REFORMCON2016 | Live Stream | Darren Doane

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Filmmaker Darren Doane discusses art and the future of reformed culture.

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to listen, and next up is actually one of my favorite filmmakers, and it started for me watching the film
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Collision. When I was working at Calvary Addiction Recovery Hospital for four years at this addiction center, it used to be a
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Christian recovery center, so you basically was a Baptist preacher in the 50s, was preaching the gospel to people on Van Buren, and so many people were coming to Christ through that ministry that eventually they needed a place to bring them back to life, to restore them to life, and so they found a place, they had like cots, and these guys were just basically disciples, it was a legitimate
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Christian program, it was about Christ and sanctification, the word of God, it was awesome.
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Well that was like in the 50s, and by the time I got to this hospital, it was kind of turning over from a
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Christian program to, let's see how good of a speaker I am right now, if I can compete with that right there, okay.
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It went from a Christian program to really a secular program, they had AA, HA, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and it was becoming anything but Christian, but they asked me to take over the
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Christian program because this place had advertised online that it was a Christian recovery center, and if you
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Googled Christian recovery centers or Christian drug and alcohol program, this was the first place that came up in every
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Google search, and so people called all the time, they had flown from around the country to find a legitimate Christian program that hired me on, and I said, hey, we want you to do the
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Christian program, run it, do it how people want it to be done. I had about four years of trouble,
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I was in the principal's office virtually every day, but they really,
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I think, special thing for me was that I got to create a 30 -day
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Christian, I called it redemption program, not recovery program, but redemption program, and one of the things that we did is we did one -on -one counseling, and we also did group talks, and we did chapel, and we got into the
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Word of God, but one thing that everybody did every single month, you had to be a part of this, is we watched collision.
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I used to invite people, this is not a Christian center, and so people came in every day off of heroin, methamphetamines, and cocaine, and they're coming in, some of them still under the influence, many of them atheists and hostile to Christianity, so what
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I used to do is I used to try to take advantage of that. So what I would do was I would put, this is what
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I did, I went in my office and I printed off challenges to debate the pastor.
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I was like, come and rough up Christian minister tonight, 615, and I would just plaster these things all over the hospital, and I'd even find people that came in that are just sort of still on their detox medication,
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I'd be like, hey man, did you hear what you can do tonight, you can come and rough this pastor up, they're like, oh that's great,
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I'll make time for that, and so it was excellent. So I got to get into constant, it was the most amazing thing for me,
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I mean God would just bring the fish to my boat every day, I didn't have to go fishing, I didn't have to reach with the gospel, it was really a tremendous experience, but I was trying to find a film that would be a good segue into a conversation, and I caught
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Collision, and I thought when I first saw it, man, this is how
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I like films to be, like documentaries, it's edgy, it is informative, you catch the characters,
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I mean it's developed so well, I really loved it, but I wasn't so sure that everybody else would love it, and so from the very first time
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I gave it a test run, I gave it a test run to a bunch of drug addicts, and they loved it, so that says a lot about Darren's filmmaking capabilities.
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So every month I would play Collision, it would always be followed up after the film with a conversation, and I can tell you right now that there are people at Apologia Church that came to Christ as a result of watching that film and then engaging in the conversation afterwards, so it's a tremendous gift, it's a blessing to my own life, and just last year we were able to coordinate with Darren in the
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Free Speech Apocalypse film, which I really really enjoyed, and I want to introduce you to someone that I love a bunch, and respect, and I think he's pretty special in a number of different ways,
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Darren Doan. Are we on?
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Are we on? I'm going to move around a lot. Oh, where do we start?
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Thanks Jeff. I'll circle back to this, and I'll say circle back to this 900 more times while I talk, because when
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I became a Christian, all I wanted to do was bring someone to the
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Lord. I just want to bring someone, I'm a Christian now, and 15, 16, 17 years goes by and I'm like, never brought someone to the
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Lord, never had that moment. By the way,
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Scott Oliphant, amazing, and then you get James White doing a breakout, then you get N .D. Wilson, and then you get this crazy thing over here, try following all that.
