Jeff Durbin Responds To Media & QAnon

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00:03

and bring it more into the realm of like, oh, because we're experiencing this, that's how that applies.

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So I've thought about this. So there's two specific things in my heart I'd like to do. Number one, there's a book on addiction that I'm working on now, a biblical approach or response to addiction to drugs and alcohol and sex.

00:19

This is the problem of addiction. So many Christians go for things like celebrate recovery or AA, which

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I would argue are either lacking completely in some essential things or are just completely hostile to the

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Christian message when you're talking about AA. It's just not biblical, not appropriate, not helpful, ultimately.

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So there's a book I'm working on right now. I do hope to finish it relatively soon on addiction, but there's also a book that I'm working on that I want to do, and it's just on this idea of kingdom, victory, and law.

00:55

Kingdom, victory, and law. Non -rockabodas must stop.

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I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it. Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite?

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We're being delusional. Delusional? Yeah. Delusional is okay in your worldview. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional.

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You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt.

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Is he hung up on me? Yes! What? What? What?

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Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

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Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Right. Don't go into the world and make homies.

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Right. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle, Nick. That's a joke, pasta.

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When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

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You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness.

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You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many so as to pervert justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit.

03:04

What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. This is the gospel heard around the world.

03:10

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05:52

Welcome back, everybody, to another week of Apologia Radio. Very excited about today's show. We actually just finished an interview with a large publication that we recorded.

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We let him know we were recording, and he was recording us. And so we recorded that. We're gonna play that in just a little bit for you guys so you guys can see it for yourselves.

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So let's talk. It's been sort of an interesting last week and a half in the media for Jeff Durbin and apparently

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QAnon. Who? Yeah, it's been fun. Yeah, it's been interesting.

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So to start this discussion, some of you guys saw the titles or you're here because of that. What happened was is that we had a visitor to our church, as far as I know, it was for two weekends, two weekends only, a visitor to our church named

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Ron Watkins. We didn't know him. We are not his pastor. And not to say we don't wanna love the guy and all the rest, it's just to say that that's the current state of where we're at.

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We're not his pastor. He's not a member of our body. He was just a visitor. He visited during two sermons. One was a

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Christian response to mandatory cookies and one was defending essential Christian truths. And it had a big impact on him.

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The sermon on Christian response to mandatory cookies had a big impact on him. And so he announced,

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I think, his candidacy. To run for Congress? Yes, I think it's for Congress.

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In Arizona. Yeah, in Arizona. And so he announced that publicly and he mentioned that it was my sermon that inspired him to do so.

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So because of that, apparently, he has a lot of people watching him. And we didn't have a relationship with him, know him.

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I found out after I actually spoke to him that he was associated with QAnon or Q.

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I don't even know all the details about it because I'm not in that world. But you're his pastor, though.

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Apparently, I'm his pastor. And so what happened was a publication, a local publication known as the

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Phoenix New Times, one of the most leftist, liberal, trash publications.

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It should be called the High Times. In the history of this nation, contacted me. And I know the

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Phoenix New Times. I know who they are. I know where they're at. I know their worldview. And so they contacted me to ask some questions about Ron Watkins because he had visited our church and said that my sermon inspired him to run for Congress.

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So apparently, that made me his pastor. And Phoenix New Times, I think, based upon the article that they put out and the questions that they asked and my responses, they already knew what they were gonna write and they were already prepared to write it.

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I think they were just checking the box in terms of, let me just talk to this guy. And so what happened was the Phoenix New Times published an article that was not fully honest at all with what

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I gave to them in terms of my full responses to their questions about how we feel about QAnon.

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It's a destructive and embarrassing movement. We've called people to repent for the things that have been spread through QAnon. We've done a show repudiating

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QAnon before. We find it to be a deplorable, a destructive, and an embarrassing movement.

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And I said some of these things to the journalist who - You didn't? That's too nice, to the woman who messaged me.

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And they just went running with an article. So next thing you know, this first article posts and then

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Rolling Stones picks it up and several other publications picked up stuff from the article. Rolling Stones actually published it and they called me

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Ron Watkins' pastor. Ron Watkins' pastor. And so my assistant, you gotta love

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Christine, our assistant, she messaged Rolling Stones and she was like, he is not

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Ron Watkins' pastor. You guys need to repent, lying is a sin. She said that. She did, she was like, you need to repent, lying is a sin.

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And so Rolling Stones was forced after they published the article to correct their own article because they didn't even bother to fact check.

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Really? Yeah, didn't even bother. Everybody else - Didn't fact check. Everybody else needs to do it but them. Yeah, didn't fact check.

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So they had to change it post posting it. And so then it goes on and now across these different media platforms you have an attempt to associate the extremist far right pastor

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Jeff Durbin with QAnon. And it doesn't matter how many times we repudiate QAnon, it doesn't matter how deplorable we think

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QAnon as a movement is, it doesn't matter how much I've spoken against it or call people even to repent of the slander that they've shared that's come from QAnon.

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They had their story, they wanted to run with it and that's what we got. Once it's said in the court of public opinion then that's what it is and doesn't matter.

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It's believed without introspection or no, without scrutiny.

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Yeah, scrutiny. One of those words. One of those words. All those are good. Those are all good. So, you know, and this is interesting.

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Okay, let's talk about it. I'm gonna read some of the stuff that went on here but let's talk about why this is important.

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It's important because from a Christian perspective, I just read you a passage from the law of God.

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That's right after the 10 commandments where God actually calls people not to take party to false accusations, don't lie about people, don't lie about people in court, don't go along with the masses to lie about somebody in court.

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God takes very seriously this, you shall not lie. And you shall not lie, by the way, is a

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Christian thing. It's not necessary in secularism or atheism. It's not necessary.

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You shall not lie is not an absolute standard in those worldview systems. It's not. You can't say it's an absolute standard and a moral ought for human beings not to lie to one another in atheism.

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If all of us are just African apes descended from fish and bacteria then there's no absolute standard not to lie.

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So it's important to start this discussion to say from the Christians are the ones that own the ground here in terms of there's an absolute standard not to lie.

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And is it an interesting that these media platforms that are repudiating QAnon rightly when they see them lying or spreading slander and saying, you can't do that, this movement's destructive, all the rest.

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I'm gonna say, yeah, put your hand in my hand. I'm with you on that. Then they go and they do the very same thing to a pastor like me attempting to associate me with this movement, attempting to make it look like I'm a pastor of Q or whatever the claim is.

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And so you're doing the very same thing that you're accusing QAnon of doing what? Spreading conspiracy theories.

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Like QAnon's bad, why? Because it spreads these audacious and crazy conspiracy theories. So let me create one of my own right now by involving a pastor with a movement that he repudiates.

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Isn't it amazing? But anyways, the Christian worldview has this at its basis. Ready? In terms of morality, you shall not lie.

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And that moves in God's law in spectacular ways. Like right after God says that, he begins to expand upon it.

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Like you should not lie. What's it look like? Well, don't take part in like where the masses are going to bring false accusations.

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Don't be a false accuser in a court of law. Don't bring false testimony in a court of law. And then God actually has some case law examples of like what it looks like when someone is lying in court.

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And he actually protects the court. And this is one of my very favorite things. And I wish we'd get back to it. I truly wish we'd get back to it.

