Losing Religion?

The following program is recorded content created by Truth Network. At the SteveNobleShow.com and now here's your host, Steve Noble. The Steve Noble Show, the Steve Noble Show.com. You can go to the website there. You can join us here in the studio in the Star Wars themed studio on Facebook Live or in Rumble, both places. Just look up the Steve Noble Show there. And if you missed the show live, you can always grab it on podcast.

Pretty much all the major podcast platforms is where you can find the show. But this one just came in. I like this headline in a blow to the Biden Department of Justice, to which I say, amen.

Jury acquits pro-life activist of all charges. So you see that they were throwing this out there in the last couple of years, where if you were doing anything that the pro-aborts didn't like outside of a clinic, then all of a sudden, did you notice over the last year and a half or so that all of a sudden the feds are getting involved and they show up at people's front door and they bring a show of force and they come in and they go after them because they're disrupting access to the abortion wary. That's called freedom of access to clinic entrances, the face act.

So this guy was Mark Houck, H-O-U-C-K. I don't know how to pronounce his last name, but this was October 13, 2021, altercation with an abortion clinic volunteer. And the jury came back not guilty on all charges, which I'm sure the weeping and gnashing of teeth that you hear is coming from Washington, D.C. and the Department of Justice because they couldn't hang this pro-lifer out to dry.

So that's good. And hopefully, God willing, the other cases that are using the face act will go the same direction. Briefly talk about the did you see the Tyreen Nichols video? There were three or four different versions from the different cops, five cops and now six. Five are summarily fired and are facing second degree murder charges as they should.

And then a sixth one is involved. And just I mean, you look at that and go, OK, now some wackadoodles out there are saying, well, even that's racist because the five cops were black. Tyreen Nichols was black. And somehow somebody's making the claim that, well, because of racism, that would be racism of white people by white people. Then that's what eventually led to this. No, this isn't a racism issue.

This is a sin heart issue. Unfortunately, I think in many ways, a culture issue and an interesting story. I heard this the other day that the Memphis PD, that's where these police officers were. Memphis PD had dramatically lowered standards before hiring officers charged in Tyreen Nichols death. At least two of them were hired since they lowered their standards and they had like a fifteen thousand dollar signing bonus and lowered the education and fitness requirements. I wonder why that is. Because on the heels of all the George Floyd BLM stuff, cities and then, of course, defund the police and then cities couldn't find police officers. So they're all scrambling and couldn't hire anybody.

So they lower their standards. And so you get what? Well, I think partially you get what we saw happen to Tyreen Nichols, who was essentially beat to death, kind of left to die. It took about 30 minutes for the ambulance to get there. These guys are standing around, basically taking turns beating the tar out of the guy is unbelievable violence and depravity to watch that. OK, he ran.

All right. He's twenty nine. He weighs about 150 pounds. These guys are all big. They're all wearing body armor, whatever, yada yada.

And he ran. And then they just just wouldn't stop. I'm like, I'm watching these videos going, why are they continuing to beat the pulp out of the guy?

Like, like what is that? Well, what that is, is human depravity on full display, which, by the way, knows no bounds when it comes to skin color or profession. So the fact that they're cops doesn't change the fact that they have a sin nature. And if you look at there's seven hundred fifty thousand police officers nationwide, what percentage of them are anywhere near like these guys that shouldn't have a job today? Is it five percent? That's thirty seven thousand five hundred police officers, friend. Is it 10 percent? That's seventy five thousand police officers that shouldn't have a job today if it's just 10 percent. But let's let's be unusually hopeful and say it's five percent. That's thirty seven thousand five hundred police officers that should not have a job today for various reasons. Meaning ninety five percent of the police are good people, even if it's just five percent are terrible, horrible.

Hopefully not as bad as these five. But let's say they are. That's thirty seven thousand five hundred police officers that shouldn't have a job today. We better take that seriously, simply because there's seven hundred fifty thousand police officers worldwide.

OK. But just horrific and just be in prayer, just in general, specifically as these things occur as followers of Jesus Christ, all of us. That's that pray without ceasing aspect of our walk with Christ that just as you go throughout your day, be it personal, family, friends, something you see on the news, something you see out in the culture. Just keep the conversation open with the Lord as these things happen and just pray as you feel led.

