One Soul At a Time - Rod Martin Part 2

00:00 - Speaker 1The more political Christians and I'm certainly one of them need to understand that a lost people will not maintain liberty period. They may manage it for a while, but eventually it always ends one way Only a spiritually awake people, a regenerate people that serves Christ and it doesn't have to be everybody, but it has to be a lot of us. If you don't have that, eventually they're going to vote for sin. 00:27 - Speaker 2Welcome to the Ignite with Barry Meguiar podcast, where Barry's book and passion for spreading God's love are guaranteed to ignite your life. Now listen in and prepare to have your life ignited. 00:43 - Speaker 3Hi everybody, Welcome back to Ignite with my new best friend, Rod Martin, who, if you haven't read his stuff yet, you need to. That's how I got familiar with him Again. Rod, where do we go to get your news feed? 00:56 - Speaker 1Go to rodmartinorg and, as I said in the earlier podcast, just briefly, we do in-depth analysis on geopolitical, just briefly. We do in-depth analysis on geopolitical, technological and economic issues with a global perspective, but with a pro-American Christian worldview. So we're very intensely interested in the issues we were talking about right at the end of the last podcast having to do with President Trump and what he's seeking to do in these next four years. We're also interested in things that people may not be thinking about yet, like the military applications of Elon Musk's Starship rocket, which are just extraordinary. You're going to be able to deploy an entire. 01:36Army division anywhere in the world in under an hour. And there are all these different things that are happening in our world that the mainstream media is never going to pull together for you, and if they did, they'd lie to you about it. So come to rodmartinorg and we'll cover it. 01:50 - Speaker 3This is looking at our world today Succinctly I mean, I can say it brilliantly through the eyes of a Christian with a biblical worldview yes, a scientist, if you will. Can you believe that? But with that clinical, technical mind still coming to the truth of God? Perhaps even more so, and talking about our world today. It's a great news feed, both from the. There's something secular for us, everything is, everything is ministry and everything's about God. Everything's spiritual. But we do live in a crazy world that's going um in all kinds of direction today and God's in the midst of all of it. And in our last podcast I was just suggesting to Rod maybe you give us a little insight in some of how God is working today, and how how God is working today and how should we be reacting as the body of Christ. 02:57 - Speaker 1Well, we have to be very realistic about where we are as a country. We have just dodged an incredible bullet and I don't know that we'd really be able to come back from it, and the easiest way to describe what I'm talking about is just to look at our mother country. The United Kingdom elected a socialist government last summer and it immediately cracked down on free speech, released like 5,000 violent criminals from its prisons to make room for grandmothers who protest or post memes. I mean, this is extraordinary. The French government actually the British government threatened to arrest Elon Musk. The French government actually arrested the CEO of Telegram, and you know they're just cracking down on things we consider inalienable rights every day over there. 03:41Jd Vance did an incredible job of calling it out in Munich the other day, and that's where we are. We have the left in America just in lockstep with, and maybe about a half step behind, where the socialist parties in Europe and in Canada and in Australia and New Zealand have already gotten. We have our constitution to thank for that, because it allows us to throw some sand in the gears. So your activism really matters in America much more than it might elsewhere, but the fact is, the darkness has been in closing. So you know for God to take this man who wasn't supposed to win in 2016,. You know that was just absurd. 04:26Obviously, donald Trump can't win. And then he does win. And not only that, but he keeps his promises. He puts the people on the Supreme Court. He says he will. 04:35He said he would slash two regulations for every one new one. He actually slashed 22 regulations for every one new one. He actually cut taxes. He actually slashed 22 regulations for every one new one. You know he actually cut taxes. He actually is getting government's boot off the American people's throat and that's what the left can't handle. More freedom is just anathema from a socialist mindset. And I want to stress, in our spiritual context I can't say it strongly enough Marxism, cultural Marxism, political Marxism, however you want to define it, critical theory and all of its subsets, critical race theory, radical feminism, queer theory, all of it are really just one big marketing scam to create an elite to rule you, and they use your aspirations and your envy against you and then they end up in power and it's just like Reagan said about some of the countries in Africa yeah, they got one man, one vote, but they only got it one time, because once they elected those Marxists, once they put them in power, they never had another real election ever again. 