Tim Wildmon: Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Thanks for listening to AFR. Today is Thursday, October 29, 2026. Joining me in the studio is Fred Jackson. Good morning, Fred.
Fred Jackson: Howdy to you.
Tim Wildmon: Chris Woodward.
Chris Woodward: Good morning.
Tim Wildmon: And in sunny Florida. That's what they call it. I don't know, it's not always sunny. How are you doing, brother?
Ray: We're doing fine here in Hudson, Florida. It's a little bit overcast this morning. No rain, but some clouds and 75 degrees. So what do we have to complain about?
Tim Wildmon: That's right. But Florida is the Sunshine State.
Ray: That's exactly right, and we get a ton of it down here.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, but you've been experiencing a lot of rain the last few weeks.
Ray: Oh, man. It was like Noah's flood there a couple of weeks ago. It's a paradox, people. It's just a weather paradox. I don't even know what I'm saying, but it sounds smart.
Tim Wildmon: What do you have for us? Florida wants to send some rain to us.
Ray: We would welcome it.
Tim Wildmon: Yes, we mentioned this before, but many parts of the Southeast are experiencing drought.
Chris Woodward: Is it ever? We're under a burn ban here in Mississippi.
Tim Wildmon: We are, at least I think all over the state.
Chris Woodward: Yeah, most of the state is, in fact, under a burn ban. There is rain headed our way on Sunday, they say.
Tim Wildmon: They say.
Chris Woodward: What is rain, exactly? I'm familiar with the term, but it's been so long since we've seen it. Seriously, where we live, it's been probably two months since we've seen any substantial rain.
Tim Wildmon: Would you say?
Chris Woodward: Well, we got a little sprinkle during the hurricane.
Tim Wildmon: They can't say that the state is done.
Chris Woodward: Yeah, just in the Florida area, right? We got a little bit of rain out of that, but that was it. The sun came out the next day, and it's been bright ever since.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, so I did some investigating and learned that rain is a form of precipitation.
Chris Woodward: Yes. Rain is a form of precipitation which occurs when atmospheric moisture condenses, forming clouds from which water particles grow and combine until heavy enough to fall to the ground.
Tim Wildmon: Wow. Well, Chris, all of our listeners appreciate that information.
Chris Woodward: I went to Mississippi State, where the meteorologists are trained.
Tim Wildmon: One in three on-air meteorologists are products of Mississippi State University.
Fred Jackson: You're not serious.
Chris Woodward: I'm dead serious.
Fred Jackson: Yeah?
Chris Woodward: I talked to a guy at the National Weather Service in San Diego last week.
Fred Jackson: That's my father, too. That's why I'm here.
Tim Wildmon: Well, by golly, others may win in football, but we're going to have more weathermen out there than you could count. We're going to tell you when to go to your safe space, America.
Chris Woodward: We just go to our safe space.
Tim Wildmon: That's exactly right. Take that, Ohio State and Alabama and Georgia guys. You want a weatherman? We got them.
Chris Woodward: We'll landscape your architecture as well.
Tim Wildmon: Or weather person. All right, Ray, give us a good word from the Bible, if you would.
Ray: Okay, let's talk about the second coming, shall we? A couple of days before His crucifixion, Jesus, in Mark chapter 13, gave us a passage that parallels Matthew 24. After He talks about the wars, the rumors of wars, the earthquakes, the famines, and the pestilence, the one question the disciples ask is the one we all want to know: “Okay, Lord, when is all this going to happen? You've given us the outline of the last days.”
Ray: Jesus said very plainly in Mark 13:33, “You do not know when that time will come.” Therefore, He says in Mark 13:35, “Therefore keep watch.” Some translations say, “Stay awake.” Rub the sand out of your eyes, keep your eyes open, because you do not know when the master of the house will return.
Ray: Whenever I speak on Bible prophecy around the country, one question always comes up: “Pastor Ray, when is Jesus coming back?” People want to know the timing. How close are we to the rapture? How close are we to the second coming? Do you think these are the last days?
Ray: To that question, I will give an affirmative answer. Yes, I believe we are rushing headlong into the final days before the return of Christ. I feel better saying it that way because that's exactly what the disciples were asking in Mark 13 and Matthew 24: “Lord, what will be the sign of Your coming?” But He said we would not know the exact time.
Ray: Let me say it this way: If you ever hear me come on Today's Issues and give you a date, pay no attention. It means that I have taken the wrong medicine and my mind is all messed up, because nobody out there knows. Some of you may remember the fellow who wrote about all the reasons why Jesus was going to come in 1988, and then he came out with a revised version for 1989. If Jesus said we're not going to be able to know the day or the hour, that's good enough for me.
Ray: What can we say? We can say, number one, Jesus is coming again. Number two, we can't be certain when He will return. Number three, therefore, friends, and this is really the point this morning, we ought always to keep our eyes wide open, because it may be today.
Ray: I agree with what the old-time preachers used to say. You have to get up every day, go to the east, open the windows, look up to the eastern horizon, and say, “Maybe today.” So I give you my personal thought here at the end: I believe the coming of the Lord must be near. I don't have a day to share with you. Many Christians before me have said the same thing. I just want everybody to know I'm taking my stand with them.
Ray: I'd rather expect Jesus to come in my lifetime and be wrong than to be so in love with the world that I'm not ready to see Him when He comes. The late, great Adrian Rogers said it this way: “We ought to be living as if Jesus died yesterday, rose this morning, and is coming back this afternoon.” To that I simply say, amen and amen.
Ray: Said another way, we should adopt the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared. Jesus is coming. No one knows the day or the hour, so be ready, be prepared, and it might be today. If you're always prepared, you'll be glad to see Him when He does come. Jesus is coming, my friends. Are you ready?
Fred Jackson: Amen. I agree with everything Ray has just said, one hundred percent. But I think it is interesting to look at signs. Israel became a nation again in 1948. I think a lot of people took that as a sign that things are getting closer, with Israel back as a nation.
Fred Jackson: I was talking with somebody yesterday because Revelation, and Ray, I'd love your comment on this, talks about the Antichrist during the tribulation period. Revelation talks about a point when people are supposed to bow down and worship an image of the Antichrist, and those who don't will be punished.
Ray: You mean worldwide?
Fred Jackson: Worldwide. I wonder, Ray, with the development of artificial intelligence, images, and all of that sort of thing, could it be that the technology now in place could be used by the Antichrist for what Revelation teaches?
Ray: I would go beyond that, Fred. I would say not only could it be, but it will be. I think in this generation, look, I went to Dallas Seminary 50 years ago and studied under Dwight Pentecost, John Walvoord, and Charles Ryrie, experts in Bible prophecy. Back in the 1970s, they said what you just said, except nobody knew the mechanism by which it could happen because the internet itself was decades away.
Ray: We are living in the days, friends, where the technology is now here. It's not coming next week. It is now here. Someone, some evil person, could control the entire world economy. Through artificial intelligence, we're already told that it is getting very difficult to distinguish between real images and fake images. AI is only going to get better and better.
Ray: We talked about these AI bots, ChatGPT, and all of this a couple of days ago when I was on the program. It's wonderful technology, but in the hands of the wrong person, and that wrong person is coming, the Antichrist is coming, that technology will be used to deceive the entire world, except those who believe in Jesus.
Ray: Friends, the signs are all around us. Fred and I don't have a date, and we're not going to give you one, but we do say, look up, keep your eyes open, watch, and be ready, because Jesus is coming again.
Chris Woodward: You know, while you guys were talking about this, I looked up 2 Timothy 3. No matter what version you might use, the various things Paul writes to Timothy about how men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, and all these things, it sounds like what I did in the newscast. What he outlines is pretty much what's on the news on an hourly basis.
Chris Woodward: I saw last night, and this is one of our news stories, that the Department of Homeland Security's computer system was breached. I'm not a tech person, so I may misuse the language, but their data was breached by a hacker or a hacking group.
Chris Woodward: This is going on all over the world. With the advancements in AI, it's a race between the good guys and the bad guys, so to speak. If you were to think that one organization would be protected and shielded against a computer hack, it would be the Department of Homeland Security.
Fred Jackson: Right.
Chris Woodward: But actually, the Pentagon was hacked a couple of weeks ago, and the FBI was hacked.
Chris Woodward: What I'm saying is that computers and IT departments around the world are in a race to keep the bad guys from controlling the world. The danger was that the successful hack into the Department of Homeland Security exposed the agents who work for ICE and others at the Department of Homeland Security, making them potential targets of violence, or who knows what.
