Fear No Evil

When up is down, black is white, and evil is good, it must be the last days. In 1952, Congress and President Truman established a National Day of Prayer as a yearly event. And President Reagan designated the first Thursday in May forevermore.

But our devout Catholic Commander-in-Chief raised some eyebrows today by not mentioning the word God during his National Day of Prayer proclamation, the first president ever to do so. Welcome to Understanding the Times Radio with Jan Markell. Radio for the Remnant, brought to you by Olive Tree Ministries. Today we feature a radio favorite, Michelle Bachman. Jan and Michelle talk about a number of current topics that are in the headlines, and we promise to end on a note encouraging you to look up and know that our redemption draws nigh.

Here is today's programming. Bank of America has issued a report that said at the very least transitory hyper inflation is coming. So let's just take them at their word. Not me, not anybody else, not any crazy yahoo like me saying this. This is Bank of America.

Let's take them at their word. How do you prepare? There's lots of different ways, but you have to start thinking like Germans did in the 1930s. Welcome to the program. So glad you can join me this week.

I have a special guest in studio every now and then, quite frankly, as often as possible. I try to get a current event slash political cultural update from the familiar voice of Michelle Bachman. And I have in front of me about 10 pages of notes and activities that are going on in America and the world, quite frankly, even the Middle East as we speak. We're going to talk about all of those things because we have a new administration just five months in office. What has changed in five months? Almost everything.

For the good or the bad, well, we'll let you decide, but we'll talk about some of those categories where things are not the best any longer. Economy, immigration, we've got a war, at least it appears to be a war. We don't know for how long it could get extended. It could get broadened.

There's Gog Magog on the horizon, I'm not sure, but activity in the Middle East, all of this, again, in just a matter of weeks to months. Michelle Bachman, welcome back into the studio. Jan, thank you.

It's always a pleasure to be here with you. Yeah. And we'll talk about some of the things you're doing too here along the way.

But I want to continue to play on my opening here. And you heard Glenn Beck on soaring inflation, just five months of a Biden presidency. Let me just hit the categories. We can't talk about them all. The economy is hurting, immigration at our border is hurting, morality issues are hurting with the celebration of the aberrant. We've got American children, teens, young adults are being taught to hate their country. We've got America's number one ally marginalized and probably in the process of being abandoned.

I'm talking about energy, trillions of dollars in debt. Does any of this, at least the swiftness with which this happened, surprise you? That part does not surprise me. I knew that if the Democrats took control of the White House, the House and the Senate, they would have the ultimate trifecta that they were hoping for. And they weren't going to waste it. They have file cabinets filled with all of their plans. They had signaled exactly what they were intending to do. And even though Joe Biden doesn't seem like with no disrespect the sharpest knife in the drawer these days, the people who are behind him know exactly what it is that they want to accomplish. And they aren't letting any time waste because they know their time is short.

They're trying to turn every dial so that the United States resembles the transformative nation that they are wanting to see, rather than the constitutional republic that we grew to love and appreciate. Michelle served Minnesota's sixth district in U.S. Congress from 2007 through 2014. Okay, economy, home prices just in a few weeks to months here, up 10% gasoline, soaring through the roof, if you can find it. And you told me a story of your brother on the East Coast.

And he's actually a doctor riding his bike to various places. Immigration, that's something you were very much involved in the immigration dilemma when you were in Congress. Tell me just a little bit about what you're seeing, particularly in light of you having served in Congress for a number of years, and now everything seems to be coming apart at the seams. Trillions of dollars of new debt, trillions of new debt.

That's right. We hear Joe Biden talk about new bills all the time. We have to start out with a trillion dollars or $2 trillion in spending. People need to understand that it wasn't that long ago that $2 trillion was the entire budget for the entire year. And now just one new bill is $2 trillion or $4 trillion with plans for $10 trillion. What people need to understand is that money will never be a reality. It's impossible. If you take everything that Americans earn in a year, we can't possibly work enough.

If we work 16 out of 24 hours a day, we wouldn't have enough money to pay into the U.S. government for the spending that Joe Biden has proposed just in the first two months of this year. So what happens? You go bankrupt. So the United States effectively is in bankruptcy now with no care at all by the current administration of putting us even more in debt.

Well, what happens when that happens? Out of control, a dragon at your door, inflation. It's one of the cruelest taxes of all time. It affects poor people the most. It affects elderly because they worked their whole life.

They tried to save and live modest lives so that they could live off of what they have for the rest of their life together with Social Security. When you have inflation at such an out of control rate, then it's very hard to buy food and it's very hard to pay your electric bill. These are hard things to even talk about because it affects our everyday life. But it's cruel to see what is coming out of Washington, D.C., because it's hurting people who cannot take care of themselves. You can paper it over with whatever nice language you want to use. But the bottom line when you're paying in one gas station in Virginia $6.99 a gallon, that's if they could find gasoline.

