We Do Not Bow Down to the ‘Masters of the Universe’

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. That's 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. It is a joy to be with you today. And as always, we want to help you keep your spiritual bearings. We want to help you preserve sanity. We want to help you think clearly. We want to help you get God's perspective on what is happening in the world around us. That's what we're here to do as your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Welcome to the broadcast.

Michael Brown here. Delighted to be with you. If you want to weigh in on what we were talking about yesterday, the government reaction to the new COVID variant, and where you stand on these issues, 866-348-7884 is the number to call.

If you'd like to weigh in on the things we're going to talk about today, in terms of our response to Internet censorship and the so-called Masters of the Universe, 866-34-TRUTH, or if you just want to talk to me about other subjects, if we have time to take some other calls on different subjects, that same number works just fine. OK. Do you remember, if you're as old as I am, I'm 66. Do you remember watching Superman on TV? Do you remember the intro to the show?

Yeah, well, to jar your memory, this is for the show, it's also for an animated series, but take a listen. See if this jars some memories. Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. The entrance of Scrypton is now the Man of Steel. Superman! To best be in a position to use his amazing powers in a never-ending battle for truth and justice, Superman has assumed the disguise of Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper.

Ah, yeah, so do you remember that? See, mild-mannered Clark Kent, he had powers from another world, but was here just disguised as a regular person. OK, there are no supermen in that regard. And the so-called masters of the universe, the leaders of the massive internet companies, be it Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook or Meta, and Jack Dorsey, who just resigned as CEO of Twitter, or Jeff Bezos with Amazon, or some of the many others that are out there, they're just regular people. Regular, frail, human beings, here today, gone tomorrow. They can't fly, they're not faster than speeding bullets, they can't stop or outrun a locomotive or stop it, they don't own Iron Man suits, they are regular people with strengths, weaknesses, love, hates, they get discouraged, they get fearful like everybody else, they need the Lord like everybody else. And as powerful as these companies may be, and I'm talking about it today with news of the resignation of Jack Dorsey at Twitter, and now the new man who was formerly the CTO, so Chief Technical Officer, now the CEO, Parekh Agrawal, making some statements that have many people concerned, statements from last year, now news statements that are being made in terms of, will Twitter get even more heavy-handed, and will Twitter censor things even more, and will Twitter crack down even more on conservatives and others, all fair questions to ask, here's my perspective, as much power as they have, as much influence as they have, as they have the ability, naturally speaking, to make you or break you, as they have the ability, in a moment of time, to make you the best-known person in the world, or virtually hidden, unknown, obscure, cancel, they have that much power. They can influence elections, they can influence what you think, they can influence what you buy, they can influence how you vote, they have power on levels beyond anything that we've known, and globally, economically, it's really quite striking to see what they can do.

Nonetheless, let me say plainly, that they are not the masters of the universe, and they are not giants, they are regular people, with regular employees, who need the Lord. And, I am not looking at us being tested by Twitter, or us being tested by Facebook, although we are. Will we do what's right, regardless of popularity? Will we honor the Lord, regardless of what's trending? Will we seek to be obedient, rather than liked? Will we do what's right, even if it costs us a platform? So yes, we are being tested. That's true, and I'll come back to that in a moment. But, I look at it that Twitter is being tested, that the new CEO is being tested, that Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos and these others are being tested. How will they pass the test?

Because ultimately, if these companies continue in the direction in which they're going, the direction of banning the most powerful man on the planet last year, Donald Trump, and he's still banned, and say Amazon, removing books that someone has an issue with, because they talk about helping people with unwanted same-sex attractions, this kind of censorship. If they keep going in this direction, sooner or later, they will fail, they will fall. Sooner or later, they're going to be the bygones. And as much as it seems unlikely now, I mean, hey, just look in the natural, okay?

