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David Wheaton: Deal, deal, but there can be no lasting deal with Iran. That is the topic discussed today right here on The Christian Worldview Radio Program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host. The Christian Worldview is a non-profit, listener-supported radio ministry. Our website is thechristianworldview.org, and the rest of our contact information will be given throughout today's program. As always, thank you for your notes of encouragement, financial support, and lifting us up in prayer.

President Trump is relentlessly positive about his own abilities, his policies, and America. It's widely reported that the President was heavily influenced by Norman Vincent Peale's best-selling book from 1952, The Power of Positive Thinking. Peale was a minister at Marble Collegiate, a church in Midtown Manhattan where Trump's family became members. This likely explains why Trump chose Paula White-Cain to lead the White House faith office. She is cut from the same positivity cloth in the health, wealth, and prosperity movement, where one names and claims God's blessings.

So, what does this have to do with the war in Iran? Trump's self-confidence in his leadership, the US military, and in his own ability to make deals has impelled him to undertake what no president previously dared: to take military action against Iran to keep them from developing a nuclear weapon, with the goal of achieving peace in the Middle East. But considering the region's history of conflict going back to ancient times, this is an audacious objective.

One of Trump's favorite adjectives is the word "great." In late February, the war started great with the airstrike extermination of Iran's supreme leader and dozens of other commanders. The war continued to go great as the US and Israel decimated Iran's military infrastructure and sank its navy. And now we're told the negotiations with Iran to end the war and give up their nuclear weapons ambitions are going great as well.

But is that really true? One day the President says a deal is close. The next day we hear there is no deal. The reality is no amount of positivism can make a crooked stick straight, or open the Strait of Hormuz for that matter. Iran is crooked and intractable. Their Shia Muslim worldview is apocalyptic. They believe they will usher in the 12th Imam, the Islamic version of the Messiah, through the conflagration of hostility. This means they have no intention of peace with the US and Israel, regardless of casualties or hardship they suffer. Their patience is long, while the President must be mindful of the midterm elections in November where he could lose power in Congress.

So, how to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable? Steve Deace, author and syndicated radio host for The Blaze, joins us this weekend on The Christian Worldview to discuss how the war with Iran can be concluded in a way that achieves the objective of keeping them from making nuclear weapons. We will also discuss how the war has exposed the deep rift on the right over Israel and the major inroads Islam is making in Western nations, including the United States. And finally, we'll talk about Steve's new children's book, Why Independence Day: America is Great Because God is Good, and the call for Christians to use their spheres of influence to be salt and light in our changing nation.

Let's get straight to the interview with Steve Deace. Steve, thanks for coming on The Christian Worldview Radio Program today. Let's start out with talking about this war with Iran. It's been going on for three months now, albeit much of it has been a ceasefire and negotiation taking place. Iran is never going to relinquish their death mission to Israel and America. Regime change is almost impossible without some sort of major ground invasion. How do you see that this war can actually be concluded in a way that's going to benefit our country and also our ally, Israel?

Steve Deace: I have no idea. I don't. I don't know what happens when maybe the greatest leverage negotiator in American history runs into a demoniac regime that has never before bargained in any form of good faith. This is the classic unstoppable force versus the immovable object. This is one of the reasons why, despite my utter righteous disdain for the Iranian regime, I was greatly hesitant about this going in.

I certainly think dismantling, even removing that regime, it lines up with the Christian understanding of so-called just war theory, with one exception. One of the parameters is a reasonable expectation of success. I think one of the issues you have here is that Iran, culturally, is Afghanistan and Iraq on steroids. It's a much bigger country, it’s 90 million people. You have the Kurds in the north, you have a very large youthful secular population, and those are the people you saw out on the streets this winter where you see girls smoking cigarettes and wearing bikinis and things like that out on the streets.

Then you have a still very large Shia Muslim population. Before this war began, there were approximately 150,000 Revolutionary Guard soldiers; those are hardcore hardened terrorists, not just from Iran, but literally from all over the world. It's essentially Iran's training and feeder system for its terrorist networks around the world. Then you had at least 300,000 Iranian members of the National Army who did not take part in cracking down on the protesters this winter, but also didn't do anything to defend them either.

So, we don't kind of really know where they stand. They don't really have a resistance leader within that National Army like Egypt had with Al-Sisi, where he's maybe not the nicest guy, but he's our guy, so it's okay. Let alone do they have like a Lech Walesa level of dissident or Boris Yeltsin level of dissident public leader. It’s kind of hard to be that in Iran; they kill you for such things. The closest to that is the Shah's grandson, but he's been gone for decades. We have no proof of concept whatsoever that he could subdue this country.

We all still have Iraq and Afghanistan PTSD, and now you're going into a way more complicated sectarian situation. I think the President deserves a ton of credit for this. He's been both the most Zionist president we've had and then also at the same time assembled the most comprehensive list of Arab allies we've ever had at the exact same time. And I think one of the things he understood from dealing in that part of the world is that Iran and Arab is not the same.

