#241 Ruslan KD - Ex-Atheist Breaks Down Israel, End Times & Why 48% of Gen Z is Jesus Curious

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Ruslan KD, welcome to the show, man.

Sean Ryan.

Thanks for having me.

This is incredible.

My pleasure.

You're a great host.

Well,

thank you.

So I saw a video about that you had posted out.

I had a bunch of people text it to me.

The first one was Darren Tyler.

You know who.

Yeah, Pastor Darren Tyler.

Shopping.

He texted me about my

Nathan Apful interview.

Yes.

So that went crazy.

And

yeah, you know, I was like really,

we talked a lot about doing that interview because

I did not want to

lean people away from Christ.

But, you know,

I thought he had some good points.

I didn't agree with everything.

But,

man, we got some backlash from that one, buddy.

Oh, really?

Oh, yeah.

I didn't look at any of the comments or the feedback.

Oh, yeah.

We got all kinds of texts and emails emails and from friends of mine, Darren, you know, and it definitely, I would say, absolutely sparked a conversation.

I mean, obviously, you're a big part of that.

So, so yeah, I thought it would be, I thought it would be good to maybe get the other side of the coin here.

And, and, um, so thank you for coming.

And thank you for having me.

This is great.

And you got a great team here, by the way.

Everyone's so hospitable and kind and friendly.

And you guys got something special here.

Thank you, man.

Thank you.

But yeah, so that's, that's, I want to do some of your backstory.

It sounds very interesting.

And,

you know, but the real reason is to cover, you know, what I talked about with Nathan on here and

kind of get the other perspective here.

So,

but

yeah, everybody starts off with

an introduction here.

So,

Ruslan KD,

a Christian hip-hop artist, podcaster, and YouTuber, founder of

King's Dream Entertainment with releases including your Indy Jones series and collaborations with artists like John Keith and Paul Russell.

Originally from Baku, Azerbaijan, and came to the United States as a refugee at age six due to religious persecution and conflict.

A former gang member who converted to Christianity in high school after exploring evidence for faith

and moving away from atheism.

A husband, a father, and all in for Jesus.

So

probably messing a lot here, but

yeah,

I was talking with Jeremy, and we'll get into this.

Now I know, you know, why, I think I know why he became an atheist, but I was like, wait a minute,

this guy was a refugee from getting persecuted from Christianity, but he's an atheist.

And then I dug in more and found the rest out.

But

this is going to be an awesome discussion, Paul.

Yeah.

So, but I got something for you.

Okay.

You know, I'm fairly new to Christianity.

I have not read all of the Bible.

Most of it I don't understand.

But, you know, one thing I do quite often is in the mornings, especially if I'm troubled with something, you know, or something's on my mind.

I'm in a dark place.

I'll open it up hoping for some inspiration that I'll understand.

And a lot of times I get it.

And the last time I did it was

a couple of days ago.

I think it was Monday morning.

And all this Charlie Kirk, you know, the assassination of Charlie Kirk's been on my mind.

I mean,

you know, maybe yours too.

Absolutely.

We both have a big,

big audience.

And so I flip it open,

hoping for some inspiration.

And I don't know the verse.

I know it was Matthew.

Okay.

It was in Matthew.

And

I open it up and

it's

about the end of the world.

And I'm like, well, this isn't the inspiration.

It was abomination and desolation and all that.

And it was talking about, he was talking about, you know, in the end, there will be

rumors of wars and earthquakes and all these things will happen.

And I don't want anybody to think I am mocking the Bible because I look at that, you know, I mean, that is, you know, even though I haven't read it all, but I, you know, I have given my life to Christ and that's the way I try to live, you know, the best,

best that I can, I guess, right?

But, you know, I'm reading that and I started thinking about it.

And a lot of the guys on my team are very,

a lot more educated on the Bible than I am, you know, from their updreaming and stuff.

And so

I called Darren.

He's he's my lead editor.

And, or I didn't call him.

I was texting him.

And I was like, you know, man, I was like,

this almost sounds like some conspiracy that was put together

and you know the reason I say that is I was you know just in my lifetime we have always been at war and so

you know rumors of wars and wars there's

you know very young we had desert storm I spent

We spent the U.S.

spent 20 something years, you know, in Afghanistan, Iraq.

We've been to Somalia, we've been to Panama, we've been to Colombia, you know, and and and I was just, I was like, man, I don't even remember a time where there wasn't war.

And those are just wars that the U.S.

were involved in.

That's not, you know, all the civil wars that are going on in Africa, the Middle East, and

Israel and South America, you know, and then I was thinking even more and I was like, this is.

I don't think there's ever been a time of peace in human existence.

I mean, the Roman Empire, the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great, you know,

China.

I mean, it's, there's always the Greeks.

There's always, always been more.

Civil war, Native Americans.

I mean,

and so, you know,

I kind of thought about that and I was like, and there's always been earthquakes too, right?

There's always, there's always been more.

There's always been earthquakes.

And I was like, well, this is almost like convenient, you know, to say that.

Like, like a good conspiracy theorist would take a pattern and say, when you see these things, this is what it means and this is what's going to happen.

And, you know, I feel like that would be like me saying, you know, when the end times come, you'll start to see men cheating on their wives.

You know what I mean?

And it's like, men have been cheating on their wives since the beginning of the time.

Not all men, but, and so I just want to, you know, I mean, this is fresh in my mind.

You're obviously very studied on this stuff.

So I just want to get your take on what I'm feeling.

Yeah.

I mean, I think what you're feeling is the angst that a lot of people are feeling right now.

I'm not sure if you know this, but there's an actual conspiracy rumor prophecy that like today is supposed to be the rapture that's going viral all over TikTok.

And so there's a ton of people, like the day we're shooting this, I don't know when this is coming out, is that this is going to be that it's all going to be gone either yesterday or today, right?

So that's happening in real time.

And I think that that's a real angst that people feel.

Wait a minute.

The rapture is supposed to happen today?

Yeah.

Like we, apparently.

We got left behind.

So there's been a long history of people reading and trying to interpret and trying to say what is and isn't supposed to happen and how it's supposed to go down.

The beautiful part about Matthew, you're talking about Matthew 24, is the end of Matthew 24.

Jesus says in verse 36, but about that day or hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the son, but only the father.

As it was written in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

And then he goes on to explain craziness and all this, all this insane stuff that's going to be happening.

But the beautiful part about everything you're describing is that from here, from that passage of like rumors of wars and all the abomination, all this scary stuff,

Jesus then goes into Matthew 25, which is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible.

And there's two parables and one story.

I'll try to condense it for you because

I don't want to get you too in the weeds.

But he opens up with the parable of the 10 virgins, the wise and the foolish virgins, waiting for the bridegroom to come back.

Jesus is the bridegroom.

There's virgins that are wise.

They had oil to keep the light on for the bridegroom.

And then there's virgins that weren't paying attention and they got left out.

So now he's talking about the end of days and he's giving you a parable, a story with these, with these virgins.

And there's a ton of context with the bridegroom and the virgins and all this sort of stuff.

So he's like, hey, basically, I can come back whenever.

Like live with the eminency of Jesus as if he's going to come back at any moment, right?

Which is yes and amen.

But then something interesting happens

from the parable of the virgins, Jesus coming back at any time, right?

He goes into the parable of the bags of gold or the parable of the talents.

There's one person he gave five talents to, one person he gave three talents to, one person he gave one talent to.

There's a master that's going on

a mission.

He leaves some money with his servants.

The guy who has five takes the five, invests it, doubles up.

The guy who has three doubles up.

The guy who has one hides his talent, right?

He's afraid.

He's scarce.

He doesn't want to engage.

And so something interesting is that the guys who doubled up, Jesus says, well done, my good and faithful servant.

You've been faithful with little things.

Now you'll be faithful with more, right?

And so end of days, Jesus is coming back.

It's going to get scary.

He goes into.

stewardship of resources.

How are you managing the time, the talent, the treasure, the things I've entrusted you with?

Right.

So in light of the whole conversation of the end of days, it goes right into, hey, what are you doing with what you've been given?

Right.

What have you been doing with the time, talent, and treasure that you've been given?

And the person that doubles up, he's rewarded, he's celebrated.

The person that doesn't, he's rebuked.

And it says, verse 26, this is the person that had the one and buried it.

He was afraid.

He didn't want to try.

Verse 26 and Matthew 25 says, his master replied, you wicked, lazy servant.

So you knew that I have harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed.

Well, then you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers so that when I returned, I would have received it back with interest.

So that, that, that lazy one, he rebukes him.

But this is the, this is the crazy part about all this.

End of days, all this wars of war.

Live as if Jesus is going to come back.

Make the most of your time, talent, and treasure.

And the end of Matthew 25 is about the sheep and the goats.

And Jesus goes on to say, I'll just read it to you because I'm trying to paraphrase, but I'll just read it to you.

It says, when the son of man comes in his glory, the end of days, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne.

All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the king will say to those on his right, come you who are blessed by my father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

Verse 35, for I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat.

I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink.

I was a stranger, and you invited me in.

I needed clothes, and you clothed me.

I was sick, and you looked looked after me.

I was in prison and you came to visit me.

Then the righteous will answer him and say, Lord, when did we see you hungry and when did we, and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink?

When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes?

When did we see you sick or in person or go visit you?

Verse 40.

And the king replies, Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did to me.

So

when we read all of this in context, I think that the big idea for Matthew 24 and 25 is, hey, Jesus is coming back.

The world is going to get dark.

However, as people of the book, as followers of Jesus, as people of the way, our job is to utilize our time, our talent, our treasure, our platform, our personalities to usher in the most amount of good so that we can help the least of these.

And the least of these might be the widow and the orphan.

The least of these might be the persecuted Christians overseas.

The least of these might be those folks in our own country that have a distorted worldview.

But ultimately, as followers of of Jesus, regardless of when the end comes, we're called to care for the least of these.

We're called to utilize and be faithful with what's in front of us.

And in that, be a blessing to other people.

So that, like the end of days stuff, all every single talk on the end of days in the New Testament all goes back to, and live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits, right?

That's the beautiful part about this gospel, this story of God coming in the flesh, living the life we couldn't live, dying the death we we should have died on the cross and in our place for our sins.

And doesn't just give us hell insurance and goes, man, the world's going to go to hell in a handbasket, but I got you in the afterlife.

No, no, no, he sends and allows us to experience a peace of heaven on earth to usher in his kingdom.

And

that's what I love about that entire sequence of events, you know, of Matthew 24 and 25 is it lands at, man,

we get to do good.

Like we got good work to do on this side of eternity.

Yeah.

Sorry, that was a whole lot.

No, that's good.

We just had a Bible study.

I'm not even sure if this is going to be in the pot or not.

It's going to be.

But, yeah, and I want to talk a little bit more about end of days

maybe towards the end of the podcast.

But to kick it off, I thought

we kick it off with a prayer.

Let's do it.

You want to lead it?

Yes, please.

Perfect.

Oh, Father God, thank you so much, Lord.

Lord, have mercy on us, Father.

For sometimes we drift and sometimes

our ways are are not aligned with your ways, Lord.

So have mercy on us, Lord.

Father, would you just extend your grace in this moment, Lord, to this conversation, that it would be covered by your spirit, by your presence,

that you would move

in ways that impact people

and encourage them and inspire them and empower them to do good here and now, Lord.

I thank you for Sean.

I thank you for his amazing team.

I thank you for every person behind the scenes and the logistics and the cameras and the editing.

I thank you for just what he's built, Lord, and how you've used him thus far.

And Father, I would just pray, would you just use this conversation?

Would you just let this be a conversation to bless people, Lord, that as we're looking at the world and it seems like it's getting darker, Lord, that a little bit of light can shine bright.

And so would you let Sean's light shine?

Would you speak and shine through me, Lord God?

And would you, would you equip others to be encouraged and to shine their light in a dark world, Lord?

We thank you, Lord.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Beautiful.

Thank you.

Well, we always start every podcast off with a gift.

Oh, my goodness.

Let's go.

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And then one other thing.

So I have a Patreon account

and

it's a subscription account.

We've turned it into quite the community.

They've been here since the beginning.

And so they're the reason I get to sit here with you today.

So one of the things I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question.

Oh, cool.

Shout out to the Patreon.

We got our own community too.

So it's beautiful.

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Yeah.

Are you on Patreon?

Yeah, yeah.

Right on, man.

This is from Kirk Powers.

What were the driving factors that contributed to your period of atheism and eventually led you back to Christianity with an even stronger level of faith?

Well, first of all, your Patreon got the coolest names because we did some out there.

And Kurt Powers sounds like a superhero.

So props to Kurt Powers.

Atheism, to me, was a direct correlation to the problem of evil, which I think is a tough thing to work through from a

apologetics, polemics, human level.

It's like, why does evil exist?

Why do bad things happen?

And that's what led me to atheism.

When I was a child, I had to have been the youngest atheist walking around.

And

what led me to Jesus was

starting to see the providential hand of God over my life, even in the areas where I suffered and even in the areas where things did not go good.

And the more I saw that, it was, it was as if my life was a movie and God kind of orchestrated even the evil things and he somehow used it for good.

So I started seeing that as I kind of drew more to Jesus and then it all clicked.

Nice.

Yeah.

Nice.

I mean, it's, it's, uh, it takes a lot of energy to be an atheist, right?

You got to do a lot of mental gymnastics.

Yeah.

I talked to Lee Strobel quite a bit about it on one of his interviews.

And yeah, it seems, I mean, you're still, you're forcing, like, it's, it's still still a faith in not believing, correct?

I think it requires more faith to not believe.

Really?

Yeah, I think so.

I think so.

Because I think just from nature, you know,

there's miracle.

Atheists have to believe miracles too.

So you have to believe that everything came from nothing.

You have to believe that mindless matter made matter and mindless matter made mind.

and consciousness.

Something that doesn't have a mind makes a mind, right?

Order from chaos.

How do you get order from chaos?

So the miracles that atheists have to acknowledge, in my opinion, are way more preposterous than the virgin birth.

And so I have a line where we say like virgin birth or virgin universe, like you decide, because

the virgin birth starts sounding a lot more sensible when you consider the virgin universe as a,

like that sounds realistic to you.

You know, there's a man that came, lived, died, rose.

That sounds a lot more sensitive than everything came from nothing.

That's a good point.

I've never thought of it like that.

Yeah, that's a good point.

But

let's move into your story a little bit.

So you obviously grew up in Azerbaijan.

What was going on there when you

made the trip back to, or not back to, to America?

Yeah.

So I'm ethnically Armenian.

My father's Armenian.

My mother was adopted by an Armenian family.

I think I did my 23andMe, and she's either like Ukrainian or Russian.

So she was adopted by an Armenian family as a little girl.

And that region of the world, I'm sure as you know, north of Iran, right, Armenia is splat in between Turkey and Azerbaijan.

They kind of refer to themselves as, you know, two states, one nation,

two nations, one group of people.

And so you have Armenia, which is the oldest Christian nation in the world.

Ethiopians and Armenians always argue who is the first Christian nation.

And you have this really rich history of Christianity.

And all of this is on the backdrop of communism and the Soviet Union.

So you remove God, you remove faith, the government becomes God, communism becomes the religion.

And in

this weird

post-1915 Armenian genocide with the Turks and the Armenians, the Soviet Union decided to drop these weird parameters within Azerbaijan.

So you got Armenian, you got Azerbaijan, and then there's this little region called the Naboro-Karagak region.

And it's right on eastern Azerbaijan, but it's predominantly an Armenian strip of land.

And I don't know how, you know, the theory is like sometimes the quote-unquote superpowers does this intentionally to maintain instability in the region.

And so what started happening was there became rumors of Arzis getting displaced from that region, and then the Arzis supposedly getting displaced from Armenia.

And then that led to this mass ethnic cleansing of all Armenians from the city of Baku in the late 80s called the Pogroms of Baku.

So half a million Armenians are displaced and ethnically cleansed from the capital.

About 500 of them brutally murdered.

And we, as a family, end up applying for refugee status.

We apply for Australia, we apply for Israel, and we apply for Armenia, excuse me, America, we apply for America.

