I am not a Catholic whatsoever and find many faults with the Catholic theology and doctrine. However, despite those differences, I know very well that to be a Catholic still means to be a Christian, and simply professing one’s faith does not mean that one possesses such faith.
 
That is the sort of faith that Joe Biden and other faux-Christian Democrats have professed for decades and even most recently, as the media has attempted to portray Joe Biden as a “devout Catholic” particularly before the election to try and take away some of the evangelical vote from Trump (even though evangelicals are not Catholic). That any of these killers of the young and old would consider themselves Christian is deeply insulting to anyone who actually is a Christian.
 
Despite that, they do, indeed, call themselves “Christians” or “Catholics” and have people within the Church backing them up (the devil attends church, after all). Actual Christians, however, recognize the fact that such people are not really Christian and do not stand for anything that is Christian.
 
Archbishop Jose Gomez, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is one such Christian who sees the evil morals that Biden holds, at least for the most part.
 
Gomez issued the following statement on Wednesday, saying that “working with [Occupier] Biden will be unique… as he is our first [occupier] in 60 years to profess the Catholic faith.”
 
“Mr. Biden’s piety and personal story, his moving witness to how his faith has brought him solace in times of darkness and tragedy, his longstanding commitment to the Gospel’s priority for the poor – all of this I find hopeful and inspiring.”
 
I’m far more certain it wasn’t his “faith” which brought him solace in times of darkness and tragedy, but remembering that he is obscenely wealthy and in a good position as part of the Washington Establishment to make far more money still. This, obviously, is where I wholeheartedly disagree with Gomez, as I find no actual faith within Joe Biden. Certainly, none of his policies and actions are indicative of someone who trusts the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. And commitment to the Gospel’s priority for the poor? The economy is shut down and he wants MORE of that, which will only hurt the vast majority of people and especially those who were already poor.
 
Saying on the campaign trail that he would help the poor or the working class or whatever is not actually doing any of those things, particularly if his policies will not help the poor but only serve to further enrich himself and his Wall Street buddies.
 
Biden serves only himself and those who can help him at any capacity. The poor are nothing to him except servants at his feet.
 
But at any rate, Gomez continued:
 
“[A]s pastors, the nation’s bishops are given the duty of proclaiming the Gospel in all its truth and power, in season and out of season, even when that teaching is inconvenient or when the Gospel’s truths run contrary to the directions of the wider society and culture. So, I must point out that our new [Occupier] has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender. Of deep concern is the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.”
 
“Our commitments on issues of human sexuality and the family, as with our commitments in every other area – such as abolishing the death penalty or seeking a health care system and economy that truly serves the human person – are guided by Christ’s great commandment to love and to stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters, especially the most vulnerable,” Gomez continued.
 
For the most part, this is good stuff. I disagree on the issue of the death penalty, as the death penalty is reserved for those whom deserve its harsh punishment, namely killers. Genesis 9:5-6 says: “Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man. ‘Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.’” And Exodus 21:12 says: “Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death.”
 
And regarding the health care system and economy, I agree only insofar as the Left has destroyed both and changed it enough to really only benefit the wealthy and not give the little people the ability to compete. Just look at Parler trying to compete with Twitter and getting utterly nuked off of the internet to see what I mean. Not to mention that the Wayfair ruling of 2018 (though a “conservative” majority was responsible for that ruling) is the primary reason as to why we don’t have a store to sell merchandise, as selling things online to people outside of our own state would require more financial and legal muscle than we have.
 
But with that small tangent out of the way, let’s get back to the overall grievances of actual Catholics against the faux-Christian Democrats like Joe Biden.
 
“For the nation’s bishops,” Gomez continued, “the continued injustice of abortion remains the ‘preeminent priority.’ Preeminent does not mean ‘only.’ We have deep concerns about many threats to human life and dignity in our society. But as Pope Francis teaches, we cannot stay silent when nearly a million unborn lives are being cast aside in our country year after year through abortion.”
 
This made a lot of faux-Christians mad, such as the Vatican and the Chicago Cardinal Blaise Cupich, though interestingly, most of their complaints were regarding procedure which seemingly Gomez broke with issuing that statement. That isn’t to say that the Chicago cardinals agree with Gomez, as they were pretty clearly in support of Biden and calling the statement “ill-considered”.
 
Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about this, and only said that Biden “attends church regularly” which is a non-answer. Attending church doesn’t mean someone is a Christian.
 
One of Biden’s first executive orders was about forcing educational institutions which receive government funding (that is to say, most of them) must allow biologically male athletes on the women’s teams and forces girls to share restrooms and locker rooms with boys if the boys wanted to use those facilities.
 
He has constantly reiterated his commitment to killing as many babies as he can with pro-abortion legislation and has told people he fully intends on lifting the Mexico City policy which bans NGOs which promote and provide abortion internationally, and intends on lifting the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funds from going to domestic abortion providers.
 
For that one issue alone, he is utterly disqualified from even calling himself a Christian. No Christian would EVER be in support of abortion because abortion is murder, no matter how you dress it up.
 
So Gomez is entirely correct to note that Biden would advance moral evils. Biden is morally evil himself and there is NO defending him, no matter what one tries to do. The Left views evil as good and good as evil and when in power, demonstrate it at its worst.
 
I pray that we will one day crush the evils of the Left and make abortion as morally detestable as the Holocaust, seeing as abortion is a holocaust in itself.
 
Proverbs 8:13
“The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.”

It’s rather easy to search this, but do you want to know what was the very first article that was published on this site? What the topic was about? The very first article was about a very similar subject to this one: Christian persecution, and it asked the question of whether or not there is Christian persecution in the United States.
 
To summarize that article, yes, there is Christian persecution in the U.S., has been for a while, and it very well might get worse in the future if we allow it.
 
However, it’s worth pointing out that there pretty much has always been Christian persecution for as long as the religion itself has existed (and technically before, since Christ suffered that kind of persecution, despite Him having been Jewish and following Jewish law). I’ve already talked about that, nearly two years to the date.
 
Christians will always be persecuted and we have been for a very long time. One example of this in the history of Christendom is the story of Thomas Becket, an English archbishop who was persecuted and ultimately murdered for defending the Church and placing it ahead of the Crown.
 
The 850th anniversary of his martyrdom was very recent, on December 29th, and President Trump made sure to commemorate this anniversary and that moment in history, adding the need to end Christian persecution much like what happened to Becket.
 
In a proclamation, President Trump wrote: “Today is the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket on December 29, 1170. Thomas Becket was a statesman, a scholar, a chancellor, a priest, an archbishop, and a lion of religious liberty.”
 
“Before the Magna Carta was drafted, before the right to free exercise of religion was enshrined as America’s first freedom in our glorious Constitution, Thomas gave his life so that, as he said, ‘the Church will attain liberty and peace.’”
 
The president went on to give a brief summary of Becket’s biography, noting that Becket was an archbishop who was killed by four knights of King Henry II in his church, Canterbury Cathedral, on December 29, 1170, after Becket famously resisted the king’s attempt at dwindling the power of the Church with the Constitutions of Clarendon.
 
Trump’s proclamation went on to say that when Becket refused to accept Henry’s declaration, “the furious King Henry II threatened to hold him in contempt of royal authority and questioned why this ‘poor and humble’ priest would dare defy him, Archbishop Becket responded ‘God is the supreme ruler, above Kings’ and ‘we ought to obey God rather than men.’”
 
“Because Thomas would not assent to rendering the church subservient to the state, he was forced to forfeit all his property and flee his own country. Years later, after the intervention of the Pope, Becket was allowed to return – and continued to resist the King’s oppressive interferences into the life of the church. Finally, the King had enough of Thomas Becket’s stalwart defense of religious faith and reportedly exclaimed in consternation: ‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’”
 
“The King’s knights responded and rode to Canterbury Cathedral to deliver Thomas Becket an ultimatum: give in to the King’s demands or die. Thomas’ reply echoes around the world and across the ages. His last words on this earth were these: ‘For the name of Jesus and the protection of the Church, I am ready to embrace death.’ Dressed in holy robes, Thomas was cut down where he stood inside the walls of his own church.”
 
“Thomas Becket’s martyrdom changed the course of history. It eventually brought about numerous constitutional limitations on the power of the state over the Church across the West. In England, Becket’s murder led to the Magna Carta’s declaration 45 years later that: ‘[T]he English church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired.’”
 
“When the Archbishop refused to allow the King to interfere in the affairs of the Church, Thomas Becket stood at the intersection of church and state. That stand, after centuries of state-sponsored religious oppression and religious wars throughout Europe, eventually led to the establishment of religious liberty in the New World. It is because of great men like Thomas Becket that the first American President George Washington could proclaim more than 600 years later that, in the United States, ‘All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship’ and that ‘it is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.’”
 
