Cultish - Live Q&A

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All right, welcome, ladies and gentlemen, we are jumping on right here for a live.

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We're going to do a live cultish Q &A, super excited, super excited for to kind of hang out with you all online.

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We did this. We did this a couple of months ago, and we're throwing this together last minute because we had we had a guest that we're super excited to get on.

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Unfortunately, something happened. We just weren't able to quite sometimes with podcasting, the unexpected happens. We all have crazy things going on.

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So just because of the so because that we had to just hold off on the episode on conspiracy theories that we're going to do.

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So we're going to rearrange that. But you know, a lot of you, we want to kind of hang out with you guys, have a

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Q &A about anything you guys want to talk about. So we did. We made a post earlier about conspiracy theories and what are your thoughts on it?

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We do have some of our own thoughts, especially concerning current events. So yeah, we want to just kind of hang out with you guys.

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If you have any questions about episodes or content or anything about us or anything else, we want to go ahead and just hang out with you guys and have a fun

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Q &A time. Just so you know, too. If you are listening to this now, this will be released in a podcast more than likely next week.

01:12

So yeah, let's take a look at the comments and let's figure out what was going on. And yeah, we're already having a fun time.

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So Giannavati already already asked. My name is in a yes, you're in a cult.

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You're no. Justin's got the first one, bro. He says, if you had to go on a secret mission to infiltrate and bring down a cult, past or present, which would you pick?

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And why, Jeremiah Roberts? Oh, man, that's a crazy one, huh? I would.

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There's a story in the whole Waco saga. I can't remember the person's name, but in the Waco series, there is an a government agent.

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I don't remember what branch of government he was because there's so many variables in play. I kind of always have to kind of like do a refresher on Waco to of all the ring rust of all the memories of everything.

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But there was a character play by John Leguizamo who actually and he's a real based on real person who went undercover and Waco, Texas and befriended

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David Koresh. And he sort of got to know everyone inside the compound in Waco, Texas.

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And it turns out once the once they got word that it was they were trying to do the

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ATF and the FBI. They're trying to do it. Most of the ATF were trying to do a sting operation. Their cover got blown.

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He was the one who told the commanders who were leading the operation. They know your cover is blown. Call it off.

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They're ready for you. And they refuse to listen. So if they had listened to him, the shootout would have actually never happened.

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So the ability to me, like I said, this is just there's other cults.

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But as an 11 year old boy, I watched that accumulate within my lifetime. So just being able to do that.

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Oh, it happens. It's unexpected. It's live. It's impromptu. Oh, no. But yeah, that happened within my lifetime.

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So from the watching the compound burn from the shootout, which happened in February to I think it was

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April 27th, it was that within that time frame, that's that whole large standoff that was 50 plus days.

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I was glued to my television screen. I read the newspaper. I read everything. And so and I just remember being called in the other room and watching the

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Mount Carmel burn down in front of me. And yeah, and it was just there were a lot of the ability if I was able to play be the role of that person or somehow in like down the road, there's some sort of through Oculus Rift when it comes out.

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If I can sort of relive that in an accurate way, like a 3D presentation, right. That's what I would absolutely love to do.

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Dang, that's good. I think I'm going to try. I'm going to go with like the Miss Universe answer for this one. And I'd probably say I'd go back in time and I would stop the new age, new thought movement, because I think that that is like the central body of a

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Hydra. You know what I mean? That has so many different heads that has caused so much evil in this world, specifically

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Jonestown and 918 bodies laying dead through the bad theology. Oh yeah, we're we're having fun, too.

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We are. We're starving, by the way. So we're going to try our best to take turns and not talk with our mouth full.

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Yeah, both of us are starving. And so this Isaac, the man over here. So the other way.

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And Brother Wade. We're getting here real quick. Come here, Brother Wade. Don't knock any of the cameras over. Oh, he's got boxes.

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Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're doing live. This is like the Avengers Infinity War of Apology Studios.

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So we got brother. So it was brought to you unofficially by Chipotle. We got Brother Wade here. Chipotle.

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Chipotle. Chipotle. Chipotle. Chipotle. So this is Gabe's. Yeah. I actually got like.

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That's a cylinder. It's very intimate. Yeah. You guys are eating dinner. Yeah. Dinner with Peltish.

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We got candles. You know. I know. Hey, so maybe you could ask this question. They asked us if you could infiltrate any cult in history to be able to observe them, do anything.

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What cult would it be? I picked Waco just because. To stop them.

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To stop them. To stop them. Before it gets really bad. Mormonism. Mormonism. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm fascinated by the history of Mormonism.

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Joseph Smith. And like I can read about it for forever. Yeah. The history of Joseph Smith and what's happening.

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It's my very favorite cult. Yeah. So you'd really want to go into.

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You'd want to just kind of hang out and infiltrate Palmyra and kind of ask clues and kind of go full Sherlock Holmes and the whole kit and caboodle.

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Yeah. Yeah. Talk to all the people. Obviously, I feel like the Christian church could have done a lot more to engage with what was going on early on.

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There were Christians that did engage and tried, but I think that it could have been cut off at the very beginning in terms of really trying to rescue people and bring them back to true biblical

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Christianity and orthodoxy if they had worked harder to try to really minister to those people who were being deluded by Joseph earlier.

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Or if you knew and you went back, you could bury some treasure and actually accurately say where the treasure was and, you know, just fully take away the authority that he had, you know, and then bring people over to your clan.

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Yeah. You know what I mean? I would have liked to have. I would have. I would have really liked to have met Martin.

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Is Martin. My mind's not going. Martin Harris's wife. Who was the. Who was it? The one I. Right now it's escaping me.

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It's been a long day. The person who, when Joseph said, you know, he wrote these and she hid, she hid the other.

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You know what I'm talking about? You guys don't know what I'm talking about? Mm -mm. She took. Well, they're the three witnesses that testified to the

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Book of Mormon. Oh, okay. The guy that invested in and helped him with the Book of Mormon, the stuff that he supposedly translated from the plates, she didn't buy it.

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Her husband was deluded and so she didn't buy it. And so what she did was she took some of it and hid it and she was like, well, if you're translating, just redo it.

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Oh, okay. So what he, Joseph said, like the Lord's changed his mind. He doesn't want me to use that anymore.

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So he didn't reproduce what she took. So I would have loved to have met her. Yeah. She seemed like a fighter and.

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True that. Like she had her head on straight with that one. And it was almost like Solomon's kind of wisdom with like the baby.

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Well, I'll just cut the baby in half and you guys can do. Well, no, no, no, no. Don't cut the baby in half. She's like, well, you know, if you're translating, just go ahead and, you know, just rewrite it, you know, just translate it all again.

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And he's like, no, I don't know about that. Lord just told me to forget that.

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Lord's giving me a revelation. He doesn't want anybody to know that revelation anymore. What about you, brother Wade? What cult would you want to infiltrate to try and bring the gospel in and try and try and stop it at its roots?

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If you could go back to the very beginning, what origin story? You know, I don't,

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I don't know a whole lot of different cults, but when I think about like my childhood in Northern California, near my grandparents' house was this big campus and everything was painted purple.

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And we called them as kids, all my cousins, we called them the purple people, the purple people eaters.

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It wasn't like the cult, it wasn't like some like cult that like worship Prince or anything? No, no, no. But they had a leader and they even had little classes and we never know what they did.

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And they would sometimes come out, you know, in the morning and he'd be in like a purple robe and be kind of like bare chested and yeah, yeah, it was just weird.

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And like, you know, it was very prominent, you know, they told me in the seventies, eighties, but in, in the early nineties growing up there in Northern California, there'd be the purple people and we were like, what are they doing?

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I never know what they're doing. Yeah. So yeah. Wow. Awesome.

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Awesome. And this is one of the cool things too, is that, you know, there's so much that's been that's happened with the studio here with just the, how we progressed through the years.

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And I was just thinking about before we even had the studio, we'd go to KPX, we'd go to the station over in Scottsdale and the

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AM station, was it, it was AM 1016? KPXQ. KPXQ. And so someone asked too, someone asked if, if Walter Martin was on today, would you have him on the podcast?

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Well, the question is we would hopefully be on his podcast because of the fact that Walter Martin was just, was a pioneer, not only in the field of apologetics when it comes to cults, but he was a pioneer when it came to media and content distribution.

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In fact, his distribution, we had one of our previous guests, Craig Nelson, he was talking about how he leveraged audio cassette tape distribution with all his different lectures and all the different fringe topics, everything from extrasensory perception and out of body experiences to historical

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Mormonism to Scientology. He had so much content distribution, but in his sermon,

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The Baptism of Boldness, it's amazing because in it, he's describing in his head what he wants to do with the

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Christian Research Institute. He's basically describing the internet before it's even invented. He talks about having this content, the center where people can just type in information, we can just print them out.

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Any sort of information about any sort of cult, whether it's historical documents, how do we refute them? How do we kind of give that summary similar to what's in Kingdom of the

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Colts just by contacting them? So in many ways, he was a visionary, almost describing, let's say

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Al Gore invented the internet. I don't really know whether or not that's true, but what's -

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Oh, come on. Oh, come on. We know it is. We know it's true. Yeah. I wonder how he's doing these days anyways, but it is though amazing to see him as someone as a pioneer and visionary really describing what we have today via content distribution and that's definitely a really cool thing.

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Yeah. And Walter Martin is in many ways responsible, his ministry is responsible for the creation of this ministry because it was

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Walter Martin's tape, it was those tape sets, the cassette tape sets that someone handed to me in a

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Christian bookstore when I knew nothing about Christianity, had recently made a profession of faith. I was in the

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Bible section and it was one of the workers of the store had seen me there so much. He just came up to me and he gives me this long cassette tape box just filled all the way up with Walter Martin's stuff.

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And so I got all of my early training in theology, the deity of Christ, the Trinity, justification by faith, sola scriptura, and even

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Walter Martin engaging with the cults. I got it all. And I remember sitting, I knew nothing about Christianity, never been to church, and I'm in my room at like one and two in the morning as a high schooler listening to Walter Martin going to bed just for hours upon hours.

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Yeah. I mean, it was Walter Martin and he inspired me to engage with the cults.

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The reason I met James White, well, I was at the Mormon temple was because Walter Martin inspired me to reach out to Mormons.

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So when I moved out here, I went to the Mormon temple. That's where I met James White in 1996, and you, same day, that first time.

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You and I were little squirts out there. Just a wee lad. Yeah, just a wee lads outside the

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Mormon temple. But that's the reason I was at the Mormon temple was because he inspired me to reach Mormons with the gospel.

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And so if I think about heaven and who do I want to meet first, who do

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I want to hang out with and have a meal with first and just celebrate? Obviously Bonson, Athanasius, obviously the apostles, that's a given, so not them.

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But Walter Martin. Amen. 100%. Walter Martin, for sure. And then I actually just learned about my,

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I have a grandfather who was the pastor of Congress, a chaplain over Congress, and he was an abolitionist.

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And he was the man that preached before Philadelphia legislature. And he was hated in Philadelphia because he was fighting for emancipation.

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And I just found out, like one of my great, great, great grandfather is one of the most famous Methodist, historic

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Methodist preachers in their whole tradition. And he was a pastor of Congress.

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That's cool, man. And an abolitionist. Yeah. I thought, how crazy is that? You want to see a picture? Yeah. Yeah. My grandpa would pull an ear from behind my head.

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You guys, just so you know, we'll try and describe it for you. I don't know if you can see it on camera. You've seen my dad. Yeah. Yeah.

