Tim Wildmon: Hey, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Thanks for joining us. It's live radio right here, people. If we make mistakes, we can't hide them. They're there for everybody to see. But if we do well, that's there for everybody to see as well.
Tim Wildmon: Today's Tuesday, October 27, 2026. In the studio with me is Fred Jackson. Good morning, Brother Fred.
Fred Jackson: Good morning to you.
Tim Wildmon: Chris Jackson, I mean, Chris. My son, Chris. Excuse me, Chris Woodward.
Chris Woodward: Thank you, Tim Wildmon. It's a pleasure to be here.
Tim Wildmon: Call me what you want. Just don't call me late for supper. Ray Pritchard is in Florida. Good morning, Ray.
Ray Pritchard: Hey, Tim. How's life in Tupelo these days?
Tim Wildmon: Well, it's lovely weather here in Tupelo. It has been, but we are in a drought. I know that you're far from a drought. You're in a drenching down there, right?
Ray Pritchard: We were in a drought all summer long, and then came the rains.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, we haven't had them yet. That's true not only where we are, but in much of the Southeast. Dry as a bone.
Ray Pritchard: Dry as a bone.
Tim Wildmon: It's really weird because, annually, the states in the southeastern part of the United States get the most rain of any states. We typically get 58 to 60 inches of rain a year in Mississippi, and we were in a drought. We're in a, what do you call it, when you can't burn things?
Ray Pritchard: There's a burn ban in so many different counties.
Tim Wildmon: I was looking in my backyard last night. I have huge cracks in the soil.
Ray Pritchard: Just because of dryness.
Tim Wildmon: It is so dry.
Fred Jackson: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: We really haven't had any substantial rain where we are, probably in two months. I don't want to say something like that. But anyway, I know you guys were in a drought there, and essentially the whole state of Florida was in a state of drought. That has largely changed because of the hurricane that blew through. It was north and west of where we are in Hudson, but we still got eight and a half inches of rain in three days two weeks ago.
Ray Pritchard: Wow. That's flooding right there.
Tim Wildmon: We hope you're having nice weather wherever you may be listening to us across the country. Thanks for joining us. We've got a lot of news to talk about. We've got an election coming up, obviously, a week from today in our country. But a lot of eyes, Chris, are on what's happening in Israel today, right?
Chris Woodward: Yes, and this is going to be the story throughout much of today. In Israel, polls close for their election at 10 p.m. Israeli time, which is 2 p.m. Central time. We're going to be watching this on AFR. Stick around for radio and print coverage today, tomorrow, and in the days ahead. This election is taking place today by paper ballot. People are showing up and voting in person by paper ballot. Imagine such a thing, if you will.
Chris Woodward: Somebody who's talking about this and paying close attention to it is Fox News reporter Trey Yingst, who was atop a building today in Tel Aviv to say this.
Reporter: Polls show a tight race between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main challenger, former IDF general Gadi Eisenkot. Neither will be able to win a majority of votes in the 120-seat Israeli Knesset, Israel's version of the parliament, and one will ultimately be tasked with forming a coalition government.
Tim Wildmon: Do we know any results yet?
Chris Woodward: Not yet.
Tim Wildmon: When do the polls close?
Chris Woodward: They close at 2 p.m. our time today.
Tim Wildmon: Two p.m. So they leave them open until 10 o'clock at night there?
Chris Woodward: They do.
Tim Wildmon: Israel is a country of, if my memory serves me correctly, I'm guessing 10 to 12 million people, isn't it?
Fred Jackson: Something like that.
Tim Wildmon: Do you know?
Chris Woodward: That's exactly the number I was thinking of.
Tim Wildmon: Somewhere between 10 and 12 million people. And you have to vote in person, right, Fred?
Fred Jackson: Right, they do. Ben Gurion Airport has been filled with people, Jewish people who have Israeli citizenship, flying in just to vote. Our own John Riley, who's in Israel right now, was talking to people at the airport. That's the sole reason for being there, to vote today.