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Where in court, if you have a witness who's making a claim, the

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Christian worldview has cross -examination. Like that's in the court. Like God's standard says there must be cross -examination.

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You can't just believe a witness because believe it or not, fallen world, people lie, they lie through their teeth.

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Just look at Joe Biden. So. I was gonna say the same thing. They lie through their teeth, right?

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So people lie, in this world, people lie, and it should always be repented of. And you need to call out lies wherever there are lies.

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But in God's court system, he says that when you have someone that brings an accusation there must be cross -examination.

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So if you like cross -examination in courts, thank Moses. Okay, you can thank Jesus for that, okay?

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But there must be cross -examination. And God's law says that if you find out that that witness was lying and they're accusing somebody and lying about it, then

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God says that the witness who was a false witness has to now get the punishment that would have been given to the accused had they been believed.

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That's pretty awesome, right? God protects the court. How much protection does it offer to the court when the witness who's saying this happened knows if I'm caught lying,

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I'm gonna get the punishment myself. That's a beautiful way to protect the court. Such a novel idea. It's such a wonderful thing.

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And that's all from God's law. So at the bottom here, when we are having this conversation, we're coming at it as Christians with commitment to Christ, with a love for God's law and submission to Christ, and we're committing to God's law as the ultimate standard.

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You should not lie. And that's why we repudiate so much that's come from Q and QAnon. Why? Because you've got false accusations galore that have been spread in that community.

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I mean, deplorably false accusations. Accusations about someone you don't even know actually accusing them of being a pedophile.

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I mean, talk about the lowest of the low. That what I saw being spread in the

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QAnon community was accusations about particular people being pedophiles, baseless. No evidence, all speculation, and literally publicly accusing somebody of being a pedophile, like a person that molests children.

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That sort of a thing is deplorable. It's lying. It totally rejects godly Christian standards about making accusations or even receiving accusations.

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And so we repudiate a movement like that because we believe you shall not lie.

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God's law has high standards for accusations. You look like you wanna say something. Isn't that the same video that said

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Jim Carrey was a clone? Was it Jim Carrey? I saw so much stuff like that. Remember that one you sent me?

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It was like the cat lady or whatever, and she was like, wasn't it Jim Carrey? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was that cat lady that was a

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Q, and they had one more day, and they killed the original Jim Carrey and cloned him. Yeah, they cloned the Jim Carrey.

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Now, look, there's gonna be people who are probably associated with Q and QAnon stuff. They're like, I don't believe any of that stuff. Okay, great,

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I'm glad you don't. I'm so, so glad you don't. But the fact of the matter is, many people who got involved in that community were spreading all kinds of lies and slander and accusations in that community, and it was spreading like fire.

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We reject that movement because of its messianic character, whether it's upholding someone like Donald Trump as Messiah, or whether it was upholding

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JFK Jr., who died, and they were saying, no, he's alive, and he's gonna come back on Easter Sunday sort of a thing.

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It's like, that's resurrection. You're making him look like Jesus. You're detracting from the glory of Jesus, and you're acting as though the kingdom of God is

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America. It's not, and you're not gonna get any salvation through the American system of government.

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You're not gonna get salvation because Republicans are elected. You're gonna get salvation because the nation turns to Christ in faith.

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And so, you got something you wanna say, Zach, before I? No, no, I was just saying, it's just so destructive, especially for Christians to get wrapped up into the whole

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QAnon, right? Because they're, it's funny, I was out at the mill a couple months ago, and somebody's preaching the gospel, and then they're trying to save babies, and they're saying all the right things, and they come up to me and say, hey, you know the 5G tower over there?

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Soros is behind that, and these nanobots are gonna come out of that tower inside of your brain, Pastor Zach, and it's gonna kill you, and Pastor Luke, and Pastor Joe.

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So, it's like, in one moment, you're preaching the truth, and then you say stuff like that, and it just sucks your credibility right out of you.

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Why are they gonna believe what this Christian has to say when it comes to gospel proclamation, when you're thinking nanobots are gonna fly out of 5G tower?

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Did that really happen? That actually happened. Did flat earth come out in the same conversation? Maybe. Well, Pastor Zach, that's what

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I actually, I'm glad you brought that up, because that's one of the things that we have challenged people on before, is that if you're spreading this slander, and these lies, and what amount to basically false prophecies.

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I mean, people are gonna say, well, I don't say those sayeth the Lord. It's like you're still predicting. Exactly right. And if you spread that, right, and then all these things fail, it's shown to be slander, it's shown to be lies, you're shown to be a person that doesn't have very high standards for evidence and for truth.

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Now go try to preach the gospel to an atheist that saw you doing that. They're just gonna be like, dismissed.

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Dismissed, why? Because if you're willing to believe falsehoods, and spread falsehoods so easily,

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I ain't trusting you about the Bible, I ain't trusting you about Jesus, and that's the danger of QAnon, is just that point.

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If you spread lies like that, and you're shown to be so willing to believe things based upon very suspicious evidence, or no evidence at all, then the world looks into that and says,

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I'm not gonna listen to a word you say about Jesus, because clearly your standards are abysmally low.

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And here's the deplorable thing about it, and the embarrassing thing about it, is that Christians were the ones who gave the world the high standards for evidence, accusation, cross -examination, truth.

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We gave the world that, why are we now going to fall back away from the public square into this little community that is so willing to spread falsehoods?

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It's destructive. And now here's the thing, watch. This is what Jeff Durbin, and Luke Pearson, and Zach Morgan have been saying for years about this movement.

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And lo and behold, the Phoenix New Times decides, I've got a story. Let's make this far -right extremist pastor look like he's this guy's pastor.

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Let's associate him with QAnon. And just so you know, everyone, I've slept so well this last week, didn't bother me at all, why?

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Because I know that one of the tactics of the enemy is to slander you, is to spread lies.

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They did it to Jesus. They called him a glutton, and a drunkard, and a friend of sinners, and all the rest.

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They did the same thing to everyone in the Bible. It's a tool of the enemy, accuse, lie, all of that.

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So I expect it, but I can still call it out when it happens. And just quickly,

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I wanna read to you something from the original questions that she asked. Go to my

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Facebook page. I actually posted, when I gave the response to her, before she published the article, I posted her questions and all my answers on my

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Facebook page. Actually, it was shared more by maybe 50 times than theirs was,

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I think. At least when I initially saw my responses. But she asked questions that I'll just say,

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I don't have proof, okay? But I'll just say, I have suspicions that these questions weren't really related to the main point she wanted to get to, because none of it was really, it just didn't seem a concern in the article about any of this.

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It just was about Ron Walken. So the first question she asked was, when did you start Apologio Studios? Was it after you began work at Apologio Church?

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Number two, it seems like your work has gained a national reach, far beyond the Valley. Why do you think that is? And then number three, last week,

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Ron Walken said you inspired and run for Congress. Do you support his candidacy? That was the main question. And she asked the question, you've drawn some criticism for harassment at abortion clinics and arguing that women should face a death penalty for abortions.

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Do you stand by those claims? It seems so, can I just say this? It is mind -boggling to me that leftists and pro -choicers and pro -aborts can't see this, but I'm gonna go ahead and give it to you right now.

