Dead Men Walking Podcast LIVE from Fight Laugh Feast: Jeff Durbin & Jeremiah Roberts

Dead Men Walking

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

and just be consistent with what you're doing. Do you, I mean, do you, well,

00:06

I try to follow everything you guys do. I mean, do you have a, like, a number per day that you try to post, you know, content?

00:16

Well, as far as social media, I wanna be a lot more consistent. Yeah. A lot of times, it's just like, I have an idea. Yeah. So, I made this post, because we have an episode.

00:24

Let's get you up on that mic there, too, Jeremiah, so everyone can hear you, if that's okay. Here we go. Yeah, yeah.

00:29

Are we up and running? Sweet. Yeah, we're recording right now, so. Yeah, we can talk about whatever. Yeah, so, there's a video

00:35

I posted. I'm posting it on the way here, and if you can see, we're gonna do an episode on the

00:40

Enneagram. Yep. And so, I posted this inside the airport, and on our

00:46

Instagram, it's got 16 comments, 241 likes. Yeah. And then, our Facebook post, it's about 150, like, 57 comments.

00:55

Serious. So, just a spur of the moment, I wanna make it, I wanna engage. Right. Let me move up here, so.

01:01

Yeah, yeah, you're fine. That's the thing about podcasting, is you gotta know the mic, you gotta be up close, you gotta hug it.

01:06

Exactly, yeah, man. Yeah, I was always afraid of the mic before, because I was a guitar player in a band.

01:12

Yeah. So, I was more of the guy looking down, you know, I was that guy in the band, just looking down, playing the guitar.

01:18

I wasn't the guy on the mic. So, now that I have a mic in front of me, it gets a little nerve -wracking. But I'm getting better, after 30 episodes, right?

01:25

Is that what we got, about 30 episodes? We're new, man. We just started, we're the baby of the

01:30

COVID pandemic, right there. Yeah, man. Got classified, not essential, started a podcast about God, that's what we do.

01:36

Okay. We'll get you back, Governor. Yeah, yeah, man. I was gonna find out, so what's the podcast about?

01:42

I mean, I was like, Deadman Walking, is that like, is that about the - Ephesians 2, now Jeremy Camp. Don't, no, I'm joking. Not the, not the, not the

01:48

Undertaker? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right, I know, right? Deadman Walking. Right, oh, man. Do you remember that match between him and Ultimate Warrior, with the coffin?

01:59

Do you remember that when we were kids? Oh, man, that's a long, long time ago. I don't know how old you are, but yeah, man, this was

02:04

WWF a long time ago. Okay, nevermind, we're not gonna talk about Undertaker, and let's talk about Bible and theology. Yeah, so the tagline of the podcast is exploring doctrine and theology, and all the exciting and interesting things in between.

02:18

We didn't wanna limit it to just that. We do talk, I'm an elected official in my county, Jason's an international touring musician in the past,

02:25

I play music, lead worship. We wanted to intertwine some things in between there, but I've always been very interested in doctrine and theology, even from a young age, love talking about it, no official schooling, a curbstone theologian, if you will.

02:38

There we go, you haven't been messed up. But we wanted to have you on here, because I follow you on Instagram, and I love the cultish posts, so can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing right now?

02:51

Introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers. Yeah, so our podcast is about, we're going up on our two -year anniversary, and the podcast is called

03:00

Cultish, so it deals with cults, things that are cultish, and really fringe topics, the new age world, stuff like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we got the sound of it.

03:10

We got some drops, baby. We got drops. I love it, it's scary. Chocolate necks don't have anything on me, baby. Oh, there's

03:16

Durbin, how you doing, brother? I gotta give this guy the credit, though. He's the one. Jump in? Yeah, jump on in.

03:23

We got it for you, Mike. We're live streaming right now, Brian. Come on in, man. The one, the only,

03:30

Jeff Durbin. Go ahead, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt you there. We got beard oil if you need some. No, so just real quickly, the podcast started, because a couple, it was about three years ago.

03:39

Jeff just said, hey, you need to have, we need to have a ministry that's focused in on the cults. And so I was thinking, all right, what does it even look like?

