Bill Jensen

Many new readers have found this page recently. I want to share the story of how Christ saved me and shaped my life, so you know the foundation from which I write and the grace that has carried me for more than fifty years. The photo is from two years after Christ saved me. I was raised in a poor family—we weren’t poor like the African poor, we had three meals a day—but living in the Los Angeles suburbs of the time, we were poor. Our family of nine lived in a 1,350 square foot home in Long Beach. During my high school years, I shared a room with two brothers, already ex‑Vietnam vets and heroin addicts. I once watched my older brother Rich cut heroin into deflated balloons on the same countertops we used to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He was dealing. My brothers would shoot up in front of me in our bedroom while we carried on talking, like brothers do. The year after I graduated high school, I got stoned every day until I was saved. I never did heroin, and to this day that surprises me. I did get drunk, smoked weed all the time, loved dropping Reds (the street name for a medical barbiturate), and of course LSD. After I became a Christian in July 1971, my friends reasoning for the transformation was that I had dropped too much acid. I was a terrible student throughout my entire time in school. By twelfth grade I seriously doubted I would graduate and for good reason. However, about seven days before graduation I discovered that I had earned (ha) my diploma. I was graduating high school with a 1.82 GPA helped by the C’s I pulled in woodshop and PE. The next day my English teacher, Mr. Seymour, called me to his desk, looked straight at me with a level of disgust and said, “You are the worst student I have ever had, and I want you to know why you are still going to graduate. It’s only because I have never failed anybody and you’re not going to break my record.” Then he sent me back to my desk. I wasn’t really raised in my childhood; I just grew up. I knew I wasn’t prepared for life as an adult. It was frightening, but you never confessed such things back then as a boy. It displayed weakness, something none of us could afford to show. The Saturday night before my conversion on July 21, 1971, I went to the Anaheim Arena with friends to see Jethro Tull. It was their Aqualung tour. I was high on a full hit of Orange Sunshine (LSD), three reds (that’s insane), and pot. My friends were high only on pot. Walking into the concert with police everywhere, I can’t fully describe how stoned I was, but so much so I couldn’t focus my eyes on the stage. After the concert, I bought a case of beer and drank it with friends at Wardlow Park until dawn. Then I went home to sleep. On the Wednesday afternoon of that week, while hanging out with friends, we were approached by three guys who wanted to talk to us about Jesus. After about five minutes of banter, a guy my age with long curly red hair and a beard wisely separated me from my friends and started to tell me about Jesus. He focused on God’s love for me and Jesus’ death on the cross for me—he made the gospel personal. He then asked if I wanted to pray with him. This was not a Billy Graham altar call moment, with Just as I Am playing in the background. I don’t understand to this day why I said yes, but I did. When my heart opened just a crack, Jesus came into my life. Three weeks later I was baptized with thousands of baby Christians (Jesus Freaks) at Pirates Cove in Balboa Bay. What my English teacher said to me was all true; I never disputed any of it. Nevertheless, five years after becoming a Christian this “worst English student ever” started working at a small, start‑up Christian book publisher and has now spent 50 years in Christian book publishing working with authors on creating books of all things. Though I’ve worked across nearly every genre in Christian publishing, the work that has always mattered most to me is helping create books that defend the faith once delivered unto the saints. As the apostle Paul says in Corinthians: “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’” It’s all grace, all of it; my boast is indeed in the Lord to whom I am eternally and happily indebted. Everything I write here—whether about faith, culture, or the church—flows from the grace that rescued me and the calling God placed on my life. My aim is simply to be faithful to Christ and to strengthen His people.

On October 10th, Allie Beth Stuckey, Alisa Childers, Natasha Crain, and Rosaria Butterfield will headline the Share the Arrows event built on the open sale of what Scripture calls sin. All four of them, and others, proclaim the Share the Arrows gathering as a Scripture‑centered event offering “clarity and courage” in an age of confusion. These women know Scripture. They quote Scripture. They teach Scripture. And yet they openly sell what Scripture condemns. James writes: “My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ while you say to the poor man, ‘You stand over there,’ or, ‘Sit down at my feet,’ have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” “But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” James 2:1–4, 9 The Bible could not be clearer: partiality is sin. Yet Allie Beth Stuckey and friends proudly and boldly sells partiality — four escalating price tiers granting increased access, privilege, proximity, and honor: $150— general admission · $500— breakfast with Allie Beth · $1,000— dinner with Allie Beth · $5,000— backstage access, elite seating, special parking, VIP lanyards This is not ministry. This is not discipleship. This is tiered access to Stuckey and friends based on wealth and position — the scenario the New Testament directly condemns. And this is not new. Stuckey has sold similar packages in previous years. She has been warned about this before. Yet she continues to sell what Scripture calls sin. Rosaria Butterfield says, “If God calls it corrupt, and an abomination, that’s what it is.” Scripture calls partiality sin. Scripture condemns self‑exaltation. Scripture rebukes religious leaders who love honor, visibility, and the best seats. Jesus’ words to the Pharisees couldn’t be more clear: “They love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats… Everything they do is done for people to see.” These speakers know these passages. They teach these passages. And they violate these passages while branding their event as “biblical.” Selling VIP access to for $5,000 is an abomination. It is not boldness. It is not faithfulness. It is a public denial of God himself. Jesus’ warning stands: “For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing… not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.” If you claim Scripture as your authority, you must obey it. If you teach Scripture, you will be held to a higher standard. As James says in the first verse of the next chapter of his letter—"My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment." “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

I hate that Oregon lost today, but I love Dan Lanning.

