The World and Everything in It: June 20, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. Hi! I'm Timber. Hi, I'm Emory, [baby sounds] I'm Ashley, a stay at home mom in Lumberton, Texas. Three years ago my daughter Timber made her first preroll, a year later Emory joined us, and today my son Bennett is joining us for his very first preroll. We all hope that you enjoy today's episode.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Voters in Spain recently handed election losses to the ruling Socialist government. What’s behind this new move to the right?

FORSTER: What we see is there is a reaction to the radical progressive trends that have been imposed from the authorities.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also, Elon Musk’s brain chip company now has FDA approval for human trials…what are the pros and cons of brain implants?

Plus, shearing sheep is hard, but there aren’t enough sheep shearers to supply the world with freshly shorn sheep.

KERRIE EXON: A desk job doesn't thrill me. So doing the shearing being one of the most physically demanding things, it balances that out.

And WORLD Commentator A. S. Ibrahim on new Christians in the heartland of Islam.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, June 20th. 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: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Blinken China » Secretary of State Tony Blinken says China has agreed to work to firm up rapidly crumbling ties between the two nations.

TONY BLINKEN: The relationship was at a point of instability, and both sides recognized the need to work to stabilize it.

Blinken heard there after meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Both said they were satisfied with progress made during the two days of talks in Beijing, though they did not point to many specific areas of agreement.

Blinken did say he raised as a priority the issue of synthetic fentanyl and its components flowing from China to the United States.

BLINKEN: We agreed to explore setting up a working group, a joint effort, so that we can shut off the flow of precursor chemicals, which helped fuel this crisis and a growing number of deaths.

But China rebuffed his biggest request. Beijing did not agree to improve communications between their militaries which the U.S. says is crucial to avoid miscalculation and conflict.

Weather » In central Mississippi, residents are picking up the pieces this morning after tornadoes ripped through rural Jasper Country, killing at least one person and injuring nearly two dozen others.

Meanwhile, storms continue to batter Southern states after days of severe weather.

National Weather Service forecaster Brian Squitieri:

SQUITIERI: The Greater severe weather threat is going to ship more eastward towards portions of southern Alabama portions of Georgia, northern Florida peninsula.

Tens of thousands are still without power from previous storms.

Ukraine » NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says Ukraine has every right to take back its own land and the West will continue to back Kyiv.

STOLTENBERG: The more land the Ukrainians are able to liberate, the stronger their hand will eventually be at the negotiating table.

After a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz yesterday. Stoltenberg said formally inviting Ukraine to join NATO is not on the table right now.

Ukraine says its forces have liberated eight villages in the last two weeks.

The Kremlin claims Ukraine has not gained any ground during its new counteroffensive.

West Bank fighting » Israeli forces raided a refugee camp in the city of Jenin to arrest two Palestinian militants in what turned into a 10-hour firefight. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

SOUND: [Israeli troops shooting]

JOSH SCHUMACHER: Sound from a helmet camera worn by an Israeli soldier amid a gun battle with militants in the West Bank.

Five Palestinians died and 90 more suffered injuries. Eight Israeli soldiers were wounded. The extremist group Islamic Jihad has said three of the dead were its fighters.

Israeli forces deployed attack helicopters to the area for the first time in two decades to evacuate their troops from the gunfight.

NETANYAHU: [Speaking Hebrew]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the Israeli troops who fought in the raid and said that in recent months Israeli troops have arrested and killed a record number of Palestinian militants.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

SOUND: [Mourners singing]

Uganda » A village in Uganda is mourning 42 victims of a deadly school attack.

Suspected extremist rebels on Friday night raided a secondary school near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Thirty-eight of those killed were students. And the assailants kidnapped at least six other students.

Local officials blame the Allied Democratic Forces for the attack. The group has ties to the ISIS.

Sudan » Donors from around the world have promised almost $1.5 billion in additional aid for Sudan amid a growing humanitarian crisis.

Fighting between military factions has killed more than 3,000 people and decimated the country’s infrastructure and food supplies.

The U.N. Secretary-General said, “The scale and speed of Sudan’s descent into death and destruction is unprecedented.”

