: 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 Thursday morning and welcome to Real Truth for today. It is September 24th. It is cooler in Texarkana, Texas. It was cooler yesterday. It's cooler today. And so we praise the Lord for that. Psalm 67 is a. As a psalm doesn't give the, author, but it says this. God, be gracious to us and bless us, and cause his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on the earth. Your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you will judge the peoples with uprightness and guide the nations on the earth. Selah. Well, that's a great psalm to start off the day. We do want God to be gracious to us. We desperately need God to be gracious to us. We need him and want him to bless us, and we want his face to shine upon us and, for God to use us as his lights in the world. Well, it is a privilege for me to, welcome once again to the program my friend Rod Martin, CEO of Martin Capital and the Rod Martin Report. Now, Rod is focused on the intersection. I looked this up today. Rod, focus on the intersection now. There's a lot of streets coming into this intersection. Rod, that you are, focused on geopolitics, technology, energy, energy, defense, stock markets, and a biblical worldview altogether, would you say that's true?
Rod Martin: I would say that's true. And I would say that's what needs to be true. We need to think holistically we certainly serve a God who does, who intricately wove together all of the different aspects of his universe. And Christians should do likewise. We can't possibly comprehend what God can comprehend. My goodness. One of the things I'm probably looking forward most to in heaven is just being able to ask what selah means. Nobody knows. Wouldn't that be great? Great, but. But the truth is, we can try. We are made in the image of God. It's our duty to see things from an entire worldview. How it all fits together and how it all serves its owner, the Creator, for whom we are just stewards.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Amen. it is the glory of God to conceal a matter. It is glory of man to seek out a matter. And, God. God hasn't made us like hiding Easter eggs, Rod. He hasn't just put them all out in plain sight. There. You got to. You got to hunt and dig and search.
Rod Martin: You just stated the story of technology. And as some of your viewers know, I was one of the early guys at PayPal. We were inventing the infrastructure of the modern world. And, you know, all of that stuff was possible in the days of Abraham or the days of Julius Caesar or the days of George Washington. They just hadn't figured out the pieces yet. And what we find is the more we figure out the pieces, the better able we are to roll back the effects of the curse. Now, we can't roll back the curse. Only Christ can do that. And, you know, inventing a fancier computer is not going to save anybody, but it may save their life long enough, give them enough education and communication ability to be able to hear from a missionary or hear from a pastor like you. We are materially improving a material world God created and cares about a great deal. I mean, it's very, very clear that God cares about the world he made. God has cursed the world we live in because of our rebellion. And God is restoring that world in the life to come with not just new heavens, but a new earth where we will dwell with Him. So seeking out a matter has real consequences for the quality of widows and orphans and everybody else. And, you know, if I had lived even a hundred years ago, I would have been dead in my 30s just from high blood pressure, which is the easiest thing in the world to treat. Technology is a blessing, and it's because God has concealed everything in the creation. And we are. We receive glory in a very tangible sense by seeking those matters out.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so, Rod, I talked yesterday. Tim, Wildmon had sent out a letter to all the, AFA family about the dangers of AI. And George Barna has done a recent survey, of 1500 or so people and then another 500 or so pastors. And they're real concerns, especially as it relates to kids, as it relates to kids not learning how to critically think because they just go to AI for everything, every answer. And they can be easily duped because AI is not always right. And especially when it relates to a, question that would have to, that would cause you to think through. Okay, this is, this can be answered different ways depending on your worldview. so what say you about the dangers of AI?
Rod Martin: Well, look, I use AI, ah, like you know, 12 or more hours a day. So I'm not in a position to say, say it's bad. It has been a godsend to me. It has massively multiplied my productivity. But the truth is, and I said this to Jim Garlow on his show last night, it's like, you know, the President's talking about, you know, not artificial intelligence, but super intelligence. As a constant user of the thing, I would say it's more artificial stupidity. It really doesn't know what it's talking about a great deal of the time. It is shocking, shockingly capable, amazing in its scope, and it's getting better every day. New models dropped yesterday that are just mind blowing. I mean really, really great tools, but they are only tools. And this is, this is the starting point I would give to pastors. George Gilder has been writing on this topic for more than 30 years. Yes, AI has been budding for a very long time. It's, you know, it's an overnight success, half a century in the making. And George, ah, who by the way, in addition to being a tech guru, in addition to being Ronald Reagan's most quoted living author, including being a father of supply side economics, is quite the technologist. He has been one of the thinkers really shaping how Silicon Valley looks at the world for a long time. And he has long been in this kind of friendly debate with the guys who believe in the singularity, who believe that AI, is or shortly will be sentient and eventually will become effectively our God. And George's take on that has always been that just defies everything we know about physics. I mean, even if you weren't a Christian, even if you weren't a creationist, we know from Von Neumann, we know from all of these originators of information theory, who made the modern world possible, that the central axioms of any system have to come from outside the system. They cannot be derived from within it. Which leads you to the next logical conclusion, which is computation is not comprehension. It's simply not. Computation is not comprehension. Your calculator is not going to replace your accountant, no matter how many times we were told it was going to back in the 70s and 80s. Because the accountant brings judgment and reasoning and even aesthetics that the programming simply can't match. It can mimic, but it can't match. It can't, it might be able to do some of the things you can do, but it can't think about it in a creative and original way. So this is a key distinction. A lot of the fears are about what we're hearing from Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis and others. And they're brilliant men, and I'm not knocking them. I just think they're theologically off base. They're also off, ah, base on the physics. And guess what? The physics derives from the theology. God created it all. So, so that's the first thing. Now the, the more practical concerns, like children overusing it and not learning this and that and the other two different paths on that. The first one is I found that I. My logic ability is sharper just from learning how to properly prompt AI. I mean, you have to get much more precise in what you say and how you say it. So that's a positive thing. But I would just admonish parents everywhere. If you're handing your kids over to the public schools at this point in American history, you're already eliminating their ability to think because all they're getting is critical theory. No critical thinking at all. All critical theory all the time. And the solution to that is either a good Christian school or homeschooling, which we did. And I got to tell you, you can absolutely solve all these problems just by having engaged parents who are really serious about taking care of their kids. It's really not that complex. And if you do that, if you lay the foundation, if you get the fundamentals right, all of this stuff becomes a neutral or even positive tool. But if you're giving your kid an iPhone when he's 8, you're probably an idiot. You really shouldn't do that. And you shouldn't let them on social media. You just shouldn't. Their brains aren't ready for that. Their hearts aren't ready for that. Don't do that. Be a wise parent. Be in the word. Apply what you read.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, Rod, I got asked this week about, AI as it relates to the Antichrist. You Know, we, we see movies like Irobot where the, the robots become, you know, they make their own decisions.
Rod Martin: Where they cross that line.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yes, they cross that line. We have Terminator and Sky. Skynet, I think was the, you know, the machines, that took over 2001 A Space Odyssey hall, you know, the spaceship took over and that kind of thing. How do you see, the Antichrist using AI? Do you see that as very critical to his, program?
