Dead Men Walking Greg Moore, Jason Hamlin, & Paul Cox of RefToons Episode 10

Dead Men Walking

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Exploring theology, doctrine, and all of the fascinating subjects in between, broadcasting from an undisclosed location,

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Dead Men Walking starts now. Well, hello, everyone, welcome to another episode of Dead Men Walking.

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I'm your host, Greg Moore, also with the co -host, J -Dawg. What's up, brother? What's going on, Greg? We're in studio today, and as always, having a great time bringing you doctrine, theology, and all the fascinating things in between.

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Guys, thank you so much for subscribing on Apple and Spotify and all the podcasting places you can get us.

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We appreciate it. Thanks for the likes. Thanks for checking out the merch cage at deadmenwalkingpodcast .com.

00:50

Now, I did say we're on Spotify. We're not gonna be getting that $100 million a year that Joe Rogan just got.

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Did you see that? What? He just said he's exclusively going to Spotify next year, and they're going to, and they're gonna pay him $100 million between all the, and he's pulling all his stuff off YouTube.

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You can only get it on Spotify for the Rogan show starting next year. So I don't know. I mean, we didn't get into this to make any money, but who knows?

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10 years from now. Hey, Spotify. Come see me and Jay. Maybe we should put our phone numbers out there just to make sure they know how to get hold of us.

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I'm joking. But hey, we got someone on the line that I'm so excited to talk to. He is the creator and owner of Ref Toons, which you can find at reftoons .com,

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Instagram at Ref Toons. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife and four kids, and he told me to say and his four chickens.

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So that's good. We got a, we got a rural guy. This is a cheese head on here. We have a cheese head. Uh oh. Now see, we're from Michigan.

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No, no, no. That's what they call it, right? Is that good though? I think it's a good thing. Is that a good thing? Yeah. We're going to have to ask him when he gets, when he gets on the line, we'll ask him.

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Because I mean, Michigan, Detroit Lions, Wisconsin, Green Bay, we don't have a great relationship. Not that we've ever beat them in anything really, maybe a few times on Thanksgiving, but that's about it.

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But we have Paul Cox on the line. Paul, how are you doing, sir? I'm doing great. How are you guys?

02:11

We are good. Thank you so much for taking time and being here. We really wanted to sit down with you, but since we can't sit down with you, since there's a couple of states in between us, a call in is good enough for us.

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You know, I stumbled across Reftunes probably be about two years ago, maybe a little less than that.

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So I'm not really sure how long Reftunes has been around. You're going to tell us about that.

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But I feel like I got in late on the game because when I was telling other people about it, they go, oh yeah,

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Reftunes. Yeah, I know what that is. I mean, I have a lot of people in my community that know what it is. I just learned about it about two months ago.

02:47

Yeah. So for people listening, why don't you give us a little bio on yourself, kind of a little bit about you.

02:54

We know you're in Wisconsin with your wife and four kids and four chickens, but give us a little bio and maybe a little bit of your testimony, how the

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Lord saved you. Sure. Yeah. I, yeah, I'm a chief head. Yes. We won't hold that against you.

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Married to Stephanie, who is actually from Michigan. All right. There we go. All right. So I've got my feet in both worlds there.

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Where in Michigan was she from? Waterford, over by Detroit. Oh, wow.

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Yep. I used to work out of Waterford. Oh, cool. Awesome. So yeah, we go and visit there every once in a while.

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So yeah, I'm married. I have four kids, four chickens. We live in the city, so that's all we can have.

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So someday we'll have more. Nice. Right. Let's see. I grew up in a

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Christian home and I was always, I don't know if I was just kind of a little follower or what, but I always kind of wanted to love the

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Lord and just based on how my parents raised me. I mean, we went to church every

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Sunday, but I didn't really get into, I don't know when precisely I was saved, like the moment in time, but I just know that as I got older,

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I wanted to go deeper and deeper into theology, but I didn't know where to start or how to even understand what the

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Bible was saying. Okay. And it wasn't until later where some things happened in a church that we were attending, which caused a lot of us, including myself and my wife, to dive deeper and deeper into scripture, and it was through finding some online resources through some pastors that had sermons online and resources online that we were able to really find a grasp of what we believed and why we believed it, and we were able to kind of work out different questions that we had on our face about what the role of a pastor is, what the role of every person in the church is,

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I guess, but what the role of scripture is, especially in the body of Christ and in Christianity.

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So through that, we were exposed to a lot of expository preaching online, and that just really helped give us a better understanding of scripture, why it's sufficient, why it's important, and I just kind of grew from there.

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Okay, so you... I feel like... Go ahead. So you had always been raised in church, and then kind of sounds like you had that pretty,

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I don't want to say normal, but pretty normal sanctification process where you dug in more, you kind of, like you said, got into sermons online and preaching and things like that that exposited the word correctly.

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Yeah, it feels like it was more of a long sanctification process rather than just like,

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I'm a Christian now, and I'm going to take it. Our listeners have heard me said many times, I said the sinner's prayer at seven, and I got saved at 24, so you know,

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I certainly understand. I said the sinner's prayer about 17 ,000 times, over and over, because I didn't understand.

06:15

So did you, you grew up in Wisconsin then? Yeah, born and raised. Born and raised in Wisconsin. Which city?

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Janesville. Janesville, yeah, I've been there. There is a... Oh, nice. There's a sports bar right off the highway off of...

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Jason's our internationally touring musician back in the day. Yeah, I used to tour, I used to tour back in the day. He's been everywhere.

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He's a walking Johnny Cash song. Yeah, Kenosha, I mean, we used to, yeah, we used to,

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Milwaukee, I mean, Green Bay, we were all over there, so yeah, I know all about Wisconsin. So my question was, you're living in Wisconsin, your wife's from Michigan, how did you two meet?