Chris Woodward: The world now, as you guys are referencing, is interconnected. With the internet, AI, and all the things that can happen instantaneously worldwide, that technology does fit in with the Bible prophecies that people 40, 50, or 60 years ago, and previous generations down through the centuries, would read and say, “I just don't know how that would ever happen.”
Chris Woodward: People on one side of the world had no idea what was happening in a town a hundred miles away. Now things are instantaneously connected around the world, and that makes sense.
Fred Jackson: Oh, yeah. It's just amazing.
Tim Wildmon: I have a quirky hobby. Sometimes I'll watch cameras from around the world. I'll click on the Western Wall camera in Jerusalem, see Big Ben in London, and then go to Venice and watch the gondolas. It's a little quirky, but I do that every once in a while because I like to travel. My point is that you can see anything around the world instantaneously today. It's pretty amazing.
Chris Woodward: It is. So, I came into the journalism business in the late 1970s and 1980s. We still used, and I may have to define and explain this, a thing called teletype.
Fred Jackson: Teletype?
Chris Woodward: Let me Google this. Hold on. It was a ribbon of paper that you would sit at a typewriter, and the ribbon of paper would have holes punched in it to correspond to the letters that you're typing. You would create that tape and send it to someone at a receiving end so that your message would get through.
Chris Woodward: I grew up in the days before cell phones. This is how we communicated. My first newsrooms had typewriters. We did not have computers.
Tim Wildmon: If you made more than four mistakes, I wonder if my 12-year-old grandson would know what a typewriter is.
Chris Woodward: I have a lot of grandchildren.
Tim Wildmon: I pray for them at night, and I ask the Lord to bless number seven.
Chris Woodward: Number seven of eight.
Tim Wildmon: Lord, so grandchild number seven, you know their name. When I forget their name, I just say, “Lord, You know their name. I'm praying for them.”
Chris Woodward: I have a 12-year-old grandson, and I'm going to ask him if he knows what a typewriter is.
Tim Wildmon: You said “typewriter,” and I wonder if they would know what a typewriter is.
Chris Woodward: It was an Olympia typewriter, and you had five-page carbon-copy paper. You would press down, and you got five copies all at once because you had to split them between the news anchors.
Fred Jackson: That was an attack back then, wasn't it?
Chris Woodward: It was a pain, is what it was.
Tim Wildmon: Did you guys ever, at some point when you were in school as a child, use a slide rule?
Fred Jackson: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: The only time I've ever seen a slide rule operated was during a scene in the Apollo movie that Tom Hanks made. That's the only time. I remember watching it with my dad and asking, “What is that?”
Chris Woodward: My dad used a slide rule.
Tim Wildmon: I just know it's in that Paul Simon song. “Don't know much about history, don't know what a slide rule is for.” Remember that line?
Chris Woodward: Paul Simon, James Taylor, and Garth Brooks, I think.
Tim Wildmon: Chris, those were not carpenters.
Chris Woodward: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was right there. I was ready to throw it out.
Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Tim, Fred, Chris, and Ray. Go ahead, Chris. What's your first story?
Chris Woodward: You guys mentioned a minute ago, when we were talking about Scripture, how Israel's return in the 1940s was a prophecy fulfilled. We're watching Israel because we had that election a couple of days ago, and it still looks like partial results indicate a possible deadlock.
Chris Woodward: What's interesting about this situation is that Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a member of the Likud Party, is apparently alleging fraud from Arabs in the nation of Israel and possibly even neighboring countries to Israel. Somebody who was on Jenna Ellis's show this morning, Jenna Ellis in the Morning on AFR Talk, was Israeli-American Joel Rosenberg, who had this to say about the Arab election-rigging allegations.
Jol Rosenberg: That's a very serious charge. I can't say that's true, but it is the prime minister making that charge, and I'm listening to it carefully. The idea is that Qatar, the tiny Gulf Islamist nation, and Turkey may have been providing illegal assistance and thus interference in the Islamist, anti-Zionist Arab party here in Israel. Overall, the Arab party gained 19 seats. That is a record. The Arab party has never won that many seats.
Chris Woodward: What's interesting about this is that, as we've discussed several times this week, Israel has paper ballots. It's not like they rigged election machines, as we've heard or perhaps gotten used to in the United States.
Tim Wildmon: Well, I don't know about all that. I guess the rigging allegations will have to be investigated, although with paper ballots, I don't know how you do that. But Benjamin Netanyahu got more votes than anybody else, right?
Chris Woodward: The Likud Party got more votes than anybody else.
Tim Wildmon: So he's likely to remain prime minister. That will have to be worked out, but he and his party got more votes than everybody else, and they're not too far away from having a majority, right?
Chris Woodward: I think it's 53 seats in the parliament as of this morning.
Tim Wildmon: He has a slight lead, depending on the news outlet that you follow, over this Eisenkot fellow.
Chris Woodward: Yeah, so we'll see what happens there. Ray, any thoughts on that?
Ray: I think Prime Minister Netanyahu has come out a little bit better than he looked three weeks ago. It looked like the other fellow was going to win. Not only has Netanyahu's party gotten the biggest number of seats, but it is a little bit beyond expectations, which I think says something good about the support he has among the Israeli people.
Chris Woodward: Absolutely, and it was record turnout, too. Seventy-seven percent of the eligible people who were on the election list voted, which is absolutely huge.
Tim Wildmon: All right, go ahead, Chris. Next story.
Chris Woodward: Let's mention this real quick because it is developing.
Tim Wildmon: And we are developing.
Chris Woodward: We sure are.
Fred Jackson: It sure is.
Chris Woodward: You know, bipartisanship is not something we see much in the United States of America, especially going into an election. I bring up this bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general. I think this is a story that's gone under the radar based on what's playing out with the midterm elections.
Chris Woodward: A bipartisan coalition of attorneys general is suing Dollar General for raising prices for many of its products without updating the sticker prices on shelves, so customers unknowingly pay more at the register. This is all the more reason to pay attention to the tablet the cashier has, where you can see the price come across the register, and to look at the receipt.
Chris Woodward: Dollar General says, “Not guilty,” but it's definitely something to watch.
Tim Wildmon: So you're telling me I have to pay attention to that?
Chris Woodward: I would.
Tim Wildmon: I don't need anything else to pay attention to at 6:30. I don't need it. Just scan it, I'll pay it, whatever. I'm just kidding.
Chris Woodward: The accusation is that 19 states are suing Dollar General.
Tim Wildmon: I find it hard to believe, and this is just me talking without seeing any evidence, that executives at the Dollar General Corporation would authorize basically telling their stores not to charge the shelf price and to make the prices on the stickers on the shelves different from what they scan at the front of the store. I would be shocked if that were the case, but is that what the claim is?
Chris Woodward: That is the claim here.
Tim Wildmon: But 19 states?
Chris Woodward: Yes. Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin.
Tim Wildmon: Those are red and blue states.
Chris Woodward: Yeah, so we'll see what happens there. That's a class-action lawsuit against Dollar General.
Tim Wildmon: You know, Ed is always joking about giving directions and asking, “Is it past the Dollar General?”
Chris Woodward: Yes, because there are 20,000 Dollar Generals in the USA. Is that right?
Chris Woodward: Correct. One of the states involved here is North Carolina. I didn't know this until today, but North Carolina has the second-highest number of Dollar General stores in the country.
Tim Wildmon: Really?
Chris Woodward: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: That must be one every three miles.
Chris Woodward: We have them on every other side of a Baptist church here in Mississippi.
Tim Wildmon: Whoever had that idea, I don't know the story behind Dollar General, but what a brilliant idea it was to put what amounts to what we used to call general stores in communities. They have a lot of common products, including some grocery products that people buy, and they make it more convenient than going to Kroger or Walmart or wherever people go for things.
Chris Woodward: I pass by four on my way home, and I don't live far from here.
Tim Wildmon: You can drive through the woods for two miles, and all of a sudden there's a new Dollar General somewhere.
Chris Woodward: It's amazing.
Tim Wildmon: It's like Baptist churches in the South.
Chris Woodward: That's about it.
Tim Wildmon: All right, we'll be back with more of Today's Issues on American Family Radio.
Tim Wildmon: All right, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. I'm Tim with Fred, Chris, and Ray. You heard me talking about the 2027 tours. We've got everything dated and scheduled, including the itinerary and the cost.
