What Happens When Nothing Is Universally True

The fastest way to lose a nation isn’t one dramatic moment, it’s a slow trade of truth for convenience. We start with Proverbs 16 and the simple claim that discretion and wise speech aren’t just “nice,” they’re life-giving. Then we connect that wisdom to real-world controversy around ICE, illegal immigration, and horrific crimes, asking what our words and policies reveal about who we choose to defend and what we’re willing to excuse.

From there, we slow down and get personal with prayer and discipleship. I pray for your family, your marriage, your kids, your work, and for leaders in the pulpit and the state. We also talk frankly about Proverbs 5 and the responsibility a husband and wife share to pursue faithful love, not as a mood, but as a covenant. If you’re looking for Christian encouragement that doesn’t dodge hard topics, this is that kind of conversation.

At the center is Acts 3: Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate, the healing of a man lame from birth, and the sermon that follows. We wrestle with suffering, why Jesus’ followers should expect it, and the hard question many people carry: why are some people healed while others are left waiting? We close with a warning drawn from Pope John Paul II’s language about a “culture of death” and the danger of moral relativism, because when nothing is universally true, everything becomes negotiable including life, marriage, borders, and justice.

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Transcript

Proverbs And ICE Controversy

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Proverbs sixteen starting with verse twenty-two. Discretion is a life-giving fountain to those who possess it, but discipline is wasted on fools. From a wise mind comes wise speech. The words of the wise are persuasive. We are what we take in, folks. Remember that. Harris's County, Texas. McGill Corazietta. Hames. Is the time frame of the case. Aggravated sexual assault of a child. ICE arrested him as part of operations targeting criminal illegal aliens. They're all criminal. That's kind of being redundant. He was illegal from Mexico. When you hear people really standing, when they start to complain about ICE, folks realize that they're complaining that they're siding with the child rapists over law enforcement. Just whatever they say, it doesn't matter. That's what their actions are doing.

Welcome And Gratitude

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Hey folks, this is Jesse Cope, back with another episode of the American Soul Podcast. Hope you all are doing well. Wherever y'all are, whatever part of the day you're in, sure to appreciate you joining me here, giving me a little bit of your day. I will try and use it wisely. For those of y'all that continue to share the podcast and tell others about it, thank you. Uh for those of y'all that continue to pray for me and for the podcast, thank you very, very much. For those of y'all that have tried out the countryside series, and also for those of y'all that are joining us now on America's Christian Heritage Podcast, the Sister Podcast. Thank you so much. Hope y'all are getting something out of each one of those. And I'm very grateful for your support.

Prayer For Families And Leaders

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Father, thank you for today. Thank you for you, Father, and your son Jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your love and your mercy, your grace and your forgiveness of sins through the merit of your son, Jesus Christ. Thank you for the people that listen to the podcast, Father. Please be with them, be with their families, bless their families, their marriages, their children. Guide them at work, guide them in the home.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Give them peace, comfort, help them to fill your presence. Calm any anxieties and worries, stresses that they have. Help us to do your will, Father.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Help us to trust you in the good times and the bad. When we think we can figure out what's going on, and when we know we have no clue what's going on. Thank you so much for those you have put in our lives, parents, spouse, children, friends that encourage us along the way. Be with those who don't have that, who haven't had good parents, or who have strained relationships with their children, or have a broken, divorced, dysfunctional household because of the marriage. Comfort them, draw close to the brokenhearted. And Father, please be with our leaders in the pulpit and in the state, our pastors, priests, president, vice president on down, the leaders, political leaders in countries around the world where people are listening. Help them to all rule and lead in fear of you. God, my words here, Father, please, in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Marriage And Mutual Responsibility

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Marriage verses Proverbs 5, 18 and 19, may your fountain be blessed, may you rejoice in the wife of your youth, a loving doe, a graceful deer, may her breasts satisfy you always. May you ever be intoxicated with her love. Another translation: let her breasts intoxicate you at all times, always be drunk on her love. If a husband has a responsibility to be satisfied by their wife always and at all times, uh intoxicated, drunk. A wife has a responsibility, logically, to intoxicate, make her husband drunk on her love at all times, folks. It's a two-way street. Both sides have to participate.