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It's not, no, no, keep going. And so I always tell my wife too,
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I'm 44 years old now, or at the time maybe 43, and I was like, and every year she would say,
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I've never brought someone to the Lord. It's kind of the whole thing, right? I mean, that's kind of what you want to do.
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As you'll see when I tell you my story and how all this happened, I mean, I love apologetics, I learned everything
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I could possibly learn, and right down to James White teaching me about P number 76, two fragments, documents, and all that stuff.
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I was like, just never brought anyone to the Lord. And then I meet Jeff Durbin a year ago.
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He says, yeah, I used to play your movie, and people come to the Lord. I was like, oh, and we were talking,
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I think it was by satellite or something, or Skype, whatever we did, satellite, 1985.
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I had a conversation with Jeff Durbin over satellite, my satellite phone.
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And I was like, oh, that's cool. And I went home, and I just started crying. I don't think I've even told you about this.
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I was like, I did something that brought someone to the Lord. And I couldn't believe it. I had no idea.
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I was content with knowing that I was never going to be the guy that actually ever had a conversation with somebody.
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And don't get me wrong, I've got four kids, so trust me, I'm bringing someone to the Lord. So there's a whole other world that I had to learn that God had made for that.
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The first memory I have in my entire life is sort of gross.
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I'm maybe four years old, maybe. And I'm standing, and I'm looking up this road, this road that just goes up.
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And I'm standing there. And I look over, and that's the first thing I remember in my life.
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And this might tell you a lot about me. We'll see. I look over, and I'm holding a hand.
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And I look up, and that's my older brother, Dino. He's seven years older than me.
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And he's laughing. And he's laughing, and he's going, it's okay.
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And I realize, I look down, and it's probably 1976.
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So shorts were short back then. Even on kids, just short. So I had shorts probably kind of right here.
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And I could just see poop. Just perfectly, just circled.
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Like it had squeezed out. Tight 70s shorts. I had to work through something and kind of make a little barrier.
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And I'm standing there looking at my brother, and he's laughing. And he goes, if anybody asks, just tell them they're your boxers.
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Then my next image is, I remember being in a shower, just being rinsed off.
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And then life gets kind of blurry. And then
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I'm at a table with my mom and my dad.
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And my brother's next to me. You'll see this theme of my brother next to me. And he just looks angry.
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And I can't figure out, again, what's going on. And by the time
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I sort of, it comes back in, I remember my mom saying, it's not that we don't love you.
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We just don't love each other anymore. And I'm not really getting it.
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I'm about eight. My brother's 15. So he gets it. And it should just kind of get tragic from here.
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But my mom divorces my dad. And she buys a house next door.
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Next door. Right, dad? Going to mom's.
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Hey, mom. That's weird. That's weird.
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My mom and my dad, up until my dad passing away about a year ago, had lunch every day, went to the movies on Sunday.
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And so when I would, you know, growing up, my friends would say, you know, would say to my parents, and they found out my parents are divorced, they said, well,
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I don't understand. They're together all the time. Yeah, just weird. Just weird. But those things form you.
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From the first lie that you're told that the poop is just boxers, to your parents splitting the house across the street, my brother being seven years older, and my brother surfed.
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I surfed growing up. And around junior high, you would, if you wanted to get a ride to the beach, you had to find someone older.
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That's just how it went, right? So the only way you could get a ride to the beach was finding someone older, and then you would give them gas money.
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Remember that concept, gas money? Does that even happen anymore? I mean, you get so old, but like, it was a big deal.
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Do you have gas money? And the older people would take you somewhere, you know. I'm sure they had a markup on that, or the gas was at the time.
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But I lived in a pretty affluent neighborhood, so everyone had money. So having gas money was never enough just to get you that ride.
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But I realized everybody smoked weed. One laugh, thank you.
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And so I was like, you know what? My money isn't getting me to the beach. Maybe I'll just buy some weed, and then
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I'll have gas money and weed. And so that would get me over the person who just had money.
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Well, I'd be at the beach. I'd have some leftover. Next thing you know, someone would say, hey, I'll buy that from you.
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Okay. Then you start selling it. You start learning more about it.
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It's a business. You're buying something. You're weighing it out. You're distributing it. Before you know it, you're just dealing.
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And I never liked weed. It's funny to think now that it's just legalized everywhere now.