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Love you, brother Wade. So I found my, my grandpa told me years ago, Hey, cause I don't really know my family.

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He's like, you have a famous pastor as a grandfather who was a famous Methodist preacher. And I was just like,

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Oh, that's cool. But then I did some family tree research. My, I found out my ancestors were Huguenots, the Durban's came over here.

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And then this guy, this guy. So look at this. I want to see if you look just like him.

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Oh. Oh. You got to hold your phone up just in case someone could pause it and zoom in later. Wow. That's crazy.

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I got to see it. That's. Oh, Whoa. That's you without a beard. Yeah. Yes.

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That's you without a beard. That's me without a beard. What's that? Pull. I don't know if you can see. Hold it next to me.

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He's going to do a close up. Check this out guys. Pastor Jeff without a beard. That's apparently my great, great, great grandfather.

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I see it, dude. You see it. I see it. Yeah. That's, that's trippy. Especially when I was young. Yeah. And I knew your dad.

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Oh wow. Isn't it crazy? That's, it's like identical. Wow. Yep. That's my dad. That's like the one.

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Isn't there the one picture too of like the one guy that the picture from the civil war of the guy that looks like Nicolas Cage. But seriously, that's incredible though.

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So I found out he was, he was an abolitionist and again, he was the, he was the chaplain over the

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United States Senate and he preached sermons and I think it was, I read one story.

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He preached before Congress once and he preached a sermon and he talked about George Washington and he talked about biblical courage and afterwards

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I think it was the vice president that came up to him and said, sir, I hope that's the last sermon you ever preach. And he was like, wait, why?

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He said, because that's the best sermon preached in the history of the Christian church and I don't want you to ruin it. Wow. Yeah.

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Yeah. Oh, he was the, he was the president of Dickinson college, which was like a Christian law school. He was self -taught like when he, uh, when he was growing up, cause he was like, uh, his father died when he was 13.

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He was going to find some sermon notes from him, but no, he has books and sermons and lectures and I was like, this is the craziest thing ever.

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So I thought it was really cool. Like my ancestors were Huguenots and then he's this famous abolitionist, like he preached against the evils of slavery.

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He was trying to find a resolution to it. So in his day he was preaching the gospel and he was an abolitionist against slavery.

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And then he has a descendant who's an abolitionist against abortion. How crazy, like you think about God's faithfulness to our prayers, like for our descendants, like you know, sometimes it skips some people, but yeah, starting to get into that covenant of grace.

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Yeah. I know. It's good, man. Well, enjoy your meal. Sorry. Yeah. Enjoy your meal and conversation. That was enjoyable though.

15:56

Cool. That's something else. That's pretty cool. We were not expecting all these cameos going on. Um, yeah.

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So let, let's catch up with, uh, where are we at with, with questions here? Wow. Um, hopefully

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I can, uh, I, I'm, I'm feeling a light head cause I'm starving, but, uh, let me take a look here.

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So find some questions. We've got a good question here. Uh, someone was asking about, uh,

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YWAM, youth with a mission. We have been asked about that quite a few times. Uh, we were going to do it last year, but we kind of made that announcement, uh, previous, uh, you know, we made that before, uh, 2020,

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March, 2020 in the year of our Lord. And obviously the, those, uh, those several months

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March through now has been roughly around seven and a half years has been roughly the time of the great tribulation basically for many people.

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But, um, yeah, so we just, we're unexpected to me, you know, last year we didn't, we didn't know what was going to happen with the lockdowns.

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We didn't know if we had to order podcast equipment from Amazon, if we, we even would be allowed to leave our house.

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It was just strange and really unprecedented. So, um, we are looking at that now. We kind of had a long tenure process.

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We have this really kind of grand idea to get to do one person who looks at a positive light versus someone who looks at a negative light, um, and then have them and do two episodes with them, have them come and dialogue together.

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Um, just the way it's working right now with our schedule. I don't know if that's really going to work, especially because of the fact that most people call in via Skype it's because you can't see each other in person.

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Yeah. We need them here in person. So what we're probably going to do, we have one person to at least start the conversation.

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Um, and so, yeah, we want to, we want to start that this year. So hopefully we can kind of get some good feedback.

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Um, the one thing I have noticed in it is that in many ways it's different than what you'd see as far as, you know, people will call it a cult.

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And I believe the reason primarily because there's a lot of, um, disorganization as a by -product of that.

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There's a lot of spiritual abuse takes place. And one of the reasons why is that typically when there's not, when they, when anytime there's any sort of parachurch ministry, there's usually a lot of spiritual abuse because whoever is leading it, they sort of become their own authority.

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They're not, there's not direct accountability where they're under the authority of biblically qualified elders. There we go. That's it right there.

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That's a by -product of that. And I think I do want to explore that conversation because I think there have been a lot of people who've experienced real spiritual abuse, but in many ways, um,

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I see youth with a mission is kind of following the conversation as a catalyst for what you call the ex evangelical movement of people who just sort of have given up on the church altogether.

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Right. Um, and I have a lot of empathy for that. I mean, I was in a situation prior to even coming to Apologia where I was just sort of in a, a real funk,

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I would say, where I wasn't even really involved in a church for roughly two years. And I was just kind of just bitter and angry at God and I just, and God thankfully did a whole process to kind of soften my heart and, and, and bring me, bring me to be part of the

18:51

Apologia. Right. You almost dying. Yeah. Yeah. So that, no, that was, no, that was, uh, that was when

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I got saved back when I was 17, but there was just a tenure. So I understand that like being in that place where you have a lot of disconnect cause you're just in a funk cause of just stuff that had happened.

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So, um, yeah, that is something that we do. We do want to explore. So, so, so Elizabeth asked us a question as well.

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She said, when will you guys unpack more alien stuff? It seems like the sightings have increased or better yet.

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Will you guys talk about Davos and the new world order slash great reset to see that's, that's an interesting combination there too.

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Like lumping in new world order with the great reset. That's a, I find that to be pretty interesting and that kind of goes in line with the research we were doing on conspiracy theories and, uh, and packing more alien stuff.

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So I find the question interesting in itself, Elizabeth, because we're lumping in aliens with new world order and great reset.

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Because I would say coming from a, uh, myself as someone who once held the position of the premillennial, uh, dispensational position and talking about the coming of the antichrist, this one new world order where there's going to be this great government that's going to take over everything and then persecute

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Christians. My thought process used to be, well, how are they going to get everyone to believe in one thing? I would think that it would be aliens.

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Aliens would come these, this great civilization from thousands of light years away that come and say,

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I have more technology than you were better than you. This is what you need to worship. This is what truth is. And it would make everyone bow the knee.

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And yeah, so I can understand why it's getting lumped in with new world order and great reset in that question. But, um, yeah, we definitely want to tackle more alien stuff.

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I think that's one of those topics that needs to be discussed. And I would say increased sightings, I would say those are happening because there's increased paganism going on in the world because the position that I would hold and I believe

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Jerry would be as well as I don't believe that aliens are extraterrestrial coming from different planets.

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Uh, I believe that they're interdimensional and I think there's a massive distinction that needs to be made in terms of talking about extra or extraterrestrial in, you know, interdimensional.

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Those are two different categories of a being. So yeah. Yeah. And the fact that the fact that Elizabeth asked, uh, even asked that question goes to show that it is becoming part of our, our normative life.

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Um, and in many ways, what you're probably going to see is just a, a lot more focused in on that.

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Not just because a lot of the people who, um, I mean, I'll tell you,

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I, my brain just totally zonked out yourself, but yeah,

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I think there's just jumping back, uh, just a couple of a, uh, just kind of jump backtracking a little bit.

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When I first heard, uh, Tom, we did an episode on Tom DeLonge from blink 182, also the lead singer of angels and airwaves and his co and his company to the stars

21:42

Academy of motion pictures and science when he was, uh, he made an appearance on Joe Rogan about three years ago, the

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Joe Rogan experience. And what he was talking about, it just seems so bizarre and out of left field.

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I thought that maybe he had had kind of one of those crazy just moments where he had kind of lost his mind.

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It just seems so out in left field as far as the claims that he was making with working with top government officials to release all these

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UFO and alien disclosures with the department of defense and a lot of the other organizations in the government.

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But he needs to find out as things progress, a lot of the things that he was talking about turns out was the case when there was a

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WikiLeaks dump that took place in one of the, uh, one of the previous elections. So yeah, that you're, you're seeing the normalization of it and especially now that we have a new, uh, believe it or not, we actually have, uh, for those of you who are not trusting the plan, uh, we actually have a new, uh, progressive, more left, uh, very left leaning administration.

22:38

Uh, the Trump administration in many ways was not, uh, really on the same page with a lot of the people who want to in, in the different branches of government who wanted to do the certain

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UFO disclosures. So probably because now we have a new administration that's more on the same page with what they want to accomplish.

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You are going to see a lot more, uh, I would say a lot more UFO disclosures and things like that. So we are in preliminary talks.

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Uh, we, I mean, there's many mean cultures are still, we're going to go through a lot of changes, changes, changes this year that we'll be making announcements on shortly though.

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So we asked that when we announced this, you'd be praying about that. But, um, yeah, there's a lot of things we want to do.

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Uh, we want to kind of hopefully make, start formulating our own, uh, almost like Christian subgroup, almost similar to, to the

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Stars Academy to give a real Christian apologetic and focus in on, uh, UFOs. So, so yeah, that is something that, uh, we are hoping to formulate and put together.

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We actually had some discussions with two of our previous guests about that. So I mean, it's, it's one of those things too, where there's always opportunity.

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I mean, uh, Jeff was just talking about, there's a lot of crazy things going on in the world in the political sphere, but it just so happens there's this family history that goes back and that's,

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I'm sure that was really inspiring and encouraging to Jeff given all the battles were fighting on other fronts here at Apology of Studios.

23:57

But that's just something to be aware of it as the world gets crazier and gets more cultish and as if the government does do indeed, uh, give a lot more disclosures and under the

24:06

Biden administration, what you're probably going to see is a lot more, um, people looking in is going to people like George Knapp or, uh,

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Bob Lazar or Jeremy Corbell. These are people you might not be familiar with, but these are household names in the

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UFO community. They're going to have a platform in the same way that right now, the whole wall street situation, uh,

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Jordan Belfort, who was in the Martin Scorsese movie, which I haven't seen, nor do I recommend it cause I heard it's a enough language to melt your earwax.

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But the reality is right now he's on every single news station because of the whole wall street, whatever's going on.

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I don't understand it, but the memes are great. Um, he's getting a lot of exposure. So in the same way, what you're going to see as things progress at this and does indeed happen, you're going to see a lot more people like, even like Dr.

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Steven Greer, get a lot more exposure on talking about the whole UFO conversation. But UFO sightings and encounters, which is part of documented, uh, evidence that government has and is going to be releasing.

25:03

That always leads to how do I get in contact with aliens and to an attempted alien contact, which always leads to doing something, some sort of transcendental meditation, getting into an altered state of consciousness, a lot of different avenues to basically cross over, practice mediumship, do things that God says don't do.

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So in many ways you're going to see that take place as this year progresses, uh, and wherever this goes, that that's what we should all expect to see.

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And that's why as the world, as the world gets crazier, we have to be able to have a give a

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Christian answer for it. Um, so it's not one of those things we can kind of dismiss and kick in the closet anymore.

25:45

Yeah. Good question, Elizabeth. Thank you so much for that. And, uh, you know, one of the focuses we want to have to in 2021 is that as Jerry was saying is things are going to get crazier, right?