Tim Wildmon: Chris, are you saying the only way they vote is with paper ballots?
Chris Woodward: Paper ballots. They vote in person. That's why people are flying in.
Tim Wildmon: Imagine that. We can't get people to go across the street to vote in the school.
Fred Jackson: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: I'm thinking this prevents fraud from taking place with the machines.
Chris Woodward: That's right. I guess that's what they're wanting to avoid.
Tim Wildmon: We have a video on our site, AFR.net, of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his wife voting this morning. There's a ballot box, they have a ballot in their hand, and they're putting it in there.
Tim Wildmon: I don't know if that's practical for a country of 350 million people like we have. You can do that in a smaller nation. I don't know if we can go back to ballot boxes, but I understand why they do it. Some people think we should absolutely go back to them. I'm not opposed to that; I just don't know how practical it is or how long that would take. When did voting machines enter the picture in the United States?
Chris Woodward: I'm going to look it up right now.
Tim Wildmon: It's probably longer than you think. I'm guessing 30 years, something like that.
Chris Woodward: I was going to say it's been a couple of decades.
Tim Wildmon: According to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, where I get my information, the use of electronic voting technology in elections was introduced in 1964.
Chris Woodward: There you go.
Tim Wildmon: 1964. That's when machines began. The machines have obviously evolved, right?
Fred Jackson: Right.
Tim Wildmon: I remember the old machines. You used to go in, the names would already be up there, and you would click one.
Chris Woodward: Mm-hmm.
Tim Wildmon: You remember those?
Fred Jackson: Sure.
Tim Wildmon: Then we moved to filling out your ballot with a pen and sliding it into the counting machine, right?
Fred Jackson: That's what we do now.
Tim Wildmon: We trust that everything is tallied up correctly.
Chris Woodward: We went to a paper-ballot hybrid in Mississippi, where you get a piece of paper that you fill in, but then you run it through the machine.
Tim Wildmon: I think that's pretty common across the country now, Fred.
Fred Jackson: I think so.
Chris Woodward: They do it in Canada the same way.
Tim Wildmon: Anyway, do you know the difference between Benjamin Netanyahu and his opponent, Gadi Eisenkot?
Chris Woodward: They're both military men, of course.
Tim Wildmon: Isn't the big issue the war?
Chris Woodward: Yes. The question is the war with Iran and the operations in Gaza. Have we gone too far? Should we pull out?
Tim Wildmon: So the argument against Benjamin Netanyahu is that he needs to pull back in Gaza and stop being at war with Iran?
Chris Woodward: It's more of the Gaza situation. That's the thrust. But the other issue is that the Netanyahu government has allowed Orthodox Jews an exemption from military service, and that apparently is a sore spot for a lot of people in Israel.
Tim Wildmon: That's been going on a long time, though.
Chris Woodward: Some people want that changed. Imagine for a moment that you've got a son or daughter who's under mandatory service. Right now, these young people have been involved with the war in Gaza, and they don't like the fact that the sons and daughters of the Orthodox Jews, the ones with the hats and beards, are exempt from that. Their sons and daughters are serving, and the Orthodox Jews' sons and daughters are not. That is a big issue over there.
Tim Wildmon: Our tour guide in Israel, when JJ, John, and I went over there in August of last year, was very upset that certain people didn't have to participate, even though her son was on the front lines.
Fred Jackson: I've been over there many, many times, as has Ray. You have the Orthodox Jewish community, also known as the Hasidics. I don't know if those two words are interchangeable necessarily, but I think they are. They're the practicing Orthodox Jews. You see them wearing the black hats and black clothing. They have the beards and the curly hair that comes down on the sides. The women dress very conservatively themselves.
Fred Jackson: Those people are practicing religious Jews, or conservative Jews. I don't know what percentage they make up in Israel. Ten percent, maybe?
Tim Wildmon: Something like that. Ten, 15, or 20 percent.
