The World and Everything in It: December 22, 2025

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Good morning. This is David Bahnsen.

One of the things I’ve learned over time is that work is one of the ordinary ways we reflect what we believe about God.

And in the years I’ve been working with WORLD, I’ve seen that good journalism is work before it is content. Careful reporting takes discipline, restraint, and time.

WORLD depends on listeners who decide that kind of work is worth supporting. And that brings us to the December Giving Drive. I hope you’ll consider how much you value WORLD—and turn that into a gift that makes sense for you—at wng.org/donate.

Stick around. I’ll be back later for the Monday Moneybeat.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Legal Docket.

the Supreme Court wrestles with the Constitutional powers of the presidency.

and what overturning years of legal precedent might look like.

KAGAN: You end up with just massive, uncontrolled, unchecked power in the hands of the president.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today the Monday Moneybeat … economist David Bahnsen is standing by.

And later the WORLD History Book. Today, a changing of the guard.

ROUGH: It’s Monday, December 22nd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Brown University shooting suspect » President Trump is suspending the lottery green card program after a Portuguese national who entered the U.S. through that program carried out multiple fatal shootings.

Authorities say Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves Valente this month killed two students and injured nine others at Rhode Island’s Brown University, and separately shot an MIT professor.

State Dept deputy spokesman Thomas Pigott:

PIGOTT:  When we see something like this happen, we need to make sure that we react appropriately, and part of that is examining the visa procedures in place. And while we're examining those procedures, we need to pause that program

Police found the suspected shooter dead in a New Hampshire storage unit after a days-long manhunt.

The motive is still unknown.

Epstein files » The Department of Justice is defending the partial release of the so-called Epstein files.

 Friday was a congressionally mandated deadline for the DOJ to release case files tied to the late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But so far, the department has only released a fraction.

Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin told CNN’s State of the Union:

RASKIN:  It's all about covering up things that for whatever reason, Donald Trump doesn't want to go public.

But Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche fired back telling NBC's Meet the press that it takes time to redact information that could identify Epstein's victims.

BLANCHE: The reason why we are still reviewing documents and still continuing our process is simply that. To protect victims. So the same individuals that are out there complaining about the lack of documents that were produced on Friday are the same individuals who apparently don't want us to protect victims.

The files released so far have included photographs of famous people who spent time with Epstein in the years before he came under suspicion,

Another sanctioned oil tanker linked to Venezuela » The U.S. Coast Guard is tracking another oil tanker in the Caribbean that officials say is helping Venezuela dodge American sanctions. A U.S. official says the ship is part of a so-called shadow fleet used to move sanctioned oil and is sailing under a false flag.

The pursuit comes days after the U.S. seized two other tankers linked to Venezuela.

The Trump administration says the moves are meant to pressure Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and protect U.S. economic and security interests.

South African shooting » Authorities report that nine people have died and at least 10 others are injured after a shooting at a South African pub.

Provincial police commissioner Fred Kekana:

KEKENA:  Three people were shot and killed there, 10 were injured. And in that process, two other people tried to run away.

He said they were also shot and killed at the scene. Kekena added that several others who were shot later succumbed to their injuries.

The incident occurred early Sunday in Bekkersdal, west of Johannesburg.

Police say about 12 suspects in multiple vehicles opened fire at the KwaNoxolo tavern and continued shooting as they fled.

Authorities were conducting a manhunt last night for the suspects.

Australia mass shooting vigil » Meantime, in Australia, week after 15 people were fatally shot at a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia … thousands of people gathered for the "Light Over Darkness" vigil on Sunday.

David Ossip is President of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies.

OSSIP:  To those who are injured, some of whom are here in the audience tonight, and many others who are watching online, we are praying for you and for your complete and swift recovery.

He declared that the Australian Jewish community won't be broken by the terror attack.

Premier of New South Wales Chris Minns also addressed the survivors and loved ones of those killed:

 MINNS: We grieve with you and with humility I acknowledge that the government's highest duty is to protect its citizens, and we did not do that one week ago.

A father and son are accused of carrying out the terror attack. The father was fatally shot while the son was critically wounded. They reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS prior to the attack.

