THU HR 2 122823

Mike Rowe here with a few thoughts on my favorite sweatshirt, a classic zip-up hoodie that used to be navy blue, but has since faded to what the fashionistas call a distressed indigo.

It's 13 years old, soft as a flannel bathrobe, and after a few hundred dirty jobs, demonstrably and undeniably indestructible. This is the kind of sweatshirt girlfriends like to permanently borrow, but I've held onto this one because I got it from American Giant. American Giant makes all their stuff right here in the USA so they can control every link in their own supply chain. That matters, because when you buy American Giant, you not only get great quality, you create jobs for people in factory towns all over the country. No pressure, but if you give a damn about the business of making things in America, you've got to support the companies who are doing it right. Go to American-Giant.com to get 20% off your first order.

That's American-Giant.com. Donate and listen to the podcast at WRWL.org. Dr. Mian praises the Saudi religious police, saying they can imprison people for not praying. Dr. Mian is yet another UK preacher who has taught in Saudi Arabia. He spent six years studying Islam in Iban, Saudi Arabia. He wants to see religious police operating on the streets.

He has a radical plan for this country. Muslims shouldn't accept British democracy. Muslims must grow in strength, then take over.

Just submit to you, hands up, until you become strong enough to take over. That little clip tied in, if you don't go to prayer, they come after you. We have a God, Randy, that gives us a choice. He lets us choose to come to him because he first loved us and cared about us.

He gives us the complete freedom to accept him or reject him. We're not forced. We don't force anybody into training, into prayer, into different things. But we have an enemy out there, and one of our best weapons is what? Scripture, the word, is our offensive weapon. And I thought it kind of tied in with our Bible study of prayer. The president's asking the nation to come into prayer.

It's what strengthens freedom, right? That's right, but prayer is the miracle of America. That we were a nation that acknowledged God, that prayed to God, that depended on God and looked to God, and God answered our prayer. And the Bible is full of other people who've done that throughout the years and the ages.

And to me, the beauty of it is that no matter what you've done, no matter where you've been, no matter how much you've messed up, if you turn towards God, his mercy endures forever, too. Amen. All right, what I'm going to do is some quick headlines, Randy, and then we'll talk about them in a minute, but I want to go through a few of them and give people an idea here and kind of follow without doing the stories, but it tells a story just in headlines.

Sure. Biden forgives another, notice the word is another, $4.8 billion in federal student loan debt. Another, they've been trying to buy votes. His administration has already canceled $132 billion in debt for 3.6 million Americans, according to the White House, against the Supreme Court.

U.S. Postal Service announces a $6.5 billion loss for 23, despite their big plan to break even. And, of course, going along with that is next year, the Postal Service is going to make stamps more expensive, and they announced their big price increase for first-class stamps, blah, blah, blah.

They gave more stuff about how they're working on their new plan, the same new plan that I've heard for 10, 20 years. Now, from the business news world, Fox Business and a couple other places, Christmas crash, no seasonal business bump as consumers run out of cash, run out of credit. All the small business owners, 76 percent said they have not seen an increase in sales during the holiday. Oh, by the way, holiday comes from holy days. Absolutely.

Season as inflation and other conditions constrict consumer cash, according to Goldman Sachs. And there's a lot more, but you get the drift. But isn't it obvious, though, at least in my life, that, like, traffic wasn't that heavy this holiday? No, it wasn't at all. Traffic wasn't? The malls weren't jam-packed like they were?

I mean, you know, people were out, but not like that, so I truly believe that. If they come back and say this was some kind of, you know, record-breaking Christmas season, it certainly wasn't because of an increase. Now, and looks into this. Well, this is by a couple of economists. The headline basically is Inflation Grinch Stole Christmas. Goes along the same, reminding people that government keeps telling, well, inflation only grew 3.1 percent. Wonderful.

No. You see, it went increased about 18 to 19 percent, and those prices are still there. You're still paying that higher price for all the goods and services, but the rate it's increasing has decreased. So it's only increasing 3 percent on top of the 18 that's already there.

And that's the big lie that they're, oh, wonderful, the rate's down, but you're still paying the old price. You know, I don't know about you, Pastor Joe, but what do you buy on a regular basis that has not gone up? Can you come up with anything that has not gone up? No, I can't come up with anything. Nothing. So there you have it.

