Twenty-two years ago, something extraordinary happened in American movie theaters.

Across the country, audiences sat in near silence as the final hours of the Lord’s life unfolded before them. There were no superheroes, no elaborate special effects, and no English dialogue. Instead, we watched a brutally realistic depiction of a scourged and bleeding man carrying a cross through the streets of Jerusalem toward His execution.

Every person watching the film also carries a reality we prefer not to contemplate: With every passing day, we move closer to our own death and our own face-to-face encounter with the living God.

I saw “The Passion of the Christ” four times on the big screen — and I was hardly alone in going back more than once. Each viewing was emotionally overwhelming. I shed plenty of tears, but none more than during this scene, as Jesus is beaten nearly beyond recognition.

Shared encounter

Mel Gibson’s 2004 film became a cultural phenomenon. It ultimately earned more than $610 million worldwide and, for 20 years, remained the highest-grossing R-rated movie in domestic box-office history. More importantly, it became something increasingly rare in American culture: a shared encounter with the story at the heart of Christianity.

Now, “The Passion” is back.

From September 10 through 17, the film returns to theaters nationwide, newly remastered in 4K with Dolby Atmos sound. Audiences will also see an exclusive behind-the-scenes preview of Gibson’s long-awaited sequel, “The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One,” scheduled for release in May.

For those of us who saw “The Passion” in 2004, its return offers an opportunity to revisit a remarkable cinematic experience. But nostalgia isn’t the most important reason to go.

An entire generation has never experienced this film in a theater.

The oldest members of Gen Z were only grade-schoolers when Gibson’s epic debuted. Many were toddlers or not yet born. They’ve grown up in a radically different culture from the one that encountered “The Passion of the Christ” 22 years ago.

An urgent invitation

They should see it.

Not simply because Mel Gibson made a powerful movie, but because of whom the movie is about: Jesus Christ. The Word incarnate. The man who walked willingly toward Calvary, stretched out His arms on a cross, and gave His life for humanity.

That is exactly what makes this rerelease different from the return of some beloved Hollywood classic. We aren’t simply being invited to revisit a movie. We are being invited to contemplate an event that changed human history.

And just maybe we need that invitation now more than ever.

Look around.

Wars rage. Natural disasters bring scenes of devastation into our homes. Human life is discarded through abortion and euthanasia. Families are fractured. Loneliness, addiction, and despair afflict millions. Technology connects us instantly, yet people seem increasingly incapable of understanding one another.

The world is shaking. What will awaken us?

RELATED: Mel Gibson’s long-awaited biblical sequel is finally happening

Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

Confronting the familiar

Christianity offers a startling answer. A crucified man.

The central image of the Christian faith is not a throne, a sword, or a display of worldly power. It is God giving Himself away.

“For God so loved the world,” Scripture tells us, “that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16).

“The Passion of the Christ” forces us to confront what those familiar words mean.

The scourging is difficult to watch. The road to Calvary is exhausting. The Crucifixion is horrifying, and that is precisely the point.

Sin is not trivial. Love is not mere sentiment. Our redemption came at a price.

Every person watching the film also carries a reality we prefer not to contemplate: With every passing day, we move closer to our own death and our own face-to-face encounter with the living God.

Seen in that light, “The Passion of the Christ” is not entertainment. Instead, it’s a question: Who do you say Jesus Christ really is?

The only question

It’s a question every human being should struggle with. It’s precisely the question that has drawn Christian leaders like Cardinals Raymond Burke and Gerhard Müller, Rev. Franklin Graham, and Pastor Samuel Rodriguez to tout the film’s rerelease — and to encourage Christians to prepare spiritually for what comes next.

The original film also changed what Hollywood believed was possible. Its enormous success opened new opportunities for religious filmmaking and raised expectations for how biblical stories could be portrayed on screen. The renaissance that followed eventually gave us productions such as “The Chosen,” which has introduced the gospel to millions worldwide.

But “The Passion” remains unique; perhaps because it refuses to make Christianity comfortable.

It reminds us of Christianity’s astonishing claim: The Creator entered His creation. God became man. He suffered. He bled. He died.

For you.

And then comes the most important part. The story does not end at the cross. That’s why the forthcoming sequel matters.

Christ dies on Good Friday. But Sunday comes.