Much of the Arab Muslim world would like to be rid of Iran too, maybe for different reasons than Israel, but they're kind of sick of their crazy zany hijinks as well. There's a lot of resolve on both ends of that coalition to do something about Iran. But one of the problems that you would have, David, is I don't think what the Israelis view as what they'd like for the future of Iran is the same maybe as what Cairo and Amman and Riyadh or even Dubai, the most moderate of Arab nations, necessarily has in mind. I think the Israelis took a look at all those young ladies with cigarettes and bikinis this winter and said, that's the Iran we'd like to be neighbors with. And I think the Arab countries are like, we don't necessarily want that beamed back to our countries because, number one, we don't want that in our streets; number two, that stuff will be used as recruitment tools by the crazies in our own borders.

So, we're at this juncture that I predicted at the beginning we would eventually come to, which is that we don't have the resolve to do what must be done. We have the capabilities to do it. We could have eliminated the Iranian regime to the fourth generation within 30 days or less if we wanted to. The problem is what comes next. We learned this in Iraq; toppling Saddam Hussein was not the issue. What came next was the issue. Who subdues the country? Who's a leader that both Jerusalem and Istanbul are okay with, that both Erdoğan and Netanyahu are like, we can live with it? Does this person exist? I don't know. I thought we would always come to a juncture where their resolve would outlast ours, that they would always be willing precisely because they are the insane demoniacs that we have been describing.

I love my movie and sports references, so let me give you one. This is where Alfred says to Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight, some men just want to watch the world burn. And I think that's the regime that we are up against here. I think that the President, to his great credit, has crafted deals we would have never seen or viewed as possible before because of his cunning in this area. But if he has a weakness in this area, and I think we saw this during COVID and you're seeing some of it now, is I do think he thinks there's a deal to be made with everybody. And there's not.

There was never going to be a deal to be made with Fauci, Birx, that entire system that was predicated on shutting the country down to get rid of him. They were never going to cut a deal. They were on a mission. And there's not really a deal here for the Iranians. They're on a mission as well. And I think what is a likely outcome here is some deal is agreed upon that we can walk away and say, look at how much we've destroyed and degraded their military and eliminated their leadership, and here's the concessions they've agreed to so that the President gets his celebration, gets his parades and all that stuff. But there's enough of this apparatus in place that say four or five months from now as the midterms draw close and maybe our economy's rebounding and maybe we're starting to realize, hey, it's almost morning in America again, that the Iranian regime does something to try to disrupt at the last minute those midterm elections to remind everybody, no, we are still here, kind of like that classic ending scene in the horror movie where you escaped the menace, you escaped the threat, but then you're kind of reminded the menace and the threat still remains. So that's kind of the standoff that we're in right now.

David Wheaton: Steve, one thing I've been surprised at for all the dominance of the US military and the Israeli military is getting the Strait of Hormuz open. It's a narrow waterway for those who haven't seen where it is in the map in the Persian Gulf. It borders Iran on one side and some of the other Arab countries on the other side. But there's a narrow passageway where something like 25% of the world's oil goes through. But the US military has not really been able to secure that so shipping can go through that. That's affected the whole world, including, by the way, our gas prices here in the US, which is a surprise because the President keeps on saying, oh, we have all the oil we need, come buy oil from us. But apparently that must not be the case because why are our oil prices way up if we're not dependent on the Strait of Hormuz and shipping there? So why don't you think that has been able to be achieved by the US military to resume shipping there even though it's right next to Iran?

Steve Deace: This ties into what I just said. And one thing I should have said in my first answer is I also think we're unequally yoked with our ally in Israel. And the reason I say that is because they remain almost three years after October 7th, David, they have a level of generational unity and resolve they have not had since probably like Golda Meir was Prime Minister, the early years after the Munich terrorist attack that kind of launched the modern Islamic terrorist presence in the world.

Netanyahu was a very complicated, controversial political figure prior to October the 7th. He'd been voted in and out of office numerous times, he was facing Supreme Court impeachments and everything else. There's never been more resolve behind Bibi Netanyahu than there has been since October the 7th. And I think the Israelis as a people are in this place where, you know what, we're fine taking this regime out and we'll take our chances with finding out what comes next because it can't be any worse than "Death to Israel" in their constitution of the country. And so that's another problem we have, is that our biggest ally in that part of the world frankly has more resolve and more unity within its own country than we do. They're going on three years of post-9/11 unity that we had for about 15 minutes after 9/11.

So when you factor that in, then that brings us now to the Strait of Hormuz. My understanding is that this is the Iranian regime's insurance policy: the narrowness of the Strait. Whether it's Kharg Island there in that region or the Strait itself, this is Iran's fallback, it's failsafe. This is the insurance policy it's left itself to make sure that it could not be taken out because the pain it would cause to uproot them from this area. Frankly, a lot of governments, a lot of the Arab governments who detest Iran, they don't want to pay it because again, they've got plenty of crazy still in their own country, and if it looks like you're killing a bunch of your fellow Muslims in the Strait of Hormuz, that could be recruitment tools that is used to overthrow the House of Saud or overthrow the government in Dubai, for example.

