Dead Men Walking Cultish

Dead Men Walking

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Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the Fascinating Subjects in Between, Broadcasting from an

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Undisclosed Location, Dead Men Walking starts now. Well hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking.

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I'm your host, Greg. And I'm Jason. Oh man, such a juxtaposition between my energy and your just -rolled -out -of -bed energy.

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I slowed it down a little bit. I told you, we gotta work on that opening and make it like a morning show. Hey! More exciting.

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I'm Greg, this is Jason on 101, the freeze. No? The freeze.

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Well, okay, usually we banter a little bit longer. Yeah, we can't do that today. We can't do that today. You wanna know why?

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Why? Because we have very important people on the show. Yep. Do you know who that is? Yeah, I was just talking to him.

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Yeah? Why don't you give the listeners a little hint? It starts with a C, ends with a

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Altish. Yeah, we have the guys from Cultish on here. We're gonna get them on in just one minute, but before we do,

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I wanted to play a short clip of one of their most recent episodes on the Enneagram, which has just exploded online.

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Not only their episode, but also the subject too. So let's listen to this clip real quick and then we'll get into it with the

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Cultish guys. We had talked about really the origins, kind of the historical origins, the history, where it came from.

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We kind of named some real major players, and one of the things we really kind of hit across too is that the fundamental foundation of the origins of the

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Enneagram was originated by spirit contact via automatic writing.

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And the process of automatic writing is where you're basically in contact with some sort of higher entity and you just write whatever comes down.

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This is similar to Christian science. Yeah, so there we go. We have Jerry and Andrew from Cultish on the line.

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How are you guys doing? Hey! Feeling good. Doing great. Awesome.

02:06

Feeling good, man. So, yeah, we just played a little clip from your show, Cultish. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about what that podcast is about, how it came about, and kind of what you guys cover, the topics?

02:20

Yeah, I guess I could jump in. I'll let Andrew jump in as well too, and I'm done. Yeah, the short synopsis is that I got into the cult personally because I kind of grew up as a home schooled kid, and I think it was around my freshman or sophomore year in high school.

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I ended up going to a small little charter school that was 98 % Mormon, so that was the first time where I got really challenged just about what do

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I really believe, you know, as far as what I was taught of what it means to be a Christian versus what they believe.

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That led me to getting the book Letters to a Mormon Elder by James White. Some of you may have heard of him.

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And so that book was very fundamental to my thinking, even though I wasn't a Christian at the time, it really formulated the fundamental foundation of how

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I thought in regards to the world, especially the opening chapters in Letters to a

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Mormon Elder called What is Truth. That led me to go out with this team to the Mormon Temple when we were doing ministry and outreach and evangelism.

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That also led me to Kingdom of the ... Someone handed me a book also, Kingdom of the Cult by Dr.

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Walter Martin, and Jeff Durbin and I, who a lot of you know him through Apologia, we are actually under that umbrella at Apologia Studios.

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Jeff and I both were heavily really influenced by Dr. Walter Martin and his ministry, his lectures, things like that.

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And we always wanted to have a section under Apologia that was focused on direct ministry to the cult.

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And cultists came about as a byproduct of that. We would go out, and if you guys look at Apologia Studios, there's a lot of Mormon outreach and similar conversations with Jehovah's Witnesses.

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We always wanted to have a focused outreach, and we always were wondering what that would look like. Jeff brought the idea up to me about what would that look like, and being focused on the cult, and I came up with the idea of why don't we just do a podcast.

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And the podcast led to the formation of Cultish. So Andrew, do you want to just kind of give your side of the story of how you got involved in Cultish?

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Yeah, so pretty much, just to echo what Jerry's saying, the short testimony myself is

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I grew up in a Christian home. I was dropped into pretty much a secular world around eighth grade, kind of fell away from the faith and did lots of drugs and things of that nature.

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I came back to Kenneth Rice, again, when I was older, and from there,

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I got interested in diving into cult research, and I ended up going to Apologia after watching some videos online.

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But Jerry, like he said, he and I formulated Cultish, and when

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I first started going to Apologia, one of the first people I met was actually Jerry, and we just started talking and we hit it off, just started talking about culting and stuff, and I'd already been doing my own research on the side, so he'd ask me questions, and I'm like, well,

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I can tell you a lot of things about the gospel right now, how about we exchange information, and then it just went, all went from there.

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So it was kind of like God brought it together, and we just really want to, you know, engage the kingdom of darkness with the power of the gospel, so that's pretty much the aim of Cultish, is we want to see all of it be put under the foot of Christ, and see people come to the living faith of the true and living

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God, who is Jesus Christ, so yeah. Amen. Yeah, that's awesome. So here's the cool thing about your podcast, is the fact that there's not very many podcasts out there like this.