Rod Martin: I think technology is neutral. It's exactly what you were saying earlier. It's the glory of God to conceal a matter. It's the glory of kings to search it out. And kings isn't limited to political leaders or even monarchs, you know, you can certainly, I think most people can connect that. Kings can include prime ministers and presidents and governors and stuff. But no, kings in this case means leaders of any number of things. The head of Exxon is a king in his realm. Peter Thiel is a king in his realm. And they are doing things that fit that description. So what they come up with is neutral in and of itself. There's nothing evil about an iron mine. But I can either use it to build, you know, stunning structures that can withstand hurricanes and save lives, or I can use it to build missiles to kill millions of people. Every one of these things is neutral until you add the moral component. And that is not something a machine can do. It's not something, something AI is going to be able to do. It will mimic it. But what it's mimicking is the morality of its programmers. And that is fundamental. Some people will come back and say, well, now AI is able to code itself to some degree. Yeah, and it will be able to do more of that. But it's coming from the seed of the original programming and wait for it, there's more. It's also coming from all the material that it takes in because all these models are trying trained on material that's already out there. News articles, great books, you name it, you know, movies, comic books, whatever there is in the world, they're trained on that. All of those are written by sinners, a hundred percent of them, except the Bible. And even there, the Lord who wrote every word of our Bible, used human sinful authors to execute on the task. I think that's very much what we're looking at here. We are using a flawed system to execute on tasks that we couldn't even comprehend the possibility of engaging in just a few years ago. It's phenomenal, it's tremendous. But you don't want bad people to have a monopoly on it. They will use it for evil, whether they're the Antichrist or Xi Jinping.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Well said. We're talking to our good friend Rod Martin, CEO of Martin Capital, and the Rod Martin Report. We have lots we want to talk to Rod about. Trump is meeting with Xi Jinping as, he has come over to America. We got the Iran war. We got the Greenland deal. Rod, I want to get your, talk, your opinion on that. And then the midterm elections and, we have a hot race here in Texas between, Ken Paxton and James Tallarico. I do have a new, clip from James Tallarico's pastor that should, cause every Christian to have a huge red flag go up. But there's more on Real Truth for today with Pastor Jeff Schrieve. Don't go away.
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Pastor Jeff Schreve: Welcome back to the program. Pastor Jeff here talking to Rod Martin, CEO of Martin Capital and the Rod Martin Report. Okay, Rod, let's, go down the list of things I want to talk to you about. Greenland. The Greenland deal that President Trump pulled off. You called it a sea change. S e a change. Tell us about that and why it's so important.
Rod Martin: Well, it's really remarkable on its face and also with its broader implications, which is what that phrasing was alluding to. First, just the basic deal. This is an island with 57,000 people that is a little bit bigger than the Louisiana Purchase. It is just this incredibly vast place with almost nobody there. And people have this idea that it was settled by the Vikings and so it's Danish in ethnicity and language and culture. No, no, all those guys left about 350 years ago and the Inuit began to move into that territory. So the Danes only ended up with it much later. Modern kingdom of Denmark. And so this is just a very different group of people. They have suffered under Danish, colonization. there were reports out just earlier this month about the just grotesque human rights abuses of the Danes against the Greenland under Greenlanders, extending into the 1990s. It's just horrifying some of what's gone on. But it's not so horrifying that they feel like they can become independent at the cost it would require. They get a billion dollar a year subsidy from Denmark which effectively puts the whole island on welfare and they just can't get out from under that boot in any meaningful way. They have clearly expressed their desire to become independent and to Denmark's credit, in 2009 they passed legislation to enable it whenever the Greenlanders want it. So that's kind of the, the situation. From a military situation. Greenland sits at the North American end of the Greenland, Iceland UK gap, which your history buffs will remember, from two different eras. First World War II, where the Germans had to get their submarines through that water to be able to threaten the North Atlantic. So it became incumbent upon the United States military to go control that, to try to control the ability of Adolf Hitler to blow up all our ships and all our troops in the water and whatever. Then during the Cold War, same thing. The Russians couldn't get a submarine into the North Atlantic without passing through that Greenland, Iceland UK gap. So it's one of the most important choke points on Earth. From a defense point of view, it's increasingly an important waterway from a commercial point of view because the Arctic is getting used more. The Chinese are beginning to use that northern sea route that goes along the northern coast of Russia. Historically, nobody's really used it. There aren't any ports up there. There aren't any major cities up there. Just, you know, this vast stretch of empty land and the, and the ocean is usually iced over. But the Chinese and the Russians and now the United States are all building icebreakers in significant numbers. Making that route usable is important because it cuts travel time from China to Europe from 40 days by sea to just 20. It makes a huge difference in the cost of everything. So people are starting to develop that. There's also, I guess the possibility of global Warming, which I'm way past believing is actually happening. But, you know, some people still believe in it. Bill Gates clearly doesn't. So if that's the case, then the Arctic would be ice free more of the time. And the truth is it has more ice now than it had 15 years ago. So, that's probably hui. But if it's true, then you're going to get important sea lanes and they all have to pass by Greenland. So you can't allow the Chinese or some other hostile power to control the island. And we have had basing rights there for a very long time. That's all true. And you know, the same Democrats who were saying last week that Trump could never get this deal and it was crazy and it was going to destroy NATO this week are saying this deal is no different from what we had before. Well, yeah, it's completely different from what we had before in multiple respects. First, it's perpetual. It survives even if NATO dissolves, it survives if Denmark becomes Islamist, it survives if Greenland becomes independent. Perpetual duration. So we have effectively made Greenland a protectorate of the United States while maintaining its internal governance and Denmark's very loose claim to sovereignty. That's all good for everybody. Second, we are, under this agreement going to significantly extend the number of bases we have in key geography around the island. And we keep hearing, well, we've had that right for decades, too. No, we actually haven't. George Bush negotiated it away in 2004. We're limited to just Petufic Space Base, which used to be Thule Air Base. that has always been, basically a big radar site. It's on the wrong side of the island and it's way too far north to do anything practical except track Soviet or Chinese ICBMs. That's very valuable. That's going to be very important to Golden Dome, but it doesn't solve the problem of the Greenland, Iceland, UK gap. So, that's important. The biggest thing, I think, in this deal is that Donald Trump got us an absolute veto over any foreign investment in the island's resources or basing rights. Nobody can come to Greenland without our permission. And the only exceptions to that being other NATO partners. So. So, you know, you better stay in NATO. That's all I'm saying. If you, if you want to be in Greenland. And that's as it ought to be. So, you know, Greenland is vast. I said it's bigger than the Louisiana Purchase. It has incredible resources, but they're very difficult to exploit because of the cold and the Ice. So if we want to drill that oil, if we want to dig up those rare earth minerals, whatever it is, it's going to take a very high level of technology that right now only the United States has. The Danes certainly don't, and they certainly don't have the money to develop it. 57,000 Greenlanders, largely on welfare, can't develop their resources, can't create jobs for themselves. So they need help. We can provide that help and in the process solve a lot of US national security problems. And everybody wins, everybody gets richer in the process. But, the bigger implication, and it really does matter, is that Donald Trump wasn't just looking at the next election. Donald Trump wasn't just looking at the next five years. That's what establishment Washington has always done. That's why they enter into short term deals and then have to renegotiate and blah, blah, blah. That's been going on since before I was born. Trump is ending that right here. This perpetuity was absolutely inspired by the absolute just idiocy of Britain's Chagos Islands deal, which was on the brink of handing our most important base in the Indian Ocean to a Chinese client state. And you saw yesterday, Andy Burnham is going to undo the deal because Trump twisted his arm. And that's good. And Trump was able to prevent Keir Starmer from going ahead with it earlier this year. But that's a thorny problem. And, and we're never going to have that problem now in Greenland. We're going to actually put the security of American taxpayers, the people who pay for global security. We're going to put their security ahead of everybody else's. And in the process, we're going to enhance the security of all of our allied friends. And that's just a whole new world from what we've had under both parties, except really under Nixon and Reagan, since the end of World War II.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: All right, well, very good, Rod. that's very helpful. Okay, let's talk about Xi jinping being in D.C. what's the purpose of the meeting and what's a win for President Trump?