03:45

And from that, formulated the idea of doing a podcast strictly focused on cults, because we had a bunch of episodes of Apology Radio where, that had stuff on Mormonism and other similar cults and things like that.

03:56

We just wanted to have something that was focused. And that's where, you came up with the idea, you came up with the name of Cultish, because we just wanted to have something that was there and just a good, something that was out there and stick.

04:07

And so we just, trying to make good content, trying to think about what are the French topics that the culture's into, whether it's like a different cult documentary, like NXIVM, which is a big thing.

04:17

There's a HBO documentary called The Vow. I've been wondering how to say that, by the way. You see the name on social media, and I'm like, how do you even say that word?

04:27

Yeah. Sorry, okay, go ahead. Oh, I didn't know. I thought it was like, is this Roman numerals? Like, I was really confused. I thought it was

04:33

Greek, I wasn't sure. So yeah, I mean, it's just a matter of taking those things, whether it's dealing with the world of UFOs and aliens,

04:39

I don't know, that's your favorite topic. Love it. Uh -oh, Jeff's not on. Oh no.

04:44

Hey, turn Jeff on. Good Lord, get him together there. You gotta get my game together there, sir.

04:50

Come on, amateur hour. It's always a sound guy. Gotcha. I know, I know. It's a Babylon Beat article posted about that.

04:56

But yeah, just anything when it comes to the role of psychedelics, LSD, that's a big thing. The two latest guests that are on the

05:04

Joe Rogan Experience, they were trying to argue, and like the typical arguments of a lot of people like in the

05:10

New Testament church, they were actually taking mind -altering substances, and that's why they were experiencing like being caught up in the third heaven and those sorts of things.

05:19

And so you see that, and we have to be able to give answers to that. And that's why, it's a weird

05:26

French topic, and maybe it's taboo to some people, but the normalization of LSD and psychedelics is a big thing.

05:33

DMT. Yeah, so we wanna be able to have like a topic like cultish, you wanna be able to have a good and rational conversation where you can kind of give, how do you actually equip someone to respond to what the culture at large is saying?

05:45

This is how you experience something that, the transcendent, and how you get there.

05:53

So yeah. It's absolutely amazing that subjects that you guys are hitting on too, because there is an explosion right now in the secular world is, even the movement of Christianity came up through psychedelics.

06:08

Like three, four years ago, I hadn't even heard of this, now in the last 18 months, two years, right around the time you guys started the podcast, there's more people talking about that, and to have you guys out there kind of talking about that counterculture stuff, to where normally, you know, where you listen to a

06:22

Bible podcast, it's gonna be, all right, yeah, post -mill or pre -mill, and I'm not making fun of those things. Hey, you know, it's like, you guys are getting into the culture, and things that people really wanna hear about.

06:33

Oh yeah, for sure. And when you're looking at just podcasting in general, that if you're going, if you're gonna deal with something that, if you're gonna have a podcast on covenant theology, and the ins and outs, intricacies of that, that's totally fine, you just have to understand you're gonna be dealing with a very, a very niche topic, a very, whether there's the reformed world, then you have the covenant theology, so you're really, you have a very unique, distinct, and in some case, minimal audience you can reach.

07:02

But I think one that, at least the way that we've been able to position us is that we've been able to have really a broad overreach that kind of transcends, goes into the world, it's what the world's talking about, but even outside the reformed world.

07:14

Absolutely. And so, yeah, it's been really cool to be able to have all sorts of conversations regarding that. Yeah, now

07:19

Jeff, I grew up in a legalistic church, then I went, my family went the other way, and we went charismatic, and then

07:25

I was a closet reformed Calvinist for eight years because I wrestled with it, I was taught those people were evil, they were horrible, they weren't even saved.

07:34

I kept reading the Bible, and then I'd listen to James White, and then I'd read the Bible, and listen to Jeff Durbin, and then I'd read the Bible, and listen to R .G

07:39

.C. Sproul, and I'd read the Bible, and I went, oh my gosh, this is just what the Bible is. So you were instrumental in my late 20s into my early 30s, in really just setting a foundation for me theologically, so it's very,

07:53

I'm honored to have you here, but tell everyone a little bit about what you got going on, and where they can hear you, and stuff like that.

