9/11 25th Anniversary

0:00We would like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, Preborn. When a mother meets her baby on ultrasound and hears their heartbeat, it's a divine connection. And the majority of the time, she will choose life. But she can't do it without our help. Preborn needs us, the pro-life community, to come alongside her. One ultrasound is just $28. And to donate, dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby, or visit preborn.com-flash-afr. Jonah Ellis in the morning on American Family Radio. I love talking about the things of God because of truth and the biblical worldview. The US Constitution obligates our government to preserve and protect the rights that our founders recognize come from God our creator, not our government. I believe that scripture in the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raised up each of you. And God has allowed us to be brought here to this specific moment in time. This is Jonah Ellis in the morning.

1:01Good morning. It is Friday, September 11th, 2026, which means that this is the 25th anniversary of 9, 11, 2001, which, of course, changed the direction of American and world history through the events in New York and the terrorist plot to take down the two world trade center buildings. And then, of course, the one plane that was likely destined for some place in DC that ended up being foiled by some really amazing heroes on board. And I remember on 9, 11, I was interning actually for the Colorado Lieutenant Governor. Back when we were still Republicans in Colorado. And I remember that day, previous to that, you could just walk into the state Capitol. I mean, there was no security. There were no metal detectors. I mean, that was the era before 9, 11.

2:03And then everything changed. I mean, there was a lockdown at the Capitol. Nobody knew what was happening. And then, of course, the metal detectors came very swiftly. And all of this changed what we perceive with security and our relationship, I think, with privacy. And what we're willing to give up in the name of security. And so a lot of debates have happened in the aftermath of some of our constitutionally protected rights, how the government should interfere and intervene. But also the culture. And one of the big debates currently is over Zoran Mamdani, who, of course, is the New York City mayor, who is a Muslim. And the fact that he gave one of the commemorative 9, 11, pens, as he was signing one of those declarations this past week to one of his aides who was one of the al-Qaeda defense attorneys on 9, 11.

3:05And there was a lot of public outrage about that. And there should be. Because how do you go in this span of 25 years from never forget? And my family has a little Christmas ornament of the American flag from 2001 saying, you know, United, we stand, never forget. And being these ardent patriots saying, we will avenge and secure our nation to now electing Muslims to office and suggesting that religious pluralism in this country is just fine. Because we need to love everybody, affirm their actions, and we can't call evil evil anymore. I mean, you look at the Lindsey Clancy trial. You can't call evil because somehow we need to sympathize with her alleged postpartum psychosis to the point that we don't want justice for her three murdered children. I mean, this is the span of where 25 years can get you. So to discuss all of this and, of course, to bring this back to the biblical worldview

4:05is my very dear friend, Gina Geraci, who is a pastor emeritus of Calvary Chapel, South Denver, one of the pastors and great mentors of my life and also was a 9-11 first responder, actually in the immediate aftermath of that tragic event and also has been an FBI chaplain. So a lot to talk about, Gina, and you know, as you are sitting here on the 25th anniversary of that absolutely horrendous day, and then looking at our current culture, what are you thinking? You know, Jenna, my thoughts like many people go from the great big ideas to the more specific ideas. And you've talked at length on the ideological divide that was marked by Charlie Kirk's murder and then the bit 9-11, which was way before that. And again, as we've sort of talked about that idea,

5:06the great big Muslim idea, the al-Qaeda thing, the, you know, what really happened. I'm thinking about how we've sort of underestimated the political divide, the ideological divide, and then asking and answering the questions, how do we respond? How do we respond to these ideological divides? Whether they're coming from the transgender LGBTQ ideological mafia versus al-Qaeda. And so I go from that great big idea, and then to your point, how things have shifted in a 25-year period where there's a growing, I'm gonna use the word either indifference or even support for ideologies that are quite literal and really harmful that could be argued fatal

6:11to the way we live and the future that we may or may not have. Yeah, and it's so important to go from those bigger concepts that should be foundational and then follow that line of logic into what we see in the every day, because that's how we get from our foundational values into public policy or into parenting or into church discipline or church membership or all of these very practical considerations in the three institutions that God has ordained. And so what, and that's when it's good, right? Like we're building on the Christian foundation and then that outflows into how we behave in those institutions and what we strive for in our policy and our rulemaking. So where have we gotten in terms of the philosophy that has been so off the mark that from 25 years ago