“On this day, we celebrate and revere Thomas Becket’s courageous stand for religious liberty and we reaffirm our call to end religious persecution worldwide.” Trump added that “the crimes against people of faith must stop, prisoners of conscience must be released, laws restricting freedom of religion and belief must be repealed, and the vulnerable, the defenseless, and the oppressed must be protected.”
 
The president concluded: “As long as America stands, we will always defend religious liberty. A society without religion cannot prosper. A nation without faith cannot endure – because justice, goodness, and peace cannot prevail without the grace of God.”
 
He is right, of course, in all of these regards. But given the nature of the Left, who are driven by Satanic beliefs, we will not see the end of Christian persecution any time soon.
 
Like I pointed out in that article from nearly two years ago, what the United States has done for those of us who are Christians is give us a moment of relief from that sort of persecution. Legally and constitutionally, we are free to exercise our religion. The problem comes when even those who are sworn to enforce the law and protect the constitution willingly decide not to do so. While there are a number of police officers who have defied their insane (often Democrat) governors and their tyrannical mandates, I have seen far too many videos online of police officers forcing Christians to disperse from public prayer and forcing churches to shut down.
 
The Chinese coronavirus gave people in power with already some dictatorial tendencies to freely and with impunity rule their states and cities with an iron fist. I’ve already detailed how Cuomo and de Blasio have targeted synagogues and churches by forcing them to shut down while allowing mosques to still operate, and there are stories of churches in California being fined and threatened with permanent closure for defying Newsom’s orders.
 
Christian persecution exists in different forms at different times. One thing I will say is that even this current persecution is not quite as bad as it used to be in the past, or as it is in other parts of the world like in China or some Middle Eastern countries. Christian leaders today aren’t being killed in cold blood by police for defying the lockdown orders. Thomas Becket was killed in cold blood by the king’s knights (the equivalent to today’s police) for defying a piece of legislation specifically because of its clause which subjected priests charged with a serious felony to being judged by a secular jury and being given a “secular punishment”.
 
I don’t know everything about how the criminal justice system used to work in 12th century England under the rule of King Henry II, and I have no idea what “secular punishment” means, but it’s clear that it was far easier for tyrants to exercise extreme measures against what they consider to be pests for things which are, from what I can see, considerably less of a big deal in comparison to impeding the religious liberty of assembly and worship of Christians in states across the country. I don’t want to trivialize or minimize what Christians had to go through back then, but I consider this present crisis to be worse than the Constitutions of Clarendon, seeing as it affects far more people than just priests who are charged with serious felonies (and who knows what constituted as a “serious felony” in those days?).
 
Even still, it’s not like Newsom or Cuomo can order cops to shoot and kill church leaders for their defiance. Even de Blasio has made numerous threats to permanently close down synagogues but has yet to actually go through with that, despite those synagogues’ persistent defiance.
 
So in many ways, this kind of Christian persecution is not nearly as bad as it was back then (again, church leaders aren’t being extrajudicially murdered for their defiance), so we should count our blessings, but any Christian persecution must be fought against anyway.
 
We will continue to see it, undoubtedly, and it could potentially get far worse. Again, the law and the Constitution protect us but only insofar as there are those who are willing to enforce the law and Constitution. Otherwise, law is just words written on paper and utterly worthless.
 
The country has the laws necessary for protecting and securing our borders – we just need to enforce those laws. The country has the laws necessary for protecting us against election fraud – we just need to enforce those laws. The country has the laws necessary for protecting religious freedom – we just need to enforce those laws.
 
The good news is that, either way, we are blessed in the Lord. If we are not persecuted, that’s great; if we are, that’s fine too. God will recompense us all our sorrows, our worries, our pain. All that we lose, God will multiply. If the enemy takes away our wealth, God will multiple that wealth. If the enemy takes away our families, God will multiply those families. If the enemy takes away our lives, God has guaranteed us eternal life through His Son, Jesus Christ.
 
The enemy has power, but that power is nothing compared to God.
 
Matthew 5:10
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

In Hellywood, it is extremely rare that we would see or hear of a major actor being unapologetically Christian and/or conservative. It isn’t because there aren’t any, but because the town is so owned by radical Leftists who have only grown more and more violent and vitriolic towards differing schools of thought that one could risk their careers being utterly ruined if they were to speak out against the things that they support or even not do things that the Left is supportive of.

As a result of such intolerance, Christians and conservatives usually opt to remain in silence about politics or religion, at least until they get so big they are basically uncancellable.
 
In some way, this is the level that Matthew McConaughey has reached, as he is such a major star that he could probably hit Leftist Hollywood like he did and not suffer greatly in his career moving forward.
 
During an interview with famous podcast host Joe Rogan, McConaughey recalled some times when fellow actors whom he has prayed with would sit in silence as opposed to clapping whenever the A-lister would thank God following an award win.
 
“I have had – and I won’t throw any people under the bus – but I have had moments where I was on stage receiving an award in front of my peers in Hollywood, and there were people in the crowd that I have prayed with before dinners many times, and when I thanked God, I saw some of those people go to clap, but then notice that ‘bad thing on my resume’ and then sit back on their hands.”
 
“I’ve seen people read the room and go, ‘whoa, that wouldn’t bode well for me in the future,’ if for getting a job or you’re getting votes or what have you. I have seen that; I’ve witnessed that… I don’t judge them for it, I just wish, you know – that it seems like a silly argument.”
 
It is not only a silly argument; it is a sad state of affairs that one’s very career in Hollywood could be in jeopardy if they were to CLAP when a fellow actor thanks God for his or her award win. But it is the reality in far-Leftist Hollywood, where the Left owns just about everything there. They own the studios which employ the stars. If a star is a conservative, they can get blacklisted for their beliefs. It happened to James Woods, after all, and perhaps even to some others as well.
 
Off the top of my head, here are the following actors whom either are conservative or whom I believe are conservative but have not really made any notable political statements that would indicate they would be a Leftist:
 
Chris Pratt, Matthew McConaughey (largely because of this on its own), Renee Zellweger, Vince Vaugh, Rob Schneider, Jon Lovitz, and Adam Driver (mostly because he keeps his private life more private and doesn’t really talk much about politics, as far as I have seen, which is usually a conservative trait in this hellish town).
 
Now, there might very well be others that I am missing, but this is the list of actors that I could think of that either are definitely conservative or strike me as fairly conservative (at least in relation to the rest of Commiewood).
 
Suffice to say, the list of far-Left radical actors is far bigger than this. And since they all have to work together in order to make a living, the more conservative actors have to keep a tight lid on what they say or do, and even that is beginning to not be a viable option, seeing as Chris Pratt was attacked for not attending a Biden fundraiser (though fairly liberal colleagues of his did come to his defense, including Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo, whom I know to be far-Left people).
 
So while I won’t excuse those actors and actresses’ hesitation in clapping whenever McConaughey thanks God when receiving an award, seeing as Jesus was perfectly clear when He said: “But whomever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven,” in Matthew 10:33, and doing so is extremely dangerous, I can at least explain why it is that they do this. In my opinion, it is better to forsake one’s acting career than one’s soul (and I do hope those people repent for their sins following such an action).
 
Now, one could make the argument that they are not necessarily denying Christ, only not clapping when someone else thanks God but still acknowledging Christ as their Lord and Savior, but it’s a bit of a moral mess, if you ask me. They demonstrate a feeling of embarrassment about acknowledging God, or at least, demonstrate prioritizing their career over acknowledging God. Even if it doesn’t go as far as to denying Christ, it does still present a problem for the soul of anyone who does this, in my opinion. It is better for all Christians to appease God, even if that leads to making enemies of men, than to appease Man, if that leads to making enemies with God.
 
At any rate, McConaughey did not end there. He also hit the “illiberal” Left as being “condescending and patronizing” to half of the world.
 
“One of the things that… some people in our industry, not all of them, but there’s some that go to the Left so far – as our friend Jordan Peterson [says] – that go to the illiberal Left side so far that it’s condescending and patronizing to 50% of the world that need the empathy that the liberals have.”
 
Frankly, that is just about the only thing I slightly disagree with him on. Not the part about the far Left being condescending and patronizing, he’s right on the money there. I’m talking about the part about liberals having empathy. Some of them might, but for the most part, liberals have taken the word “empathy” and forced it to mean something else entirely.
 
Empathy is the ability to identify with or understand another’s situation or feelings. It’s a feeling all humans can have, even liberals, but liberals have largely taken it to mean “tolerance and supportiveness of something that is anti-Christian or anti-conservative.”
 
We’re supposed to “feel empathy” for the transgender who is trying to rape a kid in a bathroom because we don’t know exactly how they feel. We’re supposed to feel “empathy” for the homosexual man because, despite the fact that the Bible is perfectly clear about it being a sin and that one who embraces sin and does not repent of it is not regenerate, we don’t “know how they feel” being so marginalized. We’re supposed to “feel empathy” for the illegal immigrant who killed an American girl while playing around with a gun he is not legally allowed to have. We’re supposed to “feel empathy” for the black thug who attempted to kill an officer with a car door or with a taser or even with a gun. All because each of these people is “marginalized”.
 
