The World and Everything in It: August 30, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. I'm Duncan Holmes from Fredericksburg, Texas. I'm also president of the National Church Conference of the Blind, and we're here at our annual convention in Little Rock, Arkansas. 1-2-3. We hope you enjoy today's program. (Cheering)

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

A special guest today on Culture Friday. A former colleague returns to the microphone.

She’s stirred up a little bit of controversy while she’s been gone.

NICK EICHER, HOST: She has. We will talk with author and journalist Megan Basham, and address some of the criticism of her new book and what she hopes will come of it.

Also today, a closer look at a 2009 cautionary tale.

CORALINE: It’s Coraline
WYBIE: Caroline, what?
CORALINE: CORaline!

And later, listener feedback.

BROWN: It’s Friday, August 30th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

BROWN: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Sullivan-Xi meeting » National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan shook hands with Chinese leader Xi Jinping Thursday in Beijing … as the White House aims to defrost relations with China … or at least prevent any volatile turns.

SULLIVAN: The president sent me here for the first trip by a national security adviser in eight years to maintain the high level strategic communication that is essentially for responsibly managing the relationship.

JINPING (Mandarin): [In and under]

And for his part, Xi Jinping said that China— in his words … is committed “to the goal of a stable, healthy, and sustainable China-US relationship.”

JINPING (Mandarin): [up briefly, then under and slowly out]

The White House says Beijing and Washington will plan for a phone call in the coming weeks between President Biden and Xi Jinping. And there is a possibility the two leaders might meet in person before Biden leaves office.

Ukraine » Ukraine needs the green-light to launch strikes deep inside Russia. The European Union's top diplomat is making that case this week.

EU High Representative Josep Borrell told reporters that Western allies need to begin allowing Ukraine to strike military targets well beyond the Russian border.

BORRELL: The restrictions have to be lifted in order for the Ukrainians to be able to target the places where Russia is bombing them. Otherwise, the weaponry is useless.

Currently the U.S. restricts the use of long-range ballistic missiles and other weapons to Russian targets inside Ukraine and in border regions.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also pressed the case on Thursday.

KULEBA: If we are supplied with sufficient amount of missiles, if we are allowed to strike, we will significantly decrease the capacity of Russia to inflict damage on our critical infrastructure. And we will, improve the situation for our forces on the ground.

But critics worry those attacks...could lead to a dramatic escalation of the war.

WHO limited pauses in Gaza for vaccines » The U.N. World Health Organization says it's reached an agreement with Israel for limited pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow for polio vaccinations for hundreds of thousands of children.

Dr Rik Peeperkorn is the WHO representative in the Palestinian territories.

PEEPERKORN: I’m not going to say that this is the ideal way forward, but this is a workable way forward. Not doing anything would be really bad. We have to stop this transmission in Gaza.

It comes after a baby contracted the first confirmed case in 25 years in the Palestinian territory.

The vaccination campaign will start Sunday in central Gaza, with a “humanitarian pause” lasting from 6 a.m. until 3 p.m. for three days. The effort will then move to southern Gaza and finally northern Gaza for similar pauses.

Trump, Harris campaign in swing states » Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are both stumping in key battleground states this week. Trump campaigned at a steel plant in central Michigan Thursday:

TRUMP: We want more babies, to put it very nicely. And for this same reason, we will also allow new parents to deduct major newborn expenses from their taxes.

Trump announced that he would push for a rule to mandate that the government and health insurance companies cover the cost of in vitro fertilization.

Meantime, Harris campaigned on abortion in Georgia.

HARRIS: Every state in the south except for Virginia has a Trump abortion ban. Think about that.

Harris called that—quote … “immoral.”

FBI reporting failures » The Justice Department watchdog says the FBI has failed to report some child sexual abuse allegations to local law enforcement or social service agencies as required. WORLD’s Paul Butler has more.

PAUL BUTLER: The report released Thursday was a review brought on by the FBI’s failures in its handling of the case against former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar.