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Everyone just smokes weed now. And I love all the things people say about it too.
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So everyone's like, it's a nonviolent thing. It's nonviolent. Really?
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I punched plenty of people when I was high. Do I count as a stat?
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No, it's a no. Alcohol, people get violent. No one gets violent on weed.
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No, no. I used to beat people up. I would smoke weed and get violent. Yeah, but it's a nonviolent drug.
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It's a nonaddictive, nonviolent drug. Really? It's not addictive? Because when my brother went to jail for the meth lab that blew up, funny story, because when your meth lab blows up, they find you.
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In the apartment you're renting. And they call you from jail because they can't go to sleep.
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And they're shaking. I can't go to bed, I can't go to bed,
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I can't go to bed. What's going on, man? Calling you from jail. I can't go to bed. I need to smoke weed. I see the bong hit.
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Yeah, it's not addictive. I grew up watching people surf, people smoke weed.
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And by the time I got into high school, we were at the beach one day. It was perfect waves.
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It was just perfect. Six to eight foot. In California talks, that's face, not backs. Hawaii, that'd be double.
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Six to eight foot offshore, just perfect waves. And I remember getting to the beach and seeing some of the best guys
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I knew surfing, sitting there on the beach just looking at the waves. I was like, why aren't they surfing?
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It was perfect. And it turned out now people were doing coke. Now people were doing meth.
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Now people were doing speed. They were just strung out.
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So strung out that they couldn't even surf perfect waves in front of them. Amen.
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And I remember thinking, wow, this is, and it clicked, wow, this is destroying people. I'm not a
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Christian at that point in time, but I know, you know what? None of this is probably going to work, so I quit partying,
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I quit drinking, I quit everything, and I get through high school somehow, and I think
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I'm going to be a comic book artist. My senior year, I send my portfolio out. I get all the rejection letters.
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I'm not going to be a comic book artist. Turns out I'm not good enough. I was like, well, I'll be a filmmaker then. Grew up with the camera.
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I'll start working with bands. And so I started doing music videos and doing that thing.
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And, by the way, the guys that shot Biggie and Tupac, you think they were high? Just saying. It's a non -violent drug.
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Just think about it for a moment. Non -violent drug. And so I start filmmaking.
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I start making music videos. And I'm doing it 24 -7. And all the bands that I'm working with kind of start to become popular.
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I'm working with these underground punk bands like Blink -182. And we have a $1 ,500 budget to make something.
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And then they get signed to a major label. And they blow up. And they get really, really big.
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And so the interesting thing is even though you can stop drinking, stop partying, doing drugs, there's still plenty of ways to do bad things, right?
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And so one night I'm out in Hollywood and come out from a place where you shouldn't be.
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And a guy says to me, it's like 2 in the morning, he says, hey man, do you want to make some money off some
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Christians? I was like, yeah. What do you got?
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And he's like, okay, don't laugh. But there's a thing called Christian music.
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I was like, yeah? He goes, no, no, no. For every band that you know of, they have a
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Christian version. I was like, shut up. What are you talking?
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He's like, yeah. I was like, what? He's like, yeah. There's like a rock band, like Jane's Addiction, there's like a
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Christian version. Red Hot Chili Peppers, a Christian version. He goes, and there's this band called
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MXPX. He's like, and they're total punk rock, but they're
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Christians. He's like, and this label, Tooth & Nail Records, they can't get their videos on MTV. But if I tell them
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I've got the cool, hip music video director guy, and maybe you do their music video, maybe
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MTV will kind of maybe give the video a shot. I was like, yeah, I'm in. Let's do this.
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So I do the MXPX video. And actually, it worked out. I actually ended up doing a video for a song called Chick Magnet.
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And it actually got on MTV, and it kind of started my man. Thank you. Right there, we got that. Three people.
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You can YouTube it. Unfortunately, most of my life, you can YouTube at this point.
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You want to see sanctification in real time? It's on YouTube.
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And so I'm hanging around all these Christians. They're all tatted up, and gauges, and you know, like you guys.
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And I look like this because I just, I never wanted a tattoo. I never wanted a piercing.
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I was never even against it. I just, it was just, it was never on my radar. Like kissing a guy, just not there.
