Point of View October 27, 2026 – Hour 1 : Epigenetics and the Architect

[00:00:04] Across America, live, this is Point of View, Kerby Anderson. Thank you for joining me. It is a Tuesday edition of Point of View, so grateful that you could join us. As you might imagine, there's just a lot going on, not only overseas, but here in the United States.

[00:00:30] Today, for example, is Election Day in Israel. This is the first nationwide election there since Hamas-led attacks back in 2023. Benjamin Netanyahu facing one of the most significant tests, and so we will certainly spend some time talking about that, especially tomorrow when we know more. Of course, a week from today, we will be voting. Many of you, like me, have probably already voted, but that is certainly the case.

[00:00:54] Middle East is in incredible conflict right now, so is Europe, as the riots first in France have now spread to other countries in Europe. Italy all the way as far away as Albania, so we'll talk about that. A little bit later, we're going to talk about the fact that even preparing for what's coming, the British defense minister told people in the U.K. to prepare and be ready for war in 1,000 days.

[00:01:20] And if that's not enough here in this country, we have a program called Fortress, which is now sent out to every military base here in the continental United States to gear itself up to run 90 days without any help from the outside world. That means its own power, its own water, its own fuel. We'll get into some of that as well. So a lot is going on, and we will focus a lot of that in the bottom of the hour.

[00:01:46] But I thought just to kind of give us a bit of a break from all the stuff of the midterms and everything else, one of the things we love to do from time to time is to talk about how this has kind of become a golden age of apologetics, a golden age of archaeology, really a golden age of intelligent design. It's a book that has just come out recently, and we're going to do a shorter interview today with the idea of doing a full roundtable discussion with him and some of our guests in studio as well

[00:02:13] on all the evidence we have now in biology that points to a designer. This book has the title Epigenetics and the Architect. Now, don't let that word scare you because the subtitle is Evidence of Design at the Frontier of Biology. And to really explain that, the co-author is Dr. Thomas Woodward. He is research professor at Trinity College in Florida, senior lecturer at the C.S. Lewis Society.

[00:02:39] An individual who graduated from Princeton eventually got his doctorate from South Florida. His book, Doubts About Darwin, was one of Christianity Today's Book of the Year back in 2004. That was followed up with some other books, Darwin Strikes Back, even What Lies Beyond DNA, and this particular book as well. So, Thomas Woodward, always great to have you on the program. This is a special moment for me. I've always loved Probe Ministries. It's just fantastic to be with you.

[00:03:07] Let's see if we can get into some of this. Before we define that big word, the second chapter I thought was very good. What Charles Darwin didn't know about the cell because we have had, well, you know Paul, for example, and other people that we've had on this program who have actually articulated, you know, this is something that if you look through your particular light microscope, which we all did in biology,

[00:03:33] you see this kind of looks like bag of goo, but now that we have an electronic microscopes, as Paul Nelson pointed out, we can, in a sense, open up this black box, and in some respects now we see that Darwin had a theory about natural selection, but we now know a lot more about this cell than Charles Darwin knew at the time, don't we?

[00:04:01] Oh, yeah, it's just totally exploded. I mean, it's like a tsunami of new breakthrough information, and of course DNA always impressed me. When I was a sophomore, entering my sophomore year at Princeton, I was at the tipping point, and I thought Darwin had won the argument. I was trying to convince Christians to embrace Darwin, and then I found there was fantastic evidence. Science is part of it. History is part of it. The biblical prophecies, et cetera, fascinated me,

[00:04:29] but when I got into DNA in those times from the mid-'70s onward, it just exploded in our face, if you will, a digital code that is identical mathematically the same as a computer code. And of course there's 3.1 billion times two, two copies in each cell, multiplied times 35 trillion. We are a mountain of digital information, but that's just the start,

[00:04:56] because epigenetics roaring to life in the mid-'90s has shown us the DNA has a dance partner. It has, in the waltz of life, if you will, a dance partner who is actually almost directing the steps of DNA. It orchestrates everything, and it has not one code, but some people estimate as many as 160 or more codes that are chattering away, talking with DNA. It is mind-blowing. It is. And I've quoted before Bill Gates,

[00:05:27] because sometimes we talk about him in terms of AI, but I also had the quote from a number of years ago where he said, look, the kind of information that's just packed into DNA alone, and this is before we get into some of the things you're going to be talking about in a minute, is so profound, and the complexity of the DNA code is so much that it's more advanced, if you will, than the best codes being written by the software engineers at Microsoft.