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Yeah, well, we were both part of the Free Methodist Church, and we went to a Free Methodist college, and we both, we met while in college in Spring Harbor, Michigan.

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Those crazy Free Methodist college parties, woo! Yeah. Dancing six feet apart, you guys were social distancing before COVID.

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Actually, no dancing. There you go. Yeah, leave room for the

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Holy Spirit. That's right. So yeah, we met while in college, and I got married my junior year, and I brought her back to Wisconsin after I graduated.

07:34

Cool, so were you in post -secondary education for illustration?

07:39

For art in general. Art in general. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about how Reftunes came about, because like I said, widely popular with people that I didn't even think you'd be widely popular with.

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I was talking to someone last week, you know, because usually when you get into the Reformed movement as well, and into that theology, sometimes you kind of provide services or things for that community, and it doesn't really go outside of that.

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And, you know, I've talked to all kinds of people, walks and denominations, and they go, yeah, we know it. Yeah, we know what

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Reftunes are. I've got, you know, a buddy of mine just bought your Pilgrim's Progress coloring book for one of their kids, which that's next on my list to buy from you.

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So tell me how that got started, and how long has

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Reftunes been around? Well, I started Reftunes in October 16th of 2017.

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Oh, I'm not that late to the party then. I knew about it for about two years. I've known about it for five years.

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Yeah, for a very reason. You hipster. You're a hipster of the Reformed community.

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I knew about Paul before it was cool. I knew about Paul when he was at Spring Arbor. Before Reftunes was cool.

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Yeah, yeah. Before it was created. So 2017, so kind of a new company.

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Yeah, yep. And so how it started, I guess, I was trying to figure out ways to...

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So at the time, I was learning more and more. This was kind of when I started switching my theological views to a more

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Calvinistic Reformed view. Okay. Which started a few years before this, but I was learning more and more about church history, more and more about theology, and I wanted to...

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I didn't want to just hold it all in to myself, but I didn't necessarily feel led to pursue becoming a pastor or something.

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Right. So I wanted to find a way to use my skills, the gift that God has given me, to be able to share these truths and these historical events with people that have shaped

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Christianity. Because as I was learning these things, I would think of different pictures in my head to illustrate different truths and stuff.

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I was like, well, why don't I just put pen to paper and draw some of these? So the first idea

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I had was just to be silly with it and just draw a Martin Luther with a bunch of trick -or -treaters behind him at the door of Wittenberg.

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And yeah, I still do a lot of silly, silly things with Reptunes, but there's also a lot of serious stuff as well.

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So from there, I found that a lot of the quotes that I was reading were very illustratable.

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And so basically all the Reptunes come from things that I may be reading at the time, or quotes that I come in contact with that really speak to me.

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Well, that's one of the things that really drew me to it is because since I was young,

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I love quotes. I have books of founding fathers, books of our doctrinal fathers, all these things.

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You're an early meme guy. I was just going to say that. I feel like quotes were like the meme before memes.

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I mean, that's really what it is. You get a good, solid quote, and you can get a lot packed into just a few lines. One, you can read it quickly.

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Two, it conveys a message to the reader very quickly. Now I feel like quotes are so important.

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Obviously, reading things in full context is important, too. But quotes are so important because people have such short attention spans.

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And then when you add a colorful illustration that's done professionally, and it creates a visual on top of the quote,

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I mean, those can be very powerful. Some of the stuff I see, Paul, on your Instagram feed, I just go, that has got to be so much more powerful to look at and read than someone just saying it or posting it on a

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Facebook thread where they're making an argument. When you see it visually, you see a likeness of someone who might have spoke it.

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And then on some of yours, you take a little liberty with what's going on in the background or what might have been happening at that time when that person said it.

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I think it really brings it full circle to make a really sound doctrinal theological point.

12:03

So you said 2017, this started. Are you doing this full -time or do you have another job?

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Yeah, RefTunes started out as kind of a side project and then it's kind of grown into a thing of its own.

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Sure. But my full -time, my main full -time job is as a freelance illustrator.

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So I work from home. Okay. And I work full -time as an illustrator. I'm doing like comics and character designs for businesses and like their business mascots and comics explaining their products or services that they may offer and things like that.

12:41

Oh, very cool. So it sounds like you said you were turned on to Reform Theology, wanted to take those talents and tell people about it.

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So it sounds like to me, you're the first person I've ever met that's actually monetized their cage stage.

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You actually said, I'm going to turn my cage stage into a business. And it seems to be working for you.

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This was when my cage stage was starting to calm down actually. Oh, okay. Yeah.

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Those cartoons might've been a lot worse at the beginning, huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I was probably still in it a little bit, but there was one that I had to take down just because I didn't feel right about it.

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Sure. Yeah. I recently saw your post on May 6th with a famous pastor with dreads.

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Yeah. I saw that and I went, oh, this is going to suck. Pretty spot on.

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It was great. I loved it. But here's the thing. I think it's a special type of ministry because I think you can get across a point.

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And when it's backed up with colorful imagery and cartoon like characters, but also, you know, really making a very deep point, an important point.

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I think sometimes that can go... I actually know it does. It goes a lot farther than someone just saying so and so bad, so and so false teacher, so and so.

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I mean, because one, you're backing it up with historical quotes or historical language.

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And then two, like I said, it's beautifully illustrated and setting a tone. I think those are more effective in ministry than, like I said, either just text or just, you know, posting a quote alone, which, like I said, really, really, really drew me to your work.

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Yeah. And I try to... Part of it is you're getting the attention of more than just one sentence.

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Like with quotes, you're either reading them or hearing them. With the tunes, you're reading them or hearing them while you read them and you're seeing them in a certain context.