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So I've never been against them, but we'll come back to that, the tattoos.
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And so I'm around all these Christians, and I'm hanging around MXPX, and Stave's Acre, and Orange County Supertones, and over 150 -something music videos for tooth and nail bands and artists.
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And never once did anyone share the gospel with me. No one pulled me aside.
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Hey, Darren, Jesus has a plan for your life. Hey, Darren, you're a sinner. You're going to hell.
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No one ever told me that. And yet, that whole time,
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I would be back at my place where I was living at the time, and I'd be flipping through channels, and I would just get stuck on TBN, and I couldn't stop watching it.
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And at first, you might think, well, it's just so gaudy that how could you not? But no, I was into it.
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I was like, there's something going on here, and there's all these guys over here, and I like them, and Benny Hinn's weird, but, yeah, he's weird.
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But I was like, Jesse Duplantis and all these people, and there was two or three times
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I almost reached over and called the number. Yeah, I'm not going to do that.
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Yeah. So one day, I'm talking to Brandon Ebel, who's the president and owner of Tooth and Nail Records, and Brandon's ADD.
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He got on the phone, and he was like, hey, Darren, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can't even keep him focused for four seconds. And we're talking, and Brandon's going about something, something, something.
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Something, something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this, that, that. You know, mere Christianity, something, something. I was like, what? Mere Christianity?
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I got off the phone. I'm like, what did he say? He said, mere, mere, mere Christianity. I was like,
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I left the office, and I drove to the bookstore, one of the big ones, Barnes & Noble or Borders, whichever one still existed.
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And this is all pre -internet. Just put yourself back, people. This is all pre -internet. There's no
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Googling about my faith or my potential faith. So I went to the bookstore. I was like, mere. I was like, mere.
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I didn't even know what mere meant, mere. I find mere Christianity. And that's back when you could go into a bookstore, and somebody had it for you there.
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You go to the religion section, there it was, C .S. Lewis. Mere Christianity. I grabbed mere Christianity. I buy it.
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I go to my dad's house, live near there. He wasn't home. I go, I sit down. I get literally maybe two pages in.
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I was reading. I just shut it. I'm not reading this.
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And I said, God, leave me alone. That's my charismatic phase, but stick with me.
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I was like, God, leave me alone. Because I knew. I knew God was doing something.
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And for six months or so, I woke up every day just feeling full.
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Like I was just sick. It just started going to the doctors.
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Like, just what's wrong? Nothing was wrong. And after about six months,
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I saw my dad, and I started explaining to my dad kind of what I was feeling. And I think maybe me and my dad had one or two talks about God in our life.
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And my dad said, oh, well, that sounds like God. My dad's
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Mexican, so he was, as you can tell. And so I guess there was some altar boy
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Roman Catholicism left in him. He said, oh, that sounds like God.
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Oh, that's strange. So a few weeks later, I drove back to my dad's house, and I opened up Miracristiania, where I left off.
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And I got through maybe two chapters, maybe two chapters. I closed it again.
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I said, huh, I'm going to hell. There's no mention of hell in the first.
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I don't know if the whole book mentions it, because I never got through it. I never finished it. I never even went back. That's how scared
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I still am of Miracristianity. I closed the book, and I thought, I'm going to hell.
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Now, no one's telling me I'm going. I mean, I'm an American, right? So we know Christianese. We know this lingo, but no one was in my ear.
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None of the Christians I was hanging out with. I love these guys and girls, and I love that I don't want to be a part of them somehow.
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No one ever preached the gospel. I'm watching weird TBN, and now I'm reading Miracristianity.
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I'm only maybe a chapter or two, and I'm like, huh, I'm going to hell. And I thought, okay.
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All right, God, me and you are going to have a little talk. That's how I said it. Okay, God, me and you are going to have a little talk with, like, swagger.
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And so I went to, like, the top of a mountain, kind of this area, because it turns out, now that I know my Bible, you always go to the top of a mountain to meet
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God. You want to find a wife, go to a well, right? You want to meet
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God, top of a mountain. And I go up there, and so I'm like, okay,
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I'm going to pray. I'm going to do this prayer thing. So I sort of sit down, and I said, okay,
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I'm going to pray, God. Me and you are going to have a conversation. And I started rambling, and somewhere in my ramblings to God, I said, listen,
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I want to have a relationship with you, God, but I don't want to be a Christian, because Christians are kind of lame.
