ASKING QUESTIONS: Is Candace Owens a Demonically Placed Sleeper Cell? | 7/9/26

Summary

Steve Deace Show | Blaze Podcast Network

Episode: ASKING QUESTIONS: Is Candace Owens a Demonically Placed Sleeper Cell?
Date: July 9, 2026

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Overview

This episode of the Steve Deace Show dives deep into recent controversies surrounding Candace Owens, raising the provocative question of whether she is a "demonically placed sleeper cell" meant to disrupt the conservative movement. With references to ongoing high-profile legal proceedings—including the preliminary hearing for Charlie Kirk's assassination—the hosts pick apart Candace Owens’ recent behavior, examining evidence not about the Kirk conspiracy, but about her own character and influence. The show also features an in-depth segment on the theological roots of deception and division within modern political and religious movements, as well as a timely discussion about the Southern Baptist Convention and broader cultural trends.

The episode’s trademark: principled, snarky conservatism paired with scriptural and historical analysis about the roots and impact of division on the American right.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Candace Owens Controversy (03:20–29:06)

• Context: The backdrop includes Charlie Kirk’s assassination trial and Candace Owens' public meltdown in recent days. Owens is accused of divisively blaming colleagues (notably Ben Shapiro) and presenting unsubstantiated theories.
• Steve’s Angle: Steve argues Owens has at last “presented some real evidence”—about her own motives and nature. He provocatively asks whether there's more evidence that she is “a literal agent of Satan” than for any conspiracy theory she’s raised.
  • Quote: “Candace Owens was demonically inserted into our movement and then supernaturally elevated to be in a position where she could... turn on all of us and knife us and divide us.” (08:03)
• The "Pigment Principle": Deace discusses the conservative tendency to elevate non-white voices to disprove leftist accusations of racism, regardless of substance or talent, and how this dynamic has enabled figures like Owens.
  • Quote: “The quickest way to make a buck in America is to say right-wing things while being non-white—no-talent hacks... we got a pigment principle here.” (09:12)
• Spiritual Framing: The hosts interpret Owens’s divisiveness through a spiritual lens, drawing parallels with the biblical concept of wolves among sheep, and the spirit of Antichrist described by John.
  • Quote: “If you were the devil... how would you have operated with said vessel any different than what’s occurred with a Candace Owens?” (08:59)
• Leadership Responsibility: Steve accepts his platform as a ministry, emphasizing leaders must “shoot the wolf” when divisive forces reveal themselves and threaten the flock.
  • Quote: “What happens now? When the wolf has presented themselves into the sheep pen, what should such leaders then do? They’d have to confront the wolf…” (20:24)
• The Devil’s Playbook: If Satan wanted to destroy the last organized resistance (the Trump movement), he’d insert someone “pretty, non-white, charismatic” with the right cred, then unleash chaos at critical moments.
  • Quote: “Cash in all that cachet, strike then, and become the nastiest, most wicked, vile form of divisiveness we've ever seen in the history of the American Right.” (23:53)
• The Collapse of Grace: Co-hosts express the view that Owens has exhausted all benefit of the doubt; her actions are described as “antichristical”—the antithesis of Christ-centric leadership.
  • Memorable line: "She is the singularity of vanity. This is all for her." (29:14, Aaron McIntyre)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Steve’s Summation:
  • “Candace Owens finally presents some real evidence that she’s a wicked and supernaturally placed tool of the devil himself. Gentlemen, your thoughts?” (24:07)
• Aaron on Candace Owens:
  • “She is the singularity of vanity... It’s not demonic, it’s antichristical. It is the anti.” (29:06)
• Todd on the Demonic Language:
  • “Somebody today actually brought up... I’m getting uncomfortable with the use of demonic. You better get comfortable using it because that’s what’s going on here. These are the terms of engagement right now.” (27:08)
• Steve’s leadership reflection:
  • “God does not call the qualified. He qualifies those He’s called.” (18:20)
• Spiritual Battle Analogy:
  • “The minute you become untethered about [the truth], and your faith is not about the gift of grace... but it's more about me instead of Him, all bets are off.” (94:20)

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Southern Baptist Convention Recap (32:04–47:07)

Guest: William Wolf, Center for Baptist Leadership

• Good News at Last: For the first time in a decade, conservatives have reclaimed the SBC presidency (Willie Rice). This marks a reversal against a left-leaning drift (eg., wokeness, critical race theory, radical hospitality).
  • Quote: “Conservatives finally won... The Southern Baptist Convention is now moving back to the right.” (32:38)
• Why It Matters: The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in America; cultural and theological battles here ripple across the nation.
• Tactics of the Left: External leftist actors (e.g., George Soros) and internal “woke” pastors have steered the institution to the left, primarily through political/social liberalism rather than overt theological heresy.
• The Fight Ahead: The contemporary challenge isn’t the inerrancy of Scripture, but the sufficiency of it—whether Christians need external, worldly ideologies to address cultural issues.
  • Quote: “It’s not so much that the fight is on the inerrancy of scripture—it’s on the sufficiency of Scripture.” (41:23)
• Defensive Measures: Returning to the grassroots, ejecting bad actors/false teachers, staying rooted in biblical authority.

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Theology Thursday: “The Seven Deadly Worldviews” (56:07–End)

Kickoff of a new seven-week series on the historical and spiritual roots of deception, deconstruction, and division

• Framing the Battle:
  • “Over the next seven weeks, we’re going to look at these seven worldviews and what you’re going to see... in the order in which we devolve as a species or a society.” (56:54)
• First Worldview: Gnosticism
  • Defined as: The belief that revealed biblical truth is insufficient; real knowledge or salvation comes only to a chosen few through secret knowledge (gnosis).
  • Biblical Roots: The serpent’s temptation—“Did God really say...?”—is cited as the first example of Gnostic thinking (doubting the sufficiency of God’s Word). (69:46)
  • Modern Manifestations: "Bible Codes," conspiracy movements, cults, esoteric philosophies, and even popular media (e.g., Da Vinci Code, Scientology, certain viral online narratives).
  • Quote: “Every cult that’s ever existed is Gnostic in nature. They've got the new revelation, they've got the secret knowledge, they've got the things God forgot or didn't want to tell you or didn't think you were worthy of knowing.” (95:07)
• Counteracting Gnosticism:
  • The early church’s response included the Apostles’ Creed—condensed, creedal truths to be memorized and recited, equipping ordinary believers against heresy.
  • Quote (Summary of Gnosticism): “You do that by... God handpicked you. There was something special about you to give you that knowledge, or you did something special to unlock God's code... it's a complete and total refutation [of biblical worldview].” (84:06)
• Psychological Roots:
  • Aaron McIntyre notes modern research showing that acquiring new “secret” information provides a physiological reward—making such deception culturally addictive. (91:34)
• Core Takeaway:
  • “God is God and I am not. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so... The Gnostic denies all those things.” (95:00)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |------------|-------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:20–29:06| Candace Owens as “demonically placed sleeper cell”; movement sabotage, spiritual analysis, vanity, division | | 32:04–47:07| Southern Baptist Convention Recap w/ William Wolf; conservative resurgence, institutional battles | | 56:07–94:19| Theology Thursday: Introduction to the “Seven Deadly Worldviews,” focus on Gnosticism, historical roots | | 69:46–89:47| Gnosticism in Scripture and Church history; the Apostles’ Creed, role of oral tradition, defense mechanisms | | 91:34–95:07| Psychological roots of Gnosticism, modern parallels (conspiracy addiction), summary reflections |

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Style, Language, & Tone

The panel maintains a snarky, blunt, and unapologetically religious/conservative tone throughout. The language is direct, mixing scriptural references, cultural analysis, personal anecdotes, and biting humor. Spiritual warfare and the pervasiveness of Gnostic thinking are recurring themes. The approach is one of “tough love,” challenging listeners to recognize and confront both political and spiritual deception.

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Summary: For New Listeners

This episode is quintessential “Steve Deace Show”—combining cultural and theological critique with current scandals and American-right infighting. If you haven’t listened, expect a provocative, thoughtful, and sometimes confrontational exploration of both real-world personalities and the “unseen” spiritual dynamics shaping American conservatism.

Essential Insight:

• The Candace Owens crisis is viewed not just as political drama, but as symptomatic of a deeper, recurring spiritual battle for the soul of conservatism and the Church itself.
• This is framed through the ancient lens of Gnosticism and the need for foundational truths to combat destructive, divisive ideologies—inside and outside the Church.

Transcript

[William Wolf]

Still waiting in line again.

[Steve Day]

That's time you will never get back. Save time and money with stamps.com over 4 million businesses have skipped the line with stamps.com join them to save up to 90% off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office for a limited time. Go to stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift to taxes and fees apply.

[Aaron McIntyre]

It's the Steve Day show and here's what happened while we were away, brought to you by Day three, the third day of the preliminary hearing for Charlie Kirk, alleged assassin Tyler Robinson happened coinciding with Candace Owens ongoing crash out. She's now blaming Ben Shapiro for the murder. The attorney for the Kirk family, Jeffrey Nyman, was invited to speak and he asked Judge Tony Graf to make all evidence available to the public.

[Steve Day]

I've been very hesitant to speak up at these proceedings. We understand it's the state, the defense and the judge. You're all doing your job. But I feel as if we need to. I want to be clear as to what the Kirk's family's position is on all of this. The Kirk family believes strongly that if the evidence is being admitted in this preliminary hearing, it should be made public for the world to see. No redactions. This court has tools at its exposure, tools at its disposal to make sure the defendant receives a fair trial. You'll use them if you find that you need to. That's it, your honor. To not be transparent here, to not be open, to not let the world see what happened, will create doubt and distrust in the judicial system. And that's not what anybody wants. That's not what any of us believe should happen here. And we'd ask the court to consider the position of the family in making its ultimate decision.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Reports from inside the courtroom on day three indicate Tyler Robinson looked visibly fidgety and nervous when the topic of his tranny roommate Lance Twiggs was broached. Twiggs was interviewed by authorities. In the aftermath of the assassination, the US Struck IRGC targets within Iran multiple waves yesterday. CENTCOM says the main strikes were facilities used to target and track shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Some reports indicate the US May have struck civilian targets like railroad infrastructure. Vice President J.D. vance says the most recent developments aren't exactly a surprise.