A Miracle At The Temple Gate

SPEAKER_02 4:51

Acts 3, 1 through 26. Peter and John went to the temple one afternoon to take part in the three o'clock prayer service. As they approached the temple, a man lame from birth was being carried in. Each day he was put beside the temple gate, the one called the beautiful gate, so that he could beg from the people going into the temple. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for some money. Peter and John looked at him intently, and Peter said, Look at us. The lame man looked at them eagerly, expecting some money. But Peter said, I don't have any silver or gold for you, but I'll give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk. Then Peter took the lame man by the right hand, helped him up, and as he did, the man's feet and ankles were instantly healed and strengthened. He jumped up, stood on his feet, and began to walk. Then, walking, leaping and praising God, he went into the temple with them. All the people saw him walking and heard him praising God. When they realized he was the lame beggar they had seen so often at the beautiful gate, they were absolutely astounded. They all rushed out in amazement to Solomon's colonnade, where the man was holding tightly to Peter's John. Peter saw his opportunity and addressed the crowd, people of Israel, he said, What is so surprising about this, and why stare at us as though we had made this man walk by our own power or godliness? For it is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of all our ancestors, who has brought this glory to his servant Jesus by doing us. This is the same Jesus whom you handed over and rejected before Pilate. Despite Pilate's decision to release him, you rejected this holy righteous one and instead demanded the release of a murderer. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. And we are witnesses of this fact. Through faith in the name of Jesus, this man was healed, and you know how crippled he was before. Faith in Jesus' name has healed him before your very eyes. But God was fulfilling what all the prophets had foretold about the Messiah, that he must suffer these things. Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away.

Suffering, Hope, And God’s Purposes

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Before I forget, folks, two things here. One, it's it's good, at least for me, maybe for y'all too, to remember that Jesus Christ suffered. And if he's our Master, our Lord, and our Savior, and He suffered, then we ought to expect to suffer in some form or fashion, right? Clinging to the hope of eternal life with Him and God and heaven, where there will be no more suffering, no more sorrow or pain or heartache, injury or illness, but only joy and peace and safety and security and love and happiness. Right? And the other thing here is when you look at Peter and John healing this man who was lame, and you can make the same kind of comment about Jesus himself. Why didn't they heal everybody? You know they didn't, I mean, at least it's implied in scripture that that they didn't heal every single person in Israel that was lame. What if you were one of those that didn't get healed? What if there were other lame people sitting on the mats right alongside this man and they picked him up and left the rest? Why? There has to be a reason. I would submit to you, this is just my theory. I guess if you want to call it that. That whatever reason, why ever they did it, it was to further the kingdom of God somehow. That there was a reason that they picked this man in particular. And you kind of get a glimpse of that here, right? Where you see uh the scripture that says Peter saw his opportunity and addressed the crowd. Now repent of your sins and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped away. Then times of refreshment will come from the presence of the Lord, and he will again send you Jesus, your appointed Messiah. For he must remain in heaven until the time for the final restoration of all things as God promised long ago through his holy prophets. Moses said, The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people. Listen carefully to everything he tells you. Then Moses said, Anyone who will not listen to that prophet will be completely cut off from God's people. Starting with Samuel, every prophet spoke about what is happening today. You are the children of those prophets, and you were included in the covenant God promised to your ancestors. For God said to Abraham, through your descendants, all the families on earth will be blessed. When God raised up his servant Jesus, he sent him first to you people of Israel to bless you by turning each of your backs from your sinful ways, to turn each of you back from your sinful ways. That makes a little more sense.

Wisdom That Persuades And Builds

SPEAKER_02 10:47

For we have had our fill of contempt. We have had more than our fill of the scoffing of the proud and the contempt of the arrogant. Man, isn't that last one true today? In America, for sure. Proverbs 16, 21 through 23. The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Discretion is a life-giving fountain to those who possess it, but discipline is wasted on fools. From a wise mind comes wise speech. The words of the wise are persuasive. Countryside. The book series, if you're looking for a family-friendly, hopefully faith-based, hopefully I did a good job with that. Middle grade series, if you would check out the countryside series, kind of like Narnia the Hobbit, Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, Fable Haven, that kind of stuff. And if you enjoy it, if you'd share it with others, and if you'd leave a review online somewhere for the first or the second book, I would be very grateful for that. You can see a link in the show notes for that. And also for a donation for the podcast, helps the writing to uh five, ten dollars a month. And you can set that monthly donation up there. And if you feel like you're getting something out of either of the podcasts, the American Soul or America's Christian Heritage, if you'd leave a review online, those reviews help quite a bit. So thank you for any or all of those.

