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What last night’s elections tell us about President Trump · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good day, and welcome to the Daily Article Podcasts from Dinnison Forum.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm narrator Chris Helfkins, giving voice to today's Daily Article, written by friend and cultural theologian, Dr. Jim Dinnison.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: That has been said that we should believe our beliefs and doubt our doubts.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: But any of us doubt our beliefs and believe our doubts, I know the feeling.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you do as well, please continue reading.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll begin with what seems to be a non-secretor.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The results are in from Indiana's Republican primaries.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: As political reported yesterday, these primaries were the first big test for whether the president still has an iron grip over his party.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: The reason, last December, despite the president's strong urging, nearly a dozen GOP state senators refused to redraw Indiana's congressional maps.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Seven of these lawmakers were targeted yesterday as Mr. Trump's ally spent more than 10 million dollars combined against them.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: The president also endorsed a candidate running for an open Senate seat.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the election returns last night, five of the seven lost to challengers back by the president.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: A sixth race is too close to call, and Mr. Trump's candidate for the open seat, one as well.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's my point, not in living memory has a single politician so unified both parties as Donald Trump does.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I recognize that politics are replacing religion for many, inciting the personal commitment formally reserved for faith.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I know that certainty in uncertain times will always be attractive, but I don't remember a politician who has been backed as fervently by so many in his party and opposed as fervently
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, I think there's far more at work here, a factor that applies to every Christian, whatever our political beliefs.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: The philosopher Antoniflu observed that an unfalseifiable truth claim is not a truth claim at all.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Suppose I tell you, I met some Martians in my backyard last night to pose you then ask, do I have any objective evidence that they were there?
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did anyone else see them?
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I answer both questions in the negative.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then you explained to me that if Martians had come to my city, astronomers would have documented their journey to our planet, but no such data exists.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: We continue our debate, but nothing you say diswades me from my assertion.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Consequently, as Professor Flu would note, my assertion is a mere opinion, not a truth claim.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some in the media these days seem to have such an unfalseifiable position on Donald Trump, reporting everything he says and does as wrong, or everything he says and does as right.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know people who have such a view of the president personally as well.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some who disagree, such commitments are evidence of such bias as to be disqualifying as truth claims.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, Professor Flu used his falsification principle, not for political purposes, but to argue that religious claims about God are meaningless, to suppose Lieber's refuse to allow evidence such as evil and suffering to disprove them.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: CS Lewis similarly recognized, quote,
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every war, every shipwreck, every cancer case, every calamity contributes to making a prima facie case against Christianity.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not easy to be a believer in the face of this surface evidence.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It calls for a strong faith in Jesus Christ.
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: in quotes.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Professor's flu and Lewis are among the greatest thinkers of the 20th century.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, in what must be an absolute height of audacity, I would like to disagree with both today.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is easy to have unfalseifiable faith in Jesus, so long as I encounter little that could falsify it.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I enjoy my personal time each day in Bible study, prayer, and worship.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I enjoy worshiping with fellow Christians and serving alongside them.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I especially enjoy writing these articles each morning and otherwise serving through our ministry.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: The cost in time and effort associated with these activities hail in comparison to the fulfillment they bring.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the problem.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: If my faith in Jesus does not cost me something significant, I'm not truly following him.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: All warned us in 2 Timothy 3 verse 12, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: The more I serve the Lord, the more I threaten the devil.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: In addition, following Jesus fully will cost me in personal morality.
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every day there will be things I must do that I don't want to do and things I want to do that I must not do.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not to mention the
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: At such times, however, trusting in Jesus does not invalidate my faith as unfalseifiable, it empowers it as transforming and true.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The evil in the world is less a case against Christianity than an opportunity to demonstrate its relevance.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: The key is experiencing the living Lord Jesus Himself in the midst of our trials and tribulations.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is claiming God's promise from Isaiah 43 verse 2 to be with us in the rivers and even more, His promise found in 1 Corinthians 3 verse 16 to be in us by a spirit.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Think of it.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everything you experienced today will be experienced by the risen Christ through the end welling Holy Spirit.
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is as real in your body as he was in his own, acknowledged in 1 Corinthians 12 verse 27.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as I noted yesterday, he's working every moment of every day to make you like himself so he can manifest himself in and through you to the world.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Frederick Beatener said it this way, quote, The gospel is the mad insistence that Jesus lives on among us, not just as another haunting memory, but as the outlandish, holy, and invisible power of God working, in countless hidden ways to make even slubs like us, loving and whole beyond anything we could conceivably pull off by ourselves.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quotes, the more we experience Jesus himself, the more we trust him, and the more we trust him, the more we experience his transforming power in grace, then even in the hardest places and times, our suffering becomes an invitation to the faith that changes the world.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll close with one more quotation from my theological mentor, in the screw tape letters, CS Lewis has a chief temperature right to his apprentice, quote, do not be deceived where wood, our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending to do God's will, books round upon a universe from which every
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, will you endanger Satan's calls today?