Cultish: Fan Episode @ ReformCon

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Hey, what's up, everyone? This is Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co -hosts here at Cultus. I want to first and foremost thank all of you who stepped up to the plate and support us and donated at the end of last year to help out our podcast.

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As we mentioned at the end of the year, we currently still stand around less than 1 % of our audience who are giving.

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We really want to try and push that up to around like 3 % to 5%, a really small amount that we just need of our audience so we can stay crowdfunded to keep going on a regular basis.

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So if you want to go to thecultusshow .com, you can go to the donate tab. You can become a monthly partner with us, or if you want to do a one -time donation, you can as well too.

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Thank you all so much for supporting us, for listening us, for sharing our content. Again, thecultusshow .com,

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go to the donate tab. All that being said, enjoy this podcast. All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Cultish.

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This is the Cultish Live here at ReformCon. We want to have an opportunity to kind of interact with people who enjoy the podcast, talk to a couple of our fans, and yeah,

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I'm super excited. So let's just jump right into it. Andrew, are you a little tired, man? I'm a little tired, but I'm doing great. Dude, snacks for days here at ReformCon.

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Yeah, usually like day three is like the gauntlet. Like, can I get through day three? They're just going to extend it to the third day, but we're here.

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We're pumped. We've got our omega snacks. We've got some energy rehydration stuff, whatever you call it.

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We've got the coffee. Coffee's always going. Awesome, man. And some leftover coffee. Yeah. I guess we need more energy.

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We'll just go for that. Yeah, so you are, what made you want it? So we're here at ReformCon. You've listened to Cultish before.

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First of all, why'd you come out to ReformCon? Sure. Well, first of all, let's say, I didn't know this was going to be live.

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I thought we're going to be edited later. So now I've got to think about what I'm going to say before I say it. This is a lot of fun. No, it was probably a few years ago.

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I just threw in Reformed Theology into a YouTube search as I was just trying to get it more educated.

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And of course, something that came up from Jeff, which then I started listening to Jeff, and then saw

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Apology Studios. And then just the amount of content that comes out of Apology Studios, I mean, it really equipping the church.

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And so I've just become a fan, like probably most people in here. And when ReformCon came up,

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I believe, maybe it was a couple years ago, like the first one or something like that. Yeah, yeah. And so wasn't able to attend, wasn't able to attend.

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And then this one came up, and I told my wife, I was like, hey, I've got to be in the room. And so here I am. And it's been a very just phenomenal event thus far.

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The teaching, the speaking, everything is just next level as Apology Studios and as this group wants to do so.

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I'm just very blessed to be here, be in the room, for sure. Yeah, man, it's awesome. It's really cool. Just because you think like all the years ago, all the years ago when

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Apology Church was just, we were a church that was 99 % people coming out with drug and alcohol addiction.

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Like if someone walked through our door, it was someone who was just fresh 30 days out of rehab. Like our nickname was like the drug church.

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And we were this ghetto church with a bunch of extradites, and we never had any money for anything. And to see like us being here right now, it's like, wow, it's really cool to see how

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God is working for sure. So yeah, I've really enjoyed the conference as well, too, getting to talk, interact with everyone.

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As far as like Coltish goes, like what episodes have you enjoyed? What has stuck out to you?

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And like, why do you think like what sticks out to you when you when you think of like the podcast and what conversations have been relevant to you?

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Well, I think that Coltish, I've listened to a handful of podcasts of what y 'all have done.

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One, there was one where y 'all talked with an ex -Mormon who kind of walked through him as leaving Mormonism and was able to kind of pick that apart.

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So it's almost like this insider's baseball of walking through that process. Dan Tate.

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I think that was it. Yeah, when he was a Mormon missionary. And so again, just the equipping side of it, of being able to have these conversations and kind of pull back the curtain of other religions, other cults, and you really look at it that way.

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And so to have a better understanding of not just what they believe, but what we believe and how we should, how we should act, how we should have a conversation with them out in real life, right?

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So it's less of a, I don't know, maybe less of a scary issue, because again, we're equipped, we're having a better understanding of this, so we're able to go out and have better conversations.

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And because of that, I've been proactive in engaging Mormons. I've been proactive in just, hey, let's have a conversation.

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Let's talk about what you believe, what Scripture believes, what's the difference, and just pointing them to truth. And it's because I've been equipped by what y 'all have done.

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So it's been a good experience. Awesome, man. Awesome. Well, yeah, well, I appreciate you coming out here, and it's just a blessing for us to make the content all the time.

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Yeah, absolutely. Hey, Paul, so what do you think, when you hear the word cult, what do you think of? I think of skewed

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Christianity, right? I don't think there's anything new under the sun. So I think with everything, they take, you know, you look at the biblical concept of what

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God has provided us, and you skew it in some way, shape, or form, and just get it off kilter just a little bit, right?

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And so I think all cults are just a skewed part of what God has deemed right fit, right?

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I don't think Satan is out there creating anything new. I think he's lying about what God has established. And so when

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I think about a cult, I think of someone who is just missing the mark and skewing some point somewhere that is leading people astray.

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That's good. Yeah. Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate you coming out here. And unless you have any other questions, we'll jump on to the next person.

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No, I just want to say thank you. I mean, y 'all are doing incredible work. I love, you know, what you're doing at Cultish. Apologies to the whole gambit of really equipping the church and helping us to go out in real life and just have engaged conversations and spread the gospel.

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So I appreciate y 'all. Awesome. Great. Thank you. Glory to God. Thank you, Paul. Very cool. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by HireBond .com.

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It's a brand new year. And if you're a single, hopefully there'll be some opportunities to find that special person in your life.

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Happy hunting, everyone. HireBond .com forward slash cultish. Back to the episode. So anyways, how are you?

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I'm good. I'm really happy to be here. I was so excited to be able to come. My husband has both, all of our kids.

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Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. So yeah. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Like why'd you come to like, what, like why'd you make the decision to come to ReformCon?

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I am, as of maybe like five years ago, a Christian now I've been saved and I'm so thankful for that.

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So just diving into theology with my husband, we're both kind of getting into reform theology now.

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And yeah, this was my opportunity. He said, you know, he grew up kind of attending different conferences and I didn't.

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So this was my chance. Yeah. And like, what have you enjoyed about the cultish podcast? Do you have any episodes that stick out to you?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely, I've really, probably the last couple of years I've been tuning in, but especially in the last year,

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I think as I've been, my family background is Catholic. So I've come from a lot of semi occult practices, you know, a lot of things surrounding death and idols and things like that.

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So for me, I wish I had known a lot of the things I'm learning from cultish to look out for, to share with my kids.

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So that's kind of what I'm taking away from cultish is learning not only what's out there, maybe ways that different cults are perverting the word and how

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I can protect my kids against that and teach them. Yeah. What do you think when it comes to, because we talked about this the other day, this would be interesting.

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We've actually never talked this about cultish, but Catholicism. Some people, would you call it a cult?

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Or when you look at church history, because we look at it, you know, we are reformed. I mean, we are pretty open about that.

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Martin Luther, he went and nailed the 95 theses with the intent to reform the church.

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So normally what you look at is that when, when typical cults have developed here in the

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United States, that's, we have a huge focus on that. They usually make a distortion.

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They usually counterfeit the authentic. In this case, this was, you know, with a consult, they were attempting to reform, like they was like, they were trying to refurbish some,

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I don't know if I could use the right illustration. Like it's a really messy piece of furniture and you're trying to like refurbish it, but it's just not redeemable.

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If that's what you can say, like, what do you think about that? In, in my, in my thoughts is like, this may be controversial, but this is coming from being

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Catholic for 20 years. And that was my life growing up, stepping away from it now and actually reading the

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Bible for the first time and learning truth. I'm of the mindset that they have perverted

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Jesus and what his abilities are to save us. Because, you know, you see that you need saints, you need

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Mary, the co -redemptrix, you need intercession, not from Jesus, but from others. And you're praying to dead people, which the

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Bible is a no -no. So in, in my mind, that has definitely perverted the gospel and, and, and if it is self -evident or not.

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So I'm not sure, I mean, when you get into the more occult, dark practices, it gets kind of culty.

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It feels in that way. And I think also kind of, you give any pushback, any biblical evidence to some of these claims to a devout

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Catholic, it's not like a discussion that can be had necessarily. It's a very knee -jerk, extreme response.

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Like if you say anything, kind of bring up things about Mary, bring up things, even about Martin Luther, I think they kind of hate Martin Luther. And, but they think like we worship him.

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And so you bring up, well, he, he didn't even want to leave the Catholic faith. He just wanted to bring it back to what he, you know, biblical truth, but they saw him as such an extremist.

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So you get immediately, why do you hate Mary? I thought, I never said I hated Mary. I think

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Mary was a special person, but she wasn't special because of her own right. She was special because God picked her.

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He didn't pick her because she was special. They believe that she was sinless her whole life. And if you talk to a devout

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Catholic, they'll tell you that that meant that her mother was also sinless, Mary's mother. And it just goes further and further back.

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It really, it gets, you know, kind of hairy. So that's crazy. Yeah. It can be a lot to process.

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And even just like trying to have a casual conversation and bring in a little bit of biblical truth, just to add some questions to it, it can become hours and, and it just gets down this rabbit hole that you thought this was never the intention, but there's so many, it's so complicated.

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Is it like your immediate family's like dynamic now that you've come to Protestant Christianity? For sure. I have a friend that he says that he's

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Catholic, but it's, it's not there. And I called my aunt one time, she's very devout and she does a lot of pro -life work.

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So I'm not disparaging Catholics in any way. I think that, you know, there's a lot of good in good, great

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Catholics. There are a lot of Catholics that are saved, I'm sure. But I think, you know, just having this conversation with my aunt and saying, how do you approach people that are even perverting

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Catholicism and perverting, you know, just biblical basic truth. And it became a two and a half hours debate.

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And really I asked her a very simple question. I said, do you know why Mary said she needed a savior?

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I mean, ultimately she, she, she knew that Jesus was her savior and she was thankful for him.

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And she couldn't answer the question. She refused to answer the question. It affronted her. So it's, it can, it can get difficult, you know?

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Yeah. So thinking back to growing up as a Roman Catholic, what did you think about Jesus when you heard about him when you were young?

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I hate to say it. I mean, we didn't really talk about him that much. It's, it's kind of weird. It's more like, obviously

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Mary and the saints are emphasized a lot. And if anything, you almost think of Jesus, just like baby

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Jesus. And a lot of times, like I'm Mexican. So in, in Spanish, you know, you hear a lot of Diosito lindo.

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My, like a little precious God almost. Diosito is to minimize. And then lindo is like cute kind of thing.