05:48 - Speaker 3So true. So here we have four years, maybe two, but say we have four years. If he doesn't get assassinated, I pray for Trump continually that he stays alive. He's a little bit cavalier out, being in places where you know that's a different subject, but basically we have four years. 06:06 - Speaker 1He feels a little bulletproof these days. 06:09 - Speaker 3Yeah, trump himself said these next four years will be the golden years for America, and my pastor, tommy Barnett, right after it, said they will be if the church wakes up. Yes, yes, yes, we can clean the halls and we can clean up a lot of the mess, but none of that is spiritual per se. It certainly overlaps, but the fact of the matter is we have a spiritual problem and it's deadly, and most of our population are going in the wrong direction. And if we just sweep the house clean and don't fear the spirit of the Lord, there's a scripture on that that says the last day will be worse than the first. The demon will come back with seven others, more powerful, and inhabit it. 06:57I mean even our Christians in government circles today that are actively working, but it's more focused on issues. My problem is they're more focused on issues and politics, which we need to be, but but less focused on on souls and in the day. It's a matter of how many people are getting into heaven. If we have four years, how many? How can we get as many people into heaven in these next four years? 07:23 - Speaker 1And that's what God is calling for, and I'm wondering how that's. 07:27 - Speaker 3I don't know how it's going to play out, but but having nothing to do with souls. You can fight for issues like fighting against abortion or whatever. Your whole life can be really successful. But it becomes like you're God and at the end of the day, probably nobody will end up becoming a Christian because of your efforts or even yourself. You can do that and not be a Christian, but we have Christians in the game and fighting. But I'm wondering how do we get people to focus on the issue of souls? How do we get people in the midst of all the chaos and all the wonder and all the agendas and all that? 08:07 - Speaker 1How do we make? 08:08 - Speaker 3Christians to get off the bench and into the game. 08:12 - Speaker 1Well, not only are you correct, but the more political Christians and I'm certainly one of them need to understand that a lost people will not maintain liberty period. I mean, they may manage it for a while, but eventually it always ends one way Only a spiritually awake people, a regenerate people that serves Christ and it doesn't have to be everybody, but it has to be a lot of us. If you don't have that, eventually they're going to vote for sin. They just can't help themselves. They have a sin nature, it's inborn, it's who they are and if they don't turn to Christ and if he doesn't change them, they're eventually going to seek that. 08:56We see that in the polling numbers with regard to liberal white women, who are just a disaster. Liberal white women, characteristically, are divorced. Liberal white women, characteristically, are divorced. They are upset at the world. They're just angry about everything and they're mad at their dad. They're mad at their husband If they have a husband, maybe they're three ex-husbands, whatever and they're looking to government to fill that hole, because God made us in a complementary way. You know there should be one or more men in your life who are protecting you and creating a forgive, the term safe space in which femininity can blossom and you can become everything that you were designed to be as a woman. And you know men provide some useful services we can reach the top shelf and we can change the tires and you know we can take things on that are emotionally taxing for women. And when they cast off the men, they end up seeking sort of a pseudo dad or husband in the state, and that's why we've got a 38 percent gap between liberal white women and the rest of the population when it comes when it comes to party affiliation, they're overwhelmingly democrat because they're looking for the Democrat party, through the government, to punish their enemies and reward their friends. 10:35That's a terrible impulse and it comes back to exactly what you're saying a loss in much of this culture of the gospel and of healthy families that stick together and that prioritize their spouses and their children. 10:53These things are inherent to the Christian worldview and they are anathema to the socialist worldview and always have been. There's no accident in the fact that one of the very first things Lenin did when he took over Russia and made it the Soviet Union, one of the first things he did was abolish marriage and it didn't work. People actually want to stay married and they got really upset about it, and that's part of why you had the Russian Civil War, but so they kind of had to peel back off of that. But everything they did was aimed at atomizing individuals, because if you don't have any supporting institutions and virtuous relationships, the only thing between this well, actually there's nothing in between the state and you, and the state is huge and you are nothing, so you become a cog in the machine and you do it voluntarily. It's really horrifying. It's a satanic way of organizing the world. 