AD Interviews Man Who David Platt's Team Banned From Worship

We are live. Hello. We've got a few people here logging on. Thank you for your prayers, guys. I'm feeling fine. So I woke up two nights ago with a fever, and I haven't had a fever since I had swine flu, which during the whole swine flu craziness, I lived in New York and I got the flu that summer.

So I haven't had a fever since then, and I had one the other night. But I feel fine. But besides that, I'm a little bit congested, but have my taste and all that kind of stuff. So thank you for your prayers, though.

We'll get started in just a minute. All right. So I'm going to reveal my guest here. This is Sal. And I'll let Sal introduce himself in just a moment. But the reason why I wanted to do this conversation, I don't know if people that are watching right now read Reformation Charlotte, but Sal had sent over an article from Reformation Charlotte about what's been going on with him and all of that.

And I thought it was so crazy. So I just asked him a few questions about the situation, and he answered them. And I thought, this is something that we need to let people know about what's going on. And so I'm sure there'll be things, Sal, that you don't want to talk about or maybe not don't want to, but can't.

But we'll just get to the bottom of whatever we can here, and I'll kind of give you the floor a little bit. But Sal, why don't you introduce yourself? You're not just some random guy, or maybe you are.

It's nice to think of myself as just a random guy. I've been a part on and off of McLean Bible Church for 38 years. And so, but I'm a Christian. I profess the evangelical faith with kind of reformed leanings, but because I had a Presbyterian background, I had, by profession, I'm a molecular biophysics researcher.

I'm published in secular venues, and I teach apologetics. I'm a creationist. I'm YouTube's number one YouTube creationist, and my life story is in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, the cover story, and a very secular venue, April 27th, 28th, 2005.

So, but I think the most meaningful thing I've ever done in my life is I took care of my widowed and disabled mother, according to 1 Timothy 5, for 18 years after my dad died. In the last seven years, while I worked from home, I took care of her 24 -7.

She passed away this past April. And it's kind of interesting that I had a dual membership at Occoquan Bible and McLean Bible, and the elders at McLean Bible said, when your mother passes, you have to return to McLean, and I've returned, and then I got kicked out.

So that's a little bit of my story. I had a time that I nearly left the Christian faith about 20 years ago, and it was my study of science that brought me back. I have five science degrees, including a Master of Physics from Johns Hopkins University.

It is my study of science that brought me back, and so that's how I got involved in Christian apologetics and research. While mom is, the last seven years of her life, as I said, I worked from home, I worked for a world-famous geneticist who was an atheist and became a Christian, and I did research for him.

And so now I'm not doing so much, I'm still doing research, but I'm not doing outreach. So a lot of our outreach was to like PhDs, and only 30 people on the planet understood what we were writing. So my involvement in McLean is kind of an oddball, because I'm not really like a very, you know, I'm not the most public site personality like UAD, so you don't have to worry about any competition for me.

You've got the charisma, you know, I'm probably the most plain vanilla guy you'll ever meet. So thank you for having me on.

McLean Bible Church, Science, and a Life of Caregiving

Let me just stop you for a second, Sal. So you've got a number of science degrees, you were taking care of your mother when she was widowed, you're churchmen, you know, you were submissive to your elders who wanted you to come back to the church after your mother passed, which, sorry for your loss, by the way.

Thank you. In other words, you seem like a real troublemaker. Oh, yeah, definitely.

No, I just want to point out the elder Mark Gottlieb, who told, who informed me of that, he left the elder board. And I think he was one of the ones I still to this day admire. Yeah. So there's been, there's been a change of leadership.

So yeah, yeah, real troublemaker.

Yeah, a real, a real rabble rouser, rabble rouser. People correct me on that one, rabble rouser. Yeah. Anyway, so, okay. Okay, got it. So I saw, I saw a few of your videos in the past. Well, why don't, why don't you take me through the story?

Because I don't know exactly the timelines of everything as well as you do, I'm sure. But I do remember seeing a video you produced about Michael Kelsey, Pastor Mike Kelsey saying something about white people and torching them or something.

So, you know, just normal stuff. But if you want to, you know, if you can have the floor and just kind of take me through kind of what's happened and why is it that, you know, a longtime member, you know, churchman, you know, I'm joking that you're a troublemaker, obviously not.

We're now led to a point where, you know, you can't attend worship anymore. So like, how did we get here?

Okay. If you could show my graph, I mean, my screen, that was me in my younger days. I was sent off to pilot school by my employer. So before I got in creation science, I.