07:59

Well, Apologyistudios .com is where you guys go to get, goodness gracious, years of radio programs, podcasts, and TV shows, aftershows, all that stuff is there.

08:10

Apologyistudios on YouTube is where we place everything from cultish, to provoked, to Apology at Radio, to our teaching ministry, to our evangelism, to stuff for End Abortion Now.

08:21

But yeah, I mean, our church has a very, very significant commitment to proclamation of the gospel in the public square, which is really what cultish is about.

08:31

I mean, for us, it's not just a matter of starting a podcast. I think one of the things that I said to Jerry early on was, now everyone wants to start a podcast.

08:40

Everyone wants to, you know, everyone has a mic, and a computer, and a podcast. No, but it could be a very positive thing, but I think the challenge is this.

08:50

A lot of times, you can even see in the last, say, six to eight years or so of podcasts, even in the reform world, a lot of solid podcasts pop up, and then they disappear, they go away.

08:59

And I think that's what Jerry's talking about. It's this niche, little market, this one little corner, sort of talking to yourselves, not really engaging in the things that most people are facing every single day.

09:10

We wanna do that. We wanna bring the gospel and the biblical worldview into the public square. We think Jesus is

09:16

Lord over everything, not just over matters of the church. Amen. So when we hear Joe Rogan talking about DMT experiences and encourage people to do it, or UFOs, we think

09:25

Jesus has authority over that conversation. We wanna bring the gospel into that conversation. If asked to do with issues going on with the government and injustice,

09:33

Black Lives Matter, Marxism, all those things, we wanna address those things. And the really great thing about having a podcast that reaches into the public square that can really bring the

09:44

Christian worldview into contact with all those things is you also never run out of content. No shortage.

09:50

Especially with what's going on right now. Yeah, all 2020 is cultish. That's one of the jokes now is that in 2019, it was that we would go into the studio, and that's where we'd talk about cultish things and now the roles have been reversed.

10:04

We're going out of the cultish world, like right now where our studio is, you see people, it's 118 degrees, and they're walking by themselves wearing a mask.

10:12

And you're like, is there just some sort of weird pseudo -cult like it is? Or driving around with a mask on by themselves.

10:19

By themselves, yeah. I mean, it's just weird, like if I had told any of you that back in 2019, the year from now, people are gonna be walking around driving, wearing masks, going surgical masks when it's 118 degrees outside.

10:32

People are like, are you insane? Wouldn't believe it. Yeah, and you know, we had the CrossPolitik guys on the podcast a few weeks ago, and I believe it was, was it

10:41

Toby? Was it Sumter? Yeah. Yeah, that made the point. Look it, when you remove religion from a culture, it's not a vacuum.

10:49

We replace it with something, and this mask -wearing religion to the state has now replaced that.

10:57

You're in solidarity with the state. If you don't wear it, you're not in line and step, and that's what we're, and I'm not making a judgment on masks one way or another.

11:05

I'm just saying that's just another sign of a godless culture, you know, secularism being replaced as our religion.

11:12

And that's why I think your guys' podcast and what you do, Jeff, is so important, and God bless both of you guys for doing that.

11:19

Are you guys doing anything here at the conference? Are you speaking or gonna be doing anything afterwards? I'm teaching tomorrow. What time for everyone, for the live stream?

11:26

What time will you be on? I think it's three or four. He doesn't know. We gotta ask his people. I don't even know. I just know to show up here at some point tomorrow.

11:33

You know, beforehand, I had to pick all the green M &Ms for his rider. It was absolutely ridiculous. Well, I need to actually go to,

11:40

I need to have a booth next time they have a conference here. I'm here with Darren Doan. I work with his creative agency now, and so if you guys, if anyone's here at the

11:48

Cross -Pulte Conference, I would just say, if Darren's gonna speak, just go. If you're looking to start a podcast, if you wanna know anything about branding, social media, anything with how to even just, there's so much you can do.

11:59

The majority of how I built Cultish, I mean, we have the studio and everything like that, but as far as the majority of content to promote, what has happened has been from this phone.

12:09

There's so many cool things that you can do, and so if you are here, if you wanna get, just look for anything that Darren Doan says in regards to media, building it up, film, listen to him, because he's had a huge track of success of things that he's built.

