Andrew Isker: Building a Christian Refuge to Fight Wokeness, Transgenderism, and Paganism

Welcome to Pro Tips for the Pros, brought to you by Floor & Decor Gilroy. In this series, we'll explore essential advice for professional contractors to deliver outstanding renovation results.
Let's dive in. Keep the work area clean and organized throughout the renovation process to create a positive impression and minimize stress for the customer.
Regularly clean up debris and dust to maintain a safe and comfortable living environment. Thank you for joining us for this pro tip on planning thorough renovations.
Stay tuned for more expert advice brought to you by Floor & Decor Gilroy. A lot of people tolerate ordinary.
Ordinary bathrooms, kitchens, entryways. Well, not on your watch.
If you're a pro, you've got a new partner in town. Floor & Decor.
From tile to wood to stone, Floor & Decor has more styles and jaw block quantities of schluter mape ledecrete and other brands pros trust come see a whole new way to wow with floor and decor coming soon to gilroy so andrew thank you for doing this so um you're so controversial uh I love that. Yeah, married man with six kids who pays his taxes.
You're so controversial. Very.
Controversial would be not paying your credit card bill and, you know, putting the banks out of business, convincing other people to do the same, not paying your federal taxes, forcing the U.S. government to pay attention to its own citizens.
You're doing none of that. So, as far as I'm concerned, you're a non-controversial law-abiding man, but you are doing one thing that's pretty wild, which is participating in the building of a new town.
It sounds almost like a Christian utopian experiment in Tennessee, but I don't really know. Can you tell me what it is and why you're doing it? Yeah.
So it's, um, it's not quite that. It's not the Oneida community?

Yeah, we're not building some kind of Anabaptist community.

Okay, you're not the Shakers.

No. No, really, it's a company.
Ridge Runner is purchasing land and sort of facilitating a lot of things. You're familiar with the big sort where people are leaving blue states to go to red states and things like that where it's along those lines where people are leaving like I left Minnesota a very blue state everyone's now familiar with our governor in that state Tim Walls Don't hire him to babysit No I would not he not.
He would be the last person. Yes, I think so.
And, you know, so we wanted to leave there. Many people want to leave places like that.
My friend CJ left California, Gavin Newsom State, to come to Tennessee. And so it's a platform to be able to, you know, draw all of your friends together.
It's like, well, we can kind of live anywhere.

Why don't we all live in the same kind of place and bring our families, bring our businesses, and build things together? So it's sort of a platform for drawing people that are spread out all throughout the country and can leave these places that are not great, living in large cities or suburbs where you're just totally disconnected and really isolated, alienated from normal life. And you can have the American small town experience once again.
so sad to hear you say that about Minnesota.

As a Scandinavian, I always thought of it, was told,

it's like where all the Swedes are,

and it's kind of lots of saunas and red-cheeked children,

and it's clean and reasonable.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not the case anymore.

Why did you leave there?

For us, it was...

Are you from there?

I'm from there, yeah. Born and raised in Waseca, Minnesota.

My children

were the sixth generation of our family that

lived in that town. Oh, gosh.

In the town?

In that town, yeah.

In the town of Waseca.

Are your ancestors buried there?

Yeah, there's six generations that are buried there even uh one of my own my own children that that passed um that you know all they're like we lived you know a couple blocks away from the cemetery where all of all of my ancestors were buried oh gosh yeah oh that's very heavy to live a place like that yes uh and it was you know After the 2022 election where the Democrats took control of the state Senate finally, and Tim Walz could do whatever he wanted to do. So the first thing he passed was, in the wake of the Dobbs decision, full abortion allowance, even up to birth.

There were the stories during the Dobbs decision, full abortion allowance, even up to birth. Like, you know, there were the stories during the election about, you know, even like post-birth abortions that took place in Minnesota.
I went to the state capitol and spoke to the first committee when that bill was being heard. And I mean, maybe, you know, later you guys can pull up that video.
But I just just went there and said like hey you you think you won an election you think you can do this and and just murder children but god is not mocked like he's he's he's going to come with vengeance about what you're doing and of course the consequences yeah they they're like all these you know 60 year old liberal ladies senators you know looking at me scoffing at me and just staring daggers at me and hating what I'm saying. How dare he cut this? Yeah, lots of luck.
Christian nationalist. Lots of luck to them.
Yeah. And so that's the first bill that they passed.
The second bill that they passed, and these are the first two legislative priorities that they had. The second one was a trans trans rights bill which allowed the state to take your child out of out of their custody or your parents custody if you opposed a transition and my my oldest child is 12 a minor child minor child yeah my oldest son he's 12 years old he autism.
We homeschool all the rest of our children, but we don't have the resources to be able to educate him with his autism. And so he goes to special ed.
And I'm well aware, especially if you see the things that happened in 2020, 2021, all of the activism, trans stuff in the schools, right? Allbs of tiktok kind of stuff yes that um the majority of like trans children are on the autism spectrum right these children are targeted right and and i'm thinking okay he he um he doesn't talk about school he doesn't talk about home at school he he categorizes all of his life. He just won't do it.
So I would have no way of knowing what is going on there. They could be putting him in a dress and calling him a girl name, and I would have no idea.
And then when I find out and I oppose it, boom, CPS comes, takes him out of our custody, and he's gone forever. So that's when you go Randy Weaver at that point.
Oh, at that point, yeah. For for sure and you don't want to go randy no like it didn't end well for randy weaver no doesn't end well for anybody no i don't i don't yeah i don't want to go down that road i don't no nobody does nobody does and so it's like we need to we need to get out of here right we cannot trust the you know the whole system with our child they could they could steal him from us right this could happen.
I don't want to be the test case for that. I don't want to go through the legal battles and do all those fights.
I want my son. I don't want to live in a place where that's even conceivable that that could happen to you.
It's insane. And so it was at that moment, I'm like, we need to get out of this state.
This is not a place where I can raise my children. And I'm thinking like long term, right? Yeah, we've been in this place for six generations.
And it's a wonderful town. Amazing place.
I mean, it's home. I love the people there.
And many of them are going to be watching this. Well, you must know all of them.
From my youth. You go to the store and you see my wife and children hated when I would go to the store because it would take an hour to get a thing of milk because I'd just stop and talk to people I've known my whole life.
Oh, I love that. And it's a wonderful play.
It's hard's hard to leave that, right? Because you know it. You're familiar with everything and all of the people and just the way of life.
And... Gosh, it's where your family's buried.
Six generations. That's just...
I had no idea. That's so much to give up.
It must have been... I can't.
I can't stay in a place like that. There's no future for my children, for my family in a place that's that far gone, that has been destroyed.
And you see so many of these other states, California, Washington adopted all the same things that Walz's Minnesota did. I want to get back to the Ridge Runner and the town that's being built, which I assume is a fascist Christian theocracy.
That's what the TV news in Nashville said. Sorry, I'll get that one second.
Yes, Mr. Phil Williams, the journalist.
Little Iran except Christian. Yeah, that's right.
But why do you think – so the three – I mean, I have my own theories, but you've lived it much more personally than I have. So you tell me, why do you think states like Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, California have gone to a place that I think by any objective global standard, there's no country in the world that would nod and say that's okay, except maybe the UK.
Yeah. How did they get there? I think, I mean, for all of them, the political power was captured by the left, political and cultural power.
I mean, I went to college in Minnesota in the early 2000s, and you could see the seeds of all of these things, right, beginning to form.

And so all of the institutions were captured, and especially culturally in Minnesota,

people are very nice, right? It's not a myth. Minnesota nice is very real, and, right, the ethos is if you don't have anything nice to say, right, don't say anything at all, which I just

swim completely against that tide. I mean, not to point to genetics, right? Don't say anything at all, which I just swim completely against that tide.

But it's true.

I mean, not to point to genetics, but it's real.

It's Germans, it's Scandinavians, Norwegians, Swedes, some Finns.

It's like these are gentle, non-confrontational people for the most part.

Yes.

Yeah, they're very kind, people that are to a fault unwilling to give offense.

Yes.

And very, very tolerant of other people.

Yes, they are. Very kind, people that are to a fault, unwilling to give offense.

Yes.

And very, very tolerant of other people. Yes, they are.
And that gets taken advantage of, right? So, you can have- So, they take our best qualities and subvert them against us. Yes.
Yes. And you can see that in other places, too, like on the West Coast as well, right? that especially

with like Christians

this is

this West Coast as well, right? That, and especially with like Christians, this is done all of the time. I know.
Where you're told, well, we need to love other people and be kind and be Christ-like. And that ethos gets subverted and used to these ends, right? Where, well, how dare you talk about these things? Like how dare you talk about these things from the pulpit, that these things going on? Like it offends a lot of people.
No, it does. I mean, I come from a family like that with some of them have strong views, but they would never impose their views on you under any circumstances.
They're just, it's just not in them. It's a very specific Northern European culture where they just don't want to, don't want to get in your face no never but it leaves them defenseless a little bit i think yeah yeah and you know i i mean maybe i'm maybe i'm unique you know maybe uh my personality type is is such that i just i can't do that i can't see evil stuff happening, taking place and not say something about it.
Not say this is, this is insane. Like how, how, how could we, I mean, just think a hundred years ago.
And that's, that's sort of, you know, my book is, right. If you go back a hundred years and you think about your, your great, great grandfather and you told him, Hey, they're going to take little kids and little boys and remove their genitals and turn them into girls.
Are you okay with that? Do you think that's all right? What would they do if that was even proposed? I thought eunuchs were out with the Ming Dynasty. That's right.
I can't believe we have that. Yeah, we're bringing that back.
They would go insane. They would fight.
They'd become violent if that were happening. And we're like, well, you know, I really want to keep my job, so I'll put the pronouns in my email signature and on my LinkedIn.
You know, I'll just go along to get along. I have contempt for them.
Yeah. So my theory is that those are the most secular states.
Yeah.