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I mean, it's weird. I mean, these guys I've been hanging out with, like, they're kind of cool, but, like, I don't want to be a Christian. I just want to have a relationship with you.
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And so I said, and I don't want to say, like, I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and I'm a sinner, and I deserve hell, and I accept the blood of Jesus, and, you know, like,
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I don't want to do any of that, but I want to have a relationship with you. And it's okay if you don't believe this next part.
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That's fine. But I just remember at that moment being lifted, just being lifted up and just slammed down to the ground, just slammed to the ground.
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And I put my arms up and said, I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I don't want to go to hell. You are Lord and King, and I will serve you.
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What did I just do? And it was gone. This thing
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I'd been feeling, I knew at that moment the sin had just, it had gotten up above my nose, and it was gone.
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And yet I knew I was still totally full of sin. And there's no theology yet.
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This is all what's just happening. And so I said, okay, all right,
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God, I'm going to go home. I'm going to read my Bible. I'm not going to tell anybody.
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Just give me me and you. And it's the only time I had that charismatic moment.
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Maybe it didn't happen. Maybe your theology doesn't allow for it. Fair enough. And I heard
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God say, no, you're not cool anymore, and you're going to tell everybody about me.
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I mean, if I focused for more than ten seconds on that moment, it's just tears and it's goose bumps.
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No. I mean, I wonder if God would actually use the word cool. I don't know, but that's what
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I heard. And you're going to tell everybody about me. And this is where it gets weirder because this is how
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I end up here, and this is how we all kind of end up doing this thing. See, I was a punk rock guy.
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I was with bands traveling across the country, showing up in VFW halls, any place they could rent something out, abandoned warehouses for concerts, on tour with bands, even doing it with MXP actually, doing it with punk bands like Pennywise or Guttermouth, you know, just nonstop.
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And so there were three people who were instrumental and kind of always talking to me. And I called one of them and I said, hey,
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Dave, I just became a Christian. My friend Dave said, awesome. Come on down to my house and we'll talk.
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So I drive to Dave's house. Dave's last name is Bonson. Dave's son is
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Greg Bonson. Dave's father is Greg Bonson. His son is Dave Bonson. So I drive over to my friend
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Dave Bonson's house. I get there, and I kept thinking everyone's going to be like, hi,
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Bob. I'm like, yeah, except at the Lord. Everyone's like, hey, Darren, come in. Come in, man. It was like I was joining the military or something.
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I was like, hey, man, get in here. All right. And he gave me three things. He gave me The Great Debate, Bonson versus Stein, audio cassette.
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He gave me Before Jerusalem Fell by Kenneth Gentry, and Marcella's Kick, a book on Revelation, I think chapter 20.
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He said, all right, just go, listen to this and read these, and you'll be just fine. And that's it.
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He goes, yep. Thanks. Okay.
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Get in the car. Still had a tape player back then. Put it in, and I was like, what are these guys talking about?
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I hear transcendental. I hear presuppositional. Oh, my goodness, laws of logic and nature.
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And I was like, okay, well. So I start getting out my dictionary when I get home. Within a year or two,
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I think I'd read everything Van Til had written. Gone through every Bonson audio cassette.
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Found Kenneth Gentry's work. And so what I didn't realize was within two days of becoming a
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Christian, I was a reformed, post -millennial preterist, which, as you know, it's a party because those people are everywhere.
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See, my friends roll down in Orange County. I was Southern California, top of Southern California. So they're two hours away.
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So I drive back up to Ventura County. I'm like, I'm going to go to a church. I just walked into Calvary Chapel Church.
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For the Lord, man. Got there, sat down. They dimmed the lights. Projector came down, and meteors started coming.
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It's like the end times are here. Just everything is exploding.
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And I was just like, everyone's like, amen.
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I was like, amen? Who's amening asteroids? What are you amening? They're like, the
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Lord's coming. We're getting out of here. I was like, I just got here. I just joined the team.
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Now we're leaving? I mean, I just, I was just here.
