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It's Thursday, 1 January in the year of our Lord, 2026.
First time we get to say that.
Pretty amazing.
2025 Behind Us.
Great show yesterday.
I want to thank everybody associated with it.
They wrapped up the year, and we're starting off with talking about, as we always do on January 1st, do something a little different about the year ahead and kind of what the focus has to be and the energy has to be.
I know a lot of people are still getting over last night.
If you still go out and participate that way and enjoy some of the, I guess, the traditional go out and have a party and get to see folks and ring out the old and ring in the new.
Dave Bratt joins me.
Ben Harnwell, also in Rome, is going to be here momentarily.
Dave Bratt.
So first off, Dave, you had a good Christmas season and kicking off the new year, right?
You know, you're supposed to pray without ceasing.
And, you know, I start off, I listen to the Bible on the way into school.
I recommend everybody should get a Bible app.
I was listening to, I listened to Job.
I learned something new about Job.
I got a smart friend up here that taught me something about Job and then went straight into Psalms.
And if you've never just listened to the Psalms, I mean, you just can't beat it.
I don't think we do a good enough job worshiping God, right?
We're always asking God for stuff and asking God to save the country and our schools and the kids and all that.
But I don't think we do enough.
So that's kind of the one thing I'm trying to push myself.
How do I praise God and give that?
That's why we're on the earth.
According to the Protestant catechism and the Catholic Baltimore, what's the chief end of man?
It's the chief question.
Why are we on the planet?
And it's to praise and glorify God.
And so you just want to do that constantly.
And then you want to kind of ingrain it so it's not just a Sunday faith.
What am I doing on this earth that matters?
In the war room policy, I really don't need to preach to the choir there.
But the one thing everyone here can do is spread this platform to your friends because as you've seen over the past week on the war room, we have major challenges all over the globe and more importantly, internally.
And so, you know, just think, how has God put you?
What gifts has God given you where you can make your difference and then encourage others?
Because we need everyone on board, right?
That's what the church is, all different parts of the body working together.
So, boy, there's a statement that puts us all in our place.
But yeah, no, it just means to have your soul geared right.
Your consciousness, your soul, your heart all aligned toward God all day.
Now, of course, no one does that, right?
It's all about me.
It's the me generation, me, me, me.
And so everyone, of course, thinks about their own personal advancement and how you can make yourself look good and how to wear your tartan vest on TV and these kind of superficial things that don't matter.
But yeah, I mean, if I look back at my life, you know, Kierkegaard, I think, said you can see your life in the past.
You know, we're looking forward in the new year, but you can see the meaning of your life looking in the rear view mirror, right?
And so you look back, and I was blessed with a great family, mom and dad, and the faith, good churches going there.
I went to Hope College in Holland, Michigan with a bunch of Dutch Reformed theologian types, really good academic background.
Then worked in business a little bit, Arthur Anderson, but then I felt the call to seminary.
And then I went and did my PhD in economics.
But all of that was linked toward the calling, right?
Toward what can I do?
I worked at the World Bank while I was doing my PhD to help the poorest of the poor.
And so, you know, you just got to, what does God want you to do?
No one else can answer that for you, right?
When I talk to kids, go to the career center here at Liberty.
You have to know what God, you know, I don't hear anything.
I don't hear anything direct in my tradition.
There's no, I don't hear the direct voice of God.
You've got to tease that out, right?
Work it out in fear and trembling, I think, also, as either Kierkegaard or Dusty Husky said.
But it's just a daily pattern of just trying to be there with God.
God's always there.
We know that.
But you've got to put yourself into that faith stance every day.
Now that you say it, it was they positioned the Dutch Reformed as quite a dour people.
It was the whole thing of that.
Kid running away, the young daughter running away to California, and bad times befell her.
I don't want to give away the plot, but it starts with the Dutch Reformed up in Michigan as being a particularly dour group.
I don't think the Brats are dour people, though, right?
You come at things with a very life-affirming Dave Bratt's got a twinkle in his eye, as they say.
Talk to me about how is your.
I tell you what, what we're going to do is we've got beautiful music.
One of the reasons I love doing these specials over the Christmas season, our team here goes out of the way to make sure that we get fantastic, fantastic music that takes us in and out from different sources.
I think we have a different version.
We're going to play different versions of Old Lang Zion, which happens to be one of my favorite songs.
So, we're going to have a different version from one of the choral societies in the 50s.
Let's go ahead out.
We're going to be back.
You've got Ben Harnwell and Stephen K. Bannon here and Dave Brett.
unidentified
We too have hold the greatest fight.