The inspector general found serious problems remain … that run the risk of child sexual abuse allegations falling through the cracks … as overworked agents juggle dozens of cases at a time.

A senior FBI official acknowledged that the bureau has made mistakes … but said the “vast majority of work” has been handled appropriately.

For WORLD, I’m Paul Butler.

Hong Kong court convicts journalists » A Hong Kong court has convicted two former editors of a now shuttered news outlet … in a continued crackdown on free speech.

Stand News former editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen and former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam were arrested in 2021 and pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious publications.

For years, Hong Kong operated a semi-independent territory of China … but it has come squarely under the thumb of Beijing.

Stand News was one of the city’s last media outlets that openly criticized the government amid a crackdown on dissent … after pro-democracy protests in 2019.

I’m Kent Covington.

Still ahead, Culture Friday with special guest Megan Basham.

Plus, your listener feedback.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 30th of August, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

It’s Culture Friday, and we have a special guest today, a guest with deep roots at WORLD and foundational ones with this very program.

MONTAGE: [Clips of Megan hosting]

Megan Basham. She’s a culture reporter for the Daily Wire and the Morning Wire podcast, and she’s a New York Times bestselling author. Her book is titled: Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda.

Good morning! It’s been a minute!

MEGAN BASHAM: It has! This is a little surreal, but I love it. It feels good to be in the old stomping grounds.

EICHER: Let’s talk about this book, because it really does fit into the cultural conversation, and I’m sure I’m understating that it’s kind of been the cultural conversation in the evangelical world.

But here’s where I don’t worry that I’m overstating things: That this same evangelical world has become divided right now between Megan detractors and Megan partisans.

Do you think the premise is right, do you think it’s healthy, and is that what you set out to do when you wrote this book?

BASHAM: Well, it wasn't what I set out to do, but I will say that I did know on some level that I was kicking a hornet's nest, and I expected there to be a reaction. I didn't necessarily expect it to be as vociferous as it has been, but I think part of what you're seeing with the Megan partisans is a lot of people who feel like what I have written reflects their experience. So, for those people, the book really rings true, and they're reacting to that. And then, I also think you have some detractors—and obviously I wrote the book, so I am a partisan for the book—but I think a lot of those detractors tend to be the people who are either in some of these institutions or affiliated in some way with those institutions that I critique, and there's a tendency to want to hunker down in a defensive mode against what I write about in the book.

EICHER: You quote favorably another of our Culture Friday guests and that’s Rosaria Butterfield, the Christian author and former LGBT activist. You know that she once practiced what was known as “pronoun hospitality,” the idea being that we concede the point about how a gender-confused person chooses to identify.

Rosaria used to do that, but then very publicly renounced it as wrong and corrected herself.

So, let me frame up the next question this way: Every week, and you remember this, I know, we come on this program and correct our factual errors on the air. It’s my least favorite part of the program, and that’s coming just a few minutes from now.

But let me ask you this: Even friendly critical reviews of your book, and I’m thinking of another professional colleague writing in First Things, goes into detail about errors in the book. Here’s the question: Do you have any regrets at all about errors in your book and will you follow Rosaria and say, hey, I’m wrong?

BASHAM: Well, it depends in the sense of how I'm saying that I'm wrong. So, certainly, one of the benefits of having, what I have to think, is the most scrutinized book in evangelicalism for years, and having it sifted over with such a fine tooth comb is that people have found some genuine errors, and I've acknowledged some of those. And certainly I want to correct those, so I have a list. And it's been very convenient for me that people have brought them forward for me, so I haven't had to do a lot of work on that front. Some things like, I did get a federal contract that I thought covered one year actually covers 10 years, and I mistook where a couple of people graduated from seminary. So, there's legitimate things like that. And of course, I regret that, and a plan to fix it going forward in future editions. 

So, yeah, but there has also been some claim of error that I disagree with. I'm thinking of people who will say something like, “Well, this author made a statement that depicted getting a COVID vaccination to being a pro-life issue. And I say that they draw an equivalency between being pro life and getting that COVID vaccine. And I think that was an entirely legitimate analysis to make.” And so some critics have said, “Well, that author also said in that piece...” I'm not drawing a moral equivalency. So what you would say is a quick disclaimer line, and for a number of reasons, I reject that. 