When you're at that point, your whole life changes. Very few people I know can afford to pay $6.99 for a gallon of gas. Can I have Tucker Carlson here embellish on this for just a couple of minutes? For example, it probably shouldn't surprise you that once they got their hands on real power, the same lunatics who don't believe in human biology immediately made a serious mess of our economy. It took them less than six months to do it. First, they acted like the U.S. dollar had no value. They spent money like they just printed it for the occasion, which needless to say, they had. And predictably, we wound up with frightening levels of inflation, which, for the record, they still deny exists. But inflation does exist, as you know well, if you live here.

Corn prices, to name just one example of a staple commodity that is now out of control, have risen by 50 percent just since January. But that wasn't bad enough. The lunatics then decided to make it even worse than that. So they paid millions of Americans more than they make it work just to stay home and do nothing. To justify doing this, they used the word COVID quite a bit, but it had nothing to do with the pandemic. They just wanted to break the system.

And so they did. And the rest of us immediately wound up with a bewildering combination of rising unemployment in the middle of a severe labor shortage. So at the very same time, we found ourselves with too many workers and also too few workers.

That doesn't even make sense. But thanks to their policies, that's now exactly what we have. And then finally, in case 2021 didn't remind you enough of a grimmer version of the 1970s, we now have serious gas shortages in a country that was recently energy independent. All along the east coast of the country today, people couldn't fill up their cars.

Take a look at the footage. It looks like Venezuela. Gas shortage is now being reported in at least six states and expected to grow. Stretching down the highways as customers wait at the pumps.

The governor of North Carolina has declared a state of emergency. The station there running out of fuel. As pumps run dry and officials urge drivers not to panic buy. We are completely out of diesel and gas. But already long lines and low fuel gauges. The shutdown of the pipeline is also putting major airports in Baltimore, Charlotte and others on the east coast at risk of low supply. Michelle Bachman, do you have any insight on the incident that caused the crisis with the gasoline on the east coast?

Do I know what caused it? No, I don't. But I will tell you this. What we are seeing in every one of these instances that Tucker Carlson just point out and also the list that you gave, this is not random. This didn't catch the Biden administration by unawares. This was not a foreign planned event. This is actually the plan of the progressive left that run the United States. Everything is going according to plan.

So you say to me, Michelle, who would do this? Why would any politician want to get power only to cause these things to happen? Well, if you look at their policies, they are implementing their policies. This is the Green New Deal. As a matter of fact, within the Biden administration, one of his officials said if people had electric cars, they wouldn't be worried about the loss of gas.

In other words, Marie Antoinette saying, let them eat cake. They forget that electricity has to come from somewhere. Realize communist China builds on average one coal fired power plant every week. Joe Biden is in the process of shutting down coal fired power plants, natural gas fired power plants, all sorts of power. They don't tell us what will replace it because up until this point, solar hasn't had the capacity to replace the energy we need. Neither has wind. And we've seen this last winter all the problems there were with wind power in Texas when a storm came up. They don't have reliable energy to replace.

They don't care. AOC is running the progressives with the Green New Deal and it's the smart hip talk to be for the Green New Deal. This is what the Green New Deal looks like. Gas shortages, gas lines. They believe that gas will go away because what do they tell us? Within 10 years, some say 12 years, climate change will do us all in. They're saying today we've got to get rid of gasoline.

It doesn't matter if we don't have a replacement. We just have to get rid of it. That's what disaster looks like. And it's because Jan, this is what delusion looks like. People tell themselves lies. They believe it. And the practical effect is delusion. Couldn't agree with you more. Delusion, deception.

Those are the two key elements of the last days according to the Bible. I have in front of me an article citing the 120 American generals who have stated that the U.S. may not survive Biden's attack on the Constitution. Let me read two short paragraphs. Our nation is in deep peril, says the letter posted online at the Federalist. Quote, we are in a fight for our survival as a constitutional republic like no other time since our founding. The conflict is between supporters of socialism and Marxism versus supporters of constitutional freedom and liberty.

Goes on under a Democrat Congress and the current administration. Our country has taken a hard left turn towards socialism and communism of a form of tyrannical government they charge. And Michelle, I have had on air, as you probably know, numerous times, Curtis Bowers, who's the best at documenting the 100-year effort to make America a Marxist nation. And we're one of the few bastions of freedom left. I'm sure you saw this 120 American generals stating that the U.S. may not survive Biden's attack on the Constitution.

That was an alarming headline that jumped out at me. It was, especially when you have generals, admirals using the words hard left and communism. These are the old school generals who know what communism is. And from their perspective, communism is a bad thing. We have generals today who may have a different view of communism, but these generals understood this was an enemy. And remember, this last 100 years was the bloodiest in the history of 5000 years of recorded human history. And it was primarily death by communist government. So these aren't nice people.

