I agree with the New York Times?

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. And even in politics, Steve is an ordinary man who believes in an extraordinary God. And on his show, there's plenty of grace and lots of truth, but no sacred cows. Call Steve now at 866-34-TRUTH.

That's 866-34-TRUTH. Or check him out online at thestevenobleshow.com. And now here's your host, Steve Noble. Well, this is an interesting day. I hope you're doing well.

Thanks for being here. This is an interesting day when you, this happened yesterday, which happened to be on my day. It turned 57 yesterday, which some people are like, wow, that's old. And you sound like my kids or my students. And then other people are like, hey, young man.

And then you're obviously a little north of there. Anyway, this was a talk about an interesting birthday present. So this is from the opinion section of the New York Times. Now, how often do you think a Bible thumping conservative like myself, evangelical Bible thumping conservative, so far to the right, I'm about to fall off the flat earth.

How often do you think I'm going to agree with anything from the New York Times, especially from their opinion section? Yet there it is yesterday, February 21st, 2023. There it is in living color.

I've got it right here in my hands. The mask mandates did nothing. Will any lessons be learned? So this is that Benjamin Lowey or Lowey at the New York Times yesterday, the most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses, including COVID-19 was published late last month.

And its conclusion, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist, who is its lead author, his conclusions were unambiguous. Quote, there is just no evidence that they, meaning masks, make any difference, he told the journalist Marianne Damasi. Full stop.

But wait, hold on, writes the New York Times. What about N95 masks as opposed to lower quality surgical or cloth masks? Makes no difference. None of it, said Jefferson. What about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates? Quote, they were convinced by non-randomized studies, flawed observational studies, unquote.

What about the utility of masks in conjunction with other preventative measures, such as hand hygiene, physical distancing, or air filtration? There's no evidence that many of these things make any difference, he said. These are, now again, this is the New York Times yesterday. Okay. So what's going on here? Wait, listen.

Is that, is Gabriel blowing his horn? Not yet, but this might be a sign that we're getting a little bit closer. These observations don't come from just anywhere. Jefferson and 11 colleagues conducted the study for Cochrane, a British nonprofit that is widely considered the gold standard for its review of healthcare data. The conclusions were based on 78 randomized controlled trials, six of them during the COVID pandemic, with a total of 610,000 participants in multiple countries.

And they track what has been widely observed in the United States. States with mask mandates fared no better against COVID than those without. Hmm. Can you believe it? Oh my goodness.

Batten down the hatches. This is shocking. No study or study of studies is ever perfect. Science has never absolutely settled. Wait a minute. Didn't Pope Fauci say he is science?

He seemed pretty settled to me. What's more, the analysis does not prove that proper masks properly worn had no benefit at an individual level. People may have good personal reasons to wear masks and they may have the discipline to wear them consistently. The choices are their own.

Oh, that's a radical thought. But when it comes to the population level benefits of masking, the verdict is in. Mask mandates were a bust. This is in the New York Times. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as misinformers for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behoove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable physical, psychological, pedagogical, and political costs. Don't count on it. This is the New York Times.

What is going on here, Lord? In congressional testimony this month, Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, called into question the Cochrane's analysis reliance on a small number of COVID-specialized randomized controlled trials and insisted that her agency's guidelines on masking in schools wouldn't change. If she ever wonders why respect for the CDC keeps falling, she could look to herself and resign and leave it to someone else to reorganize her agency. Wow, this is the New York Times.

That, too, probably won't happen. We no longer live in a culture in which resignation is seen as the honorable course for public officials who fail in their jobs. No kidding. Wow, this is so shocking.

But the costs go deeper. When people say they trust the science, what they presumably mean is that science is rational, empirical, rigorous, receptive to new information, sensitive to competing concerns and risks. Isn't that funny? That's exactly the opposite of what happened, starting with Fauci and Berks and the CDC and the NIH. And I'm going to throw Trump in there because he was, for whatever reason, was too, just, just did not take control of the situation. Mike Pence is in there just parroting all this stuff. And then the New York Times, every major publication, every major news source, for the most part, including Fox News, so many people.

