Interview with Juan Riesco on Nini's Deli

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to another edition of the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I have a very special guest with me today.

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We're going to talk about what I think is one of the most interesting, and it is the story in my mind.

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For this audience, you're familiar with what we talk about as far as the social justice movement, especially in Christianity.

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But broadly speaking, this story that I'm about to tell to you, and I'm going to get the firsthand source.

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Juan Riesco with us. He's going to tell us about it. This story, it needs to be told in a way that we can't do justice through on this interview, but it hits the

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Black Lives Matter movement, the gospel, the Christian social justice stuff.

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It's all in this story. I just want to welcome Juan Riesco. Juan, thank you so much for being willing to tell this amazing story.

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Hey, brother John, to God be the glory, man. Thank you for having me. Well, Juan, we talked on the phone a few days ago, and I was actually pretty impressed.

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I had read about your story, the story of Nene's Deli in Chicago months ago.

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I mentioned it on one of the podcasts, some of the audience may remember. It blew my mind to read about this business owner who was a

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Christian, but also the son of immigrants, saved out of a homosexual lifestyle.

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God did a work in you. Then to have this highly rated restaurant destroyed by the

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Black Lives Matter movement, for you to be called the names you were called, I just thought to myself, this story is, this is what's going on.

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This encapsulates 2020. If Christians aren't paying attention, if we don't take heed of the warning that the story gives to us, we're going to be in trouble.

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I want to start at the beginning, Juan. Tell us a little bit about yourself before what happened a few months ago.

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Tell us about your conversion. Then how did you get into running this deli? Yeah, man.

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First and foremost, John, again, thank you so much for having me, man. My pastor and I are big followers of Conversations That Matter.

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I told you earlier, I have your book, Social Justice Goes to Church. Thank you for the research and the work that you're doing on this topic, man.

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It's inspiring. Praise God. Thank you again. Yeah, my pleasure. I gave my life to Jesus eight years ago.

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Like you mentioned, after a life of homosexuality, just grew up in Chicago, a normal kid life.

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I like to get in trouble. I like to hang around with friends too late at night.

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I really found myself mixing in with the wrong crowd pretty early in life. I didn't really even know that it was the wrong crowd.

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I thought it was normal to party, drink, hook up with people, the whole nine.

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It wasn't until I was about 22 years old, 23 years old, where I lived in San Francisco for a little bit, pursuing a life of homosexuality.

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I thought I wanted to go to art school and all these things. I dropped out and my parents were like, all right, well, you better get yourself home because what are you doing out there if you're not in school anymore?

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I moved back home and my parents had opened up this restaurant called Nini's Deli. Like you mentioned, my father is an immigrant from Cuba.

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My mom is an immigrant from Mexico. They met in the neighborhood that Nini's Deli is in, back in the eighties.

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They were there since 1980 together. They opened up Nini's in the community that they met in, in 2011.

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I got home from college after being a wild kid in 2013.

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That's when my older brother preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to me. He was an ex game banger who gave his life to the

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Lord as well. He was just radical and is still radical and on fire for Jesus. He just put it really simply to me.

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He said, the lifestyle you're leading is a life of sin. A life of sin leads to eternity and hell.

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I don't think you want to do that. I was like, what are you talking about, man? I'm a good guy. I shoplift now and then and I party or get drunk or whatever, but I'm a good person.

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I take care of mom and dad. I give money to friends that are in need and things like that.

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When he preached to me, he actually preached to our whole family. My father actually growing up was a

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Muslim. My mom was essentially new age or postmodern in her way of life.

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We all thought we were good people. We all thought if there was a God for sure, he's on our side because we're nice go lucky people.

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When my brother preached to all of us, it caused a lot of ruckus in the house. Eventually it came out that I was living homosexually.

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My parents said, if you're going to live in this house, you're going to do two things.

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You're going to work for the family business, Nene's Deli, which at the time was a year and a half, two years old and making no money at all.

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You're going to work in the family business and you're going to go to your brother's church. Mind you, my dad was

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Muslim. He didn't believe in my brother's church. He thought my brother's church was crazy. My mom was new age, but probably called herself

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Catholic like a lot of new age people do. I went and I heard the gospel over and over and over again.

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I gave my life to Jesus. Just hearing the plain simple gospel, you're a sinner on your way to hell without Christ, but thank

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God the Lord came and died for you. That way you can receive eternity in heaven if you would just put your faith in him.

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That was the gospel that was preached to me. Now I love the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise God.

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That was like 2013 -ish. Then I kept my end of the deal.