MAGA apologists and influencers now sense—on some level—that they won’t escape accountability for their slavish devotion to Trump. Reality itself is exposing them: a humiliating military failure against Iran, the chaos of Trump’s administration, and an economy showing every sign of worsening. So their feeds have shifted to burrito‑price jokes, movie reviews, and hollow attempts at pastoral reflection. We all know what this is: A pathetic effort to appear harmless now that the consequences of their earlier devotion have arrived. And when they do turn serious, it’s with the very “third way” gentleness they once mocked. A borrowed pastoral voice that appears only when honesty might cost them something. The moment truth demands courage, they retreat into the tone they once ridiculed, hoping softness will cover their complicity. This isn’t repentance. It’s evasion. But this story we are living through isn’t only collapse. There are churches, apologists, and influencers who have remained faithful these last ten years — who never bowed the knee to Baal, never joined the panic, never surrendered their witness to politics. They’ve been here all along. The collapse will expose the false prophets. The remnant will carry the witness forward.

True Christians aren’t fooled anymore. When MAGA Christian leaders, such as Greg Laurie, suddenly “warn” against using Jesus for political gain only at the exact moment Trump is tanking in the polls, that’s not discernment — it’s manipulation. It’s a transparent attempt to protect influence, platform, and reputation. Philippians 1:15–17 names this pattern plainly: “Some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry… others out of selfish ambition.” When someone condemns ulterior motives while quietly adjusting their own political posture to stay in good standing the hypocrisy is obvious. If they truly believe their own warnings, then let them obey them. Let them repent. Let them stop bending the Gospel into a tool for personal advantage. Because the church does not need more political chameleons masquerading as shepherds — it needs men and women who fear God enough to tell the truth even when it costs them everything.

Would C. S. Lewis Consider Allie Beth Stuckey, Frank Turek, Megan Basham, Franklin Graham, and Others Demonically Deceived? Lewis warned — directly and forcefully — about what happens when politics eclipses faith. Widely regarded as one of Lewis’s masterpieces, "The Screwtape Letters" shows why he remains one of the most trusted Christian apologists of all time. Early in the book — in Letter VII — Lewis places a warning in the mouth of a devil: a warning about how political obsession becomes a spiritual triumph for the demonic. Again, he puts it in the voice of Screwtape himself, signaling its seriousness. For readers unfamiliar with the book: "The Screwtape Letters" is a short work of satirical fiction written entirely from a demon’s point of view. “The Enemy” refers to God; “Our Father Below” refers to Satan. Lewis uses this inversion to expose the logic of temptation. Here is the passage itself — the devil’s counsel, exactly as Lewis wrote it: "Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the "cause", in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours — and the more "religious" (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here." In Letter VII, Screwtape instructs Wormwood on how to corrupt a believer: begin by encouraging the Christian to treat a political stance as part of his religion; then elevate it until it becomes the most important part; then flip the order so that faith becomes merely a tool for advancing the political cause. Screwtape rejoices when meetings, movements, and crusades matter more than prayer, sacraments, or charity. That, he says, is when the soul is nearly won. It should be noted that Lewis chose to address this danger over a host of other temptations and deceptions he leaves out of his book— making his focus on political obsession all the more noteworthy. Lewis chose to have a devil make this argument — and he chose to place it early in the book. Those choices matter, especially when Allie Beth Stuckey, Megan Basham, Frank Turek, Franklin Graham, and a host of others insist that total political involvement is a biblical obligation—a way to ‘love your neighbor.” Lewis offers a radically different warning. And every reader must decide which vision of Christian faithfulness they trust.

A new Billy Graham Center survey says nearly half of Gen Z is less likely to attend church because of Christian support for Donald Trump. Allie Beth Stuckey dismissed this as an “excuse,” blaming sin rather than the church’s political witness. Christians, including Stuckey, regularly distance themselves from brands and companies when they believe those associations compromise their integrity. Boycotts of Bud Light, Target, Disney, Netflix, and others all rest on the idea that association communicates endorsement. Gen Z is applying the same moral logic to churches that loudly align themselves with Trump. Calling Christian boycotts “discernment” while calling Gen Z’s hesitation “rebellion” is a double standard. If believers can refuse to buy a beer because of a marketing partnership, young adults can reasonably hesitate to attend churches whose political endorsements feel morally compromising. A serious question must be asked: Are Stuckey and friends more concerned with defending the grossly immoral Donald Trump and his administration than with removing barriers that keep the lost from hearing the gospel? "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

What’s happening now among MAGA evangelicals on X is a fevered maelstrom of lunatics calling one another lunatics.