Just look in the natural. Who would have thought that President Trump, with all of his influence, and with being in your face every day, every day, every day, with tweets and messages, whether you liked him or not, there is virtually gone in that regard, that he has not yet been able to create something new to compete or to get back on Facebook and Twitter? Who saw that coming? Or Andrew Cuomo, at the height of his power, gets an Emmy for his press conferences during COVID? Are you kidding me? Get an Emmy for that? An acting award for that?

I mean, whatever. As everything was going on, I thought, wow, if last minute, if he becomes the Democratic presidential candidate, I think he could beat Trump right now. He's so popular.

He's out, had to resign, and it could well be his brother Chris on CNN is going to have to step down. I mean, things, you can be up one day and gone the next. And remember, there were things before Facebook.

Remember MySpace, right? And there are all these great, powerful companies, empires, they're gone. Ultimately, everyone that I mention, all of these leaders, CEOs, others, both men and women, they're going to stand before God one day and be judged. And that's what concerns me more than anything. Yes, I'm concerned about the power that they wield.

Yes, there could be real issues. I have a whole chapter in my next book that comes out, God willing, 1st of March, The Silencing of the Lambs, The Ominous Rise of Cancel Culture and How We Overcome It, a whole chapter on big tech. So I talk about these things freely. I've written about this for years and years and years.

And every day, literally every day, we live with these challenges here. I'll give you a quick example. I'm just going to look at this.

I don't know what the results are going to be, but I've got a good hunch. So my latest article up on AskDrBrown.org is about the so-called Masters of the Universe and says they're humans, not gods. And what reminded me of this was a text from Isaiah 31 that came to mind last night when the children of Israel were looking to Egypt for help, and God said to them, the Egyptians are humans and not gods, and their horses are just flesh and not spirit. You know, we can over-exalt in this.

It's just regular. We're just dealing with regular fallen human beings who need the Lord. So we deal with this opposition every moment of every day.

So I'll give you this example. I post it on Ask Dr. Brown Facebook page. Our latest article, The Masters of the Universe Are Humans, Not Gods. It has a total of 33 responses, 14 comments and four shares. This is with an audience of 580,000 people there. Now, if I just post something else, a Bible verse or a family picture, you watch the amount of likes and shares and all of that. Now, I'm just going to look on my personal page, my Michael Brown page, which has the limit, Michael L. Brown, the limit of 5,000 friends. But I'm followed by others there that are not actual friends, but they can follow me, so that's like 20,000 something. So the same article posted there, and let's see, so that's with potentially 20 something thousand. It has eight likes, one comment and four shares. When I posted a picture with our daughters and their daughters over Thanksgiving, that got well over a thousand likes on that same page.

This gets eight, no, I'm sorry, nine. The point is, we deal with this reality of having these points of view restricted or links to conservative websites or our website restricted. And every single day, and if you're the YouTube viewer that's reviewing this, hey, hope you're enjoying the broadcast. Every single day, virtually every video we post on YouTube gets immediately flagged as not suitable for all viewers or advertisers. We then click to have it reviewed, and to YouTube's credit, I would say 95% of the videos are approved. We may talk about controversial issues, but we do so in a fair way, in a gracious way, in an honest way, and we don't present dangerous misinformation or anything like that. So I am pleased with the fact that the vast majority do get approved for monetization.

I appreciate that, and it looks like someone's actually reviewing or bad things are not coming up, whatever. But we deal with this every day. I am not downplaying the power that these so-called Internet giants have, except when you compare that power to the power of God, there is no comparison.

The entire universe is like a drop in the bucket to God. So if human beings restrict my message, friends, if human beings censor my message, if the so-called masters of the universe say you need to bow to us and change this and change this to get your message out, well, that's not going to happen. Go ahead and censor me. Go ahead and block me.

Go ahead and remove me. God will open a bigger door. God will open a better door. God will open a more effective door, just like you put Paul in prison and he writes letters that are being read as God's very words by billions of people around the world. You put John Bunyan in prison and out comes Pilgrim's Progress, which was the most read English book outside of the Bible for a couple of centuries. The church can't be canceled. The so-called masters of the universe can be. Let's keep our perspective.

