The World and Everything in It: July 22, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. I'm Lindsay Kolster, and I live in Omaha, Nebraska where I enjoy making music and teaching piano to about 60 students. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! President Biden stands down and ends his presidential campaign. But is it really that simple?

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk it over with legal expert Ilya Shapiro.

And what might it mean for markets? The Monday Moneybeat today, economist David Bahnsen standing by.

Later, the WORLD History Book. Today the life of a minister who gave his utmost.

AUDIO: He drove himself mercilessly because again, their lives teetered on eternity.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, July 22nd. 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: Now the news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Biden is out » The Democratic Party is in uncharted waters, pushing the sitting president out of the White House race with little more than 100 days left until Election Day.

After a weekslong pressure campaign within the party, President Biden has agreed to end his reelection bid and make way for a younger nominee.

VOTER: I think it's best. I don't didn't see him beating Trump. And so it will be interesting to see how all things hash out.

One voter heard there echoing the sentiments of many Democratic leaders.

In a letter posted to social media on Sunday, Biden stated, “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”

Democratic strategist Nathan Daschle said Sunday …

DASCHLE:  I think this must have been an incredibly difficult decision. But President Biden made the right call.

Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month triggered panic within the party about the fate of the election after the 81-year-old president seemed to display severe cognitive decline while debating Donald Trump.

Biden endorses Kamala Harris » The question now, of course, is what happens next?

One undecided voter said she was still weighing her options before this announcement.

VOTER: So Biden dropping out now really kind of changes a lot of what I was thinking as well, having to learn about a new candidate.

Biden has given his endorsement to Vice President Kamala Harris to carry the torch.

And she is now prepared to become the presidential standard bearer if she wins the nomination. Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell:

DINGELL: We have delegates that will make this election. Uh, she's got to go out and prove that, I mean, people have to support her and those votes are going to have to, uh, be for her.

Harris’ career and political record will be under the microscope as never before.

The 59-year-old vice president was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016 after serving as attorney general of California.

As policy goes, in 2019, the non-partisan group GovTrack scored Harris as the most liberal senator in the country.

Open convention? » While, as the sitting VP, Harris has the inside track for the nomination. Many are calling for an open process rather than immediately coalescing behind a single candidate. But what would that look like? WORLD Washington Bureau reporter Leo Briceno reports:

LEO BRICENO: President Biden is releasing each of the delegates he won in the primary race, making them free agents. They can now support any qualified Democrat for president.

Democrats gather for their national convention on August 19th in Chicago, and here’s how that vote will work on the convention floor:

To win the nomination, a candidate must receive a majority of the nearly-4,000 delegates.

If the party fails to select a candidate on the first round of voting, the convention brings in an additional 739 so-called “automatic delegates,” (formerly called “superdelegates”) for a second round. These are influential Democrats such as lawmakers, governors, and former presidents.

In that case, whoever wins the majority wins the Democratic nomination.

For WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno.

Other possible contenders » But if not Kamala Harris, then who?

CBS news reports that some Democratic donors and officials are asking Sen. Joe Manchin to stand for the nomination. And for his part, Manchin said the party should not simply hand the keys to Harris.

MANCHIN:  A healthy competition is what it's all about. And that's why I believe it should be an open process.

Manchin is now an independent, but was elected as a Democrat and still caucuses with the party.

And CNN’s Jake Tapper reports that the senator is now considering re-registering as a Democrat and throwing his hat in the ring.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is another frequently mentioned name, though he said on Sunday that he’s endorsing Kamala Harris for the job.

And Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is currently running a third-party campaign, says he’s open to running as a Democrat:

KENNEDY: I would certainly listen to the party elders if they came to me. I would discuss something with them. I'm the only presidential candidate who can beat Donald Trump. 

Other names floated include those of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Senators Amy Klobuchar and Bernie Sanders.

But Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said regardless of who they pick, the GOP message won’t change

WHATLEY:  Whether it's Kamala Harris or anybody else, they are going to run on the exact same failed agenda that Joe Biden has been running over the last four years.

Trump-Vance campaign » Meantime, on the campaign trail in Michigan, former President Trump ripped Democrats for pushing Biden out after primary voters made their choice.

TRUMP: Sort of interesting; this guy goes and he gets the votes, and now they want to take it away. That’s democracy. They talk about democracy. Let’s take it away from him.