The Left has taken the word “empathy” to mean we have to be tolerant of their actions when their actions are as egregious as that. We can feel empathy for these people (not for the child rapist) without attempting to excuse their actions or even justifying them as somehow being correct. Isaiah 5:20 says: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who turn darkness to light and light to darkness, who replace bitter with sweet and sweet with bitter.”
 
You can feel pity for those who commit wrongdoing without justifying the wrongdoing. What liberals have done in the last few decades is justifying wrongdoing, but that’s not the definition of empathy whatsoever.
 
One might try and argue that I’m a bigot because I *correctly* pointed out that homosexuality is a sin, but that is not a true statement whatsoever because, unlike the Left, I actually DO care about these people and do not want them to sin any more. Much as I do not want the prostitute or the adulterer to sin no more, I want the homosexual to sin no more.

This is about one’s salvation. Jesus justifies the person, not the sin. He justifies the person in spite of the sin, only if the person repents of their sin. This is not a popular take anymore in part due to the fact that many “Christians” would try and push back on this, but there isn’t a single homosexual person today who is regenerate. They may be conservatives and Trump supporters, ardently so, which is great. They might even acknowledge God and Christ and call themselves a Christian, but the full embrace of sin does not justify anyone.
 
We are all sinners, that is true, but we repent of those sins, even of the ones we are not aware of. A homosexual fully embraces a sin which does not lead to one’s salvation. The liberal has always pushed back on this idea because he hates God (while claiming he does not believe in God) and wants to be perfectly free to sin as much as he wants. He twists the definition of words like “empathy” and “tolerance” to mean things that they never meant purely for political gain.
 
The liberal is considered “tolerant” even if he venomously hates those who do not share his political view point, which as we all know, is the exact opposite of tolerance. The liberal is considered “empathetic” if he supports transgender bathroom laws or open borders. They give us sob stories about “poor migrants just trying to achieve a better life for themselves and their young ones” when talking about an illegal immigrant who has illegally crossed the border dozens of times and is on trial for murder.
 
The idea that these people are “empathetic” is a complete lie. They support whatever is good for their own political side. They hate this country and illegals vote for Democrats, so they support illegal immigration. If illegals voted for Republicans, Democrats would make a wall at the southern border and make the illegals build it before kicking them out.
 
At any rate, with that little tangent out of the way, McConaughey also hit the Left for cancel culture, pointing out their arrogance and hypocrisy, and noted that his openly Christian faith did not hinder his career.
 
At one point, Rogan and McConaughey got into a bit of a discussion about science and religion, with the award-winning actor noting that he is a believer and also believes in “science”, and pointing out that there is no contradiction between the two which is perfectly correct.
 
God would not reveal in nature something which contradicts what He says in scripture, and vice versa. The complexity of our universe, as scientists have discovered the smallest of subatomic particles and the biggest of galaxies, denotes that the only possibility for things existing is intelligent design.
 
The idea that the universe is a cosmic accident or that it created itself defies logic, as for something to create itself would require that thing to both be and not be at the same time and in the same relationship, which is a logical impossibility. Nothing can’t do something. Ex nihilo, nihil fit, or out of nothing, nothing comes. So the universe could not have come into being by itself. If anything exists, there has to at the very least be a being which exists within itself and is eternal.
 
No scientific discovery that has ever been made argues against the existence of God. Not even the theory of evolution argues against the existence of God, as the existence of that first amoeba – the first living organism – could not have come from nothing, as that defies logic, and could not have created itself. We also know it was definitely not eternal, as there used to be no Earth a long time ago, and it initially was a massive rock of lava before it cooled down; an environment which no living organism can survive in.
 
The only reason people believe there is a divorce in religious thought and scientific thought is because of the enlightenment era belief that “the God theory” was no longer necessary to explain the origin of the universe, which itself is a theory which has not been proven (and can more easily be disproven).
 
Atheists took that and ran with it, saying “see? Scientists don’t think God exists, so clearly He doesn’t exist.” But religion and science are not at odds with one another, as again, God would not reveal something to be true in nature which contradicts what He reveals in scripture, or vice versa.
 
I am glad that McConaughey pointed this out in his exchange with Joe Rogan, who is himself more liberal.
 
I just wish more people in Hollywood had the guts to say these kinds of things and be more open with their Christian faith and conservative beliefs, even if it goes against the mainstream of Hollywood and even if it could potentially cost them some amount of employment.
 
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

This year has so far been rather challenging, to say the least, for a lot of people. What with the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, the strict and idiotic lockdowns that came as a result of it, the social and racial unrest that has led to wanton destruction of property and numerous deaths, all leading up to an election which if won by Trump will almost certainly lead the Left to… continue doing the things they’ve been doing so the threat of riots is not quite as effective as it otherwise would have been.
 
One silver lining in this dark cloud of a year, however, is what I believe to be the potential revival of Christian America. It is often at our lowest point that we seek the Lord for comfort, and while some might be angry at God for allowing these things to happen, many more will come to God in search of refuge from the evil one. Many more people will begin praying to God, or pray more often, that their current situation – both personal ones and larger, social ones – will turn around. As a guest pastor for a church I often watch online said, “If it’s not good, God’s not done.”
 
This has not been a good year for many of us, but since it’s not good, that means that God’s not done. Good things will come out of all of this. We may not see it now, or understand how it could possibly come to be, but even while we don’t see a way, God most assuredly does.
 
Undoubtedly, there will be plenty of people who won’t change no matter what. Who will refuse to acknowledge God’s existence (for the most part; they acknowledge Him when they have something to be angry with Him about) and who will foolishly even declare themselves an enemy of God (as I have met one such fellow on Twitter who has outright said that he would kill God if he met Him, as though he had any power at all to stand against the omnipotent One).
 
Such people will reject and even mock prayer. We often see it whenever a tragic event like a shooting or natural disaster occurs, there are those who offer prayers and those who mock those who offer prayers, declaring it to be a waste of time and effort which accomplishes absolutely nothing and that we must seek evidence-based solutions to the problem.
 
The thing about prayer is that it absolutely works and multiple studies show it is an evidence-based solution to problems.
 
For example, one study of older adults found that “the negative effects of financial problems on health were significantly reduced among those who regularly prayed for others,” according to National Review.
 
In other words, the people who regularly prayed, and prayed for other people, were noticeably less affected by the strains of financial problems than those who did not pray. When you turn your trust and faith over to God, you recognize that your job is not your income source, the economy is not your income source, but God is your income source.
 
And hallelujah for that because of the following passage:
 
Luke 11:9-13: “So I tell you: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? So if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”
 
One could say: “Well, Freddie, the context is clearly about the Holy Spirit, not about finances or other things.”
 
And one would be half right.
 
The context of the passage is clear: Jesus is talking about salvation and receiving the Holy Spirit. Indeed, whomever asks for forgiveness, they will be forgiven. The Lord is merciful to such people. But recognize that God doesn’t only give His children the Holy Spirit. In the rhetorical questions, Jesus talks about parents giving their children fish or eggs if they ask of it. While, obviously, human parents cannot give the Holy Spirit and Jesus needed an analogy that would be understandable to His audience, God also gives us many other blessings. The proof that God is happily willing to give other things to His children is in the fact that He DOES and we express our thanks to Him as a result.
 
Why else would we give thanks to God for, say, getting a new job or a promotion, or doing well on a test, or finding the love of someone’s life, if God only gave His children the Holy Spirit? When we ask God for things, a number of things can happen:
 

       1. God gives us exactly what we want. 

   2. God doesn’t give us what we want because what we want is not what we should have, or God is protecting us from something. 
 
     3. Or, God doesn’t give us what we want because He has something even better in store, giving us more than what we even asked for. 


God is delighted in giving us things that we ask for when those things help us achieve our God-given destiny. So when praying to God, He is even more delighted by the faith and trust that is placed on Him by us.
 
We pray not merely to ask for things like children asking for a new toy. We also pray for help, we pray for clarity, we pray for strength, for wisdom and understanding, as well as for others that they might get those things.
 
And studies have shown, like I mentioned earlier, that prayer is extremely helpful. One research study found that prayer is of great psychological benefit to those who perceive God to be a loving God. They also found that, on the flipside, it caused anxiety and distress for those who perceive God to be distant and uncaring.
 
Which is why it’s important to also know who God is. I remember seeing on social media a post that quoted someone about how many (too many, according to that person) Christians view God as all-loving, forgetting the wrathful side of God. The thing about that is, while God is wrathful, He is only wrathful to sinfulness which was not forgiven by Him; which was not asked to be forgiven.
 
God doesn’t express His wrath against His children. His children are forgiven! His wrath is reserved for those who are unrepentant and unsaved – those who deny Christ consciously or subconsciously.
 
