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Back to the what happened to America podcast. This is our second episode. A couple of things to get out of the way here. If you want to uh have these uh podcasts or even refer them to somebody, um you can go to America one, America, the the number one dot buzzsprout B-U-Z-Z-S-P-R-O-U-T dot com, and they're all there. Um and um this is um Memorial Day uh 2026. And um so we're gonna talk about uh we're gonna talk about America today. That's um it's a great subject. Um you know when um when I was in school, uh I don't know when I remember it first, but uh I would say probably fourth, fifth grade, sixth grade, something like that, we studied American history. We had heroes, we had uh George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, these were not perfect men, but the way they were portrayed relative to the American uh system and and to the American idea was that they were the founders. They were the guys who who started with this idea. So what is the idea? I can draw on your your knowledge now of American history. So what was the idea uh that America was founded on? Well, we uh we basically all know that it was founded upon the idea that uh of free speech. We know it was founded upon principles that uh uh these Christian men had uh and founded upon uh a right to worship God in any way that you wanted to. Uh those are just fundamental things. Um and look at the people who fought in the American Revolution. They thought enough of that concept, that whole idea, to face a world power, and Britain was a world power at that time. It was said at that time that the sun never set on the British Empire. They were everywhere, they were in India, they were uh all over the the uh what would we say, the uh Pacific Rim, those places, they were in Africa, they were everywhere. And uh they occupied those areas and they brought their principles to those areas. So as we celebrate Memorial Day, and the Memorial Day celebrates those who gave their life to protect those principles, this podcast will continually be about what happened to those principles, what happened to those ideas? What what is the what was it that moved us away and and we call it uh drift? You know, there's an old uh Arab saying that says it if you let the camel get his head in your tent before long, he'll have his whole body in the tent and you'll be outside. And we call it in theology incrementalism. That is that if something really bad takes a very small step towards you and you do not perceive any quick movement, then before you know it, it is on top of you. And so this incrementalism that uh that has crept into our country over all these years now, over all these years, has crept into this country. We're gonna be looking at those things. Um but going back to the founders, the founders felt, and and when they signed that declaration of independence, that was a death sentence for them because uh that was considered to be treason against the crown. And so these guys had something, they had something. And if we could really, if we could really define that, not just in this podcast, but in any other ways that we could, if we could define what that motivation was, and if we could get that back, then we would have an opportunity to really see under conditions that we have now, both economic and otherwise, those principles reborn. Now, at this time uh in our uh government, we have uh Christianity is coming more back to the front. Uh we've got a president that is a believer and believes in supporting those ideas. The only problem with it is, the only problem with it is he'll be out in three years, and we'll have someone else. And this whole idea of incrementalism, let's look at it for just a moment based on the values that we see today compared to those that our forefathers started with. Well, you know, if you look at uh, let's just say respect, respect. My grandfather on my father's side um was a mechanic, and he worked on cars uh uh even as far back as the eight miles and tea bottle cars, and I spent a good bit of time with him in the summer when I was out of school. And in those that time that I spent with him, there was some there were some things that I learned that I kept with me even until today. One of them was respect. You know, people were respected then, you know, and and people now, with all this insanity going on in our country, and with them attacking fundamental values, um, not only uh political values or values of the American people, but also Christian values, they're attacking these things, trying to undermine them and do away with them. But in that day, there was no uh they didn't have a telephone when he was raising his family with my father there. He he didn't have a telephone, they had to go somewhere to a the local store and use the telephone there. And uh uh unbeknownst to a lot of the people today, especially the younger ones, those phones used to be attached to the wall. And so they had to go there and do that. And so there was a really a lack of overall communication. I believe in in those days most people got their uh information either over the radio or from newspapers, uh, because radio came out much earlier than that and it's been around for a while, uh, basically AM stations. And so they got that information from there. So when we think about, you know, the respect, the respect that they had for each other. I watched my granddaddy deal with uh customers, um you know, who he had repaired cars for and so forth. And he never, and I heard my grandmother say this as well as others, he never really charged enough for what he did because he was afraid that he would overcharge people. And we told him that that would be, you know, what that what he was charging, at least I didn't tell him, but uh adults did, that that's not uh enough based even on the the current uh prices that people are getting. So respect, respect. Um what what is respect? How was it? Let's just say this, how was it classified then? Well, people then uh they respected each other's property, they respected their beliefs, that means that they would not challenge their beliefs. Um a man uh that owed you a