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Spaniards are getting fed up with Socialist policies and politicians. Plus, A visit to sheep-shearing school. This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 20th of June, 2023. You’re listening to WORLD Radio and we’re so glad to have you along today! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

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

First up on The World and Everything in It: conservative backlash on the world stage.

Since April, companies pushing LGBT advertising and products have seen a backlash from customers who don’t want to go along. Anheuser-Busch InBev, Target, and Kohl’s have seen their market capitalization drop by a collective $30-billion-dollars.

REICHARD: Well, something similar is happening in Europe where voters once willing to support socially progressive leaders now are not. One of those countries is Spain. In May, Spanish voters handed defeat to the ruling Socialist Workers party in regional elections.

EICHER: They did. But for decades, Spain embraced socialist policies and voted for socialist leaders, and they’ve done so ever since the death of authoritarian Francisco Franco in 1977. But with recent forays into gender ideology, that socialist support is starting to erode.

Here now is WORLD reporter Jenny Lind Schmitt from the Global Desk.

PEDRO SANCHEZ: [Speaking Spanish]

JENNY LIND SCHMITT, REPORTER: That’s Spanish President Pedro Sanchez the day after his Socialist Workers Party took a huge beating in regional elections. He says that even though they were local elections, the message voters sent went further. Given the results, he wanted to, ‘submit his mandate to the will of the people.’ Then he called for early–or “snap”-- elections in only six weeks. He’s hoping he can mobilize the left and consolidate his power before his popularity erodes any further.

The election results have sent shockwaves through Spain. Conservatives won control of 7 of the 12 regional governments that were in sway. And cities like Madrid and Valencia that have been socialist strongholds voted for conservatives.

ALBERTO NUNEZ FEIJOO: [Thanking crowd]

The head of the opposition and likely next president is Alberto Nunez Feijoo. His Pardido Popular party won 31 percent of the vote, over 28 won by the Socialist Workers. To build a coalition, Feijoo’s center-right party would need to work with the far-right Vox party. Critics once dismissed Vox as on the fringe, but it has mainstreamed itself and has been gaining ground.

On the other side, Sanchez’s far-left coalition partner, the Podemos party, got a disappointing 3 percent of the vote. During Sanchez’s government, much of the social agenda was driven by ministers from the Podemos party. And reaction to those policies just may be what got voters to vote conservative.

FORSTER: But what we see is there is a reaction to the sense that there have been ideologies and radical progressive trends that have been imposed from the authorities.

Jo-el Forster is director of Evangelical Focus, a European Christian news organization based in Valencia, Spain. He says across Spain, national and local governments have been pushing radical progressive ideologies around gender and LGBT issues. They’re popular in universities but not in the interest of most people on the streets.

FORSTER: And suddenly all these ideas have been people feel they have been really pushed in a way that was too much and that has led to people being concerned in especially in what has to do with sex education in schools, primary schools. And it has to do with a transgender law that was passed in December 2022, which is very much one of the most progressive laws of that kind in Europe.

The transgender law came into effect in March. It allows persons to legally change their gender on their national ID card, without any medical diagnosis or taking hormones. The Trans lobby in Spain helped write the text of the new law, and without much room for debate, the government pushed it quickly through parliament. Forster says the law is nearly identical to the Scottish Trans Law that was approved just one day later.

FORSTER: The difference is that in Scotland, the law has been stopped by the prime minister, whereas in Spain it it is already working in place and people can go and register themselves as as being a member of the opposite sex and then getting all their rights that this implies.

Forster says as average Spaniards have become aware of what’s happening, the backlash is much stronger than those in power would have expected. That follows a trend across the continent of recent electoral gains by parties on the political right in Germany, France, Sweden, and Finland.

FORSTER: So I think there is a trend in Europe of reaction against certain very ideological progressive and campaigns I would say, that have been promoted from the government, from power, from the authorities. And people are seeing things that do not make sense to them. Even people who would describe themselves as left wing leaning.

