Apologia TV w/ N. D. Wilson - Outlaws of Time!

All right, guys, welcome back to another episode of Apologia TV. You can get more at apologiaradio .com. That's where you go to get all the past radio episodes, which are pretty sweet.

They're pretty good.

There's a lot of them.

I like them.

Lots of guests and important topics and cool information, fun stuff, prank calls. And so it's kind of a Morning Zoo Christian show.

Yes.

But awesome.

Err.

Better. Is that better? When you say Morning Zoo Christian show, I think like K-Love and...

K-Love.

Calling to K-Love.

That's your favorite Christian utensil. Every Christian show. By the way, I'm Jeff Durbin. That's Luke Pearson. That's King Ginger right there. Every Christian radio show bothers me because they always have like the quintessential, like the standard, Hey, guys, welcome to K-Love.

It's always the really kind of crazy. We don't do anything like that here. Always very serious.

Always.

Yes.

Okay.

So speaking of serious business.

Serious.

Serious business. We have a very important guest on the, on the, on the show today. And he's pretty awesome. And when we first started the church, by the way, Planet Apology of Church, one of the first Bible studies that we did in the church first year or so was Nate Wilson, Andy Wilson's book and movie.

And it was called?

Notes from a Tilted World.

The book is crazy sauce.

Yes.

And the movie is amazing. It's a great Bible study. And it just filled my heart. And it was one, one weekend.

Look, I don't know if you remember this.

One weekend I had a whole sermon prepared, right? For the message. And at the beginning of the sermon, I mentioned the Bible study we've been doing, Hey, everyone get in on that. And then all of a sudden I just preached for 45 minutes on what Nate had done in the film.

And I was just like, oops. So okay. So Andy Wilson, a fantastic author, he's, he is, and I mean this, I'm not saying this just because he's on the show today, I don't make him feel good about himself.

He is my favorite modern Christian author.

Wow.

Notes from a Tilted World, Hundred Cupboards, and now a new book, Outlaws of Time, The Legend of Sam Miracle. So Andy Wilson, Nate Wilson, welcome to the show, brother.

Thanks so much for having me.

Absolutely.

It is an honor and a pleasure. And by the way, it looks like we're going to have some, some Wilson happening at our Reform Con. Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

And so reformcon .org, you can come and hang out, fellowship, and you can listen to Nate. All right, Nate. So what do you want to talk about, man? What's happened in your life?

Well, you know, this book, this new book, Outlaws of Time, and you know, I especially, I've been talking a lot to, you know, the big broad world of book readers in general. But when I talk to Christian audiences, it's kind of, it's a different experience because I can sort of tip my cards a little bit more and show people what I'm doing.

Yeah. And you show your conspiracy you're involved in.

Yeah, I really, I honestly, I wrote notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl as like a way to plant the flag because I was a novelist already. Things were going well, but rumors were beginning to spread in New York that I was an evangelical.

And you know, I actually had to write a statement of faith for Random House. And this is because they had enough people concerned that they just wouldn't call them or email them and say some outrageous thing that I allegedly believed.

And so they just reached out to me and kind of embarrassed, said, could you, you know, is this, this is awkward, but could you just write down like what you believe so that we have it and we can just send it out to people?

No.

It's like you have this, this dirty secret in your past.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, could you explain your past felony conviction? You know, so it's, it's awful. It's like, you know, if you're getting, you're trying to buy a gun at a gun shop and you hit that question, you're answering all the questions and it says, are you a fugitive from justice?

And you're like, well, now that you ask.

Yeah.

Yeah. So anyway, I wrote the statement of faith and they were sending it out and that's actually what provoked me to just write like a, my manifesto of faith, like my extended statement.

Of faith.

That's what notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl was. I just wanted to go on record, like plant the flag. This is who I am. There's nothing, there's like, there's no secret here. Like, this is just out there, but I, you know, I wrote that, I followed it up with Death by Living and then I'm just back to writing like kids adventure fantasy novels.

Now I don't write these kinds of stories because it's just recreational. Like I write these kinds of stories, A, because I really love them, but B, because I think they are really, really important and essential imagination food.

I wrote an article once called Stories are Soul Food and they really, really are. I mean, if you want to catechize, if you want a catechism for loyalty, a catechism for courage and sacrifice and loves, what is honorable?

What's damnable? What do you hate? What do you love? What do you die for? What do you live for? You have to do it with stories. That's, that's what you have to do. So without loss of time, I wanted to tap into this classic biblical story structure of the judge, you know, from the book of Judges, right?