Where would you be? I'm going to come back with some very interesting quotes from the new Twitter CEO. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome. Welcome to The Line of Fire.

866-34-TRUTH is the number to call. Hey, I've got a question for you. I just posted this on Twitter and I'm curious to know what your response will be.

This this ties back in with some of what we talked about yesterday. So when it comes to covid, when it comes to questions about vaccine, vaccine questions from mandates to medical issues and things like that. Who's your go to source for reliable information? Is it a particular news source, TV, Internet?

Is it a broadcast? Is it a medical authority? Is it spiritual leaders? Is it only yourself, just the research that you do? Who do you trust most? Do you trust the government? Do you trust World Health Organization's? Do you trust, be it Dr. Zelenko or Dr. Fauci?

I mean, I'm very, very different. Places in terms of their viewpoint. Do you trust Rand Paul, who's challenged Dr. Fauci or Ted Cruz's challenge? Dr. Fauci, you really look to them. Who do you trust in particular? If when it comes to making serious decisions about your health, about your family, when it comes to covid, when it comes to the vaccines, who do you trust the most?

866-34-TRUTH. OK, so I'm going to go over to the article that I wrote on AskDrBrown.org. And this interview from last year is now getting a lot of attention, a technology review.

Is that an MIT journal? So this is an interview that was done last year by Parekh Agarwal, the new CEO of Twitter. And he's asked about freedom of speech.

That's what he said last year. And I quote, Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment. But our role is to serve a healthy public conversation and our moves are reflecting of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation. The kinds of things that we do about this focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.

Hmm. That's a concerning quote. That really is a concerning quote. Now, there are some quotes from years back that were more radical. Oh, let's just find one here.

Well, tell you what. A paraphrase. He said, If you're not going to distinguish between Muslims and extremists, why should I distinguish between whites and racists? Something to that effect. It's obviously reactionary. It's one particular quote.

How much does this express and capitalize a larger philosophy? Good questions. Fair questions to ask. We do know what he said a year ago. Now, look, I understand that there is a big question about how far freedom of speech goes. For example. Do is it right and fine for me to get on the radio today and with our broadcast going live all over the world, potentially through Internet and with everyone that's going to listen on podcasts, all the all the people that we reach, which by God's grace is a good number.

We want to reach many more, but it's a good number. Let's say I am it. I'm an argument with you about something. You're my next door neighbor and I have an argument with you about something. And I get on the air and say, I just want you to know my next door neighbor, this address, this, this and this is is really being nasty to me. And I want you to drive by their house and and and beep your horn as you do. Obviously, I can't do that.

Of course, never think about the trillion years, but obviously that's that's wrong. Let's let's say someone wants to incite violence against a particular group and they have a broadcast and they are all over YouTube with big subscription. And they say, OK, I'm urging you to go to this person, burn their house down.

Or if you see them on the street, punch them in the face. Well, is that legal free speech? So we all agree there are certain parameters. Yes. And in terms of posting things, images, do we want nudity or sexually explicit videos come across our screens? The vast majority of us?

No. OK, so we understand that there are parameters. The question is, where does one draw the line? The question is, where does one say this is a violation of community standards that we have all agreed to abide by when President Trump gets banned from Twitter? But the supreme leader of Iran is on Twitter, where it took years and years of incendiary statements from Louis Farrakhan before he was finally banned.

And things have been very, very unequal in application. For example, P.J. Media, one of their authors of conservative Web site, one of their authors references that Rachel Richard Levine, President Biden's appointee for assistant secretary for Health and Human Services, who recently became a four star admiral, is actually a man.

So when people are celebrating, this is the first woman to become a four star admiral. Simple post saying, actually, this is a male banned from Twitter because of that cannot dead name. So refer to Rachel is Richard. You cannot misgender to refer to a biological male who's transitioned as a biological male.