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Okay, I'll give it to you. Yes, I'm a Christian. Yes, I'm a minister of the gospel. Yes, I believe this book, and this book says through and through that anybody who murders another human being, and you kill a human in an unjustified way, you are guilty of murder, and that the appropriate move for the court system for anybody that murders anybody and is found truly guilty is to give them the death penalty.

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So I'm a Christian who believes in capital punishment, and lo and behold, so do many of our states in the union right now. They believe in capital punishment.

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For what? For murder. So I'm not very unusual there, but yeah, I'm a minister of the gospel.

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I believe this book. Now, I also believe that what's in the womb is human from conception. Isn't that just standard, fair, pro -life stuff, right?

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It's a human from conception. It's worthy of our value, dignity, respect, and so if a mother or father decapitates, disembowels, and dismembers their own child, what do

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I think should happen in a just society in a situation like that, whether the child was six years old, 10 years old, or six months old in the womb?

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I believe that the appropriate thing would be capital punishment for any mother or father that decapitates their own son or daughter.

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Yeah, I do believe that, but I said to her, I said, I don't believe that our court system today can be trusted to have the death penalty wholesale because they have very low standards of evidence, and you've got all kinds of people today who have been falsely accused and incarcerated for it.

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So I don't trust our court system today to actually employ the death penalty wholesale, and however, watch this.

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This is what's so interesting about it to me. In this conversation, let's say that you put me up against the pro -choicer or pro -abort that's saying you believe in capital punishment for mothers who disembowel their own sons.

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Okay, but both of us believe someone has to die. See, this isn't a question of someone who believes that people should die and somebody who just doesn't.

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Both of us in this conversation believe that someone has to die. You think that the innocent child should die.

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I think the mother or father who decapitates, disembowels, and dismembers their own son or daughter should, through the state, receive a just penalty for that, and so both of us, though, both of us believe someone has to die.

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You just believe it should be an innocent child. I don't, and so there you go. So I hope that helps.

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I actually appreciate the way she worded that because, how would she say, calling for women to be executed for abortions because the link that it goes to is the

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New York Times where it says that you want to execute women. Yeah, yeah, I want to. Right, so I actually appreciate the fact that you changed the wording on that because that's not usually the rhetoric, but no, you don't want to execute women.

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I don't want to have anything to do with it. I'm a pastor. It sucks, I mean, you're my friend, and so I don't like lies being said about you just on a personable level, you know, love you guys, but the cool thing is they were just directed right to her stuff, so we got a big spike in our subscribers and our views, and it's gotta be related to this, so as much as they think that they're gonna use you and what you believe to smear him, right, to throw dirt at him, to get him out of a potential political position, they're all hearing the gospel.

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They're all hearing the truth. Well, I gave, I was able, thankfully, the fifth question she asked, and she, it's funny, because initially one day she sent me the questions, this question wasn't in there.

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The next day she sent this additional question, and she said, I'd be interested to hear how you describe

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Apologia Church's beliefs slash gospel, and so I said, thank you so much for asking this question, and so I gave her the gospel, and I said, you know,

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I hope that you experience this gift of life as well. So her name is Kat, I don't want to mess this up.

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Please forgive me if I get this wrong. I'm not trying to abuse you or your name, but it's unique. I've never seen it before. Katya, K -A -T -Y -A

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Schwenk, Katya Schwenk. So that was the woman who wrote the article, and I responded with this.

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I wanted to read to you guys how I responded to her question about Ron Watkins, okay? Ron Watkins isn't a member of Apologia Church, and to my knowledge, he has only attended two services.

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I am not his pastor. I do not have any specific knowledge of his beliefs, commitments, or convictions related to law or politics in our country.

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I only recently learned about the gut gentleman and the claims about his connection to QAnon. Both myself and the other elders at Apologia Church have spoken against the

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QAnon movement. We find it to be a destructive and embarrassing movement that has repeatedly violated God's standards of critical thinking, accusations, and evidence.

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We have spoken against it publicly and called people to repent of the shameful, slander, and abysmal thinking that has been propagated within the group.

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We believe that it represents a destructive and embarrassing element that distracts from the real issues and the real solution that our country needs, which is

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Christ. We believe that God calls his people to uphold justice and to correct oppression, Isaiah 117.

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Legislative issues are issues that relate to public morality and moral oughts. We believe that God is the standard of morality and ethical absolutes, and that Christ, as the one with final authority, has something to say about law, righteousness, and justice in society.

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So we bring the claims of Christ and God's law into these political discussions. However, we believe that it is wrong for a

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Christian church to engage in partisan political promotion related to supporting a particular candidate's run from the pulpit.

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We do not have any knowledge of Ron Watkins' overall belief system. We would not promote anyone's candidacy officially as a church, and if the rumors about his involvement with Q were true and verified by us, we would confront that with him speedily.

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So that's what I wrote, all right? That's what I wrote.

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Do you wanna see the article? Okay, all right, Isaac, you ready for this? Okay, this is what appeared.

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Hold on, let me move that. It's just the

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Mesa pastor who inspired QAnon promoter Ron Watkins' run for Congress, a picture of me.

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Yeah, that was, by the way, just so everyone knows, I was freezing there. Except for your fingertips, your fingertips were good.

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No, no, my fingertips were definitely not good. I mean, clearly they were warm because you didn't have them covered. That's okay, good call, yes.

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Oh man, that was cold. Oklahoma, that was our bill that we, not our bill, that was the bill that our friends in Oklahoma put together for equal protection in Oklahoma.

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We went there to support them and encourage them and to help. The Mesa pastor who inspired QAnon promoter Ron Watkins' run for Congress.

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If QAnon's grip on the Arizona GOP wasn't clear already, Ron Watkins made it so last week when the Q figurehead announced that he was running for Congress in Arizona.

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Let's see here. I mean, hold it. Even that statement that the QAnon has its grip on the

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Arizona GOP, like who in the Republicans is like in the

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QAnon? I don't know any. We know a lot of people in the Arizona legislature. Do you know anybody that's with Q?

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No. Or influenced by Q? Like Al Spokenly? No. I don't know anybody. That's hilarious because one guy says he's running and they're like, there you go, there's your proof.

29:03

Now Arizona's run by Q. Watkins' candidacy is far -fetched, to put it lightly, although he's built a major following online, he has never held any kind of elected office and it's not clear if he's ever lived in the state, but his campaign does appear to draw on local inspiration from Jeff Durbin, an extremist pastor in Mesa who has built his church into a sprawling media organization and national anti -abortion lobbying group.

29:28

That wasn't biased at all. And yeah, I mean, exactly, good. So as a journalist, an extremist pastor, it just goes to show, right?

29:37

Anti -abortion. Here's what it goes to show. The myth of neutrality. The myth of neutrality. She has a worldview that she's promoting.

29:44

I have a worldview. Let's have a worldview collision and let's see who comes out on top.

29:50

How about that? That's how you solve these things. It says this, it says, in Watkins' initial video announcing his bid to unseat

29:55

Democrat Tom O 'Halloran, the dirtiest Democrat in the D .C. swamp,

30:01

Watkins said he cited a recent sermon that Durbin gave at Apologia Church in Mesa. Durbin convinced him,

30:06

Watkins said, to double down with God as my compass to take this fight to the swamp of Washington, D .C.