dollar, you could be assured that you would get that dollar back, that kind of thing. And uh they'd simply respected the beliefs of other people. That was America, right? That was America then. And so we look at respect. Well, we basically have lost all of that now. We see teenagers in the streets taking over whole streets. Where are their parents? When I listened to what my grandfather said about the way that his father disciplined him and the things that were expected out of him, and what my grandfather expected out of my father and the rest of the children, the discipline was there. The respect for the father was there. Now, my father, uh, at some times during that time he was a wild card, and my father was mechanic, I mean, my grandfather was mechanic, and so he had a 1938 Pontiac in his shop that was a customer's car, of course. And so when my father was a teenager, him and his brother, uh, which were a couple of years apart, uh, they took that car out of my granddaddy's uh shop while he was asleep and they wrecked it. Well, let me show you what respect is. Now, I don't know what he required out of my father, but I do know that he he repaired that car at no cost to that customer and never said a word about it. Right? He respected that. Now, he had to teach my father to respect other people's property, of course, and his brother. They had he had they had to be taught that. But later on in life, after I was born and I was old enough to watch and know anything, my father had the same, he had the same kind of respect. And so that came from a time where people respected each other, honored each other, and so forth. Now, even that period of time was that that period of time was not without its problems. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that if you view today compared to that, you see very, very distinct differences. And so when we ask the question, where did America go? What are we saying left? Well, you know, if we talk about respect, we talk about family, we talk about values, we talk about government. You can pick either one of those subjects, any one or any two or whatever, and you'll see that those things have eroded. Now, as I told you in the first podcast, we we are gonna use the Bible here because it is the only guide that we have to try to extract some understanding about what is happening today. Now, the things that we're talking about here, lack of respect, breakup of the family, those are symptoms of something much deeper. And we're gonna be looking at that because they're symptoms of something that lies much deeper. You know, we look at ourselves today that we're a world full of communications and technology and and all these kind of things that are new: AI, um computers, uh cell phones, uh, cable TV, all these kind of things. Well, see, my grandfather, nor my father, had those kind of things when they were uh raising their families. And so, but today, the current day family has to deal with that. They have to deal with it, and it has to be uh, how we would say, one of the first things that they do with their children to keep them away from all of these dangerous things that Satan is trying to inject into the families. But the subject here, when it comes to America, is this America has always been classified as a Christian nation, it has been classified as having a freedom, having the freedom to worship as you please, right? But at the same time, um, those of you who studied American history, and I'm assuming the older ones, what you saw there was that that has always been an established right in my life, in my life, I have never until now seen that right to worship as you please, to respect Christian values, I've never seen it challenged like I have in the last eight or ten years. We're now being challenged by the populace, not a country outside of the United States, like Japan or Germany in the Second World War. We're being challenged from within. And these people, these so-called leaders, these so-called intellects, and so forth, they're pushing beliefs like change your gender. You can do that. God didn't do that, and and all that nonsense. They're saying, you know, you can have same-sex marriages. You can say uh that if you get pregnant and you don't want to have the child, we we've got one state here, California, that's uh considering a law that allows you to kill the child up to a year and a half or two years old. Now, to most people my age, they listen to that and they're shocked. They're shocked. And I think that the reason that they're shocked is this. When you look at every day the time that you spend, um, anybody that you spend every day, whether you're watching the news, looking at your telephone, looking at the computer, or whatever, um, when you when you determine how much time you're spending trying to, how would we say, acquire notice of these changes, I'm afraid that we're not paying much attention. But these things are happening in a nation that started out an America with an ideal, an America with a set of principles, an America who believed that God existed and that He had He determined every man's life and future and respected that. Um and they created a government that respected that. Even in the last few years, especially on the Democrat um uh rulership here or whatever, we we've we've seen um there's one here just lately, um a Christian father with, I believe, five or six children, was praying across the street from an ab an abortion clinic, a murder factory, and he was praying across the street, and he got arrested under the so-called FACE Act, freedom of access to care, whatever they want to call it. They they like to use names that really don't tell what it is they're doing. Uh and uh they came to his house, they came to his house before daylight in the morning, with his wife and six children there, FBI agents fully armed, and arrested him. Arrested him. While at the same time, inside of the clinic that he was praying across the street from, they were killing children. Now, you know, when you ask this question, what has happened to America, you've got to plug all these parts in. You know, we we this stuff is going on, and we there's a lot of people. I