This is evil and demonic. As a matter of fact, I would just give one example. On day one of Joe Biden's presidency, he canceled the Keystone Pipeline. There was no environmental reason to cancel the Keystone Pipeline.

Why would you do that? You would do that to deny the United States the capitalism, the revenue, the access to energy that would bring about greater advance to the United States. That's what communism seeks to stop. It doesn't want the American people to have the advantages of access to gasoline and to energy.

Eleven thousand jobs were lost that day. How could that be a good thing? That's what these generals are taking a look at and saying, you want evidence of communism?

Look at day one. Who would do that when you're for America? Not a make America great again agenda.

That is dead, gone and buried. This new agenda is a communist first agenda, not America first agenda. Well, this is not your grandmother's Democrat Party for sure. You're listening to Understanding the Times Radio. Jan Markell, I have you in studio as we both headquarter out of the Twin Cities area. Michelle Bachmann, she served Minnesota's sixth district in Congress, 2007 through 2014. She currently is dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University. Michelle, before the program today, we were talking a little bit about the World Economic Forum, the great reset, and the great reset of the World Economic Forum is getting itself set up. I think it wants to be up and running fully. I don't know this.

My hunch is certainly by January 1st. And this is Global Socialism. Klaus Schwab is the head of it.

I've done lots of programming on it. World Elites are a part of it. Bill Gates, Prince Charles. I list a whole number of people for that matter. I think Anthony Fauci is a part of it as well.

It seems everyone is marching in tune to the beat of this drum. That is the great reset, which is built on, as you just said, the Green New Deal. We're talking about power players in the Biden administration.

But above the Biden administration would be the World Economic Forum and their agenda, which is not National Socialism, not North American Socialism, not Western Hemisphere Socialism or Communism, but a global system that answers to just a few power elites. And it's on the horizon. Now, we could say this is the tribulation, and it may be, and the church may be gone and may never see the great reset. Or we could see the beginnings of it.

And I'm not asking for any opinion, because we just don't know. But I think we have to, as I try to do whenever possible, at least give attention to the fact that the World Economic Forum is really behind a lot of things. And the important thing for your listeners to know is that the World Economic Forum isn't interested in our welfare or anyone's welfare across the earth. They don't care about us. We're actually a problem. We're only an asset to be used in the way that they want to use us.

If we're not useful, we're gone. If we're willing to push their agenda forward, then they'll use us. There's a big question about China. China really is the big story on the earth right now. But China, in the long-term scheme of things, is a speed bump. That is not to diminish the importance of what China is doing.

They're a very nefarious, evil actor on the world stage. But ultimately, the race is between will China dominate the earth, or will a global elite system, whether it's the World Economic Forum, dominate the earth? I think what the Bible says is that some global elite, maybe a World Economic Forum type, that's what will dominate. It won't be one nation state like a China. But I do believe the direction we're going in is the Communist China direction. If you look at the United States with the vaccine passports, that's nothing more than a social contract.

I hate to use this term, but the noose is tightening for all of us. And it's because the World Economic Forum saw that when they won the presidency in the United States, and you heard me correctly, the World Economic Forum won the presidency. When they did, that was the jewel in their crown, because then they could move forward with global domination plans, because we were the impediment.

The United States of America, freedom, truth, they needed everyone to come under their thumb. And now they're in the process of ensuring that all of us have to answer to them, rather than us answering to our local governments, or what it should be, government answering to the people. I'm just reading an email here. This happens to be from a Canadian supporter, because again, we can talk about American issues.

But as we're citing here, these are global issues. This is a global countdown that we're in World Economic Forum, great reset behind some of it. But this comes from a Canadian supporter, because Michelle, it's almost like Canada has gone off the deep end. And she says, we are now under a lockdown. This is just recently, and I believe this is Ontario. We are now under a lockdown so strict that police are stopping cars for COVID checks.

People are getting fined if they are not on permitted business, or if there are people from different households in the vehicle. She says, Welcome to Orwell's 1984. And then she continues, I see this being a test model, and she says, for Klaus Schwab's Utopia World. I see us, that's Canada, becoming what Germany was since everything happening here is the same as what happened in pre-World War II Germany. I see people embracing it because good has become evil and evil has become good.

I see persecution for the church explode. Again, Canada. We're recording this program, folks, just a few hours from Canada. She concludes, I truly don't think we have much time left as a world. The illness is nothing more than an excuse to control the world and every human in it. I believe we are getting a foretaste of the great lie.

Michelle, that's a few hours from where we're sitting here in Canada. And I think parts of Europe are equally repressive as is Canada. But that doesn't mean that America couldn't come under this kind of severe control, the tenor of it being almost Nazi-like.

Think of the commonality here. Both America and Canada are descendants of the British parent. So we have that background of a Christian nation, essentially a first world nation in Canada. What's the difference? Canada was more secularized than we were.