Tim Wildmon: We would love to have you on one of them. The tours we develop are historical and spiritual in nature. We're not going to the beach, and we're not taking a cruise or anything like that. There's nothing wrong with that, but these tours are sort of a vacation with a purpose, if you will.
Tim Wildmon: They include Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown, the historic triangle, as they call it. We're going there, as we always do, twice a year. Then we're going to our nation's capital, Washington, D.C., to see all the sites, including Mount Vernon.
Tim Wildmon: Those tours are available in June and September, and they always fill up about three months in advance. People take vacation time and plan ahead for the year, so I want people to know now about the trips that will be going on in June and September 2027.
Tim Wildmon: Wesley and Walker, my sons, are leading another tour. Stephen McDowell, of the Providence Foundation, goes on all our historical tours. Nobody knows more about early American history than Stephen McDowell. Somebody may know as much, but they don't know more.
Tim Wildmon: The Boston tour has been very popular the last two years. It includes the Freedom Trail, Plymouth Rock, Concord, Lexington, and so much to see in the greater Boston area. They've got that planned for October 2027.
Tim Wildmon: If you're interested in any of what I've just mentioned, all you need to do to read all about it is go to tours.afa.net. T-O-U-R-S dot A-F-A dot net. Tours.afa.net. Everything you want to know about those tours is listed there.
Tim Wildmon: Also, the Italy and Greece, Footsteps of Paul tour, is coming up in March, but those two particular tours going to Greece and Italy don't have much room left before being full.
Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network.
Tim Wildmon: Speaking of cruises, a lot of people like to go on an Alaskan cruise, and we've got some news out of Alaska, don't we? Before we do, we're going to get Jenna to comment on it. We want to welcome Jenna Ellis to our program. Jenna is the host of Jenna Ellis in the Morning, from 7:00 to 8:00 Central Time each weekday here on American Family Radio. Good morning, Jenna.
Jenna Ellis: Good morning. I wish I was on an Alaskan cruise today. Have you been on one?
Tim Wildmon: I haven't. I've been on cruises, but I haven't been to Alaska.
Jenna Ellis: Alaska is one of only two states in the United States that I have not visited.
Tim Wildmon: What's the other one?
Jenna Ellis: North Dakota. I just can't find a reason to go other than to check it off my list.
Tim Wildmon: No offense to our listeners in North Dakota.
Jenna Ellis: Email me, [email protected], and give me a reason to go.
Chris Woodward: Mount Rushmore.
Tim Wildmon: That's South Dakota, Chris.
Jenna Ellis: I've been there. I actually got to go with President Trump.
Chris Woodward: Let me write that down.
Jenna Ellis: You're an idiot.
Chris Woodward: No, listen, I tried to save Chris.
Jenna Ellis: You did, and I nailed you.
Chris Woodward: I'll see myself out.
Jenna Ellis: Before anybody says I need to get out more, I have been to a lot of places.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, we forgive you, Chris.
Chris Woodward: That's okay. There aren't many geographical sins worse than that, but there are some.
Fred Jackson: I visited Minot many years ago.
Tim Wildmon: Did you? What were you there for?
Fred Jackson: I was just getting out of the Canadian Armed Forces, and I drove south down to Minot and stayed near an Air Force base there. It was very cold. It was December.
Chris Woodward: When a Canadian says it's cold, it's cold.
Fred Jackson: It was so cold. I had a little Dodge Colt I was driving at the time, and I had to leave that car running all night because it had a habit of freezing up the engine. It was that cold.
Tim Wildmon: This is why I moved to Florida.
Ray: I spent 19 years in Chicago.
Tim Wildmon: Seventeen freezing winters.
Ray: Chicago is beautiful in the spring, summer, and fall, but winter is brutal.
Tim Wildmon: It is tough.
Ray: I like Florida a lot better.
Tim Wildmon: The reason we're talking about Alaska is because there is a United States Senate race there, like there are in a third of our states going on right now, but it's a strange and unusual race. Chris, why don't you set this up, and then we'll let Jenna comment on it?
Chris Woodward: Thank you very much. There is a Senate race in Alaska.
Tim Wildmon: Not Alabama.
Chris Woodward: Thank you. And Mount Rushmore is not in Alaska.
Tim Wildmon: Chris, you're going to take a beating, my friend.
Chris Woodward: I'm sorry. I apologize to all our listeners for being uninformed.
Chris Woodward: In all seriousness, there is a Democratic Senate candidate in Alaska by the name of Mary Peltola, and she and her campaign are accused of looking throughout the state of Alaska, which is practically the size of a continent, for a man with the same name as the Republican on the ballot with Mary Peltola.
Chris Woodward: The reason is that Mary and others allegedly wanted to cause confusion and have people possibly vote for the wrong Dan Sullivan, therefore helping her chances of winning on Tuesday. Mary Peltola maintains her innocence. She went on MSNBC, formerly MS NOW, to claim that this is all a conspiracy cooked up by her Republican challenger, the real Dan Sullivan.
Mary Peltola: This is clearly corruption. This is clearly a very desperate attempt to cling to power, using his allies in Washington, D.C., to rig the system even further.
Chris Woodward: What's interesting here is that The New York Times, of all news outlets, is largely responsible for dropping this bombshell in America in October, right before an election. The New York Times quoted a former campaign staffer of Mary Peltola who claimed that this was all Mary's idea and that other people wanted to help her win.
Tim Wildmon: You did a great job of explaining it. Let me dumb it down even further, and then, Jenna, you can comment on the legal aspects of this or whatever. In Alaska, they have a Senate race. Instead of just two candidates on the ballot on November 3, there will be three.
Tim Wildmon: In Alaska, there is a Republican named Dan Sullivan, the incumbent. His challenger is a Democrat named Mary Peltola. Those two people are the primary candidates.
Tim Wildmon: The accusation against Mary Peltola is that she and the Democrats recruited a man with the same name as the incumbent, Dan Sullivan. When voters go to the polls next Thursday, they may be confused about which Dan Sullivan to vote for, splitting the vote and allowing the Democrat, Peltola, to win the election.
Tim Wildmon: It's a weird situation. I've never heard of anything quite like this before. Jenna, go ahead and comment on this.
Jenna Ellis: It's a first. The two candidates are distinguishable on the general election ballot. Senator Dan Sullivan is identified as a Republican, and the other candidate is listed as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., with no party affiliation. So they're not identical.
Jenna Ellis: The obvious potential for confusion is if somebody goes in, hasn't heard this controversy, and simply picks the first Sullivan without actually reading the whole thing. That's the practical problem.
Jenna Ellis: As for the legal status, ABC is reporting that a separate Department of Justice criminal investigation into the circumstances of Daniel J. Sullivan, the independent candidate, has been active for months, but no charges were reported in that article.
Jenna Ellis: Separately, the Department of Justice has sued Alaska election officials in a civil case, seeking to block certification under certain circumstances if Senator Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, loses.
Jenna Ellis: This whole story raises serious questions about political conduct. But as of right now, there is no law disqualifying a candidate just because they share the same name or because officials suspect a bad motive.
Jenna Ellis: What needs to happen, I think, is what would have been the best remedy: Make the ballot unmistakably clear. Perhaps put the Republican incumbent first and then the independent candidate, with their names and party affiliations clearly identified. Use proportionate remedies first, correct the listing, add clear identifiers or voter instructions, and pursue penalties only if investigators establish a separately prohibited act.
Tim Wildmon: Is there any evidence that the Democratic woman, Mary Peltola, recruited this independent to run against the other Dan Sullivan? President Trump says she needs to be criminally charged.
Jenna Ellis: As Chris said, one of her former campaign staffers actually said that it was her idea to recruit this guy. We have the testimony of someone who was inside her campaign.
Jenna Ellis: If that's true and the intent was to cause ballot confusion, then absolutely, I think that's something that should be criminalized. It should be investigated, and there should be civil penalties.
Jenna Ellis: I agree with President Trump that until investigators actually get to the bottom of this, if Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent senator, does not win, then at least the certification should be held until we know what happened.
Tim Wildmon: It seems to me, and I haven't heard any of these people speak, so I'm just commenting as an observer who knows nothing, but we do that a lot, don't we? It seems like you could probably tell in five or ten minutes whether this independent guy is even a serious candidate or not. Have you heard him speak at all, Jenna?
