EP 40 HOW SHOULD THE CHURCH FOSTER POLITICAL LEADERSHIP WITH MATT RICCARDI

Cornerstone Church

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You're supposed to turn the world upside down. I think a lot of politicians or people higher up are afraid to stand for something because they want to move the needle so little, so little, so little, but it seems like you're more of a let's just flip the world upside down kind of guy,

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Matt. Am I getting the right read on that? Absolutely. And again, when you step up to the plate to run for politics in New Jersey and you tell the people that you're going to abolish abortion,

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I stood firm on abolishing all of the gun control measures as well. The gun people loved me, but again,

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I would see some of their groups. Gun people were great. They at least argued and debated it, man. They were great.

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They at least gave some merit and talked about it. They believed, hey, she stinks.

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She doesn't stand for gun owners, even though the NRA gave her their support. I don't know how.

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She was for all the gun control measures too. But at least I read the comments in their groups where they were arguing it.

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The pro -life people didn't even get a chance because their masters or whoever held the keys refused.

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But yes, I am all about you're commanded to go and to beat down those gates, right?

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We're supposed to go and take people out of hell and pull them out from behind the gates of hell.

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We're supposed to storm them. It's not sitting back and keeping the gates of hell from storming us. It's the opposite.

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We're supposed to go beat down the gates of hell and pull those people out of the fire. And welcome to Tearing Down High Places.

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My name's Average Joe. I've got Pastor Tim in the house. Hi, Tim. Hey, hey.

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And then we got a special guest today. Matt Riccardi comes to us. If you don't know Matt Riccardi, he's the former chairman of the

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New Jersey Constitution Party, which nominated him to run for governor of New Jersey, 2017 youngest gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey history.

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He's always a Marine. He's a current homesteader, investor, football and softball coach, a winning championship softball coach.

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As a matter of fact, five daughters, two sons and one wife. Welcome, Matt Riccardi.

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Glad to have you on Tearing Down High Places. Thank you. Thank you.

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It's good to be here. Man, I'm just so, so excited. And you're living in Tennessee now, right?

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Yes, that's correct. Yeah. The good old conservative state of Tennessee where within every square mile, you've got like five churches.

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Well, we're not going to talk too much about Tennessee because, you know, living in New Jersey, us missionaries, you know, that you're no longer a

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New Jersey missionary, because if you're in New Jersey, you're not missionary minded. What the heck are you doing here, right? Yeah.

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I'm always missionary minded. That's why God sent me to Tennessee, not because it was a way to get away.

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It was a way to be a mission down here. Believe it or not. They've got lots of, they've got lots of, you know what, when you've got, you've got churches every couple of square miles, it, you know, there's, there's something there.

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I don't necessarily know that all of them are very sound. So they need some fire from New Jersey, some

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Italian sauce down here to liven things up a little bit. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, you can open up a hoagie shop everywhere.

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Every time I hear someone leave New Jersey, they always complain that the Italian food's no good.

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There's no hoagies or pizza anywhere. I tell you what, they're bringing a Wawa down here, which is very unique because Wawa didn't, doesn't leave the

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Northeast, you know, Jersey and Philly. And just about a year ago. Yeah. They just say they're moving one in.

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So that's kind of, I don't know if it had to do with me. They knew I got here and I can't find any hoagies.

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I don't know. But yeah, it's very weird that they would put a Wawa right here in this little area. So wow.

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Well, you heard me. You better hurry up and open a pizza shop before they put you out. Yeah. But anyway, we were talking before the show and I was saying,

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Hey, you know, the reason I thought it'd be just fantastic to have Matt on besides he's just fun to talk to.

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And I, and I miss you, man. It's been a long time since I, since we chatted and, but there's, you know, we're coming up where it's election season.

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You know, we've, we've had multiple shows about the election. We've had shows about abortion, many of them actually, and about fighting for that and the ups and downs.

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And I just think that this, it would be great to get your perspective on, you know, what Christians should be thinking right now.

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We've got to get the vote out obviously. But you know, win or lose, what should, what do we want to, what should we be looking for?

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You know, if we get the Trump presidency that we think is going to ameliorate the evils of the democratic party, what's that look like?

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And then, Hey man, if God decides he's gonna, he's gonna chastise us and let the

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Dems win, you know, what's that look like? So what are your thoughts? Where, where, where's your head at with all this? Well, I think no matter what, it's not too cliche to ever say, we should always be looking towards the, you know, the kingdom.

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We should always be looking at, at, at Jesus in everything that we do. And in everything that we're given, obviously

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God puts people in power. We know that. And, and our place here on earth isn't necessarily to be concerned with government and with the way that government acts, but more so with you know, with preaching the gospel.

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And now we have to, obviously we have to exist within all of that. But let's not be too, too worried.

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Let's not be too, too stressed out regarding the, the the coming and going of rulers and people that are in positions of power.

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We know that none of them are ruling with an intention of bringing the kingdom. None of them are ruling with an intention of, of having a

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Christ centered culture. Very, very few people at all, even state and local speaking.

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So what we should be looking for is we should be looking for opportunities in education.

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We should be looking for opportunities to advance the culture. You can't win back these places.

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You can't win back a nation that was formed through the

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Bible and through Judeo -Christian principles, a nation that was formed very much as a

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Christian nation. You can't win that back without changing the culture. And it didn't get this way overnight. It didn't get this way by one single compromise.

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It got this way from endless compromises and from people who walk around with the name Christian on them compromising.

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And they didn't, they, you know, they haven't read their Bibles and they haven't read the Pilgrim's Progress and learned anything about the walk.

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So I think that for us, those that are faithful, those that are even just starting to become Christians and trying to learn how to be faithful.

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I mean, for us, it's to just look and say, okay, this is the result. What does my Bible say? And how can

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I go ahead and step out there into the community and bring a fashion of education to these people with regards to the culture, specifically women and abortion or, you know, things like that.

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So I think that that's, don't stress out so much. In general, it's something that is, we did a switcheroo there.

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We did a quick switch, but yeah, in general, leftism is something that can be very scary for anyone.