We're one weary foot single langzine for all the time, my dear.
For all landson, we'll take the cup of kindness yet for all the sign.
And here's the hand thy trusty friend, and he is a hand of thine.
Right there, you saw, that's a Japanese vocal star, recording star, that was inspired to do that.
And somebody was inspired to lay that on top of a really not a trailer, but a two or three minute compilation of scenes from Waterloo Bridge.
Why is this important?
Well, they don't make them like they used to.
Three years in a row, that's Vivian Lee the star.
Vivian Lee made Gone with the Wind with Clark Gable, as everybody knows.
She played Scarlet Hair.
She then made a war film as England was getting ready to go to war.
It was already, I guess, in the war after 1939 called Waterloo Bridge.
She plays a tragic lover of Robert Taylor and a magnificent film.
But after Gone with the Wind, this film was shot in black and white.
But it's a love story, a very powerful discussion about war in Waterloo Bridge.
Then she made, I think, one of my all-time favorites, That Hamilton Woman, about the tragic nature of the affair of Lady Emma Hamilton and, of course, my hero growing up as a kid, Lord Horatio Nelson, played by Sir Lawrence Olivier, who was her husband at the time.
She shot that in a row.
And of course, this film is a very controversial film because later it was, there was almost going to have an investigation about it, about how Churchill and MI6 had used this as a propaganda propaganda tool to actually get the United States on the side of England in World War II.
But if you ever get a chance to see all three of them, you'll see Vivian Lee at her height of her power in the late 1930s, early 1940s, as a magnificent, I mean, no comparison to Vivian Lee at the top of her game.
Gone with the Wind with Clark Gable, Waterloo Bridge with Robert Taylor.
Robert Taylor, maybe not as well known today, but was a huge star back in the back in the late 30s, 40s, and 50s.
And of course, that Hamilton woman with Sir Lawrence Olivier.
And so if you've got any time of a holiday weekend, the last two shot in black and white, and remember, that's after the magnificent, what, Tetnicolor shooting that took so long for Gone with the Wind.
Everything's in this magnificent color, even today.
So much more vibrant than most films, as you see it made in 1939.
Actually, probably made in 1938 and 39.
Dave Brett.
And Dave Brett, we have pulled from the files and will play later a film that's about the Dutch.
It's George C. Scott.
And one of, I think George C. Scott's best, I think it's his best role he had post-Patton was the movie Hardcore about Calvinist Dutch reform up in Michigan.
Yeah, on that note, the dower, on the dour note, of course, my dad was raised in a dower household coming out of the Great Depression.
So, you know, there's a little bit of that going on as well historically.
But Morley Safer did a thing a while back.
It seems like yesterday was 2008.
He wanted to take an in-depth look at the happiest people on Earth, which were the Danish.
And after regressing on all the normal variables, like income and all these kind of things, and they showed to people on the subway, the Danes on the subway, they look pretty dour.
They're all looking at their feet.
They're not smiling.
They're not, you know, young social designers like we got today.
And they said, what's the main reason why the Danes are the happiest people on the earth in international comparisons for years?
And the answer is because they have the lowest expectations.
And so there's your, you know, I don't push that on everybody, but it's kind of a humorous, right?
They're happy because they exceed their expectations, right?
So that's a clever little way to think about happiness.
Brad, you've always got to bounce in your step, though.
And I always tease you about because the Presbyterians, if you're from the South, the American South, you know that Stonewall Jackson and so many of our great generals in the Confederate Army during the Civil War were Presbyterian.
They kind of came from that hardy stock.
And I always give you a hard time that you've got that upbeat personality.
Jordan C. Scott in the movie has got the Stonewall Jackson personality, right?
Is that, because that was that Christmas Eve show is one of the best shows I think we've ever done and I want to thank you and I want to thank Jason Jones and everybody at the Church Of The Nativity, the pastor that runs it, cutting between Manger Square and St. Peter's Square I thought was fantastic.
Now we didn't have the traditional crowds and all the energy coming out of St. Peter Square because it was a cold, driving rain.
That had been a cold, driving rain all day.
And I should tell you, the International Bureau, when Ben goes and sets up, he doesn't take.
Jason Jones had a, had an appropriate crew because Jason's making a documentary film over there.
He had lighting, he had his sound guy there, he had cameramen, he had some, you know warm, hot coffee off to the side.
You didn't have any of that, did you Ben?
You're you're, you're.
You run on the WAR room.
International Bureau runs on a sparser budget, that's one way of putting it.
She gets the final say-so on all things resource-wise.