And then you get wackadoodles like what's the Howard Stern, who basically stayed inside for two years, and other people like Sean Penn and others that were like, if you're not masking, if you're not getting vaccinated, you're like an enemy. Of the people, right? You're an enemy of the state. You're an enemy of the people.

You're the enemy of mankind. And we should deal with them appropriately. That's where these guys went. The exact opposite of what the New York Times is pointing out here. We no longer live in a culture in which resignation is seen as the honorable course for public officials who fail in their jobs. Resignation would be the least of it. How about prosecution?

But the costs go deeper. When people say they trust the science, that's what I was just reading, thinking it's rational, empirical, rigorous, et cetera. Also, humble, transparent, open to criticism, honest about what it doesn't know, willing to admit error. Science doesn't do any of that with respect to COVID, whether we're talking about the mass or the shot itself. The CDC's increasingly mindless adherence to its masking guidance, Steve, is that on Fox News? No, this is New York Times, is none of those things. It's merely undermining the trust it requires to operate as an effective public institution. It's no longer that. It's just political.

And it's turning itself into an unwitting accomplice to the genuine enemies of reason and science, conspiracy theorists and quack cure peddlers, by so badly representing the values and practices that science is supposed to exemplify. No kidding. It also portrays the technocratic mindset that has the unpleasant habit of assuming that nothing is ever wrong with the bureaucracy's well-laid plans, provided nobody gets in its way.

No kidding. Yet, there was never a chance that mask mandates in the United States would get anywhere close to 100% compliance, or that mask mandates would get anywhere close to 100% compliance, or that people would or could wear masks in any way that would meaningfully reduce transmission. Part of the reason is specific to American habits and culture, part of it to constitutional limits on government power, thank God. Part of it to human nature, thank you, Lord. Part of it to competing social and economic necessities, part of it to the evolution of the virus itself.

But whatever the reason, mask mandates were a fool's errand from the start. There's a final lesson here from the New York Times. It's crazy, isn't it?

Wait, is that Gabriel blowing his horn? Not yet! But the New York Times coming out with saying the mask mandates did nothing is shocking. We'll pick it up there when we come back. Feel free to snap your fingers along with your friend here, Steve Noble.

Welcome back, it is the Steve Noble Show. Talking about, this is crazy, I can't believe I'm actually reading this on the air that this is actually real, that I haven't been punked. This in the New York Times opinion section yesterday, the mask mandates did nothing. Will any lessons be learned? And then they go through the Cochrane study, which is one of the foremost groups on the planet when it comes to medical analysis and medical studies. And they're like, yeah, there's just no evidence that they make any difference, full stop. What about, hey, what about the N95 as opposed to lower quality surgical or cloth masks?

Makes no difference, none of it, said Jefferson. This is the guy from the group, the Oxford epidemiologist. What about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates? They were convinced by non-randomized studies, flawed observational studies.

What about the utility of mask in conjunction with other measures and like washing your hands and stuff? There's no evidence that many of these things make any difference. The New York Times friend, that's nutty, right?

Last two paragraphs of this, then we're going to talk about is Rush Limbaugh in heaven. But whatever the reason, mask mandates were a fool's errand from the start. This is the New York Times, what? They may have created a false sense of safety and thus permission to resume semi-normal life. They did almost nothing to advance safety itself.

The Cochrane reported out to be the final nail in this particular coffin. There's a final lesson, New York Times here, New York Times. The last justification for masks is that even if they prove to be ineffective, they seem like a relatively low cost, intuitively effective way of doing something against the virus in the early days of the pandemic. But do nothing is not science and shouldn't have been public policy. Wow, you think? And the people who had the courage to say as much deserve to be listened to, not treated with contempt. For all those of you that were out there and were following actual science and were doing your research and looking at studies and speaking out saying, the masks are bogus, God bless you. And a big chunk of this country owes you an apology. They may not ever get the apology they deserve, but vindication ought to be enough.