America were the first people that accepted us.

Now, my dad and everyone had to already leave because they appear more ethnically Armenian.

Me and my mom were more fair-skinned.

So we stayed kind of handling the affairs.

And it ended up taking a little bit longer.

And then we ended up transitioning, coming to the United States in 1991, May of 1991, a few months before the fall of communism.

Wow.

How old were you?

I was six.

Six years old.

Yeah.

So I remember food rations, lining up to get a box of food.

I remember.

No kidding.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lining up for, I remember, I remember there was looking into our bathroom as a kid and there was a tub of water.

And I asked, what is that about?

And they were like,

we get water rationed for the family to bathe with.

So you get water and that's your water for the week to bathe with.

Yeah.

So very different.

My first memory in America was coming from the airport and then pulling up to this beautiful, shiny, amazing store.

And I thought to myself, oh, how kind.

My parents took me to replenish my toys.

I don't have any toys.

They took me here to buy toys, right?

I'd never seen anything like it.

It looked like a toy store.

It was a Lucky's grocery store off of El Cajon Avenue in the 805 Freeway.

The grocery store in America looked like an imaginary toy store.

That's how colorful and beautiful it was.

And it was like, they weren't coming to give me toys.

We were just going grocery shopping because we didn't have any food.

And so come to the United States.

Mom and dad see a lot of stuff.

I don't have a lot of crazy memories.

There's a memory that my mom tells me.

This might be a bit graphic, but I'll share the story with you anyway.

I've only shared it once or twice.

So

Arzis are ethnically Muslim.

Muslims get circumcised.

Armenians don't get circumcised because we are like, hey, Galatians says you don't got to get circumcised.

So culturally in our part of the world, no circumcision.

So

we were the last ones there because we were fair-skinned and everyone left and they're starting to swarm in and they have reports of where there are Armenian families and they're going in and they're beating people up.

They're harming people.

This is explored.

in a movie recently released actually called Beyond Borders, this conflict specifically.

It stars Elizabeth from The Chosen.

So people are coming in our house, right?

And as a kid, this is probably going to be TMI, but I'm just going to, I'm going to go for it.

We're going to full send it.

As a kid, I end up having like a weird UTI infection as a kid.

So they end up getting me circumcised, right?

And then when they come in and they're about to bring harm to me and my mom, my mom actually is like, no, no, no, no, no, we're not Armenians.

We're not Armenians.

We're not Armenians.

Armenians are circumcised.

Look, my son is not circumcised.

So she literally shows them my penis.

And that is what makes them say, okay, these are Russians.

They're not Armenians.

Holy.

And they leave.

Wow.

So my penis saved me and my family's life.

Good for you.

Family jewels, buddy.

But, but,

I mean, so

I'm just curious.

I don't know much about this.

I don't know.

I don't know anything about this.

So, I mean,

if communism is cleansing, you know, were they just cleansing Christians?

Because communism is the religion.

So, so, so, were they, were they persecuting just Christians or was it any religion?

So, it wasn't that it was communism or the Soviet Union, it was the Arzis who had their own nation-state within the communist Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union just kind of stood back and were like, We're going to let this play out.

They didn't want to interfere too much.

So, what they should have done is said, Hey, you can't kill 500 Armenians in the streets.

Like, can't do that.

But they waited and waited and waited until it really hit the fan.

And then, at the end, they stepped in in January.

So it wasn't that the Soviet Union was doing it.

It was that the people and like they were looting and rioting and killing.

And people can pull up footage of all this.

It's horrific, the stuff that happened.

And that area, that Naboro-Karabakh region, that area just recently got ethnically cleansed two weeks before October 7th.

The last 120,000 Armenians in that autonomous Armenian region within Azerbaijan just got pushed out.

September 2023.

So the last 100,000 Armenian Christians just got cleansed, ethnically the cleansed from Azerbaijan.

No one talked about it because two weeks later, you had October 7th.

And then, but people could pull up videos and there's just, I mean, there's like a mountain of just Armenians trying to leave that region.

Man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so Trump recently just is trying to negotiate a peace treaty and is trying to normalize relations between the two countries.

Like maybe a month or two ago.

Yeah.

I don't know, man.

It seems like, you know, we're seeing, I don't know if it's because of the internet or if it was always happening, but I mean, you know, I've read about, you know, they're crucifying Christians today in Syria.

I mean, it's happening all over.

Israel has bombed several Catholic churches, probably an accident, maybe, but there's been no repercussions for that.

And so, I mean, you're probably a lot more tuned into this than I am.

I mean,

how common is this in that part of the world?

It's very common in parts of Africa right now.

Yeah, what they're doing to African Christians is just absolutely horrific.

They're shooting up churches.

They're killing women and children.

It's really dark right now.

And from my understanding, Africa is probably the worst.

I know North Korea sentenced a family to life in prison, a family with a two-year-old in it in their concentration camp.

Yeah, we just covered it on the channel because the Bibles are illegal in North Korea.

And so, yeah, that, you know, this is several years ago, but there was a two-year-old and a family in there sentenced to life for just owning a Bible.

What do you do about this?

I mean, what do do you do about this as a Christian?

I mean, as a believer, when you're seeing your people be killed, persecuted, you know, for their beliefs?

I mean, what goes through your head?

Well, one, I pray.

I pray that justice will prevail.

I pray that Jesus would make all things right.

So, one, I pray.

Two, I...

I look at what's in front of me right now and I say, well, how can I be faithful with what's in front of me?

And can I contribute to relief in those parts of the world?

Can I send Bibles there?

Can I help get messaging out there?

Can I fund folks that are willing to go out there and do some of the humanitarian work?

So I think that.

And then three,

I think awareness, like just bringing awareness to it, because

it's not a trendy thing to talk about Christians being persecuted and killed, right?

It's not.

There's not a good story arc to it.

There's not an oppressor-oppress narrative to it.

It's just this is really sad, right?

But I think bringing awareness to it is also helpful.

Yeah, I mean, you know,

I interviewed this guy.

I'm not going to say his name because he didn't want to talk about this on the interview, but, you know,

they were doing missionary work at a very young age and going into parts of China and

we're preaching the word and

they would have people, they would have, you know, the Chinese Communist Party coming in and kicking in the door and looking for Bibles and what are you doing here?

And

very,

it's, sounds like special operation shit.

I was like fascinated when we were talking offline about it.

And I mean,

are there people, are we, are Christians?

I mean, are there missionaries embedded in North Korea that are, you know, in places like that still today?

I would definitely say China, for sure, for a fact, China, 100%.

I don't, I can't speak to North Korea, but there's a lot of amazing underground churches in China.

There's some like churches that are kind of tolerated by the government in China, but they got to be connected to the state.

But the underground church revival is huge.

It's not just China.

I mean, it's parts of Pakistan, parts of Afghanistan.

They're broadcasting Bible teaching to Iran over the airwaves, and people are hearing it, getting saved, getting baptized.

And there's tons of revival happening in parts of the world.

It's like when you try to suppress the movement of Jesus,

it flourishes, ironically enough.

And then when here, when we have all this freedom to practice our faith in America, we're kind of taking for granted.

Yeah.

I just think that's,

I mean, that's like, that's, that is throwing it all on the line right there.

Yeah.

Doing that.

You know, I mean, you know, there's lots of Christians doing good things in places like Haiti, and they go all over the place, right?

But, I mean,

to do that, that's a, that is a, that is a,

you're not doing a field trip there.

You know what I mean?

And I'm just, I was just curious if you knew of any of that going on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My wife went to China for like a month-long mission strip.

Maybe six months before we got married as an English teacher.

They weren't as locked down back then.

So she went there and she said even just going there as like an English teacher, they had people following them around and keeping tabs on them and it's kind of scary.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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So you get to the U.S.

What happens?

Get to the US.

This is amazing.

It's a fresh start.

Just beautiful.

I'm in San Diego.

You know, awesome.

Don't know the language.

Don't know anything.

My only context of anything related to America, my dad would smuggle in video cassettes into

our house when we were a a kid.

We had a BCR.

He was like a bootleg smuggler.

You know, he's always a hustler.

And he,

my only context for American culture was Michael Jackson, an American ninja.

That's it.

Right on.

And so I end up trying to learn English through cartoons, Michael Jackson, American Ninja.

A few months into being out here, so my mother and my father had a tumultuous relationship because they had to, he had to leave early.

And so he's living in Moscow, kind of trying to go back and forth because, because, again, we're fair-skinned, so he stayed behind the longest.

Long story short, I find these letters with kissy marks on them that I'm like, oh, these are sweet.

And I take them to my dad.

I'm like, look, mom wrote you these like beautiful letters.

There's like she lipstick on them.

Well, they weren't to my dad.

They were to her boyfriend back in Baku.

So that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

They were had a fresh start.

They're starting over.

He was like, I'm done, you know, and he had also a relationship back in Moscow.

And so long story short, a couple months into being here, my mother and my father split.

My mother's dad dies.

My grandfather dies.

He fought in World War II

for the Soviets, right?

Awesome dude, English teacher.

He dies.

And my mom just goes down this dark spiral of

depression, despair, anxiety.

She's a single mom now.

We're on welfare.

I remember our check was $650 a month and our rent was $450 a month.

And so we have to stretch that $200 a month on food.

So no car.

My dad tries to come around, but my mom had a very toxic taste in men.

So he'd come around.

The dudes that were there would fight him multiple times, fights.

One time, my mom jumped in and grabbed like a heel and scraped his face.

The cops had to get called.

And she told me, like, don't say I did it when the cops came.

And my dad tried to be in my life, but he, you know, she made it very difficult for him.

And this, we had this conversation as like men, like, we're like, what happened, dude?

Like, where were you?

He kind of explained his side.

um at the same time we start going to the armenian apostolic church which again i don't have any god i don't have any jesus as a child i don't know anything about god i've never heard anything about the bible the gospel anything but we come to america and there's like this beautiful diaspora of armenians and the armenian apostolic church so this is the oriental arm of the church a beautiful liturgy beautiful art so simultaneously i'm becoming an altar boy i'm like this is this is awesome i love i mean i love being an altar boy we got to light the incense they when there was this is

people may not find this appropriate but when there was leftover communion wine you can't discard the communion wine that's that's holy so guess who they had finish off the communion wine

right on this guy right here so i'm like man this is great i love this that that hiat is awesome there's a there's a picture that i that i when i do talks i put up as me getting kind of christened as a as a little six seven year old kid and then there's some older kids that are also altar boys and they're 13 14 ish they were like the senior altar boys i was a junior altar boy and long story short they end up sexually assaulting me like repeatedly sexually assaulting me uh starting from showing gay porn and then doing the acts on me and then in the midst of all that it was framed as if i as a seven-year-old would initiate seven years old yeah seven years old seven seven eight years old that i was the one that like initiated this stuff so even in the way it was framed was very twisted The church didn't do much.

They didn't do anything.

At the same time, my dad remarries and my mom was bitter at the church because they remarried him.

They shouldn't have remarried technically, according to her, because they were, I guess, not divorced.

This is according to her.

So she's angry at the church because they remarried my dad.

I'm like, this happened by these guys I met at the church and you guys didn't do anything.

And so, like, I was done.

I was like, there is no God.

And if there is a God, he does not not like me.

So I have to have been the youngest self-professed atheist walking around.

Yeah.

Damn, man.

What do you?

I mean, there's a lot of kids that go through this, a lot more than I'd like to, you know, think about.

And, I mean, just on the show, we've had so many.

you know, people that have been sexually abused, physically abused

by family, by neighbors, by whoever.

And

so I'm just, you know, what's your advice to kids that are going through that?

It's going to be all right.

It's going to be okay.

The grace and the mercy of God can do wonders in transforming our hearts and reorienting us back into a healthy place.

There's going to be some work.

I had to go to therapy.

I discovered as an adult that I had onset PTSD, that I got to die.

I didn't know that, you know, a child.

I didn't know, I didn't know why I was the way I was, but as an adult, now I'm married with a family and I'm like, I got to figure this stuff out.

Like, why, why do I have these weird patterns and conflict?

And go to therapy, get good treatment, get counseling,

get around people that are going to call you to more.

And you could either allow those things to defy you or you could persevere despite, you know, Dave Ramsey has this quote.

He says, the only difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is there's a pile of poop all of us have to deal with, but those of us that are successful are just figured out a way to stand on top of all the poop.

And so that would be my advice.

How'd you get yourself out of it?

I, um, so something interesting happened.

I, um,

growing up in San Diego, predominantly black neighborhood, my, uh,

my mom and me, and then it was another Armenian refugee family in the complex.

This is like an eight-unit complex.

And I, uh,

so I get into music.

I get into hip-hop.

I love hip-hop.

I love the graffiti.

This is the early 90s, so this is a little different than it is, but you're talking LL Cool J, Public Enemy,

just a different time in hip-hop.

And then the gangster rap came on the scene.

And so I end up going down like just

doggy style, the chronic.

Like, this is who's discipling me at this point.

Eight, nine years old.

I'm listening to doggy style, the chronic.

Fourth grade, I got my ear pierced.

And I remember going back to the Armenian church, and they had nothing to say about the sexual abuse that happened to me, but they were concerned that I got my ear pierced.

And I was listening to rap music now, right?

Which is like, we're at the just scales.

So I get into gangster rap.

The manager of our apartment complex, her name's Cherie Jackson.

I'm still in touch with her till this day.

Cherie,

me and her son were best friends.

His name's Stephen.

And And Cherie was involved in some street activities.

One night when Steven stayed the night at my house, we would do sleepovers back and forth.

One night he stayed the night at my house.

There's a drive-by and bullet holes on his side of the building.

So this is, I'm just painting a picture of who Cherie was.

And took me to my first concert.

I was like nine years old.

Definitely one of the only kids in the audience, one of the only white kids in the audience.

I saw Dr.

Dre and Snoop in concert live.

This is 93.

And

Cherie ends up getting arrested for going to jail for moving, trying to move cocaine through the airport or a Greyhound or something.

So she goes to jail, gets radically saved in prison, like on fire for the Lord, loves Jesus, comes out, and everyone in our apartment complex starts coming to church with her because clearly there's a night and day shift.

And I, at the same time, I'm just, I'm just completely unraveling.

I'm now in a gang, like I'm smoking weed, I'm drinking.

This is all in and forth.

i'm breaking into my schools and stealing karaoke machines because i want to be a rapper like just a complete derelict of a kid and i get arrested at the age of 11 for breaking into a house my our gang leader damn at 11 at 11 yeah yeah our our gang leader was in jail and we wanted to bail him out And so we found out the same girl he was messing with told us she was messing with another dude and he had money and stuff in his, in his house.

So we're like, we can break into here and take the money to go bail him out.

That was the plan.

Well, in the midst of that, I'm the smallest one.

I'm in the window, the bathroom window.

You know, the little small little bath, I'm like in the window, and our lookout gets put into this arm bar.

It's like UFC arm bar.

And he wasn't a great lookout at all.

So it is an ex-police officer that saw everything that was happening.

So I get arrested and go to jail for the night.

My mom has to come bail me out.

And I knew at that point, like, I'm not built for this life.

Like, I am not a tough guy.

We weren't hand.

Thankfully, we weren't playing with guns and that sort of stuff.

But I knew like this is, is, this is not for me.

At the same time, Shari is coming to faith.

People were getting saved in our apartment complex.

And now I have to do community service as a part of my probation.

I wait till the last minute, of course.

And the only way I can get the hours done is if I start doing it at Sharie's church and with Charles and Willie, who live next door to me.

Blue collar guys.

Charles had some kids that I was friends with.

Willie was single.

And in that, I'm starting to hear about Jesus and I'm getting softened to the idea of Jesus.

I'm getting softened to the idea of God.

I'm not a Christian.

I'm still saying I'm an atheist, but they're just talking and just saying like, man, like, and it was this beautiful balance of like,

we're going to accept you right where you are, but we're going to tell you the truth about yourself.

Like, we love you and you're welcome, but you have some issues and you need to get your life in order.

And they were just talking to me like I was a grown man.

They weren't, they weren't coddling me.

They weren't talking to me like I was a kid.