We certainly don't have the character as a country right now to pay that price either. And so we're trying to do this kind of siege thing where we're kind of trying to blockade it and hoping that eventually we can kind of just wear them down and wear them out. The problem with that is they are operating on generational timetables because again, they are the very crazed demoniacs that we message. We're operating on polling and election year timetables. And so the game is now being played at Iran's pace. It's a slowdown game, it's a half-court game where if we were out in the open water, we'd eliminate the Iranian navy in about three minutes. But we're not. We're in this confined space and the collateral damage it will take to do what you want done is high. And I don't think, frankly, it's a price the American people want to pay while they're still paying incredible prices for everything else here at home.

David Wheaton: Trump's been very clear. We cannot have Iran with a nuclear weapon. Can the US live or the world live with a nuclear-armed Iran? And the second part of that question is if Israel has so much resolve, why not let them do what needs to be done because it's in their region? Why do they need us there at this point?

Steve Deace: Well, the first part is no, we cannot afford a nuclear Iran. That's why I thought Operation Midnight Hammer was a breathtaking success and necessary a year ago. I would be fine with all kinds of operations named after tools. Operation Lug Nut, Operation Bolt, Operation Washer, Operation Screwdriver. Meaning that, just as you gotta mow your lawn on a repeated basis, I would have no problem with a permanent military presence that we can do in the dead of night against all their technology and have their heads on a swivel and say, oh, you guys, here came another week, we gotta mow, time to go mow Tehran, we’re gonna go do that again.

And I think that that would send a message of strength as well, keep them tethered, keep their heads on a swivel, might also work to destabilize that regime if they were under that kind of constant subversive threat from the US military. Right now we have the biggest naval deployment we've seen since Iraq and Afghanistan. And so those resources and everything else send a message to the world and world markets: long-term engagement. We don't like the instability, so everything's gonna go up.

On the Israel front, that is a very complicated question and I'm guessing it's because we've got a teeter-totter here. The price for not having the US having a perpetual tension over the so-called Palestinian question, which the Trump administration has definitely negotiated around that which bogged down every Bush administration, every Clinton administration, every Obama administration for decades, what to do about that. In many cases, Trump's just essentially ignored that, worked around it, and been able to make deals with Arab nations without confronting that issue. My guess is if it looked like the Israelis were attempting to lead this or do this unilaterally, it would get spun in the Muslim world as the Israelis attempting to recreate the original borders, advance their own hegemony, Zionist Jewish hegemony in the region, and keeping our Arab partners on board would be way tougher because it'd be way more difficult for them to keep the radicals within their own borders at bay.

David Wheaton: Steve Deace, author and syndicated radio host for The Blaze, is our guest today. We have links to him at thechristianworldview.org. We've talked about the war in Iran and how it can be concluded. After this short break, we'll discuss the opposition to Israel that has arisen from notable figures on the right, which has been made manifest by this war with Iran. I'm David Wheaton and you are listening to The Christian Worldview Radio Program.

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Welcome back to The Christian Worldview. I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit thechristianworldview.org where you can sign up for our weekly email and The Christian Worldview Journal print publication, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Our topic today is "Deal, Deal...But There Can Be No Lasting Deal with Iran." And our guest is Steve Deace, syndicated radio host for The Blaze and bestselling author.

Steve, you posted recently on X: "Help me understand how it's possible that Tucker Carlson has not posted anything on social media or said anything on his show critical of Islamic radicalism, extremism in almost three years." And it seems to me, Steve, that when this war started and we joined in with Israel against Iran, this was a dividing point. People like Tucker Carlson, of course Candace Owens, Megan Kelly, Nick Fuentes; I mean, just lots of people. This isn't a few people. This is a lot of people who were considered conservatives, Trump supporters, Republicans, have completely turned against Israel and the US really to a large degree that we're being owned by Israel and we're just doing their bidding. So there's all sorts of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish ideology on the right now. Why do you think that happened? And how significant do you think it will be politically?

Steve Deace: I definitely don't think it's natural. You cannot have a situation where in January of this year, January of this year, Megan Kelly was warning her audiences about the danger of Islamic infiltration of America. And now just a few months later, has a completely different opinion. That stuff isn't natural. No one can organically change their position on a 1400-year-old religion in that short amount of time, particularly at the age that Megan is at. This isn't her first rodeo. She's not Candace Owens, who's just invented a bunch of personas and been grifting in my opinion from the very beginning. This is a serious journalist that's worked for serious networks. She's well informed.

