The midterms, Middle East, and the Christians' calling—that is the topic we'll discuss today, right here on the Christian Worldview Radio Program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host, and our website is thechristianworldview.org. When Donald Trump made his unlikely political comeback to win the presidency for a second non-consecutive term in 2024, many Christians and conservatives hoped America would return to sanity for years to come. Two years later, while many of the anti-God, anti-America policies of the Biden administration have been curtailed, the movement determined to undermine Christian and constitutional principles is chomping at the bit to wrest control of Congress from Republicans and make Trump's final two years in office as difficult as possible.
Meanwhile. A war-turned standoff with Iran continues to create instability in the Middle East, contributing to higher gas prices at home and fueling anti-Israel sentiment abroad. unrest in France and other European countries, including clashes involving Islamist and far-left movements, raises troubling questions about what could happen in America if similar ideologies gain greater influence. In the midst of all this, many evangelical churches continue on with regular programming, as if ignoring the issues that oppose God in Scripture and impact our lives is preferable to informing congregants how to think and engage. The least of which is to vote for the better of two options.
Our guest this weekend, Rod D. Martin, believes Christians are called not to passivity. But to what Scripture commands to be salt and light for the gospel and truth, not just within the walls of the church, but in every sphere of society, including politics. Rod has a distinguished background in putting those convictions into practice. He is founder and CEO of Martin Capital and the Rod Martin Report, a technology entrepreneur, geopolitical analyst, and the author of several books, including Trump's New World Reorder: Dismantling the Deep State and Ending Postwar Globalist Rule.
He was part of PayPal's startup team, has served on the board of the Center for Security Policy, co-founded the Conservative Baptist Network, and served on the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention.
So join us today as we discuss the midterm elections, turmoil in the Middle East, and why Christians must stand firm, speak truth, and remain faithful until Christ returns. Let's get to the first segment of the interview with Rod Martin. Rod, thank you for coming on the Christian Worldview Radio program for the first time. Tell us about your background, how God brought you to saving faith in Christ, and what motivates the really diverse life experience and vocations you've had. Like most people in the South, I was a Southern Baptist long before I was a Christian, and that's a good thing.
We want kids to grow up in church. We want to marinate them in the gospel over time. But I thought I got saved pretty young, and over time came into contact with an awful lot of humanist philosophy and with what passes as science, particularly Karl. Sagan, who was a brilliant lost man, and certainly did a lot to propagate the worldview of the other team, and I was quite impressed with what he had to say. Flirted with becoming an astronomer because of what he had to say, but in time it became very clear to me that what I was reading, what I was increasingly believing, was not compatible with Christianity.
I literally got down on my knees one day and just said, "Lord, I don't know if you are real, but if you are, I want to honor you. I don't want to be a rebel. I just don't want to be a fool.
So, if you will be kind enough to show me what I need to see." No matter how many weeks or months or years that may take, or if I have to travel around the world or whatever it is, I'm game. But I want to actually settle this issue.
Well, okay, so I went to church. I hadn't been in church in a while, and a friend who also had not been at our church in over a year that I had barely gotten to know, he calls me out from across the room. It's like Rod, come here.
So I went over there. He's like Rod, I've got something you are going to want to read, and I don't have it with me. But come back tonight, and I'll give it to you.
Okay, you got my attention.
So I came back for Sunday night church back in the days when we used to still have things like Sunday night and Wednesday night church, and he hands me a copy of More Than a Carpenter. Which was exactly what I was looking for—some evidence that the Christian worldview was not fantasy. And of course, Josh McDowell did a great job in that little book. It's just very short. It's not for scholars or anything, but I very quickly found his book.
That's more for scholars. Evidence that demands a verdict within about three days. I've devoured this stuff, and I gave my life to Christ, which is you know a fancy way of saying He converted me because I certainly would not have gone to Him if He hadn't been prompting me. I am very, very grateful for that grace. But yeah, that definitely determined the rest of the course of my life.
No question about it, because it was.
So clear that not only was he speaking, not only is Christianity. A faith of evidence, a faith of truth. You would expect that God claims to be the creator of the universe. Everything would supposedly work according to His rules. Everything would supposedly be subservient to His wisdom.
And sure enough, you know, it turned out that was entirely true.
