Friday, January 10th | Fires in California

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Links in the description below. And we are here in the Clearview Today studio with Dr. Abbadan Shah, who's a PhD in New Testament Textual Criticism. Dr. Shah, welcome to the show today.

Happy Friday, my friend. It's good to see you guys. It's a big, big, lots happening in the world. It's a big day for many people. So yeah, I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

Yeah, it'll be a good conversation. Our version of the day today is coming to us from 2 Chronicles chapter one, verse 10. Now give me wisdom and knowledge that I may go out and come in before this people, for who can judge this great people of yours? You know, we've been saying it for a long time, but Dr. Shah, I think you'll agree, like especially at this point in our nation, we need wisdom. We need knowledge. Well, we need God.

Oh yeah. Of course, we need God. And we were seeing that now. We've known that, but now it's becoming very obvious that without God, we're in trouble. And God is working. I am more hopeful today than I've been in a long, long time. And more hopeful today with a lot of good things that are coming. A lot of great things are coming in 2025. And a lot of positive reports I'm hearing.

I'm very excited. More hopeful than I've ever been, I would say. I won't say ever been, at least in the past 10 years.

In recent memory, for sure. Yes. And hopefully all the things that are going on in our nation right now are just sort of those last little tremors on the way out. Of course, I know a lot of people like to try to paint it as like, this is an omen of things to come.

I disagree. I think it's really just the last. Great things to come. Right, right.

It's the last of the toxins sort of hopefully leaving our nation. That's right. God leads us.

That's right. Exciting to see where God is taking us as a nation. It's exciting to see God's hand is still in America. God is still with us. And we still have the hope of being a nation under God. That's right.

That's right. When did you ever imagine that Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, would be talking about how they're going to change? Have you all seen that video? I haven't. I watched a little bit of it last night where he's changing where they have the fact checkers that come in and like the report these claims is false, that kind of thing.

They're changing those restrictions so that more content will be allowable on the platform. It's crazy. And I'm like, really? How did this even happen?

I mean, what made it happen? But maybe that's either we can talk about a little bit today, or maybe we can talk about another time. But it is one of those videos that was shocking because as I'm listening to this, I'm thinking just two years ago, two years ago, some of us were terrified to even put anything remotely condemning of the moral and spiritual degradation of our nation. Right. On your platform. Yes. And today you're sitting there saying, I mean, this is the hand of God. I don't know what else I can say. Yes.

I don't know what else I can say. So, I mean, there's a quick video we can watch. I want us to see that. This is Mark Zuckerberg talking to on Facebook and just sharing about, you know, how things are going to look different. So, yeah, absolutely. So here it is. Get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes.

Second, we're going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream. Wait a minute. Did you ever imagine he would say something like that?

Never. But those of you who are like, you're like checking your ears to see if you're really hearing this correctly. We're going to start this video again. Get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes. Second, we're going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. Third, changing how we enforce our policies to reduce the mistakes that account for the vast majority of censorship on our platforms. Fourth, we're bringing back civic content. For a while, the community asked to see less politics because it was making people stressed.

So, we stopped recommending these posts. But it feels like we're in a new era now and we're starting to get feedback. Wait a minute. What do you say? It feels like we're in a new era now. Did you ever imagine that would be said?

I'm trying to catch up. Here's one thing. Here's one thing I want to say. I hate, I can't stand corporate speak.

I have no clue what he's saying. What I'm hearing, and correct me if I'm wrong, what I'm hearing is we spent the last four years censoring you. We're going to ease up a little bit.

Yeah. Are we going to ease up a lot? We're going to ease up a lot. We've been on the wrong side of things.

We're about to, you know, get on the right side. So, I noticed, Dr. Hsieh, you sent this video to David to play it. I realized Dinesh D'Souza posted this. I love what he said.

He said, Mark Zuckerberg's obviously a slow learner, but hey, better now than never. Yeah. No, I didn't expect this. I haven't seen this at all. All right.

Keep playing it. Content again. So, we're going to start phasing this back into Facebook, Instagram, and Threads while working to keep the communities friendly and positive.

Fifth, we're going to move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US-based content review is going to be based in Texas. Well, that's a huge statement. That's like the polar opposite. Yeah. Like, that's not just we're going to move out of California to get a little less bias. That's like, we're going to go to the other extreme, which is great. We're happy about that. Yeah. But that's not what I expected. No. I thought, I thought it was going to be like, you take the fish and I put them in a little freshwater baggie or saltwater baggie and put them slowly in the, not just dumping them right in the Pacific ocean.