Let's go back there for a second because we are kicking off the year and talking about really personal motivation, team motivation, kind of what to look forward to.
But really, these are more, we deal with the daily material of what's happening throughout the world and the use of agency, which we always talk about.
I want to go back because that was a show.
We kind of conceived it, didn't know if we could pull it off.
Just thank God Jason happened to be over there and the Church of the Nativity really helped out because we had the pastor there.
But I think those shows did, I think that show did juxtapose, you know, particularly what's going on in that vital part of the world.
We got some real insights into really the plight of Christianity in the ancient home of Christianity, not simply Israel and Judea, Samaria, but also in the desert church.
I haven't had a chance to catch up with you because you've been on the go and your six o'clock shows you've been doing have just been extraordinary.
I've gotten so many compliments from people of all the great work that you're doing, both on the international side on the Friday show and then on the traditional Catholic, traditional Christian side on the Wednesday show.
But what were your thoughts about it?
Seeing being there at the Vatican and seeing the reporting live from the Church in the Nativity?
It was a special moment for me personally to be able to be there and feel that connection.
And as you say, with the parish priest, the actual parish priest of the church of the Nativity in that live, in that broadcast, that was special.
You know, seeing as we're going to just pick up on the themes of that Christmas Eve show, that gives me an opportunity to mention something I didn't actually get to mention on the show itself, but it was pretty important.
And for time reasons, I would have done it.
And that's the fact that Pope Leo, who I like to think we have an objective view about, we're not fanboys.
I like to think we were capable of objective criticism.
When he went to Lebanon a month or so ago on his first visit to the Middle East, he actually highlighted Lebanon as a country, which is a model country of tolerance between Muslims and Christians for us to imitate here in the West.
And Steve, That's such an outrageous thing, I think, for someone who is acclaimed to be the successor of St. Peter to say, because one has an immediate conclusion.
Either this guy is a well-meaning buffoon or he's a cipher, something worse.
The story of Lebanon is absolutely horrific from a Christian perspective.
If you go back 100 years, I think in the early 1920s was the last official census in the Lebanon Steve.
It was 53% Christian, 47% Muslim.
Now, they haven't had any official censuses since then, but the most recent informal one that they did, I think looking at the educational roles, put the Christian proportion from an overall majority down to 15%, 15% Christian, 85% Muslim.
If Pope Leo thinks that we in the West, in Christendom, are going to tolerate that dynamic and to do it supinely and passively and just accept that diktat from him,
he has no idea of the fighting spirit which is moving right across Europe and especially the United States, especially with young guys in their 20s who are showing, if you're looking at social media, are showing absolute heroic witness to the Christian faith.
That is, I say one of the tributaries to this phenomenon is the martyrdom, the public martyrdom of Charlie Kirk and the revival that we said on the show was going to take place due to the Holy Spirit following that appalling event.
But there is something taking place and at that very moment the Pope comes out and says we in the West need to imitate the Christian Islamic dynamic of Lebanon.
I would say this to the Pope.
Holy Father, you could not be more wrong.
And we're not going to accept it.
And that's why I think you mentioned the shows that we do on Wednesday.
That's why I think that the worm has such an important role to play in this revival of Christianity, which is a spiritual revival first and foremost.
And that will have riches following right on from that.
But obviously also including in the political and cultural spheres as well.
Are you getting a feeling that, I mean, I think we see it politically somewhat.
I think we're seeing it spiritually, but you're on top of this more than I am in Europe.
Do you honestly think that that's, do you think that's happening?
Because, and this kind of kicks off our January 1st, you know, the substance of it.
This is one of the biggest things that's before us today.
If you take out, you know, artificial, not take out, if you look at artificial intelligence and everything it's doing in the race for the singularity to dehumanize us, to move past Homo sapiens and past man in the image and likeness of God, on top of that, You add this fight between Christendom and really atheism, this Marxist-atheism and jihadist combination.
Do you honestly, do you see the, I tell you what, let's listen to this music because it's a great way to kick off the year.
Ben Hornwell's in Rome.
Dave Bratt's in the United States of America.
We're here at one of our traveling war room studios.
We're going to take a short commercial break, let you listen to some great music.
We'll be back in a moment.
unidentified
We won't worry of weary foot single lands for all the time,
my dear, for all that we'll take a cup of kindness yet for all lands.
And here's the hand thy trusty friend, and he is a hand of time.
We'll take a life of kindness yet for all the time, my dear, for all lands on.
We'll take a life of kindness yet for all time for all the time, my dear.
For all lands we'll take a cup of kindness.