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But the reality is, is, you know, at the end of the day, God is in control. He's going to go ahead and he's going to do whatever it is that he needs to do in order to bring about his purpose and his plan.

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And we are just here to do our jobs and to continue that walk and be faithful. Yeah. Yeah.

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So, hey, you know, I forgot about your deep background in the constitution. People would probably be blessed to hear some insights, you know, because you ran the

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New Jersey constitution party. You know, you know, as well as, as anyone how far away we are from the constitution.

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So say Trump wins, where, where, where can we get some constitutional wins? Where can we get back to the constitution?

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Because it's a long haul. We can't just, we're so far away from the original constitution right now. You'd agree with that, right?

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Oh yeah. Oh, absolutely. And, and let's not, let's not mince words here. Trump is very far from the constitution as well.

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And even though you've got a lot of Christians that really, really support him and love him and think of him as being someone who is, who is closer to Christianity and freedom, he really isn't.

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You know, a lot of, a lot of his takes, his policies, his words have been very much anti -constitution, particularly you'll note his actions towards guns.

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And now his recent positioning towards abortion, which I would love to just touch two seconds on that.

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Abortion is not a state, it's not a state's rights issue. It's, it's, it's, it's pounded down very much in the declaration of independence and in the constitution in amendments one, five and 14.

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It is not something that is to be debated and to be passed over for, for morals of state legislatures to handle.

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It's murder. At the end of the day, it's murder and it cannot be tolerated in a free society or in a constitutional republic.

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It is absolutely something that needs to be abolished and outlawed and for good reason.

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And we can go through all the arguments on it, biology, et cetera. None of it allows you to murder a human being for any purpose whatsoever.

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And it's not a state's rights issue. Trump is wrong. The Supreme court got it wrong and they made a mistake.

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The reality is, is that it should have been a full blown ban on it because again, it is murder. So that's one way that he's not constitutional.

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The Supreme court's not working constitutionally, the state legislatures, et cetera. You know, none of it is constant.

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That's not right. Um, and then again, with regards to taxation, with regards to at least freedom of speech is being upheld for the most part in many places, which you can be grateful for.

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Cause the second that that, they say the second amendment goes away, the first amendment goes away. It's over. It's done.

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You don't have an opportunity to fight for your right to defend yourself because you'll be getting thrown into prison.

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Uh, you know, every lock, if you go ahead and look over at what's happening in England, England is a perfect place to look at.

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I had a guy who argued with me on one of my posts online telling me that he was grateful to give up free speech because he gets free ambulance rides.

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And now you can see, I just saw a report yesterday. It said every single hour, somebody is raped every single hour in England, every hour.

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The statistic is that there are, or there are as many rates in England right now as there are hours in a day, uh, for the entire year.

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That's wild. And, um, and yeah, they've, well, they've imported it. They've imported it and their politicians have cracked down.

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You can't use any derogatory terms. Not that as a Christian, you don't want to. I don't want to. So my desire to sit here and to call someone a derogatory term or a curse word or anything like that,

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I don't want that. But the reality is, is if you can control me being able to say that, if I can say, Hey, it works for Christianity.

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If I can stop somebody from saying, I hate Jesus, or he can go, you know what, or whatever else, if I have the power with government to stop you from saying that, then you have the power to stop me from telling you how good

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Jesus is. You have a power to stop me from saying the Bible is real. You have the power to throw me in jail for that.

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This is what we'll have is how this country began. This is what happened to John Bunyan. This is what happened when this country started.

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They came here because they were being thrown in jail for disagreeing with what the King was saying about Christianity.

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That's the reality. So everything starts with free speech. And again, even though that's being upheld for the most part here in America, still, you still have endless attacks on it.

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Like the Baker who's going through what is 17th round against the LGBT out in Colorado. It's just, it's endless attacks on it.

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Don't give up that fight. But again, constitution is really, really ripped apart, shredded our budget, our deficit, $36 trillion worth of debt.

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That's not constitutional. So yeah, we, we need to do a lot. And I have one thing I had said, just a final note on this point.

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One thing I said is Trump wanted to win reelection is first time running. The only thing he had to say was,

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Hey, I've got a plan to hold them accountable for their spending. And if he wanted it, if he just did that in his first term and held people accountable for the spending, no president has done that all the way back to like the 1960s.

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It wasn't Bill Clinton, believe it or not. That's a, that's a myth going back to the 1960s when this whole debt started to start it up.

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No president has done anything to stop it. He could have easily dealt with that if he was, if he was smart, if he had smart people, he could have said,

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Hey, let's go ahead and curtail this and stop all the spending. Let's get mine mindful of it.

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And if I stop it, I'm the person that gets to say, I stopped our debt from growing. Obviously that hasn't happened.

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It's ballooning. It's going to explode who knows when, but the reality is, is that right there is the key thing to focus on.

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If you want to focus on politics, if you want to focus on what's going wrong in this country, focus on that debt.

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The Bible says when you're in debt, you're a slave. So we are a hundred percent enslaved here in this country.

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Even if we believe that we are free, we are not. Wow. That's well said.

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So where do you see us making some changes or Tim, you know, we were talking to Tim and I were talking about leadership and how we can bring up new leaders.

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Cause you know, Hey, Trump's going to be here. He does what he does. Doesn't do what he doesn't do. We in the church, we need more people to be in politics.

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I mean, I feel like, like we're all around Trump because that's all we got. Right. You know, the argument from the left is,

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Oh, he's bad in this way. And he's bad in that way. They have no objective standards. So I don't know what they're talking about, but they're just, they're just worldview squatters.

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As one of our old former guests, Tim, who's that guy that said worldview squatter. That was awesome. We had a new

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Jersey pastor in here talking about worldview squatters. I don't know, but he's a blood red church nominee.

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He's got my vote for the best blood red church nominee. Was that last week or no, was that a different week?

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That was like several months ago. Oh, several months ago. Okay. Worldview squatter. This is episode 40, by the way.

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Matt, you're at episode 40 of the Tearing Down High Places podcast. I love it.