[William Wolf]

Here's the basic deal that we cut. The basic deal that we cut was

[Steve Day]

we'll lift our blockade if you stop shooting at ships.

[William Wolf]

But if you shoot at ships, we

[Steve Day]

are going to punch back and we're going to punch back harder than ever before.

[William Wolf]

That was the deal. They said they would stop shooting at

[Steve Day]

ships and what happened 24 hours ago,

[Aaron McIntyre]

they start shooting at ships again.

[William Wolf]

Now they were good, they were well behaved for about a week, but then

[Steve Day]

they start shooting at ships. So the deal is very simple. If they shoot at ships, we're going

[William Wolf]

to knock the hell out of them. And it's that simple.

[Steve Day]

And that's the basic way it's going to work.

[Aaron McIntyre]

In Maine, Democrat Senate candidate Graham Platner says, after all, he is suspending his campaign.

[Steve Day]

That's what I prefer.

[Aaron McIntyre]

The understanding. Yeah.

[Todd Erzin]

The heartbreak.

[Steve Day]

The Logan to the uss.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Oops, wrong clip.

[Steve Day]

Amy and I are regular people. We were not looking for this experience. We were not looking to get into politics. We had no desire to run for office.

[Aaron McIntyre]

And finally, this from the Babylon Bee Rape allegations mar reputation of local Nazi. And that's what happened while we were away.

[Steve Day]

Regular people, eh? No ambitions, eh? Here's the thing. In this case, quite literally, give the devil his due, or her due, I should say. Candace has finally presented some real evidence. No, really, I'm being serious. I'll explain next year on the Steve Day Show. And greetings. Happy Thursday. Welcome to the Steve Day show here on Blaze TV, online, live and on demand. I am Steve Day, C's Todders and he's Aaron McIntyre, but you already know that because he preceded us. And you are you. And here's what's coming up on today's show. Next hour, Theology Thursday. I'm going to bring it back. It's been several years now since we have done this, but we are going to start again for the first time. I think it's been. Have we done this since you guys have worked here?

[Aaron McIntyre]

Yeah, remember I went out and I did. That was the origin of the montage, actually.

[Steve Day]

Was that the origin? So, so we're going back to kind of the beginning of when you worked here, then the first couple years. So it's, it's been several years since we have done the Seven Deadly Worldviews and we're going to be doing those Seven Deadly Worldviews on Theology Thursday for the rest of this summer. That's the series going to take us pretty much up to the end of the summer here over the next seven weeks. And the one that we are beginning to be, that we are going to begin with. And again, I, I, I wrote this curriculum in 2011. 2011 is when I wrote this not having any Clue, not knowing who. Who Charlie Kirk was not knowing what a Candace Owens was. Not knowing that one day I'd be sitting here next to, I didn't know what an Aaron McIntyre was. I didn't know that I'd be sitting here next to Todd Erzin. I had no clue what would transpire 15 years later from when I originally wrote this curriculum. But boy howdy, holy cow, the very first deadly worldview on this list is Gnosticism. And it's going to feel as if I just put all this together last night. No, I, I put this curriculum together 15 years ago and it's, it's just going to seem very prescient given what's happening in our culture today. So we're going to get into that. Coming up next hour for Theology Thursday. And then our old friend William Wolf is going to join us for the center for Baptist Liberty. Baptist Leadership. Leadership is the L. Thank you. Almost said liberty. But here's the thing. This is still the largest Protestant denomination in America, the largest evangelical denomination in the world. So when they have a convention and big news is made, it has an impact on everybody within the sound of my voice, whether you're a Southern Baptist or not. So we're going to get into some of that big news with William coming up in the next segment of the show. But let's begin. What I teased here at the top, and I am being dead serious when I, when I teased this Candace Owens. It has been a long time. It has taken many, many months, but Candace Owens has finally presented some real evidence here. No, really real evidence. Real evidence. It's just not about Charlie Kirk or what happened to him or his wife, the most high profile widow in modern American history. It's about her. The evidence that Candace Owens has presented, particularly over the last three days of this preliminary hearing and the crash out from her that has ensued. She has presented some real evidence about herself, about who she really is, what her motives really are, and I would argue, in fact, who she was all along. Because if you look at evidence, as far as Candace is concerned, there is way more evidence, way more volumes, tomes, multitudes, more evidence, mountains, more evidence

[Aaron McIntyre]

that

[Steve Day]

Candace Owens was demonically inserted into our movement and then supernaturally elevated to be in a position where she could, in the most painful and strategic timing possible, turn on all of us and knife us and divide us. There is way more evidence for that, that she is a literal agent of Satan himself. Way more evidence for that than for any of her claims or theories pertaining to Charlie or TPUSA. Or Erica and Charlie's assassination because there's 0.0% proof for any of those things. So gentlemen, Even if we're at 1% proof that she is a literal agent of Satan, that is 100% more proof than exists for any of her claims and theories. Correct.

[Todd Erzin]

Endorsed.

[Steve Day]

Indeed. If you were the enemy, if you were the devil, Who better to pick? And how would you have operated with said vessel any different than what's occurred with a Candace Owens? First of all, find somebody pretty and black who a bunch of whites who are both ashamed and then simultaneously looking to disprove generational allegations of racism. I mean I have, I have lamented this on this show many times over the years, right? That the, the quickest way to make a buck in America is to say right wing things while being non white no talent hacks. It doesn't mean you've heard of the Peter Principle. What about the pigment principle? How about that? We got a pigment principle here in writing media. The pigment principle works. This last generation desperate to prove no, we're not racist and the Democrats are the real racists. Don't you know? Which means of course you're trying to disprove a negative. Rush used to say for years and years and years, don't ever try to disprove a negative. You can't. That's the point of the negative. Prove to me you didn't beat your wife last night. Prove it. But it also means that you're arguing on the terms of your enemy. And whoever's premise is the one being argument argued wins the argument every single time. It's just a matter of time. But whoever's premise is being is the one being argued is going to win that argument every single time. There's a graveyard of no talent hacks that just had the appropriate ratio of melanin in their skin and they were willing to look into a teleprompter and recite words they likely did not write themselves. There's a graveyard of such hacks in this industry and business and has been for many, many a moon. She's among the prettiest and most charismatic though. Elevator put her in positions of prominence. Have her take, have her take some the right side of some issues like vaccines for example, to, to build a, to build a credibility ratio with the folks who are already the most suspicious about everything. And then you wait, and then you wait. And of course she's still a human being, so cracks are gonna show. Right? The way she handled the whole Kanye west thing, remember that? Okay? Then there was the whole daily wire thing. And here's the thing. When such vessels begin to expose themselves, at first, you're gonna be like, well, look at the body of work. I mean, I did that with Tucker on this show for about a year. Right. Let's look at his overall body of work. I'm deeply disturbed by what's happening right now and the trend line of where I think this will likely ultimately end up unless he allows the Holy Spirit to step in. Right. I mean, we had those conversations both publicly and privately, did we not?

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Day]

Do you guys remember what I told you guys privately the day we came in after Charlie's memorial? Do you remember what I told you off the air, that I said, what you're going to see now, and mark my words, that you're going to see Tucker try to assert himself into Charlie's position as the. As the first bishop of American evangelicalism. Remember I told you that the Monday we came back from the. From the memorial and what's transpired, what immediately transpired in the weeks and months thereafter, that. That is exactly what happened.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Yes.

[Steve Day]

So one of the disadvantages we have. We have as believers in these situations is twofold. And when I say disadvantage, it's really not. It's. It's. It's a disadvantage in terms of how this world operates, but not in. Of the kingdom that we represent, Number one. We rightfully remember that therefore, by the grace of God go I. We all have crimson in our ledger. We all have sins we have to be forgiven of. We are all imperfect vehicles and vessels for our claimed faith and belief system. Right. We are in constant need of forgiveness and repentance. Correct?

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Day]

And accountability. That's. That's the human condition. We're all going to fight the Romans 7. Fight until the Lord calls us home, no matter how staunch of a believer you are. I remember a pastor I respect was. Was telling me a story about how he went to the retirement party of the pastor who mentored him, and he was 90 years old, been married to the same woman for over 60 years. And he stood up there and thanked everybody for how much he appreciated them being there, all the support they gave him in their. In their marriage and family for decades on end. And. And then he had. He had a warning to the younger men in the audience. He said, you know what you guys need to know. I have fought thoughts of lust. Those thoughts have been in my head, like, every single day. I've had to fight those. I've had to work around those. I've had to rest in the Lord. And it blew his mind because, you know, he had this guy elevated like he was on some kind of pedestal, right? That he had achieved some form of sainthood, when in reality, that only happens after death. Okay, you want to know what you know? The Bible says that he who has begun a good work in you is faithful until the day of its completion. When is the Lord completed with you? When he calls you home, that's the day it's completed. He's done with his work in you. When he calls you home, that's when it's over. Is that day. For some of us, like in Charlie's case, that's age 32. For others of us, it's age 92. For some of us, that day is years off. For others of us, it's today. Numbers up. The Lord is done. Your shift here is over. Come home. And so we understand that. And. And it is. It is the right, good and prudent Christian thing to air on the side of grace rather than. Rather than judgment. Paul writes some of the harshest words in all of the New Testament, but he also wrote these words, mercy triumphs over judgment. So it is good to err on the side of mercy because we would also want others to err on the side of mercy where we are concerned.

[Todd Erzin]

Yes, true.