And I would say that if you think about if you have a friend who is frequently making a lot of comments that are derogatory about people who are ethnic minorities, but then says, “but I'm not being racist,” you tend to discount that quick disclaimer of I'm not being racist because the totality of their commentary is racist. And so we don't ignore that in that case. And I think that in a lot of these critiques that have been brought forward, that's what's being done, is that the full breadth of the context clearly communicates one message, and there's been objections to acknowledging that communication. And so, you know, in that case, I'm not quite sure what to do with that, other than continue to have this public debate and public discussion.

BROWN: So Megan, obviously we’re friends and colleagues, but professional colleagues as journalists and we ask each other hard questions.

But I did read several of those critical reviews and there was a common theme I want to ask you about: That is, that you apply a strict standard that can’t be applied to yourself. In other words, you don’t interpret others the way you want to be interpreted. And that you’ve violated the 9th commandment, bearing false witness. Some say it outright, some say you’re on the borderline. But how do you respond to that?

BASHAM: Well, all I can say, Myrna, is that I disagree with that. Part of what I saw in some of those critics is they would say, “Well, look, this citation doesn't exactly communicate this particular claim.” And I can give you an example of someone who brought up Tim Keller, and in the book, I say that Tim Keller found voting for Trump uniquely discrediting in a way that he did not find voting for Biden. And this is also a work of opinion. It's a work of journalism, but also opinion. And they're saying that that's an error, and obviously I have to disagree with that. That's not an error. That's my analysis. 

And I think when I present not just the citation in the book that this critic was dissecting but the full breadth of the context of the commentary, and in that case, it was Keller's promotion of Michael Wear, who was a former Obama staffer who became a major architect in that Evangelicals for Biden movement, and he was the head of a political action committee that was buying advertising during the 2020 election in swing states to detract from the Trump campaign. So that was obviously a political operative who Tim Keller was happy to promote and praise. The Gospel Coalition did the same. So when you look at his essays, a particular essay in The New Yorker, where he asked whether evangelicalism could survive Donald Trump, and you combine that with some of this other praise and promotion of someone like Michael Wear, I don't think it was beyond the pale to say that Keller found voting for Trump uniquely discrediting. 

And then, there were additional items that I didn't even put in the book, because you can't put in everything. And so part of the critique has been, “Well, yes, the thing she said was technically true, but we think she should have used this other support for it.” So it seems to me like we're trying to get away from the actual truth of the argument to more of this nitpicking kind of thing. And I'm fine to have that discussion. You can feel that I could have used a better or a different citation, but the fact of the matter is these were the comments that Keller made, and these were the people that he praised and promoted.

BROWN: The part of your book many people find most compelling, most of your detractors ignored, that is your Jesus story. Before Jesus/after Jesus. You say that testimony is key to understanding the entire book. What do you mean by that?

BASHAM: Well, I can tell you, it was a little scary for me to put my testimony out in that way, because I have friends like you and Nick who may not know this part of my history. I wrote about my years as a prodigal party girl on the campus of Arizona State University, and how that landed me in the clink a couple of times before I came to Jesus. And you know, that's a vulnerable thing to put that out into the world. 

But I wanted people to know it, because there has been such a cottage industry of books, particularly coming from the political left, that attack the church. And I'm thinking of books like Kristin DuMez’s Jesus and John Wayne, or a book from Politico writer Tim Alberta called The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory. And there's been a lot of articles like this as well, and it has seemed to me like their purpose is to deconstruct the church. And I wanted to be very clear that that has not been my purpose, that I love the church, and this was not an effort to deconstruct or to damage the church. It is really something to say I love what the local church and what larger Christian institutions have done in my life, for my sanctification process. And I want to ensure that all of these institutions and churches and the leaders who are speaking in them maintain that strong Gospel message for the sake of the next Megan who needs to come out of that sinful lifestyle and doesn't need confusing messages. She needs that strong clarity of you are a new creation in Christ, and you need to take hold of that and stop looking for how you have been harmed and stop manufacturing grievance in your life. But instead, take hold of gratitude for the way you have been saved and for these priceless gifts of the process of sanctification and all of these Christian leaders who poured into me. So I just want to protect all of that.

