The Bee Weekly: God Save The Queen and Mike Lindell
Adam and Jarret are joined by Thor Ramsey this week to talk about the news of the week like the Queen dying, Mike Lindell having his cell phone confiscated by the FBI at a Hardee's drive thru, and a valedictorian in Mexico possibly losing his license to practice psychology because he quoted G.K. Chesterton at his graduation ceremony! Thor also talks to the guys about deconversions and the deconstructing faith movement. Jarret and Kyle talk to Eric Metaxas about his new Letter to an American Church. Thor Ramsey's new book is The End Times Comedy Show, a satire novel of the evangelical landscape. Banger, Bomb, Sizzler Fact, Weakly News, and Hate Mail are all here in all their glory. Subscribers to The Babylon Bee also get bonus hate mail, subscriber headlines, and the second set of ten questions for Thor Ramsey. This episode is brought to you by our wonderful sponsors who you should absolutely check out: ABIDE- Download the ABIDE app and text 'babylon' to 22433 to get 25% off a premium subscription Allegiance Gold Dwell Better Help
Thor Ramsey's in the house and he wants to talk about the deconstructing faith movement.
Twitter shareholders voted to go through with the $44 billion sale of Twitter if Elon Musk is still into that sort of thing.
We talked to Eric Metaxas again and he has some words for the American church.
All this and morons.
The B weekly.
Do you deal with stress and anxiety throughout your day?
Do you find yourself on your phone constantly?
Stop checking social media and pop open Abide app to ease your mind.
Abide is the number one Christian meditation app.
Abide users report less stress, lower levels of anxiety and depression, and better sleep.
Start your day with Abide's daily meditation.
Based on biblical scripture, these audio meditations will center you and draw you closer to Christ.
For a limited time, our listeners will get 25% off a premium subscription when you text Babylon to 22433.
Abide's meditations start at two minutes long.
They're easy to fit into your schedule and feature topics like overcoming anxiety, managing stress, addiction, and recovery, finding forgiveness.
Get started now with 25% off a premium subscription by texting Babylon to 22433.
You'll get additional stories and meditations, premium music, soothing sounds, and more.
Support this show and get 25% off by texting Babylon to 22433.
Hey, everybody.
We're here for the Bee Weekly podcast.
I've got Jarrett with me and we have our guest, Thor Ramsey, who's returning again.
You've been here before.
Great Christian comedian.
Yeah.
What have you been up to lately?
And co-host.
I'm co-hosting the Babylon B today.
Yes.
Our co-host.
That's why I wear my shorts because, you know, that's full pants.
It's co-host pants.
Do you ever wear shorts on stage when you do stand-up?
That's like a tap of the thing.
Have you ever seen it?
Yeah, well, I did last Friday, but I couldn't get to five minutes.
I went at five minutes because I got a set coming up somewhere.
But it was apparently it was a big night with Ismo.
Ismo?
Oh, yes.
Ismo was in the house.
Easmo was so.
Working on a set.
What club was that at?
It was a one-nighter in Canyon Lake.
Ezmo La Cola.
He's hilarious.
He is really fun.
Unfortunately, I'd never heard of him, but.
Oh, he's so good.
And I can see why he's working on a special one.
We were talking before we started rolling about my Conan days.
Back when I was working there at New York, I was the producer's assistant who like booked the stand-ups.
And I saw Ezmo somewhere out at a club in New York or somebody had sent a clip.
And I was trying for like months to get him booked.
Didn't get booked in New York when we moved out to LA.
Tried again on the, I think it was on the tonight show.
I don't know if it was a tonight show or TBS, but eventually they booked him and he just killed.
It's so funny.
Yeah.
Yeah, he did Conan.
Yeah, yep.
Yeah.
So cool.
Really interesting.
He's a great guy.
So Thor, you're also an actor.
You do a lot of acting.
I don't do a lot of acting.
I am an actor.
I should say I do a lot of acting.
I'm an actor.
I'm selective about my roles.
Let me put it that way.
I only take roles if I've written the script.
Oh, so that's why it limits my work.
That does limit your work.
Is it because nobody will hire you or is it because?
No, you know, it's an intimidation.
I intimidate directors is what I find.
And, you know, they're just, they're hard.
Maybe that's, maybe that's my problem.
I'm hard to handle.
Yeah, I'm sure that's probably what it is.
Not easy to work with.
Go ahead.
I'm a method actor.
Yeah.
What's new with Adam Yanser, man?
Where have you been?
You've been gone for so long that I've been, I forgot your name.
I've been traveling for a couple weeks.
Yeah, I was doing shows in Florida.
I did McCurdy's in Sarasota, Off the Hook in Naples.
And the week before that, I was in Chattanooga, Tennessee at the Comedy Catch.
They were all awesome shows.
They were fantastic.
The ones at the Comedy Catch, we had a few B fans that came out.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah, it was very cool.
When I was in Sarasota, I was at a restaurant there.
I forget the name of the restaurant.
It's just named after a year, like 1796 or something, something like that.
But the waiter.
Is that a significant year?
1796?
I don't know if that was the year.
I know there was a 1776 thing.
Yeah.
Good wine that year, good steak.
I forget the name.
I'm probably getting the name of the restaurant wrong.
It was just some year.
But the waiter there, his name was the address.
Yeah.
388.
That might have been it.
4100.
Yeah.
But the waiter there, his name was Andy, and he recognized me from the Babylon B.
And when he sat down my menu, he said, All this and moron.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, that's really cool.
And you got to say it today.
Andy, yeah, yeah.
Oh, that's great.
If he's watching, all the shows in Florida were great.
And then the final night was one of the weirdest, worst crowds I've ever had in my entire life.
Yeah.
They came out there like they were sitting on the street.
What makes it a bad crowd?
So I hesitate to blame the audience because I think a comedian should be able to handle most audiences.
Like 98% of the time, I think you should not blame the audience.
That's what Phyllis Diller says.
Every now and then you get an audience where I'm like, I have to blame the audience because I was on with Mo Mandel, who's also experienced comic like 15 plus years, done Conan, done Chelsea lately.
This audience sat there.
There was about 40 of them.
And I had been at the same club the night before.
Audience was fine.
You would get like a chuckle out of them every like third or fourth joke.
Other than that, they sat there like they were listening to a lecture, didn't like clean jokes, didn't like dirty jokes, didn't like political jokes, didn't like crowd work, didn't just nothing.
Late show?
No, it was like a 7 p.m. kind of show.
That's not a late show.
No, uh-uh.
It's crazy.
It's like interesting, interesting crowds.
Worship leadership is kind of like that, too.
Yeah.
Like you start to lead worship, and sometimes the congregation's really in, sometimes they're not.
And you don't know the difference.
Like, I don't know why.
Like, you know.
Well, I'm telling you, you can blame the crowd in that sense.
In that sense.
They're really not worshiping.
I know congregations.
You can blame the crowd.
You just can't blame God.
That's exactly.
I know congregations.
This is not God's fault.
They are just not singers.
Some congregations, I mean, if you go for smaller congregations, they're just, you know, it's like the prayer thing a lot of times.
You know, you offer prayer after the service.
If it's not their culture, no one's going to come up to do it.
Well, if you've got a prayer card, they're filling it out.
Well, that's true.
And so sometimes they're just more of a quiet thing.
You don't want to judge too harshly because it's not necessarily that they're not worshipers.
They write the worship lyrics down as you're singing.
Maybe they're worshiping.
That's how they worship.
That's a worship.
These be Dutch people.
They do a journal to God as you're worshiping.
I'll tell myself that's what the crowd was doing.
They liked my jokes so much, they were quietly writing them down.
They were contemplating.
They were a smart crowd.
Yes.
Smart people just don't laugh at jokes.
No, that's true.
And Jared here is full-time now.
I am.
I'm full-time at the B.
I work at the Babylon B, you guys.
You finally got a job, man.
You shouldn't advertise.
I thought you were full-time already.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, that's true.
There's a fine line between them.