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My parents said, you have to go to your brother's church and you have to work in this family business. I did it.

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We went from making $400 a day of business, nobody knowing who we were, almost going to close down the first couple years to becoming the number one restaurant, highest rated restaurant in the whole city of Chicago in about time of seven years.

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I didn't have any business experience. All I did was trust Jesus and open up the scriptures and serve people with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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It worked. Tell me just real briefly about the life that you were living as far as after you were saved, running this business.

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I know you have a family. Looking back on that, do you look at that with a reminiscent eye and say those were the good times?

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It was a good life? I really hold to the scripture that says, any person who puts their hand into the plow of Christ and looks back is not fit to serve in the kingdom of God.

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I don't look back to those times and think those were the good times. I look at the moment that I'm in right now and I say, thank you,

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Jesus, for this time right here. I admire that. I admire that because most people, I think, who have had, if they went through what you went through, and there are many people who have for other reasons, had a business get destroyed or whatever.

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That's just a blow sometimes to someone. You have a Christian faith that keeps you grounded. You're the real deal,

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Juan. I appreciate you sharing that. It wouldn't be inaccurate to say this has been a disappointment for you to see what's happened.

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It's been a bummer for sure. You are human. Tell me what happened because one day you were not just making money, you were serving people, you were living your life in Chicago.

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You're not in Chicago anymore. Everything went downhill and it went downhill fast.

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Give me the blow by blow. What was the first thing that happened? Over the roughly seven years

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I was working with the family business from 2013 to June 2020, we became super popular.

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We, by the grace of God, had the honor of doing partnerships with companies like Nike.

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I've designed two of my own Nike tennis shoes, one of which they released only to friends and family of Meanie's Deli, the other of which they put available for sale on the

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Nike app with a picture of me. Then I've had the honor of working with Adidas when they opened up their flagship store here in Chicago.

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They partnered with my business to help promote it. Right before everything happened, I was in the process of designing a collection for Adidas and Derrick Rose specifically because of all the designing that I did with the restaurant in terms of our merchandising and stuff like that.

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It really drew a lot of attention from some big names. So because we had this massive following digitally and within the community, when everything happened on June 2nd and 3rd with George Floyd, we received a lot of pressure from the

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BLM Inc. to make a post about our position on BLM and what's going on in the nation.

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So just to clarify, so there's the movement, broadly speaking, but then there's the actual

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Black Lives Matter organization. So you're saying the organization itself reached out to you? Well, so the people that represent the organization in Chicago.

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Gotcha. Okay. So yeah, that is the representation of... Okay. Yeah. Sorry. So I woke up to someone texting me and they said like, man, a lot of people are talking about you guys on Twitter right now because you haven't posted a black square.

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And I was like, well, whatever. I don't know what to say. I'm not going to go on there and address it or something like that. Just kind of see what happens.

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So I figured it would just blow over. Then I woke up that the next day and I had hundreds of comments on my

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Instagram, hundreds, like you're racist. I haven't even said anything yet, but it was my silence that was what they were referring to.

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So I woke up to hundreds of comments. They said, you haven't spoke out against this. You must be a racist.

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Oh, you guys love when black people purchase your food, but you don't want to talk about when black people are dying.

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And I was like, actually, I preach at abortion mills all the time is what I was thinking in my head. But I was like, okay.

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Yeah. I guess I see what you're saying. So I just started reading all these comments and I felt in my spirit that I couldn't be quiet.

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I really felt the Lord tugging on my heart and he was saying to me,

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I sensed in my spirit that the Lord was revealing to me this idea that I could be silent and it could possibly blow over, but I sensed that he would no longer be with me.

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Like the Lord was spurring me in this moment to say, to stand up for the gospel.

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And what's funny is it was really not funny. It was really scary in my spirit was that the

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Lord, I felt the Lord like, I will depart from you if you choose this moment to be quiet.

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And yeah, your business will go on. You probably still will be successful. It probably will blow over, but this is your moment.

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And so I used the hundreds of comments as fuel to preach the gospel.

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So I started responding one by one, like, hey, I don't believe in Black Lives Matter Inc.,

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but I believe that all lives matter because all lives are made in the image of God. Black lives,

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Mexican lives, white lives matter in the name of Jesus. I started saying stuff like that. They were like, what is your stance on injustice?

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I'm like, my God is a God of justice. I hate injustice, but I hate it because he said so.

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And because God's word says so, not because you or your organization tells me to. And I just started responding like that and it raised hell.

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They were, the demons were pissed. Wow. Wow. And did you have any idea in that moment what,

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I mean, I know you were probably nervous about this, but did you think you were going to have a mob of people because of the responses you made?