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And I think that that surrounding illustration around the quote can help kind of reinforce what the quote is saying or help the reader see the important aspect of the quote.

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Yeah. Is it hard to not put a Charles Spurgeon quote in everything?

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Or is it... Yes. Yes. He's got so many good ones, man.

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Oh my goodness. Yeah. I think he's the one that I have the most of right now.

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Well, I mean, yeah, he's very quotable, the Prince of Preachers for a reason. Oh my goodness, yeah. Right? The Vaati one was,

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I think, that was, yeah, the first one that I think I saw was the Vaati one.

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The Vaati Bach one? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. That was the first one that showed up in my feed anyway. Yeah.

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Which Vaati one? The one with two balloons the modern church is producing.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was a good one. All right. Yeah. Which for anyone listening right now, I know you do this quite often.

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Paul and I actually met because he was doing an Instagram live video of him actually drawing the...

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Do you call them cartoons? Comics? Illustration? What's the right word I'm supposed to use? I just call them comics or cartoons.

16:09

Okay. So he was doing one live and showing you digitally how he's doing it.

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And I'm going to mess this up. My wife and my two daughters are unbelievable artists.

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They really are. I mean, my oldest who's 10, she can freehand birds and horses and hands and all the stuff that's hard.

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I can barely draw a circle. Okay. Now, I'm a musician. I can play music a little bit, but I do not get...

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Well, I don't know. No, I'm joking. That's even debatable. So when I meet artists,

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I'm just in awe. I'm like, I can barely draw a tic -tac -toe sign that looks straight, let alone when

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I watch you, Paul, live on Instagram doing it digitally, which I don't know,

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I feel like that would be so much harder. But it was just kind of cool to watch you go through the process. So I would say anyone listening, and I believe your handle on Instagram is at reftunes, correct,

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Paul? Yeah. Yeah. So jump on his Instagram account because he has quite a following there. T -O -O -N -S.

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Yes, T -O -O -N -S. Not like Looney Tunes. Not like Looney Tunes. Yeah.

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Unless you're coming out with a sweet Reformation album, are you, Paul, is that your next step?

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Word up. Right. So yeah, jump on there.

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And do you do those live Instagrams pretty often? Because I think I've caught one or two of them now. Yeah. Let's see.

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I've been trying to do them like every Monday night at 8 p .m. central time.

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But I also hop on at random times. It ends up being maybe like three times a week that I go on.

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So when I'm streaming live on Instagram, at the same time I'm also streaming live to Facebook and YouTube.

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Okay. So they can get you everywhere. Yep. So let me ask you one more question about the creation of Reft Tunes because I also host an entrepreneurship radio program.

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And I love talking to people who either start a business or find a niche market and run with that because it's so interesting.

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Most of the time it's because it's out of necessity or they see a need and they fill the market.

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So like you said, you wanted to use your gifts. You were passionate about reform theology and obviously quotes and things that church father had spoken about.

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So you took that idea and you just said, hey, look, I'm an illustrator. I'm going to do this. What was your... I mean, were you just posting on social media or did you go,

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I'm going to have a website with products or what was the very first steps in that? Well, the first step was just to get it out there.

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So I started posting it for free on Facebook. I started a Facebook page, started a

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Twitter account, started an Instagram account and just started posting. And each new one that I had,

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I would post that one or I'd post like little previews of the next one coming out, stuff like that.

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So did you get a pretty good response right from the beginning or is this something that has grown over the last few months or years or?

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I think, yeah, it got a pretty good response. I was able to, so I knew there was a fairly large reform community on Facebook in like several different groups.

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So I was able to post them into a lot of these groups, just share them, share them from the Reptune Facebook page.

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And so I think, yeah, it took off pretty good from there. It's hard to remember that far back.

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So let's change gears a little bit as we head down the line here.

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Why don't you talk a little bit about, because we love asking our guests that come on that are in that reformed community, what were some of the things that, it sounded like you said you were a free

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Methodist in college, what were some of the things that brought you towards reformed theology that moved you into that camp?

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So like I said earlier, the main thing was just diving deeper into Scripture and hearing people explain things that had never ever been explained to me before, but they had just been like, oh, well, we don't believe in that, so we're not going to teach that.

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Things like predestination, election, things like that. So what really helped me was the very first sermon series

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I found after the troubles in that first church we were at, the first sermon series was by Matt Chandler, this was back in 2009, by Matt Chandler, and it was about ultimate authority, and it was talking about God and His sovereignty and His authority and the authority of Scripture, and it was like a 10 -part series or something like that.

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But that is what really, like I had never heard anyone preach like this before, I had never, I had always seen or like heard that God is just a loving

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God and He doesn't make anyone do anything they don't want to do and all that stuff, and so this was the first time

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I really heard any position of God as authoritative, and that really got me searching

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Scripture and finding more, and through those things, Matt Chandler had recommended some books, and one of them was

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Christless Christianity by, I forget his name, the guy that does the White Horse Dance, but then through that,

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I found the White Horse Dance, which is another podcast, because I go deeper into theology and questions of Reformed theology and stuff like that.

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And just through there, I found this rabbit hole of all kinds of deep -thinking podcasts that I found out later were a bunch of Reformed Calvinist guys, and I had no idea, but I was agreeing with everything, and I was saying, oh, in my mind, when

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I was hearing them, I was thinking, oh, wow, that makes, like, total sense, like, I never read the

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Scripture this way before, but now I can't see it any other way. Right. Yeah, once that lens is put on, or the veil taken off, whatever analogy you want to use, it's hard to see it the other way, and you and I are very similar in the fact that I had the same thing, where just things weren't explained.

