The World and Everything in It: July 12, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like you and I. I'm Dan Beatty, a retired army helicopter pilot living in Huntsville, Alabama and happily serving as a worship leader in my church and as the ministry leader for a local Celebrate Recovery ministry. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! The White House is pushing back on a court order blocking it from colluding with social-media companies. The government says it ought not be muzzled from fighting misinformation.

LANDRY: No one's muzzling the government. We just want, we don't want the government muzzling people.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday. Also today, news from around the world on WORLD Tour. And...

AUDIO: The very first thing Jesus said to any of his disciples: Follow me.

A California minister helping Muslim immigrants to do that. And commentator Ryan Bomberger takes on wrong views on race.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, July 12th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard

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

REICHARD: Time now for news. Here’s Kristen Flavin.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, NEWS ANCHOR: AI briefing » The Senate yesterday held its first classified briefing on the national security risks of artificial intelligence.

The director of national intelligence and other top officials briefed the entire Senate behind closed doors.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer:

Schumer: AI could also become one of our greatest tools for keeping Americans safe. We have a responsibility, a real responsibility, to educate ourselves on these matters.

Schumer says the briefing is only part of a push to educate lawmakers before drafting legislation to regulate AI.

Schumer: There’s still a lot we don’t know about AI. We need outside help if we want to ensure Congressional action is effective, responsible, and promotes innovation in a safe way.

A Senate subcommittee is set to meet today to discuss artificial intelligence as it relates to intellectual property.

COVID origins hearing » Meanwhile, the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic held a hearing yesterday, investigating the origins of the COVID-19 virus.

Committee Chairman Brad Wenstrup:

Wenstrup: We're examining whether government officials, regardless of who they are, unfairly and perhaps biasly tipped the scales toward a preferred origin theory.

Wenstrup said he believes health officials are intentionally pushing a false narrative to avoid blaming China.

Ranking committee member Raul Ruiz disagreed with Wenstrup, saying lawmakers are trying to use the investigation to deepen the partisan divide.

Ruiz: This isn't about building trust in public health and science. No, it's about tearing it down, about manufacturing a problem and manufacturing distrust to justify an extreme partisan agenda.

Medical experts and researchers gave expert testimony while not favoring any specific theory.

NATO » Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying his country would find security in NATO, make NATO stronger in return.

Zelenskyy spoke on the sidelines of the NATO summit yesterday in Lithuania. He criticized the alliance for not giving his country a specific timetable for joining.

Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg promises that Ukraine will eventually join NATO at the end of its war with Russia.

STOLTENBERG: We reaffirmed that Ukraine will become a member of NATO and agreed to remove the requirement for a membership action plan. This would change Ukraine's membership path from a two-step process to a one-step process.

President Biden has said that Ukraine was not ready to join the bloc.

Sweden/NATO » Meanwhile Sweden could soon become a member of NATO. After Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to bring the issue of Sweden’s membership before his country’s parliament.

Biden spoke with Erdogan at the NATO summit:

BIDEN: You know, we're in this historic summit meeting. Resolving a lot of things, I hope. Made all the more historic by the agreement you reached yesterday and the admission of Sweden, how you're going to proceed. Thank you for your diplomacy and your courage to take that on.

In exchange for Turkey’s support of Sweden, European Union members who are also members of NATO will back Turkey’s bid to join the E.U.

Tylenol » The lone suspect in the 1982 Tylenol poisoning scare has died.

Police found 76-year old James Lewis dead in his Cambridge, Massachusetts, home. They do not suspect foul play.

Lewis never formally faced charges for the deaths of seven people who took over-the-counter painkillers laced with cyanide.

After the poisonings, the U.S. government began requiring tamper-proof packaging of most consumer goods.

Lewis at the time lived in the Chicago area, where the killings took place.

LEWIS: I was in New York, for over almost a month prior to the homicides in Chicago I never left New York.

He did serve more than 12 years in prison for an extortion note he sent to manufacturer Johnson & Johnson, demanding $1 million to “stop the killings.”

Flooding » Vermont is still dealing with massive floods after two months’ worth of rain fell on the state in just two days.

The rain has mostly stopped, but Gov. Phil Scott says there’s still work to do.

SCOTT: We're not out of the woods this is nowhere near over and at this phase our primary focus continues to be on life and safety before we can shift into the recovery phase.

No injuries or deaths have yet been reported.

Vermont business owner Troy Caruso described the damage in the town of Ludlow:

CARUSO: It’s a disaster. On Main Street, lotta lot of businesses wrecked on Main Street. Flooding is pretty much resigned at almost at this point, the main culvert in town let go. It's probably worse than you see on the news.

