the program this morning.
Rod Martin: It's great to be here, as always.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Well, I appreciate you coming on, my friend. so right off the bat, I want to talk to you about something that's big news in Texarkana, Texas, and that is data centers. When, I was a kid growing up, my dad worked for the Shell data center, in Menlo Paak, California. Nobody thought much about it. I think that thing was probably built in the 60s or something like that. This is late, 60s when he worked there in early Sevent. data centers have been around for a long time, but they've become a hot button topic in the last couple of years. And so, I'll just ask you a very open question, Rod, because I know you've touched on this before and written articles about it. What's the big deal about the data center? Is it a noise pollutant? A, water guzzler? An energy consumer? Is it something that we need to shun or, or we need to embrace?
Rod Martin: Mostly it's a threat to China. And China is spending a ton of money to spread propaganda in the United States to stir people up and scare them. And it's exactly as you said. We've had data centers since before I was born. It is true. We're building more now because we're using more compute now than ever. You know, you used to have movies on VCR tapes or on DVDs. Now we stream all of them. You used to watch broadcast TV. I can't remember when I last watched broadcast TV. If I watch broadcast TV, I stream it through YouTube or something. All of that requires data centers. This interview this morning is using Zoom, which utilizes data centers. There is just nothing we do now that doesn't require it. So if you think about, oh, there's all this explosive growth in data centers. And yes, it's exactly the same as the explosive growth in the need for oil. Once somebody invented the car, you know, for decades they were producing oil mostly for kerosene lamps. Who the heck has a kerosene lamp now? And they took the gasoline that came out of the refining process and just threw it on the ground. Nobody wanted it, Nobody could buy it. Now it's the most important issue for most people all the time. You know, got to get that price of Gas down. Well, that means you got to refine a. A lot more oil. Well, if you want to do all the things you want to do, you absolutely have to have more data centers, because basically a data center is just a great big server farm. When you say that you're keeping your files in the cloud, what do you think the cloud is? An actual cloud up in the sky? No, it's a data center. Cloud is just marketing terminology. And we've been using it for 20 years, and actually a lot longer than that. Just hadn't come up with the term cloud yet. So, you know, this is something we all use, we all need. And as AI becomes much, much more important to, for example, shooting down incoming missiles that have been fired at a school, you know, preventing some kind of terrorist incident or, you know, whatever it is that you need from a defense perspective, AI is essential. The enemy has it. The enemy is shooting forward really fast on it, and they want to use our political system to disrupt our ability to keep up with them. That's something we need to combat. So. So I'll just say in Texarkana, you guys should be happier than anybody, because Governor Greg Abbott just announced rules that require these things to bring their own coolant, bring their own power, you know, do everything right where it is entirely beneficial to and not at all burdensome on the local communities. We've done a lot of that here in Florida, too. So, you're absolutely right to want these things to be within reasonable constraints. The president's talked about that, too. He's got an executive order to make sure that happens. But the truth is, you know, when people talk about water, you've been able to build a data center for 40 years that doesn't use any water or that uses. Uses a limited supply of water that it takes in basically once and just reuses over and over again. You can air cool these things. You don't have to use water at all. You do that by basically air conditioning the place and, you know, really pumping up those chillers. That takes more electricity. So the president wants to make them build their own power stations, and a lot of them are doing that. So there are things we want to do to make this better for everybody. but we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is a really, really important civilizational advance.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so, Rod, this might be a dumb question, but I'm thinking in my mind, okay, your company X, and you build a data center. how do you sell what you just built? How do you Market that, I mean, we talk about the cloud, it's kind of nebulous in terms of I build a data center, who's buying from me?
Rod Martin: Oh my gosh, we don't have enough. That's the thing. And it's right that you should mention X. Although you meant it as variable, I'm going to mean it as a company. SpaceX built the biggest data center in the world and they couldn't use all the capacity immediately, so they just rented it out to one of the other AI companies. They're going to make about a billion dollars a month just off of that. I mean, it's an insane amount of money and it's only going to grow. it's so much so that in five years a rather large portion of SpaceX's entire, monthly earnings is going to be coming from, from renting out compute in these data centers as the demand just skyrockets. So yeah, nobody. This is actually a really good point. I'm so glad you brought it up. People seem to think that these things are disconnected from the rest of reality. No, nobody is building a data center if it isn't needed. Nobody is going to invest that kind of money if it isn't profitable. And the truth is, we could build 10 times as many as we are and not meet the demand that's gonna exist just five years away. This is exactly why Elon, by the way, is planning to build data centers in orbit, which ought to make everybody happy, but I'm sure they'll find a reason why that's a bad idea too. You know, in orbit you've got unlimited solar power. And you know, solar isn't that smart on Earth a lot of the time because we have this crazy new thing called nighttime, and we have rainstorms and we have all these things that obscure the sun. In space, you can make it line of sight to the sun, where you just convert power all day long for the cost of the equipment to generate it. And so, you know, that's way cheaper than building a nuclear plant in Memphis or something. So, so that's the future. And I know a lot of people thought Elon was just talking out of his hat on that. Well, first, you should never ever do that because his timeline is sometimes wrong, but his predictions are almost always right. And second, Morgan Stanley came in and did a big analysis of this data centers in orbit idea and they confirmed it 100%. They're like the technology exists or is currently being developed to do this en masse at an Economical price. And it's going to solve everybody's problem. So, you know, the data centers we're building right now, of course we need them, of course we will continue to need them. but that massive spike in demand is going to increasingly be served from space where nobody lives and nobody has to worry about what it does to their community.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so if we say, as Americans, hey, we don't want that, we don't want these data centers and the activists get going and they, you know, vote it down and that kind of thing, what is the, result of that? How does America just gets left in the dust?
Rod Martin: Yeah, exactly that. I mean, it's like if we just decided not to industrialize during the Industrial revolution, it's the exact equivalent of saying, well, we don't want steel mills, we don't want cars, we don't want phones. We want to live just like Little House on the Prairie. Well, guess what? The rest of the world isn't going to make that decision. So the world races past us, and eventually we're their colony. And it's just dumb. It's needless, it's pointless. The one thing that I think people are really worked up about, that really has a lot of validity, is the use of flock cameras and other surveillance systems, all of which are data center reliant, to do mass surveillance on the American people. But that's not a technology issue. If you have an issue with flock cameras. That's a Fourth amendment question. That's a fifth amendment question. Litigate it. The Supreme Court that Donald Trump appointed a majority on came down with a fantastic ruling just this year limiting the use of technology for exactly that sort of thing because of fourth amendment protections which prior courts hadn't been willing to apply. So the solution to flock cameras isn't getting rid of data centers. That's like trying to get rid of murderers by eliminating oxygen. That's just silly. You know, the, the solution here is stronger privacy protections in the law. And, and we have them in our Constitution. We just have insufficiently applied them to modern technology. And the Supreme Court is catching up.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Very good. Okay, we're not going to be able to jump into this too much right now, but I want to touch on it. Everybody's talking about Lindsey Clancy, the lady that murdered her three children, and they're having trouble coming up with a verdict. you have three dead children. I don't care what's going on in her head. She murdered her children. she needs to be locked up for the rest of her life. Just, initial thoughts, Rod, on that case.
Rod Martin: Yeah. Jon Hinckley tried to assassinate the President of the United States in 1981. And, you know, he really, genuinely was crazy, and we put him in a mental institution for pretty much the whole rest of his life. If she really is crazy, then that's the right solution. If she really isn't, and I've looked at a lot of this trial, I'm not convinced she is, then she should be executed. But what we shouldn't do is try to make excuses and pretend that women have no agency and they just can't control their hormones. What we're seeing online is insane. It is the reversal of everything feminists told us for the last 50 years. It makes these women out to be just automatons and completely out of control.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yes. Well, we're talking to Rod Martin and we're talking about the issues of the day. You're listening to Real Truth for today on American Family Radio. Pastor Jeff Schrieve here. We'll be right back.
