Truth Talk ft Joey Hudson

Hey, this is Jim Graham from the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we explore relationship, instead of religion, every week. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. We're empowered by the Truth Network. This is kind of a great thing, and I'll tell you why. Where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together.

Speak your mind. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. Welcome in, and Joey Hudson in with you today, sitting in for my friend Stu Epperson on Truth Talk Live. What a pleasure it is to be back with you. I'm from upstate South Carolina, where I hosted the Morning Answer for many years there. So if you're listening on the Truth Network on 96.9 in upstate South Carolina, which is the newest addition to the Truth Network, good to spend the afternoon with you.

And if this is our first time to meet, it's great to spend a beautiful Tuesday afternoon with you. Let me invite you to join the conversation. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. Also, I welcome your emails. You can send those directly to me, joey at joeyhudson.com. And you can also text me directly, too. Just send your text messages to me at 864-477-JOEY.

I hope I did not thoroughly confuse you with all those numbers. Hope you'll join the conversation today. Let's jump right in it as there's a lot of news happening today.

Let's do a quick news rundown. Former President Donald Trump talked with reporters outside of the courtroom condemning Judge Juan Merchant as a highly conflicted judge, he said. Trump complained about the gag order imposed on him, which was a primary topic during today's court proceedings. The former president is accused of violating the gag order 11 times. And at $1,000 apiece, that's $11,000 that they're potentially going to find Donald Trump. He said in a statement, I'm not allowed to talk, but people are allowed to talk about me.

Judge Merchant did not hand down a final ruling on the gag order today. Also, the city of Baltimore said that owners of the Dally cargo ship should be held accountable in last month's crash and the subsequent collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, according to a new court filing. The crash left six people dead who were working on the bridge at the time of the collapse. In court papers filed, Baltimore is accusing parent company Grace Ocean Private Limited of gross and potentially criminal negligence when it put an unseaworthy vessel into the water on March 26, just moments before it crashed into the structure, supporting the bridge and causing it to collapse.

The city said the water transportation services companies should be held fully liable for the collapse. And a group of climate activists are eyeing their next big protest over the summer. In a statement, the group members and supporters Climate Defiance, they're calling for a historic blockade of the congressional baseball game, an annual competition where Republicans and Democrat members of Congress compete in America's favorite pastime. In their statement, they said, We society, humanity are careening into an abyss. The decisions we make now will reverberate not for centuries, but for millennia.

If we do not act now boldly and swiftly, millions will die from storms and from starvation, Client Defiance said in an email to supporters saying that the entire world faces imminent catastrophe and claiming that Congress has the power to save millions, if not billions of lives. A national football or congressional baseball game is scheduled for 5 p.m. in Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. on June the 12th. Later now, we're going to talk about church services on Sunday. Did you go? Or did you stay home and watch it online?

Maybe. Maybe you watched a stream of your church service. Has your church attendance changed since COVID? A recent Gallup poll digs into the numbers and suggests that Americans have changed their church attendance plans.

We're going to jump into that later in the hour. Breaking in New York City today, a group called the NYU Palestine Solidarity Coalition led New York University students to walk out of classes this afternoon following some violent anti-Israel protests that unfolded there last night. Students and others gathered in Washington Square Park in Manhattan to, quote, reflect, debrief and strategize, according to a group spokesperson. Anti-Israel protests at New York University's campus turned violent last night when demonstrators started throwing bottles at police officers who were sent to the scene to try to disperse the large and unruly crowd. NYPD sources confirmed that 133 demonstrators were arrested by police using zip ties and flex cuffs to remove the protesters from campus.

They were taken on a bus to police headquarters where they were charged with trespassing. Let's talk about this for a moment. And I know this has been a topic that's been in the news, and I know Stu has, and you guys have talked about this a lot in recent days. But as Christians, how should we be responding to these demonstrations?

It's easy to quickly condemn their actions. But let's have a real discussion today about what we can do, how we should respond to some of these radical groups who are taking over college campuses. And they're literally taking over these campuses. I heard in the promo leading into today's show, Stu talking about some of these groups chanting, you know, deaf to America, deaf to Israel. The NYU Palestinian Solidarity Coalition said in an Instagram post that NYU students in their group set up a Gaza solidarity encampment on Monday.