And Maine is another one of the most secular states, unfortunately. And those trends are rising there as well, famously.
And there's something about, you know, there are lots of left-wing ideas that are liberal ideas or socialist ideas that, like, I don't disagree with all of them, honestly. But some of them, a lot of them I really disagree with.
Yeah. But the transgender thing, the abortion thing, human sacrifice and turning your children to eunuchs, those are so clearly expressions of cultish religion, of pagan religion.

Yeah.

That like I can't turn away.

I'm like the Canaanites did this.

Yeah. I know what's going on here.

This is not, you claim you're secular, you're not secular at all. These are not secular at all these are religious rituals that's the way it feels to me yes absolutely it is um and and and that's part of it too i think the things that happen like when i was in college in the early 2000s you know you had the new atheism and yeah and everyone was like it was just cool to to be an atheist like oh i'm agnostic i don't i don't really believe who is I thought there was like, it was just cool to be an atheist.
Like, oh, I'm agnostic.

I don't really believe.

Who is that?

There's like a really absurd person posing as like a genius who was one of the leader.

There are probably a bunch of, but who was the most famous one?

Oh, like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett or Christopher Hitchens.

I knew Hitchens well.

He was a marvelous guy, but totally wrong on this. He was legit smart.
No, there's another one, whatever, who's always running around. Like today, James Lindsay is one of those types.
Who's James Lindsay? He is this atheist guy that opposed wokeness and things like that, but wants just a free liberal society society like it's 1995 yeah yeah i'm all for a free liberal society it's just that there there isn't one either you're moving quickly toward um i mean i i will never give up my views of i will never stop being liberal on the most basic level which is i actually don't want to control you or your beliefs because I don't think you're a slave.

I think you're a human being because God made you.

That's my view.

Yeah.

And so I don't want to break down people's doors to make sure they're adhering to what I believe at all. I hate that.
However, you're either moving toward order or you're moving toward chaos. You're moving toward a society rooted in some sort of transcendent belief or you're moving toward trannyism, which is another.

Yeah. order or you're moving toward chaos you're moving toward you know a society rooted in some sort of transcendent belief or you're moving toward trainingism which is another yeah like transcendent belief it's like yeah you pick a religion yeah it's not whether but which there there will be one and that's that's part of it is like the the new like the new atheism all those things that broke down um you know christian morays and and and and christian you know just cultural christ cultural Christianity that was imbued all throughout the American public life.
Yeah. Takes all of that down, but then there's a vacuum, and that vacuum gets filled up.
And what's it been filled up with? Insane stuff like this. Child sacrifice.
All of it. It is a new religion.
It isn't a question of like, well, we're just going to have pluralism. We're not going to have any dominant religion.
It's, no, there will be one. There will be a God that you serve.
And the one that we are serving now is some kind of demon. Well, I think that so much better put than I could have formulated that.
But yes, exactly, perfectly put, exactly. You're going to worship to worship something yeah and now we're worshiping something really really dark as a society but

it's it's particularly pronounced in the states that have abandoned christianity the most

aggressively and just come up with this new pagan religion so okay so this is going on in your state

you're the six generations in one town boy that's got to be pretty rare right now yeah you've got

six children you have a child buried in the cemetery along with all your ancestors

I'm sorry. You're the six generations in one town.
Boy, that's got to be pretty rare right now. You've got six children.
You have a child buried in the cemetery along with all your ancestors. And you leave all of that.
What's going on in your church? Were you a churchgoer at the time? Yeah, I was pastoring a church. Oh, gosh.
Yeah. Yes.
Literally. Okay.
Yes. So you're involved in church.
Yes, I am. Yeah.
And it's a church with wonderful people. And, you know, they're there because they, you know, more or less think like I do.
They like hearing what I preach. You know, they like all of these things.
And so it's extremely difficult to leave them as well.

But it was difficult because it was a very small church.

And the things that I'm preaching, right? So, I take the pastorate there in 2021. So, after the lockdowns, after all of these things, and there's an incredible amount of discontent among Christians because their church has been shut down, their leaders have failed them.
And And so we had many families join us after that. But overall, the people in Minnesota, they're not used to the kind of preaching that I do, the kind of Christianity that I have where it's like, no, I believe the Bible, like God is real and he has spoken, he's revealed himself to us in the Bible.
And therefore I believe all of it and I'm not embarrassed by any of it. I'm not going to like tiptoe around the things that might be controversial.
If anything, I'm going to lean into those things and I'm going to preach all of it. And that runs totally against the evangelical Christian ethos in America today.
Really? Yeah. It's all about, you need to be nice.
You need to make Jesus very inoffensive to people. And that's how you bring people into your church.
So, I'll say I'm not an evangelical. I always liked the evangelicals i've always defended them i'm very sympathetic as a non-evangelical i'm not even exactly sure what an evangelical is it seems like a cultural descriptor but um yeah i'm completely opposed to abortion so that has been for me the reason that i've always defended them but i always thought that the evangelicals were really forthright about their faith, another thing that I liked.
And we're way more on the kind of fire and brimstone side, which I'm for, by the way. Well, good, yeah.
But you're saying that they're not. That was certainly, you look at like, you know, the 80s and even in the early 90s, like you have the moral majority where they very much were that kind of fire and brimstone.
And they've been vindicated by everything that has happened. Oh, I'd say.
I'd say. That's hilarious.
Lent is here, the period before Easter, the 40 days, and it's a unique chance to get closer to God. That's the point of it.
Halo, the world's number one prayer app, can help you do that. joining their prayer 40 challenge.
It's a great way to connect with Christians all over the world and unite in preparation for Easter, which is the payoff of this season. It's called The Way.
It helps participants focus on how Jesus is the way to heaven. If you join the challenge, you'll embark on a spiritual journey with some of America's most convicted Jesus followers.
Powerful stories, prayer, you grow in your ability to sacrifice. That's what Lent is, it's a sacrifice.
And taking thought-provoking sermons and true stories of faith in action, which are amazing. This year is going to be the best Lent ever.
Thousands of people praying together all over the world, and you can be part of it through Hallow, which, by the way, is in use in my house, and a nightly topic of conversation. So you can sign up at hallowed.com slash Tucker when you join.
Check out thousands of guided prayers, meditations, music, and everything. There is a ton on Hallow, all designed to help you find peace and closeness to God.
Download the Hallow app and jump onto the Lent Pray 40 Challenge right now. They speak of darkness and danger, but totalitarian novels also give us hope, showing us how to defend our society from the horrors of tyranny.
In Hillsdale College's free online course, Totalitarian Novels, Hillsdale President Larry Arn teaches us lessons from classic novels like George Orwell's 1984 that are as relevant today as ever. Sign up now for Hillsdale College's free online course, Totalitarian Novels, at tuckerforhillsdale.com.
That's tuckerforhillsdale.com. Your savings could be missing out on some of the best interest rates in the nation.
Raisin brings top rates directly to you with no fees. Sign up in minutes to find, fund, and manage savings options from over 70 banks and credit unions, all in one secure account.
Don't wait. Visit Raisin.com and start saving smarter today.
But throughout the 90s and early 2000s, they really changed course, right? As the cultural trajectory is changing, they adopted, you know, very seeker-sensitive movement where it's like, well, people are- I'm sorry, what did you call it? Yeah, seeker-sensitive movement. What does that mean? It was the big movement in evangelicalism in the 90s and early 2000s where we're going to make it as easy as possible for people to come into the church and believe in Jesus.
And so, we're not going to focus on things that might offend them. We're not going to focus on sin and repentance and things like that.
Just come on in and have a good time and know that you're welcome here. Come as you are.
We'll meet you halfway. like that.
We're just, just come on in and have a good time and know that you're welcome here, right? Come as you are. We'll, we'll meet you halfway.
Like that, that, that was more or less the, why do you think they did that? Um, I, I think, you know, um, a friend of mine, um, I think I could call him a friend, uh, Aaron Wren, he's written about this like, uh, neutral world or negative world, neutral world, positive world where, you know, in the 70s and 80s, Christianity is generally understood culturally as as a positive thing. Like if you said, oh, I go to church, I'm a Christian, I go to that church.
People think, oh, that's a good guy. He's an upstanding, decent person.
But by the by the mid 90s, it was it was sort of neutral. Right.
It was sort of, well, that's just a cool thing that you do, right? Just like collecting stamps or building model trains or being part of the Lions Club. But by the Obama years, by like 2015, you're a negative world where if you're an evangelical Christian, you are suspect.
You're probably a Nazi. You're probably a bigot.
You're probably a white supremacist right that's the attitude that people ask you to pause just to state for the one millionth time the nazis were not christians they were not christians but they love to throw those things around it nazis or christians no um yeah more christians were killed by the Nazis in any other group, just a fact. So anyway, no, the Nazis were not Christians.
I'm sorry. I had to say that.
Good to make, you know, because they'll clip this and they'll say, yeah, oh, Andrew Isker is saying that the Christians are Nazis. But so that period of time, like there's these widespread cultural shifts in the country.