Brother, you haven't aged a bit out of younger days. You look, you look the same.

Oh, thank you. So, um, let me just, so, okay. Let me just kind of maybe give a summary of everything and let me point something out. I want to show my family here because I'm going to talk just a little bit about Black Lives Matter.

You could see there's, there's my mother there. She's in the wheelchair. This is at my sister's wedding. She was widowed. And then her husband there was also lost his wife. They met late in life. He's African-American.

So I will touch on the Black Lives Matter thing because I don't want people accusing me of, you know, being, you know, racist or not. Black lives do matter to me, but it's the movement I have problems with.

And that's how I began, got in trouble. So maybe I could show, if I have the graph here. This is the fundamental problem at McLean. This is kind of a nice timeline of history, just so you know everything that's going on.

And I know this isn't, this is a satire graph, but the numbers are relatively accurate. So you could see that 1960, the church was founded and then it grew under Lon Solomon. But then you could see the effect.

You could see what happened when David Platt became, and Mike Caffey is like one of the senior pastors and Wade Burnett. Okay. So this is meant to be provocative, but if I should, I've been, I worked hard at trying to summarize what the problem is at McLean.

And to me, this says it's the change in management. So now I'll give the timeline. The timeline is, this is June 30th year and I, you know, this is, I was still recovering from my mother's passing and God bless her.

There she is right there. And someone said, Hey Sal, can you help us? There's bad things happening at McLean. And I broke the story that this, this pastor who's an associate pastor with David Platt, his name is Mike Kelsey.

He, I got pictures of him with the Black Lives Matter movement. I was the one that broke the story because I got him on a public interview, public interview but just no one noticed saying it's difficult for me not to torch all white people, particularly white evangelicals and Christians.

And shortly after he said that he got promoted and I said, I need to break this story. This is not right that our congregational meetings are being shut down and we cannot confront elders publicly based on first Timothy chapter five about these sort of activities.

And we wanted, I wanted to say on what grounds do the elders promote a pastor that has that attitude toward his own congregation? Right, right. And what had happened was, yeah, this is September 19th.

That's pastor Wade Burnett with the Black, known Black Lives Matter activists right there in the lobby of McLean Bible church.

So I'm sure, I'm sure he was rebuking him and telling him to, you know, okay.

You know, okay, so I can't go to this church. I will be under threat of arrest, but, okay, but you see the sort of people and the sort of pastors that are welcomed there, just open arms, all right. And they can preach there.

I can't, I can't even go there to take communion and celebrate.

Just as a side note. You know, I've heard a bunch of people kind of, you know, defend Pastor Kelsey and say, well, you know, he was just using a figure of speech about, he wasn't really talking about torturing them.

He was talking about like, you know, ripping them, yelling at them, stuff like that. And you know, in all honesty, I don't understand how anyone would defend it that way because it doesn't make it better.

It's like whether he means yelling at them or doing violence to them, he's talking about just doing it to all of them because they're white. Like it doesn't actually make it better if he meant it in a rhetorical way, you know?

So I just figured I'd throw that out there because I, you know, I could see someone probably commenting on this video saying, well, he didn't really mean that. Well, it doesn't actually matter because, you know, whether you want to yell at or hurt all white people, it's still pretty racist.

Yeah. So I have, you know, I have a white brother-in-law. He's not pictured here because he's sick. But, you know, I have white relatives and you have someone here from Iran and my cousins are half Chinese.

So this isn't about, you know, that I don't like people of all races. This is the fact that I felt that was the most that was a very racist attitude just to see someone white. Yes. And you want to torture them.

And I said, leadership, this is problematic and it's expressing itself in the sermons. But I'll go on. What happened was that on June 30th of this year, we had that infamous vote. There was security there.

And I have a video that you played it on your channel. I did, yeah. We were threatened with arrest and everything. OK, that was June 30th. There was a tumultuous vote. We feel that that was a legitimate vote, but then they wanted to redo it because they lost the vote.

And so we have July 18th here of this year. And they held a congregational meeting right in the middle of a worship service. Someone demanded a point of order. There he is right there. And you could see how that was handled.

He was escorted out by it's pictured there only three armed security. There were actually five at least. OK, so then another another troublemaker. I could definitely tell. All right, so then I had my turn to be escorted by armed security this past Sunday.