7:12or even 250 years ago, we now find ourselves in the culture that today is poised to elect socialists and Muslims and progressivists and people who are godless populists and all kinds of other false and outright pagan at times world views. Yeah, you know, I can't help but think of God's God's great book about toxic empathy where here we take a biblical kind of a view. Just, and you know, you hinted at it with Lindsey Clancy's incredible trial that how is it possible that you can come to a place of such empathy and compassion where you say, hey, I really feel for a person who's mentally and emotionally distressed, you know, one juror even has publicly said, you know, the reason why I wanted to acquit her is because she needs help.

8:15And but to your point, well, again, we're not opposed to people who are mentally and emotionally disturbed getting help, but then how do you bring the subject of justice forward? And so imagine we're living in a pluralistic society where there's religious liberty, but again, I maybe you talk about it. I'm trying to remember the public official who said that our constitution is not a suicide pact. In other words, the freedoms that we have, we're never meant to be the freedom to kill yourself. And so here we have this strange situation where in the name of compassion and plurality, we are quite literally distancing ourselves culturally from the things we hold dearest. Yeah, and you know, and it seems like the sparkle or the attraction of these false ideologies

9:16are becoming more pervasive in the church because we haven't, by we meaning, you know, the broader Christian swath in America, have not been as educated, substantively, theologically to perceive why things like, for example, toxic empathy are not actually biblical. And if we are going to respond biblically and call out falsity, we have to first know what the truth is. Right. And then you have to have, I'm going to use the term clarity and courage. And you know, Jenna, all of this reminds me of the biblical story of John the Baptist. You'll remember John, and this is kind of an interesting little aside. You'll remember that John the Baptist and Jesus were only born about nine months apart. And we have every reason to believe that maybe Jesus was crucified in his mid-30s, about the same age as Charlie Kirk.

10:17And so imagine in your biblical setting, as you're imagining the political settings and the cultural and social interactions of a John the Baptist, he's about the same age as Charlie Kirk. And he is calling out the powers that be for immoral behavior. And you'll remember the story that that Herod's wife and the dancing daughter want to shut John the Baptist's mouth. And so in that moment of passion and promise, he agrees to have him killed, have his head cut off so that his voice would be silent so he would shut his mouth. And so here we are, we're talking about 9.11, we're talking about Charlie Kirk, 25 years later, one year later. So you see this very public thing happen in New York and in Washington, you see this very public thing happen

11:21in Utah where a person is murdered right before your eyes. He shot in the throat and there is blood literally gushing out of his throat. And so in the hopes that he would shut his mouth and then I'm thinking one year later, TikTok videos celebrating his murder. I'm just thinking about the depth of evil and wickedness that has sort of enveloped our country where people would celebrate such profound perversity and evil and wickedness and not even be able to tell that it is perverse and wicked and evil. And so again, we need clarity and courage. Now for John the Baptist, it really is going to cost of his life. They're going to shut his mouth, but they're not going to shut his message. And that's what I'm wondering about 9.11. I'm wondering if there's going to be some sort of pushback. You know, we saw it briefly and Jenna,

12:21you experienced it firsthand where after Charlie Kirk's murder, there was a kind of a palpable change. College chapters for the turning point USA, that 410 registered before his birth, 1,095 afterwards. They had high level clubs went from 454 to 3,000. There was more than 120,000 chapter inquiries. There was over another million Bible sold. I think there was a kind of a, what's the word I'm looking for? There was a kind of impulse culturally that people were asking the question about the meaning of life. And whether or not there is such a thing as good and evil and right and wrong. And so, you know, that, I'm just wondering like 9.11 and like Charlie Kirk and like Columbine, can you believe it?