Go for it. I mean, he is saying that California is a messed up place. We're going to Texas. Hopefully we're going to have some normalcy, like what America looks like. I think that it will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams. Finally, we're going to work with President Trump, push back on governments around the world.

They're going after American companies. You're pushing to censor more. What?

But you, what just happened to work with President Trump? I mean, that's great. That's awesome. Hold on a second. Yeah. That's like, okay.

Wasn't it just a few years ago that they hauled your behind in front of Congress? I've never seen someone look more scared in my life. There's a great picture of Mark Zuckerberg.

I might try to find it and drop it right here in the video, but it was him just like terrified. And you're saying even that couldn't persuade you in all of 2020 to get the censorship off your platform. Because at this end of the day, you can always cry. Well, this is my platform. It's a private company, but Facebook has evolved beyond that.

We're not playing that card. Like I can understand if it was us and someone was like, yeah, you can't, you can't make that church say what they don't want to say or allow content. It's like, okay.

But if we were at the level of Facebook and we had permeated culture that much, things are different. You know what I'm saying? I think it's that picture right there. Dude is crazy. So he's saying, all right, hey guys, we were censoring you guys. We were taking free speech completely off the platform, but now we're going to go to the complete polar opposite way. We're starting to get feedback. Yeah, you've been getting feedback.

You've been getting feedback. You've been shutting us down. A lot of craziness was happening. Interesting when we talk about certain moral issues, all of a sudden our feed gets stuck. We had, we had our videos demonetized. We had our videos demonetized. We had some of them taken off. We had some of them censored. We had some of them, a lot of what we saw on our videos at Clearview was a little thing above that that said, hey, just so you know, this may be disinformation or fact checkers. Did you see the comment on the video from Dinesh D'Souza?

It said a lot of things, but the end of it was better late than never. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's funny. Yeah. I mean, we'll take it. I'm glad you're doing that because this is where the American public is and no, they're not being hate mongers and there are crazy people out there. We're not, we're not supporting people who are crazy and radical and just, just say ugly things. We're not for that, but let people live their lives.

Don't make us into a police state. Yeah. When you create a platform like that at a certain point, it grows beyond you. You know what I mean? And I'm, and I, I'm completely, I'm completely aware that when you create something, it's yours and you want to make the rules for it at the same time, it does get to a point where it's, it grows beyond you and, and it becomes, and I think Facebook has become that Facebook hasn't. I don't think, I think at this point in your life and at this point in your company's life, it's way too late to be like, at the end of the day, this is my platform. You can't say, you can't say just whatever you want.

Like if we, if someone came in here to our church and started saying things we didn't agree with, we could say, Hey, you can't do that here. Right. Facebook has evolved beyond that. And I hate to say that, but that's just the, that's the truth of it. I agree. So, I mean, that's a great positive news. That was pretty huge. And for him to acknowledge president Trump, I mean, that was not happening. I mean, just the opposite was going on. Right. Yeah. It seems like a case of, maybe, maybe I don't want to judge nobody's motives because I'm hoping he's like, okay, I see the light.

I realize I've been lied to, I've been misled. Hopefully that's it. It feels like a case of go with the winner. Could be. It could be that. But, but, but. Which you know what?

That's fine. Maybe, maybe some, some good, what do you call it? Interaction with him. Maybe getting actually in Texas and getting around like-minded people and some people who are actually thinking straight about the way media and the nation should be ran. You know, a lot of people think that about Texas, like it's like just backwoods people, people who love guns. Texas has some very media savvy people. Yeah. Absolutely.

Extremely, extremely media savvy people. Yeah. But the fastest growing state, second fastest growing. Right now, South Carolina is the one, the place where most people are moving to. Second is Texas.

Third is North Carolina. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

I knew North Carolina was where I didn't know Texas and South Carolina. That's awesome. That's awesome. Very cool.

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That's right, Dr. Shah. We just talked about some good news coming out of California. Not as much good news as we would like, unfortunately. Unfortunately, a lot of bad news in California. Well, it happens maybe not every year, but it happens enough to where it becomes a regular thing. But I think the wildfires that are going on in California right now have started to reach a new level. A level of people I definitely don't think we're expecting.