So over time, I definitely reoriented my life around that, and everything I've done since. Has been a very imperfect attempt to be a good and faithful servant. Thank you for sharing your salvation story, and it's always a marvel how God draws the future believer to Himself in different circumstances. And we're just so grateful that He did that in your life, Rod Martin, with us today here on the Christian Worldview.
Now, today, one of the things you do is you publish or put out the Rod Martin Report, and I'm just going to quote what it does. It offers daily in-depth analysis and actionable and Intelligence on issues you need to understand in geopolitics, economics, and advancing technology, all from a Christian worldview. You might hear Christians say, "Well, why is it necessary? Why do you need to, as you write there, understand geopolitics, economics, and advancing technology rather than just focusing on your spiritual life and theology in the Bible?" Well, because God says that matter matters, we get this over spiritualized view of the Christian walk, which is just completely out of balance. It's fundamentally gnostic.
It's not Christian. Jesus is so committed. To the physical reality that he actually clothed himself in flesh, and not just for a few years. No, no, he dies, rises again on the third day, and is then clothed in an incorruptible flesh that he will have for all eternity. That's a pretty serious commitment to the physical world, and we don't see at the end of Revelation.
Oh, we're all. Going to be disembodied spirits in heaven? No, he says he's going to make the heavens and the earth new, and it's in that new earth that we dwell. Heaven is a way station for us on our way to the completed creation that we will see in that new earth, that new Jerusalem that we see in Revelation descend from the clouds, and it's very very clear that in that city there is no. Because God and His Son are its temple.
Okay, so what's He saying? We're going to restore Eden. We're going to have the Lord with us, Emmanuel, in the same way that Adam and Eve did, except with further revelation and a lot more population. Therefore, since matter matters, I have to care about how my fellow man matters. And the Lord is very clear in the Word.
It's not enough to tell them to be warm and be filled. You've actually got to clothe them. You've actually got to feed them. You've actually got to do those physical things they need in addition to the spiritual things they need.
Well, thank you for explaining that. And you have four basic convictions: you believe that the American Revolution, the beginning of our country, represents the high point of human thought on government and human freedom, and that the American Republic deserves defending. That's number one. Number two conviction that capitalism. Freedom of exchange, entrepreneurship, exploration, innovation—as you were just talking about—are the societal enactment of the golden rule: to do unto others as you want them to do unto you.
Because you must first solve someone else's problem to earn anything for yourself in a capitalistic system. Third conviction is that it is the Christian worldview that gives us those things. It's the biblical worldview that leads to this kind of innovation. What has made America what it is, and number four, that our civilization's best days are ahead, unless we blow it. The left, those who believe in socialism, they would agree with you on the fourth point too—that our civilization's best days are ahead, except.
They believe that the means of getting there to our best days is actually rejecting the first three points that you made there about the American Revolution, capitalism, and the Christian worldview is the way to go. But how can Christians believe that our civilization's best days are ahead when we also know history in the sinful, rebellious nature of mankind? And as we read, as you mentioned, the book of Revelation, the scenario it presents in the lead up to the return of Christ, where there's a global evil world ruler, and Christ has to return to judge and reign a world that's gone in rebellion against Him. But it doesn't say when. I was born in 1969.
I was about three or four years old when Hal Lindsey wrote the best-selling book of the entire decade of the 1970s, "Late Great Planet Earth." So there has never been a time in my life that I haven't been hearing that the apocalypse is next Tuesday. That there is no question that the rapture will happen seven years before that next Tuesday. And oh wait, we're still here. And that's the problem. They thought the same thing during World War II.
They thought the same thing during the beginning of the Cold War. They thought the same thing during World War One. They have thought this various people for two thousand years, and yet we're still here. If even Jesus didn't know the day and the hour, what did he know? He knew that we better be found faithful in our work whenever he does return, and if we don't, we will be cast into that outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.
So, okay, if the Lord returns next Tuesday, our best days are still ahead of us because we will live with Him. That'll be great. If He comes back in a year. Or a decade, or a century, or another millennium. I am sure that there were people who were certain he was coming back in thirty-four A.D.
But here we still are.
So, however long he takes, if it's ten thousand years. We are making dramatic progress. The number of people who claim the name and the moral code of Christ is at an all-time high. Do they all live it? No, none of them live it.