The group is demanding to end all war profiting and investment in genocide. They're calling for a complete academic boycott of Israel, the removal of NYPD on campus, and that NYU must protect free speech on campus and provide full amnesty to all students and faculty penalized for their pro-Palestinian activism. Is there a limit to free speech? Should we allow, or better put, should these students, these radicals, be allowed to, first off, close down campuses because that's what they were doing at Columbia University yesterday. They had virtual learning because they literally had taken over the campus. It wasn't safe for students to be on the campus, and they were allowed to do that.

Are there limits to freedom of speech? They said that the arrests last night of the students were violent, but they said the violence we face is only a fraction of the violence that Palestinians face on the ground every day. Anti-Israel protesters, literally, they formed a human chain as police moved in to break up the demonstration.

Mass arrests began around 8.30 last night, we're told, after the protest spread to the plaza in front of the business school there at NYU. Now again, this is a separate school from Columbia that we talked about over the past few days, where the university president there could potentially lose her job, just like some have lost their jobs at Harvard and others. So that's the bad news. There is some good news because there's some great things happening on some other college campuses. We'll talk about that up next. Hope you'll join the conversation. 866-348-7884, I'm Joey Hudson, in for Stu. As we continue today's edition of Truth Talk Live!

I'm Joey Hudson, in for Stu Epperson. 864-34-TRUTH, 864-348-7884 is how you join today's conversation, and I hope that you will. Lots of things to talk about today. So I kind of painted the dark picture earlier as we talked about all of the evil that is going on on college campuses around the country.

And there is a lot of evil. When you see, when you turn on the TV and you see the headlines and you see the images of students burning flags, of students yelling and screaming obscenities, of them calling for the death of America, the death of Israel. It's a bit concerning, isn't it? But let me take a moment and talk with you about some of the good things that are happening on campuses around the country because you don't always see these.

You don't always, these don't make the headlines on all the major news networks. What about the campuses that, for example, have hundreds and thousands of students being led to Jesus Christ? Have you seen those headlines? Maybe not so much, right?

But they're out there. For example, according to an article in Belief.net, one year after the remarkable 16-day nonstop worship service at Asbury University, remember that last year? An outpouring still appears to be striking various schools and student bodies across America, according to the article. For example, well-known ministry leader Jenny Allen and others recently baptized hundreds of University of Georgia students. And get this, instead of immersions in traditional baptismal pools, many of the students profess their faith in the back of pickup trucks outside of a fraternity house.

It's kind of an unusual setting for baptisms, isn't it? Online videos show large crowds of students gathered around these trucks, watching their classmates openly embracing Christ. Allen wrote in an Instagram caption, quote, insane night at the University of Georgia, once again, he is moving. Now, this occurred after a stadium packed full of Georgia students who had attended church services. Allen called these happenings powerful and explained in a video that the baptisms followed this evangelistic event in the Coliseum there at University of Georgia.

She said in this Instagram video, noting there were about seven to eight thousand students assembled at the stadium. She said, we preach Jesus. Worship was incredible. And so we're preaching Jesus confessing sin, all these students, and it's just so beautiful, she said.

Allen called from the stage asking who wanted to embrace Jesus. And this led to young people all over the venue to stand up. And then the baptism started to unfold in a parking lot in front of the fraternity. She said, we found a public parking lot and we got four pickup trucks and we're baptizing kids in four pickup trucks.

All these fraternity guys were watching from their decks. It was just insane, as she described the setting. She's the founder of IF, a group gathering of women's ministries and a New York Times bestselling author. In the last six months, Allen has led a series of campus evangelistic events primarily in the south. And it all started when she helped hundreds of young people get spontaneously baptized at Auburn University in Alabama last fall.