Wow, I'd like to think so. But is it? I mean, again, you have to look at this in political terms, cultural terms and spiritual terms. In spiritual terms, it's priming the pump in a most excellent way for the for the Antichrist to run to rise to power and people out of fear. And I think fear drove a lot of this. People are afraid to die. They're afraid to die because they don't know Jesus Christ.

We're going to talk about Rush Limbaugh here in a minute. They're afraid to die. They know they're not right with God. The law testifies against them. Their conscience testifies against them. They know God is real, Romans one. But they don't like that because with that becomes moral judgment. And so they suppress that truth and they replace it with a lie.

And therefore, a man can get pregnant and you can change your gender, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there's the spiritual thing there, which which they fear death. So you say, hey, man, put this mask on, save your life. Plus, in their pride, they virtue signal to others, I care about people. See, I'm wearing my mask.

I care about people. Now, early on. OK, but once the information started coming out, it was just a joke. It was a control mechanism.

It's fear based. And then our leaders at the top, especially Pope Fauci, no way on God's green earth are they going to admit fault? No way. That's why that's why you got a guy with that much pride says I am. I am the science. What?

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm obviously worshiping the wrong creator. I need to turn my eyes upon Pope Fauci. Politically, it was all about power, control the masses power and people get drunk on power. Lord Acton was right. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts.

Absolutely. And you don't think you think Burks and Fauci and Trump and all the rest of them. When you when you play, Simon says what the entire population, Simon says, put your mask on. Most of them put their mask on. Simon says, get the shot.

People get their shot. Simon says shut down all the nonessential businesses and people shut. You don't think that's going to get to you if you're the power broker. You don't think you're going to get a little drunk on that kind of power.

Of course you are. Plus, especially the Democrats. But a lot of Republicans do just want to control the masses because you guys are too stupid to figure out things on your own. You need the government to get you through. You don't need God. You need government. You're worshiping once again the wrong G. Got to worship the G-man government.

And then culturally, I would go back to the spiritual on that. A lot of virtue signaling and then the condemnation of Christians, especially if you're a Christian that didn't mask. I thought you guys were supposed to love your neighbors yourself. Obviously you don't. You don't care about your neighbor. And then what happens?

Pretty much nothing. All the people involved in that scam, probably the biggest scam in world history, got away with it. They did. They got away with it. Pfizer is getting away with it. Moderna is getting away with it. Federal government is getting away with it. They're all getting away with it. But not forever. Don't forget that.

Okay. Rush Limbaugh. You think he's in heaven?

I struggled with that question for a long time. I listened to Rush Limbaugh for at least 25 years because he would talk about God a lot. I knew he believed in God, sound like he had a reverential fear of God and Christianity. He was a pretty much a defender of Christianity and religious freedom. He was a pro-life person. But do you remember? Go back a few years. Do you ever remember him talking about Jesus and kind of a deep personal way?

Because I didn't. And I'd listened to it. I listened to him all the time.

And I was always concerned. So in an interview last Friday with Joel Rosenberg, who's been on the show several times, David Limbaugh, Rush's brother, opened up about the first time he learned his brother had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer from the talk show host's wife. I think it's around January of 2020, 13 months before his brother died at 70 on February 17th, 2021.

So he just passed the two year mark for Rush's passing. David Limbaugh said they were raised in a Christian home, attended church, and their parents taught them great values. The younger brother acknowledged that they had intellectual doubts about faith. While he always believed that God existed, David Limbaugh said he merely had been going through the motions.

I would say that's like most Americans. After studying more, Limbaugh concluded that there is, David did, that there's overwhelming evidence in favor of Christianity's truth claims. He came into a full relationship with Christ in his mid thirties. Once he fully accepted Christ, he wondered if his brother, Rush Limbaugh, was a Christian. Quote, I mean, he thought he was, in my view, and he embraced it intellectually, David Limbaugh said. But did he think about it enough about it?