13:22That once we distance ourselves from a historical event, that there's a kind of sad indifference that begins to swallow us. And so that's why we have to have these conversations. And that's why I so appreciate what you do, constantly reminding your audience. We have to think about these things. Yeah, I'm so well-signed. And I'm speaking to you in Geno Geraci, Pastor Emeritus of Calvary Chapel, South Denver. And there's a lot of great work in theology and in, you know, all of these topics and especially in the biblical world of you. And you know, isn't it, isn't it interesting? As you were talking to see the cultural response, you know, overall, the response on mainstream media on, you know, we didn't really have social media at the time, but you know, even just person to person, the difference between the response in the immediate aftermath of 9.11 versus the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk's murder. And the contrast of how people were willing to stand up and say,

14:26this was evil, this was wrong and look at, you know, those who were willing to lay down their lives to take down, the planes, the heroes that went into the buildings to try to get people out. I mean, all of those things and nobody that I'm aware of, even going back and listening to clips, you know, nobody was sitting there glorifying the murders. And no one was saying, well, you know, I wonder if these al-Qaeda members were just troubled or they just, you know, suffered from psychosis or, you know, tried to empathize with, you know, the backstory of what happened. I mean, we didn't live in this cultural moment of total affirmation of anyone's choices, like we are seeing with some of these people who were actually rationalizing and justifying Charlie Kirk's murder on the basis of, well, you know, he had hate speech, he said things that we disagreed with or, you know, looking into his alleged murder, Tyler Robinson's backstory

15:26and well, you know, we can understand why he was in the place to do what he did. Those kinds of totally different reactions by mainstream public and even mainstream news outlets are just so radically different that you have to, again, come back to the question, what happened in the last 25 years that would cause society to make such a dramatic shift? And let's pull that thread just for a moment. Imagine 25 years ago, there are people who say, you know what, we had it coming. We deserved what they did. And then fast forward to Charlie Kirk. He had it coming. He deserved what he got. Now Lindsay, the woman who murdered her children, hey, guess what? Those children had it coming. Now think about the Massachusetts law, what you've also talked about. She killed her eight-month-old baby.

16:27But imagine that she had retained just 10 months earlier. She had just made the decision to kill her unborn child in utero 10 months earlier. There would be no legal repercussions whatsoever. How did we come to this? How is it possible that our culture and its values could be so dark and disconnected from a biblical worldview? Yeah. And as you're describing that, the sheer arbitrary nature of what our law is now reflecting of the sentiment of society to say it's okay to murder a child up until birth in some states now. And now to say, well, it's okay to even murder your seven-year-old, your five-year-old if you suffer from this particular psychosis.

17:31Or it's okay if we arbitrarily conclude the lives of the elderly, if we don't in our arbitrary judgment determine that they're valuable to society. I mean, the total arbitrary nature of this shows the lack of respect and understanding of the value of human life. And that's a big part of what has changed. And there are a lot of different specific ways that we could point out that society has changed in terms of the worldview. But the 30,000-foot perspective of this is that when we have lost God at the center of society and saying that all truth and goodness flows from God and that society must reflect that in our law, in our policy, in our communities. And we substitute God for our truth and our perception that is completely arbitrary. That's where we go wrong.

18:32Because then there's no fixed objective standard. And justice becomes, well, you know, whatever we happen to think on any particular trial, whatever Massachusetts may think compared to my now home state of Florida, compared to Colorado. Where you're at, you know, it's completely different, depending on circumstances, on states, on whims of the 12-year seated or governors or legislatures, instead of being objective. And a society cannot persist in its morality and in its order being a well-ordered society without having truth at the center and that objective standard. And that's what I think overall what we've missed. Yeah, you know, again, as we think about this broad, great big conversation we're having about 9-11. As we're talking about Charlie Kirk, as we're talking about the sad and tragic case

19:33of this woman murdering her children, you know what, each of those things also did, they provided a kind of functional war-shack test. So imagine you're watching 9-11, you're watching Charlie Kirk, you're watching this trial. And immediately people divide into separate ideological camps as they're trying to interpret what they're seeing. And then to your point, rationalizing, you know, applauseable but untrue excuse of why they're doing what they're doing, political violence, moral responsibility, grief. And so they're all thrown into this pot and we're stirring it. And so if ever there was a time for clarity, in charity and civility, it's like right now. And Charlie Kirk obviously wanted to have a conversation. You'll remember that you reached out to Vance Jones literally the day before he was murdered