[00:05:55] Well, nobody assumes that the Microsoft code happened by chance, and when you start making comments about how much more complex the information packed into DNA is, does seem to be a pretty good argument for intelligent design, don't you think? Yes. I think DNA sets the stage for a slam dunk, and then that sets the stage in turn, entering the realm of epigenetics, for an additional 100 or 500,000 slam dunks,

[00:06:25] because to control DNA, you have to have for each cell type its own pattern of which genes. There's 20,000-plus genes in the human genome. I won't get into the details of that, but it's amazing. It's like files on a hard drive. Now, how many files in a hard drive were created by chance? None of them, of course. Yes. Okay. So how do you know which in a given, let's say, a muscle cell? You have to know which of those genes will remain silent and which will not.

[00:06:55] And so there's a methyl switch. There's a methane, carbon with three hydrogen, sticking out. Looks like a Mickey Mouse with an extra ear. And so this little carbon-hydrogen Mickey Mouse head is stuck, the pair of them at key locations along the backbone of the gene. And if those methyl tags are there, that tells the cell, leave it alone. This gene is taking a nap. Do not disturb. Like hang a do not disturb sign on your hotel doorknob. Right.

[00:07:21] And so there's actually 60 million of these methyl tags precisely placed at locations on each genome, and there's 236 minimum encyclopedias that differ from one another. Where is all this information coming from? Where is it stored? How does it keep itself straight? It's mind-blowing. It is. I'm going to take a break, and when we come back, I thought we would get into basic biology. But let me just mention that this book has just been out. We have information about it.

[00:07:51] If you'd like to find it on our website at pointofview.net. About 120 pages, which a number of end notes take it probably to about 150 almost pages. And some great material. And as you can tell, one of the gifts of many gifts that Thomas Woodward has is the ability to take something that's kind of complex like biology and DNA and RNA and things like that and put it in a way that makes some sense. We're going to talk about Scrabble tiles and a few other things in a minute

[00:08:19] to help us straight some of these ideas. And if this is something that would be of interest to you, or you know somebody who's maybe saying, I just can't believe in God because evolution is true, and because when I look at biology, I see the evidence of evolution, you're going to go, can I give you a book? Because I don't think you could make it past about the third chapter before you're going to say, huh, there's some things I did not know, and that changes my mind. Let's take a break. We'll come back with more right after this.

[00:09:00] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. Roger Kimball begins his column in The Spectator about artificial intelligence with his admission. He says it's not often that we get a ringside seat to the birth of a narrative. As you might imagine, the narrative was, AI will end humanity. Everyone memorized their lines. Artificial intelligence was the biggest threat to humanity since, well, since ever. Forget COVID, forget climate catastrophe,

[00:09:28] forget the population explosion or collapse. Not everybody was convinced. Commentator Miranda Devine was among the first to ask how anyone who has lived through the bogus fear campaigns of climate hysteria, Russiagate, and COVID could allow himself to be duped yet again by the same cynical freaks using the same playbook. One writer posted an image of Time magazine from 2006 and one from 2026. The first said Earth was at a tipping point. The second warned that AI is the tipping point.

[00:09:58] Of course, the crisis also came with built-in solutions. Bernie Sanders called for a moratorium. Barack Obama encouraged Democrats to take up the issue and thereby never let a crisis go to waste. And everyone else called for an international oversight. Right on cue, Bill Gates called for an international organization to regulate AI. Rick DeVos was one of the many people who saw through the hype. These people really only have one solution for everything, and it's just world communism with corporate buzzwords.