So that's why I'm calling it McLean Banana Republic Church. I know that's such a mean thing to say, but I'm trying to circulate that meme now because that's how it feels like because we're not allowed to talk.

It says in First Timothy, we can and should rebuke elders publicly before all. We are not given that chance. That is not biblical. And we keep being suppressed. The reason some of us have been tempted to shout out is saying this is not right.

And so Jim Powers here, his name is well known now, especially thanks to you, Eddie and the Lord. He spoke out, he said, this is constitutional for me to do a parliamentary move. And you did just a fabulous job of pointing out he was well within the spirit of parliamentary rules.

Sure. So that's a little bit of the timeline. And if we can go on into some more details and I will just let you kind of lead me in.

What your interest is. Yeah, well, so you mentioned, OK, so this video here that you have on the screen, this is him being escorted out by security guards. And anyone who hasn't seen that video, it's still on my channel.

You know, he was he was forcefully but politely insisting on a point of order. It's not like he was making threats. It's not like he was, you know, screaming like a lunatic. It was a, you know, a parliamentary, you know, kind of point of order that you would get at any business meeting in any organization.

And so they didn't appreciate it. And so eventually he was escorted out. Now, now, now, Sal, you mentioned kind of in passing that you were also had your opportunity to be escorted out by armed security this past Sunday.

So were you shouting and raving? I mean, you know, you're obviously again, I can tell you're a troublemaker, but like we're what were you doing?

I walked into the sanctuary and I was going to do a count of the number of people and gather evidence for future congregational meetings. So I wasn't getting in anyone's face. I politely sat down at about 9, 10 a .m. or 9, 15 at the 9 a .m. service.

A gentleman came up to me very politely, said, we'd like to have words with you. We'd like to speak to you, sir. And I said, sure. And I just insisted it be in a public place. And they said, sure. And they brought me before the sheriff and they're right there in the lobby.

They're utmost polite. And before I go any further, I would like to extend my gratitude and sympathy for the security at McLean. I know you guys are in a tough spot. You have leaderships that telling you to do things I know that bother your conscience.

I don't take it personally. And I want to personally thank you all for your service in protecting the congregation. So that out of the way, I was treated with utmost respect. And they said, sir, we've received notice that you've been trespassed.

You're banned from the property. You'll have to leave. Otherwise, you'll be subject. And that was kind of the end of the matter. One of them, one of the security guys said, you know, I explained to him, I'm here to do an independent count for congregational meetings because we have a drastic drop in attendance.

And we have five campuses in McLean. This morning, I was at the Loudon campus because that was one that I hadn't we hadn't had very much information on as far as their attendance. And I was there to actually see what was going on.

And so one of the security staff said, I've seen your videos and I just laughed. Sir, if I didn't thank you for watching it. Thank you very much, sir. And the sheriff said, hey, you know, let me give you some information.

If you come back to the property, you know, McLean is going to contact me and we'll have to do something. Charges be filed. You might have to go to jail. He said, I really don't want to do that. See if you could find another way to try to resolve this issue.

And so I said, there'll be no problem. And so here I am on his channel.

Banning, Trespass Orders, and the Absence of Matthew 18 Church Discipline

So, Sal, so OK, so, you know, and again, we don't have to harp on this too much, but I do actually want to ask a few questions here. So so you've been banned from the property now. Now, have you been church disciplined?

Like have you, you know, the Matthew 18 process, you know, confronted directly, confronted with a few people, brought it to the elders, brought it before the whole congregation. Like has any of that happened as far as from your perspective?

Oh, absolutely not.

OK, absolutely not. And then some funny things are that on July 18th, even in the middle of this rancorous congregational meetings, a couple of the elders came up to me very politely and had a conversation.

One of them said, you're you strike me as a fear man. But I will point out right after I released the Kelsey video on July 16th, a couple days earlier. I had to scoot out of the sanctuary. Word got to me that they were looking for me.

I found out later they were circulating my photos with the security staff and the staff. I'm just like, what's that about? OK, you don't have to do this to me and kind of let security feel like I'm the bad guy.

So absolutely not. No, I have not gotten any emails or anything. The only thing I got in addition to emails and my trespass order was I got a Federal Express letter, Federal Express package with a letter saying.

This letter is to officially notify you that you shall not go upon any of the listed properties, failure to comply with this request will result in the criminal charge of trespassing being brought against you, which is in violation of code, whatever got a copy.

This letter has been sent to police agencies which are responsible for the above locations, and that's all I've gotten. So the funny thing is, I don't know if I'm still on the church member rolls, which would be really funny.