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: This is real truth for today. Podcasts of the program are available on the podcast [email protected] now back to Pastor Jeff Schrieve.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Welcome back to the program. Pastor Jeff here talking about my friend Rod Martin, founder and CEO of Martin Capital, an anti communist and part of the team that started PayPal. His website is rodmartin.org okay, Rod, at the break, we were talking about Lindsay Clancy and just, horrific what she did. And it would doesn't. I mean, it seemed like it was planned out. She got her husband out of the house and killed her kids, in a gruesome way, strangling them to death. Five and under three kids and then threw herself out of the window to try and kill herself. Would she slash her wrists or slash her throat or something like that? and now I haven't followed it closely, but what is her defense? That I was just nuts?
Rod Martin: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, she pled that she did it, but she's crazy. And that's probably the best defense available because otherwise this is completely indefensible. But, the evidence is absolutely clear that she did it. And the people online, and it's shocking to watch the people online who are, oh, well, the husband really did it and so forth. no, her defense lawyers actually had her plead not guilty by reason of insanity. That means she's admitting in a sworn filing that she did it. The whole basis of her defense is that she did it, but she wasn't mentally competent. So all this Internet crazy is just really wild to watch. And it goes back to something that we were fighting in the Southern Baptist Convention for several years, which is this idea that, you know, in, in the defense of women, and of course we want to defend women, but critical theory takes you into this weird place where women should be given all power, and if the world, and if only women existed, there would be no violence in the world. And also at the same time, women can kill their children randomly and can't be held responsible for it because hormones. Well, wait, what? This is just insane. And it's anti biblical because the Bible actually holds us all responsible for our actions. If she really is crazy, then of course you would modify that, but you wouldn't let her go free. She's a threat to society and she murdered three children. you know, that's not how that works. So what is the biblical view? The biblical view and the American legal view are that you are responsible for what you do. And that's a good thing because that's the basis of equality. If women are just all nannies, buffeted about by their hormones to such a degree that you can't leave your children with them safely, then the logical response to that would just be to lock all the women up. And no one, no one thinks that's right.
Caroline: So.
Rod Martin: So the defenses being made are absurd and they are a dodge of responsibility which is endemic in this culture. Everything is made a therapeutic issue to avoid the reality of sinfulness and fallenness. So nobody is ever accountable for anything. And if somebody steps beyond a certain norm, we just call it crazy. So we don't have to call it evil. That's unbiblical. That's unchristian. And honestly, if this woman is crazy, okay, she probably didn't have the requisite intent to. To, be able to be held fully accountable for murder one in this case. But she's still accountable. She still did what she did.
Caroline: And.
Rod Martin: And there's just no avoiding that. The other thing, in answer to your question, of course, is that this idea that somehow she was drug addled and just, you know, turned psychotic by virtue of pharmaceuticals, the evidence doesn't seem to support it. I saw, one of the doctors give testimony on this, and he was saying, you know, her real problem was that she was pill resistant. And her defense lawyer, you know, cross examines that and he's like, no, we couldn't get her to take her pills. That was the problem. She had all these prescriptions because she wouldn't use them. And sure enough, the physical evidence matches that. They looked at her pill bottles very, very closely. She'd hardly taken any of them ever.
Caroline: So.
Rod Martin: So the defense that, that she was driven into psychosis by medical malpractice just doesn't seem to hold water. I look at this evidence, and I think she meant to do it. I think she was competent, and she's just wicked.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Well, it's just horrific. You know, one of the things I've had this conversation with a number of people, in ministry, in the Bible, you don't read much about mental illness. I mean, they had crazy people. they said of Jesus that he's, you know, he's out of his mind. but you hear and read a lot about demonic possession. I think that in America today, we don't ever want to say somebody is demonized or demon possessed or anything. But if you do, the things that a lot of these people are doing, you stab Arayna Zaretska on the train for no reason at all, stab her to death, as that guy did, in North Carolina, in Charlotte. I mean, the demons are involved in that kind of behavior. Just like with her behavior. I think she even said she was hearing voices. So we don't like to talk about the demonic side of this, but I put more emphasis on the demonic side than on the, you know, she's got a mental illness.
Rod Martin: Now, that certainly seems to be the case here. I mean, I don't think you're going to be able to prove that to a jury, of course, but as Christians, we know that demons are real. We know how they act. We actually are given a very clear picture of that in scripture. Jesus certainly took it seriously. So, you know, why wouldn't we? And the answer to that is part and parcel of what I was saying earlier. The entire culture wants to deny the idea, of fallenness and certainly of the supernatural, which is a bit ironic these days because we have gone way past the rationalist materialism of our youth into a culture where Wicca, is prevalent and all kinds of spirituality is everywhere. They may not know it, but of course they're of part playing with demons. And I've met more than a few of these people. We've got one young lady in our church who was a Wiccan and spent years in that before she was miraculously saved. And she tells stories. Of course we knew we were dealing with demons. We would make contracts with demons. And you know, yes, we knew what we were doing. And crucially, she said, and we took the Bible more seriously than any Christians I know because the demons know perfectly well who God is and that he's real. So, so the, the whole aim is to twist and pervert whatever God wants into something that will give him offense. Okay, well, if that's going on even with people in my own church, I don't think that this is hidden in a corner somewhere anymore. It is a real shame that our Southern Baptist seminaries, and no other Protestant seminaries of which I'm aware, don't even have a single class on demonology. They just don't touch it with a ten foot pole. And that's a mistake. It is a real mistake to leave mental health issues to a professional field that is rooted in Freud's dictum that having religious belief is itself a sign of insanity. And it's equally stupid for us to leave demonology entirely to the Catholic Church. That's an enormous mistake. And Protestants have to start taking this more seriously. In any case, if it is true, and I don't know that it's true, but I think based on the evidence I've seen that it is true that Lindsey Clancy really wasn't taking her pills. Really actually seemed to be able to form the intent. Certainly premeditated it to the degree of even getting her husband out of the house and arranging everything so that she could carry this out. Actually strangled her own three children in front of each other. Can you imagine the horror in the two children who are watching the first one get strangled to death and just can't believe that their mommy is, is doing this?
Caroline: Yes.
Rod Martin: And, and she did all this just completely heartless. So, okay, that actually does sound a lot like demon possession in scripture. And Christians need to take that seriously. We don't know that for sure, but we know that that's possible. And it would be helpful to speak to a culture that thinks of itself as highly spiritual without being Christian. This is the consequence of what you're doing.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so, Rod, I'm going to play you a clip. This was from Anne Hathaway on the View. I don't know if you've heard it, but it just shows you, you know, Isaiah 5:20 just comes into view every single day. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Here is Anne Hathaway talking about the mercy of abortion.
Caroline: When you are a young woman starting out your career, your reproductive destiny matters a great deal. My own personal experience, and I don't think we talk about this enough. Abortion can be another word for mercy. We don't know. We don't know. It's not a world in which, we know that no two pregnancies are alike, and it follows that no two lives are like that, follows that no two conceptions are alike. So how can we have a law. How can we have a point of view on this that says we must treat everything the same? And where I come at it from is when you allow for. For choice, you allow for flexibility, which is what we need in order to be human.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: It's just unbelievable. But, abortion is another word for mercy. Brutally murdering your unborn baby is another word for mercy. That's where we've. And then all the ladies in the View are a bunch of seals. Oh, that's right. Yes, you can hear them. How insightful. well, that fits in with the women that now are supporting Lindsey Clancy, saying, oh, she's, you know, she's not guilty because she was in psychosis. And, you know, I look at that, Rod, and just think, obviously there's hope for humanity in Jesus, but there's not hope for humanity outside of Jesus, and we're taking a bullet train in the opposite direction that we need to go.