Trump heard there in his first campaign rally since an assassination attempt one week earlier. Security, as one would expect, was significantly tighter.

Secret Service » And Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle will testify on Capitol Hill today about that security failure in Butler, Pennsylvania. House Oversight Chairman James Comer:

COMER: This hearing will serve as the beginning of that process to get answers for the American people as to what went wrong with an agency that has a no-fail mission.

And Oversight Committee member, Congressman Mike Turner said of the would-be assassin:

TURNER: He walked in with a ladder. He had a rangefinder. He had a weapon, he got onto a roof that was within a short distance. All of these failures are obvious failures.

Turner is among the Republican members calling on Cheatle to resign, a growing list that includes Speaker Mike Johnson.

I’m Kent Covington. 

Straight ahead: What the end of Biden’s campaign means for voters. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 22nd day of July. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, Biden off the ballot.

Yesterday afternoon, President Biden announced on social media he is “standing down” from the campaign. He says he’ll focus on serving out the remainder of his presidential term. He then endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement on the Democratic ticket. Biden promised to speak to the nation later this week about the decision, but in the meantime, what does his announcement mean for primary voters who thought they’d chosen their nominee democratically?

REICHARD: Joining us now is Ilya Shapiro. He’s a legal scholar and is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute.

Ilya, good morning, I know you’re at home right now.

ILYA SHAPIRO: Good to be with you again on this emergency basis.

REICHARD: Well, we've been waiting on an announcement like this for some time, but President Biden insisted he was going to see this campaign through. Where were you when you got the news and did anything about it surprise you?

SHAPIRO: The betting markets were all over the place, day by day. You know, Biden was favored, Harris was favored, all over the place. And it's, remember, this is still the same week of the attempted assassination the RNC, the nomination of J.D. Vance to be the Republican vice presidential nominee, I mean, just craziness all over the place. I was in the air. I was I was flying back from from from Utah, back home to Virginia, and logged on to, I think I actually it was your email that tuned me to something was going on, because I was, I was working on a brief and not hadn't checked my email for half an hour. But there we go.

REICHARD: Well, everybody's wondering what happens to the delegates that are already pledged to Biden?

SHAPIRO: They are free. They can vote for whomever they want. They are the selected delegates for the Democratic National Convention. They already had an out. There was some lawyering going on. Per DNC rules, they could vote for, they had to vote for Biden, if they can do so in good conscience. Well, that's not an issue anymore. Now they're free to vote for whomever, and it looks like there's going to be some sort of blitz primary, probably not an Aaron Sorkin style thing, where you have Oprah moderating some Zoom, and then Taylor Swift moderating some Zoom and all the rest of it, right, President Jed Bartlett, Martin Sheen, you're not going to do that, but there's probably going to be some sort of soft campaigning. I don't know how that's going to look. I don't think the Democrats know what that's going to look like. Joe Biden, of course, endorsed his VP, Kamala Harris. Obama did not, and the Clintons endorsed Harris. That's where the big players are so far. We'll see where, say, swing state Senate candidates come down on all this, because at last I saw she was polling worse than Biden was against Trump. So we'll see what that goes but they are not bounded. The only limitation, and this might be your next question, is that certain states have deadlines for ballot access, and so that was already going to happen for Ohio, and I believe Washington State, both of those were going to be before the physical DNC Democratic Convention. Now they might do that with all the states, just the way the machinations work.

REICHARD: Are you aware of any historical precedent for this?

SHAPIRO: I mean, the closest thing is LBJ in '68 saying he will not seek and will not accept the nomination of his party for reelection. That was earlier in 1968 and that was not quite in our modern era of primaries and all of that, there were non-binding primaries and things like that. But there's, you know, with modern campaign finance rules, modern ballot access rules, nothing like this. We're on, running on open field. I mean, you know, we can, you know, lawyers can say certain things, like, for example, it's almost certain, not 100% it's never been tested, but all of that money, seemingly, like 90 something million dollars that are in the campaign coffers for Biden-Harris can go to Harris if she's the nominee. If she's not the nominee, then it has to, has to go to the DNC, maybe a Super PAC. There's some, some complications about these sorts of things, but that is certainly one consideration that the delegates will be looking at.