And so I think a lot of it is just in response to that, where you're in that neutral world. And so you had figures like Rick Warren or Tim Keller who sort of adapted these things.
So Tim Keller is in New York City, and he tries to adapt Christianity to your upper middle class, you know, striver people in New York City to make it easy for them to come to church. So, he wouldn't ever, you know, talk about homosexuality, or if he did, it would be, well, that's not so good for human flourishing, but we're not really going to talk about that too much.
There's the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, J.D. Greer, famously said in a sermon, well, the Bible just whispers about sexual sin, but it shouts about financial sin or greed.
So they want to downplay. It shouts about both of them it does and the two are connected right yeah uh right if you're if you're you're greedy for money you're also going to be lusting after the flesh like that the two go hand in hand um and and but it's to downplay things that the culture does not want to hear right because you'll be branded as as a bigotot, as intolerant, as a bad person if you're just like, well, this is what the Bible says.

Like this, you know, fornicators, adulterers, sodomites, they will not inherit the kingdom

of God, right?

If you say, yes, I agree with that, well, you're a bad person, right?

You are outside of polite society if you say those things.

And you can reject it. You can reject Christianity itself.
And you're certainly welcome to in this country and in all countries, actually. But it doesn't just say this parenthetically.
No. Like included in a sidebar.
It says it again and again and again. And in the church I grew up in, they're like, well, there are only four times where, you know, in the scriptures where people, you know, where homosexuality is attacked.
And it's like, since no one ever read it in my church, no one knew, but like I finally read it. What the hell? Why not read it? And I did.
And I've never been anti-gay or anything like that. But by the end, I was like's a really clear message yeah from like the hebrew scriptures all the way through the christian to the new testament and like again and again and again so you know again you don't have to believe it but if you're a believing christian it it's not whispered at all yeah you do you do have to believe it if you're christian exactly claim that you that this is the bible that god spoke this right and and so they're they're very fearful um of those kinds of things but um i mean the interesting thing now that we're in you know what wren calls negative world is um is that young men um who who were kind who were raised most of them like raised secular.
They went through the whole new atheism thing. They never went to church.
They never grew up. I mean, I talked to so many guys, so many young men I see connect with me on X and places like that where they're like, hey, I was not part of the church at all.
I was not a Christian. And I see all of the evil everywhere, right? I see the things like you're talking about, like, they are sacrificing babies.
Like, they care about this more than anything else, the ability to murder a baby. they see things like the Ukraine war where it's like our rulers just decided to

have a war

and murder a baby um they see things like the ukraine war where it's like um our rulers just decided to have a war and kill millions of people for absolutely no reason and our proxies have banned the majority christian faith yes banned the majority christian faith the majority faith which is christian in ukraine and i just wonder just to go back to the atheists for a second, what do they make of this? Like, it just, I understand, certainly understand being agnostic. Like, I don't know.
You know, I get it. Yeah, I can see why someone would have that viewpoint.
For sure. I think that's a pretty normal, you know, place to be.
I think it's wrong, but I don't think it's crazy. But to be an atheist, to have determined that there is no God, like, what do you make of the things you see around you? Have you never held someone's hand while he dies? Like, what do you think that is? Yeah.
You've never felt anything that is clearly outside of what science describes? Like, how determined are you to ignore your life that you become an atheist?

Like, what is that?

Do you know any?

Yeah.

I mean, it's funny because most of the people that you talk to are like when they espouse kind of atheist ideas, right?

They'll retreat.

It's kind of a Mott and Bailey thing where they'll retreat to – well, really, I'm agnostic.

I don't really know for sure, right?

So there's very few people, very few, especially now, that are that are like no i'm an atheist there definitely is no god okay well then how why is murder wrong yeah yeah exactly well because it is because it is well okay i think it's right yeah so how does that how can you tell me it's wrong by what authority yeah yeah because you feel that way that's your authority your emotions and you would see this i remember so like the people you were saying who are atheists like are they ever some of them are smart i assume yeah yeah what do they say to that i remember um i remember watching you know uh previous guest of yours actually the man who trained me in ministry uh doug wilson yeah uh debate wonderful man christopher hitchens yeah oh yes and they they had that discussion, right? And it was shocking to watch Hitchens say, well, it's common human experience, you know, solidarity with mankind. That's why I think murder is wrong.
And of course, Doug says to him, well, if you saw someone being murdered on the street, you think that's bad, right? Well, why? And he goes into his his whole spiel and he's like well what if what if it's a pregnant woman and her baby's being murdered right you would just say well no no you need to have a medical license for that to kill that person right like he got what did christopher say he's like oh you're being flippant uh you know you wouldn't go down that road uh yeah what's so sad is i knew christopher very well and always liked him enormously for his erudition, his ability to recite long passages of poetry, Philip Larkin and Orwell. He was just a reader, like a real dedicated lifelong reader and a wonderful dinner and lunch companion.
I had many, many highly drunken dinners with him before i quit drinking and uh but he was such and so i i love christopher but he was a moralizer whoa yeah and i never i was much younger 25 years younger than i am now and i never sort of put it to my mind like how can an atheist be a moralizer yeah it doesn't even make any sense actually yeah and i agreed to them on some things and disagree on others but he was always like in the pulpit actually yeah yeah yeah and a lot of the atheists are yeah what is that well i think so much of it is is atheism really is an atheist moralizer it's hilarious well it's it's a christian heresy like they want to they want to have all the things of christian things of Christianity just without God there. So they want to be able to pursue all of these things.
They want to be able to say, this is right and this is wrong, but have no authority to ground it on just by their say-so. It's so factuous, though.
Conundrum. What? It's wrong.
Okay, why? Yeah, you can see why it's breaking down, though, today. Under the weight of its own silliness.
Yeah, it creates this vacuum and it's being replaced by something. So all of the moralistic energy is still there.
And now it's gone to things like transgenderism, abortion, Gaza know, Gaza, whatever. Like, it goes to all of those routes.
It goes to, you know, BLM and rioting. Yes, that's right.
And so it's highly religious. It's in us.
Yeah. It's in us.
We can't get away from the conviction, the true conviction that some things are right and some things are wrong. Yeah, it's fundamentally human.

Absolutely.

But an atheist would have to, by definition,

be utterly non-judgmental about everything.

You would think they should be,

but they're the most judgmental people.

It's unbelievable.

I mean, Christopher at dinner was always lecturing about the Kurds.

And I'm nothing against the Kurds.

I don't know much about the Kurds.

I ran into them in Iraq.

They were the most bloodthirsty people in Iraq.

I did notice that.

But he was so, again, I'm not against the Kurds.

I'm not an expert in Kurdishness.

But he, man, he would lay down his life for the Kurds.

I remember thinking, what is this?

And it was the need to sort of find a good guy and a

bad guy and put yourself on the good guy side. Yeah.
Yeah. And that's, that's human.
Like it's human. We want that.
That's totally true. So what did you say to your church when you left? That was, that was one of the hardest days of my life.
I believe it. Tell them I'm, I'm leaving, I'm going to Tennessee.

And it was difficult.

I mean, I'm leaving. I'm going to Tennessee.
And it was difficult. I still have a connection with them, relationship with them.
I'm still trying to find them a pastor to replace me. It's hard for me to do that because, well, you left, Andrew.
Why do you want me to go there now? But they need one, and they're wonderful, wonderful people who have blessed me immensely. And I just told them that, no, I have to leave Minnesota.
There's a place for me there in Tennessee. And it's ultimately what is best for my family's future, right? There's a place where my children, you know, can grow up.
Because part of it, too, isn't just the things that we're leaving, you know, the political, cultural things that we're leaving in Minnesota, but it's also, you know, overall, the things that have been done to the Midwest, to everywhere, where my children grow up. And if they want to have a career and a life and a family and a success of their own, there just isn't much for them in a small town Midwest.
And so they'll all just fly the coop. is what happened.
Um, like when I graduate from high school, most of the people that I grew up with, they all, they all left. They went to the twin cities.
They went to other, other cities, uh, for work and, and for, for careers. And, uh, and so that, that same thing was likely going to happen with, with my children.
And I look at it and I think, well, my family's been here for six generations and whether it's going to end here, right? And I want to be in a place where we can continue that, where we can be rooted, where my children have the ability to stay in a place. And so, so many friends are coming to Tennessee where we are.
They're bringing businesses. And once you build things at scale, the more stuff you're able to do, the more businesses you're able to have, the more opportunity is for young people.
And so, if my children want to stay where we are and continue that on generation after generation, like we actually

will be able to do that, right? That's, it isn't, it wasn't so much just, okay, we need to leave Minnesota, but it's also we're being drawn to a place for a particular reason. The Tennessee dream.
There's a future there. Yeah.
Yeah. The hope of refugees from time immemorial.
Yeah. What did the other churches in the state say as the state itself became a place that faithful Christians

could Refugees from time immemorial. Yeah.
What did the other churches in the state say as the state itself became a place that faithful Christians couldn't live? I mean, there are a handful of churches there that are very strong. There are Christians there that oppose these things, but they're so, so vastly outnumbered.
Like when I went to the state capitol to oppose the abortion bill, there were lots of activists on both sides, pro-life activists and pro-ritual sacrifice activists. But there were no other pastors there.
I think one of the Catholic bishops did a Skype call, Zoom call. But beyond that,

there were no other pastors. And I'm thinking, my church is like 30, 40 people.
I do this,

I tent make. I do a full-time job and then do this.
We're tiny. I'm small.
I'm insignificant.