North Carolina crash update » Federal investigators are trying to determine why a business jet carrying retired NASCAR driver Greg Biffle and six others crashed in North Carolina.

The Cessna C550 apparently had a mechanical issue after takeoff, and pilots turned the plane around and tried to land it again. NTSB investigator Michale Graham:

GRAHAM:   The NTSB is aware of one brief text from a passenger on board the aircraft to a family member that read, and I quote, emergency landing.

Graham said multiple indicators suggest the plane was stable on approach:

GRAHAM:  Configured for landing with the landing lights on, but the aircraft was coming in low. That information is consistent with the debris field. Our team continues to survey.

The jet hit light poles and trees before erupting into flames Thursday, killing everyone on board.

Investigators have recovered the cockpit voice recorder but have not identified the lead pilot.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: the Supreme Court wrestles with the Constitutional powers of the presidency. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat with David Bahnsen.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, the 22nd of December. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough. Time now for Legal Docket.

Last March, President Donald Trump fired two members of the Federal Trade Commission. One of them, Rebecca Slaughter, says she found out . while at a place married mothers of four . often find themselves.

This is what she told CNBC:

CLIP: I was actually at our local elementary school when I found out I was fired. Almost immediately my devices stopped working. I was told my access to the building would be cut off.

EICHER: The White House said the President was simply doing his job as chief executive: to align the FTC with the priorities of the new administration.

LEAVITT: KL Go ahead.

REPORTER Thank you. On the FTC, two quick questions

This is a White House press briefing in March.

_{REPORTER: Can you explain the president’s thinking and his decision to fire the two Democratic commissioners, especially given that … there would be Republican majority. My biggest question is, why now?}

_{LEAVITT: Sure, because the time was right to let these people go, and the president absolutely has the authority to do it, and they were given ample notice in a letter that I believe your outlet reported on. So it pretty much explains exactly why this administration chose to let those individuals go …}

_{REPORTER … Is the ultimate goal to get this to the Supreme Court, to try to overturn the 1935 precedent?}

_{LEAVITT: The goal was to let these individuals go. If we have to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court, we certainly will.
Rachel}

_{REPORTER … back to those deportation flights to El Salvador.}

The administration certainly did … and that’s our Legal Docket case for today: Trump versus Slaughter. Only Rebecca Slaughter, because the other Democrat commissioner let go chose not to fight.

Slaughter, although locked out, is pressing on.

Narrowly, the case involves the president’s ability to direct the priorities of the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC regulates businesses as they relate to consumers. As Slaughter describes the task, the commission is to act as a watchdog against fraud and consumer scams. But FTC does much more than that: Just last year, for example, it blocked a merger of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons. It goes to court, too, as she explained to CBS News:

CLIP: We’re currently suing pharmacy middlemen over the high price of drugs like insulin. We’ve passed rules to prevent junk fees and to make it easy as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one, … Yeah, we're the cops on the beat for kids, privacy and on and on

ROUGH: Congress established the FTC in 1914 through the passage of the Federal Trade Commission Act. Congress designed the FTC to have five members serving staggered terms. No more than three members can be from the same political party. Slaughter is a Democrat.

EICHER: The FTC falls under the executive branch. But Congress designed it in a way that limits the president’s ability to remove commissioners. The law says a president can only fire a commissioner for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance.”

Because Trump didn’t fire her for one of those specific reasons, she had grounds to sue

ROUGH: Bob Pushaw is a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law. He phrases the driving question in the case like this:

PUSHAW: The overall question is: Can Congress create people in the executive branch who are independent of the control of the president, the chief executive officer?

EICHER: Said differently: Does a president that the voters elected have the authority to fire commissioners at will?

Slaughter says he doesn’t. Here’s why. Audio from CNBC.

CLIP: Because the laws of the United States say that he can’t. … The laws that were passed by Congress, signed by a president, have been in place for a century, have some limited protections on the president’s ability to control these independent agencies.

ROUGH: Ninety years ago, the Supreme Court heard Humphey’s Executor versus United States and found those laws constitutional.

In a very similar set of facts, President Franklin D. Roosevelt fired Federal Trade Commissioner William Humphrey because Humphrey didn’t agree with the president’s policies. The Supreme Court upheld the same federal statute here … saying a commissioner can only be fired for specific reasons.