Praying for Tyreen Nichols, family and friends, that community in Memphis, these cops, the family of the cops, anybody you can think of. And just continue to keep the lines open and pray because these problems are so deep, they're so bad at this point that we have to primarily engage as people of the book. We have to primarily engage in the heavenlies, in the spiritual realm. There's other things to do, of course, but primarily the most powerful thing we can do is just calling out to the Lord with this stuff. Then I'll finish with this and then we come back another story that I want to dive into the state of religion in America and around the world. Did you see this one?

I put this one up on Facebook. People probably didn't like what I had to say. Donald Trump the other day said, Ron, meaning DeSantis, would not have been the governor if it wasn't for me. So then when I hear he might run for president, you know, I consider that very disloyal.

Donald Trump's turning into a movie character. I mean, what are you, Emperor Palpatine? Won't put up with any disloyalty?

Maybe you're Snoke? Not going to put up with any disloyalty? Really, you want Ron DeSantis to bow the knee to you, Donald?

No, he's becoming a caricature of himself. I mean, no, no, thank you, Mr. Former President. This is Steve Noble. We'll be right back. Oh, yeah. Well, loving that new bump music. It's good to have that switched out.

Thank you for your patience after the last two years. Real quick, I mentioned this one the other day. Welcome back at Steve Noble, The Steve Noble Show. I mentioned this the other day. I'm not going to dive into it too much, but an interesting article. The justices don't want to know who leaked the Dobbs decision. Isn't that unbelievable?

As much as we can do, we can go whack a terrorist halfway around the world with some guy sitting in this, a little barn in Florida somewhere flying a drone over Yemen. We can do that, but we can't figure out who leaked the Dobbs decision. Alito's, quote unquote, draft report of the decision, which is just ridiculous. Eight months later, the report reveals that the court has still failed to identify the leaker. It does state that Michael Chertoff, a former federal judge and secretary of Homeland Security for George W. Bush, reviewed the court's probe and found that it had exhausted all useful, useful investigative measures.

Right. So this is from an article between Mark Stern and Dahlia Lithwick when they did an interview, a conversation about this. And what you found was we now know that the marshal Gail Curley and her staff conducted one hundred twenty six formal interviews of ninety seven employees. They we know they undertook a forensic analysis of the court's I.T., then scrutinized employees personal phone records and search histories. We even know they read a bunch of random tweets speculating about the identity of the leaker.

And then Dahlia says this, I mean, look, I wrote some snarky things about Harriet the spy last week and all the ways to cheat. Justice didn't seriously want to get to the bottom of this thing. It's why this investigation was an outsourced to the FBI or some investigatory entity with real teeth. And it's why it appears former clerks, the justices and the justices spouses were seemingly not meaningfully investigated.

What's up with that? I think my takeaway is that this should not have been the greatest unsolved mystery of the century. And yet somehow it was somehow an unprecedented act of terrible violence and betrayal done to the judiciary in the country wasn't solved because either nobody really wanted it solved or it is truly the Loch Ness monster of our time. Basically, I don't think the court wants us to know who did it. And I'm actually no longer certain the justices want to know themselves. So the other guy, Stern, says, well, even if somebody really wanted it solved, they'd be stymied by the court's own terrible security policies. The report says that the investigators could review print job couldn't review print jobs because networked printers had very little logging capability. This is in the United States Supreme Court. And a lot of printers weren't even connected to the court's networks.

What is this, 1950? At least one employee had a printer at home from which investigators were mysteriously not able to retrieve any logs. Security protocols around handling of hard copy drafts, especially taking them home, is also incredibly lax. And eighty two employees had access to the draft, which suggests document control issues.

No kidding. Honestly, after reading this report, I'm surprised it took this long for someone to leak a draft opinion. I mean, it's really once again, the federal government literally just forget about it and you can't trust them.

You literally can't. And so the swamp extends, obviously, to a certain extent into the U.S. Supreme Court, which is sad. And I was thinking, OK, find them out, ban them from practicing law for the rest of lives. It should ruin their career. And probably there should be some charges filed now.

They're like, we can't even find who leaked it. Maybe that's because it was Sotomayor. I don't know. But that's pretty pathetic, to say the least. OK. The state of religion in America. This article from The Guardian, January 22nd, Losing the Religion. Why U.S. churches are on the decline. OK, this shouldn't surprise any of you.