And so through Cherie, through Charles, through Willie, I start hearing about Jesus.

And it was weird because they would tell me stuff like, man, God's going to use you to do great things someday.

You're going to reach millions of people for Jesus.

And I'm like sixth and seventh grade.

And this is now the environment I'm in.

At the same time,

I end up,

I'm in seventh grade.

I'm a 1.0 GPA student.

My mom sees all this stuff.

Now we're getting a reputation as the kids that are breaking into houses and doing stuff, even after I got arrested.

And my mom sees this.

She wants to relocate us to North County Oceanside Vista area.

And at the same time, there was

a kid who brought a gun to school and told me about it.

And then when he got caught with it, told the police it was my gun.

So the police bring me in to the principal's office and they're like interrogating me.

And I'm like, I don't, I didn't see the gun.

He said he had a gun.

I didn't see the gun.

And they're like, well, he's saying it's your gun.

And I'm like, it's not my gun.

They're like, well, we're going to run the fingerprints.

And if it's your gun, like, you're going down for this.

You're already on probation.

And I'm like, scan the fingerprints.

Like, this is not my gun.

Do it.

And so they're like, we're going to do it.

And so it's just the weirdest sequence of events.

Long story short, the kid who brought the gun is expelled.

One day I'm walking home.

This is like the week I'm moving.

I'm walking home.

And this kid, this kid's walking towards me and Samoan kid.

And I see him and I'm like, hey, like, what was up with the, with the gun?

Why are you telling them that it was my gun?

Right.

And he, and, and I look and he has a knife in his hand and he, he says, why did you effing snitch on me?

And I'm like, snitch on you.

And so as he's walking and lunging towards me, thankfully he was a fat Samoan kid.

I just jetted and ran for my life down Okahoma Boulevard with everything I had.

A couple days later, we moved to North County and now I got a clean start.

I escape this kid attempting to stab me.

I escape going to jail.

I escape all the craziness in my life.

Okay, this is a clean start.

I'm not going to smoke weed.

I'm not going to drink.

I'm not going to break into houses.

This is a fresh start.

And so I end up discovering basketball.

I thought I want to be a professional basketball player.

Like, this is my path now.

That's my purpose in life.

This is Michael Jordan's last season with the Chicago Bulls, that era.

And I'm like, I'm going to be a basketball player.

And then I start doing better in school.

GPA goes from like a 1.0.

I didn't think they would take me into the eighth grade, but I went from like a 1.0 to like a 3.8 my first.

year in eighth grade, just a different environment.

And then more and more people around me are telling me about Jesus, right?

And I end up meeting a girl, my freshman year, I did a talent show where I rapped and I won this talent show at Bringle Terrace Park and met this girl.

And the only way I could see her is if I went to church with her and her family on Sundays over the summer.

School year was done.

I couldn't see her.

So I'm like, why not?

Might as well, right?

And I started going to this, this kind of seeker-friendly church and they're talking about Jesus and they're telling me about the gospel.

And I'm slowly softening to it.

Now I'm still one foot in, one foot out.

I'm still sleeping with her.

I'm still kind of smoking weed a little bit on the down low, right?

But I then start asking the questions: Is Jesus God?

Is Jesus the only way to God?

How do I know this?

And me and a girl break up.

I'm dating a Jehovah's Witness girl.

I got Muslim friends.

I got Mormon friends.

I got all these different friends.

And I'm just confused trying to sort out the truth claims.

My

manager at Pizza Hut and the lead delivery driver are both devoted Christians.

And I'm asking them, like, because I'm talking to this Jehovah's Witness girl, they don't believe Jesus is God.

They believe he's a God.

So I'm still going to church.

And so they hand me a book and it was the new evidence that demands a verdict, a book this thick by Josh McDowell.

And as a sophomore in high school, I just devour this entire book.

And I'm just, it's like an academic textbook, right?

Like, and now English is my second language.

I'm not a great reader, but all of a sudden the light just starts going off.

And all my answers, my apologetics questions, all those answers I got from just reading and researching.

And so another year or so of wrestling and then like my junior year, I'm like, all right, I'm done.

I'm going to, I'm going to surrender my life to the Lord.

I'm going to do it his way.

I'm not going to have one foot in, one foot out.

But it was a messy four or five years of going from atheist to deist to theist to Christian.

I'd say that was about a four or five year process for me.

Wow, at that young of an age.

Yeah.

How did you

thank you for sharing that?

How did you

what I meant to ask was, and we were going to get there,

but

how did you remove yourself from the sexual abuse within the church?

I just stopped going to church.

Yeah, I just was like, I'm not, I can't be around these dudes anymore.

Like, this is, it's just weird.

It's awkward.

Again, the way it was framed was that it was my fault and I initiated it.

How did they frame that?

I mean, a seven-year-old?

I had people, I had other people in the neighborhood come up to me and start asking me if I was gay.

Like, I remember the word gay in Russian, that's my first language, sounds similar to the word baby blue.

And so I remember someone coming up and asking me, like, are you gay?

The gulu boy, the gulu boy.

And I was like, oh boy, that sounds like baby.

What are you asking me?

And then they had to explain it to me.

And so that, so they framed this whole thing as if it was me, a gay kid, trying to initiate

relations with these

older boys.

And so that made me very upset.

Wow.

Damn.

What did, I mean, what did they say?

Did you guys approach them?

Did your mother approach him?

There was like this kind of like community town hall meeting almost in someone's house.

And I remember they were screaming and crying and saying it was me.

It was all my fault.

I was the one that did it.

And I, I just kind of froze.

I didn't, I couldn't, I didn't know what, what to say.

Like, I just cried and was like, no, you know, and that's all I remember from that day.

But yeah, it was like all the Armenian families in the neighborhood kind of got together or maybe, maybe it was the other kids' parents, and maybe my mom.

I don't think my dad was there, and it was this big meeting, and they just made me look like I was the initiator.

Did they ostracize you guys?

Well, I mean, now I'm the quote-unquote gay kid.

Yeah, yeah, so yes, yeah, holy shit.

My mom doesn't have, is a single mom, so that's what there's already, that's already kind of frowned upon.

And now

I'm the kid that, you know, they're viewing as the gay kid.

That's enraging, man.

Yeah.

I'm sorry that happened to him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Damn.

Is this the same church that Nathan went to?

No.

No, no, no.

So this is Armenian Apostolic, a part of the Oriental arm of the church.

So this is

Oriental Orthodoxy is the Armenian Apostolic, the Ethiopian Orthodox.

This is that arm of the church.

So this is very high, high church, liturgical,

apostolic succession.

This is what

their connection is pretty deep to the early church.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

And you had mentioned,

maybe you didn't mention it, maybe I was in the online, but

that you found a lot of darkness in the music industry that you were in.

Is that the darkness about the gangs and stuff, or is there more?

Yeah, I mean,

there's one, there's the practical

what is going to sell.

I was talking to

Dr.

Anthony Bradley, and he said this point.

He said, free markets without virtue get us only fans, right?

And so if you have free markets and anything goes, what is going to sell?

It's going to be lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, pride of life.

So what would sells in music?

Lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, pride of life.

So the music that I was consuming was very dark.

You know,

I couldn't imagine being, I couldn't, my son is 10 years old now.

I couldn't imagine him listening to Doggy Style by Snoop, you know, or listening to The Chronic by Dr.

Dre.

It is just so, so, so dark.

The content is so dark.

Even when I started becoming a theist listening to DMX, it's Dark and Hell is Hot.

13 songs are all about just the most horrendous murders, the most terrible things.

And then there's like a song about Jesus at the end of the album, right?

This was like DMX's thing.

And so there's, you're, you're talking about people that have been traumatized making traumatizing music over and over.

And then I am trying to do it for the Lord.

And as I'm building this thing out, then long, you know, I'm jumping way ahead, but we end up working with Interscope Records on a project for an artist that was assigned to me.

And so going from these meetings

from all the major record labels, you start,

they say they want to do something positive.

They like what we're doing as Christians, because at this point, I'm jumping ahead.

I'm a Christian now.

But at the same time,

there is just a...

a heaviness to the environment that even people who are trying to do the

hey we like you guys you guys doing christian music there's a heaviness heaviness to it.

And then there's a,

hey, we're going to kind of curate this in a way that we can monetize it and make as much money from it as possible so we can kind of feel better about ourselves because the other stuff we know we're selling to the public is just utter debauchery and is harmful to people.

Man.

You had quite the childhood.

Yeah,

quite the childhood.

It's wow, dude.

What was it like going to church?

I mean, when you, I mean,

that had to be, that had to be quite the hurdle to get over with what you experienced as a seven-year-old.

And then you're back in a church.

I think.

Did you have any fear?

No.

People,

people make fun of like

evangelical churches and are like, hey, you know, this is.

There's no reverence.

There's no art.

Whatever the critique is.

And for someone like me that came from a quote unquote high church setting,

one, I didn't really understand anything.

It was like beautiful paintings and art, but I didn't get it.

And so stepping into an environment that like, they're speaking to me plainly.

We're not doing the liturgy in Armenian.

We're doing it in English.

You could understand what the message is about.

And not only can you understand, it's actually relevant to you.

Like they're talking about, hey, you could take this biblical principle and apply it to your day-to-day life.

And then the illumination of the gospel message was like, oh man, like even though I'm a sinner and even though I'm clearly broken, I knew I was broken, that Jesus offers me an invitation to something better, to something transcendent, that really resonated with me.

And so it was as simple as like, man, I don't know about this whole church thing, but like, Jesus, if you're real, reveal yourself to me.

And it was, it just, it was that simple.

If you're real, reveal yourself to me.

And I'll do whatever you want me to do.

So it just started there.

And because the environment was so different, it wasn't a challenge, but it was a challenge intellectually trying to ask all the questions.

It was a challenge in that regard.

Interesting.

Interesting.

Let's move into

Nathan's interview.

All right, let's do it.

So a lot of people, a lot of people upset about that.

Like I had mentioned, I didn't necessarily agree with everything he said.

I do like the end message that is, I think that, you know, he wants transparency within the churches.

I think that's a good thing.

I think they should be transparent.

But, you know, there was a lot of outlandish claims in there,

according to your talk on your YouTube channel.

And so

let's start.

Yeah.

Well, one, I mean, again,

my life experience, that is my life experience, the experience of a lot of my friends, you're coming from an environment where your father's not in the home, you're broken, there's trauma.

And then you step into a church context that now I don't, I'm not just hearing good information, I actually have access to pastors and men who believe in me and are speaking life into me.

And not only that, but I get to serve and learn stuff like expensive cameras and microphones.

I'm being called to lead and teach other people as I'm now walking with the Lord.

And so all of this has culminated, like the local church has culminated into me becoming who I am today, the husband that I am today.

I mean, I discovered Dave Ramsey in the local church.

I got out of debt because of Dave Ramsey, because of I was going to a local church.

Me and my wife were $100,000 in debt.

And in 18 months, we were debt-free.

This is before I was doing YouTube, before I was doing music.

So I am a testament of the local church and the goodness of what most local churches are.

So to me,

when I'm hearing Nathan, I would say, yeah, man, there's abuse, and we should absolutely call that out.

And I do call that out regularly.

At the same time,

when you start wanting to

attack the institution, when you start wanting to

say that anyone who's ever taken money as a pastor is not corrupt, then I start taking issue with that because I know

hundreds, if not thousands, of pastors.

And I see these men and I see most of them

aren't getting rich.

You know, 47% of pastors are bivocational.

The medium pastor's salary in the United States is $61,000 a year.

The average public school teacher's salary is $72,000 a year.

So this notion that most pastors are getting rich and

I think it's harmful because now what's happening is now we're utilizing very broad strokes and it's impacting people.

like myself 20 years ago that really needed the church.

Like the church was my lifeline

to everything

to manhood, to masculinity, biblical masculinity, to financial literacy, to developing my skills, my giftings, to doing life with someone a season ahead of me that can speak into my life, right?

There's so many incredible, like practical aspects of a good local church community.

And

the way he spoke about it was, in my opinion, the epitome of a hasty generalization fallacy, where you're spotlighting

things that are true, but you don't have enough of the data to understand that that's not reflecting of everybody.

And so I paralleled it to police brutality, which if anyone should look it and say, hey, police brutality is bad.

White people, black people, bad.

Police should not misbehave.

However, when you look at the data and you go, well, how prevalent is police brutality?

Some studies say that you're more likely to get stung by lightning than you are to be killed by a police officer.

Some say you're more likely to die.

die of a bee sting than you are to die of a police officer.

So now we took the police brutality thing and we said, defund the police, abolish the police.

And what happened when that happened in major cities?

When you mess up with the institution, when you mess with the institution and you start defunding stuff,

there's ramifications to that.

Are all police officers racist?

No.

Are there some bad apples?

Yes.

Should those people be held accountable?

Absolutely.

And so I think that that same mindset of, hey,

the system is corrupt.

Policing is corrupt.

You're tinkering with things that are going to have ramifications

and they're not good.

And so we saw it in major cities with with law enforcement the defunded police movement and now everyone's kind of coming around now and going ah we probably shouldn't have defunded the police we probably should better fund the police and when you look at the data most people in in black and brown neighborhoods actually i want to say 70% of them prefer more police in their neighborhoods.

They want more order and protection from the bad guys, not less, right?

And so I think, again,

you're tinkering and you're messing with stuff, but you don't understand the ramifications of what you're really saying.

And so bad police, they should be held accountable.

They should go to jail.

If If they misbehave, absolutely.

Bad pastors, they should be held accountable.

If they break the law, they should go to jail.

But how prevalent is it?

How pervasive is it?

That's my concern.

And I don't think the data supports that it is as pervasive as Nathan has laid out.

Do you, I mean, do you, do you disagree with his end message that churches and pastors should be transparent with their finances if they're receiving donations to run their church?

Yes.

I think pastors and churches should be transparent, and I think most are.

The question is, what do we mean by transparent?

I worked with adults with developmental disabilities from 2010 to 2012.

It was one of the most fulfilling jobs I had.

I had to pick up a group of three folks.

One of them had high-functioning autism.

One of them had high-functioning Down syndrome,

take them to the gym, take them to school, take them, just kind of do their day with them, right?

It was such a fun job.

And I remember we had an all-staff meeting.

i remember we had an all staff meeting and uh our president and our vice president was there and i remember finding out that um

the president of this organization or the ceo of this this nonprofit organization made like 150 grand a year and the the uh

vice president made like 100 grand a year.

And as a 25-year-old kid that was struggling on the front lines doing this work, I was pissed.

Like, what do you mean he's making 150K?

We're doing the work on the the front lines, right?

Now, I didn't have to see those people again.

I didn't have to see, I saw them once a year and that was it, right?

Now, imagine if I, as a 25-year-old kid, have to do life with that person every single week and hear them preach every single week and have to, and get counsel from them every single week, knowing exactly what they made.

I don't think that's a healthy dynamic.

So, should churches be transparent and accountable?

Absolutely.

And most are.

What Nathan is asking for is he wants to know what every pastor pastor makes to the dollar because if he's a giving member.

And it's just a different dynamic than in the nonprofit world, right?

And so, no, I don't think pastors need to reveal what they make.

I don't think every staff member needs to reveal what they make.

I don't think that's helpful.

I don't think when you're doing life on life with people is helpful.

People naturally are going to deal with envy and jealousy, depending on what season of life they're in, especially if you're young and you feel like the world is against you.

So, no.

So I think there's transparency, but there's not, you know, I don't need to know everything about your life.

You know,

our church, Rhythm Church in Oceanside, you met my pastor earlier, we put out a book, like a magazine every year where you get to see exactly how much came in.

You get to see exactly where the money went.

You get to know how much was spent on staff, how much was spent on buildings, how much we give away to missions, how much we give away to the community.

Every single thing is, but you're not going to find, you're not going to walk in and find out exactly what my pastor makes.

You're not going to find out

what the admin makes.

And it's lumped in as a group.

It's lumped in as a group.

Yeah, it's lumped in as a group.

And I think that, by the way, the bigger the churches are, usually the more transparent they are because they have external audits.

They spend less money on staffing.

They spend less money on

building because just sheer volume.