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We don't believe in that, so we're not going to talk about it, this is the way it is, and if you're a curious person and you want to actually dig into the

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Word of God, you're eventually going to find out what those things mean and why they are.

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I find it very telling that Jason and I ask a lot of people that same question, and I think we had two or three say the exact same answer, well,

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I just started reading the Bible more. Right. That's how I became Reformed. I actually read the Scriptures.

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I actually read the Scriptures instead of listening to my tradition, or someone else tell me I actually got in and read the

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Scriptures, and then I went, oh, this makes sense, this is what the Bible says. Because I wrestled with it for, oh geez,

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I mean, in my early 20s, I wrestled with it until maybe 31, so almost eight or nine years of,

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I was taught, you know, I grew up in a legalistic church, but then an assembly as a God -type Pentecostal, and then a church that kind of got into NAR a little bit, and so then, you know,

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I was struggling against, well, oh geez, the Calvinist word is bad, and Reformed is bad, and then actually reading the

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Word of God went, oh, that's just what the Bible says. You know, I really even hate that, you know, my wife and I argue about this, we even hate using the label

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Reformed. It's like, we just believe in the Bible. You know? But it's like you have to qualify it.

23:51

You have to qualify it. Like we talked about last time, yeah, you gotta qualify what that means. You believe in the Bible, but yeah, you might be saying that from a

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New Apostolic Reformation. Mormon. Yeah, yeah. Jehovah's Witness.

24:04

I mean, you know, oh yeah, we believe in the Bible, just very generic, and then you have to define it. Absolutely.

24:10

But it's so good to see guys like you doing stuff like this that do, like I said, yeah, of course it caters to the

24:15

Reformed community, but these are, it doesn't matter if you are or not. I mean, these are great illustrations with very powerful quotes, you know, very powerful.

24:25

I think there's scripture, you do scripture in some of them too, right? I think I thought I saw. Yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

24:31

And I don't always do Reformed guys. Like I have Charles Wesley on there with one of his hymns.

24:38

Right. Yeah. So I guess the idea was just to illustrate what

24:43

I was learning and kind of bring, at the time I was into like Reformation history and I was getting deeper into Reformed theology, which

24:51

I still am, but, and so that's where the Ref name came from, Reptune, either

24:56

Reformed or Reformation. Right, Reformation. But I think a lot of church history kind of formed out of the

25:02

Reformation, so I like to include a lot of different guys in there.

25:08

And you have so many great, great ones to pull from, even if you wanted to stay in that lane. And I tell people all the time

25:14

I grew up hearing of all these names, you know, I was homeschooled when I grew up and from third to 10th grade and I heard names like Jonathan Edwards and John Bunyan and John Newton.

25:27

And we read a, you know, a Matthew Henry commentary in our church. And then

25:33

I get older and I go, and I, we listened to Charles Spurgeon and, but no one ever told me, oh yeah, their theology is

25:40

Reformed. And I went, oh my gosh, like half the early church fathers, half the, you know, our founding fathers and throughout history actually have this systematic theology that I haven't even been introduced to.

25:54

And it was kind of funny because I was putting them, you know, prioritizing them as a young Christian of ones

26:00

I really looked to and listened to. And then they end up being in that same, you know, I didn't even know that I was categorizing them into kind of a theology and then, you know, get a name put to it in my mid twenties.

26:13

So yeah. Did you have any other questions for Paul here before we let him go? You know,

26:19

I was wondering how long does it usually take you to draw these up? I mean, is this a five minute process?

26:25

Is this a three day process? Like what, I mean, what's the plan? He's going to tell us an egg.

26:30

So he goes, it takes me four and a half eggs to make one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's four chickens. It's like,

26:37

I draw it at the Italian restaurants on the napkins, you know, with the crayons.

26:42

Yeah. So yeah, I guess from sketch to vinyl colored illustration depends on the level of detail, but generally it's anywhere between like three to six hours of work on each tune.

26:58

Yeah, that's awesome. And I typically do those at nighttime and when I do draw them, I'm usually going live while I draw them.

27:05

Oh, gotcha. Okay. So, and do you come up with a conception of like the place and where it's going to be and kind of what's in the background?

27:13

Like the one that Jason just brought up with our dreadlocked friend,

27:18

Mr. White. So you had stuff like kind of going on in the background and you've got a scene and a tent and you know, some other things.

27:26

I mean, is that just stuff that you just kind of conceptualize? And I'm guessing with digital sketching too, you can kind of, you know, delete and move and you just kind of play around with it, right?

27:37

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, the background elements and everything, I just kind of figure out,

27:44

I start with the quote and then I figure out like what type of environment would

27:49

I put this quote in to make it really bring the quote to another level or like to help define what he's really talking about in this quote.

28:00

So with that particular one, Spurgeon was talking about Jesus not doing any like cool tricks or anything, so people would rather go look at a charlatan than come to Jesus.

28:15

And so immediately I thought of like the old snake oil salesman and there were these things called medicine shows where it was just a trailer with all sorts of like cures that you could purchase that would like cure all your ills and everything.

28:31

Sure, elixirs and healers. That's where the snake oil salesman came from. And so I just, and we,

28:40

I had been seeing a lot of stuff about this dreadlocked preacher guy and so I decided to kind of bring it.

28:46

We can use his name. That's okay. I don't know why. I don't know why we're being so bailing. We never pull our punches any other time.

28:51

I know, usually we don't. I know. You can, you know, Todd White, you can use it. Whoops. Todd White. I wanted to bring it,

28:58

I wanted to bring it into the modern era while also having that old time feel.

29:04

No, that was, that was a great juxtaposition too of taking a quote that's literally whatever, 150 years old or so at least.