Can't do that. That that friend is is the nonsense, the absurdity, the double standard that we're dealing with. So it must be called out. And that's why I say ultimately it's Twitter. It's the social media giants that are being tested because they may reign supreme for a while. They may reign unchecked for a while. But as surely as I'm sitting here, they will come down. And the more they are uneven handed, the more they discriminate, the more that they engage in unhealthy censorship. The more this will come back to bite them.

It may not look like it right now, but it's really some sitting here. Things will level out. The judgment will come on some level at some point. Accountability will come.

How about this quote? Are you ready? Let me grab it. This is just out now. So the new CEO is in and Twitter has made this statement.

Are you ready? This is literal. The misuse. OK, so Twitter has has said they are going to ban the sharing of any images or videos of people without their explicit consent. All right. The sharing of any images or videos of people without their explicit consent. And this is the official statement. The misuse of private media can affect everyone.

But can have a disproportionate effect on women, activists, dissidents and members of minority communities. OK. I am fine with the idea that if someone takes a video of you in public.

All right. And then without your consent posts it, especially in some mocking, derogatory, negative way for potentially millions of people to see that that is an invasion of privacy. You're in a store somewhere and someone takes a picture and does that. And, you know, they oh, it's it makes you look funny or silly, total stranger. And they post it. Oh, I can understand concerns.

But but hang on. It can have a disproportionate effect on women. Why women versus men? On the surface of it.

Can you tell me why? Well, I mean, because men are more a sexploitive of women and you take these pictures and try to for sexual purposes. OK. I accept that.

I agree. Men are going to be more exploitive in that way and sexualize women in that way. But is that what this means? Because most of those pictures are about women like that. And I don't think so.

So how does this have a disproportionate effect on women in general? Activist. So so hang on.

Hang on. If if you are, say, with the majority and you are espousing a popular position and your picture is taken, does that count? Because you're still an activist, right? Is that what you have in mind?

Or is it that you don't want someone riding on the street to have their picture taken? Dissidents. Activists. You talk about just favorite categories here. What in the world is going on with a statement like this?

And members of minority communities. So how how does that work? I mean, just I'm thinking out loud. Can anybody decipher this for me or help me? How is this that if you if you post a picture? OK. Jews, minority community, right? You post a picture of a Jewish person on Twitter.

It happens to be a Jewish person. How how does it have a disproportionate negative effect on it? Hispanics are minorities. Blacks are minorities. I mean, I don't get it.

It's it's again, just these balancing of the scales in this hyper woke mode that makes no sense. I'm all for protecting people's privacy. I'm all for not using the Internet as a bully pulpit to intimidate people.

I'm all for that. Look, I have people attack me in different ways and I want to refer to their comments publicly. But I'm thinking, OK, unless they're using a code name, I don't want to bring. OK, they went after me publicly online, but now I've got a nice platform. I don't want to humiliate them or bring them into something.

So they use a code name. I'm much more likely to do it because I'm trying to draw attention to an issue. Not bash the person was, you know, block the person's name out, something like that.

I'm all for being fair. What in the world is this? Will Twitter pass the test? We shall see.

Shocking news about censorship in Finland. Stay right here. Oh, God of burning cleansing flame sand. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866 three for truth.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us today on the line of fire today, November 30th. Yeah, I like looking at the calendar, as I say, because it's a very special day. It is the day of Nancy's birthday. I am beyond grateful to God for my incredible bride, my very best friend since nineteen seventy four, my bride since nineteen seventy six. And what an amazing, amazing woman. Literally, I don't know anybody like her on the planet and I am absolutely indebted to her in every way.

So we'll we'll have our family birthday celebration later today. But I just wanted to say it on the air. But I know she's not listening right now.

She's busy doing something with with one of our daughters. But I just say it anyway. Hey, and just in case you happen to tune in. Happy birthday.

I love you. And to all of you who are praying for a spouse, to all of you who are frustrated. Am I going to meet the right person? Maybe your circle of friends kind of small. Maybe there's been more isolation because of covid, maybe getting older.

