The World and Everything in It: October 7, 2026

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

National security threats from the inside. If everyone is responsible for intelligence failures, is no one responsible?

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk about that and more with Hunter Baker. Washington Wednesday is ahead.

Also today, World Tour. With US troops out of Iraq, who fills the power vacuum?

And later: Yom Kippur. One Jewish congregation finds joy in a day of repentance.

ROSENBERG: We need hope for the future. And I think that's what God gives us if we turn back to him.

And WORLD Commentator Cal Thomas on the love of money, and the death of Jim Bakker.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, October 7th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

MAST: Now time for the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: October 7 commemoration preview » It’s a somber day in Israel today as the nation observes the third anniversary of the October 7th terror attacks.

SOUND: 2025 remembrance.

That's music from the National Memorial Ceremony hosted last year in Israel. The now annual event is organized by friends and family of the victims who died and surviving hostages who were taken on that day. This year’s event is scheduled to take place in Tel Aviv's Yarkon Park today.

Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Michael Waltz spoke on Tuesday. At a commemoration hosted by Israel’s mission to the UN

WALTZ: Colleagues, October 7th can never, ever happen again. And it will not ever happen again. And certainly not under this president's watch.

Waltz praised the Jewish state for using its Iron Dome missile defense technology to help protect cities like Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the ongoing conflict with Iran. He went on to tell attendees:

WALTZ: Look, folks, October 7th completely and I think, irreversibly, has backfired on Iran and all of their terrorist proxies.

More than 1,200 people died during the attacks led by the Iran-backed terror group Hamas on this day in 2023. And dozens of hostages died in Hamas captivity.

Daylight savings uncertain » Nearly all Americans will be setting their clocks back an hour on November 1st, unless a bill now stuck in the Senate moves forward. WORLD’s Harrison Watters reports from the nation’s capital.

HARRISON WATTERS: Senate Majority Leader John Thune says Republicans are discussing The Sunshine Protection Act, but it’s still stalled.

The House passed the bill in July with bipartisan backing to make daylight saving time permanent.

But some Senate Republicans object., Senator Tom Cotton says Arkansas’ children would head to school in winter darkness.

That was the same objection many had a half-century ago. Washington did try daylight savings year-round in 1974, but Congress reversed course the very same year amid complaints about dark winter mornings.

Still, President Trump wants senators back in Washington before the midterms to pass the bill. Over the weekend, he posted Cotton’s personal cell number and urged people to call and tell him to stop blocking the bill.

Last year, seven Senate Republicans voted against the bill in committee after failing to make standard time permanent instead.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Harrison Watters in Washington.

Hasan execution announcement reactions » Texas Senator Ted Cruz is applauding President Trump’s decision this week to execute Fort Hood gunman Nidal Hasan by firing squad.

He was an Army major and psychiatrist in 2009 when he massacred 13 people and wounded dozens at Fort Hood near Killeen, Texas.

Police shot him, leaving him paralyzed. A military jury sentenced him to death in 2013.

Cruz calls him a “radical Islamist terrorist” and says he deserves execution.

It would be the military’s first execution since 1961.

The Pentagon says the Army secretary will set the time and place. Further court appeals could still delay his death.

Paramount/WB merger official » There’s a new giant in Hollywood, with Paramount’s takeover of Warner Brothers now official after Democrats were unable to block the merger. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has the story.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: The deal closed Tuesday, and the new combined company is called Skydance. It brings CNN and CBS under one roof, along with big film franchises like Top Gun, Harry Potter and the DC Comics universe.

CLIP (Batman): I want you to tell all your friends about me. What are you?! I am Batman.

Some left-wing actors like Mark Ruffalo launched a public campaign urging leaders to block the deal, and Democratic attorneys general in California and 11 other states tried filing a federal lawsuit.

They said they were concerned about less competition, even though the FTC and European regulators had cleared it.

But Paramount chief David Ellison said their opposition was political, because his family has close ties to President Trump.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta reversed course after Ellison reportedly threatened to move Paramount — and thousands of jobs — out of California.

The states settled last month … with Paramount committing, among other things, to keep putting plenty of movies on the big screen, not just streaming, and setting up a board aimed at ensuring independent reporting at CNN and CBS News.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Jim Bakker obituary » Longtime televangelist Jim Bakker has died at 86.