Something that she recently spoke about as she appeared on a CBN news story. Here's a here's Jenny Allen telling that story. Yeah, it was pretty incredible night and we didn't plan it. We were I just finished and done, you know, gospel. I shared the gospel and got off and just really candidly, there wasn't like a massive response to the gospel in that moment. But I did since the spirit was moving and I get off the stage and someone walked up to me and said, hey, this is a pastor. And he said, listen, it's so great.

This girl just texted me and said, I want to be baptized tonight. And I just said, hey, could we where are you going to do that? And he said, a pool. I said, could we think bigger?

Could we find something bigger? And he said, there's a lake down the street, but it's like a half mile away, a mile away. I said, do you think they would come?

And he said, well, we can we can try. So I literally just got back up on stage. The worship was going.

We were wrapping up the night and I just said, would anybody want to be baptized tonight? And dozens of hands went up. And so we we said, well, we're going to go down to the lake. And I mean, everybody came. There were actually they picked up people on their way. There were six thousand people there. And I mean, it was just wrapping the entire lake. And it's a pretty big lake.

Three or four rows deep. It was wild. And they stayed. We were there till almost midnight before we just said, hey, you know, we're going to call it.

But but I mean, we were it was amazing. And hearing the kids, like every single kid said something different. But one of the things they said consistently was, you know, we would ask them, you know, what? Why are you here?

Why do you want to do this? And and just make sure they understood the gospel before we did this. And they so many of them said this. They said, I want to be clean. I want to be clean.

I want to be clean. Wow. Now, that's the type of story that should be making the headlines, that should be plastered all over our TVs if we sit down and watch the network news tonight.

Right. Rather than the story, the stories of these kids on the college campuses, literally taking over the campus, causing other students not to be able to attend classes. Calling for the death of America, calling for the death of Israel. Why do you think the media doesn't spotlight the fact that hundreds of students were baptized in the back of pickup trucks in Georgia and around this lake? In Alabama. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884, love for you to join the conversation today.

You can email me, Joey at JoeyHudson.com. Why do you think this is? Why do you think that the media and society in general, there's not an appetite to hear these type stories? Because, look, let's face it, the media is reporting on things.

They know people will watch and will get them ratings, which in turn leads to companies buying advertising on their network. But why do you think we aren't really hearing the story of these students getting baptized? And this is just the example I gave you of Miss Allen describing the situation in Alabama is just one of many that she's been a part of just in recent months. 866-348-7884, 866-348-7884. I'm Joey Hudson, in for Stu Epperson. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. Continuing today's edition of Truth Talk Live, I'm Joey Hudson, in for Stu Epperson.

Glad to have you along as well. Hope you'll join the conversation. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. You can email me directly, Joey at JoeyHudson.com. And let me take a minute, too, to tell you about my podcast. I hope you'll join me weekdays as well on Just the Truth, Monday through Friday. Just go to JoeyHudson.com, click on subscribe or connect with Joey and we'll send you the information that you need to join us on the Just the Truth podcast.

I'd love to have you join our community as well. So we have two distinct images here. We have the images of students protesting in New York City, at NYU, at Columbia. We've seen these demonstrations around other college campuses.

They're destructive. They're shouting profanities. They're calling on America, death of America, death of Israel.

I'm sure they probably would add death to Christians as well. But then we have this group of students at Auburn University, University of Alabama, University of Georgia, where you have hundreds and hundreds of students finding Christ and being baptized in the back of pickup trucks and in ponds near the stadium. Let's go to the phones. Let's start with Lori, who's in Virginia. So, Lori, what's your solution here? What do you think we should be talking with these students about?

This is going to probably sound strange, but I teach high school and have taught college. Students are being manipulated by sensationalism, and they're not really aware of what they're protesting for, because if they thought about the idea of death to America, that would be like shooting themselves in the foot. I don't think that they're aware of the ramifications and the outcome of the things that they're asking for, but they're being swept up in like emotion and fury. So, to counteract that, I would inform them that they're being programmed. Nobody wants to be programmed.

And I think that if they thought they were being manipulated and programmed, they would start to engage the brains that they have between their ears and start to behave otherwise. As a teacher, Lori, what is it with some of the university officials just kind of sitting back and allowing this to happen? We've seen a couple of major university presidents being fired.