I know it can be difficult and challenging. The answer I got married young. She had just turned 21. I was two days shy of 21. So we got married young. I was 23 when our second child was born.

Nancy just turned 24. So we had our kids young. So I can't speak to someone that's 50 years old and things have not worked out for relationship.

And you're frustrated and it's difficult. But I can tell you the same principle works that God can bring you together with the right person. And some have met through using various online dating services and have met people in the Lord that have been compatible and their marriage is blessed.

But I'm saying aside from that, God can really do that. God can bring people together as he did for Nancy and me. And here I get saved at a little Italian Pentecostal church in Queens, New York, with maybe 100 people. If everybody there was there on a Sunday, maybe 100 people. And, you know, just small number of young people in the church, most of us newly saved. A few younger teens that were in the church, but others, most of us newly saved.

And so it's as we came in that the numbers grew of the young people. But how I ended up there, I mean, that's the hand of God. How Nancy, as a Jewish atheist, 19 years old, ended up there as well. And then, of course, I met her and then the rest is history.

But no, it was not love at first sight on her end, by the way. But if God could bring two Jews, one a heroin shooting atheist using hippie rock drummer, the other a hardcore atheist. If God could bring us together in the same little Italian Pentecostal church in very sovereign ways, he can bring people together.

He really knows how to do that. And I would really pray earnestly for God to do that, to give him, to bring the right person into your life. And then really pray for yourself.

God would make you into the right person for someone else. All right. Eight, six, six, three, four truth. Those who normally are watching live feed on Facebook or YouTube, we're having social media problems today. Our audio feed is working fine. So everyone listening by radio or podcast, same as always.

But our apologies to others. We have some very exciting news I'll be sharing probably starting tomorrow about some new things that will be happening in the new year here on the line of fire. And there's a lot going on.

And today we just encountered some of these problems. But I'm going to share some of the exciting news starting tomorrow as planned. And also tomorrow, I should be joined by my friend Pat Mahoney, who is at the Supreme Court right now, and will be calling us maybe from the Supreme Court in front of the corridor or in an office setting to give us an update on what's happening with the Dobbs case that could well overturn Roe v. Wade. So we'll be talking about some critically important issues in the days to come.

And then one of my best friends in the whole world, Yesupadam from India, in the States, flying in just to see me for a couple of days. And he's going to join me, God willing, on Thursday for Thoroughly Jewish Thursday as we talk about the unique Jew and Gentile connection and the fruit of that. So we've got some special broadcasting coming your way next few days. And of course, you've got questions. We've got answers on Friday. 866-348-7884.

There's a number to call to weigh in. But I want to take you over to Finland. All right. I preached in Finland three times, I believe. 93, 94, 95, thereabouts, maybe one time after that.

But I believe a total of three times trips as long as three weeks when I was there. And Finland, when I was there, was 95 percent Lutheran. In fact, I'm just going to check now.

All right. And see Finnish population Lutheran. In other words, you're just part of the state church. Finnish population and then Lutheran. So the vast majority of the people were nominal. And OK, about three point seven million out of five point five million evangelical Lutheran Church is one of the largest Lutheran churches in the world. So right now it's over two thirds of the population are Lutheran. And maybe maybe this affiliation even higher that when I was there in the 90s, it was much, much higher.

But the vast majority were nominal. I preached at a church there, probably seated a few thousand people, this giant cathedral, and maybe spoke to 50 people. I think it was during the middle of the week and the pastor was really pleased to see the crowd of that size. And talking to him, I wasn't even sure if he really believed in God.

He was a sincere young man, but I was wondering if he really believed in God. But in the Scandinavian countries, there has been an increasing anti Bible, anti Christian hostility, and began to manifest a few decades back with issues having to do with preaching about homosexuality. So this is this will be in my forthcoming book, The Silencing of the Lambs. And I talked about Norway, but let me tell you about Finland here. All right.

