Paul Galushkin speaks with a Sacramento CA entrepreneur and Apologetics teacher James Jenkins. They discuss the importance of universal values that are vital in making our communities strong and prosperous. James shares his story, where he grew up, and what made him who he is right now. He is very involved in the Sacramento community and he has a genuine desire to impact other people's lives.
Born in Detroit Michigan and the oldest of 7 siblings, James grew up in what he calls an "Ultra Christian" family. But later, it was his strong desire to find the truth that contributed to his strong faith and interest in Christian Apologetics. James is married, has 2 daughters, is very active, and loves to go to the gym. Earlier in his life when a doctor tried putting him on blood pressure meds, he found a new activity that made him healthy and looking young. He also shares how a single book written by Og Mandino titled "The Greatest Salesman in the World" changed his life. Later in the podcast, James shares a very touching story that had a profound impact on his life. We hope you enjoy the conversation and find it inspirational.
The episode was filmed on February 7th, 2024
James Jenkins facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/james.jenkins.3511
Paul Galushkin speaks with a Sacramento CA entrepreneur and Apologetics teacher James Jenkins. They discuss the importance of universal values that are vital in making our communities strong and prosperous. James shares his story, where he grew up, and what made him who he is right now. He is very involved in the Sacramento community and he has a genuine desire to impact other people's lives.
Born in Detroit Michigan and the oldest of 7 siblings, James grew up in what he calls an "Ultra Christian" family. But later, it was his strong desire to find the truth that contributed to his strong faith and interest in Christian Apologetics. James is married, has 2 daughters, is very active, and loves to go to the gym. Earlier in his life when a doctor tried putting him on blood pressure meds, he found a new activity that made him healthy and looking young. He also shares how a single book written by Og Mandino titled "The Greatest Salesman in the World" changed his life. Later in the podcast, James shares a very touching story that had a profound impact on his life. We hope you enjoy the conversation and find it inspirational.
The episode was filmed on February 7th, 2024
James Jenkins facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/james.jenkins.3511
From the time we are born, our lives are crafted with stories stories we hear, read and stories we tell ourselves. These stories shape our lives, our future and our potential. Sometimes, a single story can pivot us from a downward spiral to a transformative paradigm shift. Our struggles in life are rooted in the stories we choose to believe. It's a delicate balance between being realistic and maintaining hope for a brighter future, but unfortunately, many people end up abandoning their dreams, all because of self-imposed beliefs and a limiting mindset. The Greatest Story podcast exists to bring to light the untold stories that inspire, empower and urge you to discover your purpose, so that you can craft your own success story. Welcome to the Greatest Story.
Speaker 1:I was honored to talk to a man whom I met not too long ago. He is originally from Detroit, michigan, but now lives in Sacramento. He calls himself a deplorable Easter worshiper and a violator of community standards. He is married and has two daughters. Currently he teaches apologetics and is very involved in the Sacramento community. So, without further ado, here is James Jenkins. When I met you at Pete's Coffee, I would love to continue the conversation, and then I saw you at the dinner.
Speaker 2:I met so many people in different places that are gyms like yourself, and you just started a conversation with them and the next thing you know there's a local musician named Jim Martinez. I met him like that. I can't remember what restaurant, but we started talking across the table. The guy was from Detroit. I went to his not disc ristress, but he's out in Sacramento and I got a lot of his music on my iPod now.
Speaker 2:And he's a jazz pianist, but he's a music director at Christ Community Church. I think it is in Sacramento, I think it is. But yeah, and so I listened to a lot of his music and it's really really kind of jazzy kind of and some worship type of music that he does and he puts on a concert, usually at Christmas time.
Speaker 1:So that's awesome, great pianist. You're from Detroit as well. I'm from Detroit yeah, well, if you can talk a little bit about your background, what do you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we're on, we're rolling. I didn't know that I'm up here yakking at this time, so I love that about my background.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know you're the oldest of seven.
Speaker 2:I'm the oldest, you get memory. I'm the oldest of seven. Like I said, I grew up in Detroit in the cold. I hated it and I still do. I was, I grew up in I call it a ultra Christian environment, and so much so that my mother had signs all over our car Like stickers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, stickers and signs all over the side of our car. You know, god says repent, john 3, 16 on the back, things like that. And so it would be like, you know, 100 below zero in the winter and we had to walk to school. My mother would go like, hey, well, I'm going to drive you guys to school today. We went oh, no, mom, we'll walk, we'll walk. You know we were embarrassed to be seen getting out of our car, but but that's that's how I, what I grew up in, and and big, big families back then, a lot of cousins, a lot of uncles and aunts and things like that in Detroit, and I gravitated towards. Well, first of all, I, my mother, had me reading a lot of books when I was younger. Back then they called them, they called them black history books back then, but history, but I call it history now because I think it's a part of American history. Yes.
Speaker 2:I was reading things like Frederick Douglass and W E B Dubois book or T Washington and things like that when I was I took a big interest in that. I was always been a big reader and that kind of set some foundation right Abraham Lincoln and things like that and didn't think too much about politics. Back then Got to high school One of the things I knew I wanted to do was become a professional baseball player. That was my passion. It still is one of my passions that I still do.
Speaker 1:And that was all in Detroit. Yeah, right up in Detroit.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so I did a little bit of college for a couple of years and kind of wondered, because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wasn't making it in baseball, so I didn't have any idea of what I wanted to do. I'm summarizing some of this Hit a low point in my life when I lost both my parents by the time I was like 22. And end up I couldn't sleep so I ended up dropping out of school. I was back home and the doctor told me I had high blood pressure and that you need to take this medicine. And he says I said how long do I have to take this? He said for the rest of your life. So this is the first time I went home and I read what was on the bottle or something. I have a cousin. I used to tease him because everything he bought, food-wise, he would read everything and I'd be in a hurry to go somewhere. I said, come on, man, we got to go. And he's reading everything on a box of cereal or whatever.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, that's when you were 22? Yeah well, yeah, this is about when I was 22. So I looked at that bottle and I said there's no way I'm taking this stuff for the rest of my life. Look at all these side effects. And so I decided to join the gym. I joined the gym, I start working out. Stopped taking the medication when it ran out and I looked at work out as my medicine and got myself in really good shape.
Speaker 2:Went back to the doctor. Nurse says have you been taking your medicine? You know you have a follow-up appointment. I said no and she started kind of railing on me and I said and so I didn't say anything, I just took it. And she put the cuff on me, took my blood pressure and said take it again. She says your blood pressure is down. She says what are you doing? I said I'm working out. She says well, you better keep it up. And I says that's my plan. So I view I'll be 65 in a couple of months and workout has been my medicine of choice and so I've been a gym rat gym junkie.
Speaker 1:Wow, I would never say 65.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm a junkie. And so I went into, I started working out. I started, I got a job at the gym that I was working out at a few months later, going to the guys, hey, you should consider applying for a job here. I said, sure, so it was selling memberships. At the time I didn't know diddly squat about selling, and so I was in a bookstore one day, like I frequent a lot, and I came across a great book. It just happened to open up the pages of it and the words just jumped off the page and grabbed me and I was like what is? This book is not just any ordinary book. This book is about, like life, you know. And so I got to have this book and the book is called the greatest salesman in the world. I don't know if you've read it.
Speaker 1:Is it by? Who's the author?
Speaker 2:I'm Dino.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:Yes, so that book was instrumental, and once I finished it in two nights so it was not only instrumental and finding out that you know what? This is something that's deeper than me and it's something that I can make my living off of and I can be good at it because I love people and so I dedicated my life to sales it was also instrumental in guiding me back to Christ Wow, and so I won't spoil the book for anybody, but it was only about 100 pages long. So I worked my way up in that company, I worked my way up to be a manager, I worked my way up to be an area manager, which moved me out to California, and I'm very proud to say I should make sure everybody on my staff had that book. And I even get guys who I managed 35 years ago that worked underneath me to tell me James, I still got the book that you gave me and it was been instrumental and you really guide it, help guide my path and and set a great example for me.