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When I go into this space, and I'm looking for information on the cults, and anything that is cult -like, and how we explore that, how we witness to, how we explain that, understand that with a

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Christian worldview, there's not a lot of stuff out there, and I think that's also why you guys have become so popular, and so many people really appreciate what you guys do.

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You know, we just played that clip on Enneagram, and I had been introduced to Enneagram a few years ago, and, you know, didn't really know the background of it until I started doing a little research myself, and then what you guys fleshed out over the last few weeks on some of your episodes is just really insane.

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Would you mind speaking a little bit about that, because I know Enneagram is very popular within churches, and then also it's a very popular episode for you guys, a lot of feedback on, you know, how that came about for you.

06:49

Yeah, well, I'll start, and then Andrew, if you want to kind of jump in and give your thoughts on it, too. I think as a whole, like, we always deal with a broad variety, and again,

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I appreciate what you guys said. But I think one of the things we wanted to do, as far as Koltish, is we wanted to kind of really tap into the cultural conversation of what's going on.

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So even like a lot of our posts, and things we post about, we're always, it's just really to test the waters.

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Like, almost all of our posts, if you notice, we always sort of are just asking questions, because we're really just kind of looking to get people's opinion.

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It's the same thing if you go on iTunes, or if you go to the App Store, and you go to some product, you want to say, what do people like, what do people don't like about this app?

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We'll spend 30 minutes looking at the review of what's that messenger, find out what people do like and don't like about it.

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So in the same way, we always like to pay attention to what people are talking about consistently.

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We did our initial episodes on Bessel, because when we first launched Koltish, we were getting a lot of messages about Bessel consistently.

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And so we kind of noticed that was the same thing with the Enneagram. And so we were just kind of waiting for the right person to come along.

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And we were kind of following a lot of Marsha Montenegro stuff. We saw her presentation, the second

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American Gospel film, that we just reached out to her, we kind of really just gave the platform to her.

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And you know, we read her book. And in many ways, I mean, she, she's, she loves to talk.

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I think in the first episode, we chatted for like 40 minutes afterwards. But I think a big thing was just all right.

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A lot of ways, like we're not experts on the Enneagram, we weren't going into the episode, I think we just want to find someone who's an expert, who's notable, who can give information.

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And, you know, hopefully, like we will, we always want to do is not be overly preachy. But to kind of bring up a point because people just kind of initiate and start a conversation about this.

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Yeah, absolutely. That's why, you know, as you play in the clip, I was saying, well, this is the origins of this. If the whole foundation of this thing is around, is formulated around spirit contact, that God forbid, maybe you should have second thoughts about this, you know, so it's really, that's kind of how it came about is just a lot of people were talking about it is on a lot of people's minds.

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And then we post about it. And, you know, we get messages saying, hey, my pastor is, is preaching about the

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Enneagram. There's this new Enneagram small group, there's this new Enneagram certification, and we're just kind of left and right.

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So hopefully, I think that and so we just kind of went and just wanted to just do as good of a job as possible with a really good conversation to really get people to think and challenge people.

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So yeah, that's my thought. What do you think, Andrew? Yeah, I think whenever we are, you know, dealt a topic or a question on what exactly is going on in the church today, in terms of like New Age practices, the first thing we want to do is we want to say, well, is it actually a

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New Age practice, right, before we even start doing interviews. So we want to have a foundation or a basis on which we can actually say, yes, this is actually an occult practice.

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So we would move forward with the episode, and we know that God denounces these types of practices of the occult and sorcery and things of that nature in Deuteronomy 18.

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So once we actually started reading Richard Gordon and Andy Graham's secret, we found, you know, that Oscar Ochoazo, getting information from G .I.

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Gurchess and his proponents, going and taking psychedelic drugs and contacting

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Hugh Spears, one named Metatron, and the other one named Futib, not Futib, but Futib, and getting information specifically handled from psychedelic drugs and then giving it to his proponents,

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Claudio and Naranjo, who then, through automatic writing, developed the personality assessment to the

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Enneagram. So in terms of how we want to handle the situation, we know that there's people who use the

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Christian language that we have, but they have different definitions and different meanings, right?

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So they speak Christianese, as you probably heard Pastor Jeff say. And that's a problem, right? Impastors shouldn't be aware of what they're getting with their body, so if it's a problem like that that we see that's going on today, after we test the waters, as Jerry said, we will definitely tackle it, and it needs to be said, we need to be exposed in darkness, right?

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So that's kind of the focus on the Enneagram. Yeah, you guys have had so many different topics on your podcast,

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I mean, everything from Jehovah's Witnesses to Mormonism to, I mean, you went into the

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New Age, and we're actually about to have Stephen Bancar's on next week, actually, which should be a lot of fun.