We're all sinners, but lots more of them. Don't burn widows on funeral pyres. Don't bind the feet of tiny girls so that they crack and break. Don't do all of the barbarous things that used to exist before Christianity went out into the world. Moreover.
Christianity, specifically Protestant North European Christianity, primarily in Scotland, England, and Holland, created the modern world.
So, over the last however many thousand years you want to go, per capita GDP is a flat line until about 1730, and then it just shoots straight up.
Okay, at that rate. Which shows no sign whatsoever of slowing down. At that rate, we reach a productivity level that is so great that poverty, as we know it, simply disappears. Not relative poverty; the poor are always with us. But actual poverty, and you know that because you eat and live indoors and have a microphone and Zoom, you don't live like Little House on the Prairie.
And if you want to disseminate the Christian worldview, you don't have to have a one-room church in Desmet, South Dakota, like Laura Ingalls Wilder's preacher, and talk to ten or twenty people. You get to talk to the world. That is by itself a godsend. And you say, Oh.
Well, that other people use the internet for porn, yeah, and some people use their church to propagate Marxism. What's your point? The world is filled with sinners. Sinners sin. It's what they do.
But every day that we cure diseases, that we alleviate suffering, that we make it easier to get ahead, even if you're a widow, even if you're an orphan, if we make the lives of our preachers a little easier, so they have more time to share. The gospel. All these things are good, and yes, our best days are absolutely ahead, whether the Lord comes next Tuesday or whether He takes His time. Rod Martin with us today on the Christian worldview. You know, Rod, as you well know, we have a big midterm election coming up in just days.
Here, some of the races going on have garnered all sorts of national attention because of the fact that they are open socialists. Running for very high offices in this country, a Muslim anti-Israel, really a Marxist from Michigan, Abdul El Sayed is trying to become the U.S. Senator from Michigan. Here in Minnesota, where I live, a Marxist—maybe she wouldn't call herself that—but she's pretty far on the left. Peggy Flanagan is trying to become the senator in Minnesota, and then down in Texas, a big state that the left is targeting.
You have a theological leftist, a seminarian down. There, who's a socialist as well? James Talerico is in kind of a neck and neck race for Senate down there as well. Who denies the divinity of Christ? Who says that God is non-binary and who wants to castrate children and extend abortion at least to nine months and probably longer than that?
And that is a real thing, folks. If you think that death is only something we reserve for in. In the womb, check out Canada, where we now euthanize, or the Canadians now euthanize, which is another fancy word for medical murder. They kill more people through their healthcare system than die in the United States, with ten times the population from gunshot wounds. For heaven's sake, they are killing more than die here from getting murdered.
So the life issue is at its peak. Of importance, and it extends to all of us. We have a link to Rod Martin, investor, tech entrepreneur, and geopolitical analyst at thechristianworldview dot org. After this two minute break, we'll discuss the midterms, how Israel broke free from socialism, and the war with Iran. I'm David Wheaton, and you are listening to the Christian Worldview Radio Program.
We didn't want our kids doing all these secular games like Elf on the Shelf. We really wanted to put Christ front and center at Christmas, and they actually engineered a wooden manger that's small enough to hide. And then I wrote a family devotional with 25 devotions for every day in December leading up to Christmas, including Christmas Day, that you can do in about seven minutes, and the devotions are just. Loaded with the deity of Christ and the gospel. That was Pastor Grant Castleberry describing *Manger in Danger*, a 25-day devotional for families with children ages 4 through 12.
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To order, go to thechristianworldview.org, or call one eight eight eight six four six two two thirty three, or write to Box Four Zero One, Excelsior, Minnesota, five five three three one. Welcome back to the Christian Worldview. I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit thechristianworldview.org where you can sign up for our weekly email, the Christian Worldview Journal print publication, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Our topic today is the midterms, Middle East, and the Christians' calling.
And our guest is Rod D. Martin, Christian investor, technology entrepreneur, and geopolitical analyst.
So, regarding the midterms coming up, is it accurate to say that Americans are voting on number one approval or disapproval of Donald Trump and his policies? And or number two, socialism, bigger, more intrusive government, is the best path forward for our country. We talked about the American Revolution. Here's the fundamental point: the French Revolution descended into the Terror, into guillotining everybody in sight, and ultimately into a military dictatorship. The American Revolution did none of those things.