[Steve Day]

I mean, after all, what is the Lord's Prayer? Forgive us our trespasses as what we forgive those as we forgive those who trespass against us. Correct. So that is how our kingdom operates. We err on the side of mercy. Now, it says mercy triumphs over judgment. Does the Bible say mercy cancels judgment?

[Todd Erzin]

Of course not.

[Steve Day]

Of course not. Otherwise there wouldn't be a place called hell. Correct. So it does not cancel judgment, but it does triumph over it. Ultimately, the Lord has defeated the last enemy, death. And yet we're all still going to die. It just. Death won't have the final say. The cross will for those who are in Christ. So that's number one. We have a different economy than the world's economy. We don't begin things with an aura of suspicion, but of hope. Now, we're also not, you know, plebes and lemmings. You prove to us that there's no hope here. At the very least, the Lord commands us to kick the dust off our sandals and move on. Correct?

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Day]

And then there are moments he commands for even harsher confrontations of such entities and peoples, does he not?

[Aaron McIntyre]

Yes.

[Steve Day]

Whole section of Psalms called imprecatory prayers for times just like these. So we err on the side of hope instead of judgment because we're aware of how much we need and require that for ourselves. And then there's just personal relationships. I have known Tucker and like so many other people in our business, can recount how he's done solids for me. And the overall body of work at times in his career has been extraordinary. And I'm not here to say that that Candace Owens has contributed absolutely nothing. If that were the case, she wouldn't have the audience and credibility that she built, correct? Yeah. I mean, when the enemy tells you, hey, this really attractive woman who wants you, who you're not married to, she's really attractive, and she'll set your nerve endings on fire. Those things are true. Otherwise you wouldn't be tempted, right?

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Day]

He's not going to send somebody to you you're not attracted by, right?

[Todd Erzin]

Yes. The.

[Steve Day]

The book Catholics and Protestants have traditionally argued about the most is the book of James. Well, what does James say in the Book of James? You're only tempted by the things you actually desire, right?

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Day]

I'm not. I'm not tempted to turn nicotine into, you know, into an idol or alcohol into an idol and many other things that other people are tempted to turn into idols. But I do have idols of my own. I'm definitely tempted to turn women into an idol, which is why I have to be careful there. We're only tempted by the things we desire. We're not tempted by the things we're not. And so on one hand, there's credibility that you want to honor on top of the fact that mercy triumphs over judgment. That's the way the economy of our kingdom works. But you have to understand, though, that eventually the moment comes when the wolf takes off the Little Red Riding Hood and grandma costume and just shows the thanks and any good leader. I mean, one of my favorite quotes from Augusta, There are many, many sheep without many wolves within, many wolves within. The first time the term Antichrist is used in the Bible is by John towards the end of the New Testament. He says several. Many Antichrists have already crept in, denying the Incarnation. We're in the first century. He's already talking about Antichrist spirit. Antichrist is already in the church. So our job then, those of us in positions of leadership, and I am the Lord for reasons I'll probably never understand, because as much as you think you're aware of my weaknesses, trust me, I've been living with them for going on 53 years. I'm more aware of them than you. For whatever reason, the Lord has chosen to give me one of the largest platforms that an evangelical in America currently has. Our last two episodes have ranked number six and number seven in our category in the country. Only one evangelical has been, has had an episode, produced an episode this week higher than ours, and that's Josh Howerton. He's the only evangelical that's produced an episode that ranks higher on Apple itunes, the largest podcast provider in America that ranks larger, that ranks higher than ours. He's the only evangelical. And so yes, I'm not just doing a show here. It's a ministry and it does come with leadership responsibilities. And at first I wanted to deny that, mainly because I knew I wasn't ready for that. But now that I'm older, I have to recognize whether I'm ready or not. God does not call the qualified. He qualifies those he's called. And this is what's been given to me, is this responsibility and I am to use it. And as my now dead friend once famously told me, I'm to go hard with it. And so what happens now? When the wolf has presented themselves into the sheep pen, what should such leaders then do? They'd have to confront the wolf. They have to chase the wolf out. They have to metaphorically shoot the wolf. Because if the wolf is allowed and permitted to remain with the sheep, what will occur? The wolf will eat the sheep.

[Todd Erzin]

Carnage.

[Steve Day]

Yes, it will devour the sheep. And that's where we are with folks like Tucker and especially Candace. So if you were Satan himself and you had placed a vessel deep within the heart of the last organized resistance to you and your schemes for this country that exists, Trump and his movement. Whatever you think of Trump is irrelevant. He's president I love. There's a handful of you that think you can like undo the last election or your laments going to change the fact he's in charge. That's not how this works. It's not how any of this works. Whatever you may think of him, whatever you may think of individuals that are seen as leaders within his movement, it is the only organized resistance to the spirit of the age. This is not even in question. Trump and his movement are the only organized resistance to the spirit of the age that exists in total in America today. There is nothing else. And that's a fact. Jack and Jill and Joe and every other name within the sound of my voice. So if you were the devil knowing this, how would you have behaved any differently? Find somebody pretty non white, charismatic, make sure they, they take the Right positions on the right issues. Question the vaccines. Be strongly pro life. Build that street cred so that when the moment comes and it ever looks like. It ever looks like your opposition's getting their stuff together, that they might be able to unify long enough on first principles to save what's left of all of Christendom before 1700 Years of Western history is lost forever. How would you behave any differently than how Candace Owens has behaved? Give them a level of money that they're independently wealthy so you can't really. Even if you took away all of their. All of their advertisers, it wouldn't matter. They've made more than enough money. Maybe give her a husband of great means, so it doesn't really matter whether she's got advertisers or not. We checking every box here?

[Todd Erzin]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Steve Day]

Then you concoct the very scheme that breaks a lot of the American psyche, Covid. And sets them up to just be incapable as a people of absorbing truth again. I've never had a problem with questioning everything. My problem is where are we going for answers? Do we question things to get to answers or just to never find them? Christianity is not the endless asking of questions, as you'll see next hour. It's the ceaseless seeking of answers. And then, of course, the devil can't see the future, but given the fact he's lived longer than the rest of us and sees those trend lines more than we do, he's way better at reading the signs of the times than any of us. Correct. So just wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait for the moment it may seem like. Oh, snap, they might have figured it out. Here they come. Can we all agree maybe the closest that. That. That we can think of off the top of our heads in this era was Charlie's memorial.

[Todd Erzin]

Yeah.

[Steve Day]

Has there ever been a moment that you thought you felt more hope and more unity and more and closer to real revival in America in your time than the aftermath, than that event itself? And the aftermath, the immediate aftermath therein. Can you think of anything like that?

[Todd Erzin]

Martyrdom often does that.

[Steve Day]

Exactly. And that's now where the sleeper cell strikes. The right amount of credibility is cashed in. Heck, she even made Christ is King a meme. Remember that whole thing was done to troll Ben Shapiro over firing Candace Owens at Daily Wire. That's where that entire thing began, was to troll the Jew over Candace Owens. Cash in all that cachet, strike then, and become the nastiest, most wicked, vile form of divisiveness we've ever seen. In the history of the American. Right. Right at the time when it looked like we might have been getting it right and figuring some things out, some very important things. So, yes, Candace Owens finally presents some real evidence that she's a wicked and supernaturally placed tool of the devil himself. Gentlemen, your thoughts?

[Todd Erzin]

Well, she's obviously got some kind of army behind her. That's what's unsettling to me because it is accurately being portrayed by you and others that she is now running into a wall of her own making. I mean, she's made so many announcements of what she claims to be the truth is, and thus has put in line the capacity to light herself on fire. But what happens after she's gone? This. This Covid aftermath that you talk about, Steve, this inability or disinterest in people, in really ultimately grappling at the truth. Because not only is Christianity the seeking of answers, it is the answer itself. And there is a lot of people claiming the banner of Christianity that in word and in deed are simultaneously rejecting it at the same time. That's why I think it's so important that you brought up the spirit of Antichrist. That's what that is. You're not ultimately a rejection. It's the skin suit thing. You are putting this thing on and wearing it and thus sowing the seeds of confusion everywhere. And that's what's. So this isn't just politics as usual. Somebody today actually brought up. They're getting increased and it's somebody on the right. They're. I'm getting uncomfortable with the use of demonic. You better get comfortable using it because that's what's going on here. These are the terms of engagement right now.

[Steve Day]

Amen.

[Aaron McIntyre]

It is. It is the upside down. You look at the. The life and work of Charlie Kirk, and I say this as somebody who largely. I mean, other.

[Steve Day]

You.

[Aaron McIntyre]

You have a friend, you had a friendship with him. Say this as somebody largely looking from the outside in. And of course, all of the stories that we've heard that were not told while he was alive. He put his faith above all, it was obvious the love and care he had for his family. He was. He took his citizenship deadly serious to the point he built the largest organizing force, a powerful force on the American right, maybe the American right has ever seen. He was the consummate American. He was. But then you look at what Candace is. It's almost the upside down complete inverse. It is the inverse of that. She is the singularity of vanity. She is the flouting of the rights that she Has? Yeah. Is she committing crimes with all of these lies that she spew? I'm sorry? The evidence that she's spewing. Is she committing any crimes with this? No, but that's a flouting of your citizenship. That's an ingrate. You look at the family. Family that she has. Should we go there? Should we go there? Who married her? Was that convenient? Kind of think so. I'm out of grace. I'm with you. I try to be as charitable as I possibly can to as many people as I possibly can be, but I'm completely out of grace for Candace Owens. It's not demonic. It's antichristical. It is the anti. I talked about the rise of Islamianism, how that is an anti religion of antichrist. This is it as well. There's no daylight in between these two.

[Todd Erzin]

Aaron.

[Steve Day]

That was a tour de force right there, brother.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Wow.

[Steve Day]

Would you say again the singularity. Repeat that again.

[Aaron McIntyre]

She is the singularity of vanity. This is all for her.