The university president of Columbia College, some people are calling for her resignation. Why are these administrations, these teachers, not trying to get out there and give them the message that you just told me? It's pretty simple, don't you think? Yeah, it is pretty simple, but I think a lot of people feel that they're standing alone, they're going against the flow, and they're afraid. So, fear is a big factor on their end.

Yeah, I get it. You get fired. I mean, getting fired from your job, that's a big deal. That involves you, your family, a lot of change. So, I think fear.

Yeah. Hey, Lori, appreciate your call today. Appreciate you listening to the Truth Network. Have a great afternoon. You too, God bless. God bless you as well.

Let's go to Dayton, Ohio, where Buxman is standing by. Good afternoon, how are you? Welcome to Truth Talk. Hey, how are you, Joey? Wonderful to have you on the program. I have to tip my hat to teacher Lori.

She's got it. What's going on inside the school system is just, it's not what we parents would believe is being taught to our children. So, that leads me to what I wanted to offer as a hopeful solution. They move in dollars, Joey. The administration of the colleges, you look at the dynamics of Columbia, we know this is a very liberal, liberal arts college. If I remember right, Joey, you could back me up on this.

So, didn't they want to have the Iranian president come and speak at one point as a guest speaker? You know, I believe you were correct. I believe that was Columbia University, yes.

It was Columbia. And so, this is the ideology. So, I would want to speak to parents if I could, Joey. Take your kid out of the school or stop the funding for the programs that you're going through at Columbia. Pull the dollars out. Teachers, especially starting with you, who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, don't come to work for a week. You don't have to fire yourself, but don't come to work for a week.

Make them pay money to cover your classes that you should be in their teaching. Come to a solidarity among righteousness and say, no, we're not doing this, Columbia. I'm a Christian. I stand up for Jesus Christ.

I believe that Jesus is the mediator between both of them, the Palestinian and the Israeli. That's the shalom that we should be praying for. And I'm going to show you that I'm going to back up, I'm going to take a week off, I'm going to pull my child's funding out, or I'll pull my child out until you get this result. This is not acceptable. It is not what I signed up for when I signed my child to be a student at this organization on my contract. This was not negotiated. So I would say move that way, Joey.

At least give it a try. Yeah, stop, stop writing the checks and that'll get their attention. You know, I noticed that in the situation with NYU, one of the billionaires who has given literally millions of dollars has said that he's going to stop.

Robert Kraft, he's one of the, I think he owns the New England Patriots, if I'm not mistaken. He said, hey, no more money. I'm not writing any more checks if you're going to allow this to happen on the campus. Right.

I mean, that's how you get the attention. And I agree with you, the parents, the adults need to be the adults. They need to stand up and do something. And that applies to the teachers on these college campuses as well.

We would look at it a little bit differently, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, appreciate your phone call. Have a wonderful afternoon. Appreciate you listening to Truth Talk Live. You too, Robert. Have a great afternoon. 866-348-7884, 866-34-TRUTH.

Love for you to join the conversation as well. I mean, I get the whole free speech argument, but to allow these students to disrupt classes, and that's what happened at Columbia yesterday. They suspended classes, in-person classes.

They had virtual classes and to allow them to call some of the damage. Look, look, maybe people like Robert Kraft, who I don't know how many millions he's given to the school, but maybe people like him standing up and saying, hey, no more checks. And that's kind of what happened at Harvard as well. When Claudine Gay lost her job, it was when some of the big funders, some of the big contributors stepped in and said, we're not doing this anymore.

Because in most cases, let's just admit it, it's all about the money, isn't it? Follow the money trail and that'll get their attention pretty quickly. But again, I get back to, yes, all the attention is being paid to the demonstrators. But why don't we, why doesn't the media shift their focus a bit and tell the stories at the University of Georgia, at Auburn University, at the University of Alabama, where this group called Unite Us has literally started a movement. And hundreds and hundreds of students are being baptized. They're finding Christ.