29:12

A few lines. A few lines in it and it's, you know, it's powerful. It's talking about something current.

29:17

Right. Yeah. I just actually put up the Octavius Winslow drawing that you had on my

29:25

Facebook banner and people love it. Oh, nice. Yeah, they love it. He's like, that'll be $9. Right, right.

29:30

I know, right? Yeah. I'm definitely trying to get your name out there in Reftunes. Yeah, which speaking of, what kind of stuff can, if people want to support you or they like the products, what kind of stuff can they get on the website at?

29:42

What is it? Reftunes .com? Yeah, Reftunes .com. You can click on the store button and right now

29:49

I have the Reftunes Collection 1 available in paperback that is collecting all the tunes from 2017 through the end of 2019.

30:01

Sweet. Oh, cool. In one book with a nice little embossed cover on it. I have not received the shipment of books in yet to send them out.

30:09

I'm still waiting from the printer on those, but you can still order the copy and it'll get sent out once I get the shipment in.

30:20

Have you heard - Other than that - I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Oh, no. I was just going to say, other than that, I have the

30:25

Children's Progress children's book that my wife and I wrote and I illustrated. That's through H &E

30:31

Publishing. Okay. Yeah. No, I was just going to ask, Paul. How do kids receive these drawings,

30:38

I mean, with these quotes? I mean, do they seem to understand them? Is that part of your demograph or -

30:47

I've wondered about that, but I get a lot of messages from parents talking about how their kids were coloring in the

30:55

Reftunes coloring book and as they were coloring, they were teaching their kids about each person and the kids are - talking about these characters, wanting to color them, or I even got a message from,

31:11

I think it was like a 15 -year -old who sent me a presentation they had done for their school and they had drawn all these

31:19

Reftunes characters on a big poster board and it was really cool. Oh, that's cool. That is awesome. Yeah, we have a group of about 25 families in my community that are all believers and we all homeschool, and this was something

31:31

I sent out to their Facebook page. I said, look at you guys, we need to get some of these, order them, get our kids coloring them or looking through them.

31:38

My family, my kids are 10, 8, and 5, and we're a huge Pilgrims Progress family, of course.

31:44

So I would encourage any of the listeners, whether you homeschool or not, or you just have young ones, or if you just want something for your office, that book that you have going from 2017 to 2019, that's kind of neat too because then you have essentially two years worth of cool quotes that are illustrated, even if you just buy it as a quote book, which like I said,

32:06

I'm obsessed with anyway. I'm going to have to get one of those just so I have some really cool quotes all condensed.

32:12

How many pages in that? How many illustrations in a two -year period does someone get if they purchase it? I think there's about,

32:18

I think there might be about 74 or 75 illustrations in there. Cool. But it's like 80 some pages with all the front and back pages and stuff, and I have references in the back for all where the quotes can be found.

32:31

Oh, that's great. Awesome. Well, Paul, did you have anything else for us before we let you go? I don't think so.

32:37

Paul, thank you so much for being here, and as always, we appreciate you as a brother in the Lord. We thank you for coming on and taking your time to explain a little bit about your, you know, how the

32:47

Lord saved you, your ministry, your website, and we do appreciate you being here. And for anyone listening, be sure to check out

32:54

Paul at Reftoons, that's R -E -F -T -O -O -N -S, correct? On Instagram.

33:00

He said he's on Facebook, YouTube, all over the place, and then www .reftoons .com for his website where you can get all kinds of cool stuff there.

33:07

Paul, thanks so much for being here, and hopefully we'll have you on again. Awesome. Thanks for having me. All right, Paul. Have a good day.

33:13

See you, Paul. You too. Bye. Bye. The Dead Men Walking Podcast is sponsored by Greg Moore at Informed Solutions Realty.

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35:12

And now, back to dead men walking. Well that was cool. That was really cool.

35:19

So I guess I wasn't late to the game two years. I thought he had been doing it for about four or five years before that.

35:26

So really this is a newer business, I mean three years, 2017 he said. Did you catch his age?

35:32

I didn't. I don't know. Maybe he was around our age. Maybe. Maybe. Paul, if you're listening, we'll just put you, we'll say you're 25 even if you're 45.

35:42

You sounded young, I don't know. I think so. Most of the time when, because if you're watching him on Instagram live, you're just seeing the hand.

35:52

I don't know, I was like how many wrinkles are on that hand, how old that guy is now. But it's so true what

35:58

I was saying. It's so nice to have a visual aid to the quotes. Oh man, especially the way he sets them up.

36:06

I mean, I don't know, have you seen the grave one? Which one? You have to explain it to me. Dying to pride, dying to, you know that one, man that was a powerful one right there.

36:16

I mean, he's got quite a few that, I mean, just like you just said, I mean it takes no explanation of the entire thing, and he has a quote that might be two sentences, but you know, the way he illustrates it, he really explains it well with his illustration.

36:33

It's some really cool stuff. So what's going on new with you, man? We've got a few more minutes left on the podcast, we'll just, you got anything new going on in your life?

36:43

Let's see here. Well, the baby's doing, our baby's doing well, Emsley Jane, still doing awesome. She is going into the phase where she's starting to wake up a little bit more during the night, you know.

36:53

Fun. But you know, whatever, we're not working right now, and not sure if we're going back this week or not.

37:00

I'm hearing there's more cases of the Rona that are going around in plants. I heard it's going through the plants, yeah.

37:07

They shut down, I heard, I can't confirm or deny this, but they shut down Dearborn the other day, which is huge, that's the biggest plant, that's the biggest moneymaker for Ford Motor Company.

37:20

Yeah. It is F -150. I mean, if they shut that down, that's pretty serious. You're probably not going back if they shut that down, are you?