Right. So OK, so so for the record, you you you were escorted out on Sunday. You have a Federal Express. I'm sure it's a notarized letter that you're not allowed to to be at any of the properties. But as far as you know, you've never been confronted or contacted because of a sin issue.

Any of the steps of Matthew 18 have not been taken with you.

That is correct. And just to clarify, they obviously have my address. They obviously have my email because I got that same letter in an email. Right. I've not gotten a letter from any of the elders or pastors when I was there in the McLean lobbies at the various campuses.

Sure. No one come up, came up to me and said, hey, Sal, you know, your behavior looks really suspicious. Yeah. And the grounds of the trespassing is based on your observed behavior at McLean Bible Church.

On multiple occasions, you are hereby notified that you're forbidden to go on all properties where McLean Bible Church holds meetings, including the following.

Addresses. So that's so I'm sure I'm sure you have some suspicions of what they mean by observed behavior. But do you know, have they told you what the observed behavior is? No. OK, so we could probably guess.

But but you don't know. They haven't actually confronted you with that.

No. OK. And I should point out it was this happened. Last week, September 30th, I released a video that showed that graph.

The graph with the attendance plummeting, right?

Right. Right. And I said, I don't think they're going to be happy with this, so I don't know if that's correlated, but.

Yeah. OK, so so I'm going to I'm going to make some comment. Yes. You don't have to agree with these comments or not, but I'm just going to make some comments here because to anyone who's watches my channel, you know, it's focused on social justice.

And, you know, I've made the case that social justice is not biblical justice. In fact, I've made the case that it often overturns biblical justice. But but there's a there's a there's a principle in the Bible where it talks about people who are elder candidates, you know, and it's it's it says, you know, they have to manage their household well.

Right. Because if they can't manage their household well, then obviously they're not going to be able to manage other things very well, including the church, you know, or whatever. And, you know, oftentimes when people are thinking about who to elect for politics, you know, they look at their family life, you know, and this is one knock.

I think that was a very fair knock on Donald Trump because, you know, multiple times he was divorced, as far as I remember. And I remember somebody saying, I forget who said this, but like, you know, if you'll betray your wife, I mean, you'll betray anybody, you know, like so that's a that's a serious thing to consider.

And so so so guys like the Matthew 18 process, there are parts of the Bible that are complicated. But this is not one of them, it's very clear, you know, if you have a problem with somebody, you have to talk to that person about the problem you have.

And doesn't matter if you're uncomfortable, doesn't matter if you don't like his face, doesn't matter if you think he's very dangerous looking like Sal is obviously very dangerous looking. You look you look like, you know, you'd bite someone's head off if they came in over to talk to you.

But obviously not. But the point is, like, doesn't matter even if he did look like that, like you have a duty to that person to go to them. And the next step is very clear. And the step after that is very clear.

And and when somebody's excommunicated from the church, the purpose of that is is so that not only they will kind of see the error of their ways and repent, but also so that the congregation can see that and fear and fear the Lord.

And and it certainly seems to me and Sal, you don't have to agree or disagree, but seems to me that whatever has happened here, whatever they think they're doing in their discipline, it's all happened in secret so much so that you're not even aware.

Of it. Yes.

And you can't trust someone like this. Sorry, just one point. You can't trust someone who is who is so willing to just overturn simple things in God's law. You can't trust people like that to to to to interpret the complicated, more difficult things in God's law.

And so anyway, just a side note. Sorry, Sal, to interrupt you there.

No, and I need to point something out to the rest of the audience. You mentioned President Trump. President Trump visited McLean Bible. We have a lot of people, senators, congressmen, cabinet members going to McLean Bible, including the vice president, president of the United States.

I need to point something out just, you know, also partly because my reputation is being kind of trashed by McLean, by this trespass order. Oh, yeah, absolutely. This is me and Sandy Pigeon on July 16th of this year.

Sandy Pigeon is a retired Navy SEAL. We built a friendship. He came to my mother's funeral, by the way. He he was on the security team. And he's led security teams when Donald Trump came to McLean Bible, if he knew there were something really wrong with me, he would have.

Oh, yeah. Let the security team there. No. Now he left, not surprisingly, McLean Bible because partly because he didn't you know, his wife didn't like what was going on and he felt he should always worship the Lord wherever she is.