25:57

Paganism is going to run rampant. Um, you can fall and go into so many rabbit holes just trying to like grab hold of everything that's going on around you.

26:05

But that's not the point of cultish. The reason why we're talking about these things and even want to talk about these things is so that we can help you set your mind on things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

26:17

Right? Like that's what our focus is to bring this all back to what the gospel, what the central true issue is, is that there are people that are in need of a savior.

26:26

They're not only in rabbit holes or like whatever the word is, they're falling down trails, but they're caving in around themselves and they're just, they're, they're, they're talk of their, the, the tick talk of their life is just going away.

26:38

Like the clock is just going down, down, down, down, down. They're going to die in one day. They're going to meet their creator. So we want to be able to have a platform that we can give answers, right?

26:47

A reasonable defense for the hope that is within us, but with the gospel, right? That's the biggest answer, right?

26:53

Is someone seeing someone's heart changed where the holy spirit takes a heart of stone replaces with a heart of flesh and someone comes to a knowledge of saving faith in Christ because until the individual is changed, right?

27:04

We're not going to see anything positive happen in this world. The individual chain is changed by the preaching and proclamation of the gospel and we need to get into the depths of the, as Jerry loves to say,

27:14

I'm going to be Jerry real quick, the digital Areopagus. Yes. Right. We need to go in there and we need to confront what's being talked about today and then point it back to Christ as this is the answer.

27:24

None, none of these other things are going to give you hope. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Um, so a couple of people have asked to, um, we were actually planning on doing an episode on conspiracy theories.

27:34

We're going to have to postpone that. Um, so yeah, hopefully we'll be able to get ahold of a

27:39

Doug Van Dorn, uh, soon. That was our guest that we're going to have on. Uh, he has a great book called conspiracy theory, a

27:46

Christian evaluation of a taboo subject. And in many ways we wanted to get him on because it was going to be, it's probably the most level headed approach to it because I think when it comes to the world of conspiracy theories,

27:58

I think we're in a place, I think COVID it was the year where many things changed. Uh, it changed how small, it affected small businesses.

28:06

Um, it affected, uh, everything from personal relationships, personal relationships, being isolated and even

28:13

John Cooper when he was on the podcast, he was talking about it sort of emulated is sort of magnified what we are sort of doing already.

28:20

We were already isolating from each other. We are sort of Liz living through our digital selves on these, uh, on our phones just all day, you know, talk and go like this to people, just sort of idol is.

28:32

Yeah. And I mean, how many of us have actually gone and like had a conversation with someone Facebook and you start putting a voice to them.

28:38

You start figuring out who, this is probably how this person talks. So it's almost like, and then you meet them and it's like, what?

28:44

That's happened to me. Jerry is actually like amazing at impersonations. So I could totally see you doing that when you, when you have people on Facebook, you should do an impersonation for people real quick.

28:55

Oh, so, uh, the name that shall not be named, who's apparently banned off of Facebook, but I don't, I don't think,

29:00

I don't think it's community, it's community standards to impersonate him. Uh, the, the, the, the Don, the

29:05

Donald, do it, bro. So they went, these people totally went and banned me, but I'm still gonna fight for the

29:11

American people. Even the opposite of the former president in sunny, sunny South Florida.

29:17

That's how I am. I'm here to roll. I'm still serve to work for the American people. Describe that Chipotle is

29:22

Donald Trump. That's wonderful. It's carne asada. It's delicious. There may be a wall, but I would,

29:28

I would, I'd let them go through the wall for this carne asada that told us we paid in the Chipotle carne asada.

29:34

So that's, there you go. I just made that up. Um, yeah, I can also do to Dr. Fauci would like, you don't need to wear a mask.

29:40

You need to wear 37 masses, 70. You should not wear seven mass. You should wear 70 times, 70 times seven mass, which that will help you stop the spread or something like that.

29:53

I'm just like him. Oh my God. Oh my gosh. I'm so hungry and I'm still trying to eat, trying to multitask here.

29:58

But what are we talking about? Oh, conspiracies. Um, so yeah, we're talking about the, we're talking about just our digital selves and just sort of being isolated from that.

30:06

So in many ways, COVID sort of did that with everything going crazy.

30:11

But even pre COVID, I mean a couple of months prior to that, you know, 2019 that's when the whole Epstein didn't kill himself became a big thing.

30:19

And that was something where you typically something like that would be sort of on a bunch of fringe podcasts and a bunch of people, you know, in there you, you kind of figure the average person, you know, being in their basement, you know, the, the meme of the guy from it's always sunny in Philadelphia with like going crazy with all the different strings tied together with newspapers and everything.

30:39

But in many ways, the Epstein didn't kill himself was something that transcended the typical, uh, at the typical, uh, areas of where conspiracy theories existed, um, where people would talk about them and transcended everyone and became part of the pop culture.

30:55

Like what the Bernie Sanders memes was a week ago, like that was Epstein didn't kill himself for a month.

31:01

And it was, and I was sharing and laughing at it and I had no idea really what the context was. I just heard sort of loosely about it.

31:09

But then what that did is that, you know, allowed this rabbit hole to go down. And then as any sort of time in history, what we were going to do at the beginning of this episode, hopefully when we drop the episode, when we can reconnect, uh, with Mr.

31:21

Doug Van Doren is, um, we had a, uh, a copy of a clip that we're going to play of Walter Cronkite of back when he was doing a special through CBS news talking about the

31:32

Warren report. And he was saying like, were the Russians involved? Was it, was it a right wing conspirator was where we're radical right wingers involved in many ways, almost similar things that we're talking about today, just in a very different context.

31:43

So conspiracy or is there one of those things to where the world since the beginning of time, uh, since Genesis three has been full of conspiracies from every point in history.

31:54

If you look at, uh, the Exodus, I mean, if you look, uh, not even prior to that, I mean, when the first conspiracy is

32:00

Joseph and his brothers, they conspired against Joseph and they decided to throw him in this pit, conspire together to lie and take his coat of many colors, dip it in, uh, dip it in lamb's blood and tell his, his father that he was mulled by a lion.

32:16

And of course, back then they didn't have forensic DNA tests. There wasn't CSI, um, wherever it was, but yeah, it back out in the middle of nowhere.

32:25

Cane. Um, yeah. So, but the, so the idea is like that happened, they conspired together.

32:32

You see that you look at, um, first and second Kings and there's tons of conspiring nonstop that those books are, it's really there.

32:40

So you get inspired against Jesus. Yeah. So people, a lot of times, and I saw the common thread today where people were talking about the origination of quote conspiracy theory as an origination from the

32:48

CIA against the Warren report. But in many ways it didn't originate from there. Um, it, it originally, it has a biblical origination.

32:56

In fact, even you were, we were looking at today and from Doug Vandoren's book, we'll talk to him about when we talk to him, but it had to deal with, it originated in an 1800, a dictionary from the 1800s, which was actually based on the

33:10

Bible. Oh yeah. The Noah Webster's dictionary. Talk about that. Cause I need to buy this car. Okay. All right.

33:15

All right. Right. Right. Right. Right. So the modern dictionary, uh, the Webster dictionary gives a definition of conspiracy, which is just the act of conspiring together.

33:24

However, in the 1828 Noah Webster dictionary, this right here, guys, is the definition of a conspiracy. And I'll explain a little bit after I make this a definitional distinction.

33:34

It says a combination of men for an evil purpose, an agreement between two or more persons to commit some crime in concert, particularly a combination to commit treason, treason, or excite sedition or insurrection against the government of a state, a plot as a conspiracy against the life of a

33:50

King, a conspiracy against the government and in law, an agreement between two or more persons falsely maliciously to indict or procure to be indicted or an innocent person, a felony.

34:02

All right. So again, that second definition is from 1828, the Noah Webster dictionary and no

34:07

Webster cites this in accordance with his definition, uh, 40 Jews had plotted against the apostle

34:12

Paul to kill him when it was day. The Jews made a plot and bound themselves by an oath, neither to eat nor drink till they had killed

34:19

Paul. So one very interesting thing to note about this 1828 definition is we can see that at this time we don't see the massive rise of postmodernism.

34:29

We can actually sighting, see sighting from the Bible to know what, uh, have, you know, a good example of what a conspiracy is of what evil is, right?

34:38

What crimes are, I mean, in all of these conversations, when you're talking with anybody, I mean, if you're talking about a crime, we're talking about essentially a transgression against a law, right?

34:47

And if there's a law, there's an objective standard for a law, which presupposes, you know, a law giver.

34:54

And in this definition from 1828, we can see that the Bible was used, you know, to give a meaning to something.

35:02

But the modern definition is just the act of conspiring together. Can we, can we see how we can just, even from this basic definition, we can see a loss of intellectual knowledge when we like bow our knee to the postmodern worldview.

35:15

Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. So in many ways now it's just a similar, so what you see almost, I mean, think about the meme where they have the two

35:22

Spider -mans pointing at each other. That's typically when you see people argue conspiracy theorists, like that's, that's the equivalent of it.

35:29

They're just sort of throwing these emotional impact words at each other. So many times that's, that's kind of what you'll hear when it comes to conspiring.

35:37

But I think there's many ways to where some of the things, if we have a biblical precedent for, so we really shouldn't be surprised.

35:46

So the fact that there are in fact secret societies, which ones are and which ones aren't, there are those people who do things in secret that that should not surprise us.

35:58

There's a biblical precedent for that. And the Bible says no one indeed in the gospel of John, it says no one comes to the light lest their deeds be exposed.

36:07

Yeah. So you have that. So in contrast to what Jesus did, he said, everything I've done, I've spoken,

36:13

I've spoken about openly. I haven't really done anything in secret. So in many ways you should see that.

36:19

So there are a ton, the whole world is full of conspiracies. So one of my favorite passages, and Andrew, you have one that you're pulling up too.

36:28

But when it comes to conspiracies, the short answer there, there are ways you want to think via biblical law.

36:33

You want to gather two to three independent lines of independent testimony and witness when it comes to real, when you're making a formulating an accusation, most, a lot of the times when it comes to looking at conspiracies, a lot of times you're looking, and I'm not,

36:50

I'm not getting any particular example, but you'll see, and I'm just speaking in a broad sense, is that it's almost a presuppositional standpoint to where if you're, it's almost like pre -commitment that if there is a tragic and complex event, that's automatically a conspiracy.

37:05

And that tends to sort of, they're almost, and usually if you go down the rabbit hole, there's usually a frag, it's almost, there's a fragmentation that happens where that's how you interpret everything, which then creates the paranoia.

37:19

So I think, let me backtrack a little bit. So I would say biblically, and we'll, hopefully we'll lay a foundation further when we do the episode.

37:25

We can't give everything. Otherwise no one will listen to the episode with Doug Van Doren. But I think it's biblically, you can be a conspiracy realist, because there's a biblical basis for that, that do happens.

37:35

But you have to think in terms of what God says about those things. So in other words, if people are corroborating together to do something, which the

37:43

Bible says is already a sin. Like you said, if you hate someone without cause, you've already committed murder in your heart. And the law is the one that restrains us.

37:50

So there's always a biblical basis for that. What I think though, I think there's a, there's a line between, and you probably, your conscience would say it, there's a line in between thinking critically about what you're being told.

38:05

For example, any of you guys who may have seen this video, if you're into conspiracy theories, the one story about all the news, the evening news anchors who are all talking about the dangers of false news, and they're reading word for word, this is very dangerous for our democracy.