20:34and said, hey, can't we have a conversation? Can't we talk about this in a way where nobody has to get hurt? And Jenna, you know, you've been the cruel victim of people who attack you. They literally don't wanna have a conversation and then talk about the ideas and then examine them on the merit of logic and evidence in common sense. Yeah, it's so true that for many people in society day, and this is both on the left and the right, unfortunately. Many people are not seeking truth. They're seeking bias confirmation. And so whatever they want to be the truth or whatever they personally believe, they're going to advocate for in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary or in spite of being told, well, you misunderstand, you know, this particular thing or you haven't considered this

21:35or here's perhaps new evidence. And it's really been remarkable to me to see, I mean, that used to be a failing more on the left that they were just so entrenched in their progressive sort of secular thinking that they couldn't be persuaded, but you could at least have the conversations rationally on the right. I mean, that's the basis of why we've historically always held conferences, right? And had instead of all of these viral videos and the Kumbaya moments of everybody just having all the feels, the right was known for its intellectualism and wanting to come to an understanding and a well-ordered society and policy that made sense, right? And now it's like all of this has shifted so far left that even people who think they're on the right are given to feelings and emotions and beliefs and bias that aren't grounded in fact or even sometimes reality. And they will not be convinced of that because they somehow think that if they admit

22:38that they have something to learn or that, oh, that's different than what I thought, but thank you for telling me the truth, that that somehow makes them lose their integrity instead of understanding that integrity means that you should want to always be seeking the truth and uprightness. I mean, literally having integrity means that it's solid that the foundation, if you're talking about the integrity of the building, we're talking about 9-11, and the integrity of the building is that it can't be shaken and it is built on a proper foundation. So structural integrity means that even when wins come reigns, all of these things, it will stand firm. And that's the definition of integrity that we've lost as a society and we don't even understand which way is up anymore because up is relative. And so we have this sort of standpoint and epistemology of just, well, whatever my perspective is, that's truth instead of recognizing that truth is outside of ourselves and no matter our perspective, our belief or what we want it to be,

23:41truth is regardless of my opinion. And if you try to tell somebody that in today's society, they're gonna get mad at you because they don't want that objective standpoint. But, but, you know, we've got to take a break here and he's gonna continue on with me into the next segment and we are talking of course about the 25th anniversary of 9-11, talking about the murder of Charlie Kirk a year ago and the cultural differences between just where society has been with these two very important events to American and world history. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Jenna Ellis. Did you know that this content is listener supported? Without people like you, this podcast would not exist. And that's why we need you. A generous monthly gift of any amount will help sustain American Family Radio and specifically this podcast. Please consider becoming a monthly financial partner today by visiting afr.net forward slash give. That's afr.net slash give.

24:42Hi, hi, hi. Welcome back to Jenna Ellis in the morning on American Family Radio. Welcome back and I'm here with my special guest, Gino Geraci, who is the pastor emeritus of Calvary Chapel South Denver and also was a 9-11 first responder in the immediate aftermath of that event 25 years ago today. And has been an FBI chaplain. It's served in a variety of capacities in both the church government, of course, as a family of his own, but then also talks about the truth in society and our community, our body politic and why that ultimately matters and has to be predicated on a foundation of truth. And so as we're talking about all of these questions that are really big questions, we've been talking about also the difference in just where the culture was at 25 years ago compared to a year ago with 9-11, 2001,

25:45versus September 10th of 2025 and Charlie Kirk's Smurter. And not just society as a whole, but how do you think, Gino, the church overall in America, kind of writ large if we can generalize a little bit? How has the church response been either the same or different? You know, I think about that question in a kind of almost polarizing term. And let me tell you what I mean by that because you have the people who want to engage politically without regard to biblical truth, but you also have the indifferent people who are silent. In other words, they're saying, you know what, I'm not gonna enter into the political arena because this is all politics, but again, what you've rightly talked about over the years

26:47is politics, remember we talked about how that's truth in community and then we talk about the moral questions and then why is it that when you have a biblical view or a biblical worldview that our influence is the one influence that has to be silenced? And so I think that part of the church's failure is to refuse to take seriously what it means to be salt and light in a culture because again, like John the Baptist, we're unwilling to pay the price. Well, what if they cut my head off in order to keep me from keeping our mouths shut? And so you've got these growing group of people who literally are saying, hey, you know what? I think I'm gonna tell the truth about gender ideology. I'm gonna tell the truth about justice. I'm gonna tell the truth about the human condition and what it means to be a human. And so to me, you can't do that.