But Trump says the law and the Humphrey’s Executor precedent violate his powers granted by the Constitution. Specifically, the part that says: “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

EICHER: Trump argues the language of the Vesting Clause should be understood as giving the president unfettered discretion to control the entire executive branch, including independent agency officials. It’s known as the unitary executive theory.

Pushaw again:

PUSHAW: I mean essentially, Congress meets in sessions and has 535 members. …All legislative power is not vested in the Speaker of the House. … The Supreme Court meets in sessions, has nine members. … Like all judicial power is not vested in the chief justice. … So essentially, the unitary executive people are saying, read Article II. Executive power shall be vested in the President of the United States. Period.

At the Supreme Court, that’s exactly what Solicitor General John Sauer argued on behalf of the Trump administration.

SAUER: We think the text of the Constitution confers the executive power, all of it, on the president.

ROUGH: But Justice Elena Kagan wanted to unpack the way these independent agencies operate in the real world.

KAGAN: If there’s one thing we know about the founders, it’s that they wanted powers separated. … They didn’t want them all in one place. They wanted them separated across the government, across the different branches.

That’s why the founding fathers divided the national government into three branches.

KAGAN: They wanted the executive—

to enforce the laws—

KAGAN: the legislative—

to make the laws—

KAGAN: the judicial—

to interpret the laws.

EICHER: You may notice something missing: Independent agencies. Where do they fit in this constitutional framework?

And things get enormously complicated fast because agencies like the FTC perform functions of all three branches. The FTC creates trade regulations … it makes laws. It enforces the law by investigating consumer fraud and preventing what it sees as unfair competition. Additionally, it has a specialized tribunal where administrative law judges hold hearings and issue binding rulings.

Justice Kagan affirmed that many people think that’s a real distortion from what the founders intended.

ROUGH: But, for better or worse, our government did go down that path. Justice Kagan said we need to deal with the government as it has evolved. Otherwise—

KAGAN: You end up with massive, uncontrolled, unchecked power in the hands of the President. … Not only to do traditional execution but to make law through legislative and adjudicative frameworks.

Amit Agarwal represented Slaughter. He relied on the long history of government agencies and Humphrey’s Executor.

AGARWAL: Multi-member commissions with members enjoying some kind of removal protection have been part of our story since 1790. So if Petitioners are right, all three branches of government have been wrong from the start. … And this Court was wrong to repeatedly bless those laws and to unanimously uphold the exact same removal provision at issue here in Humphrey’s Executor almost a century ago.

EICHER: Sauer for the Trump administration pointed out the court has chipped away at Humphrey's Executor over the years, including a recent case from 2020.

SAUER: Humphrey’s must be overruled. It has become a decaying husk with bold and particularly dangerous pretensions. It was grievously wrong when decided. … It continues to tempt Congress to erect at the heart of our government a headless fourth branch insulated from political accountability and democratic control.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said overturning it would have seismic effects.

SOTOMAYOR: You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government and to take away from Congress its ability to protect its idea that the government is better structured with some agencies that are independent. … Where else have we so fundamentally altered the structure of government?

Sauer said it was Humphrey’s Executor that ushered in the alteration. Agencies grew under President Woodrow Wilson and, later, the New Dealers and Congress ran with it. In Sauer’s telling, They were the ones who destroyed separation of powers as classically understood.

ROUGH: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson conceded that the Constitution gives the president broad powers. But it does the same for Congress.

JACKSON: The text of the Constitution includes the Necessary and Proper Clause, which gives Congress the authority to determine, set up, et cetera, these agencies to protect the will, the interests, of the people. So we have a conflict, I guess, and I’m just wondering why the president’s interests, in the way that you describe them, win.

Bob Pushaw, the con law expert, says this is worth thinking about.

PUSHAW: The idea, and I think what Jackson’s point was, which is a very sound point, is why can’t Congress decide that it is necessary and proper to have certain agencies be independent of the President when dependence on the President might screw up the policy and the statute Congress is enacting.

Justice Jackson also expressed concern about hampering the design of Congress to leave certain matters to nonpartisan experts.