EICHER: I want to end where we began: And that’s with the idea of dividing into camps, Megan detractors and Megan partisans, falling into one camp or another, and I asked basically whether that was an intended or unintended consequence. So let me return to that thought and ask this way: What do you hope your book will accomplish?

BASHAM: Well, I did have a sense that the book would create, at a minimum, some discussion. Let's put it that way. But I think when we talk about division and unity, we can't unify when we're shying away from being honest about what's really happening. And I think that's what had been going on for a number of years. And I think that it's like a marriage. And when these issues are going unaddressed, you feel it in the relationships. And I think that's what had been going on for a long time in evangelicalism. That we felt these fault lines, as Voddie put it in his bestselling book, and that we were trying to avoid that conversation. And I don't think you can have real reconciliation and unity unless we finally sort of acknowledged openly, here's what's happening. So, that was part of what I wanted to do, is to really have these discussions: Okay, where are these influences in the church coming from? Should we be allowing secular left foundations and their money to set the agenda for some of our institutions? Is it important to know when that's happening? Do we all agree? Are we on the same page when it comes to how the church should be involved in political questions regarding immigration or climate change or gun control or what have you? So, that's one thing. Is I wanted to create a space to really have these conversations openly and with clarity. 

And then the second thing, I really did want to do was arm people who have felt discomfort and they have felt that something is going wrong, and in a large way, they have been dismissed from so many that are in evangelical leadership. And I didn't want to do it in a contentious or combative way, but I wanted to acknowledge for those people that these are real concerns and they shouldn't be dismissed.

BROWN: New York Times bestselling author Megan Basham, Daily Wire reporter, and WORLD alumna.

BASHAM: I’m so grateful for you guys for having me. You didn't have to do this, but thank you!

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, August 30th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming up on The World and Everything in It… arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino evaluates a not-so new movie.

COLLIN GARBARINO: Movie theaters usually experience a late summer slump in August. Studios don’t release their best movies during these weekends that parents are frantically trying to get their kids ready to go back to school. This lull turned out to be the perfect time to rereleaseCoraline, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary.

CORALINE: It’s Coraline.

WYBIE: Caroline what?

CORALINE: Coraline! Coraline Jones!

Henry Selick is the writer and director of this stop-motion masterpiece that adapts Neil Gaiman’s 2002 children’s novel of the same name. Selick is the same guy who directed Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, so you can expect the movie is going to be a little spooky.

The movie begins with Coraline Jones and her parents moving into a rickety 100-year-old house. Coraline is a bright kid, but she’s feeling a little neglected by her work-from-home parents who are too absorbed in their jobs to pay her much attention.

MOM: Coraline, I don’t have time for you right now. And you still have unpacking to do. Lots of unpacking.

While exploring the old house, Coraline finds a little door that opens onto a brick wall. Except sometimes it doesn’t open onto a brick wall. Sometimes, late at night, the door opens onto a tunnel that leads to another world.

After crawling through the tunnel, Coraline finds herself in a house that looks a lot like hers, only cheerier. She also finds an Other Mother who’s just like her own mother back in the real world, except she’s more fun. And strangely, she has black buttons for eyes. To Coraline, this other world feels like the kind of place where all her dreams will come true. But we can tell from the start that something’s not quite right. After all, who has buttons for eyes? This isn’t really a dream. It’s a nightmare.

OTHER MOTHER: There now. It’s your decision, darling. We only want what’s best for you.

Coraline is technically a children’s movie, but I wouldn’t advise watching it with very young children or children who are easily frightened. The spookiness sometimes becomes a little scary. It definitely pushes the boundaries of its PG rating. There’s also a rather grotesque scene in which a scantily clad overweight old woman parodies Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus.