That's right. Animal food is way up. People food is way up. Fuel is way up. Diesel fuel is way up. Tractor parts are way up. Everything is way up.

Everything. I mean, you know, come on, potato chips. Fertilizer is way, way, way up. Oh, absolutely.

And as a matter of fact, it's going to be nonexistent this year. Probably potato chips. You know, I read an article yesterday. They showed a picture of potatoes, and they said that, did you know that once the cost of potato chips versus buying a potato is 200 times? Not 200 percent, 200. 200 times. 200 times once you pay for it as a potato chip.

Yeah, well, we like our snacks. The State Department is giving financial support to a queer Muslim organization in India so it can provide LGBTQI people in the regions with a platform to write, according to a grant listing. The grant was disbursed through a Soros-funded feminist organization in India, their taxpayer dollars. Two years after Biden's call to work, many U.S. government buildings are empty. Actually, most of the federal agencies use an estimated 25 percent or less of their headquarter office capacity, according to a survey by the GAO, Government Accounting Office.

Get this. Social Security Administration and HUD, Housing and Urban Development, offices were both at 7 percent occupancy. In other words, they're heating and cooling a building with 7, instead of 100 employees, they have 7 out of every 100 employees there, they're heating and cooling the entire building for. Small Business Association, SBA, 9 percent. Office of Personnel Management was high up. It was 12 percent of the people were there.

The Buddhist Ed's Department of Transportation, well, they're quite up to 14 percent occupancy. And the General Services Administration that manages all of those federal buildings was operating at about 11 percent. Think of all the money wasted on heating and cooling, all these buildings that are being paid for, and they're not even being used. So we come to the time we talk about Rand Paul is kind of a maverick out there, and every year he puts out his Festivus Report. And this year he is alleging there is about 900, 900 billion dollars in federal spending that's pork wasted money.

And I downloaded the whole thing, and by the time I got done with it, I felt very sick to my stomach. One of the things people were sent in, you know, remember the big PPP funds that they had for COVID? Oh, sure. Billions of dollars?

Sure. Well, there was a huge amount of waste, probably 40 percent of it was stolen. People were using photos off the Internet, were using pictures of Barbie to get COVID PPP funds. Literally. I'm looking at a page where they copied the pictures that people sent in when they applied for the 800 billion in COVID Paycheck Protection Plans, and they were sending in pictures of dolls, of Barbies, of artificially created avatars.

Amazing. As long as they had a picture, they were sent money. And the government is still trying to figure out who they sent all this 800 billion to. That was just one of the things he mentions. Oh, by the way, the interest on our national debt has gone up now. It's getting close to 700 billion dollars.

More money, we spend more money on interest than we do our military. Then they have Dr. Fauci's monkey business, they call it Monkey Island. This was weird. They were studying transgendered monkeys.

Oh, my. Studying HIV, transgendered monkeys. And then they had another one that was like this Monkey Island, the National Institute of Health Research was doing about 33 million dollars on something else. Tourism to boost Egyptian tourism, six million dollars. Now, why are we trying to boost tourism in Egypt? What does that have to do with you?

Anything that you can think of? No, no. I mean, as you go through this thing, you just want to throw up. They had a study, they looked at studying monkeys that were gambling for drinking water. They were studying giving meth to monkeys.

Coming down here, they were, it just, it's totally, totally sickening. And I'm thinking, you know, this debt, the government has over a trillion dollars that they propose to spend that is not going to get even spent until next year. It was government spending that created the high inflation we had. Now, what's going to happen, do you think, I know you're not an economist, but if government spending caused the high inflation, adding another 1.5 trillion dollars being poured into the economy through the Green New Deal and other projects that they couldn't get the money out fast enough because they didn't have it, they had to print it. What do you think is going to happen next year when another 1.4 or 5 trillion dollars hits the economy that's not doing anything really?

But what I'm waiting for that will, that normally affects the economy every year. So where's the new disease at? The seasonal new disease. I mean, so we don't have the, COVID cured the flu, we know that.