And did it really affect his life in the way you would think if you were truly a faithful Christian? He started witnessing to his older sibling, Rush, even asking him straightforwardly whether he truly believed. Rush Limbaugh answered yes. David Limbaugh asked why his brother didn't discuss his faith more. Rush Limbaugh allegedly replied that he didn't talk about it much because he didn't think he knew enough about it.

He didn't want to make something. He wasn't an expert in the focus of his talk show. Quote, it makes you wonder why you didn't study it more and all that, David said. Rosenberg, Joel Rosenberg in the interview pointed out that it was interesting because Limbaugh was known to be a student of everything he was excited about to become an expert in those areas.

David Limbaugh agreed. Quote, even though he was not being intellectually dishonest about it, he didn't quite yet get it, in my view, David said. At one point, Rush Limbaugh assured his brother that he never had doubts about his faith or Christ, which David Limbaugh found heartening. But he still wasn't sure whether his older brother had truly accepted Christ. Limbaugh said the silver lining of his brother's cancer diagnosis was God's grace because God often allows suffering to enable people to embrace him.

Isn't that amazing? We grow from our suffering, and that is totally biblical throughout, so many things come in God's time, he said. With Rush, he was experiencing this hardship, and he was taken down to the lowest point and he turned, David added. He had to turn.

He had nowhere else to turn. Even if he hadn't had faith in Christ before, he had such a sincere, heartfelt faith. He said his brother began talking to God daily and reading the Bible, even texting his brother for insight on certain passages, something David had never seen him do before. Quote, it really doesn't matter if Rush embraced Christ 10 years before or one day before he died. What matters is, and I can say emphatically that he did embrace him, I would say for sure in the early part of that latter last year. I think he did before, but I don't know. All I can say is he had an exclamation point on it during that time.

He got his faith through Christ and he leaned on him, which I'll remind you when we come back something Rush said in October of that year before he died. We'll be right back. Welcome back at Steve Noble, The Steve Noble Show, thestevenobleshow.com. If you want to go to the website and grab the podcast, but the podcast is available in all the major places, Google Play, Spotify, iHeart, Apple podcasts, it's all there. So you can go check out shows from the past. If you go to the website, however, if you go to thestevenobleshow.com and use the search function, you can put in a subject or keywords, and then it's going to pull up shows where I talked about that significant portion of the hour.

So you can search more on the website, thestevenobleshow.com. In the coming days, I'm going to be reminding you a lot more now that we're in February and about to push into March about Noble You. That's my teaching side of my life, which continues to grow.

I praise the Lord for that. High school age homeschoolers also have people auditing the class. I have some public school and private school students that are starting to take the class, the classes. And so I teach US history, which is a two semester course. I teach civics, which is a two semester course. I teach Christian ethics, which is a one semester course, but, and I'm adding this fall world history. When I continue, I might add one more class that I might teach myself.

I don't know that I have the bandwidth for it, plus doing the radio show five days a week, but that's a huge calling in my life. This is my 11th year doing it. I've taught over 800 students. I'm going to at least three, maybe four big homeschool conventions, doing some breakout sessions and talking here and there. I'm going to have a pretty cool setup and display, engaging parents. I've had about 180 students this school year that I've taught myself.

And then my God goal, my prayer goal is that it's going to be 250 to 300 this fall and then continue to grow. I want to add other teachers, other subjects, but subjects that are all about teaching a biblical worldview, discipleship, and engaging the culture and where the culture is going here in America. So I talk about the things that I talk about on the air. I talk about in the class often, and that brings things alive.

What's going on in Ukraine and Russia and America and Biden and all this stuff. I mean, that ends up in my classes all the time. So this information, these classes that we're going through, the textbooks, the curriculum is not just your typical boring class on these subjects.

You just overlay it into the real world and then all of a sudden it comes alive. You're like, oh, okay, now you can actually see this stuff in practice. That's awesome.

So I'm going to be talking about that more. I'm going to cut some ads for that, but if you want to go where we've got the websites updated for the new school year coming up this fall, if you want to check that out. Also, if you just want to audit the courses, man, Steve, I'd love to take your course, but I don't do homework. Do I?