FEIJOO: [On TV news show talking in Spanish]

In a television interview week before last conservative leader Feijoo said that if he wins in July, he’ll repeal the Trans Law. He said that currently "It's easier to change your gender than to get a driver’s license.”

For evangelicals in Spain, there’s been a shift to the right as well. To understand that, you need to understand Spain’s history.

AUDIO: [Franco speech]

After the Civil War in the 30s, Spain was ruled by fascist dictator Francisco Franco until 1977. Franco supported–and was strongly supported by–the Spanish Roman Catholic Church, to the point of severely repressing faith minorities. That included Protestants and evangelical Christians. The government closed churches and put pastors in jail.

After Franco’s death, there was a big shift to the left. Evangelicals supported the Socialist governments which brought increased freedoms for worship along with democratic voting, and increased rights and education for women. But in recent decades, Spain’s efforts to prove itself as modern have stretched too far.

FORSTER: And what we see now is a shift again, back to conservative values in Spain. That does not mean a shift back to Roman Catholicism and surely not a return to the Christian faith.

Forster says Spanish evangelicals have been outspoken about how the Trans Law and other progressive policies harm women and children. They’re encouraged that others are now also speaking out and finding ways to work together for change.

Spaniards will discover how much change they want when they go to the polls on July 23rd.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Lind Schmitt.

Before we move on, I’d like to say a quick word of thanks for your support during our June Giving Drive.

I’m headquartered in Switzerland, and it’s my privilege to serve as head of WORLD’s Global Desk together with my colleague Onize Ohikere in Nigeria.

Right now, there’s just a few of us international reporters, but we’re working hard to change that and get many more correspondents in place around the world in the next five years. It’s a pretty ambitious goal. But we’re working hard to do our part and trusting God with the rest.

It might encourage you to know that our second World Journalism Institute course in Europe has now enrolled students from three continents. We’re so excited to work with them in August in Brussels, Belgium.

Do you know what makes an initiative like this even thinkable? It’s WORLD Movers like you, who give generously to turn dreams into realities.

Biblically objective reporting isn’t limited to the U.S., even though what you just heard sounds like a lot of the same battles you hear about in the States. But the Bible has a global vision and so must we.

If you haven’t given yet this month, would you consider that today? It’s easy and secure to give online at wng.org/donate. Thank you so much!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: A milestone for brain implant technology.

Elon Musk is best known for Tesla and Space X. But back in 2017, the tech billionaire unveiled a plan to develop technology for a very different kind of transportation: the flow of brain signals. Here’s Musk in 2019:

ELON MUSK: Whether it's an accident or congenital or any kind of brain related disorder or or a spinal disorder if you know somebody who's broken their neck or broken their spine we can solve that with a chip.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That chip is a wireless device. It’s about the size of a nickel, and it can pick up the signals sent between neurons in the brain. The surgically implanted device then routes those signals to receptors in other parts of the body. Think of it as you would a bluetooth connection pairing a phone with an audio speaker with no cable.

MUSK: Miraculous as it may sound, we're confident that it is possible to restore full body functionality to someone who has a severed spinal cord.

REICHARD: And even people without neurological problems could benefit. Musk talked about the chip’s brain computer interface. We’ll refer to it later as the BCI. Musk explained that the BCI lets the user connect to a computer and do things like type messages or browse the web just by thinking about it!

EICHER: Well, last week Musk’s brain chip company Neuralink got one step closer to making it a reality when the FDA gave the green light to start human trials of the brain implant.

What could go wrong?

Joining us now to talk about it is Sumner Norman. He’s a researcher at the science think tank Convergent Research, specializing in brain-computer interfacing.

REICHARD: Good morning, Sumner.

SUMNER NORMAN: Good morning

REICHARD: Let’s get some context first. Can you give us a brief history of brain implant research and why it’s significant that Neuralink is getting FDA approval for human trials?