Rod Martin: We have to understand first and foremost that this is a truly evil regime. This is a regime that is currently engaged in genocide against its Uyghur population in Xinjiang. This is a regime that continues to maintain concentration camps all over the country. This is a regime that, over its short history since 1949, has murdered 65 million of its own people. That doesn't include the Holocaust of the One child policy, in which the government Forced abortions on countless hundreds of millions of people, over the years because they were dedicated to the leftist idea that the world was becoming overpopulated. Well, those chickens are now coming home to roost because it turns out that God wasn't kidding about be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. If your population is growing, your economy is growing. If your population is growing, it doesn't mean more m mouths to feed. It means more Einsteins to figure out how to feed them. And so as population grows, the diversity in the economy grows, the division of labor grows, overall wealth grows not just for the already wealthy, but for everybody. Every poor person in America is doing better than pretty much every poor person anywhere else in the world. And this is part of why. So the Chinese have killed their future. My friend Yifu Zhan wrote a best selling book in China called Big country with an Empty Nest, a number of years ago. He's a, he's a top demographer. He's currently at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Yi Fujian. Yi has demonstrated, I think, pretty conclusively that at their current total fertility rate, China's population is going to drop by 75% over the next 75 years. They're going to be smaller than America. And that hits them hardest in, in the next 10 to 20 years because they just don't have enough working class people, I'm sorry, working age people, to be able to pay for the ballooning number of retirees. And they've got all their money tied up in commercial and residential real estate investments. That's the primary way by which Chinese invest for their retirement. And all of that is going down. They've been in a real estate crisis that makes ours in 2008 look like nothing now for several years. And it's only going to get worse because as you lose people and they are actually at the point now where the population is meaningfully dropping. And also they have actually already lost about 128 million people compared to what the Beijing was claiming three years ago. So, so this is a catastrophe for real estate. I mean if nobody's gonna buy your house, you're gonna have to sell it for less. And this just snowballs. So Xi Jinping is here to save face. He wants to make sure that China is ascendant and gonna be the global dominating power. But he's playing a really bad hand and he knows it. And he knows he only has about another decade before this just gets, impossible to hide. And so Donald Trump knows this too. Donald Trump understands the demography of China better than most people, actually, and he is very aware of where they're headed. So Xi needs an interim trade deal that's going to be important. They can't consume enough in China to keep their economy going. They have built an export based economy and the US Export market is essential. They cannot survive economically without being able to sell into the United States. And likewise at the moment, the United States can't do without their rare earth elements. So, so, you know, there is a symbiotic dance going on in the short term. so with all of that said, Trump is going to roll out the red carpet. They're going to treat Xi beautifully. You shouldn't read into that that we're endorsing Xi Jinping. That's stupid. And there are people saying that what we're doing is we're matching their courtesy to Donald Trump when he went to the summit in May in Beijing. We're going to match their courtesy, we're going to be super nice, we're going to say all kinds of nice things, and we're going to continue this dance to the point where we don't have to, to. And at that point, hopefully we will have constrained them enough militarily and economically that peace is possible. They are an aggressive power. They would love to take Taiwan, they would love to take Siberia. But if we can keep them in a position where it's difficult for them to do that, they either have to liberalize and become a freer country or they're gonna collapse and it's just a matter of time, just like the Soviet Union.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so Rod, have they, have they rescinded the one child policy in China? Are they still doing that?
Rod Martin: They've done a hard 180. They, they rescinded it, in the 2010s, and then two years later they came back and announced a three child policy, reflecting their understanding that without a total fertility rate of at least 2.1, you can't replace your population. But it was too little, too late. And now they are actually engaging in pronatalist policies designed to encourage people to have large families. The problem for them is the same one that, you see in every other country doing that, it doesn't work. I mean, people have kids because they want to have kids. And the Chinese Communists, who in many respects are identical to the wokesters here in the United States who adopted Maoist techniques to go after the subversion of America, their regime has taught a generation not to want babies. And there's just almost no way you turn that ship without hitting the iceberg.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, good point. Well, we're talking to Rod Martin, CEO of Martin Capital, and the Rod Martin Report. We've, been talking about a host of things. What is going on with AI and the Iran. Well, we want to talk about the Iran war when we come back. Greenland and the China talks and then the midterms. we want to talk about the midterms with Rod. And, we also want to take your calls. So if you have a question for Rod, we'll mix those in. 888-58-9884. That's 885-89-8840. We always like to hear from our listeners. If you're a first time listener and you've never called in or a first time caller, we'd love to hear from you because it's always, a joy to get to meet new friends. You're listening to Real Truth for today on American Family Radio. Pastor Jeff Schrieve here. We'll be right back.
: If you'd like to contact Pastor Jeff, please email pastor jeffromhishheart.org now back to Real Truth for today with Pastor Jeff Schrieve.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Welcome back. We're continuing our interview with, my friend Rod Martin. Rod has great insights on a host of different subjects and he keeps, his nose to the grindstone, so to speak. He knows what's going on, his fingers on the pulse. Rod, we were talking at the break, one of the things that I think people struggle with, and we'll use the Texas race for Senate as an example. You have Ken Paxton, who is not the, bastion of morality and virtue in his personal life. And then you have James Talarico, who tries to present himself as this fresh faced, you know, Howdy Doody kind of guy. And, you can vote for me, I'm Opie Taylor, and that kind of thing. one guy doesn't have good personal morality, let's say, or he's got a lot of skeletons in the closet. Not to just totally throw him under the bus, but the other guy's got a broken moral compass. He calls evil good and good evil. Help us understand how to navigate those waters. When one candidate, we would say, you Christians are supporting this guy. He's been unfaithful in his marriage, blah, blah, blah. And, this other guy seems to be personally a nice guy, and, he says he's a Christian, that kind of thing. Talarico's a heretic. It's very obvious He's a heretic. But how do you, Rod Martin, sift through that to vote for the right candidate?
Rod Martin: Well, I think it starts with a fundamental principle that Christians are very, very naive about. We hear a lot of talk about voting for the lesser of two evils. Guys, you're always voting for evils. Every. Every. Every human is a sinner. They are all inconsistent in what they say and what they do. They will, at random times, do stupid things like go to a strip club.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Ah.
Rod Martin: Or cheat on their wife or get drunk. That's just the human condition. It's not acceptable. It's not excusable. It needs a lot of Christ's grace. But it's real. That's the bottom line. So what do you have here? I mean, first of all, you never have the lesser of two evils. That's completely the wrong way to see it. You have the better of two choices. That's all you get in this life until Jesus perfects everything. So if we're looking for the better of two choices. Okay. Ken Paxton has been inconsistent in some of the things he believed in his personal life, but at least he believes the right things. James Talarico wants to castrate your kids. James Talarico is a horror show, and he sincerely believes those things, and he will act on them. He has made that perfectly clear. So, you know, which way do you want to go? A guy who isn't perfect, but who actually acknowledges that he's not perfect and ought to do better, and he's trying to do better. Okay. I identify with that. I appreciate that. I don't have his particular sins, but I have my own. So, you know, I appreciate that. Versus a guy who is lying about his record, a guy who is lying right now to try to appear moderate and Christian when he clearly isn't. there's nothing moderate about James Talarico. There's nothing Christian about James Talarico. The God he describes does not appear in the Bible, and the God that his pastor described this week in a clip that's been circulating isn't even resurrected. Now, what kind of pastor doesn't believe in the resurrection, actually actively denies the resurrection? That is a church of Satan, not a church of Jesus Christ. And James Talarico chose it. So you've got the imperfect, guy who wants to do better. You've got the evil guy who wants to do evil. Pick one.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Right. That's a good point. Well, for those that haven't heard, this is James Talarico's home church in Austin. And, this is his pastor. I saw it was an undercover video. The pastor. I couldn't tell if it was a girl or a guy. It found out it is a girl. Babs Miller is the pastor, but, she was being asked about their theology. This is what she had to say.