Bakker and his first wife, Tammy Faye, brought Christian talk and music to millions of viewers on The PTL Club, short for Praise the Lord.

But in 1987, sex and money scandals forced him out of PTL. That year, ABC’s Ted Koppel asked the couple on Nightline about their reported pay for a single year:

KOPPEL: A total of $1.9 million. Now that's a far cry from working for nothing, isn't it?

BAKKER: Mm-hmm. Yes, and, and I'm not sure of those figures, but, uh, I think we've made a lot of mistakes, and I'm very sorry about it.

Bakker said the ministry’s board independently set their pay, but added that they should have turned it down.

Two years later, a jury convicted Bakker of fraud and conspiracy for cheating his ministry’s supporters. His 45-year prison sentence was later cut to eight years. He served about five.

Bakker returned to television in 2003 with his second wife Lori on The Jim Bakker Show.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Hunter Baker is standing by for Washington Wednesday. Plus: With US troops out of Iraq, who fills the power vacuum?

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday, October 7.

This is The World and Everything in It from WORLD Radio, celebrating 15 years.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Time now for Washington Wednesday.

Back with us is political scientist and senior fellow at the First Liberty Institute, Hunter Baker. Hunter, good morning.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

MAST: Issue one today: Security at the seams. Hunter, three stories caught our attention this week. First, an update on an old story: President Trump approved execution by firing squad for Nidal Hasan. Hasan is the former Army psychiatrist convicted in the 2009 massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, that killed 13 people.

EICHER: The second case, investigators say, a FlyDubai co-pilot had previously been barred from flying in Oman before he would attack the pilot on a flight to Israel. The plan, it seems plain enough, but still just alleged, was to fly that plane straight into the ground and kill a planeload of Jews.

Authorities in Oman, as well as FlyDubai, the airline, and Israel each reportedly had pieces of information that never came together in time. Thankfully, the passengers were able to save the day.

MAST: In the third case, in Britain, the U.S. moved its B-1 bombers out of RAF Fairford a week after five men were arrested near the base. U.K. authorities are investigating an alleged Iran-linked plot.

EICHER: Now, three different stories, but in every case, the threat got a long way inside the perimeter, Hunter. So here’s the question: As we start, are our biggest security vulnerabilities increasingly at the seams? That is to say, places where several institutions each own part of the problem, but nobody owns the whole thing.

BAKER: I remember when 9/11 happened. My immediate reaction to that occurrence was that life on planet Earth, and certainly in the United States, was going to be extremely different after that event, but actually that wasn’t the case. We made some changes at airports, and security procedures became a little bit more burdensome. But actually, the changes weren’t as severe as I thought they might be.

With the things that we’re observing, these sort of occurrences where people get inside of systems and threats get a lot further than you would hope they could. What occurs to me is that you have a choice to make about a free society. If you’re going to have a very free society, then these threats are generally going to be able to get pretty far, unless you’re willing to make some significant sacrifices regarding privacy.

From my perspective, I remember people were very concerned about the Patriot Act. I think that if you want to have a free society and prevent a lot of these sort of things, you have to have more room for probably incursions on privacy as a way to get the jump on these sort of things.

MAST: Hunter. These aren’t all intelligence failures in the classic sense. Sometimes somebody already had the information, and the problem was getting it to the person who could act on it. So, is modern government too compartmentalized for threats that deliberately cross the lines between military and civilian, foreign and domestic, or public and private?

BAKER: It might have been worse in the government of the past. I think that at least now we have information technology and probably a greater ability to detect patterns and things like that. But it’s clear that it’s not enough.

Or it may simply be the case that our values are such that we are trying to make sure that we don’t abridge anyone’s rights by casting them under suspicion or being excessively suspicious of them because of their ethnic background or something like this. These are all the kind of calculations that a free society has to make, and it’s very difficult.

EICHER: Issue two: Trump accounts. Let’s turn to a new federal program for children. Congress created what are now called Trump accounts. These are investment accounts intended to build assets for children, and the Treasury Department has since added automatic enrollment. It now allows approved charities to contribute individual company stocks, families can’t refuse those shares, and they can’t sell them for five years.

Now we’ve spoken positively of this program for the most part, but this is more of a process thing. I think these specifics were not provided for by Congress, so the question is: At what point does executive implementation stop being merely that implementation and start becoming a rewrite of what Congress actually created?