[00:10:25] Anyone who has studied the issue of artificial intelligence knows there are potential dangers and significant challenges, but stopping further development or slowing it so the Chinese pass us is not a good position. What we need are common-sense safety protocols and cooler heads. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view. Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net.

[00:10:55] That's pointofview.net. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Thomas Woodward with us, and he is the co-author with James Gills of Epigenetics and the Architect, Evidence of Design at the Frontier of Biology. My purpose today is just to introduce you to the book. We have, after the elections, because a lot of things can then happen after the election next Tuesday,

[00:11:24] I want to have a roundtable discussion, maybe bring in Dr. Ray Bolin and some others, and maybe just a roundtable discussion on all the new things we're finding out in biology that argue much more persuasively for intelligent design. And so I just wanted you to be aware of the book and maybe even get a copy of it before we do that next sort of roundtable discussion. But, Tom, let's, if we can, for just a minute, remind people that even if you just can't remember anything more

[00:11:52] than your basic biology class from high school, there was what was called the central dogma of biology, that DNA makes RNA makes proteins. Well, it turns out, as you have aptly pointed out in this book, and we now know, it is a lot more complex than, of course, Charles Darwin thought it was. It's a lot more complex than we thought it was when I was in school,

[00:12:18] and it just illustrates, again, pretty profound evidence for intelligent design, doesn't it? Oh, I would say, and to an overwhelming extent, thanks to the insights of a Stanford top researcher. I know this guy's pretty young. I think he's in his 40s or early 50s. Stephen Quake, you know, I almost feel like saying there's an earthquake under Stephen Quake out of Stanford

[00:12:44] because he described in a very elite journal how the old dogma, which is there's some truth, you know, DNA does make proteins with the help of RNA, and so it's not totally false, but he said cellular, he says maybe a cellular dogma, dogma meaning prime doctrine, a teaching that you go with. And so he said that the cellular dogma that's arising in front of us may include,

[00:13:12] and he was very guarded, he had to be guarded, that the materials, the structures, the molecules, the codes beyond DNA all contribute to the life and the health and the functioning of the cell, and not just the DNA. DNA doesn't run the show. It's like the filing cabinet in the boss's office, and the boss and this whole team are very important, and they go over and they pull, you know, this or that out of the filing cabinet,

[00:13:40] but you can't say the filing cabinet doesn't run the business, it has the records. And that's what DNA is. It's important. Yeah, we're not throwing it away. It's fantastic as a witness. But then you have this like a thousand-fold mob, and it's the wrong word to use, but a systematic cohort of witnesses outside the DNA that fill every nook and cranny of the cell, many of them with actual codes and 3D location modifiers

[00:14:09] that I can't go into details, but it just blows your mind. I mean, it's almost like you think DNA is complex? You ain't seen nothing. The one of the things I love about your book is you have a number of pictures, including there of Stephen Quake, who again is a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. Of course, you have a picture of Charles Darwin. You have a picture, of course, of Watson and Crick and some others. But it just, I think, illustrates again that what we're learning is, yes, there's genetics, and we learned some of that in biology.

[00:14:39] Now we're learning about epigenetics. And in a sense, we're learning that the whole process about how your cell figures out how to make a protein, how it makes carbohydrates, lipids, as you said, how it makes muscle, but muscle cell for a heart, which is different than muscle cell for your arm. When you start getting into that, it's not surprising that your co-author is actually an MD, because this also shows, I think, back to Psalm 139,

[00:15:08] that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, aren't we? Yes, we are. And Dr. Gills is my life hero. I've known him. I had the privilege of working with him on projects like this for a little over 30 years. And he's now retired, but he's one of the pioneers of laser surgery in ophthalmology. But he was the one who came to me in the year 2012 when we really began, 2010 actually, to dive into this.