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Yeah, man, we're excited about that one. But, you know, the biggest thing, I think Jerry, or whoever, or Andrew, I don't know who put it up today, but on Instagram you put up the

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Supernatural Time Magazine article, and National Geographic, that's what it was, okay, and you know,

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I mean, that's exactly what everyone is trying to tap into now. Would you guys, do you guys see that across the board?

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I mean, that nailed the, you know, you hit that on the head right there with that magazine.

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That is what we're looking at in our culture right now. That's right.

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Think about this, guys. So, real quick, if we think about the atheistic worldview, right, what we're doing right now, we're tapping into pagan practices of the bastard children of the atheistic worldview, right?

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It's a failed boomer as parents, and now these children are trying to, you know, at a point in history, they're trying to find purpose and meaning in life, and something that's really just going to enslave them.

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So we're seeing the culmination of a worldview that has denounced God, right, a culmination of a worldview in a system of people and judgment, you know, and it's really sad.

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Yeah. Hey. Yeah. And Andrew, really quick, Andrew, when you're not talking, can you just mute the phone?

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We're getting a lot of feedback, I think, from Andrew's phone, because, yeah, I think so, because when Jerry's talking, we're not getting that.

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Oh, actually, whenever I'm not talking, I have been muting, and it's still been going Oh, okay.

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Maybe it's Jerry. He must have a bad connection, but we'll clean it up in post, but no big deal. Yeah, so go ahead,

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Jerry. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah, I was just gonna, I was gonna piggyback on what Andrew was saying.

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I think it's very much indicative. The last couple times I've been in Whole Foods, or in Sprouts, or a lot of other places, you know, you're just seeing a lot more books in relation to different chakra, cleaning, you know, there's a book on witches, secret societies, all the fringe stuff.

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And I think it's indicative, like Walter Martin talked about it. Whenever you have a culture that just has this, there's a swing towards secularization, and this happened with the sexual revolutions back in the 60s and 70s.

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There was a big explosion of the occult then, and even in times historically prior to that, because,

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I mean, ancient paganism has been around, and it's really repackaged Gnosticism that's been at war with Christianity since the incarnation of Christ.

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But right now, I think because of the fact that, you know, 2020 in many ways has been just sort of indicative of everyone, like we've been on this rapid path towards secularization, and almost this has sort of been the culmination of it in many ways.

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But what you're seeing too is that there's just this ring, this is, we're already off the cliff of Western, as far as, you know, any form of absolute truth in regards to Western civilization, we're in free fall.

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And because of that, there's just this vacuum, because people, you know, we think about biblically, people know

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God, but there's oppressive truth and unrighteousness, and people know inherently there is this invisible and unseen realm, but they're going towards idols in different ways to try and fill that void.

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So I, it's just my conviction that that's going to be the direction that culture is going to be moving towards in the future, just because we're still going to be dealing with cults, but I think just the aspect of the supernatural and the unseen realm is just going to be something that's very needed.

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I think there needs to be a very, there needs to be a creative and formative apologetic for understanding the role of psychedelics,

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DMT, especially when it's being normalized by Joe Rogan. I mean, I met you guys at Fight Last Feast.

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On the way there, I was listening to a podcast on Joe Rogan, the two guys who were on, who were talking about the role of psychedelics, and were trying to argue that the early

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Christian church were actually using psychedelics, when they were taking verses out of context, like Paul being caught up in the third heaven, or even the aspects of the early

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Christians drinking communion in an unworthy manner and coming under judgment, because they were sort of trying to indicate that that was their way of trying to explain, you know, using, drinking psychedelics that are going to get them into an ultrasated consciousness.

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Honestly, ridiculous to get out of context, but again, that's on the, but the

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Joe Rogan experience is the digital Areopagus of the world. That's where a lot of people go to get their information, and when you have someone like Joe Rogan, who used to really be an atheist, but now it's popularized in the world of psychedelics, you're going to have, you know, kids are going to be asking questions, like, and especially, you know, a lot of, we have a lot of moms and young women who listen to our podcast, and they have kids, and are raising them up, they need to have, they got to be prepared for conversations to have with them, about, hey mom, like, what, is microdosing okay?

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Like, those are conversations that are going to be a lot more normalized, and I think that's, that's where the direction of cultures is headed, because I think that's where the culture at large is headed as well, too.

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So, that's kind of my thoughts on the subject. Yeah, I think that goes back to the first point I made, too, why your podcast is so important, because,

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I mean, that type of talk where you're talking about Christianity coming from mushrooms and Neanderthals, you know, evolving into humans because of psychedelics and things like that, you know, that was something that used to just be talked about, you know, among a couple people getting high in a basement somewhere, and now we're legitimizing it with, you know, millions and millions of listeners through Joe Rogan, to where they're actually trying to, you know, like I said, legitimize this theory of DMT and all these different things, being in the early church, when in fact, there's absolutely no proof to it.