Fred Jackson: Whatever that number is, their influence is outsized compared to their percentage. Isn't it a foregone conclusion that when all the counting is done tonight, nobody will have an absolute majority?
Tim Wildmon: No. It's going to take days.
Fred Jackson: What will happen tonight is that the top two finishers, roughly, their parties, Likud and the party associated with Eisenkot, will then have to go to the many other smaller parties and negotiate. At some point, maybe a week or 10 days from now, one of them will say, “We have enough to form a majority.” That person will either continue as prime minister, or perhaps Eisenkot will be the new prime minister.
Chris Woodward: Just to wrap up what you guys have already explained, these religious, conservative Jews have been exempt over the years from military service, while everybody else in the country has to serve. A lot of people say, “This is not fair. These people live in our country too. They need to serve like everybody else, because we all have to be a part of protecting and defending our country, or else we don't have a country for the religious Jews to even practice their faith in.”
Tim Wildmon: You see how that works?
Chris Woodward: Yes, and I sympathize with that. It seems fair to me. But there is some contention between the religious Jews, the very conservative Orthodox Jews, and the secular Jews, who make up the majority of Israeli citizens.
Tim Wildmon: That sounds like an oxymoron, a secular Jew, but they are really nonreligious. In America, we have Easter-and-Christmas Christians. In Israel, they have a lot of people who celebrate the Jewish holidays, but many of them don't know the religious practices or the religious history of their own country. They're secular-minded Jews.
Tim Wildmon: We won't know the results yet, but Benjamin Netanyahu is the only prime minister many people in the United States have ever known. One advantage Benjamin Netanyahu has, as I mentioned yesterday, is that he speaks very fluent English without an accent. That's helpful to him when communicating with Americans, Canadians, and North Americans.
Chris Woodward: I'm not saying that's an advantage back home in Israel, but it is an advantage when communicating with Americans.
Tim Wildmon: We'll see what happens there. It's a very difficult job to have, being prime minister of Israel, with all the decisions you have to make relative to the safety and security of your people. You're always criticized by the world. Anything you do defensively, if you fire into Gaza and innocent people are killed because you're trying to take out terrorists who want to kill you, you get condemned by the world as the villain. It's a very difficult position to be in.
Tim Wildmon: Ray, is there anything spiritual about this that you want to comment on relative to Israel?
Ray Pritchard: All we can say is what we've said before. The promises God made to Abraham and to Abraham's descendants, the Jewish people, are still good. They are unconditional promises God made. We read in the book of Romans that in the last days, when Jesus comes, all Israel will be saved.
Ray Pritchard: God still loves the Jewish people. Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. The great good news, Tim, is that anybody anywhere can believe in Jesus and be saved. If the Old Testament is to be believed, and it is, a great fountain of salvation is going to be opened for the Jewish people in the last days.
Ray Pritchard: I dare to say what I've always believed: The greatest revivals and the greatest spiritual awakenings are not behind us in God's plan. They are yet to come. That's good news for a day like today, when you can look around and see a lot of things to discourage you. God is not finished with the Jewish people, and He's not finished with His work on planet Earth.
Tim Wildmon: Interesting. I was listening to Dr. David Jeremiah's program here on American Family Radio, which comes on at 5:30 in the morning. I have about a three-minute commute to work, but I take a 25-minute commute so I can listen to that program.
Tim Wildmon: Toward the end of the program this morning, Dr. Jeremiah was appalled at the level of anti-Semitism in this country right now, in the wake of October 2023. He mentioned that he's written a new book, although I don't think it's out yet, about God's promises to the Jewish people. It's just what Ray is talking about. You go back to Genesis 12 and Genesis 15. It's an unconditional promise.
Tim Wildmon: God created the Jewish people so that He could manifest who He is through them. As Ray mentioned, Romans chapter 11 makes it very clear that God is not through with the Jewish people. He warns the Gentiles, “Don't get arrogant. I am not through with the Jewish people.”