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I love it. And you're already up there as top five, which is pretty good.

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Nice. All right. Let's bring it up. Not even 15 minutes in. So, but to get back to those question, what is, do you have any advice for me?

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Because I'm a youth pastor. Is there a way for me to communicate to kids about the culture and going on?

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Do you have advice of like what age that should start talking about politics? Because it seems like the world doesn't want to talk about religion.

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The world doesn't want to talk about politics, but what is more important to talk about? Yeah. So that's a, that's a really great question.

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And I appreciate you as a youth pastor more than, more than I can, I can, uh, I can explain, um, especially in a, in a good church, right?

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I mean, from what Joe tells me, um, the church parenting in general is what's destroyed this culture.

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Parenting has been, parenting is obviously the, the win, the win lose situation.

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That's where it all comes from. The church is not to be training your children for you or educating them as your job.

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When they come into the church, if they are handed over to you, then you have, I feel like you have a position.

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I, I taught, taught kids at church as well. Um, you have a position as a teacher to teach them the word and to teach them the valuable lessons in it.

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Not just to say, well, this is Joseph and he had, you know, 11 brothers and he wore a coat and Oh yeah.

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Like, Oh, that's great. That's for like five girls. But when you get older, you've got to really tear into it.

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And I don't believe in holding back. I was teaching my son and reading the exact text to him. I didn't read a children's

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Bible to him when he was two and three. I read about the abominations of Sodom and Gomorrah. He didn't understand it.

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And the time that he asked questions and began to understand it is when I responded and gave him the answers to it.

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To this day, my son just learned about sex ed, like he's 13. He learned about it like 10 months ago, knew nothing about it.

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Still has no interest in any of that stuff, but I read it to him plainly. And I was upfront with him about it.

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Parents need to be doing that as a youth pastor, as somebody that's involved in the church. I feel like, I don't know what the age group is that you're working with, but it has to be a couple of different things that are important.

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One of them, there has to be some sort of an element of, of integrity and honesty.

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When we're teaching the word, there also has to be a focus on the text itself.

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I know a lot of people are using phones these days. My son in the church that he's in, the kids are constantly on their phones and the youth pastor is not necessarily curtailing that.

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And they're sending pictures and stuff like that. And who knows if they're looking at things that they shouldn't inappropriate stuff.

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There's got to be a lot more discipline is probably the best word to use. Discipline for every one of us is so important.

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And as Christians disciplining from within the Holy Spirit is so important for us in the church, there needs to be great discipline.

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And the discipline needs to be centered around honesty and integrity. And as Joe had mentioned the other day, we're bringing too much public school into our

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Christian lives and into the church. And there's not enough discipline. Parents are constantly and consistently letting kids get away with things and, and not focus on, on growth and not focus on their behavioral aspects, especially males.

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My goodness, the male society, the whole idea of toxic masculinity that comes up, it comes up because parents are really not honing in their boys who are being fed pornography at age nine, 10, six, seven, and are gaining that, that troubling sort of aggression, um, in all aspects of life, but especially towards women, because they're distorted by seeing this violence and this rape that goes on on videos and parents aren't paying attention.

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Cause here, my son is six. I'm going to give him a phone and they don't pay attention to it. So I feel like the discipline has to start at home.

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And as a pastor or somebody that's in the church, my job is to look at that, the kids and see if any of that is being brought into the church and to quickly deal with it and deal with, you know, the discernment and deal with the disciplining, uh, that's supposed to go on.

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I could go on with that for like an hour and a half because it's something that's near and dear to my heart.

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Um, especially with seven kids and five daughters. And I've got that contrast of,

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Oh, like how should it be for boys? How should it be for girls? It's not like I'm one sided. I've got to understand how it works for both of them and what's going to be good for both of them.

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And as Christians, how they need to perceive things and see them. But I see so much failure in the church with regards to the youth and parenting because there's zero discipline whatsoever.

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And you can't get people stand up for what's right. If you don't have discipline and within that discipline, if integrity is not number one, my son has told one lie in his entire life at two years old, it was accidental.

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I disciplined him very firmly because I was very, very strong and faithful in the Lord. And I did not want to allow that to become something that was normal for him.

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So I immediately dealt with it. And to this day, the highest thing in his life is his integrity.

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He believes that every word he says he should be held accountable for it. He believes highly now it doesn't mean he doesn't make mistakes.

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He messes up, but the kid has never spoken a bad word. He doesn't do anything that's bad with regards to those kinds of things, trying to cheat people, demean them because integrity was so important to us.

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And it still is. I feel like that's the number one thing for every human being on this planet is integrity is everything.

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Discipline, obviously going with that. And we need to instill that into the kids within the church through our teaching, within our home.

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And you can't get them into politics to stand up for what is right. If they don't understand what integrity and discipline are in the first place.

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Amen, man. Thank you for that answer. Because, you know, sometimes I wonder because sometimes, you know, it happens every once in a while where, you know, a parent or someone from church gets mad at the youth pastor because a child might be acting up or something like that.

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But I've always thought, you know, that's an indicator of what's happening at home. And the youth pastors enforce what's going on, you know, what should be being taught at home.

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But yeah, that's encouraging. Yeah, the word. I just go where the word goes. And if it relates to the culture,

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I'm happy to happy to make that application. Yeah. Yes. Amen.

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I got a comment about some of the I taught some Sunday school, too. And and and the best parents would always come in and go, all right, what do you do?

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What do you do? And then you say, no, it's really great. You know, they're like, no, no, no, he wasn't.

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What do you do? You got to tell me because we got to we got to nip it now. Got to do it now. And they were the best.

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Those are best parents. Agreed. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Keeping keeping on top of those sheep.

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Yeah. So, Matt, you mentioned that you had seven kids and that you are you a former politician or are you still a politician?

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Or I've never never been a politician. Yeah. No, no.

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If I was a politician, I would have been the governor of New Jersey or I would have got more than one percent. So but no, I'm not a politician at all.

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And I just you know, God called. I turned 30 years old. I had a heart for for politics since I was young.