Vermont is expected to get more rain on Thursday and Friday of this week.

I'm Kristen Flavin.

Straight ahead: Washington Wednesday with Erick Erickson. Plus, finding a common language to disciple Muslims.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday, July 12th, 2023.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Washington Wednesday. Today: keeping the government from policing online content.

Last week on the 4th of July, a federal judge in Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction against the Biden administration. Judge Terry Doughty ordered the White House to stop communicating with social-media companies about content moderation. Meaning, the process of reviewing and monitoring content that users generate on online platforms … and holding it to certain standards.

REICHARD: The case stems from an investigation by the Attorneys General of Louisiana and Missouri. They looked into patterns of what appeared to be big-tech censorship during the pandemic and 2020 election.

Back in November, the AGs deposed a variety of officials, including the former COVID Czar Anthony Fauci.

Appearing in December on Fox News  former AG Eric Schmitt, who is now Missouri’s junior U.S. Senator:

ERIC SCHMITT: What's clear from this depo, is that when Fauci speaks, big tech censors, and that's what this lawsuit is all about.

EICHER: And Fauci wasn’t the only one. In his injunction, Judge Doughty specified 41 people and 13 agencies as defendants. The list includes cabinet secretaries Alejandro Mayorkas and Xavier Becerra, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and President Biden himself.

REICHARD: Judge Doughty wrote that “the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario.” And that the evidence points to a “targeted suppression of conservative ideas” ranging from opposition to lockdowns to the quality of the evidence found on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

EICHER: On Sunday, the Justice Department filed a request to Judge Doughty to stay the injunction. DOJ argued that it could prevent the President from speaking about online misinformation surrounding a natural disaster, for example.

But Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry says that’s not true.

LANDRY: No one's muzzling the government. We just want, we don't want the government muzzling people.

EICHER: So what does this case mean for government involvement in social media…and the First Amendment right to free speech? 

Joining us now is Erick Erickson. He’s a lawyer by training, a political broadcaster, and host of the Erick Erickson Show. He’s also a contributor to WORLD Opinions.

REICHARD: Erick, good morning.

ERICK ERICKSON: Good morning!

REICHARD: In your article for WORLD Opinions, you highlight part of Judge Doughty’s injunction where he says, “During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

Can you explain the reference and what exactly the government did to assume this role?

ERICK ERICKSON, GUEST: He's referencing the George Orwell book 1984, and how essentially truths were lies and lies were truth. It was easier to control the people when they knowingly embraced lies. What he found from the government was that individuals within various agencies of the government at the cabinet level and in quasi-independent agencies did routinely reach out to social media companies and request that they either downplay people's accounts who were spreaders of misinformation or disinformation, in other words, make it so it was harder to see their tweets, or in some cases try to get tweets suspended or blocked because of supposed misinformation and disinformation. It was the government trying to, in the judge's opinion, use private companies as proxies to do what the government can't do, which is violate the First Amendment. A private company can censor anyone, it's their company. But when they're acting as agents of the government, it becomes a little bit harder for them to do.

REICHARD: Tell us what Judge Doughty’s injunction accomplishes, and why it matters now in July, 2023?

ERICKSON: So it very clearly was just about free speech issues, pure free speech issues. If the government wanted a social media company---Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, another company---to silence a voice uttering something the government believed was disinformation or misinformation, what he's saying is the government can't reach out to the companies to do that. They're prohibited from having those interactions about free speech issues. This matters because the government very clearly is concerned about misinformation and disinformation over for example, the upcoming election or, or the hypothetical scenarios of natural disasters and the like and want to engage in ongoing communications with tech companies and the judges saying you you can't do that on these issues.

REICHARD: To your point, the Justice Department made some claims about this injunction, and the ruling that is likely to follow. You heard it just a moment ago that it will get in the way of fighting misinformation in critical situations. Like natural disasters or presidential elections, for example. How do you respond to that?

ERICKSON: Well, what the Justice Department wants to do is to essentially censor people whose views they disagree with, when the reality is they could just respond and say this is not true and here's why and provide the facts. They want to do an end run around that and just make the tweets or the Facebook posts or the YouTube videos disappear, as opposed to having to respond to them. And that's the judge's point, that we shouldn't be responding to misinformation and disinformation by making it disappear. That actually just amplifies it and highlights for new audience. Instead, respond to the lies with truth. And that's the preferred option. In fact, that's the historic solution.

REICHARD: Is there anything about the way this story is being covered in the mainstream media that you see is misleading?