Rod Martin: Do we really believe that, like, a virgin gave birth to a baby?
: Yeah. Okay.
Rod Martin: I just don't want to offend my own, My own common sense.
Speaker D: Yeah, no, don't. Yeah, absolutely don't. Part of what we encourage here is for people to think for themselves and take what makes sense. It's kind of like what they say in 12 step programs. Take what you want and leave the rest. And I know that that, would greatly offend your relatives who want to hang on to these archaic rules. Mary and the virgin birth comes out of the pagan belief that the gods came down and impregnated people that people were still hanging onto during that time. We have no way of knowing if Jesus really existed any more than we have of knowing that the original Buddha ever existed. And whether or not Jesus existed doesn't really matter to me. The fact remains that that message that was delivered by someone named Jesus, supposedly. And it could have all been made up for all I know. And the God in the Old Testament is not a loving God. It's a vengeful, killing people kind of God.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: I'll stop it there. But I mean, just, just a cesspool of theological poison at that church. you know, Rod, it was kind of like when, when Barack Obama we got, introduced to his church and his pastor just angry. It's all critical race theory and the chickens are coming home to roost and the white man is going to get it. And you know, all that stuff. It's like, that's not a church. That's an indoctrination camp.
Rod Martin: Yeah. and a political organization. You know, this is, this is a, an institution that exists for the purpose of pushing a leftist political agenda. There's nothing spiritual about anything she said, unless you mean evil spirits. And the truth is, everything she said was wrong. I mean, I'm an historian, and I can tell you with great confidence we have greater certainty of the existence. Existence of an historical Jesus than we do of an historical George Washington. It's just absurd. No one with the slightest historical literacy could say this bunk that she's spewing theoretically, as a minister of God. It is horrifying and it's telling. It is exactly as you said. Barack Obama's pastor was, was just A communist organizer. He was, he taught liberation theology all day long, which was a version of communism invented by the KGB to infect Catholic priests in Central America. And, and it got adapted by certain Protestants in the United States for, a communist program among Protestants here. And, and that's what they were doing. And Barack Obama told you, I mean, his whole job was to be an organizer for Saul Alinsky. And that's what he did with his life, and that's what Talarico is doing with his life. So if you want militant Christ hating communists to run your country, hey, have at it. Vote for James Talarico. And while you're at it, vote for Abdul El Said and a host of other abominable Democratic candidates across this country that are actively, actively opposed to everything that this audience believes.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay. Rod, it seems like very few, Democrats, Jon Fetterman is one that hasn't lost his mind. Bill Maher is one. although we would disagree on a ton of things theologically, as he is an atheist, he hasn't lost his mind when it comes to, understanding men, or men and women are women, and understanding that the Democrat Party is the party of lunacy. he had that conversation with Jessica, Tal, whatever her name is on Fox News Talvo or something like that. she was trying to make the claim that the Democrats are more sane than the Republicans. And he called her out on it and he's like, have you looked at the dsa, The Democrat Socialists of America? I mean, those people are insane. do you notice, and see any others that would be spokespeople for the Democrat Party that haven't lost their minds?
Rod Martin: Well, you know, this isn't hard to point out. I mean, you've got Minnesota, which made it legal for the state to take your children and castrate them, you know, against your will. that state is run by Tim Waltz, who was almost your vice president. and you've got Talarico saying the same thing, but you've also got the head of the DSA standing up at their convention a few weeks ago and just saying, our goal is communism, and the crowd cheers and then the Democrats nominate a bunch of that crowd to be, to be their candidates this November. So if you think that Communism, which murdered 100 million people over the last hundred years, or, you know, castrating children are good ideas and moderate, well, more power to you. but I don't think most Americans do. And you rightly point out, James, I'm sorry, Jon Fetterman, Bill Maher, honestly, Elon Musk, who is obviously a Republican now, but, I've known Elon a long time. That's not his default state. These guys aren't normally with us. They have been. They have been m. Mugged by reality and realize that the Democratic Party isn't the party it was under Clinton or under Johnson or under fdr. all of these elements were there in those years. But now it has taken this hard left turn, and it is just unfathomable. If they started this party from scratch, you would never consider it to be a mainstream party. It's working off the fact that you have a memory of when Democrats were like Bill Maher and like Jon Fetterman, and so you think the new ones are too. But Bill Maher and Jon Fetterman are there to tell you, no, they're not. And Elon Musk, same thing. His conversion to our side, not his spiritual conversion, his political conversion is really one of the more remarkable events of the last, several decades precisely because he's not normally a Republican at all. But he knows that the only hope for sanity and decency in this country now lies with the party he always before disliked.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Rod, let me ask you this as it relates to, people on the left, CNN reporters, and, Margaret Brennan and, whatever her name is, the one that was with just recently had on her program. I think she's cbs. I've gone blank on her name. But these people, they're not stupid. You know, you don't get to this place, in their career by being a dummy. But they're so blind. So do you think they're just playing a role as a useful idiot and a spokesperson for, the powers that be? Or do they really believe this stuff, that it's good to castrate children? And yeah, America would be great if we became communist. How do you view that?
Rod Martin: Well, they really do believe those things.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: But they do.
Rod Martin: Do they believe them deeply? Do they understand the implications? I mean, it's like Jesus on the cross, cross saying, father, forgive them. They know not what they do. Well, he wasn't saying that the Roman executioners didn't understand the mechanics of crucifixion. He was saying they don't get the broader implication.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Right.
Rod Martin: these people are largely historically illiterate, and all you have to do is watch them on TV for a little while, and it's painfully clear they have the time horizon of a fruit fly. And. And so whatever the talking point points are must be good, because America is bad. America is the worst place in the world, don't you know, the most oppressive, the most racist. And at the same time we want everybody in the world to be able to come here because it's so awesome and they obviously have a human right to be here illegally. You know, it's just schizophrenic at its core. There is a leadership class, as there always is in every left wing movement that understands flawlessly what they intend to do. But there are then all of these other people who just think it sounds good. Well, you know, these poor children don't know what their gender is. Hey, I can top that. I know lots of little tiny boys who believe they're a fire truck or a dog or Batman. You know, they don't know anything. And you don't make them make life altering choices, much less make those choices for them when they aren't old enough to even understand the implications. We seem to have a media class that all went to woke high schools and colleges and journalism schools and can't think any more clearly than a five year old. So whatever sounds compassionate from their point of view. And anything that's for America, America isn't, Well, they're gonna be for that and they're gonna be against us.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, well said. Well, Rod, thank you so much for coming on. It's always a joy to get to talk to you and to tap into your learning and tell our listeners where they can get the Rod Martin report.
Rod Martin: Come to rodmartin.org that's rodmartin.org, we've got hundreds of thousands of followers and Fox Business calls our daily geopolitical analysis absolutely phenomenal. I've also got a book coming out next month called Trump's NewSong World Reorder. You can order it today on Amazon for pre order. It'll come in October. Trump's NewSong World Reorder. You're going to love it.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: All right, well, thank you, Rod. Hey, go out today, Shine for Christ. Share what great things the Lord has done for you. And guess what? God will you 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 Thursday morning and welcome to Real Truth for today. It is September 24th. It is cooler in Texarkana, Texas. It was cooler yesterday. It's cooler today. And so we praise the Lord for that. Psalm 67 is a. As a psalm doesn't give the, author, but it says this. God, be gracious to us and bless us, and cause his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on the earth. Your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you will judge the peoples with uprightness and guide the nations on the earth. Selah. Well, that's a great psalm to start off the day. We do want God to be gracious to us. We desperately need God to be gracious to us. We need him and want him to bless us, and we want his face to shine upon us and, for God to use us as his lights in the world. Well, it is a privilege for me to, welcome once again to the program my friend Rod Martin, CEO of Martin Capital and the Rod Martin Report. Now, Rod is focused on the intersection. I looked this up today. Rod, focus on the intersection now. There's a lot of streets coming into this intersection. Rod, that you are, focused on geopolitics, technology, energy, energy, defense, stock markets, and a biblical worldview altogether, would you say that's true?