I think this only happens for one of two reasons: extremely cynical and craven ones or supernatural ones. And a lot of times those two things can fit together. One thing that I would urge your audience to consider is the following: that audience and influence are not the same thing. And in this day and age, this little device right here in my hand, David, this is the most interconnected as a species through this device that we have been since Babel, since the Lord dispersed the nations at Babel.

What you're also seeing is when these people try to impact elections, they get slaughtered. Absolutely just slaughtered. I think we're learning, before we get into their motivations, I know Megan a little bit, I know Tucker a lot better, but I'm always hesitant about motivations unless someone communicates those things to me specifically. In Tucker's case, he has. I mean, Tucker legitimately believes that Bibi Netanyahu is one of the world's most evil leaders, and he legitimately does believe that Israel is one of the centers for evil in the world. He's told me this.

If Tucker is being compensated for his views, it's because of the views he has. It's not that he solicited the grift and then changed his views. He really believes he's on a holy mission, I promise you that he does. And your audience needs to be aware of that. He really believes that he has the influence to help decouple from Israel and essentially create a Chrislam, a Christian-Islamic alliance in the world and isolate Israel as a nation that uniquely is a paralyzing force that creates a lot of the tension and cause for wars in the world. I've asked him several times: tell me, for about 1400 years on this planet, we didn't have a nation called Israel, but we had Islam. How did Islam treat the United States? How did it treat the West during that period of time when there was no Israel for us to become Zionist cucks for, as you like to call it? What does history say? Well, the historic record's pretty obvious.

Starting in the Book of Revelation, we have churches in a place called Asia Minor, that's modern-day Turkey. Where'd all those churches go? Did they have a referendum and decide they just voted? They had a democratic referendum and they voted to become Muslim? No, that's not, of course, what happened. What happened to the ancient, most ancient Christian settlements of Assyria, the Copts in Egypt, of the Lebanese? When Paul is on his way, Christians are first called Christians in a place called Antioch. Where's that? It's in Syria. What happened to all of those places? Why are they not the centers of Christendom anymore? What occurred? Islam is what occurred. And so even their view of history doesn't line up.

I was talking to one of the biggest advertisers in my industry. Advertises on a lot of big shows recently. And the head of this outlet said to me, we get charged these huge rates by shows like Tucker's. And he told me, your show delivers for us way more than theirs. And I'm having a hard time explaining, understanding why that is. And so here's my theorem. The primary audiences, and I think this also explains why Tucker has become the most successful nicotine salesman since we put surgeon general's warnings on cigarette packets. Who are the two groups of people most likely to consume these nicotine pouches? Young men and also Arabs. The highest concentration of nicotine use and smoking in the world is in the Bedouin world. And who doesn't have a lot of discretionary income, by the way? Young men and Arabs. And so who doesn't vote a lot? Young men are always the lowest turnout voting demographic in our elections every time. Arabs can't vote.

The people listening to this and watching this content are very real, but the audience itself is not real in that it's not an audience that in a concentrated dose can move an agenda. It's a mile wide and an inch deep. And one example I would give is Tucker Carlson just released his first book that he's published under his own label for Russell Brand. And the sales for that book have been extremely disappointing. My book is way out-selling his book. And he has 5700% larger of a social media following than I do, Russell Brand does. I did the math myself. He was pushed by both Tucker, Megan, and Piers Morgan, they're all on the same platform. They all gave him huge interviews before the book came out. And so it doesn't matter if his book's the worst thing ever written, I should never be able to out-sell that, David. He's got way more of an audience than me, it's just math.

So what's the explanation for that then? The explanation for that is that those people, some of that's going to be bots, obviously, but I think also what you're seeing is that a lot of this audience are people that are interested in connecting via grievance, but either as the case of young men aren't buying stuff because they don't have a lot of money, or in the case of Arabs, they're just, they just don't take part in America, but they're very interested in a message that might subvert America. In all these foreign countries, you can log on to Apple iTunes, click on all these things and click on X and click on Facebook. These are global planetary entities. And those downloads, Tim Cook's gonna count all those downloads, David, whether they come from Sri Lanka or whether they come from Schenectady. Those downloads all count the same.

When we would know the difference is when it's time now to purchase a product from an advertiser. That's when we know the difference. When we notice the difference is when it's time now to go vote for the candidate I'm recommending you vote for. That's why I'd urge your audience to follow the Amazon algorithm very closely. You know why? It's not one. The Amazon book algorithm isn't an algorithm. It's just a straight-up ranking of the 32 million books on the website. Where does your book rank compared to all the other ones? You're not given any credit for clicks on your page or views on your page, just straight-up sales, nothing more, nothing less. Everything else is a variable that can be manipulated with all the technology today. The constant is how much product do you move for the people funding your program? That's how we know for sure who's legit and who's not.

David Wheaton: You've encouraged me thinking that these people who are following Tucker may not be as significant on our country as maybe we had been led to think.