37:27

If they shut that down, no, we would not. Because I mean, with the Mustang, I'm pretty sure the

37:32

Mustang is only 4 % of the sales of Ford Motor Company as a whole. Oh really? So yeah, it's a very small percentage.

37:39

It's got to be more than that. Yeah, it's - I mean, I know their trucks are - Oh yeah, man. Is their moneymaker. I mean, that's got to be at least 50 or so percent of the sales.

37:47

What's going on with all the COVID in the plants? Because out of the 400 cases we have in this county, over half of them are from DTE employees at their plant.

37:54

Really? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, what they're planning on doing, when you walk in, you're getting scanned or taking your temperature.

38:04

Right. And then if you're okay to go, they tell you to go ahead and go into work. But maybe with it being, isn't it dormant in your body?

38:14

Like it doesn't show, if you catch it today. A lot of people, yeah. Like it doesn't show, but you can still transfer the virus, right?

38:21

You still have a contagious period of 10 to 14 days when you're not symptomatic. Right. So, and at a plant, you're either working by yourself in a 20 foot area.

38:33

Sometimes you're right up on somebody. Right. Oh, that's true. You're right next to someone. Maybe you're crossing paths sometimes, or you're in the same area.

38:42

Somebody's working on the right side of the car while you're working on the left side of the car. And then maybe somebody's in the back of the car.

38:47

So, you know, Mustang isn't that big. So, you know, it's like. I feel like those, don't those guys wear masks anyway though?

38:54

No. Gloves or no? We don't have to wear gloves or masks. They do give us a mask now.

38:59

Yeah. But now I'm pretty sure you will have to wear gloves and you know, of course the mask.

39:04

But yeah, but I don't know. I'm hearing a lot of different stuff about the mask. Have you heard the CDC came out with something saying that we shouldn't even have to wear a mask.

39:15

Yeah. They were against it. Then for it now against it again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which I mean, doctors have been saying that for years and years.

39:23

I mean, you don't wear a mask to prevent it if you're healthy. Right. Yeah. And I mean, imagine getting on a plane in a tube.

39:31

I won't do it. Feels like it's strangling my chin in my face. I can't do it, man.

39:37

And then it's all wet and moist in there with us. I mean, we got this, these big old beards. So it's like, you know, it doesn't even really.

39:44

Yeah. It doesn't really go over our nose or mouth, you know, and then you see people that don't have their, their face mask over their nose.

39:50

Yeah. It's like, well, is okay. You're breathing out of your nose. Yeah. Yeah. I saw one lady and she had a hole cut right in the middle of her mask.

39:57

And she was totally serious. She's like, oh, it makes me, you know, it's bothers my mouth. So I just cut a hole in it.

40:03

And I'm like, well, then why? Yeah. Well, there is a company out there. I guess they're coming out with the, they're putting plastic see -through in the middle of the mass.

40:12

So you can see the mouth, your mouth. Why do I want to watch someone's lips move? Right. Well, yeah. And that, then, you know, somebody, you know, with bad hearing or something, maybe they can, you know, read lips or something, but yeah,

40:24

I don't know. Make kissy faces. Shame on me. Just think of myself. What do I do that for? There's people out there that.

40:30

Yeah. Yeah. Well, Greg. Yeah. Yeah. No, man. But yeah, there's, there's a lot going on out there right now.

40:37

How was, I was going to ask you about the housing market. What's going on with that?

40:43

For me, for anyone listening, I'm a real estate broker. It's like we paused for two months and then just jumped right back in the deep end.

40:51

I mean, our sales. Nope. Home values are still actually up a little bit. Serious. Time to sell.

40:56

I was actually doing business through the, even through the shutdown. There were some things I could do. And I haven't seen any, any indication.

41:05

Now here's the thing. Two months isn't a whole, isn't a big chunk of time to see how it, you know, two or three months.

41:11

You know, six months from now, a year from now when people either, A, can't go back to work or lose jobs over this.

41:18

I mean, that's going to affect lending and being able to purchase their purchase power. So I'm predicting we'll probably see something next spring.

41:24

We'll probably have a drop off in that busy season. But as from March 13th, you couldn't work to March 7th here in Michigan.

41:31

You could work. No, I just jumped right back into it. I got two closings the end of this month and another one first week of June.

41:37

That's awesome. And I'm showing houses all day yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, cause you keep, I mean, I keep seeing things about the housing market going down or, or maybe the, uh, the percentage that you're borrowing, you know, uh,

41:49

I mean the, I mean the house housing rates are going down or with like what prices or yeah, well, the, uh, percentage that you're borrowing, um, or maybe even interest rates, are they, are they going down or are they going up?

42:01

Interest rates are down, man. They're rock bottom. I mean, all my lenders are working round the clocks. They're refis alone.

42:07

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm refining mine just to refight. I get a three, 3 % on a, you know,

42:13

I'm going to take it from a 30 to a 15 year. No, you probably do. Honestly. And I mean, you come from a family of, uh, realtors, they can hook you up.

42:21

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Uh, so interest rates are low too, which is driving a lot of this. Yeah.

42:26

Uh, even, even the refis are real busy for a lot of the lenders that are, you know, even if they bought a house two years ago and they're at four and a half percent, well now they can be at 3 .1%.

42:35

Oh, that's, I mean, that's a big difference. That's huge. Yeah. Yeah. Gosh. So, but yeah, thankfully

42:40

I'm blessed to be in an industry that wasn't affected too hard. Uh, but I talked to a lot of people that this is a very difficult time, especially if they're a business owner or if they, you know, if they work a straight 40 somewhere or work overtime.

42:53

Right. Um, it's so funny. It's not funny. It's the blessing and favor of the Lord. I'd say, but, uh, my sister who is a flight attendant, uh, was still working full time because she was kind of lower rung on the, on the, uh, uh, seniority.