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So, what you guys are doing on the podcast is really important for this generation, because two,

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I think we've kind of came back, and I'm 39, so in the 80s and 90s, it was very, well, mostly the 80s, very spiritual, if you remember, everything was a spiritual, you know, demonic attack, or there was spiritual warfare with the

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Frank Peretti books, and everything was kind of very spiritual, and then in the 90s and 2000s, we kind of moved as a culture a little more towards religion, and now

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I feel like everything's moving towards, well, I'm not, I don't go to church, I don't believe in a religion,

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I'm spiritual, right, which is like, what does that even mean? But I feel, when you say that, when you have a culture that is espousing to that, they're going to move right into all those topics that you're talking about on your podcast, from Enneagram, to yoga, to Bethel stuff, to NAR, to, you know, to, who was the guy you just had on a few weeks ago, too, talking about Christology, and kind of the

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New Age idea of the Christ spirit, versus, you know, Jesus and Christ being two different people, which was a very interesting, you know, two different things, which was a very interesting topic as well.

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So, you guys are, how long have you guys been doing cultish? Are you coming up on a couple years now? They just passed their 100th episode.

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Yeah. October 2018. Yeah, 100 episodes, and, yeah, October 2018 is when we launched.

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And so, yeah, a little over two years. So, what were some things, because Jason and I have this experience where we'll have a guest on, and we'll talk about a subject, and we'll get done with the episode and go, wow, there were some really cool things we learned there, something we didn't expect.

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What were some subjects, or maybe some things on the podcast over the last two years there, you walked away and you went,

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I would have never thought that, or I never connected those things, or, wow, that's extremely interesting.

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I never believed that or was taught that. What were some of the surprises along the way? Andrew, I'm going to let you go first on this one.

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All right, brother. All right. So, okay. What blew my mind is actually some of the first research that we ever did with M.

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Jones. So, with M. Jones, we actually saw, deep into the research, about 30 or 40 years prior to him, was pretty much the first woke social gospel movement.

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And it's something that's never talked about, especially within terms of how Marxism entered into the church.

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Like, there's a quote straight up from Jim Jones where he said, and I thought, how could I demonstrate my Marxism? And my thought was, infiltrate the church.

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So, whenever we hear a story about Jim Jones and the people in Guyana where they drank the

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Kool -Aid and 913 of them died, no one thinks of that. They just think of a Christian cult.

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But the truth is, he was actually one of the first New Age proponents that had massive amounts of death.

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He was part of the New Thought movement. And there were two people prior to him.

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There was Father Divine of the Peace Mission Movement. And then prior to him was

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Father Jehovah. And this was the New Thought, New Age type of thinking.

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And essentially what we're seeing today is the same thing. They preach the same type of thing.

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I don't know. It just blows my mind. I've done even research before on Jim Jones, but I never found anything in terms of the

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New Age, New Thought link and the woke Marxism gospel, which is, you know, we saw the fruits of that with Jim Jones.

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Now we've got people coming back to it today. Yeah, that's crazy to think about that. Woke Christianity has been around for that long.

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I feel like it's a new kind of idea that we've been tossing around for just the last couple of years, in fact. How about you,

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Jerry? Well, there's a lot of ones. One comes specifically, for example,

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I think I learned a lot about really seeing both sides of the story when it comes to the whole

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Bethel conversation. You know, it was just when we had first launched Cultist, like I said, we were getting messages to talk about Bethel.

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And so I didn't really, I kind of knew about Bill Johnson and passing. I think

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I saw a movie a couple of years prior called Holy Ghost, which is directed by a filmmaker named

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Deer Wilson. I had Todd White in it. We had a couple of placement sessions. He's from Monroe.

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I grew up with him and went to church with him for 10 years. Oh, okay. I mean, the guy's a talented filmmaker for sure.

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And it was definitely, I remember the film just being compelling and interesting enough to where at least I kind of like, from there on out,

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I kind of recognized who Bill Johnson was when I'd sort of see him shared on some video or something. But I didn't really pay too much attention to it.

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I mean, I kind of saw it sort of within, all right, this is a guy who's off in a lot of areas. I'll kind of leave it to the

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Justin Peters crowd to critique him and stuff like that, which is totally fine. It was just when we got continued messages about it, and I got ahold of Lindsay Davis on Facebook.

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And it was just the initial thought was, hey, let me just get her on the podcast to find out what happened and why she got kicked out.