have some friends who say they never look at the news. Well, you know, I don't know how you know what's going on if you don't at least watch the news or read the newspaper or some of that or make some effort at it. So they arrested him. They they had to release him, and I believe he won a judgment against the government. But see, the judgment and all that is not the point. The point is, how in the world would a government official be so bold as to go and arrest a man in front of his wife and children who's trying to protect children? Listen, ladies and gentlemen, if you listen to this podcast, you you really need to give some thought to what's going on here. And you say to yourself, Well, why should I think about it? Well, let me see if I can explain it to you. One thing, you know, if you have children, okay, if you have children, those children need to be brought up, and what the Bible says is a nurture and admonition of the Lord. But as a parent, you have got to prepare your children for what's coming. Though those of us that are older, uh, we are uh our days are limited. Um in 15 or 20 years, most of us will be gone. So in in your case, depending on what age your children are, I mean, we could be all of us could be gone. And so you have to prepare the next generation for what's coming. Now, here's a this is something that is a that's been a myth ever since Christ Himself came and died, buried, and was resurrected and went back to heaven. This is this is a fact that's true. Evil, evil doesn't have a lower limit. I'm going to repeat that for you. Evil does not have a lower limit. It will go as far as it is allowed to go, and it will keep getting worse and worse. If you don't believe that, you can go back to the sixth chapter of Genesis. You can read about why God destroyed the earth with water, uh, and Noah saved himself, and there was eight of them and saved them, uh, but destroyed everything else. What does it say there? Well, it says their own the only intent of their heart was only evil continually. You can read it for yourself, it's there. So the American principle, okay, of believing in God, freedom of religion, the protection of the innocent, and all these things, they are important to the values of the American people. Now listen to this. I have some statistics which I'll share in future podcasts, but I'll just give you a couple of those numbers. Since abortion started, they started killing children in 1972. I did some calculations and through Chat GPT helped me do the calculations. We would have had ninety seven million more children, okay, counting the ones that were aborted, which close to a hundred million, and then those would have had children, and calculating in normal deaths and so forth, there would have been 97 million more people in America, you know, at that time. And the thing that is so disturbing about this is these are American, these are Americans. These babies are doesn't matter what what race they are, doesn't matter anything about that. They are all American, and they're killing them for money. Now, somewhere in all of this debauchery, somewhere in a line below this line of evil and things that are attempting to destroy the American principle, there is an evil force working and pressing toward not only the destruction of the American way, but a destruction of the world. Now these things are these are not random things that happen. These things have a dark side. Being pressed forward by Satan and those that help him, the demons and all these things, that the Bible says this is a dark force attacking the only light. I'm gonna say this again. The only light left in the world from a Christian perspective is the United States of America. The United States of America with the last, we're the very last holdout. When the light goes out here, then the light is out. When my wife and I traveled to Europe a few years ago, we saw these magnificent churches, the places where the reformers went to church, the places where they they nailed uh the the thing, the uh treatise to the door, uh and and said, you know, that you the Catholic Church was not, or at least the church at that time was not interpreting the scripture right, and and that justification by faith was the was the principle that the Bible was written about. And so anyway, the we went to these churches, we didn't go into churches, but the churches are absolutely magnificent, beautiful places, but they're all empty. You hear what I'm saying? They're all empty. Christianity has no very, very few followers in Europe anymore. In the places where the Reformation started and where these things began, and the reason that that those people who left England, they left because they wanted religious freedom. Now, if you ask about religious freedom, what does that mean? Are we talking about religion? No, we're talking about a relationship with God, is what we're talking about. And they couldn't do that freely, and so they decided to come to America and start something else here where they were free to worship their God in the way that they chose to do so. So, what we're looking at here is when I talk about the principles of my grandfather, and I look back at those things and see how they have evolved up to the time that we're living now. The point I'm trying to make at this time is this. They're slipping away from us, folks. They're slipping away. We may look up in twenty years, and our churches very well may be like those in Europe. The other problem we have with the churches is that the churches, a lot of the churches, are buying in to this debauchery. They're buying into the fact that they have turned our doctrine on us, the doctrine of love, saying, well, you can do an ungodly thing that God is opposed to because you you just got to understand that person and love them and so forth, and they will eventually come around. That is a total and completely collection of nonsense. That is not at all what this country was founded upon, and it certainly is not Christian at its core or at its essence. It is not like that. You know, we are we stand for something. We've saved the world. America has saved the world at least two or three times. First, second