In understanding who God is, putting one’s trust and faith in Him, and having been saved by His Son, prayer is a great reliever of stress and it helps people spiritually, psychologically, and often times, physically.
 
Like I said, there are a number of studies that show such things, and that National Review article I mentioned earlier talks about many of them.
 
I hope that in reading this, you will come to better understand (if you haven’t already) just how important prayer is. In terms of both helping people feel better, such as in a group of cancer patients who were instructed to pray focusing on thankfulness and concern for others and were found to have the least symptoms of depression, and in terms of better accomplishing tasks, such as a study which found that those who prayed for 10 minutes about a personal life issue (even those who are less religious) were better able to accomplish focus-driven tasks than those who were instructed to think about the personal issues or were distracted with a puzzle, prayer is a magnificent and efficient way to solve problems.
 
When ignorant people criticize prayer, they don’t realize that prayer actually has value and effectiveness which has been backed by empirical evidence.
 
Prayer is extremely helpful, not only for our own souls but also for life in general. I firmly believe that if we prayed more as a country, things would be a lot better than they are.
 
Mark 11:24
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

I have long held the belief that one cannot be a Christian and a Democrat at the same time and for very long. Either one is a Christian and momentarily a Democrat, before recognizing that Democrats are fundamentally anti-Christian and will leave the party, or one is a Democrat and calls himself a Christian, but holds Left-wing beliefs and values such as abortion, open borders, homosexuality, etc. and is not a true Christian whatsoever.
 
Seemingly, though perhaps not totally surprisingly, California megachurch pastor John MacArthur believes the same thing: one cannot be a Christian and support Leftist beliefs and people.
 
Grace Community Church pastor John MacArthur has been a recent example of a wartime Christian, choosing to fight an authoritarian dictatorship in Los Angeles which stands in clear violation of the Constitution by trying to force MacArthur’s church to remain closed and holding him and the church in contempt and violation of such unconstitutional orders.
 
The Satanic local government is trying to destroy the church’s ability to spread the gospel and MacArthur has actually decided to stand up to them for such a clear violation of his First Amendment rights.
 
Recently, MacArthur told the Falkirk Center that President Trump has recently reached out to the pastor and the two held a conversation on the “pillars of faith and their importance with regard to the upcoming election”, according to Fox News.
 
MacArthur explained: “We love God, we desire to honor Him, and upholding righteousness in a society is what a church is supposed to do. So I said, any real, true believer is going to be on your side in this election because it’s not just an individual, it’s an entire set of policies that Christians cannot, in any way, affirm.”
 
“We talked a little bit about why – certainly from a Biblical standpoint – Christians could not vote Democratic. Because there’s no way that a Christian can affirm the slaughter of babies, homosexual marriage, or any gross immorality. No way we could stand behind a candidate who’s affirming transgender behavior… these things aren’t even political for us… these things are Biblical.”
 
I could not agree more with MacArthur here (which is ironic, considering there are plenty of things that I disagree with him about, particularly on matters of eschatology). No true Christian believer could bring themselves to vote for Biden or any other radical Left Democrat.
 
What the Left believes runs contrary to what God teaches us and commands us to believe and follow. The Left believes in a government which replaces God, basically. Of course, it cannot actually do that, but their allegiance is to government, not to God, and they worship government, not God.
 
The Left believes in a woman’s “right” to kill her own baby, and they are moving closer and closer to arguing in favor of this even AFTER the baby has been born. Every Christian worth their salt knows that abortion is murder and murder is explicitly PROHIBITED by God, going all the way back to Cain. Murder is explicitly prohibited by the sixth commandment. To be at any capacity in support of abortion, at ANY stage in the pregnancy, is an affront to God and in support of plain, clear murder.
 
No Christian can, therefore, support abortion because to do so would be the effectual rejecting of God. Man is created in God’s image. Murder is the illegitimate elimination of said image (keep in mind the reason I say “illegitimate” here is because the death penalty is a legitimate elimination of a person, reserved only for the worst kind of criminal).
 
Homosexuality, transgenderism, and other sexual sins (including straight sex when done outside of marriage) are an abomination to the Lord and are wrong. God created Man and Woman to be together. Man and Man together is an affront to God, as is Woman and Woman. And, of course, this means that there is no “third” option for one’s own gender, no matter what the Satanist heathens might try and argue.
 
When a political party stands in such direct contradiction to the teachings of the Bible, how can anyone who proclaims to follow the teachings of the Bible then go on to vote for such a party?
 
Now, one might try and argue that Trump isn’t much better, though they can only argue in terms of personality, not in terms of systems of belief or policy. The ONLY argument Never Trumpers have nowadays is that he is supposedly a “deeply” flawed individual and has severe personal problems.
 
They claim that Trump is not exactly a good representative of Christ due to his Twitter fights and other supposed character flaws. Okay, but then, are we Christians supposed to wait for someone with a perfect personality, no issues or flaws whatsoever, if we are to vote for someone? Doing so would require us to wait for Christ Himself to run for POTUS, a position FAR beneath Him.
 
What, then, shall we do without Christ literally running Himself? Abstain from voting and wait until Christ runs? Vote for a party which clearly does not represent our beliefs?
 
Which is another thing right there: what sense does it make to vote for a party which very clearly does not represent your beliefs over a party or candidate which does?
 
Some people might try and argue that the Bible doesn’t say that Christians are Republicans or Democrats, which is obvious considering the two parties were created roughly TWO MILLENNIA after Christ, but again, I ask, what sense does it make to vote for a party which does not represent your beliefs over a party which does?
 
That’s not to say that the GOP is a perfect representative or even that all or even most in the party are such representatives of Christian values (GOP establishment types come to mind as inherently non-representative of Christian values). However, no one can honestly tell me that the Democrat Party better represents Christian values than the Republican Party.
 
“Oh, well, they support and believe in charity!” the ignoramus will argue. No, they don’t. Their celebrities will virtue signal because being depicted as charitable is good for PR. Their politicians will often not donate a lot of their income to charity (and considering Trump donates 100% of his Presidential income to charity, he’s hard to beat on that front) and argue that charity is communism and vice versa, when it is not.
 
Charity is the willful giving of your things to another who needs it more. Communism is the state forcing you to give up your things (like land, other possessions, and rights) supposedly for “the greater, communal good”, which at the end of the day is simply the government.
 
So, if the Democrat Party stands in such clear contradiction to the values taught to us by Christ, what reason does any true believer have to vote for a Democrat over a Republican (provided the Republican is a better representative of Christian beliefs)?
 
“Oh, but God is loving and Trump is hateful, just look at the wall he’s trying to build to separate us with our fellow humans south of the border,” the ignoramus will continue. Yes, God is loving, but He is also just. When one breaks the law, that person must be punished. Illegal immigrants break the law; they must be punished and their actions deterred. God doesn’t let people get away with breaking the law, even Man’s law, provided Man’s laws do not contradict God’s Law.
 
Also, Trump is not hateful. That he wants to prioritize American citizens is not an act of hate. That he wants to see justice for people who have been negatively affected by illegals – people who shouldn’t even be here and have NO RIGHT to be here – is not a sign of hatred from Trump. Does Trump love people like God does? No, because God’s love is agape love, meaning “the highest form of love and charity”, which is a form of love inaccessible to mankind, at least for one another. We have philia love, brotherly love, and filikos love, or neighborly love, but not agape love because that is a love relationship between God and man.
 
So Trump fundamentally cannot love people like God does, but his actions, particularly in his decision to run for President of the United States when he is just about the last person who needed to do that, shows that he loves America and Americans.
 
He doesn’t hate the immigrants that obey the law (for crying out loud, HE’S MARRIED TO AN IMMIGRANT) and I doubt he outright hates the illegals who come here, just hates that they break the law to come here and hates the criminal actions that they typically commit.
 
For anyone to argue that Trump, even despite his personal flaws (which he obviously has, considering he’s human, but I believe they have been unfairly accentuated by the media), is in any way a worse representative for those with Christian beliefs than Joe Biden or anyone on the Left is ridiculous and a complete lie.
 
God doesn’t require that we be perfect, and that includes Trump. I’ve made this point in the past, but it bears repeating: No one in the Bible, apart from God and Jesus (who are the same essential being in different persons), is perfect.
 
I’ve heard people wishing that we had a leader like David, but they forget that David committed adultery and basically murder by sending his loyal soldier to die in battle so he could screw his wife.
 
God uses imperfect people for His plan. Abraham, the father of the Jewish faith, was impatient and committed adultery before he was given his promised son. Moses killed an Egyptian guard and was running from the law for forty years before his encounter with God. Jacob was a liar and a ritualistic sinner before he was given the name Israel by God Himself (and was given that name after he literally wrestled with God). Sampson succumbed to sexual immorality but he was still redeemed by God in the end.
 