In one of the news releases, it says its goal is to share the gospel and encourage discipleship among communities on campus, endeavors offering young people opportunities to grow and flourish in their relationship with Christ. Recently, Jenny Allen baptized hundreds of students in a campus fountain at the University of Alabama. She also baptized students in the Westcott Fountain at Florida State University. So anywhere there's water, she's baptizing these students. Evidently, May the 1st, she's having also a service at the Thompson Bowling Arena at the University of Tennessee.

So it'll be interesting to see how much attention she gets there. Are you hearing about these students? They're not making the headlines, are they? Because it's not, it doesn't make for good headlines to hear about hundreds of students being baptized.

They'd rather cover these protesters who are shouting anti-American messages, anti-Israel messages, than to put these students who are finding Christ on their college campuses, putting them in the headlines. 866-348-7884, 866-348-7884. Love to hear from you. Love for you to join the conversation on this Tuesday edition of Truth Talk. I'm Joey Hudson, sitting in for my friend, Stu Epperson. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com.

Joey Hudson in for my friend Stu Epperson on this beautiful Tuesday afternoon. Glad to have you join us. You can join us via the Truth Talk line, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. As we've been talking today about what's happening on our college campuses around the country. There's a real contrast here between what's happening in New York City, for example, at Columbia University, at NYU, where students are demonstrating, calling for the death of America, calling for the death of Israel. Yet we have hundreds and hundreds of students on the college campuses of University of Georgia, Alabama, Auburn, May 1st coming up, a campus crusade at the University of Tennessee.

Hundreds of students finding Christ, being baptized in ponds and fountains in the back of pickup trucks. Let's go back to the phones. Mike is in Dayton, Ohio. Welcome, Mike. Welcome. Thank you, Joe.

Thank you for taking my call. Do you remember Paul Harvey at all? Of course, the rest of the story. Yeah, the rest of the story. My gosh, he quoted a lot of stuff over the years that if America does this, America does that, and America does this, we're going to fall.

And then that was the rest of the story. And I wish I could quote him, but I can't remember at this point. But my gosh, he was spot on about China, about things taking over us, and socialism is taught in our schools. What is happening in America, Paul Harvey predicted it back in 1965, maybe, is my memory. Yeah. I don't know if you know anything, Joe.

I mean, you want to jump in there. That would be awesome. Maybe even a quote of Paul Harvey. I mean, he did some of the amazing things back then. He was worried about the media back then. Oh, he did.

And you're right. I mean, Paul Harvey, that was appointment radio, to a degree, because people would set their watches to listen to him. And he just had a way of telling a story.

And of course, his tagline there was, and that's the rest of the story. But you're right, Paul Harvey, he was a jewel, and we need more people like Paul Harvey in media today. Hey, appreciate your phone call today. Hope you have a blessed afternoon. Oh, you too, sir. Thank you. All right. Sure thing.

Your calls are welcome. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. Did you go to church on Sunday? Or did you stay home and watch it online? Maybe you watched a stream of your church service, or maybe you watched a stream of a church someplace in another state or another country. Church attendance has changed since COVID. Many people's churches, church attendance has changed considerably since COVID, which leads to a bigger question. Is watching a church service on TV, watching a stream of a service, the same as attending in person? Now, I realize some people cannot attend due to physical issues or maybe sickness. In the case of COVID, unfortunately, we had some states overzealous government who shut them down, would not allow you to go to church service.

But if you're able to go, is there a difference in watching church on TV or on your iPad or on your iPhone as opposed to attending services in person? According to a Gallup survey, U.S. church attendance has shown a small but noticeable decline compared with what it was before COVID and the pandemic. In the four years before the pandemic, 2016 through 2019, an average of 34 percent of U.S. adults said they attended church, synagogue, mosque or temple in the past seven days.

From 2020 to present, that average has dropped to 30 percent. So we haven't seen a huge return to churches after COVID. In fact, we've seen an overall decrease in church attendance. The recent church attendance levels, again, about 10 percentage points lower than what Gallup measured when they first started asking the question back in 2012. And yes, I do understand that the coronavirus pandemic caused millions of Americans to avoid any public gatherings, not just churches, but anything. Unfortunately, many houses of worship were closed or limited to how many people they could have.