But we're more familiar with this story type as a superhero story. So superhero stories were invented. They were created as echoes of the book of Judges, as echoes of these messianic yearnings. So these young Jewish kids who are yearning for the Messiah, for the concept of someone who would come save them because they're going through absolute hell in Europe.

And then obviously we know what happened to the Jews through the modern age of the.

Superhero story.

The superhero genre was created out of that messianic yearning. And in some ways it's really tragic because they miss the Messiah. But in some ways it's really, really beautiful and cool. And just like, because it's this old Testament story structure, this old Testament concept, you have this, this outsider, this outlier who's amazingly gifted, but it's also a curse.

It's also a burden. It's also a hardship. And as you do that, you either introduce them into a broken system, you introduce them to face enormous evil, and they have to be willing to give their absolute all to conquer it.

Now, not to wander too far afield, but the same old Testament story structure, you know, the Samson, the Moses, King David, the same story structure is the, is the root of all classic Westerns. So the old Western story was that outlier, the outsider who comes in and you have a corrupt sheriff, you have a corrupt system and, and they set everything right.

They risk it all. They lay their life on the line to set things right. So I wanted to tell a story that had that kind of, that echo, a superhero story with the bones of that classic Western. And I want to do it because I want to, I want to cook for a crowd of children.

I want to cook for a massive crowd of future characters and adults and feed them things that are truly edifying. They give them their imagination, strong bones, you know, give them, give them the best food I possibly can to be the best characters that they can be in their own stories.

So I tell the story of Sam Miracle, allies of time. It's a kid who's disabled from an old accident. His elbows don't bend. He has memory loss. He's got mental and physical issues. And he, it turns out basically that he's being hunted by the vulture, this horrible arch outlaw, a time hopping time travel superhero story.

That's pretty sweet.

Time hopping arch outlaw, this very diabolical figure and a priest, father. Tiempo, father time has been moving him, you know, has been, has been hopping him to different moments in time to hide him is trying to like preserve him until the moment that he's actually ready to face his foe.

Wow.

Hang on, hang on right there. I want to hear the rest. Stay right there in that spot. We're going to go to a break. We're going to go to a break and wait and do a little commercial stuff. Pay the bills, I suppose, for the interview network, and then I'll be back, be back with Andy Wilson, outlaws of time, hear more about the story and even play a commercial for you guys.

Only one question I have right now after we've talked is how come I don't have a copy of the book in front of me right now? And that is a problem. And this is my dissatisfaction ahead of time. So if I were giving you a review ahead of time, Andy Wilson for the book, I would probably give you three stars at this point because I don't have it.

And there's a failure. So I'll be right back. ApologiaRadio .com. All right, guys, welcome back to Apologia TV. Again, you go to ApologiaRadio .com to get more episodes, television shows. You can get the after show.

You can participate with us in ministry by becoming all access. You get trained theologically. You get to look at Marcus's beard on a regular basis.

Which is read as Satan's favorite sermon.

Yeah, and all kinds of great stuff. So ApologiaRadio .com is where you go. And just quickly, Nate, where do people go to get the book like ASAP?

You can actually you can get the book anywhere. But if it comes out April 19th and anybody who buys it before April 23rd should go to OutlawsOfTime .com and get free stuff. So if you if you buy it before April 23rd, I'll give you a free audio download of notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl.

Free audio books. I'm also giving away a free nine part video series on writing, like the introduction to writing for aspiring writers.

I'm already signed up.

Yeah, young and old. So that's like a hundred and fifty dollar giveaway right there.

At least.

You undervalue yourself.

That's way undervalued.

Forty five dollars. Humility, my friends, humility. So, yeah, I've got basically you can buy it anywhere. You can preorder it at your local indie store. You can buy it on Amazon. You can buy it. Just grab it.

OK, and then then once you do go, go to OutlawsOfTime .com and pick your prize. Get your giveaway.

OK, nice.

All right. So I'll let you finish telling the story and then then Marcus has a question for you. So continue on.

What's what's I'll do this quickly because I'm not going to give away too much. So I have this kid, Sam Miracle. He's being hunted by the vulture. Think exiled in Egypt. You know, it's like he's he's in exile.

He's being moved. He's being preserved for the right moment. And then that moment comes. And this is where this is where Christians will get scared because he is destroyed. His arms are shattered facing the vulture, destroyed wrist to shoulder.

And he's going to lose his arms. And Father Time's brother, this this old Navajo chieftain graphs live rattlesnakes into his arms in order to preserve them. And so at that point, he's got the fastest arms in history.