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A lot of it is very, it really takes kind of away from his majesty. It's really interesting.

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Yeah. So the occult, when you look at the occult, it's always syncretistic. You mentioned some of your, like you're kind of dabbled it when you were younger.

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So there's a distinction between like how the occult is practiced in India versus New Orleans, the superstitions that are there versus the folklore in the backwoods of West Virginia.

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It's always different. And the same thing too, is with Mexico. Like I've always seen people message about us where there's always,

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I forget the exact name of the group, but it kind of blends in with like Catholicism.

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And it ends up being like a hybrid that's actually separate from Catholicism, but it's like a bit of both. Well, it's interesting.

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If you look at like Dia de los Muertos, there are definitely places, like my family doesn't practice that, but there are definitely places where they do celebrate it.

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And I mean, the Catholic church, their local parish will host it. You know, they host like festivities for that.

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So while they pretend that like the Catholic church just has overall rules for everyone, it does vary by region what they will allow and even, you know, condone kind of thing.

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Yeah. What do you know about the day of the dead? I mean, that's a big thing in Mexican culture. I mean, it seems because people are asking us, we did the episode talking about Halloween and its historical origins.

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And when I did our research, not too much showed up around the day of the dead. What do you know about that?

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I think it's, you know, a lot of ancestry worship, a lot of praying.

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I think the, you know, I mean, even in Catholic beliefs, you can pray for the repose of a soul for purgatory.

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So death is very heavily involved. We think we can help the dead even when they're gone already. So to pray to ancestors, to ask for wisdom, to ask for blessings is kind of natural.

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They easily go together. And then do you think, because you mentioned too, who people might be in the

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Catholic church who are saved, who are Christians. I definitely would agree with that. Do you think it might be a situation where it's like they're saved in spite of the

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Catholic church? Just because, I mean, if you just look on very, very face value, if you look at the

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Council of Trent, I mean, the Council are just a kind of bearing mark, but that in the Council of Trent has stated that anyone who didn't believe in salvation by grace through faith alone, that's anathema.

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They've never, the Catholic church has never retracted that. But it's, again, a lot of people are just going in.

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Like, what do you think about that? I think there's overall, there's so much tradition in the

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Catholic church. I think you don't, most people don't dive deeper. They don't get into the kind of crazier things that you might hear about.

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So even I have kind of an estranged grandma and I saw her for the first time a couple weeks ago. And we were talking about this because she didn't realize

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I had left the Catholic church. So we were talking about it and she told me, well, once a Catholic, always a Catholic. And I said, technically

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I'm anathema, but she had no idea what the Council of Trent was. So most people don't learn about those kinds of things.

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My personal background, I always had questions. And even in high school, my mom had me do a year long course for confirmation, just me and the priest.

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Super awkward. And so I did this year long course and it got to the day of confirmation. She had flown my grandparents in and like, we lived overseas.

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So it was a big deal for my grandparents to come and, you know, be there. They were going to be my grandparents, my godparents. And I was crying in my room and I told her,

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I don't want to do this. Like I had told her for the longest time, but I, as her child, you know, I went through the class and I obeyed and everything, but I told her

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I don't want to do this because I know this doesn't feel right in my heart. And I think that's kind of my, my background was

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I always had questions. I didn't understand certain things didn't make sense to me. And I had,

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I had one time a family member that we were at a wedding and everybody's going to for confession.

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And my, my, my, one of my siblings asked, you know, oh, so are you going to go do confession? My cousin said, why?

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I can just talk to God. And I thought that resonates with me. That makes so much sense to me, but they're trying to, you know, force everyone to believe that that's not a connection that you can have directly.

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I'm sorry. I probably got off on a tangent. This is really good. Yeah. No, we're just chatting. This is what podcasting is.

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It's really cool to, to be able to dive into this stuff because only my husband and I really talk about it. Right. My whole side of the family is

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Mexican and they're all Catholic and I love them. I love them so much. And oh, we're talking about salvation. I do.

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I think that, that, yeah, once you get into it deeper, maybe there are places where it's like, that is true idol worship and you won't give it up.

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And that's really tough. But I think that there are definitely Catholics that just love God and they're listening to instruction and at mass, to be honest, you don't get that much

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Bible. So they're not hearing something that would oppose their view and the traditions that are being presented to them.

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Yeah. And even we talked about this yesterday and Andrew, I'll let you, give you your thoughts too. I mean, both like, if you compare like Matt Walsh versus Michael Knowles, I mean, both are seem to be really nice guys.

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Yeah. Really intelligent. I've really thought through a lot of different things. Both are Catholic, but like, you'd there be distinction, like at least from my perspective of Matt Walsh who grew up in the

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Catholic church versus Michael Knowles, who was an atheist, but then came to believe in God.

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And when you see them talk about their faith, they're just like a distinct, you just see like a distinction between the two.

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Like what, what do you think about that? I definitely see that a lot of times people that maybe come into Catholicism, either from a different religion or no religion whatsoever, they, they dive in, they go deep and they can, they grab onto the saints.

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They're saying of hairdressers, they're saying for everything. Yeah. They, they, some of my family members like eat locusts to celebrate, you know, and like they get really into it, which is, you know,

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I'm glad that they are interested in history, but it can get a little much, but I think, yeah, people that, that come from nothing or something else, they, they want to be a part of it.

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And so they go into every corner of it and they soak it in. And I think that there are people that are lifelong Catholics.

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Like this just started a lot of the really intense stuff with my family when I left Catholicism.

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And I think it kind of gave them a renewed figure for everything. You know, they want to show me that this is like, it's an enriching kind of a thing.

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But I think that people that are lifelong Catholics, a lot of times it's just kind of like a surface level. We go to mass, you know, but if we miss it, like maybe, okay, you know, it's, you don't,

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I've noticed kind of, I've been, I've been Catholic in many countries. You don't necessarily form a community the way that you do in Protestant Christianity.

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Like we know our, our, you know, fellow Christians, like the people that attend church with us, we have them over for dinner.

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We, we go to fellowship together. We have Bible studies, things like that. I don't think I can say that.

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And I've never heard my family members say, oh, we had someone from church over today and they've been there for almost 10 years.

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You know, I move like every two years, but we still get involved. We get in nursery, we get a security, you know, we want to be a part of the community.

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So it's just, it's very different. They get together to celebrate traditions, but it's not, they don't really enmesh their lives together.

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And that's speaking to my experience. I don't want to say that for everyone. So your family is getting more involved in these deep traditions, like the veneration of the saints and praying to them and stuff.

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Do they ever talk to you about these spiritual experiences that they have? Like, cause I know, for example, our lady of Guadalupe is essentially a vision how

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Mary came to people. What, what, what. The apparitions. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that happens in many,

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I went to a shrine in Knock where she appeared supposedly, and they have, you know, witness testimony and things like that.

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I, my family just last week, I think went on a pilgrimage and they go, and it was in Oklahoma.

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To me, a pilgrimage sounds like very exotic. Like you're going to Europe or something. Yeah. You're going somewhere like really intense.

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Or even like Mecca, you're going to be this giant, you know. And so I thought, I don't really, I mean, I've been to Israel and we did the walk where Jesus walked with the cross and everything.

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And, but so in my mind, I think of that as like a holy experience. I went to Oklahoma. I don't know, but they, they go and they pray for intentions, like for the world.

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That's something that is part of it. But yeah, definitely, definitely apparitions of Mary.

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It's, it's almost offensive. I know that there's one apparition where they, my mom has like a picture of her or something, and she has a certain number of stars in her coat and around her and every little piece has a meaning.

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And every little piece they said, oh, there's like a mathematical equation. If you count this up, like it divides, like it's, it's, it's so scientific almost that it's like, you cannot disprove it.

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But in my understanding, it's like this, these are just people saying this, you know, this it's, it's, it, yeah.

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There's a lot of apparitions. There's a lot of supernatural folklore about Mary. Has your family ever said they've experienced stuff like that?

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A lot of kind of what I hear is very emotional. Not, not to have seen Mary, but a lot of very emotional, like when they went on the pilgrimage,

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I almost felt like I was in another planet because it feels so different. Or like, it just felt like the father's presence was so heavy and it's, it's a very emotion driven experience.

21:08

Wow. Yeah. And I mean, a lot of, it's really interesting. We have like a hymns playlist that I passed on to my mom and I was like, this really enriches my day.

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If I'm having a hard day listening to a good playlist, but she's, I don't really know. I'm not really into those kinds of things.

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She prefers the Gregorian chants. Interesting. And which, I mean, whatever, that's your thing, but, but it's, there's like not like theology to that, you know, it's just chanting.

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It's it's, and that's a lot of Catholic, you know, if you do the rosary repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, you're getting into that mindset and you're not thinking about it.

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You're just giving up your pure intention of your heart in repetition. I was never comfortable with that.

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And it's kind of funny though, because I grew up more comfortable around it, I guess, because I was there. My husband, we lived for my mom for like a period of six months when he was getting out of the military.

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And he came in one time on my mom with a couple of people having a rosary service. He thought they were doing some kind of like enchantment or something.

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He came back to the room and he was like, what is happening outside? They're just like in the corner. And they're just saying the same thing over and over again.

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And what is happening? And I told him, is it the rosary? He said, yeah. And it almost was like a train crash.

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Like you just couldn't not watch it. It was so funny. Yeah. So just one other question as we just kind of wrap up your little slot here.

22:18

Thanks for coming on. I'm sure you got to enjoy this. This is great. You got to do that. But question, just one last thing.

22:25

So when you came to Christ, when you got saved, were you actually in the Catholic church or was it like after you left?

22:32

Do you have an idea of when that was? In high school, I went on a trip where I encountered

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Jesus in a true... I became aware that he loved me despite all of my dirty past, all the things that I do all the time.

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And I was overwhelmed. I feel like it was my first real encounter with true Christ. Later, we talked a little bit about this yesterday.

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I was kind of a cultural Catholic. I didn't believe a lot of the things, but this was my family. This was my life.

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And so my husband and I had a period of a few years where he was really trying, come on, let's read this book, read the

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Bible, do this stuff. And he pushed so hard that I almost fought back. I resisted, which is weird to think you would resist the

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Bible, but when it's such a foreign book to you and it's almost scary. So in my disobedience to God and to my husband,

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I fought against him. And so there was a few years where he was kind of nervous.

23:30

He could tell that I was there, that I had everything in the making to be a solid

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Christian and love the Bible and love God, but he realized his approach was not working. So he had to really ease off and just let the

23:42

Holy Spirit work in my heart. And so that's why I say about five years. We've been married seven years, but there were a few years of resistance there where I resisted not only him, but God.

23:51

All right. Well, it's going to be interesting. We're going to probably play a bit interesting to see just the feedback.