11:58 - Speaker 3It really is. And I keep thinking where's the church? You know we have a president who's doing some great things. You know he was surrounded by ladies when he signed an executive order keeping men out of women's sports. Where was the church? I don't know. I know Our Pope is for silence. Where's the church in these issues? They're not political, they're God, they're scriptural. You know the church is. So I take from that to the next step and I'd like to get a little more of that view from a personal standpoint. You're a scientist and you, paul, you have all that knowledge. But your personal satisfaction, I, I know, is from coming, living for God and impacting people on a personal basis. And how do we get? How do we ignite Christians? You know are are going to ignite Christians, yes, to ignite America with revival, one person at a time. That's the only way it's going to work. The world's lost. They're not going to church, they're lost. 12:59They have excuse for being all those crazy things. They're lost, they have excuse and they're going to stay lost until a Christian we come to them and explain to them God loves them. We're not doing that. 13:11 - Speaker 2Something in the area of 1% of us are doing that, so the real challenge in these next four years. 13:17 - Speaker 3How do we ignite the church? We could have revival. You know, 70% or 80% of the church already have a friend in their life that they trust, who's a Christian. We already have the influence. We're just not using our influence. We're sitting there quietly and almost sitting back in our armchairs. Trump's got it now and I can relax. He's saying this is our moment, this is our moment, let's go for it. I'll just move everybody every day closer to Jesus. We can do this. What's it going to take? I mean, you're doing it yourself and I want to hear about that. But also, how do we get more people doing it? You know, that's the cry of our heart. 13:54 - Speaker 1Well, the good news is that the decline in Christianity in this country has finally halted and stabilized. You know we were losing a large number of people from the church for 25 years into the category the pollsters call the nuns, by which they mean no religious affiliation. Yeah, and that has finally halted. We've had five, six years of stability that has finally halted. 14:19We've had five, six years of stability and possibly an upswing. It's a little early to say, but the encouraging part of that is, you know what I was describing earlier about just the horrifying effects of liberalism, of socialism, on women especially, have really hit their apogee in Gen Z, which is just a horrifying topic that maybe we can discuss another time. But the net result of it has been that Gen Z men are becoming quite conservative and they're returning to church, which is amazing. We actually have slightly more Gen Z men in church than women, which is probably about the first time in 300 years anything like that has happened. So we're seeing some positive things and of course, it's exactly as you would expect and it's exactly why we reelected Trump. You know, ok, we tried it the other way. That was a complete disaster. 15:26Let's do what we knew were and you probably remember Rudyard Kipling's poem the Gods of the Copybook Headings, and the whole idea is that you know everything's going along great and then people kind of give up virtue, they kind of indulge their lusts, whether it's sexual or something completely different. The money point is but the gods of the copybook headings, with terror and slaughter, return, because you can't get away from these things any more than you can get away from gravity. If I go out and I sleep around, I blow up my family. If I go out and I rob a bank, I probably get shot, I probably go to prison. Bad things happen. And likewise if I jump off my balcony, bad things are going to happen. But the moral laws are no less intrinsic to the fabric of the universe than the physical laws are, because there's one designer, and so the fact that we have messed that up for so long has encouraged, I think, from what we can see, the beginnings of a revival in our youngest generation. And we're seeing effects of that in a lot of places. And I'll just give you as one example Miami, which 15 years ago was the second most unchurched metropolitan area in the United States, despite a lot of nominal Catholicism. They just didn't attend, they just weren't involved. And over the last 15 years we have seen a 13-point swing toward active Christianity in that area. That's an extraordinary difference and we had a little to do with that. I mean, the Southern Baptists have put a lot of effort into that. Florida Baptist Conventions put a lot of effort to that, but of course that's really just a work of God and it has incredible consequences at every level of society. 