It's like I was on for a while before I was actually employed.
And the hours do tend to creep.
Like over time, you're like, oh, gosh, I've been here 40 hours.
And now, on a serious note, it was the 9-11 21st anniversary this week.
Yeah.
It says up there, have we forgotten it?
Well, I think we were talking about it before.
This seemed like a really quiet weekend.
It wasn't like everyone was talking about it.
You know, I saw, I don't know if they do this every year.
It was a very cool, like poignant 9-11 memorial they have out at Pepperdine University.
Have you ever driven past that one?
They have that hill like overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
They have like whatever it is, close to 3,000 flags from all the nationalities that lost people in the September 11th attacks just across the field.
So it's mostly American flags and they have other nations like Dodd Through and there's people walking around.
It's beautiful.
It's a really cool memorial they had there.
Yep.
That's good.
So they did not forget.
They didn't forget.
Yeah, the media coverage seemed toned down, you know.
Our community is really...
I live in Canyon Lake, which is a gated community.
What's your advertising?
Corpuses.
Hacksaw, donkey.
Nice.
So send me cards and letters.
I'll send you a free book.
But you got to write a review.
That's the failure.
But not for me.
So it's 10,000 people, but they're real big.
Everyone puts out blue.
They change their, what do you call the light outside your door?
The light outside your door.
The light outside your door.
That's what they call it.
Yeah, porch light.
But everyone puts in blue porch lights.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah.
And then there's always a big event at the lodge.
Ah, that's good.
Big things going on there.
And the media, I didn't watch a whole lot of the coverage that day, but I did see there was a lot of Democrats that were trying to tie it to January 6th this year.
Dude, that is crazy.
It's so insane.
It is so crazy.
It's such an insult.
It is two people who lost their lives and to their families on 9-11.
Oh, my gosh.
January 6th is like, it's like a frat thing.
They keep trying to make January 6th happen.
It was a terrible riot.
I have no problem condemning the riot, but to try to make it this significant cultural event that rivals 9-11.
And the other part is they're ignoring the violence on their side, which that's the other thing we're talking about.
It's just the hypocrisy.
If somebody would just say, you know what, we have a violence problem.
Yes.
Also, we should probably not storm the Capitol.
Right.
If one person would say that, it would be like, oh, I'll listen to that guy.
Yeah, that sounds interesting.
But they just ignore it.
So you got Thor's address to get his book.
Oh, yeah.
Be sure to also check out the Babylon Bee's new book, The Guide to Democracy.
Guide to Democracy.
Yeah.
Lots of fun stuff to do in here.
Yes.
Lots of really, really true facts.
Lots of good information.
Lots of TV.
Really funny.
PDFs on voter fraud.
Oh, yeah.
That's good stuff.
It's good stuff, man.
And I believe we have an ad for the democracy book.
So check that out.
Check it out.
Babylon B, friends, we have some big news for you.
If you read the Babylon B Guide to Wokeness last year and you said, hey, there's only one book in this series.
That sucks.
Do we have the book for you?
The second book in the series, The Babylon Bee Guide to Democracy.
This comes out September 6th, and it is absolutely jam-packed, full of awesome drawings, illustrations, comics, stick figures punching each other, everything that a good book would have.
I never read War and Peace in high school because it didn't have stick figures.
This book does.
This book will teach you how to rig elections, how to bribe politicians, how to win a political argument online, and why democracy, actually a constitutional republic, is friggin' awesome.
It talks about all the branches of government, legislative, executive, judicial, and corporate.
So you know all about the government now and you can shut down opposing arguments from people who don't think America is awesome.
The Babylon B Guide to Democracy, go check it out today.
You can go to Amazon.
You can go to any bookstore in the whole world.
Babylon Bstewart, shock.babylonb.com, and they will have it.
Oh, what a great ad.
Man, best one.
I think it's the best one I've ever seen.
It was, yeah.
Yeah.
I said, make sure you subscribe to the podcast channel here on YouTube.
And make sure you get our new merch.
We've still got this conservative tears tumbler that is complicated to explain because it's got fine print and it's about Roe v. Wade.
And you got a, yeah, it's a whole thing.
Conservative tears of conversation.
Yeah.
Conservative tears of joy because of Roe v. Wade.
Yeah.
Not as complicated.
Supreme Court Justice on that.
Yeah, that is Thomas.
It's Clarence Thomas.
Clarence Thomas Hope t-shirt.
Yes.
From my sample, they cut off his head right here, but I just thought that's who it was.
Yeah.
It's all Clarence Thomas.
That's Clarence Thomas.
So be sure to go to BabylonB.com and order all of our merchandise.
We also had a crazy sketch this week.
This one's so good.
I think it may be one of our best ones ever.
It's actually taken off.
It's been a total banger.
Yeah, it's awesome.
Yeah, we're super excited about it.
It's the one where Californians moved to Texas.
Yes.
Yes.
I'm very proud of our awesome cast and team.
Yeah, you guys did a great job.
Oh, so, so, so good.
It's doing well online.
Make sure you check that out.
And it's been getting great reviews.
Here's one from Swag, who wrote, it's just a matter of time before Chandler wins herself an Oscar.
Yeah.
That's our actress who plays the liberal woman moving from California.
That's right.
Why don't you read the next one, Thor?
This is from Rod.
Oh, yeah.
All right.
The actors in this skit were fantastic and fantastic is all in capital.
So really emphasize that.
And we got one of the actors from the skit right here.
No, actually, I wasn't in this one.
What's up?
I wasn't in this one.
Oh, you were not in this one.
I produced it.
That's why this one was good.
It did not have either of us in.
That's what I was thinking.
We're like, oh, these are great.
I mean, this is great, but it's a little insulting.
So we don't have to do it.
So you're not in this skit?
I'm not in this one.
Oh, wow.
This is one of the few that Jared and I had nothing to do with.
I just, I was there, but I was, yeah.
So Just a Guy also said, the guy that got to play the Texan was a phenomenal actor.
You know, the funny thing about him?
Who was he?
He was good.
So his name's, I used a good buddy of mine.
His name's Dave Atkinson.
And he was actually on Yellowstone this last year.
Oh, cool.
So he's one of those guys that is legitimate cowboy.
Yeah, like he's the real deal.
And he's been in everything, but he was, I mean, like, I'm like, okay, who do I know that's like a southern guy that could come and play a Texas?
Oh, he nailed it.
Oh, he was so good, right?
Oh, no.
That's right.
I just love that guy.
He's so good.
All right, cool.
That'll get to the news this week.
Let's do it.
Of course, the biggest story, Queen Elizabeth died.
Yeah.
God save the queen.
And now long live King Charles III.
She's the longest serving monarch in British history.
She lived from 1926 to 2022 and served as queen since 1952.
It's crazy.
I'm not like, I see a lot of people online that have strong feelings about the royal family one way or the other.
Like they hate them or they love them.
I don't have strong feelings about like I'm kind of indifferent to them, but it is like she was like, she's just one of those people who's like been around forever.
Well, it's awkward.
This is the end of an entire.
This is the end of an era.
Like for generations, for all the world leaders and all the world events that she was there through.
Seemed like she was kind of like holding back the tide in some ways.
I love her Netflix show.
I saw that too.
I loved it.
That was great.
Both of the actors that played her were amazing.
And I just think, you know.
I was a little disappointed they switched stream on me, though.
I don't like when they change actors.
Yeah.
But I got used to it, but I didn't like it initially.
No, I agree.
I understand that.
So a couple of like weird facts.
The Lord of the Rings came out in 1954 or 55, depending on which country you were in.
And she presided over the greatest modern works of the greatest modern work of literature ever made.
Lord of the Rings.
Or the Babylon B Guide to Democracy.
That's true.
Oh, and Thor's new book.
What's the name of your book again?
The End Times Comedy Show.
The End Times Comedy Show by Thor.
There you go.
Thor Ramsey, guys.
Thor Ramsey.
It's a work of fiction.
All right.
Nice.