Why? Because the founding fathers were not just the children of the Enlightenment, though they were that; they were also the children of the Great Awakening. And that simply was not the case in France.
So, here suffused with Christian thought, the founding fathers understood that men are all sinners. In fact, one of them famously said, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Which is exactly what socialism promises: the withering away of the state.
Well, guess again. They keep having socialist countries, and the state only. Ever gets bigger. God doesn't make stupid claims like that. He doesn't say the state's going to wither away.
He says that Christ is an eternal King, and every knee will bow and every tongue confess.
So, among God's many attributes, He's actually honest, unlike these people. But the American system is rooted in the idea that if any one person or group of persons gathers enough power, they will use it as a club. And beat everybody else over the head with it, and take their stuff, and kill them if they don't like them, and that's exactly what every other system in the world does, and always has done.
So when the socialists promise you the moon, you may rest assured they're going to deliver moon pies, and they're probably going to take your moon pie and give it to one of their supporters, and you're probably going to a camp because. That is the history of socialism. This is not a new thing. I know the kiddies all think that it is a new thing, but guess what? We've been trying this out since 1917, and it turns out that these people murdered a hundred million of their own people just in the 20th century.
The persecution of not just Falun Gong but of Christians in China is ongoing, up to and including taking live people without. Anesthetics and harvesting their organs while they scream. This is happening. Today, and not only that, but the socialists here opened the border under Joe Biden, just opened it wide open. You say, "Oh, well, all these people, they should all get to come, really?" Because that's not what happened.
What happened, first of all, is the left said that this is the most oppressive country in the world, and then told everybody to come.
So, which is it, guys? Pick one. Second. They allowed the human trafficking of more women and children. That sex slavery, for those of you from Rio Linda, sex slavery, human trafficking of more women and children in the four years of Joe Biden than the total number of African slaves imported into the United States in all of history.
I'm sorry, that's not compassion, folks. There's a reason we have a border. There's a reason there's a wall. We're not asking nobody to come. We're not saying you can't immigrate here.
My gosh, we have the most generous legal immigration system on earth. There is nothing to compare to it. What we are saying is, don't break in the window. Come through the door. And that's just Romans thirteen.
If you are an illegal alien, you're in sin. I know that it drives the Democrats crazy to suggest that they're committing a crime by being trespassers. Immigration laws are perfectly consistent with the wall Nehemiah built around Jerusalem. There is nothing inconsistent here, and he let people in too. He just didn't let the merchants in on the Sabbath.
That's all. He didn't let in people who wanted to kill all the Jews. That's all. That's completely legitimate. In fact, it is the required and necessary function of government, which again we know from Romans thirteen.
So yeah, what's on the ballot? Is this sort of caricature of socialism that was taught to our kids in our public schools, and not just in our public schools, for the last two generations? Because their teachers, including in a decent number of private schools, went to the exact same colleges as the ones who are teaching in the public school. They have been completely denuded of any sort of critical thinking, any ability to do more than. Moat.
They have replaced critical thinking with critical theory, which is just cultural Marxism. It tells them that socialism is kumbaya, that socialism is just being fair. No, socialism is about creating a permanent aristocracy that rules you corruptly and wickedly. And if you really want to get back to those Ten Commandments, since I cited a few of them there, what it really is is an entitle Entire social, political, and economic philosophy and system based on the systematic violation of the tenth commandment. Every single thing in socialism is about envy.
It is about covetousness. It is about theft, and ultimately, it's about murder. That's evil, and if Christians don't stand up to it, I'd like to know who's gonna. And to answer your other question in there, honestly, how are we at this pass? We're at this pass because the church has been asleep at the switch for a long, long time.
Basically, my whole lifetime, our churches would not speak to the moral issues in the public square. I'm not talking about endorsing particular candidates from the pulpit. I'm talking about teaching your People enough Bible that they know which candidates are evil and which candidates are actually trumpeting some version of what is right. Because that's the best you get in this life. I hear about the lesser of two evils.
I'm sorry that no, you only have the better of two choices, and you should make it. Rod Martin with us today here on the Christian Worldview.