But, you know. But Randy, people are still getting the flu. People are still getting COVID. But you know what I'm saying, but see the flu, the flu doesn't pay like COVID does.

So, I mean, think about it, the hospital can say, you know, you're going to get $8,000 if we say it's the flu, and you get at least $35 if you say COVID. So do the math. You said, how can you get the money out of the system quicker? That's quicker.

That's a lot quicker. And actually it's into the hundreds of thousands of dollars now. It's well beyond those figures.

Those are old figures I just gave. I mean, what they were doing is, again, spending government cash. Now, think, this is going to be an election year next year.

Is there? They're going to be buying votes. See, much of this money that they're putting out through this big boondoggle is going to organizations and it's going to go to Democratic people, Democratic Party people to use. And it is a part of this vote buying. The idea of paying off student loans, what they're trying to buy votes from young people. All these things they're doing is trying to buy votes. So what you see is they're taking your taxpayer money, money you pay your taxes on, Randy, you and all your friends and neighbors, and they're using that to buy votes for the Democrat Party. So how do they pay the dead people to vote? How do you pay a dead person to vote? Well, you just give them government benefits.

Yeah, but how do you give it to them? Look at how many businesses were started under Obama for green, you know, kind of the same green new deal. And so most of them failed. But the people that started the businesses got a lot of money.

The businesses went broke and they took back the office furniture and the buildings and stuff, but the people that formed all those businesses got rich. That's how you buy votes. Well, that's true. That's very true.

Remembering that Cloward-Proven strategy, the idea of break down the United States so we can put in a new national system, right, the idea of collapsing America so that we can bring in a new government, a new type of government, a socialist democracy, you know, communism in a sense. Way back, an economist named Milton Freeman once said, nothing is as permanent as a temporary government program. Well, that's true. He's right about that, too. He was.

Well, most of the programs we have, welfare programs were started, the Great Society programs came from Lyndon Baines Johnson, was going to have his great legacy, the war on poverty. Remember that? Yes, I do.

We're giving away our age, right? That's exactly right. Well, I remember when they were going door to door and telling women about, if you get rid of your husband, about how they could get welfare and what all they could get. I remember. And they were doing that.

They were going door to door. Lyndon Baines Johnson, you know. Get rid of the husband and you get more money. And continue to have babies. Now, don't forget, you got to continue to have babies and get rid of the husbands because if the guy's in the house, you can't get any money.

But if you continue to have babies, you can get money. Who are dependent on government, who will vote for government because you're dependent on government, right? Well, here's some figures, folks. According to the Heritage Foundation, LGLBJ's legacy has cost us about 22 trillion, I can't even comprehend, 22 trillion in current dollars. And this is rising by about a trillion a year as we have 80 overlapping means-tested federal programs that dish out taxpayer money.

So wait a minute. So then it's 22 trillion. Do you realize that a trillion is 1,000 billion? So that means you're talking about 22,000 billion dollars.

Dollars, yeah. That's enough to give 22,000 people a billion apiece. I mean, so if we broke that down, think of how many millionaires, you could make everybody pretty much a millionaire off that.

Everybody. I remember years ago, and I don't remember the exact figures, but there were all these government agencies, think about it, there are 80 overlapping federal programs. All these different agencies, they figured there was about four agencies taking care of every poor person. And some economist did some figures, and he said, well, you can give about $70,000 to every poor person, every man, woman, and child that's in the poverty level, about $70,000. And you would save a fortune, because they would no longer be in poverty, and it would save the government billions of dollars. We wouldn't need all the bureaucrats, so it would make the government smaller. And by giving them $70,000 instead of having all the programs, we would save billions and billions of dollars. I don't remember the exact amount, but I remember being floored that you could give every poor person $70,000 and save billions of dollars just boggled my mind.

How does that strike you? That's just, I mean, it's incomprehensible. It really, really is. I mean, when you think about, you know, that kind of money, you know, that kind of money, that's, like, unreal. Like I said, I mean, to me, I still can't get my head wrapped around $1,000 billion.

Yeah, I can't get there either. This was 1964, they started looking at this poverty rate. The poverty rate back in 1964 ran between 12 and 15% across the country.