That's good.
Bolder novel.
Yeah, she was like totally a, she was a solid stalewart kind of person.
So but what's going to happen next?
With all due respect to the queen, here we have the top reasons the American Republic is totally better than the stupid British monarchy.
All right.
I'm reading this for the first time now.
All right.
So I'll kick it off.
I don't know what I'm about to say.
Number one, we are not subject to unaccountable institutions that can completely lock down our lives for two years over a simple virus.
Am I right?
We don't have unaccountable law enforcement institutions that enforce justice differently depending on your political party, right?
We get to vote for people who represent us, unlike in Britain, where they vote for people who represent them.
Wait, that can't be right.
Number four, we don't have to waste, we don't have to waste our lives following every tidbit of news about the royal family.
We just hang on every word that comes from our Hollywood celebrities instead.
So much better.
Yeah.
In 1775, the colonists had no income tax, no corporate taxes, and no payroll taxes.
So naturally, once we got rid of the monarchy, we made sure to keep it that way, right?
We've combined symbolic power and sovereignty into the head executive political figure.
So now we have an imperial president, which is kind of like a modern-day Caesar who can invade any country he wants with some word in a foreign language.
America.
America.
Yes.
The foreign language is Southern Trump supporter.
I just got news ultramara.
And that's ultra America.
It was the same thing.
They had an apostrophe in the right, and I was trying to, I thought it was.
Oh, that was the kids say?
Yeah, I.
I don't even know if they can say that.
Kids who said that are probably now in their 30s.
That's true.
That's true.
That's like lit.
Number said, we got a real one.
Well, we've still got guns.
We do still have guns.
That's something we got going on.
I mean, that's better.
Right?
Yeah.
Better than Billy Clubs.
And this was now.
This story was just breaking as I came in this morning.
This is so weird.
The FBI tracked down Mike Lindell while he was coming back from a hunting trip and confiscated his cell phone.
Harry Evans in a Hardee's parking lot.
That's right.
Yeah, it was.
It was in a Hardy's parking lot.
They pulled up behind him and closed him in and wouldn't let him leave and then took his cell phone.
It's crazy.
And I think, you know, Charlie Kirk said that 35 senior members of MAGA, which I don't know if there's like an actual MAGA hierarchy.
But he said that those MAGA Trump supporters all got raided.
So 35 of those members got that is crazy.
What are they investigating?
I heard it had something to do with, hold on, it says it down here.
They were interested in his ties with Tina Peters, the Colorado County clerk and election denier who has been accused of illegally allowing unauthorized people to access voting machines in Mesa County as part of a plot to prove the 2020 election was stolen.
It just seems like they're overreaching with just trying to investigate anyone who was a Trump supporter.
And like the whole election denier.
It's so interesting how they keep calling all these people election deniers every time.
But they don't say that with every single Democrat that supported Russian collusion and every single, you know, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore and all these people who, Stacey Abrams, all these people that denied their own election was.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, the election deniers.
Again, it's like what we talked about earlier.
We have a violence problem.
You know, like, let's figure this out.
You know, if you could just admit when other people do the same thing, then we could probably have a better conversation about it.
But I Lindell, though.
I wonder when you think of like, yes, political influencers, do we, I'm Mike Lindell.
I feel like they have to turn down the volume on the phone before they lift voicemails.
I'm Mike Lindell.
He has poured a lot of money into trying to prove voter fraud in this last election.
I think he hired a team of like 120 or 150 people on his own dime investigating.
So I don't know if...
He has a lot of dimes too.
And he has a lot of dimes.
Maybe that's why they're trying to squelch his influence.
They just want to tear down anyone associated with Trump in any way.
They want to dispute.
I like to think when they go through his phone, like every voicemail and every text message will start with, I'm Mike Lindell, creator of my pillow.
Inventor of Mind Pillow.
Inventor of Mind Pillow.
I'm a little concerned because he funded church people.
Oh, huh.
And I've had conversations with Mike.
So now it's like are they coming after you?
I don't know.
Well, he took his phone.
He found unplanned as well.
Have you ever texted or phone called Mike Lindell?
Yeah, you got his number.
Yeah.
You could call, let's call the FBI right now.
They have his phone number.
Problem is that.
Hey.
Yeah.
Who is this?
Hey, Mike.
Hey, Mike.
Can I have a question?
Hey, Mike, we're still going out stealing voting machines right now.
Oh, this is the FBI.
Oh, shoot.
Dad, gum.
Anyway, crazy.
Another crazy story.
The Democrat Senate candidate in Ohio, Representative Tim Ryan, and this is nuanced, so we got to make sure.
But he called for Americans to kill and confront the MAGA movement on an MSNBC appearance.
So isn't this the guy who blamed MAGA rhetoric for the shooting in El Paso in 2019?
They will always use the same sort of violent rhetoric and tropes.
It's very things that are even worse, and then they will.
He was like.
Again, this is a problem.
Like he's coming in, he's saying kill and confront.
These are words that obviously he's not talking about kill and confront people.
Yeah.
Right.
He's saying kill and confront a movement, but words like that.
Kill and confront the movement.
Especially if you're going to say that.
What is the movement?
Violent rhetoric.
Kill and confront is.
I mean, that's.
Here's his full quote.
It says, I believe that the president is most certainly creating an environment here where, oh no.
Sorry, this was his quote about El Paso.
Yeah.
I believe the president is most certainly creating an environment here where people like this kid in El Paso drive 10 hours to go kill Mexicans, kill people of color.
And he's saying kill and confront the MAGA movement.
But they're never bad guys are doing it.
They never have a problem.
Kill and confront in the good way, not in the bad way.
For good, for good.
For good.
Kill and confront.
For the good guys.
Well, I really think this is part of the mentality.
Even if I don't know what your thoughts on voter fraud are, but I really think there's a mentality where they felt like it's justified to save.
It's almost like we've got to steal the election to save democracy.
Yeah.
And I really feel like that's kind of their mentality sometimes.
Well, it's an obsessive, compulsive need to control because the system itself, like I think leftism sort of lends itself to authoritarianism and totalitarianism.
So it is that.
And so they justify any kind of action for the end of the utopia they're trying to create where only they have rights and privileges.
And they do see it as a moral, like they see it as the end justifies the means.
Like I'm not, I'm not, I don't support all the sort of voter fraud and like Dominion voting machine claims, but it's when you hear the way these people on the left talk, they have this moral conviction that we have to stop Trump at all costs, where it's not inconceivable to think that they see it as a greater good.
Like we can break the rules just.
And it becomes so obvious they're trying to stop him at all costs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When they raid Mike Lindell because he's having a beef and cheese.
And that they keep just inventing more and more things to investigate him for.
Every single one fails.
And then the next week, it's, oh, now they're investigating for this.
Well, actually, it's crazy.
No, it is true.
It seems like, yeah, we're dealing with that kind of mentality for sure.
It's like a superhero mentality.
But it always starts with, the big news is, the big news is.
And we keep waiting for the payoff and it just never comes.
But I think it's big news and they just kind of fade.
They all see themselves as kind of vigilantes fighting justice.
It's that resist.
They got that resist word in their head.
Injustice.
We just have to resist it all.
Well, it's creating revolution.
Revolution, revolution.
So anyway, there's other stories.
Yep.
Here's another story.
University student in Mexico could lose license to practice psychology for graduation speech.
I don't know this story.
It says the Autonomous University of Baja California has initiated proceedings against a recent graduate, Christian Cortez-Perez, after individuals took offense to his graduation speech.
The University Council is considering a petition to withhold his degree and professional license, violating Christians' fundamental right to freedom of speech.
Here it is.
In his speech, Christian called for the rejection of the redefinition of the family and radical gender ideology.
So apparently, even in other countries, now they're getting woke and you can't question this idea.
Well, you know what's interesting?
I've been noticing that there's a huge, there's a denominational split that is inevitable right now in the LGBTQ movement.
Right.
The LGB is not really, they're really pushing back on the T. They're not all on board with the T. They're not as bad.
