R Magic Brow

When Jase Robertson found himself in a movie theater featuring “Project Hail Mary,” he thought he was about to watch a football movie or a film on the Virgin Mary.What he actually saw stunned him so intensely that it now ranks among his “top five” most shocking experiences ever.“The reason I was shocked is there was so many spiritual vibes to this movie,” he said on a recent episode of “Unashamed.”Between the main characters being named Grace and Rock, several nods to the idea of a "savior of the world," and themes of self-sacrifice and redemption, Jase was astonished that Hollywood produced such a film, especially in this age.But then the real stunner came.“There is a Phil Robertson quote in the movie,” Jase exclaims. After the movie ended, Jase set out with a mission to discover the "story” behind how a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster managed to slip a Phil quote into the script.Artificial intelligence gave him a strange answer: The line in “Project Hail Mary” was not a Phil Robertson quote, even though it is “a universal accepted fact” that he coined the phrase.But Jase doesn’t need AI to confirm what he knows is true. “There is a Phil Robertson quote in there, and I didn't think that was an accident based on everything else I had seen.”Jase, calling the movie “top-notch,” praises the directors for allowing the film to “play both sides” of the spiritual argument.He recalls a scene in which Ryland Grace (played by Ryan Gosling) has a spiritual conversation with Eva Stratt, the no-nonsense administrator who gets tapped by world governments to lead Project Hail Mary.Grace inquires whether or not she believes in God, to which she replies, “It's better than the alternative.”“It was just like, well, I know which side of the production that line came from,” says Jase, calling the film “a wonderful experience.”To hear more, watch the episode above.Want more from the Robertsons?To enjoy more on God, guns, ducks, and inspiring stories of faith and family, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

One of the most common objections to Christianity is simple: The word “Trinity” does not appear in the Bible. If that is true, why do Christians believe it?Christians believe the Trinity because it is the inevitable conclusion of what Scripture teaches about God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.The doctrine of the Trinity is therefore not an arbitrary invention. Nor is it a concession to polytheism. It is precisely the opposite: a refutation of polytheism. The story begins in Genesis.The Jewish Scriptures, what Christians call the Old Testament, taught something unique among the religions of the ancient world. Pagan nations treated their gods as physical beings within the universe. Israel taught that God created the heavens and the earth. God was not part of the system. He brought the system into existence.God is therefore not made of matter, not located at one point in space, and not one deity among many. He alone existed from eternity. Everything else had a beginning.Israel was repeatedly tempted to compromise with the polytheistic religions around it. Time after time, the prophets called the nation back to the worship of the one true God. Through Isaiah, God declared, “I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God” (Isaiah 45:5).The God of Israel was understood to be eternal, immaterial, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good. These are not properties material deities could possess.That raises an obvious question. If Christians inherited this uncompromising belief in one God, how did they arrive at the doctrine of the Trinity?John opens his Gospel with these words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).John then tells us that all things were made through the Word. The Word is distinguished from God, yet the Word is also called God. John 1:3 says all created things came into existence through Him. If all created things were made through the Word, then the Word Himself cannot belong to the class of created things.Then John tells us, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). The eternal Son of God became incarnate as Jesus Christ.RELATED: Don’t let ‘Disclosure Day’ doom you to spiritual death by discourse The New Testament repeatedly presents the same pattern. At Jesus’ baptism, the Son stands in the water, the Spirit descends as a dove, and the Father speaks from heaven. The three are clearly distinguished from one another, yet elsewhere in Scripture the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each identified as God.Jesus commanded His disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). Baptism is done in the name of God. Paul gives a Trinitarian benediction in 2 Corinthians 13:14. Jesus, the Lamb of God, sits on the throne of God.Jesus also claimed an existence that preceded Abraham: “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). His words echo the divine name revealed to Moses. The Jews understood the implication and tried to stone Him for blasphemy. Elsewhere, they accused Him of making Himself equal with God.Scripture also attributes personal qualities to the Holy Spirit. The Spirit teaches, speaks, guides, gives life, and can be grieved. He is not merely an impersonal force.The early Christians therefore found themselves committed to three truths taught by Scripture:There is only one God.The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct from one another.Deny any one of those truths, and you contradict the Bible.Over the first several centuries, as pagan polytheists converted to Christianity or challenged it, the church debated how best to explain the doctrine of God from Scripture.The Gnostics denied that Jesus was truly incarnate. They taught that He was a spirit who only appeared human. In doing so, they denied the incarnation.Another early controversy involved Sabellius, who taught what later became known as modalism. According to this view, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are merely different manifestations of the same divine person.The church rejected this because Scripture repeatedly distinguishes the Father, Son, and Spirit from one another.Then came Arius, who taught that the Father alone is eternal and that the Son is the first and greatest creature.As Christians reflected on the biblical evidence, the church clarified its teaching: The Father is eternally unbegotten. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father. The Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and, in Western theology, from the Father and the Son.The doctrine can be summarized simply: God is one “what” — one divine essence — and three “whos” — three distinct persons.The church eventually summarized the biblical teaching as one God in three persons. Not one God and three gods. Not one person appearing in three forms. One God, three persons.RELATED: Contentious theological debate erupts about Mormons over War Department faith list Brent Asay/iStock/Getty ImagesThe doctrine of the Trinity is therefore not an arbitrary invention. Nor is it a concession to polytheism. It is precisely the opposite: a refutation of polytheism. The doctrine preserves the full teaching of Scripture and answers the questions Scripture itself forces us to ask about God.What is striking is how often modern religious movements that spin off from Christianity repeat ancient errors. Some deny the full deity of Christ, as Arius did. Others collapse the distinctions among the persons, as Sabellius did. Still others deny Christ’s full humanity or full deity. Some even teach polytheistic material gods.What has united Christians across denominations and centuries is their shared commitment to the biblical doctrine of God. By contrast, new religious movements often claim allegiance to Scripture while introducing another authority that corrects, supplements, or supersedes it.When Jesus called people to believe in Him, He did not require them to master centuries of theological debate. But neither did He leave them free to invent their own Jesus. They were to believe true things about Him and reject false things about Him.A person may sincerely use the name “Jesus” while holding beliefs about Him that contradict the Jesus revealed in Scripture. The issue is not sincerity but identity. Not, “What do I feel?” but, “What does the Bible say?”The question is whether the Jesus a person believes in is the Jesus revealed in the Bible or a Jesus drawn from some other source.The church’s long debates about the Trinity were not abstract philosophical exercises. They were answers to the most important question any person can ask: Who is Jesus Christ in the Bible?

Growing up in our house, prayer was non-negotiable. Before meals, before bed, and before tests. My mother prayed before she turned the ignition. Every single time. Backing out of the driveway to grab milk? A petition went up. Driving less than a mile to church? Another one. I rolled my eyes the way Hamlet brooded, often and at length.I figured Mom was a soft touch for superstition. A nice lady with a nervous habit dressed up as theology. Turns out the habit was sound — and the theology even sounder.You are not emptying the mind. If anything, you are spilling the contents before a higher power who already knew what was in there.A recent study published in Religion, Brain & Behavior by researchers in Ireland looked at 628 middle-aged adults from the Midlife in the United States project, a long-running national study that has tracked the health of thousands of Americans since 1995.They put participants through a standardized stress test and measured what their hearts and blood pressure did under pressure. They found that people who scored higher on private religious practices showed lower systolic blood pressure reactivity to the stressor.Essentially, when life throws a curveball, the praying person's heart absorbs the hit.Religious but not spiritualThe researchers separated two things most people lump together: private religious practices (prayer, Scripture reading, devotion at home) and what they called daily spiritual experiences (a general sense of the sacred, feelings of connectedness, vague "spiritual" vibes). Only the first category, the one with actual prayer in it, produced the cardiovascular benefit.This matters because the modern wellness industry has spent two decades trying to sell Americans on a defanged, deracinated version of spiritual practice. Meditation retreats. Mindfulness courses. Breath-work seminars at $400 a weekend. All of it positioned as the secular, sophisticated alternative to what your grandmother was doing for free with a worn King James Bible.But prayer and meditation are not the same animal. The wellness industry would like you to believe they are interchangeable, two flavors of the same practice, both leading to lower