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I always wanted to be the president one day. Don't know if that'll ever happen, but I turned 30. Thank you.

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I turned 30 and I had checked up on the race and I could get really deep into all the corruption that went on.

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But just from my own heart, I had checked up on it and there was no candidate that was running who was anti -abortion.

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The Republican candidate was pro -abortion because this is New Jersey. And the Democrat was pro literally ripping them to pieces even after they're born.

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And I said, you know, I can't possibly live in a state like this and have every candidate on the ballot be pro -abortion.

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There's no way. So God said, get up and go. And I said, no, no, no, wait a minute. No, I don't think so.

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And there's got to be somebody. So I checked with all the parties in in New Jersey and I checked with their positions and I had contacted the

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Republicans to talk to them and they wanted me to come in to have a sit down. So I sat with some mafia bosses legitimately inside of a

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Chinese restaurant and they sat down with me and they went through the whole story with me and they told me

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Kim Guadagno is going to win the nomination. Mind you, the vote didn't take place until June, but this was in February. And they told me it's her nomination.

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She's going to win it. There were five other candidates running for governor with her and somehow she was already presumed to be the nominee.

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Now, how does that happen? But I said, oh, okay. And they said, well, you go ahead and you run in our primary and we'll make a bright future for you.

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And I said, with all due respect, I have too much integrity to accept that you've already chosen the candidate without there being a vote.

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So I backed out and they ended up finding another person to take my place. His name was hurt.

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Well, I won't even, I won't give you his name. Um, is it the, they found another person to take my place, another young candidate who ended up becoming the fifth runner in that race.

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And he took the votes from Jack Chitorelli, um, who also wasn't as a bad candidate for governor, but that's besides the point, but they wanted me in there so that I could guarantee

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Kim Guadagno won the nomination because I would be the person that they used to take the votes from her number one competitor,

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Jack Chitorelli. That was how they were going to guarantee it. Since I decided not to run two weeks later, they grabbed another guy, brought him in.

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He was young. He was conservative. And he ended up getting those votes and stole it long story short. They had already decided that she would be the nominee in February.

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And the votes for the primary were in June. That's New Jersey politics in a nutshell.

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So from that point, I left, I contacted the constitution party. They're the only party in America that stands 100 % anti -abortion by the way.

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So that's who should be getting our votes. Um, if you want long story, if you really want to fix America, you should walk away from the major parties and you should go, every

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Christian should go join the constitution party. We'll see what that would do. That would change a lot of things in this country. Um, that's not going to obviously happen overnight, but I really would say that that's the number one thing.

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That's the only party that stands for, even in their preamble, they stand for Christianity being a part of our, uh, governing body, a part of our legislation, a part of everything.

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I would check them out and highly, highly support them. Um, but again, yeah, that's how it all began.

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And they said, I called them up, they had an interview and they said, you know what? We want you as the nominee. So I took it up and, and I stood a hundred percent on the constitution, a hundred percent on my faith, a hundred percent on what

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God said to do. And I ran the race and yeah, people mocked me for it all down. You're such a loser. You ended up with, with, you know, less than 1 % love.

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I'm like, that's fine. That's okay. Because at the end of the day, minds were changed. The voice was out there and you guys had to deal with the fact that one person would not accept child sacrifice stood in front of children or teenagers in your high schools and got to tell them a different perspective.

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That's good enough for me. I got to tell teenage girls that you do not have to kill babies in the state of New Jersey.

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That was good enough for me, baby. That's that's if I have to run the rest of my life and those are the races I run beat my face into the ground.

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So long as I get an audience to stand before, just like just like Paul, give me the audience.

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That's it. I started as one person, started as one person. By the end, I ended up with 7 ,000 votes.

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People were listening. Good enough for me. They have no idea you're running a whole different race that God's calling you to run.

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That's right. Amen. Yeah, that's right. So dude, I'm really encouraged by that, man.

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That's, that's awesome. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Yo, did you have a question you were trying to answer? Sorry.

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I was trying to say audience of one. That's, I think, I think Matt being from the, uh, from up in, uh, freehold area, he's more of a, um, more of a, probably a

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Giants fan, but down here in, in Philly, in Southern Jersey, we had, uh, the Eagles quarterback.

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He had a t -shirt that said audience of one. That was, uh, his, uh, his tribute to Jesus Christ.

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Yeah. Yeah. Was it? Huh? Carson. Was that Nick Foles? Yeah, but Nick Foles is going to be in too.

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He's a born again Christian. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a, I happen to be a 49ers fan, so I know what it's like to be an audience of one living in New Jersey.

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So Matt, you mentioned something about, um, you were, you were sitting with, um, mob bosses and the mafias.

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Is the mafia have control over New Jersey? Yeah, the mafia has control. I mean, you saw what happened with the

27:55

Piers just a couple of weeks ago, they were shutting everything down. The guy said, Oh, I'll shut the whole economy down.

28:01

You know, I don't care if I, until I get what I want. You saw that, right? The whole, where they were shutting down the peers.

28:07

So, um, so yeah, so they ended up getting what they wanted, but to have that kind of power to come out in the public in 2024 and say,

28:14

I'll shut the economy down. And you're just a guy that runs the union out on the peers in New Jersey, in New York.

28:20

That's kind of, that's kind of interesting. We should look into that. We won't look into that because he's a Democrat and he's a union guy.

28:27

But the reality is absolutely who runs the peers, the mafia, the mafia doesn't look like the good fellows anymore.

28:33

They're the guys that work in the unions that run the unions that get the guys to vote exactly how they want to vote, even though they don't believe or support anything other than a pay raise.

28:42

And that pay raise pays big money to union bosses who are mob bosses. The parties are also run by mob bosses as well.

28:49

That's something that's well known throughout politics. Mob bosses control the votes.

28:54

They control, you know, the, um, the, the media coverage and things like that. So by the way, one, one note on that too, um,

29:02

I wasn't allowed to be able to debate with Phil Murphy and Kim Guadagno. If I had been able to,

29:09

I really feel like the media being forced to cover my responses to their questions in comparison to those two would have swung everything.