43:09

Gotcha. So, so she got to work, they, they were still working her because, uh, the higher seniority didn't.

43:15

Yeah. Well, higher seniority, you got to pay more. Uh, so she's still working, but then she has a whole side business that has just exploded as a personal trainer.

43:22

I mean, exploded. You would shake your head at the client. I mean, I think she had 170 new clients, ridiculous in person, online, you know, all this.

43:32

That's awesome. So she's, so she's doing fine there. My brother works for, uh, you know, he's a line line manager for a places that make boxes.

43:40

Uh, so yeah, they need, they make all the Amazon boxes, everyone's shipping, buying the stuff online. He's, he's working double time the whole time.

43:48

You know, I wasn't affected that bad, uh, here in real estate because in real estate, you're used to getting paid every few months anyway.

43:55

Right. Right. So it was this kind of this cool thing where all of us were all believers and, you know, and you're, you're, you're doing all right.

44:02

It's been a blessing. Yeah. You're doing your thing, your side hustles that you got going on. And then obviously, you know, uh, working at Ford, he's checking his phone.

44:13

Not that I'm saying, you see, I'm not saying anything derogatory on side hustles. That's something illegal. I know. I'm sorry.

44:19

Some people hear that. Yeah. Right. Right. We don't have the camera here. It's all on the up and up, but it's just,

44:25

I just like two weeks ago, I was like, thank you Lord for just the blessing of provision.

44:30

Yeah. So, uh, and it re and for me, it really comes down to, because I've gotten to a point in my life where it's like, yeah,

44:36

I can have nice things or I can't have, and I, or I don't have nice things, but what doesn't change is God.

44:41

Yeah. So what, so what's, what's the point. He always takes care of us. You know what I mean?

44:46

And, and, you know, you, you can, uh, I don't know. I, I, you know, there was a time, um, even when

44:52

I first was regenerated before I learned about reformed teaching. I thought that there was something that I was doing wrong, you know, like I was being punished if I wasn't receiving something or if something was going bad in my life or, you know, and, and I know that's a, that's a very, uh, elementary teaching.

45:14

Um, but nobody ever gave me that elementary teaching. Like you're, when you give your life to the

45:19

Lord, like he loves you enough to put you through these things to grow you, you know?

45:25

And I mean, I mean, whenever you're on, whenever you're on the top, on top of the world, I mean, everything's going great.

45:30

I mean, what are you learning? You know, you learn through trials, you learn through some of that stuff, um, that gets thrown at you.

45:38

But, uh, Well, it's, it's funny that you, uh, that you see through and through in the Bible that talks about, uh, suffering produces perseverance, which produces character, which right.

45:48

Which produces these things. Psalms continually talking about, you know, if it wasn't for my affliction,

45:54

I wouldn't know your statutes. Right. Job talking about your affliction brought me through and taught me these things.

46:00

Right. So you see this theme running through the Bible. And then even the, even secular, um, gurus will tell you the same thing.

46:08

Like, look at your entrepreneurial guys that are like, oh, you got to fail 10 times. You learn each time you get back up, you go.

46:15

And it's like, that's why I just look at these like prosperity guys and these faith healer guys and just go.

46:21

Not only are you so far off from the Bible, but you're off from the biblical principles that successful secular people follow.

46:29

Because we've talked about this before. You can be a non -believer, follow godly principles and be very successful because it's a godly principle, right?

46:36

Reap what you sow, stewards of your money, how you treat other people, right? These are godly principles that are in this world.

46:43

I could be the biggest heathen in the world and follow those principles. And probably from, from the, from a secular, uh, you know, vision, be, be successful.

46:52

So it just blows my mind when you see these guys up there like a Joel Osteen or like a Todd White or like a Bill Johnson or, you know, any of these guys, uh, or Kenneth Copeland or all those guys, heck might as well just name them all.

47:04

Get everyone mad at us and preach something anti -gospel. Right. Yeah. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

47:09

No, no, no. I was cutting you off too. That's fine. It's what we do. It's what we do. Yeah. Right. Um, uh, right in the middle of that,

47:16

I'm thinking about. Wait, hold on. We're going to rename our podcast. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Oh, forgive me.

47:23

Forgive me. Go ahead. Anyway. Oh, I'm sorry. So, so the thing that really, uh, gosh, maybe

47:31

I shouldn't share this. No, I won't. I'm going to share this off. Okay. Yeah.

47:36

Because there were, there was something, um, that her brother, I'm pretty sure he's a brother in the

47:42

Lord. Um, I've heard him, you know, go off a little bit on his, uh, theology, but you know, if, if your name's written in the

47:48

Lamb's book of life, uh, we should probably have some grace. Yeah.

47:54

Yeah. But, uh, but anyway, yeah, I hear what you're saying. I totally hear what you're saying. But other than that, not too much, uh, new going on with me.

48:02

We obviously have, uh, here in Michigan, we have springtime is upon us. We're going to be going into summer here next month.

48:09

Had some nice days out here. Had about, I don't know, eight inches of rain in the last two days. So that's great. Everything's growing.

48:15

Yeah. You know, I really would like to start a garden, but, um, haven't gotten around to it because, uh,

48:22

Michigan's, uh, governor told us that we couldn't buy seeds for a little while. Isn't that nuts?

48:29

I mean, we live in the, this is just a weird time as it is, but you know, like,

48:34

I mean, something like that. And then we just got an announcement yesterday where it's like, well, I'm lifting it to where more, uh, less than 10 people can gather, but I'm going to extend the shut the stay at home order.

48:45

Wow. So she's extending the stay at home past 28th, letting some businesses open back up. Not, uh, doesn't sound like restaurants or salons allowing under 10.