BAKER: There’s always this threat of abuse. You may remember that when the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was passed, that Congressman Bart Stupak went to great lengths to try to gain certain pro-life protections, which eventually dragged the legislation over the line. And then, promptly after doing that, the Health and Human Services Agency issued the extraordinarily burdensome mandate regarding abortion and abortifacient drugs and birth control that hit companies like Hobby Lobby and various Christian organizations and universities, and that was not the legislation itself, but an executive interpretation.

So that’s always something you have to guard against. It seems like something similar to that may be happening with the Trump accounts. Now that having been said, I really thought about this. I’m having a tough time seeing the harm, or the way that it might be abused, and I think this is going to be the kind of thing where we have to watch what happens, and we may have to develop further rules in response to the way these exceptions are employed.

MAST: All right. Issue three: climate suits and federalism. And here we’ll stay on separation of powers. The Supreme Court opened its new term with a federalism fight over climate change. Oil companies want the court to shut down state and local lawsuits seeking damages for climate-related harms. But on Monday, the justices appeared skeptical of doing that outright, although guessing what the court will do is probably not a great idea.

But bottom line, this dispute is bigger than environmental policy. If states and cities can use tort law to impose potentially enormous costs over a national and global issue, aren’t the courts effectively making policy Congress has chosen not to make, or would you say that this is simply federalism at work?

BAKER: There’s a certain amount of policy that preemptively belongs to the federal government. It’s very hard for me to understand how climate harms of this type, letting carbon dioxide into the air, resulting in increased heat, or something like that, would be something that is localized. I’m confused by the theory of these suits in that sense, and I can understand why federal agencies would say this really belongs to us.

This is different from one of these stories like we’d have in Cleveland or somewhere like that, where a company’s been dumping pollutants into the river, and then the river catches fire or something like that. This is a different thing, and that may be an apocryphal story. This idea that climate change, to the extent that it occurs, occurs state by state to me seems ridiculous, and so I can understand why the court would take a hard look at this.

EICHER: Time for the lightning round now. 30 seconds for real, or at least we’ll try it. A Wall Street Journal poll, Hunter says that 21% of registered voters dislike both major parties, and that’s quite a big jump from 13% just a few short years ago back to the 2022 midterms. So these are double haters. So is this just noise, or would you call it the defining voter of 2026, the double hater?

BAKER: It may take us to a different place in our politics. When I was younger, I can remember that we were totally focused on the idea of the centrist voter, and that politics was really aimed at winning over that centrist voter, and that would lead the two parties to converge in terms of their policy.

And you’d have people like George Wallace claiming there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them, but I think that there’s a group of voters who want less ideology and more competence in government, and I think they’re going to be more inclined to become independents as we’re seeing.

EICHER: Okay, so yes, no, are they going to be the defining voter of ’26, or is that whole thing just overblown?

BAKER: They could be. ’26 may be a little soon, but eventually,

MAST: Do the double haters vote?

BAKER: Oh, I do think that they vote. I think that people who have the tendency to say that I hate both parties are people who pay attention to politics.

MAST: All right. Next up, a piece of bipartisan Senate draft legislation would put deadlines on federal reviews, shorten litigation windows, and make other changes aimed at getting infrastructure built faster. Hunter, is this a real bipartisan breakthrough?

BAKER: I am thrilled. I am so excited by this legislation potentially happening. I come from the South. You think about the way the American South was transformed by the Tennessee Valley Authority and some of those major infrastructure projects, and I just think that the potential is incredible.

We have been through a period where these kind of large projects get tied up for 15, 20 years and don’t do anybody any good. I think these things are a far better way to spend government money than our constant flow of entitlements and transfer payments and things like that, because you actually get something, you get something that’s productive and does a lot of good for the economy, and that you can build from.

So I’m hoping that this bipartisan compromise lasts and it goes all the way to the president.

EICHER: Finally, Seattle’s socialist mayor has had to scale back parts of her agenda amid a budget deficit and public safety pressure, meantime in Huntington Beach, California, there is a MAGA governing bloc, and it has run into courts and spending fights and voter resistance and internal divisions. So finish this sentence: Ideologues discover governing when—fill in the blank.