More than two decades after “The Passion of the Christ” first stunned audiences, its return offers our troubled culture another opportunity to stand at the foot of the cross.

​Abortion, Entertainment, Euthanasia, Gen z, Gospel, The passion of the christ, Mel gibson, The chosen, Christianity, Faith 

Imagine America in 2032. The forms remain. There’s still a Congress. Still a Supreme Court. We all carry on with our campaigns, debates, yard signs, cable panels, and concession speeches. Children are still told they live in a democracy.

But the substance has changed. The Court has been expanded and brought to political heel. Election rules have been totally federalized. Mass mail voting is permanent. New states have added new senators. The bureaucracy is no longer merely hostile to the political opposition; it is fully “fortified” against removal. Banks, universities, corporations, platforms, and prosecutors all understand the same rule: Opposition is permitted, but only as theater.

Our road divides. Which future will it be?

A Republican may run. A conservative may speak. A dissident may complain. But the machinery effortlessly ensures none of it matters very much, if the voices are even heard.

This is the future now gathering inside the Democratic Party. Its energy has left the old, once-familiar liberalism of free speech, hard work, earthy patriotism, and equal citizenship. What pulses now is the politics of the DSA: racial spoils, censorship, open borders, anti-police politics, climate command economics, anti-Western foreign policy, and bureaucratic control.

The recent socialist victories in New York and Colorado are not local curiosities. They’re previews of coming attractions.

In this future, DEI returns, not as a national faculty lounge but as ruthlessly, preemptively enforced federal law. Race communism becomes the operating system of government, education, finance, hiring, medicine, housing, and contracting. Private property is no longer treated as sacred but as morally suspicious. Wealth taxes impose “fairness.” Reparations stake permanent claims against the dwindling producer class. Upward mobility vanishes for those lacking inside connections. “Privilege” means guilt, and guilt means punishment.

And yet America does not collapse all at once. Managed downward, its factories go elsewhere and its capital, fearing crushing exit taxes, simply hides. Energy costs are surcharged to the moon. Police retreat, schools decay, families shrink, and the dollar weakens. Our best people stop building and start hedging. And China takes full advantage.

The country still has symbols, ceremonies, flags, and slogans. But underneath them is a nation poorer and angrier, more censored, racialized, and frightened. A “managed democracy,” as the Russians call it, in which elections continue, but real political reversal becomes nearly impossible.

That’s one future. Now imagine another.

Civilization renewed

Populist nationalists hold Congress and the White House. The Court is preserved. Elections are secured. The border stays closed. The intelligence community and the administrative state are brought back under elected control. Equal citizenship replaces racial spoils. Cheap energy remains, and fuels, national policy. Building becomes honorable, durable, and beautiful again.

The wind at its sails, the country turns outward with confidence. The Monroe Doctrine is revived for the 21st century. China is pushed back from the Western Hemisphere. America finds and supports more Bukeles and Mileis — leaders who restore order, unshackle markets, defend sovereignty, and repel socialist decline and decay. Europe is no longer encouraged to censor its own people in the name of democracy. The peoples of Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Poland, and the rest of the West are allowed to speak and vote without managerial supervision.

RELATED: A swarm of hidden Chinese bots are built to control what you think

NurPhoto/Getty Images

America also begins to think civilizationally again. We realize the West cannot afford to treat every historic Christian nation as a permanent enemy while China organizes the non-Western world into a rival economic and strategic bloc. A wiser American strategy, where possible and on terms favorable to American interests, aims to pull countries such as Russia back toward the broader family of Western civilization rather than leave them as raw material for Beijing’s empire.

Peace, trade, energy cooperation, commodity flows, technology markets, and a larger sphere of nations aligned against Chinese world dominance doesn’t solve America’s debt problem, but the resulting American economic growth can. Cheaper energy. Larger markets. More efficient and defensible force postures. It all makes for a less fragmented, much less deracinated West. If America is going to pay down its debt rather than inflate it away or surrender its sovereignty to creditors, it needs a bigger, stronger, more productive civilization behind it — not a shrinking coalition of guilt-ridden post-national states managing decline.

In this future, America wins.