You should understand this already. About forty five hundred Protestant churches closed in twenty nineteen. The last year data is available with about three thousand new churches opening, according to LifeWay Research. It was the first time the number of churches in the U.S. hadn't grown since the evangelical firm started studying the topic. The closures, even for a temporary period of time, impacted a lot of churches, talking about COVID. People breaking that habit of attending church means a lot of churches had to work hard to get people back to attending again. In the last three years, all signs are pointing to a continued pace of closures, probably similar to twenty nineteen or possibly higher, as there's been a really bad rapid rise in American individuals who say they're not religious. That's where we get the phrase nuns from, N-O-N-E-S. OK. Protestant pastors reported that typical church attendance is only 85 percent of pre-pandemic levels, while research by the Survey Center of American Life and the University of Chicago found that in the spring of twenty twenty two, 67 percent of Americans reported attending church at least once a year, compared with 75 percent before the pandemic. What?

What? Why does that even matter? Why is that even a statistic that anybody would cite? 67 percent of Americans reported attending church at least once a year. That would be Christmas Eve, right? Or if they're feeling really guilty, Easter. But 67 percent went, oh, I went at least once. Half of them are probably lying. But while COVID-19 may have accelerated the decline, there is a broader, long running trend of people moving away from religion. In 2017, LifeWay surveyed young adults aged between 18 and 22 who had attended church regularly for at least a year during high school. The firm found that seven out of the ten had stopped attending church with regularity. OK, they're walking away from the church.

That's out there. And so the younger generation just doesn't feel like they're being accepted in a church environment. Some of their choices aren't being accepted by those at church.

No kidding. About a quarter of the young adults who dropped out of church said they disagreed with their church's stance on political and social issues, McConnell said. Of course, that's if their church is preaching the truth.

That's going to be a direct contradiction to much of the world and the culture's positions on important issues of the day. So if you go to a Bible believing church, you're going to have a problem. If you go to a non-Bible believing church, a compromise church, PCUSA, Episcopalian, Methodist, stuff like that, then increasingly you'll fit right in. They're not going to have a problem with any social positions.

Doesn't matter how radical they are. A study by Pew Research found that the number of Americans who identified as Christian was 64 percent in 2020, with 30 percent of the U.S. population being classed as religiously unaffiliated. About six percent of Americans identified with Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. OK, that's that 30 percent religiously unaffiliated.

That's where you get the nuns. They're not, by definition, atheists or even agnostic. They're just not saying that they affiliate with a specific religion, even though most of them, if you pinned them down, would probably say Christianity in one way or another. Since the 1990s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing rank of adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. This accelerating trend is reshaping the U.S. religious landscape.

In 1972, 92 percent of Americans said they were Christian, Pew reported. But by 2070, that number will drop to below 50 percent. And the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans or nuns will probably outnumber those adhering to Christianity. OK, so that's the future here in America by 2070. No surprise, same thing in Canada, same thing in Europe. But what about the rest of the world?

That's where it gets interesting here. What about the rest of the world? And what about atheism specifically? Do you assume that atheism is growing as you look around the world?

Forget America here for a second, if you can. Do you assume that atheism is growing around the world? Well, the trend there may surprise you. And it all ties back to a worldview in terms of just a religious worldview versus a non-religious worldview. The more non-religious the worldview, the less interest they are that those people have in what?

Procreating, having babies. So that's going to factor into it when we come back from the break. We'll talk about that, why faith is becoming more and more popular when it comes to the world.

Pretty fascinating compared to the U.S. So I want to unpack that a little bit and then one more good news story out of Utah. And then we'll talk to our friend David Fisher after that. We'll be right back. Welcome back at Steve Noble, The Steve Noble Show.

Great to be with you. What is the status of not just Christianity in America and in Europe, but around the world? What's going on there? We know in America, Christianity, quote unquote Christianity, is on the decline.

You have to I call something that visually has been in my brain for several years now because I'm looking at numbers and research and stuff like this all the time. And I had this picture of, you know, kind of a big a big pile of everything that we call a Christian church in America. So there's this big pile and then at the center of the pile underneath the pile, as if everything else is sitting on top of it, is the actual biblical church. I mean, churches where they preach the unadulterated full counsel of God, the full gospel. They preach from the front to the back. They they believe it. They proclaim it. They don't compromise Christianity. Getting into heaven isn't about being a decent person.