They can also, it turns out, see in the dark is right. His right hand is always distracted. This pink rattlesnake called Speck and his left hand, Cindy, is this Mojave sidewinder that just wants to kill him.

And so he has to tie up his left hand at night. Cindy, if he pulls a gun, six things will die. He has to learn to control Cindy, especially. But anyway, that's the creation of the superhero Sam Miracle.

Wow.

And then he goes on into his book of judges. Old Testament, Wild West, time hopping adventures.

Yeah, it sounds to me a lot like Back to the Future three. Hey, I'm just kidding. There's no DeLorean.

Step off.

Big fly.

Hey, I got OK, so I'm going to come at you as the legalist Christian. Yes, I want to know. I want to know why children need imagination food. And why don't you just instead of reading your books, they should just be in the Bible.

They should just be, you know, studying scriptures.

I don't know what we need another story for. We got plenty of those in that Bible.

OK, yeah, let me say this. If they, in fact, were in the Bible, that'd be great. But they aren't. And they really aren't, because modern Americans, especially modern American evangelicals, are very, very nervous.

If we're talking about the legalists are very nervous about magic. They're very nervous about fantasy. And what that means is when they read the Bible, when they take their kids through the Bible. They got it.

They absolutely got it of magic. They got it of fantasy. So are unicorns real? Ask, ask any Christian pastor if unicorns are real and then ask him how many times unicorns are referred to in scripture.

The unicorns are real. And it's in the Bible.

Yes, exactly. It's in the Bible, but it's in only in those translations, which are not modern and embarrassing.

Yes.

So the modern translations, they hit a unicorn and they say, like, well, that's awkward. We all know that unicorns are real. So they they retranslate it to wild ox. They hit a fawn. They hit a satyr half man, half goat thing.

Mr. Thomas from Narnia. They hit that in Isaiah or elsewhere. And they and they say, oh, those aren't real. Let's just translate it goat. But guess what? The ancients knew the word for satyr. They believed in these things and they knew which word they were using.

And then modern Americans, like, try to push it away. So I'll ask. I'll ask Christians, especially. Where is the first wizard duel ever? Where did it happen? And they never know. And it's Moses going into the court of Pharaoh.

Old dude with a magic stick walking in there to kick some magician, but.

I thought you were going to say Middle Earth.

Yeah, so exactly. It's this is scarier than Middle Earth. This is much gnarlier than Middle Earth. And Gandalf is derived from Moses.

Boom.

And, you know, so as far as the kind of stories we tell, I want to tell stories that open kids eyes to natural revelation to the world around them, because, you know, God's word is not just in scripture.

He also spoke the world. This is also his his revelation, which proclaims his glory. So I want to tell stories that wake kids up to the world in which they live. And I want to tell stories that help them read scripture with wider eyes and more willing to believe it when they actually encounter the story of Samson, when they actually encounter that weird reference to Shamgar, or when they read the story of Moses in Egypt, that they actually read it as the kind of story that it actually is.

Oh, man. OK, so let's do this since everybody's watching right now. Apology TV lets you guys see a little trailer. It's up on YouTube under Harper Kids, by the way. Pretty sweet. His publisher, Harper Collins.

Right.

That's legit. Yeah, that's legit. He's not like a self-published Christian author.

Like it's canon press or anything.

It's no, it's not like it's not like he's published. He's publishing this right now. Like I published a book with Zulon Press. Like it only cost me fifteen hundred dollars to do it like creative space.

Yeah, exactly.

Outlaws of Time. Harper Kids on YouTube.

Here you go.

In the one enemy who can stop you seeking the boy who must never be allowed to grow. Are you Sam Miracle? Damaged and lost, hunted and hidden. Glory. Spalding, urgent and fearless. Are you Father Tiempo, time walking guide, priest of the past, the future?

Who are you? Save us all.

I may not be a smart man, but I believe that was Nate's voice.

It was.

Yeah.

Nice.

It was. It was me. It was me.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

I win.

I want those snakes.

I wasn't playing the drums, though. I wish I was.

I was beautiful. Fantastic. I'm in. So I'll buy the book, Nate.

Will you read the book?

I'll read the book.

The voice of Mortimer to your children.

I do.

By the way, I need to tell you that. So I have this character that we do on Apology Radio. It's been sort of like I've done it for like my whole life is his name is Mortimer. He's a World War Two veteran.

He's a little he's a little tin eared from the war. And and so I play this character Mortimer. And so when I read Hundred Cupboards to my kids, they demanded that I read the entire story in the voice of Mortimer.

And so it was Mortimer.

