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President Trump signs bill to release Epstein files · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good day, and welcome to the Thursday, November the 20th, 2025 edition of Denison Forum's Daily Article Podcast.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Dr. Jim Denison, cultural pastor and theologian, authored today's Daily Article.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elfkins.
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Two very disparate stories are headlining the news this morning.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: First, President Trump stated on social media last night that he has signed the bill that directs the DOJ in the Department of Justice to publicly release all its Jeffrey Epstein related files.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Senators from both parties said the DOJ must now release the files within 30 days.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Second, the Associated Press is reporting that, quote, the House voted overwhelmingly yesterday who repeal part of a new law that gives senators the ability to sue the federal government for millions of dollars if their personal or office data is accessed without their knowledge.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote,
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Senate included such a provision in the funding bill that ended the recent government shutdown.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was in response to reports that the FBI analyzed phone records of as many as 10 Senators in 2023, as part of an investigation into President Trump's alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: The house was blindsided by the provision and has voted to overturn it.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, the Senate must decide how to respond.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have the greatest admiration for Abraham Lincoln.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have visited his birthplace in Kentucky, stood near where he stood and get his bird, and been in the theater where he was shot and the home where he died.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have enormous respect for Thomas Jefferson as well.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: While I grieve his failures in hypocrisy concerning slavery, I am grateful for his brilliant intellect and revelatory wisdom so foundational to America's birth.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have visited his Virginia home and burial site and stood in all beside the room in Philadelphia where he wrote the Declaration of Independence.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, I must audaciously disagree with something Mr. Lincoln said about Mr. Jefferson.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: In John Meacham's magisterial biography, and there was light, Abraham Lincoln, and the American struggle, we find a statement in which Mr. Lincoln praises Mr. Jefferson, quote, the principles of Jefferson are the definition and axioms of free society, in quote.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Meacham adds that chief among them was that all men were created equal.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: All honor to Jefferson to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document and abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to involvement there today, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: in quote, if only it were true.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the partisan political fear over the Epstein files, with each side looking for ways to attack the other, the victims of Epstein's sexual abuse and sex trafficking are all too easily overlooked.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even senators occupying one of the highest echelons of political power in the land can reportedly be victimized by the government they lead.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: from Canaan Abel, to crimes generating headlines today, fallen humans have consistently and often rejected Thomas Jefferson's assertion that all men are created equal.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: For anography, objectifies people made in the image of God.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sex trafficking commercializes souls for whom Jesus died.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: crime victimizes people loved infinitely by their creator.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The beating heart of our fallen nature is the will to power.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our quest to be our own God revealed in Genesis 3, 5, at the expense of everyone else.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: All the while, they're doing the same at our expense.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is it any wonder that the US has enacted over 49,000 federal laws across our history?
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: or that they consistently fail to restrict our behavior or reform our character, and yet despite all our failed attempts to legislate morality, we persist in the effort.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: In large part, this is because abandoning the effort obviously would lead to Anarchy and Chaos.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But also, this quest for a just society reveals something transcendent about our souls.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: This week, we've been focusing on the transforming power of intimacy with Jesus.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today, let's add a different dimension to the conversation.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: In CS Lewis' The Weight of Glory, he identifies, quote, a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our existence.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: In Quote, Lewis speaks of books or music, for example, in which we experience beauty, but never quite attain the deeper beauty to which they point.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: As he notes, they are not the thing itself.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: They are only the scent of a flower we have not found.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: The echo of a tune we have not heard used from a country we have never visited, in Quote.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I myself have had this experience many times, sitting on my favorite bench beside my favorite lake.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Watching the sunrise or said over the ocean, hiking in the woods, a mid-blossoming dog woods in Azaya's on a glorious spring morning.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have been privileged to visit places that will remain fixed in my memory to the end of my life.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The sunrise over the sea of Galilee, the hushed beauty of the garden tomb in Jerusalem, the majesty of the Acropolis and Athens, and the wonder of the pantheon in Rome springed to mind.
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: But each and every time, without exception, there was a nagging sense in the back of my soul that this is not it.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is something more, something beyond this, something more perfect
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Plato was right in calling this world a shadow of the ideal.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: We legislate against our immorality and strive for beauty and joy with all our hearts, but we never actually attain what we seek.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even when it seems we do, the moment passes, and the shadows envelop us once more.
• 6:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lewis had the explanation to which I am pointing us today.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, if we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy,
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: The most probable explanation is that we were made for another world, in quote, if nothing in this fallen world can satisfy our souls, let's use the temporal to experience the eternal, the material to unite with the spiritual, the mundane to seek the transcendent.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Aristotle corrected Plato by claiming that the ideal is found in the material, and in a sense, he was right.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: If God is truly omnipresent, we can meet him in every moment and place.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: If he is truly omnibenevolent, we can experience his love even in the most loveless moments.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: If he is truly omniscient, we can find his wisdom and follow his guidance even in the darkest valleys.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: If he is truly omnipotent, we can experience his transforming strength even in our greatest weakness.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it is likely that it is in such moments that such revelations will come.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: When Paul trusted his thorn in the flesh to God's providence, he discovered that he could say, when I am weak, then I am strong.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: noted in 2 Corinthians 12 verse 10, what is your thorn today?
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where are you most disappointed or frustrated with life?
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Conversely, if your circumstances happen to be joyful this morning, are they enough for your soul?
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the Bible assures us in James chapter 4, verse 8.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: In just the moment where you find yourself today, can I invite you to seek with all your heart, the Father who is seeking you, promised in Jeremiah 29, verse 13?