REICHARD: Some say party leaders can’t simply replace Biden on the ticket. Earlier this year, analysts at the Heritage Foundation laid out a strategy to issue legal challenges if Biden withdrew and party leadership replaced him. Here’s Mike Howell from a press conference back in June.

MIKE HOWELL: There’s not a political exception that if you've been trying to cover up the fact that your candidate's been declining rapidly. That doesn't mean you just get to supersede all the election integrity rules that exist throughout the various states, and so our role as a watchdog is to make sure that those are applied appropriately.

Ilya, you already mentioned ballot access rules. Are there other legal hurdles the Democrats might face selecting Biden's replacement?

SHAPIRO: Well, to get back to what you were saying earlier, the you know, I don't see how any Republican or other challenges would work because Biden has not yet been formally nominated, so there would have been other legal considerations if he had withdrawn after being formally nominated. Everything would have worked differently, except for the campaign finance rules, I think. But now we don't have to worry about that. You know, there's political arguments to be made about the party that wants to advance democracy is going to ignore all those primary votes, and Harris was in on the cover-up about Biden's mental state. That's, you know, that's going to be litigated in the in the political space, but legally speaking, you know, the Democrats have not nominated Biden by any stretch of the imagination, legally. So there's there's no problem with the delegates when they take their formal votes to nominate whoever gets a majority under under DNC rules.

REICHARD: What about this? If Biden is unfit to run for reelection, what does that say about his fitness to be president right now?

SHAPIRO: Well, that's the parlor discussion, certainly. There's no legal ramifications to that, either. I don't think it necessarily follows that if you feel like you can't run for reelection, that you have to resign right away. Again, talking about LBJ, he didn't resign right then, although he was very unpopular. Again, a political argument. So Republicans are already making the argument that I saw a statement from Mike Johnson, the Speaker, saying, "If Biden is not competent to run for reelection, how is he competent to serve as president for six months?" And that's a valid point to make, but it's not necessarily the case. Maybe he feels that he can serve it out, and he has, you know, he's declining, he recognizes that, but he's okay now, and at this point, at least, who knows what he's going to be in 3, 4, 5 months, feels like he doesn't need to to resign. And there doesn't seem to be the kind of pressure from Democratic stakeholders on him to resign as there has been this drumbeat to get him to withdraw from the reelection campaign.

REICHARD: Can you speak to the difficulty the Democrats really brought upon themselves by putting identity politics ahead of merit? I mean, Kamala Harris's list of accomplishments as VP is pretty thin, but now that same identity politics is tying them to someone who is unpopular even within her own party.

SHAPIRO: Yeah, I think I have about 90% confidence that the nominee will be Kamala Harris, simply because not giving her the nomination is an admission that she was originally picked for the number two slot on something other than merit, and the Democrats are not going to publicly show their hypocrisy in that way. You know, it's, she hasn't helped her cause in office. It's not like she's really, you know, she was thought of as being a weak politician or a weak, weak stateswoman or what have you, but as VP, she's grown into office. Not at all, if anything, she's shown that her detractors were right. But again, because of this identity politics that controls the Democratic Party, it's very hard for these delegates to deny the first woman of color presidential nomination.

REICHARD: Any other issues that are top of mind for you this week?

SHAPIRO: I mean, I'm, you know, mostly going off the top of my head and based what on what law professors I respect have already tweeted out about things. So I'm kind of like studying, studying the experts and things like that. But I think legally speaking, that's all we have now. If it's not Harris, then there are going, there's going to be major litigation over that, that huge pot of money. And one other thing to note, people think that, oh, well, now that, if it's Harris, let's say, not only do they get that pot of money, but she'll be able to fundraise, because of a fresh face, donors didn't like Biden, etc. Donors have already maxed out to Harris, arguably, because she was part of the Biden-Harris for America campaign. So there's no doubt going to be litigation over maximum donation limits to her, if the same donors have already maxed out to Biden-Harris now want to give more money.

REICHARD: Ilya Shapiro is a legal scholar and is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. Thank you for your time.

SHAPIRO: Thank you. Take care.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: the Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: All right, another special edition with seismic changes in the political world. We will talk it over from the perspective of economics with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David's head of the wealth management firm the Bahnsen Group. He is here now. David, good morning.

