Provoked: With Eddie Roman

The Christian Church, Abortion, and Proclaiming the Gospel

Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity.

I mean, this is what's wrong with the Christian church today. We don't know who God is, and we don't know who we are. Officer, you need to repent of your lawless conduct. You don't know the law, and yet you pretend to represent it.

That's not law enforcement, sir. That's being a thug.

We will not stop fighting and bothering you all until this monstrous, barbaric practice of legalized abortion ends, and we are teaching our children to do the same.

God's word says that the shed blood of innocent humans cries out for justice, and mark my words, they will have their day in court.

Nobody gets saved by being treated nicely. They get saved by hearing the gospel. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. If we don't open our mouths and commend Christ...

We're not loving him, no matter what we're doing with our hands.

Why the Podcast Is Called Provoked

What's going on, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Provoked. I'm here with my wonderful sister.

Hello.

Desiree. Do you like going by Desi or Desiree better?

Either way, I like Desi for people that know me well. Sometimes it's a little disarming for me for some reason. I don't know why. It's just a weird thing. I don't know what it is, but if somebody I don't know says, Hey, Des, I don't know why that sounds aggressive to me.

That's funny because I only call you Des.

I know. People I know call me Des or Desi. I don't think twice. Desiree, that's a little bit more formal. They probably don't know me that well. A lot of people just call me Desiree, and I don't correct them.

Yeah, I don't like Desiree.

Yeah, because my name is Desiree. Tomato, tomato, whatever.

Welcome to our podcast. We hope you love it because it's the best podcast ever created. It's like the best one. Think about any other podcast. Ours is better. But the purpose of our podcast is just simply we want to use this as a vessel to serve Christ and to encourage our brothers and sisters out there because we have millions within the church, just in the nation, professing Christians who don't put feet to their faith.

They don't evangelize. They don't really understand what the gospel is. You only know what you know, right? And it really has to do with the pulpits, has to do with spiritual leadership, not really understanding what evangelism is and not, of course, teaching that to the body and on and on and on.

But the purpose of this podcast is not to come against the local church. It's to come under the local church, to come alongside of the local church and its leadership and just assist the saints and say, Hey, you know, we're just some average, ordinary people, just trying to obey the great commission.

And we want to provoke you. And sometimes people don't like that word. I think we got a couple of messages to say, why is it provoked? What do you need? What do you need to provoke people? And I think we provoke people.

Why?

Because we want to stir them up to love and good works. So we provoke them to stir them up to love and good works in the area of Christian living, evangelism, apologetics.

Yeah.

So we want to stir the heart.

Yeah, exactly. Because I think people think we need to be, Christians have to be nice all the time.

Yeah.

It's like provoking somebody. Think about provokes. Why'd you provoke me? Or, you know, don't provoke your sister or brother by saying that. So it has like a negative connotation, but it's a scriptural kind of, I guess, issue or it's a scriptural example of, you know, Paul was provoked in his spirit because he was provoked and he was moved to engage the culture with the gospel.

Right. Right. So we want to provoke it also. It's almost like there's such a sleeping giant within the American church. You kind of need to push them and poke them and say, Hey, this is what crisis called you to do.

He is your master. You've been bought by his blood. Your life is no longer your own. He says, go out and proclaim the gospel. And that's what we should do. So that's what our show is about. If you could right now, go to apologyiststudios .com and become an all access member.

Just tons of incredible information that you can just wade through there and thousands of hours of incredible teaching. It's a good way to, especially for dudes because of our, our three primary duties as Christian men is to provide, protect and to be the priest of our homes.

And so we always need to be increasing in our ability to provide, to protect our family and then to govern our homes spiritually. And so this is a great thing that you can do as a guy take in all this great biblical information.

So you could teach it to kids and your wife. And as you support apologyiststudios financially, it keeps the lights on and keeps everything going. Where can they go for all that?

You can go to apologyiststudios .com. While you're there, you can go over to reformcon .org and pray about joining us in the end of October. Cause it's going to be fun. The last time we went, it was really just a great time of learning and fellowship.

And yeah, everybody had a blast. My kids loved it.

Because he's going to be preaching.

No. Nope. Nope.

Just kidding.