No, you don't. You can just get access and we'll send you the videos. We record the classes each week because the news changes. So the class I teach this school year, which will end in May, I can't teach. I can't use that class in the fall because next school year, all that stuff's dated. It's always current.

So we don't just record something and then sell it in perpetuity. We're just going to show you the brand new classes every week. So you can check all that out. nobleuschool.com is the website, noble U, the letter U. nobleuschool.com.

If you have other friends that are, these are basically eighth through 12th grade students or adults, if you want, and mostly homeschoolers, but we're starting to get some public school students and some private school students and some adults. So if you want to check that out for yourself, your children, your grandchildren, please go there. It's just been awesome to see what God's doing with that.

nobleuschool.com. So talking about Rush Limbaugh, and I was always concerned because he would talk about God, but I never heard him talk about Jesus. Okay. And that's, you got to listen for that. A lot of people will say God, much smaller portion of people will talk about Jesus and especially in a way that sounds personal and deeply meaningful, trans, not just transactional, but transformational.

Okay. So it was in, I was concerned once I knew we all found out Rush had cancer. I'm like, I hope David's talking to him. David's his brother. I've met David a couple of times.

He's been on the show a few times, really strong, solid believer, a great student, had written some great books, great book on Romans. So that was David who had been talking to his brother for years. And this was an interview he did with Joel Rosenberg last week. And then I remember this, this is in October of 2020.

As the Christian Post reported, Rush Limbaugh spoke publicly about his faith in October of 2020. You might remember this. This is exactly what he said, quote, I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It is of immense value, strength, confidence.

That's why I'm able to remain fully committed to the idea that what is supposed to happen will happen when it's meant to. Okay. So a garden variety, sure. I'm a Christian person doesn't talk like that. They don't talk about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. They'll talk about God. They'll talk about heaven. They'll talk about God bless you. We're all God's children, stuff like that. But and you can try this for yourself.

And perhaps this is you. If you ask the average person on the street, hey, are you a religious person at all? Now we have a growing percentage of the country that are going to say, no, I'm not in a particular religion. I'm spiritual, but I'm not a part of an organized religion. That's about a just went past 20 percent of the nation at this point. Those are called the nones. Okay.

N-O-N-E-S. Doesn't mean they're atheists. It just means they're not aligning themselves with particular religion or faith. But they're not atheists. Some of them are. Most of them are. And so you've got people like that all over the place.

And then you got other people that say, yeah, yeah, I would say I'm a Christian. Really? Why? Well, you know, I believe in God.

Okay, that's that's good. What else? What do you mean? What else?

What what else? Is there anything else that makes you a Christian besides just saying you believe in God? Well, I mean, you know, I try to do the right thing.

Okay. So are you talking now about like going to heaven? Like if you died soon, do you think you'd go to heaven? Gosh, I hope so.

I think so. As soon as you put yourself into the equation as to whether you're going to heaven or not on the authority of scripture, you're not. Because you're not a part of the equation. And I had a young friend of our son's. We were having this conversation the other night because he's watching the news and stuff going on with Russia and Ukraine and what happened with the Asbury revival. And, you know, it's a fascinating time.

It's pretty wild stuff going on. And and he's concerned that Jesus coming back soon. And he's got loved ones that doesn't think they know the Lord, doesn't think that they're actually Christians, although they call themselves Christians. But when he starts talking to them, they're like, yeah, well, I try to do the right thing. Again, if you throw your resume on the table at all when it comes to going to heaven, you're most likely not going. And how do I how do I back that sounds harsh, Steve? That's not harsh.

It's just true. All right, let me just give you three passages of scripture, and if if you struggle to kind of deal with this particular aspect of Christianity, just write these down. OK, the first one is Romans three, twenty seven and twenty eight. OK, now this is in the New Living Translation.

I'll keep it down on the West Coast version, simple street language. Can we boast then that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on obeying the law, the moral law. It's based on faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law, not by being moral.