Now, Rod, one of the things that you specialize in is geopolitics, in other words, world events that are shaping the movement of history in the future. You wrote a column entitled "From Socialism to Startup Nation," subtitle: Benjamin Netanyahu's Capitalist Revolution in Israel. I was going to read a paragraph from that. You said, lost in the current debate over Israel and Hamas, is the utter transformation of the former over the last two decades of Israel. For years, Israel was a socialist backwater, a welfare case filled with smart, hardworking people whose economic system rendered them dependent on the charity of others.
That was before Benjamin Netanyahu, the MIT-educated Netanyahu, believed strongly in the power of freedom and free markets to transform Israel's future. He dreamed of the day when Israel might be the Hong Kong, Singapore, Silicon Valley of the Middle East. In beginning in the two thousands, he began to make it exactly that. Explain more about the transformation that has taken place in Israel, making it the country it is today. And what you make of the inner turmoil they're having there with Israel ascending, yet their electorate.
It's kind of unknown, based on their recent elections, whether who's going to be in power going forward. Like Japan, Israel is proof that if you follow God's law, you have success, even if you are lost. That's really quite an extraordinary discovery. Nobody believed that Japan could possibly become a first-world nation with rich, prosperous citizens and a bright future. That wasn't in the cards when they bombed Pearl Harbor, and yet they have because, though they have not followed Christ, they have followed Christ's precepts in key ways.
Certainly not always, but certainly some. The Lord establishes private property. One of the reasons for that is because all property ultimately belongs to Him. It is all His. I own things, but I own them in a subsidiary fashion.
I'm a steward, not an ultimate owner. And He has devised ownership as a way to help people express their individual spiritual gifts in a way that is optimal. Optimized for the benefit of others, and capitalism is just an expression of those biblical laws against theft and envy.
So, again and again, we see that private property, aside from just being the most workable system, is also the most God honoring system because it requires me to respect you. It requires me not to take your headphones off your head and smack you. You have rights, so do I. My right End where yours begin. That basic human dignity that is inherent in private property makes it possible for us to live peacefully in a world that otherwise, historically, has been suffused with murder and theft.
So, explain the transformation then that has happened in Israel.
Okay, the Zionist movement got started in the late 19th century because Jews were tired of getting persecuted everywhere they lived and thought it might be a nice idea. Hey, if the rest of the countries getting their own countries, why shouldn't we? It would be nice to go home. That is actually our home, and we are the indigenous people there. They did that, but they did it as socialists.
They were very, very socialistic, and on a super. Superficial level, as it always does, it made a certain amount of sense. There are only a few of them. They're surrounded by hostile enemies.
Okay, we got to band together. Or as Ben Franklin put it, "We must hang together; we will surely hang separately." And that turned out to be true for them, but not economically. Mostly, they spun their wheels for decades economically, which was just completely needless. And they really did depend on foreign aid. You hear about people talking.
About foreign aid to Israel all the time. I'm sorry, the foreign aid we send to Israel never leaves the United States. We send those checks to General Dynamics and Boeing and Lockheed and Raytheon, and most of that is done as joint development projects with Israel because it's just full of smart people. They have become a new Silicon Valley. It is just unreal what they've achieved.
And not just in Tel Aviv, but in several other centers around the country, and it's a tiny country. It's the size of a postage stamp. And they've only got ten million people. By the way, two million of those are Arabs. They are equal citizens.
They have more rights than any Arabs in any other Middle Eastern country. They are generals in the army. They're in the parliament. If you live peacefully with Israel, Israel will live peacefully with you. Netanyahu came in and finally had the opportunity in the two thousands.
He had been prime minister briefly in the nineties, but in the two thousands, first as finance minister and then as prime minister again, he got the opportunity to do some pretty dramatic privatization, and the whole thing just took off. I mean, now twenty years later, you have those same ten million people. They have twice the economy of Iran. They have one tenth as many people. It's just phenomenal what has happened, and it has happened because respecting private property.
This is the key part of the capitalist debate. Private property forces me to think about the other person's problems. Everybody thinks about it as stealing. No, no, guys, that's actually socialism. Capitalism forces me to think about your problem and find a creative way to solve it, and then wait for you to decide to pay me for it or not before I can feed my kids.
It's really that simple. It takes a mass of sinners. And forces them, even sometimes against their will, to follow the golden rule: to do unto others as they would have them do unto you. Whoever invented the iPhone changed my life. They weren't thinking about me individually; they were thinking about making crazy bucks.