23:56

We're like dipping our toe into the water in the conversation about Catholicism.

24:02

We might have to have you back on, to be honest. I totally understand. And that's why when I mentioned to you yesterday, if you do an episode on Catholicism, call me because this has been my whole existence almost.

24:12

But I totally understand why you haven't, because I think there is that. And when I met my husband, this was kind of the understanding.

24:19

Oh, we're both Christians. Like we both love the same God. So this is cool. It's going to be easy. It's not easy. And there are a lot of differences, but you have to get past that surface level.

24:28

Awesome. Thank you so much for coming here. I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Hey, what's up everyone.

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24:43

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25:19

Yeah. We're going to have her back on for Roman Catholicism, bro. If we do that. Yeah. I was like, that was good.

25:25

That was good. That's good. It's interesting. I was like, Whoa. Yeah. Cause there's a couple of people too, that are on, uh,

25:33

I follow on Instagram who are like X new age years, but they've gone into Catholicism. Right. And it's like, like there's, they're saying that it's good, but then it's like,

25:41

Ooh, yeah. Yeah. I could see how being new age and going into Catholicism is a very easy switch.

25:48

All of a sudden, if I do these certain things, I get into like a higher state of community with God. Right. X, Y, Z.

25:53

Yep. All right. Let's put the headphones on. Let's chat. What's up, man.

26:01

Yeah. Just, uh, make sure your mouth is like close to it and we're good to go. Testing one, two. So Anthony, right?

26:08

Yes, sir. Awesome, man. How are you doing better than I deserve? Yeah. Dave Ramsey, Dave Ramsey, but there's also a deeper set for that too.

26:17

Um, so you came out from Hawaii. Yes. What Hawaiian Island are you on? Yeah. So we, we live on the big

26:22

Island on the Northern tip of the big Island in a little country town. It's like the end of the world.

26:28

It's called Kohala twice. Best kept secret. So don't tell anybody about it.

26:33

Yeah. So you're a reformed Christian on, on the biggest Island. You're a an anomaly, a bit of a unicorn.

26:39

Definitely. Um, you know, most pastors on the big Island don't even know what reformed means.

26:48

Right. And, uh, we celebrate reformation day religiously.

26:53

Yeah. And I would say 99 .9 % of Christians on the big

26:58

Island don't even know what that is. Yeah. So yeah. Um, I think some people are, are

27:04

Calvinist without knowing it. Yeah. There's just hasn't, isn't like good discipleship there.

27:11

And people typically aren't very theological. However, the Puritans were the ones that brought the gospel to Hawaii.

27:19

So it's interesting to see how things have, have changed and how we've lost touch of, of what

27:27

God has done. Yeah. And just, what's like the nature of Hawaii? Because like a big part with cultures is we knew we'd do with a lot of aspects of the new age, uh, the occult.

27:37

I mean, that's what I know is when I went to Kauai, uh, just a couple of years ago, just when we were getting ready to plant a church there, it was everywhere.

27:45

There's like, there's, there's like these different temples, Buddhist temples. I think it was like a Shinto temple.

27:50

There was a couple of different stores you walked in that was just like, you felt ill when you're walking in just all this like comedic comedic

27:57

Egyptian guy. I think you're a boy right here. You might want to hang out with you. That's all good.

28:04

We're just getting into the good stuff here, bud. Can you sit on my lap for, for five minutes? Yeah. You want to throw some shakas to the camera?

28:12

Tell people what your name is. What's your name? Eliyahu. That's awesome.

28:19

What's your full name? Eliyahu Ikaika Shaloha Aina Palazzolo.

28:27

That's awesome. Nice. That's awesome. Little blend of Hebrew and Hawaiian. That's cool.

28:32

That's so cool. It's Eliyahu Ikaika Shaloha Aina. Yeah. What does that mean? Daddy, what is that?

28:38

So Eliyahu is a Hebrew word for Elijah. And then, yeah.

28:45

And then, uh, and go grab a coloring book over there, bud. I'll be there in a couple of minutes.

28:51

Okay. So yeah, we got Eliyahu Hebrew word for, for Elijah.

28:58

We've got Ikaika, which means strength in Hawaiian. Yeah. Eliyahu Ikaika Shaloha.

29:04

Just grab like the light, I think. Okay. You want, can we redo this? Yeah. Yeah. If you want to do it another time, like we can,

29:11

I can, I can get him set up with, uh, with my friend.

29:19

He's just kind of like, he, he had too many expresso shots. He's all excited about the

29:24

Reformation. I know. Reformation plus expresso. Yeah. Just to be here with you guys.

29:30

We're big fans of my wife and I, I'm going to, I'm going to come back in five minutes. Is that cool? Yeah. That's cool.

29:35

Will that work with you? Yeah. That's good. Yeah. What do you think about this? Like so far, I mean, when you talk about just like being here,

29:42

I mean, just for us, it's like, it's always cool to like, well, all the content that we make constantly, but all of a sudden you see the face behind somebody whose impact, like, you know, we have somebody, you know, like with Ashley, we just talked to or the previous guy, but also like people on the

29:56

North Shore, like listen to us. I mean, he's definitely, even when you talk about just being a Christian, even outside the realm of Reformed theology, being a

30:04

Christian versus just the amount of new ageism and paganism that's on a place like Hawaii.

30:10

Like, it's just cool to always see like the face behind, um, all the people who listen to our podcast. Well, like, what do you enjoy the most about these events?

30:16

Yeah. I love getting to see the people that listen to Apology Studio stuff. Like, it's really cool to see, like you said, the faces behind the people that are being affected by it.

30:25

Right. And it really helps put things in perspective that you're not just going behind a table and speaking on a mic.

30:30

Right. Yeah. Like it can, you don't want that to become a monotonous, right?

30:36

You want to understand that there are people who are listening, people who are created in the image of God, and this is helping them in some way.

30:43

And it helps us as well. You know, it's almost cathartic in a sense, every time you get to sit behind a mic, because you're sitting there doing research for X amount of time, you want to put a passion and thought and get

30:53

Jesus out through the mic. And then understanding that when people are coming up to you and they're saying, Hey, this helped me in this way, or this helped me in that way, you go all glory to God.

31:02

It had to be God alone, because we're fools. Yeah. I mean, the other thing is, too, is like, we're just having a conversation.

31:07

Like we, we just did a podcast on the true crime, prime true crime podcast on Jeff on the

31:14

Jeffrey Dahmer. And it's called his true crime story. Yeah. Called his true crime story. And we, I don't know, it's got like 20 something down 20 ,000 somewhat downloads, but it's like, that's an individual person who maybe they're enamored by the whole culture conversation, given the

31:27

Netflix series, but now all of a sudden they're listening to our podcast. And now all of a sudden they're getting, they're understanding how you can actually give an accounting for evil.

31:35

They're getting the gospel, like through that avenue. So it's always just a cool thing. And you know, who knows the ripple effect of that? It's always a cool thing.

31:40

Cool thing to say. No, absolutely. I love that. Yeah. We don't know what God's doing or what he's up to, but what's cool about reform con is sometimes you can see how he's actually working and doing things because we're behind here.

31:51

We don't get to see everyone who's listening, but you know, once a year or once every other year, we get to actually see the faces of the people who are being, are being affected by this podcast.

32:01

And that's an awesome thing to be able to see. And it's also extremely refreshing to come here and listen to a bunch of people not a bunch of people, but the speakers in general to, to breathe truth into you and into what's going on in the world.

32:14

It's refreshing. Yeah. I mean, just like listening to David bonds and him just like talking about economics or even talking about technology that is technology really a result of the fall.

32:24

Like, no, that's people like emulating and imaging God. Like, you know, I have my iPhone, which

32:29

I've done just a couple of posts that literally, you know, literally take a, take a picture, upload it.

32:34

And it's reached thousands of people, you know, whether it was something about a recent appearance in LA best Stucky, or if it was just a funny meme, that was pretty funny by the way, that, that Dom meme and that had to be tongue in cheek.

32:45

Oh yeah. The Don as a Adam and Eve. Yeah. Yeah. He's the

32:50

OG man. Yeah. We're talking about there's this meme that someone shares. Supposedly there's a, uh, some university had done some sort of rendering or use

33:00

AI to figure out what Adam looked like. I think it was Princeton. Yeah. It was Princeton, but it looked exactly like Vin Diesel.

33:06

Yeah. It was definitely fake. Yeah. So I had to like play with it. And I was like, from one man came every family.

33:13

I can't, I can't, I w I wish I could somehow like, just for one word, cause they like to do like the

33:19

Vin Diesel voice. He's got that raspiness. It's such a unique voice. I wonder if there's actually anyone out there who could do a

33:24

Vin Diesel impression. You're pretty good at impressions. I think you should just give it a shot real quick. No, I can't.

33:30

Three, two, one. I've got family. Didn't work that time.

33:36

I'm about to have family. Reform con is we had a, I think it was David Reese who spoke yesterday and talked about islands of Liberty.

33:44

I think essentially reform con is that for people, you know, like you, you're out in the world, living the

33:49

Christian life. Uh, you know, church is supposed to be like that every single Sunday, that's for sure. But when you're getting a bunch of people from a bunch of different churches together, uh, this is a, an awesome place for us to express the glory of God to Christ, uh, together.

34:04

This is an Island of Liberty here. It's like a safe retreat in a way. Yeah. And there's also, it was kind of cool.

34:09

I mean, like talking about like a blast from the past, like seeing Jeff do his, uh, have you, have you seen him do that before?

34:16

Uh, I think I've seen videos. Yes. I actually watched, uh, have you seen him do it in person? I, well, no, I, I've watched, uh,

34:22

MTV back in the day when he was actually on it. I watched that show final food, the final food. Yeah. Yeah.

34:28

I remember the episode where he kicks the guy in the stomach and he gets in trouble for it.

34:33

Yeah. I watched that, but I never knew who pastor Jeff was at the time, but I actually watched that when it first came out, but I've seen him do those things when we actually did some karate classes at apology when

34:42

I was living here in Arizona, they had some like really weird rules. It was like, you can only punch if you get like punched in the middle of the stomach.

34:49

So it was like this weird version of like rock them, sock them robots. It was, well, the guy was kind of, that he was like sparring against was kind of getting a little cocky too.

34:58

And then Jeff just like, he just showed him like, this is, this is what's up. Yeah. I remember that. Sometimes you got clapped back a little bit.

35:04

Yeah. He clapped back and it was, it was really good. Even the guy was like, Oh, you're right. Well, this is just something too.

35:09

I mean, this is, and I want to show grace because again, people, some people like on our

35:15

Instagram posts thought this was like footage of Jeff at a church. So if you're like just going super secret sensitive, you know, and I'm like, what you realize this is the conference, right?