12:25

And if you're looking to do a podcast, you're in the media, if you wanna glorify God through that, he has a lot to say.

12:32

So whether he's up on stage or picking his brain, pulling him aside, look for him. We'll definitely have to look him up.

12:38

Yes. Absolutely. Go on Instagram, look up the hashtag Donut, D -O -A -N -I -T, and that's kind of his thing he started, so.

12:46

Nice. So yeah, I had to give him a shout out there. Yeah, where's Dr. White? Why was he not invited to this?

12:51

Yeah, what's going on here? He would've definitely been invited. He's super, super busy right now. Obviously after COVID, he had tons of stuff canceled this year.

13:00

So did I. We were supposed to do a debate early on in the beginning of this year with some atheist professors back in Utah.

13:07

That got canceled. It's supposed to be rescheduled, but his schedule's picking back up again right now. And actually he's, thankfully, he's taking the pastoral responsibilities this

13:15

Sunday while I'm gone. Let me ask you as a pastor too, because I find that sometimes the Lord works in pastors' hearts and seasons.

13:22

What are you preaching to your church right now? Or what kind of season does the Lord have you in, Jeff, in this culture and everything going on?

13:28

What's really been impressed into your spirit? And what kind of messages are you delivering? I think what people have to understand about Apologia Church, and Jerry knows this well,

13:36

Jerry and I have been friends since, well, we first met in 1996 and became very close, was it 2000 when we reconnected?

13:44

Yeah. Something like that. Apologia Church is just a local church in the desert. I'm one of four elders.

13:51

Jerry's a deacon at Apologia Church. We have a local church that we're raising, that we're caring for and loving.

13:59

Most of the time that I spend during the week is with our body, face -to -face, counseling, shepherding our body.

14:06

Everything that you see going out into the world is from the gifted people we have at our church, whether it's Jerry doing cultish or Andrew or the other things that are going on.

14:14

And we were always a church anyways. And Jerry knows this, before we even planted Apologia Church, we were out doing the work of evangelism,

14:21

Mill Avenue in Tempe, ASU stuff, or Mormon temple evangelism, or meeting with Mormon elders in houses, those sorts of things.

14:29

So evangelism and outreach was always just a part of what we did anyways. So what you see with Apologia Studios is just the fact that we have a camera turned on now while it's happening.

14:37

Right, yeah. And so what's going on right now with us right now is that surprisingly COVID kind of blew our church up in terms of size, numbers.

14:46

Really? Yeah, actually right now, one of the things I've been trying to communicate to the church every Lord's Day is that I'm uncomfortable with the fact that I have so many faces at church and I don't know them.

14:58

And so we're trying to really right now care for the new people that have, we're refugees.

15:04

We have people that have fled to Arizona from California. By my count right now, at least six new families

15:09

I met with in the last three weeks that have actually come from California because of what's happening there. We have families that have come to us during COVID because of their elders response to COVID.

15:19

And now this is their home. So right now what we just did is we want to build solid foundations with all of our people.

15:24

So we just did a new series on Doctrines of Grace. Okay. To really equip them in the gospel, understanding the important components of the gospel and God's sovereignty.

15:34

Right now we're in the midst of a series. I got to get back to Matthew at some point. 24?

15:39

And finish it up. No, I did 24 for like a year. James will never let me forget that. You started

15:45

Matthew and it was in 2014. 2014 I started Matthew. I'm in 25, I'm still in 24.

15:51

But we're taking a pause from Matthew. Like right now I just did one on why we believe.

15:58

Why we believe the Bible is God's word. James is doing this Sunday, why we believe in the Trinity. Then I'm doing one on why we believe

16:04

Jesus is the Messiah. What spurred that on was I sat down with a girl who is new to our church.

16:10

She's been going for the last four weeks and she said that she's been in the church for eight years. She was a professing believer.

16:16

She was actually serving in the church for eight years locally in Gilbert actually. And she said that she ran across this random

16:24

YouTube video and in the YouTube video this new age guy said, yeah, Jesus isn't God, he never claimed to be

16:29

God. And that rocked her faith. And she said since that time she said, I'm no longer a professing

16:35

Christian. She said, I know God is there, but I don't know that I believe Jesus is the Messiah or that he was

16:41

God. I'm just, I'm open to the truth, but right now I'm realizing I don't even know why I believe that in the first place.

