Hey folks, this is Jesse Cope, back with another episode of the American Soul Podcast. Hope y'all are doing well wherever y'all are, whatever part of the day you're in. I sure do appreciate you joining me. I know y'all have other things buying for your attention, so I appreciate it. We'll try and use it wisely, your time, that is. For those of y'all who continue to share the podcast with others and tell others about it, thank you for helping to spread the word. For those of y'all who continue to pray for me and for the podcast, thank you. Very, very grateful for your prayers. Need them and want them. Father, thank you for today. Thank you for you, Father, and your son Jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your love and your mercy, your grace and your forgiveness of sins. Thank you for the time to record this podcast. Thank you for the people that listen to it. Be with us, Father. Surround us with your angels, protect us from evil of any kind. Help us to truly love your Son Jesus Christ and to follow his commands. To love you with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, to love our neighbors as ourselves. Guide our steps. Be with our nation. Forgive us our sins as a nation, Father, for supporting evil. Whether it's abortion, feminism, sexual deviancy of all stripes. Help us to turn back to you and to your son Jesus Christ. Help us to care for the widow and the orphan, the poor and the needy. With actions and not just words, Father. Forgive us when we fail. When we put other things in front of you. Give them wisdom and courage and a strong faith. Help them to rule in fear of you. And help us all be more concerned with obeying you, Father, instead of men or women. And guide my word to replace it. Your son's name we pray. What have you done with your last 24 hours, folks? If you had a pie chart or a bar graph or Excel table in front of you right now, and it broke your last 24 hours down by time spent, would you be pleased with what you saw? One of the I've talked about this frequently on the podcast, an old recruiting poster from the Marine Corps, and it asked if or maybe it wasn't a recruiting poster, but it was somewhere I saw in the Marine Corps. If if somebody accused you of being a Marine, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Based on your last 24 hours, and you can stretch this back to a week, a month, a year, five years, ten years, your life. But just talking about the last day, if somebody accused you of being a Christian, of being a follower of Jesus Christ, would there be enough evidence to convict you? And second, only to that, if somebody accused you of being a good husband or a good wife, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Marriage verse for today. Colossians 3, 18. Well, we're going to start with 18. Wives, be subject to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them. I throw 20 and 21 in here, folks, just because it's so relevant to the family. Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not exasperate your children so that they will not lose heart. When we look at this, folks, again and again, you really want to see whether somebody's interested in following God and Jesus Christ. Talk to them today about these roles as a husband or a wife, and you'll get a pretty quick and clear understanding of whether they're really that interested in God and Jesus Christ, first and foremost, and if they're married, whether they really care about their spouse at all or not as well. So the scripture reading today I really felt like yesterday's was pretty important. And so we're going to go through and read it again. This is 1 Peter 4 7 through 514. The end of the world is coming soon. Therefore, be earnest and disciplined in your prayers. Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other. For love covers a multitude of sins. Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay. God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God Himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ. All glory and power to him forever and ever, amen. Dear friends, don't be surprised at the fiery trials you were going through, as if something strange were happening to you. Instead be very glad, for these trials make you partners with Christ and His suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing His glory when it is revealed to all the world. If you are insulted because you bear the name of Christ, you will be blessed, for the glorious Spirit of God rests upon you. If you suffer, however, it must not be for murder, stealing, making trouble, or prying into other people's affairs. But it is no shame to suffer for being a Christian. Praise God for the privilege of being called by his name. For the time has come for judgment, and it must begin with God's household. And if judgment begins with us, what terrible fate awaits those who have never obeyed God's good news? And also, if the righteous are barely saved, what will happen to godless sinners? So if you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who created you, for he will never fail you. And now a word to you who are elders in the churches. I too am an elder and a witness to the sufferings of Christ, and I too will share in his glory when he is revealed to the whole world. As a fellow elder I appeal to you, care for the flock that God has entrusted to you. Watch over it willingly, not grudgingly, not for what you will get out of it, but because you are eager to serve God. Don't lord it over the people assigned to your care, but lead them by your own good example. And when the great shepherd appears you will receive a crown of never ending glory and honor. In the same way you who are younger must accept the authority of the elders, and all of you dress yourselves in humility as you relate to one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. Stay