38:18

This is very dangerous for our democracy. So you have that. So the answer to, you know, the answer to dealing with conspiracy theory is just to trust, just to trust and trust, just to watch trusted news sources.

38:31

Well, by whose standards is it trusted? So in the same way, when you have, it's been documented multiple times, even the last year where it's been bearing false witness, you had

38:40

ABC news even prior to COVID, they got busted for betraying a war, some sort of a war that was going on in Syria.

38:49

And what they did is they took this sort of firearms demonstration out in the Midwest and they cropped it out and they made it with it.

38:56

They had a tracer bullets and everything else. And they totally did that. And they, they, they, they lied.

39:02

They bore false witness and that's happened multiple times. So it's also in the same, in the same thing, if you're, if, you know, if, if you're a pastor and you're counseling a couple and the husband's been documented, just habitually like lying pathologically multiple, multiple times, well, how do

39:19

I deal with that? Well, just, just listen and trust your husband. That's definitely the best advice. So, but what

39:25

I do think when it comes to conspiracies, there's a level in between thinking critically about what happened versus a line you have to be careful about because where it turns into a dangerous obsession, where you, it starts to, where there's almost a fragmentation where you become paranoid about everything.

39:42

So just to give you an example, I rewatched the film, the Oliver Stone movie, JFK. And so I've been to the grassy knoll.

39:50

It's interesting, especially being there. One of the most fascinating aspects about being at the place where JFK was assassinated was that camera, it was filmed at a lot of a higher shutter speed.

40:01

So what that means is that the distance that what it looks like it's going at, it was actually going a lot slower. And, but the video looks like it's, it's going, the car is going faster, but just being there and so much happened in such a short amount of time.

40:14

And yeah, I would look at that. And there's people I could give five bucks to. And they kind of give me the theory about who shot who.

40:19

And yeah, I mean, if you look at that, yeah, it's suspicious. I mean, there, and if you look at, you know, Oliver Stone in this movie, he lays out, if you watch it, you're like, wow, that's really convincing.

40:29

And you could look at that and you could think critically about that. And then I typed in JFK book, conspiracy books on Amazon.

40:39

I lost count of how many books there were. So then there's a level where you start reading this book and that book and that book and that book.

40:45

And what I'm saying is I'm not saying don't do that, but there's a level in which you can go down a rabbit hole where that becomes your obsession out of things that ultimately are outside of your control.

40:57

And then it becomes your obsession is on all the evil and dark people and centers of forces who are conspiring.

41:05

But even in the entirety of history, whether it's JFK, I'll just say what people think may or may not have happened on 9 -11 or any of the other kind of big, big kahunas when it comes to conspiracies.

41:19

Yeah, whatever those are, you have a God who is sovereign, who is working all things out, even what people are intending to do for his purposes and will.

41:28

So one of my favorite passages when it comes to dealing with conspiracies is

41:34

Exodus chapter nine. So what I love about this is that if you even think about a lot of this conspiratorial, a lot of people who come out of the new age, they tend to have a very conspiratorial mindset.

41:47

I think a lot of it just has to do with because they were in the new age for such a long time. There's almost this mindset that, you know, everything

41:55

I looked at was under what I was deceived by the devil, which is true.

42:00

But there's almost a sort of reverse pantheism in a sense. I'm speaking metaphorically where everything, it's almost like everything is of everything's of the devil almost.

42:08

And I'm just sort of saying it, you know, hopefully in a term that would understand where they're coming from. But when it comes to just like Egypt, a lot of the ancient aliens and a lot,

42:19

I mean, a lot of the documents like ancient aliens or even a lot of new age bookstores, there's this obsession with pyramids and sphinxes.

42:26

And even biblically, there's documentation of people doing practicing dark arts. So when, you know, when, when, when

42:33

Aaron threw down the staff, he, the pharaohs, magicians and practitioners of dark arts, they threw down their staffs and they emulated a miracle that was done by the power of God.

42:43

So you see people that have these supernatural powers by demonic power, but via demonic and satanic power, they're going back and forth.

42:51

So that's there. So you probably, if you look at the entirety of what was going on in Exodus at that time is knowing the history of Egypt and different culture, things that they were involved in, like the book of the dead or just all the different things with mummies and the pyramids and what that is or isn't all of that is there.

43:08

So if you look in the zoom picture that I'm sure it'd be easy back then to obsess about whatever cabal or whatever, there might've been their own, they might've had their own deep state, you know, whatever you want to call it.

43:19

But if you look at the entirety of history of a God who is sovereign and rules the nations with a rod of iron, it's, you need to sometimes look out, like stop looking at all the people who are, who isn't, you know, in the

43:34

Biden administration or, or who isn't in the deep state or the cabal or whatever you want to call it.

43:39

But let me just like, take a look at this. So this is the plague of hell. And this is

43:44

God instructing Moses what to tell the Pharaoh. And this is Exodus 9 verse 15. And he says, for by now

43:51

I could have put my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence that you would have been cut off from the earth.

43:59

But for this purpose, I have raised you up to show you my power so that my name may be be, may be proclaimed in all the earth.

44:09

So if you listen to that, like I said, just go back to, with your Bibles later on, just go to Exodus 9 verses 15 and 16.

44:16

And what you see is if God wanted to, he could have just snapped his finger. He could have done a

44:21

Thanos on Pharaoh if he wanted to. And he could have been done, but God raised him up.

44:27

He even allowed all their evil intentions, all their secret conspiring. It all worked out so that God could proclaim his name on the earth.

44:34

And because of that, we have the whole story of Exodus and what happened with Moses. And because of Moses, we have, we have the law of God and we, which, and the whole story of Moses leads to the fulfillment, the fulfillment of the law, which is

44:45

Jesus. So I think in the same way too, you know, every generation has its challenges, unprecedented times.

44:51

And yeah, we are in this weird kind of quasi postmodern digital

44:57

Wild West where it's just really getting strange. But you have to,

45:02

I think, and there's many times where it can get overwhelming if you look at that. But I think the biggest thing when it comes to be a conspiracy realist, and we'll go in more into that when we go to the episode.

45:12

But the biggest answer I would have as a whole is that, is to look at who

45:18

God is, what his promises are versus the circumstances around you. So that's what

45:25

I would say as a whole, and hopefully as an encouragement, and we'll go into that deeper, you know, there's, and here's the thing too, when you look at the aspect, when we go into the episode, we'll, we'll talk about things like PSYOPs and, you know, military and misinformation by the deep state.

45:40

But when you hear about that, realistically that, that shouldn't surprise or scare you.

45:45

The Bible talks about that. People conspired in secret to deceive people. Like Jesus said himself, like, take heed, lest no one deceive you.

45:53

And that was more in a spiritual sense. But the fact that there might be a government organization that purposes leading misinformation, like that shouldn't shock us.

46:03

Yeah. Like the Bible talks about that. Yeah. We shouldn't shock us as Christians. Yeah. And we shouldn't expect anything otherwise from people who are totally depraved, right?

46:10

As we ourselves are without the grace of God, like take this as an encouragement,

46:15

Psalm two, I might just read the whole, the whole Psalm here. Let's see here. So it says this. Why do the nations rage in the people's plot in vain?

46:23

The Kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.

46:33

He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury saying, as for me,

46:41

I've set my King on Zion, my Holy Hill. I will tell of the decree. The Lord said to me, you are my son today.

46:48

I have begotten you ask of me and I will make the nations, your heritage and the ends of the earth, your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a

46:56

Potter's vessel. Now, therefore, Oh, Kings be wise, be warned. Oh, rulers of the earth, serve the

47:01

Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling kiss the sun lest he be angry and you perish in the way for his wrath is quickly kindled.

47:10

Blessed are all who take refuge in him. So think about this for a second. As a Christian, we have the vantage point of looking at conspiracies, but not actually getting caught up in conspiracies.

47:20

Why? Because we know Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, right? Says in Colossians that in him, the fullness of deity dwells bodily.

47:29

And then we have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority. So we have heavenly promises of God that we can rely on to actually look at conspiracies and have a good time because we know how it ends, right?

47:43

You get caught up in the weeds when you forget who Jesus is. And we can't, we can't be surprised if there's conspiracies or people taking counsel together, even nations together trying to thwart the plans of the

47:56

Lord. But guess what? They failed. When did they fail? When Jesus Christ raised from the dead, because it says in Colossians again, when he raised from the dead, he put all rulers and authorities to open shame by triumphing over them in him.

48:11

And that is the one who lives in you, right? It's a, it's a beautiful thing to know. It's a beautiful promise to grab hold of and remember and realize as we're living throughout these times, because if you forget, you're going to be just like everybody else who doesn't have

48:25

Jesus as their Lord and Savior, who doesn't have him separated as Christ and Lord in their heart. They are drowning in contempt, right?

48:32

They're drowning in their sorrow and fear and anxiety and hopelessness. Christ is the hope, the anchor of our soul.

48:40

Like he keeps us steady when the oceans rages, crazy oceans of the world.

48:46

I mean, it's, it's really is as simple as that. As Christians, we should look at conspiracies and we should be not scared.

48:52

Instead, we should say, well, guess what? We have the answer. How do people in the Kings actually not plot in vain against the

48:58

King of Kings? Oh, by having a changed heart. How do they have a changed heart? Well, Christians going out and preaching the gospel, making, uh, disciples, right?

49:07

Like that's what we should be doing. I mean, Christ has all rule and authority. Again, he sits in the heavens and laughs.

49:14

And when the Kings do not obey the son and his law, they will perish.

49:20

So what are we seeing today? What are we seeing today? I mean, that's the question, right?

49:26

Right. But we have hope. We have Christ. And we know why things are the way they are with an objective standard of reality and truth in itself.

49:36

Whereas the world, they don't. And it's sad. We need a savior. Well, uh, if there's any plan that was out there,

49:41

I'll trust that plan. Trust the plan.

49:47

Right. That's all part of the plan. Um, yeah. So that's, uh, you probably, any of you who've been following us, see what we did there.

49:54

And for those of you who are wanting to know, uh, what we kind of wanted to do with Doug Van Doren's, we wanted to, uh, kind of lay down the prime, like a primer for Christians about how to think, uh, with conspiracy theories.

50:06

Um, in many ways, I think that is, and, and if you have friends who are kind of down that rabbit hole,

50:11

I think you wanted to, is that it's easy to kind of crack jokes and, and make fun of someone who does that.

50:17

If you're wanting, in the same way, if you talk to anyone who's got an area of unbelief or just confusion of where they're talking to, um, you want to not talk in a way that's going to trigger a siege mentality where they, they sort of see your criticism as unwarranted persecution.

50:36

So in the same way that I wouldn't, uh, go out and pick at the

50:41

Mormon temple by holding up a giant banner with Joseph Smith in hell, um, is the same reason why

50:47

I wouldn't, you know, bust up a whole bunch of cute. I mean, I kind of made a tongue in cheek huge joke there, but as far as, you know, talking with someone who's believes those things and sincere, because I think a lot of people who are in that movement,

50:57

I mean, there's people who've really gone over the top and, and, and are, and have done something that are dangerous.

51:03

And there's, there's the danger to be radicalized in that sense. Um, there are a lot of people who want bad things like wanting, wanting for sex trafficking to be stopped is not a bad thing if they're in, it's not.

51:16

And Satanists have been involved in a lot of crazy things. I mean, just in the, I was talking to someone earlier, just in the abortion ministry that we've done,

51:23

I've been part of, I had a Satanist who was working at the abortion mill, like come out to me and like, try to blow, like have his curse and blow incense on me.