Rod Martin: Well, we had a number of Southern Baptist leaders for a while, and fortunately, many of them have left our denomination. But a number of them preached for many recent years that the worst thing about America was its Christian culture. This cultural Christianity that, you know, deceives people into thinking their believers when they aren't. Okay, first of all, I question that anybody's really deceived about that. They either know Jesus or they don't, but it doesn't really matter. The point is that what cultural Christianity did for us for centuries was it gave us a common moral reference point where we just didn't do certain things. And if somebody did, even the unbelievers understood that it was horribly wrong. And so, so there was a consensus. That didn't get you a lot of Lindsay Clancy or or Irene Zarudskas or the woman who just randomly in Times Square yesterday pulls a knife on a bunch of people and starts stabbing them. And I mean, again that sounds like demon possession. That's weird. And we have this just increasingly, prevalent view that, that no one is ever responsible for anything. Of course, unless you're a Christian white male and then you're responsible for everything, but you know, everybody else gets a complete pass. Again, it is an attack on scripture. And yes, it started with Roe v. Wade. It started with the idea that you could murder your own child in the safest place it should ever exist, experience in its life, your womb. And somehow that's not only morally acceptable, but in many cases morally virtuous. No, that's horribly, horribly wrong. And not only because, okay, you know, the excuse is frequently, well, but the woman might not be able to raise the child well, well guess what, Lots of people have bad mothers. That, that doesn't mean they want to die. for that matter, there are about three times as many people in the United States who would like to adopt a child as are able to. There's no lack of demand for happy homes where these children can be raised if somebody can just manage not to murder them before they have a chance to be placed for adoption. So all of this is just horrible. And of course it was always going to lead here. What is the difference between killing a preborn child and a post born child? And increasingly the answer of many Democrats in particular is there isn't any difference at all. And we saw that under the previous governor in Virginia when he was actually enacting legislation to allow the mother and the doctor to decide after the child was born whether they would kill it in the hospital. This is where this goes. And you see it with the euthanasia campaign in Canada and other countries. It is a culture of death. And if anything in the world is satanic, that's it.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: well said for sure. Okay, you are an anti communist, it's in your bio. Communism, they don't call it communism, it's democratic socialism, which I think the Nazis were the democratic socialists of their day. on the rise. Young people think it's all the rage. okay, so are we on a collision Course, with disaster here.
Rod Martin: Well, they used to deny the communist thing, but we just had the Democratic Socialists of America convention a few weeks ago, and one of the principal leaders of the DSA stands up at the podium and says, our goal is communism. And the crowd cheered. So, no, they don't think it's bad. They want to use the power of the state to punish their enemies. and we know where that goes. We know where it's gone in every country that's tried it. It involves mass death and just unbelievable systemic oppression. So, yeah, we're in a horrifying place in this country, and the Democrats are lapping it up like water at a trough.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: It's crazy. Well, we're talking to Rod Martin when we come back from the break. We'll be taking your calls. 888-589-8840. That's 888-589-8840. If you have a question or comment. You're listening to Real Truth for today with Pastor Jeff Schrieve here on American Folks Family Radio. We'll be right back after the break.
: If you'd like to contact Pastor Jeff, email pastor jeffromhishheart.org now back to Real Truth for today with Pastor Jeff Schrieve.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Welcome back to the program. Pastor. Mr. Jeff here talking to my friend Rod Martin, founder and CEO of Martin Capital. And, Rod is a anti communist, which is a good thing, and part of the team that started PayPal. You can, check him [email protected] he's got great commentaries on things. And so, Rod, you are a political, analyst of, sorts, and you look at races and you, you were there with Mike Huckabee way back when in his administration as governor of Arkansas. When you look at the race in Texas for the Senate, James Tallarico, who is one of, he presents himself as a offspring, of howdy Doody and Mr. Rogers. And then you have Ken Paxton, who's been, rode hard and put up wet. Perhaps, if we use that expression, give me your opinion of those, of that particular race.
Rod Martin: Well, I'll come straight to Talarico, but I want to play off something you said just a second ago. my day job is CEO of Martin Capital. We do technology investments. I was one of the early guys at PayPal. But in my copious spare time, we have launched here about a year and a half ago, Rodmart. That's rodmartin.org where we do daily geopolitical analysis, Fox Business Calls. Absolutely Phenomenal. And not only that, but all of it is informed from a Christian worldview, as you can see. So we may be talking about human rights abuses in Greenland or how the Venezuela oil deal affects global markets, but we're doing it from a Christian perspective point of view. So. So I encourage people to come to rodmartin.org and I have a book coming out in, in October which is available for pre sale called Trump's NewSong World Reorder. That's Trump's NewSong World Reorder. And, everybody's gonna want that. Look, Talarico is a terrible, terrible candidate. And I really, really can't see Texas electing this clown.
: He's.
Rod Martin: He's a train wreck in every possible respect. It is true that Ken Paxton has not raised money well, but Ken Paxton was a great Attorney General, whatever his personal issues may be, and he will be a great United States Senator. So I was really encouraged to see Jon Thune say they're going to get fully behind him and call on the President. You know, the president has $400 million in super PACs. Texas is an incredibly expensive place to try to run for office. You just got so many media markets, and there's some of the top media markets in the world. And it's expensive to buy ads. It's expensive to put up that many yard signs. It's a big, big place. And so. So, the President needs to spend here, Elon Musk needs to spend here. And certainly the National Senatorial Republican, Senatorial Committee needs to get a lot more serious about this race. But I think Ken Paxton pulls it out. I think he does fine. And every so often you're going to get a Beto or a Talarico on the left, who, you know, is. Who captures the imagination enough to make the race competitive. you guys are not quite as red a state, perhaps as Florida has become, but you're pretty red. And it's a little hard to see how Paxton loses. It's just going to take all the work that all of us can do.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yes, well, that's good to hear. I agree with you. I think James Tallarico is just awful. you know, it's one thing to be a liberal, but to try and pass yourself off as this Christian liberal, that is so utterly distasteful. And the way he twists scripture and then presents it like I'm a seminarian and, it's just disgusting. It's. It, has God said type thing. it's just awful. Ken Paxton is who he Is. I mean, he's not trying to present himself as something that he's not.
Rod Martin: I do appreciate that.
Caroline: Yes.
Caroline: Yes.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: So, a little rough around the edges, maybe in his personal life, but he, still, he knows the difference between right and wrong. That's one of the things, Rod, you know, like with President Trump, people that attack his, you know, his sins of the past. He still has a moral compass. And when he has been unfaithful in his marriages, he knows that's wrong.
Rod Martin: He does.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: And, the problem I have with the Democrats, their moral compass is totally broken. They are upside down on virtually any moral issue. They choose the wrong side. I can't think of one moral issue where they're right about it. Can you?
Rod Martin: there's nothing anymore. And m. It's just been a remarkable thing to watch over the last 30 years. It was already bad under Clinton, but Clinton couldn't have imagined where we've gone, and it's just abominable. Speaking to Ken Paxton, you know, the other side of that is how has he behaved professionally? And he has been one of our very, very best fighters among any attorney general anywhere in the United States. He has taken it to the bad guys. He has put them in jail. He has fought for Texas, and, and we need a fighter in the Senate. Honestly, Jon Cornyn has been such a disappointment, such a disappointment. When he first got elected, you know, all of us were cheering that really thought he was going to be the real deal. He was not. And Paxton isn't afraid to actually mix it up in the Senate, get legislation done, and actually make sure that it comports with what we promised people when we ran. That's a big, big upgrade. So we really need him.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, I would agree with that. Well, we're going to the phone lines. 888-589-8840. And we have Micah on the line from Virginia. Micah, welcome to Real Truth for today.
Caroline: We were there because of that.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, I, I, Yeah, go ahead. Do you have a question?