Trump has flaws, of course, but for any Christian to believe such flaws disqualify him from being president or earning our vote is ludicrous. For a Christian to support Biden or abstain from voting (which only helps Biden and the Democrats) is to run contrary to his or her own professed belief.
 
Like John MacArthur said, any real, true believer and follower of Christ will see the two options presented to us this electoral season and come to the conclusion that, despite whatever flaws Trump has, Joe Biden represents and carries with him beliefs that not only run contrary to Christianity, but are outright damaging to it (and no, it doesn’t matter one bit that he is a self-professed Catholic. Profession of faith is not the same as possession of faith).
 
Keep in mind, MacArthur is currently fighting DEMOCRATS who say that he is not allowed to open his church and share the gospel with his congregation and are actively seeking to punish him for wanting to do so. Clearly, given the chance, Democrats will leap at the opportunity to destroy our constitutionally protected rights of freedom of religion.
 
Once last time, I ask: what sense does it make for any true Christian to vote for a party which does not represent his or her Christian values and actively works to undermine them?
 
Ephesians 6:12
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

To paraphrase Tucker Carlson, you have to be extremely stupid to work at CNN because you will never stray from the topic that is handed to you. You never have to think on your own, you just have to repeat what is on the teleprompter or your notes, and when not speaking, mindlessly nod at whatever someone else said even if what someone said is monumentally stupid, incoherent, illogical or even extremely bigoted.
 
The dumbest man on news, working alongside Fredo Cuomo, let some of his idiocy shown recently when talking about the Founding Fathers and, more specifically, the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
In a discussion with the man who has as many IQ points as he does brothers, Don Lemon criticized the Founding Fathers, “So why are we deifying the founders of this country, many of whom owned slaves, and in the Constitution – the original one – they didn’t want, they put slavery in there, that slavery should be abolished because it was the way the king wanted. And then the Congress said, ‘No way!’”
 
The man’s stupidity knows no bounds, as he unwittingly praised the Founders whom he is trying to crap all over (and I’ll get to that in a brief moment).
 
Yes, many of them owned slaves because that was a violent and disturbing time in history when people owned other people. This has been the history of humanity for millennia and the idea that people shouldn’t own others is relatively new. White people used to own black people. Black people also used to own black people, both in Africa, with the tribes that fought and enslaved other tribes, and in the States, with black people legally owning other black people. Native Americans owned other Native Americans, at least, the ones that chose to enslave the tribes they conquered. Often times, tribes like the Comanche would simply choose to slaughter the tribes they defeated.
 
The Jews used to be slaves in Egypt and Babylon. Romans had slaves. Europeans would enslave one another when possible, particularly in Eastern Europe.
 
Slavery has been a part of humanity’s history for ages and is not something that has strictly applied to black people (especially considering there were black people back then who were either never slaves or outright owned other people). And let’s not ignore the fact that slavery is still a thing in this day and age, specifically in the Middle East.
 
Now, does this justify the horror that is slavery? Of course not. But it does put necessary context in a discussion that the Left chooses to not put any into just to get a chance at delegitimizing the United States. These people want Americans to believe that slavery was strictly an American thing, created by the U.S. and every other country in the history of the world was more “civilized” and “progressive” while the U.S. was anything but.
 
Ironically, Lemon PRAISED the Founders by noting that they wanted to abolish slavery in the first iteration of the Constitution. If these people were senseless barbarians who saw no issue with owning people, why would they try to put the abolishment of slavery into the original Constitution? Never mind why it was not actually put into it (the South wanted to keep their slaves, the North didn’t want that, but prioritized keeping the Union together and kicked the can of slavery down the road, though made provisions for the eventual abolishment of slavery), the fact that they DID WANT TO put it in there shows that they were not demons who wanted perpetual slavery.
 
At any rate, the dumbest man on news went on to further show why he has earned the moniker from President Trump by saying: “Here’s the thing: Jesus Christ – if that’s who you believe in, Jesus Christ – admittedly was not perfect when he was here on this earth.”
 
On who’s admission, Don? Yours? Because it’s certainly not to Jesus’ own admission or God’s own admission or any of the human authors of the Bible’s admission.
 
Jesus Christ was perfect, otherwise He would not have been an adequate sacrifice for the sins of those whom God has called. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says: “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
 
Hebrews 7:25-26 says: “Therefore He is able to save completely those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest truly befits us – One who is holy, innocent, undefiled, set apart from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.”
 
John 7:17-18 says: “If anyone desires to do His will, he will know whether My teaching is from God or whether I speak on My own. He who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but He who seeks the glory of the One who sent Him is a man of truth; in Him there is no falsehood.”
 
Luke 1:35 says: “The angel answered and said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.’”
 
The One who is holy cannot be imperfect. Not that I expect the dumbest man on news to understand this. Furthermore, it’s not even about how dumb or smart he is (though he is definitely not the latter). Intelligence matching that of Albert Einstein is not required in order to understand that Jesus Christ is perfect, and was perfect while He was walking on the Earth. What is required is faith and at least a basic level of understanding of the Christian tenets. It is made abundantly clear, day in and day out, fake news story after fake news story, that Don Lemon possesses neither of those requirements.
 
Don Lemon is not a Christian, so it’s not exactly a surprise that he would know nothing of the Lord. He has no excuse, of course, given the prevalence of evidence of God’s existence, Christ’s divinity and holiness, and availability of the Bible, both in book form and via the internet, but still not surprising that he would not know who the Lord is, even to this level.
 
The guy is a charlatan and is employed by the Charlatan News Network. That Chris Cuomo, who is supposedly Catholic, mindlessly nodded along (like I said was a requirement for working for CNN if you weren’t the one speaking), is also not surprising because he is every bit the charlatan that Don Lemon is, that his genocidal governor brother is, that Nancy Pelosi is, etc. They are not true Christians in the least.
 
Don Lemon is like the sort of person spoken of in 1 John, specifically chapter 2, verses 22 and 23: “And who is a liar? Anyone who says that Jesus is not the Christ. Anyone who denies the Father and the Son is an antichrist. Anyone who denies the Son doesn’t have the Father, either. But anyone who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.”
 
Denying the perfection of Christ is denying the holiness of Christ, as the two are inseparable. Denying the holiness of Christ is denying the deity of Christ. Denying the deity of Christ is denying the deity of God. Denying the Son is denying the Father. That is precisely what Don Lemon (and Fredo) is doing, of which he should repent immediately, knowing that Jesus said, in Matthew 10:33: “But whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”
 
Denying the Son is not the path to salvation; in fact, it’s literally going the opposite direction. Do I think Don Lemon is seeking to be saved? No, otherwise, he likely would have been, because if he was seeking to be saved, he would have been called to the Lord. But regardless of whether or not Lemon is seeking to be saved, or believes he must be saved from the punishment of his sins, what he did was deny the Son, which is to deny the Father.
 
Claiming Jesus was not perfect is extremely ignorant and shows the state of his soul. It also shows the state of Fredo’s soul (and the emptiness of his head) that he mindlessly nodded along as Lemon publicly rejected Christ on live TV.
 
I pray that these two repent of their abhorrent sin and come to the Lord in repentance and submission.
 
John 3:16
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

This is something I have said before, but it bears repeating: the Left HATES Christians, hates Christianity, hates Jesus and hates anyone who follows Him, believing such people to be nothing but foolish and naïve science deniers who believe in fairy tales. They loathe our worship of the Lord and view it with nothing but contempt and mockery.
 
That is the precise response some Leftists in the mainstream media had to President Trump appointing Vice President Mike Pence to lead the Coronavirus Task Force and to Vice President Pence praying alongside the CTF in a photo (above).
 
The New Yorker, after President Trump appointed VP Pence to lead the Coronavirus Task Force, shared a cartoon of the Vice President with the caption: “We remind everyone that the first defense against this outbreak is vigorous handwashing and repentance.”
 
Days later, a contributing writer for The NYT Magazine tweeted out the picture of Pence and the CTF praying, stating: “Mike Pence and his coronavirus emergency team praying for a solution. We are so screwed.”
 
Do you see how little these heathens think of Christians and those who pray to God? Funny how they would never dare say the same if they saw a picture of Muslims praying to Allah about the same thing. They would applaud their commitment to their religious beliefs, but when Christians pray to the Lord, we are mocked. Not that this comes as any surprise.
 
These godless people do not understand the power of prayer. They outright mock it whenever a mass shooting occurs (which is nowhere near as often as they would want us to believe) and people offer prayers for those affected. They are devoid of any sense of reverence to God in their unbelief, somehow believing that everything came to be out of pure chance, and have the nerve to claim that we are the illogical ones for believing in God.
 
Verses such as Philippians 4:6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God,” and Mark 11:24: “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours,” and others that highlight the power of God through prayer are utterly meaningless to these people.
 