And they spend way more money on

giving and missions and serving the community.

So, and if people, and if a church doesn't provide that sort of data, people have the agency to go to a different church.

Right.

There are churches right now.

The pastor who married me and my wife, the deacons and the elders vote on his salary.

everything is transparent you you know he has a parsonage on site next to the church everything is so there are churches like that and i would say if you want a church like that praise god go find a church like that if you want to know where every dollar is going and you want the deacons to approve every stapler that gets bought like cool man might as well talk like go do it but when you're when you give a and this really happened when you give a 20 donation to a church and then you email them or call them and say, hey, I want all your financial records and I want to know what your pastor makes.

I think you're a little out of pocket at that point.

Yeah, you know, I don't disagree with that.

And that's something that I thought about after that interview when he was talking about I donated to that church.

And I, you know, it's, it's like, okay, but did you donate a dollar?

And now you're demanding all these answers, maybe showing up at somebody's house with a camera crew.

They're blasting

they're not transparent.

Demanding transparency.

I mean, I don't, you know, I mean, I run a for-profit business, but if somebody was at my front, in my front yard with a bunch of cameras and a microphone and demanding my financials,

it probably would have ended a lot worse than it did

with wherever he was.

But I do, I mean, I don't know how you would

do the, I mean, I don't know exactly how you would do the transparency.

I like the grouping it in, you know, all of the staff.

This is how much staff we have, and this is how much is allocated to that.

And again, most bigger churches do that.

And they get external audits.

They do that.

And the funny thing is with Nate, what happened to him was awful, man.

What he went through with the pastor that mentored him and

that dude being convicted of

sexual assault against his own daughter that they adopted,

that rocked our entire region where we live.

Like everyone was devastated by that because that's a good church.

I don't even want to say the name of the church, but anyone from the region knows what church I'm talking about.

That was a good church.

And the pastor was a good pastor.

And my friend there is still one of the pastors there.

And they do an amazing job of reaching the community and helping people.

And they have one of the best mental health counseling programs in the area.

That's like Christian counseling where you can go to them.

But what happened to Nate and the pastor that then committed that is awful.

And it rocked our entire area.

But what happens is when something bad happens to you, Like to me as a kid, we develop a schema for seeing everything through that lens.

So like I had a schema of like church is bad, church is evil.

Church just wants to harm me.

This is all BS.

This is all nonsense.

I had the same schema.

And it takes a while to detangle that schema and say, well, let me not generalize and say all churches are this way.

No, this was my experience.

And what's the general data and the general consensus on it?

And

when you look at the data, the data just doesn't reflect this conclusion that churches are all stealing, churches are all unethical, churches are right, or not all, but most.

And I think that the distinguishment is any abuse is bad

any abuse is bad and any abuse should be called out and i'll lock arms with nate in a heartbeat and say man if kenneth copeland owns a 19 000 parsonage and like

no that's not that's not good right but then what what he's doing is now that's impacting young men who really need the church.

And now they're looking at their pastor side eye and they're looking at the institution side eye, not understanding that, man, Jesus established the church, like Jesus established both in a, where two or three are gathered, I'm with them, and in the local gathering, and sometimes in large gatherings.

We see all the above.

We see home churches in the New Testament, and we see them gathering in Acts, and there's thousands of people there.

So this idea that, you know, this is good, this is bad, it's like bad is bad.

Good is good.

There are big churches that are doing great, great work.

There are small churches that are not doing great work,

that don't have accountability.

They rewrote the bylaws, right?

And so

how we speak about these things has ripple effects.

And if you want to tear down the institution, that's going to come with consequences.

I mean, I'm with it.

Minor correction or 19,000 square foot home, not $19,000 home.

Excuse me.

Sorry.

Thank you.

19,000 square foot parsing there.

Minor difference, sir.

Big difference.

But,

you know,

another thing that I don't think that

Nathan didn't highlight it, I think this may have been,

I probably should have picked up on it.

I should have picked up on it quicker.

But, you know, one of the things that he had said is that, you know, the 14, I think he said it was a 14-point guideline on the IRS that

they go into.

Something that we didn't discuss is what, and he said it, but we didn't dive into it, is that

it attracts criminals to open churches as a facade.

You know, and we, we, I should have gone down that rabbit hole more.

I didn't really broach it at all.

Sometimes it just doesn't hit me until the interview's over.

But, you know, I think one of the things, and I do think this is an important point, that

the guidelines are so lenient and allow, you know, no transparency that it actually,

and that's why I think where he was going with the Hells Angels, is that

it can attract criminals to build their organization.

in the church is actually a facade.

You know, and so that alleviates having to be transparent about where funding's coming you know if it's if it's from who knows drugs whatever right it's money laundering exactly oh yeah great money laundering way or a great way great way to launder money and we did not highlight that enough and uh it should have been highlighted enough but you know what other um like i said i've i've gotten a ton of texts from people emails a lot of from people that i actually that i really respect yeah and um

so i just you know, I really want to dive in and get, you know, the other side of the coin here.

So what other, what other things did he

can I read some data to you?

Absolutely.

Okay.

So here's here's some here's some data.

So I already said this to you.

Average full-time pastor's salary in America is $58,000.

That's the medium, right?

Average teacher's salary is $74,000.

So most pastors are making less than public school teachers.

I love public school teachers.

God bless public school teachers.

I prefer pastors to get paid more than public school teachers.

Lifeway Research reports that nearly half, 47% of evangelical pastors are bivocational, according to a national congregant study done in 2021.

Being a pastor is hard, man.

42% of U.S.

pastors said they've seriously considered leaving full-time ministry in the past year.

So this is a study that was just released by Lifeway Research.

Relevant magazine just reported on it.

Now,

here's the pros of church that don't get talked about enough.

And again, as a kid that like, if it wasn't wasn't for the local church, I would not be sitting here with you right now.

I don't even know if I'd be alive right now, right?

Harvard's nurses health study followed 74,000 women for 16 years and found those who went to church more than once a week had a 33% lower risk of dying.

Wow.

It's bigger effect than many medicines showing that faith actually adds years

to your life.

Wow.

So me growing up poor on welfare single-parent home, right?

Man,

the church gave me the framework for the healthy rhythms in my life, right?

Here's another one.

Harvard also found that women who went weekly were five times less likely to die by suicide.

And both men and women had dramatically fewer deaths from despair, up to 68% lower risk.

So in a world where we know deaths of despair is rising, especially you're connected to a lot of the SEAL community and, right?

Man, there's a strong connection to deaths of despair and suicide being mitigated by people who go to church regularly, right?

And for me, I had a lot of despair and I needed hope as a kid.

And that's that church was a segue for that.

You can interrupt on any of these if you want.

2016 study in the American Journal of Psychiatry showed that attending church reduces the risk of developing depression later in life, even after adjusting for prior mental health issues.

Wow.

Right.

How many young people are dealing with incredible levels of anxiety right now?

Astronomical amount.

42% of Gen Z say that they feel hopeless about the future.

47% of Gen Z is higher amongst women, say that they constantly feel anxiety almost all the time.

Damn, 47%.

And I can send all this data to you guys, too, if you guys want to link it below.

Anxiety is at an all-time high, man.

And there's a, I'm not saying these are causations.

I'm not saying these are one-to-one, but I'm saying there's very, very clear correlations of people who are going to church having less rates of depression, less rates of

despair, less likely to commit suicide.

You know?

Yeah, you know, that's, that, that is,

I mean, all these things, you know,

when I was saying I had a,

it was a big decision for me to, to do that, to conduct that interview.

These are the things that I didn't want to take away from people.

Yeah.

You know, and

those are, you know, not to call them minor things, but, you know, the major one being I don't want to steer anybody away from Christ because I think that's where a lot of people find Christ, you know, and, and, um,

and that's where they learn.

And, and, and,

you know,

another thing is regardless of, you know, regardless of the pastor's motives and, and, and what they're doing, it's still, you know, I think it's still a good message that they put out, whether they're, you know,

overspending or overpaid or buying jets or living a 19,000 square foot home or not.

Like people are, you know, they are being rejuvenated.

They are turning into better people.

They are leaning into Christ, you know, going to church.

And so, you know, his, you know, we had a discussion about, you know, what is the church?

And I'm with him, you know, that, and, and I mentioned

one of my mentors, Todd Bell, you know, he lives here.

We do, we haven't done it for a while, but we do a home Bible study.

And that was one of the first things that I learned is that the church is, you know, according to him, I agree with him, the church is the living body of believers, not a brick and mortar.

But, you know, Nathan doesn't, he doesn't, you know, I don't think he steps foot in a church.

I think Nathan actually does go to church from a conversation he had with my friend.

I want to say Jeff from Church Disrupted.

So I think he goes to church like once or twice a month.

I'm not sure if he goes regularly, but the idea about the building is interesting.

It's the building,

you're right.

Church is the community, church is

the camaraderie, But church is also the local ecclesia.

That word church means local gathering.

It's almost like a governmental term in the original Greek.

So the church gathered in big groups on Solomon's porch outside of the temple, and they gathered in homes.

And then the moment they could gather in buildings, they did.

And that's around 175 AD.

And this is not according to me.

This is, I'm going to butcher his name, but David Guzek

did a whole lecture series on church history.

And people can look up his series, and I could send that over to you guys as well.

But it breaks down the eras of the church.

And so around 150 to 200, the moment that it got a little more relaxed under Roman occupation and the church could meet in buildings, they did meet in buildings for pragmatic reasons.

We meet in the home, but we also meet in large groups and we come together for corporate worship, liturgy, the reading of the scriptures, encouragement.

So communion, right?

Those things, the sacraments.

So I think it's and both.

I don't think it's either or.

I think the home church is where you're known and where you're connected.

But I think the bigger gathering, there's nothing like worshiping with hundreds of other people you know uh we saw charlie kirks memorial you know and how beautiful was it to see chris tomlin up there and my buddy phil wickham up there leading worship and a hundred thousand people singing to jesus there's a beautiful part about corporate uh gatherings and worship you know just again just because it's big doesn't mean it's bad

yeah can i keep going on some of these stats yeah keep going harvard's human this is harvard harvard's human flourishing program found that people who attend church weekly are 30 to 50 less likely to get divorced.

And couples who go together are the most stable.

Coming from a broken family, coming from a single parent home,

my wife comes from a single parent home.

The 2008 recession, we got married in 2008, in the middle of the recession,

the church was absolutely the backbone to help us build a stable marriage coming from utter dysfunction.

People talk a lot about the divorce rate, right?

We know the number one correlation to young men going down the dark path path is not having the father in the home.

And what you see amongst churchgoers is they're more likely to stay married, to get married, to stay married, to have healthy marriages.

And I think that's so crucial, you know, is just fathers in the homes with their kids and building solid families and 30 to 50% less likely to get divorced.

A lot of good coming out of there.

Yeah.

The national ad health study used advanced methods to show that teens who go to church are less likely to use marijuana, drink, or smoke.

Strong, strong decline in that.

Long-term U.S.

household data shows that regular attenders give three to four times more to charity each year than non-attenders, around $3,000 versus $700 a year.

So church ends up shaping our generosity.

You become a more generous person.

You keep that open-hand mentality because you're trained to be generous.

You're trained to give.

We look at the gospel story is Jesus gave everything, gave his life for us.

And so there's a byproduct.

So folks who are in church are way more generous.

700 for the average person, 3,000 a year in charitable donation for the churchgoer.

A 2022 study in the Journal Nature found that communities with more cross-class friendships, and this is me, like poor and I'm around folks that are wealthy.

Poor and I'm around men that are stable.

So communities with more cross-class friendships, often built in churches, have much higher rates of upward mobility for poor kids.

So just access to a mentor, just access to a Bible study leader that's financially stable, and I'm coming from welfare, more, more opportunities for upward mobility.

Yeah.

I could keep going, man.

There's so many.

Let's talk about tithing.

Yeah, let's talk about tithing.

That's something I didn't know about until Nathan came here.

And you talked about that in that video as well.

So what is it?

Where did it come from?

Should we be doing it?

So the tithe is an Old Testament law, primarily around agriculture.

And it wasn't just 10%.

It was probably around 23%.

And it's talking about, hey,

the first fruits that are coming in, you should be giving to those.

The what groups?

The first fruits from your crops.

You're talking about an agricultural society.

So as they're getting grain and all that sort of stuff, they're tithing off of their grain.

And they're also, it also took care of the priests.

There was a component to it of like a, almost like a civic use for sometimes infrastructure and stuff like that as well.

So it's to take care of the Levites, but then there was also stuff to take care of just the society as a whole.

Who are the Levites?

The priests in the Old Testament.

Okay.

Yeah.

So the Levites are the priests, they would minister in the temple.

And so the tithe would go to them to care for them.

And so it's an old, it's a it's a it's a it's a one of the commandments in the Old Testament, and it

had multiple utilities to it.

In our modern day context, we as followers of Jesus, we don't follow the letter of the law for the Levitical law, but we do extract principles from it, right?

And there are certain laws that are moral.

There are certain laws that are civic.

There are certain laws that are

identifying markers for the Jewish people, right?

Tithing, those sorts of things.

And so today, in our context, New Testament Christianity, with the letters of Paul, we're called to radical generosity.

We're called to give and be and be generous, open-handed, not under compulsion, but to be consistent in our giving.

And so when most people are talking about tithing, they're not saying you have to give a literal 10%

or God's going to curse you.

Generally speaking, there are some people that do that.

But generally speaking, when we're talking about tithing, we're using a shorthand for saying, hey, this is a great principle for you to walk out.

There's something to this.

In the same way, we would say Sabbath is good for you, right?

Most of us, we believe in Sabbath.

I'm assuming you probably take a day off at least once a week.

Maybe you might turn your phone off.

Maybe you may not turn your phone off.

Maybe you don't do any work.

But you practice the principle of Sabbath.

Now, in the Old Testament, they got really gnarly with the Sabbath laws, right?

Like you couldn't do any work, you couldn't do this.

And so we take Sabbath and we say, yeah, taking a day off is good.

Yes and amen.

Every single person should take a day off.

And so in the same way we use to tithe, we use it as a short form.

We're not saying, hey, if you don't give a 10, 10%, you are cursed and you're disobedient.

We're saying, hey, this is a great financial principle to live by.

Learn to live on 90 and give 10.

And for me and my wife, man, we've consistently given above 10% for decades while we were struggling.

We just said, hey, we're always, we're going to carve out.

generosity.

That is a value of ours.

And we're going to consistently give at least 10%.

It's a rule of thumb.

It's not a law.

No one's saying you're going to go to hell if you you don't give 10%, but it's a good benchmark to say, hey, you know,

none of it is mine anyway.

It's all God's.

God's giving me money and letting me steward it, manage it for him.

So we're going to give 10.

We're going to look for opportunities to give to other charities.

We're going to give the

single mom in our community and try to take care of them as well.

And we're going to save and we're going to invest.

And then we're going to enjoy the fruits of our labor as well.

And I think if you look at any

financial expert, they would put together those four things.

Save, give, invest, enjoy.

This is whether it's Dave Ramsey or secular psychology would tell you there's something to giving.

In the Christian world, we just say, hey, we're going to use shorthand or tithe, and we're going to say, that's a good principle to live by, but we're not going to condemn you to hell for it.

If you don't give, okay, we understand, right?

And so, but we've practiced it.

We practiced it when we were in debt.

We practiced it while we were getting out of debt.

We practice it now.

And we give above 10% now.

And then if you factor in all the charities and all the other stuff,

because I think

we give what we value to.

So if I value my local church, if I value the communication of the gospel, I'm going to give to it.

I want to support it.

If people value your show, they partner with you on Patreon as they should because they value you.

And so this idea of like giving is somehow bad or it's evil or it's, you don't, you're not supposed to do it tie that, I would agree with Nathan.

I would say, yeah, I don't, I don't think it's a literal 10%.

I think it's a principle that most of us say that's a good principle to live by.

I mean, does it always have to do with money?

Or I mean, can you give time?

Can you give I think you can give everything.

I think you give time.

I think you give resource.

I think

you can be generous with so many different things.