30:12

So it says, a former karate champion, Durbin has been cultivating influence nationwide over the past decade from Mesa, the media arm of the church,

30:19

Apologia Studios, which Durbin founded in 2015, has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, 300 ,000 officially this past weekend, and millions of views on YouTube where it produces daily far -right political content and a late -night talk show.

30:35

So anyway, the article, here we go, he also occasionally has drawn national headlines for some of his most extremist moves, calling for women to be executed for abortions, for instance, and refusing to close his church's doors even in the early days of the pandemic.

30:54

And then she puts, of course, a note. So extreme. Durbin confirmed in New Times that he believes that women who get abortions should be executed, although clarified that he would not trust our current judicial system to mete out the punishment because it has led to so many to be falsely incarcerated.

31:06

Thank you for that. I'm glad you added that in there. But did you wanna?

31:12

I was just gonna say, I wonder how many changes she had to make in this article post your answers to her questions.

31:20

I put them out publicly. Because she was like, oh, shoot, I'm gonna have to change that answer, how I wrote that.

31:25

Yeah, and near the end of the article, it says Durbin distanced himself from Watkins. However, when New Times inquired about his candidacy, although Watkins has been attending sermons,

31:35

Durbin says he is not a member of Apologia Church, and furthermore, the church as a practice would not endorse political candidates.

31:40

As for QAnon, Durbin calls the movement destructive and embarrassing. So here's the interesting thing about this. When you put this together, and she takes snippets of my responses,

31:48

I mean, isn't the real story here that this really has nothing to do with me, associated with QAnon?

31:55

It's an attempt at association. It's an attempt at association that she knows that she's doing.

32:02

It's an attempt at association to create a story, sort of like a conspiracy. You've got the far right extremist pastor over here, he's influencing

32:10

Q. You've got Q, who has the Arizona legislature in its grip, sort of a thing.

32:16

It's like, I thought you were against conspiracy theories, so what are you doing? That's crazy. And this just goes to show, not just a double standard, but just the commitment to lying.

32:27

In this case, what do you have wrong with Q as a journalist? I would imagine you'd say, it's the slander, it's lies, it's the fiction, it's the conspiracy theories, all that.

32:37

Great, so don't do it. Don't attempt to do it. So for example, and this is what I brought up to the guy we talked to in just a little bit here, the sermon that Ron Watkins attended, that he visited and saw, that sermon has been seen by about 300 ,000 people in about two weeks.

32:56

About 300 ,000 people saw that in about two weeks. Am I, as a pastor, responsible for the belief systems and the moves of every person who's watched that sermon?

33:08

Right, like if you dig through the list of people, if you could do so, and look at the personal lives and beliefs and actions of all the people who watched that sermon,

33:15

I hope you're not gonna hold me accountable for it. I stand behind what I said in the sermon, but I'm not responsible for what every single person who views the sermon believes or does, right?

33:27

And the attempt though, is to say like, he went to his sermon, and he was influenced by Durbin, and Durbin influenced him to do this, and that's why he's doing it.

33:38

And it's like, let's try to be fair and have just weights and measures here.

33:45

And so I'll leave it at that for now. I'm gonna let you guys, you guys wanna? I was just gonna say, it was my understanding that he was already going to be running for Congress prior to attending our church service, but that doesn't really matter, but that is a point.

34:02

But I was just gonna say, I mean, that's the same thing the left has tried to do. And I'm not saying this as a pro -Trump dude, but like the whole thing with him being a racist and like KKK and a white supremacist and all that, like they've tried, they just keep repeating this lie that he's of that ilk, even though he's repeatedly denounced it.

34:24

And same thing that we're talking about here, it's the same thing, but they just continue to repeat these lies because that's the narrative they're trying to put forth.

34:31

It doesn't really matter what the truth is. Exactly. So before we get, we're gonna play the actual recording that I had with this other journalist from a major publication.

34:44

I asked for his permission to record it. He said he was also recording it. So we're gonna let you guys view it and let's just do this as an experiment, okay?

34:53

You guys will all get to see my answers and let's be hopeful. Like let's treat the man as innocent, that he's gonna be a good journalist.

35:01

Let's assume his innocence and let's see what he comes up with. Yeah, he was a nice guy in the interview. He was a super nice guy, you'll see that.

35:08

Rhett is a nice guy. Stand up guy. That's what we did for all of you with the first interview that came out with the

35:13

Phoenix New Times, I posted it immediately. I posted, here's the questions, here's my answers. Let's see what comes out.

35:20

And so with this gentleman, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. Let's treat him as though he's innocent until we have proof otherwise.

35:26

And let's see what comes out as an article after the actual interview that you're going to view in just a moment here.

35:33

But before we get to it, I gotta play this. I have to, okay? It's important to me to play it.

35:39

This is Dave Chappelle. Oh. So, by the way, no, I'm not playing clips of Dave Chappelle comedy show, no, no.

35:46

So if you don't know, if you haven't heard, if you're living under the rock, Netflix made a deal with Dave Chappelle for a number of different comedy specials.

35:56

Seven, wasn't it? Six or seven. So his last one was called The Closer. And in his last comedy special,

36:03

I guess it's about an hour long, Dave Chappelle, obviously, this is not an endorsement of Dave Chappelle.

36:09

Dave Chappelle has a lot of foul language. He talks about a lot of, he's not a Christian, talks about a lot of dirty things.

36:14

But I will say this. There are clips that you can see that are fairly mild that show that he is a comedic master of the internal critique.

36:22

As a matter of fact, I think one of the most delicious things I've ever seen him do was where he actually clearly got his audience to think he was on their side with the issue of abortion.

36:34

And he does an internal critique. He makes them think that he's pro -choice. And by the end of the joke, you realize that he's pointing to them and showing them their inconsistency.

36:45

And he even says, if I'm wrong in my internal critique, what I'm doing to show you, he's like, then maybe we're wrong.

36:52

He said, figure it out yourself, which was clearly him saying he's pro -life. At least that's how the joke went.

36:57

So he does these comedic internal critiques throughout his shows. And his last show, he talked a lot about them tees.

37:05

That's how he refers to them. And in the show, it was actually, I saw the jokes and they were,

37:12

I think, really powerful in the way he actually went about doing an internal critique on somebody.

37:18

But of course, what takes place is Netflix. Some employees in Netflix want to cancel

37:24

Dave Chappelle, one of the most revered comedians. He's the most popular. In American history,

37:29

I mean, truly. He's not just currently, he's massive. So Dave Chappelle, under threat of being canceled,

37:36

Netflix employees staged a walkout or a protest or whatever the case, whatever they did. And so now

37:42

Dave Chappelle got a chance to respond. Have you, did you watch it? So I wanted you guys all to see it. There's no cursing in this that I can remember.

37:48

It is clean. But this is Dave Chappelle. Now, watch this. A strong black man, a strong black man, an outspoken black man, one of the best comedians in history.

37:59

I'm not endorsing all of his comedy, but in terms of his skills, his gifts, he's one of the best comedians in our history.

38:08

He's not a Christian. He's definitely not a Christian. He's a secularist. And he's gonna be canceled.