[00:15:36] And he said, have you heard about the astounding evidence of design in epigenetics? And my very intelligent answer was, ethyl what? Which I think is what a lot of our listeners are thinking. Yes, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. So he basically said, you know, oh, no, there's methylation. Methylation. And I said, okay, methylation. I've never heard of this. And I was so embarrassed. This had been out for 10 or 12 years. I mean, like a big focus. And so then I realized that besides the methyl code that's directly attached to DNA,

[00:16:06] DNA is wound around spools. And these spools have wiggly high-tech tails. Yes. They kind of stick out. And those each have little sockets. And you can put a phosphor tag, a methyl tag, or an acetyl tag. And I won't, you know, blitz everybody with details. We explain it and show how it works in the book. But these tags have to be attached. And just you need an army of robotic protein workers, high-tech robots running around, attaching the tags.

[00:16:34] And they have to know where to go. And so the information goes off the chart. Yes. Well, again, nobody expects an explosion in a print factory to give you Webster's unabridged dictionary. Nobody expects a tornado to go through a junkyard and leave a 747 jet in its wake. But I promised that we would use a Scrabble illustration. And you have one of those here because there was an individual that said, if you came home and you found written with Scrabble tiles,

[00:17:02] take out the trash and walk the dog before playing Scrabble, I don't think anybody would look at that and say, why, it's just amazing how all those tiles arrange themselves in a very coherent message. And yet that is insignificant compared to the complexity of cells, is it not? Absolutely. And we chose that imaginary moment where these tiles are found there on a table.

[00:17:29] And it's obviously, you know, he may not know the exact identity, which person, but he would know an intelligent being, intelligent agency was behind it. And that's the same way. And this is 47 letters. If you compute that, take out the trash and walk the dog before playing Scrabble. That's 47 letters precisely. Each one arranged in correct order. That's identical to the way DNA works. Letters arranged in a precise order. But not 47.

[00:17:58] You're talking about 100,000 for an average gene. You're talking about billions looking at the entire cell. And so, I mean, how could people even for one nanosecond think that Darwinian theory still has a hold as a plausible explanation? I think it was dead and gone as early as the late 80s, early 90s.

[00:18:21] But it's like there's nothing of credibility left on the table for Darwinian theory in light of genetics plus this new world of epigenetics. Let me just mention one of the things I have planned is, like I said, it was hoping maybe we could have Ray Bolin in studio, maybe Casey Luskin by phone. But I think really the two of you just would be enough to talk about some of the things about the cell. And I mentioned just a minute ago, which I think would be another way in which people can prepare for this.

[00:18:49] Some of your diagrams and illustrations come from Illustrimedia. And as somebody that teaches creation at least once a year, I'm very familiar with some of those illustrations. So it is, I think, very helpful for people to recognize that even if you can't quite understand it, we've talked about a bacterial flagellum. We've talked about the structure of the DNA. There's enough pictures in there as well.

[00:19:12] And you are, for an individual that has multiple degrees, very gifted at finding some ways to communicate that. But at the same time, for some of our people listening in that have a science background, every once in a while I think it would be good in our future roundtable to talk about how detailed this is. Because in some respects, and I'll close with this, it seems like the more we know about biology, the more we know about the cell,

[00:19:39] the more we know about DNA, genetics, and epigenetics, the more profound and more persuasive the argument for intelligent design is. Don't you think? Absolutely. Absolutely. And a leading researcher in epigenetics of the Case Western Reserve in near Cleveland, the Harvard of Ohio, if you will, he, Berkley Greider, has said that if you compare the word processing functions,

[00:20:05] the digital processing functions of the latest cell phone, an iPhone 13 or whatever, and you say that that, let's say that the number seems off the chart now, and that comes up to five feet, if you look at the human cell compared to that iPhone, the measure would not just go five feet, it would go 250,000 miles past the movement. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. So the cell puts iPhone to shame. It's just unbelievable.