As of May 2021. So again, this will be in a chapter in my forthcoming book, The Silencing of the Lambs. A Christian member of the Finnish parliament was facing six years imprisonment for allegedly committing three crimes, including, quote, hate speech for sharing her opinion on marriage and human sexuality on social media, on television, and in a pamphlet.

So I asked, does this sound crazy and impossible? Does it seem that there must be more to the story that we're not being told? Here's all you need to know. The parliamentary member in question is Pivi Resinen. I'm quite confident I mispronounced the name. Former minister of the interior. She is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, former chair of the Christian Democrats and a medical doctor with five children and six grandchildren. Yet she has been under police investigation since June 2019 for publicly voicing her opinion on marriage and human sexuality in a 2004 pamphlet for comments made on a 2018 TV show and a tweet directed at her church leadership.

She now faces two years in prison for each of the three criminal charges brought against her. I'm not making this up. Woe is just no, no, this this is no this is we know people involved in the case. OK.

This research for yourself. Two years in prison for each of the three criminal charges. So for publicly questioning her church's teaching on the Bible and sexuality via Twitter, she's potentially facing six years behind bars. In response, she said this fearlessly. I cannot accept that voicing my religious beliefs could mean imprisonment. I do not consider myself guilty of threatening, slandering or insulting anyone.

My statements were all based on the Bible's teachings on marriage and sexuality. I will defend my right to confess my faith so that no one else would be deprived of their right to freedom of religion and speech. I remember this woman was a political leader in Finland.

Medical doctor. Christian woman. I hold on to the view that my expressions are legal and they should not be censored. I will not back down from my views. I will not be intimidated into hiding my faith. The more Christians keep silent on controversial themes, the narrower the space for freedom of speech gets exactly. So I want to come back to the point I was making earlier when I said that we are not being tested. Twitter is Facebook is. Will they do the right thing or will they go the way of my space and others or be cut up into many pieces legally so their power reach is much smaller?

We shall see. But it is true in another way that we are being tested. I've been doing the Bible in 90 days, which I'll do every so often. Just an app on the on the Bible app. So you just plug it in and then every day it'll tell you to read X number chapters. And it could be 10, 12, 15 chapters. Longer chapters will be less.

Shorter chapters will be more. And what I'll normally do is listen as I'm driving this on Audible or just play it audibly as I'm driving with the Bible app. And then the rest of the time, just read. You start the day doing it and the day doing it because it's it's it's a good amount of reading because I'm doing other studying, of course, and stuff during the day. But it's just a nice refresher.

It goes by quickly, obviously. But it's just good to kind of refresh you if you if you're losing sight of perspectives or passages or things that it brings it back to your mind. So, you know, just going through Isaiah, Jeremiah, I'm about halfway through Ezekiel now. And I'm reminded once again of the degree of opposition they faced here. You know, when Jeremiah is going in obedience to God to buy his his uncle's field and an antidote as a sign that the exiles are going to return. So they're going to be exiled, but they're going to return as he's on his way to do that. They say, oh, you're going to the Babylonians, to the Chaldeans. You're that's why you're saying submit to them because you're siding with them and you're it's all lies.

It gets thrown thrown in prison and house arrest for that. And you think of, you know, God telling Ezekiel, Ezekiel two and three, that the children of Israel won't listen to you because they don't listen to me. If I sent you to the foreign nations, they'd listen.

But your own people, my people won't listen. And I was thinking, what what if we were influenced by social media? What if what if the prophet said social media and Jeremiah posts a message and it gets more dislikes than likes? Well, I better change my message.

Well, I really thought that one would trend. It didn't go anywhere. I better come from a different approach. We'd have the Bible if that was the case. We would not have the Bible. Literally, there would not be a Bible because the prophets would have bowed down to social pressure.

They would have bowed down to what's popular and they would not have spoken the truth. Will we pass the test? Pastors, it's a question for you. We preach what people want to hear to keep the money coming in, to keep the well-placed givers in your congregation. When you speak the truth with love, regardless of cost or consequences, we're all going to answer to God one day. Thanks for joining us, friends on the line of fire. Let me go back to Finland.