48:55

Now when I say allowing, I'm saying this all with air quotes because, uh, as a free person, she can't tell me what to do just because she wants to tell me what to do.

49:05

Okay. She's constitutionally bound and things like that. Um, but, uh, so it's all very convoluted.

49:11

I do get a kick out of driving down the road and watching, uh, guys and girls in their car by themselves with a mask mask.

49:21

Oh man, like what is going on there? Maybe they have their outside air coming in through their vent and they're just afraid.

49:30

I mean, I go, you're in the car by yourself, you know, I mean, I know there's times that you drive by a, uh, as construction zone, there's, there's like dirt, you know, flying up in the air and, and maybe, you know, maybe, you know, yeah, exactly.

49:43

But a couple of filters on a car made past 1983, all these, all these air filters that you got.

49:48

And then, you know, maybe if there's something outside, maybe turn off the vent. But I mean, really though, like what is the reasoning behind wearing a mask while you're driving by yourself?

49:58

Yeah, there's, there's, it makes absolutely zero. I don't know, man. I think the same people I'm gonna go out on a limb here and it probably going to sound crazy or make people upset, but the same people who willingly bow down to governmental authority and live in fear and anxiety and don't really check with discernment and wisdom what they're doing or why they're doing it.

50:19

I think those people are not going to stand up too well against the kind of persecution that this church is going to be seeing over the next 20 years.

50:27

I just, I see this almost as not some like conspiracy theory, Illuminati test run.

50:33

I'm saying in a spiritual way, this is a very good test run to kind of see how

50:39

Christians deal with a soft type of tyranny against a certain group of people and then how they respond to it and how they measure it against the word of God.

50:50

And this is mainly America though, you know, I mean, this is, this is like, we don't really go through much tribulation here.

50:58

No. You know, I mean like comparative, comparatively, you know, China, Iran, you know, wherever you want to name in the world.

51:07

I mean, we have had it really good, you know, and, and, you know, there's, there's times where we are,

51:14

I don't know, I, you know, everything's going to hell in a handbasket. I'm more on the optimistic side maybe of, of my eschatology with, you know, at some point

51:25

I feel like maybe I'm, I'm praying and believing that more people will come to Christ and that, you know, that the world will at some point maybe turn back to him.

51:35

Because if you think about it, I mean, 500 years ago, a thousand years ago, it was pretty, it was probably a lot worse than we have it right now in 2020, you know, 2020

51:45

America, you know, but it's almost, you know, and actually we'll be talking to Sam Storms about this, but he,

51:53

I've heard him say that, that it's probably offensive to maybe some of the people overseas that here, you know, things are going to get a lot worse, you know?

52:03

And that's a really, you know what I'm saying? Like what they're going through right now, getting thrown in jail, like getting pulled out of their houses, getting put in boxes and like not being able to read the word, you know, like,

52:15

I mean, there's a lot, you know, thousands of Christians executed in China last year, government doesn't do a thing, right?

52:21

We literally were asked to bake a cake and that went to the highest law on the land, right? Supreme court, right?

52:27

Now, obviously they ruled for the, the cake, the cake, the baker, but just juxtaposition that, right?

52:35

Okay. When you want to see how good we have it, we have the Supreme court arguing a case on our religious freedom to bake a cake or not versus 10 ,000

52:43

Christians executed and killed in another country and no one lifts a finger because that's okay. Right?

52:48

So yeah, I would agree with Sam on that. And what you said is it probably is very offensive and all it's, it's going to get worse.

52:55

And they're like, guys, it's, it's worse now. Right? I mean, you just had an ethnic cleansing of Christians just a few years ago.

53:01

And I ran 250 of them just killed and got, got a half a day's worth of travel on social media, but then nothing.

53:08

I mean, that's why Paul says, remember your brothers and sisters in prison. Remember those of the faith that are being persecuted and tortured.

53:15

And because that was a very real thing and were to uplift those brothers and sisters in prayer.

53:21

Growing up when I was a little kid, we actually prayed that we actually, my dad would make us pray for our wives and pray for our future wives.

53:28

I wasn't, and then pray for those in prison and contending for the faith.

53:35

That is awesome. I remember those things when I was little, because those are important. I wish more people would think that way too. Right. Right.

53:41

Amen. You got anything else before we kick off here? Uh, not that I could think of right now, man.

53:47

All right. Well guys, thanks for listening, joining us. It was a good episode with Paul Cox. Remember to check him out on rough tunes.

53:52

If you want to see any of his stuff, I really appreciate him calling in from the cheese state. Cheese head. Cheese head. And maybe, uh, for Thanksgiving this year,

54:00

I'll shoot him a text when, when our lions play his, uh, yeah. Cause he's got a situation and going on over there without their quarterback.

54:08

Yeah. He might be on his way out. Cause I just drafted a new quarterback. Oh, wow. The, uh, the Brett Favre has, has turned the tables.

54:15

How the turntables have turned. Wait a minute. What's that saying? No. Favre called

54:21

Rogers up and was like, yeah, you should just walk out and leave. Like, Oh really? They're grooming someone. Oh, they're buddies.

54:27

Oh, okay. But anyway, guys, thanks for listening as always. Make sure you follow us and like on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook and all those places.

54:36

Check out the merch cave at what is our merch cave? It's up dead men, dead men, walking podcast .com.

54:41

Geez. Forgot my own website. Make sure you watch this fun videos for an Instagram. I've been posting a lot more than getting a lot more traction on Instagram with the little snippets that me and you do.

54:50

All right, guys from Greg and Jason. Later. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at dead men, walking podcast for full video podcast episodes and clips, or email us at dead men, walking podcast at gmail .com.