Caroline: Yes, I have a comment for Rod, your, guest, I'm sorry, Rod Martin, if I mispronounce his name. Yeah, Rod Martin, for the years, about the data centers, for letting us, throwing some light, especially, on added computing. But I would like, your guests to address a point concerning mass surveillance. The increased, concern, from my perspective and from other people, is why suddenly we have increased data centers. Really. they've just come up with an explosion. So, as we know within the product and, you know, the Role of supply and demand. Data centers will provide computing but also storage. So people may be wondering if you can comment, Kaidre, about concerns for surveillance, especially concerning China and all that that you said. Thank you.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay. Thank you, Micah. Did you get that, Rod?
Rod Martin: The sound was a little garbled on my end. Could you please restate the question?
Pastor Jeff Schreve: I think he's talking about the explosion of data centers. It really, tracks with the explosion of artificial intelligence.
Rod Martin: Well, it absolutely does. Look, A.I. is essential to nearly everything anybody does now, whether they realize it or not. It has exploded my productivity over the last year and a half. I'm able to do five times as much as before. And no, that's not causing a jobs apocalypse.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: We're.
Rod Martin: We're seeing some companies that have some financial problems they don't want to admit to blaming layoffs on A.I. ah. But the truth is, when you really look at the numbers, it's very, very, very clear that. That the number of jobs available is staying steady or even increasing. Because, again, in my experience, if I had five new people who could use these tools the way I'm using them, we could improve productivity, you know, 25 fold. So. So, yes, the explosion is very real. And. And I would add, I, believe I heard the caller say, you know, it's also about storage. And I want to remind everybody, you keep your movies in the cloud. Movies are huge files. You also keep your photos there. Now, nobody, Nobody develops photos anymore. You keep it online. All of that's in a data center. If you don't have data centers, you can't possibly keep up with regular people's needs.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, very good. We have Richard, on the line from Alabama. Richard, welcome to Real Truth for today.
Caroline: Good morning.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Good morning. Go ahead.
Caroline: yeah, I had a question about the data centers. I totally agree that we need them, but why can't they use nuclear power? We have ships going around the world, submarines that have these many nuclear power plants in them. Why can't they go that route?
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, that's a good question, Rod.
Rod Martin: You are singing my song. And by the way, it's also an important point to make in light of what was done to nuclear power in this country for 50 years. Absolute scaremongering and propaganda. And who benefited from that? Not the public. The worst nuclear accident we ever had in the United States was. Was Three Mile Island. And the highest exposure of radiation anybody got at Three Mile island was less than I get every time I fly in an airliner at 30,000ft. So this scaremongering prevented us from rolling out a proper nuclear industry for pretty much half a century. And it's just stupid now. That's what they're trying to do to data centers. But you're exactly right. Nuclear is the solution to the power problem for these data centers. And the companies building them know it. That's exactly why you now have this deal to reactivate, interestingly enough, one of the reactors at Three Mile island specifically for all of that power to go to power a data center. That is the way. And that will radically expand what's available to the grid. I'll tell you something else. And people aren't talking about this. This is important. These data centers will lose, will use less power over time as all of these systems become more efficient, but the output of those plants will not drop. Which means over time, installing those nuclear power plants, small modular reactors in particular, that's going to feed back into the ground grid. That's going to bring down the price of everybody's electricity. Maybe not next year, but in five years or ten.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, good point. Yeah, thank you for that, Richard. Well, we have Suzanne on the line from North Carolina. Suzanne, welcome to Real Truth for today.
Caroline: Thank you, Pastor, for having me on. And Mr. Martin, I have a question for you. I believe you're Florida resident, which my husband and I are, and I'd like to know your thoughts on Florida Amendment 3. There's so much confusion out there and so many different, you know, thoughts. I'm hearing about it. Like to hear your thoughts, please.
Rod Martin: Well, let me ask you first your thoughts. Where, where do you want me to head with that?
Pastor Jeff Schreve: What is Amendment 3?
Caroline: It is legislation that will reduce property tax in Florida for people who have a homestead setted property.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so where do you stand on that?
Rod Martin: Okay, I will, I will take, I will take that as the direction. Look, property tax on first residences is just evil. It's unbiblical, it's immoral, it is wrong. Now you want to have a property tax on a business's property, no problem. You want to tax, you know, second homes and investment properties and, and all that stuff, have at it. And you know, Amendment 3 does that, so that's all fine. But if you spent 30 years of your life paying off a house, and now you're an 85 year old widow in Sarasota and you miss a property tax payment and you lose your house, what are you, you're not an owner. You're renting from the state. Property tax on first homes makes everybody a, tenant Nobody really owns anything. It's horribly, horribly wrong. So I'm thrilled that the governor has taken up this cause this is not the only state where we're attacking this, but Florida is leading the charge, as usual. and this will be a boon for our people, not least because we have a higher concentration of retired people than anybody. So it's especially important for them. But honestly, I'm in the middle of my career. I don't really want to be a renter either. I bought a house. I've been paying it on it for. For a long time. I don't want to lose it to the state. That's insane. And nobody should have to face that. So. So we can raise a mix of other taxes and more than compensate for the revenue loss. The people who are claiming that we can't, that's just silly. And I thought that might be where you were going with the question, which is why I asked you where you wanted me to go with it.
Caroline: But.
Rod Martin: But the fundamental principle is everyone who owns m their own home or is paying to own their own home through a mortgage should be entitled to what they paid for. And when they die, they ought to be able to pass it to children or children's children. And those children. And children. Children's children shouldn't be burdened by a state getting into their pockets for money that was already taxed and homes that were already paid for.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, good. Good answer. Suzanne, do you agree?
Caroline: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Like I said, there's so much confusion. Thank you for setting it straight. I appreciate it.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, thank you, Suzanne. Well, Heywood, I'm sorry we ran out of time, but I appreciate you calling. You can always, reach me@pastor jeffromishheart.org and, rod, people can reach [email protected] is that not right?
Rod Martin: They absolutely should. And also go to Amazon. And pre order Trump's NewSong World reorder, which is gonna just be a blockbuster. It comes out before the election, and it really shows how Trump isn't a crazy chaos agent. All of this stuff really does fit together, and it's going to build a better world.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Amen. Well, Rob, thanks for being my guest today. And thanks for listening to Real Truth for today. Pastor Jeff Schrieve here. I'll be with you again tomorrow. Go out today, shine for Christ, and share what great things the Lord has done for you. And God will use you as his witness. God bless you.
Welcome to Real Truth for today with Pastor Jeff Schrieve, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Texarkana, Texas. Now, here's Pastor Jeff.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Well, good morning, and welcome to Real Truth for today. I wanted to read to you From Lamentations, Chapter 3, a very interesting passage of scripture. Very famous, passage of scripture. But lots of people don't know what Jeremiah the prophet said before he said, the famous words that I'm about to quote. Life was really hard. And, Jeremiah was lamenting. That's the book, Lamentations. And Israel has been wiped out by the Babylonians. And, he said this beginning in verse 12 of chapter three. He, meaning God, bent his bow and set me as a target for the arrow. He made the arrows of his quiver to enter into my inward parts. I have become a laughing stock to all my people, their mocking song. All the day he has filled me with bitterness. He has made me drunk with wormwood. He has broken my teeth with gravel. He has made me cower in the dust. My soul has been rejected from peace. I have forgotten happiness. So I say, my strength has perished, and so has my hope from the Lord. He's about as low as you can get. And then he says this. Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness. Surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me. This I call to mind. Therefore I have hope. What is that? The Lord's loving kindnesses indeed never cease. For his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore I have hope in him. Listen, I don't know what might be going on in your life, but I know this. The Lord loves you. And his loving kindnesses indeed never cease. And his compassions never fail. And they are new every morning. They're new this morning. And we can say to the Lord, thank you for your faithfulness, Lord. You're my portion, and I have hope in you. Well, it is a privilege for me to welcome to the program a familiar guest, Rod Martin, founder And CEO of Martin Capital, anti communist, part of the team that started PayPal, and he has his website, rodmartin.org. we want to talk about a host of things that, you've been reading about in the news. And so, Rod, welcome to the program this morning.