Rod Martin: I would say that's true. And I would say that's what needs to be true. We need to think holistically we certainly serve a God who does, who intricately wove together all of the different aspects of his universe. And Christians should do likewise. We can't possibly comprehend what God can comprehend. My goodness. One of the things I'm probably looking forward most to in heaven is just being able to ask what selah means. Nobody knows. Wouldn't that be great? Great, but. But the truth is, we can try. We are made in the image of God. It's our duty to see things from an entire worldview. How it all fits together and how it all serves its owner, the Creator, for whom we are just stewards.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Amen. it is the glory of God to conceal a matter. It is glory of man to seek out a matter. And, God. God hasn't made us like hiding Easter eggs, Rod. He hasn't just put them all out in plain sight. There. You got to. You got to hunt and dig and search.
Rod Martin: You just stated the story of technology. And as some of your viewers know, I was one of the early guys at PayPal. We were inventing the infrastructure of the modern world. And, you know, all of that stuff was possible in the days of Abraham or the days of Julius Caesar or the days of George Washington. They just hadn't figured out the pieces yet. And what we find is the more we figure out the pieces, the better able we are to roll back the effects of the curse. Now, we can't roll back the curse. Only Christ can do that. And, you know, inventing a fancier computer is not going to save anybody, but it may save their life long enough, give them enough education and communication ability to be able to hear from a missionary or hear from a pastor like you. We are materially improving a material world God created and cares about a great deal. I mean, it's very, very clear that God cares about the world he made. God has cursed the world we live in because of our rebellion. And God is restoring that world in the life to come with not just new heavens, but a new earth where we will dwell with Him. So seeking out a matter has real consequences for the quality of widows and orphans and everybody else. And, you know, if I had lived even a hundred years ago, I would have been dead in my 30s just from high blood pressure, which is the easiest thing in the world to treat. Technology is a blessing, and it's because God has concealed everything in the creation. And we are. We receive glory in a very tangible sense by seeking those matters out.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so, Rod, I talked yesterday. Tim, Wildmon had sent out a letter to all the, AFA family about the dangers of AI. And George Barna has done a recent survey, of 1500 or so people and then another 500 or so pastors. And they're real concerns, especially as it relates to kids, as it relates to kids not learning how to critically think because they just go to AI for everything, every answer. And they can be easily duped because AI is not always right. And especially when it relates to a, question that would have to, that would cause you to think through. Okay, this is, this can be answered different ways depending on your worldview. so what say you about the dangers of AI?
Rod Martin: Well, look, I use AI, ah, like you know, 12 or more hours a day. So I'm not in a position to say, say it's bad. It has been a godsend to me. It has massively multiplied my productivity. But the truth is, and I said this to Jim Garlow on his show last night, it's like, you know, the President's talking about, you know, not artificial intelligence, but super intelligence. As a constant user of the thing, I would say it's more artificial stupidity. It really doesn't know what it's talking about a great deal of the time. It is shocking, shockingly capable, amazing in its scope, and it's getting better every day. New models dropped yesterday that are just mind blowing. I mean really, really great tools, but they are only tools. And this is, this is the starting point I would give to pastors. George Gilder has been writing on this topic for more than 30 years. Yes, AI has been budding for a very long time. It's, you know, it's an overnight success, half a century in the making. And George, ah, who by the way, in addition to being a tech guru, in addition to being Ronald Reagan's most quoted living author, including being a father of supply side economics, is quite the technologist. He has been one of the thinkers really shaping how Silicon Valley looks at the world for a long time. And he has long been in this kind of friendly debate with the guys who believe in the singularity, who believe that AI, is or shortly will be sentient and eventually will become effectively our God. And George's take on that has always been that just defies everything we know about physics. I mean, even if you weren't a Christian, even if you weren't a creationist, we know from Von Neumann, we know from all of these originators of information theory, who made the modern world possible, that the central axioms of any system have to come from outside the system. They cannot be derived from within it. Which leads you to the next logical conclusion, which is computation is not comprehension. It's simply not. Computation is not comprehension. Your calculator is not going to replace your accountant, no matter how many times we were told it was going to back in the 70s and 80s. Because the accountant brings judgment and reasoning and even aesthetics that the programming simply can't match. It can mimic, but it can't match. It can't, it might be able to do some of the things you can do, but it can't think about it in a creative and original way. So this is a key distinction. A lot of the fears are about what we're hearing from Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis and others. And they're brilliant men, and I'm not knocking them. I just think they're theologically off base. They're also off, ah, base on the physics. And guess what? The physics derives from the theology. God created it all. So, so that's the first thing. Now the, the more practical concerns, like children overusing it and not learning this and that and the other two different paths on that. The first one is I found that I. My logic ability is sharper just from learning how to properly prompt AI. I mean, you have to get much more precise in what you say and how you say it. So that's a positive thing. But I would just admonish parents everywhere. If you're handing your kids over to the public schools at this point in American history, you're already eliminating their ability to think because all they're getting is critical theory. No critical thinking at all. All critical theory all the time. And the solution to that is either a good Christian school or homeschooling, which we did. And I got to tell you, you can absolutely solve all these problems just by having engaged parents who are really serious about taking care of their kids. It's really not that complex. And if you do that, if you lay the foundation, if you get the fundamentals right, all of this stuff becomes a neutral or even positive tool. But if you're giving your kid an iPhone when he's 8, you're probably an idiot. You really shouldn't do that. And you shouldn't let them on social media. You just shouldn't. Their brains aren't ready for that. Their hearts aren't ready for that. Don't do that. Be a wise parent. Be in the word. Apply what you read.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, Rod, I got asked this week about, AI as it relates to the Antichrist. You Know, we, we see movies like Irobot where the, the robots become, you know, they make their own decisions.
Rod Martin: Where they cross that line.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yes, they cross that line. We have Terminator and Sky. Skynet, I think was the, you know, the machines, that took over 2001 A Space Odyssey hall, you know, the spaceship took over and that kind of thing. How do you see, the Antichrist using AI? Do you see that as very critical to his, program?