Jenna Ellis: I've seen a few reports where he's saying that he just decided to run independently. It doesn't seem like he's mounted a genuinely serious campaign, something that's actually winnable.
Jenna Ellis: But the issue here is that Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, and the polls are really close between the Democrat and the Republican. Even if the independent Sullivan gets 2 percent, that could be the difference in the election.
Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues on American Family Radio. What was your next topic for Jenna and Chris?
Chris Woodward: She got into a very interesting situation at the beginning of her show today. Again, I think it's a story that's flown under the radar, involving a Christian blogger. What's the story there, Jenna?
Jenna Ellis: This Christian blogger, Sam Say, was detained by ICE through the Department of Homeland Security while traveling through an airport in Ohio, I believe on Sunday, earlier this week.
Jenna Ellis: If you just read the headline, it looks like the targeting of a Christian. But when you go deeper, the interesting facts are that he originally came from Ghana, lived in Canada, and then, according to his family, immigrated to the United States.
Jenna Ellis: The Department of Homeland Security put out a statement after questions arose about his arrest, saying that he had come in 2022 on a visitor visa, which is not for immigration purposes. The intent of a visitor visa is that you come in, visit, and leave.
Jenna Ellis: He came in on a visitor visa and overstayed by four years. During that time, he apparently came in with the intent to marry his now-wife, who is an American citizen. He is being detained, according to DHS, and will be deported. He has agreed to voluntary deportation.
Jenna Ellis: The questions surrounding this are, first, do we still support the law enforcement that DHS provides through ICE, even when it's a Christian conservative blogger? I think the answer should be yes, if he is truly subject to deportation, as DHS says.
Jenna Ellis: The second issue is that a lot of so-called Christian nationalists, or the new Christian right, have celebrated this just on the basis of his original Ghanaian heritage because he is Black. They have said that we need to rid the country of anyone other than the white race, putting a completely white-supremacist spin on this story in a way that is completely unbiblical.
Jenna Ellis: There are a lot of videos of some of these so-called pastors recording themselves praying and thanking the Lord for removing this Black man from the United States. As Christians, we need to be careful to parse these issues. Border control, law enforcement, and consequences for coming in illegally need to happen regardless of your identity as a Christian or any other immutable characteristic.
Jenna Ellis: At the same time, we don't need to go overboard, and we can certainly have compassion for his family and his three young children.
Tim Wildmon: Jenna, I've been following this case myself. Before all this came up, I knew who Sam Say was. I've read his work, though I haven't met him personally. He has a lot of good biblical commentary.
Tim Wildmon: Is there any legitimate legal defense he could make that would allow him to stay in the country? Or in your mind, is it a foregone conclusion that he's heading back to Ghana?
Jenna Ellis: According to DHS, it is a foregone conclusion that he will be deported, and he has accepted voluntary departure. Immigration law is very complicated, which is why you should always hire an expert in that field.
Jenna Ellis: According to his family's statements, they were in some kind of process to convert his visa, apparently to permanent residency. But DHS has said there are no pending applications.
Jenna Ellis: As far as we know from the facts, it appears that somehow he came into the United States and simply overstayed. Whether he was reckless, misunderstood counsel from an attorney, or whether something else is going on remains to be seen.
Jenna Ellis: Immigration law is very complicated, so while it's possible that he could have some defense, the practical reality is that if you come in on a visitor visa, you came legally. But if you overstay, you're deported.
Tim Wildmon: If you've overstayed four years, that's a problem.
Jenna Ellis: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: That's sad because he'll be separated from his wife and children, right?
Jenna Ellis: Unless they move to Ghana. His wife is an American citizen.
Tim Wildmon: Since immigration law can be complicated, after he is deported, can he apply for U.S. citizenship based on the fact that his wife is an American citizen?
Jenna Ellis: Generally speaking, yes. The complication for him is that if there is a finding that he overstayed, and he is deported, that voluntary departure, according to DHS, would potentially allow him to remain eligible to file. But it's really going to depend on his circumstances.
Jenna Ellis: If you come here illegally, or if there is evidence later that shows he came on a visitor visa but actually intended to overstay, immigrate, and marry, and he wasn't forthright to the border agent when he came in, then that could further complicate his eligibility because that would be fraud.
Jenna Ellis: It remains to be seen, and it's a lesson for all of us: Do things the right way the first time. If he had simply, while he was in Canada, applied for what's called a K visa, saying, “I'm engaged to an American citizen,” he could have come in legally on that visa. That visa requires you to get married within 90 days of coming into the United States, and he could have done that without the overstay and the possibility of deportation.
Tim Wildmon: What's this fellow's name?
Jenna Ellis: Sam Say.
Tim Wildmon: Let's hope it works out well for him and that he's able to be reunited with his wife and children. Maybe he can get some kind of legal clearance, but he'll have to be deported to Ghana and then reapply.
Chris Woodward: For more on Jenna's thoughts about this, I've posted her podcast from today's show on the Today's Issues Facebook page. You can also find it on AFR.net.
Chris Woodward: Jenna, most everybody knows about your morning show here on AFR weekdays. Tell them about your weekly podcast.
Jenna Ellis: It's available on demand. We just recorded the final episode for the year because we are actually rebranding it and refocusing the content. I'm really excited about the direction.
Jenna Ellis: Listen on demand this week as we tell you about this exciting turn for the podcast. I want to supplement the morning show with a lot more biblical teaching. As a little tease, that's the direction we'll be heading in January.
Tim Wildmon: If I want to access the podcast, what do I do?
Jenna Ellis: Go to AFR.net. Whether you're on the app or the website, go to the podcast page and click “On Demand.”
Tim Wildmon: All right. Thank you, Jenna. Take care and have a great day.
Jenna Ellis: Thanks, guys. You, too.
Jenna Ellis: Merry Christmas ahead of time because I have started decorating. This is my official start, so I'm going to be done by the end of Sunday. I'm starting today. I'm letting you guys know Christmas is upon us.
Tim Wildmon: I'm one of those who doesn't believe in doing that until at least the day after Thanksgiving.
Jenna Ellis: That's a long time to have to wait.
Chris Woodward: We don't know when Jesus was born, so you can decorate whenever you want.
Tim Wildmon: Amen.
Jenna Ellis: Chris has redeemed himself.
Chris Woodward: He was born in North Dakota.
Tim Wildmon: This is not Bible stuff here. Jenna wants to decorate for Christmas. You just knock yourself out.
Jenna Ellis: It's the free state of Florida.
Tim Wildmon: All right.
Jenna Ellis: Decking the halls in Florida.
Tim Wildmon: That just doesn't seem normal. It's like in Arizona. It doesn't seem normal.
Chris Woodward: It's hot.
Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues on American Family Radio. We've got another half hour of the show coming up with Steve, Paisley, and George. Chris, have you got any one-minute things?
Chris Woodward: Yes. Our fellow Americans in Milwaukee are celebrating today because the Brewers won the World Series last night, four games to one. We have the audio of the last out, courtesy of Steve Jordon.
Announcer: Big deal kicks, fires, swing, and a ground ball. This ought to do it. Right side to Rang, to Powers, and for the first time ever, Milwaukee fans can say the Brewers are World Series champions as they celebrate to the right of the pitcher's mound, jumping up and down in a pile. The Brewers have won it all.
Tim Wildmon: I watched that game.
Chris Woodward: It's the first time since the early 1980s that they've been to a World Series.
Tim Wildmon: In 1982, because I watched that. I wasn't an infant. My team, the St. Louis Cardinals, won that World Series. I think it was four games to three against the Brewers.
Chris Woodward: I'm so happy for the long-suffering Milwaukee Brewers fans. They hadn't won a World Series. Milwaukee itself hadn't seen a World Series victory since the Braves were in town back in the 1950s.
Tim Wildmon: Oh, really?
Chris Woodward: Since they were the Milwaukee Braves. Eddie Mathews and Hank Aaron were on that 1950s team.
Tim Wildmon: Wow, Chris. Keep going there, man.
Chris Woodward: I'm a Braves fan.
Tim Wildmon: All right, we will be back in five minutes with more of Today's Issues. Stay with us.
Tim Wildmon: Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Thanks for listening to AFR. Today is Thursday, October 29, 2026. Joining me in the studio is Fred Jackson. Good morning, Fred.
Fred Jackson: Howdy to you.
Tim Wildmon: Chris Woodward.
Chris Woodward: Good morning.
Tim Wildmon: And in sunny Florida. That's what they call it. I don't know, it's not always sunny. How are you doing, brother?