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And now I'm here, and like I'm getting on a bus. I don't understand. What's going on? Why is my voice going so high?
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I was freaked out. I don't think left behind even come out yet.
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So it's coming. But it just got worse. So I'd be in little church groups, and I'd just be like, hey, you know,
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I don't know if you guys have ever thought about it, but Matthew 24, some of those things could be talking about like the temple being destroyed in 8770.
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I'll just, I'll leave now. I'll leave now. Yeah, no, God bless you guys, too. That's great, yeah.
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So I didn't have a home there, and I ended up running to a friend, and they're like, hey, I'm going to this awesome messianic church.
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I'm like, what's that? They're Jews, but they're not.
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I don't understand. You know, like Jesus. He's like a Jew, but he's not. I mean,
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I kind of get that. Yeah, I mean, Jesus, kind of a Jew, but kind of not. I don't know, it's weird. Bloodlines, I don't know.
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So I ended up in a messianic congregation. Rabbi Murray, who's also known as the dancing rabbi, look it up.
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So you're like dancing in service. Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu.
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And he's like doing this whole thing, and he's like, apparently that's how the Jews did it, or the Jewish Christians.
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And I'm there for a while, and, you know, hanging out at one of our Bible studies,
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Torah studies, and someone starts talking about Calvinism.
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I'm like, oh, this I know. Kind of like, Jesus I know,
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Paul I know. They were talking about just what a bunch of anti -Semites all these reformers were.
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I'm like, really? He's like, oh, yeah, these reformers, man. Hated Jews.
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Hated Jews. I was like, oh, that's weird. Like, I'll look into that.
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Now, fair enough, they kind of did. You can laugh. But turns out they hated anyone that didn't love
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Jesus. I mean, it wasn't just, I mean, they just were so Jesus. It didn't matter.
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If you weren't on the team, they're just like, well, then you're on the wrong side. And I was in the
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Messianic congregation, and so we're like talking about that, and all of a sudden it kind of bleeds into kind of dispensationalism.
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Like, no, no, no, God still is, you know, there's a whole, like, and all of a sudden, you start living long enough in Christianity, starts out a little kumbaya, but before you know it, it's full of theology.
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Everywhere you go, it's full of theology. And you know this, especially in the
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Reformed world, because you'll be talking to someone, oh, you Reformed people, you're all heady and this, I'm just real simple,
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I'm a real simple Christian, my faith, you know, this, that, and before I know it, they are giving you a lecture on the headiest things theologically.
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Everyone's got a heavy theology. Everyone's got a heavy worldview. It's not just Reformed people.
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So I leave the Messianic congregation, and before you know it, I think I, you know, I walked into a Christian bookstore back when you could do that.
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I think I found The Forgotten Trinity by James White. R .C.
35:34
Sproul, now that's a good question. You start, there used to be a time when there was a little section in Christian bookstores, they had all this stuff.
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And what I realized was all the Reformed people I met, they were Reformed, but they were much more Calvinist than they were
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Reformed, because 15, 16 years ago, maybe it's different now, but you would meet people that were
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Reformed, and they were much more concerned with Calvinism than they were anything else that kind of comes with the Reformed faith. Before that, you hang out long enough, you realize like, oh, this is more than just about, you know, maybe presubstantial apologetics, but now we're talking about covenantal stuff, dispensationalism, like learning new things, like what?
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I mean, some people are baptizing babies, some aren't. Some people, like, wait till they're 27. Other people, like, they gotta be a confession, and you're like, and you start trying to figure it out, you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, and like, and you get it, and before you know it, you're just, you realize, it's a weird, wacky world in the
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Christian faith, especially in the Reformed world. And the thing that I loved about sort of stumbling into the
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Reformed world was it was people who were, who were really trying to take the hard, hard parts of the
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Bible. That's the one thing that I saw, was that there was hard stuff in the Bible, and people in the
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Reformed world were actually wrestling with it, working through it, and the rest of evangelicalism was sort of just like, well, you know,
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I don't know. That was the God of the Old Testament, or it was something like that. And what
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I really appreciated was that this Reformed group was just gnarly, and I think because I'd grown up around gnarly things, gnarly people, bands that were just traveling across the country, what
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I see now in this young Reformed world, and I don't mean to call it young Reformed, whatever they call it, young Reformed, restless, whatever, is
37:29
I look at an event like this, and I go, when I was 20 years old, driving around with punk bands, we'd show up in places like this.