1964, 12 to 15% of the people were on the poverty level. So what is it now? Do you want to guess at what it is today? I'd say, come on, not far off. It might be more. And it's exactly the same.

Okay, yeah, okay. We've spent $22 trillion in today's money, and the poverty rate since 1964 in America has remained unchanged. But what has happened is the middle class has been collapsing, so it's getting smaller and smaller and smaller every year. And the middle class is not the actual people that they call in poverty, so what we're doing is making the nation poorer as a whole, but keeping them wealthy enough to continue to pay taxes.

That sounds like a hamster wheel to me. Yeah, yeah, I just remember back, you know, it's almost six decades ago, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, completing the legacy of the New Deal, it would end poverty, end illiteracy, provide housing, medical care for everyone. This would be the great society. I mean, you know, another one of the great programs was the war on coal with Obama. If you think of, like, it costs a thousand times more money to produce a unit of heat or coolant, BTU or whatever you want to call it, to use natural gas than it does coal. We're sitting on, in this area of the country, essentially the Saudi Arabia of coal, and we can't use it. We can't even use the clean burning natural gas. It's clean burning.

It's the most efficient fuel out there in the world. And they're trying to shut it down and force us to use something that, I don't know where they're going to get all this wind and solar power. Do you remember Texas when the wind... Oh yeah, and they froze to death. Yeah, they about froze to death.

They're saying the winds have gone down in the west and a lot of the power plants aren't generating electricity because the winds have gotten weaker, and it goes on and on. But I'm thinking along with this, Medicare, go back a few years, that's the trouble being old, you can remember things. Healthcare policy analysis, Sally Pipes gets some figures in Forbes magazine. Two years after Medicare was launched in 1965, the House Ways and Means Committee forecasted that Medicare would spend $12 billion by 1990. $12 billion. The actual figure was $110 billion. When the government tells you how much something is going to cost, we look at their past track record.

How accurate have they been? Well, my favorite one is the way they call a tax cut. The way they do a tax cut is that if the tax is projected to go up to say 10% next year, if they only do eight, then that's called a tax cut. A tax cut, right. That's a tax cut. Let me figure this.

Let me finish this. Last year, the Medicare spending was $875 billion in one year. So their projections were off by a figure of 10. And since 1990, it just keeps growing. It went from $110 billion to $875 billion. Medicaid started off, it cost $3 billion back in 1967.

And in 2022, there were 87 million people on it. And now they're spending, the last figures I had were in 2021, it was about $700 billion. That's what they said, $86 billion of that was fraud or improper payments.

You know, I'm thinking, one of the American people is going to get mad, Randy. I'm looking at all this huge amounts of money that's incomprehensible, you know. They talk about, you know, they're going to do this and save money and everything's going to, you know, be better and help you and all this garbage, food stamps. And we're talking money that we can't even comprehend. The average person can't wrap their head around a trillion dollars.

Most of us can't wrap our heads around a billion. We get this huge amount of waste and debt. When are the people going to get angry and say, hey, wait a minute, I'm the one that's got to pay that debt. I'm the one who's paying the taxes on all of this, this interest on the debt. It's my children, my grandchildren are going to be paying on this the rest of their lives. I would think this would make people mad. But think of the money that they can't account for in foreign aid.

We didn't even go there. Yeah. I mean, I think about Ukraine, where the last time I heard it, I know the number is much higher than this. They had given them like the $40 billion injection. And when they tried to do the audit, they could account for eight. That's how much they could account.

So that means $32 billion just floated out there. And we know that those were politicians. Those are politicians. Yeah. And we know that a lot of the rich oligarchs are of houses in the Mediterranean and everything else, even though the countries at war and all come.

Yeah. They have all these rich leaders. The same thing with Hamas.

They're in, oh, which I can't remember right off my head, can't remember what country they're in, but they live in one of those richer countries and they're living as some of them are very rich million multimillionaires. And, but I'm thinking, I can't help but going back to Cloward-Proven strategy, overload the economy till it what? Collapses.

Yeah, collapses. And you're right. And they are well on the run.

And they're well on their way. And yet people don't seem to understand how dire the straits are, how much money that is, how far in debt. And I keep asking, why are people not angry?