16:46

And so I thought to myself, that's actually pretty incredible to me. Eight years professing Christian, you don't know why we believe

16:52

Jesus is God? You don't know why you believe he's the Messiah? That's all it took, huh? That's one guy on YouTube? Yeah, considering things like that with so many new people in our body, our duty is to equip them and prepare them.

17:05

So we wanna make sure that everybody knows the word of God and is ready to actually proclaim and defend the word of God. Not everyone can be a

17:12

James White. I think that he's the best Christian apologist in the history of the Christian church. Nobody has debated more people for more worldviews, the best they had to offer all over the planet.

17:22

I think that's actually a fact. I mean, he's got almost 200 debates with the world's best all over the planet.

17:27

There's never been a Christian apologist in history that's done that. So I think he's the best, but every Christian is commanded to know what they believe and why they believe it and to defend the truth.

17:36

And so right now we're in the process as pastors to make sure that our people know some essentials of the faith, how to defend those things so they're ready to go out into the world and die for their faith.

17:46

And they're also becoming black belts. Yes. That was an amazing. That was. Dr. Grant, this guy right here, if you wanna talk to somebody who's a hero, this is your hero right here.

17:57

Line him up. Thank you, brother. Great to see you. Great to see you. I look forward to talking to you this weekend.

18:04

Yeah, well, we're just a few minutes. Do you know who that was? Do you know who that was? I'm not familiar with Dr.

18:09

Grant. Okay, so. Tell the listeners and viewers and myself. So you have to know that it's a requirement in my home as we're doing homeschooling, which everybody should be doing.

18:19

We do. It's a requirement I hope that my children go through Dr. Grant's four -year curriculum on history and worldview.

18:28

Let me just say this right now, there isn't anything better, period. Full stop, there isn't any better. Dr. George Grant, King's Meadow Curriculum is where you have to go.

18:37

I know I sound like a salesperson right now, but I'm selling you something really good. I'm not making any money off of it. There is no better history, worldview, overarching curriculum than Dr.

18:48

Grant's curriculum. You have to get that to your kids. It's more of like a middle school through high school kind of age thing, four years,

18:56

Christian history, world history, American history. There's nobody better than Dr.

19:01

Grant. If you don't know him, you need to get to know him. Sounds like something I could use. I went to public school. Yeah, I'll tell you.

19:07

No, me too, me too. Let me tell you one thing Dr. Grant taught me, and it was in the middle of a radio program

19:12

I did with him once. I learned it in the middle of the program. It's somewhere on YouTube. Our ministry focuses on bringing the gospel as pastors into conflict with the issue of abortion.

19:23

It's a very big deal to us. We're willing to die for this cause to bring justice to these fatherless children.

19:29

So I have Dr. Grant on. He knows everything about history. It's sick how much the man knows. It's an embarrassment,

19:35

I feel like, to my own intellect when I talk to him. But Dr. Grant talked to us about the fact that the

19:42

Christian church has already had a victorious movement over the issue of abortion in American history, and I said, wait, what?

19:49

What are you talking about? He said that shortly after the Civil War, the abortifacient industry was becoming very popular, and it started to have this big move to where abortifacients were a very serious issue.

20:01

So a group of pastors who believed the gospel and the word of God fought against that issue as Christians, not as a pro -life industry, not with compromise, and not with the pretended neutrality.

20:14

They fought as pastors with the word of God and the gospel, and they started a publication to promote their views and to put down this abortifacient industry, and they won.

20:24

Do you wanna know what the publication was? What was it? The New York Times. Oh, wow. No way. That's awesome.

20:30

I gotta go. And with that, he is out of here. Thank you so much, Mr. Jeff Durbin.

20:36

We appreciate it. We're just a few minutes before starting here at, I think it is, right? A few minutes before seven right now?

20:41

Yeah, yeah, a few minutes before seven. And I know you got some stuff going on with the conference. I probably gotta check on Darren at some point, but right now, all that sort of stuff.