[00:20:33] Well, we're just about out of time, and again, I just wanted this to be kind of a preview for people that are already interested in this issue of intelligent design to recognize that this book is out. It's a Discovery Institute press book. You can find information about you and everything on the website, and my plan is to then use this as a rain check, get you on in the future where we could devote some very significant amount of time going into some of the detail in that regard. But I wanted people to know that the book is out,

[00:21:01] and so let's see if we can look forward to the next opportunity where we get you on the program again and talk about it at some length. So, Tom, thank you for joining us today here on Point of View. Could I mention that our website, that people can see an epigenetic model of DNA? Go for it. Yeah, so it's DNAandbeyond.org, DNAandbeyond.org. I'll see if we can post it on our website as well. Let's take a break.

[00:21:27] We have some very important issues in the news to talk about right after this. In 19th century London, two towering historical figures did battle, not with guns and bombs, but words and ideas. London was home to Karl Marx, the father of communism, and legendary Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon. London was in many ways the center of the world economically, militarily, and intellectually.

[00:21:56] Marx sought to destroy religion, the family, and everything the Bible supports. Spurgeon stood against him, warning of socialism's dangers. Spurgeon understood Christianity is not just religious truth. It is truth for all of life. Where do you find men with that kind of wisdom to stand against darkness today? Get the light you need on today's most pressing issues delivered to your inbox

[00:22:23] when you sign up for the Viewpoints commentary at pointofview.net slash signup. Every weekday in less than two minutes, you'll learn how to be a person of light to stand against darkness in our time. It's free, so visit pointofview.net slash signup right now. Pointofview.net slash signup.

[00:22:49] Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, is Kirby Anderson. Back once again, let's see if we can get into some of the issues in the news.

[00:23:19] And you might remember the proverb, may you live in interesting times. Well, we live in very interesting and even controversial times. Just before I move on to the news, let me just mention, just as he was leaving, Tom Woodward did mention his website, which is DNAandbeyond.org. DNAandbeyond.org. We'll see if Karen can post that up there next to his picture, and that would help you find that.

[00:23:46] And, of course, we will certainly put that up next time we do the interview because I wanted to do a longer, more detailed interview, but I'm aware of the fact that, first of all, we have midterm elections. Second of all, today, we also have Election Day in Israel. Our original plan was to have Michelle Bachman with us. She had to cancel, and I'm looking forward to trying to get her on real soon because this says today, for them, Election Day. And this is the first nationwide election since you had the Hamas attack,

[00:24:16] which was on October 7, 2023. And I think, as sad as this might be for some of us who have appreciated some of the actions by Benjamin Netanyahu, maybe the removal of him in that position. But, again, we'll see. He's facing one of the most significant electoral tests, and so we'll have to see where that unfolds in the next few days. And certainly there is a coalition government. We'll see what happens there.

[00:24:45] There are certainly a number of people in Israel that are not pleased with him for different reasons. And if you really wanted to dig into that, I would have to recommend that you go to Joel Rosenberg's broadcast each week on TBN because he's gone into that in some detail and certainly will give you a very good analysis after this election. But we have our own election coming up. But before we mention that, let's just talk about the conflicts overseas for just a minute.

[00:25:15] We have, of course, had riots in France, which have now spread to Italy. And as far away, I saw a picture of some people rioting even in as far away as Albania. And so, as Gary Bauer points out in his Monday end-of-day report, rioting by Marxist Islamist anarchies continued in France over the weekend. The French government called up more police officers and reinforced them with the military.

[00:25:44] More than 1,300 people were arrested just on Saturday alone, and more than 50 police officers were injured. And, of course, as he points out, demonstrations are now spreading across Europe. Protesters waving foreign flags, especially the Palestinian banner, are everywhere. Those with the Palestinian banner stormed the Coliseum in Rome,

[00:26:09] where Christians were thrown to the lions and a number of other things. And maybe that was symbolic. I don't know. But it's just very interesting to see where that unfolded there as well. And Gary Bauer went on to remind us of the fact, and we've been talking about this more off-air than on-air, but it's worth mentioning that there have been some reports that people have been able to uncover about the plan after the election.