Tim Wildmon: It's amazing when you think about it. Here you have a tiny speck on planet Earth with a tiny percentage of the people on Earth, and yet all the focus seems to be on Israel. The amount of attention and criticism directed at Israel, when you look around the world at places that are at war and places that have attacks, is astounding. We were talking in our meeting about the 40 Christians who were killed in Ethiopia. Is that genocide happening? It just seems like an inordinate amount of attention and criticism is reserved for the Jews in Israel. Is that in line with what the Bible talks about happening in the last days?
Ray Pritchard: You can't explain that hatred for that tiny little nation and the tiny number of Jews in the world rationally.
Fred Jackson: It's also Jew hunting around the world. It's not just Israel and the politics of Israel. The hatred for people just because they're Jews is going on around the world.
Chris Woodward: I talked to a guy from Defending Education a couple of days ago, Jonathan Greenberg. He looks after anti-Semitism issues for Defending Education, which is a grassroots group of parents and other concerned people about what's going on in schools.
Chris Woodward: Jonathan was talking to AFR about the growing number of anti-Semitic ideas in school curricula and how that's a problem not just for Jewish students, but for all students. You can't learn anything when you go to school every day and you're being told that Jacob is an oppressor. It causes so many problems, and it's why this continues to be a problem. They're getting young people at a young age and telling them nonsense like the Jews are terrible people.
Tim Wildmon: Fred, we won't know who the next prime minister is, whether Benjamin Netanyahu remains or his opponent takes over, until maybe a few days or a week or so?
Fred Jackson: Probably. You've got parties in Israel composed mostly of Arabs. That's a big population over there. Twenty percent of Israel's population is Arab. You have to court them to be part of your coalition.
Tim Wildmon: So it's not easy.
Chris Woodward: President Trump was in northeast Mississippi last night to campaign for Republicans, including Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. Next Tuesday, she's going to be in a race against the Democratic challenger, Scott Colom. He's a prosecutor in Columbus, in the Lowndes County area, also in northeast Mississippi. Scott had former Vice President Kamala Harris campaign on his behalf last week.
Chris Woodward: Trump came to Corinth last night, not far from where we're sitting here in Tupelo, Mississippi, and urged the crowd to do all kinds of things, including support Cindy Hyde-Smith. Here's a portion of his speech.
President Trump: November 3rd, the people of the state need to tell the radical left Democrats that Mississippi is not sending a Soros-backed communist to the Senate. You're reelecting an America First patriot, Cindy Hyde-Smith.
Chris Woodward: He called Scott Colom a Soros-backed prosecutor because it has been widely reported that organizations backed by George Soros campaigned for him and gave money to his campaign.
Tim Wildmon: The fact that the president of the United States, a Republican, is coming to Mississippi and going to other red states too, I wonder if that signifies that it's going to be a very close race.
Chris Woodward: You would think that. Trump was in north Mississippi last night, flew home to Washington, and is about to leave Washington again today for two stops and two rallies in Texas. Why is he going to Texas? He's going to deep-red states to campaign. On any other occasion, you would say, “Why are you doing that? You're wasting time. Go to swing states.”
Tim Wildmon: His voice sounded very hoarse there.
Chris Woodward: You're talking about an 80-year-old man who's traveling nonstop. How much sleep did he get last night?
Tim Wildmon: He's not human.
Chris Woodward: He really is. He's 80 years old, and the physical stamina that God has given him to travel and speak as much as he does is not normal.
Tim Wildmon: We're coming up on a break. Later in the show, perhaps stick around, listeners, because I do have some sound where he addresses concerns about his health and age.
Tim Wildmon: We are just about out of time for this segment. We'll be back momentarily.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Thanks for joining us. It's live radio right here, people. If we make mistakes, we can't hide them. They're there for everybody to see. But if we do well, that's there for everybody to see as well.
Tim Wildmon: Today's Tuesday, October 27, 2026. In the studio with me is Fred Jackson. Good morning, Brother Fred.
Fred Jackson: Good morning to you.