Reclaiming our machines

Meanwhile, an irony lays in wait. AI and robots, the very technologies so often described as dehumanizing, may be what finally allow human beings to live human lives again. For two centuries, modernity has promised liberation while chaining families to commutes, paperwork, credential mills, medical costs, school failures, housing shortages, industrial drudgery, and the endless anxiety of keeping up. As a result, many Americans view another wave of highly hyped change with fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

But properly ordered, the machine can give time back for the soul. Robots can do dangerous, repetitive, exhausting work. AI can help tutor the child, assist the doctor, accelerate the engineer, guide the farmer, protect the soldier, and multiply the builder. Automation need not mean a cold world of isolated consumers watched by rigged algorithms. In a sane civilization, it can mean parents home earlier, children taught better, elders cared for longer, towns rebuilt faster, medicine delivered sooner, and ordinary people freed from scarcity enough to rediscover family, faith, friendship, craftsmanship, worship, and wonder. The machine, if governed by men who still know what man is for, can help restore the conditions of real life.

A return to the soul transforms our vision of the future. The menace and alienation drains away from images of robot aides in every classroom; robot surgeons and AI doctors; 3D-printed schools, hospitals, homes, and factories; and nuclear reactors providing clean, sovereign, abundant energy. With rebuilt American manufacturing, accelerated scientific discovery, and an economy where American workers once again build, supervise, own, maintain, secure, and profit from their ingenuity, the most productive economy in human history beckons.

No third way

And so our road divides. Which future will it be? There is no third option where the comfortable get to keep their illusions, and the machinery keeps tightening but liberty somehow survives. There is no version of the future in which the groups who want to rewrite the rules gain the power to do so and then politely decline.

That’s why the next two years of elections are not normal. They’re not just about which rear ends fill which seats. They’re about whether elected offices will lose the ability to change the direction of the country at all.

Whatever differences divide our friends and allies, we need to win now, while winning still means something. Or we can explain to our children and grandchildren why we stood by and watched the door close on their future.

​Tech, Socialism, Western civilization, Supreme court, Ai 

By the time you read this, my friend and managing editor Rob Eno and I should be somewhere in the Mountain West, headed southeast toward Dallas.

We are taking the scenic route.

The Republican Party is a house divided.

We took off Friday in a rental car from Inland Southern California. This was not entirely my idea. My doctor advised me not to fly for the time being, on account of a “blood pressure-induced event” in late March. Eno required remarkably little persuasion to turn a business trip into an expedition. He collects counties. He loves Buc-ee’s. He is weirdly excited about a 13-foot Sasquatch at a Terrible’s in Jean, Nevada.

We are also stopping in Moab, Utah, on purpose.

I have owned Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire” for years and have never read it — an oversight I have always assumed I would get around to correcting eventually.

So naturally, we’re going to Moab to pay homage to a writer I respect but haven’t read.

There will be plenty more levity along the way. I expect Rob and I will have developed three podcasts and sketched out a couple of book proposals before the trip is over.

The destination calls for a bit more gravitas, however.

We’re going to Dallas as part of Blaze Media’s coverage of the Republican National Committee’s first-ever midterm convention, a two-day spectacle at the American Airlines Center. President Trump will appear both nights. Vice President JD Vance will keynote the first night.

This is a big deal. Not necessarily because the convention needs to happen. Good Lord, no.

Nobody is being nominated for anything. There are no delegates fighting over a platform or credentials. Republicans are spending a princely sum of money to stage something resembling a presidential nominating convention two years before the next presidential election.

It’s political theater, pure and simple.

Donald Trump, of course, understands the business of show very well. He wants a spectacle ahead of a midterm election that could be very bad for Republicans.

Notice the conditional: could.

RELATED: Sorry, socialists: The internet saved your homework

Rob Eno

I offer no predictions. The conventional wisdom says the president’s party loses seats in a midterm. Republicans have a razor-thin House majority. Trump has political problems. Nobody likes the war in Iran. Nobody likes the high cost of living. Nobody wants to pay $20 for a burrito, assuming such a thing exists. Republicans know they need to persuade voters that the country is moving in the right direction. Those anxieties are part of the reason Dallas is happening at all.

But Democrats possess a remarkable talent for self-immolation.

We have seen it with Graham Platner in Maine. We may be watching it in Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed has spent precious weeks creating problems for himself with Jewish Democrats that Republicans would be foolish not to exploit.