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Someone selling merch, ragtag group of people showing up for something.
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I was like, this is punk rock. I said,
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Dr. Oliphant, that that generation, and I'm sorry if I'm aging you, maybe you're a lot younger than I think,
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I apologize, and I say this respectfully, look at the guys that we are pulling from, because we don't look like them, and they've built institutions and publishing companies, and they own a jacket.
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Scott's only got two tattoos. Two, that's it, just joking. That's James White. And so here we are, at the end of a
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Reformed era. Bonson's gone. Sproul will be gone. MacArthur will be gone.
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Driscoll exploded. Where'd Mars Hill go?
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No, it was right here. What do you mean, it's shut everything down? Well, there's still churches, right?
39:10
Nope, those are gone too. Wow, I mean, gone. I ended up at Francis Chan's church for a while in California.
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You guys know who Francis Chan is, anyone? Yeah, hold it for a second. I remember being there.
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We joined the church, became members. In the summertime, we went on vacation.
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We came back, we were so excited. I saw someone, I was like, hey, we're so excited, we became members. Yeah, there's no more membership,
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Francis got rid of it. Excuse me? Yeah, there's just no more membership.
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He got rid of it. Before you know it, it was like, yeah, this whole church thing, we're just going to break it down.
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This isn't the way they did it in the Book of Acts. What? I was watching good people, young people in the
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Reformed world, looking at their Bible, doing what Reformed people do, and going, but it says right here that Christians in the first century were selling their property.
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And they were sharing their possessions. We have to do that. Why aren't we doing that? It's right there. Everyone's like, wow, you're right.
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And before you know it, they were going to get rid of Cornerstone, the church, they bought all this land, they're going to build this open amphitheater. They were like, you know what, there are
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Christians worshiping in this world, and they don't have a roof. And we're going to worship with our brothers and sisters in Christ, no matter what the weather is.
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We live in Southern California. It's always pretty nice. But anyways, that's what was going on.
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That never happened, and people sold their businesses. And I remember looking at, well, hold on,
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I remember looking at that, going back to that verse. And this is where it gets really interesting, because if you think about what was going on in the first century, you have all these
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Christians that the Book of Acts says are trying to sell their possessions and their land.
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Now, I don't think we need the Book of Acts to tell us to be able to help people, and to share, and to give to one another.
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I think God's made that clear ever since He's been speaking to us.
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But I think what's happening there is Jerusalem's about to be destroyed. In 40 years, that generation, they're going to be destroyed.
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There is no value in having land in Jerusalem. There's no value.
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And think about Ananias and Sapphira, right? What do they do? What happens to them when they hold back money?
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They get killed. Now, I don't know of one single evangelical application of that today. How do you make sense of that?
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Well, you know, it turns out if you sell property and you hold some of that back, and you promise the church, then God's just going to kill you. But I'm there at Cornerstone, and I'm watching people look at these verses, and it made me start to think in terms of this
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Reformed world has got a lot of interesting things going on. Oh, to make a point, that's why they're selling their land. That's why
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God kills Ananias and Sapphira. It's a warning. You want to sell your property in Jerusalem, but put a little bit of that in your back pocket?
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You want to keep money from Jerusalem in your back pocket? Then you're going to die with Jerusalem.
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You're going to die with that city. I left California two years ago, and I was just sick of it.
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Maybe a little too much, but I was like, we're leaving California. We're getting out of here. It's going to hell. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever.
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Everyone's gay. Go to the mall.
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Everyone's just kissing. It's true.
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Put our house on the market. Sold the first day. We got full asking price. Full asking price.
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I was like, yeah. Going to move to Idaho. Right there. Driving up,
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I get a call. My mom, who is our realtor, said, I've got some bad news for you. The offer was accepted, full price.
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The bank isn't going to give the buyer the loan because they appraised it at $100 ,000 under than what you were asking.
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I was like, oh, no. Uh -uh. That's my money.
