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Deadly protests in Iran: A right analysis but a wrong spirit · The Daily Article

• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good morning, and welcome to Denison Forms Daily Article Podcast.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's Wednesday, January 7th, 2026.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Connor Jones, co-host of the Culture Brief Podcast here at Denison Forum, filling in for Chris Elkins, and narrating today's Daily Article, authored by our co-founder and CEO, Dr. Jim Denison.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I need to begin today with a confession.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Deadly clashes have erupted in Iran, as demonstrations sparked by anger over the rising cost of living, entered their second week.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unlike those in past years, these protests are seeking regime change, and taking down regime symbols, posters, and statues.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: At least 285 locations, and 92 cities, have witnessed protest gatherings.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: At this writing, more than 2,000 citizens have been arrested, and at least 34 protesters have been killed.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: If Ayatola, Oli Combinate's forces failed to quell dissent, he has reportedly made plans to flee to Moscow.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am old enough to remember the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis vividly.
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've written often about Iran's horrific Gehata studyology, and have called its leaders the world's most dangerous regime.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: It would be in the best interest of Iran, Israel, the Middle East, and the world for them to fall and flee.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: But while I believe I have reacted to this news with the right analysis, I have done so in the wrong spirit.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: The same has been true with regard to recent events in Venezuela.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me explain.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Religious across human history have focused on transcendence or immanence, but not both.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: To the Greeks and Romans, the gods lived atop Mount Olympus and used humans for their personal, often nefarious ends.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: To Muslims, Allah is remote and removed from the human condition.
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: To Hindus and Buddhists by contrast, there is no personal ultimate being.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: The focus is on personal enlightenment and oneness with reality.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: The mystery religions of the Greco-Roman world similarly centered on rights and rituals
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: then gain the prophetic declaration fulfilled by the birth of Christ in Matthew 123.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Behold, the version shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name, Emmanuel, which means God with us, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 714.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: This transcendent God, who was with us, became imminently one of us.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: In one sense, his earthly life could not have been more lowly.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was born to a peasant, teenage girl, and adopted by a peasant carpenter father.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: His birth was attended by Fieldhand so ritually unclean that they could not attend synagogue or temple services.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: He grew up in a town so obscure that it is not mentioned even once in the Old Testament.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was baptized among sinners, experienced temptation, hunger, thirst, weiriness, and pain.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: He lived in a friend's home because he had nowhere to lay his head as we read in
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was buried in a borrowed tomb.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: In another sense, however, his life could not have been more exalted.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: His birth was celebrated by angels.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: We read a Matthew 316 and 17 that his baptism was marked by the spirits, dissent, and the father's affirmation.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: He regularly demonstrated divine omniscience, omnipen excellence, and omnipotence.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: His death was marked by darkness over all the land, the rending of the Temple Curtain, a violent earthquake, and the opening of tombs, as we see in Matthew 27-45-53.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: His burial led to his glorious resurrection and ascension to heaven.
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Across his ministry, he interacted with every dimension of the cultural spectrum.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: He befriended tax collectors and sinners as noted in Matthew 9-11.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: He touched lepers and healed demonic acts.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: He ministered to a Roman centurion, taught a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, and witnessed to the highest officials in the country.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, as Romans 834 declares, he continues his earthly ministry, as he praised for us while his spirit dwells within us, as we read in 1st Corinthians 316.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: 1st Corinthians 1227 tells us he empowers us as the body of Christ in the world today.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: No other religion in history has conceived of such an astounding combination of
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: all of it for us.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: He brews 415 and 16 declares there is no temptation we can not trust our Savior, knowing that he has been tempted as we are, and will empower our victory over our common enemy.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is no problem we cannot bring to him, knowing that we can, with confidence, draw near to the throne of grace, where we will receive mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there is no soul on earth with whom we should not stand in compassion and solidarity.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus loves even all e-commerce and Nicholas Maduro, our Savior would have died just for them.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: The more they, and others like them reject God's Word and will, the more they need our intercession, witness and ministry.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the more we pay forward, the grace we have received, the more we give our broken world what it can find nowhere else.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus assured us in Matthew 544 through 45, that when we love your enemies and pray for those
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: In Philippians 215 and 16 reminds us that though we live in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, we shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life.
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: By contrast, our broken culture can claim neither divine transcendence nor immanence.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Secular society has no God who is for us, much less a God who lives in us and works through us.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: George Orwell's 1937 book The Road to Wiggenpeer describes socialists in a way that is just
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: With their eyes glued to economic facts, they have proceeded on the assumption that man has no soul, and explicitly, or implicitly, they have set up the goal of a materialistic utopia.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: You and I know better.
• 6:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: We know that a materialistic utopia is a contradiction in terms.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: We know that man not only has a soul, but is a soul.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: We know that God's love can change any heart in this world for the next.
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: But we also know that such love has to be incarnated to be believed, first in Christ, and now in Christ in you, as stated in Colossians 127.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You may not have the chance to be the presence of Christ to world leaders, though you can and should pray for them to follow Jesus, but you can demonstrate the grace of Christ today to someone you were tempted to reject, but called to love.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fill up the antsy noted, grace, like water, flows to the lowest part, and so should we.