It's anti-science.
It's anti-fact.
Yeah.
It ignores biology.
And no one really knows where the Q comes in.
The Q is just kind of.
But they're on both sides.
The Q, we don't really know.
But the T is being.
No, that is the news right now.
There's a lot of tension in the community for sure.
T is for tension.
It's for tension.
LGBT.
LGBT tension.
Well, I think the LGBT is moving to have T redefined as TERF in a positive sense.
TERF.
Oh.
You never heard the TERF?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Explain it.
What is it again?
Well, TERF is basically an illusionary radical thing.
There you go.
Very good, Adam.
Very good.
So TERF is going to be included in gender in LGBTQ.
No, the T's are mad.
It's supposed to be trying to make it.
Feminists.
Yeah, feminists used to, like, feminists were sort of ideologically on the same side as the rest of the left.
But now a lot of the feminist movement is pushing back specifically against the transgender stuff because they recognize that women are biologically different than men.
Yeah, you've got a good example.
If you have no same sex, if sex is not binary, then you lose the whole idea of same-sex attraction.
You can't have lesbians and gays without same-sex attraction.
Well, you've got one.
So if transgenderism, it's well, part of the pushback is: okay, if you're, and you have to define everything, but if you're a man who is fronting or pretending or identifying as a woman and you want to date a woman who's a lesbian, you can't because she's a lesbian.
She's not attracted to men and you're still a man.
Dwell is a Bible app we've fallen in love with.
Their mission is inspired by the psalmist who encourages us in Psalm 119 to hide the word of God in our hearts.
Dwell has built the most beautiful listening and reading experience for the scriptures.
Everyone says so.
They have over a dozen new recordings of the Bible.
They've hand-picked voices that will engage and inspire you.
And they have the best versions of the Bible too.
In addition to a world-class listening experience and an exclusive read-along mode, Dwell is now the best way to read the Bible on your phone.
In fact, studies have shown that recall is significantly increased when listening and reading are combined.
In short, a multi-sensory approach leads to quicker and deeper learning.
Go to dwellapp.io/slash Babylon B to get 10% off a yearly subscription or 30% off Dwell for Life.
Dwell for Life.
Right.
Well, there were cases online where, and I think just socially, where transgender women, like men who think they're women or claim to be women, were accusing women and lesbians of being transphobic.
Transphobic.
Because they wouldn't date a transgender person.
Well, they were accusing men of the same thing because 98% of men would not date a transgender woman.
And so they're saying, you guys are just transphobic.
You need to get over your transphobia.
And it's like, well, maybe it could be about the.
Yes.
And then there's the idea of men who are, I don't know what to call it.
You know, I can't keep up with the terms, but the men who are identifying as women calling themselves lesbians is a problem.
Well, I don't, personally, that's not big.
I think all men are lesbians.
They're attracted to some lesbians.
Yeah, some lesbians.
Technically speaking.
Yeah, technically speaking.
We're all lesbians.
another so this uh university student in mexico who uh might lose his license for psychology he quoted gk chesterton gk chesterton there's his problem in his uh speech uh on the destruction of the family because that's the other thing they're against the nuclear family now the left too but uh he said people do not know what they are doing because they do not know what they are undoing So as a Chesterton quote, he further noted that to attack life and the family is to self-destruct.
It is an attack on civilization itself.
He called on his peers to live in solidarity with one another, saying, You have to love.
No one seeks the good of the other if he does not love him.
That sounds like a great speech.
And so, of course, the leftists have a problem.
It sounds like it was really good.
It sounds like we'd like to.
Oh, and the Alliance Defending Freedom is supporting his case.
So good luck to all of them.
Yeah, there was, and this isn't in there, but there was a DOJ employee that called the Alliance Defending Freedom a hate group this week, too.
Not the DOJ themselves, although I'm sure they all think this.
And that's the leftist argument.
Everything they disagree with is either hate.
Well, it's everything.
They tag it emotionally.
It's fascism, hate, or a phobia, right?
They tag it emotionally.
And that's why Hollywood has been so good at producing a left agenda in civilization and culture because they win the emotions.
They win the emotions.
That's exactly right.
Hey, we got a banger of the week here.
Banger of the week.
Banger of the week was Stacey Abrams announces that with a heavy heart, she will succeed Elizabeth II as queen.
You know?
That old election denier.
Dang.
You know, what a nice person.
Yeah.
I've got the Stacey Abrams app.
Do you guys have that?
No.
I will say that.
She annoyed me.
Like, when I was at Ellen, you know, I was very openly conservative and stuff.
And I would always try to get the producers and people like, I was like, book people from both sides, you know.
And there's always this excuse of like, no, no, we want to stay out of politics.
They bring people like her on, and she would come on.
And I remember when she goes, right now it's America versus the Republicans.
It's like they use these just like over-the-top, like divisive rhetoric and all this stuff.
And January versus it's ridiculous that people are not.
It is really not.
Oh, we want to stay out of politics.
This is not political.
It's just true.
All right, we have a bomb of the week, too.
Bomb of the week.
Man spends 800 hours and $3,000 to beat free mobile games.
It's kind of a funny joke.
I think that was funny.
I like the Stacey everyone's pointed, but I like the mobile game one.
That's good.
And it's time for one of the, well, our probably best segment of this week.
It's the most popular segment.
Sizzler Facts.
Everyone always looks forward to it.
So 20 weeks ago, we debuted a new feature to the podcast called Sizzler Facts.
This week's Sizzler Fact is a sad one.
This past Sunday in Logan, Utah, right on the border of the SDZ, that's the Sizzler Dead Zone.
Oh, that's right.
The Sizzler Dead Zone from our Sizzler Fact a few weeks ago.
The local Sizzler wait staff reported to work as usual and were informed of a mandatory meeting later in the evening.
After hours of hard Sizzler work, they were told at the meeting that their Sizzler branch would be closing and that they had just completed their final Sizzler shift.
So in this time, we'd like to offer a Sizzler prayer for the former employees, and we hope they land on their feet and can find other work soon.
Hopefully at another Sizzler.
Maybe if there's one close and it's not in the SDZ.
By the way, when did this happen?
It says this past Sunday.
Oh, this is this past.
Actually, you know, strangely enough, this is in Logan, Utah.
I passed by the Sizzler in Provo, which is a great Sizzler.
Great.
And didn't go in, but it looked good.
Let's pray for them.
All right.
Actually, you know what?
To be honest, let's pray.
Lord, I pray that you give those people jobs.
They need them.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Amen.
So this is actually, I thought your Sizzler facts just meant like hot facts of the wheat.
This is the first time.
No, there's facts about Sizzler.
Yeah, yeah.
All right, that is hilarious.
I wasn't familiar with the Sizzler fact.
Now it's time for the weekly news with Adam Jenser.
It's time for the weekly news with Adam Jenser.
The biggest story this week is that last Thursday, after 70 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth II quiet quit.
According to Buckingham sources, the queen passed away peacefully, surrounded by family, and spent her final hours being disappointed in Prince Andrew.
The Queen's 30 Corgis will now go to live with Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah at Windsor Estate.
Sarah tricked Andrew into adopting the dogs by telling him she was bringing home some 14-year-olds.
Bicycle.
On Saturday, Elizabeth's eldest son, King Charles, took his formal oath as king, thus completing all his duties as king.
Some customers were angered by a Virginia restaurant's 9-11 memorial menu, which featured items like Freedom Flounder, Pentagon Pie, and the Remember Teeny.
In response to the outrage, just like the owner of Tower 7, the restaurant decided to pull it.
In a speech this week, Joe Biden reiterated his moonshot goal of finding a cure for cancer during his presidency.
So far, he's only succeeded in bringing back monkeypox, polio, and three new COVID variants.
Archaeologists in Borneo found evidence that humans successfully amputated a girl's leg 30,000 years ago, proving they were much more medically advanced than previously thought.
And they didn't give her irreversible gender surgery, proving they were more advanced than Boston Children's Hospital.
