NASHVILLE – Music City USA, home of the Grand Ole Opry, is also home to the successful TBN television program hosted by former presidential candidate and ex-Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee.
On December 5, Timothy Plan founder and CEO Art Ally and Financial Stewardship Ministries CEO Dan Celia joined Mr. Huckabee for a segment on Biblically Responsible Investing.
Here’s a transcript from the show, edited for clarity:
HUCKABEE: Well, the pandemic and the election have a lot of Americans worried about their finances. Art Ally is the president of the Timothy Plan, America’s top biblically based mutual fund group. And we welcome back to our show Dan Celia, the CEO of Financial Issues Stewardship Ministries and host of the radio and TV series “Financial Issues.” Both of them have a counter-cultural effective method of handling money. Would you please welcome Art Ally and Dan Celia? Good to have you guys here.
Art, a lot of people are really worried. We don’t yet know how this election is really going to turn out and what may happen in the Senate. Should people be concerned about their money right now?
ALLY: People are always concerned about their money.
HUCKABEE: That’s a good point.
ALLY: They really are, but they’re overly concerned in some cases. Right now, you’ve got to be careful. We’re being careful. We don’t know how it’s going to turn out. Well, we know how it should turn out. I mean, but who knows with the corruption and all. So, they do need to be careful, but they also, if they’re a Bible believing Christian, need to be biblical about how they do things.
HUCKABEE: And what does that mean to be “biblical about your money and investments?” Because a lot of people say, “How does the Bible figure into that?”
ALLY: Well, the Bible figures into handling money more than any other subject. In fact, the first thing I ever wrote was a biblical stewardship study guide nine hours long of what the Bible says about handling money from cradle to grave, because we get all of our training on handling money from the world’s perspective, not from the church. And it’s exactly the opposite of what God’s word says. And so that’s why people are always in stress and anxiety over money. If they do it God’s way, they’re going to be in total peace and comfort. And that’s what we try to bring.
To answer your question, what we bring to the table is that we will not invest in corporations that are funding an unholy agenda. That’s what people do when they just carelessly invest without thinking about who they’re really owning. And I don’t mean “careless,” but when you’re not thinking about that. One of my good friends, Kevin Freeman, once made a profound statement to our board of trustees. He said, “If you’re not carefully screening how you invest the money God’s entrusted to you, you could inadvertently be funding your own destruction.” We’ve got to quit funding the bad guys.
HUCKABEE: You never think about that. Dan, you’ve been with us before. We’ve talked about the anxiety people have. They’re afraid, “what if I put into the stock market, it all falls apart?” If you were advising me or anybody in this audience tonight, what to do with the resources that we’ve worked really hard to acquire, what advice would you give the person in light of the political climate right now?
CELIA: Well, in light of the political climate, I’d probably tell them to sit tight. Don’t do anything drastic. Don’t make any big changes. A lot of people panicked the night after the election and got out of the markets. A lot of people panicked before the election, depending on what they thought was going to happen. And, you know, I think one of the things that we always forget, if we have a good strategy, and we believe in it, we’ve got to stick to it. And if we’re not going to be able to stick to it, maybe we’re on the verge of retirement, or we’re older and we want to just protect what we have, then you shouldn’t be in the markets. But the worst thing we can do is move our money based on news. And that’s what we tend to do. Hey, the news is good, I’m getting in. That means you’re buying high. News is bad, I better get out. And you know, that’s what most people do. It’s the worst thing you can do. So, don’t be driven by the media, or the party run media, as I call it now.
HUCKABEE: Now that’s really the truth, you know? And I do hear sometimes people say, “don’t get in a hurry about things”. The Timothy Plan that you created, Art, is unique in that you take people’s funds in a mutual fund and invest them in things that are not offensive to a believer. So, let’s just be blunt. How successful is the Timothy Plan compared to other mutual funds? Because, I mean, people say, “Well, I’d love to do a biblically based thing,” but if I only get half the return, it may not be worthwhile. So, how’s the Timothy Plan doing?
ALLY: That’s the question. I’m glad you asked. Because when we started this 26 years ago, my friends on Wall Street said, “You can’t do this.” I said, “What do you mean?”
[They said], “You cannot get good investment returns and screen out some of the largest, most profitable companies in the universe of stocks available.” And my answer then was my answer now. “If you’re a Bible-believing Christian, obedience trumps performance every single time.” If you’re not, there’s a world of stocks to invest in. But what we have proven for over 26 years is that you don’t have to sacrifice investment returns. We get very competitive returns because we’ve got outstanding money management firms managing each of our 12 mutual funds.
HUCKABEE: That’s pretty impressive. So, Dan, my question to you is: If the Democrats were to take everything – the White House, the Senate, the House –they’ve said they’re going to raise taxes, they’re going to open the borders, they’re going to go back to a globalist mindset. What does that do to the economy of the United States, and more specifically, to individual families and their household income?
CELIA: It’s going to impact individual families dramatically. I think it’s going to be six months, seven months into that kind of mentality for that to happen. But we’re not going to survive from that. We’re not going to ever be able, possibly, to go back to what we had. What we could possibly have is an administration similar to what we had for eight years. And that was a “do-nothing economy.” It was a horrible economy.
HUCKABEE: I think it’s important that people realize it’s not about the political parties but about the financial principles they live by. And, look, there’s no way we can exhaust all the knowledge these guys have, but there’s a way that you can get more of it, and we have the opportunity to talk about it. So, you can learn more about investing in a biblically responsible way by visiting Timothyplan.com, also financial issues.org.
A writer for Timothy Partners, Ltd. He is a regular weekly columnist for The Washington Times and Townhall.com and is frequently published by AmericanThinker.com, DailyCaller.com, OneNewsNow.com, and others. He has authored the following books: “A Strong Constitution: What Would America Look Like If We Followed the Law” (D. James Kennedy Ministries, 2018), Invested with Purpose: The Birth of the Biblically-Responsible Investment Movement, and A Nation Worth Fighting For: 10 Steps to Restore Freedom.