They legitimately believe that we came from MONKEYS despite all of the massive holes in Darwin’s theory and even its origin, and yet, do not believe in the God of the Universe.
 
It’s worth pointing out that, obviously, prayer is not the only thing the vice president and the CTF are doing. Unlike what some Leftists might sarcastically suggest, they are not “praying the virus away”, or at least, that’s not all they are doing. They are praying to the Lord, who has total and absolute control over everything that happens, that He give them strength in dealing with this, wisdom in how to tackle it, and success in minimizing the influence and effect of the virus so that as many people may survive it and so that this can be put behind us.
 
The seventh question of the Westminster Confession of Faith asks “what are the decrees of God?” The answer is: “The decrees of God are, His eternal purpose, according to the counsel of His will, whereby for His own glory, He hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.” This means that God has, for His eternal purpose and His own glory, preordained whatever comes to pass, such as a coronavirus outbreak. It wouldn’t happen if God did not ordain for it to happen. That is not the same as saying God caused it or it’s His fault, because God is the Healer, whereas Satan is the destroyer. However, He has allowed it and the Vice President, as well as the others in that picture, understanding the power of the Lord, are praying that He give them the tools to deal with it and that He would allow for this virus to be defeated.
 
And while I know that the Westminster Confession of Faith is a Presbyterian document, I don’t think too many Christians would disagree with the notion that God is absolutely in control of everything that happens, because if even one molecule in this universe were not under the complete and utter control of God, He would cease to be God.
 
Unfortunately, this is where many on the Left and general unbelievers would retort with “if God is so good then why does He allow these things to happen” which can be difficult sometimes to explain. I couldn’t imagine trying to explain to someone who has suffered throughout their life why God, who is so good, or is regarded by Christians as being so good, would allow for such suffering to happen. The best I could imagine myself doing would be pointing out the story of Joseph, how he was betrayed by his brothers, hated by them, thrown into a pit, be rescued by them only to be then sold into slavery, be falsely accused of trying to have sexual intercourse with his master’s wife and be thrown into prison for years and how if anyone had any “right” to be angry at God, it was him, and yet, he never abandoned his faith in God. Eventually, as we all know, through the path that he took, despite how rocky it was, Joseph became the second-leading ruler of Egypt only behind Pharaoh, and saved millions of lives as a result of that appointment.
 
The point of that is to say that, even when things are at their bleakest and we wonder where God is, we have to remember that God is there, working behind the scenes, for our good. Some may look at what’s happening with the coronavirus and mock Pence and the others for praying to a God who would allow this to happen, but the VP and other fellow Christians know the goodness and the love of God, know who He is and that He wouldn’t allow for this to happen for no reason. Whether that reason be an individual one where someone with the virus or someone who has family with the virus turns to the Lord and repents of their sins, or a larger reason, such as forcing companies to understand the perils of being so dependent on a communist nation that can’t do jack to protect itself and turn away from it to keep their businesses from being hurt like that in the future. I mean, 80% of our medicine comes from China! Maybe this will force some businesses to reevaluate their desire to work with the Chinese and focus on other countries (if not the U.S.).
 
People who do not know the Lord look at us Christians in contempt and think of us as monkeys who believe in fairy tales. They think prayer, despite the power that it has, is completely worthless. But God, as previously stated, is the one in control. It is through Him that anything at all happens. And God is delighted when His children pray to Him, asking for salvation of their soul or simply to be strong in the face of trouble.
 
We pray, not because we are without hope, but because we are full of hope, knowing the goodness of God. We humble ourselves before Him, bowing our heads to Him in prayer. The simple looks at these actions and thinks little of them, while God looks at them and is delighted.
 
Do I know what will happen with this coronavirus? No. I am not God, after all. However, we know from Romans 8:28 that “God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.” Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, we will obey the Lord and trust that He will deliver us from earthly perils, and that even if He doesn’t, we will not be shaken in our faith.
 
Those three were threatened to be thrown into a blazing fire so hot that it killed the Babylonian guards that were trying to put them in there. The only thing that burned upon being thrown into the fire was the rope that bound them together, with Nebuchadnezzar questioning why there were four people in the cauldron and not three, with the extra person looking like one who was like “the Son of God”.
 
We trust in the Lord and His ways, knowing that they are greater than ours, and thus, we pray to Him both in times of great need and of great abundance; in times of suffering and times of joy. I am so glad that Vice President Pence is a man of faith, one who knows God and His goodness, and leads his CTF team in prayer while searching for ways to mitigate the problem.
 
God is good; remember that.
 
Psalm 34:17
“When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.”

As a Christian, I want to always share the good news - the Gospel of Jesus Christ - so I try to speak about the goodness of God every time I get a chance. Because no matter what mistakes we made in our lives, we know that Christ paid for the sins of those who trust Him. So I tend to try to share the good news with anyone – any sinner – who’s willing to listen.

But also as a Christian I have high expectations of those who speak from a pulpit – you don’t have to be perfect, but you need to understand Scripture. And you need to be passionate about Jesus and about people – showing the same love and compassion towards sinners that Jesus showed. So what I definitely don’t want to see is a “Church” in which they allow in their pulpit anyone who clearly has no understanding of the Word of God – someone like Mayor Pete who hates babies and is in favor of killing them if their moms don’t want them.

This past Sunday, Democrat presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg spoke at the First Baptist Church in James Island, South Carolina, and decided to quote the Bible to get his political message across. The problem is, while using the Bible, he clearly misunderstood the very verse he used. I’ll explain that in just a moment, but let me share with you what he actually said:

“My point in standing before you is not to claim that I understand more than I do, but rather to promise – as the Scripture says – not to lean on my own understanding too much, but to do a lot of listening along the way”. And he added “Not to say that I get it, but to promise to always surround myself with people who will let me know when I don't.”

Now, all of this sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Mayor Pete has this ability to sound so reasonable all the time. After all, there’s nothing wrong with surrounding yourself with people who will let you know what you don’t know. That makes perfect sense. Except he’s citing a Bible verse to appeal to Christians as if the Bible was the one directing Buttigieg to listen to other people when he doesn’t know - and this is where he's wrong. The problem is that that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible actually warns us about false prophets, for example, and to be careful about who we surround ourselves with. We obviously don’t want to listen to murderers, do we? Or sexual predators.  What good thing could we possibly learn from them?

What Mayor Pete said comes from Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding”.

If Buttigieg knew anything about the Bible he’d know that a) it’s the inerrant Word of God and b) it must be interpreted by the Bible itself. As many Theologians would point out, “you have to interpret the Bible by the Bible”. This means you don’t just read one verse and interpret it any way you want, which is what Buttigieg mostly does, but rather you need to continue the reading of Scriptures and understand that particular verse by other verses in the Bible such that you will be consistent and correct in your interpretation.

But in this particular case, the verse is so clear that it doesn’t require reading any additional Bible verse to understand its meaning.

You see, what God asks from us in that verse is that a) we trust Him and b) we do not lean on our own understanding. That even when we see bad things happening, we need to trust God's plan.

As you can see, God is not telling us to go listen to other people to understand better, but rather to trust Him. That's the mandate. How do you trust Him? By listening to Him. And we listen to Him by reading all of the Bible and trust what He says – when you get to know God you know He’s the only one you can truly trust. He told Abraham that he would have a son and He would give his offspring a land “flowing with milk and honey”. And He did. I wonder if Mayor Pete knows that. God said that if we walk in all His statutes, He would cause everything we touch to prosper. I wonder if Mayor Pete knows that. God also said that He would never leave us nor forsake us. I wonder if Mayor Pete knows that. Jesus healed everybody who asked Him to heal them – He never denied healing to anyone who came to Him. I wonder if Mayor Pete knows that.

Mayor Pete is not supposed to go listen to other people, though that’s not a bad thing to do, but rather listen to GOD. Listening to God by the reading of Scriptures is the BEST way to lead your life. If Buttigieg did read the Bible regularly, he’d be a much better politician (and definitely would not be a Democrat). He would also do his best to stop sinning, knowing he isn't perfect and he will sin by his very nature, but will try to mitigate that sin. But because we know he’s leading a life that God calls “an abomination” (Bible verses against homosexuality include Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13; Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9 and many more), we can tell he doesn’t understand God at all. And how could he, when it's clear he doesn't understand this simple Bible verse?

For this reason, Mayor Pete should never be allowed to speak from a pulpit. No matter what the message is. He should attend service and try to understand who God is and who he is, as a sinner. And furthermore, he would know that there’s a way to Heaven that is inclusive but also unique and does not involve doing good deeds to try to convince God on judgement day that you weren’t all that bad while here on Earth. The Bible is clear, in Galatians 3:11 "the righteous shall live by Faith". We're saved by faith and by faith alone.