[00:26:36] And that, again, will be a week from tomorrow when, okay, whoever wins, there probably will be riots in the streets. For example, the argument is that there would be a plan to try to stoke rioting in this country after the election. If Democrats win, would the rioters be right-wing? No.

[00:26:58] But if the Democrats win, the left would actually start rioting to actually force the hand of President Trump, so that eventually he would have to declare a state of insurrection, use the Insurrection Act or something like that, and then use that to claim that Donald Trump is threatening our liberty and use that as another justification for removing him from office. So as you oftentimes have heard us say, there are individuals that are planning the future.

[00:27:28] They are really convinced that there are some actions that they can be taking that will hasten the demise of a particular politician, the particular party, even the country itself. And if you are dedicated to a revolution, or at least even a transformation of America, that is certainly not surprising for us as well. So while we have conflicts in the Middle East,

[00:27:55] because, of course, we still have the war between Israel, the United States, and Iran, of course, you have the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. We also have what is happening on other parts of the continent there as well, and that is, just recently, the British Defense Secretary, Wes Streeting, has said the country must be ready for war in 1,000 days. He said after the government was announcing that,

[00:28:24] then he advised citizens to stock up on essential supplies. Writing in the Telegraph, he warned that the U.K.'s enemies could be ready to launch an attack on the U.K. by 2030. He wrote, quote, Our adversaries' willingness to harm us is not new. What has changed is their capacity. By 2030, their force, strength, and war economy could put them in a position to attack. He says that gives us a little over 1,000 days to complete our mission

[00:28:52] to be ready with our allies to fight and win. That is not something most people in the U.K. expected to read in the Telegraph, but that's what you got from the British Defense Secretary, Wes Streeting. He went on to say that the danger might not even come through conventional military action, warning that we are now in a world of what are oftentimes referred to as hybrid war tactics,

[00:29:18] which would be disrupting technology, disinformation campaigns. He doesn't say it, but could even upset food, water, energy, things of that nature as well. Now, if that's not enough, then you have, of course, what we've talked about, which is called fortress. And that is every military base in the continental United States is now going to,

[00:29:43] or will be required to gear itself up to run for at least 90 days without any help from outside. No help from the local community. No help from any other military base. That means they have to have their own power. They have to have their own water. They have to have their own fuel. They have to have their own communications. And every single one of these bases much run independently as if there's no help coming from the outside for three straight months.

[00:30:12] And so you begin to think about what that means because they're talking about trying to develop portable mini nuclear reactors, microgrids that would enable military bases to continue functioning if the civilian power system is taken down. I don't know what they know that we don't know. But I had some people say they just know the same things we know, and that is it's just become kind of a dangerous world.

[00:30:40] And if you're one of those individuals that says, I have no interest in all these silly preppers out there, I'm not going to suggest that you have to go out and buy water and guns and ammo tomorrow, but I'm saying when the government is doing that and you said, well, I'll wait before I see the government taking those kind of steps. Maybe you might think about what you want to do yourself in that regard. And again, we don't want to be alarmist.

[00:31:07] Again, one of the concerns I have, and it's even related today to my commentary about fear, we've been having people talk about AI fear and the rest, and that's why my piece today is on AI fears. We recognize that we should not have fear. We should not have a spirit of fear, but of a sound mind and a common sense, depending on which translation you have.

[00:31:32] And it does seem to me that there may be individuals stoking some fear for all sorts of reasons, and that's not the case. But at the same time, I think we would be remiss if we didn't say that what we are seeing right now is the fact that Russia continues to wage war against Ukraine.

[00:31:55] You have Iran and its proxies are still attacking some of our military, even though we've degraded them significantly. And when you have this Secretary of Defense, if you will, in the UK talking about that and looking around and seeing all sorts of war drums around the world, we see all the riots taking place in Europe.

[00:32:19] We may be very grateful that we live on a continent that is separated with oceans on both sides. But we also recognize that some of the people that are here maybe have some very definite plans as well and why we should pay attention to those over time. And if that doesn't cause you to take seriously the upcoming midterm elections, I don't know what else does. We will, of course, tomorrow be talking more about that.