It's about being born again. They preach the truth. OK, so that's a small group. That's convictional Christians in America that go to church three or four times a month has remained at about 22 percent of the population since the early nineteen hundreds.

That's probably a surprise to you, right? You were thinking back in the 1920s and 30s that it was probably 50, 60, 70 percent of people were regular church attenders, convictional church attenders for the last hundred years has been right around 22 percent. So I call that the actual real church.

That's the remnant. And then on top of that, you pile everything else. All the feel good churches, the apostate churches. You got the Methodist Church, get the PC USA, Episcopalian churches, all that kind of stuff to a certain degree. The Catholic Church, all kinds of stuff. OK, all that's piled up on top of it. But who's actually teaching the full counsel of God?

That's that's down below. So the church is falling away. That's what that's what you see happening in America and in Europe, which is why you're saying, OK, Christianity is just on the decline. And pretty soon and in about 50 years, there'll be more people that say they're not religiously affiliated in America than people that say they're Christians.

OK, that's just where we're going. That shouldn't surprise anybody. And same thing is true in Europe. But what are what about the rest of the world? This is really interesting.

Here's another article. Now, the data is about four years old, but the trends are it's still in play. Why faith is becoming more and more popular. How many believers are there around the world?

If you think religion belongs to the past and we live in a new age of reason, you need to check out the facts. Eighty four percent of the world's population identifies with a religious group. OK, we're not talking about exclusively Christian here. Members of this demographic are generally younger and produce more children than those who have no religious affiliation.

Wonder why that is. So the world is getting more religious, not less. Although there are significant geographical variations like we're seeing here in the good old US of A. According to 2015 figures.

OK, so these are eight years old, but the trend line is working. OK, you can study this stuff for yourself. Christians formed the biggest religious group by some margin with two point three billion adherents or thirty one point two percent of the total world population. Next come Muslims at twenty four percent, Hindus at fifteen percent, Buddhists at six point nine percent.

The next category is people who practice folk or traditional religions. It's about six percent. But the third biggest category that's missing from the list that I just mentioned is one point two billion people in the world or 16 percent said they have no religious affiliation at all.

Sixteen percent. This doesn't mean that all those people are committed atheists. Some, perhaps most, have a strong sense of spirituality or belief in God, gods or guiding forces, but they don't identify with their practice and organized religion. OK, because the reason behind that, friends, is Romans Chapter one. God has made his existence plain so that men are without excuse. Everybody knows when they look at a star filled sky that there's something rather than nothing.

You reverse that. Go look in a microscope. Go look in an electron microscope. And, you know, there's something rather than nothing. When you look at design, whether you're talking about the position of the Earth, its axis, its tilt, the position of the sun and the moon, the position of the Milky Way within the larger universe and all these other things. You start going, this looks tampered with like.

This can't possibly be the result of random forces. OK, all kinds of stuff there. So the heavens declare the glory of God, right? Creation screams God's existence in the vast majority of people on the planet are not so arrogant as to say there's nothing.

OK, that's that's why you get this. Then we break it all down. And that's why the gospel is so important and missions are so important because there's a whole lot of people on this planet don't even know the name of Jesus. So worldwide, you have 16 percent that have no religious affiliation, but that doesn't mean they're atheists. Almost all religions have subdivisions.

Christians can be Roman Catholic, Protestant, Ethan, Orthodox, so on and so forth. Muslims, same thing. Hinduism, same thing. There's two different main traditions in Buddhism.

OK, so that's out there, too, when you break it all down. Geography is also important in religion. Asia Pacific is the most populous region in the world and also the most religious. It is home to 99 percent of Hindus, 99 percent of Buddhists and 90 percent of those practicing folk or traditional religions. Three quarters of religious people live in a country where they form a majority of the population. The remaining quarter live as religious minorities. The short answer in terms of what's growing and where is religions on the wane in Western Europe and North America. That's because we are excellent at idolatry, outpacing everybody else in terms of idolizing ourselves.