For us, it is money because I don't want, you know, there's a joke we always say, like the last part of a man to get saved is his wallet.

You know, we're so attached to our money.

We're so attached to our finances.

And so I think it can be multiple things, but I think when you're willing to sacrifice financially and say, hey, these are my values.

This is what I believe in.

And I'm willing willing to contribute in this way.

Um,

something unlocks, and I don't, I don't, I can't even put words to it, but something unlocks and has always unlocked for me.

Can I give you a quick tithing story?

This is gonna sound so cheesy.

Okay, so

I come to faith, I'm trying to live this stuff out.

This is like I'm surrendered to Jesus.

I had this 1987 Toyota Celica.

This is back in the day, I don't know if you had any friends like me, but we would put the big 10-inch subs in the trunk and drive around, boom, boom, right?

And I had this Celica, and one day

I come out and someone broke into my car and all of my sound system is jacked.

It's all gone.

Right.

And I'm like, man,

this sucks.

I call the police.

The police come.

The police run fingerprints and they do this whole investigation, right?

This whole thing.

So I forget about it.

I start going to church.

I start giving.

I'm just, I'm working a pizza hut.

Like I'm not making any money.

My little $250 check.

I'm, I'm just going, I'm in faith.

faith, I'm going to practice this principle because I think there's something to the principle of giving.

In faith, I'm not lying to you.

A year and a half later, but it was the first month I started giving to my church, started, started being generous,

I get a check in the mail for $800.

They had caught the kid doing something else that broke into my car, threw the fingerprints, made him pay restitution.

and sent me the money, didn't call me nothing.

And I got a random check in the mail for $800.

Wow.

As a kid, to me, and I'm like, I just started doing this.

And I'm not saying every time you give, God's going to send magic fairy money from heaven.

Like that, that's not the point.

But for me, it was like, I'm just going to be faithful with this little bit I got.

And all of a sudden, that same week, I get a $800 check, you know?

And the weird part is, man, the more I'm generous, the more I give money away, the more I'm just willing to just go, Lord, it's yours anyway.

What do you want me to do with this?

Like, I'm going to provide for my family.

I'm going to save.

I'm going to invest.

I'm going to do all that stuff.

Lord, what do you want me to do with this, man?

Is it being generous to that waitress that, man, you could tell she's had a rough week?

And let me just be radically generous with her and just blow her mind, you know, and then like do that.

And they run and chase you out through the restaurant.

You're crying because that mattered so much.

I think that's the heart posture.

It's not about that.

That's how I like to give.

I like to, I mean, I'm very.

I'm very choosy on who I give to, both time and money.

But, you know, I mean, we, we, a lot of times before the interview, we'll go to breakfast, stuff like that.

And, and I always,

always over tip

because, I mean, I know where we live.

It's hard to get by here as a, as a waitress, you know, and, and so I always do that.

I'm always looking, but I just, you know,

I love to give.

Almost, you know, I've been told by numerous people that, you know, I over give and that causes, that, that could cause resentment.

I struggle with that sometimes.

But,

but, you know, know, I'm very, I'm very choosy because I want to know that whatever I'm giving, whether that's time or money, that it's not going to be wasted, you know?

And so I'm always, I'm looking for somebody that's going to, that's going to, that's going to use what I give them in the right way to better their life.

You know, and you don't always see that with a church or a nonprofit or, you know, I'm not picking on those because there's a lot of good ones.

You know, there's a lot of good nonprofits out there, a lot of good churches out there.

I've given to both.

But, you know, I like to see the direct impact.

And I like to see the, you know, I, even with, you know, a lot of the people that I bring on the show, I mean, there's, there's, there's guys that I've been watching and women, you know, for years.

Like, are they really trying to do what they say they're doing?

You know, are they, you know, are they on the hamster wheel and they're not getting any traction?

You know, are they going to give up?

You know, is the, is, is the money going to get to them?

You know, when they do make it, are they going to be,

flaunting all kinds of

erotic shit all over the internet?

You know, and

that's not who I want to give to.

I want to give to the person that's going to appreciate it, use it, better their life, better their family life, better the world.

You know, and so, I mean, and in God's eyes, you know, does it matter who you give to?

Does it have to be to the church?

Can it be to anybody?

Can it just be generosity in general?

Yeah, I think, yes, I think it's ASN.

I think you're a generous person.

You know how fun it is to give.

I think for me, man, I'm so in love with my local church and I'm so in love with how God is using us.

We do a thing called Blessed Local, where we just give a lot away to our community and go above and beyond to be generous to the single mom, to be generous to those who are struggling.

We give a lot of weight to missions.

We do a lot with disaster relief in other parts of the world.

And I want my pastors to do well.

I want them to be able to afford a home and buy a home in the city they live in.

I want them to be able to,

I want them to be able to send their kids to college without worrying about finances.

I want them to do well because I value them.

We value public school teachers.

I value my pastor a lot.

And I value the men and women that are like,

they're laying their life down.

They're preaching.

And this is their service.

This is their contribution.

I want them to be well taken care of.

And so I have a church that I'm so in love with.

And I love everything that's happening at Rhythm Church.

And I would encourage people,

if you're at a church and they're not transparent transparent with the finance like i just had a buddy that hit me up and was like hey man like

i like my friend called this church and he gives there and they wouldn't share any of the information with him you know and i was like oh well that sounds a little weird most churches do but if that's the case he might want to look for another church if they're not if they're not willing to offer what anything they're doing with the money i wouldn't want to give either and so i think the the gathering of the local believers every week with the preaching and the teaching and the discipleship and the community that's happening,

I value that.

And I think the scriptures call us to value that.

And I think we should give to that.

Does it have to be a percentage and some legalistic thing?

I don't think it has to.

But to me, man,

I have it by the grace of God.

And generosity is the antidote to greed.

And I think we have a lot of consumerism and self-centeredness in America.

And if I could be generous, And by the way, I give beyond just churches.

There's amazing nonprofits I partner with every month.

There's missionaries I partner with every month.

I give beyond just my local church, but I get to see the impact of what happens in my local church.

I get to see the young men.

We're next to Camp Pendleton, big Marine base right there in Oceanside.

Men coming in, they're broken,

they're hurting.

They start coming to church, they start getting discipled, people are pouring into them, and within six months, they're totally different people.

You know, like I value that and I'm going to go above and beyond.

My goal, and I'm not trying to like brag or flex and maybe we need to cut this out, but like my goal is to be.

No, not taking it that way.

Yeah.

Didn't come off that way.

My goal is to be the single biggest giver in my church.

Like, I want to be the single biggest giver in my church.

And that's what I'm shooting for.

I'm not there yet.

I'm not there yet.

But that's, that's, I work hard because I value these things.

Do you think that, do you think that churches can overemphasize growth instead of spreading the message?

Absolutely.

I think churches can do all sorts of goofy things.

I think overemphasizing growth, I think overemphasizing,

maybe overemphasizing politics, you know, I think overemphasizing

the social programs i think there's all sorts of things they can do the the idea is how many people can you be faithful with is it a thousand is it fourteen hundred is it ten thousand is it five thousand right what what are people doing you know in in our church in our sit the church that planted my church is a church called north coast uh vista and ironically enough when i had nate when i had a conversation with nathan in january i would love to hear if nathan would acknowledge that he said this to me when i told him the circles i'm in and i said hey my this is who my pastor is this is the pastor who pastors him and plants it helped plant our church he told me oh bro you're you're connected to the gold standard of of this stuff these are these you're around guys that are doing the best at this when it comes to transparency i wonder if he would say that now but i i used to think growth is bad big church is bad and then i went to north coast and i met pastor chris brown and what happened was man um

One of my close friends, he lived in my studio.

I used to rent two condos next to each other.

Me and my family lived out of one.

I had my studio kind of like this, not as nice as this, but in the downstairs of the other.

And the upstairs, we'd always have rooms, different rappers, creative people, sometimes family would stay in the rooms.

And one of my friends,

his name was Tanner, Tanner Ross.

He got leukemia.

And

he,

I was downstairs.

He came down and told me he was going to the hospital.

We thought it was nothing.

He got leukemia and he beat it the first time.

But the second time,

on Thanksgiving Day of November, November 2022, Thanksgiving Day, he ended up, he came back and he died.

And I watched for those several years how North Coast Church wrapped their arms, not just around Tanner, but around his wife, around his family, around his friends,

how they showed up for them.

And I got to see a big church disciple and love and lead and pay and take care of and sacrifice for a dear friend of mine.

And so I was critical of churches up until that point, critical of big churches.

And now my scheme has shifted where I said, okay, yes, I'm a local church guy, but like, man,

big churches aren't bad.

They're doing good.

And when I saw that and I saw Chris Brown and,

yeah, man, I just,

I saw it up close.

You know, I saw the mercy and the grace.

I feel goofy, even crying about it because it's a good thing.

It's a good thing to see churches do good things.

And it's the biggest church in our city.

It's a $30 million budget.

And Pastor Chris Brown is one of the most transparent people I've ever sat with.

And I've seen him be generous to my pastor and plant us and take care of them, church.

And I've seen him be generous to me.

And that's when my mind, like...

It shifted like big is not bad.

Oftentimes they have more resources.

And to see them lock arms and be there for this family.

And I'm still, I just saw Tanner's parents.

His dad just came to my book launch event.

And they're still hurting, but the church is still with them.

They're still next to him.

We did a vlog on the church because I said, I got to, I got to highlight what God's doing here.

We did a vlog and it was like investigating the biggest mega church in my area.

You know, we're being spicy with the title.

While we're doing the vlog, his mama's there

and she's just there and they're just taking care of her and loving on her, giving her something to do, giving her dignity after burying a child.

You know, this is years later at this point.

So I got to see it up front.

Like I got to see it up front and go.

And they showed up.

They showed up for my friend.

Wow.

You want to take a break?

Yeah, let's take a break.

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all right we're back from the break

i want to move into you know we're seeing this at least i i think we're seeing it the internet makes it look like that right but it seems like actually it is happening you know i've tons i told you the story about eddie penny earlier you know uh big part of my journey to christ and uh a mentor of mine and you know we're seeing this big wave of

the revival of Christianity.

You know, and, you know, one of the things that I always bring up that's like a public display of all this is,

I think it was the University of Georgia where, you know,

they showed this tailgate party and all these kids, these college kids are getting baptized in the back.

It looks like a Kegger.

It looks like a fraternity party.

And then, and then you, and then you look and it's people getting baptized.

And, you know, I'd mentioned, you know, Eddie came on my show and shit and shared how he got saved.

And then, I mean, it was at least a year.

Every single person that came in here on the show had brought up Jesus Christ and

coming to the Holy Spirit and getting into the Bible and all that stuff.

And these are, you know, these are

these type of individuals that I'm talking about on the show.

I mean, a lot of them have seen, you know, I mean, you've seen the worst of humanity as a seven-year-old, you know, but these guys are coming back from war.

They've seen,

they have seen a lot of carnage, you know, and so for that kind of revival to happen, you know, amongst that, it takes a lot.

And, I mean, we're seeing it through the veteran community.

We're seeing it in

Generation Z.

I mean, my parents went back.

I mean, a lot of, I'm,

I don't go to church, but I'm very, I'm very into it.

I want to learn.

That's one of the reasons you're here.

I want to learn from you.

And I'm bringing on people like John Burke, Lee Strobel, Priest.

Lee Strobel's awesome, man.

I read Case for Christ.

It dropped me.

So good.

He's one of my favorite people in the book.

He's amazing.

But he's got a new book coming out called The Case for Christmas this year.

Oh, dope.

Yeah, yeah.

But anyways, we're seeing, you know, I think we're seeing this huge revival in Christianity, not just in the country, but worldwide.

You know, and I wanted to, you know, get your thoughts on that.

Well,

I think people have been faced with evil and discovered darkness.

And when you face and you see darkness, you see

COVID post-COVID, you see how dark the world gets.

I think that the natural reaction is, well, if there's evil, there has to be a good.

And I think it's honestly just walking through that paradigm.

For me, I was coming to faith around the time of 9-11.

So it was like, man, you see those towers go down.

You see, that sort of stuff.

You see celebrating in parts of the world.

And you go, ooh, there's some evil in this world.

There has to be good.

There has to be light.

So I'd say that's what you're describing.

I think that would be my first assessment, especially folks who've gone to war and seen the

evil of all of it, the darkness of all of it.

I think you see that and you go,

there has to be the opposite of this.

And done it.

And done it too.

I mean, you know, I've talked a lot about this on the show, and I don't agree with all the reasons that we're over there.

One of the reasons I left the agency is

I didn't understand the mission anymore.

You

And I think that a lot of things that went down were, there was a lot of nuance to them, and maybe we shouldn't have been in parts of the world.

But not only,

I don't think it's just the fact that people see evil.

I think it's also the fact that it is so

hard to find actual truth these days.

in everything with the with

I think it stemmed from COVID, but I mean, everything, I mean, right now, the big thing, right, is Charlie Kirk's assassination.

Who did it?

What was it?

What killed him?

A lot of conspiracy type stuff around the sniper shop that may or may not be conspiracy.

But

so what I'm getting at is, I mean, it's

with all these big events that happened, you know, COVID, the wars, Israel.

Charlie Kirk's assassination.

I mean,

the list goes on and on and on, right?

I mean, whatever, and there's multiple narratives around each one of these things, right?

And so

whatever narrative that you want to buy into, you can convince yourself that's what happened.

And

I mean,

do you know what I mean?

I mean, like Charlie Kirk's assassination, right?

It was the far left.

It was the far right.

It was a trans person.

It was Israel.

It was, you know, I mean, it's, it's, and, and there are very compelling factors in each one of those different

avenues of what may have happened, right?

And so, I think, I think that

for me, I'm extremely confused.

You know, it's, it's like,

fuck, man, all these guys have very compelling arguments on what happened, and there's a lot of compelling arguments on COVID, and there's a lot of all of these things.

And so, it becomes almost impossible to find actual truth.

Jesus says, you know, I am the truth, right?

So

I think that plays,

the confusion on finding truth also plays a big role in why people are coming back.

I mean, would you agree with that?

Absolutely.

I think

I love that you pointed to that verse, right?

John, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

And that word for truth, the way,

Jesus in the Christian worldview is the only thing that makes sense of reality.

Because if you don't have Jesus, you don't have anything to anchor reality on.

How do we know we're not in a simulation right now?

Because I believe Jesus is the way and the truth and the life.

So I think everything is anchored in Jesus being the truth.

And then what we can know is I know through who Jesus is, through his time on earth, and then the good that's impacted that.

And I think that's crucial because to your point, we're living in alternate universes, it seems.

It's like you can frame either, anything the way you want to.

Now, here's my deeper theory, and then I do want to come back to the idea of revival.

This is what I think.

I think

post-social media,

so many people have seen, you've dealt with this personally, but so many people now are so chronically online that they're consuming the most traumatic stuff that most people are not accustomed to seeing.

The death of George Floyd, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the crazy lockdowns with COVID, the deaths of despair and increases.

Is the medicine worse than the disease, right?

In terms of the byproducts of the lockdowns from COVID, potential vaccine injury, all of these different things.

And what I think has happened is we've consumed so much trauma

that

people's brains are cooked.

Like they can no longer decipher.

reality.

And so everything is black and white.

Everything is binary.

Everything is so so polarized and so charged.

And you're either deifying Charlie or you're demonizing Charlie.

And it's like, dude, like, hey, let's turn the temperature down.

But I think this generation is cooked, man.

I think they've consumed so much media and they've seen so many traumatic things that the cognitive distortion is binary, black and white, all or nothing thinking about every issue.

Name an issue, it's black or white.

Israel's either the heroes or they're the villain.

That's it.

No nuance, right?

And in your work, your line of work, and in my life as well, you start traveling and seeing and you're like, wait, there's, there's more nuance to some of these things, that these things are complicated.

They're not binary, that people are complicated, that we all have struggles and internal wars within our hearts that need to be redeemed and rescued, right?

And so I think that's where we're at

as a people.

Like I think as a people, we're just cooked, dude.

Chronically online, average American spends seven hours a day.

passively consuming media.

Seven hours a day.

That's not working.