Steve Deace: But I would add this. The fact that there's so many young men, and I have a 19-year-old son, we're launching him into adulthood right now, the fact that there's so many young men, and this is what Charlie was so concerned about when he was alive, the fact that so many young men are so despondent about the future that they are attracted to this message, that's our real problem. That is our real problem. It is not the supply of this message; it's the demand for it.

And now a lot of chickens are coming home to roost now. A generation of fatherlessness, a generation of matriarchal churches where we sing "Jesus is my boyfriend" music did nothing for the guys whatsoever. And everything was built around the, you know, all the Christian music channels all have their 35-year-old soccer mom in the suburbs, they build all their programming blocks around. The 28-minute mixed sermon at your mega-church is so mom can get the kids out of the nursery fast enough. I mean, there was always going to be a price to pay.

Now our young men are struggling to find women to marry that don't have three abortions on their body count or wouldn't be willing to do it. Right now the median home buyer, the age for a first-time median home buyer in America, David, is 41. 41. And so young men are sitting around and saying, "So wait a minute, you want me to go die for a sandlot in the Middle East, but I can't find a wife here at home? I'm out." And so I think the bigger issue is not Megan and Tucker Carlson. The bigger issue is we have to address the realistic angst and concerns of our young men. They're the future of the country. You tell a lot about a culture by the condition of its men. And I think we've got to reach those young men. And if we don't, and if we just continue to ignore them and we continue to say "suck it up, man, get a job" — well, I tried to get a job, but they gave it to an Indian with that H1B visa, so so much for that. So if we keep doing that, then all we're acting as a country and as a church is as an RSS feed just driving more people to this nihilistic content that we're all concerned about.

David Wheaton: I do want to get to your book and I have three things I listed out as we talk about your book as about Independence Day here is 250 years of America coming up as a children's book that's doing really well. But before we get to that, just touch on three brief things that I think are significant threats to our country. And the first topic is on the issue of Islam. And you've been mentioning this just within the last answer with Tucker Carlson and so forth. And I read on X today from a content creator named Savi. She had a statistic how rape has exploded in Europe after all this Islamic immigration to their countries. And she compared the year 2000 to 2023, I think it was. And in the UK, rape is up 692%, in Germany 380%, France 465%. Poland, which didn't import Islamic immigrants, is down 53%.

And then you went on to another post and you talked about how Chip Roy in Texas lost, I think it was in a runoff race, he was running for Attorney General and he's been one of the leading people who have been pushing back against this invasion of Islam into our country that I think a lot of Americans aren't aware where we are here in Minnesota with all the Somali immigrants. We see it all the time here in Minnesota and all the fraud that's taken place. And so I'm just wondering what your perception is, because sometimes, Steve, you can look online, you can see all these videos and all these Imams saying the reason why we're here is to overthrow America. America will be Islamic in 35 years. You see all these videos and sometimes it can be sort of this circulating video loop and you wonder how is that really real? But it is really real in Europe. What is your perception of the threat in our country?

Steve Deace: It's real throughout the history of Islam. I mean, there are many Islamic locales where the age of consent is nine. And the reason why they have that age is because that is the age that Muhammad consummated his marriage with Aisha; she was nine years old, he married her at six. And so subjugation of women has just been inherent to Islam from the very beginning. That's just not even in question. And you can just see it in the way that women are treated throughout the Islamic world. You're a commodity, you're to be used, you're here for the men, not in the complimentary way.

The word for woman that is used in the Pentateuch for the first time by Moses, I think the literal translation for that is something like "rescuer," right? That the woman is here to assist the man in fulfilling his God-given destiny. A helpmate. That's right. The word that we translate as helpmate, its like literal translation I think is like rescuer. None of that exists within Islam and it never really has and it can't. It can't exist within Islam. It's not inherent to Islam.

And so this has been its history from the very beginning. And I think your audience needs to understand there's a couple things they've been told about Islam that are not true. First of all, the term Islam means "submission." Jihad is not "holy war." That's not the translation. Jihad is actually, means inner or my struggle, meaning that it's the inner struggle, the internal struggle every Muslim is called to engage in in order to spread the dominion of Islam. In Islam, they have their own Great Commission and it's to spread the dominion of Islam to all the governments of the world. Jesus said "My kingdom is not of this world." And when He returns, He will reconcile the kingdoms of this world to Himself as a final judgment. In Islam, they are there to turn the governments of this world to Allah. That's part of the mission there. All Muslims are called to Jihad. All of them are.

The question is whether or not it's a violent quest or not, but they are, it is inherent to be a Muslim that you must, you must do your part to spread the dominion of Allah and Islam. I don't know why we haven't taught our people this for the last generation. I don't know why we bought into a lot of tropes that say otherwise. Those aren't true. And what I just said is true, and the history speaks for itself.

David Wheaton: How does this get pushed back in a country that has so many here already where most of our population and probably I'd say most of our leaders, what would it take to not allow them to expand and build and have their communities and immigration and schools and accommodating them? I mean, is it just a matter of time here before we become like Europe? Is there political will and how would we stop this?

