The World and Everything in It: March 6, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. My name is Melissa Brown, and as the wife of a career army officer, I often tell people our home is everywhere and nowhere. We currently listen to the podcast in Landstuhl, Germany. I know you will be blessed by the program today.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! The Senate Minority leader announces he’s leaving, while the Speaker of the House faces yet another deadline to fund the government.

AUDIO: We're trying to turn the aircraft carrier back to real budgeting and spending reform.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday. Also WORLD Tour. Plus a new congregation comes together after its members leave the United Methodist Church. And WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney on the counter-cultural value of contentment.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, March 6th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

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

SOUND: [Voting machine]

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Super Tuesday » Machines counted ballots in Denver last night. Colorado, one of 15 states to cast their primary votes yesterday, in what was the biggest day yet for the Trump campaign.

TRUMP: They call it Super Tuesday for a reason. This is a big one.

GOP rival Nikki Haley won Vermont, but when the clock struck midnight, that was her only Super Tuesday win and her first state victory — after winning the District of Columbia this week.

Trump held a victory party last night at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida telling supporters he’s ready for a likely rematch with President Biden.

TRUMP: We’re going to straighten it out. We’re going to close our borders. We’re going to drill baby drill. We’re going to get the inflation down.

Trump won most of the nearly 900 delegates on the line Tuesday. He is well on his way to the roughly 1,200 delegates he needs to win the nomination.

I mistakenly said in our program yesterday that he needs about 2,400, but that is in fact the total number of delegates available. He must win only a simple majority of that number.

Sinema will not seek reelection » Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has announced that she will not seek reelection. She said her relatively centrist brand of politics isn’t popular in a polarized political climate.

SINEMA: The only political victories that matter these days are symbolic, attacking your opponents on cable news or social media. Compromise is a dirty word.

Sinema left the Democratic party more than a year ago and has no clear path to reelection as an independent.

Gaza cease-fire talks » The White House is still holding out hope for reaching a cease-fire deal in Gaza, even though the talks appear to have reached an impasse.

Hamas has agreed to remain at the bargaining table for a third day in Egypt. And President Biden told reporters:

BIDEN: It’s in the hands of Hamas right now. The Israelis have been cooperating.

Under the agreement, Hamas would get a six week reprieve from Israel’s offensive in exchange for releasing remaining hostages. The deal would also allow a substantial increase in humanitarian aid into Gaza.

HAMDAN: [Speaking in Arabic]

But a Hamas spokesman insists that the terror group will only settle for a permanent cease-fire. And he called the negotiations a farce.

FBI hunts for Iran’s would-be assassin » The FBI says it is on the hunt for an Iranian spy who investigators believe is involved in plots to assassinate U.S. government officials, both current and former. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: The bureau says 42-year-old Majid Farahani has been leading efforts to exact revenge for a U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in 2020. Iranian leaders vowed revenge for that strike.

And the FBI assesses that Farahani is acting under the authority of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence.

He is known to travel between Iran and Venezuela and has also recruited allies for operations inside the United States.

The U.S. government has assigned security details to multiple former members of the Trump administration.

The bureau believes an assassination plot targeted former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo among others.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Ukraine sinks Russian ship / never asked for troops » Ukraine says it has sunk another Russian warship in the Black Sea using high-tech sea drones.

The Ukrainian military intelligence agency said a special operations unit destroyed the large patrol ship which can reportedly carry cruise missiles.

Leaders in Kyiv say they have successfully dented Moscow’s ability to launch missile attacks from the Black Sea.

Meantime, at the White House, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby reiterated on Tuesday,

KIRBY: There’s not going to be U.S. troops in the ground fighting inside Ukraine … and you know what, President Zelenskyy isn’t asking for that. He’s just asking for the tools and capabilities. He’s never asked for foreign troops to fight for his country.

French President Emmanuel Macron recently caused a stir when he said NATO shouldn’t rule out sending troops into Ukraine.

Sen. Menendez facing new charges » Embattled Sen. Bob Menedez is facing additional charges accusing him and his wife of obstruction of justice. The New Jersey Democrat was already facing corruption charges alleging he accepted bribes for political favors.

The senator says he’s done nothing wrong and has defied calls, including from his own party, to resign from Congress.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Avoiding another government shutdown on Washington Wednesday. Plus, new churches after a split.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the sixth of March, 2024.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re happy you’ve joined us today! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

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

Today is Washington Wednesday, and we’re looking at another government funding deadline this week.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Congress has been stuck in this loop since last Fall, extending deadlines while negotiating government funding, only to again extend the deadlines.

REICHARD: But on Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said this messy process is still an improvement from passing massive omnibus spending packages of the past.