JACKSON: So having a president come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the Ph.D.s and replacing them with loyalists and people who don’t know anything is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wanted to confirm that a decision in favor of Trump would be a limited cut to the way our government operates:

KAVANAUGH: I want to make it crystal-clear, that over-ruling or narrowing Humphrey’s Executor would not threaten the existence of these agencies but only would alter how the heads of those agencies can be removed, correct?

SAUER: Correct.

EICHER: The justices asked both sides where to draw the line.

If the president can fire FTC Commissioners at will, logic would say he could do so with other agencies.

If the president cannot fire agency leaders at will, could Congress convert cabinet posts into agencies in order to shield them from presidential control?

ROUGH: Quickly, two more things: Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested it’s time for the court to reinvigorate doctrines that limit the ability of Congress to delegate its legislative authority.

And Justice Samuel Alito made this remark:

ALITO: It certainly is an interesting argument. It’s an interesting constitutional argument. It’s an interesting political science argument about the advantages and disadvantages of allowing Congress to impose removal restrictions on executive branch officers.

I asked Professor Pushaw his take.

PUSHAW: I’m an originalist. I think the unitary executive theory is correct. And I think that what we have is an unaccountable blob of administrative agency bureaucrats. I mean, if you read the Constitution, I think the language is pretty clear. The executive power of the United States shall be vested in the President of the United States, not the President of the United States comma, and a bunch of independent agencies and people outside his—that’s not what it says. And the President has a duty to take care of the laws, be faithfully executed, and he can’t faithfully execute the laws if he can’t control people who are underneath him.

But where will all of this lead?

Next month, the court is scheduled to hear Trump versus Cook, about the president’s attempt to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. A ruling here that favors Trump should logically extend to the Fed. And that could give the president the power to control monetary policy. But the court is going to take up a question of whether an exception applies. We’ll have that for you in the coming weeks.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s time now to talk business, markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm the Bahnsen Group, and he is here now. Good morning to you.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Good morning. Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: David, the two economic reports driving headlines this week were the jobs report and the consumer inflation numbers. According to the one: Inflation cooled a bit, that’s the Consumer Price Index reading, CPI. And according to the other: Unemployment rose to its highest level in several years.

Both reports, of course, were affected by delays and distortions tied to the government shutdown.

So as you look at those numbers—together or separately, however you want to approach it—what stands out to you about what they do, and do not, tell us about the economy right now?

BAHNSEN: Well, let’s start with the unemployment report, because it’s one of the rare times that I get to say that a move higher—in this case to 4.6% unemployment—was for exactly the right reason, which was that the number of people entering the labor force had gone up.

So now you have new people coming into the labor force, adding to that denominator. You have to see them get jobs, but it is a good thing for more people to be coming into the labor force. We’ve seen so little of that for so long that I’ll take that as an encouraging sign, although there weren’t a lot of new jobs created on a net basis.

When the administration is talking about some of the new jobs created this year in the private sector, that’s a gross number. It isn’t looking at the net, given that we’ve had a pickup in layoffs this year. So there’s still a lot of work to be done on the jobs front, Nick.

But a 4.6% unemployment rate from 4.5%, because more people entered the labor force, that’s a better outcome.

Now, the CPI number—I hesitate to even talk about it, because I cannot believe for the life of me that they even released it. There was essentially no data from October, a totally made-up number on the shelter side because they had no data, so they plugged in a 0% number for it. There were only 14 days of data from November, and the full month they had was from September, which by December is obviously totally obsolete.

So it was just a very odd number. It didn’t include any insurance figures. Auto insurance is a pretty big component of people’s spending and monthly expenses, so I didn’t really put much weight on it.

Whether people want to assume the current inflation rate is somewhere between two-and-a-half or three percent is immaterial to me. It is somewhere in there. By the way, I’ve long believed that the contribution to CPI from shelter is overstated, but I think the administration putting in a 0% number is a little disingenuous.

So we have a little room to go here in terms of the shutdown being resolved before we get data that I think is going to be reliable.

EICHER: So, between zero and more than that, a lot of guesswork going on here.

BAHNSEN: Well, look, zero could be right. It could be negative. I don’t think it’s negative, but the point is they don’t know either. They put it in as an input, and the footnotes are pretty clear.