And we're so advanced, right? Islam's fastest growing religion in the world, more than twice as fast as the overall global population. Between 2015 and 2016, the world's inhabitants are expected to increase by 32 percent. But the Muslim population is forecast to grow by 70 percent. And even though Christians will also outgrow the general population over that period, with an increase of 34 percent forecast mainly thanks to population growth in sub-Saharan Africa, Christianity is likely to lose its top spot in the World Religion League table to Islam by the middle of this century. OK, so that's out there in the future. Again, are you worried?

I'm not. I'm sad for the people that reject Christ, but I'm not worried about the ultimate destination here. And while the religiously unaffiliated currently make up 16 percent of the global population, only about 10 percent of the world's newborns were born to religiously unaffiliated mothers between 2010 and 2015. But 23 percent of American Muslims say they're converts to the faith. And in recent years, there's been growing anecdotal evidence of Muslim refugees converting to Christianity in Europe. China has seen a huge religious revival in recent years.

Thank you, Lord. And some predict it will have the world's largest Christian population by 2030. The number of Chinese Protestants has grown by an average of 10 percent annually since 1979, to between 93 million and 115 million, according to one estimate.

There are reckoned to be another 10 to 12 million Catholics. So what's the lesson there? The more freedom you have, the easier it is on you, the less you need God.

Therefore, you turn away to your own devices. In contrast, Christianity is in the decline of Western Europe, Ireland, Scotland, all the same. So then you've got the nuns. OK, this is very interesting because God wants us to be fruitful and multiply.

That's what he says. Globally, the relatively young population and high fertility rates of Muslims led to a projection that between 2030 and 2035, there will be slightly more babies born to Muslims than to Christians. And even though the total Christian population will stay larger by 2055 to 2060, the birth gap between the two groups is expected to approach six million more Muslims than Christians.

In contrast, this is so interesting to me. With this baby boom among Muslims, people who do not identify with any religion are experiencing a much different trend. While religiously unaffiliated people currently make up 16 percent of the global population, only an estimated 10 percent of the world's newborns between 2010 and 2015 were born to religiously unaffiliated mothers. This dearth of newborns among the unaffiliated helps explain why religious nuns are projected to decline as a share of the world's population in the coming decades. By 2055 to 2060, just nine percent of all babies will be born to religiously unaffiliated women, while more than seven in ten, that's 70 percent, will be born to either Muslims, 36 percent, or Christians, 35 percent. So the more religious people are, the more they procreate, have babies, the more they have families, because generally, as a religious practice, they're less selfish. They look beyond themselves to something bigger, something higher. But if you're religiously unaffiliated and you're not going to adhere, then it's all about you, baby. I mean, we all fight that anyway, right? It's all about you. So the people who are religiously unaffiliated, atheists and so on and so forth, actually aren't doing a good job replacing themselves.

They're way behind the curve. And so the world as a whole gets more religious, not less. And then we know ultimately the trump card is Christ.

And all just remember this, every other religion on the planet outside of biblical Christianity is a false religion. Created by the devil himself to lead people away from Christ. They know. Just think how the devil works here for a second. They know God exists. They know there's something rather than nothing because God's made it obvious.

So now the question is, what do you do with the obvious? That's where Satan comes in and says, I'm going to come up with all kinds of things. I'll meet you in a cave. I'll get you some golden plates out in Pennsylvania, whatever. Anything.

Because you're a religious people because you know God exists. So I can't beat that. But I can get you distracted. I can take you down a different path. Therefore.

Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Mormonism, take your pick. That's what he does. OK, lie, kill, destroy, steal.

Misguide. End on some good news. Utah. Way to go, Utah. The first state to pass a ban on trans procedures for minors. Anybody under 18?

No puberty blockers, certainly no mastectomies. God bless you guys in Utah. Let's hope some other states start to follow along.

Because why should we legalize child abuse? This is Steve Noble on The Steve Noble Show. We'll be right back. I woke up this morning and I heard the news. I know the pain of a heartbreak. I don't have answers. And welcome back at Steve Noble, The Steve Noble Show.

Great to be with you. Hey, Steve, what's with the what's with the depressing song? Because that's just part of reality. You know, heartache, heartbreak, pain and loss and suffering is part of the human condition. And to go through that, go through life where you're going to encounter that for some of us, it's more often than others. But we're all going to go through it. The question is, how do you go through it? Do you have anything to help you or are you just going to rough it on your own? You pull yourself up by your bootstraps?