Steve Deace: Well, without Great Awakening level revival, we cannot. Never forget this: someone will always rule and something will always be worshipped. It is not a coincidence that as the church lost its lampstand in Europe... about right as we sit here today, about 2% of France is evangelical. 2%. Many of the old Catholic cathedrals of Europe are now mosques or strip malls or just empty. And so nature abhors a vacuum, David. Something was going to fill that space. And so Islam is filling that space as we speak in the UK.

I mean, the King of England for about 30 years now, this isn't a recent development, he's been saying this stuff for decades. He's essentially been a simp for Islam or a Muslim himself for decades now, talking about Charles. And keep in mind, he's the head of one of the largest Protestant churches in the world, the Church of England. He's basically an Islamist. We won't have the wherewithal or the political will to do what must be done about this without Great Awakening level revival. This is happening because we're godless. This is not going to make us a godless society. It's a symptom of being one.

And so when we have John Piper tweeting out "I can't wait to go vote with all my Somali Muslims there in Minnesota again this year," we're done. You cannot ask the political system to do more than the Christian churches are willing to do. Now on top of that though, we do have a challenge in the New Testament; we have to love our neighbors as ourselves. And so we have to treat people, provided they're not using their God-given rights to violate ours, then we grant them their God-given rights as we would want them to do unto us. But the problem is we also don't have what it takes to do something when they want to violate our God-given rights, when they want to change our way of life, when they want like Memorial Day... Miss Wayne County was in a hijab in Dearborn's Memorial Day parade. We don't have what it takes. We lack that resolve and we will be replaced. They're out-birthing us, they're out-childing us, they're out-marrying us.

And so that is why without Great Awakening level revival, it's revival or bust territory now. We cannot vote our way out of this. We can use the election process to stall things. I would argue those white evangelicals that are criticized for believing in a prophetic Israel, those boomers, they countered the counterculture. That voting block that voted for Reagan and later Trump, that voting block is why we're not Western Europe already. It's why we're not France and the UK and Germany already is that voting block. That's why they're attacked so often because they have been the bulwark, pardon the pun, holding back the spirit of the age post the 1960s. That critical mass of voters did not exist in any of those other Western democratic countries and that's why they couldn't hold back what is to come. But we're running out of time now.

In this last generation, instead of following in the footsteps of Jerry Falwell Sr. and Francis Schaeffer and D. James Kennedy and the men who formed the original religious right, we've been out looking for a purpose-driven life and wearing Hawaiian shirts in the wintertime and sweater vests in July. And we've been seeker sensitive instead of Savior sensitive. And so right now our worldview ranks are greatly depleted, which is why we're ripe for the pickings right now by Islam.

David Wheaton: Author and syndicated radio host Steve Deace is our guest. We have links to him at our website, thechristianworldview.org. I looked up what popular author and pastor John Piper said about voting with Somali Muslims. Here's what he tweeted back on November 6, 2012, quote: "Two-thirds of the people in line with me to vote were Somali. I love this neighborhood, this country," unquote. Why would a Christian love that a false religion with a violent conquering history is growing in this country? I would hope John Piper would reconsider that tweet and remove it. Short break to tell you about some ministry resources and then one final segment with Steve Deace coming up where we will discuss how every Christian has opportunity to be salt and light. I'm David Wheaton and you are listening to The Christian Worldview Radio Program.

We are excited to announce that The Christian Worldview Journal is now available in digital format, meaning that it can be read on your computer, tablet, or smartphone. For the March-April issue, all Christian Worldview partners will be sent both the print version of the journal by mail and a link to the digital version by email. For future issues, you can choose to receive only one format, print or digital, or continue to receive both. The Christian Worldview Journal is a bi-monthly publication with compelling articles on current events and issues of the faith. It is sent to all Christian Worldview partners as a thank you for their support of this radio ministry. To become a Christian Worldview partner and receive the journal or to update your print and/or digital preferences, call us at 1-888-646-2233, email us at support@thechristianworldview.org, or return the resource insert form in the March-April issue.

The classroom and the dorm room students encounter at secular and yes, Christian colleges lead to as many as 50% of students who profess upon entering college to be born-again Christians not saying the same four years later. So how can students avoid spiritual shipwreck? In my book, University of Destruction: Your Game Plan for Spiritual Victory on Campus, I give a scouting report on the three pillars of peril in college and provide a game plan to be an overcomer. This would be a meaningful gift for the high school or college students in your life. And there's a free study guide available as well. University of Destruction is softcover, 176 pages and retails for $17. For a limited time, you can order signed copies for a donation of any amount to The Christian Worldview. Bulk discounts also available. Go to thechristianworldview.org or call 1-888-646-2233.

Thanks for joining us on The Christian Worldview. I'm David Wheaton. Today's program and past programs, along with transcripts and short tapes, are available at thechristianworldview.org. While there, you can also sign up for our weekly email and The Christian Worldview Journal print publication, order resources, and support the ministry. In this final segment, we'll discuss the undermining effect of so-called progressive Christianity and how there's opportunity for every Christian to be salt and light in our society. Once again, our guest is Steve Deace, author and syndicated radio host for The Blaze.