Probably be there, you know, helping in the kitchen and stuff.

We've lost 80 of our viewers.

They're like, gosh.

No, it's going to be rad. Yeah. There's going to be tons of people. We've got a huge venue. It's just going to be.

It's the Sheraton over there in Mesa Riverview, right?

I think.

Yeah. It's really nice over there. There's a really cool park too. If you have kids.

Yeah. We're expecting a big number, so it's going to be sweet. Yeah. Go to reformcon .org and sign up and come see us.

Yeah. And while we have you, please give us a five-star review if you like our podcast, because that's going to help kind of boost our numbers. And we're so thankful for all the messages we got the last couple of weeks after Jesse's testimony, our episode with Jesse Schreck from Italy.

So thank you guys for all your messages of encouragement. And that was a really, I liked that episode. It encouraged me so much.

And then we'll get out there in Italy.

Yeah, that would be amazing.

Don’s Run for State House and Christian Political Involvement

Cool. We'll talk to us a little bit about your husband.

Yeah.

What's been going on.

So Don, a lot of, you know, ran for state house representative in our district and it started about 18 months ago, kind of started the process. He felt called to step out in that area in faith and, you know, kind of put some feet to his faith and kind of branch into the political realm.

And last night was the primaries to go on and he didn't make it. And so now we're kind of just in the aftermath of that, it was just, you know, a lot of work and we learned a ton and had a lot of people come around us and show us, you know, kind of the ins and outs of running for office.

And so it was a really great experience. It was really cool to see him, you know, he's such an organized man and just person. And he's like, I was telling you just like a good athlete, like when he goes in, he plays to win and he gives it his all.

So it was really cool to just see him kind of step out into that area that he's never stepped out into. And just all the love and support that we've got from our church and elders and friends and having our kids being able to see their dad, you know, do that.

And we talked about that last night because our son Liam was 11, was super bummed out. And we said, look, we're not called to results. We're just called to faithfulness. And dad felt called to do this and to learn.

And God doesn't say you need to win. He just says be obedient. And so, you know, our prayer is that God will use Don and this experience to encourage other men to step out into the political realm and men and women.

And what was his main goals or goals? I mean, why did he want to do it? Cause it required a lot of sacrifice.

Yeah. His main goal was just to, he wanted to be able to put forward legislation to protect all life and end abortion in this state. And he just wanted, you know, to be a voice of Christ in that area, in the political realm.

Right. So what an incredible example. We just hope that through that, he'll be able to lead more Christian men and women into the political realm because the scriptures say when the wicked rule, the people groan.

And so when the righteous rule, even though we're only righteous by Christ and his blood, it brings about the blessing of the Lord. So yeah, it's just sad to see so many Christians demonize any political involvement.

I really think it has to do with undergirding theological systems, right? Where anything to do with the world is inherently bad and we can't really, that's just not our realm. And we can understand that there is jurisdiction jurisdictional boundaries there.

Like I, as a, you know, upholding an office within the church couldn't run to be a governor, right? Those are two, that's a silver realm. And then there's the civil government church government. And I couldn't do that unless I like resigned, but we need to get more Christian men and women in political positions of power, you know, governed by the constitution, but also their understanding of God's law.

Right. Yeah. I was just thinking about, you know, when we got to the abortion mill where we are pleading with the moms and we're telling them, you know, this baby is going to be like no other baby. There's never going to be a baby in all of throughout history.

That's going to be the exact same imprint as your child with their soul, their unique, their love, you know, their precious God has made them in his image. And so, but I think that about everybody too.

I was thinking about Don and how unique God created him and made him with these special giftings and, you know, our guests that's coming on, you know, God has created you, he's given you certain talents and giftings and we're just called to use them all for his glory because the man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

And so whatever your unique giftings are, sometimes it's easy to feel like you don't have any, but God is giving you, you know, certain qualities that there's never going to be anybody like you throughout all history.

And so that's not to puff yourself up, but it's just to say, God is a masterful creator and he's a designer and he, you're a unique individual with your own talents and God has put you on this earth for a purpose during this time to make him known.

Exactly.

Eddie Roman’s Testimony and BMX Career

With that being said, I'd like to introduce our next, our guest, our friend and brother in the Lord, Eddie Roman. Hi, Eddie. How are you?