Rod Martin: It's great to be here, as always.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Well, I appreciate you coming on, my friend. so right off the bat, I want to talk to you about something that's big news in Texarkana, Texas, and that is data centers. When, I was a kid growing up, my dad worked for the Shell data center, in Menlo Paak, California. Nobody thought much about it. I think that thing was probably built in the 60s or something like that. This is late, 60s when he worked there in early Sevent. data centers have been around for a long time, but they've become a hot button topic in the last couple of years. And so, I'll just ask you a very open question, Rod, because I know you've touched on this before and written articles about it. What's the big deal about the data center? Is it a noise pollutant? A, water guzzler? An energy consumer? Is it something that we need to shun or, or we need to embrace?
Rod Martin: Mostly it's a threat to China. And China is spending a ton of money to spread propaganda in the United States to stir people up and scare them. And it's exactly as you said. We've had data centers since before I was born. It is true. We're building more now because we're using more compute now than ever. You know, you used to have movies on VCR tapes or on DVDs. Now we stream all of them. You used to watch broadcast TV. I can't remember when I last watched broadcast TV. If I watch broadcast TV, I stream it through YouTube or something. All of that requires data centers. This interview this morning is using Zoom, which utilizes data centers. There is just nothing we do now that doesn't require it. So if you think about, oh, there's all this explosive growth in data centers. And yes, it's exactly the same as the explosive growth in the need for oil. Once somebody invented the car, you know, for decades they were producing oil mostly for kerosene lamps. Who the heck has a kerosene lamp now? And they took the gasoline that came out of the refining process and just threw it on the ground. Nobody wanted it, Nobody could buy it. Now it's the most important issue for most people all the time. You know, got to get that price of Gas down. Well, that means you got to refine a. A lot more oil. Well, if you want to do all the things you want to do, you absolutely have to have more data centers, because basically a data center is just a great big server farm. When you say that you're keeping your files in the cloud, what do you think the cloud is? An actual cloud up in the sky? No, it's a data center. Cloud is just marketing terminology. And we've been using it for 20 years, and actually a lot longer than that. Just hadn't come up with the term cloud yet. So, you know, this is something we all use, we all need. And as AI becomes much, much more important to, for example, shooting down incoming missiles that have been fired at a school, you know, preventing some kind of terrorist incident or, you know, whatever it is that you need from a defense perspective, AI is essential. The enemy has it. The enemy is shooting forward really fast on it, and they want to use our political system to disrupt our ability to keep up with them. That's something we need to combat. So. So I'll just say in Texarkana, you guys should be happier than anybody, because Governor Greg Abbott just announced rules that require these things to bring their own coolant, bring their own power, you know, do everything right where it is entirely beneficial to and not at all burdensome on the local communities. We've done a lot of that here in Florida, too. So, you're absolutely right to want these things to be within reasonable constraints. The president's talked about that, too. He's got an executive order to make sure that happens. But the truth is, you know, when people talk about water, you've been able to build a data center for 40 years that doesn't use any water or that uses. Uses a limited supply of water that it takes in basically once and just reuses over and over again. You can air cool these things. You don't have to use water at all. You do that by basically air conditioning the place and, you know, really pumping up those chillers. That takes more electricity. So the president wants to make them build their own power stations, and a lot of them are doing that. So there are things we want to do to make this better for everybody. but we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is a really, really important civilizational advance.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so, Rod, this might be a dumb question, but I'm thinking in my mind, okay, your company X, and you build a data center. how do you sell what you just built? How do you Market that, I mean, we talk about the cloud, it's kind of nebulous in terms of I build a data center, who's buying from me?
Rod Martin: Oh my gosh, we don't have enough. That's the thing. And it's right that you should mention X. Although you meant it as variable, I'm going to mean it as a company. SpaceX built the biggest data center in the world and they couldn't use all the capacity immediately, so they just rented it out to one of the other AI companies. They're going to make about a billion dollars a month just off of that. I mean, it's an insane amount of money and it's only going to grow. it's so much so that in five years a rather large portion of SpaceX's entire, monthly earnings is going to be coming from, from renting out compute in these data centers as the demand just skyrockets. So yeah, nobody. This is actually a really good point. I'm so glad you brought it up. People seem to think that these things are disconnected from the rest of reality. No, nobody is building a data center if it isn't needed. Nobody is going to invest that kind of money if it isn't profitable. And the truth is, we could build 10 times as many as we are and not meet the demand that's gonna exist just five years away. This is exactly why Elon, by the way, is planning to build data centers in orbit, which ought to make everybody happy, but I'm sure they'll find a reason why that's a bad idea too. You know, in orbit you've got unlimited solar power. And you know, solar isn't that smart on Earth a lot of the time because we have this crazy new thing called nighttime, and we have rainstorms and we have all these things that obscure the sun. In space, you can make it line of sight to the sun, where you just convert power all day long for the cost of the equipment to generate it. And so, you know, that's way cheaper than building a nuclear plant in Memphis or something. So, so that's the future. And I know a lot of people thought Elon was just talking out of his hat on that. Well, first, you should never ever do that because his timeline is sometimes wrong, but his predictions are almost always right. And second, Morgan Stanley came in and did a big analysis of this data centers in orbit idea and they confirmed it 100%. They're like the technology exists or is currently being developed to do this en masse at an Economical price. And it's going to solve everybody's problem. So, you know, the data centers we're building right now, of course we need them, of course we will continue to need them. but that massive spike in demand is going to increasingly be served from space where nobody lives and nobody has to worry about what it does to their community.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so if we say, as Americans, hey, we don't want that, we don't want these data centers and the activists get going and they, you know, vote it down and that kind of thing, what is the, result of that? How does America just gets left in the dust?
Rod Martin: Yeah, exactly that. I mean, it's like if we just decided not to industrialize during the Industrial revolution, it's the exact equivalent of saying, well, we don't want steel mills, we don't want cars, we don't want phones. We want to live just like Little House on the Prairie. Well, guess what? The rest of the world isn't going to make that decision. So the world races past us, and eventually we're their colony. And it's just dumb. It's needless, it's pointless. The one thing that I think people are really worked up about, that really has a lot of validity, is the use of flock cameras and other surveillance systems, all of which are data center reliant, to do mass surveillance on the American people. But that's not a technology issue. If you have an issue with flock cameras. That's a Fourth amendment question. That's a fifth amendment question. Litigate it. The Supreme Court that Donald Trump appointed a majority on came down with a fantastic ruling just this year limiting the use of technology for exactly that sort of thing because of fourth amendment protections which prior courts hadn't been willing to apply. So the solution to flock cameras isn't getting rid of data centers. That's like trying to get rid of murderers by eliminating oxygen. That's just silly. You know, the, the solution here is stronger privacy protections in the law. And, and we have them in our Constitution. We just have insufficiently applied them to modern technology. And the Supreme Court is catching up.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Very good. Okay, we're not going to be able to jump into this too much right now, but I want to touch on it. Everybody's talking about Lindsey Clancy, the lady that murdered her three children, and they're having trouble coming up with a verdict. you have three dead children. I don't care what's going on in her head. She murdered her children. she needs to be locked up for the rest of her life. Just, initial thoughts, Rod, on that case.
Rod Martin: Yeah. Jon Hinckley tried to assassinate the President of the United States in 1981. And, you know, he really, genuinely was crazy, and we put him in a mental institution for pretty much the whole rest of his life. If she really is crazy, then that's the right solution. If she really isn't, and I've looked at a lot of this trial, I'm not convinced she is, then she should be executed. But what we shouldn't do is try to make excuses and pretend that women have no agency and they just can't control their hormones. What we're seeing online is insane. It is the reversal of everything feminists told us for the last 50 years. It makes these women out to be just automatons and completely out of control.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yes. Well, we're talking to Rod Martin and we're talking about the issues of the day. You're listening to Real Truth for today on American Family Radio. Pastor Jeff Schrieve here. We'll be right back.