Do you have a guess at why people aren't mad at this? Well, I think they've dumbed people down so much that they almost don't care. And everybody really feels like that can't happen to me while it's happening to them right before their eyes.

They're just happening to somebody else, but not me. That's exactly right. You know, you know, it's kind of like, you know, if you said, you know, if you do A, B, C and D, you know, you're going to have cancer. Or like when I sold insurance, we one out of two men over 50 die from cancer.

But 56 percent of all people in America don't have insurance. And the reason is, is that if you said count one, two, one, two, one, two. And we said only the twos would have cancer. They'd always think they're going to be a one.

Aha. Yeah, that's that's how they think. You know, you're covered.

So, you know. Yeah, I mean, even though like it happened to your your buddy, your father, your mother, your brother, you know what I'm saying? But it's not it's not going I'm never going to be the one. It's not going to be me or my family. That's exactly right.

It's not going to be a it's not going to be a you just think that way or they wouldn't do that. And they're doing it to you right in front of your eyes. I mean, come on. We all watch them go on the poisonous poke.

Now, with those abysmal numbers, it'd be good for you. Right. Right. Right.

With those abysmal numbers on the success rate of the poisonous poke and everybody rolled up their sleeves and took it and took it. Well, maybe it's time for the people to get a little angry, to call their, you know, congressman or senators and say, hey, you know, this year they've got to have a budget. We need to close the border. We need to stop this illegal immigration. It's overrunning our country. That's costing more billions and billions and billions and billions in health care, education, you name it, housing, food stamps. But see, but see, here's what you're forgetting about.

They've legalized marijuana, which will help numb and the dumb. OK. We are going to get a short break. We're going to take a break and stay with us.

We're going to be right back with a lot more. Well, there's people on the left and people on the right, and there's people that's in between. Some say I'm a little bit too far right when I write and sing my song. But on Judgment Day before God's throne, I'd rather be right than wrong. Lord, I'd rather be right than wrong.

They say no one murdered more than Hitler did. Most people would say that's true. But over 50 million babies that were never born might disagree with you. Yeah, they might disagree with you. Some say I'm a little bit too far right when I write and sing my song. But on Judgment Day before God's throne, I'd rather be right than wrong. Lord, I'd rather be right than wrong. We got a right to feel the way we feel.

We got a right to make a stand. And I'm proud to say on my wedding day that my woman was not a man. A great big ugly man. Some say I'm a little bit too far right when I write and sing my song. But on Judgment Day before God's throne, I'd rather be right than wrong. Lord, I'd rather be right than wrong. Thank God I'm saved on Judgment Day. I'd rather be right than wrong. Lord, I'd rather be right than wrong. We're back.

We're back. This is What's Right, What's Left for Radio Ministry, the voice of the Christian Resistance. You're listening to Pastor Joe Larson and Deacon Randy Gay. We're sitting in for Pastor Ernie Sanders, who's home having a bad case of the flu, quite sick. And Randy, I just want to throw one thought and finish up.

There's nothing else. But when I was talking about Rand Paul's best of this report, he noted in the last year, in 2022, he was talking about one of the things that came up. It said, you know, we borrow money. We have to borrow money because we can't pay the bills that the government is spending.

They're spending money faster than they're taking it in. And he said, we have to borrow because we don't have the funds to pay. We borrow it. A large portion we have been borrowing from China. We borrow from China to pay the interest on funds we couldn't afford to spend in the first place. It isn't a danger sign to America. We're borrowing from our enemy to pay interest on money we couldn't afford to spend in the first place.

I want to leave the people with that thought. And with that, well, don't forget Russia. We owe them some money, too. Oh, yeah. Well, we don't forget them now. Don't you know, all of our so-called enemies are our creditors.

Yeah, that's we're really smart, right? That's a good way to do suicide. But I want to end tonight with some fun. Still Christmas week. And I thought we'd look at some of the things in Christmas that maybe the folks out there don't know, like one of the questions I have that I'm going to ask the listeners.

I know you can't call in. Just tell me. But I wonder if most Americans know where we got the modern day Santa Claus from. Do you think they do, Randy? I don't think so. No.