Hey, doing good. Thanks so much for having me on Provoked.

Yeah.

Thanks man. So, so thankful that you're, you're on. Cause I know you're a busy guy.

Yeah, I am kind of busy, but I found shelter in a corner of my bedroom right now to talk to you guys.

So.

Sweet. Yeah. So Eddie is a director, producer. Are you guys still producing anything as far as Way of the Master? Is that kind of over?

Yeah, no, actually we just launched season eight. And so if you go to livingwaters .com, you could find all the listings, but yeah, it's going strong. It's airing in 190 countries all over the world and it continues to actually be our biggest outreach.

You know, so many people see us on YouTube and we got tons of YouTube videos, but the television side of thing is actually where the majority of people who find out about Living Waters for the first time, they're coming from flipping through channels.

And so Way of the Master still is, you know, kind of the, the, the biggest outreach and the format we have now is, is a lot different. Basically I've been taking a crew of about four or five guys out and just following Ray and Easy and Mark and Oscar around.

And so it's just like witnessing clips gone crazy from a bunch of different angles and stuff. So it's, it's a, it's a lot different, but you know, we all like it more because it's just kind of showcasing the stuff that made, I don't know, Ray, Ray known as that's just, that's just his witnessing clips.

So, but yeah, Way of the Master is definitely going strong.

That's, that's so awesome. It's just been amazing to see God use Ray. And you guys all in just the ministry, I think you guys have a million subscribers now, right on YouTube.

Two million, I think on YouTube, right? Or plays or something.

I don't know. I can't keep track actually. I'm so focused on TV. I know we passed a million subscribers a while ago, but yeah, it's pretty neat.

My son Liam watches and pays attention. He said they had their golden play button. So I think that means you have two million.

They have 1 .13.

Okay.

There you go.

That's awesome. It seems like it's skyrocketed too. Like you guys, you know, went from 100 ,000 to four to five, but it just exponentially, the time kind of gaps shrunk between, you know, so many people subscribing to your channel.

You know,.

What's crazy is COVID was just a huge blessing to us because everybody was at home. Everybody was on their computers. And that's when the view count just went nuts. So many people found out about living waters during COVID and it's actually becoming kind of a problem because every single time we go out filming, people will come up to Ray and they'll say, Hey, we just came in from Arizona.

We thought you'd be here. And they just, you know, so it's, it's, it's cool. But at the same time we're like, Casey is trying to talk to someone. Can you step back for a minute? So it's kind of funny, but yeah, we definitely have gained crazy amount of viewers and subscribers just during COVID.

Yeah. That's so great. Yeah. It's just been, like I said before, just really a special thing. You know, looking at a year as his ministry, especially him using Ray specifically, it's, it's just incredible with the guys.

I know, I know the street preaching scene since Ray started out on the streets has kind of, it's kind of exploded, you know, just his example going out there faithfully with the true, true gospel, not a false gospel or a watered down gospel, but it's just been incredible to see so many men inspired and moved along into public evangelism because of his testimony and your guys' work there.

Why do you think it's been so successful?

Man, I don't, you know, a big part of it is just Ray himself. I think his, his faithfulness, he is just the real deal. What you see on YouTube is what he's like in person, his character. I mean,.

There's,.

There's so much stuff about him on a personal level that people don't even know about. He, he really, and it's funny cause he's, he's a, he's a friend and I don't really talk this way about him a lot, but he really is a man of God.

Like there's, there's times when he'll be at Huntington beach and you know, there's been times when he's gotten into just this heated debate with maybe a homeless guy and the guy's just cussing at him and going on and on and on.

And then after, after it's all over and the guy sitting there, Ray will go over and say, Hey man, can I buy you some shoes? And he'll take them across the street to just the first surf shop they see there at Huntington beach.

And they'll say, okay, just pick one. And, you know, in this one case I'm thinking about the guy went in and he picked like super expensive shoes and Ray just bought them and just gave them to him. And like, that's the kind of guy he is.

And he does that. He does that with food. He does that. Like he's constantly carrying in and out gift cards and he just gives them to everybody all the time, you know? So, so he's, he really is just a loving gracious man.