NORMAN: Yeah, sure the history of BCI is or brain computer interfaces actually goes back quite a long time, all the way back to the University of Washington in the 1960s, where they literally had a single monkey controlling a physical gauge using only his mind. And this is recording from a single neuron. It was in 2006, that John Donoghue’s group at Brown founded a group called BrainGate, which is still around today, they were the first ones to actually start installing these types of implants in humans. So we've been translating these BCIs to human users for a very long time. Most of that research has been based on older styles of technology, including the Utah Array, which is a 100 electrode array that we put into the brain. And that's what's been around for a couple of decades. Neuralink represents a pretty major jump forward, technologically speaking, moving from hundreds of electrodes to 1000s, or even 10s of 1000s in the near future. What isn't necessarily doing is driving the science for the sciences, they have been making a steady march for a very long time. It's a significant milestone for Neuralink to get access to human patients, and that's what they're going to get through this FDA early feasibility approval. But this isn't, to be very clear, a large scale clinical study the likes of which is going to go by quickly. This is really the first proofs of concept and humans. So to get to that place, it suggests that Neuralink has already developed some of the early animal studies that have shown promising results that the FDA is happy with that, that they've done some amount of initial safety assessment, and that that is enough of a burden of proof to say, Okay, this is worth testing in humans, because if and when it works, it could provide value to people, especially, as you mentioned before, for people who have severe forms of chronic paralysis, and in the near future, also vision disabilities.

REICHARD: I see a problem: what’s to keep people who understand these brain implants from controlling me? In other words, they know how this technology works to let my mind control technology. But those people could use the same technology to control me. What prevents that from happening?

NORMAN: Yeah, I first want to dispel a myth if I can, which is that BCIs are not mind reading. It's a highly willful and skillful act to use a BCI. And it requires a ton of concentration and a great deal of practice. And all of our patients that we've implanted before would attest to this. So they're not mind reading as much as they are a very advanced interface in the same way that a keyboard is an interface to your computer. So two is a BCI just a much better one, hopefully in the future. 

REICHARD: So what kind of protections need to be put in place to protect people from the potentially dangerous impacts of brain computer interfaces?

Luckily, for now, we get a bit of a moratorium on this because the most effective BCIs are invasive. That means they require a medical intervention, a surgeon usually, and they're therefore subject to all of the regulations that implantable devices have to go through. So that helps us in the near term. But we still need to develop BCI specific principles to guide that development. Regulation will be a part of this down the line. It's probably a bit early now. But I would say that the Chilean constitution is maybe the first example of this where they've actually adopted specific neuro rights into their constitution. And I think that this can lay the groundwork for many others to start seeing how that type of regulation actually takes effect.

REICHARD: Sumner Norman is a scientist for the nonprofit organization Convergent Research. Sumner, thank you for your time today.

NORMAN: You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.

NICK EICHER, HOST: You might remember old sayings such as “a penny saved is a penny earned,” and “watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.” Well, a man in Los Angeles discovered this for himself. John Reyes, speaking with LA’s Fox 11:

REYES: This is an open bag. Now, here's the unique part and this is what I've been getting collectors that call me about the fact that these are lead sealed.

What’s going on here? Well, Reyes was clearing out his late father-in-law’s basement when he came across a pile of bank bags filled with pennies.

REYES: Boxes. Crates. It's about a million pennies.

That’s right. A MILLION pennies. Just move the decimal two places and you see that it’s $10,000 face value—and that’s without knowing whether any of the pennies are rare ones worth more than, well, a penny.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Must’ve weighed a ton, too.

EICHER: Well, literally. It was a little more than 2,000 pounds in weight. So quite a few trips up the stairs and he’ll need a heavy-duty pickup truck to take it to the bank.

REYES: I've had quite a few collectors tell me that this is something that should not be sold until we know what's going on.

REICHARD: Maybe that explains that coin shortage.

EICHER: Heads up.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 20th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: shearing sheep.

It’s a more demanding job than you might think. It requires strength and precision, and some animal handling skills. It’s hard to retain workers in such a physically demanding industry. In countries like the U.S. and Australia, there’s a shearing shortage.

EICHER: Demand is obviously outstripping supply.

Australia has 79 million sheep and only 2,000 people to shear them. So that’s a 40-thousand to one ratio.