Rod Martin: I think technology is neutral. It's exactly what you were saying earlier. It's the glory of God to conceal a matter. It's the glory of kings to search it out. And kings isn't limited to political leaders or even monarchs, you know, you can certainly, I think most people can connect that. Kings can include prime ministers and presidents and governors and stuff. But no, kings in this case means leaders of any number of things. The head of Exxon is a king in his realm. Peter Thiel is a king in his realm. And they are doing things that fit that description. So what they come up with is neutral in and of itself. There's nothing evil about an iron mine. But I can either use it to build, you know, stunning structures that can withstand hurricanes and save lives, or I can use it to build missiles to kill millions of people. Every one of these things is neutral until you add the moral component. And that is not something a machine can do. It's not something, something AI is going to be able to do. It will mimic it. But what it's mimicking is the morality of its programmers. And that is fundamental. Some people will come back and say, well, now AI is able to code itself to some degree. Yeah, and it will be able to do more of that. But it's coming from the seed of the original programming and wait for it, there's more. It's also coming from all the material that it takes in because all these models are trying trained on material that's already out there. News articles, great books, you name it, you know, movies, comic books, whatever there is in the world, they're trained on that. All of those are written by sinners, a hundred percent of them, except the Bible. And even there, the Lord who wrote every word of our Bible, used human sinful authors to execute on the task. I think that's very much what we're looking at here. We are using a flawed system to execute on tasks that we couldn't even comprehend the possibility of engaging in just a few years ago. It's phenomenal, it's tremendous. But you don't want bad people to have a monopoly on it. They will use it for evil, whether they're the Antichrist or Xi Jinping.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Well said. We're talking to our good friend Rod Martin, CEO of Martin Capital, and the Rod Martin Report. We have lots we want to talk to Rod about. Trump is meeting with Xi Jinping as, he has come over to America. We got the Iran war. We got the Greenland deal. Rod, I want to get your, talk, your opinion on that. And then the midterm elections and, we have a hot race here in Texas between, Ken Paxton and James Tallarico. I do have a new, clip from James Tallarico's pastor that should, cause every Christian to have a huge red flag go up. But there's more on Real Truth for today with Pastor Jeff Schrieve. Don't go away.
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Pastor Jeff Schreve: Welcome back to the program. Pastor Jeff here talking to Rod Martin, CEO of Martin Capital and the Rod Martin Report. Okay, Rod, let's, go down the list of things I want to talk to you about. Greenland. The Greenland deal that President Trump pulled off. You called it a sea change. S e a change. Tell us about that and why it's so important.
Rod Martin: Well, it's really remarkable on its face and also with its broader implications, which is what that phrasing was alluding to. First, just the basic deal. This is an island with 57,000 people that is a little bit bigger than the Louisiana Purchase. It is just this incredibly vast place with almost nobody there. And people have this idea that it was settled by the Vikings and so it's Danish in ethnicity and language and culture. No, no, all those guys left about 350 years ago and the Inuit began to move into that territory. So the Danes only ended up with it much later. Modern kingdom of Denmark. And so this is just a very different group of people. They have suffered under Danish, colonization. there were reports out just earlier this month about the just grotesque human rights abuses of the Danes against the Greenland under Greenlanders, extending into the 1990s. It's just horrifying some of what's gone on. But it's not so horrifying that they feel like they can become independent at the cost it would require. They get a billion dollar a year subsidy from Denmark which effectively puts the whole island on welfare and they just can't get out from under that boot in any meaningful way. They have clearly expressed their desire to become independent and to Denmark's credit, in 2009 they passed legislation to enable it whenever the Greenlanders want it. So that's kind of the, the situation. From a military situation. Greenland sits at the North American end of the Greenland, Iceland UK gap, which your history buffs will remember, from two different eras. First World War II, where the Germans had to get their submarines through that water to be able to threaten the North Atlantic. So it became incumbent upon the United States military to go control that, to try to control the ability of Adolf Hitler to blow up all our ships and all our troops in the water and whatever. Then during the Cold War, same thing. The Russians couldn't get a submarine into the North Atlantic without passing through that Greenland, Iceland UK gap. So it's one of the most important choke points on Earth. From a defense point of view, it's increasingly an important waterway from a commercial point of view because the Arctic is getting used more. The Chinese are beginning to use that northern sea route that goes along the northern coast of Russia. Historically, nobody's really used it. There aren't any ports up there. There aren't any major cities up there. Just, you know, this vast stretch of empty land and the, and the ocean is usually iced over. But the Chinese and the Russians and now the United States are all building icebreakers in significant numbers. Making that route usable is important because it cuts travel time from China to Europe from 40 days by sea to just 20. It makes a huge difference in the cost of everything. So people are starting to develop that. There's also, I guess the possibility of global Warming, which I'm way past believing is actually happening. But, you know, some people still believe in it. Bill Gates clearly doesn't. So if that's the case, then the Arctic would be ice free more of the time. And the truth is it has more ice now than it had 15 years ago. So, that's probably hui. But if it's true, then you're going to get important sea lanes and they all have to pass by Greenland. So you can't allow the Chinese or some other hostile power to control the island. And we have had basing rights there for a very long time. That's all true. And you know, the same Democrats who were saying last week that Trump could never get this deal and it was crazy and it was going to destroy NATO this week are saying this deal is no different from what we had before. Well, yeah, it's completely different from what we had before in multiple respects. First, it's perpetual. It survives even if NATO dissolves, it survives if Denmark becomes Islamist, it survives if Greenland becomes independent. Perpetual duration. So we have effectively made Greenland a protectorate of the United States while maintaining its internal governance and Denmark's very loose claim to sovereignty. That's all good for everybody. Second, we are, under this agreement going to significantly extend the number of bases we have in key geography around the island. And we keep hearing, well, we've had that right for decades, too. No, we actually haven't. George Bush negotiated it away in 2004. We're limited to just Petufic Space Base, which used to be Thule Air Base. that has always been, basically a big radar site. It's on the wrong side of the island and it's way too far north to do anything practical except track Soviet or Chinese ICBMs. That's very valuable. That's going to be very important to Golden Dome, but it doesn't solve the problem of the Greenland, Iceland, UK gap. So, that's important. The biggest thing, I think, in this deal is that Donald Trump got us an absolute veto over any foreign investment in the island's resources or basing rights. Nobody can come to Greenland without our permission. And the only exceptions to that being other NATO partners. So. So, you know, you better stay in NATO. That's all I'm saying. If you, if you want to be in Greenland. And that's as it ought to be. So, you know, Greenland is vast. I said it's bigger than the Louisiana Purchase. It has incredible resources, but they're very difficult to exploit because of the cold and the Ice. So if we want to drill that oil, if we want to dig up those rare earth minerals, whatever it is, it's going to take a very high level of technology that right now only the United States has. The Danes certainly don't, and they certainly don't have the money to develop it. 57,000 Greenlanders, largely on welfare, can't develop their resources, can't create jobs for themselves. So they need help. We can provide that help and in the process solve a lot of US national security problems. And everybody wins, everybody gets richer in the process. But, the bigger implication, and it really does matter, is that Donald Trump wasn't just looking at the next election. Donald Trump wasn't just looking at the next five years. That's what establishment Washington has always done. That's why they enter into short term deals and then have to renegotiate and blah, blah, blah. That's been going on since before I was born. Trump is ending that right here. This perpetuity was absolutely inspired by the absolute just idiocy of Britain's Chagos Islands deal, which was on the brink of handing our most important base in the Indian Ocean to a Chinese client state. And you saw yesterday, Andy Burnham is going to undo the deal because Trump twisted his arm. And that's good. And Trump was able to prevent Keir Starmer from going ahead with it earlier this year. But that's a thorny problem. And, and we're never going to have that problem now in Greenland. We're going to actually put the security of American taxpayers, the people who pay for global security. We're going to put their security ahead of everybody else's. And in the process, we're going to enhance the security of all of our allied friends. And that's just a whole new world from what we've had under both parties, except really under Nixon and Reagan, since the end of World War II.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: All right, well, very good, Rod. that's very helpful. Okay, let's talk about Xi jinping being in D.C. what's the purpose of the meeting and what's a win for President Trump?