It's not what saves you. That's Romans three, twenty seven and twenty eight. If you need to write that down, here's the next one. Ephesians two, eight and nine. Many of you will know this.

Again, New Living Translation. God saved you by his grace when you believed. Wait a minute. I thought it was when I was a good person.

Nope. When you believed. And you can't take credit for this. It is a gift from God.

Somebody gives you a gift. Can you take credit for that? Of course not. That's ridiculous, right? Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done.

So none of us can boast about it because, you know, we probably would. Ephesians two, eight and nine. And then this Galatians two, sixteen. Again, New Living Translation. I use that especially with people that don't know, haven't really studied the Bible.

If you get in the ESV and stuff, King James version, they're going to glaze over. You got to keep it really simple street level language, which is why I'll use the New Living Translation in situations like this, which these are the three passages I sent our friend. And yet this is Galatians two, sixteen. We know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believers. We have believed in Christ Jesus so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law for no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.

That's Galatians two, sixteen, New Living Translation. And you'll never be made right with God by obeying the law because you will never be able to obey the law perfectly. That's why the Bible also says all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All have fallen short. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There's none good.

No, not run one. That doesn't mean good by our standards. That means good by God's standards.

Perfect, morally, pure, holy, completely set apart from sin. Nobody. There's none.

Not one. And so you have this enormous gulf between you and your creator, who's a perfect moral judge. And your works, your decency, your part-time church attendance, your being mostly honest on your taxes, mostly telling the truth to the people you know and love, working fairly hard at your job, not killing people, not stealing from people.

That is worthless. You can't buy God off with that stuff. You throw him some trinkets and you think he's going to erase your seventy-eight and a half years of sin?

No. Not by works, by faith only, in the finished work of Christ. Only Christ could pay the price because he's the only perfect one to ever walk the face of the planet. And the only way he could do that, because he was fully God and fully man. And so those three passages of scripture are absolutely necessary.

And if you or anybody you know or Rush Limbaugh didn't put 100% of his weight on what Jesus did, you're in big, big trouble when it comes to your death and whether you think you're going to heaven or not. Big, big trouble. Forever and ever and ever. We'll be back to talk with our buddy David Fisher.

Little Money Monday update on a Wednesday because it was President's Day on Monday when the President should have been here and stood at Ukraine. So we'll talk to David when we come back. This is Steve Noble on The Steve Noble Show. Don't go anywhere.

Hey friends, it's Steve Noble. I want you to send a text. Just text the word DOS to 66866. That's the word DOS to 66866 and that'll get you on the email list for my daily dose devotionals. Right now we are in the book of Colossians. After that, I'm going to do 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy, hard hitting, straight to the point, lots of application in the usual Steve Noble style. So I hope you'll jump on the list for your daily dose and help get your day off to a great start. If there's one more. Welcome back.

It's Steve Noble, The Steve Noble Show. Great to be with you. Well, Monday was a national holiday, a federal holiday. It was President's Day. And so we didn't have a chance to talk to our buddy David Fisher from Landmark Capital. So we had to bounce some things around. The show yesterday was packed.

As you might have heard, we were talking to our buddy Alan Hahn from Iron Academy, which is awesome. And then talk to John Irwin, who's the director of Jesus Revolution, which opens. There's some limited showings around the country tonight and tomorrow night, but opens wide on Friday. Jesus Revolution, you can it's at like 3000 theaters around the country.

So odds are you can see it by you. Definitely. I mean, it's an amazing movie. You've heard me talking about this. My favorite Christian movie of all time. And I don't put Passion of the Christ in there. That's like a totally different thing. But of all the other Christian movies, Jesus Revolution is my favorite.

And just go back and see what God did there. Late 60s, early 70s. That's when Pastor Greg Laurie came to faith. And that gave birth to his whole ministry, which I was a part of for a while. And it's just a phenomenal movie. Kelsey Grammer and Jonathan Rumi, who plays Jesus in The Chosen, is in it. So and it's important that we go out and support that this weekend, because that keeps it in the theaters longer and might, even if it has a great opening weekend, expands. And you want something, the Jesus Revolution, you want that in as many theaters as you possibly can. And given what has been happening at Asbury University and now some other colleges and Baylor and Texas A&M, there's, you know, we just pray into that, hoping that God's going to just continue to bless this and expand this. So go see Jesus Revolution.