But they actually made my life immeasurably better. Brooks Brothers makes this sport coat that makes my life better. They aren't thinking about me. They're thinking about feeding their kids, and in the process, they're making it easier for me to feed mine. That's what freedom does.
That's what respecting persons and private property achieves, and that's what Israel finally, finally figured out.
So, like Japan, they've become a wealthy country, and that is truly a miracle. There are hardly any of them, and they're in a hostile part of the world, and yet. Following God's precepts, even when you don't worship Christ, still makes a difference. It does. Rod Martin with us today in the Christian worldview.
One follow-up question to Israel, because the United States has been in a joint war against Iran to keep them from developing a nuclear weapon. President Trump said this war would be over in a few weeks back in late February. Or here we are, many months later. There have been predictions of the regime collapsing any day from the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. There have been lots of economic sanctions, and yet it still goes on.
Of course, we've seen it represented in gas prices here in the U.S. are high, at least during a Trump presidency. The midterms, the GOP majorities in Congress are in doubt. In retrospect, Rod, do you think it would have been better to do what the U.S. did?
I think it was last year with Iran and just bomb their nuclear facilities and not get into a war. Or do you think this has been the right? Policy, the right decision to do this. I know 2020 hindsight's always perfect, but what are your thoughts on this war with Iran and what we should have done? There are many, many issues there.
So let me hit a few of them. You started with Israel. The people here who say we are somehow fighting Israel's war—honestly, I guess they slept through the last half century. Because I remember when the Ayatollah took over. I remember when they took our hostages for 444 days.
I remember when they were bombing our facilities all over the Middle East and Europe for decades. I remember the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. I remember that they launched a forever war, and Donald Trump is ending it. And that's really the bottom line. And that war isn't primarily against Israel.
Israel's in the way. Israel's closer to Iran. Iran can actually get weapons. To Israel, because it's close, but that's not how they look at this. They look at Israel and they say this: this is their verbiage.
Israel is the little Satan. Guess who the great Satan is? And it's not because we support Israel; it's because we stand against every single thing the Ayatollah believes. We are the force in the world that they see as preventing Mos domination of the planet. We are in the way far more than Israel, and they're just going to keep coming.
The second point is that they're the head of the snake. There is not a single armed conflict anywhere in the Middle East today, and hasn't been for many years. That isn't armed, funded, and directed from Tehran. There isn't. Name any.
Good luck.
So, what have we achieved?
Well, already we have achieved the destruction of Iran's ability to project power. They can fire off a missile here and there. What they can't do is arm, fund, and direct Hamas. Arm, fund, and direct Hezbollah. Arm, fund, and direct the Assad regime that has now fallen in Damascus.
Arm, fund, and direct the Shia militias in Iraq. Where a friendly government, a government friendly to the United States, is now arresting leaders of those militias that were just proxy armies for Tehran, and actually shipped themselves into Iran to help murder those forty-two thousand unarmed protesters back in January. A lot of that was Shia militias from Iraq. And the Iraqi government now, for the first time since Saddam fell, is rolling those guys up. The only force left that is meaningful and still operating properly, to some degree, is the Houthis.
Their days are numbered too, because ultimately, the thing about an army is, even if it's an insurgent army, even if it's a terrorist army, you still got to pay them. And Iran can't.
So okay, the war actually took a few weeks. We continue to be in that situation because honestly, Donald Trump's never going to say it, but I believe it is true that we have taken the position that the Iranian regime must collapse for the sake of world peace and also for the liberation of Iran. But we're not willing to send in an army and spend twenty years like we did in Iraq or Afghanistan. That is. Never going to happen.
So that being the case, the blockade makes a lot of sense. We have completely shut down their ability to get much of anything in and out of Iran. They have nothing more they can sell, and they're losing about. Four hundred million dollars a day in a country that's poor. Eventually, you reach a point where the IRGC thugs simply aren't getting paid.
Hey, they got kids too. They got people who need braces too. They got a wife pestering them too. Even I don't care what culture you're in, you have those things, and eventually. They get a little annoyed at the people who didn't bother to pay them, especially while those people are living high.
And that is the point that keeps getting missed. Scott Bessent was all over this the other day, saying, "We know where your offshore bank accounts are. We know where you've stashed the money you stole from the Iranian people in the British Virgin Islands and in Panama and in Switzerland and in the Cook Islands. We're coming for it all. We're taking it." And we are.