You had 14 days of data in November. You had no data in October. You were missing whole product categories. So it’s hard to believe that the news outlets spent as much time as they did covering it at all.

EICHER: Given all that, do you think it would have been better for the government simply to say, “We don’t know enough right now,” instead of publishing numbers the Fed itself is looking at skeptically. So just skip it and regroup in January?

BAHNSEN: I suppose not. I suppose that would have looked a little funky. To be honest with you, they did disclose the holes in this report. The administration said this is missing, this is missing that.

I think the flaw here was the way the financial media reported on it. They didn’t adequately footnote it. But the report itself did have all the right caveats.

EICHER: Okay, so that brings us to your Dividend Cafe this week. You step back from the month-to-month noise and take a 25-year view, and what emerges is a pattern of repeated instability—economic instability, political, cultural instability—stretching across a quarter century. Why was it important to you to zoom out like that?

BAHNSEN: Well, I would argue that I could zoom out even further and we’re not going to see anything different. You could take any 25-year period, and that’s because you and I know we live in a fallen world. On this side of glory, one of the hallmarks of original sin is that you end up, on a systemic basis, with geopolitical original sin, with economic instabilities, and so forth.

There’s no 25-year period that isn’t going to have that.

But I wanted to focus on these 25 years because we’re now at the end of the first quarter century of this new century. It’s unbelievable. If people were to look at it and say, “What’s happened so far in 25 years?”—you have 9/11, you have the tech implosion, you have the global financial crisis that brought the world’s financial system to its knees. You have the ascendancy of China. You have the COVID pandemic.

There are all sorts of major events.

Do we want to argue that these 25 years were more unstable than any other 25-year period—than the Cold War, than World War II, than Vietnam? You get these things in the news cycle all the time.

I think it’s a really interesting trip down memory lane to think about the last 25 years. But for investors, and for those looking at this in the context of economics, to look at it and then say: all of those major instabilities, and investors are up seven-and-a-half times over the last 25 years.

That ought to give us perspective on how markets absorb instability. I have to say, I think markets absorb instability a lot better than governments do.

EICHER: And that gets to one of the big takeaways for me—that government economic policy may not matter as much as we often think, because there’s something about the resilience of a free-market economy, and the ability of businesses and business leaders to adapt.

BAHNSEN: That’s where you have to combine your two sentences there, because it doesn’t matter about the policy as long as you have a free-market economy. If the policy is to confiscate all corporate profits, well, that would change things.

But to the extent that we have a generally free-market system, you’re exactly right.

This is also part of my theological framework. As much as original sin means I expect ongoing instability, I also believe in the human person created by God, with faculties for overcoming problems, with the ability to create solutions, with an innovative and productive engine behind him or her that is part of our created person.

That’s where profit realities come from—how God made the human person. You put that at scale, you put it in the context of an interconnected, global, very substantially resourced economy, and that’s how you get the kind of profit growth and innovation we’ve had, which have led to really tremendous returns for investors.

EICHER: All right. David Bahnsen—founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. He writes at DividendCafe.com and at WORLD Opinions. David, thanks and Merry Christmas. We’ll see you after the holiday.

BAHNSEN: Merry Christmas Nick

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

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough. Up next the WORLD History Book.

For the past year, the History Book has been shaped by a growing team of contributors—you’ve heard them.

This week, we hear from Paul Butler as he looks back on a decade of stories, going back to the early days of this regular feature, and the transition to a new generation of history buffs that’s already underway.

PAUL BUTLER: On August 3rd, 2015, I voiced my very first WORLD Radio History Book segment.

BUTLER: We begin today with August 2nd, 1923. President Warren G. Harding — in office for only about two-and-a-half years — dies suddenly during a trip to California...

After voicing, writing, or producing nearly 500 History Book segments. Today is my last.

When I started, producer and co-host Joseph Slife wrote the segment and I just got to voice it. Over time, I began writing the segment more and more myself. Since 2017, I’ve been the one primarily responsible for the weekly segment.