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And I mean, the podcast just exploded. And so a big part of me was just trying to make sense of like, why is there so much tension behind this conversation?

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Why is this such a big deal? And through that process, it's just interesting because we ended up getting

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Elijah Stevens on, who is a BSSM teacher. That was just an interesting conversation because we chose to kind of hear it from the horse's mouth and just to have a conversation with him.

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Like people were upset at us because they kind of wanted us to kind of fight with him and maybe like beat him over the head. But that wasn't the purpose.

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I mean, he was as close to the horse's mouth. And I think if we were going to have this thing where we're going to constantly jump on him,

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I don't think it would have been a fruitful conversation. But it was just very interesting in hindsight of that series with Elijah.

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Because in many ways, I think that I believe that he's a brother in the Lord and that he is sincere.

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It's just a very interesting place. And this is not anything, this is something I would say directly to him.

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I've had conversations with him privately. I believe he's in a place where he understands his problems at Bethel.

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But I think in many ways, Bethel has this honor culture where you're supposed to honor your leaders, in a sense, and maybe challenging them on areas that they have is considered dishonoring.

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Not that it's like in a way like you can't talk or be shunned. I think it's just part of their culture. So it seems like he's kind of in a rock and a hard place.

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It sounds like he's kind of jumping around the issues. And I don't think he was trying to do that.

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I think he was trying to measure, trying to kind of like weave his way in between, like saying those problems within Bethel and have a conversation about it.

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But also not in any way talk bad about the leadership, because that would be dishonoring to him.

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I think that's the mindset in which he was operating. And I think as a whole, it was a theory.

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And Andrew, you probably would have, because Andrew and I, you can affirm the same, Andrew, is that I think after the Elijah Stevens episode, we kind of chose, our episodes are still there.

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We kind of chose for the time being, it's always just a matter of conviction to kind of like walk away for a bit from the whole

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Bethel conversation. Because in many ways, there's a lot of serious problems there.

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But as a whole, I believe it does belong to the discernment realm. So I'm confident in the fact that if I went to Bethel Reading and came across some

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BSSM students or some people from Bethel, I think there's a way higher probability that I'm talking with someone who's a brother or sister in the

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Lord with probably a lot of serious errors that need to be talked about in seriousness.

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But it's a big difference between talking to someone who's a cult member or someone like that.

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And just one thing that's really interesting, too, is that just out of conviction, we kind of chose to stay quiet for a while on Bethel.

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And then last year, do you guys remember the whole wake up all of a sudden that happened? Sure. Yep. Yeah.

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And that was definitely one of those points where we kind of realized that Bethel in many ways is still kind of teetering the fine line on a tightrope in many ways of anyone who goes too far in 2

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John. And so I think if Bethel does go that route, they're going to get there on the road without our help.

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I think that the wake up all of was kind of one of those moments where it was starting to get alarming and concerning because in many ways, not just praying for resurrection, which

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God can do anything, but almost commanding and demanding it while this little girl is still in the morgue.

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And I'm talking about it now. At the time, though, we were getting inundated with hundreds of messages just saying, hey, what are your thoughts on this whole wake up all of thing?

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And I chose during that time just to stay quiet and not say a word about it, just because as concerning as that theology is,

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I was struggling with the fact that this is still someone's daughter and someone is grieving right now.

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Someone just lost their daughter. And as a man, as a single man who doesn't have any kids.

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And I've had friends who lost a child similar at a similar age and saw them grieve as their child died unexpectedly.

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It just seems very out of place for me to really talk about it. But I was just confident that, you know, and like the verse that came to mind was the

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Lord will fight for you. You need only be still. And so while we didn't say a word on that whole wake up all of thing, our podcast shot up to maybe number seven or eight on iTunes, just under religion and spirituality, just because everyone was going back and digging up the old pot of the old episode.

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So, yeah, I think holistically, I think in the past few years, it's kind of going through the whole process of having that big episode, you know, and just hearing the other side, which is challenging.

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And hopefully in the future, we're going to get people on, not just, or, you know, we want to, we mostly talk to people who are

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Christian. Like we're hoping to be able to get people on, you know, even someone like Tom DeLonge or someone like that or anyone else, like a cult survivor who's not a

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Christian. I think those are good conversations to have as well. But, yeah,

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I think just understanding that whole, having a podcast that episodes were successful and big as Bethel.

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And in many ways, kind of making the decision to sort of step away from it, not in any way as like a political or PR thing, just a matter of conviction.

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I believe this is really where it's at. And I believe we've done enough at this point in time to contribute to the conversation.

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And, you know, we hope that maybe it'll be indicative that they'll get their act together or people, you know, at least within the

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Pentecostal realm, they'll develop a lot more determined to stay away from movements like that, or at least they can hopefully get their message cleaned up.

