Marcus Pittman and Pastor Joel Webbin critique liberal media dominance, arguing Christians must shift from passive endurance to active confrontation against enemies of liberty. They champion Lore, a conservative streaming platform raising $500k for projects like an anti-abortion series, as a God-centered alternative to market-driven neutrality. Rejecting "winsomeness" toward opponents, they advocate for a market of "godly violence" and masculinity, urging believers to build robust cultural institutions rather than merely boycotting secular content. Ultimately, this strategy aims to reclaim the cultural playing field through direct engagement instead of retreat. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Fair Ground for Christian Art00:15:13
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Hi, I'm Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries, and you're listening to another episode of Theology Applied.
In this episode, I was privileged to have as a special guest Marcus Pittman.
Marcus Pittman is the president or CEO and founder of Lore.
It's a streaming company.
It's a conservative streaming company that, by God's grace, their ambition is to be a force to be reckoned with, to take back the culture for King Jesus.
This was a really interesting interview.
I think you guys will enjoy.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
All right.
Welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin, and I am privileged to have as a special guest, Today, Marcus Pittman.
Marcus, thanks for coming on the show.
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
So, let me frame it up a little bit.
This is what we want to do.
So, Marcus is known for many things.
He actually helped Jeff Durbin start Apologia Studios back in the day.
And then a couple of years ago, a year and a half ago, he moved to Moscow, right?
That's what guys do.
They just go back and forth between Doug Wilson and Jeff Durbin.
That's where the action's at.
And so, he's in Moscow now.
And with those guys, Fight Left Feast Network, you guys know Gabriel Wrench.
Gabriel Wrench is on our board with.
With Right Response Ministries and Toby Sumter, David Shannon, Chalk Knox, I guess is how people work.
Well, me and David Shannon have known each other for years back in Georgia when we were both working for Wretched.
So, okay.
So I didn't know you worked for Wretched.
So you worked for very briefly.
Yeah.
Very briefly.
So were you wearing?
I got fired after like three weeks.
Did you get fired because you want to put a pinwheel on the side of your head?
No, I just wasn't that good at the time.
Oh, okay.
I just wasn't that good at the time.
Gotcha.
You know, that forced me to, me and David became really good friends as a result of that.
Nice.
And me and David just started making videos together, got connected with Darren Doan, got connected with American Vision, did How to Answer the Fool and a bunch of other documentaries there for American Vision.
Awesome.
And then we both went, you know, David went to Moscow and then I went to Apologia.
Yep.
Were you involved?
I know David Shannon was a big part of it, but were you involved with a By What Standard documentary?
I filmed.
I wasn't really involved other than.
I held a camera and I went to the Southern Baptist Convention to help record some of the stuff that went down for the first one.
That's one of the only reasons somebody would go to the SBC.
That is true.
Cool, man.
All right, so let me frame it up.
So this is what we're doing.
Marcus is known for a lot of things.
We just went over some of that.
But his most recent and current venture is Lore, which is a streaming platform.
Well, you go ahead and say it's a Christian conservative streaming platform.
Tell us about it.
It's a conservative streaming platform, I would say.
I mean, everything I do is Christian.
That's right.
Amen.
So, but yeah, so basically, the way it's going to work is right now, if you have Netflix or Disney, your monthly subscription goes to liberals who hate God.
And then they spend that money funding movies and TV shows that you don't want your family to see, or they put the crazy diversity LGBTQ standards in there and all that sort of nonsense.
And so you really have no say in sort of the programming.
And so what Laura's going to do is Laura's going to allow you to use your monthly subscription to fund the TV shows and movies that you actually want to see.
So, you actually have a say, you have a vote in the shows and TV shows that get made.
That's cool.
Movies and TV shows that get made.
Yep.
That's cool.
And so, it's not Christian in the sense that I think it was Martin Luther who said, you know, the first imperative of the gospel on the cobbler is not that he makes Christian shoes, but he makes good shoes.
And good shoes are Christian shoes when a Christian makes them.