No. So I try to remain as authentic and real on this show as I possibly can. And the noble family goes through trials and tribulations.

We're going through a challenging time right now. And that happens, man. And just because you're a follower of Jesus Christ doesn't mean you're insulated from the garbage of this world. Although I am protected from it ultimately. And ultimately I get released from it. And I get to be a part of eternal bliss, perfection, no pain, no heartbreak, no loss, no tears even. No bills, no finances, nothing to worry about. And that's because of Jesus Christ.

So that's that's the reason I have a song in like that, which sounds kind of depressing. It's just, hey, what do you have an anchor? Right.

That's the question. David Fisher, I know you have an anchor. Welcome back, my friend.

How you doing? I got a great anchor. It's kept me even keel for a long decades after decades. So, yes, thank you for having me on your program. Amen. Great to have you.

As always, David Fisher, as always, everybody from Landmark Capital, landmarkgold.com is the Web site. And, you know, I that song comes up, I say what I say, and then I see our scripture for today. And I just remember that God is always operating here, which is so humbling and just a beautiful thing. And God just always does that with us, David, and keeps us on the same wavelength. So we'll start there.

John, sixteen, thirty three. And then we'll dive into some of the big stories of the day. It says these things I've spoken to you so that in me you may have peace in the world. You have tribulation, but take courage.

I have overcome the world. So obviously, God is omnipotent and omnipresent. In other words, he sees all, he knows all.

Nothing gets past him. And he knows, Steve, what the challenges are on your plate today, challenges I have and everybody that's hearing our voice. And that is how life is. But we either can go through it alone and struggle and wonder and be frustrated, or we can go with somebody who's going to be our best friend, who will never forsake us or leave us, knows everything that we feel, everything, emotion, everything, what we're going to face. And he says, I'm here right alongside of you and I'm giving you some peace during this time. Doesn't mean he goes away, but it means he gets to walk with us if we allow him.

Yeah. And that's that's David. Low, though, I walked through the valley of the shadow of death. It's just a shadow in Christ. Death is just a shadow.

Of course, you're foolish. If you're afraid of your shadow, you shouldn't be afraid of your shadow. And he gets us through. Right. We he we have a way through and eventually a way out. And we praise the Lord. That's why even when we're dealing with some of these frustrating things that we talk about every week with finances and what's going on in the world and economics, that it's all temporary.

And we praise the Lord for that. So one of the things I don't like to see on my schedule each week is when the Fed meets on Wednesday. So what's what can we expect this week from our quote unquote friends at the Fed? They're going to raise rates a quarter of a point.

There's an 80 percent chance of doing so. So just remember, when the Fed raises rates, unless the market has that factored in, that's not good for stocks. And I and to cite one of the most accurate, if not the accurate person from Morgan Stanley, Michael Wilson, he is saying, don't buy in this current stock market because we're in the still in the final stages of the bear market. So we're getting closer to getting out of this basis. We're not out of it. And he says, in fact, I brace yourself for another 20 percent stock drop.

He's not the only one. Chris Vermillen, he runs Technical Traders. So he's looking at the stock market as a technical move, not an emotional move. And he says it's set to crash 37 percent.

That's the technical side. So just we're not having this fantastic economy. Don't get caught up in all that. That's just propaganda. 25 percent of millennials are still relying on their parents to pay their rent, their mortgage payment. And 19 percent of adults still ask their parents to help them out financially. And 57 percent of Americans still can't come up with a thousand dollars for an emergency expense. This is not a totally recovered economy. I'll announce it when I see it, but we're not there. No, we're not there. And I heard something earlier today.

I went and looked it up. Just like Social Security out into the future. This is part of unfunded liabilities. In 1950, there were more than 16 workers for every Social Security beneficiary. In 2035, that ratio will only be 2.3 workers per retiree simply can't afford it.

So we have to pay attention to all this. So will this be is there any chance this will be the last rate hike this year? And so and if it is, are they trying to say that inflation is now under control? Well, I think we're going to have one more rate hike and maybe more. But James Bullard says 7 percent we need to be at with this rate hike will be at 4.5 to 4.75 percent. The Fed unanimously said, Steve, that they need to be over 5 percent.