38:15

Why? Because he spoke against the untouchables. He committed the modern version of blasphemy.

38:22

Blasphemy, by the way, is inevitable in terms of laws against, don't say that, right?

38:29

People say, oh, look, you know, God's law has laws against blasphemy. Yeah, and so does our country. 21st century, we have blasphemy laws.

38:37

We call them hate crime laws. That's what we call it. Like if someone says something that hurts somebody or offends them, it's like, well, that's hate.

38:45

Blasphemy, it's modern -day version of blasphemy. Like Jesus doesn't matter to our 21st century culture, and so no one cares if you vilify or blaspheme

38:54

Jesus, but you do not go against the untouchables. Well, Dave Chappelle did, and he did it as a comedian.

38:59

And so now he's under threat of being canceled, and here's what he said in response. I actually rather enjoyed this.

39:10

It's been said in the press that I was invited to speak to the transgender employees at Netflix, and I refuse.

39:19

That is not true. If they had invited me, I would have accepted it, although I am confused about what we are speaking about.

39:29

I said what I said, and boy, I heard what you said. My God, how could

39:36

I not? You said you want a safe working environment at Netflix.

39:42

Well, it seems like I'm the only one that can't go to the office anymore. I want everyone in this audience to know that even though the media frames us that it's me versus that community, that it's not what it is.

40:07

Do not blame the LBGTQ community for any of this. This has nothing to do with them.

40:13

It's about corporate interests and what I can say and what I cannot say, for the record.

40:27

And I need you to know this. Everyone I know from that community has been nothing but loving and supporting, so I don't know what all this nonsense is about.

40:40

In summer 2020, when the whole world shut down,

40:46

I was outside doing shows. My neighbor had a cornfield, and he let me throw shows there, and people came from all over the country.

40:55

Some people came from around the world to see those shows. The best comedians on earth came to my home and broke bread with me, and we lived our lives.

41:06

We found a way to keep moving forward. I made a whole documentary about it.

41:16

The first night of those shows was a piece that some of you might have seen. It was called 846, and it dealt with the death, the murder of George Floyd.

41:33

This film that I made was invited to every film festival in the United States, and some of those invitations I accepted, and when this controversy came out about the close -up, they began disinviting me from these film festivals, and now, today, not a film company, not a movie studio, not a film festival, nobody will touch this film.

42:03

Thank God for Ted Sarandos at Netflix. He's the only one that didn't cancel me yet. To the transgender community,

42:20

I am more than willing to give you an audience, but you will not summon me.

42:26

I am not bending to anybody's demands, and if you want to meet with me,

42:38

I'd be more than willing to, but I have some conditions. First of all, you cannot come if you have not watched my special from beginning to end.

43:01

You must come to a place of my choosing and a time of my choosing.

43:10

And thirdly, you must admit that Hannah Gadsby is not funny. I desperately want people to see this movie, but I understand why investors would be nervous.

43:30

Since nobody will touch it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I will make it available for all of you in 10

43:36

American cities, going on sale in the next few days. You will be able to see this movie in its entirety, and you can see what they're trying to obstruct you from seeing.

43:47

And you can judge for yourself, but you cannot have this conversation and exclude my voice from it.

43:54

That is only fair. You have to answer the question, am I canceled or not?

44:02

Then let's go. Thank you very much, and good night. There you go.

44:10

So I thought that was an important thing to play because you have somebody that's actually not a

44:16

Christian who's being threatened with cancellation because he spoke against the untouchables.

44:24

And he did it as a comedian. He did it with an internal critique. And he did it actually saying some pretty amazing things in terms of his love for people who are

44:34

LGBT. Is the Q in LGBTQQ anon? Or is that, no?

44:41

Okay, that's Isaac's joke, by the way. Just make sure I give him credit for it.

44:48

So interesting times we're living in. People talk about canceling people. You can't be a person that goes against the narrative in our country.

44:56

Here's the worldview. They say, this is the worldview. This is what you're to believe. If you say anything, if you speak against this sexual ethic that we're propagating, then you are guilty of blasphemy, and we're gonna make sure that you die.

45:10

And what's that mean? Here's what I mean by that. Because if you take away a person, this is something Dave Chappelle says too. If you take away a person's ability to work, it's akin to killing them.

45:21

If you take away a person's job and their ability to feed themselves, then it's akin to killing them.

45:27

And that's what we've said too about the mandatory cookies is that all these people who are losing their jobs because of the mandatory experimental cookies, that is essentially a modern version of the death penalty.

45:36

If you can't work, you can't eat, you can't provide for your family, it's essentially saying you die.

45:42

You either do this or die. And that's essentially what this community is saying to Dave Chappelle, is you apologize, you repent, you stop blaspheming this idol or die.

45:53

And that's what cancellation is, it's die. I hope you starve and die in the streets because you spoke a word against my

46:01

God. And so I'll be interested to see how Dave Chappelle pulls out of this or gets out of it.

46:07

I think that because he's one of the greatest comedians in American history, I think he's gonna do just fine. Clearly he has the support of his audience.

46:15

And if you think about where we're at in terms of those who profess to be part of the

46:23

LGBTQ plus community, you're talking about very, very, very, very small numbers, very tiny minority of Americans who were actually a part of that community.

46:35

The larger majority is not part of that community. And the amazing thing is that you see in a special like Dave Chappelle's special or what he's even doing here, you see that actually the large majority is on his side and agrees with him.

46:48

And that's why they can't cancel him. I was just gonna say, well, the first thing I thought after I watched that clip was, man, we need more

46:56

Christians to be that bold. Because it's Christians that are just cowering and afraid to say something.

47:03

But I think what we need in general is people to stand up like this and to be brave and be bold.

47:11

People are waiting for someone to lead, right? Waiting for people to stand up and say enough is enough.

47:18

And everyone's just so afraid to offend someone. And so I think this is gonna be good. I think we might see a snowball effect of more people saying, you know what?

47:26

We need to stand up and fight against this nonsense. It's powerful for Joe Rogan to expose

47:32

CNN's lies and for him, because really it's guys on the left that are gonna influence people on the left from not drinking the

47:41

Kool -Aid of our tyrannical government. So I think it's a really good thing. I mean, they've already categorized people like us.

47:47

Far right extremists, don't listen to them. Low level of incredibility. Then you have Joe Rogan, 10 times the viewers in CNN or most everybody.

47:55

Then you got Chappelle, the most popular comedian on the planet. So they have so much say -so and so much influence into people that we can't really reach.

48:05

We can reach them, but I think it's a good thing. I think hopefully more, like you're saying, more people like them follow suit and expose what's going on because it's just gonna get worse as a nation.

48:14

Yeah, and of course, a challenging thing that we should all feel the weight of as Christians is where are the

48:19

Christians building platforms, trying to build platforms that can reach that many people? And also where are the

48:25

Christian leaders, the men, who are fighting against cancel culture and these blasphemy laws, the way that Joe Rogan, not a

48:32

Christian, and Dave Chappelle, not a Christian, are doing? We need Christian men to stand up, like you said, Luke, to do the very things that they're doing.

48:40

And where are we? Where is it? I mean, obviously, we're out there, but we need believers to be in a better place of influence and people who are respected in terms of the platforms they build that can speak against this as well.