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So, that's my long -tailed answer. Yeah, I think you showed wisdom and discernment there. I mean, you know, for someone who is not inside of the whole

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NAR and the Bethel movement, it is hard not to just almost make fun or make light or just continuously hammer it because it's so absolutely ridiculous.

29:22

I mean, you get into some of the stuff that they're doing, the Christian tarot cards and the yoga and the grave soaking and the, you know, and the sozo and the inner healing and all this stuff.

29:33

And, you know, sometimes I forget there's believers out there that maybe, you know, not mature in the faith or not sanctified and don't understand that they kind of need to be walked through that.

29:43

So, I totally get that because we've caught ourselves even here on this podcast going, okay, maybe we shouldn't mention that again or take it in that manner because it is a serious issue.

29:51

But on the other side of that, I would encourage you that there are many, many millions of Christians being influenced by Bethel and the

30:00

NAR movement. And brothers, anything you guys can do on your podcast to stand for truth and stand for the word of God and to preach truth and love,

30:07

I would encourage you to do that. You know, obviously take it before the Lord and make that decision when the time comes.

30:12

But those episodes that you do on that subject matter, I think are so woefully important. Absolutely.

30:19

I could not agree more. Let me ask you this, Jason, did you have something you were nodding your head over? No, no, no.

30:24

I mean, yeah, he was, Jeremiah was talking about cult leaders. Well, he wasn't talking about cult leaders. He was talking about Bethel.

30:31

Same thing. Let me just, I'll step away from that, what I was about to say. But, you know, that was the main thing that most cults, that's how they run, you know.

30:43

You can't say anything about the leader. You can't say anything about the person that is in charge.

30:50

Because if you do, and you're against them, you are in some trouble.

30:55

Well, that's what Dwayne said from Bar Podcast. He works with Just Thinking. I don't know if you guys know Dwayne Atkinson from the Bar, but he was an apostle.

31:03

He was just on the podcast two weeks ago and he said, man, you have to jump on board with those guys and just agree and, you know, and basically support each other and you can't dishonor.

31:13

And if someone says they saw a leg grow out, no matter if you saw it or not, you say you saw it too. And he was just, he said, that's what actually turned him away from that and got him into Reformed Theology was just kind of him self -reflecting and going, is this stuff even real?

31:28

I mean, I'm living a lie. He said he even had a story that he would tell that he had to embellish, you know, to make it seem a certain way.

31:35

But we don't want to make the whole program about Bethel either. I have a question for you guys.

31:40

Do you guys do just so on Cultish, which listeners, if you're listening now, make sure you go over to Apple, Spotify, Google, anywhere you get podcasts, you can get

31:48

Cultish, download it, check it out, stream it. But do you guys do just things that are officially labeled as a cult or do you also do things that could be cult -like?

32:00

Because I told Jason, I said, you know, I've been involved in local, state and federal politics for 12 years.

32:06

I've ran campaigns. I'm elected county commissioner. I've been to Washington, to the White House, the whole thing. Politics is a cult.

32:13

I don't care what you say. When you get in it and you talk to other people in the way that, you know, a great example is we just elected a guy in the state legislature and the former state legislator said, oh, yeah, he's a great guy and campaigned for him for a year.

32:25

And then the day he got elected, he was talking to me and another guy. And he goes, I wouldn't trust that guy as far as I can spit. And it's like, well, you just supported him for a year.

32:32

You donated money. You got him elected. But it's this whole thing where it's like, you know, you scratch your back,

32:38

I scratch mine. Like next guy in line. It's a whole cult. And I was just wondering, do you guys ever tackle subjects like that that might not be classically labeled as cultish but could be cult -like?

32:51

Yeah, I think we did an episode this past year called A Cultist's Day at the Union where we just talked about current affairs.

32:59

And, in fact, you guys know Darren Doan. He made a really good point. If you guys are listening, check out the

33:05

Doan cast. Darren Doan has so many great insights, especially when he's looking at how to build brands in today's day and age.

33:15

But, you know, he talked about, in many ways, polarization is the new marketing. In a sense to where now there's no neutrality.

33:24

Everyone wants to know where you stand. How do you feel about social distancing?

33:29

How do you feel about masks? Are you voting for Trump? Are you going to do—be it when the

33:36

George Floyd thing happened—are you going to do a blackout on your Instagram? Why didn't you do a blackout?

33:42

And all of a sudden now, with Elliot Page, people are playing Naples. And now he is no longer

33:50

Ellen. Yeah. And so now everything is on the tables.

33:56

But, in many ways, people want to know what's your opinion on this. So I think going out and kind of stating your position on politics is there.