Yes. And Canada was willing to accept more of a progressive view. They were choosing a Trudeau for their prime minister. Their prime minister threw off limitations upon his powers. That's what you're seeing by these progressive governors, the progressive prime minister.

They've thrown off limitation on power. That's what's unique about America. Our constitution is a limiting governing document. We maximize power for the individual in America and we limit power to the Supreme Court, to the legislatures, to the executive branch. Under the pretext of COVID, which your Canadian listener was writing about, she was saying this has essentially lifted all restrictions on power over government.

So what has come in its place? Absolute Nazi-type socialistic context. This neighbor, which is a couple hours from us, it should be light years away from us in terms of the type of evil way of life that it's imposing on its people. How often does government ever give you back liberty once they take liberty from you? We have a glaring example in front of us. It should be on the news every single night what is happening in Canada.

But people here in the United States don't know how oppressive Canada has become. Is this a peak into our future? Are you kidding?

Of course it is. This is exactly where the Biden administration is taking us. We're not talking 10 years from now, Jan. We may be talking 10 weeks from now.

That's how quickly this is like lightning. This is the blitzkrieg of our day in terms of losing liberty in front of our eyes. That's why people need to realize, again, this is a delusion that we're being presented. This whole COVID is a cover and a pretext. Again, I've had COVID. People have died from it.

But remember, it's a 99.98 percent chance of recovery. There was never a case to be made for shutting down the economy and giving government these extraordinary powers over our lives. Our president, the Congress, these governors need to give up emergency authorization powers if they have any shred of trying to pretend they still live under the Constitution and let us have our freedom back. We'll know this summer if we get to go back to having our freedom. If we don't, then look at Canada, because that's going to be our life.

I want to play one more soundbite in this Part 1 of my programming. We can actually talk about it when we come back. We have some in Congress, Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan, and others who are trying to push back. This is Ted Cruz. And this is H.R.

1. Again, this would disenfranchise voters forever. And I know voting is a passion for you and for me. He's going to talk here about the bill that is going to possibly change voting forever in America. We'll talk more about it, certainly, in Part 2 of my program.

Let's play this clip. This legislation, to use a phrase that has been popularized on the media recently, is Jim Crow 2.0. This legislation would disenfranchise millions of Americans. Many of us are referring to this legislation as the Corrupt Politicians Act.

Senator Schumer talked about politicians picking their constituents. That's what this legislation does. This legislation is designed to ensure that Democrats never lose another election. This legislation would register millions of illegal aliens to vote.

It is intended to do that. It is intended to do that because Democrats have made the decision that millions of illegal aliens voting are likely to vote for Democrats. This would register vast numbers of criminals and felons to vote because Democrats have made the decisions that criminals and felons are likely to vote for Democrats.

This legislation strikes down virtually every voter integrity law adopted at the state level. Voter ID laws. Over 70 percent of Americans support voter ID laws. By the way, over 60 percent of African Americans in this country support voter ID laws. 29 states have voter ID laws on the books. What does this legislation do?

Strikes them all down. It says it's illegal for any state to have a voter ID law. Ballot harvesting. 31 states prohibit ballot harvesting.

Why? Because it is a corrupt practice where paid operatives handle the ballots of someone else and it has repeatedly led to instances of stealing votes. What does this bill do? It strikes down all 31 states restrictions on ballot harvesting. This bill turns the federal election commission from a bipartisan agency into a partisan agency. Into a partisan agency controlled by Democrats.

Why? Because Democrats want Chuck Schumer in charge of the federal election commission. The effect of that, I will point out, will be that every Republican senator and every Republican House member will be investigated, will be fined, will be prosecuted by the federal election commission. By the way, if this bill were to pass and miraculously Democrats were to lose power, and this is designed to make it impossible for Democrats to lose power, I ask you for a moment, which Democrat on this committee would want a federal election committee controlled by Senator McConnell?

Because I guarantee you that every Democrat would then be investigated and prosecuted and the federal election commission shouldn't be a partisan weapon designed to win elections. This legislation is profoundly dangerous and the reason it suppresses millions of votes is by allowing millions of people to vote illegally. And that is the intended effect and that would be the actual effect of this bill. It dilutes the legal votes of American citizens. That is H.R. 1 that Senator Cruz is talking about. Folks, we've just spent the first half of my program talking about the new restrictions and the new mood in America that has clamped down on the freedoms that America has in the process.

A lot of things are going haywire from the economy to immigration to morality, out of control debt. Well, if you want more of that, this H.R. 1 will guarantee more of that. We'll talk more about that in part two of my programming. I need to take a very short time out and I'm coming back with Michelle Bachman who is in studio with me.