world war, uh against terrorism, and all of these things that we've done, and these principles that we were founded on are the things that drive us on to do those things, to do the right things. And so we we must we must understand that as we flesh this out to see where we are and where we're going, you know, there should be a personal consideration in this. One is, yes, the nation is one thing. Number two, what the nation believes is another thing. But listen, you as an individual with a family, maybe you've got children, you've got grandchildren, great-grandchildren, whatever, if you're listening to this podcast, it is not the church's responsibility to see to it that your family, that your family believes the right things, practices the right things, practices respect, respect for family, respect for the nation, respect for the church, respect for individuals, these things. It is your responsibility as a leader of your family to ingrain these things in your children. It is your responsibility not to let your kids go out at night, go out at night and riot with a bunch of other hellions, you know, burn things down and so forth. You need to be responsible for that. You need to tell them no. And if you have to lock them in the house, that's fine. But you need to do that. This is where we are, this is where this is breaking down. We live in a country now that uh that is trying to define masculinity as something just short of femininity. That if you're a real man and you and you stand up for what's right and so forth, you're either a bully, you're abusive, or whatever. And uh that's that's total nonsense. Men, you are to be the heads of your family. You are to lead your family, you're to care for your family, you're to do all the things you can to protect them so that you raise decent human beings who can raise more decent human beings. But there's something wrong here, folks, as I close this out here in just a minute. There's something wrong here. Something has gone wrong. Something's gone wrong when you look at a nation who uh up until Roe vs. Wade was overturned, we were killing over a million children a year for the last since 1972, right? Over a million children a year, a hundred million. And that's not even counting the the other uh double that uh that would have been born from the children that were aborted. Uh, you can look at the deficits. The deficits we have now are simply because we've killed a third of our population since 1972. I got the numbers to prove it. And it is a it's a it's a tragedy. I personally, as a Bible teacher for 40 or 50 years, I lay a lot of that responsibility at the foot of the churches and the pastors. Pastors now are more interested in teaching morality than in teaching ecclesiastical compliance. In other words, when we're talking about spiritual things, they're talking more about, well, that's love folks, that's don't steal, that's don't kill, that's doing nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. But these pastors need to dig down deeper and to alarm the people. You can go to the book of Ezekiel 28 and some of the others, and you can look in there where God called Ezekiel and he said, You go up on that wall and you watch for the enemy, and what he was talking about was this the enemy has entered our place. The enemy has entered our place, folks. He's working through the politicians. Listen, did you think any of you are listening to that tell, would you think in the last political conventions at the Democrat convention that they would park an abortion truck at the convention? Wake up. We gotta wake up, y'all. We what we're doing is we are self-destructing. We're self-destructing because we will not admit the fact that we've got a deep spiritual problem. We will not admit the fact that in a lot of these states that the American people now, this is American people with American votes, are bringing people into office, okay, that are nothing but promoters of degrading debauchery. And they're mostly Democrats. They're not all Democrats, but most of them are. Like it or not, that's what they call themselves. I'm going by what they do and what they have promoted. They promote ungodly actions, they promote ungodly people, uh, uh ungodly things that are doing nothing but destroying this country. And I'll tell you, uh, we've got a long way to go here. And I'm going to address these things uh in very much detail. These first these first uh podcasts are preparatory, but we're gonna be looking at some very specific things in the future. So I say I say again that uh if you'll join us, these generally would be posted on a Monday, uh, every Monday. Uh and if you want to respond to me, you got questions or some things that need to be addressed uh in this podcast, write me at America1, the number one dot buzzsprout buzz.com, and and that email will come to me. And I'll be glad to address those things uh with you and try to answer some of those questions. This is what I say. What has happened to America? We're gonna try to find out, and we can do that together, but we're gonna have to find out, folks, are we not gonna have an America that we recognize? It's almost to that point now. It's almost not recognizable. If I were to bring my grandfather back here somehow today and stand him here and tell him some of the things that we've covered tonight, he would be flabbergasted. He would be overwhelmed and to a point to where he could not at all in his mind comprehend that we've moved this far. But that's what it is, and we're going to address it. I do appreciate if you listen to this today. I appreciate you listening. Let's celebrate uh Memorial Day for our soldiers and those who've given their lives to protect that principle. And I just pray that as we go forward here, that you will recognize these things. You will bring those things back to your family. You will try to strengthen your family, undergird them, support them, and raise especially those children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord so that when they have their own families, they can carry those same principles on. So until next time, I just pray that God will bless you in the very best way.