We are in a bit of a mess. There's no question about that. But it's a mess that had to happen sometime. The president's party has won the midterms exactly three times in the last century. The odds have always been that we would lose this election.
That's not news. And this war isn't going to decide that one way or the other. But this war could keep us safe. This war could bring. At least for a time, peace in the Middle East, and definitely helps shift the center of gravity of the entire energy industry from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of America.
We saw what that means in the '70s, sitting in gas lines, the whole world held hostage by a few tyrants in the Middle East. We're never going to let that happen again. That by itself is a godsend, and it is equally won because that money comes home instead of going to foreign tyrants who oppress their people. We were sending seven hundred billion dollars a year to people who hate us.
Now they're sending their money to us. That is infinitely better. Christian investor, technology entrepreneur, and geopolitical analyst Rod Martin is our guest today. Connect with his content at our website, thechristianworldview.org. A lightning round coming up in the final segment as we discuss the riots in France, AI, and his final exhortation to Christians.
I'm David Wheaton, and you are listening to the Christian Worldview Radio Program. The winter issue of the Christian Worldview Journal features a compelling article by Michael Clary about how pastors should be informing congregants about issues in the public square. David Mitzenmacher of Founders Ministries writes about the radicalization of women, and Todd Freil explains how all of life ought to be lived to the glory of God. The Christian Worldview Journal is a print and digital publication designed to sharpen your biblical worldview on current events and issues of the faith. There is also a resource catalog for adults and children that make for meaningful Christmas gifts.
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Welcome back to the Christian Worldview. I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit thechristianworldview.org where you can sign up for our weekly email, the Christian Worldview Journal print publication, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Our topic today is the midterms, Middle East, and the Christians' calling. And our guest is Rod D.
Martin, Christian investor, technology entrepreneur, and geopolitical analyst.
We don't have a lot of time left, Rod, so just a few final questions. The first is: Could you explain what the uprisings in France, Italy, and other parts of Europe are about, and why Americans should be watching this with interest? On France, honestly. It's immigration. They let whosoever will come, and guess who whosoever will was.
It wasn't families fleeing oppression. It was mostly military-aged males from places that hate France and hate Christianity and hate any of the trappings of Christianity. Because God knows France isn't a Christian country. It hadn't been for a long time, but they've got some amazing churches that these guys want to burn down. They've got some other amazing.
Churches. These guys want to turn into mosques. They want conquest. They always have. They have for fourteen hundred years.
That's how Islam works. It is a political program far more than it's a religion. And yet, it is a religion. It's a very evil religion. And the French just didn't take that seriously.
In typical Western liberal fashion. They projected their beliefs onto everybody else in the name of tolerance. None of which the rest of the world agrees with at all.
So they let all these people in, and then they just can't understand why they're rioting and burning things down. Read the Quran; they'll tell you it's really clear. And that's something that Donald Trump has gotten great control of. Here, we actually have net outward migration for the first time in American history. We've actually had more than three million illegal aliens leave the country.
Most of them voluntarily. Most of them, we bought them a plane ticket and gave them some walking around money, and said, "If you'll go away, we'll let you get in line to come through the door. And if you make us deport you through the legal process, you're never coming back." Okay, well, that's fair. That makes sense.
So we're making real progress there. Seventeen straight months without a single illegal alien released into the United States. That's fantastic. But you actually got to see it through. We got to get past twenty twenty eight.
All right. Continuing with the lightning round of questions here at the end. You're a technology entrepreneur.
Now, the development and growth of AI, artificial intelligence. Is the Wild West right now, both here in America and abroad? Is there a race for the U.S. to win? And how is AI going to change life in the future?
AI is a tool. There are a lot of people in Silicon Valley who think they're inventing God, and they're just completely nuts. But George Gilder can tell you why. You should have him on your program sometime. George has been talking about this for thirty years.
That computation is not comprehension. It can really compute. It can't really comprehend. And I use AI pretty much all day, every day now. And I can tell you, it isn't comprehending anything.
It does a good job of mimicking it. But if you understand what you're getting out of it, you understand its limits, and they are very, very limited indeed. Having said that, they're very, very powerful.