The sad part is that Mayor Pete and, likely, the leaders of the church where he “preached” do not understand the good news. You see, if it wasn’t for the bad news there wouldn’t be any good news. The bad news is that we’re all sinners. The good news is that God provided a way for us sinners to ensure eternal life. And that way is Jesus Christ exclusively. There is no other way. And when you understand the work of redemption that Jesus did 2,000 years ago – the fact that He was sinless, the fact that He was tortured by the Romans and crucified FOR OUR SINS, descended into Hell and was raised from the dead, then understanding what He did for you causes you to want to know everything about Jesus. Like when you follow an athlete or a singer, you want to know everything about them, right? Followers of Christ want to know everything about Him. And out of gratitude for what He did for us, we want to obey Him in all His commandments. But it all starts with understanding God.

Did Jesus die for everybody? No. He died only for those who trust Him, like John 3:16 says: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life”. "Whoever believes in Him" excludes those who don't. God tells us that Jesus died for the sins of those who trust Him. Those who don’t trust Him are going to end up in Hell. There is one condition for salvation and that’s that you trust Jesus. When you do, you get ALL the blessings God promises. ALL of them.

I pray that Mayor Pete one day sees the light and truly gives his life to Jesus.
  
1 Kings 2:3
“keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn .“

This is not a sports website or a basketball website by any stretch of the imagination. What happens in the world of sports or the NBA is largely irrelevant to this website unless it has something to do with immoral business dealings by the league with authoritarian communists or when a basketball player asserts that there is vast racism in this country when there largely is none. Some topics relating to sports are relevant to this website, but many are not.
 
But it should come as no surprise to long-time readers of this website that I, personally, am a big basketball fan and have been for years. I stay in tune with many of the things happening in the NBA from trades, to free agent signings, to individual player stats to win columns, etc. Basketball, though not close to the level of politics and theology, is a big passion of mine. So hearing the news of the tragic death of Kobe Bryant, one of the greatest players to have ever set foot on the basketball court, has honestly both shocked me and left me in mourning, at least to some extent.
 
Of course, I never met the guy or knew him personally and he certainly never knew I existed, but that does not really matter. The whole basketball world, from the fans to the players to the coaches and those in the executive offices and lower on the corporate ladder, is in mourning over this extremely unexpected and horrific event.
 
The fact that it was not only him, but also his 13-year-old daughter and 7 other people apart from them (9 total, with another 13-year-old apart from Kobe’s daughter, at least according to TMZ) also perished in this incident makes it all the worse because of the potential of those lives. Kobe’s playing career ended in 2016, but he was not done with the game. Gianna, Kobe’s daughter, had dreams of continuing her father’s legacy and enter the WNBA, likely dominate in that league as her father did for so many years in the NBA.
 
All loss of life is tragic, particularly when it comes in this manner. No one in Kobe’s family could’ve possibly prepared, even a little, for last Sunday. But I hope that in this grief and time of mourning, the Bryant family, as well as the families of the people who likewise perished aboard that helicopter, come closer to God and that He would bring them closer to Him, so that they might seek His comfort and, if not quite yet saved, that they might be saved.
 
As far as Kobe and Gianna go, I would like to believe that they are playing for Heaven’s basketball team now. The reason I say this is because of the various sources saying that the guy, and his family, were/are all Catholic.
 
Now, if you are indeed a long-time reader of mine, you know my irks with the Catholic Church and the doctrines they teach. They emphasize a relationship with the Church as opposed to Christ and have many other doctrinal problems, let alone political and social problems that have plagued the Church for centuries (Dictatus Papae, anyone?). However, that does not mean that the entirety of the body of that church is cast off from God’s sight and presence. For all the problems within the Catholic Church (problems that are not exclusive to the Church), there are, indeed, some among the Church who are saved, provided they put their salvation on Christ and not the Church.
 
Kobe Bryant and his family, I believe, are among those who have been saved. Why do I say this? Well, while Kobe has been raised Catholic (which alone does not necessarily save someone), after the rape allegations were made against him, he sought the counsel of a priest who advised him to let God control that situation. Kobe said of that meeting with the priest that “that was the turning point”, supposedly in reference to him trusting his life to the Lord.
 
One could also assume that his faith had influence over his family as well, possibly giving Gianna, Kobe’s oldest daughter, the opportunity to trust the Lord with her life as well. Now, I will say that I do not know for certain whether this is the case, but for my own sake, without having substantial evidence to convince me in one way or another, I believe Gianna did also make it into Heaven alongside her father (and I hope whomever else in that crash that perished also received the Lord Jesus into their hearts and repented of their sins before this).
 
It is this faith that saves us and this faith that tells us the meaning of life. I’ve already mentioned this to some extent in a previous article relating to British youth being “the least happy generation”, but the answer to the meaning of life can be found in the shorter catechisms of the Westminster Confession of faith, particularly in the first one (though I will mention all the ones I consider to be relevant for this).
 
The first shorter catechism found in the Westminster Confession of Faith asks the question: “What is the chief end of man?” The answer to this question is: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”
 
Again, I’ve already mentioned this once, but to reiterate: this right here is the meaning of life. We are created in God’s image so that we may glorify and enjoy Him forever. This is how every Christian should try to live: doing everything for the glory of the Lord.
 
The seventh shorter catechism asks the question: “What are the decrees of God?” The answer reads: “The decrees of God are, his eternal purpose, according to the counsel of his will, whereby, for his own glory, he has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.”
 
With this, we know that God is in control and that nothing is a surprise to Him. He already knew and foreordained everything had happens, knowing the day and the hour in which we all pass.
 
The 20th shorter catechism asks the question: “Did God leave all mankind to perish in the state of sin and misery?” The answer reads: “God having, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer.”
 
God, in all of His wonderful love and grace, has given to us a Savior and Redeemer so that we would not have to suffer His wrath and perish due to our sin.
 
The Lord has put purpose into our lives and that purpose is to glorify Him. This is not a purpose that is exclusive to those who believe (though belief in God is a prerequisite, otherwise one would not glorify a being that they do not believe exists) but a purpose given to each and every single one of us. We are to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
 
God also already knows whether or not this is something we will strive for and, not only knows it, but has preordained it. He has elected some of us to believe and be saved by the works of His Son Jesus at the cross.
 
And in all of His ever-lasting love for us, who do not deserve such love and grace, God has given us a path to salvation through His Son Jesus. And while the Westminster Confession of Faith is a Protestant document, many of the doctrines it teaches are fairly universal. God loves us. He has given us a purpose to glorify Him, doing everything in His name and for His glory, and ultimately, we shall enjoy Him forever. This is not merely a Protestant thing – it is a Christian thing.
 
This, I hope, is how Kobe lived his life and I hope he is, indeed, enjoying God forever, having been saved by the Lord Jesus.
 
I also hope this is how the other passengers lived their lives, or at least tried to, and can all now enjoy the Lord in Heaven.
 
John 4:24
“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

It is always unfortunate to see when supposedly Christian organizations, be it Chick-fil-A or “Christianity Today” switch allegiances in support of Satan, but that is basically what occurred recently when the editor-in-chief attacked Trump’s morals and character and demanded that Trump be removed from office because of what LYING LEFTISTS have alleged about him.
 
Mark Galli writes: “The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”
 
Do you want to know what else is profoundly immoral? Lying to people and bearing false witness.
 
Trump did NOT attempt to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to “harass” and “discredit” one of his political opponents. He asked Zelensky about an investigation Ukraine previously had of Hunter Biden and the company he worked for, Burisma, because the guy was making $50k a month in a job he did not qualify for and even ADMITS wouldn’t have gotten without his dad being Vice President of the United States. He asked about an investigation into Burisma that ended because Joe Biden bragged about WITHHOLDING AID TO UKRAINE IF THEY DIDN’T FIRE THE PROSECUTOR INVESTIGATING HUNTER.
 
He asked about the very real possibility of THE PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATION abusing power to protect the former VP’s son. He asked about Crowdstrike and their involvement with Ukraine officials in an effort to further investigate foreign involvement in the 2016 presidential election.
 
To say that he attempted to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit an opponent is not only a massive lie, but defends the false witnesses during the impeachment hearing. HOW IS THAT MORAL?!
 
The answer is that it isn’t and this guy should know better, but he doesn’t.
 
Further, he asserts that Trump “has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals,” as though that speaks poorly of him. Do you want to know who has been convicted of crimes (or will be on trial for it)? Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign advisor for a few months before being fired, likely because Trump found out about his ties to Ukraine and his illegal business dealings; Michael Flynn, who was arrested and charged with lying to the FBI, even though Comey admitted he didn’t think he lied and simply did not remember things correctly, and even though the FBI held an interrogation of him under false pretenses where he didn’t have a lawyer because he didn’t think what he was going to say would be used against him in a court of law; Roger Stone, who was arrested and charged with procedural crimes (same as Flynn, though with more charges) and Michael Cohen, who violated campaign finance laws himself and lied about it.
 