But you know, when it comes to what, when it comes to evangelism, as everybody knows, he just does not stop. Like literally every single day he gets on his little bicycle and he goes out in the neighborhood and just interviews people every single day.

He does that three or three or four people every day. Like that's all he does. So.

And that's it. I mean, biblically God blesses faithfulness, right? It's just faithful commitment, faithful obedience to the word. And I think that's part of it. And I would think he's such a balanced guy too.

Like you just talked about he's firm in the truth. He's not going to compromise. And I've watched, I don't know how many of his videos in the past almost 20 years. So he's firm in the, in the, in the truth, but he's also so gracious and actually loves the people that he's talking to.

And he speaks the truth in love. And sadly there's not a lot of examples of guys who speak the truth in love out there in a massive public format. I think, you know, our, uh, pastor Jeff Durbin does that well too.

I mean, how does that robust theological understanding and knowledge never compromises the truth, but also knows how to deal with people who are up in your faith or up in your face. And Ray does the same thing.

And I would just say too, I've thought a lot about it. It's the, it's really the understanding of the law in its place in the gospel message. I think that as well as just who Ray is and the vessel that he is, but him kind of bringing back the law into evangelism is why God has blessed it so much.

Yeah. Um, you know, for, for those who might not have heard this already, if there's a message he, he did about evangelism, it's his classic evangelism teaching it's called hell's best kept secret. And if you go to either hell's best kept secret .com or just livingwaters .com, you can find that teaching.

And it just kind of gives his philosophy on evangelism. And you watch his videos and then you listen to that message and you understand what he's doing and why he's doing it. But it, but it's like you said, you know, he's using the law.

Um, he's not just going up to people and saying, Jesus loves you. He's not just going up to people and trying to emulate what he might've saw at altar call, you know, and that's kind of what we fall into as Christians.

You know, at the beginning of the show, you were saying how the lack of evangelism in this country is in part the responsibility of the teachers and the preachers, you know, and, and for, for years, for decades, we've been presented this idea that evangelism is, you know, this, this, uh, telling people that God loves them.

Um, and, and then, you know, a few other things, you know, say this prayer. And so as a church, I think, you know, we, we do as we're told. And so we've got this idea that that's what we do. Um, and even sadder than that, we got this idea that evangelism is for the elite, it's for the super spiritual it's for the missionaries, you know, maybe once a year we'll go out and do evangelism in another country, but for the rest of us, you know, it's just not something we do.

And so I think when people watch Ray and they just see how natural and biblical, um, and easy, and even how fun it can be, you know, like that, that's a, that's a thing about him too. People are just scared to death about doing evangelism.

And here's this little funny guy, just cracking jokes. And it's, you know, it's, it's super interesting. And I mean, his videos really are representative of the fact that when you go up to someone and start talking to them, like all kinds of stuff's going to happen.

And it's not a cookie cutter thing at all. And it's, it's just a great practice. You know, the practice of regularly sharing your faith. Um, I, I, sadly, I think a lot of Christians are just missing out on, on so much, um, just in their spiritual walk with, with simply, you know, being clueless on, on the fact that they should be evangelized.

Man, that is so true. They're missing out on so much of the blessing that comes through it. But then what we talk about to our folks at our churches, sanctification too, because evangelism is just a primary part of sanctification.

And we say, it's kind of like an engine, you know, your spiritual life is like an engine with different pistons, right? And so one of the pistons that needs to be firing is prayer or like the scriptures say adherence to the apostles teaching.

And that's just the intake of the word of God community fellowship. But evangelism is one too, but we don't treat evangelism like in everyday practice, right? We don't, it's like, well, we'll do it once a week or not even that we'll do it a couple of times a year or something.

And then it's kind of like an annual endeavor, but it absolutely affects your sanctification because it's gotta be a, a process oriented thing that you're doing, not an event oriented. You see what I mean?

So it's huge. Okay.

Cool.

Let's go back in time a little bit and we just kind of want to hear your testimony. Like how did God save you? How did you get into the world of evangelism? How'd you start working for living water? So just tell us as much as you want.