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: This is real truth for today. Podcasts of the program are available on the podcast [email protected] now back to Pastor Jeff Schrieve.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Welcome back to the program. Pastor Jeff here talking about my friend Rod Martin, founder and CEO of Martin Capital, an anti communist and part of the team that started PayPal. His website is rodmartin.org okay, Rod, at the break, we were talking about Lindsay Clancy and just, horrific what she did. And it would doesn't. I mean, it seemed like it was planned out. She got her husband out of the house and killed her kids, in a gruesome way, strangling them to death. Five and under three kids and then threw herself out of the window to try and kill herself. Would she slash her wrists or slash her throat or something like that? and now I haven't followed it closely, but what is her defense? That I was just nuts?
Rod Martin: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, she pled that she did it, but she's crazy. And that's probably the best defense available because otherwise this is completely indefensible. But, the evidence is absolutely clear that she did it. And the people online, and it's shocking to watch the people online who are, oh, well, the husband really did it and so forth. no, her defense lawyers actually had her plead not guilty by reason of insanity. That means she's admitting in a sworn filing that she did it. The whole basis of her defense is that she did it, but she wasn't mentally competent. So all this Internet crazy is just really wild to watch. And it goes back to something that we were fighting in the Southern Baptist Convention for several years, which is this idea that, you know, in, in the defense of women, and of course we want to defend women, but critical theory takes you into this weird place where women should be given all power, and if the world, and if only women existed, there would be no violence in the world. And also at the same time, women can kill their children randomly and can't be held responsible for it because hormones. Well, wait, what? This is just insane. And it's anti biblical because the Bible actually holds us all responsible for our actions. If she really is crazy, then of course you would modify that, but you wouldn't let her go free. She's a threat to society and she murdered three children. you know, that's not how that works. So what is the biblical view? The biblical view and the American legal view are that you are responsible for what you do. And that's a good thing because that's the basis of equality. If women are just all nannies, buffeted about by their hormones to such a degree that you can't leave your children with them safely, then the logical response to that would just be to lock all the women up. And no one, no one thinks that's right.
Caroline: So.
Rod Martin: So the defenses being made are absurd and they are a dodge of responsibility which is endemic in this culture. Everything is made a therapeutic issue to avoid the reality of sinfulness and fallenness. So nobody is ever accountable for anything. And if somebody steps beyond a certain norm, we just call it crazy. So we don't have to call it evil. That's unbiblical. That's unchristian. And honestly, if this woman is crazy, okay, she probably didn't have the requisite intent to. To, be able to be held fully accountable for murder one in this case. But she's still accountable. She still did what she did.
Caroline: And.
Rod Martin: And there's just no avoiding that. The other thing, in answer to your question, of course, is that this idea that somehow she was drug addled and just, you know, turned psychotic by virtue of pharmaceuticals, the evidence doesn't seem to support it. I saw, one of the doctors give testimony on this, and he was saying, you know, her real problem was that she was pill resistant. And her defense lawyer, you know, cross examines that and he's like, no, we couldn't get her to take her pills. That was the problem. She had all these prescriptions because she wouldn't use them. And sure enough, the physical evidence matches that. They looked at her pill bottles very, very closely. She'd hardly taken any of them ever.
Caroline: So.
Rod Martin: So the defense that, that she was driven into psychosis by medical malpractice just doesn't seem to hold water. I look at this evidence, and I think she meant to do it. I think she was competent, and she's just wicked.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Well, it's just horrific. You know, one of the things I've had this conversation with a number of people, in ministry, in the Bible, you don't read much about mental illness. I mean, they had crazy people. they said of Jesus that he's, you know, he's out of his mind. but you hear and read a lot about demonic possession. I think that in America today, we don't ever want to say somebody is demonized or demon possessed or anything. But if you do, the things that a lot of these people are doing, you stab Arayna Zaretska on the train for no reason at all, stab her to death, as that guy did, in North Carolina, in Charlotte. I mean, the demons are involved in that kind of behavior. Just like with her behavior. I think she even said she was hearing voices. So we don't like to talk about the demonic side of this, but I put more emphasis on the demonic side than on the, you know, she's got a mental illness.
Rod Martin: Now, that certainly seems to be the case here. I mean, I don't think you're going to be able to prove that to a jury, of course, but as Christians, we know that demons are real. We know how they act. We actually are given a very clear picture of that in scripture. Jesus certainly took it seriously. So, you know, why wouldn't we? And the answer to that is part and parcel of what I was saying earlier. The entire culture wants to deny the idea, of fallenness and certainly of the supernatural, which is a bit ironic these days because we have gone way past the rationalist materialism of our youth into a culture where Wicca, is prevalent and all kinds of spirituality is everywhere. They may not know it, but of course they're of part playing with demons. And I've met more than a few of these people. We've got one young lady in our church who was a Wiccan and spent years in that before she was miraculously saved. And she tells stories. Of course we knew we were dealing with demons. We would make contracts with demons. And you know, yes, we knew what we were doing. And crucially, she said, and we took the Bible more seriously than any Christians I know because the demons know perfectly well who God is and that he's real. So, so the, the whole aim is to twist and pervert whatever God wants into something that will give him offense. Okay, well, if that's going on even with people in my own church, I don't think that this is hidden in a corner somewhere anymore. It is a real shame that our Southern Baptist seminaries, and no other Protestant seminaries of which I'm aware, don't even have a single class on demonology. They just don't touch it with a ten foot pole. And that's a mistake. It is a real mistake to leave mental health issues to a professional field that is rooted in Freud's dictum that having religious belief is itself a sign of insanity. And it's equally stupid for us to leave demonology entirely to the Catholic Church. That's an enormous mistake. And Protestants have to start taking this more seriously. In any case, if it is true, and I don't know that it's true, but I think based on the evidence I've seen that it is true that Lindsey Clancy really wasn't taking her pills. Really actually seemed to be able to form the intent. Certainly premeditated it to the degree of even getting her husband out of the house and arranging everything so that she could carry this out. Actually strangled her own three children in front of each other. Can you imagine the horror in the two children who are watching the first one get strangled to death and just can't believe that their mommy is, is doing this?
Caroline: Yes.
Rod Martin: And, and she did all this just completely heartless. So, okay, that actually does sound a lot like demon possession in scripture. And Christians need to take that seriously. We don't know that for sure, but we know that that's possible. And it would be helpful to speak to a culture that thinks of itself as highly spiritual without being Christian. This is the consequence of what you're doing.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so, Rod, I'm going to play you a clip. This was from Anne Hathaway on the View. I don't know if you've heard it, but it just shows you, you know, Isaiah 5:20 just comes into view every single day. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Here is Anne Hathaway talking about the mercy of abortion.
Caroline: When you are a young woman starting out your career, your reproductive destiny matters a great deal. My own personal experience, and I don't think we talk about this enough. Abortion can be another word for mercy. We don't know. We don't know. It's not a world in which, we know that no two pregnancies are alike, and it follows that no two lives are like that, follows that no two conceptions are alike. So how can we have a law. How can we have a point of view on this that says we must treat everything the same? And where I come at it from is when you allow for. For choice, you allow for flexibility, which is what we need in order to be human.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: It's just unbelievable. But, abortion is another word for mercy. Brutally murdering your unborn baby is another word for mercy. That's where we've. And then all the ladies in the View are a bunch of seals. Oh, that's right. Yes, you can hear them. How insightful. well, that fits in with the women that now are supporting Lindsey Clancy, saying, oh, she's, you know, she's not guilty because she was in psychosis. And, you know, I look at that, Rod, and just think, obviously there's hope for humanity in Jesus, but there's not hope for humanity outside of Jesus, and we're taking a bullet train in the opposite direction that we need to go.