Coraline is a beautiful movie. The girl’s real world is worn and dull, but it has so much texture. The Other Mother’s world is sparkly and shiny, with everything seemingly made brand new. The animation is so smooth, you’ll be amazed the movie was created using stop-motion photography. The filmmakers worked for more than a year and a half, producing only about 90 seconds each week. The Coraline puppet alone had more than 200,000 different facial expressions. Each scene was shot with two different cameras, so if you see it in theaters, you’ll get a true stereoscopic experience.

The film contains a lesson about contentment. Its tagline is: “Be careful what you wish for.” Little Coraline desires a life that’s better than the one she has, but when she gets it, she realizes the consequences of her folly. If the desires of a man’s heart tend toward evil, we should be wary of getting just what we want.

THE CAT: And what do you think you’re doing?

CORALINE: Well, I’m getting out of here. That’s what I’m doing.

The story of Coraline is a sort of a reverse Chronicles of Narnia. Coraline finds a door that leads to a magical realm, but instead of leading to a better country, she finds out that the better country was the one she left behind.

Neil Gaiman, who wrote the original novel, isn’t a Christian, but he was heavily influenced by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. And while the movie is a masterpiece of animation, I still think the book is much better.

The novel is quieter, more subtle. Coraline’s not as sassy. Her real parents aren’t as cranky. It’s an introspective story about a girl who’s much more self-aware than the Coraline of the movie. I highly recommend it.

Over the last decade, Coraline seems to have grown into an allegory that it was never meant to be. I honestly can’t think of a better analogy for our current algorithm-driven existence that promises to give us just what we want—our entire lives filtered through a digital experience that prioritizes capturing our attention over exposing us to reality. This story asks whether it would actually be a good thing to be the center of the universe. What if you could have a whole world tailor-made just for you? The only catch? None of it is real and it will only cost you your soul.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, August 30th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Time now for Listener Feedback. We begin with a couple corrections.

First, during our August 15th newscast we reported on the Monkeypox outbreak in Africa … and when we ID’d “the Congo” as the epicenter … we should’ve been more specific in identifying the “Democratic Republic of Congo” when we did.

EICHER: Next, during our missionary pilot training story from August 21st, we mentioned how instructors teach their students how to recover from stalls … but we didn’t get it quite right, as private pilot Dale Fenwick points out.

DALE FENWICK: Great story on the missionary pilot training. However, an aviation stall has little to do with the engine. It’s actually not the engine stalling, it’s the wing and it’s a term that’s used when the airflow is insufficient over the wing, the wing then loses the ability to lift the plane or keep the plane flying and the plane falls. And so recovering from a stall means recovering from loss of lift, which means that you have to straighten the plane out and bring it back to level flight. Okay, other than that great job as usual.

Alright, and of course we fact checked the fact check and I’ll put a link to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association so you can read all about aviation stalls … which are terrifying but good to know about.

BROWN: Next this, and it’s a regrettable misspeak. Back on August 16th. we referred to a proposed cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel, and we made the mistake of saying Hamas would release hostages in exchange for Israel releasing hostages. The mistake, obviously, is that Israel does not take hostages. They offered Palestinian prisoners. Important distinction.

EICHER: Now on to a few questions and other feedback. Staying in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, listener David Deacon sent us this voicemail after a August 12th story:

DAVID DEACON: Hello World and Everything in It staff! First off, I want to thank you for what you do. I'd like to ask though, why you feel comfortable stating casualty figures for Israeli actions in Gaza when the Gazan authorities have such a history of lying and Israel repeatedly objects to their casualty figures. How can anyone know such a thing?

Very good point and that’s why we really try to limit references to death-toll figures there. And when we judge that we need to, we’ll make sure there’s attribution to Gaza’s Health Ministry, so the listener can take it with the appropriate grain of salt.

During the August 12th reporting on the missile strike in Khan Younis, we were reporting on the international response to the strike and failed to mention that Israel had challenged the reported death toll. And we should have.