Major League Baseball announced several new rules on Friday, including a 15-second pitch clock and larger bases.
The Houston Astros have vowed to find a way to break the new rules as soon as possible.
Steve Bannon was formally charged with money laundering for allegedly stealing $1 million from a group that was raising money to build a border wall.
Although his attorney has argued, if Steve Bannon had a million dollars, why would he look and dress this way?
Bannon has vowed to defend himself with the best legal team border wall donations can buy.
LAPD officers delivered a baby at a Van Nuys gas station this week.
According to witnesses, the baby came out, saw California gas prices, then went back in.
Donald Trump's lawyers submitted their nominees for special master to review the Mar-a-Lago investigation.
They include newly registered lawyers Stephanie Bannon, Paulina Manafort, and Ruby Giuliani.
Some fans are complaining that Disney's new live-action Little Mermaid has gone woke because they made Ariel black.
At least it's not as woke as their upcoming body positive sequel, The Big Mermaid.
On Tuesday, Joe Biden celebrated the impact of his Inflation Reduction Act, even as inflation remains sky high.
Although the Biden administration has stopped the inflation of U.S. life expectancy and math test scores.
That's it for weekly news.
Be sure to check out the full B Weekly podcast on the new Babylon Bee podcast channel.
That was amazing.
Adam, you are so funny.
You're so thanks, man.
Some of those jokes.
Thor, what do you think about Adam's comedy?
It's great, right?
He should do Florida.
He should work Florida.
Yeah.
And speaking of comedy, we got Thor Ramsey here with your new book that we mentioned once before, The End Times Comedy Show.
Tell us a little bit about the book.
Well, so the book, basically, so it's set in the late 90s, because that's when I started writing it.
And it's about a comic living in LA, comes from the most prominent evangelical family in the country, and he's trying to deconvert.
But as he tries to deconvert, he keeps having these.
The further he tries to get away from his faith, the more supernatural experiences he keeps having.
And so until up to the point where he has a dream.
Now, is this completely fictional or is it completely fictional?
Well, in real experience.
You write what you know.
Yeah.
So, but yeah, I don't know if you know this.
If you're in a relationship with writers, but basically they'll steal from your life and not tell you.
So you'll share the story with them.
That's really great.
And then they put it in a book and you'll read it one day.
my story but it's like there was a twilight zone episode where did you see this Where the comic?
Starts to just throw all of his friends under the bus, like that's what he does, and then that person will disappear.
It's a Twilight zone.
So every time you i've never seen that one for their, for their comedic like value, then they will disappear from his life and he's like where.
I don't think i've seen that one either.
I saw the one where the great Guy was an actor who came into the studio and that was his real life and then he was denying his other life.
So for you guys oh, I like that.
Yeah, that's what I feel like right now.
Yeah, so God gives him 24 hours to live in a dream and now he's trying to basically find a way to reverse that proclamation or that prophecy, and that's kind of the.
It's a, it's a satire, satire.
It's funny.
But enough about the Twilight Zone.
If someone uh, if you want to sell your book in 30 seconds, tell us why someone should read your book in 30 seconds.
Well, here's why you should read my book.
Because if you're going I don't really read fiction that has a uh, that's steeped in the evangelical subculture I go.
This is unlike any Christian novel you've ever read.
I would say that that was the goal.
I don't know that was the goal.
I don't know if that's a pitch for it or a pitch to avoid it.
No, i'm gonna read it, you know.
So i'll leave.
I got copies for people just oh awesome oh, that's good.
I'm gonna leave this with the guys and you can.
You know let's uh, let's.
Let's just hear, can I have one of those?
You can have one.
Yeah, let's just pop.
Let's pop there, we're gonna sit.
Oh, I think we're gonna read it.
We're gonna sit, we're gonna just read it and you read it.
All right, everyone.
Chapter one, all the people in the story are fictitious.
I should read the.
It's the chapter titles, the chapter titles themselves.
I should uh, so you talk about.
You talk a little bit about uh, deconstruction in this, don't you?
Yeah well, it's a guy trying to lose his faith.
So I put the deconstruction in kind of as a satirical thing uh, in the sense that he's trying to deconvert.
So I don't go the whole deconstruction route.
But that's really what deconstruction is.
It's yeah, it's trying to deconvert.
Is there a difference between those two things?
Um well, I think deconversion leads to deconstruction.
I would say that, or the desire to deconvert leads to to you deconstructing your faith because oh, I got you.
I would say this, and this is a real movement, deconstruction leads to deconstruction.
Faith, it is a real movement, it is something that's.
But I I so much from my perspective in because I, because I fell away for a decade, so there's a little.
You know I, i've had my experience with falling away from the faith and not calling myself a Christian anymore, and yet that's when I started comedy.
So it's a really odd state of mind.
I haven't reached that point in comedy.
I'm gonna lose my faith next year and then and then come back to it.
You're planning on this later, but it's an odd state of mind because I still believed everything.
It's just I believed I was going to hell.
Oh, which is an odd state of mind to do comedy in, and that's like i'm going to hell anyway.
I might as well start.
That's interesting.
So during the phase of your life when you no longer identified as a Christian you, you basically still believed.
It was really some aspect that you did going to hell, But I had, I came from really bad theology, Charles Finney.
Oh, snap.
Yeah, Charles Finney was my theological mentor through Keith Green.
Let's not go there.
But, and I love Keith, you know, I love his heart and his music and stuff still to this day.
But he was 27, wasn't a great theologian.
But so I came from a perspective where I thought you could lose your salvation.
Matter of fact, with Finney, every time you sinned, you lost your salvation.
That's right.
This is too deep for the beat.
But anyway, this is what I like to talk about.
Yeah.
And so I read a bunch of stuff.
I'd much rather we talk about this than all the other stuff we talked.
So I started stand-up.
So I, but because I thought I lost my salvation, I didn't call myself a Christian anymore.
Now, I'm thankful for that because at least I didn't drag the name of Jesus through the mud.
And it's like, you know, a lot of times you backslide.
Like, oh, I'm a Christian.
It's like, well, okay.
You know, so it was just kind of an odd state of mind to be in.
And so I'm really big on theology now because theology ended up bringing back saving my life.
Good.
And now a word from our sponsor, BetterHelp.
You know, it's important to take care of your mind.
How well would you take care of your car if you had to keep the same one your entire life?
That's how our brains work.
You only get one.
They haven't perfected the technology where you can put it in a jar yet.
There are plenty of ways to support a healthy brain, like learning a new language or taking a nice power nap.
That's my favorite.
There's also BetterHelp online therapy.
I personally have used therapy, Bible counselors, talking to a trusted pastor or advisor at church to get through hard times in my life.
And I highly recommend opening up to someone else when you're going through difficult times.
BetterHelp is online therapy that offers video, phone, and even live chat only therapy sessions.
So you don't have to see anyone on camera if you hate Zoom meetings as much as I do.
It's much more affordable than in-person therapy, and you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours.
Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/slash Babylon B. That's better H-E-L-P dot com slash Babylon B. You know, I grew up in a holiness background as well.
That's Finney, man.
Yeah, he's a father.
NAS holiness move.
Holiness, Wesleyan, like big time.
Yeah.
So I remember the day that I realized what grace was, and it was a big day for me.
I was driving home from my Orthodontus, like I was like 16 or 17.
And I was like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to heaven because I kept sinning.
And I just remember the Holy Spirit just kind of like whispered to me.
He's like, so he's like, he's like, do I stop loving you?
And I'm like, no.
And he's like, do I forgive you?
And I'm like, yes.
And I was going to a Calvinist school at the time.
So I had to kind of go through all the kind of reformed theology.
It was like, do you think that I, do you think that I've, yeah.
So anyway, so he accepted me and I started to realize what grace was.
He's like, I've given you grace.
He's like, why did I die on the cross if not for this?
What school did you go to?
So I went to Denver Christian High School.
So in Christian, Denver.
Yeah.
And it was reformed.