[00:32:49] We're going to have Debbie Withnow with us once again. I, Voter Guide, we'll talk about that. We'll get into some other aspects of that throughout the week. But it just reminds us that here we are one week away from our own elections at the same time when Israel has their election today. And it's probably time for us to begin to think about what our next steps are going to be, what our future is going to be, and have some reasonable plans in place.

[00:33:18] Let's take a break, though. We'll come back. Got a couple other issues to point out. Even though we don't have the conversation today with Michelle Bachman, we'll get that scheduled very soon. And I might just point out that in the next hour, we'll be talking with Josh Wood. He is the executive director of Them Before Us, why we need a global children's rights movement. We'll get into that in the second hour. But we'll come back with some final comments before the top of the hour right after this.

[00:33:57] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Once again, let's, if I can, for just a minute talk about, of course, the election, because we're in the middle of the midterm elections. And just the other day when many of us were in Georgia, one of the questions we got is, you know, I can't seem to get my kids to be very interested in the elections. They sort of wonder, why should we vote and all the rest? And, of course, there are a lot of ways to answer it.

[00:34:24] One is, I simply said, well, you might ask them if they enjoyed when we had the pandemic and lockdown all the rules and regulations about masks, about six feet, not being able to go to various places. How, in some respects, we were able to keep big box stores open, but we closed down churches. And if they said, yeah, that was not good, well, then say, yeah, but those decisions were coming from your city council. They're coming from your district attorney. They're coming from your, maybe your county judge.

[00:34:53] And that's why those votes really matter. And, of course, I went through many of the others. Just the fact that we can celebrate so many successes right now in religious liberty because an election that took place in 2016 allowed for Donald Trump to put three justices on the court, which would be very different if Hillary Clinton had been the president, which has allowed us to have all these areas of religious liberty and freedom that we've had. So elections matter.

[00:35:20] Well, one of the things I didn't say at the time, but I thought I'd bring it up here, is each year when we have an election, especially every two years, I like to talk about some of these close elections. And you can't get any closer than a tie, a 50-50 tie. And I've collected quite a few of these, some which were won by one vote, some won by one vote per precinct.

[00:35:45] But I've collected a few of those, and I'm going to run that maybe next Monday just as a reminder that your vote really does matter. For example, I often love to tell a story about Penny Pullen. I used to do broadcasts with her occasionally when she was a state representative in Illinois and on the Moody Broadcasting Network. And she, many, many years ago now, lost a primary election by a number of votes.

[00:36:14] But then there were, for those of you in Illinois know what I'm going to say, some electoral irregularities. And so finally the judge jumped in, Francis Barth, and concluded that we have to just declare the election a draw, a tie. And he ordered a coin toss, and interestingly enough, she lost. That's not the rest of the story, because then she went to church that Sunday, and there were all sorts of people coming up to Penny and said,

[00:36:43] Oh, if I'd known the election was that important, I would have voted. But I got home late, and I said, What difference does one vote make? Or I was out of town and didn't know that my vote would have made a difference. And that certainly is one example of a 50-50 tie, which was lost on a coin toss. Well, there's another one. And this one happened in the state of Ohio.

[00:37:06] That's where William Crawford and Gene Miller received, and this one was, an identical number of votes in this election. Identical. But William Crawford, he was the most upset about this, because it turns out he had two sons, both who failed to vote that day. One son, Jim, lived across the street from him. His other son, Andy, is a college student who lives at home with him. Neither went to the polls.

[00:37:32] And so, again, when people say, Well, does one vote really matter? Well, just ask Penny Pullen and the people in her church that didn't turn out to vote for her. Or ask either William Crawford or his sons who didn't vote for him. And I think it just illustrates, again, that we have some very close elections. We have some very close Senate elections. So that should be enough.

[00:37:58] But let me, if I can, also point out the consequences of what could unfold. And that is, let's now go to our listeners in Michigan. You have a senator, Lisa Slotkin. Senator Slotkin has made it very clear that if Democrats are in control and they really believe there's going to be a blue wave, then we're going to investigate all the people that have worked for Donald Trump or worked with Donald Trump.