BAKER: —they have no other choice. You get into these crises like New York did in the 1970s, and some of us remember that famous headline: “Ford to New York City Drop Dead,” because they wanted the federal government to bail them out.

And you’re going to get into these kind of situations, but it’s hard to get there because left-wing ideologues actually like the impact. If they govern badly, and if their policies are too far left, people in the center and the right move out. And if people in the center and the right move out, you’re guaranteed to win the next election. And so it’s a self-fulfilling cycle that people on the left may find desirable.

MAST: All right, Hunter Baker, political scientist and senior fellow at the First Liberty Institute. Hunter, thank you so much.

BAKER: Thank you.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Up next: World Tour.

SOUND: Independence celebration

That’s the sound of celebration in Iraq after the last U.S. forces withdrew last week… Most of the demonstrations were peaceful, though at one, an Iran-backed militia desecrated the American flag.

NICK EICHER, HOST: The last time U.S. forces withdrew in 2011, it left a power vacuum ISIS filled. This time, analysts say Iraq may have enough strength to hold them off.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

MARY MUNCY: In 2014, Asseel Yako and his family lived in a small town outside Nineveh, Iraq. He had been watching ISIS’s progress for months, keeping his family’s important documents packed.

Then one day in August.

ASSEEL YAKO: I just looked outside, and there are bombs everywhere.

ISIS had arrived in the majority-Christian town.

YAKO: They said you either convert to Islam or we kill you.

So Yako, his pregnant wife, and three children put as much as they could in the car and started driving.

YAKO: And they were like bombing behind us, so we were just speeding up to get to to save our life.

They headed north, to a refugee camp.

The U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 as part of the Global War on Terror and ousted the former president Saddam Hussein. Leaders at the time said he supported al-Qaida. The Pentagon later said that wasn’t true, though he did support other terrorist groups. In 2011, the U.S. said it accomplished its mission and withdrew.

But in 2014, militias started taking ground again, and U.S. forces began Operation Inherent Resolve.

WOOD TV8: Breaking news in the Iraq crisis, the U.S. dropped bombs on insurgent artillery.

NBC NEWS: More than 30 rockets fired at a military base north of Baghdad Wednesday… killing two American troops and one British soldier.

CBS: Aid worker Peter Hassig has reportedly been beheaded by ISIS militants.

Most soldiers on the ground were in advisory positions and remained on U.S. bases. In 2024, President Joe Biden announced a deal: the U.S. would leave if the militias disarmed. The disarmament deadline has been pushed back to June of next year, but the last American troops left last week.

TRUMP: This day is a victory for the United States. It's a victory for Iraq and a decisive victory over ISIS.

President Trump last Wednesday.

TRUMP: We leave with Iraq having a wonderful new Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi.

The Iraqi parliament approved al-Zaidi in May, and so far analysts say Iraqis are happy with him, and al-Zaidi says he has reached agreements with some militias.

But Bill Roggio with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies thinks the situation is tenuous.

ROGGIO: You've had militia leaders say that they would kill Iraq's president and prime minister if the Iran's supreme leader ordered them to do so.

One of the biggest militias in Iraq has an estimated 230,000 plus members and it’s controlled by Iran.

ROGGIO: Our influence has waned year after year as the as as the Iranian influence has skyrocketed.

Roggio says after 2003 “mini” Saddam Husseins started popping up all over the country. They’re just as brutal, more unpredictable, and now leading militias.

ROGGIO: Saddam Hussein was a horrible person, but I don't think U.S. leadership really thought about the aftermath of him being gone.

Roggio thinks the area was ready-made for recruitment.

In 2014, over half of the country’s 35 million people followed Shia Islam, that’s the majority religion in Iran.

But Iraqi Prime Minister al-Zaidi was confident as U.S. troops left:

ALI AL ZAIDI : (Arabic) Our security forces, across all their branches, have established control over the security and operational landscape throughout Iraq.

Saying his military has established control throughout the country.

Roggio thinks Iraq will be different than the disastrous U.S. pullout in Afghanistan. It immediately fell to an insurgent force, but he thinks life will stay fairly consistent for most Iraqis for now. If Shia influence continues to rise, oppression of Sunni Muslims and Kurds will probably rise too. And he thinks growing militias will mean more violence outside of the country.

Refugee Yako and his family eventually made it to Australia. He doesn’t think he’ll ever return to Iraq.