51:31

It was, and I had to sort of rebuke her in Jesus name and all that fun stuff. But, um, yeah, like that's, so that's what happens.

51:38

But I think just because they, they want, they have good intentions and a lot of them do, but I think in many ways they're misguided.

51:46

And I think one of the problems too, as a whole with the movement, we'll get into it is that it's in many ways, while it isn't, while the

51:55

Q drops and everything else from seeing, it doesn't say thus sayeth the Lord. Um, this is the biggest red flag I have with it.

52:00

And we'll delve more into it when we actually drop the series. We're just kind of, we've been kind of waiting for it to kind of really fully develop and play out its course.

52:08

And it still is, but it's play out its course enough to finally, in my opinion, talk about it. Sorry, that's the

52:14

Chipotle right there, but yeah, but in many ways, I'll just give you examples. So apparently if you, if you put all the

52:20

Q drops together, um, from beginning to end and like the word count, it's just a little bit bigger than the

52:26

New Testament. And while they don't, they won't outright say they view the

52:31

Q drops as a religious text in many ways, they sort of see them as these sort of infallible, um, this is sort of these infallible, 100 % accurate, uh, inerrant, uh, sort of revelations that are happening.

52:45

So, and this is another thing too. So while Q or whoever Q is doesn't necessarily say that, uh, thus sayeth the

52:53

Lord, he talks about this thing that is coming that, but in the end, this whole thing,

52:58

God wins. That's sort of the subtle saying. So what's really being, while they're not saying thus sayeth the

53:03

Lord, they're saying this is going to be the plan. Nothing can stop what's what is coming, but in the end

53:09

God wins. So it's subtly saying this is part of God's plan. So in other words, to question the

53:15

Q narrative is, is in many ways is, is almost an unconscious level to question the very revelation of God.

53:22

So that's where the weird religious aspect comes to it. And that's why if you kind of go down the rabbit hole, you'll start seeing more stranger claims being made, um, and just more bizarre claims being made.

53:33

And so that, that's overall the concern. And I'm not trying to demonize the movement as a whole. I think there's a lot of people in there who have good intentions.

53:40

I mean, if there are bad people in the government, in, in government, uh, that are doing wrong things, they should have, they should be get the correct biblical justice and, and have that correct due process.

53:51

Um, and so in many ways that people are longing for that you've had all throughout history including recently people that have been frustrated about bad things going on.

54:00

So in many ways, I think though the Q movement is sort of taking advantage of those frustrations of, of corrupt politicians and they're, they're, they're wanting justice, but in a distorted way.

54:12

And I think, I think the biggest thing I want to say to the biggest concern I have is that I watched, um, kind of what broke the, the, the straw that broke the camel's back for me to finally start talking about it was over the inauguration weekend, which was, um, watching, that's when all the hype was there.

54:29

Everyone's saying this, this, this is it. This is Avengers end game. Like this, they're surrounded by the military. Everything has been hyped up for the last four years.

54:37

They're going to prison. There it is. Mass arrest, everything else, nothing, nothing, nada.

54:42

And I watched in real time. I watched, it was like, I watched, I was watching a bunch of, I got access to a, just a bunch of different sort of forums, uh,

54:50

QAnon forums to sort of spy on a little bit to kind of just watch what the pulse of the conversation was.

54:56

And it went from, I don't know, a lot of excitement to people just having their hopes shattered. I wasn't happy.

55:02

I wasn't in the mood to have jokes. I was, for me, I was sad. I was angry, um, more particularly because there are a lot of people who put all their vested hope, uh, in this thing, but it was just, it came, it, it was misplaced.

55:18

And then you have to say, is this of God? Well, think of the scripture. And when it says in the book of Proverbs, hope deferred makes a heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

55:26

So you're, you're hoping one for this great revival and transformation and world awakening happening through a military operation.

55:36

I'm sorry, but no amount of special forces or military power can, can usher in repentance.

55:42

And it doesn't matter how much you look at the face of evil without a regenerate heart. That's not going to change you.

55:49

Let me just state this. Like we had one of the most recent military operations in recent history, the Iraq war, where we toppled over a country with precision.

55:58

And that was, yeah, like that, that happened, but there was still tons of violence after that.

56:05

Um, there, in fact, even recently, even in spite of that military operation, uh, persecutions of Christians have actually escalated since we started the

56:16

Iraq war. I'm getting a little political here, but I'm trying to think too. And I'm thinking through the lens of someone who used to be like a hardcore pro

56:23

Bush right winger. Um, we did that, but even now there's been this really this surge.

56:28

I saw an article recently that even in Iraq right now, there's a big, huge problem with sex trafficking.

56:35

So in that whole, in that aspect, like you could, or wherever you're at, you can't, there already are lots of organizations that work with government agencies and officials, just even at the

56:45

Superbowl last week, they do stings all the time. And there have been notable sex trafficking experts that say that if you went and did a, if you did a sting, this is back in 2009.

56:56

Um, and I forget where I heard this from is some sort of Christian documentary that came out. And they said, if you went and did a sting operate, did a massive sting operation on every underground sex trafficking ring and just got them all, that would create a vacuum that would almost be filled instantaneously.

57:15

The reason why is because of the demand filled by what more sex trafficking.

57:21

Yes. So in that, so in that you see that there's, and they even said that we can only this dealing with it from a government standpoint or a military standpoint is only at the best of small bandaid.

57:35

This has to be, and they're interviewing people who were actually involved in the industry who are saved and now like new

57:41

Christ. And they were broken over the fact that they participated in these things and God saved them from that.

57:47

Now they're involved working with the government to help stop these things. So, so in many ways, I think that's, you need, so if you want to actually do it, make a difference, like find out how you can be evolved.

57:57

There's lots of great Christian ministries that are involved in stopping sex trafficking. What I would say, if you want to be involved in justice, that's not a bad thing.

58:05

I would say, find out a trust, you know, trustworthy Christian organization that's involved in actually doing these things and, and go get involved, go get certain and go serve.

58:15

There's a lot of you who there's a lot of people, not only, it's not just the rescuing part, but now victims who have been rescued and have a lot of serious trauma and they need a lot of help and assurance and counseling, and maybe that's something you get called to do.

58:30

So, so yeah, that, that's kind of really where we're at. And hopefully what we're trying to do is just kind of formulate a further conversation that one, first of all, we're going to hopefully try and reschedule with Doug Vandoren and talk about conspiracies as a whole.

58:45

And then we're kind of going to hope around sometime around a little bit after March 27th, we are going to do a series on the name that shall not be named the

58:57

Voldemort of the internet QAnon. So yes, so we're going to be doing that. So anyways, that's my, that's my ranting on that.

59:05

Do we have any other, want to take another question? I need another bite of this carne asada here. Yeah, here we go. So y 'all looking into the

59:11

Baha 'i faith anytime soon from Nicole. And what is the Baha 'i faith from Misty?

59:17

Definitely want to look into the Baha 'i faith. That is, that is one that'll be one of those more like classical cults that we could look into and do a cool historical episode on.

59:25

We don't have plans for it for 2021, but to think about the Baha 'i faith, it's more of like a, you can actually look up some of their churches.

59:32

I think they still have one. There's a Baha 'i. Yeah, there's one here in the valley in Scottsdale, I think. No, there's one right down the street from where, yeah,

59:39

Scottsdale. There's one in Scottsdale. So yeah, we definitely want to do Baha 'i and that's kind of like a conglomeration of trying to join all religions together.

59:47

Happens all the time, right? With our gurus. So pretty much a spiritual guru offshoot movement. You can watch some cool debates where Walter Martin is actually debating some people from Baha 'i and it's phenomenal.

59:59

Just go look those up. I recommend those on YouTube. But yeah, I mean, typically like what

01:00:06

I'm just thinking of with what you were saying, Jerry, is like the Lord doesn't want good intentions.

01:00:12

You know, the Lord doesn't want your self -righteous worship. He wants your heart.

01:00:19

You know, and the state can't provide a heart change, nor can they provide a solution to an issue that is not tangible with human hands.

01:00:28

You know, like it's just not feasible. It's not something that's going to happen.

01:00:33

It's just going to, that spiritual vacuum or void that will be replaced with some other type of self -righteous worship, you know?

01:00:40

And it's just not feasible. We need Christ and we need to bow to his kingship and his lordship in every aspect of our lives in order to see actual change in this world.

01:00:49

Let's see if there's any some other questions. Yeah, someone's asking about Mike Heiser. And yeah, I think

01:00:55

I would like to get Mike on. We've had just some preliminary talks. We're just kind of looking at some ideas.

01:01:01

More than likely, we will. He's done a lot of research. I think he's read a couple of books every single year since many, many, many years ago before I was born.

01:01:10

Yeah. It's a couple of years older than me. Just about everything about UFOs, aliens, government cover -ups.

01:01:18

So in many ways, there's a lot of people sort of on the outside looking in, even people in the UFO community who still kind of look to Mike Heiser as someone who's a notable scholar.

01:01:27

I know there's areas personally where I'm not fully on the same page of theologically, but I think the biggest appreciation

01:01:35

I have for Dr. Heiser is the fact that he's been able to take a lot of topics that in many ways are sensationalized and fringe.

01:01:45

In fact, Kristen Bellamy is actually on this live stream. I just saw her comment. So what's up,

01:01:51

North? But I think that episode was really good because when you look at something like exorcism, that usually is viewed through the lens of Hollywood or being extreme, just something that's usually being sensationalized.

01:02:05

Yeah, you're just looking through the lens of some sort of con artist on TBN, Bob Larson, who is totally doing something totally over the top and sensationalized.

01:02:19

You have other people who are trying. It's super theatric. And whenever that happens, I just don't buy that.

01:02:25

That may be a unique circumstance, but I think most of the times when that happens, it's not really something for someone.

01:02:32

It's something that happens when no one else is watching. And God has that happen to you. I have someone who I was witnessing to one time, and it was almost this person,

01:02:42

I would say it felt like they shape shifted, where it's almost like they completely changed personalities and their voice changed too, but it wasn't on camera.

01:02:50

So it was almost like God wanted me just to experience that. And who knows, maybe there's something

01:02:56

I was experiencing. I was sort of seeing the unseen realm that couldn't be witnessed with a camera. I don't know. But what

01:03:02

I do appreciate, though, is that Heizer has been able to really deal with a lot of the sensationalized topics typically from a very level headed and scholarly point of view, which

01:03:13

I think is incredibly well needed. Like I said, there may be some areas of where I'm not in full agreement, but I think as a whole that his work has done,

01:03:23

I think has done a lot of good work. And hopefully that will be a catalyst for kind of looking at that, which is a good thing.

01:03:29

I think both Stephen Bancar's and some of the things that Heizer has said was also helpful for me kind of looking at when you talk about new agers who experience these really crazy story when they're on these psychedelic trips or they're in an altered state of consciousness.

01:03:45

In many ways now, it doesn't surprise me when I hear those things. I have a point of reference and framework in which to look at that.

01:03:52

But if I was talking earlier, if I was talking with someone and they're talking about their astral body going on into these astral realms and experiencing all these crazy things and not being able to get back into their physical body or actually visiting places that they found out the next day they actually visited,

01:04:10

I would say that you're crazy. Did you take some sort of hallucinogenic or you just sort of trip it in your head? There's something wrong with your brain chemistry or what have you.

