Today's podcast is being sponsored in part by my friends at the Functional Medical Institute.

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Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Heidi St. John podcast. Listen, in every generation, God raises up shepherds,

pastors who refuse to bow to fear, to cultural pressure, or to political correctness. You guys have

been listening to me, talk about this for a really long time. And my deep, deep conviction that

these men are so necessary in the culture right now,

men who will stand firm in the truth of God's word and love their people enough to tell them

the truth and who are willing to lead courageously no matter the cost.

This is part of my Shepherds in the Storm series.

It's a series that I'm doing with bold pastors around the United States who are leading with conviction in a culture of confusion.

And today I'm really honored to welcome my friend, Pastor Phil Hopper, back to the show.

You guys love Pastor Phil.

He is one of the most requested guests here at the podcast.

He's a husband, a father. Now he's a granddad, a former police officer, and the lead pastor of Abundant Life Church in Lee Summit, Missouri. Pastor Phil, welcome back. Hi, Eddie, great to be back. As always, I got to tell you, it sounds really weird to introduce myself as a grandpa, I have to say. I'm loving it,

but it's kind of bizarre. It's a good gig though, right? Oh, it's great. Yes. Yeah.

Listen, I added that to your bio this morning and I was like, this wasn't in at the last time I interviewed

you, so it was pretty exciting. Yeah. I love it. There's a lot of stuff going on in the culture right now. I just did an entire show on what's happening in the United States when it comes to Venezuela and the taking out of the dictator-in-chief Nicholas Maduro out of Venezuela. And I noted something, and I guess I'm going to start here because I'd love to hear

your thoughts on it. To me, there was kind of a connection between the rabid Jews screaming for

Barabbas, the release of Barabbas because they were so angry and just hated Jesus, right?

Obviously, the connection to Jesus and Trump is not there. It's not what I'm

trying to say at all. But I thought it was interesting that there's so much anger and, well,

anger, I think, is the best word. And people can't read the room politically that we would scream

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