And Michelle actually ran for president of the United States in 2012. She just has great insights, I think, into the tide of our times, which is why I try to bring her on several times a year. So be back in just a couple of minutes. Don't go away. We hope you'll stay in touch with us online through OliveTreeViews.org. That's OliveTreeViews.org. You can call us Central time at 763-559-4444. That's 763-559-4444. Write us through the mail at OliveTree Ministries and Jan Markell, Post Office Box 1452, Maple Grove, Minnesota, 55311. That's Box 1452, Maple Grove, Minnesota, 55311.

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Here's the balance of today's programming. Growing up, we've seen things take a terrible turn, and things obviously began with liberal politics a lot of years ago, and we had the George Floyd incident almost a year ago to the day you and I, Ronnie, are talking about that. You indicated to me on air the Floyd incident had been preceded by 30 days in Minnesota of honoring Allah. The mayor of Minneapolis gave permission to remind us of that for the Muslim call to prayer, which is broadcast in Muslim nations. It was allowed to be broadcast in Minneapolis the first time in the history of America in a major metropolitan area where five times a day praises to Allah were issued through the microphone system over Minneapolis, and at the conclusion of that, then you had the George Floyd incident happen.

That's almost a year to the day here in the Twin Cities. Like I say, it's not the area I grew up in, and that's heartbreaking for me to have to watch the area I literally grew up in taken over by homeless and others. It's where liberalism leads to. I went out of part one of the program with that clip from Ted Cruz because we are concerned that there be free and fair elections.

He was talking about H.R. 1, which is a law that's going to disenfranchise voters and make it impossible for progressives to ever lose an election. You've been a politician for a lot of years. At the moment, you're not doing that because you're dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University, but your thoughts when you heard Ted Cruz a few minutes ago?

He was exactly right in everything that he said. Essentially, what H.R. 1 does, and people need to know this is the number one priority for the Democrat Party, the most selfish politicians in the world are the ones who want to ensure that they will never lose an election. They will never be held accountable for what they do. If they can fix it so they can rig an outcome of the election, outcome based elections act, or a voter fraud entitlement act, then they can pass anything they want. They don't worry about getting thrown out of office by the people because, again, they despise the will of the people. They fear the people. And so what they want to do is make sure that they deny all of us our vote. That's what Ted Cruz was saying.

H.R. 1 has already passed through the House of Representatives twice under Nancy Pelosi. It sits in the U.S. Senate. Joe Biden said he will sign it. The only thing that's stopping it from passing are two Democrat senators. One is Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The other is Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona. To think that two Democrat senators can't be promised something in exchange for their vote, that's how Washington works.

Just look for it at the most opportune time. We will see the pressure come to bear on passing this bill. So everyone needs to know what this is and put the pressure on the West Virginia Senator Manchin and on the senator from Arizona and also prayer, because God is so much more powerful than any grubby politician. So we cry out to God for our deliverance, not to a politician. We cry out to God. We need to also be wise and cognizant of what's happening in our day. Remember, we're in a very different day and time. We need to know what the evil is about us.

We don't fear the evil, but we have to be wise and we have to come against that evil. Do you see some on the right pushing back? We just heard Senator Cruz eloquently trying to push back. Sometimes I get the feeling that he's a minority of 6 or 8 or 10. Who do you see pushing back against the insanity that we've talked about for over 30 minutes?

Jan, I can tell you that it has always been a minority that pushes back, always. So Ted Cruz is Jim Jordan and the House is. I hope that Jim Jordan will be the next Speaker of the House. He should be.

He and I both came into Congress at the same time in 2006. He's as real today as he was when he came in in 06. And he's a believer. He's a family man. And people should pray for Jim Jordan. And I think he would make a marvelous Speaker of the House.

He's a wrestling coach. And I think that's a good background for him to try and wrestle that Republican conference to get a spine. I think it's very important that we realize the power of prayer. There aren't that many who understand the times that we live in and who are trying to push back. Most of them want to keep their job and keep their head down and don't say too much because we're living in a vicious era. Politics is very different than what I was in. So it takes someone with tremendous courage. You have to be from a strong Republican district so you don't lose your seat. But sometimes you have to be willing to lose your seat to fight.

We have a couple who will, but not very many. We talked a moment ago about God, what was tragic this year, National Day of Prayer. The White House did not mention God on the National Day of Prayer. I think that is telling of why our country is in disarray as we speak.

It is. I was on the White House lawns in the Rose Garden for National Day of Prayer with Donald J. Trump when we had worship music in the White House on the lawn of the White House. We had prayer. It was as biblical as anything I have ever seen. And this is one of the rare times where on a National Day of Prayer, the word God isn't even mentioned, let alone Jesus Christ.

So it was completely absent. And that's indicative of the administration that we're in right now. This is not an administration that cares about us. They don't care what the will of the people is. They don't care that our founding documents were based upon the Bible and the Judeo-Christian ethic. They don't care. What they care about is their transformative view of the world. And that's a man-centered view of the world.