ERICK: Yeah, they've really focused on for example, child pornography and getting child pornography on the Internet off. For example, the FBI, the Homeland Security, and others, do reach out to social media companies and do flag bad criminal behavior like child pornography or even drug dealing. And the media would have you believe in the spin on this, that they're not going to be able to have this relationship with tech companies for anything. That's not true if you read the injunction, it only applies to free speech issues about alleged misinformation and disinformation. So child pornography is not a matter of free speech, neither is drug dealing. The government will still be able to contact technology companies based on those issues.

REICHARD: Since we’re on the topic of social media platforms, there’s been a lot of buzz about this new companion app to Instagram called Threads. It’s been positioned as an alternative to Twitter. Less than a week after going live, Mark Zuckerberg announced over 100 million sign ups. How is this new competitor likely to affect Elon Musk’s quest to make Twitter a haven for free speech that is also profitable?

ERICKSON: Well, so Twitter is struggling financially even before this comes along. In fact, Elon Musk has now fired off a cease and desist letter to Meta claiming they stole his information. He's gone after Mark Zuckerberg, he seems to be threatened by it. I don't know that Threads is a distinct threat. Twitter has a lot of public policymakers and opinion leaders discussing public policy and politics. Threads seems to be more about influencer opinion. In fact, they're, they're using it algorithmically, you can't get a chronological timeline, and they're overselling [a sss] non-social commentary on politics and life. It's more just to connect with people more more like what Facebook used to be in its origins. So they're really two different platforms, it has the potential to be very big. The thing that always made Twitter unique is that anyone could go and see public opinion makers and thought leaders in the world and interact with them and help them in real time shape their opinions. But as progressives began to dominate Twitter, they used it as a tool to silence others. Like, for example, the Hunter Biden laptop story that they thought was election collusion with the Russians. And that drove conservatives away. Well, now that Elon Musk has bought it, progressives are leaving to their own safe space. Twitter still kind of has a unique sphere where people left and right kind of get together to argue over politics but less so these days. I don't think Threads will become something like that, because the folks behind Meta and Facebook are saying they don't want it to be a place for political argument.

REICHARD: Erick Erickson is a political broadcaster and commentator for WORLD Opinions. Erick, thanks for joining us.

ERICKSON: Thank you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: News from around the world on WORLD Tour with Onize Ohikere.

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Ethiopia hunger—— We begin today in Ethiopia’s conflict-hit Tigray region.

SOUND: [Hospital]

Parents inside a hospital in the region’s city of Mekelle watch over malnourished children struggling from the impact of drought and a two-year war.

Hospital staff say eight children died in May.

FATHER: [Speaking Tigrigna]

This father sitting beside his severely malnourished 10-year-old says the family doesn’t have any food. Now, their daughter can’t keep any solids down.

Fighting between government troops and the regional Tigray rebels has left much of the region reliant on food aid.

PEDIATRICIAN: [Speaking Tigrigna]

This pediatrician at the hospital in Mekelle says families are battling a vicious cycle of receiving treatment and returning home to no food, before falling sick again.

The World Food Program and the United States suspended food aid to the region in March after reports that local officials and rebels played a role in diverting the aid from those in need.

Brenda Kariuki is a senior regional spokesperson with the World Food Program. She says the food distributions could resume this month.

BRENDA KARIUKI: We are also implementing a new targeting methodology to identify the most vulnerable in the communities and rolling out a new digital registration system so that WFP can better identify and verify beneficiaries to ensure that the right people are receiving critical food at the right time.

Local officials say at least 700 people have died from hunger in the region since the aid stopped.

Germany deal — We head over to Germany which is sending troops to attend joint drills in Australia for the first time.

Army Chief Alfons Mais said some 240 soldiers, including paratroopers and marines, will train in jungle warfare and landing operations.

They will join service members from 12 other nations, including Japan, France, Britain, and South Korea.

MAIS: [Speaking German]

Mais says that Germany is not interested in sending a signal to any nation but in strengthening partnerships.

Germany has shown increased military presence in the Indo-Pacific region in recent years even as tensions rise with China. Its biggest trading partner.

Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced Monday … the country will station a military surveillance aircraft in Germany.

ALBANESE: This aircraft will help to protect the multinational logistics hubs that are essential to the flow of military and humanitarian assistance to the people of Ukraine.

Albanese says the deployment will last six months and include up to 100 support crew members.

SOUND: [Japan Fukushima protests]

In Japan, local activists and South Korean lawmakers chanted and waved flags outside the prime minister’s office on Monday.

They oppose the Japanese government’s plan to release treated radioactive water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Japan plans to start releasing water from the plant as early as this summer to prevent accidental leaks as storage runs out. Japan’s fishing community and other groups across South Korea and China have raised concerns.