And there are churches with 15,000, 20,000 people, prominent men in the Twin Cities. And all I had to do was just send an email to the clerk of the committee like, hey, can I have two minutes to speak? No one showed up.
No one is there. And it's like, no, they're going to murder babies up to birth, enshrine this in our law, try to make a constitutional amendment for it, all of these things.

And no one is opposing it. I'm the only one that came.
I quoted the Bible and opposed it as a Christian. There's just so little fight there.
Christians built your state. Yes.
And all of it and and every bit of it and it's so telling when you go to the twin cities i think of them as protestant catholic yeah yeah i think of them as scandinavian in minneapolis and irish yeah um and others and others in saint paul yeah um but both of them especially saint paul uh just littered with churches and schools and It's just like the infrastructure of those cities was built by Christians. Yeah.
And so it's a little bit crazy that, first of all, it's been taken over by people who have made a point to stick a finger in the eye of Christians to make it impossible for them to live there. It's like you're being driven out of your own homeland, six generations.
Yeah, I mean, this is what happened with my wife. My wife is from St.
Paul. Her father's side of the family is Polish Catholic.
Yeah. I went to St.
Kazimierz Church. Exactly.
That's exactly in my mind what I think of. In the neighborhood that they were in, it was all Polish people.
Yeah. But now it's all Hmong, right? Everywhere.
It's all Hmong and Somali. And everyone there just left over the last two or three generations.
What happened to their churches and parochial schools? Well, St. Kazimer's Church is there, but it's largely empty.
We went there for a funeral a couple years ago. But people still attended, but it's not like it was.
Most of was. Most of the, most of the parishes there have shut down.
The church, the church schools have, have shut down and, and they've moved out to the suburbs. And so that, I mean, it was, that was a Polish neighborhood.
It was, it was, right, this ethnic enclave. If I can just say, showing myself to be an ethnic nationalist, the Pol, they're just like some of the greatest people I've ever met.
I don't think I've ever met a whole one. I have to say that married one.
Yeah, I just think they're great people. I don't know.
I've met many I don't like, but just salt of the earth, smart, hardworking, serious about faith and family. Yeah, great people.
I doubt it was an improvement, the change to St. Paul.
In fact, it wasn't. I've been there.
No, it's like when her parents finally moved, like the whole area is just run down, lots of crime.

Oh, my gosh.

And it's sad because it was – you could see the remnants of what was.

Like you drive through St. Paul, you see some of the old buildings and how beautiful they were, how much care people put into these places.
And now they're just falling apart, bars on windows everywhere. Factory workers basically tithing to build the infrastructure of churches and schools and their own homes.
People had no money giving the maximum amount to build all this stuff for their families. And then it's just some politician decides, oh, this is too white.
So we need to, yeah, destroy it all and destroy all the people. It's a crime on a level that only historians will be able to assess clearly.
But yeah. Okay.
Sorry. So can we just, before you get into what's happening in Tennessee, I'm so discursive, it's my fault.
But what, why aren't the fearsome evangelicals who I will still defend? Absolutely. I'm just saying that.
The laity absolutely defend them. Well, the laity, yeah.
Know a million of them. Yeah.
And I love them. In fact, there's some working here right now in this office.
But the preachers, like, where were they during all of this oh i mean i i think it's it's it's largely uh the the contemporary evangelical mode of being is is i mean so much of it i i look back to it um being you know going all the way back to something like the second Great Awakening, where the purpose of the major change that took place there is it's all about conversionism, right? And it becomes a big show and marketing and all of that. That's where you got the 10 revival.
Yeah, yes. Yeah, Charles Finney, those kinds of things.
Well, that's kind of in the DNA, at least somewhat, within evangelicalism. So, to put a finer point on what you're saying, the point became the more souls we convert, the more people who profess faith, that's like the scorecard that we use? Yeah, that's the metric that everyone follows.
And so you look at it and you think, well, if we just water it down a little bit more, make it more palatable to people, just get more butts in the seats, then that's the metric of success. Not the internal development, discipleship of people, not actual repentance and conversion, not fundamental life change and so forth that traditional Christianity always was.
It's, oh, if we just get them here and, of course, if they put some money in the plate and they're attending, that's what matters. So, you see churches where it's like, okay, we have amazing production values.
We have a great band and all of these things. And it's all of these entertainments to get people in or the sermon is sort of like a self-help talk.
There isn't really Bible in it at all. Or if it is, it's like tangentially related to something that the pastor wants to say.
It's not, all right, we're going to go through a chapter of Leviticus today and explain what the sacrifices are about. Well, there's no, there's none of those things.
And so you see, you know, many evangelical people, right, have not been taught really any Bible or theology at all. And you see this in like surveys, like the Barna group does surveys and, right, what people believe about different things.
And they haven't been taught any Bible. They don't know it.
And so then when the liberal says, well, the Bible condemns eating shellfish and pork in the same way it condemns homosexuality, so what do you have to say about that? And they have no idea how to explain that, what that is about. And their faith is shaken.
God didn't destroy two cities with sulfur and fire because people were eating pork. That's right.
He destroyed them because they tried to commit gay rape on an angel. Yeah, yeah.
And they'll say that with, well, the sin of Sodom was inhospitality. No, it wasn't.
Well, I mean, I guess- It was gay rape. Yeah, I mean, the least hospitable thing you could do- I mean, just read it if you want.
It's like, it's pretty out there. Yeah.
It's like, well, yeah, the least hospitable thing you could do to a guest is to anally rape them. Yeah.
All the men of the town came out. They demanded.
Yeah. We need to know these angels.
To have sex with these angels. And then Lot's like, I've got some daughters in here.
Take them. Which kind of takes a lot off my Christmas card list for saying something like that but whatever he does that it's in genesis and they're like no we want to rape the dudes like it's like it's these are not euphemisms it's pretty straightforward yeah yeah i mean i actually i just read genesis 19 to my children and there were some questions from the kids it was funny i read that a years ago for the first time.
I'll admit it. And my wife, who's a very serious and wonderful person, but a serious Christian.
We were on a walk and I told her what I had read the night before. And she's like, what? What? You know, she's just like, she's the model for me as a faithful person, but she was like, no, that's no way.
And I was like, it's in there. That's what happened.
Yes. Yes.
Yeah. And, and, and so I think about that and it's like, I mean, it's funny.
Like even at my little, little church, I, I, I just preach through the Bible. Right.
So I'll just take a chapter and I'll talk about it. I'll explain what's going on, all of these things.
And I mean, I have some wonderful people there, older people that have been Christians, their entire adult lives and they're in their 70s. And one of them said to me, you know, Andrew, that's the first time someone has ever preached from the book of judges in a church service it's a good one i went through the entire entire book and then well let's do ruth and then first samuel and second samuel and and and it's like wow there's so much there so much there i mean i had friends come down uh that were sort of um you know, new and becoming Christians out of being secular their whole lives.

And they're like, whoa, the Bible is extremely metal.

This is wild.

Like, there's so much, like, political intrigue happening in 1 and 2 Samuel.

Yeah.

And I'm like, yeah.

And I'm explaining it, you know, sort of in, like, this, you know, meersheimer-y, real politique way.

And they're just, like, at the edge of their seats, like, whoa.

I don't claim to understand a lot of it, particularly the Old Testament. Starting to figure out the New Testament more.
But just having read it cold a couple of times, just like a book, like you would read Anna Karenina or Moby Dick. It's like the wildest, coolest, most interesting, most profound.
Like those are not overstatements at all. Yeah.
And I think everybody should, it's the basis of Western civilization. I don't know why people don't read it.
There's obviously a reason. But even if you're an atheist, how could you not read the bible like everything we have is founded on yes the ideas in this and like you're basically illiterate if you haven't read it oh i know i mean you even you can see this it's it's it's so funny like when journalists uh write about the bible and they're like oh there's this weird uh illusion here that that and it's like he's talking about a a whale swallowing a.
I don't really know what's going on. And it's like, that's the book of Jonah.
How do you not know what that's about? But they have no idea. It's just so compelling.
Yeah. Of all the New Year's resolutions you're likely to put off, the one you're most likely to put off and keep putting off is buying life insurance.
And you should have life insurance. It's kind of crazy not to because the future is unknown.
You've got to have life insurance. But you may not have life insurance because it's a huge hassle and it can be a huge ripoff.
But there is an answer. Policy Genius.
It makes it very easy and much cheaper. You can find life insurance policies start at just $2 bucks per year for a million dollars of coverage.
And some options, and this is the best part, are 100% online and

let you avoid unnecessary medical exams. The guy with the gloves, you don't want that if you can

avoid it and you may be able to avoid it. 40% of people wind up looking back and wishing they'd

had better life insurance or any life insurance. It could have helped their families enormously.
Policy Genius can fix that for you. Peace of mind.
That's what they're really selling. The address, policygenius.com slash Tucker, or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much money you could save and how much hassle you could save.
Policygenius.com slash Tucker. Even Leviticus, which I ran on a flight to Europe one night, I made myself, because, you know, I had eight hours on a plane.
And I texted my wife on the plane. I was like, this is excellent, actually.
It's just excellent. I thought it was going to be all like sacrificing doves because you have your period that's in there.
But like 95% made sense to me well and it's and it's real like it's it's um it's tangible right it's you know in theological terms incarnational like it's your your the real tangible world that people interact with right that's there and it and people always ask me like well andrew what's your favorite book of the bible and i and i love to i mean sometimes i love to get a rise out of people. But I tell them, well, Andrew, what's your favorite book of the Bible? And I love to, I mean, sometimes I love to get a rise out of people.