Ray: We're doing fine here in Hudson, Florida. It's a little bit overcast this morning. No rain, but some clouds and 75 degrees. So what do we have to complain about?
Tim Wildmon: That's right. But Florida is the Sunshine State.
Ray: That's exactly right, and we get a ton of it down here.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, but you've been experiencing a lot of rain the last few weeks.
Ray: Oh, man. It was like Noah's flood there a couple of weeks ago. It's a paradox, people. It's just a weather paradox. I don't even know what I'm saying, but it sounds smart.
Tim Wildmon: What do you have for us? Florida wants to send some rain to us.
Ray: We would welcome it.
Tim Wildmon: Yes, we mentioned this before, but many parts of the Southeast are experiencing drought.
Chris Woodward: Is it ever? We're under a burn ban here in Mississippi.
Tim Wildmon: We are, at least I think all over the state.
Chris Woodward: Yeah, most of the state is, in fact, under a burn ban. There is rain headed our way on Sunday, they say.
Tim Wildmon: They say.
Chris Woodward: What is rain, exactly? I'm familiar with the term, but it's been so long since we've seen it. Seriously, where we live, it's been probably two months since we've seen any substantial rain.
Tim Wildmon: Would you say?
Chris Woodward: Well, we got a little sprinkle during the hurricane.
Tim Wildmon: They can't say that the state is done.
Chris Woodward: Yeah, just in the Florida area, right? We got a little bit of rain out of that, but that was it. The sun came out the next day, and it's been bright ever since.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, so I did some investigating and learned that rain is a form of precipitation.
Chris Woodward: Yes. Rain is a form of precipitation which occurs when atmospheric moisture condenses, forming clouds from which water particles grow and combine until heavy enough to fall to the ground.
Tim Wildmon: Wow. Well, Chris, all of our listeners appreciate that information.
Chris Woodward: I went to Mississippi State, where the meteorologists are trained.
Tim Wildmon: One in three on-air meteorologists are products of Mississippi State University.
Fred Jackson: You're not serious.
Chris Woodward: I'm dead serious.
Fred Jackson: Yeah?
Chris Woodward: I talked to a guy at the National Weather Service in San Diego last week.
Fred Jackson: That's my father, too. That's why I'm here.
Tim Wildmon: Well, by golly, others may win in football, but we're going to have more weathermen out there than you could count. We're going to tell you when to go to your safe space, America.
Chris Woodward: We just go to our safe space.
Tim Wildmon: That's exactly right. Take that, Ohio State and Alabama and Georgia guys. You want a weatherman? We got them.
Chris Woodward: We'll landscape your architecture as well.
Tim Wildmon: Or weather person. All right, Ray, give us a good word from the Bible, if you would.
Ray: Okay, let's talk about the second coming, shall we? A couple of days before His crucifixion, Jesus, in Mark chapter 13, gave us a passage that parallels Matthew 24. After He talks about the wars, the rumors of wars, the earthquakes, the famines, and the pestilence, the one question the disciples ask is the one we all want to know: “Okay, Lord, when is all this going to happen? You've given us the outline of the last days.”
Ray: Jesus said very plainly in Mark 13:33, “You do not know when that time will come.” Therefore, He says in Mark 13:35, “Therefore keep watch.” Some translations say, “Stay awake.” Rub the sand out of your eyes, keep your eyes open, because you do not know when the master of the house will return.
Ray: Whenever I speak on Bible prophecy around the country, one question always comes up: “Pastor Ray, when is Jesus coming back?” People want to know the timing. How close are we to the rapture? How close are we to the second coming? Do you think these are the last days?
Ray: To that question, I will give an affirmative answer. Yes, I believe we are rushing headlong into the final days before the return of Christ. I feel better saying it that way because that's exactly what the disciples were asking in Mark 13 and Matthew 24: “Lord, what will be the sign of Your coming?” But He said we would not know the exact time.
Ray: Let me say it this way: If you ever hear me come on Today's Issues and give you a date, pay no attention. It means that I have taken the wrong medicine and my mind is all messed up, because nobody out there knows. Some of you may remember the fellow who wrote about all the reasons why Jesus was going to come in 1988, and then he came out with a revised version for 1989. If Jesus said we're not going to be able to know the day or the hour, that's good enough for me.
Ray: What can we say? We can say, number one, Jesus is coming again. Number two, we can't be certain when He will return. Number three, therefore, friends, and this is really the point this morning, we ought always to keep our eyes wide open, because it may be today.
Ray: I agree with what the old-time preachers used to say. You have to get up every day, go to the east, open the windows, look up to the eastern horizon, and say, “Maybe today.” So I give you my personal thought here at the end: I believe the coming of the Lord must be near. I don't have a day to share with you. Many Christians before me have said the same thing. I just want everybody to know I'm taking my stand with them.
Ray: I'd rather expect Jesus to come in my lifetime and be wrong than to be so in love with the world that I'm not ready to see Him when He comes. The late, great Adrian Rogers said it this way: “We ought to be living as if Jesus died yesterday, rose this morning, and is coming back this afternoon.” To that I simply say, amen and amen.
Ray: Said another way, we should adopt the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared. Jesus is coming. No one knows the day or the hour, so be ready, be prepared, and it might be today. If you're always prepared, you'll be glad to see Him when He does come. Jesus is coming, my friends. Are you ready?
Fred Jackson: Amen. I agree with everything Ray has just said, one hundred percent. But I think it is interesting to look at signs. Israel became a nation again in 1948. I think a lot of people took that as a sign that things are getting closer, with Israel back as a nation.
Fred Jackson: I was talking with somebody yesterday because Revelation, and Ray, I'd love your comment on this, talks about the Antichrist during the tribulation period. Revelation talks about a point when people are supposed to bow down and worship an image of the Antichrist, and those who don't will be punished.
Ray: You mean worldwide?
Fred Jackson: Worldwide. I wonder, Ray, with the development of artificial intelligence, images, and all of that sort of thing, could it be that the technology now in place could be used by the Antichrist for what Revelation teaches?
Ray: I would go beyond that, Fred. I would say not only could it be, but it will be. I think in this generation, look, I went to Dallas Seminary 50 years ago and studied under Dwight Pentecost, John Walvoord, and Charles Ryrie, experts in Bible prophecy. Back in the 1970s, they said what you just said, except nobody knew the mechanism by which it could happen because the internet itself was decades away.
Ray: We are living in the days, friends, where the technology is now here. It's not coming next week. It is now here. Someone, some evil person, could control the entire world economy. Through artificial intelligence, we're already told that it is getting very difficult to distinguish between real images and fake images. AI is only going to get better and better.
Ray: We talked about these AI bots, ChatGPT, and all of this a couple of days ago when I was on the program. It's wonderful technology, but in the hands of the wrong person, and that wrong person is coming, the Antichrist is coming, that technology will be used to deceive the entire world, except those who believe in Jesus.
Ray: Friends, the signs are all around us. Fred and I don't have a date, and we're not going to give you one, but we do say, look up, keep your eyes open, watch, and be ready, because Jesus is coming again.
Chris Woodward: You know, while you guys were talking about this, I looked up 2 Timothy 3. No matter what version you might use, the various things Paul writes to Timothy about how men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, and all these things, it sounds like what I did in the newscast. What he outlines is pretty much what's on the news on an hourly basis.
Chris Woodward: I saw last night, and this is one of our news stories, that the Department of Homeland Security's computer system was breached. I'm not a tech person, so I may misuse the language, but their data was breached by a hacker or a hacking group.
Chris Woodward: This is going on all over the world. With the advancements in AI, it's a race between the good guys and the bad guys, so to speak. If you were to think that one organization would be protected and shielded against a computer hack, it would be the Department of Homeland Security.
Fred Jackson: Right.
Chris Woodward: But actually, the Pentagon was hacked a couple of weeks ago, and the FBI was hacked.
Chris Woodward: What I'm saying is that computers and IT departments around the world are in a race to keep the bad guys from controlling the world. The danger was that the successful hack into the Department of Homeland Security exposed the agents who work for ICE and others at the Department of Homeland Security, making them potential targets of violence, or who knows what.
Chris Woodward: The world now, as you guys are referencing, is interconnected. With the internet, AI, and all the things that can happen instantaneously worldwide, that technology does fit in with the Bible prophecies that people 40, 50, or 60 years ago, and previous generations down through the centuries, would read and say, “I just don't know how that would ever happen.”