That's right. There's a Los Angeles fires. I mean, it's no secret. You've probably seen images on social media or the news channels or special alert on your phones. It's devastating. I've never seen anything like that. I've seen back five, 10 years ago, there were some wildfires going on in the mountains and they were bad, but this is on a different level.

Yeah. You hear about wildfires, especially in California, drier climate. You hear about wildfires spreading and that's sort of a regular occurrence for them. But this is, I mean, it is unbelievable. I've seen some of the pictures.

It looks like a bomb went off. It's unreal. I agree. It's worse than I think we've seen. And the thing about that is with California, you start to kind of expect it. And so you get a little bit desensitized. When I first heard about these, I was like, this happens every single year. Well, it's almost like Florida and hurricanes. You're like, yeah, okay.

You moved to Florida, you're going to get hit with hurricanes. That's fire area. But we were sitting here before the show started and they'll probably show some footage while we're talking, but they were showing some shots that I was like, oh my goodness. It's devastating. Multi, multi, multi million, million dollar homes and neighborhoods just gone.

And that could be, that could be why I think this is different. Cause a lot of what I think we've seen in the past were like in the mountains, you know, there's houses, there's homes, but this is like neighborhoods. This is like, And it's not just, oh, there's evidence that my house had a fire in it. Like there's walls that are scorched and burned. No, this is like your house is ashes.

It's a pile of rubble on the ground. Right. Right.

That's, that's shocking to say the least. And Los Angeles sitting right on the coast, right? The Pacific ocean. But as you can see, water shortage.

That did not make sense to me that the fire hydrants were empty. Yeah. They said something about, there was a smelt fish crisis a little bit back. I don't know what the, what the crisis was about the smelt fish.

President Trump had, had critiqued Gavin Newsom about it. It's called the smelt. Yeah. It's this little, it's this little endangered fish. It was an endangered species thing. It was, it was sort of like this in the Pacific ocean on the, yes, on the coast of Los Angeles. And I think a lot of that water that was in the city was diverted to the coast for that.

It was like some endangered species thing. Really? Yes. But now that now that Los Angeles needs it, there's not enough water. So can, can we look at the article right here? It says president elect Donald Trump has launched a sharp critique.

This is coming out of the Newsweek magazine of California governor Gavin Newsom, blaming him for the state's devastating fires and accusing him of prioritizing environmental policies, including protections for the endangered Delta smelt fish over the needs of Californians. And then, and then Newsom's office is denying that they're saying, no, no, no, we never did that. We never signed that declaration.

We never said that, but his signature's on it. It happened. The water was diverted. It was diverted.

So the water was diverted. Yes. Oh yes.

Oh my goodness. That's why the fire hydrants are empty. Yeah.

There's no, really. So they were, that's shocking. So fire hydrants, I've heard that, but so they were empty because the water was, had been diverted for this environmental quote unquote crisis of the smelt fish.

And if that's really true, again, we don't, I don't, I'm not the authority on this news, but if that really happened, that should have serious consequences. Water diverted to protect fish, which if there's endangered species, you know, maybe we need to take efforts to protect them. Sure. But people ought to come first. You ought to make sure that you have enough to care for people and fight the fire that's coming. And I could understand if this happened in New York, but this is California where this thing happens. Right. Like if they, if you're going to divert Los Angeles water supply to the coast, that's someone should say, Hey guys, this is California. We get fires here a lot. Should we save some water?

Should we not have something with us? Yeah. This has been an ongoing issue between President Trump and California all the way back as far as 2016.

Really? This issue with environmental crisis. If you go down some, it says, it said President Trump's recent attacks stem from his belief that Newsom's environmental priority, again, we're using Newsweek magazine here, particularly the protection of the Delta smelt have contributed to water shortages that allegedly hampered firefighting efforts in Los Angeles. I think a lot, I mean, a lot of people are saying that, that the firefighters can't do what they need to do, especially right now. Now there was a couple of videos I did see online while we were here or on the news channel yesterday, and the fire trucks couldn't do anything. They said, we don't have water.

They don't have it. And people were yelling at the firefighters and like, what are you doing? Do something. And they're like, what can we do?

We don't have any water. Yeah. I remember seeing that. So there's something about having no water, whether it's connected to the Delta fish or whatever this smelt fish is.