20:50

Can you tell us about tonight? I don't know if anybody's out there in Nashville listening. Tonight, is everyone allowed to get in that, or is this a?

20:57

No, I believe if you wanna meet up with him, and if you wanna just go talk to Darren. At King's.

21:02

If you're here, let's look for Darren Doan and say, hey, I wanna have a drink with you tonight. Cool. And just chitchat and hobnob and all that sort of stuff.

21:10

That's awesome, man. So cool, man. Bring our own sticks, right? Right. I got a few. Yeah, bring some sticks.

21:16

Bring some sticks, baby. Bring some sticks, yeah. Awesome. Very cool. Yeah, thank you, Jeremiah. Jeremiah, thank you so much for stopping in and saying hello, introducing yourself to our listeners and viewers.

21:27

Guys, make sure you're listening to Cultish, you're following Cultish. Such a great idea. I appreciate what you do, and thank you.

21:35

You're such a great brother in the Lord. Do you have anything else you wanna tell anyone before you get off here? Yeah, again,

21:40

I just wanna emphasize that we're in a unique opportunity. So our show was really inspired by Dr.

21:48

Walter Martin. He wrote the book Kingdom of the Cults, which is still, to this day, is the best definitive work on the subject of just the broad variety of cults and world religions.

21:59

He really was a pioneer in media in his day, and back then, it was really just audio tape cassettes.

22:08

And he would just mass distribute all of his lectures out there, and he had such a broad variety.

22:14

The guy was a walking library. And so, yeah, I think in the same way if Walter Martin was here today, he would be podcasting, he would be posting on social media, he would even, so even this,

22:27

I took this out, you may think this is crazy, but even like TikTok, there's 600 million users there, and there's a lot more to the podcast.

22:35

Are you guys on that? I just joined it. Gotcha. And the funny thing is, the most comments we got was a clip

22:42

I put up there from Walter Martin. Really? And it started some controversy, which is great. It's Walter Martin's first appearance on TikTok.

22:49

Yeah, so I mean, there's so many opportunities right now, and you gotta go in and just get your hands dirty and be consistent, and just get out there with your message.

22:59

That's really, I think, it is really cool, though, to be able to kind of emphasize kind of what

23:05

Wally had talked about, how he wanted to use media to get the word out to the world, the kingdom of the cult.

23:12

And yeah, whatever your niche is, learn how to just get, learn how to get better.

23:17

I mean, you're gonna have your challenges. When we first launched our show, we were gonna launch later episodes.

23:26

We didn't realize, like, oh, we forgot to open up an iTunes account. So all of a sudden, like, oh, shoot, they're not out there.

23:32

We forgot to open up the account. So we had to go, and we had to open up an account. So we still premiered that day.

23:40

Right. I've been there since the beginning, brother. Yeah. I've been there since that first episode.

23:46

Oh, awesome. So I love the content on your show. It is so helpful, too, you know, because my church never dealt with a lot of those topics.

23:54

Yeah. You know, like we've already been talking about. So yeah, it's been a blessing, man. It's awesome, man. So much, yeah.

24:00

Glory to God. Yeah, Jason's geeking out a little bit right now. I mean, Durbin, and then you show up.

24:06

You know, it's pretty awesome, man. I'm glad to be here. This is gonna be a great weekend. Heck yeah, dude. Yeah, thank you so much.

24:11

We're gonna have fun. I'm looking forward to this beer and psalms here in a couple minutes. Yeah, dude. Sing glory to God. Grab your beer.

24:17

Yep, final piece. All right, thanks a lot for coming on. And that's Jera, Maya Roberts, everyone.

24:25

Thank you so much, brother. We're gonna wrap up here, guys. We're just about ready to get started down here at Fight Laugh Feast.

24:32

We're live streaming, live podcasting. We'll be uploading all these later on today. We're getting ready, and as always, be sure to tune in.

24:40

Follow us at Dead Men Walking Podcast just about anywhere on social media. It's all the same name, very easy to remember.

24:45

Leave those comments, and God bless. Dude. All right. Cool, thank you so much.

24:51

Yeah. So much. Absolutely. Super fun, yeah. Yeah, you guys come.