[Steve Day]

Well, and you know, it really just hammers that home to me all the more. Who is the OG Singularity of vanity? The devil. I will ascend. I will become like the most High. The prophet Isaiah quotes him as saying. I'm just asking questions. Is Candace Owens a satanic and satanically placed vessel, A demonically orchestrated construct? I mean I think there's way more evidence for that than anything she's claimed in the last nine, ten months. But again, could be wrong. I mean I'm just. We're just asking questions here, that's all. More in a moment. The steve day show. All right, back here on the Steve Day show. We are powered by our friends over at Chirp. And yes, when I went to DC for America 250, I did take my Rolling Power mini massager with me. Used it as well this morning. All right. Right as I got out of bed to get myself straightened out and ready to go take on the day. Just one of the preventive, preventative health devices available for you at Chirp where their. Where their mission is simple. Bring relief to as many people as possible so you can feel better, restore your energy and make self care simple. They innovate to deliver professional grade therapies like my rolling Power mini massager that you can use at home or even when you're on the road for real lasting relief. Whether it's the Power mini massager, the rollouts that they have that are huge guys for avoiding injury, make sure you're using those. There's the Chirp Contour the decompression and massage table. All that and more. Go check it out right [e-mail] Steve C-H-I R P Go chirp.com Steve and make sure to use my name to get 10 off your first order when you're there. 10 off your first order at go chirp.com Steve 10% off your first order at go chIRP.com Steve well, we welcome in our old friend William Wolf from the center for Baptist Leadership. Good to see you again on the show, brother. How are you?

[William Wolf]

Great Steve. Glad to be back with you.

[Steve Day]

Always good to see you my friend. So we had the Southern Baptist Convention there in June. We've not had a chance to double back with you and find out what news has been made out of there because as I explained to the audience at the top of the show, whether you're a Southern Baptist or not, this is the largest evangelical denomination still, I think in the world. It's at least the largest Protestant denomination here still left in America. So whether you're a Southern Baptist or not, the news that comes out of there is if you're any kind of patriot at all, it's going to have an impact on you. So what is the news that came out of there this year?

[William Wolf]

William yeah, thanks. The news is finally good after 10 years of what's really been sort of a left leaning takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention by guys who would call themselves conservatives on paper. We deal with these people all the time, Steve. You know them, they're like the rhinos of the sbc, pushing critical race theory, feminism, egalitarianism, all sorts of nonsense, open Borders ideology. After 10 years of them running the show, conservatives finally won. We elected this guy as president, a guy named Willie Rice from Florida who is an outspoken conservative reformer. He ran on a platform of Baptist reform and renewal. He rejected all the wokeness. He said we have real problems and we need to address them even as we celebrate our gospel work. And he won the election to be our next president. So it, it really is an incredible shift. Even Mother Jones, one of the most left leaning outlets out there possible gave us a pretty fair like summary saying that the Southern Baptist Convention is now moving back to the right. So for many conservatives we are celebrating a first big win in a long time.

[Steve Day]

Explain to the uninitiated why are those big wins?

[William Wolf]

Well, because for as I mentioned, there's been about 10 years now of guys trying to take the Southern Baptist Convention towards the left or if you want to be say more charitable, you could say towards the middle, trying to moderate it. We don't want to be those, you know, backwards, Bible thumping, knuckle dragging Baptists who love God, guns and our Bible. We want to be more winsome. We want to be more appealing to the secular culture. We want to do things like use trans pronouns as an act of hospitality, something one of our former presidents, J.D. greer, said. Or we could think of Russell Moore, the former president of the erlc, who celebrated Baptists helping Muslims get mosques built in New York City. That's what we were dealing with, even though our base, our rank and file were conservative. And it's been many years that people have been raising the alarm that we're not only losing the gospel, we're moving to the left. And we haven't quite been able to cross the finish line in terms of electing a new president, a new leader of our convention that sees the issues and wants to address them. So this is the first time we've done it. We've come close before, but actually getting this guy in, Willie Rice, you guys should, everyone should check him out. He has a website called BaptistRenewal US. And so it's, it's really the first time we've seen signs of fight and life from the baptists in about 10 years that we don't want to end up like the United Methodists and the pcusa, which just affirmed transgender surgeries on children, that we're going to fight for fidelity, fight to take back our convention. And in a day and age of institutional compromise, drift and manage decline, we see a better future for the Southern Baptist Convention.

[Steve Day]

So for people that don't know, and I've, I've talked about this several times over the years, William, but this is well before you were born. And I was maybe, you know, I was still maybe in diapers when this all went on. But your denomination is the only one in American history to ever go left and come back. And this happened because in the mid to late 70s and early 80s, a group of men like Adrian Rogers, for example, the Tennessee pastor, literally just went, you know, congregation by congregation, seminary by seminary, and just ejected all the heretics, just, just threw them all out. And there was great wailing and gnashing of teeth about that back then. I can't even imagine in today's social media world with that kind of a purge would cause. But that's the kind of effort it took to rescue this denomination from the brink a generation ago. What's changed now in the last 10 years here, now in your time where now folks within the sbc, a critical mass of them have awakened to the real threats that exist out there in the spirit of the age. What's transpired that's made this threat more readily understood?

[William Wolf]

Yeah, that's a great point and really good history to bring up here. The conservative resurgence was fought against sort of run of the mill theological liberalism of 40 years ago. People denying the inerrancy of scripture, people saying you can't really trust the Bible, denying the divinity of. Of Christ, which is exactly what infected all the. The main lines back then. We weren't talking about things like trans pronouns and even women pastors back then either. But, you know, it's every generation's responsibility to fight for faithfulness. We see this in scripture, we see this in judges. You know, the generation that was brought out of Egypt died off and a new generation rose up who didn't know the Lord. So we shouldn't be surprised that we have to fight for faithfulness in our generation. And the fights for our time are less over things like the inerrancy of scripture and the divinity of Christ, because these guys say they believe that again, it's over. Political and social liberalism really wokeness. But at the end of the day, and I think you know this too, Steve, because you watch this, the political wokeness, the political liberalism ultimately wags the tail of the theological dog. You can only adopt trans pronouns. You can only preach open borders. You can only say climate change is sort of an existential crisis that Christians have to address for so long before you start compro on Scripture. And so we're not quite that far gone yet. It's sort of different symptoms of the same underlying cause of liberalism and progressivism. And yes, grassroots Baptist, I think, have finally said enough is enough. Of course, you throw in the big me too issue that sort of roiled the Southern Baptist Convention where we were accused of harboring all these abusers, which we never did. And really, again, this guy's election, Willie Rice, it's such a remarkable rhetorical victory. And as people who work in politics, you know, this sort of winning, the rhetorical framing of something over years, Willie just didn't only say there was never abuse crisis. Willie said there were bad actors in the Southern Baptist Convention who worked with bad actors outside the Southern Baptist Convention to try to tar and feather us and use it for their own political purposes. So somebody like him winning shows just how far the conservatives have finally come over the last five to 10 years.

[Steve Day]

Let's double back to what you just said in Terms of the difference of the challenges within the SBC of the last two eras, that one I referenced and the one you're now a part of, and you said it was just straight up heterodoxy to just straight up heresy was being attempted to infiltrate coming out of the counterculture in the 1970s. And that's what that era of leaders and those men had to stand up against. And you talked about the prevailing cultural and political trade winds infiltrating. And then eventually the tail, because it's wagging, the dog here becomes a camel's nose under the tent and it kind of doubles back into re evaluating just our entire relationship to scripture at that point. Are you saying that that is intentional or unintentional? Meaning that is this an adaptive tactic by the enemy or is this just how our cultural, our culture operates today? And so it's, it's, it, it's more coincidental than intentional.

[William Wolf]

Well, it's, it's certainly intentional by bad actors outside the Southern Baptist Convention. And as you'll know, and maybe many of your listeners will know, Megan Basham really wrote the book on this. Shepherds for Sale. The left, I mean, genuinely like God hating progressives like George Soros and Pierre Omidyar, they started funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Southern Baptist Convention through organizations like the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission to get us to compromise on political issues because they see our value as a political bloc in America. We could use that term or, or to use a biblical term, Steve, I would say as salt and light in a fallen world. They see Southern Baptists as this bastion of conservative, pro American Christian values in our country and they want to subvert that. So they intentionally came after us on the political issues on climate change, on immigration, on trans issues, et cetera. And then I think what we had inside the Southern Baptist Convention were perhaps well intentioned pastors who were tired of being called, you know, racists by the left and by the New York Times and by the Washington Post. And they thought, well, maybe we can preach a gospel of climate change carbon emission credits for Christians or maybe we can support open borders and we should love the immigrant, which actually means open borders. And so they, or particularly at the height of critical race theory, they're like, well, maybe we actually are a bunch of racists and George Floyd is proof of systemic white supremacy in America. And so those guys got hooked by it. Have a lot of those guys, you know, denied the divinity of Christ? No. Have they denied the inerrancy of scripture? No. But I will make this point to close this section out. It's not so much that the fight is on the inerrancy of scripture, it's on the sufficiency of Scripture. Is God's word sufficient to address our cultural issues and our political climates? Or do we need ideologies that come from the secular academy and are funded by billionaire leftist activists to address these issues? Or not?