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

EICHER: Wow, two history-making weekends in a row. Now Joe Biden succumbed to pressure, bowing, I guess, to the reality of the polls, which tells you that it’s the campaigning that’s so taxing, not the job itself, in that he’ll remain president.

When I asked last week about whether attempted assassinations jostle the markets, I’ll ask a similar question, now that the presidential race has in fact been scrambled. Can this kind of uncertainty rattle economies?

BAHNSEN: Well, not the economy, but the market. I mean, those are two really different things, and I think that financial markets will absorb a certain increase in unpredictability for the reason that the presidential election results were becoming more predictable by the week. The lead in the polls, particularly the battleground polls, was expanding. That's, of course, the reason why President Biden has been pushed to drop out and there's uncertainty as to whether or not vice president Harris will end up being a viable candidate, but I think that the dream scenario for the Trump campaign has been taken away, and I do expect that the polls will tighten. We'll see here, and whether it's days or weeks, who she selects as Vice President, I have significant sources that believe they're making a full court press to get Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona. That doesn't mean he will accept it. It doesn't mean that they won't have other candidates, but Mark Kelly, who's one of the more moderate Democrats in a state that President Trump was leading President Biden in, significantly, which President Biden had won in 2020, that could change things quite a bit. So I want to look to where the Vice President's election goes, and what I suspect we could end up with is a tighter race than markets were expecting, which, yes, will add to volatility. Ultimately, it doesn't change the thing I've said on the program several times, which is that the markets are not going to know the ultimate result until November. And by ultimate result I mean more than the White House. I mean the outcome of the House of Representatives and the outcome of the Senate. If you look at all the polls in Senate races now, the Republicans are almost assured to take West Virginia. Have a chance to take Montana, but that's tight, but look quite behind in a lot of the other states they thought they were going to compete in. So you could end up with a 51-49 Senate for Republican, regardless of who wins the White House, and that ends up with a lot of divided government as well. How do markets price that in in the summer? They just simply don't.

EICHER: David, how does Kamalanomics differ from Bidenomics, if at all? Do you have some insight on that?

BAHNSEN: Well, a lot of that depends on what Kamala economics would be. She in 2020, at one point, said she was for Medicare for All and getting rid of private insurance. And then she backtracked on that, and she hasn't had much of a portfolio in the policy sphere in her time as vice president, other than supposedly being in charge of certain things at the border. And then, of course, she's been a leading spokesperson on the abortion issue. But economically, she hasn't had a lot to say. And the only way a guy like me is able to decipher this, and I do this with Republicans and Democrats, I believe, Nick, that personnel is policy, and you start to get an idea of how someone would govern in a presidential spot or a gubernatorial spot, or whatever their role is, based on who they're putting around themselves as key advisors. You know, President Obama famously had selected Larry Summers as his National Economic Council Chair, who had been Bill Clinton's treasury secretary. And there were, I don't want to say moderates, but more center left, Neo-Keynesians who were not far left extremist. He selected Tim Geithner from the New York Fed as his treasury secretary. That gave us an idea of where the Obama economic regime would be, which was center left, but not necessarily where some feared it may go. I have no idea who Kamala will pick as some of her economic advisors, but I'll be paying very close attention to that in the weeks ahead, you can believe that.

EICHER: All right, and obviously we will check back in on that, David. Let’s not forget now about intrigue on the Republican side and zoom in a bit on the senator from Ohio who is now former President Trump’s VP running mate J-D Vance. I would bring up Vance’s views on economics, because they are a break from standard Republican fare on free markets, light regulation, and low taxes. Vance is different. What do you know about him?

BAHNSEN: Well, there's been a couple different Vances, and the one that I really liked a great deal, when his book Hillbilly Elegy came out nearly 10 years ago now, talked about a lot of the problems facing working class America, particularly the kind of Appalachian region that he had come from, a poor, white, working class part of America that he identified a lot of the problems there as cultural and moral and the need for strong institutions, stronger families, it was just a wonderfully captivating book, and the underlying message of it is one that really resonated with me. I do think that he has become much more interested in governmental solutions to a lot of these economic issues, and he has spoken out in favor of larger minimum wages. He's spoken out against lower tax rates. And so there's a bit more populist. You know, I've heard him referred to as kind of a Republican FDR, a Republican Elizabeth Warren. He's culturally more conservative. He's a converted Catholic. I mean, there's a lot about him that's very interesting, but he would not be in the Reaganite mold of free market conservative, and so there are some issues that concern me a little bit there, in terms of the future, of what the Republican plank may be.