During the break, you talked to me, Jan, about January 6th. We're all told that that's the worst day that ever happened. These were the worst riots in America. It absolutely wasn't. It is my opinion that this was a theatrical event that the progressive left put on.

The individuals who were the instigators who brought this about, these were agitators brought in to create this problem. I believe it was specifically done to rebrand Donald Trump as being an insurrectionist and a leader of a terrorist movement. I also believe that this was done to rebrand the Make America Great agenda, because remember, that was considered extremely popular by about 80 million Americans. So they wanted to rebrand Make America Great as an evil thing.

And those of us who supported Donald Trump and that agenda as evil and terrorists, that's all a lie, as your listeners have seen. In the last five months, you wouldn't even know that Donald J. Trump was ever the president. You wouldn't even know that those four years of his presidency existed. George Orwell wrote a book 1984. He talked about a concept called the memory hole. If the government in charge didn't want you to remember someone, they put them in the memory hole. Donald J. Trump has been put in a memory home. Make America Great Again has been put in a memory hole.

In other words, oh, it never happened. And people, when you look, compare and contrast to what Donald J. Trump did, it's very hard to build up and create wealth. He helped that happen. Today, it's just the opposite. Wealth is being stolen from the poorest among us.

It is cruel what is happening today. We can't get sucked into the delusion of the mainstream media. They want us to believe that Donald J. Trump was evil and that the Make America Great Again agenda was evil and that it was Donald J. Trump inspired insurrectionists on January 6th.

And that isn't true at all. That's why recently your listeners heard all about Liz Cheney. Nobody cares anything about Liz Cheney.

She was not a big, important player in D.C., but she was a useful tool used by the leftists in D.C. to throw another javelin through the heart of the Make America Great Again agenda, because what is it that the progressives fear? They fear Donald Trump running in 2024. They fear the Make America Great agenda coming forward because if you compare that with no gas, high inflation, no jobs, people on unemployment, wars breaking out all over the world, which would you pick? You'd pick Donald J. Trump. You'd pick Make America Great.

You wouldn't pick this mess that we're living with right now. So they're doing everything they can. And it wouldn't surprise me if Liz Cheney didn't get a pretty sweet deal for the betrayal and sabotage that she did to Donald J. Trump. You're listening to Understanding the Times Radio. I'm Jan Markell. I have in the studio the familiar voice of Michelle Bachman. She's currently the dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University.

She's home a bit here for the summer. Michelle, I'm transitioning a little bit here into foreign policy. And I think I'd like to jumpstart this next few minutes with a very short clip by your friend and mine, Amir Sarfati, and that is Israel has been embroiled in, let's just call it, a war here for the last 10 days or so. I don't know quite where it's going.

It certainly could explode into regional activity. Amir has some insights here as to how what's happening could be prophetic. In it, he says something very profound, I think, and that is keep your eyes on Damascus. In other words, is what's happening in Israel, and by the way, Michelle, it's happening because of our weak foreign policy stand and the fact that we're not standing by Israel.

As a matter of fact, we've just given $235 million dollars to the Palestinians back in April, and they're turning that around and dropping thousands of rockets on Israel. Let's play this clip here and come back and talk about it. But until then, here we are. We're still here and we have all these events. And where are we in the prophetic timetable?

Very, very easy. We are now being tested. The waters are being tested. People are testing the readiness of Israel.

Iran is testing. Isn't that interesting that Turkey went to Russia, asked for the U.N. and for the international community to punish Israel? They don't even go to America anymore. There's no one to talk to in America.

There's no someone in charge there. I mean, now Russia becomes the boss in the Middle East. As of now, Russia is okay with Israel because they don't like the Iranian destabilization of this area. But as soon as Damascus is going to be destroyed, as soon as the apple of the eye of Moscow is going to be gone, then the road to lead a coalition against Israel with those that are ready to do that is very, very easy. So keep your eyes on Damascus because that will ignite that fire of Ezekiel war. And remember that in the meantime, pray for the peace of Jerusalem and pray for Israel and pray for the Prime Minister. Look, one of the reasons they're testing us right now is because they see the political instability in Israel. Netanyahu might not form the next government. They understand that the rest are so weak.

Let's test them. It's not going to work this time. So I want to encourage you again with Colossians chapter three verses one and two. I want you to remember there's a lot of things that are going to happen. Not everything means the end of everything.

It's testing the waters before the biggie. And the biggie, of course, is Ezekiel war, which we may not even be here to see it with our very eyes. And that tells you how much I'm excited about our soon departure from this place. That was Amir Sarafati.

He'll be my radio guest in a couple of weeks. Michelle, a couple of things jumped out at me in that clip by Amir. The boss in the Middle East is now Russia, according to Amir. Obviously, Iran and Turkey are stepping up and playing major roles.

And again, that's Gog Magog. Then Amir emphasizes the political instability in Israel, which is going on as we speak. Interestingly enough, political instability in Israel, political instability in America.