Speaker 2:So I'm very very proud of that.
Speaker 1:That's great.
Speaker 2:A couple other things. I've been married for 27 years coming up next not this Friday, but on the 16th two days after Valverine, february 16th.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been married 27 years.
Speaker 2:My wife Carrie and I, we have two daughters, 23 and 26. Our youngest one is finishing up in May in music therapy down at UOP and she'll be done, and so I just I think I've been in sales all these time. Another big factor I had a younger brother that used to start started challenging my Christian faith when I was about maybe 20 years, 15 years ago, 15 years, yeah, he started challenging my Christian faith with all these he's about. He was about 10 years younger than me. He's passed away now, but two years ago, but he, he was hitting me with all these things that I had never heard before, like hey, the Bible has been rewritten a million times, it's fake, science have disproved all these things, miracles are not possible. And I was like no, no, no, no, it really is, you know. And I realized the implication that what he was saying.
Speaker 2:So that led me to Christian apologetics and I started looking for answers in books, like I typically do, and I read one again, another book that really transformed my trajectory, trajectory which is by Dr Frank Turks I don't have enough faith to be an atheist and a fantastic resource my that book I still have the original assigned by the author, frank Turk, is worn out and anyway, once I got that book, I started unraveling it. Equate me to unravel a lot of the things he was saying and show that they were false. And then I understood that, hey, you know what Christianity, christianity were? Some call to give answers in 1 Peter, 3, 15, 16, and do so of generalness and respect. I had to always remind myself about the second part. When you imagine two brothers eagles clashing is hard to do it in generalness and respect.
Speaker 2:So because of my sales background and my sales skills, it apologetics kind of came naturally to me in that sense God equipped was equipping me, and so I actually went through a course in 2013 with the instructor of that book on teaching it. So I teach out of that book as my primary source for jumping off into apologetics. That led me to a lot of other, a lot of other authors and books and teachers that I adopted and start speaking for different other organizations defending the life of the unborn, speaking on with a life training institute, scott Gloesendorf, where I seen debate down at Berkeley.
Speaker 2:So I started attending debates and all these things to understand all the arguments. So I encourage a lot of people and teach. I teach a class right now at the Point Church once a month on apologetics.
Speaker 1:It's live, it's live, yes, nice.
Speaker 2:And I try to help Christians and equip them to understand that what we believe is absolutely true and that we have all the bases covered and the Bible is true, and I teach them how to present evidence that the Bible is true and it's letting me into so many interesting areas and so many interesting conversations with people who are non-believers. One of the other things that else it did as I grew in that area and I'm still growing and I still is always something to learn and you learn anyway. One of the things I understood with my brother was that at the end was, to my knowledge, he never came to Christ before he was actually killed. I say he passed away but he was actually killed, but that's another story, but to my knowledge he never came to Christ. But I understood that the things that he were presenting to me, these challenges, held no intellectual rigor or grounding. They were all built on sand and I exposed them for what they were and what I wasn't.
Speaker 2:What I was dealing with was not an intellectual issue. It was a heart issue. It was an emotional issue. He was mad. He was mad at God. Once I feel back the layers. It takes years for me to do that, but now you have to.
Speaker 2:So in apologetics, you have to understand what you're dealing with. Why is a person, why are they, railing against God? You know what happened and you got to ask them questions to peel back these things and understand where they're at. And so that took me to another level. But I understood it was. It was an anger issue because you got to remember my father died in 19 and my mother died at 22. So he was 10 years younger than me. So that affected his life differently than it affected mine. So that led us into all kinds of debates. We debated on politics, we debated on all these things, and so it was a sharpening of our iron for me and to get to understand all these things, because they're all intertwined and then what they call worldview issues, how you see the world, and so those are the types of things that kind of got me where I'm at right now.
Speaker 1:So, james, so when you are talking to someone, let's say, maybe they're an atheist right. Or they have something that's really pushing them to have this point of view that there is no God and stuff. How much is if you were to say like, how much is it something that you can say and, like you know, bring a good discussion or some facts or wherever? Or how much is it the Holy Spirit doing the work?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. I think both has to be at work. I think the Holy Spirit starts in the preparation, because what I found is you have to be, I have to be prayed up and I have to be in the right state of mind, otherwise I start taking these things personal, and that's what I can't do. I have to be a seeker of truth, but I would say it's a little bit of both, because again, you got to be armed with the Holy Spirit, because sometimes they'll launch personal attacks at you, and so, in order, and as a Christian, as a man who's filled with the Holy Spirit, I have to be above, I have to be seeing and looking at this from above the fray. For me it's a search for truth, and so I don't let my ego get in the way, because you know I could be wrong sometimes and I have to be willing to make the admission that, hey, you know what, you're right, I was wrong about that, but, and so they respect. Usually most people will respect. You'll gain their respect when you understand when you're wrong, or that we, you know what. I don't know the answer to that question. That's a great question and I don't know the answer to it. So I would say it's a little bit of both, but it also takes a lot of preparation.
Speaker 2:Because I spoke to a good friend recently, paul, and he said he's one of my best friends growing up and we were talking and he's in my neighborhood where I was at. I know his family but he's trying to hang around the neighborhood guys Great guy, by the way but he's never dug into these questions and he got the neighborhood guys because they know he's a Christian and they kind of beaten him up a little bit. And so I talked to him recently and I said I won't mention his name because he might listen to this, but he knows I love him. But I started telling him. I says, look, you need to start getting a couple of books and these might be at this time, at this point in your life. These might not be the guys you might not want to witness to because they see you at your weakest. So you might have to get and just start learning one answer a day and go buy a book on Apologetics and if you learn one new thing about it how to deal with one answer a day and one year, you got 365 challenges to Christianity that you can be equipped to deal with. And I've got books on all these answers. I got tons of them and I say I encourage people hey, get one.
Speaker 2:Hey, what's the biggest question? Well, there's a big questions that are tough and there's the questions you hear every day and I don't know if you want to go here, but one of the big questions I think people have in, one of the toughest ones that Christians struggle with and nonbelievers struggle with, is why would a good God send a, send a, send a? Like my mother, she was a Christian. She died at 42. So our family struggled with that one. Why would God take her? Of all people? She trusted him and she died of cancer at 42 years old with seven kids. And why would God take her? And we have to be ready to answer that. And why does God take babies? Why does God take what happens to people who don't know God? You know the Bible has all these answers. Shall I share some of them with you?
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely no.
Speaker 2:This is fascinating, yeah, so so I'll deal with a couple of them. Examples, for instance I start with a premise. By the way, the premise is and we have it in Genesis the world's broken, and so are we. And I start to this to my friend I said so. The world's not the way it's supposed to be. Even the atheist knows this. He knows the world shouldn't be like this. I shouldn't have to watch my child die, and so we have to acknowledge that I shouldn't have to watch my mother die at 42. We trust it in God, but we go back to the original premise that the world is broken, and back to our Genesis, and sometimes we forget about these things. That is right. The answer is right in front of our face and we read it a million times. So I put it in my terms the world is broken. And then when they say a good person, well, according to the Bible, there's none good, not one.
Speaker 1:But wouldn't they say well, God created the world, so why did God create a broken world, man?
Speaker 2:it wasn't broken. And then again it was. Paradise was lost and paradise was found. Genesis, god created it.
Speaker 2:He saw that it was good and sinned sin entered the world and we're suffering the consequences of the first Adam's sin, and where is paradise lost? And at the end paradise is going to be found. And we're in the middle of that story. It's kind of the way I explain it and I says and we're, all men are broken. So where are these perfect people, when are these good people? And so all of us are broken. I'm broken. The only was one that wasn't broken and that was Jesus Christ. He was perfect, he died for our sins, so, and he paid the price for our sin. He's the second Adam, the perfect Adam.