alert, watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are. In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation. All power to him forever. Amen. I have written and sent this short letter to you with the help of Silas, whom I commend to you as a faithful brother. My purpose in writing is to encourage you and assure you that what you are experiencing is truly part of God's grace for you. Stand firm in this grace. Your sister church here in Babylon sends you greetings, and so does my son Mark. Greet each other with a kiss of love. Peace be with all of you who are in Christ. Psalm 119 verses eighty one through ninety six. I am worn out waiting for your rescue, but I have put my hope in your word. My eyes are straining to see your promises come true. When will you comfort me? I am shriveled like a wine skin in the smoke, but I have not forgotten to obey your decrees. How long must I wait? When will you punish those who persecute me? These arrogant people who hate your instructions have dug deep pits to trap me. All your commands are trustworthy. Protect me from those who hunt me down without cause. They almost finished me off, but I refuse to abandon your commandments, and your unfailing love spare my life, then I can continue to obey your laws. Your eternal word, O Lord, stands firm in heaven. Your faithfulness extends to every generation. As enduring as the earth you created, your regulations remain true to this day. For everything serves your plans. If your instructions hadn't sustained me with joy, I would have died in my misery. I will never forget your commandments, for by them you give me life. I am yours, rescue me, for I have worked hard at obeying your commandments. Though the wicked hide along the way to kill me, I will quietly keep my mind on your laws. Even perfection has its limits, but your commands have no limit. Proverbs twenty-eight, fifteen and sixteen. A wicked ruler is as dangerous to the poor as a roaring lion or an attacking bear. A ruler with no understanding will oppress his people, but one who hates corruption will have a long life. So particularly Peter out of four and five, the talk about suffering. We had a pastor years ago, and he would say that a couple things. He said, if you're not suffering for following Jesus Christ, I question whether you're really following Christ at all. And but he also said, he said, make sure that you're actually suffering for following Christ and not suffering because you're an idiot. And he gave the example. If you worked for a company and they said every day you've got to have black pants, that's part of the uniform. And every day you came in with a different color: blue, white, pink, red, green, brown, whatever. And you got fired. He said, you didn't get fired because you were following Christ. You got fired because you're an idiot, right? Because you weren't following the principles of the company. But if you are suffering, folks, realize that that's just part of the package. And maybe it's you lose some friends over it. Maybe it's you lose a job over it. Certainly around the world, we need to remember that there's a lot of people that are losing their lives, being in prison, right? But here in America, maybe one of the biggest ways today, maybe two of the biggest ways are your marriage. If you're in a marriage and the world says, man, that marriage is just, you're not getting what you deserve out of it. Even if you really aren't, even if your spouse isn't following the roles and responsibilities that God laid out for him, right? And it's I've seen some atrocious marriages. Can we still love that person? Is that part of the suffering with Christ that we're called to do, right? And that's that's that's a longer conversation, but that's just one example. The other today is standing up for the principles of Christ and the foundation of our nation. It's not very popular at all. Maybe that's part of the suffering of following Christ. Whatever it is, folks, realize these verses again, right? From Peter chapter 4, 1 Peter 4. Don't be surprised at the fiery trials, as if something strange were happening, right? Be glad, for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it's revealed to all the world. If you're insulted because you bear the name of Christ, you're going to be blessed. For the Spirit of God rests upon you. That's part of the way that you know the Holy Spirit right here. If you're insulted, if people are irritated at you because you're following Christ, that's a good indicator, folks. It's no shame to suffer for being a Christian. It's a privilege to be called by his name. If you're suffering, keep on doing what's right. Trust your lives to God who created you, for he will never fail you. If you're struggling, folks, if you're suffering, if you're hurting right now, I would humbly recommend reading 1 Peter chapter 4, parts of it a few times. So I want to try and get through, make sure I get through. So we're going to skip the Medal of Honor reading for today. And I'm going to, I'm not going to finish up. I had a lot more planned with this article, Miranda Divine, Lawlessness is a choice. It's just, it's taking too long because in November, for those of y'all that have been around the podcast, we go through Thanksgiving proclamations. It's one of my favorite times of the year. And so honestly, that's why I'm going to go ahead and move through this pretty quickly. If you get a chance, read this article. Again, Miranda Devine, Lawlessness is a Choice. She's a columnist for the New York Post. And this was printed in In Premise, which is produced, I think, by Hillsdale. The overarching point, there's two here that I want to try and make. And the biggest one is, folks, there is no such thing as fringe or extreme leftism or Islam. Because whether the followers of those evil ideologies acknowledge it openly or privately, their desire, their