Chris Woodward: People on one side of the world had no idea what was happening in a town a hundred miles away. Now things are instantaneously connected around the world, and that makes sense.
Fred Jackson: Oh, yeah. It's just amazing.
Tim Wildmon: I have a quirky hobby. Sometimes I'll watch cameras from around the world. I'll click on the Western Wall camera in Jerusalem, see Big Ben in London, and then go to Venice and watch the gondolas. It's a little quirky, but I do that every once in a while because I like to travel. My point is that you can see anything around the world instantaneously today. It's pretty amazing.
Chris Woodward: It is. So, I came into the journalism business in the late 1970s and 1980s. We still used, and I may have to define and explain this, a thing called teletype.
Fred Jackson: Teletype?
Chris Woodward: Let me Google this. Hold on. It was a ribbon of paper that you would sit at a typewriter, and the ribbon of paper would have holes punched in it to correspond to the letters that you're typing. You would create that tape and send it to someone at a receiving end so that your message would get through.
Chris Woodward: I grew up in the days before cell phones. This is how we communicated. My first newsrooms had typewriters. We did not have computers.
Tim Wildmon: If you made more than four mistakes, I wonder if my 12-year-old grandson would know what a typewriter is.
Chris Woodward: I have a lot of grandchildren.
Tim Wildmon: I pray for them at night, and I ask the Lord to bless number seven.
Chris Woodward: Number seven of eight.
Tim Wildmon: Lord, so grandchild number seven, you know their name. When I forget their name, I just say, “Lord, You know their name. I'm praying for them.”
Chris Woodward: I have a 12-year-old grandson, and I'm going to ask him if he knows what a typewriter is.
Tim Wildmon: You said “typewriter,” and I wonder if they would know what a typewriter is.
Chris Woodward: It was an Olympia typewriter, and you had five-page carbon-copy paper. You would press down, and you got five copies all at once because you had to split them between the news anchors.
Fred Jackson: That was an attack back then, wasn't it?
Chris Woodward: It was a pain, is what it was.
Tim Wildmon: Did you guys ever, at some point when you were in school as a child, use a slide rule?
Fred Jackson: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: The only time I've ever seen a slide rule operated was during a scene in the Apollo movie that Tom Hanks made. That's the only time. I remember watching it with my dad and asking, “What is that?”
Chris Woodward: My dad used a slide rule.
Tim Wildmon: I just know it's in that Paul Simon song. “Don't know much about history, don't know what a slide rule is for.” Remember that line?
Chris Woodward: Paul Simon, James Taylor, and Garth Brooks, I think.
Tim Wildmon: Chris, those were not carpenters.
Chris Woodward: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was right there. I was ready to throw it out.
Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Tim, Fred, Chris, and Ray. Go ahead, Chris. What's your first story?
Chris Woodward: You guys mentioned a minute ago, when we were talking about Scripture, how Israel's return in the 1940s was a prophecy fulfilled. We're watching Israel because we had that election a couple of days ago, and it still looks like partial results indicate a possible deadlock.
Chris Woodward: What's interesting about this situation is that Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a member of the Likud Party, is apparently alleging fraud from Arabs in the nation of Israel and possibly even neighboring countries to Israel. Somebody who was on Jenna Ellis's show this morning, Jenna Ellis in the Morning on AFR Talk, was Israeli-American Joel Rosenberg, who had this to say about the Arab election-rigging allegations.
Jol Rosenberg: That's a very serious charge. I can't say that's true, but it is the prime minister making that charge, and I'm listening to it carefully. The idea is that Qatar, the tiny Gulf Islamist nation, and Turkey may have been providing illegal assistance and thus interference in the Islamist, anti-Zionist Arab party here in Israel. Overall, the Arab party gained 19 seats. That is a record. The Arab party has never won that many seats.
Chris Woodward: What's interesting about this is that, as we've discussed several times this week, Israel has paper ballots. It's not like they rigged election machines, as we've heard or perhaps gotten used to in the United States.
Tim Wildmon: Well, I don't know about all that. I guess the rigging allegations will have to be investigated, although with paper ballots, I don't know how you do that. But Benjamin Netanyahu got more votes than anybody else, right?
Chris Woodward: The Likud Party got more votes than anybody else.
Tim Wildmon: So he's likely to remain prime minister. That will have to be worked out, but he and his party got more votes than everybody else, and they're not too far away from having a majority, right?
Chris Woodward: I think it's 53 seats in the parliament as of this morning.
Tim Wildmon: He has a slight lead, depending on the news outlet that you follow, over this Eisenkot fellow.
Chris Woodward: Yeah, so we'll see what happens there. Ray, any thoughts on that?
Ray: I think Prime Minister Netanyahu has come out a little bit better than he looked three weeks ago. It looked like the other fellow was going to win. Not only has Netanyahu's party gotten the biggest number of seats, but it is a little bit beyond expectations, which I think says something good about the support he has among the Israeli people.
Chris Woodward: Absolutely, and it was record turnout, too. Seventy-seven percent of the eligible people who were on the election list voted, which is absolutely huge.
Tim Wildmon: All right, go ahead, Chris. Next story.
Chris Woodward: Let's mention this real quick because it is developing.
Tim Wildmon: And we are developing.
Chris Woodward: We sure are.
Fred Jackson: It sure is.
Chris Woodward: You know, bipartisanship is not something we see much in the United States of America, especially going into an election. I bring up this bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general. I think this is a story that's gone under the radar based on what's playing out with the midterm elections.
Chris Woodward: A bipartisan coalition of attorneys general is suing Dollar General for raising prices for many of its products without updating the sticker prices on shelves, so customers unknowingly pay more at the register. This is all the more reason to pay attention to the tablet the cashier has, where you can see the price come across the register, and to look at the receipt.
Chris Woodward: Dollar General says, “Not guilty,” but it's definitely something to watch.
Tim Wildmon: So you're telling me I have to pay attention to that?
Chris Woodward: I would.
Tim Wildmon: I don't need anything else to pay attention to at 6:30. I don't need it. Just scan it, I'll pay it, whatever. I'm just kidding.
Chris Woodward: The accusation is that 19 states are suing Dollar General.
Tim Wildmon: I find it hard to believe, and this is just me talking without seeing any evidence, that executives at the Dollar General Corporation would authorize basically telling their stores not to charge the shelf price and to make the prices on the stickers on the shelves different from what they scan at the front of the store. I would be shocked if that were the case, but is that what the claim is?
Chris Woodward: That is the claim here.
Tim Wildmon: But 19 states?
Chris Woodward: Yes. Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin.
Tim Wildmon: Those are red and blue states.
Chris Woodward: Yeah, so we'll see what happens there. That's a class-action lawsuit against Dollar General.
Tim Wildmon: You know, Ed is always joking about giving directions and asking, “Is it past the Dollar General?”
Chris Woodward: Yes, because there are 20,000 Dollar Generals in the USA. Is that right?
Chris Woodward: Correct. One of the states involved here is North Carolina. I didn't know this until today, but North Carolina has the second-highest number of Dollar General stores in the country.
Tim Wildmon: Really?
Chris Woodward: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: That must be one every three miles.
Chris Woodward: We have them on every other side of a Baptist church here in Mississippi.
Tim Wildmon: Whoever had that idea, I don't know the story behind Dollar General, but what a brilliant idea it was to put what amounts to what we used to call general stores in communities. They have a lot of common products, including some grocery products that people buy, and they make it more convenient than going to Kroger or Walmart or wherever people go for things.
Chris Woodward: I pass by four on my way home, and I don't live far from here.
Tim Wildmon: You can drive through the woods for two miles, and all of a sudden there's a new Dollar General somewhere.
Chris Woodward: It's amazing.
Tim Wildmon: It's like Baptist churches in the South.
Chris Woodward: That's about it.
Tim Wildmon: All right, we'll be back with more of Today's Issues on American Family Radio.
Tim Wildmon: All right, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. I'm Tim with Fred, Chris, and Ray. You heard me talking about the 2027 tours. We've got everything dated and scheduled, including the itinerary and the cost.
Tim Wildmon: We would love to have you on one of them. The tours we develop are historical and spiritual in nature. We're not going to the beach, and we're not taking a cruise or anything like that. There's nothing wrong with that, but these tours are sort of a vacation with a purpose, if you will.