cortisol and better sleep. That is a lie.RELATED: Secular bias, fake faith — beware the new chatbot 'Christianity' Empty promiseMeditation, in its popular Western form, is largely about emptying the mind. You sit, you breathe, you observe your thoughts like passing strangers you owe nothing to, you achieve a kind of inner stillness.The goal is detachment. You are training yourself to step back from your own mental chatter and watch it from a distance. The self is the subject, the object, and the audience all at once. If it works, you feel calmer. If it doesn't, you feel like you spent 20 minutes wondering if you turned off the stovePrayer is the opposite. Prayer is a conversation. There is a Person on the other end of the line, and that Person is listening. You are addressing someone, asking, thanking, confessing, repenting, interceding for your sister’s job interview. You are not emptying the mind. If anything, you are spilling the contents before a higher power who already knew what was in there.Meditation looks inward. Prayer looks up. Meditation is a monologue performed for an audience of one, who is also the performer. Prayer is a dialogue with the Creator of the universe. Meditation assumes the cosmos is indifferent and that the best you can do is make peace with that.One assumes you are a bundle of neurons talking to itself. The other assumes you are a soul talking to its Maker.That difference is the whole game.Praying together, staying togetherAnd the benefits extend well beyond the cardiac. A 2016 systematic review examined a dozen randomized trials and found prayer reduced anxiety in mothers of children with cancer, helped chemotherapy patients cope, and improved spiritual well-being across the board.Then there is collective prayer, which deserves its own paragraph. Something happens when believers gather and pray together that doesn’t happen alone in your kitchen.A hospital-based study published in ScienceDirect documented measurable benefits among patients and staff at an outpatient clinic that began every workday with group prayer. The faithful have known this for 2,000 years. Fears that felt enormous at three in the morning shrink to a manageable size when spoken aloud in the presence of people who love you and a God who loves you more.Burdens get distributed. A timid believer hears a confident prayer spoken aloud and realizes that confidence is available, not reserved. A confident believer hears someone else struggle to find words and remembers that brokenness is not a disqualification. The result is a kind of mutual restocking.Kneeling and dealingWhich brings me to the deeper point. America is in a mental health crisis. Antidepressant prescriptions keep climbing. In 2023, loneliness was declared a public health emergency by the surgeon general himself. Suicide rates among the youth are at generational highs.Pundits offer theories that include smartphones, social media, economic precarity, and polarization. All are real, but all are partial. The fuller explanation is the one your pastor has been preaching for years. You cannot evict God from a culture and expect the building to stand. A nation that traded the sanctuary for the self-help aisle was always going to drown in despair. There is a God-shaped hole in the modern Western psyche; stuffing it with meditation apps and microdoses is like trying to plug a dam with Kleenex.Prayer is older than the problem. Prayer is bigger than the diagnosis. The studies show it, and Christians know it.

In the beginning, there was a pool. It was green, and broken, and hemorrhaging millions of gallons a year into the soft earth beneath the National Mall. For decades, nobody fixed it.America turns 250 this July. For a country that can't agree on anything — especially about Donald Trump — what is reflected back isn't always easy to look at.'It looks real good. And you know what, 'scuse my French, but I f**king hate that.'In preparation for the 250th celebration, the pool was drained, painted, and fenced off. It brought on lawsuits, court hearings, and more cable news segments than anyone expected from a paint job.And then the water came back in. On June 4, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool refilled under a blazing June sun. Tourists, joggers, and D.C. regulars lined the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to watch the water rise.The reflecting pool is the centerpiece of a broader $95 million push by the Trump administration to restore Washington ahead of the 250th. Under Executive Order 14252, "Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful," the National Park Service launched a sweeping effort to restore fountains, rehabilitate historic landscapes, and address aging infrastructure across the city.The funds come not from the NPS' congressional budget but from national park entrance fees — money the agency is legally permitted to redirect at its discretion.More than 20 fountains that had sat dry for years — some for decades — are flowing again. The Columbus Circle fountain in front of Union Station was turned back on in late May for the first time since 2007. Meridian Hill Park's cascading fountain — the longest in North America — is running again.The reflecting pool is the latest in a series of restoration projects that have drawn surprisingly positive reactions across the city — even from residents who didn't vote for Trump.RELATED: The fountains in DC are back on. It turns