That's not learning.

That's That's just passively consuming media, right?

Whether that's YouTube, Netflix, fill in a blank, right?

That's almost 50 hours a week.

And so you could find any story you want to tell to yourself.

But to your point, what story is true?

C.S.

Lewis says how the Christian story is the myth that's true,

that it transcends everything, right?

And by myth, he just means the story that's true.

It is.

transcendent in the story of Jesus and what it's done to shape history and the good that it's caused.

I don't think there's anything like it.

And so, if you're not anchoring yourself in Jesus, you have no way to make sense of anything.

There's no epistemic basis for any, you can't know anything, right?

Because that could be a deep fake,

that could be a misinformation or whatever.

And so, I think that's where we're at.

And so, I think people, rightfully so, are going, I'm so disillusioned with all this.

I need something more.

I need something deeper.

I need something ancient.

I need something transcendent.

I think that's what we're seeing with, especially young men are coming back to church.

They They say this is the first time,

I want to say within modern history that men are coming to church more than women are.

No kidding.

Yeah, young men are attending church at higher rates than young women.

And this is the first time within modern history that this has happened.

That's fascinating.

Yeah.

I did not know that.

I mean, is the biggest, do you have any insight?

Is Gen Z the biggest generation that's being revived back into the church?

So Gen Z, from the data I've looked at,

yeah, from the data I've looked at, I want to say 48% of Gen Z, non-Christian Gen Z, is Jesus curious.

So they're very open to Jesus.

They're very open to church.

They're very open, because

I think we've came to the conclusion in society that like new atheism and secularism completely failed us.

It's incoherent, right?

Because the very same folks with new atheism, Richard Dawkins and these guys,

they were the elites and they were the smart people, now they're getting canceled for saying a man is a man and a woman is a woman.

Like the worldview that you championed has imploded on itself and they've turned on you and they said, you're a bigot now for making biological statements about gender.

Like, so I think we've come to the place of like, yeah,

it's new atheism and secularism.

It doesn't work.

It doesn't work.

And so now people want something else.

And I think that that is Jesus.

Do you

find yourself thinking about spiritual warfare often?

All the time.

Is that what's going on with this search for, I I mean, it's impossible to find.

It's not impossible, but it's very, very hard to find truth these days in anything.

And so is that, do you think that spiritual warfare plays a part in that confusion?

Absolutely.

I mean, you know, Ephesians 6 says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood.

We wrestle against principalities and powers in an unseen world, that there's a realm beyond this world.

That is, I think, is acknowledged by every civilization throughout all of society.

There is something beyond this life.

There's a realm beyond this life.

And so if we're talking everything from

this phenomenon of UFOs to just this utter complete darkness of some people getting a hold, it's like there's a dark passenger in them to do what that man did to Charlie Kirk.

Like there's an unseen realm that we don't see.

And it is real.

And

it manifests itself in different ways.

And oftentimes it needs prayer.

It needs fasting.

It needs deliverance.

and there's a spiritual world that like people aren't comfortable acknowledging but i think we all sense it why does it need fasting what does that do well jesus said that they were trying to cast out demons the disciples were trying to cast out demons in the gospels and they couldn't and jesus said some only come by fasting some only come out by fasting there's something to again the spirit realm where sometimes jesus was casting out demons and the disciples were just casting out demons boom it'd go other times you just say no sometimes this requires fasting it's a there's a There's a deeper stronghold that requires more to lift this darkness.

Do you have any idea on

how demons manifest?

I mean, in Search for Truth?

I mean, is it a possession in

social media influencers?

I mean, you know, I mean, even with the Charlie Kirk stuff, I mean,

the day, probably two or three days after that happened, it was like every single time I would scroll through X

or

IG, it's a slow-mo shot, you know, a slow-mo video of him being shot in the neck.

And, I mean, and that desensitizes,

it desensitizes everybody who sees that.

And it's over.

And it's almost like a

fucking brainwashing.

You know, I mean, it's literally every post.

And

people shouldn't be seeing stuff like that, you know, in in, I mean, especially especially kids, you know, and I mean, to desensitize a kid that's on there, like, I mean, my, my kids won't be on social when they're not either.

But, but there are a lot of kids that are, it's desensitizing them, it's making it, it's be good, it's becoming normal to see that stuff.

I mean, and the week before that happened, or maybe it was two weeks, you know,

it was the Ukrainian girl that got stabbed in the neck on the subway.

And

before that, there was, there was something else.

I can't remember what it was at this point in time.

But, I mean, it's just, I mean, so I'm asking, you know, how does this, how does this happen?

How is it manifesting?

Why is it allowed to happen?

Yeah, I think that I'm not an expert in the spiritual realm, but from my understanding, like, I definitely think there's demonic elements

that are often

hijacking people when they open themselves up to darkness to then cause harm against other people.

I would say what happened to me as a child with experiencing sexual assault was a demonic thing that distorted my brain and my identity and my self self-image.

And I think when we're seeing the horrendous nature of certain things, I think there's a demonic component to then go out and harm someone or even to send something like that to someone.

Like I was getting videos of the Charlie Kirk thing from Christians, you know, and I'm like,

I don't want to see that.

Like I, I, I, and I was just

alarmed.

Like, why are we passing this around?

And so I think there, there's something demonic that happens when, when someone is causing sin, like harming someone else and then that is then propagated and passed around and and now we're consuming it we're becoming like you said desensitized to it

how it all is connected i i i don't know there's there's there's there's men like michael heiser that have done amazing research on the the the unseen realm and he has a great a great series on that um and it's evident though it's everywhere that there's there's something happening and

what happens i think from my limited experience is that you take you take these forces, someone then sins against someone else, that then causes consistent issues and trauma in their life.

They then pass it on to someone else.

And then that could even affect people's epigenetics.

Like your genetics, can then you could be more predisposed to being an alcoholic, right?

You could be more predisposed to being an addict.

All of that is passed around and you're walking through this stuff.

And so,

and Jesus.

can break those curses, right?

Jesus can lift those things, yet we still have work to do, you know?

I don't think it's a coincidence that both my mother and my father committed adultery on each other, both my mother and my father, my mother more so than my dad, struggled with alcoholism.

And then, like, I have sexual assault committed against me, and then I'm smoking weed at a young age.

Like, I think the enemy is crafty, and I don't think that stuff is a coincidence.

I mean,

here's another question I have.

You know, I mean, with how prevalent all this is, and the search for truth, and

I mean,

you could could find yourself totally

encaged in this kind of stuff by, you know, what the algorithm is serving you.

And you mentioned, you know,

average is what, seven hours a day?

Yeah, yeah.

Consuming the United States, yeah.

Social media.

And I mean, and so, you know, for those, you know, couple days and the week, week or two before that, every post I saw, it's Ukrainian girl getting stabbed in the neck.

A week later, it's Charlie, you know, and I mean, so you can, you can, it would be very easy to entrap yourself in that dynamic for a long period of time forever possibly right and so you know one of my questions I have for you is I mean

to get to heaven the only way to heaven is through you know Jesus right right that's right and so

it it it's on my mind on if somebody

has not

come to faith yet, you know,

how could they be judged for not believing when they are

entrapped in all of that?

Everywhere, you know,

it would be like being put in a room and that's all you're showed all the time, you know?

And so, you know, I don't, it's, I mean, when I see that and how often it's, you know, you're exposed to these things,

I don't know how he could blame you for not believing.

I'm just being honest.

Yeah.

No, that's, that's a great point.

What do you think about that?

I think that that is a point that is often raised of like, how could a good God send people that have never heard or maybe have heard and just haven't understood, how could he send them to hell, right?

When they're entrenched in that.

When they're entrenched in hell.

It's almost it's

we

you know, we have free will, right?

But, I mean, when you're entrenched in that, that can be

very misleading.

I think it's a very valid question.

It's a trap.

I think the way I look at it in a few different ways.

One, Romans 3.23 says, for the wages of sin is death.

So every single person has a degree of contributing to what their own sinfulness, right?

And the good news is that Jesus then comes and deals with that sin.

Now, when it comes to the issue of hell and who's going to hell and how does all that work, right?

I prefer C.S.

Lewis's view on this.

And if you've never read Mir Christianity, you would absolutely love Mere Christianity.

It's as timeless as ever, man.

You read that.

It was written during World War II and it's just like, oh my gosh, it's like he's writing about it in our time.

It's so trippy.

But C.S.

Lewis has this quote where he says,

the gates of hell are locked from the inside.

The gates of hell are locked from the inside.

So the people that are going to hell are going to hell because they want nothing to do with the light and they want nothing to do with Jesus and they want nothing to do with goodness and beauty.

The gates of hell are locked by people who are saying, I want nothing to do with this God.

Now, the question is, and this is a very deep question, is how many people are actually, that's their heart posture.

And how many people are misguided?

And how many people haven't heard yet?

And how many people is God going to redeem?

In my life, man, I feel like God just kind of scooped me up.

Like, man,

I was spinning my own wheels.

And though it was four years of wrestling, he just kind of scooped me up.

And

I don't have the answer to that.

I don't know.

I don't know how many people are like middle finger to Jesus.

I think those people definitely exist.

Like, I think when you go down the rabbit hole of like the debates with the atheists and you start getting to the bottom of it and they're like, they're judging God.

Like their position is I'm judging God.

And I think that's a very dark place to be because you have no basis for good or evil if there is no God.

How can you judge God?

Based on what standard is God good or evil if there is no God, right?

Objective morality comes downstream of an objective standard and you're an atheist.

So there is no objective standard.

So it's all subjective.

Based on your subjective standard, you're going to judge God.

That's a dark place to be because you have no basis for making any of those claims.

There's no truth claims that there's no God.

So I don't know how many people are like middle finger to God.

I want nothing to do with God.

How many people are deceived?

How many people are, man, they've been sinned against so much that they're just stuck in a pattern of addiction, right?

I do know that the wages of sin is death.

I do know that God loves the world so much that he gave his one and begotten son.

And Jesus comes.

And he doesn't run from the mess.

And he doesn't run from the darkness.

He steps right into it.

And he comes in the form of a human body, a physical, material body, and he lives amongst us and he and he and he eats food like us and he's tempted like us and he works like us and he experiences the full human experience and then through that ends up dealing with that issue of sin, right?

That issue of, hey, man, on our own, like we're all cooked.

Let's our own devices.

Every single one of us is cooked.

But there's something to this grace and this mercy that he creates a pathway to heaven.

And again, not just heaven in the afterlife, but helps us usher in a piece of heaven on earth, helps us usher in his kingdom here now.

I mean, I think everybody's been deceived to one degree or another

on the planet.

But, you know, another question for you is,

you know, the reward, the going to heaven?

I mean, are there,

do you believe that there are

levels of heaven or are you rewarded more for being faithful your entire life?

You know,

what do you think about that?

I mean, somebody that's been deceived that isn't given the middle finger to God and Jesus, I mean,

but lived a very, very sinful life versus, you know, somebody that

has been revived and is doing good and pumping good into the world and donating to good causes and spending time with people that in need.

And, you know what I mean?

Those don't balance out

to me.

Yeah.

So, so I think

this is such a great question.

I think, one,

there's rewards here and now, generally speaking, generally speaking, especially in the West, for living out God's ways.

So if you take

the Christian worldview and you apply it to your life, and you practice the faith, you practice loving your enemies, you practice prayer, you practice reading the scriptures, you practice the principles on what it means to handle your money God's way, to lead your marriage God's way, that there's rewards here and now.

You will have, generally speaking, in the West, in a state that's not oppressing Christians and we're not under Roman occupation, generally speaking, there's a lot of fruit here and now that we get to experience by aligning our lives with God's ways.

So I say that's generally true.

Then there's real persecutions of Christians getting beheaded for the name of Jesus in other parts of the world for doing the same things, right?

So it's this weird dichotomy there that's tough to deal with.

Now, when it comes to good works, I believe we're saved by grace through faith to good works.

And meaning that faith is a confidence.

I'm placing my confidence.

I'm placing my trust.

I'm placing that when me and you are organizing this conversation, my confidence is that it's happening.

We're going to meet up.

It's right.

Like I have a trust in you, even though I've never met you.

I trust that you are who you say you are, that your team is who they say they are.

So I'm placing my trust, my confidence.

And then by grace, it is a gift.

That means grace means gift.

You didn't do anything to deserve it.

I can't do anything to make God love me anymore, and I can't do anything to make God love me any less.

In the same way, my 10-year-old, who's about to enter puberty, he can't do anything to make me love him any less.

He can't do anything to make me love him anymore.

He's my son.

He belongs in my family.

It's in his best interest to be obedient.

It's in his best interest to live out his father's ways because I'm a good father and I have his best interest in mind.

That doesn't make sense to a 10-year-old's brain or an 11-year-old's brain.

I think sometimes we're the same way.

And so with regards to the works aspect, saved by grace, it's a gift through faith, a confidence and a trust.

I'm going to trust Jesus' ways, even though it don't make sense.

When I got saved, I was like, I can't have sex with my girlfriend.

Like, why can't I have sex with my girlfriend?

Like, I like having sex with my girlfriend.

It's like, nope, there's a standard and there's an ethic to how I am to treat my body.

My body's not my own.

It didn't make sense at the time, but goodness is it makes sense in hindsight on why I shouldn't have been sleeping around, right?

So

there are then good works that I'm supposed to do here and now.

And I do believe that those good works provide different rewards in heaven right how that looks i have

yeah i think there's different i'm not not different levels of heaven okay but he was faithful with little will be entrusted with much so that matthew 25 passage we see that that is a that is a foreshadowing towards heaven this is a this is the the pilot like this is the test pilot is the test drive that we get to try and and see how we're faithful and then in heaven we get opportunities to serve in different ways.

And I think people think heaven is going to be this like, we're in the clouds floating like angel, angels, heaven's going to be more real than this.

And there's going to be a new heaven and a new earth.

And there's going to be a reality that feels and tastes and smells even more real.

And it's not just going to be,

you know, floating in the clouds like angels and diapers.

Like there's going to be a real new reality that we're going to get to walk in.

And

there are then rewards for faithfulness here on earth.

How that works, I don't know.

You know, I thought where you were going is the rewards happen during your lifetime.

They do too.

And I think that, you know, that's a perspective that

I've not thought of, that if you lead a good, faithful life, then you'll be rewarded in this life.

And then maybe everybody's equal, you know,

when they get to heaven.

I think it's in both.

I think rewards in this life and rewards in the next life.

You know, the funny thing is, I think everybody in the West ties rewards with money and possessions.

But, you know, what comes to my mind is ever since I've come to faith, I've had a much clearer conscience and

less

less

how do I say less mental suffering.

Whereas more peace.

More peace.

Great way to put it.

More peace.

Peace of mind.

And then I think back about when I was

sleeping around, doing drugs, boozing, fighting, you know, all that kind of stuff.

I mean, that does not create

a clear conscience, a clear mind.

That does not bring you peace.

That brings you

mental suffering.

And consequences to that, consequences to your body, right?

From alcohol,

consequences.

I mean, I've had a, like, to me, I think of the cool kids in high school, you know, my buddies in high school.

They're not doing so well in their 30s and 40s.

You know, they got a couple different kids with a couple of different women.

They didn't develop any useful skills.

They partied a little hard.

Their bodies are starting to break down.

There's consequences, man.

And they look at my life and they're now coming around around to the faith.

You know, I was like, I was telling you guys about this 25 years ago, man.

We could have saved so much heartache and headache by just getting aligned with Jesus back then.

But that's the beautiful part about the grace of God.

Like every moment passing is another chance to turn it all around.

Every moment passing, God's graces is extended and mercies extended and we don't deserve it, but he gives it anyway.

You had mentioned earlier.

just a couple of minutes earlier, a new earth.

What do you mean, a new earth?

So in Revelation, when you're reading through the end days and how it's all going to play out, it talks about a new heaven and a new earth, that this earth will be made new.

And there's a new heaven that's going to be the, and it's going to be more real than anything we're experiencing.

Paradise on earth, paradise in heaven.

I don't know if we're going to be flying back and forth in some sort of spaceship.