Yeah, it was a reformed school.
That's what saved me.
I mean, I feel like when I came, and I'm not, you know, I'm not, I'm through my cage stage, but when I came into Reformed theology, it was like a, it was like a conversion.
Yeah.
Because it was like I had never had security in my walk with Christ ever.
Yeah.
And so that was a big deal.
But going back to the deconversion thing, in one sense, I did, I did deconvert.
It was just unsuccessful.
And that's kind of where the idea came from.
But I really think deconversion begins emotionally.
I think most people, I mean, I don't know who said this.
Somebody smart said this, that, but what the heart wants, it will justify.
So meaning that it's Woody Allen.
Woody Allen.
And Woody Allen says some good stuff.
Actually, I read his biography or his autobiography.
No, he said the hearts.
He was the guy that famously said the heart wants what the heart wants.
But yeah, but that's anyway.
It's good.
But man, if you haven't read his autobiography, it's really good.
Woody Allen.
Really good.
And it really changed my whole mind on the whole, you know, his, it changed my perspective of Woody again.
That's cool.
So anyway, I'm back and I'm a Woody fan again.
So, so I highly recommend his autobiography.
I got to give him a plug.
But so, the deconversion thing.
So, the idea that if the heart wants something, like a lot of things, I think a lot of times people grow up, and I think this is more likely if a person grew up in a Christian home, if their background is, you know, seeped in Christian culture or subculture, and they grew up with all the, you know, like grew up with bananas or whatever it happens to be, but they grew up with all the different, you know, Christian subculture things.
And they went to all the Christian camps and they made their decision for Christ, you know, multiple times, whatever it was.
And, but it's, but they, and so I think they think they're Christians, they really believe that they're Christians, but what they also find is that they don't really like the, they don't really like Christian morality, I think is what it amounts to.
They kind of like Jesus and they like the story of Jesus and they like the idea of free forgiveness and grace and all that, but they don't really like the morality that comes with the gospel itself.
So inside they start feeling that.
And so what the heart wants, it'll justify, it will justify.
And so they have to start looking for ways to either, because you'll find different stages.
Some never completely deconvert, but they try to hold on to their faith to a degree.
So they start justifying the different viewpoints they have, which tend to be right in line with everything that the well, if you look at culture today, everything's moral.
If you look at the left and they talk about how we should feel about same-sex marriage or how we should feel about the transgender movement, they speak not just from a moral standpoint, but from a deeply self-righteous moral standpoint.
It's their religion.
It's their religion.
It's chilling out.
It's absolutely a religion.
And they might deny it's a religion, but they're zealous.
They speak religiously.
They speak in absolutes.
They want to evangelize it to other people.
They evangelize huge.
They need to be.
And that's why they disdain people that disagree with them.
This is the whole evangelism thing in everything we see on Netflix and Amazon for the most part.
It's ridiculous almost to the point now where you're like, did you sign the form where you're going to put in the, I watched, I think what was it called, the series?
The series was called The Devil Comes to Ohio, which was like a six-parter area.
I don't know why anyone, even the devil, would go to Ohio.
Why would anyone go to Ohio when you can go to Cheyenne Wayne?
So he already lives there.
But it was like a six-parter in the series.
But there was this one little plot, well, with two carriers, but a little plot length literally had nothing to do with the story.
And I could just get to it and literally, you know, fast forward for those two minutes, but they had to put in the same-sex relationship.
They had to put in something from the agenda.
It's ubiquitous.
It's obligatory.
It's obligatory.
Right, absolutely.
A ridiculous degree.
But all that to say, I think deconversion is emotional and not really intellectual.
They look for intellectual reasons to justify what their heart wants.
Well, and I think when you're speaking with somebody who's deconverting, it's really good to remember this, or somebody who's deconstructing.
It's really good to remember that most of the time, this is an emotional response to something that's happened or to what you're saying.
Like, I actually, my flesh desperately wants to do this or sleep with this or do this.
And so then they have to change their theology to meet it.
And I think Aldous Huxley famously said that.
He's like, Tim Keller wrote it in his book.
But Aldous Huxley was like, well, I wanted to sleep with whoever I wanted to, so I changed my theology.
Yeah.
And that's kind of what.
Now, let's be fair too.
Not every single person who deconverts or is trying to deconvert is in that category.
I would say it's a huge percentage.
Now, there are some who might truly struggle with intellectual issues.
Well, and I, right.
And those are, I think if they're truly struggling, I think they're rare because I think the Christian faith is more intellectually robust than anything else out there.
Right, I agree.
But it's also one of those, you just always have to kind of use a lot of discernment.
Like we were talking to Jerry Root yesterday about evangelism.
And it's just one of those, you have to use a lot of discernment to kind of listen and know kind of where they're coming from.
Is this an emotional thing?
Let's, let's, you know, like when they give you permission to talk about those things, you talk about them and stuff.
Spurgeon famously said, you probably know this famous Spurgeon quote about evangelism.
I've actually saved more people by listening.
You know, that was weird because Jerry kind of, that was what Jerry was talking about yesterday.
Basically listening.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Especially when he's sort of opening the conversation to the people.
It's kind of sort of mining.
You're listening to them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Instead of just, you know, kind of asserting all these things.
Yeah, Victoria Jackson or whatever.
Yeah, yeah.
So she tells a story.
Yeah.
This is from years ago.
She was, I forget what it was for, but she was on some sort of event with a couple other famous Christian evangelists.
And so they, but they didn't really know her.
But right away, instead of actually having a conversation with her and getting to know her, they launch into their pitch and they basically pitch her the gospel.
And here she's already a believer.
But you're going, that's almost an example of the worst type of evangelism when you don't even get to know the person or hear anything where they're coming from.
And so I think, yeah, as we can generalize about deconverting and people who are deconverting, every case is going to be different.
And you'd want to get to know why that person's actually going through what they're going through.
Well, yeah, absolutely.
And a lot of respect to the people who are doing evangelism too.
Because what was it, DL Moody said?
Somebody goes, somebody came up and talked to him.
I like the way I do it better than the way you're not doing it.
So if we're not doing it, we better be careful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So anyway, that's great.
So deconstruction is a really big problem in our culture right now.
And I always love talking to people that are dealing with it or like have thoughts about it.
And how do we deal with this?
Alyssa Childers is really good.
Mike Winger deals with it a lot.
She's done some great stuff.
Her podcast is great.
Isn't it great?
She's great.
We're big fans over here.
That's awesome.
Well, we're excited to reach out.
That's your case with her years ago.
Oh, did you?
When she was in the, I forget her group now.
CCM.
What was it?
She was in a, the Zoe girl.
Zoe Girl.
Zoe Girls?
Joe's just girl.
I think it was singular.
It was Zoe Girl.
There was three of them, though.
Yes.
But they were brand new.
I was brand new to the, I think, but we did a little showcase in Nashville there.
That's cool.
I didn't get to talk to him, though.
That's cool.
Yeah, she's a Zoom.
You know, most musicians don't get that deep, you know?
So she went deep anyway.
And now it's time for Kyle and Jarrett spoke to Eric Metaxas again this week.
We did.
Great conversation.
Here's part of that.
And now for another interview on the Fee Weekly.
All right.
Thanks for coming on, Eric.
It's good to have you on the Babylon B podcast again.
Great to be back.
Thank you.
Letter to the American church.
If you had to condense this letter to a 30-second postcard, what would it say?
Try to make the case as soberly and seriously as I can that it is the role of the church to be the conscience of the state.
I only know that because I wrote a book about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and he tried to make that case to the German church.
He was a prophet, really, trying to make that case.
And they did not heed those words, which of course were God's words to them through him.
And it is an absolutely horrifying thing to think of what happened to Germany as a result of the silence of the German church.
And we need to understand that we are being similarly silent.
There's no hyperbole.
That's exactly where we are.
And if we continue, what befell Germany will befall this country.
And it seems to me that it's already happening.
And I'm just like begging my fellow believers to consider what I think God is trying to say.