But I tell them, well, Leviticus is.

And they're like, what? Really? And I'm like, yeah. Like, I mean, I'm a pastor.
My calling is to preach the gospel and to lead worship. And that book right there, all of it is about how do sinful people draw near and approach the presence of a holy, just, righteous God that cannot bear sin at all.
And there it's laid out for us, all of it. And even like you look at Leviticus chapter 9, like you read that, maybe you remember reading it.
I'm actually going through this with my church right now in Tennessee. but Leviticus chapter 9, like you read that, maybe you remember reading it.
I'm actually going through this with my church right now in Tennessee. But Leviticus chapter 9 is the entire liturgy of the church right there, each of the sacrifices.
And all of the Western liturgy for 2000 years basically follows it, right? You're called into the presence of God You Confess your sins

Probably like you're Episcopalian upbringing, Book of Common Prayer, like you probably track with this, right? They never admitted that in our church. Yeah, that's right.
Maybe they didn't have a confession of sin of yours, but there's a confession of sin, right? Then there's an ascension, right? The ascension offering in chapter one of Leviticus, right? The entire, the worshiper puts his hand on the animal, right? Saying like, this animal's me. And then the entire thing is consumed, is burned up, right? Ola, right? Where the word holocaust comes from.
Consumed, burned up, goes up to God in smoke. And that's you, right? That's when, and then the New Testament where it says, right, the word of God is living and active sharper than any two-edged sword.
Well, it's the sword of the priest that cuts the animal and puts it on the altar and burns it up. Well, that's what's happening when the church hears the Bible read and hears it preached, right? You're being cut up by the word of God and ascending up to God in smoke.
And then the next part of the service is the peace offering. Well, that's communion, right? You sit down and have a meal with God, and then you're sent out, right? The entire liturgy is right there.
Like our actual worship that we do now, right after the death of Jesus and resurrection of Jesus, right? Sacrifice is done away with because he is that sacrifice. And we're going through all of that each time we worship and renew the covenant with God.
And like you see that in Leviticus and it's like, whoa, actually, there's so much to learn here in this book about what we are doing every Sunday when we worship God. So, I'm like, yeah, this, of course, is my favorite book, right? Not just because I'm autistic and like lots of rules and regulations, right? It's like reading the instructions on the Monopoly game, you know? Like, no, it's there.
Like, so much is happening. It's beautiful.
And the prescriptions or the prohibitions, more precisely, are surprisingly, like, sensible. yeah yeah and one of the challenges to atheism is to explain why the atheist would agree with the overwhelming majority of what's prohibited yeah because it's it's in him he knows that's wrong don't have sex with your sister okay okay and most people most atheists would be like yeah well obviously but of course he has no grounds upon which to say that.
There's literally no law he can appeal to to say that. He says that obviously because he grew up and is reared and absorbed by osmosis, like Christian culture, where that's prohibited.
I think that's right. But I also think in primitive cultures that have never had exposure to Christianity, I mean, I don't know that there are many cultures where most of the prohibitions in leviticus would be considered crazy no or esoteric or like why would you ban that it's like everyone i'm like of course well even like you you think about this there was um there's um a pastor theologian uh brilliant guy uh peter lightheart who wrote a book uh Delivered from the Elements of the World.
And in that, he shows, I mean, there's tons of just amazing stuff in this book. But one of the things that he shows is that, right, God makes these restrictions for Israel in the Old Covenant that sets them apart as this holy people, as the priestly people.
But elsewhere in the world, they all have something like that. All throughout the ancient world, their gods had something like a funhouse mirror version of Leviticus where it's like, okay, here's all these rules about sex and what makes you clean and unclean and food you can't eat and can't eat.
The Egyptians had this, the Babylonians Persians Greeks all of them have these kinds of the the Mayans the Incas the Aztecs the Norse German like my ancestors the the Germanics like they all had these these rules and it's well it's because in the ancient world right they're all under their own particular gods right and um what what Jesus does is he comes and he he takes the world back from Satan and from all the demons that ruled over the ancient world.

And now he's reigning over heaven.

That's actually like the book of Revelation.

That's actually like what's going on in that book.

The much maligned book of Revelation.

Yeah, like I know you had John Rich on last year and he's talking about dispensationalism and things like that. And I was like, oh, I'm going to be in Tennessee.
I need to meet him and talk to him about this. Did you? I haven't.
No, I have no way of getting in touch with him. Maybe after this, if you used to watch it.
He's a good man. Oh, I love it.
I mean, he was like the soundtrack of my youth of country music. he wrote all those songs right so on that basis alone right but um where he's talking about like dispensationalism and what has happened in in american christianity for the last 130 years how it's actually a novel new thing um and and for me it was it was like yeah i i looked at that i mean i remember you remember growing up and that's just everything, like left behind and the rapture is coming and all of that.
So I missed all of that? Yeah, yeah. I don't know what you're talking about.
Yeah, it's a thing. Especially, and of course, I'm very critical of it.
But these are the best people in America that believe it like the the people that have like six trump flags on the back of their truck i totally agree like they they also believe that well the rapture is coming tomorrow we need to be ready for it and so i'm anytime i'm critical of it i'm like okay i'm not critical of the people like there's not a moral defect that they believe these things um i i totally first of all thank you for that. Second, I feel what you're saying, especially with evangelicals.
I look at these, you know, greaseball preachers who I honestly, I find disgusting. And then I see the people who go to their churches and I'm like, oh, I love you.
You're exactly my kind of people. You're the most decent people in this country.
You're trying your very hardest against headwinds that are so unfair and you're doing a great job anyway. And I just love that.
I really mean it. I love them.
So I never want to criticize. Yeah.
Right. Because.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And so like, and so like, whenever I'm critical of that theology, I'm like, I have to make sure people know, like, I'm not criticizing you because you're great, awesome people.
Like, even when I, when I first went to the town in Gainesboro before we decided, you know, before

we made our move, it was right after the hurricane, which it wasn't far from there.

And this is a town that like they don't have a whole lot.

The median income is not very high in this town, but I'm driving around in every gas

station.

Where is it?

Gainesboro, Tennessee is in Jackson County.

It's like north central Tennessee.

Okay.

Excuse me. Yeah.
And so every gas station? Every gas station has like signs up like, hey, we're going to western North Carolina to go help out. And it's like people that don't have a whole – like they're taking their time and what little money they have to go help people.
And meanwhile, the Biden administration is sending billions more to Ukraine and to Israel and everything israel and everything and they're taking their time it's like these are wonderful people they are and i will say for trump whatever people think of trump i know trump well enough to have talked to him about this kind of stuff and you know away from cameras and his affection love gratitude toward those specific people is totally real yeah and you can argue about whether you know those people best or whatever but leadership begins with love if you don't love the people you lead you'll mistreat them and you see it reciprocated right but it's totally real and completely real and it's emotional and he's like I love those people and Yeah. And he eats McDonald's in private.

Yeah, that's right. So that is, I just want to say that because I know that for a fact, you know, a lot of politics is obviously fake.
Yeah. But that part, that specific part of Trump, like loving people like that.
Oh, man. Well, and it's the people that are, you know, the most maligned in our country.
Like the only people you can make fun of are like rural southern appalachian people right that's free game you can criticize them all you want and mock them like you know jimmy kimmel can can make fun of them all day long on his show um no other group of people can you do that for and and they're the people that have been have been dispossessed of their country the most and and you i like that's just a big reason why we moved to this place is these are the people that are hated i want to go live with them yes i want to be around these because they're great people with the wonderful and cheerful too yeah wonderful people yeah i live in a place a lot of people like that and you know every third person has a child or grandson who's died of a drug od and like there's no year-round work and there's just a lot of problems and these are like you can pull into their driveway on a sunday and they will just they'll have a six-pack and they'll give you two of them i mean they really are just the most generous kind hilarious wise just good people yeah the best the best the best that this country's ever produced, in my opinion. Yeah, absolutely.
And I'm not from those people at all. So I'm like coming at this like, wow, these people are incredible.
Yeah, absolutely. And so I think about that, right? And I think about the theology that has been, that has shaped their outlook.
And it's understandable because like you're, the midst of serious decline. It's like, well, actually, it's sort of attractive to have this eschatology where everything is coming to an end.
You can understand why people would eat that up. But the people that actually built America, the Puritans and all of the settlers of this country, you think of even like the founding generation, that theology did not exist yet.
That wasn't until the middle of the 19th century that it came into being. Like, they were actually optimistic, right? They viewed, right, this continent as a place for Christians to build, to grow, to have a future.
What an interesting point. Well, I've never thought of that before.
So dispensationalism, for those who haven't followed it, is normally criticized and defended because of its interpretation of what biblical Israel is now. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
So it's like, it's a super electric topic, both theologically and politically. Absolutely.
And people get utterly hysterical about it and start calling you names or whatever. Yeah.
So there's that, but you're saying that the deeper or a deeper problem with it is that it makes people pessimistic. Yeah.
Can you flesh it out a little bit think if i mean if you think if you go your entire life believing that any minute the world is going to come to an end yes that i'm going to float up into heaven and my clothes will be here and and everything everything we we're gone it's it's done it's over over. Well, that takes a people that ordinarily are very low time preference that build things for the future, that delay gratification, all of those kinds of things.
And it flips it around and makes them very high time preference where it's like, well, if the world's not going to be around tomorrow, why invest in anything yes for today and you can even see this in terms of architecture right you think the buildings that that churches have well they they're in strip malls or they're you know just um they're kind of ugly yeah yeah and and you look at the buildings that's like a former former pet store and yeah yeah and you look at the buildings that Christians had before this was the dominant theology, and they're gorgeous.