[Steve Day]

That is a key point you just made there on the tail end. And it's the reason why I asked the question and framed it to you the way that I did. Because what you are describing is the way that I think and I don't whatever sect of Christianity you're a part of, heck, even if you are just, you know, a non sectarian organization attempting to do some kind of goodwill in pushing back on the spirit of the age in some way, shape or form on any host of fronts in our culture today, I think it's very, very important to understand the tactics of the opponent that you're up against. Right? And to come right at you in many cases and get you to straight on reconsider the, the, the very tenets of what created in your, of your convictions in the first place. You're probably going to be much more prone to push back on that which is what you saw the previous generation do successfully in the Southern Baptist Convention, but instead come at you with, since you quoted our dear friend Megan Basham, let's quote our dear colleague Ali Stuckey to come at you with your toxic empathy and the kinds of things that, that sound good and sound right and, and sound like they should be true and, and sound like they should go along and syncretize with Christianity and the word of God. It, it sounds right. There's a way that seems right to us, right. Of course ends in death and destruction. But we don't finish that last part, but give you things that kind of appeal to emotion and your flesh. Particularly after a decade long, longhouse, all right, where logic and reasoning centers have largely been kicked to the curb out of the American brain and mindset, right? And so find the things that appeal to you on an emotion basis, on a feelings, vibe basis. And what will end up happening is you'll partner that with, partner then with that entity to go ahead and numb yourself and water down your belief system. And then when people like William Wolf come along to a few years later and say, hey do you guys realize the amount of sand that shifted underneath our feet here? You guys seen how much erosions occurred on this beach here? You then actually Turn on that person. Because it's convicting to you that he's pointing out, you fell for it. You stepped on the rake. You stepped on the banana peel. As the great prophet Dave Chappelle once said, you played yourself right? And that's essentially what you're describing has been going on in the SBC for the last decade or so.

[William Wolf]

Yeah, that's exactly right. It's incredibly well said, Steve. You know, just in light of what's happening in New York City and, like, the election of the Islamo communist mom, Donnie, you go back and you see these videos of this faithful Southern Baptist pastor, this guy named John Wofford from Arkansas, who stood up at a Southern Baptist Convention meeting about, like, seven years ago at this point point, and confronted Russell Moore. Because the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, funded by our Tide Dollars, signed on to amicus brief to help a mosque get built in New York City, I think near the 911 site. It was New York City and New Jersey. And this guy's like, why are we partnering with these. These evil people, this false religion? Like, I understand religious liberty, but why are we helping them spread their message here in America? And Russell Moore just dismisses him and mocks him, and he says the answer to Islam is not government power, it's the gospel. And he got clapped. Everybody clapped for Russell Moore and mocked the conservative Southern Baptist pasture. But he's the guy who saw that the sand was shifting, and now the sand has completely fallen off the cliff, and we have an Islamic Communist running New York City celebrating all sort of perverse pagan holidays from his official government position. And, yeah, that John Wofford was right, Russell Moore was wrong. And that's a really great sort of picture of what we fought over in the Southern Baptist Convention for the last 10 years. And I will say, last June, just a few weeks ago, John Wofford's sort of group in the SBC finally came out on top.

[Steve Day]

Great stuff, William. I know you guys are doing great work there in the sbc. How can people follow you if they want to be a part of it?

[William Wolf]

Yeah, sure. You can follow us on X at BaptistLeaders. Check us out on YouTube. Center for Baptist Leadership. We're on Facebook. Center for Baptist Leadership. And I'm on X at William Wolf. If you want to talk more about this, you can DM me. They should be open.

[Steve Day]

Good to see you, brother. Thank you.

[William Wolf]

Thank you, Steve.

[Steve Day]

You bet. All right, guys, what do you think?

[Todd Erzin]

What is the best case scenario in the. In the near term? Of you recover this because as you've recently said, Steve, men need to act. Right. So this recovery effort is is not just to run in place. It is to do something in the near term. And this as a Catholic, what can be expected? How much of the reach can this conference go to take charge to act.

[Steve Day]

It's got, it's got as much if it if the conviction and unity of there is there it has as much potential in terms of paradigm shifts in this culture as any singular entity in America does. So any singular entity does, which is why it's uniquely attacked all of the time and has been uniquely attacked and under attack in some various forms. Pretty much the the entirety of you and I's allowed.

[Todd Erzin]

So it's fair to have more expectations for it than a thought exercise.

[Steve Day]

Correct.

[Todd Erzin]

Should be taking ground.

[Steve Day]

It's it is worthy of and I would there's not too many things I would say institutionally that have either succumbed to the spirit of the age and the Southern Baptist Convention has not succumbed to it, but it's it's at least lifted a little bit of its panty. It's, it's, you know, pantyhose line and showed a little leg to it at the very least. There's not a lot of institutions at that point that I think are still worthy of trying to fight for and preserve. This would be one of them might be number one on the list because of this in this entire dialog that you and I are having, the frame of your question and my answer to it, the opportunity for paradigm shifts coming out of this within the church. I, I don't know of anything within the current American Christian church, the formal American church on an institutional level. I don't know anything that has more potential for culture shifting than the Southern Baptist Convention does. If we can, if it can get on the right on the right page and unify around the same convictions, for sure we'll come back. Speaking of convictions Theology Thursday. We're bringing it back after several years. The seven Deadly Worldviews. It begins next. Stay tuned. When patient care is your top priority, you need a proven workforce Solutions partner who can deliver it all and deliver it right. AMN Healthcare brings together technology and talent into one seamless solution trusted by more than 2000 health systems across the country. We help organizations make smarter data driven decisions and improve patient outcomes. AMN Healthcare One Partner Complete Workforce Solutions Discover how we are empowering the future of [e-mail] hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 months or $180 for 12 month Plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes me slow when network is bus. All right, back here with hour two live and on demand here on the Steve Day Show. Let us know what you think about what we think via the stevedace.com inbox by emailing the show [e-mail] that's D E A C E like us on Facebook. Me, we and Gab. You can follow me at steveday show and X Instagram and Tick Tock. Subscribe to our Rumble Channel at Steve Dace there. You can also subscribe to the podcast thanks to the many of you who have and to the tens of thousands of you that have given us a five star review on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for all of those and if you would add yours today, we thank you too. Hit that subscribe button or if you're on Apple itunes. Follow to never miss an episode of this show and to make sure each time we do one of these, it drops right there conveniently in your podcast feed. This message brought to you by our friends over at Ear over at Raycon. With summer in full swing, so many celebrations and stuff happening this year. Whether you're heading to a backyard barbecue, running errands, just enjoying the nice weather, Raycon's Essential Open Earbuds have basically gotta become a part of your daily routine. I'd love for them to be a part of my daily routine, but my kids keep taking mine, so they're not. But I hear from my kids about how great they are and they must be great because my kids keep taking them. They're open ear, so you can listen to music or podcasts while still hearing what's going on around you. They sound amazing, they're really comfortable to wear, and they're 20% off right now if you want to check them out. All right. The Essential Open Earbuds A great option for everyday listening. On the few occasions my kids have let me wear my Raycon earbuds, I can tell you they have the best fit of any earbud and it's just the most seamless fit. I'm not twisting them all the time to adjust them, especially as I get sweaty either at the gym or doing yard work. That stays in there nice and firm.

[Todd Erzin]

So.

[Steve Day]

And I don't know what it is. I've got like oddly shaped ears. Like if you want to get me nervous before I come speak at your event. There's only one thing that'll get me nervous. Tell me. I've got to wear the over the ear mic because it never stays on. I just can't ever get it to stay on. No matter what setting or mold we use that. That makes me nervous. Okay. So no problems like that with the Raycons. Again, on the few opportunities my children have allowed me to use mine. But they, if they were here, they would assure you they keep taking their old man's Raycon earbuds because they are a great option for everyday listings. Go to buyraycon.com/steve that's/steve. To get 20% off buyraycon.com a r a y c o n raycon raycon buyraycon.com steve get 20% off at buyraycon.com steves and thank you to Raycon for sponsoring this segment. I want to read something to you guys. You ready?

[Todd Erzin]

Probably not if you're just going about it this way.

[Steve Day]

This was posted on X at 10:04am I'm just going to read it to you verbatim. Graham Platner's fall is not really about sex or tattoos. The establishment cared so much about getting him canceled because he opposed their economic and foreign policy programs that serve the powerful and shaft average Americans. End quote.

[Todd Erzin]

Is that the New York Times?

[Steve Day]

You think it's the New York Times?

[Todd Erzin]

Is it? I know the New York Times has been glossing this. Is it them again? Is it somebody?

[Steve Day]

It is not the New York Times.

[Todd Erzin]

Jake Tapper.

[Steve Day]

It's not Jake Tapper. Aaron, do you have any guesses on who just posted this?

[Aaron McIntyre]

Mitch McConnell.

[Steve Day]

Just about 20 minutes ago. It was about 20 minutes ago Mitch McConnell posted the following Graham Platner's like about. I had about a 20 minute conversation with Mitch McConnell. Decided to drop out of the Senate race.

[Aaron McIntyre]

No, I'm going to say Bernie.

[Todd Erzin]

Was it David French.

[Steve Day]

Guys, what I just read for you verbatim about Graham Platner. Sex is apparently what rape allegations now are sex. That was posted at 10:04am by the Tucker Carlson Network's official X feed. Verbatim. Let me read this again. Quote I'm just reading the post. Graham Platner's fall is not really about sex or tattoos. So it was a rape allegation. It's a Nazi tattoo.

[Todd Erzin]

Okay?

[Steve Day]

The establishment cared so much about getting him canceled because he opposed their economic and foreign policy programs that serve the powerful and shaft average Americans. That was posted at 1004am by the Tucker Carlson Network official account.

[Todd Erzin]

Remember, I was pretty schizophrenic about Tucker because I was even more benefited out than you were. But then at one particular episode, and you said. You kind of reacted internally to when I said, he's now going full David French. Drag Queen Story hour is a blessing of liberty. Because you broke me. I realized how right you were all the time. Well, this is not more testimony of that. This is. This is. That's what he just did. He just said drag Queen Story hour is a blessing of liberty.

[Steve Day]

That's exactly what it is. Graham Platner is a blessing of liberty. Graham Platner's Nazi tattoo and all of his, you know, immoral, reprobate actions that are the ones that he actually owns up to, let alone before we even get to the rape allegations. Essentially, Tucker Carlson is saying that that is a blessing of liberty.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Are you familiar with the X account called nyt? So New York Times, NYT Pitchbot.

[Steve Day]

No.