35:26

And Jeff has four, like five black belts. Like this is what he does.

35:32

Yeah. People wanted to see it. Yeah. Anyways, let's go jump back on man. It's part of what happens.

35:40

I'm probably gonna be experienced that too. I'm going to be in that same situation soon,

35:48

Lord willing. Blessings. Yeah, absolutely, man. Well, welcome back. Yeah. So talking about the

35:54

North Shore of Hawaii, like you talked about, you know, you do evangelism there, but what's the spirit, the aesthetic of, of just the islands when it, when it comes to just the religious syncretism there.

36:05

Yeah. Okay. So I would say that Hawaii is a place where people from all over the world, especially the continental

36:14

US want to come and reinvent themselves. They want to come and have an awakening.

36:19

They want to come and be enlightened. They want to come and, and find God, or they want to come and be actually become

36:27

God. Yeah. And a lot of people think that they are God. And then I demonstrate to them pretty quickly that they're not through a series of questions and whatever.

36:36

But anyways, to answer your question, what is it like in Hawaii in general?

36:43

I would say that Hawaii is intrinsically Christian because at one point in time, it was a, it was a fully

36:51

Christian monarchy that, that was sovereign and they had a constitution that was more godly than, than our

37:01

American constitution. But over time, like a lot of the missionary kids the missionaries are completely sold out for the gospel, but their kids, they, they ended up becoming like aristocrats and really wealthy.

37:19

And kind of like you see in ancient Israel too, you know, you, you'll have like a generation where they're faithful to God.

37:25

And then the next generation, they forget the things of the Lord and they engage in idolatry. Then they get carried off to Babylon.

37:31

We kind of seen the same thing in Hawaii, I think. Um, so a lot of the, the grandchildren of these missionaries, they, they just turned their heart from God and just engage in all forms of, of, um, pleasures, just, thank you.

37:52

Pleasures, different, uh, world religions that help them escape from this idea of, of their own convictions or from their, you know, what their grandparents had laid out.

38:04

Um, so I don't know, am I, am I answering your question? It's really good, man. It's really good. But then

38:09

I'll just talk about when you, cause you mentioned like questions you ask people, um, there's videos too, of like when we, when we've gone to Kauai where Jeff has talked about people who are a new age and just, it's very much relational.

38:19

Um, that's very, the aesthetic of Hawaii, but, um, but yeah, like what, when you go to the North shore, cause that's, would you say just cause you have surf culture?

38:27

Yes. Did you ever see a documentary riding giants? Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah. So like it talks about that or guy like Laird Hamilton or kind of like that whole culture there.

38:34

But in many ways that the North shore would be kind of like the Areopagus of the surf culture in Hawaii.

38:41

Yeah. And just to clarify, um, like you've got the North shore of Kauai, which is, uh, it's like a, a surf

38:49

Mecca in its own right. However, um, the, the true surf Mecca is the

38:56

North shore of Oahu. And that's where you have the seven mile miracle, which is a seven mile stretch of literally like, like thousands of surf breaks.

39:07

And for a good eight to 10 months out of the year, you have that place just gets blasted with tons of swell that comes down from Alaska.

39:16

It comes down from the Aleutian islands. Um, like near Japan and then

39:23

Alaska and just all of the Pacific there bruise and it sends these swells and it slams right into the

39:29

North shore of Oahu. And it also slams into the North shore of Kauai too. But then the North shore of Oahu is where all the nations come.

39:37

It's where the whole entire surf world is and everybody is worshiping.

39:43

So, so you do have, it's, it's, it's an interesting dynamic there because you, you, you have a, a place that once was a

39:51

Christian monarchy and it's still intrinsically Christian. You've got the doxology in Hawaiian and all the local people from Hawaii know the doxology, right?

40:00

Um, no, no matter how pagan they might be. But then what has happened is there's just a lot of brokenness.

40:06

And I think a lot of local people have accepted or tried to synchronize different forms of like ancient

40:14

Hawaiian spiritual belief, which is, is a polytheistic and different worship of these false gods.

40:21

So there's been this synchronism of that. And then the, and then that opens the door to the new age and the new age has come and people all over, you know, the

40:30

States have, have, have, have fled. They're trying to find refuge. They're trying to reinvent themselves.

40:35

So it's just this crazy, like cosmic buffet of anything and everything.

40:42

But when it comes down to actually Jesus, it's like, Whoa, that's too much. You know, it's, that's the only name that's blaspheme.

40:49

It's the only name that can be, that, that can save. And that's also the name that brings conviction.

40:55

Um, wow. So yeah, that's kind of the spiritual climate of the North shore.

41:00

And then you've got Christians there too. There's actually a lot of Christians on the North shore of Oahu and, and I would say Kauai as well.

41:06

Um, but you know, the, the culture affects people and, uh, the culture, like either the church is going to affect the culture or the culture is going to affect the church.

41:18

And in many ways, I think the church has kind of made

41:24

Christianity like this, this privatized thing that they do in their churches. Whereas for my wife and I, we've been like,

41:32

Hey, we have this incredible opportunity to cross the street from where the church, where the churches are.

41:38

Cause they're all like on the coast, go cross the street to the beach and go proclaim the gospel to the nations. Jesus said, go to all, all nations.

41:45

Well, guess what guys, all the nations come right to us. They're on the North shore. So it's, it's a really, it's a really fun place to do evangelism.

41:52

Yeah. What is, um, what's the Hawaiian word for like family? Ohana. Ohana.

41:58

So where, where does that, uh, come from essentially? And how can, uh,

42:04

I know you said prosperity begets essentially unfaithfulness and forgetfulness. Like we see with, uh, the

42:10

Israelites going into the promised land and we have the Shema for example, and God really hitting through Moses to make your children remember,

42:18

Oh, what God has done. Although they forget and we get the judges and stuff like that. Uh, Ohana seems to be like a, a very

42:25

Christian like mindset, but these, but it seems like, are there like people are living there, but forgetting the

42:31

Christian roots of Hawaii in general, like forgetting about the foundation in which most of the prosperity came from.

42:38

Yeah. Yeah. I would say so. Um, I mean, to answer your question too, like Hawaii is very family based.

42:48

Um, and it's all about Aloha, which is, which is love.

42:53

And it's like the love of God. And it's also like the breath of God that sustains us. So, um, so Hawaii is very family oriented.

43:05

It's very, uh, community based. So you, you can't just really go to Hawaii and just start like trying to convince people of certain things.

43:16

You got to actually get to know people and not to say that you need to do barbecues with people for five years before you can preach the gospel.

43:25

However, you need to preach the gospel in, in word and use words. Faith comes by hearing, you hear by the word of God, but you also need to preach the gospel.

43:34

Um, in, in Hawaii, I think with how you live your life and really engaging with people in, in, in everyday just lifestyle.

43:42

And your Island's a lot bigger, but even like in Hawaii, you'll be an instance where you really inquire, you don't, it's very short amount of space.

43:50

You only have a couple of the different towns that are really notable where it's like, okay, well you could be in a gospel conversation with someone on the beach and it might even be, it might just be like an intense conversation.

44:00

And then, you know, if we're out here in Arizona or like you're out in Utah, like you get to go home, you'll probably never see that person again, more than likely.

44:08

But it's like the culture of Hawaii, like you're more likely to run into that person at the store, like two hours later.

44:14

Well, everybody's going to know who you are right off the bat. Cause, cause everybody knows everybody. And it's really family oriented

44:20

Ohana, like we just talked about. So when you come into Hawaii and you're not from Hawaii, it's like, who are these guys?

44:28

Instantly and instantly the people are guarded too, because a lot of people come and they just take, you know, people come like from Southern California, you sell a cardboard box, um, on the side of the freeway, like the junkiest house ever.

44:47

And it's like almost a million dollars. And then you go to some country place in Hawaii, kind of more pre

44:52

COVID and you can buy like a pretty nice home with, with some aina, with some land on it. So you get all these people that aren't from there who are, who are jacking up the property taxes and pushing out the local people.

45:05

And then, you know, there's a, there's a lot of brokenness historically in Hawaii as well. It's a big move. They call the sovereignty movement just because they want to reclaim the

45:12

Island. That's a big part of the culture there. Yeah. Do you find that that relativism and syncretism has made a search for Aloha and a search for Ohana in a sense that if you lose the standard in which those things are formulated from, which is

45:26

God and his word that there is now through syncretism is the expression of what's going on in Hawaii is the search to actually try to find it, but they're looking for different For sure.

45:37

I think that a lot of people, I think deep down inside, they know to a degree the truth, especially considering the fact that like,

45:49

I keep reiterating that I believe Hawaii is intrinsically Christian. There's the, this foundation, these roots that are, that are

45:57

Christian, but they'll, they'll try and explore other things like this idea of going back to the system, which was the ancient system of, which was incredibly oppressive.

46:08

But some people are, are not looking at the full picture and they're like,

46:14

Oh, Jesus is the white man religion. Right. And they want to go back to these things that don't offer any life.

46:22

And it's like, when you play with the fire, you're going to get burned. And I've seen that happen a lot where people go and they, they engage in all this different kind of, whether it be like new age stuff in Hawaii or doing like psychedelics to try and expand their consciousness or false religious stuff or the

46:39

Hawaiian stuff or trying to find their identity in the land. And then they realize that it's all bankrupt.

46:46

And I've seen people full circle come back to Christ. Yeah. Yeah. Is psychedelic, is that pretty big on the island?

46:52

For sure. Like how do you see that formulated? Do people just take it for the sake of taking it?

46:58

Are there like groups kind of like that do it together, like a religious ritual? Or even like,

47:03

I remember there was one place, it was the local coffee shop and you just go in there and they had this one thing that was really good.

47:10

It was like, it was espresso, Coke, like the good, not, not just like the caramel colored

47:15

Coke, but like the Mexican Coke like that. And like this vanilla flavor is the most delicious drink ever.

47:21

I just remember like I got that every single time I went in there, but like on the wall, there'd be this bulletin board and it was like all things like new way, this new age, you know,

47:31

Reiki energy healing, like, let's do this Kumbaya. Like, yeah.

47:37

Basically you could, if you, there was like a song, you just imagine like John Lennon's imagine like playing, like looking at all the, all the songs and stuff like that.

47:44

How do you see that? How do you see that playing about? Yeah. I think it's just heightened there because life is slower in Hawaii, especially in Kauai.

47:56

And then on the big island where I'm from. And then even the North shore of Oahu. I, I, I grew up on the

48:02

North shore of Oahu. That's, that's, that's pretty much home for me. But in general, you just, you just get off the plane and the mentality is slower.