YAKO: Even now, people are still leaving the town because they don't feel safe there. Nothing is secure there.

He still has nightmares about returning, but for now, he thanks God for his escape.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

NICK EICHER, HOST: A New Hampshire library has finally gotten back a magazine due in 1894. (I did not say 1984. I said 1894.)

The magazine returned 48,220 days late.

The fine: $12,055.

Now, the man who brought it back is 84 years old, and he was not the original borrower. (That would not be possible.) He was just the good Samaritan who found it.

Thankfully, the library is testing a fine freeze, so the bill is actually zero. After 132 years, finally some good timing. The only good timing in this entire sad episode.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 7th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a Jewish holiday turned joyful.

Early October marks the end of the Jewish Calendar's busy season this year, with four holidays that take place within a month.

While most of these holidays are festive, one of them is far more solemn.

WORLD’s Koryn Koch has the story.

KORYN KOCH, REPORTER: It’s 10 o’clock on a Monday morning. But attendees of Adat Hatikvah synagogue are filtering into the building in Deerfield, Illinois. Many are dressed in white—a symbol of both purity and death in Jewish tradition.

AUDIO: [Sound of Hebrew prayer]

It’s the start of Yom Kippur, or, the Day of Atonement. The holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Historically, Yom Kippur was the one day a year that the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem.

ROSENBERG: Yom Kippur is a day of repentance. In scripture, it's actually the day of covering. And it's part of the sacrificial system that's found in the Old Testament.

Rabbi Jacob Rosenberg leads the congregation.

ROSENBERG: But generally it's a day where we restrict ourselves from things including food, and we spend most of the day going over a list of things that we could have potentially done in the last year and asking God to forgive us so that we would be in the book of life.

A Yom Kippur service is traditionally very somber. That’s to help congregants reflect on the seriousness of sin and repentance.

AUDIO: [Sound of Al Chet recitation]

It includes a prayer called the “Al Chet.” People pound on their chests while seeking forgiveness for all their possible sins.

AUDIO: [Sound of Torah reading in Hebrew]

Many are fasting until sundown. But the service at Adat Hatikvah lacks some of the traditional solemnity.

AUDIO: [Joyful worship with clapping]

This service is joyful. That’s because Adat Hatikvah is a Messianic Jewish synagogue. Here, there’s a mix of Jews and non-Jews who observe Jewish tradition while believing that Jesus—or Yeshua, in Hebrew—has already paid for their sins.

CORNWELL: The good message of Yom Kippur is that there is Kapurah, there is a covering that God provides. It is not our doing.

Joanna Cornwell was raised a Christian while celebrating the Jewish tradition of the Sabbath. She came back to faith later in life, and wanted a place that combined faith in Jesus with Jewish tradition.

CORNWELL: We believe as Messianic Jews, that that is that has been fulfilled in Yeshua, when he is our covering. And we can have through him, we can through his sacrifice him dying on the cross for our sins, we have access to the throne, we have access to God and we can have that relationship that has been restored through the sacrifice.

This hope in Jesus turns a traditionally somber holiday on its head.

AUDIO: [Sound of kids gathering]

About two dozen kids gather near the stage to watch a puppet show that explains the significance of the holiday.

MAN: We ask God to forgive us, but also to try to make all things right.

WOMAN: Oh, so sorry, sorry, sorry

[Laughter]

WOMAN: What does atonement mean?

MAN: Well, it means our sins are covered and our relationship with God can be restored.

Adat’s mix of tradition and unconventionality sometimes offends members of the Jewish community. It’s not generally the puppet shows, but often the name of Jesus himself. To many Jews, Christianity and Judaism are not compatible. History seems to back that claim. Rabbi Rosenberg’s own grandmother pointed to their family’s experience in the Holocaust as a reason not to believe in Jesus.

ROSENBERG: She said there was a sign in the concentration camp that said, ‘You killed Christ, we kill you.’ So there's this sense that Christianity is at odds with Judaism.

Many Jews say believing in Jesus feels like a betrayal of their roots. Rabbi Rosenberg’s goal is to show them that believing in Jesus is a fulfillment of being Jewish.

ROSENBERG: We don't even really think of it as conversion. We think of it as completion. So they're not changing from anything. A Jewish person believing in the Messiah is a very Jewish thing to do.