Yeah. Back in time, back to the eighties. So man, around, around 1983, I was down at my local seven 11. I was a Pac-Man champion. I actually won, I actually won a belt buckle for the, like the Pac-Man championship of, of I dunno, San Diego or my neighborhood or whatever it was.

And so that's what I did. I hung out playing video games. And when we weren't playing video games, we would go over to the magazine rack and look at the skateboarding and the surfing and the BMX stuff.

And for whatever reason, I just got really interested in BMX. I wanted to get rad. I wanted to be like a motorcycle guy. And so I saved up my paper route money and bought a used BMX bike and that became my life.

And so for about three years, I would just get home from Catholic school and then just ride, ride my bike and copy all the guys I would see in the magazines. And then eventually met a group of other guys who rode and started going to contests and started winning contests.

And you can imagine my surprise when I went over to that magazine rack at 7-Eleven one day and picked it up and I was in it. And so, yeah, it was really cool. This is before the internet. This is when you had to look at magazines to see stuff.

And so that began is about a little over 10 years of just full-time riding and, and eventually turned pro, got to tour all over America and Europe and Tahiti, different, different places. Yeah. And I was, I was one of the guys that was in the magazines all the time and they didn't have it on television a lot back then.

This is before the X games, but I was on television a few times and, you know, so I was just a little, little BMX star. And it was just, it was just, it was just funny. Look, looking back. And so during that time, I was, you know, extremely fulfilled and happy and just live in life.

And if you would have asked me if I believed in God, I would have said, yeah. And, you know, I was like I would have told you I was a Catholic and didn't think about it too much. Eventually my BMX riding just, you know, that my life just became doing that all the time.

So eventually the older I got, the less hold my parents had on me, the more I would skip church. And I never really would say that I was against God, but I just didn't care about him. And being a Catholic, obviously I didn't have an idea of who the right God was in the first place, but there came a point in my later teenage years when, you know, I was sleeping around, I was promiscuous and, and all that and just kind of out of nowhere, I just started getting convicted and nobody talked to me.

Nobody preached to me, didn't read the Bible, wasn't even going to church, but I just started just feeling guilty about my promiscuity. And it's actually kind of funny. So in my mind, I just thought I need to get right with God.

So I went to the Catholic church, I went to confession. And so for you non Catholics out there, confession is when you go into a little room and you tell the priest all the sins you've done, and he prescribes a few prayers and forgives you.

And that's kind of how it works. And so I go to this priest and I say, Hey, you know, I haven't been to confession for years. I don't even remember what I'm supposed to say. Is it okay? If I still do this?

And he said, yeah, that's fine. Cause there's like structured things you're supposed to say to the priest before you confess. And I said, well, I've been having sex and I know that's not right. And, and I'm not married.

And he says, well, he asked me, so do you use a condom? Oh boy. And there's a Catholic priest. And I said, well, yeah. And he said, well, it's okay. As long as you protect the girl you're fine. Yeah. And so I walked out of that church, a happy man, because I thought everything was fine.

And I went and said the prayers he told me to pray, but it didn't take just maybe a week or two weeks where the conviction was back. And I knew that that guy was wrong. I knew that it was wrong. And shortly after that, I broke up with my girlfriend and that relationship, or I didn't break up with her.

I said, Hey, we could still be boyfriend and girlfriend, but let's not, you know, let's not have sex anymore. And so that relationship lasted about another week, you know, cause that's all that it consisted of.

It was pretty, pretty pathetic. And then not too long after that, a friend of mine, a guy named Vic Murphy, who was a pro BMXer, he got saved and I watched him go from being a drunk and, and just a irresponsible, you know, party guy kind of guy.

And he got, he became undrunk and normal and he started going to church and he started preaching the gospel to everybody. And I went to church with them. And, you know, at first I thought, well, I'm a Catholic.

I know what church is about, but it was the first time I'd ever been to a Christian church where they actually teach the Bible and go through the Bible. And I'd really never heard the Bible being taught before.

And I heard the Sermon on the Mount and I heard that if you lust after a woman, it's the same as committing adultery. And that really hit me because even though I had gone to Catholic church pretty much my whole life, never heard that before.

And it's sad because like, I just remember that when I'm talking to people now, it's like so many people are just in some kind of religious system and yet they don't know much, anything about the word of God, you know?