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: We broke the omnibus fever, right? That's how Washington has been run for years. We're trying to turn the aircraft carrier back to real budgeting and spending reform. This was an important thing – to break it up into smaller pieces…

BROWN: Speaker Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer agreed on a funding plan after meeting with leaders of the Senate and the White House last week.

The House bill outlines funding for six of the twelve appropriations bills. It would also slightly raise defense spending while making small cuts to some federal agencies like the FBI.

REICHARD: Joining us now to talk more about Johnson’s leadership in this process is Marc Clauson. He’s professor of History and Law at Cedarville University. Before that, he served in West Virginia’s Department of Finance.

Marc, good morning.

MARC CLAUSON: Good morning.

REICHARD: Johnson mentions the government funding process is like turning an aircraft carrier around: going from massive omnibus bills without much debate or scrutiny back to individual appropriations bills with debate and scrutiny. Based on Johnson’s four months as speaker, by how much has he turned the aircraft carrier around?

CLAUSON: Not a whole lot, and I actually don't blame him for that. For the most part, I think what we have here is an institutional problem that's been going for a long time. For one thing, the funding bills get bigger and bigger. For another thing, there's every incentive for one side, generally liberal or Democrats, to spend more and every incentive for the more conservatives to spend less, but conservatives have to deal with the fact that they have to spend money for their constituents. So they're incentivized to vote for more spending, too. So we get piecemeal kind of budgets. We don't really get full budgets anymore. They don't meet, they don't talk about a whole budget, they do these little pieces of spending, funding. And in the meantime, the institutional arrangement continues. There's no incentive in the abstract. Everybody would say we want to limit spending. But when it comes right down to your district, they can't do it. They can't limit their spending. But at the same time, they can't act as if there are no limits at all, if they're conservative. So that puts them in a quandary.

REICHARD: Well, this is the second deal speaker Johnson's made with the Democrats to pass a spending plan and fund the government. He used another continuing resolution to extend the deadline, and that frustrated some people, but Johnson said the point was to give lawmakers time to read the bill before voting on it. What does this say about his ability to lead his caucus and lead the House?

CLAUSON: Well, it's difficult to lead a caucus and to lead the house. Now, especially there's a fringe group, of course, that may vote against any spending bill, and he has to face that he has to somehow compromise for them. And then he has to somehow compromise for the middle way Republicans. That means he has to get together and form some kind of a coalition with the Democrats. And that's really hard to do. It's always been hard to do. But because, like I said, because of the institutional arrangements that we've been seeing for the last few decades, makes it even harder for him to do. He's not exemplary, but he's not a failure yet, either. We'll have to see, time will tell.

REICHARD: Johnson says his goal is to get the funding for fiscal year 2024 done so that Congress can get a head start on funding for 2025. What are his biggest obstacles to making that happen?

CLAUSON: Well, he's obviously got to bring his right side along with him, that is the more conservative, much more conservative members of the House, because it's a really thin margin. And he has to bring them and he also has to bring some of the Democrats along too. And again, that means he's got to compromise. He's got to form coalitions. Can he do it? I think he can. Other speakers have managed it fairly well. But it's still not the ideal, and I don't know whether he can ever reach the ideal.

REICHARD: Well, let's turn now to the top Republican over in the Senate, and that is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who announced on Friday that he was going to step down as leader after the 2024 election. And here's part of what he said.

MCCONNELL: As Ecclesiastes tells us, for everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. To serve Kentucky in the Senate has been the honor of my life. To lead my Republican colleagues has been the highest privilege. But one of life's most underappreciated talents is to know when it's time to move on to life's next chapter.

Marc, let’s talk legacy for a moment. What stands out to you about McConnell’s record?

CLAUSON: Well, in the last few years, I think his efforts to to keep the Supreme Court conservative have been really good. He didn't bring a vote for Merrick Garland to the floor, he resisted that. That was big, because at that time, it could have begun to go in the wrong direction. And he prevented that from happening. His main legacy overall is not so much what he did, but what he didn't do, how he would keep bills that were bad from reaching a vote. And he could be really good at that when he wanted to be. Sometimes he couldn't do it. But he was very close even on the ones where he didn't succeed. So it's really what he didn't do that really stands out to me. And that helped the nation, I think.

REICHARD: Last question...Thursday is President Biden's State of the Union address. He is now consistently polling behind Donald Trump in swing states. So this is an opportunity for the President to win over voters. What do you expect to hear Thursday night?