Tim Wildmon: Chris Jackson, I mean, Chris. My son, Chris. Excuse me, Chris Woodward.
Chris Woodward: Thank you, Tim Wildmon. It's a pleasure to be here.
Tim Wildmon: Call me what you want. Just don't call me late for supper. Ray Pritchard is in Florida. Good morning, Ray.
Ray Pritchard: Hey, Tim. How's life in Tupelo these days?
Tim Wildmon: Well, it's lovely weather here in Tupelo. It has been, but we are in a drought. I know that you're far from a drought. You're in a drenching down there, right?
Ray Pritchard: We were in a drought all summer long, and then came the rains.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, we haven't had them yet. That's true not only where we are, but in much of the Southeast. Dry as a bone.
Ray Pritchard: Dry as a bone.
Tim Wildmon: It's really weird because, annually, the states in the southeastern part of the United States get the most rain of any states. We typically get 58 to 60 inches of rain a year in Mississippi, and we were in a drought. We're in a, what do you call it, when you can't burn things?
Ray Pritchard: There's a burn ban in so many different counties.
Tim Wildmon: I was looking in my backyard last night. I have huge cracks in the soil.
Ray Pritchard: Just because of dryness.
Tim Wildmon: It is so dry.
Fred Jackson: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: We really haven't had any substantial rain where we are, probably in two months. I don't want to say something like that. But anyway, I know you guys were in a drought there, and essentially the whole state of Florida was in a state of drought. That has largely changed because of the hurricane that blew through. It was north and west of where we are in Hudson, but we still got eight and a half inches of rain in three days two weeks ago.
Ray Pritchard: Wow. That's flooding right there.
Tim Wildmon: We hope you're having nice weather wherever you may be listening to us across the country. Thanks for joining us. We've got a lot of news to talk about. We've got an election coming up, obviously, a week from today in our country. But a lot of eyes, Chris, are on what's happening in Israel today, right?
Chris Woodward: Yes, and this is going to be the story throughout much of today. In Israel, polls close for their election at 10 p.m. Israeli time, which is 2 p.m. Central time. We're going to be watching this on AFR. Stick around for radio and print coverage today, tomorrow, and in the days ahead. This election is taking place today by paper ballot. People are showing up and voting in person by paper ballot. Imagine such a thing, if you will.
Chris Woodward: Somebody who's talking about this and paying close attention to it is Fox News reporter Trey Yingst, who was atop a building today in Tel Aviv to say this.
Reporter: Polls show a tight race between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main challenger, former IDF general Gadi Eisenkot. Neither will be able to win a majority of votes in the 120-seat Israeli Knesset, Israel's version of the parliament, and one will ultimately be tasked with forming a coalition government.
Tim Wildmon: Do we know any results yet?
Chris Woodward: Not yet.
Tim Wildmon: When do the polls close?
Chris Woodward: They close at 2 p.m. our time today.
Tim Wildmon: Two p.m. So they leave them open until 10 o'clock at night there?
Chris Woodward: They do.
Tim Wildmon: Israel is a country of, if my memory serves me correctly, I'm guessing 10 to 12 million people, isn't it?
Fred Jackson: Something like that.
Tim Wildmon: Do you know?
Chris Woodward: That's exactly the number I was thinking of.
Tim Wildmon: Somewhere between 10 and 12 million people. And you have to vote in person, right, Fred?
Fred Jackson: Right, they do. Ben Gurion Airport has been filled with people, Jewish people who have Israeli citizenship, flying in just to vote. Our own John Riley, who's in Israel right now, was talking to people at the airport. That's the sole reason for being there, to vote today.
Tim Wildmon: Chris, are you saying the only way they vote is with paper ballots?
Chris Woodward: Paper ballots. They vote in person. That's why people are flying in.
Tim Wildmon: Imagine that. We can't get people to go across the street to vote in the school.
Fred Jackson: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: I'm thinking this prevents fraud from taking place with the machines.
Chris Woodward: That's right. I guess that's what they're wanting to avoid.