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You did. I knew it. I knew the second I didn't give them what they want, it was going to be a mob.

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I instantly started thinking about the book of Genesis, when the demons are knocking on the door and he gives them his daughters and then they're still not happy.

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And then the mob comes to Sodom. Horrifically paraphrase that, but I think you know what

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I'm saying. Yeah, we understand. Wow. I knew it. I was like, I can give them anything.

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It's not going to appease them right now. So that's why I knew I had to come gospel. Well, you're a brave man,

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Juan, I have to say. I respect that, to give up these corporate partnerships and everything else you had to just stand for truth and to be satisfied in that, to not look back and regret it, but to say, no,

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I did the right thing. The Lord was in that. I want to just briefly,

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I mean, have you seen fruit from this? Have other Christians seen your example? I know it's gone out there here and there.

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Had they written to you or told you, hey, that inspired me or, hey, I've come to Jesus now because I heard you preaching, anything like that?

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Dude, too much to even count. I bet. Before I dive into that though, real quick,

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I do want to touch on the fact that it really rattled my church. Our core church, a lot of the leaders and specifically my pastor was right next to me.

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He was so with it, bro. He was preaching his heart out with me the day that we all went to go preach.

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We'll touch on that later, but it also rattled a lot of the other leaders who had the appearance of spiritual maturity on the outside and clearly did not have that thoroughly on the inside.

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We lost a lot of our congregation when all of this started happening, but again, it strengthened a whole other group of people in our congregation.

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Now we're stronger than ever through that persecution. Yeah, man, a lot of people came to the

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Lord. We just had baptisms a couple months ago and there was, I want to say two or three people that got baptized, rededicated their life to Jesus.

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After seeing what happened at Nene's, they said they want to be a part of that Christianity that stands up against evil in real life and not just in the spiritual realm, which is an important place.

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We know that's where our battle primarily is, but also there is real life evil in the physical.

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There were people that were really inspired by that. It's too much to count, man. Honestly, it's amazing.

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Even if just one person came, it was worth it, but more than one gave their life to Jesus again since that.

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It's all worth it, man. We want to go into more detail later, and I'll talk about that at the end and share your story in its fullness.

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I kind of jumped ahead. You were on social media, kind of where we left this chronologically, and then this jumped to not just social media, but you're out there in front of your storefront, boarded up, preaching the gospel as thousands of people are mobbing it.

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How did that whole thing happen? Was that immediate or did that take a few days for people to—every day they're showing up and there's more of them?

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The day I responded was probably—it was a Wednesday night.

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I called my brother. I called my pastor. I'm like, just so you know, I'm getting mobbed tomorrow for sure.

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They're like, what are you talking about? I told them everything that happened. They're like, oh, snap. You went crazy for Jesus.

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That's amazing. I was like, yeah, bro. I went off for the gospel. We were celebrating at that moment.

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Then they were like, what do you think is going to happen tomorrow? I was like, I know for sure they're going to protest. I don't know about how many people or what, but I know they're going to protest.

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My brother was like, bro, if they're protesting, we're going to preach. I was like, that's right.

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We're going to preach. If they protest, we're preaching. He's like, cool. Then I'm coming to your job tomorrow. I'm taking off of work. I'm going to come to your job.

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He comes, and then my pastor comes, and then a lot of our elders and deacons come.

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At first, because we opened at 8 a .m., there was no one really there. Actually, there was nobody there.

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It was a regular day at work. Then by 9 a .m., I told my brother, I'm like, I can sense something's going to happen.

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I can sense it. He was like, you think so? There's nobody here. I'm like, bro, I don't know.

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I just feel like I feel it in the spirit that they're coming. I was like, so let's meet them. Let's be out there first.

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He's like, what do you want me to do? I was like, go grab your microphone from your car, grab your speakers, and start proclaiming the gospel in front of the store, publicly out loud.

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He was like, there's no one even there. I'm like, it don't matter. Go do it. A bunch of the church members that came to support went outside and started preaching the gospel.

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They started reading scriptures. I think my brother was reading through Romans. Within the first five minutes, a young man dedicated his life to Jesus.

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He literally walks up and he's like, what are you guys doing? My brother's like, we're sharing the good news about Jesus Christ.

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You ever heard of it? He was like, not really. My brother was like, hey man.

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My brother literally said, everybody without Christ is a sinner. If you repent for your sins and put your faith in Jesus, you can have eternity with him.

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He was like, do you want that? I'm talking about first five minutes. We have a video of it. You do?