CLAUSON: Well, I know there's going to be a huge effort to get the president to sound very presidential and very dignified, very sharp. That's crucial, because of the criticism of his age and his cognitive abilities. He's going to have to sound like he knows what he's talking about. He also is going to have to find a way to appeal to the voters out there who are unsure of not only his age and cognitive abilities, but also his policies. What's he going to say? Right now, it looks like there's very little that the Democrats are able to say effectively to sway voters. For example, he could say, “Democracy is under threat right now.” He could also say, and this is a little trickier, that “My policies have been working. They may not have worked as fast as I thought they would, but they've been working.” So he'll point to inflation, the rate of inflation slowing down, although inflation hasn't stopped, it's slowing down. He'll point to that. He's going to point to some of his programs that have been passed. He's going to point out people in the audience who will testify to that. 

Beyond that, it's not clear to me what he's going to be able to say, outside of those kinds of things. He knows that if he goes too far, he's going to sound, come off sounding like he's obfuscating or lying. And that's a problem. A president should never sound like that. He should be confident, and also accurate in what he says. Now, accuracy doesn't always mean that he tells the whole truth. But it does mean he what he does say he tells the truth. So voters are going to be looking for that.

REICHARD: Marc Clauson teaches history and law at Cedarville University in Ohio. Thank you for joining us, Marc!

CLAUSON: Thank you.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with Onize Ohikere, our reporter in Nigeria.

AUDIO: [Protesters singing]

ONIZE OHIKERE: Tunisia Protests — We start today’s roundup in Tunisia, with protesters chanting against price increases and restrictions on union rights.

Protesters filled the Kasbah Square in Tunisia’s capital of Tunis, on Saturday. The Tunisian General Labour Union organized the demonstration to call for better social dialogue.

Tunisian President Kais Saied has ruled the North African country by decree since a power grab in July 2021. The Tunisian economy is now at a standstill as authorities struggle to also service the country’s foreign debt.

Noureddine Taboubi is the secretary general for the labor union.

TABOUBI: [Speaking Arabic]

He says here that people are suffering the effects with residents lining up for hours to get food.

Civil society groups are also decrying a government-backed draft law that will require state authorities to approve all foreign funding for nonprofits.

Bassem Trifi is president of the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights.

TRIFI: [Speaking Arabic]

He says here that the tightened funding sources would cut about 30,000 direct jobs for university graduates.

India rape case — In India, authorities have arrested seven men after a foreign tourist said she was gang raped and her husband assaulted.

The Brazilian-Spanish couple were on a motorbike trip touring South Asia. They usually document their travel experiences online. They stopped to camp outdoors in India’s eastern region after they couldn’t find a hotel nearby.

They said the men took turns assaulting the woman and repeatedly hit her husband.

Police officers on patrol said they found the couple by the roadside looking beaten.

Pitamber Singh Kherwar is the district’s police superintendent.

KHERWAR: [Speaking Hindi]

He says here that authorities have formed a special investigation team to look into the case.

On Monday, authorities handed over a compensation of about $12,000 to the couple.

WOMAN: Thank you to the government of Jharkhand and the police for very fast investigation.

The woman’s husband thanked the police and authorities for the fast investigation.

India recorded an average of nearly 90 rapes a day, according to the country’s National Crime Records Bureau.

AUDIO: [Street]

Haiti violence — Over in Haiti, authorities have imposed a nighttime curfew after a wave of violence began last week.

Gangs launched coordinated attacks on state institutions, including the international airport and national soccer stadium.

Late on Saturday, gang members targeted the National Penitentiary. Nearly all of the prison’s 4,000 inmates escaped.

Carlos Guerrero—a Colombian prisoner—was one of the few who stayed in the prison.

GUERRERO: [Speaking Spanish]

He says here that they sheltered in their cells as gunfire raged around them.

The gangs also overran another prison in Port-au-Prince with about 1,400 inmates.

Haiti’s National Police has about 9,000 police officers to protect more than 11 million people.

Gang leader Jimmy Cherizier had called on criminal groups to band together to overthrow Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is currently out of the country.

Henry is seeking support for a United Nations-backed security force. On Friday, he signed a security agreement with Kenya to contribute troops to the force.

AUDIO: [Chanting]

Honduras-Cuba medical mission — And in Honduras, residents welcomed nearly a hundred Cuban health workers at the international airport in the city of Comayagua.

Their arrival is part of a two-year agreement that will see the specialist doctors help reduce surgical backlogs at some public hospitals and rural areas. The doctors include cardiologists, oncologists, and neurosurgeons, among others.

Honduran Health Minister Carla Paredes said the specialists will work alongside Honduran general healthcare practitioners.

PAREDES: [Speaking Spanish]

She says here that the doctors will enhance the country’s existing resources.