Speaker 2:So I kind of explained it like that to him, and and and you know there'll be some other objections sometimes to come up in between that. But and sometimes the other one is hey, what about people who don't know about God? Now he's say well, Romans, one has us covered. It says, right there. It says I'm paraphrasing if you don't mind, I should know about heart. But it says, basically, God's revealed himself through the world. His invisible qualities are seen by the things he's made. His fingerprints are all over nature. But God wrote two books. He wrote the book of nature and he wrote the Bible. Okay, and they don't contradict each other. So we can see him. Even if you didn't have a Bible, we can see. And in that section it says so, that men are without excuse. So at the end of the day, you're not going to be sitting up there, God, I really didn't know about you. He's saying basically and Paul, and God, speaking through Paul, said basically no, you don't get to use that excuse, because you can look at the stars and you can say well, God, you got, somebody did all this. What's behind all this? What's behind nature? What's behind DNA? Dna is a code from all our known experiences. Codes come from minds. It comes from intelligence. So his fingerprints are all over nature. You know, you have a mind. Where does it come from? Where does you know?
Speaker 2:One of the other things that comes up sometimes is people go like well, I don't believe in anything that I can't see, touch, taste, and this is called materialism. And what's interesting is that statement is immaterial, so it's self-defeating. You believe in a statement that you can't see? Yeah, you can hear it, but you can't see it. It's a self-defeating proposition. So it took me in apologetics, took me in all these areas where I recognize, when people say things that are not true that they end up refuting themselves. If you say there is no truth, then I usually ask a question Well, is that true what you just said? And so by saying so, they're affirming that there is true. So even the denial true of truth is an affirmation of it.
Speaker 1:This reminds me of a book. Have you ever read Power vs Force? Not yet, david Hawkins. Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:David Hawkins yeah, give me that before we leave. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So he was a PhD and he wrote multiple books, but this one is basically about levels of consciousness. So he starts with calibration of 200, which is low no, no, not 200. Like zero is where pretty much a person is suicidal. Nothing you can say or do to help them get out of that, they're just done. And then 1000 number is enlightenment. So he says that someone like Jesus, where he was just full of love, he wasn't afraid to die, you know, like he was like at the high, that's like the highest level. Perfect. Yeah, it's perfect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then everything is in between. The 200 number is the calibration for courage. So there is the power, he says. Power in the power category above 200 is the positive consciousness. Okay.
Speaker 1:The force is the negative consciousness, so things like bitterness, envy, regret. You know all of this. So there's people and when I was reading this book there were some people that came to my mind who I know from my life that they're. Whenever you ask them how they're doing, they always respond like could be better, or I'm alive, like as if they're like like they're just struggling. All this stuff is always happening to them. They're sick, right. And he writes in this book that, depending on which level of consciousness we live in, we attract these things because those things come out from us. We attract that. It's like a lot, almost like a lot of attraction, but on a more deep like, it was really hard for me to read that book, like I had to like reread multiple things and stuff. So it's, it was for me. It was mind blowing because it really opened up. And he says that the courage starts. That's the first positive level, which is 200.
Speaker 1:And that's where someone has enough courage to like take, take a step towards something okay do something like begin to like change their life, their viewpoint, and then it's acceptance, and then it's reasoning acceptance and it kind of moves on to to all the way, all the way up to enlightenment. Very, very interesting book. So it was.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna do some research in it for you, paul, to see what you got there. Yeah, I'm trying to catch the concept of it and relate it to to to Well, he's saying that truth.
Speaker 1:So there's this experiment that he talks about. They do so. For example, like he has one person come out and stretch his hand out like this and he says, when I push it down, resist Okay. So when he says something that is true, then the person like is strongly, like his, his arm resists pretty, pretty firmly. Yeah. When, when it's something that's not true, then the muscle becomes weak. Interesting.
Speaker 2:Very, very interesting. It transfers over to the physical. Physical, yeah, it sounds like what you're saying. Yeah, interesting, interesting.
Speaker 1:I know it like I'm. I'm still very limited in my vocabulary because English is my second language. It's doing pretty good so. So I'm not really able to like explain exactly like these concepts, but they were. I mean, I understood them enough to say, wow, there is something to this for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and truth is, you know, one of the, when you understand Jesus being the embodiment of everything, every word that you think that's good, he is the embodiment of, it is really mind boggling. And and and also is mind boggling just throwing things out there to look at the things in nature that reflects his fingerprints. Intelligence, I don't know if you have you. Are you familiar with the cosmological argument? No.
Speaker 2:I'll. I'll share it with you because I think it's important, because it's basically one of the what they call great. There's about three, three arguments I call them for that supports the existence of God and as we describe them from the Bible, and one of the first one is called the cosmological argument or the argument from the cosmos. And then Paula goes to something like this everything that began to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. We know this from whatever Big Bang, we understand this from, the science has come along in the last century or so, from Einstein to Hubble's telescopes, which has documented that the universe is expanding. So, if you reverse it back, it came from a, what they call the singularity, and it came to being out of nothing. And so this is cause of cosmological argument. So the universe had. Everything that began to exist had a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has has a cause.
Speaker 2:And then you have to determine, take a step further and say what must that cause be like? And this is kind of like forensic science or just looking at how it began and what the universe is made of. So the universe is made primarily of three primary things time, space and matter. So if time, space and matter had a beginning, then whatever created it has to be outside of time, outside of space and material. This sounds like the God of the Bible, Cause he's time, but it could be the God of Islam, because there's only really three major religions that has a God outside of time, space and matter.
Speaker 2:Most of them are pantheism or atheism, which is irrational. The universe had a beginning, it had a beginner. Big bang needs a big banger, and a big bang big banger has to be bigger than what it banged. So anyway, I stole that from somewhere, but anyway. So. So now we have hey, we got a timeless, spaceless and material being. Now we start adding onto that. We can show that the universe has extreme complexity. For instance, they call it the Goldilocks zone. We just happened to be living in that room, exactly the right place that allows life to be, to happen. And if we were 5% closer to the sun, we'd burn up. If we were 5% further away, we'd freeze the death. If the expansion rate of the universe was a minute fraction faster, we're not here. Slower, we're not here. There's a number they call them anthropic principles that says oh, dna. Dna is another one. It's a code. Codes, as we know, come from mind, so that whatever created this had to be timeless, spaceless and material. I'm talking too fast here. I haven't even had coffee.
Speaker 1:You're already running in the in the overdrive you got me wound up here.
Speaker 2:But it also has to be extremely intelligent to create a code like DNA. This in all living things, a building blocks from it, and codes come from intelligence, extremely precise, to create the universal that life. It makes it just right for life. So all these factors are just right. If we live on a really fine edge and the atheists, it takes more faith to believe that happens by chance or luck than to believe that an intelligent being did it. So so that's called. So that's the cosmological argument, and you add onto it the argument from a design. A design needs a designer, so implies a designer, so any. And we're back to Romans one. It says we look at nature and I. I talk to people all the time and some of them say I believe in a higher being. And I said do you know how? What I? I said I agree with you, there's a higher being behind this. I said do you know how, how to know that that's true? And they go no they go.
Speaker 2:let me tell you why. These are the things I explained to him. I says this appears like the God of the Bible. And they go wow, I never thought about it like that. Most people who are honest. And then we add that to the moral argument. Morality is hardwired into us and and the Bible states that you know his law is written on our hearts. And for those that don't believe it, I always say if you want them to, you want them to confess it. All you got to do is do something wrong to them and they will admit. And it's not just an opinion, because if you don't, if morality is not there, then it's just we have just bumping around opinions that something is wrong. But they really know, if I steal your wallet, that you really did something wrong to me and I could. If they, if they were in atheists, I can say well, court, come on, there's no God, it's just your opinion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just a yeah.
Speaker 2:So these are not just opinions that we're talking about, and so you can get somebody to admit that something's wrong. That's the one way that that blows the cover and it's an argument for God. There's a moral law there. Therefore there's a moral law giver, and so I say it's hardwired right into us. So these are three of the great arguments that that shows that God exists.