I will say this though, Nick, I know you haven't asked yet, but President Trump's speech Thursday night did not go in that direction. He spoke for tax cuts, he spoke for less regulation. He defended what his prior administration has done, and I think rightly so, about repatriating a lot of corporate profits that were held offshore, coming back onshore. It was a bit more supply side friendly. And so Vance may have a certain different point of view on this, but Vance is not at the top of the ticket, and I'm encouraged that at least so far, candidate Trump is holding the line on some of these more free market planks of his administration.

EICHER: Okay, well, back to Vance. David, I did note that there was one official in the administration, in the Biden administration, for whom Vance had praise, and that was someone we've talked about before here. Lina Khan is her name. She's head of the Federal Trade Commission, and Vance specifically singled her out, Lina Khan as one official he thought was doing a good job, but she's not doing a good job by your reckoning?

BAHNSEN: No. And anyone else who believes that the government ought to have a more humble role in economic administration, she's a big believer in governmental oversight of companies and in some cases, breaking up companies, proving which companies get to merge and which ones don't. And I myself am supportive of some governmental involvement where it involves national security. She has never been involved in any anti-corporate activity that was related to national security, and Vance's fondness of her was not related to that. It has to do with a belief that sometimes companies just get too big and profitable, and we need the government to help right-size them.

So look, Senator Vance is 39 years old. He came out of an incredibly difficult childhood with a absolutely powerful story, and served in the military. He went to Ohio State, got his degree, went to Yale Law School, worked at Silicon Valley in a significant venture capital role, wrote one of the best selling books of the last 10 years and became a United States Senator. And now he's 39 years old. All right, so that's a lot to have done in the last 10 years, and to have gone from a Yale Law grad and venture capital, you know, multi-millionaire to now being an anti elite, you know, populist. It sounds to me like his journey is still going on, and so I'll cut him a little slack.

EICHER: Ok, David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group.

Check out David’s latest book, Full Time: Work and the Meaning of Life at fulltimebook.com.

Have a great week, David!

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much. Good to be with you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, July 22nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: the WORLD History Book. One hundred fifty years ago this week, the birth of Oswald Chambers, known best for his daily devotional: “My Utmost for His Highest.”

Here’s WORLD correspondent Caleb Welde.

CALEB WELDE: As the son of a pastor, Oswald Chambers couldn’t remember a time he didn’t believe in God. But on the walk home from a Charles Spurgeon sermon in 1889, he tells his dad he wants to surrender and give his life to the Lord.

He’s 15 years old and a talented artist, but people are encouraging him to follow in his father’s footsteps. Robert Bell as the voice of Chambers.

CHAMBERS: I shall never go into the ministry until God takes me by the scruff of the neck and throws me in.

But … one morning after a long night of prayer, he receives a brochure in the mail for a small theological school near Glasgow. He believes it’s a sign. It’s confirmed later when he hears missionary Hudson Taylor speak, saying Christians must place their faith in God’s faithfulness—not their own … adding that it’s only in this condition when men will “dare to obey Him,” however unwise “it may appear.”

Chambers enrolls in Dunoon Training College. The school has just one “professor” Duncan MacGregor who mentors Chambers. At Dunoon, Chambers asks God:

CHAMBERS: Simply and definitely for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, whatever that meant.

Fellow students and ministry leaders are impressed as he is leading people to Christ, but he says he has no conscious communion with God even after claiming the gift of God at a small college prayer meeting.

CHAMBERS: I was as dry and empty as ever, no power or realization of God, no witness of the Holy Spirit.

Yet two days later forty souls came forward while he spoke at a meeting. He was terrified and found Mr. MacGregor to tell him what had happened.

CHAMBERS: He said, 'Don't you remember claiming the Holy Spirit as a gift on the word of Jesus, and that He said: "Ye shall receive power . . . "? This is the power from on high.' And like a flash, something happened inside me and I saw that I had been wanting power in my own hand.