29:18

Why wasn't I allowed on that stage to debate them and put my ideas forward alongside their ideas?

29:24

Because money, the media makes it so that the election commission makes it so that you have to bring in $500 ,000 worth of donations in order to have a voice on the stage.

29:35

So our system is, is incredibly screwed up and it's jaded and it's geared towards corruption.

29:43

That is wild. Now, uh, Matt, you being Italian, did you have a little bit more street cred or respect with the mob bosses you think?

29:51

Yeah. As soon as they saw the nose, when they look at that nose, as soon as they saw me walk through that door, they say,

29:57

Hey, this guy right here, we like this guy. So yeah, no,

30:03

I don't, I don't know what I think being a Marine really weighed with them, obviously, um, being pretty clean, you know, having all, you know, all the other stuff that that's involved as well, a wife and kids.

30:14

And I think that they, that they were intrigued by that. Um, I don't know that Italians do well in politics in this country for the most part.

30:21

I don't think we've ever had an Italian president or anything. So I don't, I don't know, but definitely.

30:27

Yep. I was sitting here thinking like, man, this guy would make a great president. Even before you said you might do that one day, do you think that's a dream in your heart that might actually come to fruition?

30:38

Well, you know, God did what he, what he, what he did and does what he does with people who are what, you know, a speck on the earth, uh, who are, who are not seen as anything special in the eyes, people that are, that are, that are sinners and have made lots of mistakes.

30:51

Mine are well -documented and, and I, and I own every one of them. Uh, my family members, you know, that, that don't believe in Jesus and sit there and hold things against you and they'll bring up stuff and you're just like, that's,

31:02

I, I definitely did that. But at the end of the day, I put it on the cross. I put it on Jesus. I certainly have made tons of mistakes.

31:10

I wouldn't look at myself as being some white knight or some super clean human being, uh, who's deserving of, of any sort of accolades, but God doesn't use people that, that do.

31:20

He uses people just like me and people that are, that are messed up and have made lots of mistakes. Why? Because we're so covered in dirt that when you see the person rise to the top and they're now white as snow, somebody's going to ask, what happened?

31:33

How'd that happen? Well, Jesus Christ, it was on God. Look at Gideon, you know,

31:38

I mean, there's so many stories in the Bible, but look at, look at Gideon alone. So I'll never say never, if God, God says, get up and go,

31:45

I'm going, I don't care. You know? And again, it's just like the Stephen and Paul thing. I execute me. I don't care. Put me in on TV and execute me.

31:52

I don't, it doesn't bother me at all. I'm not, I'm not concerned with it. It's like my son for a 13 year old has no problem dying for his faith.

32:00

It's wild to hear my son talk like that, but he's like, I don't care if you, if you want to punch me in the face, you hate my guts.

32:06

You know, you're going to kill me. I'm going home. I'm going, I'm going to be with Jesus. It doesn't bother me, but I'm going to speak the truth.

32:13

That kid's out in the, in the, in the, you know, the streets of my neighborhood where there's tons of teenagers and kids that are really, really bad.

32:18

And he's preaching the gospel and he's telling them, you know, about, about, uh, about creationism. He's, he's boldly standing, man.

32:25

He's against evolution talking to these kids. But I look at him as inspiration because he's on fire.

32:31

Um, and he has no fear. And I feel like we need to have no fear. And for me, again, standing up for being anti -abortion in the state of New Jersey, and you got to have no fear.

32:42

And why? Because I die, I'm going home. I don't want to leave my kids and my wife, but if I die,

32:47

I'm going home. I have no fear. I'm going to tell you what I have to tell you. And if you got to do something about it, do what you got to do.

32:54

What an outlook, man. Such faith. That is so, I am so encouraged by that story of your 13 year old doing that because there are not many, there are not, there are very few at 13 sharing the gospel.

33:09

And they don't even know that they're on a, in a gold mine because you know who else is open to hearing the gospel?

33:14

It's other kids that age. Yeah, of course they are. They are. And they, they respond to him.

33:20

And even the ones that want to just get under his skin, they come back every single time for more.

33:27

They like to get under his skin because they know he's clean cut, but it, it pierces the heart. The word will not return for it.

33:33

It pierces the heart. It gets back to them and they come back every time. One of the kids who was riding down on his bike the one day, and he stopped in and he said,

33:41

Hey man, will you pray for me? And this kid's not a good kid, very bad kid.

33:49

But with the constant talking to them and preaching to them, you know, it hit him.

33:54

He's going through a bad time. All these kids are going through a bad time, man. I, that's another issue that we could talk about.

34:00

You know, this country is so broken. Almost every home in the neighborhood has stepmoms and stepdads.

34:06

We've got LGBTers, you know, three, three houses down. There's so much confusion and brokenness that these kids do not understand.

34:16

And they're trying to understand it. And there's no way to reconcile except through the gospel.

34:22

There's no way to reconcile it except through Jesus. Amen. True.

34:29

True. Um, Tim, let me tell you, let me share something that it taught, taught me, exposed me to that.

34:38

I think you may be exposed to now already. Um, and I think there's been other pastors nationally have talked about this since Roe V.

34:46

Wade came out. But back in 2017, when he was running, uh, he shared with me that the pro -life organizations in New Jersey, they're not very pro -life.

34:58

They're only pro -life in a very limited sense. And now we've got this, you know, now, and, and, and so we've got all these organizations that we think are

35:09

Christian friendly in New Jersey. And Matt, as he was running, found out that they were more

35:14

Republican than they were Christian. Matt, you want to share a little bit about that? What we're talking about? Yeah, I immediately saw it out.

35:21

Right. So I run for governor and immediately the first, what am I going to do? I don't have any team. I don't have anybody.

35:27

I ain't got no money. I got nothing, but I do have God. Right. So what am I going to do? That's my thought, right? Where do we start now?

35:32

I have a history in politics. I went to an Ivy league school. I went through all kinds of presidential courses and things.

35:40

I learned everything there is to know about politics. And that meant nothing by the way, until I actually ran when I learned everything about politics.