desired outcome is still the same. And that is total power by whatever means necessary. The second thing that we have to understand is that those go together. That whole bucket of isms, leftism, socialism, communism, Nazism, fascism, all go hand in glove with Islam. And illegal immigration is tied into that in America today, too. Okay. And if we have time today, we'll talk about that. If not, it's tied in there too. All you have to do is look at the 20th century to see this, folks. Every single time you have one of those ideologies spring up somewhere, of that bucket of isms, it ties not to Christianity, not to anything to do with Christianity, but to ism. So a couple quotes, and we'll just see how far we get. The first one that I wanted to read is from the ambassador to Tripoli. And this was during the Barbary Wars. We've talked about it a lot. The Barbary, the pirates were seizing American ships, sailors, cargo, etc. And Adams and Jefferson asked the ambassador from Tripoli, said, Hey, what why? You know, we're not at war with you, we haven't done anything. And this was his response, right? At the very beginning of our nation. That it was founded upon the laws of their prophet Muhammad, that it was written in their Quran that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty, duty, folks, that's key, to make war upon them whenever they could be found and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Muslim Muslim who should be slain in battle was sure to go to paradise. That is the mentality. It's still the mentality. It's not fringe. That's what their Quran teaches. That's what their prophet teaches. So I'll throw this in real quick. Well, no, I'm not. We don't have time. I want to read two more quotes out of this article on Miss Divine. Only two months ago, Kirk warned that the assassination culture is spreading on the left, citing a poll showing that 48% of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk. 55% said the same thing about Donald Trump. The left is being whipped into a violent frenzy. Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response. So 50%. Folks, that's the people that are openly willing to acknowledge it in a poll. Again, there is no such thing as fringe or extreme. It's mainstream. The other quote here in May, Israeli embassy staffers, Yaron Lachinsky and his fiancee, Sarah Lynn Milgram, were assassinated, allegedly, by a left-wing Palestinian activist outside the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. Even the arson attack on the home of Pennsylvania's Democratic governor Josh Shapiro was perpetuated by a left-wing pro-Hamas anti-Israel activist. Again, folks, these go together. That whole bucket of isms and Islam, they go together. And anti-Semitism is the canary and the coal mine often. It certainly has been in the 20th century, and it's pretty much terrifying to see some of the people today that are promoting that, even many who claim to be Christian. So I'm going to end with two quotes here: one by Thomas Jefferson in his notes on the state of Virginia. Yet from such absolute monarchies, we are to expect the greatest number of immigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. In proportion to their number, they will share with us the legislation. With the principles of the governments they left, they will infuse into it their spirit, warp, and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass. We import a bunch of people, folks, that don't share the founding Christian values of this country. We're going to turn into, as Jefferson termed it, a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass. They're not going to come here and suddenly take on our values, right? So how do we do that? So you look at now a quote by Calvin Coolidge. Two quotes, actually. The first one, we reflect on no one in wanting immigrants who will be assimilated into our ways of thinking and living. And then this is out of his first annual message to Congress. They were created by people who had a background of self-government. New arrivals should be limited to our capacity to absorb them into the ranks of good citizenship. America must be kept American. You cannot flood the country, whether you're talking about with illegals or even internally via the education system, leftists, Muslims via mass immigration, and expect America to stay American. And what does that mean? We've talked about this so often. In order to love a country, you have to love its founding values. What are the founding values of America? The principles of Christ. Not a particular denomination, folks. That's the whole separation of church and state thing. But the general principles of Jesus Christ is laid out by Scripture. Sermon on the Mount, Ten Commandments, right? It's a great article. If you get a chance, check it out. Also, if you get a chance, if you're looking for a family-friendly middle-grade read and you get a chance, check out Countryside, I would appreciate it. And if you enjoy it, if you would leave a review somewhere, I would appreciate that a great deal as well. It helps immensely for the book series to spread. It's kind of again along the lines of Narnia, the Hobbit, Harry Potter, that kind of stuff. And if you're getting something out of the podcast, I hope you are. If you have three or four or five dollars a month to support the podcast, there's a donation page on the Buzz Sprout website where you can do that and set up for a monthly donation of three or four or five dollars. I would greatly appreciate that. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom of power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. God bless y'all. God bless your families. God bless your marriages if you're married. God bless America. God bless your nation, wherever you are around the world. Listen, folks. We'll talk to y'all again real soon. Looking forward to it.