48:54

So, long show, but we wanted to make sure we ended this show by putting in the interview that I just had with the publication, and again, let's try this.

49:03

Let's actually follow God's law, and let's assume the innocence of this journalist that contacted me, let's assume that he's gonna take what

49:11

I said into account and actually tell the story in the way it needs to be told. So, you're gonna watch the interview.

49:17

Again, he knew it was being recorded. I knew he was recording from his end. You're gonna watch it, and we're gonna see what happens with the article.

49:26

How about that? Let's do that. So, thank you guys for watching. Don't forget to go to endabortionnow .com.

49:32

Go to get your church signed up to get free training, get free resources, get equipped to go out and to share the gospel at the abortion mills.

49:39

Thousands and thousands and thousands of children have been saved through the over 800 churches that we've equipped and raised up doing this work, and pray for us as we have more states coming with more bills of equal protection for all human beings at every stage of life.

49:52

That is happening right now. I just learned of a new one we're working on, which I'm super excited about. I'm very excited about.

49:58

So, this year it has been Arizona. We helped in Oklahoma. We got Texas going. We got South Carolina.

50:03

We got Pennsylvania. We're working on Indiana, Louisiana, Florida, and then one more, which we'll announce later.

50:09

So, thank you everybody so, so, so very much for loving us, supporting us, and being a part of what we're doing.

50:15

Go to apologiastudios .com, sign up for all access. Partner with us in this ministry, and catch next time we do

50:21

Ask Me Anything. I think it'll bless you a bunch. So, thank you everybody. We'll catch you next week right here on Apology Radio.

50:30

We'll catch you next week right here on Apology Radio. Hello, this is

50:35

Alex. Hi Alex, Pastor Jeff Durbin. Hey, good afternoon. How are you? I'm doing wonderful.

50:41

How are you doing, sir? I'm doing all right, thanks. I appreciate you giving me a call back.

50:47

Of course. I certainly appreciate you taking your time. Of course, my pleasure. Yeah, like I said, if you don't mind me, if I just throw my recorder on, just so I've got hands free.

50:56

No problem at all. Yeah, and like I said, I really just wanted to follow up.

51:04

I've been kind of writing about U .S. elections and the influence of QAnon and related movements in politics for the last couple of years.

51:14

And I know there's a piece in the Phoenix New Times interviewing you about Ron Watkins.

51:21

Right, right. I just kind of wanted to follow up on that. Yeah, I understand that you hadn't maybe necessarily spent much time with him.

51:32

But yeah, I was curious because he had brought up on social media a couple of times that he was inspired by a sermon you gave.

51:42

I think you mentioned it before he made his announcement that he was running for Congress.

51:48

And I was curious if you happen to remember what that was. He seemed to be pretty taken with it.

51:55

I was just curious if you can remember what it was that day. Yeah, sure, I'd be happy to answer that.

52:01

So let me get to my dashboard here so I can tell you the exact name so you can take a look at him.

52:09

Yeah, the New Times article was a bit disappointing. I feel like it didn't matter what

52:14

I said to her. She had a story and she was gonna run with it. So it was really disappointing. And disappointing considering the fact that we repudiate

52:23

QAnon. We despise the movement and we've spoken it out publicly against it.

52:30

And so it's frustrating to see the attempted association between myself or our church with QAnon, especially when you spend so much time repudiating something and calling it out for its lies and inconsistencies.

52:48

So the sermons, as far as I know, and I'm about 99 % on this, he was a visitor to our church.

52:57

He attended two messages. And like I said, I'm fairly confident of that.

53:03

He attended two messages. He is not a member of our church, neither I or the elders of Apologia Church are his pastor.

53:10

And the sermon, let's see here, I think the first sermon he visited and saw was a

53:21

Christian response to mandatory cookies. A Christian response to mandatory cookies. That sermon on YouTube alone has been seen, let's see here, 222 ,000 views.

53:34

I think a total of about 300 ,000. So somewhere around 300 ,000 people have seen that sermon.

53:41

Cool, yeah, I think I pulled that up, but I hadn't watched it yet. But yeah, I was just looking at that. So that was,

53:46

I believe, his first one. Yeah, he visited. And the second one was the sermon on defending essential

53:52

Christian truths. I don't believe he was there last Sunday.

53:58

But yeah, he was a visitor. He's not a member of our church. I'm not his pastor. And again, the frustrating thing about the

54:06

Phoenix New Times article was that I think she had already decided before she wrote it what she was gonna write and how she was gonna try to associate us with Ron Watkins.

54:15

And it didn't matter what I said. She was gonna run with the story. So yeah, that's how that started.

54:24

Yeah, sure, I can see how that would be frustrating. Yeah, I believe he also posted,

54:31

I think a similar video, or maybe the same video, on his Telegram account that he had posted a week or so ago, or maybe two weeks now, of you discussing vaccine requirements and encouraging service members to, and your work with service members to push back on some of those requirements.

54:57

Yeah, yeah, so the way that there's any connection between us and Ron Watkins is,

55:05

I actually didn't even know who he was, or that he was associated with QAnon until after I actually received a phone call, or maybe

55:15

I called him. Somehow word got to me that there was somebody who had a very large media following that could possibly help get the word out about the

55:22

Navy SEALs and the other military branches, members who are struggling right now and essentially being fired because they won't take the experimental vaccine.

55:34

And so he said that he got word to my assistant that he was someone that had a fairly large media following.

55:39

I didn't find out actually his association with QAnon until after I was on the phone with him.

55:46

And I actually, I haven't done any thorough investigation in terms of what he really has to do with QAnon myself.

55:55

He wanted to help with getting the word out about the Navy SEALs and their plight right now.

56:02

And so that's where that came from. And again, after I talked to him and I did a little

56:07

Google search, and then I said, whoa, goodness gracious. People think he's

56:13

Q or he's associated with Q. And so that was how that happened.

56:22

And as I said, one of the struggles for us as pastors at Apologia Church is we've actually spoken out quite frequently against QAnons.

56:32

I mean, we find, I mean, we ask the question, what do you find destructive and embarrassing about the movement? I find it to be destructive and embarrassing because from a

56:41

Christian perspective, as a minister of the gospel, God has very high standards for accusations, accusing people and receiving accusations.

56:49

God's law actually tells us how to do that. And it's one of the glories of really the, at least some of the blessings in the

56:57

West in terms of justice, where there's courts, where there's the right against self -incrimination, where there is the demand for witnesses and evidence or cross -examination.

57:06

That all comes from the Christian worldview and the law of Moses. And so Christians historically have had a very strong commitment to very high standards for accusation and receiving accusations, cross -examination and high standards when it comes to evidence and gathering evidence.

57:22

And one of the things that I feel so destructive and embarrassing about QAnon is that it seems to me to be a community that thrives in just making baseless accusations, wild accusations and at times very disturbing accusations.

57:39

I can give one example of that is something that I saw, I can't remember when it was, I think maybe it was two years ago and it was the

57:48

QAnon community spreading stories about people drinking children's blood and adrenochrome and for some reason, the particular week that I saw some of the stuff that was being shared was slander against Tom Hanks.