35:47

But, uh, first things first, what am I going to do? I got to appeal to Christians. Christians are going to support a

35:52

Christian, right? Christians are going to support a Christian, right? That was the phrase. That was my thinking.

35:57

Christians will support a Christian. I got to hit the churches and I got to get the Christians. If I get them, all

36:03

I need, it's a three -way race, Democrat, Republican, me. If I can get the

36:09

Christians, I can get 33%. And all you need is 33%, 34 % in the state of New Jersey, right?

36:15

I just got to get a little bit more than the other two people. So I figured I'd get to the churches that works.

36:21

What else can I do, man? Tell the pro -life people in New Jersey, that's a whole movement.

36:26

Abandon the Republican. She's not pro -life. Come to me. But unfortunately a couple of things happen.

36:32

One, fear is a great motivator and it motivates even Christians to run away from the gospel, to run away from faith.

36:41

They would rather pick the lesser evil because she has a Republican nomination and R next to her name, then stand for the gospel, then stand for the truth, then stand for saving the lives of babies.

36:58

On top of that, the pro -life movement and the organizations in New Jersey do the exact same thing.

37:04

They save face by sticking with the party that's going to also bring in donations to them.

37:11

I was ignored. I was attacked. I was maligned.

37:17

There was a woman who stood firm with me. She was the chair of their Northern chapter.

37:24

We're talking about New Jersey right to life here. She was the chair of their chapter and somehow as soon as the election was over because she supported me, she was suddenly ousted from her position.

37:34

The president sent out an email to the chapters throughout New Jersey and to their supporters that I was a fake and I was a fraud and I was a plant and all this other stuff despite the fact that I obviously spoke very publicly about abolishing abortion, which by the way, they try to tell you you can't do.

37:50

I had a lot of people try to tell me that running for governor as governor, you are the executive of the state.

37:57

Therefore, you could abolish abortion on day one. You do not need a legislature to abolish abortion. You can do it on day one.

38:03

Any governor in the country and the president of the United States can do it on day one. You are the executive office.

38:09

I can go into that based on the constitution easily done tomorrow. We could stop abortion just like that, but there are people who do not have courage and they do not step up to the plate and obviously it's led again by fear over faith for the

38:23

Christians who did not support me who watch this podcast. Hopefully, you've grown from that time.

38:28

Hopefully, you remember this handsome face here. You've grown from that time.

38:34

My prayers were lifted during that time for you that your eyes would be open. Countless churches

38:39

I went into, man. My own church wouldn't even give me a microphone to speak because they had

38:45

Republicans on the board and they were supporting Kim Guadagno. Yeah, they wouldn't even give me a microphone to speak.

38:52

Imagine if every church in New Jersey at least gave me the microphone. Don't tell them to vote for me, but give me a chance.

38:59

Give me the microphone to tell these people they wouldn't do it and I wonder why. Let me repeat that for anybody who didn't quite get it.

39:08

These pro -life organizations bringing in millions of dollars from people who love

39:18

God, who love Jesus, who want their money spent honoring

39:24

God by ending abortion, were unwilling to let the only pro -life candidate in the race speak because they were more

39:35

Republican than they were Christian. That's right and I appreciate you actually going over that.

39:42

That's actually a beautiful way to put that. For the people that are listening, the pro -life organizations didn't just not give me an ability to speak.

39:49

They wouldn't give me their endorsement, which I sought out fervently over and over again and they bad -mouthed me and maligned me, attacked me, and said terrible things about me in order to dissuade their people from even giving me a single opportunity, their donors, from giving me a single second to listen to me.

40:04

I went to their events. I went to, what is it, Our Lady Fatima. It's like a fair that they have in the state of New Jersey.

40:10

I went there and she was there, looked me dead in the eyes, said hello to me, and then completely walked away.

40:17

It's like a huge Catholic pro -life thing. I was ignored over. I went to their, oh, I was brought as a guest to their pro -life ceremony, award ceremony or something so funny.

40:28

They wouldn't let me speak there to all the donors that were there that night. Nothing. Rather than caring about abolishing abortion and ending abortion, they cared specifically about keeping the saving face and protecting a candidate who got blown out.

40:42

She got wrecked. Kim Guadagno lost by 15%. If you had just grown some courage and grabbed hold of that courage and stood by your faith and what the

40:54

Bible teaches, you could have had an opportunity. Imagine if I, some nobody of a third party, pulled off such an upset in the state of New Jersey, what that would have done to the entire country.

41:09

Even if I didn't, say I got 10%, what would that have done to the entire country? How could that have galvanized churches across the country politically?

41:19

It would have changed everything. It would have changed everything, but they refused to stand up.

41:25

And that's what happens by the way. That's a cautionary tale for the church as well. Any third party candidate basically ever sees that there's

42:08

God's hand was on it. His hand was on it. It was the church's job to respond. God will do a miracle.

42:13

If he wanted to, he would have put me in power and it would have been all his hand and all his doing. God gave them an opportunity and the people in New Jersey, the choice wasn't what they wanted.

42:24

And I'm perfectly fine with that. Again, I got to speak to lots of people, especially young people.

42:30

I got to speak to girls. I'm on record standing up against abortion, standing for human, for the right to life, for standing for the constitution, freedom of speech, the right to defend yourself.

42:45

At the end of the day, that was God's plan and that's where it went to. People had a choice.

42:51

They didn't choose. And at the end of the day, he's going to give them what they deserve. How happy is everybody that chose Guadano now, seven years later?

42:59

How happy are they now? Hey, Matt, I got a quick question because I just thought of this.

43:04

Watching the last vice presidential debate when JD Vance was talking about abortion, he kind of echoed what

43:14

I guess Trump said in where he wants to leave it up to the state. Do you think that was kind of a weak take and he should have just took that moment in front of millions of people just to say, this is incredibly wrong?

43:29

He should have buried him for sure. But again, Trump's pivot is specifically tactical.

43:37

I think a lot of people want to believe, well, it's okay to lie. And then when he gets an office to not, not me, no.