And they went on to another excellent church. But I'm just pointing this out. It's not like I don't have people in the McLean that don't know that, you know, they know that I'm not a bad guy. And it was one of their own, you know, one of their top security guys.

And I think it was provident that we built this friendship because otherwise I'd just be vulnerable. McLean could say anything they want if I didn't have a witness like Sandy. And he's been on my YouTube channel, which, by the way, is evidence and reasons for the Christian faith.

You can Google it. By the way, I'm not going to be competing with you, A .D., I teach a lot of molecular biology and physics on my channel. Really? I'm all about it.

Good stuff. No. So, yeah, and I think Sandy has commented on some of my videos. So God bless. God bless him and his wife as well. Yeah, definitely. And, you know, at the end of the day, like my whole purpose in this is just this is this is up.

This is an upside down way to run a church where where, you know, conceivably I could see maybe if someone was an imminent threat, you know, maybe you don't, you know, go through the steps of Matthew 18.

You know, someone's coming in there threatening people, you know, wielding a knife or something. Yeah, you just got to tackle them. You don't go through Matthew 18. That's different. But in your case, there's nothing like that.

Obviously, obviously, in my opinion, this is just my opinion. They don't appreciate the videos that you're doing. They feel like they're that they're being undermined by you. That's my opinion. I haven't I haven't spoken to anyone over there, so I don't know.

So in those situations, it's like there's no imminent threat. There's no there's no reason to not do Matthew 18 there. There's no reason, because I have a feeling, Sal, that you're the kind of guy that if if they were taking you through through church discipline and they eventually excommunicated you, you probably wouldn't show up to church the next day.

You know what I mean? Like you probably would respect that and move on.

And by the way, just for the record, they did ask me if I had any weapons. I said, no, no, sir, I don't. And I didn't accept that. You know, there's a saying the pen is mightier than the sword. And I did a pen and I was taking notes.

I mean, that's about it. You know, and the security staff actually looks surprised. It's like, gee, you know, you're not quite the bad guy you're being made out to be or something. I mean, that's just my own perception.

I can't imagine what it feels like to have to know that people were passing around your picture as if you were some kind of a terrorist or something like it.

I'll tell you something else. There's another data point that's disturbing. Whenever I went there, five campuses that are geographically separated. By a lot of distance, and I was driving around visiting them, they were keeping track of me and I found out they were keeping track of people that I talked to.

Like Big Brother knew, and the reason it got back to me is they said they were approached by one of them informing he was approached by security. They said, we saw you with Sal out there in Prince William.

And OK, so you're, you know, and there was a yeah, this is like, OK, so you're keeping track, are you keeping tabs on people, your own congregation?

And so this reminds me, I don't know if you watch any TV because, you know, listen, you probably don't have time for it doing the kind of content you do. So but I used to watch with my wife stuff on Scientology.

It reminds me of that a little bit where people are kind of tracked and followed. And if you're talking to the wrong people, you get hauled into the principal's office and and stuff like that.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, this is ridiculous. This is creepy that they knew what campus I was on. You know, it seemed like red alerts were coming on whenever I visited.

So can I ask you a question? So, you know, you were there on Sunday and you were going to count the people that were there. Why were you doing that? Why was that important to you?

I could probably it's easier to show. Yeah, let's do it. First off, this is the Association of Management, because some people actually don't realize that we've lost a lot of congregation. One of the reasons is we went from five services at the Tysons campus just down to two.

So people that just go like, say, to the 9 a .m. and their newcomers, they wouldn't realize the carnage. That's the first thing. The other thing is I needed to confirm for myself that we've really lost this many people.

Right. So I was going to present this at one of the congregational meetings. Actually, recently they tried to have one, but for a variety of reasons, they didn't. I was going to present it. And then we're getting this from Larry Cooper in our congregational meeting, September, quote, unquote, it's debatable, it's very debatable whether it was a legitimate one because it was held online.

No way to establish quorum. Right, right. Up here is Larry Cooper and he's the chairman of the Board of Elders. So I'm going to try to answer your question here. He said there, I hope that you're as energized and as excited as I am about where we are.

And he said, and where we're headed. I mean, I'm just like, so why am I doing this? I needed to gather evidence and I was going to write, actually, when I was driving on my way to Loudoun, I said, I'm going to write the elder board.

I said, guys, do you know that this is the state? What they're also doing is the solid lines are from their official congregational report. But they're including the online counts there. Right. What they're not doing is separating out the brick and mortar, the brick and mortar is down here.