Rod Martin: Well, we had a number of Southern Baptist leaders for a while, and fortunately, many of them have left our denomination. But a number of them preached for many recent years that the worst thing about America was its Christian culture. This cultural Christianity that, you know, deceives people into thinking their believers when they aren't. Okay, first of all, I question that anybody's really deceived about that. They either know Jesus or they don't, but it doesn't really matter. The point is that what cultural Christianity did for us for centuries was it gave us a common moral reference point where we just didn't do certain things. And if somebody did, even the unbelievers understood that it was horribly wrong. And so, so there was a consensus. That didn't get you a lot of Lindsay Clancy or or Irene Zarudskas or the woman who just randomly in Times Square yesterday pulls a knife on a bunch of people and starts stabbing them. And I mean, again that sounds like demon possession. That's weird. And we have this just increasingly, prevalent view that, that no one is ever responsible for anything. Of course, unless you're a Christian white male and then you're responsible for everything, but you know, everybody else gets a complete pass. Again, it is an attack on scripture. And yes, it started with Roe v. Wade. It started with the idea that you could murder your own child in the safest place it should ever exist, experience in its life, your womb. And somehow that's not only morally acceptable, but in many cases morally virtuous. No, that's horribly, horribly wrong. And not only because, okay, you know, the excuse is frequently, well, but the woman might not be able to raise the child well, well guess what, Lots of people have bad mothers. That, that doesn't mean they want to die. for that matter, there are about three times as many people in the United States who would like to adopt a child as are able to. There's no lack of demand for happy homes where these children can be raised if somebody can just manage not to murder them before they have a chance to be placed for adoption. So all of this is just horrible. And of course it was always going to lead here. What is the difference between killing a preborn child and a post born child? And increasingly the answer of many Democrats in particular is there isn't any difference at all. And we saw that under the previous governor in Virginia when he was actually enacting legislation to allow the mother and the doctor to decide after the child was born whether they would kill it in the hospital. This is where this goes. And you see it with the euthanasia campaign in Canada and other countries. It is a culture of death. And if anything in the world is satanic, that's it.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: well said for sure. Okay, you are an anti communist, it's in your bio. Communism, they don't call it communism, it's democratic socialism, which I think the Nazis were the democratic socialists of their day. on the rise. Young people think it's all the rage. okay, so are we on a collision Course, with disaster here.
Rod Martin: Well, they used to deny the communist thing, but we just had the Democratic Socialists of America convention a few weeks ago, and one of the principal leaders of the DSA stands up at the podium and says, our goal is communism. And the crowd cheered. So, no, they don't think it's bad. They want to use the power of the state to punish their enemies. and we know where that goes. We know where it's gone in every country that's tried it. It involves mass death and just unbelievable systemic oppression. So, yeah, we're in a horrifying place in this country, and the Democrats are lapping it up like water at a trough.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: It's crazy. Well, we're talking to Rod Martin when we come back from the break. We'll be taking your calls. 888-589-8840. That's 888-589-8840. If you have a question or comment. You're listening to Real Truth for today with Pastor Jeff Schrieve here on American Folks Family Radio. We'll be right back after the break.
: If you'd like to contact Pastor Jeff, email pastor jeffromhishheart.org now back to Real Truth for today with Pastor Jeff Schrieve.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Welcome back to the program. Pastor. Mr. Jeff here talking to my friend Rod Martin, founder and CEO of Martin Capital. And, Rod is a anti communist, which is a good thing, and part of the team that started PayPal. You can, check him [email protected] he's got great commentaries on things. And so, Rod, you are a political, analyst of, sorts, and you look at races and you, you were there with Mike Huckabee way back when in his administration as governor of Arkansas. When you look at the race in Texas for the Senate, James Tallarico, who is one of, he presents himself as a offspring, of howdy Doody and Mr. Rogers. And then you have Ken Paxton, who's been, rode hard and put up wet. Perhaps, if we use that expression, give me your opinion of those, of that particular race.
Rod Martin: Well, I'll come straight to Talarico, but I want to play off something you said just a second ago. my day job is CEO of Martin Capital. We do technology investments. I was one of the early guys at PayPal. But in my copious spare time, we have launched here about a year and a half ago, Rodmart. That's rodmartin.org where we do daily geopolitical analysis, Fox Business Calls. Absolutely Phenomenal. And not only that, but all of it is informed from a Christian worldview, as you can see. So we may be talking about human rights abuses in Greenland or how the Venezuela oil deal affects global markets, but we're doing it from a Christian perspective point of view. So. So I encourage people to come to rodmartin.org and I have a book coming out in, in October which is available for pre sale called Trump's NewSong World Reorder. That's Trump's NewSong World Reorder. And, everybody's gonna want that. Look, Talarico is a terrible, terrible candidate. And I really, really can't see Texas electing this clown.
: He's.
Rod Martin: He's a train wreck in every possible respect. It is true that Ken Paxton has not raised money well, but Ken Paxton was a great Attorney General, whatever his personal issues may be, and he will be a great United States Senator. So I was really encouraged to see Jon Thune say they're going to get fully behind him and call on the President. You know, the president has $400 million in super PACs. Texas is an incredibly expensive place to try to run for office. You just got so many media markets, and there's some of the top media markets in the world. And it's expensive to buy ads. It's expensive to put up that many yard signs. It's a big, big place. And so. So, the President needs to spend here, Elon Musk needs to spend here. And certainly the National Senatorial Republican, Senatorial Committee needs to get a lot more serious about this race. But I think Ken Paxton pulls it out. I think he does fine. And every so often you're going to get a Beto or a Talarico on the left, who, you know, is. Who captures the imagination enough to make the race competitive. you guys are not quite as red a state, perhaps as Florida has become, but you're pretty red. And it's a little hard to see how Paxton loses. It's just going to take all the work that all of us can do.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yes, well, that's good to hear. I agree with you. I think James Tallarico is just awful. you know, it's one thing to be a liberal, but to try and pass yourself off as this Christian liberal, that is so utterly distasteful. And the way he twists scripture and then presents it like I'm a seminarian and, it's just disgusting. It's. It, has God said type thing. it's just awful. Ken Paxton is who he Is. I mean, he's not trying to present himself as something that he's not.
Rod Martin: I do appreciate that.
Caroline: Yes.
Caroline: Yes.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: So, a little rough around the edges, maybe in his personal life, but he, still, he knows the difference between right and wrong. That's one of the things, Rod, you know, like with President Trump, people that attack his, you know, his sins of the past. He still has a moral compass. And when he has been unfaithful in his marriages, he knows that's wrong.
Rod Martin: He does.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: And, the problem I have with the Democrats, their moral compass is totally broken. They are upside down on virtually any moral issue. They choose the wrong side. I can't think of one moral issue where they're right about it. Can you?
Rod Martin: there's nothing anymore. And m. It's just been a remarkable thing to watch over the last 30 years. It was already bad under Clinton, but Clinton couldn't have imagined where we've gone, and it's just abominable. Speaking to Ken Paxton, you know, the other side of that is how has he behaved professionally? And he has been one of our very, very best fighters among any attorney general anywhere in the United States. He has taken it to the bad guys. He has put them in jail. He has fought for Texas, and, and we need a fighter in the Senate. Honestly, Jon Cornyn has been such a disappointment, such a disappointment. When he first got elected, you know, all of us were cheering that really thought he was going to be the real deal. He was not. And Paxton isn't afraid to actually mix it up in the Senate, get legislation done, and actually make sure that it comports with what we promised people when we ran. That's a big, big upgrade. So we really need him.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, I would agree with that. Well, we're going to the phone lines. 888-589-8840. And we have Micah on the line from Virginia. Micah, welcome to Real Truth for today.