17:29You said and I'll hush after this but you said at one point you know some Christians get really political and that ends up being their God. Yes, some do, and I can name a few, and so can you. But that doesn't have to be that way. You know, what needs to be is a submission to Christ that actually informs everything you do, in every area, and it's never going to do that perfectly. But if Christ is the center think of it as the Copernican revolution. You know, I'm not at the center of the solar system. The sun is, in this case, s-o-n, and if he's at the center, then if I'm doing politics, I want to do it Christianly. You know, if I'm doing business, I want to do it Christianly. If I'm doing charity, I want to do it Christianly because I want to give glory to Christ. 18:20 - Speaker 3Yeah, Well, you will like this. I spoke in December at a fabulous, a fabulous group of people is the National Association for Christian Lawmakers. Okay, and I got up and I said so what is it you made? What's your mission every day? Passing legislation, putting people in place, getting righteous laws, all that kind of but, but. But. But is that your mission? I mean, think about what you're doing here. And then I came back to him in this Florida. I said I got to tell you you're not Christian lawmakers, it's the name of their organization. I said you're not Christian lawmakers, I'm the name of their organization. I said you're not Christian lawmakers, I'm on the National. 19:01 - Speaker 1Advisory Board of that organization. In fact, what's that? I'm on the National Advisory Board of that organization. Oh, they're great. I love them. 19:09 - Speaker 3I was playing with them a little bit, of course, because I said, you know, but this is why I got every eye in the room and there's senators and congressmen and governors or whatever. I got every eye. I mean, I had them, I knew I would, but I said that. I said you know, christian is not an adjective, you know, it's who you are. You're a Christian, you're a lawmaker, christian. 19:33But in the midst of all those battles, you're in one of the darkest places in America. The list of the charges against senators and congressmen goes on and you look at it and you say is that the NFL or is that the NBA? No, it's our congressmen. And you're having to fight that battle every time. But if you instead say this is an opportunity and you start fighting for souls, first and foremost, you're there as a Christian to bring people over to our side, and then you won't have to convince them anymore because the scales will be taken off their eyes and they'll vote rightly. 20:11Wherever we are, we're Christian. First, it's about souls, nothing else matters. When we get to heaven, it's not going to matter what legislation we pass this year or anything else, or how many bottles of Carwax are sold. None of that matters. The only thing that matters is how many people do we lead to the Lord. So, rod, if we could go from the macro to the micro for a minute, so much you do has huge audiences, but just on that personal basis. We have all those times when we're going through life. I mean that's where you have some real fun, just doing it on a personal basis and making a difference in people's lives and sharing God's love. Can you talk a little bit about that before we're going to run out of time? I don't want to miss that part of Ron Martin. 20:56 - Speaker 1Well, in line with what we've been discussing. You know, if you really believe, if you really love Jesus Christ, then you care about his word and you care about what's in it, so you don't steal, whether you're a government official, stealing from people through taxes and fees and printing money and all the things they do, or whether you're talking about, you know, treating your employees right or treating your employer right. If you're an employee, I mean, there are a thousand ways that we apply the moral teaching of scripture and that's worthy of many discussions. You know, the scripture speaks to tax policy, it speaks to conscription, it speaks to property rights, all kinds of things that we don't normally think about. So, to answer your prior question, you know how do we ignite the church? We get them in the Bible. The more time they spend in the Bible, the better off they'll be, and the more they are like Christ, the more society will improve. 22:00 - Speaker 3It's so true. It's so true, and we often say and remind people everything you say and do, everything from the time you get in the morning to the time you go to bed, everything you say and do is moving people closer to God or further away from God, and that's a game changer for all of us. That's why he said if you love me and love your neighbors yourself, it satisfies all the law. Not out of legalism, not out of rote, trying to be lawful and do everything God wants to do, but just out of the pure joy of leading people into Jesus Christ. And that's what this ministry is all about. Ignite everybody, move everybody every day closer to Jesus. You're doing that in such a huge way. Ron, I so appreciate you and I'm one of your raving fans, and maybe we can get a few more people to come along with us because of this podcast. God bless you, my friend, and we'll see all of you next time. 22:56 - Speaker 2If you enjoyed today's episode, let us know, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review to help us reach more listeners. Remember sharing your faith ignites your faith. See you next time on the Ignite with Barry Meguiar podcast.