43:44

And that's what I told them. If you, if you watch there's interviews on my, on my Facebook page from when I ran, there's a couple, but one of the things that I had said was

43:52

I could sit here all day, right? I mean, listen, I don't always look like this. All right. I shaved my face and I got a nice clean

43:57

Marine cut. I looked about 10 years younger. And at that time I was 30. So I look like 20, right? I got good

44:02

Italian oily skin. Um, I'm very well, uh, moisturized.

44:08

I can sit here and I can play the dimples and the baby phase with people. I can lie and schmooze everybody.

44:14

I'm an Italian baby. Look, I could, I could schmooze. I, I specifically said in those interviews, not a chance.

44:21

I'm going to tell it like it is. And you're going to accept it or you're going to, you're going to reject it. And I'm perfectly fine with that.

44:26

And there was somebody who wrote in the comments and said, I wouldn't vote for you if blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, and if you were the, if you were the one vote that I needed to become governor,

44:34

I wouldn't want your vote. I don't care. I don't want your vote. And I told the people that I don't want your vote.

44:40

What I want is I want you to listen and I want you to make a decision. I'm not here to say vote for me because I'm going to promise this.

44:47

In fact, by the way, I'm the only person in history to ever have a contract. I made a contract with the people of New Jersey, a, an actual legally binding contract that if I was to lie or break a guarantee that I came out of my mouth,

45:03

I would pay $10 ,000 of my own money to the Democrats and the Republicans. Why didn't anybody else sign that contract?

45:10

Why didn't the Democrat candidate or the Republican? And why didn't the media hold their feet to the fire over it? I challenged them publicly to sign a contract because what did

45:19

I, what did I know that kit that Kim Guadagno and Phil Murphy were telling endless lies?

45:26

Have they done anything that they said that they were going to do? Look back at their campaign promises from 2017.

45:32

They've done nothing. Phil Murphy has done absolutely nothing that he promised to do.

45:38

And you know, hold them accountable. Like I love what you say about get the church.

45:44

I want, I want you to go back in time and I want all these churches to say, we should've let

45:50

Matt speak, you know, because how are we going to encourage, we were just talking about encouraging leaders in the church.

45:58

If the church isn't going to back people who are running good races and have them come speak to their congregation, how are you going to encourage people to get up and speak?

46:11

You know, if that, candidate who is doing all these vile things knows that they have to go speak at a church, they might be a little less vile, you know, because the church is not in the process.

46:25

And we're very, listen, Matt, you might want to come back here in the spring. We're doing this thing where you might want to come back to Jersey, the little visit, take the kids to the shore and come to the blood red church summit, which is going to be happening.

46:38

I think, I forget, Tim, do you remember the date? Is it May or April? I forget like when, cause we're working with a guy in Wisconsin too.

46:46

I think it's May. I don't think we set an exact date, but I think we, we settled on early

46:51

May. Yeah. So, so this is what we're looking for, Matt. We're looking for blood red church pastors and we want to give them an award.

46:58

You want to see the award? Yeah. Yeah. Here it is. That is the red church pastor of 2024.

47:08

I'm sorry, Tim, it's on your face. It would have been my face, but the whole switch thing happened.

47:17

I think. Nice. There we go. You probably couldn't hear me though.

47:24

I'm froze up on my end. I don't know if I can, but listen, Matt, this is what we're doing.

47:30

We're trying to get, we're trying to encourage gray churches, those who are squishy.

47:36

They're not the churches flying the rainbow flags with a female pastor. They're the kind of squishy ones.

47:43

They're kind of like, they got one foot over here, one foot over there. Their flock doesn't really know where they stand politically because they just don't want to talk about it.

47:52

They kind of, we don't want to tear them down. We want to build them up.

47:58

We still call them brothers. We want to lift them up. We'll tear down the rainbow flags and the female pastors, but we're trying to build these guys up.

48:05

We want to encourage them. Look, there's, there's, we want to reward them and say, Hey, come on out and speak truth.

48:13

You know, speak like, you know, I don't, I don't always quote Martin, Martin Luther King jr.

48:21

Because I don't think it was a Christian, but anyway, but he did say some awesome stuff. And one of the things he said was that the church is not above the government or below the government.

48:31

It's the conscience of the government. And we're missing that so bad. Yeah. Matt's role be, uh, coming to the summit.

48:40

Would he be like a guest speaker or something? Or would he just come to enjoy? You know, I don't know.

48:45

He could just come to enjoy if he says, but I would think you could get them up there to talk to these pastors about how important it is to support politicians who are

48:55

Christians, you know, and how, and how they've got to let people into their churches to speak during the political process.

49:03

Because if they don't, they're, we're not going to be heard. Christians aren't going to be heard.

49:10

Our issues aren't going to be heard. Cause guess what? Who's listening to us in New Jersey? Nobody, Matt, couple, you have to go back a couple episodes.

49:19

A bunch of people from our church went to the library because the library is setting up this sanctuary library where they're promoting

49:26

LGBTQ books. Right? So we went to the town council and then we went to the, to the libraries board of governors or whatever they call themselves there, you know, where they're authorizing this stuff without representing the voters.

49:37

And we basically were told we're not here to represent you, you know, well, you know, how it works in some town councils.

49:45

They say, well, we really don't have any power. Anyway, it's the town administrator told us, no, just, it's just crazy here.

49:53

Just crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. You go ahead, Matt. No, I was just saying, yeah, it's the mafia.

50:00

It's it's, that's how it works. Yeah. There's, there's people that are, that are in control and didn't really care what you say.

50:08

So I got a verse here that reminds me in that, hopefully this will be encouraging to him.

50:13

It's a Psalm 127 verse three to five. Behold, children are a heritage from the

50:20

Lord, the fruit of the womb, a reward like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth.

50:28

Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

50:37

Yeah. Amen. Amen. That's my, uh, that's, that's my whole entire, uh, I guess, foundation.

50:44

That's my, my mantra is, um, is Psalm 127. We, we believe it, you know, we firmly stand on it.