Do you think that the recent speech by Biden was any indication of the direction we're going as a country?
Do you think that that was like foreshadowing, or do you think it was just kind of a mistake by the PR people?
They are at war with fundamental American values, biblical values, and there's no way out of it for them except to win.
And you win by demonizing your opponents or trying to demonize your opponents and to basically pull out all the stops and say that we will stop at absolutely nothing to win.
And if it means calling half the country fascists, insurrectionists, Christian nationalists, whatever we have to do to silence those people, to demonize those people, we will do.
But I mean, let's be clear.
It's because the church has been silent that we've allowed things to get to where we are now.
And it is because the church was silent in Germany that the Nazis were able to take over.
It's very easy for us all these decades later to think, oh, it was inevitable.
Of course it happened.
There is nothing inevitable about what happened in Germany.
It was because of the silence of the church.
It was because the church misunderstood the scriptures.
They weren't all cowards.
Cowardice comes into it.
But some of them had these kind of pious, legalistic reasons for their silence.
And I try to make the case in my book letter to the American Church that the parallels are astonishing.
The silence of the American church today is for many of the same reasons.
The results are going to be similar results.
And we bought the same lies that many people in the German church bought in the 1930s.
Now, so Christianity Today last week just came out with this article that was trying to discourage Christians from engaging in the culture war, they're calling it now.
So like the culture war.
It is exactly what I'm talking about.
It's exactly the subject of my book Letter to the American Church, exactly what you just said.
It's the shortest book I've ever written by far because I thought this is a point that needs to be made and understood.
This is not, you know, a long, you don't need to spend a week reading this, but it's very dense.
It's very sobering.
It's very, very serious.
While I was writing this book, Christianity Today published something, I guess it was around Easter time, that Russell Moore, who's now the editor of Christianity Today, wrote.
And he wrote an article in Christianity Today at Easter time in very highfalutin language, basically demonizing everyone who would dare to be politically engaged as merely wanting to win, as merely wanting to be culture warriors.
And I thought to myself, he is doing what Biden did more explicitly just the other day.
This is just name-calling.
They don't have an argument.
And it's because of misleaders like that that we are where we are today.
It's the job of the church to speak up on all issues of truth.
Bonhoeffer famously said that unless you speak up for the Jews, you have no right to sing Gregorian chants.
In other words, you can't go into church and worship God unless you bravely speak up for those who are being persecuted, who are being demonized, who are suffering.
Unless you do that, God is not interested in your phony worship.
And usually folks in this camp theologically, they say we're only interested in quote unquote preaching the gospel.
Well, that's what the German Christians thought that they were going to do.
They thought we're going to shut up.
We won't oppose Hitler.
We won't speak up for the Jews, but they will give us the opportunity to quote unquote preach the gospel.
Well, the fact of the matter is, you are at that point preaching the most thin, pathetic pseudo-gospel imaginable.
You are not preaching the gospel if you've been silenced on issues of truth.
And when it comes to, you name it, human sexuality, transgender, whatever you want to talk about.
Issues of truth are God's issues.
God cares about truth, and He's deputized His church to speak the truth.
And when we cease to do that, we participate with the devil.
We're not participating with God's purposes.
We fool ourselves if we think so.
But, you know, the church has often fooled itself before and has been silenced.
But the case of the German church is a dramatic parallel to where we are today.
Now, what's the line for political engagement for churches and pastors?
Like, there's probably some people listening who hear you say the church needs to be politically active and they think that we need a big vote Trump banner, you know, behind listen to this.
Imagine being alive at a time when you have a candidate who is for slavery and then you have a candidate that's against slavery, okay?
And you say, Well, you know what?
Slavery, chattel slavery, is one of the most wicked things on the surface of the earth.
I'm going to vote for Abraham Lincoln, and I'm going to tell everyone I know they need to vote for Lincoln because this is an abomination before God.
And as a Christian, I have no choice but to do everything I can then to get the man elected who claims that he sees what I see.
He's imperfect, he's a sinner, but this is really important because millions of lives depend on it.
Millions of Africans are suffering the horrors of the damned.
And if I keep silent on this, because people say, Well, don't be political, I participate in that evil.
And so, are we to be silent on those kinds of issues?
People told Bonhoeffer for sure, shut up, don't speak against the Nazis.
You're just being political.
How dare you do that?
Romans 13 is clear.
We're supposed to, you know, bow before the governing authorities.
And Bonhoeffer says, No, that is a misreading of scripture.
Scripture says that I'm going to be a voice for the voiceless.
So there are people who simply do not want some people to believe to be politically active.
And they immediately make it sound like all you care about, you worship your Lord and Savior, Donald Trump.
You're a Christian nationalist.
No, there's throwing words and terms around because they don't have an argument.
Scripturally, they're simply mistaken.
And if we think about how people suffer, how people suffered because the German church was silent, how can you be silent today?
That's interesting.
I feel like I'm very frustrated by the church leaders that are doing exactly what you're talking about.
It's not the world that I'm worried about because what the church is doing, and we see it all the time, the church is accusing us of not being about the people that we're trying to reach.
You know what I'm saying?
Like they're trying to say that we're being bad witnesses because we're engaging politically or we're engaging in the culture war or we're talking about issues that really are dear to us, like abortion and things like that, and especially like abortion.
That's only one issue.
Right.
Let's just say that that is just one issue.
But in the book, I write about, I mean, gosh, look.
What was the name of the book?
The name of the book is Letter to the American Church.
Thank you for letting me get that out.
Letter to the American Church by Eric Metaxas.
But I mean, again, writing a book with a title like that, I had to, it's a really sobering thing and a humbling thing because you say, I believe this is what God wants to say.
I think we have to make the case clearly that we're commanded by the Lord to take his truth into every sphere of life, to the school board meetings, wherever we go, we're to take his truth.
Why?
Because it will bless people.
This is not to enforce theocracy.
This is to bless people by bringing God's truth to bear on all these situations.
And so all of these pastors, and there's another irony too, is that if you're interested in evangelism, There are tons of people out there who don't go to church.
When pastors start talking about some of this stuff, they are suddenly interested in maybe going to that church because most churches won't go near that.
People are hungry for the truth, especially with the whole world falling apart.
The hunger for the truth is huge.
And so when Christians have the courage of their convictions and speak these things, there are tons of people that are not Christians that just say, I'm so glad somebody has the courage to speak about that.
And shouldn't we have more courage?
Because we are supposed to believe Jesus defeated death on the cross.
We don't fear death.
We're supposed to live utterly freely, knowing that that's what God created us to do and freed us to do and saved us to do.
So I actually believe ironically churches that are talking about these things.
And I'm not talking about being wildly political, but I'm talking about speaking about the truth and not being afraid to be called political.
If you have the guts to do that, there are tons of Americans who would not call themselves evangelical Christians who would be attracted to that and who ironically, I think, would be drawn to Jesus as a result of that kind of boldness.
Well, it's almost as if the church itself, the progress, like these leaders are targeting only the progressives in the culture.
They think that that's the only group that we need to be reaching.
And so they're backing off of anything that might offend somebody that's on the political left.
Of course.
Instead of going after everybody and speaking to the rational populace, these people, these general populace, that would actually be open to hearing somebody speak about these things rationally from a worldview that makes sense to them intuitively instead of all this crazy leftist backwards thinking.
So I don't know.
I think you might be onto something there.
We need to be clear.
I like that.
That's why he wrote his book way later to the American church.
you sit on the sidelines, when you say, I'm just going to, I'm just going to be quiet.
I'm not going to stick my neck out.
I'm not going to get, God condemns us.
He.
He wants us to be a voice for the voiceless.
There are people whose lives depend on us living out our faith.
Actually, I was going to title the book, Faith Without Works is Dead, because I think that kind of sums it up in a sense that I think a lot of people have this attenuated idea of faith that it's just this intellectual thing.
I believe this and this and this and this.
And you realize, no, faith is lived out in how you behave.
People can see what you believe.