[Aaron McIntyre]

It's run by some guy. It's pretending to be a computer that spits out, you know, sometimes funny parody generations for New York Times stories. See where I'm going here?

[Steve Day]

Yep.

[Aaron McIntyre]

How about a TCN pitch bot? That would be a great account. A great X account.

[Steve Day]

Yeah.

[Aaron McIntyre]

I shouldn't have said that out loud. Now somebody's going to steal it from me. I'll be right back.

[Steve Day]

That is an excellent segue to where we're going with Theology Thursday for the next seven weeks, particularly here in week one. This is what deconstruction does. It'll take you all the way down until you prove what sometimes is referred to as horseshoe theory, where the two deconstruction extremes just kind of end up on the same wavelength here. You know, they're there. They have their own little, if you know, the shape of a horseshoe, right? They have their own. Each side has its own, like, pinnacle, you know, sides in and of itself, but they're connected to the same. The same structure. That's what this looks like now. Tucker Carlson has now become one of the few people defending Graham Platner. Just misunderstood. How did we get here? That's what we're going to talk about over the next seven weeks on Theology Thursday. As we begin for the first time in many, many years, the seven deadly worldviews. Over the next seven weeks, we're going to look at these seven worldviews and what you're going to see. They're in order. I did not randomly select these. This is the order in which we devolve as a species or a society. Whether it's just individual deconstructions, like what we're talking about with Tucker, to whether we're talking about a societal deconstruction, which we've been fighting really since the counterculture and then the postmodernism was the, the permianation of it that you and I grew up with, right, Todd? And then it became wokeism and intersectionality. Right. This is the pattern of, of, of what you're going to see. And, and as something I originally wrote 15 years ago, I'm not going to change this. I'm not going to change the outline to this one iota. I don't have to. Even when we get to the final worldview, and I tell you what it was setting the stage for, you're going to think again that I just wrote this all last night or in the last week or two based on what's happening today. I didn't. I wrote this all 15 years ago based on what was always happening and always does happen. Because remember, the word of God doesn't tell us what once happened. It tells us what is happening

[Todd Erzin]

and

[Steve Day]

what will always happen. It's a truly prophetic work. And if you know it, then you know the owner's manual to the universe, or at least the part of it that our species occupies anyway. Now, here's the first thing, though, that's important. Before we get into the first deadly worldview, we have to establish what the alternative is. Because if we're looking at the seven deadly worldviews, we have to establish what are the. Then what's a biblical worldview, what is that? Now, because I'm an evangelical and it's my show, that definition is going to be greatly influenced by the theology that influences me. So I'm going to briefly walk you through what are commonly referred to as the five SOLAs of the Reformation. And then because we do have a large Catholic audience on this show, I'll let Todd take the two that he would most differ with me on and explain what his tribe thinks these things mean. But moving forward on the show, we're going to vet these other worldviews up against this metric, this, this standard, right before we can identify the counterfeit, we have to know what the real thing is. Okay, so the five solas of the Reformation are kind of the five creeds or pinnacles that came out of the Reformation. And they all start with a word in Latin, sola, which means alone. Doesn't mean only, but it means alone, meaning the final ultimate word. Okay, so the first one is sola, grace. I'll leave out the rest of the Latin. Grace. Alone. It means by grace alone are we saved and not anything that we could do to deserve it. We have not provoked God to send his son. We didn't reach some ability or acquire some knowledge or formula that God said, you've done it. You've cracked the code. I'll send my son to the cross for you. That. That God always must initiate with his creation. Because we are sinners on an ultimate level, a meta level, we cannot initiate with God. We are incapable of it. Abraham does not walk out when he's Abram. He does not walk out of his father Terah's home one day and say, who is this unknown God up in the sky? I should seek him out. No, that God sought out Abraham. Moses does not say, I wonder, you know, I wonder if there's a burning bush with my name on it somewhere in the wilderness that might give me some great revelation of what my purpose ultimately on this planet is. No, the. The burning bush came to him. God must always initiate. Because we've broken covenant as a species with God, we cannot initiate with him. And so it's always by acts of grace that God initiates. And the ultimate act of grace that saves us is Christ at the cross. For it is by grace we have been saved through the free gift of faith. Lest anyone would boast. Now, you and I have not done a Reformation show in many a moon, but I recall there was pretty much agreement on this one. Yeah, absolutely. All right, the next one would be faith alone. Okay. In other words, that we are justified, or ultimately we are. Our faith is completed. It is fulfilled within us. It is confirmed within us by faith alone. Now, this. Here's what this does not mean. It does not mean that you get to just answer an altar call and coast from here. That's not what it means. What it means, though, is what would confirm faith is fruit would confirm faith. Now, the argument that Catholics and Protestants have been having over this one is, is whether or not works produce faith or faith is what leads to works. That's essentially the argument. Now, we could write a book that's hundreds of pages that explains it more thoroughly than that. And probably would take some imbridge with the simplicity of how I just explained it. But fundamentally and for the purposes of this conversation right now, that's really the difference. Do we intentionally commit to works in order to confirm our faith or do works pour out of our faith in order to confirm it? But in either case, God is not going to plant a seed in your soul that does not bear any fruit. That's not how it works. Okay, there's going to be fruit there. Go back to the conversation. Was it, was it yesterday or was it last feedback Friday? I can't remember. This. This came up in another context. Right. And I made the point to you that ultimately you would want to do things differently. If you are a Christian, you've had a heart change. You want to serve your Lord. You, you want to, you want to obey him as best as you can. You know that, that your desires are changing. You should want these things. Your heart of stone has been replaced by a heart of flesh. And so ultimately there is no, in the evangelical mind, there is no ratio of works that can be successful enough to justify your justification. Instead, it is by faith we are justified. And through that faith, works will pour out of it. And for example, someone who has a deathbed confession of faith, that would be a fruit, that would be an atonement, that would be a repentance. Now, you guys would take umbrage with some of what I just said, so I'll let you have the floor here. And we're not here, we're not going to debate these things today. We'll present both sides of the argument. For now, we've debated him other days. We'll debate him again in the future. We debated some of this when we got to Romans 1:17 a couple of years ago. Right. Today is just to present what we are comparing ourselves to when we're going to really argue now with the other worldviews.

[Todd Erzin]

Well, the scriptural context, you know, Catholics would add would be like Hebrews 3:13 through 14. Exhort one another every day not to harden your hearts. For we share in Christ if only we hold our first confidence firm until the end. Well, what does that mean? Well, the parable of the Sower. Yes, that seed is absolutely designed to bear good fruit. Where does it fall on? Are you fertile soil? Are you hard ground? Are you filled with thorns and thistles? So there's scriptural context for that. The ongoing nature of the confirmation of your faith, it is a daily exercise. It is not a one time exercise.

[Steve Day]

Next would be Christ alone. There is no other atonement that satisfies the justifiable wrath of God against you and all human beings other than Christ's atoning redemptive work at the cross. Nothing else. There is nothing else. There is no other path to the Father except through Christ. We would both agree on this.

[Todd Erzin]

Check.

[Steve Day]

Okay. The next one we would disagree on would be this. Would be this one scripture alone. That Scripture alone is the final authority on all matters pertaining truth and ethics and the conscience that binds the Christian and the Christian life that. That. You know, to use this rectangular table that I'm sitting at today, something has to sit at the end of the table. There's other seats at the table. Philosophy, science, history, all kinds of other ologies, all kinds of other great epistemological pursuits also get a seat at the table. But they all have to answer to something. Something gets to sit at the head of the table, and that's something. Is the word of God. All right? Anything that attempts to challenge the veracity or supremacy of the Word of God is to be rejected by the Christian on matters that the Word of God is silent on. You are welcome to utilize as much of your own conscience as you want, provided you don't use that to then sour upon the conscience of a fellow believer, particularly one that's newer and weaker in their faith than you. All right. But something has to wear the referee shirt. Something's got to be at the head of the table, and that something is Scripture alone. You guys would have a different difference of opinion.

[Todd Erzin]

Well, we obviously absolutely agree about the importance of that. Referee. We would point out the irony that if it's Scripture alone, Scripture never says scripture alone. So the authority has to be come from somewhere else, also within Scripture. If you know the notion of the plain reading of scripture after 2000 years, the level of disagreement on things like baptism, eschatology, right now, too much to Steve Sigrin, the Jews. You would think there would be more clarity on that Scripture on the. On. On the basis of Scripture alone, when the opposite seems to be happening over time.

[Steve Day]

And then the fifth and final one, which we would both agree on this one as well, sola de gloria, that the ultimate purpose of human life. That means you, me, everyone with the sound of my voice, everyone who's ever lived, everyone who's alive now, and everyone who will ever live, that the ultimate purpose of each and every one of those lives is to glorify God.

[Todd Erzin]

Amen.

[Steve Day]

All right. And so those five things are going to be, for the purposes of this exercise, how we're going to define a biblical worldview, and we're to compare all the next seven worldviews we're going to look at in opposition to them from that counterpoint. All right, so we're going to do this again in the order in which these worldviews present themselves. And the very first time that we see the word of God challenged, it's with a worldview known as Gnosticism. Now, Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge, or the idea that, you know, last segment, William Wolfe said we're not even just debating the supremacy or the inerracy of scripture here in the Southern Baptist Convention, but the sufficiency of it. Now, what does he mean by that? Well, the Enemy shows up in Genesis chapter 3 and says to Adam and Eve, well, did God really say that? You sure you shouldn't have a take? You sure you shouldn't get a vote? Did he. Did he really tell you everything that you're supposed to know? Has he really proven that he can be trusted? In other words, the enemy immediately challenges the sufficiency of Scripture, the sufficient, the sufficiency of the word of God. And therefore, I mean, think about this in, in a human context, if you lose trust in another man's Word, you've kind of lost trust in that man, Right? For most of us in many cultures, pagan, Christian or otherwise, a man's word is his bond, right?