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

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Last week, families in Scotland plopped down $44 per ticket for an immersive Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory experience. Ads on social media promised optic marvels, lots of candy, and chocolate fountains!

The kiddies showed up, but the moment wasn’t magical.

PAUL CONNELL: You could say it was a world of imagination in that you had to imagine it was not a dirty old warehouse.

But it was a dirty old warehouse, says actor Paul Connell, hired to play Willy Wonka, and he apologized for what the event turned out to be.

Sparse decor and, most pitifully, the actors were instructed to give each kid a single jellybean and quarter cup of lemonade.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: No chocolate?

REICHARD: None! Event organizers really dropped the ball. But in the spirit of Oompa-Loompas, Connell and the other actors carried on even after realizing they’d likely get no pay:

CONNELL: However, they're going to put this event on with or without us and children are going to be coming through. Let's just stick around. Let's do our best to make sure that the children have some kind of experience.

BROWN: The show must go on!

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

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, March 6.

This is The World and Everything in It and we’re glad you’re along with us today. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

Coming next: life after a church split. [pause]

More than 5,000 congregations left the United Methodist Church last year. That made it the biggest church schism in U.S. history.

Many of those who left joined the Global Methodist Church. The worldwide denomination was founded in 2022 and includes congregations from Angola, Bulgaria, the Philippines, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

REICHARD: WORLD’s Addie Offereins visited a new Global Methodist Church in Austin, Texas. Its members left the United Methodist Church last year. Here’s WORLD executive producer Paul Butler with the story:

PAUL BUTLER: Randy Berry and his wife were among the 100 members who left Bethany United Methodist Church last year. At first they didn’t have anywhere to go.

RANDY BERRY: The biggest challenge we had was finding a place to meet. Obviously, we couldn't, we had too many people to meet in someone's home, you know, and that's the way a lot of small churches start by just meeting at home.

A local Baptist church opened their sanctuary to the group.

Every Saturday evening, a group of about 70 people gather in the cloth-covered wooden pews to sing hymns and recite the Wesleyan liturgy.

AUDIO: [Crowd reads scripture together]

Six candles glow on a table covered in a white cloth that sits in front of the stage bearing a Bible and the communion bread.

The new congregation doesn't have an official pastor yet, so pastors and worship teams from around Texas have been filling in. Tonight, the volunteers traveled 45 minutes from Bertram, Texas.

To officially disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church, a supermajority of Bethany’s members needed to approve the motion.

BERRY: So we had 57%, vote to disaffiliate and 42 to not disaffiliate Well, in any structure, organization, business, whatever. 57%. That's a pretty big majority. And but it wasn't enough under the protocol set out by the bishops.

So the members said goodbye to the sprawling church building with its large windows and brick accents and left on their own.

BERRY: It drifted away from what the doctrine and beliefs of the original Methodist Church was. So that was the reason that we decided to leave and form the global Methodist Church in Austin. And it's been wonderful.

Sterling Allen, a Global Methodist Church pastor from Houston. He made the three hour drive to preach to the new church during all four advent services in December.

STERLING ALLEN: When I heard about their issues, coming up on a vote, and then how the vote went, and then the formation of the new church, I felt called by God to reach out to some of the folks that I know and say, I'm here if you need me and use me however you want.

Some Methodist congregations decided to remain independent after leaving the UMC. But the Austin Global Methodist congregants didn’t want to lose the accountability and community of a larger church network.

ALLEN: An important thing to remember is to be Methodist. To be Wesleyan means that you're connected by DNA. It is in our DNA that we are a connected people. And so when we venture out on our own, and we walk away from denominational connection, we put ourselves in a precarious situation that opens ourselves to sinful behavior. And there are lots of different ways you could do that. There's heretical teaching, there is misrepresentation of the gospel. There's also a lot of personal things when you lack accountability that you can veer into that leads you to a sinful path.

United Methodist Church leadership failed to prevent a slide into liberal theology. But Allen is confident the Global Methodist Church is committed to scripture and willing to discipline a wayward church if necessary.

Berry said practical concerns also motivated the Austin congregants to join the Global Methodist Church network.

BERRY: We wanted the support that the Global Methodist Church could give us in a lot of ways. And a very important aspect is they help us find pastors. So there's a lot of structure there that helps us. We're not out here, just really doing a new startup on our own trying to just invent everything from scratch.

It wasn’t easy to leave Bethany. But the disagreement had been brewing for years. Tom Deviney was the lead pastor at Bethany United Methodist Church for more than 20 years.

TOM DEVINEY: There's been a fair amount of animosity toward the GMC from some of the folks in the UMC. And I suspect from some of the GMC toward the UMC. So there's some tension there between those two groups.