Speaker 2:And you can step further, and I and I do this in a PowerPoint presentation that I do. You can step further now and say, well, okay, now we got you know a theistic God. A God is outside of time, space and matter, to create at time, space and matter, morality and all this complexity we have. Now, which one is it? Is it the Muslim God? Is it Christian God or the Jewish God, which is the same God essentially. And so, and then we have to build onto it, then we have to show that the Bible is true. I said, well, to show the Bible is true. What do we start? I says we just got to show that the New Testament is true and the reason we show that the New Testament. I train students to learn that the New Testament is true because if you prove that the New, or at least lay the sound evidence that the New Testament is true. Guess what? You get the Old Testament thrown in, because Jesus affirmed everything in the Old Testament. So we provide I provide evidence that the New Testament is true. And so and some of that evidence is we have what they call the manuscripts, their early evidence. These are evidence. These are what they call. Well, I'm going to start back, step one. Take one more step back.
Speaker 2:We have in Matthew, matthew, mark, luke and John as eyewitness testimony. Yeah, okay. So when somebody says, well, I'll throw out an objection, these guys were biased or whatever you want to say, we've heard it all, I've heard it all. But so I said, first of all, these are eyewitness testimony. Oh, we don't know who wrote those blah, blah, blah. They were written by somebody else. I said, well, they're either eyewitness testimonies or somebody who was dictated to eyewitness. And I said so what kind of evidence do you think? What kind of ancient evidence is what I typically ask? Skeptic is acceptable, because you can't have a Kodak camera that took pictures back then and you like the things we have today. So sometimes, people, you got to show me proof or something like that. It says the best evidence we have from those times were eyewitness testimonies. What you have in Mark and Matthew, Mark and Luke and John are eyewitness testimony to the resurrected Jesus and Jesus's life in his ministry of three years. So that's the best evidence you got. So these are all the literations of E, so they make it easy to remember.
Speaker 2:So these are eyewitness testimonies, as who saw this happened and what they call early testimony. These happened within the lifetime of the resurrection. They were and they were written. And how do we know that? The reason we know that is because hey, now I really need the coffee to get to my brain here, paul. The reason we know that is because the destruction of the temple is not it is written about, but it's written about as a future event and that happens in 70 AD. So if it happened they were written after 70 AD. They would be looking back at the temple being destroyed and Jesus prophesied. He said, when he said before this time period passes, he said we're not one stone to be left on top of another before this generation passes is what he said. So he's looking forward to that.
Speaker 2:So we know we have early testimony, we have eyewitness testimony and we have things like embarrassing testimony. There's all kind of embarrassing testimony in the New Testament. What I mean by embarrassing is if you were to make up a story. If this was a made up story, would you leave in embarrassing details about yourself? I wouldn't, no.
Speaker 1:I'd be the hero.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, that's not what we find in the New Testament. We have all, and these are things that were pointed out to me, by the way, through reading and reading the book I was referring to, and these are. So I give Dr Frank Tuerck and Norm Geiser, who put this stuff together, credit for all this stuff. I just stole it so, just so you know, and I made it my own. But the embarrassing testimonies we don't even think about. We read them all the time and I read them for years and years and don't realize like the women were the first one. So the tomb, well, that's embarrassing. You look at things like it's chock full of information, like the book is like the number of times that Jesus said, oh ye of little faith. They didn't get what he was saying. Many times they doubted him, even after they seen him risen from the dead. They, oh boy, so many pieces of embarrassing things that we don't even think about that when.
Speaker 2:I started reading the book I said, wow, that is. And here's the thing I always say Christianity could have been over 2000,. Over 2000 years ago could have been ended 2000 years ago. With one little piece of evidence, one little small piece. You know what it is.
Speaker 1:I purposely stopped you here, paul, 2000 years ago, so that might that was.
Speaker 2:that has to do with Jesus Christ his body, his body, his dead body is found in the tomb, then Christianity is not worth believing in. Yes, and the reason that this is where the early testimony comes in is that somebody could have written or taken these writings of Matthew, mark and Luther and John and said no, these guys are lying, I'll show you where the body is at and let's just end this crazy cult called Christianity right now, and it would have been over, yeah. Game over.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that gives us hope that Christianity is alive and we know what would happen if his body was in a grave. It would mean that he would be a false prophet because he said he was going to rise from the dead. It would mean that he's, along with Muhammad and everybody else buried all the other prophets throughout history, joseph Smith and whoever else you can name. So these are the type of the conversations that I get into and the type of evidence and I go in deeper.
Speaker 1:I see your view, man. You're so good I think I don't see how you can't convince somebody that Jesus Christ is the Lord. So do you believe that America was founded on the Christian faith, Christian principles?
Speaker 2:It was absolutely found on Christian principles, absolutely so. Another one of the books I came across I'm a story of books that I came across. Let's go. And here's a great thing, too, about apologetics. I told you about Dr Frank Turg. I came across this book. I Don't have Enough Faith to Be a Nathius. That led me to other books and that led me to Neil Momin's book called Jesus was involved in politics. Why Aren't you Wiser Than your Church? When I read that book it kind of got my head around where I should be politically, and not in the sense that it tells you who to vote for. It lays out the foundation of America, which you are alluding to, and it laid down the principles and why they are there and why they work better than secular ideas. I need some coffee.
Speaker 1:I want you to go a little bit deeper in that, because I've heard a point of view where church, community and government are separate entities, separate parts of the whole universe, for example, or the world. And the role of the church when it comes to government politics can you go into like, how do you?
Speaker 2:see that. Thanks, that's a good question. I'm going to start down that road with saying that a lot of people well, I'm going to do another way Our Christianity, unlike a lot of religious, we take everywhere with us. We believe God has a hand in everything and that we are to be sought and liked on this earth. And so there's some kind of way, I think, bad ideas have gotten to church or Christianity and say we shouldn't be talking about these things because the government's area is over here, given a seizure of what's seizure and what God given to God. Who is God? Well, guess what belongs to God? Everything, and so we have to have a hierarchy of what things are important.
Speaker 2:I think the first government that God created is the family, and I might be jumping around here a little bit, but I want to say that today we have a lot of churches that are afraid of jumping into the political arena or saying anything that relates to the political arena, in the sense of thinking we shouldn't be involved in these moral issues. Number one is abortion, for instance. But I want to back up for a second and just tell you a little story that might illustrate some of this. I was talking to a gentleman and he and my gym and some kind of way that becomes my missionary field a lot, for whatever reason, god puts people next to me. I'm working out, we start talking, and he was a Christian brother and we start talking and he said that he was more on what are the issues we're talking about? He said well, I don't think that people who are Republican are on the right. I don't think they push against. Taking care of the poor is kind of what he said Might be paraphrasing.
Speaker 1:That the Republicans are pushing against taking care of the poor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, programs that take care of the poor. And so what I said to him? I said that I don't see it that way. I said well, I see it as a difference between, I think, both of us, if you're on either side of whether Republican or Democrat or what do you want to call them, progressive or whatever. I call it conservative versus liberalism. But I said the conservative value is a closer to our biblical worldview. I says because what it says is, and that's what we believe, the role of the church is to take care of the poor. It's not the government.
Speaker 2:And in about three minutes I made a case for him and he actually, to his credit, listened to me. I said look, I says Christians and most religious people giving is into our worldview. We are to give tie 10% and offerings, things like this. We built cathedrals around the world. We built cathedrals here. We sent missionaries around the world. I should say so if you tax us less, we'll take care of the poor, and that's a better way to take care of the poor Over here. When you want to take care of the poor, the government wants to take care of the poor. They have to create an agency that they have to hire somebody to oversee it, to raise our taxes. And it's not really. I'm really blanking out. All this lack of sleep is catching up to me. It's not really charity, because they're taking from somebody over here or wherever.