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Day]

And so this is what the Enemy attempts to step in and do. If he can get you to challenge, to question and challenge the credibility of God's Word, then you'll question and challenge the credibility of God himself. Or that maybe he's held out on you and only a select few or those who have ascended to a higher form of. Of understanding or consciousness, whose brains are. And minds are more open than yours, are able to acquire the knowledge that the average person God just doesn't share with. Now, over the centuries, Gnosticism became a much more developed metric. It also created its own form of duality, that the body and soul were separate, that the body in and of itself was tainted. So therefore, do whatever you want with your body. And in Gnostic rituals, in fact, even Dan Brown admits this and depicts this in the Da Vinci Code. Gnostic rituals always go along with some form of sexual lasciviousness because your bodies are. Are just. They're just stuff. They're not vessels that house a holy spirit. You're not fearfully and wonderfully made. You're not made in the image of God. He has not counted every one of the hairs on your head. You're just made of stuff. And so do what you like with that stuff. It doesn't matter. Only what you do on a spiritual level ultimately matters. And of course, the biblical worldview would say it's, you know, out of the heart, the mouth speaks. You know, it's. It's what you pour into the cup that determines what comes out of it. There's no duality there. We are made body, soul, mind and spirit in the likeness and image of our creator. So if you want a good definition of Gnosticism, I'm going to give it to you here. The belief that the revealed truths in God's word are not sufficient either for salvation, justification, or existence. Therefore, either there is knowledge that God is arbitrarily hidden from us, that we are entitled to, or he only reveals this knowledge to special people so they can truly know him and his ways. Aaron, you used a phrase to describe Candace Owens last segment again. Can you repeat that phrase for us?

[Aaron McIntyre]

The singularity of vanity.

[Steve Day]

This is exactly what Gnosticism is.

[Todd Erzin]

I was going to say that you exact same thing.

[Steve Day]

Were you?

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Day]

Great minds think alike. It's a singularity of vanity.

[Todd Erzin]

Which is why this is the first one. Because it's timeless.

[Steve Day]

Correct. It always starts here. Every single time. Every pagan religion begins with some idea that there's a secret incantation, a secret formula, a spell book. Went and saw the new Minions movie last or the other night. You guys know I love the Minions, right?

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Day]

I can tell you there's a reason why this movie is also greatly underperforming at the box office. Because it's. It can't hold the jockstrap of all the other Minions movies.

[Todd Erzin]

Seems to be a theme at movie theaters.

[Steve Day]

I think maybe the Minions have run their course and we'll always have the memories.

[Todd Erzin]

Okay.

[Steve Day]

But guess what? The Minions play around with the entirety of the movie Sorcery and Witchcraft. A secret spell book. The Minions. They play with it the entire film? Play around with it? The whole film. They use it to try to acquire the. The secret knowledge that helps the villains throughout the centuries. That they're aiding and abetting.

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Day]

And then they even use that same exact secret knowledge that they've acquired later on when they've. When they've reached. The minions have reached a new or higher form of consciousness. They then use that secret knowledge to then bind the very evil that they open themselves up to. Which is the next worldview we'll talk about next week. Dualism. But that's a topic for next week's show. Every great movement of God is distorted by a satanic counterfeit. For example, right away you saw in the New Testament the early church already in its formative stages. This was the very first heresy it faced. It's addressed many times in the New Testament. John addresses it. There's a lot of thought that much of Jude's Epistle is a direct challenge of Gnosticism.

[Todd Erzin]

This is what Paul is talking about in the first four chapters of First Corinthians. You follow Apollos, you follow. It's a about. I want this. I want to be a special part of this group. That's exactly. It never says Gnosticism, but that's exactly what it's addressing. Instantly they are fracturing into their own desires.

[Steve Day]

It's a lot of thought that First John, the first Epistle written by the apostle John, the last living apostle. That entire thing is a refutation of Gnosticism. So the church fathers dealt with Gnosticism from the very beginning. We have anti Gnostic writings dating back as early as 160 AD with Justin Martyr Theophilus of Antioch in 185 AD one of the greatest Christian apologetics of all time. It is still studied in seminaries today. Arrheniuses against heresies. It was a refutation of Gnosticism. And especially Arrhenius was likely responding to an individual at the time named Marcion. And I've compared Tucker to Marcion. Marcione was the son of a wealthy bishop, just like Tucker was the son of a well off political operative. Grew up in Georgetown around political contacts. Well, to do so was Marcion. In fact, Marcion later became a consecrated bishop himself. But he wanted a Christianity. Now stop me if any of this sounds familiar folks, what you're going to learn through the seven weeks of this course that I wrote 15 years ago. Nothing new under the sun, man. Just new people under the sun who haven't heard this stuff yet. Used to hear me say all the time the devil just plays the hits. Just has the greatest hits album just re racks it. Some errors it's folk. Some errors it's techno. Some errors it's auto tune. Some areas it's rap. Samaris is with a liar, summits with a harp. But it's the same songs, bruh. It's the same songs. To quote the great prophets, Led Zeppelin. The song remains the same every time. So stop me if you've heard this one before. Marcion and I wrote these words 15 years ago. Marcione Wanted a Christianity not polluted, as he saw it, by Judaism. I told you, you're gonna think I just wrote all this stuff last night. I wrote this all 15 years ago and I haven't changed a word of it. Not enough time. Plus, it was good enough when I wrote it 15 years ago. Let me say that to you all again. Marcion wanted a Christianity not polluted, as he saw it, by Judaism. Any evidence for any kind of a movement like that today?

[Todd Erzin]

Imagine the vanity of the person who says and thinks that when it was good enough for the creator of the universe itself to dabble with for how many centuries.

[Steve Day]

In other words, we're going to take it away from the root.

[Todd Erzin]

Yeah.

[Steve Day]

What ends up happening to a plant or a crop or a tree or anything that's expected to bear fruit? What happens when it's separated from its roots? What happens usually withers and dies, does it not? And that's what Marcion intended. And that's what you're watching the Tucker Candace crowd trying to do today. Whether they know it willfully or not is really not relevant. The end result is the same. He began teaching the Old Testament wasn't consistent with the New Testament. They were two different gods, even two different gods. So, yes, Marcione was essentially Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson has resurrected the spirit. If Candace Owens is the spirit of Jezebel, the most infamous, heinous, villainous in all of the Bible. Seductress, temptress, deconstructor, heretic, force of division, manipulator. But I repeat myself, the first great heretic in the history of Christianity was Marcione. He would know the language, but he'd know all the other prompts Marcion could do. Tucker Carlson's podcast today, provided he knew the language, not a topic would change. Now, what did the Church do to combat Marcion? Well, I mentioned some of the Church fathers. Justin Martyr wrote a book, we talked about it a few months ago, called Dialogue with Trifo, pointing out to a Jew that he's writing to named Trifo that, number one, Jesus is your Messiah and you're gonna go to hell if you don't recognize that. But then, number two, no, Marcion does not. And the Gnostics do not get to separate Christianity from Judaism. Christianity is a fulfillment of it. But there was a more formal means by which the Church combated Marcion as well. And we're gonna get to that when we come back. Stay tuned, the Steve Day Show. So as we go through these seven deadly worldviews here, the rest of the summer the last theology Thursday before Labor Day. So that's eight weeks from now. We're gonna do a Q A, right? So you guys have questions and stuff that come up over the course of these conversations. SteveDay.com I've already got a little folder there for you guys. We'll save a bunch of those and do a Q and A. And week eight to wrap up this study here to conclude the summer, [e-mail] is where you can send your questions on these seven deadly worldviews we're going to discuss over the next couple of months. And the first one we're talking about now is Gnosticism. You see it come up right away in the Bible, and we mean right away. It is the. It's the intervention the enemy uses to bring sin into the world. Did God really say, Is that what he really meant? Should he have said more? Should he have told you more? Is he holding out on you? That's not the only place we see it, though. Gnosticism leads to mysticism, the occult. There's numerous examples of this in the scriptures. One of the most infamous is two of them would be a guy named Balaam. He is hired by kings and nobles to curse their enemies, the Jews in the Old Testament. And then God ends up speaking to him. I think it's out of his donkey, right? Isn't that where God speaks to him out of his donkey? And that once inspired Luther to, to coin the phrase, if the Lord can speak out of the back of an ass, he can speak through me.

[Todd Erzin]

Right?

[Steve Day]

Because that's literally what happened. Balaam's on his way to go curse the pesky Jew and his donkey starts talking to him. I don't know if that happens to you, but it's going to stop you dead in your tracks probably, right? Your donkey's got something to say. Your donkey's like, I think. I think you need checked. That's coming from your donkey. You're like, I'm listening. All right, so that happens with Balaam. And then another sad chapter in the life of Saul as he tries to speak to the. His dead ancestors, which is again, explicitly forbidden in. In the law. Doesn't. The law does not say that you. These things are not. Are not with power. The law does not say these things are powerless. That's exactly why you should stay away from them. They're demonic powers. And he goes to a witch in a place called Endor. Apparently that's where George Lucas got the idea to name the moon.

[Todd Erzin]

You remember the first time you Learned that as an adult that Endor wasn't just a fictional place, that Lucas didn't just make Star wars universe as mind blown.