BROWN: Our next voicemail comes from John Langley, listening in Botswana.

JOHN LANGLEY: One of your news updates covering Iowa's heartbeat bill reported that 14 states now have near total protections for unborn Children. And this story was worth covering. But the framing of it, in my opinion, was a rare miss and a disheartening one.

If I can paraphrase God's word through the prophet Jeremiah: laws that regulate the method and timing of murder are superficial treatment at best. They may stop some bleeding but they don't treat the mortal wound in the heart of our nation. We as Christians ought not invite complacency by preaching peace, peace where there is no peace.

I remain thankful for your God-glorifying works and excellent kingdom focused journalism and God bless you all and may you have mercy on our nation for the sake of his people.

Now an email from a listener in Hawaii who raises a question of style. She points out that the term “Hawaiian” doesn’t fit just any person who lives in Hawaii. That it’s typically an indigenous term, and that we ought to play it safe and say “Hawaii residents.” So we consulted our handy-dandy style guide, and it turns out that both the U.S. Government Publishing Office and the AP Style guide encourage the same terminology.

EICHER: And about our interview a few weeks ago with the Never Trump Republican former presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson: lots of mail came in, and suffice it to say the negative mail vastly outweighed the positive. But this came in from a Hutchinson critic who was grateful for the Joe Rigney commentary from Wednesday on the “progressive gaze.” Listener Charles Calvin called it “a great balance to the earlier commentary [in the interview with] Asa Hutchinson.” He added that balanced viewpoints really do help those who are trying to follow a Biblical worldview.

BROWN: Our last piece of feedback today is a longer letter telling the story of how our program inspired a listener to finally do something about an issue she felt strongly about. That letter flowed in to our Paul Butler …

PAUL BUTLER: She writes:

Thank you for faithful reporting that informs and encourages me to take a stand and make a difference. The pride celebrations of June grieve me, but I thought I just needed to put up with it. Yet your reporting with David Bahnsen regarding the differences Christians are making in corporate America and especially John Stonestreet’s July 5th commentary on pride month encouraged me that maybe even I could make a difference.

So when I encountered extensive pride decorations at my Medical Clinic where I went for an x-ray, I contacted them and expressed my disappointment and frustration, insisting that my medical professionals keep their politics out of my medical care.

I didn’t really expect a response, but I got an immediate email and a phone call the next day. He listened to my concerns and informed me that they had already taken down all decorations while they conduct an internal investigation and seek out counsel from marketing and owners about appropriate decorations in a medical setting.

Thank you for encouraging me to take a stand in my corner of the world where God has placed me.

Sincerely, Hannah Peltier

EICHER: Thanks to all who wrote and called. We’re thankful for the time you give to listen each day … and for your feedback.

BROWN: If you have a comment to share you can email editor@wng.org. You can include an audio file attachment to your email, and we’ll consider it for air. You can even call it in at 202-709-9595.

EICHER: And that’s Listener Feedback for August!

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, it’s time to say thanks to the team members who helped put the program together this week:

Jenny Rough, David Bahnsen, Caleb Welde, Mary Reichard, Addie Offereins, Anna Johansen Brown, Leo Briceno, Lauren Dunn, Cal Thomas, and Collin Garbarino

And a few new voices this week… WJI Midcareer grad Rachel Coyle, and World Opinions commentators Samuel James and Joe Rigney.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Kent Covington, Lynde Langdon, Mark Mellinger, Travis Kircher, Lauren Canterberry, Christina Grube, and Josh Schumacher.

And thanks to the guys who stay up late because you expect the program early … Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Our producer is Harrison Watters.

Our Senior producer is Kristen Flavin and Paul Butler is Executive producer…with additional production assistance from Benj Eicher.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Psalmist writes, “Be not afraid when a man becomes rich, when the glory of his house increases. For when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him.” —Psalm 49 verses 16 and 17.

Be sure and worship Him with brothers and sisters in Christ in church on the Lord’s day. And Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.