I mean, when you think back to those what we went through through COVID, it's kind of surreal, isn't it? It's not clear if the pandemic, according to Gallup, is the cause of reduced attendance or if the decline is a continuation of trends that were already in motion, because Gallup says that even prior to COVID, they had seen a gradual decrease in church attendance. But when you add to that the temporary closure of some churches and the fact that people wanted to avoid those community activities, many Americans got out of the habit of attending religious services.

Attendance rates since 2020 are lower among many or nearly all various subgroups. The main exceptions are groups that had low levels of church attendance before the pandemic and were already had decreased tremendously then. Church attendance is down four points among Protestants, from 44 percent to 40 percent, seven points among Catholics, 37 percent to 30 percent, which are two of the largest faith groups in the U.S. Republicans, Democrats, independents show similar declines in church attendance since the pandemic began as well. Between these three, Republicans, 40 percent remain much more likely than Democrats, 25 percent or independents, 25 percent to attend religious services. So that is good news for Republicans, that Republicans seem to be more likely to attend church services. The attendance, though, has shifted dramatically from in-person to virtual. Do you get the same experience when you watch church from home than you do when you're in the church in person? Now, I have to admit, I actually. I actually watch more church services now I've been able to be introduced to churches I never knew about before. Pastors that I'd never heard of because I've been seeking them out on YouTube and other places.

And some people use that as an excuse. What say you? 866-348-7884. Let's go to Charlotte, North Carolina. Timothy. Good afternoon, Timothy. How are you? Hey, how are you? I'm doing good. Thank you.

Sure thing. What's on your mind? So a couple of things. I think there's a lot. I think you probably know that there's a lot that goes into answering some of those questions.

I think that. Watching church service online can really help supplement believers, especially a new believer or a an anxious believer. People who are getting over social anxieties or maybe they're just trying to figure out how churches work.

And they're just curious, kind of like what you were saying. They're exploring what church is all about. However, I think that and there's the element of God doesn't dwell in the house made by human hands. But once they're a Christian, once we are a Christian, we have access to the Lord and we can worship him in the woods.

We can worship him in our homes. But I think that the second that a moment, the second that a Christian thinks that they don't have to do life in some kind of community, in the context of worshipping the Lord, reading scripture, praying for one another, serving one another, serving others. That's where I think that the line is drawn.

Yeah. If if if a Christian tells themselves that, you know, I'm doing all I need to by consuming content in the form of an online church service, I think that's where they could go remiss. And I think I might be able to add a little bit on the decline of church services. My family was living in New York during during Covid, and we ended up not going to church for a while. But I think that we saw Covid exacerbate a situation where people in the last five, 10 years, even just increasingly don't want to spend time with other people. They want to avoid other people.

We want to live life isolated. We are animosity with other people, whether it's Covid or political issues or social issues. And then growing skepticism over the last 10, 20 years for institutions like churches.

There's so much noise. And then all of this, we're all we're all sinners. And the second that we get out of church and we get out of community, we get out of accountability and we're in our sin and then we just find ways to justify it.

The world says we're justified. And I think it's not the large portion of Christians, but I do think that a lot of those things contribute heavily to that situation. Well, Timothy, you know, it's easy and I can see, you know, Gallup says people got out of the habit of going to church. And sometimes on Sunday morning, it is easier just to roll over or to get up in your pajamas and sit down and watch the service on streaming, isn't it? But if I'm here, if I'm understanding you, you're saying that that's fine, but it shouldn't take the place of an in-person community.

Never, never. And it's a difference between me consuming the word, consuming worship, or me knowing that there's another believer in church that I need encouragement from, that I need to encourage. There's a new person that I need to greet.

Gotcha. Hey, Timothy, we're out of time. Appreciate you joining me. Hey, I enjoyed my time with you today. Joey Hudson, find me on joeyhudson.com. Stu Epperson, back tomorrow.