out that decline was 'a choice.' Blaze News The pool was designed by architect Henry Bacon and completed in 1923 — a long, narrow mirror stretching almost 2,030 feet between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Trump compared the pool's length to "skyscrapers."The nation's reflecting pool has also been leaking for most of its existence. The original structure was built without pilings on the soft, dredged riverbed and started losing water almost immediately. The Obama administration spent $34 million and closed the pool for nearly two years, rebuilding the structure with foundation support and installing a brand-new filtration system. The algae came back within a month. The leaks never stopped.By the time Trump took office, Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said it was losing 45,000 gallons a day.The Biden-era NPS received estimates "above $100 million" for another fix and didn't move forward.Trump ordered a different approach. Workers drained the pool, hauled away what he says were 12 truckloads of garbage, sealed the cracks, and replaced the filtration system with a state-of-the-art ozone nanobubbler — the first of its kind at the pool. Then, they coated the basin in what the president calls "American Flag Blue."When Trump first visited the drained pool on May 7, he said previous estimates to fix it had run as high as $355 million and 3.5 years. He initially said it would cost $1.8 million and take one week.The contract was signed for almost $6.9 million — awarded to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia firm, through an expedited no-bid process. The DOI later revised the timeline to a month and added $6.2 million, citing the urgency of the July 4 deadline.It took six weeks. Federal contracting records show the final cost came to just under $14.2 million — more than eight times Trump's 1.8 million estimate, yet roughly 4% of the $355 million he said it could have cost otherwise. Trump says the work will last 50 to 100 years."Our country is about beauty, cleanliness, safety, great people," he told reporters who questioned why he was focused on the pool during a period of international tension. "Not a filthy capital."Trump drove his motorcade across the drained floor to inspect it personally. He also posted an AI image of himself and other Cabinet members swimming in it."It won't leak; it will shine and be the pride of Washington, D.C., for decades to come," said Trump.RELATED: America 250 UFC event at risk: Anti-Trump group sues to shut down event on behalf of Democratic activists Blaze NewsBut the landscape architects and historic preservationists weren't concerned about the preventable water loss. They were concerned about "American Flag Blue.""It wasn't intended as a place that looks jolly like your local golf course," said Judy Scott Feldman of the National Mall Coalition, a nonprofit that helps protect the area's historic legacy. The Cultural Landscape Foundation filed suit, calling the project a "permanent blemish" that would turn a national landmark into a "theme park."The pool's original bottom was dark asphalt and tile — not Obama's 14-year-old tinted gray concrete that critics defended as "historic." The NPS agreed that a darker bottom, like Trump's dark navy, improves reflectivity.An EarthCam time-lapse from the top of the Washington Monument shows what actually changed. The pool isn't green any more. Trump's new nanobubbler targets the algae, and the sealant addresses the leaking joints that the Obama renovation didn't.One problem reportedly remains: two miles of cracked underground pipes that, if they fail, could shut down the filtration system and bring the algae back. The Trump administration says pipe replacement will begin in the fall.Blaze News went out to the National Mall and asked five people what they thought.A resident who has run the Mall route for six years barely broke stride. "I didn't like the construction, so I started running the Jefferson Memorial way. Honestly, I don't even care who did it. It was Trump, right? I'm not really political — I work in tech. It looks fine." A 13-year-old on his school trip said his class had studied the "I Have a Dream" speech just weeks before. "I didn't know the pool was broken. I just thought it was always like this."A retired couple from Western Pennsylvania had been here before — once for the Bicentennial in 1976 and twice since 2023. He pointed to their matching MAGA hats. "We promised to come back only to Trump's Washington," he said, "and seeing it completed makes me feel more patriotic than I already was."Not everyone Blaze News spoke with voted for Trump. In 2024, Washington, D.C., voted more than 92% for Kamala Harris.A college junior interning on Capitol Hill had watched the construction drag on through her first weeks in the city. "I tried walking by here to romanticize, you know, my D.C. hot-girl summer," she said. "The construction was low-key annoying. Our office has been talking about it, and besides the fact that it seems, yet again, like just another one of Trump's pet projects, I wouldn't go as far as to say it looks bad."A lifelong resident who works in education stopped at the edge of the pool, looked out at the water, and said: "I'm not going to give that man credit. I'm just not. But it does look good. It looks real good. And you know what, 'scuse my French, but I f**king hate that."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!