PROTESTER:  [Speaking Japanese]

This protester says she eats fish and seaweed and called the idea of polluting the sea unthinkable.

Last week, the United Nations nuclear agency concluded Japan’s plan complies with international standards.

Syria bomb attack — Ambulance siren

Car bomb explosions in northern Syria on Sunday killed at least eight people.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one bomb exploded in a car repair shop in the town of Shawa. Five people died … including three children.

Another explosive planted in a car went off in the city of Manbij. At least three fighters of a Syrian Kurdish-led group died.

No group has claimed responsibility. Syria’s civil war began in 2011 … and has dissolved into a conflict involving insurgent groups and foreign players.

SOUND: [South Africa snowfall]

We end today in South Africa where residents dashed outdoors to enjoy a rare snowfall on Monday.

Other parts of South Africa experience some snow during the winter, but it’s the first in the city of Johannesburg since 2012.

The rare occurrence brought people outdoors including this student: 

STUDENT: I would maybe do things we used to see in cartoons, making snow angels and whatnot.

The South African Weather Service warned the icy temperatures and strong winds could pose a risk, particularly to the city’s homeless.

That’s it for this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Walk around any city or airport and you find people glued to their devices. Really doesn’t matter where. Even the Zoo. Apparently people have taken to showing videos to the gorillas, and it’s becoming a problem.

In Chicago, the Sun Times reports the Zoo put up a rope line to keep people further away from the glass, because the gorillas were becoming so distracted by people’s phones.

Same thing up in Toronto. There’s a sign at the gorilla habitat saying JUST DON’T!

Zookeeper Hollie Ross told CP24 news that the gorillas are so fixated on screens, it’s changing their behavior. And not in good ways:

HOLLIE ROSS: We have a male gorilla Nasser, who seems really enthralled with videos that certain guests would show to him. And so we just want the gorillas to be able to be gorillas.

Sounds to me like the gorillas have been watching us more closely than we thought.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Monkey see, monkey do.

EICHER: It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, July 12th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: leading Muslims to the truth.

For the last many decades, hundreds of thousands of Muslims have immigrated to the US. Driving that in part has been upheaval in Iran, Turkey, and across the Arab world.

This trend concerns some observers who track Islamist movements.

REICHARD: But many in Christian ministry say there’s another movement taking root in the United States: Muslims coming to a new faith. WORLD’s Jill Nelson reports.

JILL NELSON, REPORTER: It’s a Wednesday night in Orange County, California, and this spacious Middle Eastern cultural center is alive with activity. It’s Muhammad’s birthday, and people are filling tables with food while children play games.

Off in the corner, three men and five women walk into a makeshift classroom. Most of the women are wearing hijabs, or Muslim headscarves. They are all here to improve their English skills.

SUE FUQUA: Ok the next sentence says you’ve been created. How are we created? In the likeness of who? Like God.

Sue Fuqua is teaching English using the story of creation from Genesis. Five volunteers sit next to the students and help them decode the answers. They all seem to know one another.

NADER HANNA: Is that it? All right, take turns reading it.

Salam Ministries President Nader Hanna takes over as they transition to the next exercise. Hanna says his ministry seeks to meet the needs of immigrant communities, and promote relationship building.

HANNA: I think we should seek to build bridges and build relationships with our Muslim neighbors, coworkers, classmates and just do life with them and then it opens the door to communicating the message of the gospel.

Hanna has been in full time ministry for more than 20 years. In his earlier days, he worked for the Christian broadcasting station SAT-7 in Egypt, Lebanon, and Cyprus.

Now he lives in Orange County where he facilitates church planting, outreach, and discipleship training programs. He believes in creating community first, then moving onto discipleship and evangelism. He says the West often has it backwards.

HANNA: We think evangelism, discipleship and then community. We think of evangelism as an event. And then discipleship. When we say the word, we think of a classroom setting.

Eventually we may accept them in our community. But this is not how Jesus did it. The very first thing Jesus said to his disciples, follow me, become a part of my community first. And then He discipled them into believing in Him. 

Hanna gives an example. One day he was with a friend at a restaurant enjoying Lebanese pizza.

HANNA: Of course they don't call it pizza. They call it naish. It’s dough with zaatar and olive oil on top or cheese.

They noticed a man and his son sitting together and struck up a conversation. Hanna and his friend invited them to their table and shared their food with them.

HANNA: Turns out there are Algerians who moved recently to California and they're a family of five. So we got to know them. And we started helping them with the things that a new immigrant would need, like car insurance and stuff like that.

They became friends. Hanna invited the family to the ministry’s 50th anniversary celebration. He says the family enjoyed getting out of their hotel room and meeting people.