Then again, Democrats can be ruthlessly effective when they choose to be. They have killed candidacies that became liabilities and cleared paths for stronger nominees. Anyone who remembers what the party establishment did to Bernie Sanders in 2016 — or how quickly Democrats jettisoned Joe Biden in 2024 — should hesitate before assuming they will simply stand around while Republicans win.

The Republicans have problems of their own, and they run deeper than any generic ballot.

Like it or not, the Republican Party is very much a house divided.

What remains of the Bush-Romney establishment still possesses considerable institutional power, especially in Congress. It is conservative in the least attractive sense of the word: hidebound, risk-averse, and frequently several election cycles behind its own voters.

MAGA defeated that establishment without entirely replacing it.

Trump transformed the Republican electorate. He changed its language, its priorities, its geographic base, and its relationship with the working class. But he also made himself indispensable to the coalition he created.

That’s dangerous.

Trump is 80. The Constitution bars him from another term. Sooner rather than later, Republicans will need to answer a question they have spent a decade avoiding: What is Trumpism without Trump?

RELATED: Who gets the GOP when Trump is gone?

Win McNamee/Getty Images

If the answer is “nothing,” the Republican Party is in much worse trouble than any poll can measure.

Maybe Dallas will provide a glimmer of an answer. Maybe JD Vance will be the heir. Maybe, just maybe, economic nationalism, immigration restriction, and a less interventionist foreign policy can become a durable governing program rather than the preferences of one extraordinary political personality.

Or maybe the convention will simply be a very expensive show about Donald Trump.

Eno and I should have a better idea by Wednesday.

But first we need to traverse the mountains and the desert.

And see the Sasquatch.

​Donald trump, Graham platner, Jd vance, Joe biden, Midterm convention, Opinion & analysis, Republican national committee, Working class, Foreign policy, 2026 midterms, Dallas, Mitt romney, George w. bush 

The Western church has stepped back from the political and cultural fights shaping our world — and in a conversation with BlazeTV host Nick Freitas, Christian apologist Frank Turek explains why it’s necessary that changes.

“Why do you think that the church has retreated from what we might more broadly call the political world or even just the cultural fights that we see? Why do you think the Western church in particular seems to have kind of just washed their hands of that fight and not all of them,” Freitas asks Turek.

“We don’t want to say anything offensive because we want people to hear the gospel,” he adds, asking, “Why do you think the West took this position?”

Turek explains that the West “dove into anti-intellectualism about 100 years ago when it didn’t think it could answer Darwin.”

“So instead of engaging the culture, it retreated from the culture and just created its own Bible colleges and seminaries,” he says.

“It’s all blind faith,” he adds.

And Jesus’ own words reveal one of the most powerful reasons Christians should remain engaged in politics rather than turning a blind eye.

“He said, ‘You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free,’” Turek says. “Now, that implies if you don’t have the truth, you’re in bondage. So we have to be engaged. And unfortunately, many in the church think, ‘Oh, we ought not to get involved in politics because that’s going to detract from the gospel.’”

“In fact, when pastors say to me, ‘You know, I don’t get involved in politics, I just preach the gospel.’ I say back to them, ‘I guess you don’t think the gospel is very important then.’ And they say, ‘Well, what do you mean?’ I say, ‘Because politics affects your ability to preach and live the gospel,’” he explains.

“Why don’t you go to North Korea and try and start your church?” he recalls asking. “It’s not going to happen. Why? Because politics affects your ability to preach and live the gospel. That’s number one.”

“Making the Argument with Nick Freitas” is available on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms.

Start watching Nick Freitas NOW at blazetv.com and use the promo code NICK40 for $40 off your BlazeTV+ subscription.

​Frank turek, Nick freitas, North korea, Pastors, Western church, Christian apologist, Jesus, Blazetv show, Bible 

A newly released mug shot reveals the bloodied face of a Florida man who allegedly challenged a police officer to a fight inside a hospital.

Ronald Jeffery Johnson, a 51-year-old man from Fort Lauderdale, reportedly was involved in an incident at the Broward Health Medical Center on Aug. 29.

‘I physically subdued his intentional, aggressive, and violent behavior towards me, and he was taken into custody.’