Last two questions for you, Steve, just in the sake of time. I'm just going to ask you one more threat because it follows up really well with just what you said about this how to push back against Islam. Because down in Texas, there is a guy that won the Democrat primary down there. He's a professing Christian. You know him, you just actually tweeted about him recently, James Talarico. You said "The Democrat attempt to hijack and subvert Christianity is in full swing. Why James Talarico is not a heretical outlier, but an omen." This is something you did on your podcast; I haven't heard it yet.

But this goes to this demographic in this country that I think is the last remaining bulwark in the world, really. I looked at a map, Steve, when I was preparing for today's interview, and looked at the Middle East, and you see all the countries over there and Africa, even South Asia, the oppression that takes place. Go north into Russia, see what's happening in Europe and the takeover of Islam there. You're thinking, where is the part of the world that still remains that is Christian-based, that has individual rights and liberties and so forth? There's not much left, really. There's not much left. And so then we see this kind of quote-unquote progressive Christianity here with someone like James Talarico, who — and there's no such thing, but continue — right, he reinterprets the Bible to be basically for leftist political causes. That's to summarize it very simply. So how can Christians look at someone like that and not be convinced or persuaded by someone who speaks nicely in a certain way, but he's reimagined and reinterpreted everything as if he's come from a liberal seminary, which I believe he has?

Steve Deace: Talarico's a symptom. This could have never been attempted, let alone in a place like Texas 40 years ago when Texas was a blue state, was a Democratic state. Could have never done this. This is a sign of the times that we're in. There's a gubernatorial candidate that the Democrats are about to nominate my home state of Iowa, Rob Sand. He's using all the same kind of language. But he doesn't have the record of saying stupid stuff about local culture that Talarico does. Hey, we're going to do vegan barbecues and all kinds of other stuff. I mean, that's why Talarico won't win even in this environment because he has said too many things that are offensive to just the average Texas culture that the normie voter knows about.

But there'll be more people like Rob Sand here in Iowa who have not done those things and ingratiated themselves to the local culture and then will turn around and attempt to blaspheme the Holy Spirit and subvert Christianity. And again, we created the market for this. Many churches in America, too many, were way more interested in building a brand than building a kingdom, David. And so the debt will come due. God is not surprised by any of this, none of this snuck up on him. He's permitting this. Do not be deceived. God will not be mocked. A man will always reap what he sows. We said that we wanted complacency and compromise, and He's going to let us have it.

The same antidote to this that exists that we need now is what's existed all throughout the eons that's preserved the faith once more to the saints. And that is simply this: a bold man, not male, not sperm donor, man, a man, a bold man in a pulpit with the Bible open and the fearless courage to tell people exactly what the word, and say thus sayeth the Lord God of hosts. Thus speaketh the word of God. That's the weapon of mass destruction, my friend. And we lack, and we have lacked, those kinds of men in our pulpit now for a generation and that's why we're here. And we're only going to get out of here in this mess we're in by more of those kinds of men rising up.

David Wheaton: Your book is titled Why Independence Day: America is Great Because God is Good. And I love the subtitle because it wasn't about how great we are, we've been so — no, it's because of God's grace in our country, that any goodness we have is — because there's a lot of things that aren't very good in our country, but anything good about us is because of God. And it's a top 10 bestselling Christian children's book at this point, and so congratulations on that, Steve. But this year we celebrate 250 years of America and there is so much opposition going against what your book talks about. Your book talks about how the Ten Commandments inspired our founders, how Christ frees the believer from sin and offers eternal life. You talk about the Puritans, early American history, Boston Tea Party, early American leaders and so forth, and the Christian founding of our country. And you're trying to persuade people about who we are as a nation and what's made our country great, and it's God's made our country great.

But the problem is, Steve, there is so much opposition out there. The whole public educational system, the whole college system, the media, the entertainment. It's been not just a drip, drip, drip, but it's been a tidal wave over the decades trying to reimagine and reinterpret the whole Christian history and founding of America. So I guess my question as we conclude today is tell us what you're attempting to do with your book in the midst of this huge opposition out there that's trying to teach the opposite, and what can the regular listener today do to make a difference in our country to try to get our country back or moving in a more God-honoring direction?

Steve Deace: I'll give two pieces of advice. Number one, don't despair. This has all happened before and worse. It's never happened to us before. But the Puritans were not fleeing Muslim invaders, they were not fleeing pagan communists, they were not fleeing even, you know, a Catholic monarch upset that they were defying Rome. They were fleeing a Protestant king! And a generation before they jumped on the Mayflower, John Bunyan was thrown in prison for over a decade because he didn't want to submit to the Church of England his sermons. It can get way worse than it currently is.