So yeah, we're in a race. The Chinese understand who. Whoever dominates AI is going to determine the human future for a very, very long time to come. If you want the future to be free, you need two things. First of all, we need to beat communist Chinese.
Period. Full stop. Second, we need to beat Anthropic and OpenAI. Because those guys are going to Congress and they're going to the White House and they're begging for what amounts to a public utility situation where they have all the power theoretically under regulation, but guess who's going to write the regulations? And the regulations are going to be designed to preclude any competition.
I'm telling you all of the dangers of AI. I'm a technology guy. I helped start PayPal. We invest in technology companies. I know what I'm talking about here.
And I'm telling you, the only way you defeat the dangerous aspects of AI is by having a bunch of other smart people with competitive products that can thwart those dangers. And if you concentrate it in the hands of Dario and Sam. Are you kidding? Those guys are leftists. They'll use it to create your social credit score, like the Chinese have done.
It'll just be a high tech tyranny. You have to have competition. You have to have it because it's the best way to organize economies. It's also the best way to ensure everybody stays honest. Because without that competition, there's no incentive to, and they're all sinners and sinners sin.
Final question for you, Rod. We are. Publishing an article by Pastor Michael Clary in our winter issue of the Christian Worldview Journal about how Christians have had what he calls a loser theology when it comes to the public square and the political realm. Of course, the Great Commission has to be the top priority for Christians to make disciples of all the nations. But how would you exhort Christians?
To not be hands off in the public square, in politics, to the point that many of them don't even vote. Michael has done a fantastic job of showing how Christians have made a virtue of being losers, of just losing all the time, mediocrity for Jesus.
Somehow that's pious. That's not pious. That's not what we see anywhere in Scripture. Not when the craftsmen are creating the Ark of the Covenant. Not when God is creating the heavens and the earth.
Not when Paul is talking about running the race to win. Excellent. Is baked into all of this because our God is excellent, and we should be like our Father.
So our pastors have to understand the kingdom of God is not coextensive with your church walls or even your bus ministry. The kingdom of God encompasses all of creation, and the Word speaks to every jot and tittle of everything.
So you have to equip your people to deal with the real problems they. Really have at work in their marriage and yes, in their government. And if they aren't equipped with the basic biblical teachings that tell you, okay, maybe I don't understand macroeconomics, but I think that's wrong. I'm pretty sure the scripture says you can't do that. If they aren't equipped with that, guess who will rule you?
Those who hate God, and that is exactly what we've seen happen progressively over the last thirty, forty years. It is just so mind-numbingly awful to watch. Our churches just fiddle while Rome burns, and there's no need for it. The Scripture has the answers to every problem that exists. We have to preach the full counsel of God.
Amen to that, and that's what we strongly believe here at the Christian Review Radio Program. And we so appreciate and are grateful for what you're doing, Rod, in that capacity. And thank you for coming on the program today. And all of God's best and grace to you, and to you also. Rod Martin has been our guest today.
You can find out more about him at thechristianworldview.org. If you missed any of the program, you can hear replay at our website or contact your local radio station to see if they air the program at other times. You can also open the podcast app on your phone and search for the Christian Worldview with my name, David Wheaton, to subscribe to the program for free. Hear us loud and clear. The great commission that Jesus gave to make disciples and teach them is the priority and is the power to change the heart in one's eternity.
But what Jesus told believers to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world means we must not cloister, but each with our own gifts must use them to boldly proclaim God's truth to the outside world. It could be writing letters or posting on social media. It could be serving on city council or school boards. It could be working heartily for the Lord in your business or street evangelism. It should be at minimum discipling your family and voting for the candidates that more represent a biblical worldview for government.
Christ is returning. We don't know when, so let Him find us working and being faithful stewards until He comes. Thank you for joining us today in the Christian worldview, and for your support of this nonprofit radio ministry. Until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. The mission of the Christian worldview is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.
We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript, or find out what must I do to be saved, go to thechristianworldview.org or call toll free one eight hundred eight six four six twenty two thirty three. The Christian Worldview is a listener-supported nonprofit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, order resources, become a Christian Worldview partner, sign up for our weekly email, or the Christian Worldview Journal print publication, or to contact us, go to thechristianworldview.org, call one eight eight eight six four six two two thirty three, or write to Box four zero one Excelsior, Minnesota five five three three one. Thanks for listening to the Christian Worldview.