Speaker 1:By force.
Speaker 2:And given it to somebody, the person who receives has an allegiance to a nameless, faceless bureaucratic government Over here. I think it makes a better citizen, because the person who helped them off the street, who clothed them, who fed them and was a good Samaritan to them. In that sense, now they owe allegiance to the church and God as the one who picked them up and got them out of the gutter. So I made the argument to his credit. He had never heard that and so this is the design.
Speaker 2:So what we find today is we have an increasingly growing government and it's pushed this area, and now the government has pushed into our domain and even Christians are bought into the government doing, hey, I don't, and if that's the case, I don't have to do anything but pay my taxes, I don't need to give, I'll give indirectly or let the government do it. So, but these taxes, if you think about them, I know, I can tell you know this they never go away. No, they're always there. I read somewhere, especially in California, yeah, thank you. And I read somewhere recently, paul, that we're still paying for the new deal back in the 30s, in the 30s. Don't take that to the bank yet, but I heard that somewhere.
Speaker 2:I haven't researched it yet, but they said some programs that we're still paying on and from back. You know 80 years ago what?
Speaker 1:about all this debt that it's piling on, and I'm hearing these point of views where our kids, our grandkids, they're eventually going to be responsible for this Like all of this debt is actually going to be piling on them.
Speaker 2:I mean it's a big problem. It's a moral issue. I'll put it right up there with a lot of other things. I don't think it's up there with abortion, but it's a moral issue. We're depending more on government and we're just putting off something and chewing off. If you go by proverbs, you have so much wisdom in it, you can't go wrong on these things. But we've dispensed with biblical principles regarding money and we are. I mean, where this is going to go, I don't know, but I really believe that there needs to be a revival in this country. The Christians have to wake up. The Christians has to be as Martin Luther King called. We have to be the consciousness of this nation, and we have a lot of Christians.
Speaker 2:There's a great book I read by Francis Schaefer I don't know if you're familiar with him called A Christian Manifesto. It was written in 1982 and I read it late last year and I couldn't put it down. I underlined a lot of things in it, but it was written in 1982 and he's talking about everything that's happening today and there's been a human, anistic worldview that's seeped into every area of our life and is creeped into the church even, and I even have heard pastors and leaders of churches say things like well, I don't think we should be talking about X issue or this issue and we're supposed to just stay over here in our lane. Meanwhile, government is all in our lane, all in our lane and every like you alluded to everything. Every one of these things cost us taxes, and if we keep on getting tax, we're moving closer towards where we talked about one of our earlier conversations socialism, where the government owns every dog on thing they do everything for you, and this is what we're moving towards.
Speaker 2:And if the churches don't wake up and we don't wake up, I heard a statement that Pastor Farrington, down at the Destiny Church, made this last Sunday and it was a quote actually. He gave from Mario Marilla and I think he said something like I might butcher this, but it said America, christianity, can survive without America, but America cannot survive without Christianity and Christians. In this book, christian manifesto says that the reason that things are the way they are is because Christians have either been silent and not being the conscious of the country and a voice out in the culture, challenging the lies, the things and running for offices and getting involved, that we're going to have people who don't have that worldview and it's more human centered, man centered, than God centered, and I'm not talking about a theology.
Speaker 1:I mean a theocracy.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. We're talking about Christian principles that are built underneath, guiding us to a better country, and so the founders. They were wise men. God would definitely guide those men. They got it right, and further we get away from those principles, the worse we're going to be.
Speaker 1:Yes, I don't know if you've seen this. There was this Wall Street article last year that was written and I actually want to pull up this stat because this made me. I actually talked about it at my Rotary Club meeting. So the article said that America is rapidly moving away from the values that once defined this nation. Yes, so here are the five main things that it was written here about. So patriotism between 1998 and 23, 2023. People who say these values are very important to them. So in 1998, 70%. In 2023, 38% patriotism.
Speaker 1:In 2000,. 62%, 39% having children, 59% versus 30%. That's 50%. Community involvement from 62% to 27%. But the one thing that had increased as far as values money in 1998, 31%, 2023, 43%.
Speaker 2:So when you say money, and what aspect is he talking about as far as probably Having it as a high value? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like considering these things how you value them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, got you. So, yeah, yeah, we're definitely going in the wrong direction, I know. Last time I read, our birth rate was down. When you look at the fact, I'm going to if you don't mind, I'm going to roll over a little bit to the even. Well, I'll do. The black community, for instance, we've been about 13% of the population, comprised right over 30%, about a third of abortions Since Roe v Wade 1973, we've aborted over 63 million babies, and so these things are playing a lot into social security.
Speaker 2:You think about it? We're running out of funding. Yes, yes, government took some money out of it a while back, but even so, we don't have the popular. People are living longer. That wasn't taken into consideration. And also we don't have the young people. That's paying into it. Enough to support the old people. I do believe it's the greatest Ponzi scheme ever invented, by the way. Social security, because it's really the more I look at it, the more problems I see with it as I approach the age where I'm probably going to get it. Thank God, god, let me live a couple more years.
Speaker 1:Well, isn't it supposed to run out like in 1937 or something like that?
Speaker 2:It's running out and you look at these factors that played into it. You look at we have less kids being born for various reasons. We had the women's movement destroyed the family values. We've had abortion. We've had the welfare state where government was paying families to more money if a man wasn't in a home. So we have all these factors that play into. It's kind of like I call it unintended consequences. When you mess with something, you think, oh, I think about one. I says why didn't God get rid of mosquitoes? It'd be nice if God got rid of mosquitoes, and I don't know what mosquitoes do, but I guarantee you, if we figure out what the benefit of having them, but if we figure out how to get rid of mosquitoes, it'll probably throw the whole universe out of balance, because it's something that they do. I don't know what it is, but God has a plan for everything I believe.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you know, when you buy a piece of property and I'll say if there's a pond or a creek that's running through it and the environmental agency is going to get involved because they got to make sure that you're not destroying a mosquito or some other insect stuff. But, speaking about the values, there's this thought that I recently had and I'm going to share this with you, please. Yes, you know, sometimes I look at what's going on right now and I'm thinking it seems like some people are just trying to destroy this country, the world. Like why, what's going on? I'm asking myself, I'm thinking about it and then this occurs to me. I'm thinking like, okay, so if they destroy these values, where you don't believe that there's God, so you don't believe that there's life after death, if, because of abortions and all of this LGBTQ that's being, this propaganda that's being pushed, you don't have any children, that's another factor I left out, but yes, Then you don't have any future.
Speaker 1:So why would you care about destroying, or why would you care about making this world a better place, when you know that once you are dead, there's no life?
Speaker 2:Your worm food? Yes, yeah, it's a great question and I've actually put that to people. I said well, if there's no God, why should I be good? Why should I cheat you? With respect, you know, why is this wrong? These are questioned Atheists has no, they can answer them, but they have really no basis for answering them because there is no reason. And the answer is why should I care if I'm just dead when I'm leaving here? But you get back to now.
Speaker 2:The apologetic question is I tell people that, yes, I have a great reason for believing that's life after death, because a man named Jesus, who is a historical figure that we know existed. One of the ease is extra, extra biblical evidence as well. We have writings from outside the Bible. You just maybe think about that. That corroborates what was written in the New Testament. So we have a man who we have a eyewitness testimony, who was dead three days and came back from the dead and is still alive. So he predicted it and he did it. So that's why I believe there's life after death.
Speaker 2:Why do you believe there's not? You have to deny that Jesus existed or there's something else that goes against that evidence, and I think the atheist is cornered if we do our jobs and demonstrate that it's unreasonable to say that the Bible and the New Testament got this wrong. So that's why I believe there's life after death and there's a whole image. There's all these immaterial realities that we have as well, that we can show that and demonstrate that we're not just physicality, yes, yes, and so even things like personalities, even dogs, have personalities, and so personalities, people have thoughts, we have dreams. Those things are immaterial. You can't touch them, taste them, feeling. We can experience them, but they're not material. A thought is not a material thing. So we get all these things that we can say where do these things come from? And so that leads me also to believe that as evidence, as something we have that's more than just physical.