So we're not there yet. They're going to keep hiking rates for a little bit more, but we're getting towards the end of it. But just understand, inflation is not under control.

We're going to get more of this here next week. We have more time. But just look at the price of oil. Oil has come down. And that's why the CPI number came down.

All the other areas, food costs, housing costs, those are still up and moving up in some cases. But oil came down because President Biden released 250 million barrels from the government supply called the Strategic Petroleum Reserves. Oil, it was at 120 when he did this. Then it went to and that was March of last year. It went to 71. That's where it bottomed out in December last year.

And now we're $79. So in other words, it's creeping back up. And AAA is saying we're going to have higher prices even more. So we're not out of the woods by any means of inflation being under control because oil is just kind of being fabricated through manipulation and not really dollars and cents supply and demand through the real market. Any other major players out there with respect to contributing to inflation?

Well, I think the biggest culprit, Steve, is the government and the Fed. I don't want to get all technical, but there's a chart that the government put out, the U.S. Bureau of Economics specifically. And you go to a chart by the federal government on what they call expenditures. In other words, how much the government is spending. And the chart goes from 2013 till now. And when we get and it's just kind of a straight, slightly increasing line from 2013 until we get to 2020 and Covid hits. And then the spending goes through the roof and it's still escalated and we're still not getting it under control.

So the Trump, President Trump, yes, you heard me right. He contribute to some of the spending, not near as much as Biden. Biden went over the top on it.

But they're far exceeding historical levels. And then the Fed printed. So you add all that up and it's a total of 20 more trillion dollars that we're not even pulling back from the reins. And this is going to cause all kinds of financial problems.

No slowdown whatsoever. I'm looking at a story here. A dollar collapse is now in motion. Saudi Arabia signals the end of petro status, meaning you don't have to trade in dollars, go get dollars in order to buy from Saudi Arabia.

Now that looks like they might say, hey, the store is open for business. Bring us whatever you want. Rubles, whatever.

We'll take whatever. So the U.S. dollar, which has been an interesting ride the last couple of years and it's been unusually strong, but that's going to be a problem. So then we've got this thing out there that you've talked about a little bit, the Fed crypto, which definitely doesn't make me feel good. So I think we're going to head into a perfect storm here in 2023. I think we're going to see the biggest change since 1971 when Nixon was in office and our currency.

And I think what's going to contrive all this is there's a problem financing our debt. The world is moving away from holding our dollars. For the first time, oil is now no longer going to trade only in dollars since 1974.

That was the case. Now the floodgates have opened. They're going to trade in multiple different currencies. Maybe even a gold-backed currency the one might be.

We'll talk about that in the future. And so this is going to cause all kinds of problems for financing our debt. And I think what the world would do or what the Fed would do, hey, let's fix it. We're coming on the white horse.

And let's introduce this digital currency that solves all your problems, which will be actually the death to an era and cause all kinds of more problems. Yeah, man, really scary. So we'll have to keep an eye on that. We've been talking about it for a little while. And that's not going away. So it's January 30th. So you've been talking about this discount out there in gold and silver. So speak to that. Is that still going on? And then I want to ask real quickly about the new white paper, the good, the bad and the ugly, which is excellent, by the way.

Yes, thank you. So, yes, the discount is going to end the month of January. But I said, let's just make this simple, because that'd be tomorrow.

People might be feeling like they didn't get an opportunity to participate. So we're going to go to the end of this week. But after this, no more, no more, unless I run out before then. But call my company, no obligation. Discounts are being happened from 5% up to 15%.

And it's a great opportunity to step in the market at a discount, but no obligation. Yeah, and another one of my friends just sent me a message the other day. They had a great conversation with you and are thankful for you and are going to be investing some. So that was cool. That was great to see that. For people to get more information, David, and then once the new white paper is ready, how do they do that?

Yes, the good, the bad and the ugly. It is ready. Call me. It will tell you what's going to happen this year. My predictions, 844-604-2575.

Again, 844-604-2575 or landmarkgold.com. Read it myself today. It is excellent. Great job once again, my friend. Great hearing from you.

We'll do a full Monday Monday next week. Have a good week, buddy. Peace to you, my brother. Amen. You as well. This is Steve Noble on The Steve Noble Show, God willing. I'll talk to you again real soon. And like my dad always used to say, ever forward. Another program powered by the truth network.