01:04:18

But I know just looking at that, there's a basis to make sense of that. Both Heizer, also

01:04:25

Ben Carson's book, Second Coming of the New Age, and the first two chapters of Walter Martin's Kingdom of the

01:04:30

Alcohol was really good of laying a foundation of scripture. And that's one of the reasons too in the Exorcism of Kristen Bell in the episode, we almost spent with Pastor Josh, we did almost a full hour just laying a foundation of scripture before we got them to the nitty -gritty tales.

01:04:45

And I drove everyone crazy by doing that cliffhanger. Not sorry. But anyways, did you have something on your mind?

01:04:53

Brother, yeah, no. There's so many things to think about when tackling the topic of the unseen realm or the spiritual dimension in a sense.

01:05:03

But there's people asking on here, which I like. It's a good idea. Nicole was talking about a cultish book club or a list including the things that we've read or for research.

01:05:13

That's a really good idea. Recommended books, yeah. Yeah. I think we should do that. Yeah. Because we have the two books, like Jeff Quinn, like the

01:05:20

Manson series we based The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Quinn. Yeah. We've read so many books in the last two years.

01:05:26

It's insane. Jerry knows where to find these books too. Like all of a sudden, he's like, hey, look at this book. Look at this book. Look at this book. Hey, Andrew, look at this book.

01:05:31

Look at this book. I'm going to send you this book. Yeah. The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. Oh, that's the first book he actually bought me.

01:05:40

And that book is phenomenal. If anyone hasn't gotten that book, you need to get it and read it now because you can see what's going on right now in terms of people wanting to identify with specific movements that are going on in the

01:05:52

United States of America and causing that movement to essentially turn into a religion where they forget who they are and just follow the belief system that's being propagated in front of them.

01:06:02

Yeah. Whether it be the, let's say, oh man, this is so popular for nowadays is what brands, right?

01:06:10

Like you almost become a brand, like you're always wearing that Nike or Nike means something greater than what it actually is.

01:06:18

Uh, what is the word I'm thinking of? Like it gives you our system like brand. Well, brand deals sort of give you the, if we're talking about marketing, brand deals sort of give you the permission to, to, to like to happen to like the dream is you don't even know about.

01:06:31

So like the North, if we're talking about brand mill, so like the North face jackets, almost like someone puts that on the whole

01:06:37

North face is kind of like this whole, it gives you permission to kind of go out into the great unknown, go to like grab your pickaxe and kind of like start climbing up some cliff, you know, or something like that.

01:06:47

Is that what you're referring to? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But there's also like the way things are advertised nowadays, which

01:06:54

I believe the book that we're reading by Doug Van Doren talks about it in terms of astroturfing is what the definition is, is that they actually, many brands will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to push information out in forms of propaganda to make people think that what they're reading is actually true when it's not necessarily.

01:07:14

So you're, in other words, kind of like, kind of like independent fact checkers. People think, people think they're checking out independent journalists, but there might be a little like,

01:07:24

Hey, I'm going to be a little check here and write this positive article. Well, it even goes with specific brands that are selling things. Did you watch the

01:07:29

Ted talk that he referred that Doug Van Doren talked to? No, no, no, no, no, no. But that's, it's all in the same vein though.

01:07:34

Right, exactly. Yeah. So you'll, you'll see that. So a lot of times you'll have different, you know, 527 ads or even in the political sphere, people who are grassroot movements and they think that they're kind of like an independent group separate from the presidential candidate or a person running for office.

01:07:49

But in many ways they're, they're kind of maybe like an independent journalist, but they're really not. Right. And so again, this still is like one of those things that should not surprise us.

01:07:57

Like people do that stuff. Yeah. So. Shouldn't be surprising. Nope. Shocker. Let's see here.

01:08:03

What else do we got? What do we got? Ask some questions, guys. We are here. Look at the questions.

01:08:09

I'm going to take another bite of the Chipotle. Let's see. They're going to get some free advertising. They're probably going to get some.

01:08:15

I know. Postmates or something. I think,

01:08:26

I think our questions are up. Oh, Roberta's hanging up. The Roberta, the queen of meme, she's on here. Oh yeah.

01:08:33

Gotta give her a shout out. And she's over in Vegas. So she was talking about George Knapp. He's talking about Area 51. Oh, nice.

01:08:39

So yep. He's yeah. George Knapp is one of the kind of the main, it's sort of like one of the main sort of like sages in a sense of the whole following the whole

01:08:48

UFO movement. So again, the Biden administration does do a lot of UFO disclosures and that's part of their agenda.

01:08:55

And then you will see people like Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp really kind of ride that for a while.

01:09:01

Yeah. Jenny has a question about mission trips. I let's find it. Let's see if we can find that real quickly.

01:09:12

Oh, and the next question, the last was about Bob Lazar. All right. Let's see. I can't find the mission.

01:09:17

Ask the question again. Okay. Let me take a look here.

01:09:23

It's a Bob Lazar asked that. Yeah. So what do you guys think of Bob Lazar?

01:09:31

So I believe that he's a hundred percent sincere. I don't think he's someone who he definitely encountered and saw something.

01:09:39

The question is, what is, what did he actually see? And so I actually,

01:09:45

I've been mean to read his book, but I saw the documentary of Bob Lazar UFOs near 51 is definitely interesting to see.

01:09:51

But I believe that, you know, there's sometimes, you know, the Bible does talk about people talk with confident assertions, even though that they're wrong.

01:10:00

So, cause sometimes you're good and you watch the nature of politics. You kind of know when there's that political answer.

01:10:05

Like, let me ask you that by answering you this, how much could a woodchuck chuck of a woodchuck could chuck wood. And again, we're roughly two years out from when we did our initial episodes on Bob Lazar.

01:10:13

Right. So usually it's like a content dump and you're onto the next thing. So I don't remember every single thing, but I believe a hundred percent

01:10:20

Bob Lazar believes what he believes and is sincere. How much of that is actually grounded in full truth.

01:10:27

I'm not sure. Some of the things seem over the top, but some of the things he did talk about are correct. So he talked about the bone scanner.

01:10:33

That's near 51. That turned out to be true. There were a couple other things that he got into that found out as well to be true.

01:10:40

There's a couple other things that are kind of. Kind of iffy. Kind of iffy and confusing. And one of the things he did, which in the documentary, which is interesting is that he kind of went into this hypnosis to kind of go back and re -remember something.

01:10:54

Right, I forgot about that. But if you remember, like a lot of times when you go into hypnosis to try and re -remember something, it's very, you become incredibly suggestible.

01:11:01

And even if you ask leading questions, it's hard. And a lot of times if you take hypnosis, there's a lot of times therapists will give someone sodium amytal, which is a mind altering or relaxing substance.

01:11:12

But that allows you to be a lot more suggestible. So that's where I would say, I've talked about before in the episodes, my skepticals come on.

01:11:19

And I kind of wonder what's the, I'm not sure how valid that is.

01:11:24

It's one person's witness under a subjective state. So that's where I would say any of the claims made under there would be, it would be sus.

01:11:31

It'd be a little sus. Yeah, it's hard for me to think that what he was saying is 100 % accurate in terms of the fact that he's talking about extra, specifically extraterrestrial beings, other advanced forms of life out there in the universe that have a spaceship that was discovered and it was being reverse engineered in area 51.

01:11:52

To me, I think the six day creation account totally does not allow for that.

01:12:00

You know, specifically the earth being created prior to the rest of the stars in the universe.

01:12:06

I take a very literal approach to the creation account in the beginning of Genesis.

01:12:11

But the thing is though, like Jerry's saying, is Bob Lazar could have actually been seeing something, you know, maybe he was fed information to make him assume and believe something different than what it actually was.

01:12:24

Maybe there was a craft. Well, maybe it wasn't an extraterrestrial craft. Maybe it was a military operation.

01:12:31

They just didn't want to give them all the information. Again, they're hiring some independent contractor that they don't really know much about and bringing them to area 51.

01:12:38

I mean, in terms of conspiracy, we have facts, right? But then we have these, like, what are textural variants within the facts that lead to more questions and more questions.

01:12:48

And then that's where we have our speculation. You know what I mean? So I don't know. I think

01:12:54

Bob Lazar, like Jerry said, probably believes what he's saying. But at the same time, does it make it true?

01:13:00

No, that's pretty much my opinion on him. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. So Brent asked.

01:13:06

Yeah, he talked about he loved the latest episode on the Moonies. Definitely check out the latest episode with Hannah Castaneda.

01:13:12

I finally got her name right on the live stream. I worked on it. I was it was a work in progress on the episodes.

01:13:17

But he says that he watched the film Ticket to Heaven that we talked about.

01:13:22

Really intriguing. And also his interview with Steve Hassan. If you guys actually want to listen to an amazing interview, like I said,

01:13:29

I can't always recommend every single Joe Rogan Experience podcast. And if you do, I listen to it.

01:13:34

I would say if you do choose to do it, take it with a grain of salt and just be prepared. He's not it's not a Christian program.

01:13:40

And there is colorful language on it a lot of times in many of the episodes. But I would say if you can put up with a couple of words that aren't pleasing.

01:13:48

Thank you. If you look up Joe Rogan, Steve Hassan is an absolutely fascinating conversation about how he got into the

01:13:56

Moonies and how he got indoctrinated and got brainwashed and how he sort of unplugged and deprogrammed from a really a psychological standpoint.

01:14:05

And so in many ways, I really love and appreciate a lot of the work that Steve Hassan has done. I mean,

01:14:11

I think while he's done a lot of great work and explaining a lot of ways the psychological aspects of how colds work, the bite model, aka behavior control, information control, thought control, emotional control.

01:14:23

And that's even it's even been helpful for understanding how abusers and even people who manipulate people who lead sex trafficking rings and helping how them operate.

01:14:35

And he's been really helpful in that regard. But I think one of the areas in which Steve Hassan falls short, if you want to take presuppositionally,

01:14:43

I don't he's partisan. He talks about it in the Joe Rogan. He left a cult and joined a cult. Yeah. So he's part of this Joe Rogan calls him out and he's like he joins some sort of brand.

01:14:51

It's like this Jewish mysticism that practice like Jewish mysticism and like the Kabbalah and stuff like that.

01:14:57

So in many ways, it's he kind of appeals to things that make sense and are observable, but that can make sense in God's word and in God's world.

01:15:07

But ultimately, he can't give an ultimate accounting as to why why is behavior control wrong if all we are just bags of protocols, bags of protocols and just bumping up against each other?

01:15:18

What's the what's the problem with survival? That mean that would be survival of the fittest, is it not? Well, this is the cult of his choice in his defense.

01:15:25

He'd say it doesn't hurt me and it's not controlling all of my thoughts and emotions. Then I can just go ahead and join and be part of this larger movement.

01:15:33

Yeah, like that. That's Steve Hassan. That's like pretty much how he or like this vague decoration that there needs to be sort of.

01:15:39

Oh, yeah, we need the ultimate authority needs to be an appeal to a UN declaration of human rights.

01:15:45

Well, it's like, well, how do we know they're infallible? Like, I don't I've never met anyone from the UN. Like, what's their worldview?

01:15:52

Like, what if they all want to do like lockdown 3 .0? Like, I don't know. I mean, like we're about to do the conspiracy rabbit rabbit hole.

01:16:02

But I'm just bringing a point that we don't what's his ultimate world, the ultimate authority. He can't give an ultimate accounting as to why those things happen.

01:16:08

So I do recommend I do think, though, it's a good learning experience. If you want to learn about the cult and how they operate and kind of the psychological aspects, it'll help you better understand cults and how you interact with his two books.

01:16:21

Yeah, maybe we should do a book club. Maybe we should think about that. That's a good idea. Yeah. Combating cult mind, combating cult mind control and freedom of mind.