Speaker 1:And there's morality.
Speaker 2:That's not a physical thing, it's an immaterial thing. So these are. I look for opportunities to show that. Here's the other thing Paul Even if when we screw up, it's like it's an affirmation of scripture Even when he ate and say I'm not perfect, that's a Bible said that's an affirmation of that. I'm not perfect. I'm not making an excuse for it, but hey, you're going to fail and do something immoral and so am I. I said the difference is I got a savior and he's got me covered and there's an higher authority than I. Yes, and when you have authority, you act differently and you go back to the man in the home. I use another stat you got me wound up here way too much. You giving me the bully pulpit over here. You got a man in the house, you have an authority figure that you know if you do something wrong, he's got a belt that's got to straighten you out when you get home. That makes you a different act different.
Speaker 1:Even that they're trying to take away right.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:And the fact how many young kids right now are growing up or have already grown up without a father figure. I think that's huge.
Speaker 2:It's 75% of the long-term prison inmates grew up without a father in the home and somewhere in my phone I keep a lot of those stats. But it affects everything, from young girls looking for the love of a father that they didn't get going all kind of places that they really shouldn't be looking for. That love that they didn't get as a little girl causes them to do all kinds of things. You can go on and on and on about the fatherless, what they call it fallout from not having a father in the home, and it is oh another thing. Another factor I didn't bring up is no-fault divorce, which Reagan signed. He says one of his biggest mistakes was signing that bill for no-fault divorce. It used to be hard to get a divorce and it should be hard. Our society, if we want to get back on track. It's going to be very difficult, it's going to be an uphill battle and I almost think that what I see is I think it reminds me you ever heard of the story of the kid who gets into the liquor cabinet and gets caught by his dad? It's kind of an analogy story. It's not something that really happened. Probably does sometimes. I think I heard it, but go ahead. But a kid goes into the liquor cabinet and he's sneaking a drink and his dad catches him. He's okay, you want to drink liquor, go ahead. He goes, go drink it. And the kid gets sick and he throws up and he goes. Now what are your lessons have you learned from drinking alcohol? Oh God, I don't want to do that again. I wouldn't do too much of that.
Speaker 2:So I think there is that factor that's going to play into this equation, that maybe we haven't figured it out, but I think we're starting to see some cracks I'm going to go political here, if you don't mind which is in this president that we have right now. People are finally starting to realize because I've heard them fight for the last three years and tell me about his health doing well things, about how the economy is doing well, bi-nomics are working and all these things. And I go, wait a minute, I got inflation through the roof. I've got. I'm paying double for my gas prices, I'm paying for groceries. Look at all these prices and you're telling me I'm doing well and you keep spending.
Speaker 2:You give it out these stimulus packages which cause the inflation, and all these things are happening and you're telling me we're doing great, our 401K has been down in the toilet, all these things, and you keep telling me I'm doing well, the world's on fire and they blame the previous president. And I said you know what I said. And you know I said wait a minute, hold on a second. I says if this president didn't do anything, then I think you can blame it on the previous president. Donald.
Speaker 2:Trump. I said but he did, he did a lot, I think, on the first day, yeah, first day.
Speaker 1:On Thursday, he just the borders.
Speaker 2:Yeah, open the borders, all these things, and so a lot of this is common sense and I think a lot of people don't have it and I think they end up to get their information and believe in the news. Another great stat I heard is only 3.4% of the media is made up of Republicans. I don't know if you heard that in the last, yeah, what about teachers too? Teachers. I forget what that number is. I think probably really low.
Speaker 1:And universities. That's like 90 something percent of. Yeah, it's interesting. I thought like when we, when our family, came to America it was 1993. Okay. I remember back in Ukraine I was eight years old and I have 12 siblings. Wow, but three were born here in America. My parents had 10 back there in Ukraine. So we came to America. They already had 10 kids. My dad was 33, my mom was 31.
Speaker 2:Where are you at in this? I'm third.
Speaker 1:I'm the first born son, but third, I have two older sisters and I remember we would get together in a room and we already know that we're going to America and whatever we knew about America was based on what we heard, what we read, what our parents told us, what other people said, and in our imagination, you know, america was this, just this paradise. You know, obviously, when we came here, you know there was this shock, because you know we came with nothing, just some bags of some stuff which we don't even you know.
Speaker 2:Did you come into California? Yeah, we came to Sacramento, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:And we had to pretty much start from scratch. But that's the risk my father took because he had everything in Ukraine. He had a property, just brand new house, he built brand new barn. But he saw, and he was against moving to America at first, and then, as he was praying, he's a Christian man, my both parents were born Christian, christian family and they were praying and then all of a sudden my dad changes his mind and he thinks, hey, you know, there's going to be a better future for my children in America. So that was the main reason why he decided to come here.
Speaker 1:How old were you again when you came? I was eight, eight. Okay, guys, thanks, yeah. So we came here. We had to start from, you know, from scratch. My dad started working after a few months, you know. So I remember we were getting a welfare for like a few months. Right, we came, just came. We don't have nothing, you know. So we were getting like 700 or $800 a month in 1993. We're living in a 900 square foot home two bedrooms, one bathroom and my parents started buying like canned stuff, dry salami, packaging it up in boxes and sending it to Ukraine, and my dad was saving enough money for a van, because obviously we all had to fit in some kind of vehicle, the Volkswagen bug.
Speaker 1:So what I'm saying is, when we came to America, like I remember, like the way and my dad also can test to this that America was different than what it is right now, and we're talking about 30 years went by and even like the way people were, how people were on the roads you know, there's so much that has changed and I think that during this time, like the 90s, maybe even early 2000s, I think, a lot of people were very, they were doing very well. Things were calm, we had peace, peaceful time, people were doing well and I think that during this time, it's probably the time that really created, you know, like there's the saying here that I wrote down good times create weak men, weak men create hard times, hard times create strong men, strong men create good times. I like it. So it's like a cycle, right, and I think I'm looking at it. I'm thinking maybe that's what happened, like we had all this good, good time and people kind of weakened, let their guard down. They were not looking into, like you know, what kind of people are getting into the schools, universities, but there was a plan. There were these people that were like strategically going in there because there was a plan and you know, people were asleep and now you know that time created weak men and that's why I think we're up. You know this.
Speaker 1:I consider this to be a hard time that we're kind of facing right now and I think, you know, we're always like, like I'm a parent, right, we have two children and we're we're trying to make things easier for our kids. We're trying to say, hey, you know what we want you to have. You know better this, because I didn't have this, so I'm going to give you this. You know, I'm going to give you a boost here. I'm going to pay for this and sometimes I think is this the right way to do it? Yeah, there's irony, like we want to make it easier and stuff, but we have to realize that making it easier and giving everything to them is not going to be a good thing in the long term for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'll put a caveat on that. It depends on the kid too, yeah, but in general I think you're dead point straight on as far as what you just said. It's dead point on. It's like I did a study, not a deep study, but a dive a little bit recently into the car business, being from Detroit and what caused it to crash. Dillor reading it was very similar story to what you just described as like the car industry in Detroit. Being from Detroit, you got a job at Ford or Chrysler or Chevy. It created a very good middle class life for a lot of people in Detroit. What happened was they got so top heavy fat with executives that it made us easy prey for the Japanese to slip in and undercut and take advantage of it.
Speaker 2:Let's just call it that, because I think what I read was the average. In the 60s and probably through part of the 70s, the average per hour pay was like $20 per hour, $20 an hour. When you got in the factory, well, japanese were paying their workers $3 an hour. People wanted cheap cars and Detroit got kind of fat. They had to compete, which is a good thing. I think what you're talking about is hey, give you a similar thing Again.