Did something else jump out at you? Obviously, our cozy relationship now with the Iranians, sending not just the Palestinians millions, but the Iranians and the various JCPOA that's being reignited, etc. Whether it's domestic policy or foreign policy, it doesn't get any more bizarre. I feel like I've fallen into Alice's Wonderland.

And I'm looking at the Mad Hatter. This didn't just happen overnight. Remember, under Barack Obama, he completely changed the dynamic in the Middle East. The Russians were out of the Middle East.

They didn't have a presence for 35 years. They certainly didn't in Israel. But when Barack Obama came in, he completely turned the tables with the JCPOA agreement. That's the agreement with Iran. That completely upended and destroyed the Middle East. Everyone else in the world knows, including the U.S. State Department, that Iran was and is the number one leading terror state in the world.

And they have been since 1979. So why in the world would Barack Obama give literally $150 billion to Iran, over $4 billion in cash to them? Then Donald Trump came in. He had a very traditional American view toward Israel, being pro-Israel. We never had a more pro-Israel president. Well, the Biden administration is here, and it is Obama times 10. Now everyone in the Middle East sees what's going on.

We don't know where this is in prophecy, but here's something else that you have to realize. Destabilization in the American government, destabilization in the Israeli government. There's also destabilization in the Palestinian Authority, because Abbas is in the 16th year of his four-year term.

Once these people get elected to office, they don't leave. Even his own people in the Fatah party, they were saying, hey, buddy, we got to have an election here. So he said, okay, we'll have an election. And so shazam, a war breaks out and he blames Israel.

It's very likely that this also has a part to play. It works for Abbas to have exactly the status quo that's been. He wants to be in power.

He loves to get the money from the United States. He frankly needs to have the Israelis in Judea and Samaria because otherwise Hamas would come in and he'd be gone. The Fatah party would be gone. They call the Israelis the bad guys, but they actually need the Jewish Israelis to keep Abbas in power in the Fatah party. So there's a lot of dynamics going on here. And there is instability where quite literally for two years, we haven't had a real government in Israel. This has never happened before where Israel has had this level of problems and instability. We've had four elections. Now there'll be a fifth election in Israel. We still don't have a stable government.

And then you look to the shores of the United States and all you see is a land that you no longer recognize. The world went through this with Barack Obama for eight years. They know that it's worse under Joe Biden because they know Joe Biden isn't running the show. They know Kamala Harris isn't. They know that it's somebody behind the scenes or a group of elites running the show. The only thing they know is that America isn't back. America's gone. So when the cat's away, the mice will play and the mice are playing all over the world. The Chinese are playing, the Iranians are playing, the Turks are playing, the Russians are playing. Everybody's taking advantage of us. In just five months.

In five months. The floor has dropped out of the United States. I hate to say that to your listeners, how bad it is. It's fallen out domestically. A president can come in and they can turn the tables on the economy. They can actually get an economy going fairly quickly. What has long-term implications, and some are impossible to even change, is foreign affairs. When you get foreign policy wrong, it's decades into the future. And the example I've given historically is Jimmy Carter, who sat on his hands in 1979 when the Shah of Iran needed us. That was the rise of the modern state of terrorism in 1979 because Jimmy Carter got it wrong. Now you've got Joe Biden, who it was famously said of him, that there isn't one foreign policy he ever got right in 50 years. He's always been wrong on foreign policy.

Well, that truism has been proved to be true again. He's gotten everything wrong on foreign policy in five months, so much so that he's pulled the United States back into foreign wars, exactly the opposite of what Donald Trump was doing. Donald Trump rebuilt a weakened military and he pulled us out of foreign engagements and he built up American jobs and the American economy.

Now we're doing just the opposite in five months' time. Well, I appreciated some of the insight that Amir gave in that clip. He's saying, let's look at this a little bit from a prophetic perspective because the Bible outlines things to come with Israel, Middle East being the center of the storm.

We've been watching for 10 days, almost two weeks. It's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking because you're looking at Jerusalem on fire.

You're looking at Tel Aviv, Ashkelon, Ashdod. It is horrible to think of all of the people who've been killed. But this is what happens. Innocent people get killed when you have bad actors in positions of power. I would submit that there are bad actors in power in the United States. There are bad actors in power in Iran, Turkey. That's a given, certainly in the Palestinian Authority.

Very selfish people, not led by a biblical worldview. And you have Israel in turmoil without a stable government. That's why we had a meeting of a wonderful prayer coalition, thousands of people in prayer for Israel, because they were under rocket attack from thousands of rockets. As you had mentioned, Jan, $235 million. The United States under Joe Biden foolishly put into the hands of the Palestinians so they could finance this war. This isn't hard to figure out.