They're beautiful.

And there were very poor people that made them, like you said earlier.

I know, I know.

And it's like that right there, like you see it tangibly.

And you think about that in terms of all of life.

That is so smart.

And what was the phrase you used?

Low time preference?

Yeah, low time preference.

What does that mean?

It's like an economic phrase, right? So, right please respect my ignorance um yes uh it just means that um you um you're going to wait longer for things it's it's sort of like the marshmallow test with little kids right where yes yeah where the one where like in five minutes you'll get two marshmallows or you can eat this one right now, right?

Well, the child that says, oh, I'll wait. I want two, right? Well, he's going to go on and have more success and so forth versus the one that has – that immediately grabs the one and eats it, right? Well, that's low time preference.
It's people that will delay gratification, who will save and invest and build things for the long term, for the future. And for future generations.
Yes. They plant oak trees.
Yes. Who plants oak trees? Yeah, well, I mean, we're going to in Tennessee.
We want to bring back the American chestnut in Tennessee. We want to bring that back.
Are you putting in evergreens, please? Oh, I think everything. Yeah.
I mean, there's pines. Please don't neglect the pine.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
I know it's a fast-growing tree, relatively speaking, but it's beautiful. It's the answer.
And cedars, if you can, if you have water. Yeah, I don't know if we'll be able.
Okay, okay. Since you're a preacher, Old Testament scholar, what was the inside of the temple clad with? Cedar, yeah, from Lebanon.
Exactly. God himself said cedar.
That's right, yeah. An accident? He was pretty specific about it.
Yeah, it smells great. Maybe there's a reason my sauna has cedar on the inside.
That's right. I always tell my kids that.
Just think of it like the temple. It's my cedar church, yeah.
That's right. No sacrifices, however.
Well, here's something you may not have known. This network almost didn't exist.
Trademark issue almost prevented us from launching by blocking us from using the name TCN. Now, a company called the American Country Network owned the rights to that trademark, and we were not sure if they would give them up.
Looking back, American Country Network could have demanded a lot of money. They could have held us up at gunpoint in exchange for the name TCN, and a lot of businesses would have done that, but they didn't.
They were incredibly nice. They gave us the name for free, and they gave it to us quick.
That's when we realized this is not your average company at all. These are really, really nice people, and we're glad this happened because it let us get to know the American Country Network.
It turns out it's a great place. Its leaders are excellent people of the same values that we do and we think that you do.
American Country Network is a family-friendly conservative Christian group bringing the best country music to millions of households across the country. And it's growing fast.
They launched just last year. They plan to reach 40 million homes in 2025.
As the only Nashville-based country music network left, there's only one, American Country Network is here to stay. We really cannot recommend them highly enough to you, and we're grateful to them for their kindness to us.
They did it for no reason other than to be nice, so we're especially grateful for that. We always are.
So go to acncountry.com to enjoy everything they have, including their 24-7 live stream. We hope you will.
Hey, it's Cole Swindell, and I want to meet you in Austin at the iHeart Country Festival. Register now at chumbacasino.com for your chance to win a VIP trip for two to the 2025 iHeart Country Festival.
Thanks to our friends at Chumba Casino, you can win a chance to head to Austin with a friend and meet me backstage. Plus, see the show with some real VIP treatment.

That sounds like a good time.

No purchase necessary.

VGW Group.

Voidware prohibited by law.

See terms and conditions.

21 Plus.

Sponsored by Chumba Casino.

I'm sorry, I've gone so far.

But so your point is that dispensationalism not only has specious theological elements, which I think very obviously it does. Yeah.
By the way, the whole theology was like laid out in the end notes. It's not actually in the Bible.
No, no. It's like interpretation in the version of the Bible.
Yeah, I mean, like John Nelson Darby and Cyrus Schofield and they'll claim

that they're antecedents from the early church.

Well, this guy believed in

something like the rapture and it's like,

it's always very, like you said, specious.

Yeah, that's my read

as a non-theologian, but it does seem

incredibly silly.

But sincere.

Yeah, exactly. People sincerely

believe it. A hundred percent.
A lot of people I really like and respect believe it. Yes.
So I just want to say that. But you're saying that the cost is even deeper because it changes your worldview and makes it very difficult for you to engage in the labor of, like, for example, loving people around you and building something beautiful, which are also Christian imperatives.
Is that what you're saying? Yeah, I think so. And it also, yeah, so it forces you into an immediacy, right? We got to do everything right now because there isn't going to be a future.
There's not going to be, I mean, I heard this all the time growing up. Well, you know, we're not going to be around.
We're going to be raptured. So, why plan the future why build things for the future why you heard that growing up oh yeah this was this was just everywhere in evangelicalism did you grow up in that yeah yeah yeah i did and i remember i remember in college when i was first getting into more historical theology or thinking like what did people believe before the 19th century about things?

And it's like,

For the first 1800 years.

Yeah.

What did they,

well,

there were various different eschatological schools.

Like there's all sorts of different views of,

of how the end works.

But when I first get into that and I'm thinking like,

Oh,

I don't know if I actually believe in the rapture.

And I remember being in college and in campus ministry and telling people this, like, I don't know if I actually believe in that. I mean, it was like I just uttered the greatest heresy of all time.
Like I could have said, I probably could have said, well, you know, just denied the Trinity or something. Right.
And they would have been like, oh, that's interesting. But saying, I don't think there's a rapture.
What? Are you serious? That is central doctrine to many Christians. And it has this deep emotional connection.
Because, I mean, if you've grown up your entire life hearing this, and it's just assumed by everybody, right?

It's hard to break out of that, even though the everybody of the historic church of millions or billions of Christians, right? It's actually a tiny minority in the history of the church that has believed that, but presently, it's a majority of evangelicals. Yeah, it seems like that theology is dying.
That's just my sense, but I'd be the last to really know. No, I think your instincts are correct.
I think some of it is, I is i mean some of it too especially in the latter half of the 20th century right after right israel is formalized as a state in 1948 well that that gives like big confirmation that okay things are happening like there's an israel in revelation and a temple in revelation so it's happening guys uh so we've got 40 years right 1988 that's the end well then that doesn't happen and then people make all sorts of other guesses i wasn't even aware of that so the idea was 1988 40 years after 1948 right that that's when the rapture is coming that was a you know i think it was there was a book like 88 reasons why jesus is coming back in 1988 right And I'm sure it sold a lot of copies and then, of course, didn't happen.

Wow. like 88 reasons why Jesus is coming back in 1988.
Right. And I'm sure it sold a lot of copies.

And then, of course, didn't happen.

Wow.

But Mike Takakis lost.

No, I mean, that's not obviously the rapture, but, you know, whatever, we'll take it.

For people in Massachusetts, maybe it was. But, yeah, it's just just so interesting because like i i look at it like you look at uh matthew 24 right that's the big you know the big text um that people point to and what does it say um where jesus says well there you know there's going to be wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes in various places and plagues and and things like that um right before it, right, well, Jesus is in the temple, and he's fighting with the chief priests, and he's telling them, you know, he's just, he's fighting with them at Passover, so thousands of people surrounding them, he's embarrassing them in the temple.
And... His boldness is really shocking.
Yes. To people who haven't read it before.
Yes. The rage that he displays at the leadership.
Yes. The religious leadership is just like.
Like nothing else. It comes right off the page.
And which is so ironic because you see evangelicals who are like, you need to be more Christlike. Right.
You need to be, which means like wimpy and weak and inoffensive. Sweeping into the temple and knocking over tables and driving people out with a whip and then and then going into the temple and giving this parable right where of the vineyard where he's like yeah first uh i sent uh i sent this servant you beat him and and stoned him and then you killed the other another one well i'll send my son they'll respect him and then it's the heir right if we kill him we could take could take the vineyard for ourselves.
And he asked them, what's he going to do to these people? Well, he's going to come and he's going to destroy all of them. And it's like, and they knew, right? The hilarious thing, I think, like reading the Gospels is, right, Jesus is giving parables and the point of the parables is actually to conceal what he's saying.
And people are like, well, what's that? Even his own disciples are like, what, what's that about? I don't really know. Like, it doesn't make any sense, but he's telling parables to the chief priests and the Pharisees and all the leaders of Israel.
And they're like, oh, that's about us. I think it says they understood it was about them.
They knew it does. Yeah.
So they, the parables are like obsc obscured everybody else but when it's about them like oh he's talking about us right and and but but talk about speaking truth to power i mean yeah like yeah i don't know how that jesus was kept for me as a you know lifelong churchgoer i have no idea yeah but you just read it i would recommend everyone read it. Non-Christians alike.
But he's there. He's right there.
And especially the gospel of Matthew. I love it because it is.
But Mark too. All four.
I mean, obviously all four of them, but like Matthew in particular is so cool to me because like you read it and the way it's organized is Jesus is recapitulating the entire history of Israel, right? So right in the very beginning,

he goes out into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, right?