48:11

Life is slower. People are on Hawaiian time. There's like a grace period of, it's like, you can be there at, at, at eight o 'clock in the morning.

48:18

Well, if you show up at eight 30, it's like, you're still, you're, you're still on time.

48:23

Yeah. We were learning that too. Like when they were playing the church in Kauai, they're like, why is everyone late?

48:30

Yeah. Well, it's like now then they understood. Okay. All right. Well, we'll be leaning with that. So it lends itself. It can lend itself to, to, to being lazy and to being a slugger, but it can also lend itself to, to being real present with people and to engaging with, with people and, and really taking time to stop and smell the flowers, smell the roses.

48:50

So I think that your question was,

48:55

I'm sorry, what exactly was your question? I don't remember exactly. Okay.

49:01

Yeah. So, so a lot of people are in Hawaii and they just have more free time on their hands, more time to try and like be introspective, more time to want to, uh, explore different spiritual things.

49:17

I mean, culturally, I would also say Pakalolo, which is the Hawaiian word for, for marijuana.

49:24

That's like a big part of the culture too. Like everybody just smokes weed. Yeah. And, uh,

49:30

I, I believe that's pharmacia and as a, as a Christian, we have no business doing those kinds of things. I believe that it's your, these, these people are just in slavery and bondage to it.

49:41

But anyway, it can be a gateway into other things. It, one thing that's real popular in Hawaii, you'll see it in Kauai and in the big

49:49

Island is, um, there's a lot of these kind of like farms and they're like new age farms and like organic farms, hippie farms, whatever, commune farms.

49:58

And, and it's, it's having a banner or title of, of actually good things, eating organic food, coming together as a community, being transparent with each other, living intentionally.

50:10

Like, I don't think there's anything wrong with any of that stuff. We're called to like go and be good stewards of the land.

50:15

Right. But there's no foundation and, and the foundation is

50:20

Christ. So they're just floating. And then you get different woofers. I don't know if you're familiar with that term.

50:27

Woofers, woofers are basically volunteer farmers, people that will like travel the world and they'll go vol, they'll do like work trade on, on organic farms or whatever.

50:36

So that's like a big culture in Hawaii. So you get these like woofers and they're usually college age. They're trying to find themselves and they immediately, um, get engulfed in just a slurry of, of drug usage, psychedelics, um, people, you know, men trying to take advantage of these like young girls and there's just a lot of brokenness in that, but that lends itself to an opportunity for people who, who actually have the spirit of God in them and have the gospel to go and engage with them and meet them where they're at.

51:10

And, and a lot of these people I would say are coming to Hawaii to try and find God, you know, and, and I think there's a lot of people that, that God, God brings in his providence, his sovereignty and he's drawing them to himself, but sometimes they got to go through a lot of bumps on the road.

51:30

And like this conference, you know, the big thing that they've been hitting home and because you've seen it with all the different speakers is that the

51:37

Lordship of Christ encompasses everything from art to economics to how you live your life, not just when you're sharing the gospel, but almost very emulative of what you're talking about with Hawaiian culture.

51:51

Like when, with all the speakers and everything that you've heard this past weekend, like how do you see it?

51:57

Do you see yourself applying that like as you go back to where you're at? Yeah. First off, I just want to say that sometimes

52:04

I feel like I'm, I'm, I can communicate somewhat decent, especially when people have no reference points and I can almost get a little pompous and puffed up, but I just got to say for the record, being here at ReformCon, listening to these guys like, like Toby and Andrew and all these hard hitters,

52:26

I'm a, I'm a straight up chimpanzee. Like, I'm nervous to even open up my mouth now.

52:32

I am incredibly insecure about myself at this moment. We're just recognizing the, just these, seeing these like hero, heroes, you know, but I've always realized that, that like,

52:45

I'm a small, I'm a small man, but I serve a big God. So, yeah, this has just been real inspiring to say, we don't have anything like this in Hawaii and, and just even the cultural aspects of it.

53:00

I've been in culture shock since I've been here, but it's been a sweet time. Yeah. Awesome, man.

53:06

Well, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on. And yeah, I'm glad, I'm glad to hear you all chat with us. I mean, we would love at some point to come out to like either the

53:13

North shore and kind of document that. Like we were talking about it yesterday. I think that'd be like a really, really cool thing just because like we mentioned with someone else is that when you look at the new age it is, it's something that encompasses, it's always different with every single culture.

53:27

Like I said, with a different, like an India versus New Orleans versus West Virginia. And you see it with, and you see it with even like Hawaii.

53:37

So when you jump back to surf culture, do you remember in writing Giants at the very end,

53:43

Laird Hamilton, for anyone who doesn't know, I mean, he was a very famous surfer. He doesn't serve as, he's a little older, so I don't know if he has surfed as much, but he was big into towing surfing.

53:53

Yeah. He's kind of like the founder of a lot of that stuff. Yeah. But remember the very end where he, he hits that amazing wave and it's like mind blowing.

54:03

It's a place called Choku or Jaws. Do you know what we're talking about? Yeah. So I don't know if I recall exactly what you're thinking of, but I could tell you there's a wave in Tahiti called

54:12

Choku. Yeah. I think that's what it's called. Yeah. And it's just, it's a big body of water that moves over, over like deep ocean and then it hits a shallow reef and it causes the wave to project and fold and create it.

54:29

We call them tubes. Yeah. But this wave creates like a big giant cave and it's so big that you could fit a house inside it.

54:37

Wow. On big swells. And there is a, like a historical time when, when

54:43

Laird Hamilton did, he just got a really big wave on a, on a historical swell and a really big day.

54:54

And I've, I've, I've, I've watched that wave that he got. Yeah. And if I can remember correctly,

55:01

I think he got towed into it because it's so big, you can't get enough speed to paddle. You actually get whipped in by a jet ski.

55:07

And then he's in the barrel. And if he would have fell in that barrel, the consequences would have been so severe that it probably could have taken his life.

55:14

But he was able to, we call it thread the tube. He was able to navigate that barrel and actually come out of the barrel and waves like Choku or Pipeline, it's so hollow that the wave will actually inhale.

55:25

And then right before the wave kind of stops barreling, it will then, it will blow and it will spit or it will, we call it like waves that spit.

55:34

And if you get spit out of a barrel, that's like a big deal. Like most waves in California don't even spit, but a lot of waves in Hawaii do.

55:41

And then this wave Choku does, but this wave in Choku actually vomits. You're like, it like vomits you out.

55:47

So he got vomited out of the barrel and then he kicks out on the shoulder and he just sat there and he like, if I remember correctly, he just like cried in the channel.

55:56

And he was just, cause it's real shallow reef. Then it also goes real deep again. So boats can hang out in the deep spot and the waves don't break where the deep spot is.

56:02

So it's a real spectator kind of sport, if you will. And yeah, that was, that was like a historical time for surfing.

56:08

That was like well over a decade ago. I was like pretty young at that time. My hope for Hawaii is essentially that could be the

56:14

Christian history, right? Like we had the Puritan heritage. Uh, they, like you said, they were Christian monarch.

56:20

That's like the towing with the jet ski, but somehow they let go. And now, right now in the history of Hawaii is in the middle of this tube.

56:27

You can either be smashed, right? And just plop, spit out, vomited out, die. But my hope is, is, you know, like the, the wave is ridden by the grace of God and they're going to come through the tube and there'll be like a reformation research, right?

56:40

Well, you want, if you want to be more like Christ, you got to start surfing because Jesus is the first surfer. Amen. By the way, um,

56:49

I remember, I was going to get back to my point just a second with that. We were just chatting about with Laird, my thoughts on that.

56:55

But, um, someone actually gave me, uh, I had a stint where I was like really interested in surfing for like two years because of that documentary.

57:02

It was just challenged because when you're like into surfing, but you live in Arizona. Yeah. It's kind of like. Rick Kane.

57:08

You guys know North Shore? What's that? Oh my goodness. So all my friends from, from the

57:14

North Shore of Oahu are texting me and kind of making fun of me because there's this movie called the North Shore. It came out in 1987 and it's about this guy named

57:21

Rick Kane. Who's from Tempe, Arizona. He learned how to surf in a wave pool and then he wins the, the championship wave pool contest.

57:31

The waves are like knee high and everyone's like, yeah, Rick, you're the man. He gets cut a check for like a thousand dollars or something.

57:39

He's like raising the check over his head. Oh, I'm going to go to the North Shore and surf the big waves of Hawaii.

57:45

And everyone's like, yeah. So then he goes to the North. It's, it's a real classic movie. Laird Hamilton's actually in that movie back in the eighties in his heyday.

57:54

Okay. Other guys like Jerry Lopez, who they call Mr. Pipeline. He's like the most classic guy, but you guys got to watch that.

57:59

Cause that's like part of your guys's roots. So there's this connection guys from Tempe, Arizona to the

58:04

North Shore. That's why I'm here. Yeah. So with Laird though, when he was in like, it was very like an emotional experience, but he talked about how it's almost like people are worshiping when it comes to that.

58:18

But my thought is, is that just when you look at like one -ism versus two -ism, like, so the one -ism is like, there's a, there's a blending of the creation, the divine and the spiritual and the material, the material and the, and then the material.

58:33

So there's no distinction between creator and creation, which is like in Romans one, Paul says that people, they worship the creation rather than the creator.

58:42

And so would it almost be an aspect where people think that they are, like, they are one, like all is one, all is self, all is pantheistic.

58:50

So when I'm actually on this tube, when I'm surfing this pipeline,

58:56

I guess you would say it's like, I am just, I am one with it. Like you're practicing one -ism.

59:02

Maybe the greatest expression of pantheism, like you just are part of it and all that kind of thing.

59:09

I think so, but you want to, when you're surfing waves like that, those are big waves. Yeah. Those are powerful waves.

59:15

Death is there. And there's no atheists out on the water at that point. It's just a matter of time till you, you miss time, your, your paddle out and you get, we call it getting caught inside and the wave ends up breaking on you.

59:27

And the most hardened men are like crying out, like, God save me because people die every year at pipeline.

59:35

People die every year on the North Shore. Some of the best surfers in the world die on the North Shore. So it is a worship culture.

59:43

Yeah. When you're in Hawaii, you're constantly worshiping. And when you go to the North Shore, it's a worship culture. What are you worshiping?

59:48

You're worshiping the waves. You're worshiping the glory of the pro surfers. The sexual promiscuity is like second to none there.

59:56

There's just half naked woman everywhere on the beach. And they're constantly pushing the envelope in terms of like how skimpy can they get with the bathing suits?

01:00:04

And that's just cultural. There'll be like 14 year old girls dressed like that. Yeah. So, um, you go there, everybody's worshiping.