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I put it at that price. It's $100 ,000. I remember at that moment thinking about Ananias and Sapphira.
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That little weird verse. Here I was, bitching and moaning, getting out of California.
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But what did I want? I wanted the money from California. I wanted the value on my property in California. I was like, oh, you know what?
44:27
Okay. Being very much a hypocrite. And so, when
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I left, I moved up to Moscow, Idaho. Because on this reform journey, on this reform journey, through Bonson and Bantill and all these people,
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I got to, on Covenant Media Foundation, I got to the actual W's on every debate they had.
44:54
They had hundreds. I got through all the James White stuff. I got to the W's and I hit a guy named
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Wilson. And he's having a debate with an atheist. The atheist says, do you believe in a
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God that would send in the Israelites to kill babies and smash them against the rocks and destroy them and tear their heads off?
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Is that the God that you worship? Now, I'm reformed. I know the answer to that question. There are no innocent babies.
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That's my reformed answer. I'm stuck in a corner, right? And I hear Doug Wilson say, let me ask you a question.
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He says, are you pro -choice? The guy says, well, yeah, I'm pro -choice. What's that have to do with it?
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He says, so you believe a woman should have the right to kill her own baby, but God can't kill his babies? I was like, what?
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He did not just say that. That's not how you debate.
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I was like, what is this? I found another debate from Doug Wilson and the guy said, almost another guy, very similar, do you believe in the
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God of the Old Testament? That believes it was immoral and a sin and abomination to eat shellfish?
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And Doug Wilson said, let me get this straight. You believe that shellfish are your relatives?
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I was like, you can't. That's not how you debate. Before you know it, you're reformed.
46:47
Before you know it, you're a partial preterist. You have to say that. Everyone's like, are you a full preterist? Hyper preterist? Is Jesus coming back?
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He's coming back. On the record, he's coming back. This might be 400 ,000 years.
47:02
You find yourself in this reformed world, and I'll try to make a point here, I'll wrap this up, in that this is punk rock and what's being developed here.
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The thing I have become a part of and grown into as a Christian, this is it.
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I didn't have the big evangelical church. I didn't have all that. God's doing this thing.
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What I want to try to encourage everyone here to think about is that we have to make a jump at some point.
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We have to make a jump and make sure that we are building. We are building our own schools.
47:37
We're building our own distribution outlets. We are building, building, building, building everything. The generation above us has built that, but it may crumble.
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We're seeing plenty of things crumble. I think we are truly called to make sure that in this reformed world that let's make sure we get our act straight.
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Let's make sure we get it together. Let's make sure we're networking. Let's make sure we're doing what we're doing here. Because this is as good as it's going to get unless we keep building.
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I'm super encouraged by what ReformCon is doing, what Apologia is doing. Just meeting everyone here today.
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We all have weird, crazy, wacky stories, but somehow we ended up here.
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We ended up in this room. What the reformed faith does, it's so robust.
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I just want to encourage everybody to make sure that we're encouraging those around us, making sure that we are building infrastructure around us.
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Let's make sure that we're thinking about what we're going to do for our kids, what we're going to do for education, for school, for businesses, for work, all those things.
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Jesus said all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him. It's his world. He reigns.
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Every square inch, let's go after it. Let's take it, and let's do it in faith. Thank you very much.
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That was pretty good for on the fly, right? What happened? I said it was pretty good for on the fly.
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I can't prepare anything, so I just have to get up and talk. That was awesome, man. Real quickly,
49:36
Jacoby, why don't you come on up? You're right on me, huh? Where are we hanging out? Jacoby's going to come up here and introduce his ministry in a second.
49:44
Did you guys like the ice cream? Was that awesome or what? It sounded fantastic. It tasted really good, too.
49:51
Also, I wanted to... Isaiah, can you pull it up real quick? If you guys enjoyed the food so far, too,
49:59
Arizona Blue Sky Catering, they did a lot of the food for us, the breakfast burritos, and yes, and the brats.
50:07
When Isaiah pulls that page up, if you guys can go to their Facebook page, and never mind, it's
50:13
Arizona Blue Sky Catering, and then they also have a profile on Thumbtack. If you guys can go, if you enjoyed it, just give them a review.