Tim Wildmon: We have a video on our site, AFR.net, of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his wife voting this morning. There's a ballot box, they have a ballot in their hand, and they're putting it in there.
Tim Wildmon: I don't know if that's practical for a country of 350 million people like we have. You can do that in a smaller nation. I don't know if we can go back to ballot boxes, but I understand why they do it. Some people think we should absolutely go back to them. I'm not opposed to that; I just don't know how practical it is or how long that would take. When did voting machines enter the picture in the United States?
Chris Woodward: I'm going to look it up right now.
Tim Wildmon: It's probably longer than you think. I'm guessing 30 years, something like that.
Chris Woodward: I was going to say it's been a couple of decades.
Tim Wildmon: According to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, where I get my information, the use of electronic voting technology in elections was introduced in 1964.
Chris Woodward: There you go.
Tim Wildmon: 1964. That's when machines began. The machines have obviously evolved, right?
Fred Jackson: Right.
Tim Wildmon: I remember the old machines. You used to go in, the names would already be up there, and you would click one.
Chris Woodward: Mm-hmm.
Tim Wildmon: You remember those?
Fred Jackson: Sure.
Tim Wildmon: Then we moved to filling out your ballot with a pen and sliding it into the counting machine, right?
Fred Jackson: That's what we do now.
Tim Wildmon: We trust that everything is tallied up correctly.
Chris Woodward: We went to a paper-ballot hybrid in Mississippi, where you get a piece of paper that you fill in, but then you run it through the machine.
Tim Wildmon: I think that's pretty common across the country now, Fred.
Fred Jackson: I think so.
Chris Woodward: They do it in Canada the same way.
Tim Wildmon: Anyway, do you know the difference between Benjamin Netanyahu and his opponent, Gadi Eisenkot?
Chris Woodward: They're both military men, of course.
Tim Wildmon: Isn't the big issue the war?
Chris Woodward: Yes. The question is the war with Iran and the operations in Gaza. Have we gone too far? Should we pull out?
Tim Wildmon: So the argument against Benjamin Netanyahu is that he needs to pull back in Gaza and stop being at war with Iran?
Chris Woodward: It's more of the Gaza situation. That's the thrust. But the other issue is that the Netanyahu government has allowed Orthodox Jews an exemption from military service, and that apparently is a sore spot for a lot of people in Israel.
Tim Wildmon: That's been going on a long time, though.
Chris Woodward: Some people want that changed. Imagine for a moment that you've got a son or daughter who's under mandatory service. Right now, these young people have been involved with the war in Gaza, and they don't like the fact that the sons and daughters of the Orthodox Jews, the ones with the hats and beards, are exempt from that. Their sons and daughters are serving, and the Orthodox Jews' sons and daughters are not. That is a big issue over there.
Tim Wildmon: Our tour guide in Israel, when JJ, John, and I went over there in August of last year, was very upset that certain people didn't have to participate, even though her son was on the front lines.
Fred Jackson: I've been over there many, many times, as has Ray. You have the Orthodox Jewish community, also known as the Hasidics. I don't know if those two words are interchangeable necessarily, but I think they are. They're the practicing Orthodox Jews. You see them wearing the black hats and black clothing. They have the beards and the curly hair that comes down on the sides. The women dress very conservatively themselves.
Fred Jackson: Those people are practicing religious Jews, or conservative Jews. I don't know what percentage they make up in Israel. Ten percent, maybe?
Tim Wildmon: Something like that. Ten, 15, or 20 percent.
Fred Jackson: Whatever that number is, their influence is outsized compared to their percentage. Isn't it a foregone conclusion that when all the counting is done tonight, nobody will have an absolute majority?
Tim Wildmon: No. It's going to take days.
Fred Jackson: What will happen tonight is that the top two finishers, roughly, their parties, Likud and the party associated with Eisenkot, will then have to go to the many other smaller parties and negotiate. At some point, maybe a week or 10 days from now, one of them will say, “We have enough to form a majority.” That person will either continue as prime minister, or perhaps Eisenkot will be the new prime minister.