01:00:14

And in the midst of all of these image bearers, people created by God that they're worshiping false things, not the right thing.

01:00:22

Things that are their worship can go in vain. Well, the actual waves themselves, they're worshiping.

01:00:28

Who are they worshiping? They're worshiping King Jesus. Every single wave that breaks that pipeline in order for that wave to break the way that it does, there has to be serious mechanics, serious ingenuity and serious design.

01:00:41

Who designed all of that? Jesus did. Yeah. You're right. And in Colossians one, I believe it says that all things were created by him and for him.

01:00:51

So waves that pipeline, when people are are able to actually get to a level physical conditioning to be able to surf those waves, those waves were created by Jesus and for Jesus.

01:01:04

And without him sustaining them and giving them the breath that's in their lungs, they wouldn't be able to surf those waves.

01:01:10

All things hold together through Christ is where it articulates. Yes. Yeah, man. That's so big. That's basically my message when

01:01:16

I go to the North Shore. That's so cool. Those are my people. I'm able to talk that language.

01:01:22

I surf those waves. When we really get into it, people that don't surf, they don't even understand what we're saying.

01:01:29

And then also people that aren't from Hawaii when people are speaking Pidgin, they also aren't really understand what's going on.

01:01:36

But anyway, it's such an opportunity to just redirect that worship because we're going to worship.

01:01:43

If we're not going to worship the king of kings, we're going to worship something else, whether it's ourselves or a sport or some perverted thing.

01:01:51

So it's the North Shore is also a place of youthful lust. And the Bible says flee from youthful lust.

01:01:56

So it's a tricky place. Yeah. But it's a glorious place because God's glory is everywhere. And you cannot say that this is all of chance when you're there.

01:02:05

Like you are. It's a natural phenomenon when you're on the North Shore. That's why they call it the seven mile miracle.

01:02:11

You guys got to come. You guys got to come and do ministry with us and do evangelism with us.

01:02:16

I've reached out to Jeff for like the past two years. We've got my phone number. And I think he's kind of softened up to me a little bit. But I know he's got a lot on his plate and he's there and he's there in Kauai.

01:02:26

Like his efforts are going to be there in Kauai. But you just jump over to the North Shore of Oahu.

01:02:32

But the guys that have run the show on the North Shore of Oahu that have figured out how to surf those waves the best have actually been the guys from Kauai from the

01:02:39

North Shore of Kauai. So you got like Andy and Bruce Irons and there's just a whole slew of guys.

01:02:45

You have what's called the Wolf Pack that was real popular. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's like kind of like preceded something called

01:02:52

Tahui, which was like a surf gang back in like the 70s and 80s. And then in the late 90s and early 2000s, you had something called the

01:03:01

Wolf Pack. So the whole world is coming to the North Shore to try and surf these waves, particularly

01:03:07

Pipeline. And it turns into a zoo. The wave is super dangerous.

01:03:12

And then you've got hundreds of people out there and broken boards and very little surf etiquette.

01:03:18

And people are essentially going to like kill themselves or kill each other. So the Wolf Pack, which came out of Kauai, they would all post up for eight months out of the year, post up at the

01:03:30

Volcom House, which is right there on the beach at Pipeline. And they would blow the whistle. And if somebody was out of line, they would escort them in.

01:03:39

They'd give them cracks on the beach. And it was like, it's like the wild, wild west. Cracks on a beach, like with like a stick or something.

01:03:47

Guys would just get jujitsu'd on the beach and take some serious cracks. Well, I had something similar happen because I would go out to San Diego and I would surf.

01:03:57

And there's one time right by where the Navy SEALs, I'm giving it away, but I'm like right out close to where the

01:04:04

Navy SEALs train. And I didn't realize it. It's like Camp Pendleton area. Yeah. So I'm like out there surfing, but all of a sudden, you know, the waves were just,

01:04:10

I was very inexperienced. I was just trying to get out there and have some fun. But all of a sudden, I didn't realize

01:04:16

I was getting drifted. And all of a sudden, there's two military police who were like out on the beach, just like blowing whistles, telling me like, get in.

01:04:25

And the funny thing was like, I thought they were like looking out for me, like, oh, there must be like sharks in the water or something like that.

01:04:33

So of course, I told them, oh, guys, thanks for looking out for me. He's like, yeah, you're a military property. Can't be here. I'm like, oh, okay, my bad.

01:04:41

But yeah, it sounds kind of similar. One thing that was kind of interesting too is that where I was going with him when

01:04:46

I was out in San Diego is that there's a guy named Jimmy. He actually gave me this book.

01:04:51

It was called Dad Jesus book. The Jesus book. Yeah. And it was a New Testament was written in Hawaiian pigeon.

01:04:57

Yeah. And it's like, even my friend thought it was like, he had a hard time reading it. He thought they were like making a joke.

01:05:04

Yeah. This is like for real. Like they're saying, no, this is for real. This is like how they talk. This is how they communicate. Have you ever read one of those?

01:05:09

The Jesus book. Yeah. I've preached quite a few times at our local church. We go to a

01:05:14

Baptist church in North Kohala. And sometimes I'll open up my sermon and read just straight out of the

01:05:20

Jesus book. Give like Andrew an example, like give a Bible verse. Like how would you, do you know, do you have any

01:05:26

Bible verses memorized in the Jesus book? It's so hard to speak pigeon when you're like out of context. Do John 1,

01:05:31

John 1, 1. The Logos. Do you have an idea of what you'd say? Oh man.

01:05:37

It would be hard for me to give it. Anyone like John 3, 16? I just feel like I just wouldn't do justice to it.

01:05:44

It would just be so corny and stupid. Let me look it up. We'll have some fun here. If you can look it up,

01:05:50

I can read it and I can read it well. I got to go to the bathroom really bad. Okay. Yeah. It's actually a good translation.

01:05:57

It's like theologically well done. Let's go over a couple of verses and we'll do the, we'll do

01:06:03

John 1, 1. Yeah. Uh, let's just say the Jesus book, John 3,

01:06:09

John 3, 16. Yeah. John 3, 16. All right. Uh, yeah, it's actually on Biblegateway .com.

01:06:19

Nice. See, it's a legit translation. Okay. So I wouldn't even want to try and say it because I feel like I would butcher it too. Okay.

01:06:24

This is John 3, 16, Hawaiian pigeon. I'm going to try my best. Okay. Here we go. God, when you get so plenty love and Aloha for the people inside the world that he wouldn't send me his one and only boy so that everybody that trust me, no get cut off from God, but get the real kind life that stay to the max forever.

01:06:57

Oh dude, that is so awesome. That is so cool. And people are like, I love that because dude,

01:07:03

I, like, I always used to go on mission trips a lot to Mazatlan, Mexico, to like Mexico and like being able to hear, like sometimes it's like, you can hear something, you know what they're saying, but you know, it's like in another language.

01:07:16

And like, when I first got saved, I remember like one of the first hymns, I remember like singing with a changed heart was like,

01:07:22

Holy, Holy, Holy. So instead of like God in three persons, like blessed Trinity, it was Dawson trace, but Cionos bless your

01:07:29

Trinity. And it was like, Oh, that's just so rad. That is so cool. Yeah. Um, but yeah,

01:07:35

You know what's really powerful is singing the doxology in Hawaiian.

01:07:41

Really? Yeah. Yeah. They're talking, like, what is it? Like, how do you, how do you say the doxology? In Hawaiian?

01:07:47

Yeah. Do you know it? Can you say it out loud for me? Oh man, I'll just butcher it. Like when, when everybody's singing it,

01:07:54

I can kind of chime in, but just to hold it. Yeah. I just, I guess some local, local people would like counsel you guys if I tried to do it.

01:08:05

Oh no, it's all, it's all good. It's all good. It's all good. Um, yeah. What's the, what's it going to ask to, um, like what's the example of like anybody, like what's the most interesting conversation you've ever had?

01:08:16

Like the one that like, is there something that just like really stands out just real quickly in Hawaii?

01:08:22

Yeah. Just like on the North shore is the one that just kind of sticks out to you. Like, is there a specific example you can think of?

01:08:28

If not, no worries. Just curious. Yeah. I mean, there's so many, um, I think,

01:08:36

I just think local people that are like front, like Hawaiian or from Hawaii, they have actually more of a softness in their heart for the gospel.

01:08:47

And even if they're super hardened, like I've, I've preached the gospel to the boys that are just all tatted up, just drinking, drinking

01:09:00

BS, BS, smoking Paco Lolo and just talking a muck.

01:09:06

Yeah. And I've, I've felt different times called to go and just boldly, just, just engage with these guys and meet them where they're at and point them to Christ.

01:09:16

And almost every time I do that, these guys will like end up in tears towards the end of the conversation.

01:09:25

And they'll just talk about how they know they need to get their lives right with the Lord. And like, we need to go back church and, you know, so I've had a lot of experiences like that.

01:09:37

One other one, I'll leave you with this experience is, um, this was recent.

01:09:44

So we're at the beach at Pipeline. And, uh, there's this guy that when you're hanging out there, when you're there for a while, you start to kind of get to know everybody and familiar faces.

01:09:58

And there was this person who was sitting there and he was just kind of doing his own thing. And I just came over to him and I asked him,

01:10:05

I said, I, I just asked him his name. We started talking and got into the conversation, talking about the waves, talking about surfing.

01:10:12

And then I said, um, so who are you worshiping? Yeah. And it just totally threw him off.

01:10:19

He didn't know how to answer that question. And then perfect wave breaks right in front of us while we're sitting on the beach.

01:10:27

And I said, well, who is that wave worshiping? And he just had no idea how to answer that.

01:10:33

He's just like, what are you talking about? And then I was able to drop Colossians one on him and basically just share the gospel with him.

01:10:43

And, and towards the end of that conversation, he was, uh, you know, he was convicted, he was compelled, he wanted a

01:10:52

Bible. And there, there, there's some good fellowships there and we're, we're good.

01:10:58

We try and partner with, with all the, the local churches that are on the shore. And then we're able to invite them to, to church on Sunday or Bible study or whatever.

01:11:07

And in proximity, it's very close. It's all like walking distance. So I'd say that was like a pretty awesome.

01:11:13

That's super awesome. That is experience. So as we wrap up here, like, uh, cause I know this is like one of your favorite verses.

01:11:19

Like whenever you talk about the gospel, you're always like the word made flesh. Like that's always going to come out when you talk about it. So here we go.

01:11:25

John one, one Hawaiian pigeon. This is like, this is one of my favorite verses too. Yeah. So this is

01:11:31

Hawaiian pigeon. And like, this is your culture. So I just want to, this is like the Andrew, I just want to look at Andrew. This is the

01:11:36

Andrew reacts to a Hawaiian pigeon video. Here we go. Wow.