01:16:29

Both of them are excellent resources. And again, they come from a non -Christian worldview. But Sandra Tanner actually has that for sale in her bookstore.

01:16:36

Really? Yeah, I don't know if you know that. So we love Sandra Tanner. I know here. And we actually have an episode with Brother Wade and I.

01:16:43

If you go way back into the depths of the podcast feed,

01:16:48

I don't even know if that's the right lingo. You can find an interview with Sandra Tanner from Wade and I just about her life and the

01:16:54

Lord leading her out of Mormonism and into the true knowledge of saving faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

01:17:00

So Jonathan asked a question. He said, you guys going to be doing an episode on the IFB, the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist.

01:17:07

That mouthful right there. You know, we've kind of talked about it, but then we're like, you know, well, Pastor James has done a really good job talking about the

01:17:15

IFB. Even Pastor Jeff talks about it. We haven't considered it, but we do have really good resources if it's something that we wanted to tackle.

01:17:25

So this year in 2021, we really want to explore more fringe topics and things that we're seeing run rampant in society today.

01:17:34

But IFB is one that we had thought about, but we haven't. And I don't think we're going to do it in 2021.

01:17:41

Yeah, and we are going to do, and if any of you guys had to bounce around here for a while, we'll upload this on our podcast later.

01:17:48

But we are going to hopefully explore, do a couple of origin stories. Hopefully we can knock out.

01:17:54

We're going to do a series soon on William Branham. Super excited for that. I did a post the other day.

01:18:00

I posted on Facebook and it got almost 320 comments. I was not expecting that. We got quite a few messages in contrast to that.

01:18:08

So as far as William Branham is concerned, I know there's people who are affiliated with him in the modern word of faith movement.

01:18:17

And there's people in even Bethel who sort of acknowledged him in passing. We're not really going to focus on that because, like I said, we're kind of really not involved really that much anymore in the discernment realm.

01:18:27

It's important though. It's very important, but we kind of hold that over. I think it's almost that I feel like Justin Peters, people like brothers like Justin Peters and Chris Rosenberg, they do a good enough job without it.

01:18:38

And I, I don't, I feel like we're sort of like the RC Cola of discernment industries that we're going to try and like put ourselves up against them.

01:18:45

Well, if we do the origins of people, they say they want their mantle from right. It's going to be damning in itself.

01:18:51

Right. So I think what we're going to do is that so we're going to be focusing on origin stories. So right now, the way from what we're looking at, from what we're unpacking on William Branham, we're looking at potentially it could be a four part series because we've just started to unpack it and already we have prohibition and the

01:19:07

Ku Klux Klan, like, and that's just his early life. And there's a whole lot more, including a interesting relationship he had with Jim Jones.

01:19:17

And so we want to basically go in and kind of really, I know there's a lot of people who have messaged us and have stories of coming out from the movie.

01:19:25

I think it's called the message is Branham's group, or they're also known as Branhamites, but the primary focus is the introduction.

01:19:33

We may have some interviews with ex -Branhamites as a whole, but when we have

01:19:38

John Collins on, the focus is going to be not necessarily, you know, a survivor's experience, but really just focus on this is the historical origin.

01:19:46

So we're hoping to do that with also Charles Tate Russell. And we want to do that, an origin story on the

01:19:55

Watchtower Bible and Track Society. And then finally, by the end of the year, we have some potential historians we want we're hoping to get in contact with to do one.

01:20:05

It finally may happen. So cross your fingers, Ellen G. White and Seventh Day Adventism.

01:20:12

Yes. Because what are the ties between Charles Tate Russell and Seventh Day Adventism?

01:20:20

Right. I mean, but I'm not going to say that they're one in the same. I'm saying what are the ties? That's why we're doing origins, historical sources.

01:20:26

So you guys can get a good understanding of, I'll just say the Millerites. And that's all I'll say.

01:20:32

Yeah. And also, you know, too, that's one of the reasons why we've held off on doing a series on Waco and David Koresh is because that originated in Seventh Day Adventism.

01:20:43

Yes. So yeah. They were a branch. Yeah. And Adam, just for a quick answer to your question, you are right.

01:20:51

That is what you saw. But yeah, 2021 is an exciting year, man. I think we're doing different things.

01:20:57

Yeah. It's been a wild ride so far. A lot of times we just made plans and all of a sudden we get thrown the unexpected.

01:21:02

Like it's only February, it's the beginning of February. And who knows, we could get, we could have, who knows what

01:21:08

March 2021 may hold for us. None of us expected that. You know, here I am, you know, back in January and we're talking with Warren Jeff's 65th wife.

01:21:18

Oh man. That was one of the best experiences. Mind blowing. If you guys have not listened to the episode, go check it out with, yeah, with Brielle.

01:21:26

Brielle Decker. Brielle Decker. My brain, like I had a little time brain fart there. But yeah, she's done a lot since then. She's been involved with like helping women escape.

01:21:33

Did a TED talk. Yeah. Rehabilitation. She did a TED talk here in Scottsdale. If I had known about it,

01:21:39

I would have wanted to come. So shout out to you, Brielle, if you're, if you listen in. I love you. And a lot of people were really inspired by that episode.

01:21:45

So yeah, I mean, like I said, there's a lot of unexpected stuff that could happen. I mean, we already sort of have, there's plans that we haven't announced yet.

01:21:54

That it will be kind of, I'll say this is it may be, it's going to be expanding. What cultists is going to be doing outside of the studio into the real world in a sense.

01:22:05

So that's as much as I'll say right now, but we will be announcing that shortly. So I would say in advance, be praying for that.

01:22:13

And I can't see what they're like. I feel like there was something on my lips right here. I'd look at the reflection. How about you look at me and I tell you.

01:22:18

Is there anything in my life? No, you're looking good. Okay. I looked there and I thought I saw the reflection of myself. So, so yeah,

01:22:25

I think, yeah, I mean the whole, everything's unexpected and who knows will take place, but yeah, just be praying for us because we'll be making an announcement shortly.

01:22:34

It is going to change aspects in how we operate cultish, but in the same way, you know, yeah, that's all

01:22:41

I'll say. New horizons. New horizons, but it's new opportunity. It's new opportunity and what we have plans.

01:22:47

It's, it's very congruent with where, what we originally wanted to really do with cultish. Yeah. As far as, yeah, it's leveling up, but not software update.

01:22:55

Yes. It's iOS. It's a cultish iOS update. So in many ways, I need to make sure it cultish.

01:23:01

It's in many ways that would be sort of cultish 2 .0. Yeah. Oh, whoa. God is good, dude.

01:23:07

Here. Michael, Michael asked a question. He said, what about Alcoholics Anonymous? The whole 12 step movement, higher powers and gods of your own understanding.

01:23:13

Pragmatically, it can work with those gods or idols. You know what, Michael, I 110 % agree with you.

01:23:18

Um, a full episode devoted to Alcoholics Anonymous. Um, we haven't talked about that.

01:23:23

That would be a very interesting one. We would get, I would get, I would get pastor Jeff on that. Yeah. Just because he was a chaplain for four years and dealt with that.

01:23:32

So we did, I'll tell you, this is that if you go back to the old school apology radio, there's actually an episode we did on AA.

01:23:40

Oh, there we go. And it's actually really good, but we had somebody, some people messaged us who got really, really angry and upset because of that episode.

01:23:49

We want to talk with them, but it was just very, they felt very, it was, it was very, yeah, they took it very personal as far as what we said, um, that you can't just choose any higher power, but you need to actually see it as an idol.

01:24:02

Um, so yeah, I think if I checked it out, Look at Elliot Hillis, uh, said, hi, we love you, bro.

01:24:07

He's our worship leader at Apologia. And he also has his own channel where he does streaming for video games and stuff.

01:24:14

Coina Geek. Coina Geek. You guys need to check out Coina Geek. And yes, it is a play on words of Coina Greek. Yes. So Coina Geek, shout out to Elliot.

01:24:21

Yes. And, and total side note, a little tidbit about us. Both Andrew and I are kind of a little bit of gaming nerds.

01:24:27

So we kind of do, we kind of game part -time when we have time, which isn't too much. Yeah. Um, speaking of not having time, um, but it's a great question.

01:24:37

Um, Nicole asked early if we'd ever do a cultish conference with panels with former guests.

01:24:43

Oh bro. That's a great, great idea. How come we can't think of these great things? I know it's a brilliant idea.

01:24:49

Um, and I think it's entire, I think something like that in the future is entirely possible. I think right now, just with the fact that I, both you and I still have.

01:24:58

Yeah. We need more funding for that. Yeah. We need more funding for that. That'd be great. Because there is a lot that goes into a conference.

01:25:03

I was watching about, I was sort of following what the planning, the planning that went into, uh,

01:25:09

ReformCon, um, both 2016 and 2019. I was like, that has a lot, a lot of planning.

01:25:16

So that would be down the road if Andrew and I were both full -time. That'd be amazing. It would be incredible.

01:25:21

I'd probably cry. Yeah. But right now, just with everything, especially being Covidia 1984, it's definitely, there's a lot of complexities with that.

01:25:29

And we could pull it off just right now. I don't think we could do it without really being full -time with all the other stuff we have going on.

01:25:36

So let's see here. So look, Oh, Jenny finally got her question back in. Sorry. We don't know where it goes.

01:25:42

Sometimes the questions, it goes up and we just seem to disappear, but let's see. She says, have you heard of Renee Bach and no white saviors, evangelical white churches, sending teens to build schools and witness to them, but taking away their culture.

01:25:56

Wow. That's an interesting, I've never heard of them at all. I don't know where they're sending them to.

01:26:02

I guess you're saying to other countries and they're taking where their culture. I wonder, I'm going to look, I would like to look into that.

01:26:08

That does sound interesting, but is, is it a cult? Are they preaching a different Christ? I mean, it sounds like something that comes from people preaching a different Christ, right?

01:26:16

Making them look a specific way, dress a specific way, which kind of reminds me of Mormonism.

01:26:21

You know, like you go outside their wards or watch them walk in. They're all wearing the same exact thing. The beautiful thing about the true and living

01:26:27

God is he wants us to celebrate him from every tribe, tongue and nation and not make us all look exactly the same.

01:26:34

So it looks like just hearing that comment, it does sound like they're, they, they may preach a different Jesus just because we can see that when it's a different Christ, there's going to be different outcomes from that religion.

01:26:47

And what it's going to do is it's going to create a yoke. That's going to be a burden where you're going to have to do

01:26:52

X, Y, and Z in order to obtain salvation, right? And one of those is looking a specific way, doing things specifically, and pretty much just stomping on the freedom that we have in Christ.

01:27:05

So sounds like it. That's a, that's a good one. Jenny, I'll have to take a look at Rene Bach.

01:27:11

Any, any other questions for you from you guys? Yeah, let's take a look real quickly. Oh, someone says

01:27:18

RC Cola, more like RC Sprola. Yeah. Yeah, actually there's a picture I shared on, on someone's page by sharing my social media back when

01:27:28

I was like a little 19, 18 year old, a little kid, a little hobbit, a little skinny hobbit.

01:27:34

And I got to meet RC Sprola. I got my picture with him. I was totally just like nerding out. So I was like brand new Christian.

01:27:40

And I was just like, I love listening to RC Sprola. I came back out of this mission. I got saved in the mission trip. And like, after I came back,

01:27:46

I just like grabbed every single table talk my parents had. And I just started binging through them.

01:27:52

It was so much fun. So yeah, it's yeah, that was a, yeah.