Shearing schools are working to close the gap, but can they keep up? WORLD Correspondent Amy Lewis takes us to meet some beginners in the shearing sheds.

AMY LEWIS, REPORTER: It’s a sunny fall day in May of 2022 in Ballarat, Victoria. Inside the large corrugated metal shed, dozens of shaggy sheep wait patiently. Their cloven hooves clack on the floorboards.

SOUND: [CLATTER OF HOOVES]

The sheep are waiting for their shearers to relieve them of up to ten pounds of wool apiece.

They may have to wait a while. It’s Monday—the first day of class for beginning shearers.

ASSISTANT: They’re loading a handpiece there as we speak. (Okay.) Getting ready to go. (Thank you) No worries. (creak of door)

Instructor Rick Hodge explains how to hold the wool clippers, or handpieces, his eight students will use this week.

RICK HODGE: That releases him to go, whack and take up. See what I mean? He can't even get his legs up towards his chest and give you get the kangaroo kicking. Okay.

A banker, an electrician, a university student, and farm workers stand in a semi-circle around Hodge and his fellow instructors. They all want to learn to shear a sheep well. Here’s agricultural student Will Tickner.

WILL TICKNER: I guess just, yeah, wanting to upskill. I think there's a lot of obviously, the demand for shearers at the moment is very high.

At age 18, Miles Sandlant is the youngest student and a 5th generation farmer. His goal is to learn everything he can about running his family’s farm.

MILES SANDLANT: Our farm specializes in wool, so super, ultra fine. So we’re shearing all year round. Unlike a lot of farms, they'll just have their shearing for one month in the year. And then they’re done.

Kerrie Exon has a mentally challenging job at a bank and wants to shear on the weekends.

KERRIE EXON: Whereas I've always been a very physical sort of person, I like doing things. So a desk job doesn't thrill me. So doing the shearing being one of the most physically demanding things, it balances that out.

Thirty years ago, Australia had twice as many sheep and five times as many shearers. But for decades, the country has scrambled to find enough shearers for all of its sheep—even though it’s a good-paying job.

HODGE: It can be one of the worst jobs, because it's tough on your body.

Electrician Thomas Heald found that out early in the class when he threw out his back.

THOMAS HEALD: I sort of moved the wrong way a little bit and lowered me back a bit and triggered a pre-existing injury. So that sort of put a bit of a damper on my week, but yeah.

Shearing is like any other physically demanding activity. It takes weeks and months of consistent work to toughen up and make the aches go away. And it takes a mindset of wanting to work hard.

HODGE: Rather than ‘just because I didn't like school, I might like shearing because you don't have to have an education.’ And if you don't approach it intelligently, which is the same as any job, you probably won't get very far.

SOUND: [HANDPIECES, BAAING]

Sheep shearing is on the decline in other parts of the world, too. Farmers in Colorado say the industry is shrinking, because fewer Americans are interested in hard agricultural jobs.

Just before lunch on Day 1, the students start by shearing the head of their first sheep. The goal by the end of the week is to get the whole fleece off in one continuous piece.

SOUND: [HOOF SOUNDS, SHEARING]

Instructor Rick Hodge says a common question to ask shearers is how many sheep can they shear in a day.

HODGE: And the old, um, the old sort of hurdle used to be, you know, 200 a day. Well, now it's sort of 300 plus, you know.

But he says asking how many someone can shear isn’t necessarily the best question because sheep differ in size and wool type. Or the sheep might be stubborn.

STUART NEAL: So do we need another demo before we start back in again, or is everyone gonna be right? (Do a quick one, yeah. Outside hip, outside leg. See that?) (clippers)

By the fifth day of classes, Australia has eight beginning shearers who feel more confident in how to move the sheep while they shear. Every student says it’s all about the feet. Kerrie Exon explains.

EXON: So it's really, there's a dance to it and it's learning that dance. As we got through the week getting better at it. But it's certainly your feet placement and remembering those steps that was probably the hardest thing.

After the class is over, the students walk away better shearers. But they don’t all stick with it.

In the year since that shearing class, Will Tickner finished agricultural school and moved back to his family farm where he grows crops. He doesn’t shear much these days.