Rod Martin: We have to understand first and foremost that this is a truly evil regime. This is a regime that is currently engaged in genocide against its Uyghur population in Xinjiang. This is a regime that continues to maintain concentration camps all over the country. This is a regime that, over its short history since 1949, has murdered 65 million of its own people. That doesn't include the Holocaust of the One child policy, in which the government Forced abortions on countless hundreds of millions of people, over the years because they were dedicated to the leftist idea that the world was becoming overpopulated. Well, those chickens are now coming home to roost because it turns out that God wasn't kidding about be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. If your population is growing, your economy is growing. If your population is growing, it doesn't mean more m mouths to feed. It means more Einsteins to figure out how to feed them. And so as population grows, the diversity in the economy grows, the division of labor grows, overall wealth grows not just for the already wealthy, but for everybody. Every poor person in America is doing better than pretty much every poor person anywhere else in the world. And this is part of why. So the Chinese have killed their future. My friend Yifu Zhan wrote a best selling book in China called Big country with an Empty Nest, a number of years ago. He's a, he's a top demographer. He's currently at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Yi Fujian. Yi has demonstrated, I think, pretty conclusively that at their current total fertility rate, China's population is going to drop by 75% over the next 75 years. They're going to be smaller than America. And that hits them hardest in, in the next 10 to 20 years because they just don't have enough working class people, I'm sorry, working age people, to be able to pay for the ballooning number of retirees. And they've got all their money tied up in commercial and residential real estate investments. That's the primary way by which Chinese invest for their retirement. And all of that is going down. They've been in a real estate crisis that makes ours in 2008 look like nothing now for several years. And it's only going to get worse because as you lose people and they are actually at the point now where the population is meaningfully dropping. And also they have actually already lost about 128 million people compared to what the Beijing was claiming three years ago. So, so this is a catastrophe for real estate. I mean if nobody's gonna buy your house, you're gonna have to sell it for less. And this just snowballs. So Xi Jinping is here to save face. He wants to make sure that China is ascendant and gonna be the global dominating power. But he's playing a really bad hand and he knows it. And he knows he only has about another decade before this just gets, impossible to hide. And so Donald Trump knows this too. Donald Trump understands the demography of China better than most people, actually, and he is very aware of where they're headed. So Xi needs an interim trade deal that's going to be important. They can't consume enough in China to keep their economy going. They have built an export based economy and the US Export market is essential. They cannot survive economically without being able to sell into the United States. And likewise at the moment, the United States can't do without their rare earth elements. So, so, you know, there is a symbiotic dance going on in the short term. so with all of that said, Trump is going to roll out the red carpet. They're going to treat Xi beautifully. You shouldn't read into that that we're endorsing Xi Jinping. That's stupid. And there are people saying that what we're doing is we're matching their courtesy to Donald Trump when he went to the summit in May in Beijing. We're going to match their courtesy, we're going to be super nice, we're going to say all kinds of nice things, and we're going to continue this dance to the point where we don't have to, to. And at that point, hopefully we will have constrained them enough militarily and economically that peace is possible. They are an aggressive power. They would love to take Taiwan, they would love to take Siberia. But if we can keep them in a position where it's difficult for them to do that, they either have to liberalize and become a freer country or they're gonna collapse and it's just a matter of time, just like the Soviet Union.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so Rod, have they, have they rescinded the one child policy in China? Are they still doing that?
Rod Martin: They've done a hard 180. They, they rescinded it, in the 2010s, and then two years later they came back and announced a three child policy, reflecting their understanding that without a total fertility rate of at least 2.1, you can't replace your population. But it was too little, too late. And now they are actually engaging in pronatalist policies designed to encourage people to have large families. The problem for them is the same one that, you see in every other country doing that, it doesn't work. I mean, people have kids because they want to have kids. And the Chinese Communists, who in many respects are identical to the wokesters here in the United States who adopted Maoist techniques to go after the subversion of America, their regime has taught a generation not to want babies. And there's just almost no way you turn that ship without hitting the iceberg.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, good point. Well, we're talking to Rod Martin, CEO of Martin Capital, and the Rod Martin Report. We've, been talking about a host of things. What is going on with AI and the Iran. Well, we want to talk about the Iran war when we come back. Greenland and the China talks and then the midterms. we want to talk about the midterms with Rod. And, we also want to take your calls. So if you have a question for Rod, we'll mix those in. 888-58-9884. That's 885-89-8840. We always like to hear from our listeners. If you're a first time listener and you've never called in or a first time caller, we'd love to hear from you because it's always, a joy to get to meet new friends. You're listening to Real Truth for today on American Family Radio. Pastor Jeff Schrieve here. We'll be right back.
: If you'd like to contact Pastor Jeff, please email pastor jeffromhishheart.org now back to Real Truth for today with Pastor Jeff Schrieve.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Welcome back. We're continuing our interview with, my friend Rod Martin. Rod has great insights on a host of different subjects and he keeps, his nose to the grindstone, so to speak. He knows what's going on, his fingers on the pulse. Rod, we were talking at the break, one of the things that I think people struggle with, and we'll use the Texas race for Senate as an example. You have Ken Paxton, who is not the, bastion of morality and virtue in his personal life. And then you have James Talarico, who tries to present himself as this fresh faced, you know, Howdy Doody kind of guy. And, you can vote for me, I'm Opie Taylor, and that kind of thing. one guy doesn't have good personal morality, let's say, or he's got a lot of skeletons in the closet. Not to just totally throw him under the bus, but the other guy's got a broken moral compass. He calls evil good and good evil. Help us understand how to navigate those waters. When one candidate, we would say, you Christians are supporting this guy. He's been unfaithful in his marriage, blah, blah, blah. And, this other guy seems to be personally a nice guy, and, he says he's a Christian, that kind of thing. Talarico's a heretic. It's very obvious He's a heretic. But how do you, Rod Martin, sift through that to vote for the right candidate?
Rod Martin: Well, I think it starts with a fundamental principle that Christians are very, very naive about. We hear a lot of talk about voting for the lesser of two evils. Guys, you're always voting for evils. Every. Every. Every human is a sinner. They are all inconsistent in what they say and what they do. They will, at random times, do stupid things like go to a strip club.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Ah.
Rod Martin: Or cheat on their wife or get drunk. That's just the human condition. It's not acceptable. It's not excusable. It needs a lot of Christ's grace. But it's real. That's the bottom line. So what do you have here? I mean, first of all, you never have the lesser of two evils. That's completely the wrong way to see it. You have the better of two choices. That's all you get in this life until Jesus perfects everything. So if we're looking for the better of two choices. Okay. Ken Paxton has been inconsistent in some of the things he believed in his personal life, but at least he believes the right things. James Talarico wants to castrate your kids. James Talarico is a horror show, and he sincerely believes those things, and he will act on them. He has made that perfectly clear. So, you know, which way do you want to go? A guy who isn't perfect, but who actually acknowledges that he's not perfect and ought to do better, and he's trying to do better. Okay. I identify with that. I appreciate that. I don't have his particular sins, but I have my own. So, you know, I appreciate that. Versus a guy who is lying about his record, a guy who is lying right now to try to appear moderate and Christian when he clearly isn't. there's nothing moderate about James Talarico. There's nothing Christian about James Talarico. The God he describes does not appear in the Bible, and the God that his pastor described this week in a clip that's been circulating isn't even resurrected. Now, what kind of pastor doesn't believe in the resurrection, actually actively denies the resurrection? That is a church of Satan, not a church of Jesus Christ. And James Talarico chose it. So you've got the imperfect, guy who wants to do better. You've got the evil guy who wants to do evil. Pick one.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Right. That's a good point. Well, for those that haven't heard, this is James Talarico's home church in Austin. And, this is his pastor. I saw it was an undercover video. The pastor. I couldn't tell if it was a girl or a guy. It found out it is a girl. Babs Miller is the pastor, but, she was being asked about their theology. This is what she had to say.
Rod Martin: Do we really believe that, like, a virgin gave birth to a baby?