The war was financed by the United States through the ill-gotten money that was sent to the Palestinian Authority, or at least the promise of money, and they got loans instead. And Iran sees an opportunity. So this happens. Well, then what does the believer do? These people aren't in charge. Ultimately, God is in charge. He is our judge. He is a righteous judge. He pursues us with unfailing love.

Our cup runneth over with goodness. His hands move when we pray. And that's why we are praying for the peace of Jerusalem, because he neither slumbers nor sleeps, who watches over Israel. That is our God. We don't know what God's timetable ultimately is.

We know what will happen. His word is clear, but it is our job as those who believe in the Bible, who love our God. His heart is for Israel and his chosen people. And so it's our job to pray for Jerusalem. We pray for the Jewish people. We pray for the land of Israel.

Why? Because God's plan is to have a specific people on a specific land for the purpose of blessing the nations. The nations are blessed from Zion. The word goes forth from Zion. God's glory goes forward from Zion. And so we pray for Zion. We are called to. That is one thing that we are admonished to do, to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And they need those prayers now. And you've been an activist in this realm for years, Michelle.

So have I. But have you ever seen a time of such intensity where what you've just said is so urgent right now? Both the domestic issues we've talked about, that's urgent. Foreign policy, that's urgent. But let's just confine it to God's covenant land and people.

I'm not sure when, at least not since 1967 and 1973, more urgent than right now. And that was a miracle. That was instability that led to a miracle. 1948 was instability that led to a miracle. All of Israel's foreign policy and military has been miraculous interventions from a holy God. Clearly, there's no other way to say it.

It is the same today. There will be miraculous intervention from his hand. But at a certain point, the scripture says, we know, as Amir said, that Damascus will be gone very quickly. And we know that the nations of the earth will gather together on the hills to come against Israel. But we also have the assurance that when the morning comes, that God will have vanquished the enemy and that Israel will be spared and the people will know it is the hand of God. But that again speaks of his time clock. That's what we're talking about.

Instability in America, instability in the earth, instability in Israel. But again, God holds us in the palm of his hand, the book of Jude says. And that's why it's even more important that we know his word today.

We don't need to fear. We don't need to despair because he neither slumbers nor sleeps. And that's why it's more important that we are dialed into him through prayer. We need to know his word and then we pray according to his word. It's the most efficient way to pray. Remember the fervent, effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much. This is the day for righteous men and righteous women to cry out to our holy God. There are many listening today, Michelle, who are watchmen on the wall.

That's a very high calling. I think some people think maybe it isn't, but a watchman on the wall keeps track of the tide of our times, tries to warn people. Now, just what people do with that warning is not our responsibility, but I think it is our responsibility when we see certain things, particularly when we see the truth that we talk about it.

And we get labeled all sorts of things. I could rattle off the names that were called all the time, but I just want my audience to be encouraged that if they are a watchman on the wall today, that's one of the highest callings that there is because it's sounding an alarm. And the Bible says in Ezekiel, if you see the sword coming and you don't sound the alarm, the blood is on your hands. All the more important, folks, to tell the truth when you see it, to tell it like it is when you see it, to be that in tune watchman on the wall.

Michelle, in 30 seconds, I'm giving it back to you. People often are very conflicted about sharing the gospel. I would say today is the time to not have fear. Today is the time to be free about speaking about what the Bible says. We are so wide open with opportunities to speak to people because you can just look at where the world is at and tie that directly to scripture, not for the purpose of being political, for the purpose of being biblical and then tie people into God's plan.

The bad ending is not meant for anyone. God loves everyone. Again, Psalm 23, with his unfailing love, he pursues us.

His goal is to overflow in our lives with his goodness. That's the good news that every one of your listeners has, to share with everyone who's filled with questions. Share the good news.

Just look at Psalm 23. It is filled with good news. Keep Michelle in prayer.

She serves at the School of Government, Dean of the School of Government at Regent University. Thank you, Michelle, for coming in. I know you're enjoying your summer here in the Twin Cities. Folks, I'm just going to go out of the program, partly because we're running really out of time. A little saying I like to use now and then, particularly in light of times that are trying, troubling for sure, won't you always look back and thank him, look around and serve him, look ahead and trust him, but always look up and expect him. He is coming again. He's coming again sooner rather than later.

He's coming again, even perhaps today. I want to thank you for listening and we will talk to you again next week. We welcome friendly feedback at OliveTreeViews.org. That's OliveTreeViews.org. Call us central time at 763-559-4444 at 763-559-4444. Get our mail when you write to Jan Markell and Olive Tree Ministries, Box 1452, Maple Grove, Minnesota, 55311.

That's Box 1452, Maple Grove, Minnesota, 55311. All gifts are tax deductible. We look forward to the time when the government will be upon his shoulders, the millennial reign of Jesus Christ. At that time, government will be righteous and fair. Until then, know that God still has everything under control. He cares for you more than you know, and everything is falling into place.