34:04

And I think one of the advantages, too, of Cultish is that we kind of have the ability just to kind of interchange our topics.

34:10

So, yeah, we could talk about politics in many different ways. It's definitely Cultish. You could even talk about COVID, about people being conditioned to be afraid of something that, statistically shown, has got a 99 .99

34:25

% survival rate. I was at—I was trying to get some coffee this morning. I was meeting up with someone for coffee.

34:32

And I was going to get something to eat at this one little dinery over where I was meeting up for a match.

34:39

The place wasn't open. They had one small little window for takeout. And it was in front.

34:45

And I'm standing on a public sidewalk. And they're asking me to put on the mask, even though they're inside and I'm outside on the sidewalk.

34:53

And I told them no. I'm on a public sidewalk. Oh, you said heck no. Boom. Yeah. No, I just said—I just looked at them, and I was just like, you've got to be like, no.

35:04

Right. And I was, like, laughing at her as she looked at me. But it was just sad because, I mean, this lady looked like deer in the headlights.

35:11

Like, I was on the verge—like, I could give her the death sentence because I'm standing outside, you know, probably about four feet away.

35:18

I'm like, do you want me to step away a foot? Would you feel more safe? So, but it just goes—I'm not trying to mock her, but I'm showing for example that.

35:26

And that way people are, you know, in many ways conditioned to think about it a certain way and just be programmed in many ways just to be fearful.

35:34

So you definitely see that happening. So, yeah, there's a lot of different ways to explore politics. I mean, one of my favorite all -time cults that I want to hopefully explore next year is the whole story of Waco, Texas, with David Koresh and the

35:46

Branch Savinians. I mean, really, the untold story isn't about David Koresh. It's about the cult of sadism and how they abused their authority and power to murder those men, women, and children.

35:57

Absolutely. It doesn't make David Koresh a good person by any means, but if you look behind, like, what happened, there were good people within the

36:04

FBI who wanted to resolve it peacefully. But there were people who, I think in many ways, wanted retribution for the

36:11

APF agents that were killed initially. That's why there's documented evidence that nerve gas was used in the final raid of Waco.

36:20

You also have pictures of different federal agents who were posing outside of the charred remains of Waco after it burned down, posing in victory.

36:31

Wasn't David Koresh in a top 40s cover band?

36:39

Did you know that? Was he? Yeah, he was. I know he's a musician.

36:46

If you look up his music, he's pretty good, actually. Sorry, I cut you off.

36:53

I was just thinking. Yeah, so there's a lot of things when it comes to the role of private property, being able to defend yourself, those sorts of things.

37:02

I mean, a lot of people don't know that the branch civilians were trying to go out. They tried to resolve it peacefully.

37:08

They called the local sheriff and they said, like, there's a 911 call you can listen to saying, hey, there's men, women, and children here calling off.

37:16

You know, and like I said, it was just, there's a lot of complexities between they thought like the

37:22

FBI and even people, the good people who are trying to resolve it. They were seeing it as kind of like a hostage crisis negotiation, where eventually you kind of weaken their ability or make their life more difficult.

37:34

You shut off their electricity. You, you know, you play loud noises. You blast like they're blaring

37:41

Nancy Sinatra. These boots are made for walking. You know, and in fact, in a weird way, like that song was prophetic, just because of the fact that in the song,

37:53

Nancy Sinatra says these boots were made for walking. I can't remember the middle standard. It's just one of these days these boots are going to walk all over you.

38:00

And that's exactly like what happened when the tanks rolled in and like burned down the compound.

38:07

But, you know, they're blaring that music like late into the night, trying to keep them up. But a lot of times what cults have is a persecution complex that reinforces their identity.

38:20

So instead of weakening the resolve, it reinforces their position. And if you think about it, too, when you have

38:28

David Koresh, who's giving his apocalyptic visions of revelation, saying that he's the one to unveil the seven seals and all the forces of the world are going to come upon them.

38:37

And all of a sudden you see helicopters and ATF agents storming into Mount Carmel.

38:44

How much would that just reinforce everything that has been said?

38:50

So, yeah, there's a lot of different ways. So what do you think about this, Andrew? What's your thought on it?

38:56

You go ahead. No, it sounds like you have some episodes coming up here. Yeah, I can't wait for that.

39:02

You got some good subject matter. Yeah, what is the future looking like for you guys here? The future's bright, you know.

39:13

It's good. We got a lot of things. We got a lot of topics. Andrew, why don't you answer that question? I got it kind of rampant the last time.

39:19

No, no, you're good. You're good, brother. So, yeah, the vision, I mean, it's all encompassing, right?

39:25

So when we think of cults, we can think of a counterfeit gospel, a counterfeit spirit, and a counterfeit Jesus, right?