I don't know how that's going to work, but that's how the scriptures describe a new heaven and new earth.

Randy Alcorn did a lot of really good work on the idea of heaven and really digging deep.

And he has short books and long books.

And the way he describes heaven,

it's nothing like

we've been conditioned to think about heaven.

What does he say?

He saw it's more real than this.

It's physical.

There's probably going to be food.

There's all the things about this life and some in heaven, right?

Like it's going to be better and more real and more transcendent.

And there won't be any sin.

There won't be any crying.

There won't be any death.

There won't be any despair.

We'll be physically in the presence of God, right?

And I don't know.

I mean, I'm going to have some questions, you know, for Jesus when I get there.

But I think it's going to be even more magnificent than we can imagine.

Interesting.

You think that?

I believe that, yeah.

I believe that.

I believe that.

But

I don't then become so heavenly-minded and I'm of no earthly good.

Because I think that's the dangerous part is that you can really start thinking about heaven that

you become disoriented with here and now.

And the here and now, I think, man, this is

what an opportunity.

As much as there's delusion and confusion and despair, what an opportunity that we get to communicate through these devices.

What an opportunity that we get to have a conversation like this.

And it goes out to millions of people that then will sit here and think deeply and ask questions.

There's never been a time like this in history.

Yes, there's a lot of dark stuff, right?

Unrestrained capitalism leads to stuff like OnlyFans and just the most dark stuff on the internet.

And then you have goodness and beauty.

You have transcendence.

You have conversations that are pointing people towards something different, aiming at something more beautiful.

That I think we take for granted as well.

I think we forget what a stellar opportunity that we have to just do so much good in the world.

You know, one of the reasons that I

like the the the home church or Bible study or whatever, whatever you want to call it, is that

it gives you the opportunity, if you're with the right group, to ask questions with zero judgment.

And that's something that I think that a lot of churches have wrong is, you know, that I don't think that there should be a,

you should never be offended by a question, a real question.

And I've asked

a lot of tough questions

to Todd in my Bible study.

And, you know, questions that I would never feel comfortable asking at church in front of people or putting a pastor, priest, minister, whatever, you know, on the spot like that, because it's become, it's become, I mean, it's like a line that you can't cross.

You know, I mean,

do you think that most churches are open to all questions?

The tough, tough, tough questions?

Or I think most churches are.

You do.

I do.

I do.

And I think that because the churches I'm connected to, the pastor is not hiding out in the green room in between services.

He's out meeting people.

He's conversing.

He's having conversations with people.

He's answering hard questions in between the services.

So you met my pastor.

Every single week, there's guys asking him questions in between every service.

Every single week, he's talking to people.

You know, every single week, we're engaging with the felt needs of what's happening in our church.

I think one of the things about

what I get to do that's amazing is like, I'll do live events now and we'll do kind of like a conversations like this in a live podcast format.

I might give a talk and then we're going to their questions.

Ask us anything.

I'm not ashamed of anything.

Ask me anything.

And I might, and the answer might be, I don't know.

I don't know how heaven works.

And

I don't know, but I have hope and I have trust and I have confidence.

I think the hard part, though, is people want

answers for everything.

And the reality is there's a degree of tension that we get to walk through in life.

It's a degree of tension we get to walk through in faith.

I don't have all the answers, I could only have confidence and trust.

And I think this is how the world works because this seems to be the most clear explanation of reality.

Let's move into end times.

I mean, we kind of touched on at the beginning of the podcast, you know, brought up the verse or the

what I read in Matthew.

And I mean,

it sounds like today.

You know, there's another one.

Shit, what I can't even remember what it was.

Is it,

I can't remember

the chapter.

But it's basically talking about,

oh, it's Romans.

And it was talking about the fall of the Roman Empire.

And, you know,

confusion of genders, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a crazy passage.

Man, I love your Bible recall.

You're new, but you got some good recall because you're citing books.

And I might find a chapter for you, but you got some great recall.

Yeah, you're describing Romans 1.

You know, we wrote scripture on every exterior stud in this entire.

I heard about that.

Yeah, you guys, was it the Bibles that you guys put in the cornerstones of the?

We put a Bible in each corner, and then we, as a team, we wrote scripture on every single exterior stud.

Yeah, that's so good.

So you're referencing Romans.

You want to finish your thought and I could read it?

Go ahead.

I'm finished.

Romans 1, 18, the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them.

So that's that question of do they know, do they not know?

It says God has made it plain to them through nature, through our mind, right?

For since the creation of the world,

God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have already been seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

For although they knew God,

they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him,

but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore, God gave them over.

in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.

They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the creator who has forever praised amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful acts.

Even their women exchanged natural or sexual relations for unnatural ones.

In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.

Men committed shameful acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

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Yeah, exactly.

I mean, it means what it says, which is like, man,

instead of worshiping God as God, they started worshiping creation.

And if you don't, if you, if you aren't aligned with creator, you will always worship creation.

And worshiping creation could look like...

like actually making idols out of stuff.

Worshiping creation can look like worshiping the human body, worshiping sex, worshiping pleasure.

That could then look like what we see now with some of this wild ideology that says you were born in the wrong body.

God didn't make you this way.

And those are deeply theological statements that if you think about it, it's not that my pastor said this a couple weeks ago.

It's not that the church has become more political.

It's that politics have become more religious and theological.

Now we're talking about gender.

Now we're talking about marriage.

Now we're talking about, is that a baby in there or is that not a baby in there, right?

Well, it's a baby if you feel like it's a baby.

And if you don't feel like it's a baby, then you can kill it.

Like this is, this is what happens when you don't put creator in his proper place and you start worshiping creation.

So is that going to happen again?

Is that what that's saying?

I think that's happening now.

I think this is

the state of humanity for what is the, what I'm asking is, is Romans saying that this is going to happen again, or is this strictly talking about the past?

Well, this says, what this is really saying is that

because this is happening, that's evidence that God is, he's letting people do what they want, right?

This is the fact that this is happening, God's just handing them over to their own sinful desires, right?

And their own crazy, selfish, sinful, carnal, base instincts, right?

And if you, if you think about like materialism and secularism, like at the end of the day, what are they telling people?

They're not telling people you're created

in the image of God.

You have value, dignity, worth.

There's sexual standards for you.

There's life standards for you.

No, they're telling young people, you're a highly evolved animal in heat.

So wear wear protection and have at it.

It's like, that's the worst advice you can give to young people.

This is terrible.

Anyone that's ever participated in hookup culture will tell you that it leaves you so empty and depleted, but that's the spirit of the air, you know.

And so, back to Matthew, I mean, we have that happening right now,

all over the world.

And then, you know, like I said, rumors of wars, earthquakes, all these things.

So what I'm asking is, I mean, are we, in your opinion, are we approaching end times?

One, I don't know.

So let me, let me, because no man knows the day or the hour.

Two,

there's an argument that could be made that we've been in the last days since Jesus ascended to heaven and that we're patiently waiting for his return.

Three,

Is it possible that these are all signs of the times?

I think there's some other things that have to happen first.

I think there's a strong argument that the third temple needs to be built in Jerusalem.

I think there's a strong argument that the gospel has to go forth to every nation and tongue.

It hasn't happened yet.

There's still unreached people groups.

So I think there's still some room to go in terms of my understanding of the end times.

So you got...

Third temple.

We're not anywhere near having a third temple built.

The Temple Mount in Israel, as I'm sure you know, is controlled by the Muslims.

They're not letting the Jews build a third temple up there.

Now, there's talks of red heifers being brought to Israel from Texas, and they're waiting to do the sacrifice of the red heifer to usher in this moment of their Messiah.

But the third temple is nowhere near being built.

They can personify it and talk about it a lot, but we're not there yet.

And the gospel hasn't gone forth to every nation, language, and tongue.

There's still unreached people.

There's still people on earth today that have never heard about Jesus.

Yeah.

You know, also, I mean,

I think think it did, you know, I called

a really good friend of mine, Congressman Eli Crane, about a lot of the stuff that's going on in Israel right now.

And, you know, I had a conversation with him about, you know, I'm not, I'm not interested in

what people think.

I'm interested in what the scriptures say.

And I'm confused by a lot of the scriptures.

And he had brought up, I believe it's Ezekiel 38, 39, several times to me.

Read

didn't really understand it.

I don't know if he's talking about at the time or this is going to happen in the future, but it basically says that all the nations will rise against Israel.

We see a lot of that happening right now.

I am not happy with what's going on over there at all.

October 7th was horrible.

Gaza looks like a dumpster.

60,000 people killed.

That's several months old.

Probably a lot more now.

You know, bomb Catholic churches in Libya,

in Gaza, rumors of one in Syria.

I mean, I'm not happy with what's going on over there.

But, you know, at the same time, when we see this, the

rise against Israel, and it's once again, it's everywhere in my feed.

You click on one thing, you want to hear what somebody says, the next thing you know, that's your entire feed, you know, and

it is in.

every comment section doesn't matter what the post is you know

everything you know, there are people out there that claim everything is Israel's fault.

In Ezekiel 38, 39, it talks about these, I think it's 12 nations that rise up against Israel.

That's where the Antichrist will come from.

And so, you know, I'm curious about, what are your thoughts on this?

So you're right in that Ezekiel,

Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Daniel are being written.

at the same time, they're all contemporaries of each other, and they're being written to and about the children of Israel who are exiled in Babylon.

So that's the backdrop of those three books.

And so it's very wild stuff, right?

Now,

Babylon was the enemy and they were held captive, taken out of the land.

And in those books, there's apocalyptic stuff in all of them.

Daniel has some really wild stuff about the son of man.

He's coming back.

And there's all kinds of really cryptic stuff in there that is prophetic, but it's also serving two purposes.

It's also speaking about stuff that's happening there now, right?

And so

my thoughts on all of it, man, is

I think

October 7th was awful.

I love Israel.

I love the people of Israel.

But on the night that happened, and

I got in a lot of trouble for this.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

On the night that happened, I said, man, this October 7th is so bad.

I said,

but I'm nervous because the IDF can be heavy-handed with how they respond.

And I got torched by the Christians.

What do do you mean?

You're a Christian.

How dare you say the IDF can be heavy-handed?

And like, I just got back from Israel less than a year ago.

And we landed the day Benjamin Nanyahu got re-elected.

And it was tense because they don't have a two-party system.

He had to connect with the far right, the ultra-Orthodox folks, to build a coalition.

And they don't have a two-party system.

There's multiple parties.

So he already wasn't popular.

And

you align yourself with the far right in Israel.

I'm not sure how much you know about the far right in Israel.

It's a lot of the ultra-Orthodox.

They don't work.

They don't serve in the military.

They just read Torah and pray all day.

And that's their service to Israel.

Everyone else in Israel has to serve two years in the IDF.

So they're already not, that coalition he made was already not popular.

And I'm, and I could sense it.

And I, and I, and I got friends in there in Israel that are Armenian.

I got friends in Israel that are Christian.

I got friends in Israel that are Palestinian.

I'm hearing all of their different takes.

Some folks that love Israel that are Palestinian.

Some folks that dislike Israel that are Palestinian.

And so back then, it was clear as day that, oh, like something's about to go down.

Like, there was a weight to that.

And they were trying to explain all this to me.

And I'm just like, I don't understand.

Like, I don't understand Israeli politics, right?

But what we're seeing, I think, is the overflow of

a government that is heavy-handed.

And

they also have the backdrop of the Holocaust over their legacy.

So it's never again, we're going scorched earth.

And it's like, wait a minute, there's churches.

We're going scorched earth.

Wait a minute, there's civilians.

We're going scorched to earth.

Now, if I give them the benefit of the doubt, are they intentionally blowing up churches?

Are they intentionally blowing up civilians?

Are they intentionally bringing harm?

I really would like to say no.

I would like to believe they aren't.

I would like to believe there's more checks and balances in place.

Do they have a right to defend themselves?

Yes.

Do they need to clean it up and fix it?

Yes.

You guys got to clean that up.

And so, you know, I've been to Israel one time.

I get emails all the time about going back to Israel.

Ministries, Kufi, Israeli government, they want me to, I'm not going to, I got to clean that up.

Like, I'm not going.

Clean it up.

Figure it out.

Like, it's been two years.

This was supposed to be this, like, uh, the, the, when we declared victory in Iraq and then stayed another 20 years.

It's like, is this indefinite now?

You know,

how long is this going to go on?

And so

I say all that to say with, I don't, I can't speak to the policies of the IDF and if they're intentionally doing things.

I don't know.

What I'm asking is from a scriptural standpoint, you know, we hear that they're, you know, they're God's chosen people.

Are they God's chosen people?

I thought there was a new covenant that encompassed all of us.

Am I wrong about that?

I think, so what we're getting at is dispensationalism,

which is a view amongst many Christians.

I do not identify as a dispensationalist.

So dispensationalists will believe that Israel...

and Jewish people are under a different dispensational period and Christians are under a different period, right?

I had somebody on recently to really go deep on dispensationalism and to say, hey, like, is this stuff accurate?

Is Israel under a different period?

So like Andrew Clavin from the Daily Wire will say stuff like, I don't think Ben Shapiro, Andrew Clavin's Christian.

I don't think Ben Shapiro needs to come to faith in Jesus because he's doing great as a Jew, right?

And it's like, no, no, no Ben Shapiro needs to come to faith in Jesus.

I want Ben Shapiro to be a Christian.

I'm not going to water that down.

He needs Jesus.

So you're getting at dispensationalism.

I hold to the view that the church is the continuation of Israel and God has something planned for Israel.

And I don't know how it's all going to work out.

There seems to be a lot with the prophecies and a lot with just the establishment of them as a nation, a lot with these things.

And so we've had these debates on my channel before.

We've wrestled through the scriptures before.

And there's a lot in here about

all Israel will come to faith in Jesus at some point in Romans.

I think it's Romans 10.

I'm trying to find the verse for you right now.

How it all plays out, it sure does seem like, man, everyone's rising up against Israel, but is Israel being sloppy?

Those are questions someone like you is way more equipped to answer than me.

I don't understand the geopolitics.

I don't understand just war theory the way you do.

But it seems like, man,

the church is the church.

I would say it's the continuation of new Israel.

And God has some sort of plan for his original people.

And that's in scripture.

That's in Romans.

How that works?

Oh, I wish I knew.

I don't know.

I don't know.

So

Romans 10, I'm trying to find the verse for you.

But not all Israel accepted the good news.

For Isaiah said, Lord, who has

believed our message?

Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the faith is heard through the word about Christ.

But I did ask, they did not hear.

So this is talking about Israel hearing, but not accepting.

Paul is talking about how he's so distraught that his people, Israel, aren't coming to faith.

And then there's a verse that says,

and all Israel will be saved.

And I don't know what to do with that.

Like, I don't know how that all works.

I would like to believe that there's going to be some sort of revival where the Jews will come back to faith, right?

Here it is, Romans 11, 25.

It says, I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited.

Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of Gentiles has come in.

So Paul is going out to the Gentiles.

The Jews, they don't like that.

He's writing to a mixed church in Rome, both Gentiles and Jews.

Gentiles are just non-Jewish people, non-Jewish Christians.

Verse 26, and in this way,

all Israel will be saved.

As it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion.

He will turn godlessness away from Jacob.

And this is my covenant with them

when I take away their sins.

As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake.

But as far as election is concerned, they are loved on accounts of the patriarchs, for God's gifts are irrevocable.

There's a lot of tension there.

It says all Israel will be saved.

It says they're hardened right now, but it says that because of the patriarchs, because of Abraham, because of Jacob, that at some point it sounds like

God's going to turn Israel to him back to Jesus.

I don't know how that works.

Me neither.

I don't know how it works either.

I mean, you know, and then there's the other hand where you you hear, you know, the only way to the father is through me.

Well, if they don't believe in him,

how do they get there?

And what happens to all of the

Gentiles who didn't believe?

I mean, is it a different,

are we down a different, you know, system?

Yeah.

What do you mean by a different timeline?

Dispensationalism.

is the view that there's different dispensational periods and that God interacts with his people in in different agreements.

And so the Jews are under a different dispensational period and we as Christians are under a new one.