This somber and joyful Yom Kippur service is designed to show just that—how Jesus completes a several thousand-year-old tradition.

ROSENBERG: There's really nothing much I think better than hope, especially in the world we live in that has so many problems. We need hope for the future. And I think that's what God gives us if we turn back to him, especially on days like Yom Kippur.

Attendees of Adat Hatikvah pray and fast without wondering if their name might be written in the Book of Life. They believe it already is.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Koryn Koch in Deerfield, IL.

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

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

TV evangelist Jim Bakker died on Monday at age 86.

His rise, fall, and eventual return to television made him one of the best-known—and most controversial—religious figures of the 1980s.

WORLD commentator Cal Thomas knew Bakker personally. And he says there are lessons in the story that reach well beyond one man.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: In the 1980s, the media called Jim Bakker and others like him “televangelists.”

Some preached what became known as the “prosperity gospel”—the idea that God would reward people who gave money to their ministries.

Bakker was among the most successful, if your standard for success is money and fame.

Then it all collapsed.

In 1987, as his ministry was coming apart, Bakker appeared with his wife Tammy Faye on ABC’s Nightline.

JIM BAKKER: It makes us very sad to hear that. The Bible says, “Ye without sin cast the first stone,” or “Ye that are spiritual, restore your brother in the spirit of meekness.” And it’s just such unscriptural activity for all of us to be debating back and forth publicly and we’re supposed to do this quietly and privately and with love—

TED KOPPEL: All right, but you’re starting to do what I was suggesting to you early on I wasn’t going to let you do tonight, and that is, you’re wrapping yourself in the Bible again. And that’s fine, but I’m asking—there have been some very direct charges made here.

Two years later, Bakker was convicted of defrauding followers in a scheme involving his Heritage USA Christian theme park and resort. He served four and a half years in prison.

At the time, I opposed his imprisonment. I argued for the biblical standard of restitution. Prison, I said, didn’t repay the people who had been defrauded.

Bakker wrote me from prison to thank me.

After his release, I invited him to my home. I had met him several times and had once appeared on his PTL television program.

I asked him a question.

“I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you. I said. When did you start to go wrong?”

His answer has stayed with me.

“When I surrounded myself with people who told me only what I wanted to hear.”

I told him television was like a drug, and he had been a heavy user. I advised him to stay off TV.

He did for a while.

But eventually he went back.

Religion can occasionally be as phony as politics. Both, at least the TV versions, require lots of money, and both have been guilty of sometimes not telling the truth.

And money was very much part of that Nightline conversation.

TED KOPPEL: How much money did you earn last year? How much money were you paid in salary, in bonuses, in dividends, in royalties?

JIM BAKKER: I would say roughly my salary was 1.1 million, and a take-home payout of that would be about five, six hundred thousand, probably.

TED KOPPEL: All right. And how about Mrs. Bakker?

TAMMY FAYE BAKKER: I honestly, honest, I do not know how much I make. I’ve never thought about it.

TED KOPPEL: If you were a prayer partner who had coughed up a difficult five dollars, twenty dollars, fifty dollars at some point, would you feel comforted seeing Tammy Faye Bakker sitting there saying, “I don’t know how much money I made”?

JIM BAKKER: Ted, that’s our problem. That’s our failure.

The Apostle Paul warned, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.”

He continued: “It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”

That was true of Bakker.

So was another problem: biblical illiteracy.

In 2019, the Pew Research Center published a survey called “What Americans Know About Religion.”

Among evangelicals, only 66 percent knew Jesus was from Nazareth, while 86 percent knew Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt.

Surveys by the Barna Research Group have found that roughly 10 to 12 percent of Americans mistakenly believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.

After the laughter—and the holier-than-thou expressions—there is still the problem of TV evangelists ripping off otherwise decent people.

Jim Bakker is gone.

But others remain.

For WORLD, I’m Cal Thomas.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: is your phone eavesdropping on you? We’ll have a report on how ad companies collect data.

And, a conversation about the foundation of Judeo-Christian values in a secular society.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

This is episode 35-03 of The World and Everything in It, from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says,

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place

in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

You return man to dust and say, “Return, O children of man!”

For a thousand years in your sight

are but as yesterday when it is past,

or as a watch in the night.”

Verses 1-4 of Psalm 90.

Go now in grace and peace.

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