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Lawmakers take step to end US government shutdown · The Daily Article

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  [SPEAKER_00]: Good day and welcome to Denison forums November the 11th, 2025 edition of the Daily article.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Cultural Theologian Dr. Jim Denison, author today's Daily article, I'm Chris Elkins, narrator.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: A group of Senate Democrats reached an agreement last night with congressional Republicans the first in a series of votes that should lead to reopening the U.S. government.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The negotiated deal reverses federal layoffs promises a vote in the future on expiring Obama care subsidies and fully reopens the government through January 30th.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: A final vote is still required by the Senate and the House.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Then the continuing resolution would head to President Trump for his signature.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Healthcare benefits have been at the heart of the longest ever government shutdown, which raises the question how much of our lives are spent managing our mortality.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: American spend $265 billion each year on physical activity.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: $70 billion a year on weight loss plans and $100 billion a year on prescription drugs.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Nearly a million people have evacuated in the Philippines, ahead of a deadly typhoon that struck yesterday.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Paris residents are entering a lottery to share cemetery space with Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: The plastic surgery industry is now booming in the U.S.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is human nature to seek to mitigate human thinitude, but the mortality rate is still 100%.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: In a world where death comes to all, according to Hebrews 9 verse 27, why should we believe that God is love stated in 1 John 4 verse 8.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I spent the weekend grappling with a sinus infection, the details of which I want to share as you begin your Monday.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: However, I would wager that, like me, you can name something, or several somethings, about your health, you're glad you won't have to endure forever.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And every day you tire of the news with its never-ending cycles of doom and gloom, you can take heart that your world will not always be like this.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The fourth centuries, St. Ambrose of Milan, is best known for his influence on St. Augustine, but he was a brilliant theologian in his own right.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He encouraged us, quote, Let Death do its work in us, so that life may do its work also, a good life after death, that is, a good life after victory after the battle is over.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: When the law of the flesh is no longer in conflict with the law of the mind,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: when we have no more battles with mortal flesh, but in mortal flesh, we have victory."
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  [SPEAKER_00]: End quote.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He understood that for Christians, dying is not the final battle, but the final victory.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our death is but the doorway into a life without death, a world in which death shall be no more revealed in Revelation 21 verse 4, and as John Dunn warned us, our old foe, death, thou shall die.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Max Locados, right?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Quote, though you and I may wish for a longer life for our loved ones who have gone before us.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: They don't.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Ironically, the first two-except God's decision of death is the one who dies.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: You see, while we're mourning at the grave, they're marveling in heaven.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: While we're questioning God, they're praising God.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, as I often said at funerals, when we take our last breath here, we take our first breath there.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We close our eyes in this world of death and open them in that world of life.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We step out of the car and go into the house.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We are well and we are home and we discover for ourselves the truth of Jesus' promise in John 11 verse 26, everyone who lives and believes in me shall never
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's our problem.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We cannot prove that it's so.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: When we die, we obviously have no agency to save ourselves from death.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Like a patient under anesthesia, we are completely dependent on someone besides ourselves to bring us back to life.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: But unlike those facing anesthesia, we cannot interview someone who has come back from the other side, so we have no way to prove that the other side even exists, much less that we will go there upon our death.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Every position we take on the afterlife, therefore, is a faith position.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The atheist Richard Dawkins is sure that, quote,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: but he has absolutely no way to prove that he's right.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He has faith that there is no God, no judgment, or afterlife.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Just as I have faith that all three are real.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Based with a faith decision, we cannot avoid and no one can avoid death.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We do well to examine the evidence and then make our decision on its basis as best we can.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the evidence upon which I base my hope of eternal life.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The fact of Jesus' empty tomb.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I can prove to you without opening a Bible that Jesus of Nazareth existed was crucified and was believed by his followers to have been raised from the grave.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: When they began proclaiming the resurrection the easiest response by the authorities would have been to produce Jesus' corpse.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: This would have ended the Christian movement before it began.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: But they did nothing of the sort.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: They fabricated the lie that the disciples stole the body.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Only because they had no body to display, according to Matthew 28 verses 11 through 15.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: From then to now, the fact of Jesus' empty tomb back into me,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Every time the inevitable doubts of faith begin to find me, there is no logical explanation for it.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: If a disciple stole the body, they kept the secret better than any secret has ever been kept and then died tortured deaths for a lie.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: If the disciples went to the wrong tomb, the authorities would have shown them the correct tomb.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: If Jesus had somehow resuscitated himself after his death, despite the spirit that pierced the paracardial sac around his heart and the mummified airtight shroud in which his corpse was wrapped, he could not have performed the miracles that proved his resurrected divinity and sparked the Christian movement.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: If Christ rose from the grave, he must be God.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: His word must be true.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Trusting him must be the most reasonable decision to make, sharing his hope must be the greatest gift we can give, and death must be the door to eternal life.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The 17th century Puritan Thomas Brooks noted, a Christian knows that death shall be the funeral of all his sins, his sorrows, his afflictions, his temptations, his vexations, his oppressions, his persecutions.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He knows that Deathshill be the resurrection of all his hopes, his joys, his delights, his comforts, his contentments.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Why is this reminder good news for you today?