All right, kids. Got it. Got around. Got around the fire, kids. All right. All right. Sit close because I can't talk that loud right now. I got a little bit of bellyache right now. All right, kids. Pour some chicken gravy on those Cheetos.

Let's have a little snack and let's listen to let's listen to Nate. Take us into a lullaby into time.

You know, it was great.

Yeah.

Entire story.

Audio book.

Night.

Let me do the audio book. Outlaws of Time.

Outlaws of Time. That led you to Sam Beryl.

Like, you know, I can make it happen. But yeah, very magical. So I think what we should do right now is just talk about how amazing Nate is as an author. He's fantastic. And I want to encourage you guys to start reading them because I'm going to tell you, we're going to break here in a second.

But this doesn't happen with me often. Honestly, I told Luke this, I think when I read notes in the Tilted World, kind of my introduction to Andy Wilson, I had to like read a page and I would chew on it for hours and it would like affect the way that I was thinking the rest of the day.

Literally.

Literally.

We'll be right back.

Apologia TV. What is a philosophically devastating critique of your worldview? It is not a worldview you should hold on to any longer.

Virginia Tech, 2007.

So what?

32 children, kids, students are killed.

So what?

Andrea Yates, 2001, killed her four children.

So what?

No, we're not baby eaters.

So what?

And we are back. That's the bear.

What up?

You've been awfully interested in this interview, right?

Yeah, you are.

You said that as if it's...

No, this is a fun interview for us. We're all very, actually really into this interview because we all love Nate so much. And so this is a big deal for us and we're very excited. So I was saying on the way out, I want to hear what you have to say, Luke.

I was saying on the way out of the last segment that I would read a page and then I had to chew on it for the rest of the day. And it wasn't just like, I was like, oh, that was really cool. It was like, it was actually one of those things where you read and you start to look at the world different, right?

It just encouraged me because it was a story that actually challenged me. I was like, I don't even appreciate God's world as much as I'm supposed to. And it was just like, Nate was in this masterful way, given this story and with the right language, she was convincing me to love God more and His world more and to seek real delight in.

It all.

And I felt convicted and challenged that I know all this stuff, but I wasn't actually.

Living it.

And it really, and to this day, it's changed me a whole bunch. Like I can't look at a hot dog the same way again, or a 32 ounce soda. Like I can't do it. If I go into like a circle K, I look at it and I go, thank you, Nate.

Appreciate that. So go ahead.

Well, most people don't know this. We got to experience this when we went to Moscow. There's actual N .D. Wilson notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl tour.

Yeah.

Remember we got to go to the gas station.

Yeah.

We saw the Tilt-A-Whirl, all that stuff. It was, it was fantastic.

Gas station has been smashed since then.

Oh my goodness.

That's terrible.

Forget it.

I'm glad we immortalized it in film.

Rest in peace, gas station.

Yeah, that's right. So, um, so I have a question.

Yeah.

Nate, how come you don't marginalize yourself to Christian bookstores?

Oh, this is big.

Yes.

Yeah.

How could, how could, but you're, you're an author, not a Christian bookstore author, but you're still a Christian.

Yeah.

How do you make that distinction in your work?

The way I make the distinction is that Christian bookstores frequently won't sell my stuff.

That's pretty easy.

So it's, it's pretty simple because they, they made that decision for me.

Oh, okay.

That's a good thing.

It's like, not that I've ever really tried. I know that Thomas Nelson tried when Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl came out. And, you know, as, as you were just saying earlier, it's like the goal, the goal for the book, the goal for Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl, the goal for anything I write is that you want to affect the way people see.

You want to like, re-lens their eyes, you know, kind of open their eyelids and re-lens things so that when they, when they leave, they can't revert. They start seeing things a certain way and then that's it.

You know, it goes that direction. And with the Christian bookstores, well, when I finished Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl, it's probably 3 .30 in the morning. I finished the first draft. I emailed it off to Thomas Nelson.

I was writing in my bedroom and my wife wakes up sort of magically. She senses the disturbance in the forest. I've sent the book off. She, she wakes up. She looks at me and she's like, well, and I said, I feel like I just streaked through a megachurch.

Yeah, I just, I just barged in one door and I ran just naked straight through screaming and out the other side. And I think that Lifeway and some other chains felt the same way. That's kind of what, like they felt the book was, it was disruptive.

They wanted me to change some language. They wanted me to rewrite some scenes and, and maybe I should have for the sake of my publisher, but I just refused. So I wouldn't do it. And now I think, I think they sell Notes now, I believe.