Speaker 2:Growing up in Detroit, we didn't have a lot of money either, like what you're talking about. We were in a 900 square foot hospital with six of us and my other little sister came along later to give us seven yeah, with two bedrooms and my grandmother and so lived there as well. But anyway, when I wanted something, I had to go get it. I had to go shovel snow and knock on doors because we didn't have the money. If I wanted a new baseball glove, me and my brother, we'd get our shovels and get our boots on and we'd go knocking on doors. Hey, miss Jones, would you like us to shovel your snow? Yeah, just go out here and do it and I'll pay you afterwards. You get your snow, start shoveling. We had another couple. They said hey, don't even ask when this snow is, just come on over, we'll pay you.
Speaker 2:I delivered newspapers, I bussed tables. I did everything, every kind of little odd job you could probably name to stock boy in a grocery store at corner drugstore. I did it all. Even when I first got out of college. I worked in a fast food restaurant for a couple of months until I started working at that gym because that was the only job I could get at the time. So work ethic. A lot of people think they're old something. When you have that attitude, it creates an attitude of I'm going to call it laziness.
Speaker 2:It might be a better word for it, but I'll use that term or complacent, the work ethic. I think it's still there for a lot of people. I want to say there's still hope, because I think we're going to hit a wall and people are going to realize it. You know what, like the kid who went to the liquor cabinet and got it his daddy's liquor and he said, oh, my goodness, I'm sick of this stuff. You see it, I see some cracks in the dam of people breaking away from this form of government that keeps pouring taxes on top of us and trying to do everything in our society places that we shouldn't be spending money on, things that we shouldn't spend money on.
Speaker 2:The student loan quote forgiveness thing it's not really a forgiveness, I told somebody. I said it's not forgiveness. We're taking money from you and I who work every day and they're paying off somebody else's debt. And I said and that should be? Only the bank can forgive them, only the bank, because that's who owes them the money. I said and what this guy is doing? When I say this guy, I mean this president is doing. The Congress already told him not to when he's doing it. I know we're going all over the place here, but I said what he's doing is actually taking my money to pay off your debt and he's trying to buy your vote with my money. And is not really charity, I said.
Speaker 2:And they wanted me to celebrate this. I said I can't. A relative of mine, he says oh, my friend had their debt paid off. And I says I can't celebrate that because the money has to come from somewhere. That's the deal. It has to come. Where is it going to come from? And that's a question that many people don't ask.
Speaker 2:And critical thinking, I think it'll lead you to a more conservative point of view when you start asking questions when does this money come from? Jump a little further, I'll say even on the news, watching intake of news, people start asking why is this playing on the news? Why is what I'm seeing important? Why is this important and why is this issue the one that they're putting in front of me versus another issue? How did they decide that this is? And my take is. And I tell people that news exists on ratings. They know exactly what you want to see. And I tell people, usually on the opposite side of the political spectrum from me, I say they know exactly how to play on your emotions and they're going to play two things that we know gets everybody most people emotional about Donald Trump let's go ahead and talk about the elephant in the room and they're going to talk about racism in America as being a huge problem.
Speaker 1:You know, when I went to school and I specifically remember sixth grade my best friend, his name was Andrew Collins black man. He was such a comic. We always laughed. We would like you know everyone was reading book and we would like sit down across the room and like we would like look at each other and we would crack jokes and we would laugh. And I'm growing up like I, everyone is the same for me, right, like black, brown, whatever race, it doesn't matter, You're a cool human, I love you, let's go, you know. And all of a sudden, like all of this is being like stirred up again. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2:I have a lot of thoughts about it. That's a big old Tia for me there, would you say. What do I think about it? I think Martin Luther King had it right. He said we should judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. And that is, I think, a biblical perspective and the right perspective. And we've gone the opposite. And what's so ironic is seeing people with pictures of Martin Luther King on their walls and in their homes buying into this diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which is very problematic, and they're looking for what they call equity and the difference between equity and equality. I don't know if you have studied this, but it's equity is given everybody a different in the same ending point and favoring certain races because they're somebody in certain jobs or because of their race.
Speaker 2:And Dr Frank Turck I listened to his podcast a few weeks ago. He says something very powerful, being a baseball guy. He says today, if Jackie Robinson, who broke the color line in baseball, were playing under today's baseball, under the equity versus equality program let's say ideology that he would get four strikes and five balls, versus three strikes which everybody gets According to them, they would give him four balls and they said, no, he played on the same playing field. Is all the whites improved that a black man could play in the major leagues is just as well, just as talented, and so, no, don't treat me different than anybody else, just give me the opportunity to compete, and that's equality.
Speaker 2:And we were not doing that and I'm really glad that we got rid of affirmative action. I think it's a form of racism and a lot of Asian people who, for cultural reasons, I guess, they study more and they're catching, they caught the short end of the stick. They came to that and so now we have gone the opposite way and it's really we've gone back into racism. I've heard all the arguments saying that if it's not all white people are racist, or it's not racism if it's the other way, and if you favor somebody because of the or or disfavor them because of the color of their skin, it's racist, it's a and how can you change that?
Speaker 1:if somebody is at heart, they really don't like certain race, right Like, how are you going to regulate that?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a great question. It depends on how you're doing. First of all, I think it's a it's a. It's a human. Racism is a human condition of that reflects the fallenness of mankind. We all flawed and some people's law is whatever racism and and no, it's not right, it's a sin.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, to do that. I think you can regulate it to a certain degree. You know, in government and things like that, it's hard to more difficult when you're talking about somebody's private business and how they treat their private business. But I think also that if I think people are pretty smart, in some sense maybe I give them too much credit, I don't know, but I think that people are pretty smart and they they know when they're being treated fair or not by a business or things like that. Now, there's some people also who they see races and everything.
Speaker 2:Hey, you looked at me too long, paul. I think you've got a racist streak in you. How you looked at me and everything is. You can find it in everything and that's the problem I think we're at right now where racism is in everything. You look at this lady, claudine Gay over at Harvard, how she was put in that position. In my opinion, the case is that she should have never even been in that position of running Harvard. She didn't have the qualifications and a lot of people cried racism when she asked. They asked her to step down as the president of Harvard.
Speaker 1:University. I'm sure he's got the story.
Speaker 2:So a lot of people called racism and, and somebody aptly pointed out I think rightly so that no, you got the job because of racism, which I totally agree with. I mean, she hadn't written, she plagiarized so much and and that you know she's still teaching an African American studies at Harvard and making almost a million dollars a year salary. Imagine sitting in her class. You're tasked to do a paper and you toil for weeks all night, stand up all night to get your paper in time. To a teacher who plays everything just about.
Speaker 1:Well, now they have chat GPT.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh boy, you really All right, james. So as we land the plane, this, this podcast, is called the Greatest Story, and my thought behind naming it like this was you know I thought about sometimes. You know, when we are growing up, we read stories, we are being told certain stories, and then there are certain stories that we tell ourselves that can either get us in the right trajectory upward or downward. And sometimes a bad philosophy, like the women's rights right, like there's so many women that bought into that philosophy, and then you know they're 55, 60, lonely by themselves. No kids realized. Well, it's already too late. So can you do you have a story, or maybe a couple stories, that, something that really moved you? You told me about the book that you found at the bookstore that really changed your life. Is there a story that really had a huge impact in your life?
Speaker 2:Oh boy, there's so many true story stories in general that I've read about no true story for you.