27:50You will not have the moral courage to do that, not just simply with a biblical understanding of the truth, but I'm gonna use the term, then have it being motivated to live out that truth in a public setting. I know this sounds very, very simple, but I think that that's the answer. So here's the church and the church says, I'm gonna teach you the truth, but then I'm gonna encourage you to be salt and light, to live out that truth in the real public setting in which you live. And so that's the challenge, isn't it? It is. And having courage has always been the challenge. We even see that through the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before. And that's a perfect moment, I think, to ask, do you share some of what you experienced as a first responder on 9-11?

28:50And yeah, let me tell you my very first response, when I came to this 15-acre facility that used to be the Twin Towers. So I can remember, I skipped high ticket and I, along with Franklin Graham, we got there on Sunday night. And then we were, so it happened on Tuesday, we fly it, you know, the air spaces closed, we're there in rescue and recovery mode on Sunday. And then we're on, on literal, on at ground zero on Monday. And Jenna, my first thought was, how could something so valuable become so worthless so quickly? So I'm thinking about the 3000 plus people who are dead. I am smelling death and I am smelling jet fuel. And I am seeing trash. And there is toxic waste all around me. And so again, you talk about first responders,

29:52remember we're going to a place, putting ourself at physical harm, possible risk, possible future health problems, but we go. And so I can remember doing the rescue and the recovery. I can remember the weeping firemen. I can remember the wanted posters of loved ones who desperately want to find their loved ones. I remember being at ground zero and then going to the family center as people are weeping and crying desperate to find their loved ones. And then I spent part of my time at the morgue, Jenna. As people are sifting through DNA as we're trying to figure out who's alive and who's dead. And then imagine not just one or two, but imagine 10, 20, 100 people coming up and then having that very difficult conversation

30:53that your loved one has gone, that they're not coming back. And I mean, it's just it's unimaginable. And I remember seeing the contemporaneous footage in the day of and the aftermath of all of that. From Colorado, I was not there, didn't have an opportunity to actually visit until a few years later. And of course have now been at the Freedom Tower and seen that museum and just all of the history of that now that it is. And I also remember then fast forward to college a few years later, so it's only maybe four or five years later. I'm in college in journalism. And one of the remarkable things that had never really occurred in modern journalism was the decision of whether to actually

31:56air a live shot of what was going on as people were literally jumping from the buildings. And how that changed a lot of the ethics and questions in journalism of covering these types of events and tragedies. And that term ethics and the questions around it, do you think that there is a cultural view that we tend to want to sanitize some of the worst of humanity to the rest of the culture in a way that's actually doing a disservice to the public, to show what is actually evil so that we can condemn it and we can see what it is that we're fighting against. Yeah, what an interesting question. And I'm going to kind of turn the question around just for a moment, Jenna, because there's two ways of thinking about this, okay?

33:00Think of sanitizing and sensationalizing as part of an arc or a spectrum. Are we going to sanitize it? Are we going to sensationalize it? But again, on either extreme, would if something gets lost, what if the actual message gets lost? And so here we are, because again, I am a first responder. I have been a first responder at the most gruesome events in our at least recent history, Columbine, Ground Zero, the Aurora movie theater shooting. And there's certain things, Jenna, that once you see them, you can't unsee them. It never goes away. And so I'm particularly aware of how certain things traumatize people as you relive them. And so how do we have that balance? How do we, and again, you saw it with Charlie Kirk

34:04and you saw it with Ground Zero and people jumping out of buildings. And then the pictures of the three children who were murdered by their mother. Now, imagine, do I have to see people jumping out of buildings? Do I have to watch the Charlie Kirk footage? Do I have to see the crime scene photos of these children who were strangled in their basement to be shocked into thinking something wicked, something evil, something horrible has happened. And what will it take to shock you into a sensible response? You know what I think about? Because I'm always thinking about the Bible. You remember the story in the book of Judges where this man has a conchia vine and she's gang raped by people. There's a roving mob of people who engage in sexual assault. He chops her up into little pieces

35:06and then sends her mutilated body to the several tribes of Israel. And many people reading the Bible go, that's in the Bible. Yeah, why is that in the Bible? How could that possibly be in the Bible? What possible function could it possibly serve? And you know what it did? It shocked the sensibilities of an indifferent people to unite as one and say, you know what? We can't do this anymore. There's something so wrong that we're gonna need a united effort to course correct. To your question then, but what will it take? What will it take to shock the sensibilities of the United States of America in order to course correct? Sorry, I think. That's no. So well said and I think that is the question is what will it take? Because I would have honestly thought it would take a lot less.