According to the arrest report obtained by the New York Post, Johnson allegedly was yelling at medical staff in the emergency department when an off-duty police officer in full uniform was notified of the alleged disturbance.

“I observed the defendant yelling at medical staff from the opposite side of the registration desk, causing a breach of peace in the waiting room and creating fear in the surrounding patients,” the officer wrote in the arrest report.

Once Johnson saw the cop, he allegedly confronted the officer.

“I want to fight you,” Johnson reportedly yelled to the cop before charging toward the officer.

“A physical altercation between me and the defendant ensued, where he initially grabbed me in an attempt to fight me and resisted me from controlling him,” the arrest report stated.

WPLG-TV reported that police said Johnson grabbed the officer and resisted efforts to restrain him.

The officer wrote in the report, “I physically subdued his intentional, aggressive, and violent behavior towards me, and he was taken into custody.”

The arrest report said the officer suffered a cut on his left hand during the alleged confrontation that required multiple stitches.

After receiving medical treatment at the hospital, Johnson was arrested and transported to the Broward Sheriff’s Office Main Jail.

According to jail records, Johnson was charged with aggravated battery on an officer, resisting an officer with violence, assault on an officer, and disorderly conduct.

Records show Johnson was being detained on an $8,500 bond.

Johnson garnered notoriety online for his mug shot, which showed him propped up; his face was severely swollen and bloodied, and he had a black eye.

RELATED: Florida man faces felonies after furious feud with neighbor erupts into alleged fecal attack, fistfight, and scooter threat

(WARNING: Graphic image)

Image source: Broward County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office

WPLG reported that Johnson was wanted in Georgia in connection with a terroristic threats case.

Johnson reportedly was arrested in 2023 on a terroristic threats charge after he allegedly threatened to attack an individual with a boat paddle at a park in Cave Spring, Georgia.

The threat allegedly occurred in front of the victim’s 8-year-old child, which led to a cruelty to children charge.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Aggravated battery, Assault, Florida, Georgia, Mugshot, Physical attack, Crime 

The text from my friend contained one of the stranger questions I have ever received from a family planning a funeral: “Do you know ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah’?”

I stared at my phone, a bit wild-eyed. My first instinct was to reply, “Why do you ask?” Instead, I simply wrote, “Yes.”

In that sanctuary, the music served something greater than itself.

His mother had died after a long battle with Parkinson’s. The song was one of her favorites, and the family had sung it with her for years. They hoped I could play it during a slideshow at her memorial service.

I have been a pianist longer than I have been a caregiver, which is saying something. Over the years, families have invited me to play at hundreds of funerals, and I never take that invitation lightly.

As a preacher’s kid, I began as cheap labor for my father’s church: Sunday services, weddings, funerals. I did it all. I no longer play weddings unless enormous amounts of money or extraordinary affection are involved. There is simply too much drama. Funerals are different. If possible, I still play them.

A grieving family does not need entertainment or musical pomp. They need someone willing to serve the moment. Music should give grief room to breathe while gently lifting people’s eyes, even if only an inch.

That assignment becomes considerably more demanding when the requested song is “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.”

I could have treated it as a novelty, played the familiar tune, collected a few smiles, and moved on. But this family was not asking for a joke. They were asking me to honor their mother.

A funeral is one of the few remaining places in American life where we must confront the difference between entertainment and reverence. Our culture can turn nearly anything into content, spectacle, or argument. A family’s grief deserves better.

My father had died not long before this service. He was a pastor who understood ceremony. He did not confuse reverence with stiffness or ceremony with showmanship. He knew some moments deserve the very best we can bring to them. His lessons sat close as I worked on the arrangement.

RELATED: The oldest cure for doomscrolling in one lyric

CorbalanStudio / Getty Images

Before moving to Montana, I lived and played in Nashville. Nashville taught me polish. Montana reminded me of intimacy. In a small rural sanctuary, every note sits close to the people who need it.

I did not try to make “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” sacred. The song was not sacred. The moment was.

A family’s love was sacred. A life well lived was sacred. So was the faith that endured years of Parkinson’s and the long goodbye that accompanied it.

I arranged the piece more slowly than usual, but not sorrowfully; tenderly, but not timidly. I added a few chords no one expects to hear in “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” My wife calls them my “non-sanctified chords.”