No, sir. I think we've all seen pictures of the old Europe, the elf, the more elfin Santa. And really kind of a little more spooky. Strange looking, right? That's right. I think a lot of people have seen those.

But I'm going to do like my old. I just used to love to listen to Paul Harvey and his rest of the story. It was so great. Well, here's where we got our modern day Santa Claus. The final adaptation of St. Nicholas to the present Santa Claus occurred back in 1930s. The Coca-Cola Company hired artist Hayden Sundbloom. By the way, he happened to be a Jew. They hired a Jewish ad man to illustrate. A new Santa Claus for a advertising campaign to sell Coke, a cola. So Hayden portrayed Santa as more warm, more human, maybe very more human in this new Santa Swept America, especially as the invention of the television and mass marketing came. So your modern day Santa Claus came from a Jewish admin on Madison Avenue to help sell Coca-Cola. You know, somehow that just strikes me so funny. A Jewish ad man creates our modern Santa Claus.

Any comments there? But that just lets you know that the ad people are more about what they can get people to go for. Exactly. As we mentioned earlier, there are more children in this world who know about Santa Claus and Rudolph than know about Jesus Christ, and that is one of the great shames today.

Shame on us, right? That's right. That's right. And what they've done, I want to add something, because people don't understand the theologians, the Bible gives five qualities that God alone possesses. He's omniscient, all-knowing, omnipresent, he's everywhere at the same time, he's omnipotent, he's all-powerful, he's eternal, he can never die, and he's immutable, he never changes.

He never changes. And what the ad people started doing as they built the image of Santa Claus is they took these qualities of God, along with being the giver of rewards and punishment, and they kind of superimposed them over the image of Santa Claus. What does the Bible say? Thou shalt what? Have no other... God before me.

...before me. Oh, I bet people out there never thought about it, but they're portraying Santa Claus as a type of God. I wonder how many people who've been this Christmas season realized that their children talking about Santa Claus and waiting for Santa Claus actually realized that they superimposed all these attributes of God onto a fake image created by a Jewish ad man to sell Coca-Cola. That was kind of a sad ending. Now, something else.

I wonder if the world knows where we got the Christmas tree. I doubt it. I seriously doubt that one. Yeah, so did I. And thanks to Bill Fitterer, an old friend of mine.

Oh, sure. I know Bill. Yeah, he is one great guy.

He's great. St. Nicholas and the Christmas Holiday Traditions. This was a book by, there really is a Santa Claus, and it was a title, and he's having fun with it. But he did a lot of research.

He's a real good researcher. And one of the first places he talked about, there were lights at Christmas were probably inspired by the Jewish Festival of Lights back in 165 B.C. They were having this festival of lights. And there was a reference in early church writings to a tree Tertullian when he was writing something about trees in 2000 A.D. after the Lord. And he wrote, You are the light of the world, a tree evergreen, if you have renounced the heathen temple. So one of the first references was 200 years after Christ. Then in 400 A.D., and this was from the Catholic Church, they had a man they called St. Boniface. He was a pastor, you know, but they called him a saint now. His name was Winfred Boniface, and he was sent by Pope Gregory as a missionary to the heathen Germans at Gessomar. And there he read into this chieftain, Gundahar. This was one of these heathens in Germany. This is a true story. And he was about to offer a little prince called Azulf to be a bloody sacrifice to Thor, the god Thor, their pagan god, that they believed to live in a huge oak tree. Now, we don't know how much of this is myth and legend, but we do know that this Catholic pastor went to Germany and actually met Gundahar and stopped the sacrifice.

That much we know is true. Now, the story is the pastor took, boldly picked up an axe and took a few swings at this mighty huge old blood oak tree, and all of a sudden an enormous wind came up and blew the tree over. And it scared everyone there.

The heathen were in awe. And taking advantage of the situation, the pastor pointed to the little evergreen tree, and he said, This is the word. Not a drop of blood shall fall tonight, for this is the birth night of Saint Christ, son of the All-Father and Savior of the world. This little tree, a young child of the forest, shall be a home tree tonight. It is the wood of peace, for your houses are built of its fur. This is the sign of endless life, for its branches are evergreen.