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You have video of this? Yeah. My brother's like, do you want that? He's like, yeah.

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Our congregation comes around him. The dude repents for his sins. I'm still looking for him.

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I'm trying to find him. We want a disciple. That happened within the first five minutes.

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Then slowly but surely, more and more people came until we were full on surrounded.

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I was right. The Lord was showing me in my spirit that they were going to come.

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We were to be out there preaching the gospel before they got there. They met us preaching the gospel. Then we got surrounded.

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The rest is history. Yeah. You were out. There was a few days that you had people showing up.

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The first day, it was about a hundred or so people. Then the second day was thousands.

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At that point is when we had already boarded up. They had leaked my address, leaked my mom's address, started calling my brother's employer and my sister -in -law's employer.

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They took that. Harassing you, bullying you. Yeah. That's when we fled the city.

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The second day when they protested by the thousands, we had saints from different parts of the country fly in because they saw our video.

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They went and preached on behalf of us and Jesus. We had already skipped town because it was too dangerous.

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You had to leave in an emergency situation. We left in the middle of the night. You had death threats.

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I had over a thousand pending death threats in my Instagram. I was getting phone call after phone call after phone call from private numbers.

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My pastor was getting the same exact attacks. So was my brother. They put all of our information on the internet.

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They said, this is where these racist people live. Go kill them. These are from people who supposedly are angry because you don't stand up for justice in their mind.

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This is the way they're treating you. That shows the hypocrisy. That's how we all are before Christ.

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We all have our hypocrisies. Even Christians can have their hypocrisies.

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We repent of those things. That's man apart from God right there. People without God are like blind men who stumble in the dark.

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They don't even know what they're stumbling over. For you to come out with the compassion you have, which just proves that this narrative is false about you being this bigot.

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You're preaching to them. You care about them. Your brother does. The saints who came out.

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This is incredible to me. I didn't know this part of the story. It wasn't in the articles that I read.

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There was a long one that I had read. It didn't really share that. But this is during the time that this is happening.

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You're losing your corporate contracts as well, right? People are calling you. They're canceling you. Yeah. Every second another organization was calling me.

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I'm like, hey, thank you so much. I'm in the process of getting my life threatened. Can I call you later? Oh, man.

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All right. You skipped town. Understandably, Paul did this. Jesus did this.

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When you're persecuted to a certain extent, there's nothing wrong with that, especially when you have a family.

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This is still fresh. This is a few months ago. Those who are watching can see here's a picture of Nini's Deli before and after.

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This is what it looks like now. Obviously, no sandwiches being sold there currently or drinks or anything.

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It's a vacant lot, really. Is there anywhere

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I can send them right now to be supporting you? Obviously, we're praying, but is there anything else that we can do as an audience?

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Well, the Lord is so good, man. We've used this—or not used this.

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We've pivoted this scenario to be an official launch of the second campus of our church.

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We have our main campus back home, which is where I first heard the gospel and where many young people have first heard the gospel.

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We are truly the spiritual front lines of Chicago. We have been standing up against abortion,

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LGBTQ, and the social justice movement. We're basically one of the only churches in Chicago that takes that stand.

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There are a couple others, but there are not many. When people have been rioting the city, our church was literally on the corners preaching the gospel in front of the rioters.

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We lead an evangelism team once a week to Chicago's west side to preach the gospel and love the community.

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The Lord is really doing something in our church. Can you give the name of the church for people who might want?

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You want me to put it in the chat? Yeah, sure. Send it to me as we're talking, or you can just name it for people who are listening.

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Our church is Metro Praise International, or MPI Chicago. MPIchurch .org

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and slash giving if you want to give to that church in the missions that they're doing.

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Exactly, yeah. We all prayed and asked the Lord where we should go, and we felt the

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Lord lead us to Dallas. We are in the north Dallas suburb area, and we're looking to plant our second church here in the area.

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Let me ask you— More than welcome to give. We'd be grateful. Yeah, and we'll pitch that again at the end.

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I want to backtrack just a moment because I forgot to ask you about this. Other than your church, I mean, you kind of touched on it a little, but what about other

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Christians in that area? I mean, there's—I mean, Chicago is famous because in Christian evangelical folklore, right, because that's where Moody Bible Institute's located.

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Did you have any support from any other evangelical churches, organizations, anything?

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So, unfortunately, a lot of people in the crowd were

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Christians, and they were Christians that were saying that we weren't preaching the true gospel, that Jesus would have been an ally of BLM, and they were literally coming to tell me that.

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While I had people spitting on me and lighting things on fire and throwing it at me from that crowd,

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Christians came up to me and said, you are wrong for this. Your business profited off Black people.