36:07I was shocked watching this jury have 11 people who were willing to come to acquittal that easily and that quickly. And you know this one juror who says, okay, well, you know, there's maybe there's doubt, but she's guilty. And you know, the one sane person in the midst of you saying the emperor has no clothes. I mean, that's literally what it felt like to see that there's just this one lone juror that's willing to stand up and say no. And what will it take in a society that has been so overrun by so much noise? And you know, we can get on demand any sort of pornography, graphic content, horror movies, you know, slash and burn or whatever they call them, you know, all of this stuff that it has so desensitized us to evil. What honestly will it take? I mean, do you think it will take something

37:08that is profoundly, that profoundly touches our lives and our way of life and our comfort perhaps before we wake up and are willing to say the evil has to stop? You know, I have a Jewish friend, you know, that anti-Semitism thing has a real problem as well. I have a Jewish friend who, who asked me the question, which is worse? Seeing the evil. For all that it is, we're being indifferent to that evil. In other words, here you have this oddly shocking situation where that we've become desensitized to the evil, that nothing shocks us, that it's the indifference itself that becomes the genuine problem we have to struggle with. Yeah, and I mean, there is a quotation,

38:08I don't remember it was quoted on a television show, but I don't know where it originated, that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. And there's a lot of truth to that. And when we see the profound indifference where people just don't care anymore, I mean, they don't care about the horrors that are perpetuated by criminals in this country, they don't care whether, you know, societies overrun. I mean, a lot of this I personally think is that indifference can be attributable to how overmedicated we are as a society, because if you completely desensitize your emotions and your feelings, I mean, obviously, we do need to still say, you know, don't go based just on your feelings, but if you are so numbed to feeling anything, to even feeling the righteous anger or the anger that comes with injustice, and then you are being numbed to what it takes to have courage

39:10and to understand what drives human beings to be willing to stand up for the truth. And so, you know, this is obviously multifaceted, but I think that it's so interesting and worth pointing out that, you know, the devil has a strategy, and you see how all of these different tentacles have woven their way into society, so that on one hand, we're numbing out our emotions, and on the other hand, the emotions that are left, we're told to follow them and to affirm anyone's life choices and to follow these blatantly false worldviews to the point that, again, we don't know which way is up. And this is where I think it falls on the Christians, the true Christians in society to say, we are the ones, I mean, God always leaves a remnant, there are always the few that stand up in the face of evil, and we see that over and over again

40:11in biblical history, in world history, it's going to take the few that are willing to stand up and simply say no, this is enough, enough. You know, there's an interesting movie. I think your mom and dad were playing it at the church in Longland. It was, I don't know if you remember the movie, Amazing Grace, about Wilbur Force, but there's a scene in the movie where the evangelicals are pressing William Wilbur Force to keep fighting, to keep fighting the British slave trade through politics, and he confesses, you know, or at least dramatically in this movie, he's torn between being an advocate and government and saying, why I am just going to simply do the work of God and their response was, we humbly suggest that you do both. Am I thought? Yes, sometimes it isn't an either or proposition.

41:14Sometimes we have to do both, sometimes we have to engage and but still remain true to our biblical identity as followers of Jesus. Yeah, absolutely. And even in the face of when others fall away or they just say, you know, this is too much for me, or I'm going to bend either to the mob because I'm scared of them or to even, you know, our friends on our side who sometimes are misperceiving in a situation or they're not willing to stand up for the truth and, you know, you may not want to disappoint them or you want to go along with basically peer pressure. I mean, all of this comes down to courage to follow the Lord regardless. And even if you walk alone, you will never be alone because you're walking with Christ. And this is where we need to come to that moment as everyone has to in their own Christian life