Tim Wildmon: They include Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown, the historic triangle, as they call it. We're going there, as we always do, twice a year. Then we're going to our nation's capital, Washington, D.C., to see all the sites, including Mount Vernon.
Tim Wildmon: Those tours are available in June and September, and they always fill up about three months in advance. People take vacation time and plan ahead for the year, so I want people to know now about the trips that will be going on in June and September 2027.
Tim Wildmon: Wesley and Walker, my sons, are leading another tour. Stephen McDowell, of the Providence Foundation, goes on all our historical tours. Nobody knows more about early American history than Stephen McDowell. Somebody may know as much, but they don't know more.
Tim Wildmon: The Boston tour has been very popular the last two years. It includes the Freedom Trail, Plymouth Rock, Concord, Lexington, and so much to see in the greater Boston area. They've got that planned for October 2027.
Tim Wildmon: If you're interested in any of what I've just mentioned, all you need to do to read all about it is go to tours.afa.net. T-O-U-R-S dot A-F-A dot net. Tours.afa.net. Everything you want to know about those tours is listed there.
Tim Wildmon: Also, the Italy and Greece, Footsteps of Paul tour, is coming up in March, but those two particular tours going to Greece and Italy don't have much room left before being full.
Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network.
Tim Wildmon: Speaking of cruises, a lot of people like to go on an Alaskan cruise, and we've got some news out of Alaska, don't we? Before we do, we're going to get Jenna to comment on it. We want to welcome Jenna Ellis to our program. Jenna is the host of Jenna Ellis in the Morning, from 7:00 to 8:00 Central Time each weekday here on American Family Radio. Good morning, Jenna.
Jenna Ellis: Good morning. I wish I was on an Alaskan cruise today. Have you been on one?
Tim Wildmon: I haven't. I've been on cruises, but I haven't been to Alaska.
Jenna Ellis: Alaska is one of only two states in the United States that I have not visited.
Tim Wildmon: What's the other one?
Jenna Ellis: North Dakota. I just can't find a reason to go other than to check it off my list.
Tim Wildmon: No offense to our listeners in North Dakota.
Jenna Ellis: Email me, [email protected], and give me a reason to go.
Chris Woodward: Mount Rushmore.
Tim Wildmon: That's South Dakota, Chris.
Jenna Ellis: I've been there. I actually got to go with President Trump.
Chris Woodward: Let me write that down.
Jenna Ellis: You're an idiot.
Chris Woodward: No, listen, I tried to save Chris.
Jenna Ellis: You did, and I nailed you.
Chris Woodward: I'll see myself out.
Jenna Ellis: Before anybody says I need to get out more, I have been to a lot of places.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, we forgive you, Chris.
Chris Woodward: That's okay. There aren't many geographical sins worse than that, but there are some.
Fred Jackson: I visited Minot many years ago.
Tim Wildmon: Did you? What were you there for?
Fred Jackson: I was just getting out of the Canadian Armed Forces, and I drove south down to Minot and stayed near an Air Force base there. It was very cold. It was December.
Chris Woodward: When a Canadian says it's cold, it's cold.
Fred Jackson: It was so cold. I had a little Dodge Colt I was driving at the time, and I had to leave that car running all night because it had a habit of freezing up the engine. It was that cold.
Tim Wildmon: This is why I moved to Florida.
Ray: I spent 19 years in Chicago.
Tim Wildmon: Seventeen freezing winters.
Ray: Chicago is beautiful in the spring, summer, and fall, but winter is brutal.
Tim Wildmon: It is tough.
Ray: I like Florida a lot better.
Tim Wildmon: The reason we're talking about Alaska is because there is a United States Senate race there, like there are in a third of our states going on right now, but it's a strange and unusual race. Chris, why don't you set this up, and then we'll let Jenna comment on it?
Chris Woodward: Thank you very much. There is a Senate race in Alaska.
Tim Wildmon: Not Alabama.
Chris Woodward: Thank you. And Mount Rushmore is not in Alaska.
Tim Wildmon: Chris, you're going to take a beating, my friend.
Chris Woodward: I'm sorry. I apologize to all our listeners for being uninformed.
Chris Woodward: In all seriousness, there is a Democratic Senate candidate in Alaska by the name of Mary Peltola, and she and her campaign are accused of looking throughout the state of Alaska, which is practically the size of a continent, for a man with the same name as the Republican on the ballot with Mary Peltola.
Chris Woodward: The reason is that Mary and others allegedly wanted to cause confusion and have people possibly vote for the wrong Dan Sullivan, therefore helping her chances of winning on Tuesday. Mary Peltola maintains her innocence. She went on MSNBC, formerly MS NOW, to claim that this is all a conspiracy cooked up by her Republican challenger, the real Dan Sullivan.
Mary Peltola: This is clearly corruption. This is clearly a very desperate attempt to cling to power, using his allies in Washington, D.C., to rig the system even further.
Chris Woodward: What's interesting here is that The New York Times, of all news outlets, is largely responsible for dropping this bombshell in America in October, right before an election. The New York Times quoted a former campaign staffer of Mary Peltola who claimed that this was all Mary's idea and that other people wanted to help her win.
Tim Wildmon: You did a great job of explaining it. Let me dumb it down even further, and then, Jenna, you can comment on the legal aspects of this or whatever. In Alaska, they have a Senate race. Instead of just two candidates on the ballot on November 3, there will be three.
Tim Wildmon: In Alaska, there is a Republican named Dan Sullivan, the incumbent. His challenger is a Democrat named Mary Peltola. Those two people are the primary candidates.
Tim Wildmon: The accusation against Mary Peltola is that she and the Democrats recruited a man with the same name as the incumbent, Dan Sullivan. When voters go to the polls next Thursday, they may be confused about which Dan Sullivan to vote for, splitting the vote and allowing the Democrat, Peltola, to win the election.
Tim Wildmon: It's a weird situation. I've never heard of anything quite like this before. Jenna, go ahead and comment on this.
Jenna Ellis: It's a first. The two candidates are distinguishable on the general election ballot. Senator Dan Sullivan is identified as a Republican, and the other candidate is listed as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., with no party affiliation. So they're not identical.
Jenna Ellis: The obvious potential for confusion is if somebody goes in, hasn't heard this controversy, and simply picks the first Sullivan without actually reading the whole thing. That's the practical problem.
Jenna Ellis: As for the legal status, ABC is reporting that a separate Department of Justice criminal investigation into the circumstances of Daniel J. Sullivan, the independent candidate, has been active for months, but no charges were reported in that article.
Jenna Ellis: Separately, the Department of Justice has sued Alaska election officials in a civil case, seeking to block certification under certain circumstances if Senator Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, loses.
Jenna Ellis: This whole story raises serious questions about political conduct. But as of right now, there is no law disqualifying a candidate just because they share the same name or because officials suspect a bad motive.
Jenna Ellis: What needs to happen, I think, is what would have been the best remedy: Make the ballot unmistakably clear. Perhaps put the Republican incumbent first and then the independent candidate, with their names and party affiliations clearly identified. Use proportionate remedies first, correct the listing, add clear identifiers or voter instructions, and pursue penalties only if investigators establish a separately prohibited act.
Tim Wildmon: Is there any evidence that the Democratic woman, Mary Peltola, recruited this independent to run against the other Dan Sullivan? President Trump says she needs to be criminally charged.
Jenna Ellis: As Chris said, one of her former campaign staffers actually said that it was her idea to recruit this guy. We have the testimony of someone who was inside her campaign.
Jenna Ellis: If that's true and the intent was to cause ballot confusion, then absolutely, I think that's something that should be criminalized. It should be investigated, and there should be civil penalties.
Jenna Ellis: I agree with President Trump that until investigators actually get to the bottom of this, if Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent senator, does not win, then at least the certification should be held until we know what happened.
Tim Wildmon: It seems to me, and I haven't heard any of these people speak, so I'm just commenting as an observer who knows nothing, but we do that a lot, don't we? It seems like you could probably tell in five or ten minutes whether this independent guy is even a serious candidate or not. Have you heard him speak at all, Jenna?
Jenna Ellis: I've seen a few reports where he's saying that he just decided to run independently. It doesn't seem like he's mounted a genuinely serious campaign, something that's actually winnable.
Jenna Ellis: But the issue here is that Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, and the polls are really close between the Democrat and the Republican. Even if the independent Sullivan gets 2 percent, that could be the difference in the election.
Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues on American Family Radio. What was your next topic for Jenna and Chris?