When I played it for her at home, she wiped her eyes. “You played it so respectfully,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

I called one of the daughters and asked for the exact length of the slideshow. Then I shaped the arrangement to fit it.

At the service, the pastor introduced the slideshow: “It is set to one of her favorite songs, ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,’ played by Peter Rosenberger.”

After decades at the piano, I had never received an introduction quite like that. Chuckles rolled through the sanctuary. I understood. Then the pictures began.

Childhood. Marriage. Ranch life. Children. Grandchildren.

As her life unfolded across the screen, the novelty disappeared. The room settled into stillness. A playful song associated with happy memories in her home began carrying the weight of a family’s love and loss.

I timed the final chord to the last photograph of her face. For a moment, no one moved. The chuckles had given way to misty eyes. That familiar little tune had slipped past everyone’s defenses and carried something deeper than anyone expected.

RELATED: Gratitude is not perspective. It is remembering mercy.

Everything bagel / Getty Images

Christians do not pretend that Parkinson’s is beautiful or that death is merely another happy chapter. Scripture calls death the last enemy. But it also declares that Christ has defeated it. For those in Christ, suffering does not receive the final word. Neither does Parkinson’s. Neither does the grave.

The song was not the gospel, and I did not pretend it was. But it carried the memory of a woman who had sung it through years of suffering. In that sanctuary, the music served something greater than itself.

My father’s death still weighed heavily on me as I played. Perhaps that helped me understand the assignment. Even amid our own grief, we can offer the best of what we have to someone walking through theirs.

Sometimes grief calls for a great hymn. Sometimes it calls for silence. And every now and then, it calls for “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.”

Because for those who belong to Christ, everything really is … satisfactual.

​Family, Funeral, Gospel, Grief, Parkinsons, Love, Montana, Marriage, Christians, Death, Opinion & analysis 

The story of Jonah and the whale is one of the most well-known stories in all of Scripture. But there’s a hidden historical detail the vast majority of people don’t know, says Lakepointe pastor and “Live Free with Josh Howerton” co-host Carlos Erazo.

In this episode, he shares a little-known fact about the pagan city of Nineveh that will change the way you think not only about the story of Jonah and the fish that swallowed him but also about God, who he says never wastes a single detail.

Most people, even many non-Christians, know the basics of Jonah’s story: He was an Israelite prophet whom God commanded to go to the wicked city of Nineveh and warn it of coming judgment, giving the pagans who lived there a chance to repent before God destroyed their city. Wanting judgment, not mercy, to fall upon the Ninevites, Jonah refused God’s command and fled on a ship.

God sent a violent storm, and the sailors, knowing Jonah was the cause of God’s wrath, threw him overboard, where he was swallowed by a giant fish. For three days, he remained in the beast’s belly until it spit him out on dry land. Repentant, Jonah went to Nineveh, where the people believed God, turned from their violence, and were spared from divine judgment.

“That’s basically the whole story. … It’s a short book,” says Erazo, “but there’s something more happening behind the scenes that a lot of people have no idea.”

He explains that Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire — a military superpower in Jonah’s day and Israel’s mortal enemy.

“If you know a little bit about the culture, Mesopotamia back in the day, it would be a polytheistic culture, which means that they would have a lot of different gods, little g pagan gods, that they would worship,” says Erazo.

One of those gods was named Oannes. Ancient art and writing describes him as a man-like being with a fish’s head and tail who comes out of the water to teach people divine wisdom.

Erazo displays a picture of an ancient stone relief of Oannes. He is depicted as a bearded man with a fish head and skin worn as a cloak.

“It looks like it’s a man with a fish on top, or you could say a man coming out of a fish,” he says.

“If you were a pagan fisherman at the time, and you’re kind of out there doing your thing at the coast … and all of a sudden you see this fish literally come out, and there’s this man coming out of the mouth of the fish, and he’s out there preaching repentance in the name of this deity, in the name of God, and all of a sudden people are listening to this,” he tells fellow pastor and co-host Paul Cunningham.

Erazo explains that there’s speculation that Jonah was received by the Ninevites because he initially appeared as Oannes coming out of the sea to share wisdom.