Deviney was set to retire right as the split took place. He faced a choice: retire with the UMC or transfer his retirement to the Global Methodist Church.

DEVINEY: I saw the decisions the United Methodist Church was making. There was a lack of integrity in some of those decisions, I felt. I also felt like the future direction it's going—to me—is not consistent with my understanding of Scripture. And what I think God calls us to, and I thought, I don't feel I can, with integrity, stay a part of that any longer.

The whole process raised questions about Church unity.

DEVINEY: The unity of the church has been argued and discussed forever. And if you start drawing like a tree of all the divisions and stuff in almost any denomination, it gets very confusing very rapidly.

Deviney says unity in itself isn’t the primary goal. What matters more is who and what brothers and sisters in Christ are unified around.

DEVINEY: I think there is a confusion between unity in the institutions of the bureaucracy of the church, and unity in Christ. And what we are called in Scripture is to unity in Christ as THE church, the universal Church. And that has nothing to do with, you know, what denomination label you have, or what institution you're part of, or any of that.

Randy Berry and his wife expect the Austin Global Methodist church to continue to grow. In mid February, the congregation started meeting Sunday mornings at Concordia University chapel.

BERRY: We believe that we will have a lot of other folks that will join us that just just doesn't work out for one reason or another on Saturday evenings.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Paul Butler. WORLD Reporter Addie Offereins wrote and reported this story.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Wednesday March 6. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney says there’s plenty of bad news these days. But the cheerful news is you may have more power than you think to “overcome evil with good.”

JANIE B. CHEANEY: Does the world seem a darker place these days?

Our major political parties look increasingly dysfunctional, and government increasingly incompetent. Israel is fighting for its life, Russia is flexing its territorial muscles, China is threatening East-Asian stability. Fentanyl deaths are rising, as is depression among the young and suicide rates among men beyond middle age.

And yet, when it comes to our everyday lives, most humans are living longer, eating better, enjoying more leisure time and wider opportunities. Why then do we feel so bad?

In the libertarian journal Quillette, philosopher Maarten Boudry describes “Seven Laws of Pessimism” that influence first-world gloom. For example: “The Law of the Invisibility of Good News.” Progress happens gradually while setbacks are often sudden and dramatic. This correlates with “The Law of the Velocity of Bad News,” reflecting the newspaper maxim “if it bleeds, it leads.”

Then there’s “The Law of Conservation of Outrage”: as safety and prosperity increase, so do a society’s expectations. But the outrage quotient remains the same for microaggressions as it was for violent assault.

“The Law of Awful Attraction” observes that people will find what they’re subconsciously looking for, especially in the age of algorithms that prioritize click-bait. Deluged with true crime and disaster stories, we fall prey to “The Law of Self-Effacing Solutions”—once a problem is solved, we move on to new problems (often created by the solution).

Number seven is “The Law of Disinfecting Sunlight,” or, “The freer a society, the more ugly things will surface.” The whippersnappers protesting on campus today don’t realize how far we’ve come on the racism front, just as the whippersnappers of my day didn’t appreciate the sacrifices our reactionary parents made during depression and war.

Psalm 4:6 echoes centuries of pessimism: “There are many who say, ‘Who can show us some good’?” Well, here’s some: On January 25th my husband developed an infection that quickly escalated to septic shock and kidney failure. By the time I called 911, his life was on the line. When the ambulance arrived, med techs got him on a gurney and hooked up fluids while still in our driveway. Immediately after arriving at the hospital, the ER team started antibiotics and blood-pressure medication. After three hours of tests, the doctor told me my husband needed constant monitoring, and no ICU beds were available locally. Someone kept calling until they found a place for him two hours away. Transport arrived early in the morning to take him there.

Today, my husband is alive and medically stable, owing to the speed, skill, and compassion of people who knew what to do. For all the troubling news, hundreds of hospitals churn out similar stories every day. Thousands of churches counsel the desperate, shelter the refugee, clothe the needy, while faithful pastors persevere in preaching the hope of the gospel though conflicts and failures.

Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a seed, small and hidden. But the seed will sprout and grow, however slowly, and the harvest will be massive. That’s good news.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Tomorrow: Climate change or something else? Some say the Texas panhandle fire is due to climate change, but are there other factors in play? And, the heart vs. the art of music. How AI is changing the music industry. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Myrna Brown.

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 records that after Jesus cleansed the Temple of money-changers, “the Jews said to him: What sign do you show us for doing these things? Jesus answered them, Destroy the temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews then said, It has taken 46 years to build this temple and you’ll raise it up in three days? But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” —John 2:18-22

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.