58:08

And I couldn't believe my eyes. People were accusing him of being a pedophile and killing children and drinking children's blood.

58:16

And they were even sharing a picture of him coming off of an airplane on a tarmac with his hand up like he was waving.

58:21

And they were sharing the picture as though he was being arrested, that they finally caught him for being a pedophile and everything else.

58:29

And one of the things I think is so destructive when you ask the question like what's destructive about the movement is in God's law, one of the ways that the court is protected in terms of making accusations is that if a witness is found to be lying, they make an accusation, they're found to be lying about somebody, then the penalty in the court is supposed to be that that false witness is supposed to receive the punishment that the person you falsely accused would have gotten had they been actually found guilty.

59:01

And so very high standards in terms of even lobbying an accusation. And so from my perspective, in terms of what's destructive, if you have a community that is so willing to spread such vicious slander and lies about just random people with no evidence whatsoever, according to God's standards, those false witnesses deserve to get whatever punishment that that accused person would have gotten.

59:23

And so I find it to be destructive, I find it to be embarrassing. I think it's a movement that actually is in many ways, from what

59:33

I can tell, I'm not an expert on QAnon, but from what I've seen just here and there, it seems to me very messianic in its mindset.

59:42

In other words, from my perspective as a minister of the gospel, I wanna focus on Christ, I wanna focus on eternal life and the free gift of forgiveness and salvation that's through Christ and the story of the

59:53

Bible is about Jesus, He's the Messiah, we find life in Him as a gift through faith in Him and what

59:59

He's done. He lived and died and rose again so that people like me and you could know God and have peace with God, that's the story.

01:00:07

But it seemed to me so many times in QAnon that I've seen there's this messianic character to even how they view

01:00:13

Donald Trump. There's a messianic character in terms of how they've even seen JFK Jr.

01:00:20

I mean, that was crazy. When I saw that, all the QAnon community actually communicating the hope that JFK Jr.

01:00:31

was still alive, I think that they were even trying to connect him to Donald Trump and then he was gonna basically come back again from the dead in a way on Easter Sunday.

01:00:42

I mean, that was being spread and I saw someone actually saying that and I confronted them. I said, you realize, of course, that this is detracting from who the true

01:00:50

Messiah is, this is messianic in character, this is baseless, there's no evidence for this garbage and you shouldn't spread this.

01:00:58

And we even called somebody to repentance who was spreading that, someone that was spreading it and communicating that JFK Jr.

01:01:09

was gonna come back from the dead and sort of drain the swamp or whatever the words they were using about it was.

01:01:16

And then when, of course, JFK Jr. didn't show up, we went to that person, we were like, this is the problem, you spread this story, it's wrong, you need to stop, you need to raise your standards of accusation and your gathering of evidence.

01:01:29

And so there's at least a burst about how we feel about QAnon. Sure, yeah,

01:01:37

I think that those kinds of criticisms have kind of given it the cult -like definition or self -prophesizing or prophetic.

01:01:49

Yeah, that's exactly right, Alex. I think that's one of the things that, I mean, I think if you challenge somebody who's involved in the

01:01:56

QAnon community and you say, well, this is clearly a false prophecy, like you said this was gonna happen and it didn't happen.

01:02:02

And again, Alex, in Scripture, there's Deuteronomy 18, 20 through 22, one of the standards that God sets for a prophet is if they give one false prophecy, they're clearly not from God and that's a false prophet.

01:02:14

You're supposed to see them as that. And I think one of the ways that the QAnon community gets around that is they're not saying, well,

01:02:20

I'm not saying thus sayeth the Lord. Well, it's like, well, yeah, but maybe not. But you were saying that this was gonna happen, that this is what's going on underground and this is what's gonna happen in the world and it just fails and it falls flat on its face over and over and over again.

01:02:36

And any movement that detracts from the glory of Christ and is messianic in character like QAnon that has so many failed predictions and that has such an abysmal standard of evidence and accusation needs to be rejected by any

01:02:53

Christian and I think any thinking person. Sure, and Ron has made some statements over the past several months to really clarify that there either is no such thing as QAnon or he has never been

01:03:12

Q, really no, at least showing that there is some distance between him and that or wanting to have the appearance of that at least.

01:03:24

Yeah. But in a sense though, he has hosted through the platform that he worked with messages that did promote it.

01:03:35

So there is a, at the very least, a sort of tangential connection, regardless if he is directly responsible for posting those things.

01:03:44

Is that the kind of thing that you would want to confront him about should he want to become a member or become more involved with the church?

01:03:54

Yeah, well, again, I didn't even see him last weekend. I saw him, well, again, he came to those two services that I know of.

01:04:02

Like I said, I'm very confident those are the only ones that he visited during. And then, of course,

01:04:09

I heard there was a person that had a large media following that could get the word out about the Navy SEALs. And I find out, oh, this person's associated with Q or there's accusations going his way about Q.

01:04:19

If he showed up, we want everyone to know Christ. Alex, if you showed up, I wouldn't want to turn you away.

01:04:24

We don't investigate people at the door and ask, we want people to hear the gospel. And so if he showed up and wanted to be a member of our church, we would, as we do with all of our members of our church, we'd sit down, we'd get to know him.

01:04:36

And that would be something that I would ask questions about. Like, how do you feel about Q Anon? Do you have any association with Q Anon? And if there was any support of Q Anon and the sort of things that go on with Q Anon, or if he's responsible for it in any way, it would be something that the elders of the church would confront and call him to repentance on.

01:04:56

And we would, again, I think one of the great dangers that I see with Q Anon is just its very messianic character with the figures that they prop up, whether it's

01:05:05

Donald Trump or whether it is JFK Jr. And so it would be something that we would confront, that you can't detract from the glory of Christ and the gospel itself by propping up this theory, this system, in a messianic way.

01:05:22

I mean, because in the end, I think one of the most important things to say here is that the answer for peace and forgiveness and salvation and justice in the world is

01:05:34

Christ. And that's not gonna come through Republican politics. It's not gonna come through petty partisan politics stuff.

01:05:42

It's not gonna come through, salvation's not through America. Salvation's through Christ and through Christ alone.

01:05:49

And any movement that even professes to be Christian that detracts from the glory of Christ and the gospel itself is something that we would repudiate.

01:06:00

And pre my ignorance, you would use the word messages Is that different from a sermon or?

01:06:08

Oh no, either way. That's just a message sermon. Yeah, so those two were the

01:06:15

Christian response to mandatory cookies and then the sermon defending essential Christian truths. Those are the ones that he was in.

01:06:20

And I think between two of those, they've been seen over 300 ,000 times. And I would hope that people would be gracious enough to us as pastors not to hold us accountable for the belief system of the hundreds of thousands of people who have seen those messages.

01:06:35

Sure, sure. Great, yeah. Again, I didn't wanna take up your afternoon.

01:06:42

I just wanted to kind of follow up on some stuff. Well, I appreciate Alex, yeah. In writing about this campaign.

01:06:49

But yeah, did you have any questions for me? Any additional thoughts?

01:06:56

No, I just wanna say, Alex, I do appreciate you contacting me to ask these questions. As I said, one of the frustrating things with the original article is it seemed that she was prepared to write what story she wanted to write, and it didn't matter what

01:07:10

I said or responded. And the unfortunate thing is that now there's a lot of publications that are basing off of her article, their own articles.