God sees what you believe.
The devil sees what you believe by how you live and whether you speak fearlessly.
And if you don't, people know and God knows.
You don't actually believe what you claim to believe.
So there's a chilling idea that if you're not living out your faith boldly and fearlessly, maybe you don't have faith.
Maybe you're not saved.
And we need to think about that because that's the most important thing there is.
Let's go to our second set of 10 questions since Metaxas has answered the first.
And now the second set of 10 questions.
What emoji best describes your personality?
I don't believe in emojis.
Oh, you don't do them at all?
What is your karaoke song of choice?
And can you sing a little bit of it for us right here?
I think anything like I'm kind of into like 70s tunage.
So it would be like an Eagle song or I don't know.
Question number three, what is the airspeed velocity of an unlidden swallow?
I'm going to go with 60 miles an hour.
Have you ever been to a Sizzler?
And how was it?
I've never been to a Sizzler and it was awesome.
Not going was awesome.
It was so good not going.
If you were forced to move to another country, what would it be?
I think it would be Greece where my family is and where I have like real roots.
I kind of feel like it's home in some way.
So I would choose Greece.
Okay.
Is a hot dog a sandwich?
That question doesn't need any answer.
The answer, of course, is no, it's not a sandwich, but thanks for trying.
Okay.
Who is the greatest heretic of all of them?
It's interesting.
That's such a, it's another great question.
Can you give me multiple choice?
Joel Osteen.
Richard Rohr.
Joel Osteen.
Jen Hatmaker.
Or a penny hit.
Oh my gosh.
I think I'm going to go with Brigham Young.
What's the worst haircut you've ever had?
And can you send us a picture?
My dad gave me a haircut.
And so one time, my father, in our breezeway, I was like a sheep before the shearers.
My father cut my hair and genuinely was so bad, the haircut was so bad that my aunt, my German aunt, my Tanta Eleanor, when she showed up a couple days later, she literally said, What happened to you?
So there's no question that that's the worst haircut I ever got.
And you can tell that it still stings to remember it.
Question number nine: What is love and why is love?
Love is the agape love, the self-sacrificial love of the Lord of hosts.
And it is something multi-dimensional.
What Bible translation do you prefer?
This is our last question.
Sometimes I love the King James or the new King James just because of the beauty of it.
But I don't know that I have a favorite Bible translation.
All right.
Good answer.
There you have it.
All right, Eric.
Well, thanks for joining us.
Everybody, please check out the book, Letter to the American Church by Eric Metaxas.
If only I had a copy, I would hold it up.
It's called Letter to the American Church.
It's by Eric Metaxas.
It's blue.
Who wrote the book called Letter to the American Church?
And it's outside Texas.
I just say, I just beg people, get a copy for your pastor.
That would be, that would be, that would kind of help things because it's pretty serious.
And you guys know that, which is why I'm a big fan.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks a lot, Eric.
We're big fans too.
Treasure in Heaven is great, but it's not going to buy you a tank of gas.
So let's take a moment to briefly review the current state of our economy and the global effect the war between Russia and Ukraine has had.
We're in for a tough year here, and Biden's printing and spending could be catastrophic for the U.S. dollar and the market.
That's why a growing number of financial analysts are recommending you diversify with gold and silver now.
And the only company we recommend is Allegiance Gold.
Our friends at Allegiance Gold can help you protect your IRA or 401k with physical gold and silver and have it delivered securely right to your door.
The team at Allegiance Gold takes the time to educate their clients on the importance of having a financial portfolio that's diversified with gold and silver.
Allegiance Gold has been one of the top precious metals firms in the nation for their commitment to protecting your hard-earned savings.
They have an A plus from the Better Business Bureau, a five-star rating with TrustLink, and they're AAA rated with the Business Consumer Alliance.
If you act now by calling them and you mention Babylon B, we'll even give you $500 of free silver on a qualified purchase.
Call 844-790-9191 to get this exclusive offer.
Or you can visit allegiancegold.com/slash B. That's B-E-E.
Call 844-790-9191.
That's 844-790-9191.
Or visit allegiancegold.com slash B-E-E.
Awesome.
That was so good.
Now, where was that at?
Was that here?
No, he was zooming in.
So he was in.
Yeah, he's been in the studio before, but he was not this time.
He was in the week before I was.
The last time I was here, he was in the week before I was in, or the day before I was in.
Oh, that's, you know, that's funny.
I keep wanting to run into him.
I know.
He's a great guy.
We did men's events together years ago before he was the Eric Metaxas he is today.
I know.
And now I can't get him on the line.
Yeah, he's trying to get on his show.
Yeah.
Yeah, notoriously hard to get a hold of.
I know.
Right, yeah.
No, he's actually a great guy.
He's a good guy.
I've met him a couple of times, and he probably doesn't remember, but it's great.
He's a great guy.
We like him.
Anyway, no, after that, I guess that was before the interview.
I guess maybe you would remember me now.
Here's my funny area.
I don't know if it's a funny Eric McTaxis story, but so he, you know, so we met years ago doing these men's events when Promise Keepers had kind of become defunct.
And then somebody else started up some men's events.
I think we did like five or six together.
They had like a panel of guys, and Eric and I were on it.
And he had just published his first book, Everything You Want to Know About God, But Weren't Afraid to Ask.
And so, and then, so, and I write some books, and then he gives me blurbs for three of my books.
Like, he gives me great blurbs that I can put on the books.
And then I always heard Eric Metaxas gives great blurbs.
He does.
He does give him great blurbs.
That's the word on the street.
Yeah.
And so then when Stephen Baldwin was on his show and was talking about church people and mentions my name, Eric goes, why do I know that name?
And he didn't remember.
Oh, no.
Stephen Baldwin.
That is so great.
That's right.
I forgot Stephen Baldwin was in Church People.
He seems like an interesting guy.
He's an interesting guy.
He's a lot.
He's loud.
He's a he's.
But he's a real follower of Christ, right?
He's like the real.
Yeah, yeah.
He's not a pretender.
He's not a pretender, you know.
But yeah.
Well, cool, man.
We got hate mail.
Now it's time for hate mail.
I really miss Adam Ford.
A comment on our peaceful protest or insurrection game show video.
This is from Tim Johnston.
Really?
Treason is Treason B. You guys are about to lose more income.
So sad.
Love dad.
I'm not sure I understand this one.
I don't understand.
Treason is treason.
That's true.
What he said is true.
Who's going to argue with that?
You know, blue is blue.
Yeah.
Treason is treason.
Treason is treason.
Do we have another one here?
Johnston.
Tim Johnston.
Oh, no.
I think that's the only hate mail we have.
Oh, nice.
It's a good week.
We didn't get Mr. Gillie.
Yeah, that was good.
Well, actually, it may be kind of a bad week.
Yeah, maybe we should have poked the hair more this week.
Was that real hate mail or was he trying to be satirical there?
I think that was someone that genuinely disagrees with us, probably, if you wrote it that way.
Yeah, it seems like he was kind of going after the juggler there.
Very emotional.
That was an emotional deconstruction.
It was.
It was.
All right.
So thanks for watching, you guys.
Stay tuned.
If you're a subscriber, go to BabylonB.com slash plans.
Is that right?
BabylonB.com/slash plans.
And for just $5 a month, you get access to full-length ad-free podcasts, bonus video content, and the chance to support your favorite team of certified fake news journalists you can trust.
And we asked Thor the second 10 questions that we're going to do.
That's in the subscriber lounge.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
What was your first job and what was your first car?
First job?
Hohen beans.
Hoe beans?
Hohen beans?
Hoe beans.
Yeah, you go down the row of beans and you cut off, well, you cut down weeds.
First car was a pinto.
Really?
That I drove the bean theme here.
He's really into beans.
He did a lot of bean work.
That's a bean theme.
I didn't realize that.
This has been another edition of the Bee Weekly from the dedicated team of certified fake news journalists you can trust here at the Babylon Bee, reminding you that fake news of the people, by the people,