I don't know for sure. But if they're saying that probably there's a lot of truth to it. Oh yeah. I mean, there, there's, there's been a lot of unfair criticism lobbed at the Los Angeles fire department and a lot of other fire departments that are doing everything they can to do this, but they can't bring the water from home. They have to get the water from somewhere and it's not there.

If it's not there, what can they do? Right. Wow. That's, that's sad. That's really true.

And I don't know of any reason why it shouldn't be. That's, someone has a lot of answering to do. If your leadership, the people who are making decisions for the wellbeing of your community, your state, put the environment ahead of the people, we've got a problem. And the people of California are suffering for this. A lot of them, I don't know if you guys heard this, but a lot of them had their fire insurance policies canceled like just a couple of months ago.

Why is that? Because State Farm was running out of money. And I know that sounds like. Paying for these fires? Yeah. Well paying for all this fire insurance that I guess they didn't think.

Again, I'm not an expert. I'm sitting here in a comfortable studio in North Carolina. And you're reading the news reports. I'm reading Newsweek magazine, but, but common sense tells me this is California y'all.

This happens. My dad actually went and had to install generators for cell towers because wildfires are so frequent in California. So it seems to me that State Farm would say, Hey, maybe we shouldn't cancel all these policies. We're making plenty of money because, or you know what? I think they were having to pay so much in these policies because wildfires were so prevalent.

They were like, you know what? We can't afford to pay out for this, this thing anymore. So we're not insuring for fire. I thought it was, I thought it was, we're not making enough money on the fire insurance, but it's the opposite.

They're losing money because they're losing money. But look at how terrible, I don't know if our listeners can really appreciate this. But it's, it's horrible. I saw a shot earlier before we started recording that was absolutely devastating. It was like a line of houses and they looked like blocks. They look like toy blocks and the Inferno behind them was some, I mean, it looked like something out of a movie.

It's chilling. I couldn't believe it. But yeah, there's a lot of people suffering and a lot of people are going to be paying for this out of pocket.

I think there's also, Dr. Shaw, we can talk about this a little bit. There's a lot of vitriol from people that don't live on the West coast saying that now this is only a problem now because celebrities, you know, Tom Hanks lost his house. Paris Hilton lost her house. Anthony Hopkins lost his. Billy Crystal lost his. And so there's a lot of jaded people, I think, who are saying, well, now that celebrities, now that the leader being affected now, all of a sudden it's a problem.

But you know, I don't, I just don't, I don't know if now's the time, you know what I mean? And that may have a point to it, but I don't think, I don't care whose house it is, whether it's a section eight housing or someone's home. Firefighters should be given everything they need, right? Everything they need. And it's sad because it happens and not just on the West coast, it happens everywhere where first responders are not given an adequate salary or the equipment they need or like for fire trucks. I mean, in some of these smaller fire departments, I mean, they have to, you know, sell stew and sell chicken plates and beg people to write big checks just so they're going to have a decent fire truck.

That's crazy. That's bizarre to me because it seems like we ought to be resourcing our first responders first. We should be giving them exactly what they need in order to respond adequately. Why, why do people encounter that, especially in smaller towns? Why are first responders sort of put on the back burner? Because they don't think it's going to happen to them.

They don't think it's necessary. We're living in 2025 and these kinds of things don't happen until they happen. This is 2025. An entire, I mean, tens of thousands of acres gone. And these are just acres as in mountains and farmland, which is sad as well. This is homes. These are homes and lives and neighborhoods and businesses gone. So they don't think it's going to happen to them until it happens. What do you say to the people?

Cause I think, I think there's some people, I haven't seen any of these comments. I'm only imagining them in my head, but I'm sure it's out there where people are saying, you know, this is, this is modern day Gomorrah. This is Gomorrah, California. And this is the Lord exacting his judgment.

He's not going to stand for this disrespect any longer. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's something I don't espouse to, you know?

Yeah. You may have a point, but there is no way to prove that point because we all are sinners. We all have done evil things. So as to say that God's judgment is coming over there, it's, it's not a very biblical thing to say, what we need to do is God, what are you telling America?

What is it? Great point. What is it that we can learn from this?

And how can we use this as an opportunity to share the gospel? Because this could happen to us in some of the forms. Yeah. Fantastic point. This could happen to right here on the East coast in some other form, right?