01:07:21

And the Rolling Stones even, they did an article and they called me Ron Watkins' pastor and tried to associate me with Q in that way and never even asked me a single question.

01:07:33

Never contacted me. So I do appreciate your attempt at journalistic integrity to ask the questions.

01:07:38

It really means a lot to me. Thank you. Oh, certainly, yeah. I mean, that's my job.

01:07:44

If I'm writing about a person, if there's a person's name included in something I'm writing about, they have every right to comment.

01:07:53

So I'm just doing my due diligence there, for sure. Oh, I appreciate it. I honor that, thank you.

01:07:59

But again, yeah, just in covering this campaign, I was just curious why he was making, by and large, he has not discussed his faith.

01:08:19

And in the lead up, in the previous weeks, in the lead up to this campaign, it's become a more central role in his messaging and discussions and public appearances.

01:08:30

So very, very interested in that, and... Sure, well, I can make it, maybe, yeah, no, yeah.

01:08:38

Oh, okay, so maybe that's where he's getting inspiration from, you know, just kind of pulling at that thread. I can say that, and you can look at that yourself, too.

01:08:45

That first one that he attended was the sermon, A Christian Response to Mandatory Cookies.

01:08:52

And that was really laying out the groundwork of the

01:08:58

Christian worldview, historically, and of course, biblically, how do we view the role of Christ in the world?

01:09:05

And one of, you know, it's interesting, people would refer to me in some of these publications as an extremist pastor, or a far -right extremist.

01:09:15

I don't actually know exactly what that means, but we hold to, really, the historic

01:09:22

Christian perspective of Christ, his authority, and him in public life.

01:09:31

And so, for example, Alex, where are you at, actually? Independent UK, are you actually in the

01:09:37

UK, or are you in the States? Yeah, I'm in the US. I'm on their US Bureau, based in New York.

01:09:45

Okay, so whether you're from the UK or the United States, the groundwork that developed sort of in both those nations was the

01:09:54

Christian worldview. The Huguenots and the Covenanters and the Puritans came over specifically to this nation, and there was a particular worldview in the atmosphere.

01:10:02

Even if somebody wasn't Christian in those days, the Christian worldview was in the atmosphere, and it was just assumed.

01:10:08

And so, really, all spheres of life were seen as accountable to Christ, and it was saturated in the biblical worldview.

01:10:16

And so, when someone says, Jeff is an extremist pastor, it's interesting, because I hold to, really, the historic

01:10:24

Orthodox reform perspective of God and government and culture and society, and my belief system is not different than the predominant belief system of the early

01:10:38

Christians who were really building this nation from bottom to top, whether it was family, church, government, whatever it was.

01:10:47

And so, I think what Ron heard in that message was laying the groundwork for just what does

01:10:56

Christ have authority over. And we're Christians, and we believe that Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords, and so we believe that Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth, as he said.

01:11:06

And so, we believe, like the early Christians who started this nation, that there's no sphere of life outside of Christ's authority.

01:11:13

And we need to bring the word of God into every area of life, whether it's science, the arts, whatever it may be,

01:11:21

God, government, all of that is together. And so, if that's extremist, then so were all of our founding fathers, and so was everyone who was a part of building this nation.

01:11:33

And so, it's interesting that we've sort of shifted in this culture away from its historical foundations and biblical foundations to where today you can have just, in history,

01:11:45

I wouldn't be anything special. What I'm saying is just in line with what Christians have been saying throughout history about all of these areas of culture and society and law.

01:11:55

And today, someone might label me as an extremist pastor, but I'm in the same line and vein of really the historic

01:12:03

Christian ministers of the gospel, even say the New England pulpit, which was responsible for the beginning of this nation.

01:12:11

We're Reformed Baptists, we're in the Reformed tradition. And so, that's who we are, and that's where we come from.

01:12:18

And today, of course, because of how far we've gone from our biblical foundations, you see a pastor like me saying that Christ has something to say to government, and that's called extremist.

01:12:27

I would just call it biblical. As opposed to a sort of separation of church and state, you see more of that the state in itself, at least in the constitutional context in the

01:12:44

U .S., is inherently one based on faith. Yeah, so it's interesting, separation of church and state, many secularists today learn that terminology and don't understand the historical background of it.

01:12:57

The separation of church and state is something that Christians developed based on Scripture and the

01:13:02

Christian tradition. So in other words, we gave that to the world. We developed that doctrine, that tradition of separation of church and state.

01:13:09

And I would say one of the ways you can see that is the covenanters in Scotland, the king was trying to take authority as the government over the church, and Scripture forbids that.

01:13:19

There's two different spheres there, the church and the state. They are distinct, but they are both under God. And what

01:13:25

Christians never meant when they gave the world separation of church and state is a separation of God and state, or the separation of morality and state.

01:13:34

And separation of church and state is a Christian doctrine, and it was essentially, early on in the history of this nation, trying to avoid a situation like in England, where you had the

01:13:44

Church of England controlled by the state, and they didn't want a state church. And so separation of church and state, that doctrine came from Christians, and it was in terms of trying to avoid a government -controlled state or a state -controlled government.

01:14:00

They didn't want something that they have seen gone so bad in history, because it's really a violation of God's law.

01:14:06

But again, no Christian believed separation of church and state meant separation of God and state, because Christians have historically always believed that Jesus is a standard of righteousness and justice and morality, and that has something to do with the public square.

01:14:23

Sure, I guess like in the Jeffersonian context and looking at, you know, Congress shall make no law respecting establishment of religion, et cetera, or in, you know, in...

01:14:36

As a state church, yeah, as a state church, that's what they meant, yeah. And there's only one mention of that in Thomas Jefferson's letter to the

01:14:43

Baptists who were concerned about the development of a state -controlled church. And that's, you know, when people refer to separation of church and state, that terminology is not in our constitutional documents, but the worldview that gave rise to that perspective was from Christians.

01:15:02

And I would say a good thing to look at is the history of the Covenanters who resisted so strongly the state church situation.

01:15:11

And they're really the ones who really gave us this nation, the Huguenots, the Covenanters, the

01:15:16

Puritans. And they all had that perspective of separation of church and state is not a separation of God and state.

01:15:23

And one of the proofs of that, just as a passing remark, one of the proofs that no one believed in a separation of God and state is our first Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, when he was developing the case law system of our nation, he explicitly referenced the law of God in the case law examples that he was giving us.

01:15:43

So the case law system we have in our nation today actually is Christian. It comes from Moses. And John Jay, who was the first Supreme Court Justice, was explicitly quoting the law of God in our initial case law examples.

01:15:55

And that was the founding of our nation. So they didn't hold to the secular perspective of separation of church and state that people hold to today.

01:16:05

Right, no, yeah, certainly. Yeah, that was definitely part and parcel. Yeah, again,

01:16:14

I appreciate your time. I didn't really, doesn't really have any other questions for you, so if anything comes up, do you mind if I shoot you an email?

01:16:23

Yeah, please do. Yeah, please do, Alex. And again, I honor you for that. Thank you for having the integrity to do that.

01:16:30

I appreciate that very much. Certainly, yeah, give me a shout if you have any questions.