39:32

Which presupposes that there is a truth. And we know that Jesus is supreme, that we have his objective standards, his word.

39:39

So even in terms of looking at cultish government movements, it's as simple as saying that, well, any government that is formed, that does not abide to the principles which

39:49

God states to pursue the sovereignty of what the government should have in the Bible, right? If they don't abide by those principles, they're pretty much a cult government.

39:57

They're a counterfeit government because they're not abiding to the king of kings. So in terms of the vision of cultism, it's essentially all encompassing, right?

40:04

From looking at politics to looking at cults. But our vision we want to have in the future is we want to create a platform where we can, you know, equip people so they can have conversations out in the daily with all kinds of different types of people so they can actually have a place where they can go to get equipped.

40:25

To actually have videos of actually engaging in conversations and, you know, all kinds of stuff, man.

40:32

We want to get more people in our church involved and create like a, not like an organization, but just something where people can go so we can get equipped.

40:41

It's not just a counterfeit worldview that's going on right now that's propagating. That's pretty much the vision of our cult issue.

40:49

That's awesome. So guys, as we finish up here, can you just tell the listeners where they can find you guys at, what social media platforms you're on, and how even they can get in contact with you if they want to maybe suggest subjects or have some questions?

41:06

Yeah, I would say just go to Look Up Cultist on Facebook. And we're there.

41:13

You'll see our logo there. Also, we are on Instagram. So if you type in TheCultistShow, just type in TheCultistShow, you'll see us.

41:21

We got a pretty big following there. And yeah, and also if you go to TheCultistShow .com, that's our official website.

41:29

And also check out Apology Studios because we are under their umbrella. There's a lot of great content on that platform. We have a master show there.

41:36

Also, for any of us, we just launched a brand new merch store. So you guys have awesome merch, by the way, too.

41:42

Oh, thanks. Thank you. So are you wearing your shirt? I know.

41:47

I know. That beard oil, too, man. It's bomb .com. But yeah, we got a brand new merch store.

41:57

I've been following that on Instagram. Yeah. On Instagram, you've been posting some of the stuff.

42:03

Man, it's so cool. It is so cool. Yeah, man. I want all of it. You guys are about to get all my money. Right? Jason's going to spend all his

42:11

Christmas money at Cultist's merch store. Sorry, kids. You guys can't have any presents. Did you guys do those designs yourself?

42:17

Did you hire someone out? Or did you guys kind of have the idea and have someone else do the graphics? Because those are very unique, very cool. Yeah. Yeah, we hired someone who's a very talented graphic designer.

42:29

And so he's a very talented guy. So we kind of reached out to him and kind of gave him the concept.

42:36

I think one of the things I like, too, is that I believe in Cultist is really it's not just me that runs it.

42:45

It's just a whole collaboration of people. So I think always the best thing to do is to give people as much creative freedom as possible.

42:53

I just kind of give people a loose idea. And since this is kind of what I'm looking for, go make something. And so that's how those designs came about.

43:02

And they're fantastic. And we've got a lot of cool things in the future. We actually have a new logo we're going to be debuting.

43:09

Kind of like a Cultist 2 .0. Sweet. You heard it here first on Dead Man Walking. The new

43:15

Cultist logo. I love it. Very cool. So cool. So for everyone listening, if they want to go get some merch, shop cultist .com.

43:23

Like I said, a lot of cool stuff out there. Jason, did you have any final words before we wrap up here? No. No, this is good.

43:28

This is great. Jerry, Andrew, I appreciate you guys coming on so much and talking about the podcast a little bit.

43:34

Listeners, make sure you go check them out, Cultist. I mean, you Google it. They'll come right up.

43:39

They come right to the top, so it's an easy one to get to. And as always, guys, thanks for listening and commenting.

43:45

And, you know, geez, we had 100 ,000 interactions on Facebook last month. You guys are really interactive on the

43:51

Facebook and on Instagram. I just said the Facebook. The Facebook. Like I'm 90. The Facebook. No, that's what it was called before.

43:57

Remember? That's true. The Facebook. See, I'm OG. That's what it is. Right, baby. Vintage, baby. The Facebook.

44:02

Obviously, Dead Men Walking podcast on YouTube, Parler, Instagram, Facebook, all those different places.

44:08

We love that you guys comment, give us constructive criticism. You know, Jerry, Andrew, we thank you so much for coming on, guys, and we wish you all the best in Cultist.

44:17

I think you're really doing something special on that podcast, and we're always here to support you for it. Yep. Awesome, bro.

44:25

Awesome, bro. All right, guys. Thanks for listening, and as always, God bless.

44:31

Yep. God bless you guys. Thanks, guys. Hey, thank you guys. Seriously, this has been awesome.