01:11:41

Yeah. Okay. Let's, let's see if I can do, do this somewhat decent.

01:11:50

The time every, everything had start, had one guy,

01:11:57

God's talk. That's who him, that guy in God, they stay together in the guy stay

01:12:08

God for real kind. That's the guy, the time every, the time every, everything had start him in God's stay together.

01:12:25

God wouldn't make every team, but the way he do, um, he tell this guy for doom, no more nothing.

01:12:35

This guy never make he the guy. If you like come alive for real kind, you come by him.

01:12:46

Cause that kind life come from him. When people come alive, a lot at just a lot at days, they stay inside one place that get plenty light.

01:13:02

Then they can see and understand no matter stayed dark, the dark, no can peel the light every time get light.

01:13:17

Wow. That's cool. Yeah. That's actually really cool. Yeah. And it's interesting too.

01:13:24

I mean, for anyone who's like, wait, what? Like, you know what that verse is if you're a Christian, but like, this is their culture is hearing the exact same thing, but this is their native tongue or this is their, or their dialect of, of how they talk.

01:13:40

So you guys know where pigeon came from? Where'd it come up? So Hawaii was a, it was all like a plantation sugarcane plantation.

01:13:47

So you had the missionaries that came brought the gospel from 19, from 1820. It was, it was all just a pagan nation.

01:13:55

And from 1820 to 1840, it became the most Christianized nation in the world.

01:14:01

Also became the most literate nation in the world too, because Hawaiians were learning how to read so they could read the word of God.

01:14:08

But shortly after that is when the sugarcane industry came and they brought in Chinese immigrants.

01:14:18

They brought in Japanese, Filipinos, and you had Hawaiians mixed in there. And you had all these different, and also you had

01:14:28

Portuguese and Puerto Ricans and they all were there and they couldn't really speak really well

01:14:38

English. So they just kind of created their own dialect. And that, that was the birth of pigeon. Yeah.

01:14:43

Wow. That guy was there. Yeah, dude. That's so cool. Everything was cool.

01:14:49

And thanks for chatting here. We got one more guy. We got Joey. Thanks for having me on guys. I am excited.

01:14:55

We gotta be, we gotta be in touch and I would love to come out with the North shore and talk with these guys. Get you guys some ways.

01:15:01

Don't worry. I've never been there. So I'd love, I'd love to see it. Yeah. It was blow your mind. You guys got to come to my farm.

01:15:07

We got a turmeric farm in Kohala on the Northern tip of the big Island.

01:15:13

Okay. Come there. We'll get centered, drink some turmeric shots, do a little surf training, and then we'll go fly out to the

01:15:20

North shore. Sweet bro. Thank you. Appreciate you bro. Sorry for interrupting your currently scheduled programming, but did you know, you can go to apologiastudios .com

01:15:30

and become an all access member. With all access membership, you get exclusive content from all of apology studios productions, not to mention cultish is an apology of studios production.

01:15:41

So you'll get access to cultish the aftermath where Jerry and I talk together after our most recent series discussing what we thought it's really cool.

01:15:49

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01:16:03

What's up man. All right. Tell me where you're telling me where you're from. I am from Ireland.

01:16:10

You're from Dublin. Dublin originally. Yeah. Okay. How'd you, how'd you find out about us? You've been following us for a couple of years.

01:16:16

Yeah. Just through apology studios and the following different events that was going on there and then getting to connect with different people.

01:16:23

Yeah. Maybe like you appeared on a guest show and yeah. Okay. Who's that guy?

01:16:29

Right. Let me follow that guy. He's, he's saying something good. Yeah. So it's, it's very interesting just because you know, we're, this is reform com or right reformation days, like right around the corner.

01:16:39

Um, you know, you're dealing with all that, but there's just a very unique distinction between Catholic and Protestant. Like I got a story

01:16:45

I want to tell you and get your thoughts on, but maybe like explain like, it's not, it's not just the theology, but it's also a culture.

01:16:52

Yeah. How'd you, how'd you briefly explain that to Basically Ireland was taken over by the

01:16:58

British and, and then was divided in 1920s. So there's always been since the 1920s, the political divide between Catholics and Protestants, uh, which has turned into more political than actual

01:17:09

Protestants and Catholics about Jesus. Yeah. So most people in Ireland, the Southern about 89 %

01:17:15

Catholic, but we have abortion and gay marriage voted in by the people.

01:17:21

Why do you suppose 89 % Protestant Catholics of North is the same.

01:17:26

Yeah. So Northern Ireland is mostly Protestants and a population. So, right. Yeah.

01:17:33

So just, I'll tell you the story in that context. Uh, back in 2008, uh, we were, I went to Ireland with a buddy of mine, my brother.

01:17:39

And so we're having some fun in Southern Ireland, but then we decided to go to North to check out Belfast. And as soon as we got there, there's like a different spirit or aesthetic where everyone was kind of like closed and like closed off.

01:17:50

Yeah. And you could like feel it in the air as soon as you saw the British flag. Yeah. And so finally we got to Belfast and there's like not a soul around.

01:17:58

And somebody told us, he goes, it's probably not a good time to be up here. If you're a tourist,

01:18:04

I'm like, why is that? It's like, oh, well today's Protestant day. July the 12th. Yes. I was up there in July the 12th and we go around this corner and lo and behold, there it is.

01:18:14

We have a, uh, a whole, uh, bonfire getting ready of pallets that are basically going to be dousing gasoline with the

01:18:22

Irish flag on top. Yeah. Why? It's a, it's from the battle of the Boyne where I live in Ireland.

01:18:28

It's about 20 minutes away from the event. So there was two historical battles, really, uh, Cromwell's battle, which made

01:18:34

England become a Republic and then the battle of the Boyne. So a Dutch King invaded

01:18:40

Ireland, uh, had a fight with an English King that was already taken over Ireland. They had a battle, uh, 20 minutes from my house.

01:18:47

And, um, since then they've, they've been having these marches ever since the, in my opinion, anyway, the, it's not good.

01:18:56

It's more political. And then the people that live in these areas have to, everything shuts down for them.

01:19:02

So, and then you have the other side as well that, you know, they have their matches as well, marching bands and stuff.

01:19:08

So basically it's called the orange order, but the orange order is Masonic and in nature.

01:19:14

So, but that's, that's a whole different story. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Um, and it's interesting as we're driving back down to where our hotel was in Dublin, you could see all the different bonfires, like just all across the countryside.

01:19:26

We actually drove one like right by one that was, uh, I think it was just a bunch of hooligans and they, they had a pretty rowdy one.

01:19:33

Yeah. It's a drinking event for most people. It's, it's fairly little to do with culture anymore. Almost like how we, it's supposed to celebrate the process and victories of our

01:19:42

Catholics. Well, most of the people, they defeat were actually English, which is the same people that are loyal to the

01:19:50

Northern Ireland people are supposed to be loyal to the crown, but they celebrate two victories just that just happened to happen in Ireland, but have nothing to do with Irish history.

01:19:58

And it's like a victory over the Irish and the Catholics, but the King was English. So what's the most interesting cult to you?

01:20:06

Cause I know you, I know you follow cultish. Yeah. What cult sticks out to you that you find the Mormons the most interesting. Yeah.

01:20:12

It's ever since I was a young kid, we used to have Mormons visit our housing estate and we, we got on very well with these people.

01:20:20

And there was actually one guy that got killed a missionary. Yeah. Missionary. Yeah. And he, they used to come, you know, sweets and showed

01:20:28

American football and everybody was like, wow, what's this? And we formed a nice relationship.

01:20:34

Now we weren't interested in anything he had to say, but we were interested in the, in the sweets and the candy and stuff like that.

01:20:41

So, so ever since then, I've always had a fascination with Mormon people and more so when I became a

01:20:46

Christian. So I've met actually so many and I'm surprised to hear the stories that Jesus came to America and everything.

01:20:54

Yeah. Brigham himself went to England. Many, like a few times. I'm not sure if it was, um, it was at the

01:21:01

Mormons that there was an Irish guy involved and he was selling some ancient documents. It's like a traveling salesman or something.

01:21:08

So when I heard that, I was like, here we go again. The Irish are getting the blame for everything. So funny.

01:21:14

Who, um, a total side note, what would you say is the most in American cinema? Like what actor has done the most authentic Irish accent?

01:21:22

What's the, what's the best and what's the worst? I don't think there is the best one, to be honest.

01:21:29

But the worst one is definitely Tom Cruise. Oh, from far and away. Tell me you like me hat.

01:21:36

We actually don't have lucky charms in Ireland either. You don't have any at all?

01:21:42

No. It's probably a Boston invention, like the fight in Irish as well. We don't, we don't have many people fighting

01:21:49

Irish anymore. Really? And we don't actually eat corned beef and cabbage either. Really?

01:21:54

You're like just blowing my mind right now. All American. Sorry to disappoint you. Yeah. So many people come to Ireland expecting corned beef and cabbage.

01:22:03

Do you have Captain Crunch? I don't even know what it is. Wow. So we don't have, okay. So it's not just the lucky charms.

01:22:10

No. Okay. So I guess we'd call that poison. There's so much chemicals in there.

01:22:16

Yeah. I guess another story I got to tell you, give me your thoughts on, and I don't know how much of this is exaggerated, but I used to work at Costco and I worked in the meat department.

01:22:27

And one of my managers, his name was Tom and he was from Ireland. He had a thick, heavy

01:22:32

Irish accent. He's from there. He immigrated over here. And he had told me the story because we were talking about the same conversation about what's the best

01:22:40

Irish accent. And he ended up the story his friends told. I know how much of it was exaggerated.

01:22:46

So I never saw the movie, but there's a Brad Pitt movie called the devil's own with Harrison Ford. I retract my statement.

01:22:51

That's actually a decent accent. That's a decent accent. Okay. So Brad Pitt's a great actor and he really takes a lot of thought into his role.

01:22:58

So apparently there's a story when he was doing prep for the role, he wanted to get an understanding of those areas in Ireland where it's full of IRA.

01:23:07

And so he tried to be like all discreet with like a ball cap and sunglasses. It was kind of going around taking pictures, apparently stuck out as a sore thumb.

01:23:16

So there's actual people in the IRA who like, apparently I grabbed and kind of like abducted him and sit down and had a hard conversation where like in his face.

01:23:24

Um, and we're saying like, who are you? Like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm Brad Pitt. And the guy responded, yeah. And I'm the

01:23:29

Pope. That's a common response. Yeah. That happened to us. We were in Northern Ireland and we were in Belfast.

01:23:37

So we were staying in a mainly Protestant loyalist area. So on the walls, they have all these bits of people with guns and balaclavas and stuff like that.