Just like Israel's in the wilderness for 40 years, right?

Is tempted by Satan.

He comes, right?

After he crosses, or is baptized in the Jordan,

is like crossing the Red Sea, goes into the wilderness.

Then after that, right, he is preaching a sermon on a mountain, expounding the law, which is Moses on Sinai. And after this, he's telling parables of the kingdom, like he's David or like he's Solomon, writing proverbs, writing psalms.
And then he begins all of these excoriations of the high priesthood and the Pharisees and all the leaders of Israel. Well, what's that like? It's like the prophets, right? So, he's reliving the whole history of Israel in his lifetime.
What's Matthew doing there? What's the Holy Spirit doing there? It's showing that Jesus is Israel, right? He's the true Israel, right? He is the, as the Apostle Paul says, he's the chosen seed of Abraham, right? He's the one that carries out Israel's mission, which is, you know, I'm kind of doing the weave too, like I'm doing the weave. It's Trumpian.
It is. People, I mean, when I'm preaching, people are like, Andrew, you're doing the weave like President Trump.
But like Trump, it's interesting. I try not to do the hand motions and things like him too.
But we all have our own rhetorical style. But it's interesting because, right, like the whole dispensational thing where it's like, okay, right, the old covenant still somehow sort of exists.
And there's still this, you know, this distinction between Jew and

Gentile out there. Well, like the whole New Testament talks about this, that no, right, that separation that existed in the old covenant, right, they're brought together as one in Jesus, who is the true Israel, the successful Israel, the Israel that's obedient and goes to the death and is vindicated by being resurrected, right?

And that old covenant, it's done.

It's over, right? Those distinctions between Jew and Gentile, they're gone. It says that only about a thousand times in every book of the New Testament.
So to come to the opposite conclusion does make you sort of wonder, like, have you read it? Yeah, and exactly. And whether you believe it or not, that's just not what it says at all yeah and so you think about that and it's like okay the these two are brought together i mean the whole book of acts is is about this right that the the the holy spirit not only goes to the apostles and and the jews in in jerusalem but the gentiles get it too like peter goes to cornelius and he believes.
And now here is this Roman, right? This Gentile. And the interesting thing about that too is there's this misconception that the only people in the Old Testament that believed in God were Jews.
But it's like everywhere they go, there are these Gentile God-fearers that believe in God. And Cornelius is one of them in the New Testament.
Well, it's all through the New Testament. And in fact, Jesus calls out repeatedly Gentiles as the most faithful.
Yes. Repeatedly.
The Roman officer. Yes.
Yes. Again, like, I mean, he says this in the Gospels.
Like, he's talking about, right, the faithful or faithless and adulterous generation, right? He's talking about Israel. And he's talking about the faithless and adulterous generation.
He's talking about Israel.

And he's saying in the resurrection, Sodom and Gomorrah and Tyre and Sidon, they'll rise.

Sodom, destroyed for trying to rape angels.

They will rise up in judgment on this generation because if the things that I'm doing, if the Son of God appeared to them and preached to them, they would have repented, right?

And Nineveh, right, this Gentile city in the Old Testament of Assyrians, right, brutal, bloodthirsty people, right, Jonah shows up and he preaches. And his only message is 40 days, Nineveh is going to be destroyed.
Right. He's gleeful about this.
And the king hears about it. He repents.
He makes all the people in the city wear sackcloth and ashes. And it's like, well, I don't really know what's going to happen, but this looks serious.
We better repent. And I mean, we're going to go in the deep weeds here if you let me.
You know, this is – I'm not filibustering like President Putin did. But, right, you look at the book of Jonah in particular.
He is – he flees not because he's afraid of the Assyrians, right? Like that's the, what people think is like, he's scared to go there. No, like you read the end of the book of Jonah and he's arguing with God at the end.
And he's saying, I knew that you would show mercy on these people, right? I knew you would show them mercy. That's why I didn't want to go, right? He was trying to outwit God, like trick God into not being gracious to these Gentiles because he knows in the law, right? In Deuteronomy, right? One of the signs that Israel is about to be cursed is that he is going to call nations, right? The Gentiles, right, nations that do not know him to himself.
He's going to go to the Gentiles and away from Israel. And that means judgment is going to come upon Israel.
So, Jonah knows this. He's like, I am going the opposite direction.
I'm going to Tarshish, to Spain. Because I am not going to let God judge my people, right? That's why he's angry about this.

And it gets even more interesting because Jesus talks about the sign of Jonah to Israel. And people think, oh, well, Jonah's, he's talking about the resurrection being in the ground for three days and three nights.
And it's like, that's, I mean, that's, that's symbolic. That's typological.
He's drawing on the typology. But it's not about that.
It's that what's going to happen? Gentiles are going to hear the gospel and not you. And that judgment is going to come on Israel.
Judgment is going to come on this generation. And that's what Jesus says at the beginning of Matthew 24 is these things are going to happen in this generation.
He's walking with the disciples in disciples in the temple and they're marveling at the, we would marvel too. I mean, beautiful, like the whole thing is clad in gold on the outside is gorgeous, beautiful, giant, I mean, massive stones that you, it boggles your mind how human beings could move these things and build this stuff without, you know, modern power tools, right? They're marveling at the temple and jesus says what are you looking at right uh do you not know that not one stone is going to be left upon another very soon and they're like oh boy uh when's this going to happen well 37 years later actually yeah well i think it's we could we can debate you know well whenever but that's 40 years later but uh okay 40 years later but i mean i'll be autistic on that point the second revolt it's normally said to be 70 I think the resurrection is in 30 we're coming up on 2000 years the point is the Romans it's actually crazy the effort that they I mean I'm sure you've been there to the site I haven haven't.
Maybe one day. Oh, you should go.
Jerusalem is the most amazing city. And they've, anyway.
But they just went to such a great effort to separate every stone. Destroy everything.
So how much, they didn't just burn it and sack it. Okay, got it.
But they actually dismantled it. Yes.
Piece by piece. How many slaves did that take? How much money did that take? How much effort, human effort? Why would you do that? Why would you bother to do that? Yeah.
So, okay. I just want, and I'm so sorry for the discursions, but I want to get to your destination, which is Tennessee.
Yeah. Yeah.
Can you be a lot more specific about what you're doing there? I know there have been attempts to paint this as some sort of white supremacist enclave or theocracy or whatever.

What actually is it?

Can you describe it?

No.

So really, it's a real estate venture to build communities, to build – and I'm even hesitant to call it like subdivisions.

Because it's not subdivisions. It'll be – it's large properties, you know, two, three, 10 acre lots where people- Has someone already bought the land? Yes.
Yes. So Ridge Runners bought the parcels.
It's being divided up and sold, you know, as we speak. And one of them, you know, my church is going to build a church, like right at the center.
And so it's, so imagine, you know, so there's kind of two kinds of development that happen or really just one kind it's just build massive cul-de-sac subdivisions right houses for black rock yeah that kind of thing yes and and like that's not how america was built right like my town you know is founded in the in the middle of the 19th century and like the first thing that gets built like everywhere else would were churches right and then schools and that's not featured anywhere in any you know subdivisions or or real estate developments at all there's no place for people to congregate and have an actual community yeah yeah like you you see all these ones i mean i've seen some of the plans in like places around the Dallas-Fort Worth area where it's like they have a lazy river and they have all these nice amenities like that. There's never a church, right? There's never anything that the old America once had.
And so, yeah, my church is going to build, it's building there. Families from the country, some of them know me, I've known them, and they've been dying to get out of their blue state, city, horrible existence, out of the traditional subdivision into a place where they can have land, where they can have some chickens, maybe a cow, like live like Americans used to.
And be out in nature and enjoy beautiful things. To build something like that, because that's happening everywhere.
It's development, especially in Tennessee. It's like here in Florida, just exploding.
So many people moving there because because they're trying to get out of these places. And so what gets built, right? Black rock style subdivisions and just hideous buildings.
Hideous. Yeah, and very anti-human, right? And so this is development that is human scaled.
It's built for people to enjoy actual life, right? For people to congregate in the same area where they hold, you know, similar values, right? You don't want to live in a place where everybody hates you and hates what you think and hates that you love Donald Trump, you love your country, you love your God. I done that yeah you don't you don't want that

and tons of people it was like oh wouldn't it be great if i had neighbors that you know we we

pretty much agreed on on everything we we we you know agree on everything politically culturally

all of that where you and then you don't even have to talk about it it's just have normal

normal life together right your kids can play with their kids and and grow up together right that's

that's the kind of thing that you know that's being built uh there in tennessee and so i'm

I love you. together right your kids can play with their kids and and grow up together right that's that's the kind of thing that you know that's being built uh there in tennessee and so i'm i'm so excited to be a part of it the fact that there's a church at the center of it is is a red flag for the authorities in most places and certainly for the cultural commentators and the uh and and the media and was any other religious institution of course it would be be great that would be your community They're praising the media.
And if it was any other religious institution, of course, it would be great.