Yet for all lands should all the quaintest free for God and lodge all to
So, Ben, question to you first and then today, Brad.
Are you actually seeing this and feeling it?
Because it would be one of the, because I honestly think we need a moment like the Crusades to turn this thing around.
You can see in Western Europe, I think she's seen the fall of Christendom.
I don't think there's any other way to look at it, and it's going to take some very determined individuals.
And they're out there.
But are you actually seeing this as a movement?
I mean, it's one of the reasons we're going to Texas.
It's not just the 9th of January.
I'll have other things to report.
In fact, if we can, in the next hour, I want to get it up.
We're virtually sold out of tickets, but I want everybody in the area, a grapevine that can come, should definitely come.
And we're going to have other things around it.
I think I'm going to spend a couple of days down there.
Because it's that important to us, what's happening here in this country.
And particularly, you can see in Texas, the is Texas the first among equals?
I don't know.
I come from the Commonwealth of Virginia.
We're very proud of our heritage, but what Virginia's deteriorated to, it's the data center capital of the world because of all the deep state that's up in Northern Virginia by Dulles Airport.
That whole corridor down there is nothing but deep state companies.
And they've now trashed Northern Virginia and becoming the data, not just the, it's the, it's the deep state that all the companies are there.
But now you've got these data centers that just kind of ruined the entire thing.
You mentioned earlier the Wednesday show that we do, which is a recap of what's going on in Christianity, specifically focusing on, but not exclusively, on, not exclusively at all, on traditional Catholicism.
So we have this show.
We have Liz Yor, known obviously to the War Room posse, the legendary Frank Walker from Canon 212, and Jenny Holland.
And Jenny Holland, every week, comes to us and recounts a development on exactly what you're talking about here, which is the revival, the Christian revival in the West.
And she does this by picking a key story.
It'll be the New York Times, The Washington Post.
So these aren't natural voices that are encouraging, let's put it like that, the revival of Christianity.
And every single story is the same.
There is something taking place in the 18 to 24-year-old male block in terms of Christian church attendance, a pickup, an uptick.
And it's not contradictory to what you're saying, which is the fact that we are losing the battle here in occupied Europe.
Because there are two parallel movements, and this is what we talk about on Wednesday, on our Wednesday evening show.
Two parallel movements taking place.
One of them is the falling away of cultural affinity church going.
That is to say, three or four generations of people who no longer have any sense of supernatural faith in Jesus Christ are simply ceasing to go to church anymore.
Because let's face it, why bother unless you actually do believe?
On the other hand, what is taking place is you have in that young, especially male cohort, a very strong sense of radicalization.
Let's look at that word.
If you give me 30 seconds, Steve, radicalization.
The true meaning of that word comes from Latin, radix radicis.
That means to the root.
It means the root.
Okay.
So when we're talking about radicalization, what we're talking about here in the Christian context are young guys who are going back to the roots of Christianity and they're living it with a coherence and a confidence that has not been seen in the West for at least 100 years.
And that is going to bring, that is going to bring spiritual fruit.
Jesus Christ never told us in order to win our battles, we need to be a numerical majority.
In fact, he indicated would be the yeast that makes the bread rise.
That's the thing I can't underline enough.
Quantitatively, extremely tiny, right?
But if you live the faith with integrity, with joy, with peace, that will attract people, guaranteed, a thousand percent.
Because God made us to respond to the gospel.
And he made us to respond to the gospel being lived with coherence and with credibility.
And that's what's taking place.
Now, Steve, you're going to ask me, is it going to be too little, too late, or will it swing the tide?
And I don't know the answer to that question.
All I know, all I can say is that I think what the Holy Spirit wants us to do is to be the best witnesses to Jesus Christ that we can possibly be in whatever sphere the Holy Spirit has given to us to operate in.
Okay, in the next hour, we're coming up to the hour break.
In the next hour, I've got Brad and I've got Hornwell.
We're going to talk about how they go through the end of the year and how they rejuvenate themselves for the beginning of the year and talk about everybody in the audience, your personal agency.
When Ben talks right there about this rejuvenation among young men 18 to 24, it's about the use of agency of God working through you as divine providence does.
And so we're going to talk about that as kind of the motivational kickoff.
We've got a long, tough year ahead of us, but we've had a bunch of long, tough years ahead of us, and our accomplishments are unparalleled.
Why?
Because of your agency and your stick-to-ativeness, your work.
We're going to take a short commercial break.
and return in the world in just a moment.
unidentified
I'm sure I'll boy.
For all my sign, my dear, for all the song will take the cup of kindness yet for all that time.