01:23:47

So we, we have Dublin registration on our cars. So we just parked anywhere.

01:23:52

And, uh, we got a knock on the door late at night. Who are you? So the guy that was with us had to go on a drive with basically this guy from the neighborhood who was that guy that looked after him.

01:24:05

So, uh, we've seen that I've seen paramilitary marches. Yeah. Yeah. We went on holiday with two

01:24:11

Spanish girls and just randomly said in a, like a hostel woke up the next day, there was a full military parade and I'm in the back of the taxi, like scared as hell.

01:24:22

And these two Spanish girls are thinking that the music is Irish. So they're clapping their hands. And I've seen so many strange things in this journey with God.

01:24:31

It's been amazing. Yeah. What's like with, when you think about just the culture of Irish and talking about it, and we mentioned we're here at ReformCon and I mentioned to one of the previous subperson that was on here behind the mic with us, we're really this really putting on the emphasis on how the

01:24:45

Lordship of Christ encompasses everything like economics, uh, like how you conduct relationships both with God, with your neighbor, all of that.

01:24:54

When it comes to me, and there's a lot of things that are different between here in the United States, here in Arizona versus where you live in Dublin, like what are like the big takeaways?

01:25:03

Like, how do you see applying like everything you're learning here? And just for you as a Christian, uh, like in Ireland, like how do you, how do you live that out?

01:25:12

Uh, just from what I've heard here, it starts in the home for, for everything. If you're not doing that at home, you're hardly going to affect the culture around you.

01:25:21

So if you're a good husband and good wife and all that, and your kids are being raised in the Lord, God is doing all the work anyway.

01:25:28

You know, he allows us to be used for his glory, you know? And sometimes we forget about that and we think, oh,

01:25:36

God needs me to do this. God needs me to do that. God doesn't need anything from me, you know? So, um, with me, with, uh,

01:25:44

Jeff and all, they start the abortion ministry in Ireland. So there's a good core of people there that have gotten that idea and sort of ran with it.

01:25:52

So everything starts small, you know? So how do the, when you go do like abortion ministry out there, like what does that look like?

01:25:58

Are there's cause Planned Parenthood, that's a really an American thing. We've had like they do in the hospitals or hospitals which are used for other things.

01:26:08

So the big argument there is how could you stand outside because women are going in for different things. You don't know they're going in for abortion.

01:26:15

Plus we're also so far away from the facilities to actually, you know, talk to these people.

01:26:21

So, but we've developed relationships with people walking by. Doctors have come out, said, thanks so much for what you're doing.

01:26:28

What you're doing is difficult. Thanks so much. And that's encouraging because it's not the same fight as it is here.

01:26:35

You can't just stand outside with a big megaphone and you know, the police are aggressive as well.

01:26:40

We've had many issues with the police in different areas actually come up. We have had reporters take pictures of us because we stood there with the baby's immortal tear signs and that's freaked out people.

01:26:51

So when I was younger, I would say in my younger years, like college around that time,

01:26:58

I became a huge U2 fan, right? And you're like, Oh boy. Well, let's just say when they came out in support of repealing the eighth amendment,

01:27:07

I was like, we're done. And I've never listened to a U2 song since. Since then have

01:27:14

I ever not started listening to them? I realized I'm like, yeah, I think they're pretty overrated honestly. Did you ever like world tour or something like that?

01:27:20

I've been to like two or three, I've been to three other concerts. Yeah. I've never, never went to a concert. Never had the need to.

01:27:26

But yeah, but it was just, I remember like the, the, the stunning hypocrisy of Bono who flexes himself as this like humanitarian, who wants to save lives.

01:27:36

And here he is advocating for an amendment that's going to allow the murder of babies to happen up until like basically partial birth abortion, like right up until like, before they give birth, you can, you can murder the baby.

01:27:52

Yeah. Bono in the eyes of most people is a hypocrite. So yeah, I wouldn't be listening to anything

01:27:57

Bono says, you know, people, people that put music on your phone without your permission.

01:28:03

I'm still angry about that. The very first song that I play on the Apple phone. It's like, Oh, what was it, babe?

01:28:10

What was that song? That U2 song on the iPhone? Bah, Bah, Bah, Bah, Bah, Bah, Bah, Bah.

01:28:17

It would just always play. It's like, come on. Come on. What are you doing? Yeah. He apparently came out and like apologized to like all these years later.

01:28:25

And it's like, Oh, okay. That was the worst Bono. It was like 12 years later. Oh yeah. When I do a decade and two years ago,

01:28:31

I'm sorry. Yeah. He needs to repent. He needs to apologize. Not just for that terrible album, but he needs to repent for advocating for the murder of babies.

01:28:38

But one thing that's interesting though, is that when I, I don't know if it was apologia that did this, it might've been, but they were actually interviewing people just asking, do you actually know the ramifications of the eighth amendment?

01:28:54

And a lot of them were told that you know, it's just basic early birth. They weren't aware of the ramifications up until like right before, up until like nine months, basically.

01:29:05

And they were like, they were like shocked. They're like, Oh my goodness. Like, that's not right. But the problem there in Ireland, especially as they used a particular woman that was, they said was refused an abortion and she died.

01:29:18

So they politicized that woman and that event. And then actually it was found out that wasn't the actual reason why she died.

01:29:26

So that's what they do. And they, they polarize, uh, popularize these things that aren't actually true.

01:29:32

So people are missing, misinformed and then they vote based on that. So it's just what most medias do.

01:29:40

So they were really pushing for Ireland because Ireland was the last place, um, nearly in Europe that didn't have abortion.

01:29:47

So, and with all the different ideologies that are here now in Ireland, it's been pushed aggressively.

01:29:53

Christianity is like, people are nearly afraid to speak out at Yeah. Well, so, uh, you know, pastor

01:29:59

Jeff and the end abortion group, they just went out to Ireland, uh, to kind of help you guys out. Tell me about that.

01:30:05

Like, what was, what did you take away? What do you think the impact was with them coming out there with the other pastors and everything?

01:30:10

That last time I think was a time of, uh, refreshing and stuff like that because they've actually been over there since like 2017 with different churches, mostly in the

01:30:19

North. Also with our church now, they were in their 2020 sack, um,

01:30:24

Luke and Jeff came over, but they're trying to convince people, hearts and minds of Christians that, you know, the pro -life movement is doing what they're saying they're doing.

01:30:34

They don't want to end abortion. It's very difficult to get past that for some people. They'd be like, why, why would the pro -life do that?

01:30:41

We're pumping so many millions into this fight, but they're not actually fighting. So, uh, we've had great success changing hearts and minds, but everything is slow, you know, everything's slower in Ireland.

01:30:54

So going back to the reference there with Brad Pitt, he said the best quote of that film was, this is not an

01:31:01

American story. It's an Irish one. So basically that means there's no happy ending here. You know, so Irish, they like to be tragic.

01:31:10

They're not very optimistic people. They like the tragic stories and the tragic films.

01:31:16

So trying to convince them to be positive that God is going to win. He's already sitting on the throne.

01:31:22

People are looking around saying, I like how you say throne, that's like, yeah, 33 and a third. And people are making fun of me asking all week, you know what

01:31:30

I'm saying? 33 and a third, you know, like a leprechaun, you know, but it's what the

01:31:37

Americans want. So we give it to them, you know, Andrew, what questions do you have? Do you have anything out to fly?

01:31:42

Yeah. What's like the mysticism like over there in Ireland? There's lots of new age now at the moment. Uh, lots of people doing, um, you know, that out of Alaska is a, yeah.

01:31:53

And people are searching for some sort of spirituality. Yeah. And then we have all the

01:31:58

Celtic stuff as well. So people are getting back into that Celtic new age through it kind of things.

01:32:04

Yeah. But the, the, the, the thing is they are looking for something, but like, where's the preachers, where's the people on the streets, you know, it's a big problem, you know?

01:32:14

Yeah. Just as we are up here, it's interesting culturally, just because, um, like, I think there's a, just a huge interest in kind of that old

01:32:23

Nordic paganism, like, and I was interesting too, but just because, uh, there's a movie that came out,

01:32:29

I saw it twice in theaters, actually. Um, it was called the Northman and it's, it's brutal.

01:32:35

It's kind of like the saving private Ryan, uh, Vikings movies. And it showed everything, both the spirit, like the, them taking psychoactive substances, getting in contact with, you know,

01:32:46

Thor and these other different, uh, deities or whatever. I want to, I wasn't Thor, but just like, whatever, whatever the

01:32:52

Nordic, whatever the Nordic one is. Uh, but it was like brutal. And I, like,

01:32:57

I walk, I kid you not, like I walked out of the theater and I was like, thank God for the gospel.

01:33:04

Because like, prior to the gospel conquering these lands, like it was brutal. Like everyone was killing each other.

01:33:10

Like even the guy who's centralized around in the very opening segment of the film, they put a bunch of women and children inside a home and set it on fire.

01:33:18

Like it's brutal. And like, that's what it was before these people came over and were evangelized.

01:33:24

Yeah. It's like people that are Buddhist and stuff like that. And then they learned the story that Buddha left his wife and his child to pursue his own happiness.

01:33:32

And how could that be a role model for anything, you know? Oh, a hundred percent. It's terrible. Like, well, people only know a loose bit of the facts and they have statues everywhere, you know,

01:33:42

Buddha statue, a Viking head and all this sort of crazy stuff. And they don't know anything on a deeper level, but that's why he shows like yours and like even the yoga one as well.

01:33:52

So many doing yoga, you don't know the dangers of it, actually promoting these things as a healthy options or like after listening to your show,

01:34:01

I didn't know enough at the time to be bold enough to say something to people. But now that's why

01:34:06

I like yours and things like Walter Martin and stuff. And I got introduced through Apologia to people like that.

01:34:12

So it's really helpful when you're talking to people on a one -to -one level and you can actually tell them and then they get introduced to the gospel in so many different ways, you know?

01:34:24

So praise God. It's interesting. It's a good journey. Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for coming on to chat with us and hope you enjoy the rest of the conference.

01:34:32

No problem. Take care. Awesome, man. Appreciate you. All right. Well, this is our first ever, what do you call it?

01:34:40

Getting behind the mic with us. The fans. The fans cast. We actually said it the wrong way, like not realizing that we were actually titling it under a very terrible website.

01:34:52

Oh my goodness. Do you realize we did that? Yeah, this is the fan cast. The fan cast. The first culture's fans cast.

01:35:00

So all that being said, next time you ever want to come out, if we do one next year,

01:35:07

ReformCon, we are so glad we got to interact with everyone here, all of our fans. And we hope to see and meet a lot more of you guys in person in the near future.