42:15to say, I am willing to follow the Lord come what may. And that is a very courageous statement because we can't say that lightly because come what may. I mean, there are a lot of Christian murders who have said that, who have come before us that it literally costs them everything to serve the Lord. And the point is it is worth it. And that frame of mind and understanding the value of what the Lord offers and the Christian life offers compared to what the world offers, that's the distinction. And I see, you know, even just in my own life of Christians that I know who aren't even willing to, you know, get up and go to church regularly on Sunday because it's too hard or well, you know, we have football practice with our kids or, you know, all of these other distractions. It's like they don't see the value of the Christian life

43:16and of doing what we're called to because that's what's so worth it. And you know, it's really interesting about what you just said, Jenna, that's not gonna sustain you in the moment of crisis. You've experienced personal crisis. I've dealt with crisis most of my adult life. What's gonna sustain you? What's gonna sustain you when you find out your child was murdered? What's gonna sustain you if you get a cancer diagnosis? What's gonna sustain you in that moment of deep and dark difficulty? The only thing that's gonna sustain you is to have a right relationship with the Lord through the Lord Jesus Christ. And so again, you know, I'm constantly, I've made a commitment, Jenna, that I don't wanna talk about the brokenness of this world without also giving fair time to the promises of redemption and the promises that God affords us.

44:19So that's part of the way that I think we cool the conversation. We do both. And hopefully, you know, I'm reminded of what Charles Spurgeon was said when somebody said, how are you going to defend Jesus? And he goes, I have no need to defend Jesus. I will simply let him out of his cage like a roaring lion. And you just go, there is a sense, as you already know, that truth will make its way forward, that justice will make its way forward, that reality will in fact have a say in the way we process things. Yeah, well, Jenna, we have to end this here, but I so appreciate this conversation and we have to focus on truth and that is our only hope. And so thank you so much for joining me to talk about all of these important things. And you should follow Gina on X

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46:22Please don't wait. Dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby. That's pound 250 baby or give securely at preborn.com-4-AFR. That's preborn.com-AFR. Together we can save lives, one heartbeat at a time. Welcome back to Jenna Ellis in the morning on American Family Radio. Welcome back. Well, I spent so much time talking to Geno because that was such an excellent and substantive conversation that we only have about three minutes left before the end of the show. And this is why the hour just goes by so quickly. But I love having these conversations not just about the events that we need to remember and the facts of what's going on in the news and in history that we should know where we've come so we know where we're going. But we need to always ask ourselves the questions, why? Why does this matter? And not just that it matters to us, but why does it matter to eternity?

47:22And we always need to be looking not just forward but upward. And saying, what can I learn from where we've been, where we are currently, where we're going, and what can I learn about the standard of truth, so that I can be the best citizen in society, the best member, and hopefully active participant in ministry of my church, and the best role in my family. If you are a husband, wife, son, daughter, all of us have those roles in our families, in our churches. If you're not part of a local church, please find one. Get involved. We are called to be members of our local church community, and we are members of our civil society. And we can't advocate for a moral and upright society without first knowing the truth and knowing the standard that we are supposed to bear.

48:25We can't stand up for courage when we don't know what it is we are standing up for. And so so many of the lies that have come at us over the last 25 years in this culture and how there is such a difference in our culture between where we were in 2001 compared to where we are today in 2026, and that difference has been the slow and sometimes rapid encroachment of lies, of either selling a completely opposite paradigm to the Christian worldview, or even more insidiously, a false view of Jesus, a meek and milder, a gentler, a firming, even socialist, kind of form of Jesus, that is not the biblical truth. And so my encouragement on this anniversary of 9-11-2001 is to get into a church that substantively teaches the truth of God and know that there is significant

49:26eternal value in understanding what the Bible teaches and dedicating yourself to knowing Scripture from cover to cover, knowing the things of God, the things of truth so that we can disbuse ourselves of the lies of the devil and we can point them at and we can recognize them because we know the truth. And so, if you are daily in the Word, get into a Bible study, get into a class, get into a church that teaches the things of God and the knowledge of truth. As always, you can reach me in my team, jennat.afr.net. Preborn has rescued over 400,000 babies from abortion, and every day their network clinics rescue 200 babies lives. Will you join preborn in loving and supporting young moms in crisis? Save a life today. Go to preborn.com-flash-afr.