“But at some point, they would have realized, ‘Hey, actually this is not one of these little g gods. This is the real God revealing Himself, giving us wisdom and telling us that if we don’t repent, He will destroy us in judgment,”’ he notes.

This fascinating historical detail, says Erazo, is an example of how free will and God’s sovereignty beautifully co-exist.

“Jonah may have been running from God, but he was never outside of the sovereignty of God,” he says.

“God knew from the very beginning that Jonah was going to be swallowed by a fish, and he was going to spend three days and three nights inside the fish, which would be a prophetic sign for the Messiah,” he continues, highlighting how Jonah’s three days and three nights in the whale before emerging to save the Ninevites parallel Jesus’ time in the grave before His resurrection that would save humanity from eternal damnation.

“The whole process of him rebelling and running away from God and eventually repenting and obeying God, God knew He was going to use that testimony, that story, that experience, and eventually He was going to use all of that for the people to hear the gospel. … With God, no detail is ever wasted,” Erazo beams.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

Join BlazeTV+ and start watching Josh today at blazetv.com/JOSH. Use promo code JOSH40 to get $40 off your subscription.

​Josh howerton, Bible, Christianity, Blazetv show 

Heading into midterm elections this fall, Washington is zeroed in on socialism, party loyalty, and political power, but Glenn Beck warns that the issue capable of overwhelming every political talking point is sitting at the bottom of voters’ grocery carts.

“Pew just asked voters in July what they would most want to hear about, and it was prices,” he says. “People ask which party they trust on the economy, and it’s 37 to 36 so it’s a coin flip.”

“People are tired, and they want normal,” he concludes.

But the nation being exhausted and desperate for relief is a scary place to be, Glenn warns. What this Pew data reveals, he argues, is that tired people don’t carefully pick a philosophy or ideology; they pick whichever path sounds more promising — even if it leads off a cliff.

On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn goes back to 1920 to show what a worn-out country actually does with its vote.

“We’ve been here before. 1920, this country was wrung out in a way that makes us look coddled right now — a war, then a flu that killed more than the war, strikes, bombs in the mail, riots, prices that were eating a paycheck alive, socialism and progressivism gone wild,” Glenn recalls.

Ohio newspaperman Warren Harding campaigned on one word: “normalcy.” The message resonated so deeply with the public that he won in a huge landslide. But in that same election, roughly one million people still voted for socialist Eugene Debs, who at the time was in federal prison and couldn’t even campaign.

Glenn draws one conclusion: Exhaustion ≠ moderation.

“I think that’s what we keep getting wrong. A tired country does not move to the center. It just moves away, and it moves away in any direction that’s open,” he says.

He fears that the 2026 midterms will mirror the 2020 and 2024 elections, where people voted based on their overwhelming desire for “rest” instead of which candidate had the soundest philosophy.

“A man doing math in a grocery store … is not being propagandized, OK? He’s doing math, and his arithmetic is right,” says Glenn, “and no microphone, no propaganda beats arithmetic — not mine, not a cable news network’s, not the president’s, nobody.”

“You can be entirely right about the direction of the country and still lose to a receipt from the grocery store, and I think that’s what’s happening,” he warns.

But many of the Democratic midterm candidates are “Marxists,” Glenn points out, and while voting for them may scratch the normalcy itch, there’s nothing normal about Marxism.

Normal, he explains, isn’t really something we can vote for. Only “programs” can be voted for — and that applies to both sides of the political aisle.

Glenn reminds that Harding’s promise of normalcy may have won over voters, but “his administration became synonymous for corruption.”

“Any man who promises you that he’s going to take you back to that place [of normalcy] is selling you something, and he’s selling you something he doesn’t have,” he says.

There’s only one standard for measuring if what a candidate is offering is truly “normal,” says Glenn, and that’s the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

To hear more, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Glenn beck, 2026 midterms, Socialism, Marxism, Blazetv show 

“Convert or get hurt.” Three words, one warning. If you’re a new arrival at a British prison and unlucky enough to land in the wrong wing, they might be the first thing anyone says to you. A terrifying ultimatum delivered by men who know that they can do as they want and suffer no consequences for their actions, no matter how savage they may be.

Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, recently detailed the Islamification of British prisons. His report described Islamist prisoners operating as “self-styled ’emirs,'” running private empires built on intimidation and plenty of beatings.