Chris Woodward: Just to wrap up what you guys have already explained, these religious, conservative Jews have been exempt over the years from military service, while everybody else in the country has to serve. A lot of people say, “This is not fair. These people live in our country too. They need to serve like everybody else, because we all have to be a part of protecting and defending our country, or else we don't have a country for the religious Jews to even practice their faith in.”
Tim Wildmon: You see how that works?
Chris Woodward: Yes, and I sympathize with that. It seems fair to me. But there is some contention between the religious Jews, the very conservative Orthodox Jews, and the secular Jews, who make up the majority of Israeli citizens.
Tim Wildmon: That sounds like an oxymoron, a secular Jew, but they are really nonreligious. In America, we have Easter-and-Christmas Christians. In Israel, they have a lot of people who celebrate the Jewish holidays, but many of them don't know the religious practices or the religious history of their own country. They're secular-minded Jews.
Tim Wildmon: We won't know the results yet, but Benjamin Netanyahu is the only prime minister many people in the United States have ever known. One advantage Benjamin Netanyahu has, as I mentioned yesterday, is that he speaks very fluent English without an accent. That's helpful to him when communicating with Americans, Canadians, and North Americans.
Chris Woodward: I'm not saying that's an advantage back home in Israel, but it is an advantage when communicating with Americans.
Tim Wildmon: We'll see what happens there. It's a very difficult job to have, being prime minister of Israel, with all the decisions you have to make relative to the safety and security of your people. You're always criticized by the world. Anything you do defensively, if you fire into Gaza and innocent people are killed because you're trying to take out terrorists who want to kill you, you get condemned by the world as the villain. It's a very difficult position to be in.
Tim Wildmon: Ray, is there anything spiritual about this that you want to comment on relative to Israel?
Ray Pritchard: All we can say is what we've said before. The promises God made to Abraham and to Abraham's descendants, the Jewish people, are still good. They are unconditional promises God made. We read in the book of Romans that in the last days, when Jesus comes, all Israel will be saved.
Ray Pritchard: God still loves the Jewish people. Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. The great good news, Tim, is that anybody anywhere can believe in Jesus and be saved. If the Old Testament is to be believed, and it is, a great fountain of salvation is going to be opened for the Jewish people in the last days.
Ray Pritchard: I dare to say what I've always believed: The greatest revivals and the greatest spiritual awakenings are not behind us in God's plan. They are yet to come. That's good news for a day like today, when you can look around and see a lot of things to discourage you. God is not finished with the Jewish people, and He's not finished with His work on planet Earth.
Tim Wildmon: Interesting. I was listening to Dr. David Jeremiah's program here on American Family Radio, which comes on at 5:30 in the morning. I have about a three-minute commute to work, but I take a 25-minute commute so I can listen to that program.
Tim Wildmon: Toward the end of the program this morning, Dr. Jeremiah was appalled at the level of anti-Semitism in this country right now, in the wake of October 2023. He mentioned that he's written a new book, although I don't think it's out yet, about God's promises to the Jewish people. It's just what Ray is talking about. You go back to Genesis 12 and Genesis 15. It's an unconditional promise.
Tim Wildmon: God created the Jewish people so that He could manifest who He is through them. As Ray mentioned, Romans chapter 11 makes it very clear that God is not through with the Jewish people. He warns the Gentiles, “Don't get arrogant. I am not through with the Jewish people.”
Tim Wildmon: It's amazing when you think about it. Here you have a tiny speck on planet Earth with a tiny percentage of the people on Earth, and yet all the focus seems to be on Israel. The amount of attention and criticism directed at Israel, when you look around the world at places that are at war and places that have attacks, is astounding. We were talking in our meeting about the 40 Christians who were killed in Ethiopia. Is that genocide happening? It just seems like an inordinate amount of attention and criticism is reserved for the Jews in Israel. Is that in line with what the Bible talks about happening in the last days?