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And they told you? Yes. They said, I'm a Christian? Oh, no, I know them. I know them.

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We had graduates of Moody Bible Institute there flicking us off, and I don't want to say that that is all -encompassing of that university by any means, but I do want to say that it is scary that you could have a

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Bible college degree and be on that side of the story.

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It grieves my heart to hear this, and I'm sure it's grieving many who are listening to this. It's really, really hurtful.

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Yeah, this is a time for the church to stand together against tangible evil that is existing in our country, and you got the brunt end of it with this whole situation.

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And it's not you that they're actually angry at, that's the thing. It's Christ. It's the Word. It's the fact that you actually took a stand based on your

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Christian convictions that they have a problem with. I want to just pitch this to the audience.

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This is actually not even really a pitch. I'm begging you guys. We want to tell this story, and we want to support organizations, churches, parachurch organizations that are going to take a stand because this is the time to stand.

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So you already heard, if you want to give, you can go to mpichurch .org. You can give to Juan's Church because they are actually trying to take a real stand and share the gospel.

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You can also, though, go to the Give Send Go link that is in the info section of this video.

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Just go down to the info section. The link is right there. And Juan and I talked a few days ago, and I am willing, and I told him that we're going to make this happen.

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I'm going to connect him with some people, and we're going to do a documentary somehow. We're going to give this the treatment that it deserves because there's been a lot going on this year that deserves some kind of exposure, treatment, etc.

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And this story, to me, though, just sums up everything. It shows the hypocrisy of the Black Lives Matter movement. It shows the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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I mean, your parents are immigrants, Juan. I just, you know, someone with a straight face telling you you're a racist.

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I mean, I have some of the headlines. I was just looking up that most of them are.

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One of them was actually from someone who claimed to be a Christian, and it came up right on Google. You're a racist. And I just, this is a lie.

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This is an absolute lie. And we want to expose, as Paul says, expose the deeds of darkness, shine the light of the gospel, which

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I know you will share in its strength and power. We want to use this as an example to others and to warn the church.

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This is what you are. This is the Trojan horse that you're buying into when you buy into social justice. To have

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Moody Bible Institute graduates flipping you off, along with all these secular pagans who hate you because you won't go along with the

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Black Lives Matter movement. I mean, this is the moment that, like for the early church, when they had to sacrifice to Caesar and they said no.

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I mean, you said no, Juan, and I respect you for it. So go to mpichurch .org

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or go to the Give Send Go link in the info section for this video. Just an FYI for people who are giving, we think that this will cost, and this is a low end estimation, about $10 ,000 to really do this right.

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And so if you give to this, and if we happen to go beyond the $10 ,000, I've already vowed that I'm going to make this happen no matter what.

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If I get a $100 donation, I'm going to cover the rest. We're going to make this happen. But if we end up getting above $10 ,000, it's all going to go to this effort to make the documentary, to advertise the documentary.

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If we have anything left over, we'll give it to MPI Church there in Chicago. I'm not going to get a cent of this, guys, and I don't want to get a cent.

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I want to connect, Juan, with you guys in the audience, because this is the audience that has made so many other things happen, like the

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Enemies Within the Church Naples documentary and so many things. I can't even think of them all off the top of my head.

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I appreciate your generosity, and that's my begging right there for people at the end of the year here to give.

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Juan, any final thoughts from you? I know we're just on the tip of the iceberg here of your story.

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There's so much more, but you have an encouraging word for us. How are you guys right now?

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It sounds like you're doing okay. Let our hearts rest a little bit with knowing that you're fine.

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Tell us how it's gone. Yeah, man. We're so grateful, man. I told you when

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I first got on this call just to be alive. Honestly, it was a scary time, and we're really grateful to be here right now.

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Yeah, this is not a sorry story for us. This is a victory story. We stood up for the gospel of Jesus Christ in a time when everybody was bowing down, and we're on the other end of it, and we're just praying and believing that our brothers and sisters all over the world will hear this message and stand up as well.

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That's just it. We want the gospel to go out. We want people to be empowered by the

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Holy Spirit and to stand on truth because this is a time when everybody's searching for truth, but there is none unless it's

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Christ. I think that if I could share one thing, it's that we have what the

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BLM movement's looking for, and that's the truth of Jesus Christ. We have what the LGBTQ movement's looking for, and that's

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Jesus Christ. Let us be empowered to share that message with them.

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That's awesome, Juan. Well, praise be to God. I appreciate you joining me for this, and we'll be talking a lot more in the coming weeks.