Caroline: We were there because of that.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, I, I, Yeah, go ahead. Do you have a question?
Caroline: Yes, I have a comment for Rod, your, guest, I'm sorry, Rod Martin, if I mispronounce his name. Yeah, Rod Martin, for the years, about the data centers, for letting us, throwing some light, especially, on added computing. But I would like, your guests to address a point concerning mass surveillance. The increased, concern, from my perspective and from other people, is why suddenly we have increased data centers. Really. they've just come up with an explosion. So, as we know within the product and, you know, the Role of supply and demand. Data centers will provide computing but also storage. So people may be wondering if you can comment, Kaidre, about concerns for surveillance, especially concerning China and all that that you said. Thank you.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay. Thank you, Micah. Did you get that, Rod?
Rod Martin: The sound was a little garbled on my end. Could you please restate the question?
Pastor Jeff Schreve: I think he's talking about the explosion of data centers. It really, tracks with the explosion of artificial intelligence.
Rod Martin: Well, it absolutely does. Look, A.I. is essential to nearly everything anybody does now, whether they realize it or not. It has exploded my productivity over the last year and a half. I'm able to do five times as much as before. And no, that's not causing a jobs apocalypse.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: We're.
Rod Martin: We're seeing some companies that have some financial problems they don't want to admit to blaming layoffs on A.I. ah. But the truth is, when you really look at the numbers, it's very, very, very clear that. That the number of jobs available is staying steady or even increasing. Because, again, in my experience, if I had five new people who could use these tools the way I'm using them, we could improve productivity, you know, 25 fold. So. So, yes, the explosion is very real. And. And I would add, I, believe I heard the caller say, you know, it's also about storage. And I want to remind everybody, you keep your movies in the cloud. Movies are huge files. You also keep your photos there. Now, nobody, Nobody develops photos anymore. You keep it online. All of that's in a data center. If you don't have data centers, you can't possibly keep up with regular people's needs.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, very good. We have Richard, on the line from Alabama. Richard, welcome to Real Truth for today.
Caroline: Good morning.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Good morning. Go ahead.
Caroline: yeah, I had a question about the data centers. I totally agree that we need them, but why can't they use nuclear power? We have ships going around the world, submarines that have these many nuclear power plants in them. Why can't they go that route?
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, that's a good question, Rod.
Rod Martin: You are singing my song. And by the way, it's also an important point to make in light of what was done to nuclear power in this country for 50 years. Absolute scaremongering and propaganda. And who benefited from that? Not the public. The worst nuclear accident we ever had in the United States was. Was Three Mile Island. And the highest exposure of radiation anybody got at Three Mile island was less than I get every time I fly in an airliner at 30,000ft. So this scaremongering prevented us from rolling out a proper nuclear industry for pretty much half a century. And it's just stupid now. That's what they're trying to do to data centers. But you're exactly right. Nuclear is the solution to the power problem for these data centers. And the companies building them know it. That's exactly why you now have this deal to reactivate, interestingly enough, one of the reactors at Three Mile island specifically for all of that power to go to power a data center. That is the way. And that will radically expand what's available to the grid. I'll tell you something else. And people aren't talking about this. This is important. These data centers will lose, will use less power over time as all of these systems become more efficient, but the output of those plants will not drop. Which means over time, installing those nuclear power plants, small modular reactors in particular, that's going to feed back into the ground grid. That's going to bring down the price of everybody's electricity. Maybe not next year, but in five years or ten.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, good point. Yeah, thank you for that, Richard. Well, we have Suzanne on the line from North Carolina. Suzanne, welcome to Real Truth for today.
Caroline: Thank you, Pastor, for having me on. And Mr. Martin, I have a question for you. I believe you're Florida resident, which my husband and I are, and I'd like to know your thoughts on Florida Amendment 3. There's so much confusion out there and so many different, you know, thoughts. I'm hearing about it. Like to hear your thoughts, please.
Rod Martin: Well, let me ask you first your thoughts. Where, where do you want me to head with that?
Pastor Jeff Schreve: What is Amendment 3?
Caroline: It is legislation that will reduce property tax in Florida for people who have a homestead setted property.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so where do you stand on that?
Rod Martin: Okay, I will, I will take, I will take that as the direction. Look, property tax on first residences is just evil. It's unbiblical, it's immoral, it is wrong. Now you want to have a property tax on a business's property, no problem. You want to tax, you know, second homes and investment properties and, and all that stuff, have at it. And you know, Amendment 3 does that, so that's all fine. But if you spent 30 years of your life paying off a house, and now you're an 85 year old widow in Sarasota and you miss a property tax payment and you lose your house, what are you, you're not an owner. You're renting from the state. Property tax on first homes makes everybody a, tenant Nobody really owns anything. It's horribly, horribly wrong. So I'm thrilled that the governor has taken up this cause this is not the only state where we're attacking this, but Florida is leading the charge, as usual. and this will be a boon for our people, not least because we have a higher concentration of retired people than anybody. So it's especially important for them. But honestly, I'm in the middle of my career. I don't really want to be a renter either. I bought a house. I've been paying it on it for. For a long time. I don't want to lose it to the state. That's insane. And nobody should have to face that. So. So we can raise a mix of other taxes and more than compensate for the revenue loss. The people who are claiming that we can't, that's just silly. And I thought that might be where you were going with the question, which is why I asked you where you wanted me to go with it.
Caroline: But.
Rod Martin: But the fundamental principle is everyone who owns m their own home or is paying to own their own home through a mortgage should be entitled to what they paid for. And when they die, they ought to be able to pass it to children or children's children. And those children. And children. Children's children shouldn't be burdened by a state getting into their pockets for money that was already taxed and homes that were already paid for.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, good. Good answer. Suzanne, do you agree?
Caroline: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Like I said, there's so much confusion. Thank you for setting it straight. I appreciate it.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, thank you, Suzanne. Well, Heywood, I'm sorry we ran out of time, but I appreciate you calling. You can always, reach me@pastor jeffromishheart.org and, rod, people can reach [email protected] is that not right?
Rod Martin: They absolutely should. And also go to Amazon. And pre order Trump's NewSong World reorder, which is gonna just be a blockbuster. It comes out before the election, and it really shows how Trump isn't a crazy chaos agent. All of this stuff really does fit together, and it's going to build a better world.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Amen. Well, Rob, thanks for being my guest today. And thanks for listening to Real Truth for today. Pastor Jeff Schrieve here. I'll be with you again tomorrow. Go out today, shine for Christ, and share what great things the Lord has done for you. And God will use you as his witness. God bless you.
Pastor Jeff Schreve welcomes Rod Martin, founder and CEO of Martin Capital and an early member of the PayPal team, to discuss some of the biggest cultural, political, and technological issues facing America today. They examine the rapid growth of data centers and artificial intelligence, concerns about surveillance and privacy, the importance of nuclear energy, and the consequences of falling behind in technological development.
The conversation also addresses accountability, the biblical understanding of good and evil, the rise of socialism and communism, and the importance of maintaining a moral foundation rooted in Scripture. Throughout the discussion, Pastor Jeff and Rod emphasize the need to view today's issues through a biblical worldview and to stand firmly on God's truth in a culture increasingly moving away from it.
Pastor Jeff Schreve welcomes Rod Martin, founder and CEO of Martin Capital and an early member of the PayPal team, to discuss some of the biggest cultural, political, and technological issues facing America today. They examine the rapid growth of data centers and artificial intelligence, concerns about surveillance and privacy, the importance of nuclear energy, and the consequences of falling behind in technological development.
The conversation also addresses accountability, the biblical understanding of good and evil, the rise of socialism and communism, and the importance of maintaining a moral foundation rooted in Scripture. Throughout the discussion, Pastor Jeff and Rod emphasize the need to view today's issues through a biblical worldview and to stand firmly on God's truth in a culture increasingly moving away from it.
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