So sometimes that can look real wonky and saying

like Christians are like really into Israeli stuff and just give Israel a blank check to do anything.

That's how that can look, right?

And I don't want to name names on here.

We've talked about this.

on my channel extensively.

I had my friend on who's a dispensationalist and we were trying to kind of hash this out, you know, because he was like, you sound like a dispensationalist.

I'm like, I'm not a dispensationalist.

You need to believe in Jesus, right?

Whereas covenantal theology, which would be, hey, there are different covenants that God has, and we are under the new covenant, and the church has replaced Israel as the new Israel.

So, I'm kind of in between both positions.

I

think God is going to save Israel, and I think God has a plan for Israel.

I don't know how that works.

At the same time, I believe the church is the new Israel, and I believe the church is God's people.

Okay, okay.

Well, I appreciate that, Carl.

It's a tough conversation.

I took a stab at it.

I took a stab at it.

Let's talk about your new book, Godly Ambition.

Yes.

What are you discussing in there?

I think right now we're in a time where men and young women are conflicted about should they go after the things that they believe God's put on their heart.

How do I get out of this despair, this quiet quitting, this hustle culture, all of this tension?

And when I look at the scriptures, Oftentimes Christians see the word ambition and they view it as a nasty word, ambition, ew, right?

But when I look at the scriptures, I found out there's two words for the word ambition one is edithia which in the greek is like a um

it's it's a selfish clobbering by any means necessary ambition and it's forbidden in the scripture but there's a second word for ambition and it's found three times in the new testament and it's fellioti feliotiome

my buddy wes huff tried to help me with the greek on this and that word for ambition is found three times and

felio is where we get the etymology for the word like philadelphia brotherly love and filio,

time it.

It's like there's a time in there.

So it's an ambition that out of a brotherly love, I'm going to be faithful to aim and get after the things that God has for me.

And that word ambition is used three times in the New Testament.

I make it my ambition to preach the gospel where others haven't.

Paul says that.

Paul also writes and says, I make it my ambition to do what pleases God.

And then in 1 Thessalonians 4.11, Paul writes, make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, working with your own hands, minding your own business, so that you will not be dependent on anybody and so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders.

And so I'm really trying to orient people to say, hey, man, hustle culture left is burnt out, work your face off 18 hours a day.

That just swung people to the other side of quiet quitting and I'm just checking out and I don't care anymore and the apathy and the nihilism and that there's a better way in the scriptures.

And it's called godly ambition.

And I'm trying to reorient people and say, hey, how do we get men and women, but men specifically to see their time, their talent, their treasure, not as their own, their ambition is not their own, but it's to be managed and stewarded.

That this is like,

this is not mine anyway.

Let me manage it onto the glory of God.

And so we open up with discovering your calling and your purpose, the difference between purpose assignment and calling.

We talk about talent stacking.

how to develop your skill sets.

And we really are trying to get to the brass tacks because, you know, we were talking about church and what should the church do.

One of the scariest passages in scripture is 1 Timothy 5.

And it's not about the end times, but it is a very high call.

And the passage is talking about widows in the church and who's to care for certain widows in the church.

And in that context, widows in the church were the most destitute, most vulnerable people.

And Paul says something interesting.

He says, hey, those widows that are young enough to get remarried, they should get remarried because if they don't get remarried, they're going to be busy bodies and they're going to be causing a fuss.

The widows that don't have anyone to care for them, that's who the church should be taking care of.

And then he has like a caveat.

He's like, as long as they've been faithful to washing the apostles' feet and they've been, you know, serving in the church.

He adds a caveat to the charity, which is really interesting.

And then he says, but those widows that have family,

the family is supposed to take care of those widows.

And then he makes this

bombshell statement.

It says, for he who does not provide for the needs of his family, specifically his immediate family, is worse than a non-believer and is denied the faith.

That's a woof, that's a gut punch.

In light of the economy, in light of all the uncertainty, the wealth inequality, all these issues, we're still called to provide for the needs of our family, specifically our immediate family.

So what does that look like?

That means we don't ship grandma away when she's old.

We don't wipe our hands of the person that's down on their luck.

No, no, no, we have to take care of our own.

How do we take care of our own?

We got to have some godly ambition for that.

We got to get our life in order.

We got to get our finances in order.

And again, men are struggling, man.

They're They're chronically online.

They want to play video games.

They're being told by the left and the right that they're victims.

There's a system out to get them.

They, them, are going to destroy you.

Israel's bad.

These people are bad.

The left is bad.

Everyone's bad.

The police are bad.

And they're just, they're just, they're growing in despair and nihilism.

And I'm saying, man, there's a biblical framework on how we can get after it.

And you don't got to lose your soul, but

you can get after it and serve God while serving your family and building some stability to do good for others.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: You had mentioned, you had just mentioned, you were talking about single mothers.

And you said

the way I took it is that they need to be in the church to be taken care of.

Did I hear that correctly?

That's what 1 Timothy 5 lays out, yeah.

Okay, so wouldn't that be somewhat of a contradiction?

And I mean, earlier you just said,

I don't know who it was, but you said that you should be preaching the Bible where it's not preached.

Yes.

Correct?

Yes.

So why would it be bad to not take care of a single mom who is not in the church?

Because wouldn't that also come with preaching the Bible?

Yeah.

You're right.

It's not bad to take care of a single mother that's not in the church.

You're absolutely right.

What we run into is

a hierarchy of priorities, right?

So there's a hierarchy in scripture of values, right?

So a lot of people, as an example, loyalty, loyalty, loyalty.

How a lot of these pastors get in trouble.

They start calling for unmitigated loyalty.

And loyalty submits the truth.

Loyalty is not the highest value.

Truth is the highest value, right?

Love, goodness.

So what happens is we conflate our values.

And so we're more concerned about the single mother out there or what's going on in that country over there than we are within our own home.

And so you're right, it is good to care for the single mother.

But there's a hierarchy of priorities.

So what are those hierarchies?

Galatians says, hey, do good to all people as you can, as opportunity presents itself, but especially those in the house of faith.

So what we see in scripture is that first and foremost,

there's us now, me and my household, you and your household.

We have to first take care of our own, your immediate family, then it's your extended family, then it's your local church family, then it's your community, then it's the nations.

And what we do is we do the opposite.

We want to go and worry about what's going on in other nations, other parts of the community, stuff we can't even really control, if we're honest.

And then we neglect the things we can control.

And it creates this weird upside-down inversion of of values.

And the reality is we should care for those single mothers, but I should care for the single mothers in my church first.

And then when I have means and when opportunities present themselves, I'm absolutely going to bless the single mothers that aren't in the church.

And I'm going to preach them the gospel as well.

Okay, so it's a priority list.

It's a priority list.

Yeah.

And that's uncomfortable to talk about because people think that the church is exclusively a charity.

And the church does charity, but the church primarily exists to preach and teach the gospel, make disciples, and cultivate godly community.

And the overflow of that is is charity right and so i think we we inflate these things and we say no no no the church is just supposed to give all their money away it's like no no the church is supposed to preach and disciple people and care for the widow and the orphan within the context of the church and then we go on beyond the church but my big idea is if we just apply godly ambition and everyone just takes care of their household and then their extended family that will solve a lot of our societal ills if men say i'm going to step up i'm going to be the priest provider protector of my home i'm going to figure it out it's hard.

Finances, job market, AI, who knows where the world's going?

It's hard.

But I'm going to figure this out.

I'm going to figure out how to take care of my family and my extended family.

If that just happened in the next five years, all these men that are coming to faith, all these Gen Z, if they just said, hey, I'm going to figure this out.

I'm going to figure out a way to take care of my own, take care of my extended family, and then be generous through my church, because I don't just give to my church.

I give through my church, right?

I think.

we will see a radical change in society by men just showing up, being fathers, and then being father figures to folks in their family, in their communities that don't have fathers.

The world changes

within a short amount of time, in my opinion.

I love that message.

Yeah.

Nice work.

Yeah.

So, so, so I think you're right, though.

I think, I think we should live for something bigger than ourselves.

And I think the poor and the marginalized

need help and need resources.

I think the tricky part is you've heard of toxic.

toxic charity.

You've heard how sometimes charity can do more enablement than helping people, right?

And so one of my favorite charities that I've partnered with is a company called Charity Water, where 100% of what they get goes towards the actual mission of bringing clean water filtration systems in parts of the world that need it.

So we donated my birthday a couple of years ago and we were able to build a water filtration system in a part of the world that when you bring clean water to people, it changes everything.

It's actually the best ROI because now they can farm, now they have clean water, now they have better hygiene, just that alone, right?

And so, like, we should absolutely be doing that, right?

But not at the expense of my family, not at the expense of my in-laws, not right.

So, it's so it's and both, but there has to be a hierarchy, there has to be priorities to that.

Great point, yeah, great point.

Well, man,

this was a fascinating conversation.

Man, thank you so much.

This was great.

You asked great questions.

Thank you for coming.

I got questions for you, but maybe what do you got?

Can I really ask?

Yeah, all right.

The war on drugs in the 1980s.

The war on drugs in the 1980s?

CIA.

Oh, shit.

Was the CIA complicit in bringing over cheap cocaine to pay the Nicaraguas to fight communism?

Is that verified?

Because I've heard they've admitted it,

but I haven't been able to find anything recent.

And then the whistleblower who,

you know, self-deleted himself by shooting himself twice in the face.

And then to turn around and punish and have this crazy war on drugs and this hundred-to-one Coke to crack disparity, which was supported by liberals and Republicans and Democrats.

So this isn't a

partisan thing, but that ended up causing a lot of harm to a lot of communities.

So

I was curious as a guy that is very connected and aware,

is there, did the CIA do that?

There's been movies, mid-documentaries to fight those wars at the expense of poor communities.

I mean,

that is not my expertise.

And,

you know, I think a lot of people think that I was a lot deeper within the agency than I actually was.

But, I mean, so I don't know.

I would say there's a high probability that that is probably true.

You know.

Something that kind of skirts the line on that.

I had this interview with this guy, Roger Reeves.

He was the

most prolific drug smuggler out of Colombia.

Just

lots of trips back and forth.

He connected with this guy called Barry Seal.

Do you know about this?

Barry Seal sounds familiar.

Barry Seale supposedly worked for CIA.

He was the plug.

He was the connect, right?

If I remember this correctly.

Roger was flying cocaine out of Columbia, a lot of cocaine out of Columbia.

Went to jail for a long time.

He came in for an interview.

He had met this pilot named Barry Seale.

And

some of this may be off, so you have to re-reference my interview with him in case I'm off on some things.

So Roger would fly the cocaine into Louisiana, right?

And he would land on highways that are under construction.

Well, when Barry went to work with him,

he told him that

that's the plan.

We land on the highways in Louisiana.

Well, Barry said, no, I don't fly into Louisiana.

I fly into Arkansas.

Bill Clinton was the governor at the time.

So maybe there's some ties there.

But what I'm saying is he was protected by

either state government or federal government or both to fly in the cocaine to Arkansas, you know, for dispersion.

And so, you know, I think there's something maybe there to explore, but

I was born in 1982.

So

that's a little, you know, before my time there.

And, you know, the other thing about the agency is, you know, you don't, you don't get access to everything.

Everything is very compartmentalized, segmented.

They call it a need-to-know basis.

And if you don't need to know, then you don't get the information.

So that is, that is, that's not something that I've been read into,

not something that I've spent a lot of time exploring.

But

sorry, I don't have that.

No, it's all right.

I've always thought about it.

My wife's parents were both caught up in the war on drugs.

My mother-in-law, she was working at a company, sliced her finger,

like the tip of her finger got cut off, and she ended up

getting a settlement.

And man, they partied hard.

They partied a little too hard.

And they both ended up going to prison.

And then because of the drug laws back then and the war on drugs, they got some pretty harsh sentences.

And then, you know, you just, then the cycle cycle starts of like, now my sister-in-law is trying to raise the girls at 12.

She's robbing and stealing.

She gets arrested.

She then gets pregnant at 15.

And so the cycle just continues of despair and fatherlessness, you know.

Generational trauma.

Generational trauma.

Yeah.

And my wife, by the grace of God, like she ended up going to live with her best friend when she was

in high school.

And that's how we met.

We met at high school.

And the best friend, you know, white evangelical Christian family, mother and father in the home, They weren't perfect, but they were great.

And that kind of like removed her from

a lot of like being in these pretty rough environments.

And we met after that and we got married.

And when we got married, we knew it's like, hey, we are not going to repeat these cycles.

You know, we're not going to continue the fatherlessness.

Like, we're going to figure this thing out.

You guys broke it together.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we've been married 17 years now.

Together, 21.

Congratulations.

I think she's the one.

Yeah, she's great.

My wife is great, man.

Yeah, we got two kids.

Levi is 10.

He's always four.

And we got one on the way in November.

Congratulations.

Another boy.

Oh, man, that's awesome.

How many kids you got?

Two.

Two.

How old are they?

Two and four.

Two and four.

Oh, man.

I got a four-year-old.

It's such a fun age.

Boy, girl?

Boy, girl.

Boy, girl.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's kids are the best, man.

They are.

They are.

They definitely change your perspective on the world and

how you carry yourself.

A lot, like the men I'm speaking to are coming from, you know, similar backgrounds struggling.

And a lot of what I'm trying to get them to understand is like, dude,

like, you're going to get married one day and like your wife is going to want to stay home and just be a mom and be with her babies.

And the data supports that too.

You know, Forbes did a study about a decade ago.

86% of working women prefer to stay home if they were given the opportunity.

And then this is not Christianity.

86%.

This is a little dated.

It's probably around 75 now.

Want to stay home for a season when they have kids.

This is working women with kids.

They prefer to stay home if they were given an opportunity to.

And some women grow resentment if they aren't.

And

that conversation is very unpopular, you know?

And so my advice to young men is like, bro, there's a future version of you that's like depending on this version of you to make good decisions.

And if you don't make good decisions, like.

you're going to pay for it later.

That's a great, that's a, I love that there's a future version of you.

Yeah.

depending on what you do.

No one told me this stuff.

Like when I was 20, new to the faith, like no one sat me down.

I was like, hey, man, like, you got to go make some money, bro.

Like, you, you can't, and you got to stop getting into debt.

Like, you got to clean this stuff up because at 28, 29, like, your wife's going to want to have kids and she's going to want to stay home.

You know, she's not going to want to be a boss babe in 12 weeks, you know, again, like after pushing out a human.

No one told me these things.

And again, by the grace of God, and really through Dave Ramsey's stuff, like we were able to clean up our finances and got out of debt.

And it was so life-giving, you know, to have that stability and then transition into music full-time and then YouTube.

Yeah,

that's awesome, man.

Yeah, that's I'm going to steal that.

Yeah, yeah, it's a good line, right?

I love that.

You could sauce it up.

You could talk about sci-fi movies.

Sometimes I'll talk about like my favorite movies or sci-fi movies, time travel movies, and you know, the timeline continuum, you know, and so you can really sauce it up.

But yeah, it's, it's a, I think it's so real because when you don't have the motivation, you have all the time in the world.

When you have the motivation, kids, a wife, people depending on you to provide, you don't have a lot of time.

And so if I can say, hey, man, why you have the time,

let's make you an asset to your current employer.

Let's not go in and try to get the most amount of money for the least amount of work.

No, no, no, no, no.

You're going to show up and you're going to be the best dude.

You're going to be the first to come, last to leave, most competent, working your face off.

And in that, you're going to be a greater asset to your current employer.

And I'm sure you appreciate that.

You have an amazing team here of just studs that are crushing it.

Those people end up being amazing in an organization, but they could also go on and do their own thing if they want to because they're competent, they're stable, they're confident.

And

people don't understand that.

Like they don't understand that, like, man, you got a window of time from 25, from 20 to 25 before you're married with kids.

Like, figure this out.

Figure this stuff out.

You know, yeah.

Well, man,

awesome interview.

Man, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

This is a copy for you.

So maybe you could take a peek sometime.

I will.

I will.

And I just want to say congratulations on to you and your wife on breaking generational trauma.

And

that's

a huge thing.

We talk a lot about that here.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

I learned a lot.

All right.

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