I mean, some of the form, I mean, look at what happened with hurricane Helene. Yeah. You're right. Right.

In the mountains, beautiful, beautiful multimillion dollar homes became part of a landslide. That's right. That's right.

Yeah. This, what, what they're experiencing with fire, we just experienced with water changed, rearranged. I mean, lives upended homes destroyed, wiped out right now.

We have people from our church who are going to help build small shelters and trying to partner with Baptist on mission. And we're working on doing that partnership and helping any, every way we can, you know, talking about fire back in 1871, there was a big fire in Chicago. And what is very interesting is that deal Moody also from Chicago, he lost his home as well, but about 10,000 acres were burned. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

In, in, in Chicago, maybe more. And, um, night before deal Moody was preaching and when it came time for invitation, he thought to himself, not today, I want to give an invitation tomorrow. And of course the big fire happened, right? This is 1871 and it destroyed lives.

It destroyed homes, people, everything. And at the end of that deal, Moody made a decision that he'll never, ever again, delay giving someone an invitation to receive. It'll be that it'll be right then.

I love it. And I read that story years and years ago, I would say maybe 25 years ago, and it became part of my ministry and it became part of our Clearview church ministry, which is, we don't wait. We'd share the gospel with you now. That's right. Because we don't know if you will have the opportunity to hear the gospel again. That's right. Every, every service must end with an it's just one of those rules. That's a hard and fast rule that every service must end with invitation. Every event must have the gospel. It must have Jesus's name proclaimed at some point. And even if it's not a service that you're conducting, if it's just a conversation you're having with a friend, family member, a neighbor, a stranger, and it happens to come on the subject, or you're leading it towards the subject of the gospel, don't walk away without at least mentioning the name of Jesus.

That's right. At least saying something about God and how God is faithful or how Jesus is, is our safe. Do something because that may be the last opportunity for that person to go to heaven forever. I love that sense of urgency, that sense of immediacy that we need to live with, because what if it is the last interaction you have with them? What if that is the last word that they hear? What if that is the last time that they get the chance to respond to the gospel before they're called into eternity? And there's a lot of anxiety, too, when you want to share the gospel or you want to say the right thing. Because it's like every time I try to speak to someone, it's just a bunch of cliches. It's just like a hodgepodge of all this weird stuff that I want to get out. But at the same time, the gospel is so simple.

And it's times like this that really help us to, not just to work on that, but just to just to facilitate it. You know what I'm saying? There we go. Hodgepodge.

That was mine. Hodgepodge? Hodgepodge.

Really? You gave him a hodgepodge? He is hodgepodge. That was kind of hodgepodge. You gave me a rigmarole. Yeah, you got rigmarole. Hodgepodge.

Hodgepodge. That was it. I had to get this out.

I was like, I don't know when I could get the secret word out in this, so I just saved it for the very end. But good job. Thank you.

Thank you. In all seriousness, let this be an invitation for you to see that God is moving in America. And it's now our duty to share the gospel any way we can. That's what we're doing here on the show.

That's right. Make sure you guys join us tomorrow. Same time, same station. We're going to be diving into another great topic here on The Clear Read Today Show. Thanks again to Le Bleu Ultra Pure Water for sponsoring today's episode. And don't forget that you can support us by subscribing to the show on iTunes if you want to re-listen or share it with a friend. And you can always support us financially at ClearReadTodayShow.com. Jon, anything you want to plug as we close today?

Yes, 100%. Talked about a lot of things going on in our nation today. 30 days praying for America, I think, is going to be one of the best things that America has ever seen. We can't do it by ourselves.

We need your support. God has already, believe it or not, I know we say this on the show, we're not lying to you, God has already put this book into President Trump's hands. It might be sitting in the Oval Office. It's not sitting there right now, but it will be. It will be soon. So, make sure you grab this book, 30 Days of Praying for America, their daily devotions to heal our nation. Also got some original music in the pipeline, but you can always grab our debut album, Heaven Here and Now. It's available on Spotify or iTunes, anywhere that digital music is streamed or sold.

That's right. Find a church family to plug in with. If you're local in the area, we'd love to see you worshiping with us at ClearView this weekend. We've got service Saturday night at 6.30, Sunday morning at 8.30, and 11 o'clock with Sunday School at 9.45. We would love to see you there.

We'll see you bright and early Monday morning on the ClearView Today Show. We love you guys. We love you. We love you.