01:27:57

I miss him, but, but yeah. Oh yeah. Brent also says,

01:28:02

I will say I love your interview with Ray Bosch. I go to church with Pastor Ray. And for those who don't know him personally, he's also a great guy and amazing pastor.

01:28:10

Love that guy. Pray for him as he fights cancer. So Ray is absolutely amazing brother in the

01:28:15

Lord. He has such a great wealth of knowledge when it comes to this area, this phenomenon.

01:28:22

And in fact, he only has one lung. You know, that's, I think you knew that. Wow. Yeah.

01:28:28

But, and that has to do, I think was a previous surgery he had, but yeah, just be, yeah, definitely be praying for, for Ray because he's a very easy, he's in good spirits.

01:28:37

And we, we kind of have a sort of a chat thread between us and a couple of people who are into the whole UFO thing. And so, yeah,

01:28:43

I appreciate, man, the kind words about him. And yes, definitely give a shout out. So Ray, if you listen to this, we are praying for you, brother.

01:28:50

Tell him we love him. Yeah. Tell him we love him and praying for healing. And yeah, tell him we said hi, even though we always talk in the

01:28:55

Facebook thread. So yeah. All right. Cool. Let's see.

01:29:01

Let's, let's take one or two more questions and then I got to get the rest of the Chipotle before I go crazy. Yeah.

01:29:08

This episode is brought to you by unofficially Chipotle, carne asada.

01:29:14

And once Chipotle knows who we are, they would cancel us. Oh yeah. Don't ever eat Chipotle again.

01:29:20

Canceled, canceled. So, oh yeah. Okay. Well, uh, let me think, let me think here.

01:29:27

Is there, are there any other like topics you think that we should explore?

01:29:32

Because we just kind of like kind of take whatever comes to us. We plan something in advance. Yes. What do you want to talk about? Jim Jones and communism.

01:29:41

The one aspect of Jim Jones that is never talked about ever.

01:29:48

That is something we need to cover. Jim Jones and Marxism and how he used religion as a vehicle to indoctrinate people to death.

01:29:58

Yep. That quote, if you guys have listened to the end of Jones color glasses, you did roughly two years ago.

01:30:03

And I thought of it, how can I use my Marxism? Or basically it says that my thought was infiltrate the church.

01:30:11

And the way he says it, it's like, ah, I thought to myself, how could I demonstrate my Marxism? Oh yeah.

01:30:17

So there's infiltrate the church. Yeah. The whole rabbit hole of Jim Jones is such a weird, strange, crazy world.

01:30:24

I think it's crazier than the death tape because you sort of, it's like the part, if we could find the audio of,

01:30:31

I will fight, I will fight. That is what blow people's minds. And I don't know what to see whether or not we'll play the unedited, the unedited version of that.

01:30:42

The craziest thing to think about in terms of Jim Jones and Marxism is let's think about Christians for a second.

01:30:48

We have our testimonies, right? We can give our testimonies about how God saved us. However, Jim Jones's congregation, the people he was a quote unquote shepherd over, they don't have testimonies of God's saving grace.

01:31:01

They have testimonies of divine economic socialism and how they will kill themselves in order to usher about this new era of Marxism.

01:31:10

And these are people you can listen to their transcripts. You can literally listen while they're in Guyana Jones, uh,

01:31:16

Jonestown in Guyana. And you can hear their voices, children as young as eight years old talking about how they will kill themselves for this.

01:31:25

And these are people that are now dead. Yep. Hundreds of people. They're giving death pledges.

01:31:30

Giving death pledges to divine economic socialism. Yeah. And to communism. That's their testimony. And you'll even see, there's even videos that will, when we do this episode where they're singing the

01:31:39

Soviet national anthem out in the, the. They had the Russian like leader come and speak with them in Guyana.

01:31:46

Not like their, their president or whatever they would name him, but some guy in some position of power came down and they were, yeah.

01:31:53

Yeah. And again, just so you know too, when we talk about the Jim Jones stuff, this isn't, this isn't some crazy tinfoil thing.

01:31:59

So when you're talking about conspiracies or any of that stuff that's weird, we're talking about independent line, corroborative lines of testimony and evidence.

01:32:06

So any of the stuff that we refer to, if we do this episode, and even the stuff we did prior, it's all from San Diego.

01:32:12

I believe San Diego state university has the Jonestown archives, which is almost every, every document, every sermon, transcript, pretty much any document audio that they have.

01:32:24

It's everything they took from the FBI files. Like, so the FBI has not just disclosed all of the

01:32:32

Jonestown things. I think via the freedom of information act. Yeah. And so the San Diego university went ahead and they created this archive website where they've transcript everything.

01:32:41

And they have all of the audio tapes because Jim Jones being the narcissist, he was recorded everything pretty much he ever said under the sun.

01:32:50

So that's pretty much what that archival site is. And it's, it's parallels between Jim Jones and BLM.

01:32:57

Yes. Massive. Well, yeah. Cause it was in the video, for example, what you noticed over the summer. And like I said, what happened with George Floyd was just horrific.

01:33:06

Um, and it rightfully so to turn anyone's stomach of who watched that. But when you saw the majority of people in the

01:33:14

BLM movement doing this, there's a symbolic meaning behind that. And I would just say, do your research on it.

01:33:22

I'm not going to go into detail on it, but what you'll see is that a lot of people are going to equate

01:33:27

Jim Jones and his movement with, um, with the whole drink, the

01:33:32

Kool -Aid. That's sort of like the pun, that's sort of the punchline, no pun intended, but in many ways, that's what it's affiliated with.

01:33:40

But in many ways, the reality was not him just being a communist, but his main message was about, in many ways, very liberal, progressive idea of social justice and racial equality that was preached both back in Indiana, um, that as we're studying,

01:33:56

I'm curious to see what the connections are to Jim Jones, because that's where they had that relationship with Brandon and Jones.

01:34:03

But, but yeah, so you'll, you'll see that. And there were a couple of interesting tidbits too, is that in the state of Indiana, that Jim and his wife, um, was it

01:34:15

Marcine or Marciane Jones? Yeah. Yeah. So both of them as a couple, they, they adopted a couple.

01:34:22

They, they were the first white couple to adopt a black child in the state of Indiana. If you look up the history, the first ones to ever do it because he wanted to kind of have that diverse, that sort of brand is the diverse family.

01:34:35

And he named him Jim Jones. Yeah. Jim Jones Jr. And so, yeah, you'll see that. And that's another interesting thing too, if you look at later on in his life when both, uh,

01:34:45

Jim Jones's son, not Jim Jones Jr., but both of them go back to going on all those years later.

01:34:52

It's, uh, I can't remember Jim Jones's son, not Jim Jones Jr., but he's like just emotional and just like breaks down and starts crying.

01:34:59

And in a very disturbing way, Jim Jones Jr. is sort of like, I'm here where like my dad was.

01:35:07

And like, like just sort of like infatuated with it in a weird way. But when it comes to just the whole story of Jim Jones, especially if you look at what happened when he was over in San Francisco and Los Angeles and the sermons he preached there, it, it was just a very, he kind of got really involved with a lot of the social justice aspect of people who are very involved.

01:35:27

So like Harvey Milk, do your research on him. He was involved with, he did work with him. A lot of the

01:35:32

Democrats who were involved in San Francisco Democrats, he was very involved with them and their politics and was kind of using what he was doing to kind of expand his power and influence.

01:35:43

And what happened, of course, after that happened in Guyana, you know, you saw a lot of, of course, politicians try and really distance themselves and explain away the relationship they had with him.

01:35:54

So in many ways, that's really, if you kind of, and we didn't talk about it a whole lot, but if we jump back into it,

01:36:01

Jones's aspects of social justice and how he had people react and demonstrate in many ways is there's levels of similarities, not in the sense that they tore down statues or burn things down, but they had a lot of the same, in many ways, similar political worldviews that led to different outcomes.

01:36:24

But yeah, in many ways, they'd be there in many ways, they'd have similarity as far as, as far as that.

01:36:30

So yeah, no personal property at all belongs to the government. Even your children belong to the ideology, which is something that BLM proponents stayed on their website.

01:36:40

Right. So, yep. All right. Well, this has been a fun and super exciting Q and A.

01:36:47

And I hope I help lead that chewing my Chipotle. I'm just starving. You know, the other time I've eaten, I've eaten where I was like, sort of like you were recording me was back when our

01:36:55

Utah trip. Oh yeah. And I was like eating the chips and I was like, hmm, smoking jalapeno. Yeah.

01:37:02

Do you remember that? I remember that. People can find that one Koldish Embedded episode. They could probably still find that one that we did if they

01:37:09

YouTubed it. Yeah. They want to go back and see some crazy stuff. And who knows? We might be going to Nevada soon.

01:37:17

Yes. To do like a Koldish on the road trip in March. So keep your eyes.

01:37:24

Keep your eyes peeled for that. Almost like I like it. And it tasted good. You almost spit, but it tasted good. I caught it.

01:37:31

Anyways. Hey, so if you guys liked this, hey, thanks for hanging out with us.

01:37:37

Wow. We still have 24 people on. Wow. A lot of people still hanging out with us. It's cool. Impromptu little impromptu little live stream.

01:37:43

No big deal. But yeah. So thanks for hanging out with us. And we are wrapping things up here.

01:37:48

And just so you know, too, we are going to drop this on. We're going to drop this next week, more likely on the

01:37:56

Koldish podcast, because not everyone was able to catch this live stream. And hopefully we'll reach out to Mr.

01:38:02

Doug Van Dorn. We'll reschedule with him. And because, again, his book is excellent. I think that conversation with him would be a really good service to many of you.

01:38:10

And then we would like later on to kind of really give a level headed and biblical analysis of QAnon.

01:38:18

What does it say? How do we view a movement like that ultimately in the light of scripture, of a

01:38:24

God who is sovereign? And this is in God's world in regards to the claims that are made and how he operates. So hopefully we could have a good, deeper conversation about that.

01:38:33

A lot of great things in the pipeline. So if you guys are listening now, you can share this live stream if you want to, or if you are listening to this when the podcast comes out, please share this episode, let your friends know about it.

01:38:47

And hopefully you'll find this as encouragement, as you can be excited for what is ahead.

01:38:52

And as always, a program like this cannot continue without your support. So for all of you who have supported

01:38:58

Koltish, we are using that to kind of start bringing some people part -time on staff to kind of really help with the workload.

01:39:06

And so we can be more focused on content creation, episode creation. It's just kind of hard to do everything in between work and job.

01:39:12

So hopefully there'll be things happening to make Koltish a lot more efficient, smooth operating machine.

01:39:19

But if you feel led to donate, or if any of your friends feel like they want to support a good ministry doing the work that we do, you or they, whoever it is, can go to our website, thekoltishshow .com.

01:39:31

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01:39:38

Also go to apologyostudios .com, become an all access member. So you can get access to Koltish the aftermath, right?

01:39:46

This wouldn't be possible without the studio. So we appreciate you guys for actually following us to goofballs while you listened to us for a couple hours while we ate

01:39:54

Chipotle. Praise God for you guys. We are so thankful for you. We love you guys. You are in this with us.

01:40:00

I just want to say that. And even though we're not wearing it today, Koltish merch is awesome. Yes. And so if you want to get some great merch, go to shopkoltish .com

01:40:09

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01:40:16

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01:40:23

Win, win, win, win, win, win. Yeah. All the wins. All the wins. All right. All right. Thank you guys for hanging out. And we will talk to you guys next time on Koltish.