One of the modern scholars who influenced my approach to History Book is independent historian Larry Eskridge:

ESKRIDGE: One of the great things about history is that it is the study of everything. Every dimension of life that you could imagine, social, economic, military, political, religious, theological—it's all history.

Eskridge used to study American evangelicals at Wheaton College.

ESKRIDGE: Inevitably, if you want to understand the world in which you live, you need to have some context.

Many of the stories featured each week have been of general interest. But we’ve also tried to consistently highlight Christian history.

ESKRIDGE: Sometimes when you look at your own particular strain of Christianity there's some characters who were questionable and that's a[n] exercise which can help you think a more Christianly, I'd say about your own situation and time.

It’s hard to narrow down my favorite segments over the last 10 years, but here are some highlights of a few of them:

BUTLER: We begin with February 24th, in the year 303 — the first of four edicts is published by Roman emperor Diocletian, prohibiting Christians from gathering for worship.

Ryan M. Reeves is an Associate Professor of Historical Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

REEVES: Across the vast majority of the Roman Empire, the Christians experience the harshest persecutions that they would ever face…

Diocletian’s persecution of the Church does not work as he hoped. The church does not fracture, but rather, grows stronger.

March 9th, 1831 — American Presbyterian minister and evangelist Charles Finney concludes a six-month series of meetings in Rochester, New York. The revival marks the peak of America’s Second Great Awakening. The New York meetings lead to the closing of many city theaters and taverns, and crime falls by two-thirds. As many as 100,000 people reportedly are converted during the event.

According to Mark Noll, Professor of History at University of Notre Dame, Charles Finney’s legacy is clearly seen in modern evangelicalism.

NOLL: Things like preaching for a decision, things like asking people to make a commitment to Christ at the end of a meeting had been very rarely done before Finney’s time. He became a master of this sort of activity. And these have been characteristics that have been quite prominent since his time in America and especially American Protestant history.

We begin with October 22nd, 1844. That’s the day Baptist lay-minister William Miller predicted Christ’s return. Miller arrived at the date by comparing Daniel’s prophecies and Revelation to historical events and computed a timeline for the end of the world.

As many as 100-thousand so-called Millerites believed him:

ROWE: Some of them quit their jobs in order to get ready for the end. Some people gave away their possessions.

David Rowe is professor emeritus at Middle Tennessee State University and author of God’s Strange Work: William Miller and the End of the World.

ROWE: There were people who confessed to crimes, people who solved long-standing disputes with neighbors or with family members, but for the most part people just prayed and, and gathered with their families...

When October 22nd, 1844 came—and went—without any visible sign of Christ’s return, the day became known as the “great disappointment.”

ROWE: It was a pretty shattering experience for all of them really...

There are many others I’d like to highlight, but just one more. It’s from August 3rd, 2020. It marked the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims setting sail from Holland. It was a personal story for me as my wife is a direct descendant of John Robinson, the pastor of the Pilgrims.

BUTLER: In the summer of 1620, about 100 separatists left Holland for England. The Pilgrims’ pastor, John Robinson, had stayed behind in Holland with the rest of the church. He sends a farewell letter to be read aloud before they set out on the next part of their journey.

ROBINSON: Though I be constrained for a while to be bodily absent from you...Make account of me in the meanwhile as of a man divided in myself with great pain, and as having my better part with you.

Robinson ends his letter much like his farewell sermon a couple weeks earlier, commending them into the hand of their Creator.

ROBINSON: I do earnestly commend unto your care and conscience, that He who hath made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all rivers of water, and whose providence is over all His works, would so guide and guard you in your ways...inwardly by His Spirit...outwardly by the hand of His power...fare you well in Him in whom you trust, and in whom I rest. - John Robinson

When I first worked on the History Book, I stepped into a feature Joseph Slife had built from the beginning. Since then, it’s been my privilege to steward and shape it. Over the past year, I’ve been gradually stepping back, working with a growing team of younger writers to pass History Book along in the same spirit. So it continues—and I’m grateful to have been part of it.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book, I’m Paul Butler.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Tomorrow: a first-hand report from Dearborn, Michigan, an American city with a Muslim local government. And, observations from African Christians about Christmas customs here and there. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick 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 Bible says, “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.” —Revelation 1:5b-6

Go now in grace and peace.

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