Speaker 2:So I'll give you one. That I think kind of defines a lot of about persistence about me. So I told you about when I was start working in the gym. Yeah, I didn't know dilly squad about sales. I was horrible. I was getting circles ran around me by these other guys outselling memberships, and, any rate, my manager. One day I was dragging in the bottom and of sales. I was working my butt off but I was just wasn't getting sales. So he pulls me in the office one day and he says, james, you're not doing too well. I said so I'm giving you about, I'm giving you two weeks. You got to sell X amount of memberships in these two weeks or else I'm not to let you go. Okay, so I work all day for the next two weeks, end of that two weeks. I'm not even close, I'm not even in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2:So we the gym wasn't open on Saturday. So Saturday night I'm thinking, hey, he's going to let me go. And so we had to clean up the gym and put all the weights away at the end of the night. So we put everything away and I says you're going to let me go now and I'm like so he's okay, fellas, have a good weekend, see you on Monday. He didn't let me go, I'm coming back in Monday. So Monday, walk in. We had got everything ready for the gym to open up, sat down, had a little sales meeting around his desk. Okay, fellas, let's let the members in, out there waiting let's go. I'm like, well, okay, he's not going to let me go. Okay, I work all day, so nothing. End of the day. Okay, fellas, see you tomorrow. I'm like, didn't let me go, I'm coming to work tomorrow.
Speaker 2:This went on for like five days. Every day I says, came in on my off day, worked all day, 11 hours, whatever, it was Hardly anything. And all of a sudden, that Friday we used to give out what they call guest passes by their friends and we'd give them a workout, training them, and then they would come back in. So that Friday, about four or five sales, saturday, about four or five sales, and then they just start pouring. They just start pouring in, and I tell people that because I worked my way up to be a manager in that company and I used to tell people I says all I had to do was sleep in for one day and it would have been over. The irony of it is, I ended up becoming my manager's boss.
Speaker 2:The other crazy thing this was very uncomfortable because he trained me and everything. Three years later I had to let him go and that was really hard. But I didn't do it for revenge. It was just one of those things where they put me over him and he wasn't really the same guy, great guy. But I always talk about persistence and I says that's the kind of drive and persistence you must have and that you don't quit in the face. If you have a dream, you do not quit, you do not quit, you do not quit. It's like you keep battling and there's again. At this point I read the book and I knew one of the principles of that book is I will persist into life Succeed. I'll never give up. And so that was what drove me.
Speaker 2:But I say all it would have taken is one day where I said you know what I'm not going in, I'm going to sleep in, and I think that's kind of rare today and I run into it sometimes. When I see people with that, I just I love them. I go like I say your attitude is so refreshing to me. I mean, I have a goal right now and that is to become the best 65 year old baseball player in the country. Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I still play baseball, I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I love it to do that I have to play in the national championship was coming up and which I was a part of a winning team in 2021, which got me this World Series ring. It's an amateur World Series ring, so that's one of my goals is to become the best 65 year old baseball player in the country in this tournament that I have to play nationally coming up in November. So I think you got to have goals and those goals drove me. I said I didn't want a life of poverty. I didn't want a life of like what I grew up in. That drove me and you know so.
Speaker 2:I read all kind of books I took when I decided I was going to be the greatest salesman in the world. I was going to be the best at what I did. I went to seminars, I read books. I have a book collection. Today. I'm always reading something, always reading something, and I tell people I says you know what you dedicate yourself. Well, first of all, let me back up for a second. Things got even better when I put God first in my life. I still hit bumps, absolutely, but I can deal with the bumps because you know what I see. The end. I have the end in sight. I know, god forbid anything happens to me. I know where I'm going, I know exactly where I'm going. So I would say that is one of the stories that probably I look back on and think, hey, look at all the people you know, you've seen the movie. It's a wonderful life.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh, we just watched it this Christmas, yes.
Speaker 2:I can watch it a million times. Oh my God.
Speaker 1:They used to make great movies.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think about that movie and I think about, and I think sometimes it's one of those things where and I don't say this to brag on myself, but I think God used me to touch a lot of people's lives. I really believe that and sometimes you don't know it until somebody whose lives you touch tell them, Tell them. Oh, you tell me.
Speaker 2:I had one of my ex-workers, a guy I used to work with, actually just a couple of years ago. He said he goes, we're talking, we hadn't talked in a couple of years. He's James, you don't want to talk me this and talk me this and talk me this. I said, really I had that big of impact on you. He said, yeah, you did, man. He says we only work with each other for about a year, you know, and I, and so I apparently I left some things with them that you know it was a horrible job. I won't name the company. Well, it was a horrible job, but it was. It was, but apparently something good came out of it, and God can call something good to come out of it.
Speaker 1:Oh yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how much time we got. You want to share something else? Please do. I'll share one more.
Speaker 2:This is not a story about me, but it's a story that I read in a book called Unstoppable. If you haven't read it, this is one particular story in there. It's a true story that every time I tell it or I read it, it not only inspires me but it gets it might get me choked up. So bear with me for a second. Yeah, do you know who's the author? Her name is Cynthia Cursey, k-e-r-s-e-y. Yeah, it's 45 stories in the book about people who had what to call it, what she defines as an unstoppable spirit, and people who done amazing things that were overcoming insurmountable obstacles that we don't even dream of.
Speaker 2:And there's one particular one about a little boy in Africa named Lexin Cairo. It's a true story on the 50s and he had missionaries coming over to Africa and he lived in a very poor village and people made excuses for poverty and things like that, and he got inspired by some of the missionaries that were coming over to his village and so he had read stories about Booker T Washington and a lot of the greats and he decided when he was 16 or 17, he didn't even know his age because he didn't have a birth certificate or anything like that. But he decided that he wanted to be like one of these, like Booker T Washington, and he wanted to be and make an impact on society. He had to come to America to get a first rate education. To get to America he had to cross over 2,000 miles walking and then get plain fare, and so he decided that he was going to leave home and he was going to walk and so he started walking and after a month I think he had went about 30 miles or something like that. He got sick, he got hit. Some people had to take a man, a village, took a man and nursing back to health. He would work, get a little job in the town and he'd walk further. Took him two years. He walked to, he walked. I think it was to Egypt. He walked all the way to Egypt from his country, 2,000 miles. But it would take him a while. He would stop, he would write letters. He would get a little job, bus and tables or whatever. Write letters to schools in America. He saw this one school. He really liked it. Now when he got to Cairo he didn't know how he was going to get to America. He had no plain fare. He didn't have anything he had. By the way, he had reached out to the missionaries and they helped get him his birth certificate and some other things, but unbeknownst to him. See, I'm starting to get choked up. The first school he wrote because he had a budget he was sending. This first school he wrote. The students heard about his story. They raised money, got his airfare, so he came over, got his education, became a PhD. He's passed away now.
Speaker 2:But how do you walk 2,000 miles, all these strange villages? You don't know them. And at what point do we give up? You know we get a hang down and we're like ready to go home and jump back in bed. I mean you talking about I read that you could tell I'm getting choked up at it.
Speaker 2:That story moves me every single time. It's like we don't know how good we have it Even under all these things we're dealing with right now, the obstacles. Can you imagine 2,000 miles? He didn't know how he was going to get to America once he got the chirals. But these other God put other forces in that action that caused them to make it happen and finish this journey for him or completed a big part of his journey, but if he would have stopped at any point, he doesn't live out the dream that God put in his heart and in his mind and in his soul. But this is a lot of stories. Whatever reason, that story just I go like, oh my God, I don't have anything to complain about. This guy slept outside underneath the stars on his journey. It's called the walking Ulysses is what they name it in the book.
Speaker 1:I will check out the book.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so that's those kind of things really they move me.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for sharing, James. How can people follow you? Where can they look?
Speaker 2:you up. I would say the best way is to. I don't have a website or anything like that yet, so I'm sorry I don't have, I haven't built all that stuff and I would say the best way is to pop me a quick email. I'm on Facebook as James Jenkins, under my the moniker. If you want to follow me on there. It says deplorable Easter worship or a violator of community standards. Cause, as several James Jenkins you'll see on Facebook, that's probably the best place. If you want to email me. I'm JJ Manota, like the old cameras at hotmailcom.
Speaker 2:So, I'm pretty simple, straightforward. I love to talk to people and make friends everywhere I go, just like we did. Thank you so much for this. A pleasure for you to wind me up and let me let me go, James.
Speaker 1:it's an honor for me. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.