Right. So probably earlier in the history, this was really more or less brick and mortar. Yeah. And now we're going, you know, we're inflating the numbers because of the online. And I'm like, this is a very serious situation.

I think the numbers could be even as low as thirty two hundred now.

Attendance Decline, Financial Transparency, and Inflated Numbers

Yeah, well, so you care. So basically you care for the same reasons that anyone would care about the numbers. So, I mean, you know, there's there's issues as far as, you know, quorum, there's issues as far as, you know, leadership and funding and where that money is going, what the priorities are, like basically any time anyone takes account of, you know, a church's numbers, there's reasons for and those are the same reasons that you would.

Care. OK, and there's a little bit more and it ties to the financials. OK, so this is our Larry Cooper said also on September 30th, this this that is our elder board consisting of Larry, David, Mike, Wade, people in the picture, plus some more.

He said it's a high point. And I'm like, I mean, only if you kind of maybe from your perspective, you're kind of upside down. You think we're at a high point here. OK, this is real satire. All right. So this is my little this is how I vent, you know, because I don't scream and yell.

This is kind of how I express myself.

Well, I get it now. I get it. That's that's by anyone's definition, it's not a high point.

OK, so this again, these are pictures of the congregation. This is the Arlington campus meeting at Tyson's.

Just to give me some context, you know, pre-COVID, I mean, what would this have looked.

Like? They're meeting at Tyson's because they're. They are. They're under construction at their actual Arlington. So I actually don't know. But let's let's say we've pre-COVID going back to the graph, it'd be about four times larger, three or four times larger.

Yeah. And I need to point out, people say the pandemic, the pandemic. I said, well, why is it the churches around the area that are, by the way, getting a lot of ex-McLean? So we've had a lot of people that have left.

Obviously, they've gone to other churches. They're breaking records now. Right. In terms of their attendance. So even though that's, you know, that is a data point, I have that countering data point.

That's right. Many, many churches grew during the pandemic. Yes. And let me just say this, too, just for anyone of my, you know, church growth is not necessarily a sign of a healthy church. You know, there's lots of unhealthy churches out there that have a lot of members.

That's not what I think Sal is saying or what what I'm saying. But but there clearly is something to address. And the rhetoric and the speech doesn't match the reality, clearly.

Yes. And that's it's like if you're going to be shepherd of the congregation, you tell them that you level with them where we really are. Yeah. And I wouldn't, you know, I'm not I'm not calling that out yet.

I'm just saying this is just not wise. So these, you know, I use the color coding here partly to conceal their privacy and also helps me count. So each of the colors are groups of 10. So I get accurate counts when I have the photographs.

That's the mind of a scientist, by the way. I would never have thought to do that.

This is the Prince William campus. And of course, when I got there and I was counting here, I got. I raised alarms. Just a carnage, because I also witnessed that this used to be packed. Yeah. And you could see a lot of the empty spaces.

And there's something really funny here. This is September 19th. OK, this is like in the last few weeks. Do you see that sign there? It says overflow seating. And I was like, you guys, either you're trying to cover the cover up the lack of attendance or you're just delusional.

Right. Because there's no way in the 9 and 11 a .m. service that there's enough because I was kind of you weren't even at like 50 percent capacity at the 9 a .m. service. What's the deal here? And something really funny, this is we have we have two auditoriums.

This is the Smith Center auditorium that hosts the Spanish service. I'm going to point out something funny. What they did is they told all the Spanish speaking people that day that Sunday they were coming in there to hear as their service in Spanish.

And they said, no, we have to close this down because we need it for overflow seating. And so I'm trying to diagram here. If you could see it, if you could see my mouse, there's that Smith Center here.

And here's the main sanctuary. And so what they did is they said, let's shut this down. So we have overflow seating. So they herded all the Spanish speaking congregants into the English service. So that's why I showed this little boy.

He said, so let me get this straight. The Spanish speaking people have to go to the English speaking sanctuary because the English speaking sanctuary is already full.

And when it's actually half empty. And it certainly seems to an outsider that they brought them in to make it look fuller.

Full. Yes, yes. And the excuse doesn't hold water. There's again, this is photographic evidence of what's going on. And I mean, there's something financial here. We'll get to that. So go on.

Yeah, let's let's get to some of that. But it just from an outsider's perspective, it just it just reeks of desperation. You know, I mean, obviously, you know, that that excuse makes no sense, even if you think about it for two seconds.