Rape Case And Courtroom Nonsense

SPEAKER_02 12:20

I wanted to go back and cover uh this event. I think we talked about it on a previous podcast. This is uh Iraqi asylum seeker Al-Maliki, uh, South Kensington, London, August 1st, 2025, the Astor Hotel in South Kensington uh asylum accommodation. 30-year-old Iraqi national who arrived illegally on a small boat in September 2024. He was standing at the hotel, had just met the victim that day, uh, raped the woman he met there. And a part of the defense, the reason I wanted to come back to this, I don't think I mentioned this last time, is that he claimed uh bisexuality in some reporting. And that struck me today, folks, because we have allowed so much nonsense into our courts. It really doesn't matter whether he was transgender or bisexual or anything else. And his his mental state doesn't matter either. It doesn't make them unfit to stand trial in the sense that they get released back out into the population, which you you need the mental institutes, the insane asylums back again. And if a person is really truly so-called unfit to stand trial, uh then that's where they need to go until they are fit to stand trial, or they're not, and they stay there. But you don't put them back out in the population.

Courage Under Fire In WWI

SPEAKER_02 14:16

September 26, 1918, near Varenis, Varenis, France. During an operation against enemy machine gun ness west of Varenice, Corporal Call was in a tank with an officer when half of the turret was knocked off by a direct artillery hit. Choked by gas from the high explosive shell, he left the tank and took cover in a shell hole 30 yards away. Seeing that the officer did not follow and thinking that he might be alive, Corporal Call returned to the tank under intense machine gun and shell fire and carried the officer over a mile under machine gun and sniper fire to safety. Not awarded posthumously. Presented February 9th, 1919, Chaumont, Chaumont, France, presented by General John J. Pershing. Born November 29th, 1892, New York, died March 19th, 1984, Bethesda, Maryland. Buried, cremated ashes in flower garden, Bethesda, Maryland, United States. Just shy of a hundred. Donald Marshall called. And that man saw a lot of life, ladies and gentlemen. So we were gonna try and read

Culture Of Death And Moral Relativism

SPEAKER_02 15:41

this. I know we're getting close. Uh this is part of a speech, I believe, from Pope John Paul II. Um it was part of a mass celebrated at Cherry Creek State Park in Colorado August 15th, 1993, as part of World Youth Day. A culture of death seeks to impose itself on our desire to live and live to the full. There remains only each individual's choice of this or that objective as convenient or useful in a given set of circumstances. No longer is anything considered intrinsically good and universally binding. The family especially is under attack, and the sacred character of human life is denied. Naturally, the weakest members of society are the most at risk the unborn, children, the sick, the handicapped, the old, the poor and unemployed, the immigrant and refugee. I would add women there too, folks, my own words. You must feel the full urgency of the task. Woe to you if you do not succeed in defending life. The church needs your energies, your enthusiasm, your youthful ideas in order to make the gospel of life penetrate the fabric of society, transforming people's hearts and the structures of society in order to create a civilization of true justice and love. There's two, there's a lot of really good points here, folks, but there's two in particular, right? One, if we really want a civilization of justice and love, it can only be based on the principles of Christ, not just in our individual lives, not just in our family lives, but in our public political, civil life as a nation. The other is if you take away God's unchanging standards, you open the door for the changing political whims of man. And what that means, as Pope John Paul II said here, is what you end up with is only each individual's choice of this or that objective as convenient or useful in a given set of circumstances. No longer is anything considered intrinsically good and universally binding, right? Uh maybe today I want to do X, Y, or Z, and maybe next week I want to claim that X, Y, or Z is horrible. Uh, you know, it's it's no fault divorce is a great example. Well, I'm gonna get married and I'm gonna promise to love you until death does part, but in a few years, I'm not gonna feel that way anymore. And so I'm gonna go ahead and get divorced, right? Uh, you know, murder is wrong, but not when it's a baby inside the womb. Then then it's the person, you know, the choice, my body, my choice. Well, marriage is only between a man and a woman. Uh, maybe between two men, maybe between two women. Sex is only appropriate in a marriage between a man and a woman. Well, yeah, maybe, maybe not. Maybe you can have sex outside of marriage. That's not that big a deal. Maybe two men can have sex together, maybe two women can't. Maybe a boy can be a girl or a girl can be a boy. Maybe this law applies all the time, maybe it doesn't. Maybe we have borders, maybe we don't. Maybe you have to come through a port of entry in order to correctly enter the United States, maybe you don't. Maybe you can just crawl through the fence. Maybe life matters, maybe it doesn't. The only source of unchanging laws that produce justice and love are those of God and his son Jesus Christ, via the scriptures, via the Bible. You take that away, folks, and then it just depends on whoever's in charge and what they feel like on any given Wednesday.

The Lord’s Prayer And Blessing

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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is a kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. God bless y'all. God bless your families, your marriages, your children, if you have them, your nation, wherever you are around the world, listening. God bless America. We'll talk to y'all again real soon, folks. Looking forward to it.