HANNA: We got the impression that they don't mind being invited to other Christian events. So we invited them to an Arabic Bible study we had then and ever since they've been with us, Jamel and Aisha. Aisha is veiled. They have three children and they are still practicing Muslims. But they love our company, they love to be with us. They come to the Bible study.

Hanna emphasized the importance of long-term relationships. His ministry baptized a Turkish man last year who had been a part of their multi-ethnic church plant for two years.

HANNA: Some people get to this point faster, some people take a longer time to get to this point.

Hanna’s observations align with those of other ministry leaders.

Some I talked to know 30 or 40 Muslim background believers in the United States and have secondary knowledge of several hundred. Others told me about Iranian converts to Christianity on U.S. campuses who keep their faith a secret for fear of reprisals against their family back in Iran.

They all said evangelism usually begins with relationships, and they believe the church can do a better job getting to know their Muslim neighbors. Hanna says many are seeking answers to their faith questions.

HANNA: I have no doubt that many Muslims are reconsidering or considering Christianity or seeking to know the truth or choose to follow Jesus. Many more than we know.

But the church is not doing great in regards to the Great Commission in general. And within that, it's worse when it comes to Muslims.

Back at the Middle Eastern cultural center, Hanna cues up a simple video about the Genesis creation story while the group looks at their printed script.

ESL CREATION VIDEO: She then gave the fruit to Adam and asked him to take a bite as well.

Hanna says the cultural center the ministry meets in promotes interfaith dialogue and has been open to their teaching curriculum.

HANNA: At some point, we found that we can use Bible stories to teach the class. So we've done Joseph, and then today we thought, why don't we start from the Genesis, chapter one, and then take all the prophets?

Audio: [SueTeaching]

They don’t use the ESL class for direct evangelism, but Hanna says they are laying foundations.

HANNA: We're happy for people to be in our company and part of our community and we just love on them and become their family and just let the Holy Spirit work.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jill Nelson.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, July 12th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next: the new definition of racism.

WORLD commentator Ryan Bomberger says that since 2020, many groups have been led astray by a wrong new perspective on race, including Christians.

RYAN BOMBERGER, COMMENTATOR: Racism is everywhere. It’s in everything. It’s in everyone. Well, ok, not everyone. Just white people. Or so say some proponents of Critical Race Theory, a poison that was pumped into our national veins during the summer of 2020. After the senseless death of George Floyd, the Anti-Defamation League or ADL redefined racism as a moral outrage only white people could commit. They proclaimed racism was “the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”

Prior to 2020, their definition made more sense. It read, “Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics.”

Since then, ADL has changed its definition several times and then decided to scrap their whole Racism subpage altogether. But in many ways, they still embrace CRT’s definition of racism–as do many organizations and corporations today. During the 2020 Summer of Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots, even faith-based non-profits like Bethany Christian Services began to drench themselves in “anti-racist” language, offering webinars to help families fight “white privilege.”

Around this time, the Smithsonian’s taxpayer-funded National Museum of African-American History and Culture offered its racist and now-retracted infographic titled “Aspects of Whiteness and White Culture”. It claimed among other things that believing in hard work, politeness, and planning for the future were unique values of white culture. Like CRT advocates, they redefined racism as that which only benefits white people–whether it’s individual, institutional, systemic or structural.

Such academic verbiage has an air of sophistication but really just reeks of, well, more discrimination.

Even leading anti-racism evangelist and best-selling propagandist, Ibram X. Kendi, can’t seem to define the word from which he’s made millions. In this cringe-worthy clip from the leftist Aspen Ideas Festival, Kendi leaves his audience in an awkward silence:

KENDI: Racism. I would define it as a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas.

Circular definitions are so fitting for those who incessantly talk in circles. Racism is “everywhere,” but somehow these activists cannot explain what it is.

Here's how the Bible defines racism: sin.

Race is a destructive human construct with absolutely no basis in science. It’s simply another failure of humanity to see ourselves as being made in God’s image with inherent and equal worth. People of every skin color can be tempted to think they’re better or more valuable than others.

Many anti-racists today claim to “build community” with their colorized anti-social policies, but they only divide us further. For Christians, true unity exists solely through the love of Jesus Christ. He’s the only one who can break the seemingly endless cycle of worshiping color instead of the Creator.

I’m Ryan Bomberger.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: the federal government is trying to rein in bad behavior in local police departments, using a tool called a consent decree. What are they, and will they really help?

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. 

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

Jesus said in the parable of the sower: “As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.” Matthew 13, verses 20 and 21.

Go now in grace and peace.

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