So don't despair. If your worldview begins with the supernatural fact that God intervened directly into human history to raise His dead son back to life, you are not permitted despair. That doesn't mean be naive. But none of this is a surprise to God whatsoever. So don't despair. There are signs that God is moving for sure. We're watching our culture reject a lot of these woke pop culture brands and phenomena. You're watching them get, you know, just tank at the box office in real time. You're watching them go bankrupt right now in real time. Despite all the advantages the left has, they got their clocks cleaned in this last election. There are signs that America is waking up.

Which brings me to the second point, though. I was on another show recently they asked me about revival and if I saw signs of revival. I said I see embers. But, you know, you have to fan those flames. And what everyone within the sound of my voice can do: 86% of Americans have a Facebook page. That means probably almost everybody listening to this has one of those. Everybody listening to this has some platform, has a family member, has family, friends, a job. Boldly, courageously, use all of your platforms to be the hands and feet of the gospel, to be a voice for your principles. Stop hiding your light under a bushel. It's time to come out now.

We're about to head into June. A whole bunch of people are going to come out again and remind us, hey, we're proud of our depravity. Be proud of your holiness. Be proud of the grace that was given to you. Be proud of your Lord every single day. I think a lot of the mess we're in is just simply because we have been too quiet, David. And we're too concerned about backlash from people that are probably never going to like us. You have to understand, as the Lord once said, if they do this to a green tree, me, what are they going to do to you?

This is the assignment. You are not your own. You were bought at a high price. What was that high price? Your God became a human being and gave every drop of His blood for you. In return He asked one thing: that you offer yourself up as a living sacrifice. Which means there will be some forms of persecution, there will be some forms of alienation, there will be some forms of shunning, right? But then we have the church, where we can be united with one another and we can encourage one another and equip one another.

So this is the mission. We have to understand the mission and accept it. In this last generation we did not. We took a generation off from seriously discipling the culture. We went from Francis Schaeffer to Bill Hybels, Joel Osteen, and Rick Warren. And now here we are. If we take another generation off, do me a favor: just teach your kids Arabic now; they're going to need it. So learn to speak through the Holy Spirit with the voice you're given or learn Arabic. Just as Joshua said at the end of his life — it's interesting, Joshua might be the only man in human history that got to preach his own funeral in a way — "choose ye this day whom you will serve." That's the same message now. Choose ye this day which language you will speak. Use the platform God gave you to speak the language of heaven or go ahead and start learning Arabic. Those are your options.

David Wheaton: To use our own platforms, our spheres of influence to be even more bold about the truth. After all, it is the truth. God is on our side. Whom should we fear? The results will be to Him. We're not guaranteed what the future is going to be. We know Who holds the future for sure. And we have to be responsible and dutiful in the meantime. Steve, thank you so much for coming on The Christian Worldview Radio Program today. We have your new book Why Independence Day: America is Great Because God is Good children's book. This is the third in a trilogy you've done. We have it linked at our website, thechristianworldview.org. Of course they can find it on Amazon as well. Keep up the great work you're continuing to do. And thank you again of all God's best and grace to you.

Steve Deace: Same to you, brother. Thank you, David.

David Wheaton: Author and syndicated radio host Steve Deace has been our guest today. We have links to him and his new children's book at our website, thechristianworldview.org.

I read 1 Peter this week where it starts this way: "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia." The towns and regions Peter references here are all in modern-day Turkey. Turkey was the early frontier of the expansion of Christianity out of Jerusalem by Peter and Paul and other missionaries. In fact, for nearly 1500 years, Turkey was predominantly Christian before the city of Constantinople fell to Muslim invasion in the year 1453. Over the next centuries, churches were destroyed, cities renamed from Christian ones to Islamic.

The Bible says Turkey will figure prominently in the end times against Israel. Upon reading this from 1 Peter, I asked AI whether any country in history has gone from majority Muslim to majority Christian. The answer was no, never in history. But many nations have gone the other way that were majority Christian, like Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, several in North Africa. They were all forcibly changed to Islam from Christianity.

So while the Great Commission is about individual salvation and sanctification, and not about producing majority Christian nations by force, the result if God brings many to saving faith will be greater Christian influence and presence in nations. Which is why Steve's last exhortation to use the platforms you have with your family and friends, on social media, to intentionally proclaim the excellencies of God and the gospel is worthwhile. Always base and point your reasoning to the perfect will and ways of God written in His word, even when the issue is political. Let's remember what scripture says of believers in 2 Corinthians 5: "We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us."

Thank you for joining us today in The Christian Worldview and for your support of this non-profit radio ministry. Until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm.

The mission of The Christian Worldview is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript, or find out "what must I do to be saved?", go to thechristianworldview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233. The Christian Worldview is a listener-supported non-profit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, order resources, become a Christian Worldview partner, sign up for our weekly email or The Christian Worldview Journal print publication, or to contact us, go to thechristianworldview.org, call 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Worldview.