Chambers later says if those four years had been “hell on earth,” life now is “truly heaven on earth.”

CHAMBERS: Glory be to God, the last aching abyss of the human heart is filled to overflowing with the love of God. Love is the beginning, love is the middle and love is the end. After He comes in, all you see is ‘Jesus only, Jesus ever.’

Chambers teaches at Mcgregor’s seminary for several years before joining the League of Prayer—an interdenominational holiness and revival group.

In 1905, a thirty-one-year-old Chambers is invited to a widow’s house for tea. She has two daughters.

MICHELLE ULE: He never expected to be married.

Michelle Ule is author of the biography: “Mrs. Oswald Chambers.”

ULE: He spent a lot of time talking to kind widows and he didn't think much of it…

But three years later, Chambers gets a letter from the widow.

ULE: I understand you're sailing on the same ship as my daughter who's going to America to be a stenographer. She's traveling by herself. Could you maybe look in on her?

Out of a sense of duty, he tracks down Miss Gertrude Hobbs.

ULE: And whoa, wait. That's right. She was pretty. Oh, she was interesting. And oh, wait. She knew all about the Pentecostal League of Prayer.

Chambers begins “looking in on her'' several times a day. His sister’s name was also Gertrude, so Chambers nicknamed Miss Hobbs: “beloved disciple” or “B-D” … which morphed into “Biddy.”

ULE: That was his reflection of her character, she was a beloved disciple of Jesus.

They part ways in New York but exchange addresses and write regularly. A few months later they’re both back in the UK, and Chambers bluntly proposes.

ULE: It's going to be an arduous, hard life, there won't be any money, but we will have each other and we will have God. Are you interested? Will you marry me?

“Biddy” says yes.

For a few years the couple runs a live-in missionary training school for the League of Prayer. The Bible training college has no endowment, and usually only enough funds to meet next week’s expenses. “Spend and be spent” is a favorite motto, along with “do the next thing.” Chambers emphasizes…

CHAMBERS: Prayer does not fit us for the greater works; prayer is the greater work.

The couple continues classes through the first jarring headlines of a world war. Chambers is now 40 and feels God calling him to be a chaplain. On October 10th, 1915, he boards a troop transport to Egypt, writing Biddy:

CHAMBERS: The sense of God’s presence is real and beautiful. The sense also is so entire that my going is of Him and His ways, that, although I cannot begin to discern what I am to do out in Egypt, I am not even concerned.

He sends for his family in December— now including two-year-old Kathleen.

In Egypt, the trio make their way into a mud hut in Zeitoun Camp on the outskirts of Cairo. The troops outside are mostly Aussies and New Zealanders, and there’s a cavalry unit here—meaning flies everywhere. There’s also many diseases, and the air is 120 degrees. Chambers writes of his delight of desert sunrises and star-lit walks with Biddy.

But Chambers continues to live “aggressively,” as he calls it.

ULE: He drove himself mercilessly because again, their lives teetered on eternity. They had to hear the gospel. He preached it everywhere.

In October of 1917, Chambers goes to a Red Cross hospital with severe abdominal pain he’d initially dismissed as a stomach virus. Doctors operate immediately on his ruptured appendix. He begins to heal, but then his lungs start to bleed and he dies on November 15th, 1917. He was 43 years old. Biddy had believed God would heal him. All she telegrams home is, “Oswald in His presence.”

The soldiers insist on a military funeral with full honors through old Cairo. Biddy’s graveside musical request, I Will Lift Mine Eyes from Psalm 121.

Biddy Chambers stays in Egypt and continues the work until the camp closes at the end of the war. In 1924 she self-publishes a daily devotional with some of the stenography notes she’d taken during Oswald’s sermons and lectures. Here’s an excerpt from January 1st’s entry:

CHAMBERS: Shut out every other consideration and keep yourself before God for this one thing only — “My Utmost for His Highest.” I am determined to be absolutely and entirely for Him and for Him alone.

Oswald Chambers’ ministry continues today—more than 100 years after his death. His daily devotional has been translated into 40 languages and sold more than 13 million copies.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Caleb Welde.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The investigation into why the Secret Service failed to stop an attempted assassin. We’ll have a report. That and much 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.

The Psalmist writes: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. —Psalm 19:14

Go now in grace and peace.

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