: Yeah. Okay.
Rod Martin: I just don't want to offend my own, My own common sense.
Speaker D: Yeah, no, don't. Yeah, absolutely don't. Part of what we encourage here is for people to think for themselves and take what makes sense. It's kind of like what they say in 12 step programs. Take what you want and leave the rest. And I know that that, would greatly offend your relatives who want to hang on to these archaic rules. Mary and the virgin birth comes out of the pagan belief that the gods came down and impregnated people that people were still hanging onto during that time. We have no way of knowing if Jesus really existed any more than we have of knowing that the original Buddha ever existed. And whether or not Jesus existed doesn't really matter to me. The fact remains that that message that was delivered by someone named Jesus, supposedly. And it could have all been made up for all I know. And the God in the Old Testament is not a loving God. It's a vengeful, killing people kind of God.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: I'll stop it there. But I mean, just, just a cesspool of theological poison at that church. you know, Rod, it was kind of like when, when Barack Obama we got, introduced to his church and his pastor just angry. It's all critical race theory and the chickens are coming home to roost and the white man is going to get it. And you know, all that stuff. It's like, that's not a church. That's an indoctrination camp.
Rod Martin: Yeah. and a political organization. You know, this is, this is a, an institution that exists for the purpose of pushing a leftist political agenda. There's nothing spiritual about anything she said, unless you mean evil spirits. And the truth is, everything she said was wrong. I mean, I'm an historian, and I can tell you with great confidence we have greater certainty of the existence. Existence of an historical Jesus than we do of an historical George Washington. It's just absurd. No one with the slightest historical literacy could say this bunk that she's spewing theoretically, as a minister of God. It is horrifying and it's telling. It is exactly as you said. Barack Obama's pastor was, was just A communist organizer. He was, he taught liberation theology all day long, which was a version of communism invented by the KGB to infect Catholic priests in Central America. And, and it got adapted by certain Protestants in the United States for, a communist program among Protestants here. And, and that's what they were doing. And Barack Obama told you, I mean, his whole job was to be an organizer for Saul Alinsky. And that's what he did with his life, and that's what Talarico is doing with his life. So if you want militant Christ hating communists to run your country, hey, have at it. Vote for James Talarico. And while you're at it, vote for Abdul El Said and a host of other abominable Democratic candidates across this country that are actively, actively opposed to everything that this audience believes.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay. Rod, it seems like very few, Democrats, Jon Fetterman is one that hasn't lost his mind. Bill Maher is one. although we would disagree on a ton of things theologically, as he is an atheist, he hasn't lost his mind when it comes to, understanding men, or men and women are women, and understanding that the Democrat Party is the party of lunacy. he had that conversation with Jessica, Tal, whatever her name is on Fox News Talvo or something like that. she was trying to make the claim that the Democrats are more sane than the Republicans. And he called her out on it and he's like, have you looked at the dsa, The Democrat Socialists of America? I mean, those people are insane. do you notice, and see any others that would be spokespeople for the Democrat Party that haven't lost their minds?
Rod Martin: Well, you know, this isn't hard to point out. I mean, you've got Minnesota, which made it legal for the state to take your children and castrate them, you know, against your will. that state is run by Tim Waltz, who was almost your vice president. and you've got Talarico saying the same thing, but you've also got the head of the DSA standing up at their convention a few weeks ago and just saying, our goal is communism, and the crowd cheers and then the Democrats nominate a bunch of that crowd to be, to be their candidates this November. So if you think that Communism, which murdered 100 million people over the last hundred years, or, you know, castrating children are good ideas and moderate, well, more power to you. but I don't think most Americans do. And you rightly point out, James, I'm sorry, Jon Fetterman, Bill Maher, honestly, Elon Musk, who is obviously a Republican now, but, I've known Elon a long time. That's not his default state. These guys aren't normally with us. They have been. They have been m. Mugged by reality and realize that the Democratic Party isn't the party it was under Clinton or under Johnson or under fdr. all of these elements were there in those years. But now it has taken this hard left turn, and it is just unfathomable. If they started this party from scratch, you would never consider it to be a mainstream party. It's working off the fact that you have a memory of when Democrats were like Bill Maher and like Jon Fetterman, and so you think the new ones are too. But Bill Maher and Jon Fetterman are there to tell you, no, they're not. And Elon Musk, same thing. His conversion to our side, not his spiritual conversion, his political conversion is really one of the more remarkable events of the last, several decades precisely because he's not normally a Republican at all. But he knows that the only hope for sanity and decency in this country now lies with the party he always before disliked.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Rod, let me ask you this as it relates to, people on the left, CNN reporters, and, Margaret Brennan and, whatever her name is, the one that was with just recently had on her program. I think she's cbs. I've gone blank on her name. But these people, they're not stupid. You know, you don't get to this place, in their career by being a dummy. But they're so blind. So do you think they're just playing a role as a useful idiot and a spokesperson for, the powers that be? Or do they really believe this stuff, that it's good to castrate children? And yeah, America would be great if we became communist. How do you view that?
Rod Martin: Well, they really do believe those things.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: But they do.
Rod Martin: Do they believe them deeply? Do they understand the implications? I mean, it's like Jesus on the cross, cross saying, father, forgive them. They know not what they do. Well, he wasn't saying that the Roman executioners didn't understand the mechanics of crucifixion. He was saying they don't get the broader implication.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Right.
Rod Martin: these people are largely historically illiterate, and all you have to do is watch them on TV for a little while, and it's painfully clear they have the time horizon of a fruit fly. And. And so whatever the talking point points are must be good, because America is bad. America is the worst place in the world, don't you know, the most oppressive, the most racist. And at the same time we want everybody in the world to be able to come here because it's so awesome and they obviously have a human right to be here illegally. You know, it's just schizophrenic at its core. There is a leadership class, as there always is in every left wing movement that understands flawlessly what they intend to do. But there are then all of these other people who just think it sounds good. Well, you know, these poor children don't know what their gender is. Hey, I can top that. I know lots of little tiny boys who believe they're a fire truck or a dog or Batman. You know, they don't know anything. And you don't make them make life altering choices, much less make those choices for them when they aren't old enough to even understand the implications. We seem to have a media class that all went to woke high schools and colleges and journalism schools and can't think any more clearly than a five year old. So whatever sounds compassionate from their point of view. And anything that's for America, America isn't, Well, they're gonna be for that and they're gonna be against us.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, well said. Well, Rod, thank you so much for coming on. It's always a joy to get to talk to you and to tap into your learning and tell our listeners where they can get the Rod Martin report.
Rod Martin: Come to rodmartin.org that's rodmartin.org, we've got hundreds of thousands of followers and Fox Business calls our daily geopolitical analysis absolutely phenomenal. I've also got a book coming out next month called Trump's NewSong World Reorder. You can order it today on Amazon for pre order. It'll come in October. Trump's NewSong World Reorder. You're going to love it.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: All right, well, thank you, Rod. Hey, go out today, Shine for Christ. Share what great things the Lord has done for you. And guess what? God will you you as his witness. God bless you.
Pastor Jeff Schreve welcomes Rod Martin, CEO of Martin Capital and host of the Rod Martin Report, for a wide-ranging discussion on artificial intelligence, technology, geopolitics, China, Greenland, and the upcoming midterm elections. They explore the opportunities and dangers of AI, the importance of critical thinking and biblical discernment, and how Christians should approach rapidly changing technology. Rod also discusses U.S. relations with China, the strategic importance of Greenland, and the role of Christians in evaluating candidates and issues through a biblical worldview. Throughout the conversation, listeners are encouraged to think carefully, seek truth, and remain grounded in Scripture.
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