See how it points toward heaven. Let this be called the tree of the Christ child. The tree of the Christ child.

Gather about it, not in the wild woods, but in your homes. There it will shelter no deeds of blood, but loving gifts in lights of kindness. So here you have a story going back 400 years after Christ about a tree, an evergreen tree, the tree of the Christ child. And then in 1520, Martin Luther, remember the man who led the Reformation church out of the Catholic church, is told he was coming home on Christmas Eve under a cold December sky, and he noticed the countless stars in that cold night.

They were brilliant. When he returned home into the light of his children, he set up a small evergreen tree in the house, placing candles on its branches. And he told his children about the Christ child, the light of the world, whose birth had brightened the sky on that first Christmas Eve with the angels and the Shekinah glory. So he set up a manger scene, a creche, under the tree so that the lights would appear as the stars above Bethlehem. And this is supposedly where the real tradition of Christmas trees in the home came from. The idea of the tree, the evergreen, everlasting life, pointing toward heaven, and the lights on the tree representing the light of the world, which is the Christ child, and the idea that the lights would appear over a manger scene that should be under the tree. This is probably the birth of the Christmas tree, and you and I were talking on the telephone earlier. We've come a long way from that, haven't we, in the Christmas trees that you see out there in the world? It's a whole other ball game.

It really is. Most of them no longer have stars or angels, they're just what? Oh, they just have colors.

Just colors and tensils, you know? But if you think about it, it goes back to Jeremiah chapter 10, which is the heathen takes the tree and he decks it with silver and gold. And that's what they usually put on there. They worship the tree, right? The tree was the worship, not the Christ in the manger under the tree. That is correct.

That's true. Anyway, how much time do we have left, Style? About nine minutes. Okay, we've got time for one more, and then Randy, you're going to do our invitation tonight. Yeah, I'm going to do it tonight, that's right.

Real quickly, I've got one more for us. One of the hymns that everybody's familiar on the 12th day of Christmas, a lot of us have sung that, and the round robin with it, and it's really a lot of fun. But this hymn, back in England in the 1500s, there was a lot of religious persecution going on. And things changed kind of frequently, and it was kind of dangerous to openly teach the doctrine of Christ.

So spiritual lessons for children were put into songs with symbolic meanings, and this is where they came up with the idea that 12 days of Christmas was composed during this period of persecution. And I want to tell people what it actually meant. In fact, you can take a guess.

The first line is, my true love would be what? God. God himself, right. The partridge would be his son Jesus, right?

Jesus Christ, okay, right. Yeah. And then, well, we know that a mother partridge would feign injury to decoy predators, you know, birds do that, you know, it was like. So the partridge was the idea of the protecting from, you know, protecting the young. And then we have the pear tree, which stood for the cross and tree of Adam's fall. Yeah.

And they used the pear tree, it goes along with the song. The two turtle doves, I bet you can guess that one. But it'd be not Adam and Eve, no? No. So it doesn't mean the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ? No, Old and New Testament. Okay, okay. Old and New Testament, three French hens. Okay. And see how doves, I was thinking the Holy Spirit, the dove, but that's okay.

Well, but it's Old and New Testament here. Yeah, yeah. French hens, faith, hope, and love.

Okay. So this one you know, four calling birds. Oh, four gospels. Four gospels, right. Five golden rings.

So that would be what, gifts? First, yeah, it's first five. Oh, Pentateuch, the first five books.

Yeah, first down. Gisselain, six Gisselain. Six. Six. Days of Creation.

Right. Day of the Alayah, six Gisselain. Swans are swimming. Seven swans. We find that in Isaiah 11, two of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Okay. Eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.

Okay. Nine ladies dancing, the nine fruits of? The Spirit.

The Spirit. Ten lords a-leaping, I bet you can get that one. Oh, no. Ten. Ten, ten, ten. Ten commandments. Okay. Ten commandments, okay. Eleven pipers piping, eleven faithful apostles. Right.

Eleven twelve drummers drumming, we might not know, but it was originally the twelve points in the Apostles' Creed of the Protestant Church. Oh, okay. Anyway, that's one of your great Christmas hymns really had a lot of meaning, and it could be used for Bible study for children and grandchildren.