[00:38:27] And that sounds like almost a purge of some sort. And she is, of course, saying out loud what many others are thinking. And another person that has said this is Robert Reich. Now, Robert Reich actually was in the Clinton administration as the Secretary of Labor. And, again, you would think that some of these statements would be statements they would make after the election.

[00:38:53] But, no, and you can go and watch the interview that he gave in which he said that he is convinced that if Democrats are in power, they should seize control of SpaceX and Starlink because it is not right for Elon Musk, who, by the way, built these, to have that kind of power. And so these enterprises, he says, should only be owned by the government,

[00:39:19] implying that, of course, NASA would be able to have achieved all of this if given enough time. Of course, NASA did very little. But if we weren't for SpaceX right now, of course, I don't know if you're aware, we're going to eventually have to push the International Space Station into the ocean. That's a story for another day we'll get into. But just think about individuals. And, again, Robert Reich is not some yahoo out there.

[00:39:45] This was the Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, a distinguished professor, and yet he's making those kinds of statements and saying that that, he thinks, is quite appropriate in this regard. And, of course, you also have to say that this issue of affordability has been a big issue. But nowhere are things least affordable than in San Francisco. This one comes from our friends at The New York Times.

[00:40:14] Heather Knight was out there in San Francisco the other day. Of course, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, so this didn't surprise me. But for most of you listening right now, you will not believe what I'm going to tell you. The headline is really all you need to know. In San Francisco, a family earning $325,000 qualifies for government aid.

[00:40:38] Yes, a family earning $325,000 qualifies for government aid. Those are amounts I can't even get my head around. But, okay. And part of it is that now San Francisco offers free child care for families of four earning up to $235,000 a year. Okay, they exceed that.

[00:41:01] But it turns out the couple he's talking about, they do actually receive some because it turns out that the city will pay half of the cost of child care for families making up to $325,000 a year. Which is, of course, an eye-popping amount compared to the fact that it's three and a half times the country's median household income.

[00:41:25] For those of you complaining about your rent, the median rent in San Francisco for a two-bedroom apartment, $4,640. $4,600 per month for a two-bedroom apartment. Now, it turns out that the couple she's interviewing actually has a 1,200-square-foot home, which is, I'd have to say, more on the small side.

[00:41:52] And they purchased that for $1.3 million. So, I think you can kind of see that, yes, there are some issues of affordability in this election. Yes, there are also some people that are having trouble making ends meet. But part of it is when you are paying for free child care for people making $235,000 less or less,

[00:42:19] or half for people making $325,000 a year or less, you can see what we're dealing with in terms of questions of dealing with affordability. Those are the topics we'll be addressing for some time. But when we take a break, we're going to talk about this idea of a children's rights movement, one that I think is biblical. There have been some that have been very secular and liberal. And we'll be talking about that with Josh Wood and then some other guests in the next hour.

[00:42:48] If you'd like to find some of the information we've been talking about, go to the website, pointofview.net. Lots of very good articles, resources, including my commentary today, which we'll talk about later. All that we will get to in the second hour, right after these important messages.

[00:43:12] I'm sure that you've noticed that social media is now filled with information generated by AI. Dramatic descriptions of politicians and music stars supposedly making statements about a current issue. Leaning into the microphone, looking into the lens, opponents silenced. It's powerful, it's riveting, and it's all lies.

[00:43:36] Even several national television networks were recently found using enhanced pictures, meaning manipulated, falsified, literally not giving a true picture. So many liars, so much deception. Where can we turn for truth? Right here, from Kirby and the team at Point of View. We need your support. Please, join the Point of View Truth team today with a monthly gift of $30 or more.

[00:44:05] Together, we can shine the light of truth and dispel the darkness and deception of this day. Give now at pointofview.net. Or call 1-800-347-5151. Pointofview.net. And 800-347-5151. Point of View will continue after this.