NONE OF THESE DAMAGE TRUMP’S CHARACTER. They were all largely arrested, persecuted and subsequently prosecuted (some, not all) because of a rabid Left wanting to hurt anyone who was close to Trump. People close to Trump being sent to jail doesn’t make Trump a bad guy, otherwise we would have to claim that JESUS was a bad guy because John the Baptist, the Apostle Peter, and virtually every Christian who professed the faith were arrested and imprisoned.
 
Just because you or someone close to you is sent to prison, that doesn’t make you a bad or immoral guy. Plenty of innocent or good people have been sent to prison. Would this guy argue that everyone the Soviet Union imprisoned or executed was a bad person? How about Communist China imprisoning and executing people? They want to imprison the Hong Kong protesters who are fighting for freedom and liberty. Does that mean the protesters are immoral people?
 
Rome imprisoned and crucified our LORD AND SAVIOR. Clearly, the argument of “hiring and firing people who are convicted criminals” means absolutely nothing, particularly considering just WHO was persecuting them.

Not that I expect Galli to agree with me on this point anyway. Mark Galli is the same man who adored and lionized in the biography that he wrote of Karl Barth, a neo-orthodox theologian who excused Stalin's crimes against humanity due to the "intention" behind Marxism:

"[I]t is pertinent not to discriminate in our view of contemporary Communism between its totalitarian atrocities as such and the positive intention behind them," Barth once wrote. "And if one tries to do that, one cannot say of Communism what one was forced to say of Nazism ten years ago (this was written in 1949) - that what it means and intends is pure unreason, the product of madness and crime. It would be quite absurd to mention in the same breath the philosophy of Marxism and the 'ideology' of the Third Reich, to mention a man of the stature of Joseph Stalin in the same breath as such charlatans as Hitler, Goerin, Hess, Goebbels, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Streicher, etc. What has been tackled in Soviet Russia - albeit with very dirty and bloody hands and in a way that rightly shocks us - is, after all, a constructive idea, the solution of a problem which is a serious and burning problem for us as well, and which we with our clean hands have not yet tackled anything like energetically enough: the social problem."

Basically, Barth excuses the atrocities that even he recognizes because it was for a "good cause". Hitler also thought he had a "good cause" and I will RIGHTLY talk about that monster in the same breath as Stalin. To see that Galli wrote Barth's biography and thinks highly of him (Barth also denied that the Bible was the Word of God and that the witness account of Jesus' resurrection was accurate, so the guy was not even a CHRISTIAN) makes plenty of sense, considering Galli is, in all likelihood, not a Christian either.
 
Galli then writes: “[Trump] himself has admitted to immoral actions in businesses and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud.”
 
Fellow Christians, it is with a heavy heart that I tell you that if you ever did anything immoral in your past, you cannot be saved whatsoever. Trump admitted to immoral actions in businesses and relationships with women. Clearly, there is no hope for Trump or any of us.
 
Trump does not remain “proud” of his past, otherwise, Melania wouldn’t still be married to him. There’s no doubt in my mind that he apologized to her and, more importantly, to God for his previous sins.
 
Thank the Lord that Galli is not God, otherwise, no one would be saved because there’d be nothing we could do. He chooses to judge Trump on something I’m certain GOD no longer does.
 
“His Twitter feed alone – with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders – is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused,” Galli wrote.
 
Hey, guys, apparently, it’s an impeachable offense if the President says stuff on Twitter that you don’t like.
 
Look, I don’t care if you like or dislike what Trump does on Twitter. But Trump does not “mischaracterize”, “lie” or “slander”. He points out the truth about people, he tells his side of the story (because the fake news media will lie about him constantly) and he will fight back against those who actually do slander him. And precisely because it is his way to tell his side of the story (basically his only way), virtually anyone who wanted to actually fight back against the Left and against the fake news media would do, say, and tweet the same exact things.
 
Laying down and accepting the libelous criticism you receive is not the Christian thing to do. Giving up to Satan is not the Christian thing to do.
 
Would Jesus do what Trump is doing? No, but if He were to run for POTUS, He’d be slandered and lied about EVEN MORE than Trump is. THE PHARISEES LIED ABOUT AND SLANDERED HIM IN HIS OWN TIME TO THE POINT WHERE THEY HAD HIM CRUCIFIED!
 
I’m not saying Trump is perfect, but those who whine about his Twitter antics miss the bigger picture and can, at best, be described as peacetime conservatives (if they are conservatives in the first place).
 
Galli then goes on to say how the impeachment hearings “made it clear” that Trump abused his power for personal gain and betrayed his oath of office. Allow me to return to the point about a false witness, because that is exactly what this guy and the “witnesses” during the hearings were doing.
 
The “witnesses” were not witnesses to anything. They did not witness Trump “abusing his power”. They were Leftist, elitist college professors who hated Trump. They were people who, at best, could only provide THIRD-HAND KNOWLEDGE about Trump and what he was doing. The hearings PROVED NOTHING which is precisely why impeachment became LESS popular AFTER the hearings.
 
Galli then ends by daring to say that Christians who support Trump should reevaluate their support:
 
“To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump’s immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we don’t reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come? Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation’s leader doesn’t really matter in the end?”
 
A couple of points here. First, a “blackened moral record” means nothing if Trump is repentant of it.
 
King David had an affair with a married woman and then tried to cover up his immorality by sending the husband of said woman off to die at the frontlines of battle. Samson succumbed to temptation and slept with a woman who betrayed him and robbed him of the strength God had given him (temporarily). Saul of Tarsus hunted down and executed those who professed Jesus as the Messiah. Abraham got impatient with God and slept with his wife’s servant in order to have a child that was not promised to him. Solomon fell to idolatry. Peter denied Christ three times. Moses killed an Egyptian guard and fled justice for decades. Need I go on?
 
Look throughout the history of humanity and you will not find a single person who was free of sin, except literally Jesus Christ. EVERYONE has a blackened moral record, including me, including you, and including Galli. Romans 3:9-12 says the following: “What then? Are we Jews any better? Not at all. For we have already made the charge that Jews and Greeks alike are all under sin. As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away; they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.’”
 
President Donald J. Trump is a sinner. But guess what? SO IS EVERYONE ELSE! But that doesn’t matter if God has already forgiven us of our sins, through repentance. Only two people further condemn after repentance: Man and Satan. So it’s no wonder that Galli would continue to condemn Trump, despite his own iniquities.
 
If Christians “reverse course” on their support for Trump and await someone who does not have a history of sin, they will wait UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD. Only God is moral, only God is good, only God is without sin.
 
The second and final point I wish to make about Galli’s conclusion is that I find it interesting that Galli recognizes the evil that is abortion and yet, does not recognize that if Trump is brought down and defeated, that very evil will be unleashed and run amok worse than we have ever seen.
 
There isn’t a single person on the Democrat field that is against this evil of abortion. They all advocate and DEMAND abortion be easily-accessible, even in the third trimester and up until birth. Murder is the Democrat Party’s biggest agenda item and Donald Trump has been THE MOST PRO-LIFE PRESIDENT in recent history.
 
The Democrat Party is the party of Satan. With Trump out of the picture, they get to do whatever they want, pretty much. As much as I like Mike Pence and think he would make an excellent POTUS, he’s nowhere near as popular as Trump is. If Trump is removed from office, Pence likely would not be elected in 2020 and one of the Satan-worshippers would be.
 
This is what so-called anti-Trump “conservatives” and “Christians” fail to understand: get rid of Trump and the country belongs to Satan in the blink of an eye. This doesn’t just mean that abortion will be more rampant, but Christianity itself will be more heavily targeted and persecuted. For crying out loud, a man in Iowa was sentenced to 16 YEARS in prison for setting a pride flag THAT WAS HANGING ON A CHURCH on fire.
 
People might try and downplay the numerous conservative judges being placed by Trump, but it’s those conservative judges that can help Make America Great Again and keep injustice like that from occurring, because not only was that a clear violation of the 8th amendment, but also, the sentence was ADDED ONTO because it was considered hate speech by the Leftist judge, a clear violation of the FIRST amendment.
 
THAT is a far bigger threat to the constitution, the country and CHRISTIANS, than Trump asking for a foreign country to CONTINUE THE PREVIOUSLY HALTED INVESTIGATION THAT WAS HALTED BECAUSE OF AN ACTUAL QUID PRO QUO BY BIDEN.
 
Charging Trump with immorality when LITERALLY EVERY CANDIDATE ON THE LEFT WANTS TO BRING ABORTION-ON-DEMAND AND PERSECUTE ANY AND ALL DISSENTERS is not only incredibly stupid, but not exactly a Christian thing to do if Trump has repented of his sins, as I believe he has.

But again, I doubt Galli actually is a Christian, considering he holds the socialist and unbelieving Karl Barth in such a high regard. Mark Galli has no moral authority to say anything about anyone, let alone Trump or any Christian who supports him.
 
Romans 3:10
“As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one.’”