TICKNER: I thought I would have more time to do, yeah, some shearing or some other livestock work, but I have found it's just something else always comes up.

But some of the students do work with sheep full time. Like fifth generation farmer Miles Sandlant. He’s back at his father’s farm in Lexton helping grow world-record Merino wool for Italian suits.

SOUND: [SHEARING, CLIPPERS]

One of the instructors visited to help him refine his technique while he sheared 300 sheep over a few days. For Sandlant, it’s more than a job. It’s a holistic experience.

SANDLANT: Ah, the greasy smell of the wool, just the smell of the sheep in general and then the sound of, you know, the handpieces going and people sweeping down the board and Yeah.

The students from last year’s class haven’t solved the shearing shortage. But Rick Hodge sees his job as more than just training people to shear Australia’s sheep. 

HODGE: I mean, I love the science of shearing, which is great, but there’s sort of more to it than that, I reckon. So there's a bit of mentoring goes on as far as your total outlook on your job and your life, really. And that sort of comes through your work a lot in the way you conduct yourself.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Amy Lewis in Ballarat and Lexton, Victoria, Australia.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 20th. 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. WORLD Opinions contributor A. S. Ibrahim recently visited the Middle East and was struck by how much God is doing to turn Muslims to Christ.

A. S. IBRAHIM, COMMENTATOR: Much of Western Christianity is imploding. But don’t assume Christianity is collapsing and vanishing everywhere.

In some regions, the number of Christians is rapidly growing. This is particularly the case in the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia. The Middle East and North Africa are worth noting, as they have been the heartland of Islam for over fourteen centuries. In many remarkable ways, this region is experiencing a Christian spiritual awakening.

I was recently in a country in the Middle East where Christianity is witnessing a remarkable work of the Spirit of God. On Sundays, local churches there are full of worshippers, many of whom come from a Muslim background. I met believers in Christ who used to be Sunnis, Shiites, or even Druze. Some come from Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, or other ethnic backgrounds.

They all have one thing in common: All have abandoned Islam and are now serious followers of Christ, despite being disavowed by their Muslim families, persecuted by their Muslim neighbors, or harassed by local governments. We are not talking about Christian believers switching churches—no, not at all. Local churches are being filled with numerous new believers.

But why are multitudes of Muslims abandoning Islam in our generation? There could be several factors, including the clear gospel witness of local Christians. However, one factor is glaringly obvious—the internet.

Unlike any previous generation in the history of Islam, Muslims are now able to access information about their faith that they never knew before. In past generations, a Muslim needed to travel to a local library to read about Muhammad’s life and deeds. Now these are accessible with one click. In the past, knowledge of Islam was filtered and controlled by Muslim clerics—but not now!

Today, Muslims all over the world can learn what the original Islamic sources reveal about Muhammad’s deception by Satan, his marriage to a nine-year old girl, his massacre of a Jewish tribe, his military incursions against innocent tribes, and many other stories.

Islam is shielded no longer. The internet also allows criticism and evaluation of a religion that for centuries terrorized critics.

There has never been a moment like this in the past 14 centuries. This openness in criticizing Muhammad’s actions and Islam’s claims didn’t exist even two decades ago. And the Church is winning the moment, as ambassadors of Christ proclaim the gospel in the heartland of Islam.

What can the Church in the West do to partner in this crucial moment of revival? It can assist in the advancement of the gospel by supporting local churches worldwide. Numerous local churches are doing excellent work of evangelism among the nonbelievers, but they lack financial resources and theological education suitable to their own contexts.

Some Christians in the West have grown weary, believing that evangelism seldom leads to conversions among Muslims. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a remarkable moment for all Christians to work together to fulfill Christ’s commission to the end of the earth.

I’m A.S. Ibrahim.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: on Washington Wednesday we’ll talk about the other bull in the Republican china shop, presidential candidate Chris Christie.

And the story of how a Lebanese man went from hating Muslims to pursuing them with the Gospel.

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.

The Bible says: For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 1 Peter chapter 4, verses 3 through 5.

Go now in grace and peace.

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