But at the time they wouldn't. And as far as writing, when you're writing fantasy in the secular world, a Christian bookseller doesn't want any kind of controversy or disruption. And so what they end up selling is what they can sell to everybody.

They want it as flavorless and vanilla as possible so they don't get people mad. There are tons of Christians who love the Narnia Chronicles, who love the idea of telling magical stories, imitating those stories in the Old Testament and new.

But there are also those fundies who will come in and get mad, right? They will come in and be like, well, there's, there's, you know, there's magic here. Why is there magic? This is the devil's book.

And so chains book, you know, Christian bookstores just won't, they're not going to pick up my stuff because then they're going to have to have conversations and they're actually going to have to think through it and have, you know, have some kind of standard that they appeal to where we won't sell this series because this kind of magic is, is unbiblical and we think unhealthy and we will sell this series because we think it's, it's great.

They would have to make that kind of distinction. And it's easier for them just to say, we're not selling this entire genre at all than to say, we will sell this Christian version. We won't sell that.

They let the, they let the publishers curate that. So I'm from a secular publisher. Good luck getting into Christian stores. So that's a long way to answer the question. It's up to them. They made that decision for me.

I'd love to be in Christian bookstores. I'm in Mormon bookstores.

Oh, oh no. That's not what I'm saying. It says a lot about Christian bookstores.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

Okay.

Um, you got something you want to say?

No.

Okay.

Oh, um, so, okay, Nate, I'm curious as to why you do this, like, um, cause you're really good at it, but what made you want to do this? I mean, what made you want to be a storyteller and to do it this.

Well, and to just want to tell good stories ultimately for the glory of God and the way that you do, um, there had to be something in your life that got you to that point, kicked you over the edge.

Yeah.

I, you know, honestly, I think I could answer it. You know, my dad, Douglas Wilson is a writer too, and you know him.

Yes.

And he says that he writes for the same reason that a dog barks. And so there's a very real aspect to that. Like I could just say, well, I made this way. I make noise. That's what I do.

Yeah.

And I'm like a bird dog. So there's dogs that love to just point at birds. And then there's people like me who just need to write stuff down. And that's, um, I think that's a big part of it. But the truth was, is how affected I was by Lewis growing up, how amazingly affected I was by the Narnia Chronicles, Lord of the Rings and the space trilogy.

And then also, as I grew older, I mean, I knew by the sixth grade, I wanted to write stuff like that. I wanted to imitate the kind of storytelling that those, those guys pursued. But as I grew older, I started to see how much of an actual impact they had.

If you go around and you ask big leaders, Christian leaders, which books affected them the most as they were growing up, you will see a massive, massive percentage of them cite Lewis.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, C .S. Lewis from an early age and rereading Narnia as an older person. I tell people I write, I write books for kids age eight to 90. And that's, that's the goal. You want to be serving protein, you know, serving up good food.

So I could see what Lewis did. I could see how much of a cultural impact he had, uh, for God's glory, for the church, for the faithful. And that's the, that, those are the steps that I want to follow in those though.

That's the guy I want to imitate. That's also why I rationalized writing nonfiction too. So when I told Random House, like, Hey, I'm going to write a, you know, philosophy of religion, nonfiction, creative memoir, mostly around the problem of evil and next day, hello, creation.

I mean, that was not something they were like, Oh yeah, yeah, we got that. There's a whole demographic for that.

So the idea of writing out of different markets and moving, you know, into this kind of writing, into that kind of writing, that's all just an imitation of Lewis, who was the master of both genres.

Well, you, I think have done it. And so you're a gift, you're a blessing. Nate Wilson, my favorite modern author, author.

Oh, shut up.

I'm not kidding.

I've said it a million times.

I mean it. Your work is amazing and delicious. And I can't, I can't speak or write like you, but I love to read your stuff. So that's Luke the Bear. That's King Ginger right there. And missionaware .com hook us up and they love our church and mission.

So you should go buy a shirt from them and you should pick up Nate's stuff. Andy Wilson. Don't miss out. Share it with your kids. Nate, thank you so much for being with us.

Free stuff on outlawsoftime .com.

That's right. All right.

We'll see you in June, Nate.

All right.

That's right.

Reformcon .org is where you go to get tickets to come to our conference. You get to meet Nate and us. And so thank you, Nate. And we'll catch you guys next time.

Thank you guys. See you in June.

All right.

ApologiaTV guys. ApologiaRadio .com. See you next time. The conversation is going to continue at ApologiaRadio .com. That's where we're going to have our after show. We're going to have more content, more conversation, some really great stuff.

You go over there to get it at ApologiaRadio .com by becoming all access. Go check it out.