All right. Let me go back to Finland. This article is on the Federalist Joy Pullman, November twenty third, just seven days ago.

And I've seen articles going back to February of twenty twenty about this in the Jerusalem Post. Here's updated Johanna Pojola, again, mispronounced that name, I imagine, in Finland. Wouldn't be cast to play his own part if Hollywood made a movie about a bishop put on trial for his faith. The Finnish pastor has inherited a place in the church of Martin Luther, but appears none of Luther's pugnacity or vitriol. In person, Pojola, forty nine, is forthright, but unassuming and gentle.

Stereotypically, the Finn is thin and tall. He often pauses while speaking to carefully consider his next words. He listens attentively to others with far less impressive resumes in more than two decades as a pastor. Pojola has ministered to congregations as small as 30. He spent his life building a network of faithful churches across Finland, many of which started with a few people gathered for prayer, Bible study, hymn singing and communion. If they can get a pastor in an in-person interview with the Federalist, Pojola urge fellow Christian leaders to be willing to seek out one lost sheep instead of crowds in the claim. This is the man who appears to be the first in the post-Soviet Union West to be brought up on criminal charges for preaching the Christian message as it has been established for thousands of years. Also charged in the case that goes to trial on January 24th is Pojola's fellow Lutheran and a Finnish member of Parliament, Pavi Russinen.

That's the one I just mentioned in the previous segment. Now, Pastor Aki Green in Sweden went to trial because of preaching against homosexual practice in his church. And let's just see when that was. I referenced a few decades back. Let me get the exact exact date.

Let's see. Aki Green, born 1941, was prosecuted but acquitted under Sweden's law against hate speech because of critical opinions on homosexual in these sermons. Court found him guilty, sentenced him to one month in prison, went to the Court of Appeals finally February 2005. So this case goes back to the early 2000s and then gets all this hearing in 2005 thereabouts. So certainly this pastor in Finland would not be the first, but perhaps the first since Aki Green. Residence alleged crimes in the country that claims to guarantee freedom of speech and religion include tweeting a picture of a Bible verse.

Potential penalties if they're convicted include fines and up to two years in prison. Russinen and Pojola are being charged with, quote, hate speech for respectively writing and publishing a 24-page 2004 booklet that explains basic Christian theology about sex and marriage, which reserves sex exclusively for within marriage, which can only consist of one man and one woman for life. So this is 2004 when this was actually the official view at that time. It was before Finland had shifted views on same-sex, quote, marriage. The Finnish prosecutor claimed century-old Christians teaching about sex incite hatred and violate legal preferences for government-privileged identity groups. Writer Rod Drehrer pointed out the witch hunt nature of this prosecution, quote, Resinen wrote that pamphlet seven years before LGBT was added to the national hate speech laws to protect the class. She was investigated once before for the pamphlet and clear, but now she's going to undergo another interrogation. Now, both of them, so the pastor and the former parliament member, have adamantly infirmed, quote, the divinely given dignity, value and human rights of all, including all who identify with the LGBTQ community.

Christian theology teaches that all human beings are precious, as all are made in God's image and are offered eternal life through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In advance of the trial, Resinen and Pajola have been interrogated by police for hours about their theology. Pajola told me in the interrogation, police treated Christian beliefs as thought crimes.

And a statement, Resinen noted that the police publicly admitted their interpretation of Finland's law would make publishing the Bible a hate crime. And the quote, the article now quotes her as I did in my forthcoming book, The Silencing of the Lambs. Human rights lawyer Paul Coleman, who spoke to the Federalist from his alliance defending Freedom International Office in Vienna, Austria. And we interviewed him.

Yes, was that the gentleman we interviewed? I believe so, says Pajola and Resinen's cases are a canary in the coal mine for freedom of speech across the West. ADF International is providing legal support for their cases, quote, Although all European countries have these hate speech laws and these hate speech laws are increasingly being used against citizens for things that they say. This is the first time we've really seen Christians face criminal prosecution for explaining their biblical views.