And so it's easy sometimes to get impatient with people and be like, you're a Christian. You should know this stuff. You say you're a Christian, but I remember I was that guy, you know? And then after hearing the Sermon on the Mount, I understood that I was going to hell and I knew that, but I still liked going to church.

So I kept going. And it's funny because I'll meet people when I'm evangelizing who will say something, you know, I'll take them through the 10 commandments and get to the place. You know, if God was to judge you, should he find you innocent or guilty and they'll say guilty, and then they'll admit they're going to hell and then they just won't care.

And that used to be me. Like I used to know for a fact that I was on my way to hell, but I just figured out I'll worry about that some other day. But I kept going to church and it was a process of about three months or so.

And then at one point I heard teaching on the Holy Spirit and it was just very.

Basic.

It was something along the lines of God can give you the power to overcome sin. And that just made a lot of sense to me. You know, I thought, you know, yeah, that makes sense. If God can do anything, he's probably not going to be spending too much time making people rich or giving people cars or all this, but that makes sense.

You know, it makes sense. And so I believed and I actually walked down the aisle at an altar call, you know, and there's all kinds of problems with altar calls, but in my case, I understood the law. I understood the gospel and that's when I got saved.

And immediately after that, I started getting hit with all this temptation and, you know, it was, it was by the grace of God that I immediately stopped being promiscuous and, and put that behind me just, you know, and, and, and just got involved in church, got involved in reading the Bible and, and, you know, never looked back and yeah, never, never, never even looked at pornography again, like it was over, you know?

So yeah, that God does have the power, not only to save, but to keep you from, from whatever it is that, that he wants to keep you from, you know, and, and, and, and obviously, you know, that, that was the beginning of my sanctification, that, that, that sin God dealt with right away.

There's, there's all kinds of other ones, you know, but, but he definitely saved me from that one. So that's yeah, that's, that's how God saved me out of Catholicism and, and just general unbelief and not caring.

Praise God. And so how old are you at this time?

That was right around 21.

About 21?

21. Yeah.

So were you still biking or did you continue on with your BMX career after.

That?

I was still biking. That was, that was right in the, in the middle of it, right. Kind of at the height of it. Some interesting things happened about around that time. One is, you know, this is before email.

So I wrote a letter, I wrote a test, I wrote my testimony out and made copies and mailed it to all my friends. Every pro freestyle bike rider at that time, you know, this is around 90, 91, 92. They all would have got a letter from me with my testimony.

And so I lost, lost a lot of friends, but didn't care, didn't care at all. And, and it's funny because so, so I was known for being one of the guys who invented street riding. And so street riding is where you use obstacles on the street.

So like wall riding and rails and all, all that stuff. You know, so if you ever see a sign that say no bikes or skateboards, that's partly my fault because I'm one of the guys who like encourage kids to destroy stuff.

And so after I got saved, you know, I would, I would go to like throw my bike over a fence that said no trespassing. And I just felt bad about it. And so eventually I just kinda didn't want to put marks on people's buildings anymore.

And, you know, and eventually my, the main thing is my interest just changed and I got so into being a Christian that I kind of stopped caring about BMX, but also at the same time, the recession, you know, the early nineties recession had, had set in and the bike companies just were losing money.

The bike industry went from having probably like eight or nine monthly magazines to one or two. And the bike companies started pulling out. And so like I lost my sponsor and all kinds of guys lost their sponsor.

And so, you know, everything kind of died as far as the industry goes. Now, another thing going on is during this whole time, I'm also a photographer and video guy, just kind of picked it up as a hobby.

But then during all the BMX years, I started doing that main, mainly filming all my friends doing BMX. And so I actually am one of the first guys to film BMX and like sell VHS tapes. Remember those and, you know, at the blockbuster video and all that stuff.

And then I got hired to be a producer, video producer for GT bicycles. So I would make a bunch of their training stuff. And then we would make VHS tapes that BMX kids would buy, like cut out the coupon in the back of the BMX magazine.

It sounds so old just talking about this stuff.

I know I was just trying to explain to my kids about blockbuster and they're like, wait a minute. What's it like? They couldn't picture it.