And that's an easy way to be a part of what God's doing. And you'll love it anyway. It's a phenomenal, phenomenal movie. But let's jump over and talk to our good friend David Fisher, since we couldn't do that yet this week. David, how are you? I'm doing good, brother. Happy belated birthday to you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

57 and holding. So we'll see. We'll see how it goes.

Great to have you back on. A lot to talk about. Obviously, the last five days have been pretty ugly in the markets.

Last five days down over a thousand points. We'll get to that. But let's start where we always should get our compass set correctly. And let's start in the scriptures. Today, it's 2 Corinthians 4, 18.

Take it away. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary.

But what is unseen is eternal. So obviously, there's a difference between the way that we might humanly look at the things of the world versus how God views the things that we go through. And our ways are not necessarily His ways. You know, the Bible says to be strong, you got to be weak.

To be rich, you got to be poor. And, you know, when I remember the time when I was not a believer, and I was trying to figure out how you seek the Lord and become a believer, because I heard, you know, I had some people influencing my life, and their life had a radical change when they accepted Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior. And so I was trying to find my own way to the Lord.

And I was doing it the human way. Like, we had this hill where I grew up on, and there was a cross at the top of the hill. So I thought, and that was kind of around the Moses-Cecily B. Mills Ten Commandments.

I went up there, and I was going about it my way. And little did I know that God had a better plan. And so necessarily, the way we might fix our eyes upon things, you know, when we're, it's not necessarily the way the Lord would want us to see things. And so sometimes when we go through challenges, it's maybe just try and see the way the Lord is trying to show us something in those challenges.

That's right. And then, you know, I was talking about this on the show earlier, David, just all these different things we're looking at, what's going on around the country, whether you want to talk about COVID or Ukraine, whatever the case may be. Ultimately, everything is spiritual, and how people respond is based on spiritual realities. That's the unseen. So what you see, there's always something if you pull back that curtain, and that's why you got to study Scripture and know the Lord personally and get the power of the Holy Spirit so you can see these things and understand them.

It's such a great lesson. Well, I mentioned in the last five days, been kind of a bloodbath. Markets lost over 1,000 points. So we got kind of, I would assume that's kind of a short-term problem. We got a short-term and medium-term and long-term problems you wanted to talk about. So how do we kind of look at this, anything we need to really focus on today?

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. That's a short-term problem. I talked last week on your program saying, you know, don't be surprised because of the CPI number coming out that we're going to see stocks going down because it came in a half a percent higher. And now the Fed meeting minutes came out today, and as soon as the Fed minutes hit, within about five minutes, the market went from green to red. And that is because the Fed short-term is going to be raising rates more, at least a quarter of a point, maybe a half of a point. They're kind of dissenting Fed board members on what it's going to be, but so far the majority rules at a quarter of a point, but there's going to be more than one of them. And so that's not good for stocks.

And thank you for sending this article to me, Steve, about Michael Wilson. Fox News reported that Michael Wilson, who works for Morgan Stanley, the guy who's been number one predicting the market, he is saying this thing could sink another 26% from current levels. He relates it to a mountain climber which has gone into the death zone where there's no air up there. So in other words, the market's too high in reference to price for earnings and the profits, and they're just not there.

He's not the only guy. We can read the article, and that could be the end of our segment today, but there's lots of people saying that don't get caught up in this saying that this is a bull market right now. It's not.

Yeah, that's exactly right. So that's happening in the short term. Anything in terms of that's out there on the horizon, like the debt ceiling in terms of big concerns? Well, the debt ceiling, let's take it back to 2011.