It's unprecedented. We've not seen attacks on free speech on this level in Europe. And that's why they're extremely important cases, not just for the people of Finland and Pajola Resinen and the bishops themselves, but for all of Europe. And if this is upheld in one jurisdiction, we will no doubt see it in other jurisdictions as well.

And it goes on more about the pastor there and his study background, et cetera. So I'm sharing this with you to say that what we've been warning about since 2004. Those who came out of the closet want to put us in the closet. It is it is happening more and more every day around the world. From big tech to the federal government. To even organized religion in certain parts of the world.

It is to be fully expected. The main reason being that our light has grown dim. The main reason that others who in their mind are doing what's right in their mind, they're protecting people in their mind. They don't want people hurt, suicidal, depressed. Don't say these things is going to condemn them in their mind. This is all about equality.

This is all about liberation in their mind. This is a matter of our relationship should be viewed just like anyone else's. No one has the right to speak against us, just like I'd be off radio in a moment. If if I spoke of certain groups in derogatory ways, if I use the N-word and things like that and insulted others, I'd be off the air. Fully expect to be deservedly so. So I understand that there are standards.

There are things that are not necessarily illegal, but simply moral in the eyes of larger society. And that's why you'll never hear me bash people in crude, insulting terms. It's not in my heart. It's not that I have to restrain myself.

Oh, I got to hold it. No, it's not in my heart. As I've said for many years, if you cut us, we should bleed love. I'm speaking out of the abundance of my heart. I care about people. It it hurts me that when I speak the truth in love, according to God's word, I know that some will be hurt and some will think of me as a hater and will not listen to the gospel message I bring. That hurts me because I want to help people.

That hurts me because I want to get involved in their lives and show them God's love and God's goodness and demonstrate to them how a real follower of Jesus acts and thinks and feels. And I appreciate the many of you who write, even those who differ and say, I'm a gentleman in the midst of our differences. And so many of you respond in kind and are gracious in differing with me and taking issue with me.

And I appreciate that and honor that. So I'm not out to create enemies. I'm not out to get people mad at me.

I'm not out to use all kinds of incendiary speech to increase ratings, as I've said endlessly, I'm not a right wing conservative pundit. I'm a follower of Jesus. I will comment on politics, of course.

I will comment on culture as part of my calling. Of course, I'll address controversial issues, but I'll do so in a way that seeks to bring grace and truth together. I'll do so in a way that that seeks to bring a compassionate answer without compromise. To me, that's God's heart. Compassion without compromise reflects the heart of God.

So we seek to emulate that. But I want to say this, that there would not be such an effort, such a successful effort to silence us, to cancel us, to put us in the closet. If we had not been canceling ourselves for years, if we had not been self censoring for years, if we had not been fearing people more than we feared God for years.

If we had not turned upside down the words of Jesus and instead of losing our lives for the gospel, thereby finding them, instead we try to save our lives, thereby losing them. Well, if I say this, then people won't like that, so I'll say it like this instead. Oh, I'm not going to touch that 10-foot pole.

It's 10-foot pole. It's too volatile. But hang on. Your congregation needs you to touch that because they live in that world. Your family needs you to address that because your kids are being exposed to these other points of view and they're confused. The business world needs you to take a stand because pressure is being put against you. So it doesn't matter whether it's comfortable. Doesn't matter if you're going to gain in popularity. Doesn't matter if you're going to lose your business, lose your popularity, lose your life. What matters is that we obey the Lord and we do what's right. And because we haven't taken advantage of all the liberties we've had when there was little pressure and little opposition, now it's becoming more difficult. Now, when we do speak, there are consequences. Better get used to it and start doing what's right because it's right.

Better get used to it and start speaking the truth now while you still have the opportunity. Let the consequences come. Let our heart be set on glorifying God. We've got some special broadcasts in the days ahead. Don't miss one of them. Let these have blessed you. Share them with your friends. Let's keep spreading the word.