Chris Woodward: She got into a very interesting situation at the beginning of her show today. Again, I think it's a story that's flown under the radar, involving a Christian blogger. What's the story there, Jenna?
Jenna Ellis: This Christian blogger, Sam Say, was detained by ICE through the Department of Homeland Security while traveling through an airport in Ohio, I believe on Sunday, earlier this week.
Jenna Ellis: If you just read the headline, it looks like the targeting of a Christian. But when you go deeper, the interesting facts are that he originally came from Ghana, lived in Canada, and then, according to his family, immigrated to the United States.
Jenna Ellis: The Department of Homeland Security put out a statement after questions arose about his arrest, saying that he had come in 2022 on a visitor visa, which is not for immigration purposes. The intent of a visitor visa is that you come in, visit, and leave.
Jenna Ellis: He came in on a visitor visa and overstayed by four years. During that time, he apparently came in with the intent to marry his now-wife, who is an American citizen. He is being detained, according to DHS, and will be deported. He has agreed to voluntary deportation.
Jenna Ellis: The questions surrounding this are, first, do we still support the law enforcement that DHS provides through ICE, even when it's a Christian conservative blogger? I think the answer should be yes, if he is truly subject to deportation, as DHS says.
Jenna Ellis: The second issue is that a lot of so-called Christian nationalists, or the new Christian right, have celebrated this just on the basis of his original Ghanaian heritage because he is Black. They have said that we need to rid the country of anyone other than the white race, putting a completely white-supremacist spin on this story in a way that is completely unbiblical.
Jenna Ellis: There are a lot of videos of some of these so-called pastors recording themselves praying and thanking the Lord for removing this Black man from the United States. As Christians, we need to be careful to parse these issues. Border control, law enforcement, and consequences for coming in illegally need to happen regardless of your identity as a Christian or any other immutable characteristic.
Jenna Ellis: At the same time, we don't need to go overboard, and we can certainly have compassion for his family and his three young children.
Tim Wildmon: Jenna, I've been following this case myself. Before all this came up, I knew who Sam Say was. I've read his work, though I haven't met him personally. He has a lot of good biblical commentary.
Tim Wildmon: Is there any legitimate legal defense he could make that would allow him to stay in the country? Or in your mind, is it a foregone conclusion that he's heading back to Ghana?
Jenna Ellis: According to DHS, it is a foregone conclusion that he will be deported, and he has accepted voluntary departure. Immigration law is very complicated, which is why you should always hire an expert in that field.
Jenna Ellis: According to his family's statements, they were in some kind of process to convert his visa, apparently to permanent residency. But DHS has said there are no pending applications.
Jenna Ellis: As far as we know from the facts, it appears that somehow he came into the United States and simply overstayed. Whether he was reckless, misunderstood counsel from an attorney, or whether something else is going on remains to be seen.
Jenna Ellis: Immigration law is very complicated, so while it's possible that he could have some defense, the practical reality is that if you come in on a visitor visa, you came legally. But if you overstay, you're deported.
Tim Wildmon: If you've overstayed four years, that's a problem.
Jenna Ellis: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: That's sad because he'll be separated from his wife and children, right?
Jenna Ellis: Unless they move to Ghana. His wife is an American citizen.
Tim Wildmon: Since immigration law can be complicated, after he is deported, can he apply for U.S. citizenship based on the fact that his wife is an American citizen?
Jenna Ellis: Generally speaking, yes. The complication for him is that if there is a finding that he overstayed, and he is deported, that voluntary departure, according to DHS, would potentially allow him to remain eligible to file. But it's really going to depend on his circumstances.
Jenna Ellis: If you come here illegally, or if there is evidence later that shows he came on a visitor visa but actually intended to overstay, immigrate, and marry, and he wasn't forthright to the border agent when he came in, then that could further complicate his eligibility because that would be fraud.
Jenna Ellis: It remains to be seen, and it's a lesson for all of us: Do things the right way the first time. If he had simply, while he was in Canada, applied for what's called a K visa, saying, “I'm engaged to an American citizen,” he could have come in legally on that visa. That visa requires you to get married within 90 days of coming into the United States, and he could have done that without the overstay and the possibility of deportation.
Tim Wildmon: What's this fellow's name?
Jenna Ellis: Sam Say.
Tim Wildmon: Let's hope it works out well for him and that he's able to be reunited with his wife and children. Maybe he can get some kind of legal clearance, but he'll have to be deported to Ghana and then reapply.
Chris Woodward: For more on Jenna's thoughts about this, I've posted her podcast from today's show on the Today's Issues Facebook page. You can also find it on AFR.net.
Chris Woodward: Jenna, most everybody knows about your morning show here on AFR weekdays. Tell them about your weekly podcast.
Jenna Ellis: It's available on demand. We just recorded the final episode for the year because we are actually rebranding it and refocusing the content. I'm really excited about the direction.
Jenna Ellis: Listen on demand this week as we tell you about this exciting turn for the podcast. I want to supplement the morning show with a lot more biblical teaching. As a little tease, that's the direction we'll be heading in January.
Tim Wildmon: If I want to access the podcast, what do I do?
Jenna Ellis: Go to AFR.net. Whether you're on the app or the website, go to the podcast page and click “On Demand.”
Tim Wildmon: All right. Thank you, Jenna. Take care and have a great day.
Jenna Ellis: Thanks, guys. You, too.
Jenna Ellis: Merry Christmas ahead of time because I have started decorating. This is my official start, so I'm going to be done by the end of Sunday. I'm starting today. I'm letting you guys know Christmas is upon us.
Tim Wildmon: I'm one of those who doesn't believe in doing that until at least the day after Thanksgiving.
Jenna Ellis: That's a long time to have to wait.
Chris Woodward: We don't know when Jesus was born, so you can decorate whenever you want.
Tim Wildmon: Amen.
Jenna Ellis: Chris has redeemed himself.
Chris Woodward: He was born in North Dakota.
Tim Wildmon: This is not Bible stuff here. Jenna wants to decorate for Christmas. You just knock yourself out.
Jenna Ellis: It's the free state of Florida.
Tim Wildmon: All right.
Jenna Ellis: Decking the halls in Florida.
Tim Wildmon: That just doesn't seem normal. It's like in Arizona. It doesn't seem normal.
Chris Woodward: It's hot.
Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues on American Family Radio. We've got another half hour of the show coming up with Steve, Paisley, and George. Chris, have you got any one-minute things?
Chris Woodward: Yes. Our fellow Americans in Milwaukee are celebrating today because the Brewers won the World Series last night, four games to one. We have the audio of the last out, courtesy of Steve Jordon.
Announcer: Big deal kicks, fires, swing, and a ground ball. This ought to do it. Right side to Rang, to Powers, and for the first time ever, Milwaukee fans can say the Brewers are World Series champions as they celebrate to the right of the pitcher's mound, jumping up and down in a pile. The Brewers have won it all.
Tim Wildmon: I watched that game.
Chris Woodward: It's the first time since the early 1980s that they've been to a World Series.
Tim Wildmon: In 1982, because I watched that. I wasn't an infant. My team, the St. Louis Cardinals, won that World Series. I think it was four games to three against the Brewers.
Chris Woodward: I'm so happy for the long-suffering Milwaukee Brewers fans. They hadn't won a World Series. Milwaukee itself hadn't seen a World Series victory since the Braves were in town back in the 1950s.
Tim Wildmon: Oh, really?
Chris Woodward: Since they were the Milwaukee Braves. Eddie Mathews and Hank Aaron were on that 1950s team.
Tim Wildmon: Wow, Chris. Keep going there, man.
Chris Woodward: I'm a Braves fan.
Tim Wildmon: All right, we will be back in five minutes with more of Today's Issues. Stay with us.
The hosts examine allegations that Mary Peltola’s campaign helped recruit an independent candidate named Dan Sullivan to create confusion in Alaska’s Senate race. Jenna Ellis discusses the legal questions, ranked-choice voting and the Department of Justice investigations surrounding the case.
The program also considers Bible prophecy and the return of Christ, including whether artificial intelligence and global technology could enable deception described in Revelation. The hosts emphasize that no one can know the day or hour and encourage Christians to remain watchful and prepared.
Additional coverage includes a reported Department of Homeland Security data breach, a bipartisan lawsuit accusing Dollar General of mismatched shelf and register prices, and Jenna Ellis’ analysis of a Christian blogger’s immigration case.
Live
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