[Steve Day]

Yes. So he goes to a witch in a place called Endor. King Saul does and says, call up the great, the final judge of Israel, Samuel and I, I want to speak to him. And this is one of the saddest chapters in Saul's at this point in his life, increasingly sad life. So Scripture teaches your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit. And through that Holy Spirit now Christ comes and lives in you the hope of glory. He lives in you and through you and through others that he has his spirit in. He teaches you and disciples you. Gnosticism denies all of that. So how does Gnosticism refute the biblical worldview we defined at the beginning of this, of this episode? In totality? All five points, in fact. We'll just go through them all here briefly. Gnosticism says you're saved by knowledge, not by grace. Gnosticism says that it's. That it's the acquisition of that knowledge and your utilization of it that shows that you are justified, not by faith. Gnosticism says there's all kinds of atonements, sacrifices and things you can do to satisfy the wrath of whatever nebulous creative force is actually in charge of the universe. Gnosticism denies the both the supremacy, inerrancy and sufficiency of scripture, incomplete in totality, let alone recognizing it as any kind of final authority. If it did, if the Gnostics did, they read that whole, Thou shall not suffer a witch to live part and think I should stop that. Right. But that's typically not their response to that verse. No, no. And then of course, the purpose of life is not to glorify God in Gnosticism, but to obtain glory in and of yourself. That would you call it again there, Aaron? The singularity of narcissism.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Singularity of vanity.

[Steve Day]

Vanity.

[Todd Erzin]

Thank you.

[Steve Day]

You do that by you now are special. God handpicked you. There was something special about you to give you that knowledge, or you did something special to unlock God's code or the creative forces code. So it's a complete and total refutation. It's just pagan incarnate. So what did the church do to battle against this? Well, keep in mind now we're still well over a thousand years before there's a printing press. In fact, we don't have a formalized scripture quite yet. It's going to show up here around this time. Some of the first iterations of what would go on to become the canon. But it's still being discussed, debated at this point in time. And a lot of these are people that we're taking the gospel to. I mean, are not literate, even by the standards of the day, let alone our standards. So then how do we pass this on? What do we teach? Well, we were still within the ancient world. Oral tradition, memorization were held in very high esteem. They were still conventions of the times. And oral tradition was how the Old Testament was passed down for many of the first few generations. So if you read the New Testament, sometimes you're going to hear Paul say the fall, something like the following words. A few. A few times he's going to say something like this. This is a trusty saying. He's essentially introducing either what's called a doxology or a creed. And this could be a mean. This would be a means by which people would remember things. They get etched into their brains. Okay, so one of our creeds on this show is our address of our physical building. Because for many years, I kept asking Aaron all the time, what's our address? I could not remember it. So, Aaron, you finally did what?

[Aaron McIntyre]

I changed the name of our text thread to the address.

[Steve Day]

Exactly. You gave me an oral tradition so that every time I. I called on my phone and said, hey, I can't say it out loud because then we give out our address, and we don't want to do that. So now if I tell my phone to text Todd and Aaron, it won't do it. So I have to give our physical address so I can text Todd or Aaron by voice.

[Aaron McIntyre]

Is this a passive aggressive way of saying you're really annoyed at me?

[Steve Day]

No, no, I'm saying you did me a solid. Thank you. You made it so that I could you. I thought you did a passive aggressive way of saying you're annoyed at me.

[Aaron McIntyre]

I thought that was pretty aggressive, but try again.

[Steve Day]

Yes, indeed. But it's in my brain now. Now I remember it now. Somebody asked for the address, or somebody needs that for some odd reason, or I need it for some odd reason. It's in there. It's locked in. Okay. And so this was how a lot of the early church was taught letters were read aloud. Oral traditions, memorization. One of the first things that they memorized and that the church created to push back on Marcion. And this heresy was known as the Apostles Creed. Let me read to you the first 12 points of the Apostles Creed. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell. On the third day, he rose again. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen. And that essentially is the totality of the early beliefs of the church. And one fell swoop of memorization and it was going to be way easier to teach people to memorize this, particularly given how much memorization was valued in the culture of the time. It's not so much valued in our culture today. Remember how many phone numbers you used to know? All your whole crew of boys. Right. Every girl you ever wanted to date or ever dated. Right. Every family member. Right. Just knew all those phone numbers. How many phone numbers do you know right now?

[Todd Erzin]

Oh, I barely know my own.

[Steve Day]

I know, I know, I know. Because we're. Now, you remember that scene in Star Trek 4 when they're in modern day San Francisco and Scotty sits down at the computer, computer, computer. He tries to talk to it to get. Nothing happens. And they're all looking at him like, what drugs is this guy on? Right. But this is what we do now. We don't know our own numbers. So I'm like, call Todd. That's what I do. Call, you know, call one of my kids.

[Todd Erzin]

This is why you and I literally knew the starting batting order of every team. Yes. Back in 1982 and 1984.

[Steve Day]

But we can't remember it from like the last couple of years, correct?

[Todd Erzin]

Yes.

[Steve Day]

And so this was how much of this was taught to the masses. This they could remember. And because they were used to being asked to remember things, they couldn't just run off a photocopy, couldn't just send a text.

[Todd Erzin]

Right.

[Steve Day]

I mean, so there were not, there was not a ton of physical copies. We're all, you know, I don't know how many of us are going to go see it now, but a lot of people are getting ready to go see Homer's the Odyssey, right. In theaters here a week from Friday. Do you know that it's about 300 years after when this Apostles Creed was formed that we actually have the first written copy of Homer's the Odyssey in existence? Think about that

[Todd Erzin]

now.

[Steve Day]

Was Homer's the Odyssey written in the third or fourth century A.D. no, no. Which means how was it passed on? On and on and on and on and on. It was memorized. That's a lot longer than the Apostles Creed. What are some other examples of seeing this today? The Bible Code would be an example of this. Remember those books in the 90s? There's a secret code in the Bible. Movies like the Golden Compass would be an example of this. Where Satan in fact is the hero and God is the villain. It's a series of books too. Nostradamus, the Mayan Calendar, the so called Lost Gospel, Scientology, the Da Vinci Code, movements like Islam who say an angel came hundreds of years after the scriptures were canonized and has forgotten a few things. God forgot some stuff. We got to clarify. In fact, Paul writes in Colossians to beware of those who will come later and claim through revelations of angels things that were never included in the word of God. So you're going to see evidence for Gnosticism in every single challenge of a biblical worldview, because it is the prequel to every challenge of a biblical worldview because it's the OG. All other challenges to a biblical worldview begin here because all other challenges stem from the father of lies. And this was the first lie he told. Turn it over to you guys now for your thoughts.

[Aaron McIntyre]

This is probably my favorite and least favorite one of all seven and I just thinking about this from a psychological or physiological standpoint. There is research showing that new information being learned, specifically novel information being learned, share some of the reward, the chemical rewards that eating food provides for you. That little quick dopamine hit. There's also research that proves gossiping, Gossiping provides some of the same oxytocin hits as mother infant bonding. These two things, the information, the imbibing of new information providing a dopamine hit. The gossiping, providing a boost of the bonding chemical that has everything to do with Gnosticism. Just strictly looking at it from a physiological standpoint. So what does this. What? What do I mean by this? Insurrection Barbie Somewhere beneath a college campus in Orem, Utah, in tunnels that no student, janitor or building inspector has even seen ever. An assassin trained by the French Foreign Legion, activated over a donor meeting that was never closed, fired a shot from below a stage, while a completely different shooter fired from a rooftop. Both of them working for Israel, which was disguised as Egypt, whose airplanes had spent years tailing a woman whose flight logs show she was in a hospital having contraction at the time. All to protect a four nation sex trafficking cartel jointly Administered by governments that cannot jointly administer customs, form a cartel that was about to be exposed by a campus tour podcaster who had just survived a Hampton's intervention. So you see what I'm saying here? Just all of these little. These novel pieces of information you can see, all of the sudden, all of the sudden, you're hooked. Spiritually and physiologically. It's a hell of a drug. Gnosticism is because you need this novel information. Why? It's not that you're pursuing the truth. It makes you feel special. And then you find a group of people who believe some of the same things. Then all of a sudden you've got a community. What don't you have though?

[Steve Day]

The truth.

[Aaron McIntyre]

And as you said, you're going to wither and die.

[Todd Erzin]

There's many versions of Gnosticism throughout the ages. But the constant there, the thing to remember so that you can anchor yourself to why it's the first and what it is, is one word and one word that is one letter, I. It's the most reliable thing the devil knows.

[Steve Day]

Yep.

[Todd Erzin]

Get things turned to yourself. It's why it's so disappointing. And I've mentioned this on the show before, Rick Warren, when he blew up on the scene, I can't remember what year, but the Purpose Driven life. And I went, okay, who is this guy? I look up his book, but the very, very first sentence, and he was right. It's tragic that he didn't stick with it. It's not about you. The minute you become untethered about that and your faith is not about the gift of grace from God and your life isn't about worship, but it's more about me instead of him. All bets are off.

[Steve Day]

That is very well said. And here's the thing, it feeds our egos and they love to be fed. I've told you before that the two most important truths you'll ever learn in your life. Number one, God is God and I am not. Number two, Jesus loves me. This I know. For the Bible tells me so. If you know those, if you absorb those two truths, everything else in the entire world aligns with clarity from there. Didn't say it's simple. Didn't say it's easy. We're in a fallen world where sinners, we'll do stupid stuff. People will do stupid stuff against us. But at least you'll understand why they're doing it and maybe why you are doing the stupid stuff you're doing. It clarifies everything else. God is God and I am not. Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so. If you absorb those two truths you've locked in the formula for our species right there, everything else will come back to those two things. Literally everything else will. They're the ultimate cosmic clarifiers. And the Gnostic denies all those things? It's not that simple. It's way more complicated than that. So complicated, in fact, you probably could never decipher it on your own. Especially without me. Or if you come with me long enough, then you can become one of the special people that will decipher it all next. What kind of. What kind of people use that kind of language, by the way? Cult leaders. Every cult that's ever existed is Gnostic in nature. They've got the new revelation, they've got the secret knowledge, they've got the things God forgot or didn't want to tell you or didn't think you were worthy of knowing. And every other deadly worldview we're going to talk about now over the next six weeks starts right here. This is the starting point here. That'll do it. For today's show, we're going to stick around and do overtime for BlazeTV subscribers. For the rest of you, we will see you tomorrow noon to 2 Eastern, right after Glenn Beck, and right here on Blaze TV. Until then, go hard. Romans 8, 28. Sam.