That would be your community.

They're praising the Muslim communities in Texas, for instance.

Right.

Or the illegal alien communities in Texas or whatever.

But a Christian church is, and I don't think any Christian should be surprised.

I mean, the Bible says you're going to be persecuted for believing this.

So, and they are.

All right.

Prediction come true. But tell us the response to this believing this.
And they are. All right.
Prediction come true.

But tell us the response to this, this dangerous venture of yours. Well, you know, like locally, the people in town are, and in the surrounding area, even despite like the news attacking us and things like that, the people that I've spoken to, the people I've met in the town are are very you know they're they're like like very enthusiastic actually that yeah uh especially when they see you know see the things that i do see the podcast i do or various things like oh like you're not at all like the tv man said you are and of course these are people that that we've been describing.
Like, they don't trust the media. They don't trust journalists.
So they're already distrusting of that. I'm like, oh, it just seems like you really like Donald Trump and the United States and Americans and the Constitution and our freedoms.
And you seem like a just normal, you know, conservative kind of guy. And I'm like, yeah, I, I am.
That's, I'm an open, open book. Like there's no, you know, what you see is what you get.
What I, what I believe, I earnestly believe. And so, so people are very, have been very, very kind.
But the state legislature hasn't tried to. No, no.
Mess with your zoning permits or, and the thing is, it's like, well, the company itself is not saying, well, this is a community, like that would violate the Fair Housing Act, right, to say this is a Christian-only community. It's just that my church is allowed to build a church there, right? There's no law against that at all.

And I can call up friends and say,

hey, you want to move here and be part of our thing?

What are the costs like?

Oh, the cost of living is extremely low.

Like there's no income tax in Tennessee,

just like Florida.

And so it's, especially compared to large cities, much, much cheaper place to live. So a lot of people are like, oh, wow, that's only going to cost me this much for a home.
It would cost me two or three times that if I were to build something like this. And I get land to have.
Are houses being built there? They're starting to be. Yeah, my friend CJ actually is right in the beginning stages of building his dream house.
He's going to be one of the first ones. That's quite a concept.
Do you think that, and you've written a book about this called The Boniface Option, which was controversial but also loved, like all good things. That's right.
Maybe you're speaking self-referentially, but... No, no, no, no, no, I'm not.
No, I was just saying like, you know, it's pistachio ice cream, you know, like not everyone loves it, but the people who do really do. They really do.
Yeah. So, but I think you suggest that, that like it's time for sincere Christians to be in fellowship with each other physically.
Yeah, especially because you see sort of like online communities where people are like, oh, I like this pastor.

I like the sermons that he preaches.

I agree with this theology, and I'm being formed in shape.

You band into groups online where you sort of self-sort, and there are these massive communities on the internet. It's like, well, what if we took that, this like digital community that exists, and what if we made it in real life, right? What would that be like, right? And that's kind of sort of what, at least for me, what I'm trying to do is, what if we bring people together in real life? What kind of stuff can we do? Like, I'm trying to just make it on my own, right? Just eke out an existence.
But what if we all did that together and multiplied, you know, our respective bandwidths, what kind of stuff would we be able to accomplish? And you expect to have businesses there too? Yeah. People are already moving their, their businesses there.
Yeah. And, and the, the exciting thing is, and it wouldn't be just like the people moving in right there, the only ones working at these businesses.
Like it will, it will help the people that are from there, the local community, which is, you know, throughout the, you know, because of macroeconomic forces, geopolitical things, things that were done to our country, all the manufacturing and real good jobs that used to exist in a place like this, those are all mostly gone. And so what would it look like if we brought those things back, right? How would it,

how would it bless the people in that area, right? That's, that's a major part of it. Yeah.

And, and so that's, that's the exciting thing is, well, we can, we, we come to a place like this.

We bring our friends that have, you know, some of them have remote jobs and, and, and good incomes.

They can, they'll, people will spend money locally and businesses will spring up because of that.

People will bring businesses and need employees.

And the people in the area will flourish in a way that they haven't for quite a while.

That's the pioneer spirit.

For people who are interested, what's the name of this again?

Ridge Runner.

So the Highland Rim Project.

Highland Rim Project.

I like that. for quite a while.
That's the pioneer spirit. For people who are interested, what's the name of this again? Ridge Runner.
So the Highland Rim Project. Highland Rim Project.
Highland Rim Project, yeah. So the website is ridgerunnerusa.com.
So I have one last question for you. Do you expect, I mean, what you described in your home state, in your hometown, is basically the persecution of Christians, the people who built the united states um and that is a trend do you expect where do you expect that trend to go to the extent you can predict it that's the most difficult thing of course always making predictions of course um i i think it will go in in two directions um so you know you have uh the left i mean you see this right now just how violent they are they're just itching to destroy things destroy people uh they're burning teslas they're there they they they shot uh president trump right they um they're very very very violent people and of course like the political apparatus on their side loves that right right? They never condemn it.
They never say these things are bad.

And we saw the same thing. They're youth brigades.
Yeah. They're militia.
In 2020, right? The same exact thing. And so I think, you know, and there have been, you know, instances of churches being, you know, shot at and burned down and bombed and things like this.
I think those kind of things will continue to happen and continue to get worse, especially in blue states and blue cities where it's basically allowed.

You know, George Soros just handpicks all the prosecutors and they're not going to enforce these laws. But on the flip side, there are still tens of millions of Christians, very conservative evangelicals and the like.
They just got President Trump elected, right? And political power is being wielded. And that's always the thing is like for so many years, we were told that no, no, no.
Our enemies have all this political power, but we're going to restrain ourselves. We're going to follow the Constitution, and we're just going to expect them to disarm themselves for reasons.
And that sort of way of thinking among conservatives is quickly being discarded, that the only thing you could do is confront power with power. Right.
Um, and, and president Trump and vice president Vance, they're wielding power and, and that wielding of power is going to defend Christians in this country. Yes, it will.
And, and so I, I think like that conflict will continue to become more stark, right?

The two visions for the country will become more black and white.

It will become more obvious that Christians need to band together to leave places where they have no protection whatsoever, where people like Tim Walls or the next governor of Minnesota, probably Keith Ellison, who is an Antifa Muslim. I mean, that was a terrifying thing, too.
It's like, this guy, maybe he knows who I am, and what could that guy do to me? To leave a place like that where you will very likely be persecuted, right?

They want to have a foil.

Like the whole thing on Christian nationalism, I mean, this is why I wrote a book on that, is in 2022, the media is just attacking like normal, decent evangelical people that happen to like Donald Trump and have skepticism about the election, the vaccine, everything.

And make them the boogeyman. And they would always say white Christian nationalism.
They always put those things together because they happen to be white. And even though they espouse no white nationalist tendencies at all.
They have no race theology whatsoever. Whatsoever at all.
They're like, well, I'm totally colorblind. They have a universalist theology.
Absolutely. Unlike the fascists who run the U U.S.
media who are like Nazi race mongers. Totally race-brained.
How many people of color? We're going to count you by race, which they literally do in this country. Who's the Nazi? I know.
They don't do that in church. When people come to your church, you're like, how many blacks do we have today? How many Hispanics? How many Pacific Islanders? You're like, we have Christians.
Well, the evangelical leadership definitely does, right? Well, they've fallen for this stuff. Yeah, of course.
But never forget how poisonous it is. Absolutely.
Yeah. I think.
Yeah, it is. It's like, well, no, we just have Christians, right? And so, no, I think those trends will continue.
And, but I'm hopeful. I'm optimistic.
I'm espousing this optimistic eschatology. So, of course, I'm optimistic.
I'm always, always hoping for the very best.

And I think that especially if the kind of evangelical Christianity, right, historic Christianity, the Christianity that built Christendom, that built the West, that built America, if that comes back, right, the kind of Christianity that sees Jesus in the Gospels, like we were talking about earlier, and sees a man, right, a man that is on a mission and is totally courageous and attacking God's enemies, right, to their face, knowing it's going to get him killed, right? That kind of Christianity that preaches like that, that speaks like that, that sees a God that is real and is your God. And he loves you and he loves what's true and good and right.
And there's justice. And he is going to bring justice to all of his enemies right to all of the people that hate him all the people that that do just monstrous evil right that kind of christianity that makes a comeback in america well that's that's an america that has a future i have to say i think that the hallmarks of courage among them are cheerfulness and optimism.
I do think that. And you have that, you know, for a dangerous theocratic fascist.
You seem very optimistic and cheerful. So thank you for spending all this time.
I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.
It was great to meet you. Yeah, it's nice meeting you as well.
Thank you. We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day.

We know the people who run it, good people.

While you're here, do us a favor.

Hit follow and tap the bell so you never miss an episode.

We have real conversations, news, things that actually matter.

Telling the truth always.

You will not miss it if you follow us on Spotify and hit the bell.

We appreciate it.

Thanks for watching.