Ray Pritchard: You can't explain that hatred for that tiny little nation and the tiny number of Jews in the world rationally.
Fred Jackson: It's also Jew hunting around the world. It's not just Israel and the politics of Israel. The hatred for people just because they're Jews is going on around the world.
Chris Woodward: I talked to a guy from Defending Education a couple of days ago, Jonathan Greenberg. He looks after anti-Semitism issues for Defending Education, which is a grassroots group of parents and other concerned people about what's going on in schools.
Chris Woodward: Jonathan was talking to AFR about the growing number of anti-Semitic ideas in school curricula and how that's a problem not just for Jewish students, but for all students. You can't learn anything when you go to school every day and you're being told that Jacob is an oppressor. It causes so many problems, and it's why this continues to be a problem. They're getting young people at a young age and telling them nonsense like the Jews are terrible people.
Tim Wildmon: Fred, we won't know who the next prime minister is, whether Benjamin Netanyahu remains or his opponent takes over, until maybe a few days or a week or so?
Fred Jackson: Probably. You've got parties in Israel composed mostly of Arabs. That's a big population over there. Twenty percent of Israel's population is Arab. You have to court them to be part of your coalition.
Tim Wildmon: So it's not easy.
Chris Woodward: President Trump was in northeast Mississippi last night to campaign for Republicans, including Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. Next Tuesday, she's going to be in a race against the Democratic challenger, Scott Colom. He's a prosecutor in Columbus, in the Lowndes County area, also in northeast Mississippi. Scott had former Vice President Kamala Harris campaign on his behalf last week.
Chris Woodward: Trump came to Corinth last night, not far from where we're sitting here in Tupelo, Mississippi, and urged the crowd to do all kinds of things, including support Cindy Hyde-Smith. Here's a portion of his speech.
President Trump: November 3rd, the people of the state need to tell the radical left Democrats that Mississippi is not sending a Soros-backed communist to the Senate. You're reelecting an America First patriot, Cindy Hyde-Smith.
Chris Woodward: He called Scott Colom a Soros-backed prosecutor because it has been widely reported that organizations backed by George Soros campaigned for him and gave money to his campaign.
Tim Wildmon: The fact that the president of the United States, a Republican, is coming to Mississippi and going to other red states too, I wonder if that signifies that it's going to be a very close race.
Chris Woodward: You would think that. Trump was in north Mississippi last night, flew home to Washington, and is about to leave Washington again today for two stops and two rallies in Texas. Why is he going to Texas? He's going to deep-red states to campaign. On any other occasion, you would say, “Why are you doing that? You're wasting time. Go to swing states.”
Tim Wildmon: His voice sounded very hoarse there.
Chris Woodward: You're talking about an 80-year-old man who's traveling nonstop. How much sleep did he get last night?
Tim Wildmon: He's not human.
Chris Woodward: He really is. He's 80 years old, and the physical stamina that God has given him to travel and speak as much as he does is not normal.
Tim Wildmon: We're coming up on a break. Later in the show, perhaps stick around, listeners, because I do have some sound where he addresses concerns about his health and age.
Tim Wildmon: We are just about out of time for this segment. We'll be back momentarily.
Tim Wildmon and his guests examine Israel’s election, where Benjamin Netanyahu faces a closely watched contest shaped by the war in Gaza, military-service exemptions for Orthodox Jews, and the challenge of forming a governing coalition. They also discuss biblical promises to the Jewish people and rising anti-Semitism.
The program reviews President Trump’s campaign appearance in Mississippi for Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and his comments about his age and health. Tim, Fred, Chris, and Dr. Heather Hefner also encourage Christians to vote in the midterm elections and explain how voters can research state and local races.
Heather Hefner discusses 58 ballot measures across 24 states, including measures involving life, voter identification, election integrity, taxes, women’s sports, and protections for minors. The hosts also consider taxation, wealth creation, government spending, and the national debt from a biblical perspective.
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