We're having the same thing. What was happening there? President Obama was in office. Republicans were in control of the House, and they were demanding a deal with Obama for them to raise the debt ceiling and give them the votes. They were going to have to cut spending. Kind of sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Yes. So we got within 48 hours of a default back in 2011. There was all this uncertainty, but the three months prior to that, three and a half months, the Dow fell by 17% and Gold Sword 25%.

So I think we're going to, as we get into this thing towards June, we're going to see more of those history repeating itself. I hope that they get this thing under control, but we're farther away now than we were in 2011, and there's a lot more debt that's hanging overhead at higher interest rates now. So it could get really choppy here, and again, don't have all your money and paper right now.

That's right. Don't be all parked in one particular parking space. That's not a great idea with the uncertainty of what's going on. Inflation, obviously, still here. The CPI number didn't help the other day, went up another half a point, had come down a little bit before that, but up a half a point.

So it doesn't seem like they're having such an easy time getting that under control. No, I mean, you have to, so there's no way we're not going to have inflation when you print out of thin air almost 70, excuse me, almost $7 trillion in 30 months. That's what the Fed did. That's 30% of all the money that's been created was for, since we started our country, 1776, 30% of it was printed in 30 months.

It all got injected post-COVID or during COVID. And so think of it this way. It's simple as this. If you're a central bank, let's play the game. You're now a central bank.

Everybody hearing my voice puts zeros behind your bank account. You're holding a lot of dollars, and you see all this money being printed. It devalues the dollar. You see all this debt being issued by this country called the United States, and you know that they can't pay this off, and the interest rates are going up, and you see a financial calamity.

What do you do as a central bank? Buy a lot of gold. And that's exactly what is happening. But they're selling a lot of dollars to buy gold.

Now let's come back to reality. So the biggest money of the world is doing this. Doesn't it make sense just to look into gold? Because that's what the big money is doing. And guess where all those dollars are going? They're coming back to the United States, and that's another reason why this is becoming inflationary, because the central banks of the world are selling massive amounts of dollars, flooding our system with dollars that we got to buy back, which creates just more inflation.

Yeah, that's going to be a real serious battle. So you're obviously mentioning gold and silver, and that's the center of your wheelhouse, David. So what's the latest news in that? How's gold and silver reacting to what's going on out there in the real world? Well, when the Dow pulled back almost a thousand points, like you said, gold pulled back like $30.

So it's not pulling back near as much. And here's another billionaire, John Paulson, came out and said this week, you need gold, not dollars. That's his quote.

He says, why? He says, follow central banks. The world is shifting away from the dollar. We are just starting this trend, he's saying, and you're going to see a lot lower dollar values and a lot higher gold prices.

Now is the time to be getting involved in gold. This is a guy who has a hedge fund. He's a billionaire.

And I'm going to speculate. He's been involved in gold before. When gold ran up, he had a hedge fund and he laid the foundation by telling people to get involved in gold.

I wouldn't be surprised again, where he's going to announce his hedge fund bought a significant amount of gold because that's what the world is doing right now. Yeah. And again, that's the opposite end of the teeter totter, regular market conditions on one end of that seesaw.

And then you got to have something else on the other end. And that's why precious metals become a part of the story. And again, you always mentioned this, this is about diversifying your holdings. So you own a home or part of the home because the bank owns a big chunk of it. You've got some of your assets there in real estate. You've got some of your assets in cash.

Maybe you have a 401k, some stocks, and then another aspect there of that diversification would be precious metals. And a lot of people just are like, this all makes sense to me, but I don't really know exactly how to do this or how much to do. So how can people just kind of get a primer on it, David?

How can they just kind of get into the pool and start trying to get educated? So how do you learn how to drive a car? You have somebody sitting right beside you and help you understand it, but before you get in the car, you understand it with them. And then they get in the car with you. So I've been in the car for 29 years. We help people understand about this.

There is no pressure to drive, if you know what I mean. But get the education, find out what drives gold, see if it makes sense to put a portion of your wealth there. You wouldn't dare have all your money in gold or silver. You shouldn't have all your money in paper. What's the content? Another program powered by the Truth Network.