Alrighty. And that's kind of, I thought we'd finish with some fun stuff, a little bit about Christmas that most people were never taught, didn't know. And now would you end the program with the invitation, the most important part of the program? Tonight I'm going to do it a little different. I'm going to tell you now that if you have no desire to be saved, if you have no care about Christ, no care about God, none of that, and you just want to do your own thing, I have nothing for you tonight. But if you do, if you're like myself, like most people, where you realize that there have been times in your life when you dropped the ball, there's times in life when you thought only of yourself, times in life when you didn't think about God, when you didn't honor your commitments, when you did not fall through, then you know that there's parts in your life that you look back on and you think about them with trepidation and anguish, and you wonder what's going to happen if you have no fear of death, I have nothing for you. But if you want to not spend eternity in hell, if you want to spend it with the Lord Jesus Christ, if you want to be atoned for and in your own way, live your eternity in the presence of God and Christ, then I want you to listen up. And this is Romans chapter 10, this is just, we're going to go through these 13 verses and I'm going to do them really, really short. Paul says, brother, my heart says iron prayer, prayer to Israel is that they might be saved.

And of course that's my heart says, I am prayer to you. And he says that they have a, they have a zeal of God at which you do, but no knowledge because here's what we all think I'm a good person and you're a good person because it's what you did. And we also know that you're a bad person because of what you did. So Christ is the end of being a good person for anybody because it's now now what he did now. And it's as simple as this.

You've heard this story over and over again. You see the advent now, if, if you truly believe that Jesus Christ was God coming down in the flesh to really literally die, to live and die for you and his death page or page or penalty that if he died for you and you believe that in your heart and you will confess that in your mouth, that father, I have sinned, okay father, I have sinned and I owe you an an impossible debt to pay, but I know that you paid it for me. And you said that if I believe in my heart and I accept that you've done this then, and that you are, you are now my savior, Lord in life, then I've shall be saved by your grace and your mercy by the gift, not only of the life of Christ, but the main thing is this death that it ransomed you back from sin because that's what you owed God. Now if you confess in your mouth, the Lord Jesus Christ, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, then whoever shall call on the name of the Lord in those circumstances shall be saved and you're saved now. Not tomorrow, not a year from now, not whatever, and you enter into a relationship and a fellowship with God.

He comes in and dwells in you and that's your evidence that God has accepted you and that you are now a child of God. You are free from sin and you now have not the power to not do wrong. You have the power finally to do right in Christ.

And so if you would confess with me, say, Lord, I've sinned and Lord, I accept you as my savior and my life and my payment for my sin debt, then thank you now for coming into my life and living in me. And if you believe that with your heart, then God has raised you from the dead and you're in heaven. It's as simple as that. And I know we don't have much time left, but it is as simple as that. It's with the heart you believe the righteousness, not doing stuff.

If righteousness comes by the law, if you can be good enough, then Christ died in vain. Thank you. Well, it's about that time where we tell people what we say. Good night. God bless. We say God bless. God bless. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year. And always, always, always, always keep fighting the fight. Thanks for listening to the voice of the Christian resistance. What's right? What's left? Hosted by Pastor Ernie Sanders. To learn more about our ministry, please visit us online at www.wrwl.org. Please tune in next time for another edition of What's Right, What's Left.

The preceding program is sponsored by What's Right, What's Left Ministries and is responsible for its content. Ah, ho, ho, ho. Hey, what's wrong, Santa? Well, it's these elves. The new ones all feel entitled. They don't want to work their way up the ladder.

In fact, they hardly want to work at all. Then there's those social justice elves. They keep pointing out everyone's differences, dividing the elves and getting them all riled up. And don't get me started about the reindeer rights elves. The shop floor just isn't the happy little place it used to be. We should have used red balloon.

That's right, Santa. RedBalloon.Work is America's woke free job board. Every day we help good companies find reliable, motivated job seekers without all the woke nonsense. And our new Red Balloon Recruiter Service is turning traditional corporate recruiting on its head, delivering high quality employees for a fraction of the price. Give yourself a Christmas gift and post your jobs on RedBalloon.Work today and use promo code Salem to get 10% off your first month's job posting because life's too short for a bad hire.