Every single year, tens of thousands of American prisoners convert to Islam.

Usman Khan, who murdered two young Cambridge graduates at Fishmongers’ Hall in a 2019 terror attack, spent years before that pressuring other inmates to convert. Sudesh Amman, who stabbed two people in Streatham days after his 2020 release, did the same thing behind bars. Along with recruiting and converting, both men taught other Muslim thugs the most effective methods to spread extremism and ensure compliance.

Coerced conversion

Hall’s review also found evidence of systematic “recruitment” of non-Muslims. New arrivals who didn’t identify as Muslim were denied protection from the dominant faction on their wing. In prisons across the U.K., Islam has taken on clear gang characteristics. It operates through forced initiations, protection rackets, and severe punishment. There are designated lookouts enforcing control over prison wings, while prisoners are pressured to join gang-run prayer groups simply to stay safe.

The numbers are alarming. Muslims make up 18% of the prison population in England and Wales, compared with 6.5% of the general population. But the most revealing stat is that one in five Muslim prisoners is white, a figure utterly detached from everyday Britain. It’s clear that white inmates are systematically targeted and pressured into converting, much like how Muslim rape gangs have targeted white girls across the U.K. for decades.

The mainstream narrative about the rise of Islam behind bars rests on a particularly absurd modern myth. We’re repeatedly told that Islam is exclusively a religion of peace. Believing this requires ignoring vast swaths of foundational texts. The Quran contains explicit directives authorizing warfare, conquest, and the violent subjugation of nonbelievers. Examples include Surah 9:5, which commands the slaughter of non-Muslims wherever they are found, and Surah 9:29, which calls for war against infidels until they acquiesce and pay tribute to Allah. To claim that a faith rooted largely in the need for violence contains no theological blueprint for violence is utterly ridiculous.

RELATED: To raise Christian children who become Christian adults, one simple habit matters most

Eric Thayer/Getty Images

‘Cut-and-paste Islam’

Equally ridiculous is the assumption that the Islamification of prisons is a uniquely British problem. It is not. Every single year, tens of thousands of American prisoners convert to Islam.

Frank Cilluffo of George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute spent years documenting the rise of “cut-and-paste Islam” or “prison Islam.” In extensive congressional testimony and policy reports, Cilluffo detailed how American correctional facilities are hotbeds of Islamic extremism. Radical inmates assume the role of radical imams, using the Quran’s most aggressive verses to enforce territorial control and legitimize brutality among inmates. Many of these prisoners eventually re-enter American society, completely brainwashed by Islamic teachings.

The exact same dynamic has played out in other Western nations, and the consequences have been deadly.

In France, Cherif Kouachi, a terrorist responsible for the murder of innocent journalists, spent 20 months at Fleury-Merogis prison, where he met an unhinged imam connected to bin Laden. Amedy Coulibaly, a young man who murdered a policewoman and four hostages at a supermarket days later, was also radicalized while serving time.

Australia provides another concrete example of this perverse pattern. In 2007, Bassam Hamzy, serving 21 years for murder at Goulburn’s Supermax, converted more than a dozen fellow inmates to radical Islam, specifically targeting indigenous prisoners for recruitment. Through his Brothers 4 Life Gang, he sought out new followers and punished those who refused to comply.

Brutal system

From London to Los Angeles, Paris to Perth, four Western countries have produced almost identical findings. Christianity might be losing its appeal among the incarcerated and the general population. The same isn’t true of Islam.

I’m not asking you to feel sorry for every non-Muslim inmate who is pressured into serving Allah. That would be an idiotic request. Many of these men are absolute animals. They belong behind bars and deserve no sympathy.

But we must recognize that Western nations have become home to a brutal system that allows gang leaders to use Islamic identity as their primary means of domination. Unless the powers that be intervene to dismantle that system, this cycle of prison radicalization will continue in the U.K., the U.S., and beyond.

What happens in prison doesn’t necessarily stay in prison; today’s incarcerated Islamist could become tomorrow’s suicide bomber. Ignoring the threat inside the cell block only guarantees that innocent people will have to face it outside.

​British prison, Christianity, Convert, Islamic extremism, Islamification, Prison population, Radicalization, Muslim rape gangs, Lifestyle, Culture, Uk, America, Faith