50:51

And I think the verse is really speaking to the fact that that is true for those who discipline their children properly, who train them up in the ways of the

51:02

Lord, because lots of people make children and then do nothing with them, uh, abandon them, don't train them properly, send them to their public schools, basically a place where they end up indoctrinated and come back, um, confused.

51:16

I think that versus speaking to Christian parents, specifically a man, but, um, speaking to the fact that you are, if you are training them properly, they are arrows, baby.

51:29

I sent my 13 year old arrow out and he's, he's striking targets every single day out there.

51:35

So. Amen. I agree. That's great stuff.

51:41

Well, anything else you guys want to add? We're kind of, kind of getting to that, wrapping it up time.

51:47

Um, no, what I would say is, um, yeah, yeah.

51:52

My, my conclusion and thank you both for, for your, your time and for having me. And I think that,

51:57

I think we, I think having that summit's a great idea. I'd love to come. I think that, you know, you guys should continue, uh, knocking, knocking down these high places, uh, for the next several months.

52:07

And, and maybe you can have like a little, I wish that there'd be like a little tour. I'd love to tour New Jersey and hit every single, uh, possible church in a week possible and just sit there and talk to whoever will listen.

52:18

Um, one thing the churches love to love to hide behind their tax exemption and the fact that the government won't allow you to have a political speaker.

52:29

That's not true. So they're lying when they do that. Um, they don't have to do that. Matt, give us some more endorse.

52:35

They don't have to endorse a candidate. What they tried to tell me several of them, including my own was, well, we really can't because you know, you know, he can't get involved politically.

52:43

You don't have to endorse me, but you should be, I should be allowed to come up and speak. There's no reason why I can't speak. You speak every day.

52:49

You have deacons come up and speak every day where they speaking politically is a problem in the church. How could you allow a government to control what you saying your church?

52:59

How do you as the church leadership, how do you as a Christian allow that? Do you not remember what

53:05

Peter told them? You know, I'm not going to stop telling you about Jesus because my instructions come from him, from the

53:13

Lord beat me, told me in prison. So what look at what, look at what happened with COVID that all we have to talk about is what happened with COVID.

53:19

If your church shut down during COVID, I got a problem. I want to talk to you. That's, that's as far as, but for political reasons, again, they sit there and they say, you can't speak because we'll get in trouble or whatever, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

53:32

Why not? When we'll get in trouble, let's do it. But why not? But that's, that's false. I'm not asking for your endorsement.

53:37

I'm not asking for you to tell the state that you've endorsed a political candidate, even though the black churches in New Jersey have no fear and endorse their leftist candidates proudly and boldly, um, specifically when they run for cities.

53:51

So what's going on with that? But the reality is you should have candidates come and you should speak and support.

54:02

But yeah, so, so that's also, that's false. But yeah, if you came up with some kind of a tour and you did like a week of that,

54:08

I would gladly come up there. I would absolutely love to do a, a sort of sit down and a

54:13

Q and a with, with these churches, anyone that's willing to listen. Um, and I'd be more than happy to run this back over and over and over and over again.

54:22

Um, so yeah, if there's an audience, I'm always willing to speak to it specifically about my personal experience running, uh, my personal experience as a, a father of seven children, uh, my personal experience of, of dealing with youth and teaching them my personal experience of as a

54:39

Marine, uh, my personal experience of growing up in a non -Christian home that was violent and awful.

54:47

I can speak to any of those things and where that journey comes and what it looks like when it's fulfilled by Jesus Christ, by the

54:55

Holy spirit and why it's important for every single one of us to step up in faith and courage and embrace that.

55:03

Don't run from it. Don't fear it. Step up and embrace it. And I would love to always have an opportunity to speak about that.

55:10

So, but again, thank you both for, for this opportunity. I love it. Uh, I enjoy it. It's great to see two people that, that feel the same way that are fervent about the

55:19

Lord and about the Bible. And when it comes to politics and when it comes to the church, when it comes to raising families, that the, the firmness of the gospel is what we are leading by.

55:29

So I really appreciate the both of you and everything that you guys are standing for and doing with this podcast and within your own churches and your own ministry.

55:37

So thank you so much. Yeah. Fantastic. Matt, you, you, you're, you're, you've, you've educated, uh, us today on, uh, you know, just being careful with our abortion money, being careful with our vote.

55:52

You know, I think, you know, we'll probably want to talk to you again after the election sometime we're going to need to dissect whatever happens, you know,

56:00

I mean, where do we go from here? Whether it's, we, we, we got some Republicans in there and, you know, there's a lot of rhinos still, man.

56:09

We talked about that. You know, we talked about not in the episode, but before the episode, we're talking about how, how, how many bad

56:16

Republican presidents do we have going back to when I was like 15, you know, George Bush was a disaster.

56:25

George Bush was a disaster, terrible president, the worst horrible.

56:30

And then Romney. Oh my gosh. How, how, how bad is Romney? Right.

56:36

Horrible. Horrible McCain. Horrible McCain. It's just, you know,

56:43

I mean, we, we really need leaders and we're not going to get leaders, uh, to, to step up unless churches are, are, are cultivating that.

56:51

And so, yeah, it's our prayer. So yeah, maybe you'll come back and, uh, we'll, we'll have another show, but it was, uh, it was love to have, have

56:57

Matt again. That was awesome, man. All you said about us, the feeling is mutual. So, well, you know,

57:03

I feel blessed to meet you and, and you were one of the best guests we ever had, if not the best. I appreciate it.

57:09

Thank you. If you were, if you were a pastor, we'd, we'd nominate you for the red church. We'd love for you to get us some nominees.

57:18

If you got some people like some other, uh, church, some pastors that you would speak highly of and, uh, you know, send them to us, you know, cause we're like them and we want to, and, or if, you know, some, some pastors that are a little timid that need some encouragement, you can send them out to the summit because we're going to be encouraging them.

57:39

I would, I would love to, I would love to. All right. I think that brings us to our motto.

57:44

It did. It does. We got to do our thing. You ready? We trained you, Matt. You ready? All right.

57:50

All right. Ready? Lift them up. Lift them up. And when you see a high place, tear it down.