So, it's not like you have to be a Christian producer and have, you know, John 3 16, you know, in your head.
I don't think art works that way.
And the reason I don't think art works that way is because if you look at, The heavens and the earth and the stars and the planets and the moon and all the beautiful sunsets and sunrises, all of God's handiwork, that's all general revelation.
So God's artwork is general.
It's not salvific.
And if you look at a lot of the art in the Bible, it's general too.
The building of the temple, it had meaning.
There was meaning there.
The mercy seat we know now, but at the time it was, okay, here's a mercy seat.
Here's a veil.
It was beautiful artwork, but it wasn't necessarily like there wasn't.
An explanation of what Jesus was going to do written on the mercy seat, right?
So, so, uh, that was revealed later.
And I think the same is true with when you watch a movie and you're writing home with your family, you're talking about the movie, and you go, Oh, there is a redemption narrative in that.
You know, there was this, you know, one, you know, when you look at like the Mandalorian, you're talking about, you know, watching the Mandalorian, you go, Man, there's a lot of stuff about like adoption and covenant and all this cool stuff in the Mandalorian.
This is the way.
Yeah, this is the way.
This is the way.
You know, abandoning the Mandalorian religion for the Force or whatever, the true religion of the Star Wars universe.
So there's really a lot of stuff there, but it's not like explicit.
And then a lot of times, one of the benefits I think we as Christians have is that the pagans can make art that glorifies God, at least to some degree in the narrative and stuff.
And so it's interesting to.
But when it comes to Christian films, we've put.
Weird rules on it, you know, that they have to be made for 35 year old women and above who shop at Lifeway bookstores, who they have to have a horse, a female, what is it, a horse, a female, a puppy, and a child?
I think are the four standards that they look for for real.
Like, if you want to sell a movie to PureFlex, those are some of the standards, right?
So, there's all these weird, like, not they're not Christian rules, they're not derived from scripture.
And so, what we're trying to do is like, okay, if there's an absolutely fair playing ground, Between the pagans and the Christians, who's going to win the storytelling contest?
And I think history has shown that's always the Christians that win the storytelling contest.
And I think that's going to, I think we'll see that play out.
But you have to have that fair ground.
You can't have Sony buy pure, you know, Sony who pushes LGBT stuff, you know, they have, you know, The Last of Us 2, which, you know, huge video game that was all pushed a homosexual trans agenda, right?
So Sony, and then they buy pure flicks and then they start making Christian content.
And now all of a sudden, all your Christian movies are profiting the lost leader documentaries, the homosexual movies that nobody watches, right?
But allows them to sort of.
So we can't have that.
That's not going to work.
And so what we really need is just a place where the free market can determine what's a good movie and what's not, and not stats and data and analytics and marketing panels and all this other sort of nonsense that plagues Hollywood, burdens Hollywood.
I would say it makes Hollywood worse.
That's why you have.
Um, you know, Superman and Lois is a good example on the CW.
Last season was amazing.
Huge, huge family narrative.
Father, son, you know, without going into too much detail, but it's Superman moving back to his family, his family farm, and raising his kids with Lois Lane.
And just this amazing family story of how, you know, Superman, if he's like, if he's late for his job, people actually die.
But he also has to be back in time for dinner.
Or he'll lose his family.
This is amazing.
People say, well, Superman doesn't have any weaknesses, but I think they found it.
And then two episodes into season two, they start to push the LGBT line.
You're just like, why did that have to happen?
The show is amazing.
But that's because there are requirements and marketing panels and diversity, directors of diversity that are required to do it for them.
And there's no government laws, let's say, that has to happen.
That's just their own religion.
Yeah.
And so I think if you, yeah.
And what we found is that artists who might not even be Christian hate it too.
And they're just looking for a place that they can make a lot of money and tell the stories that they want.
And I think if you, you know, have the playground in which that can happen, you also get to decide the rules and tell them what they can't do.
Right.
And then, and then, I think, you know, because, you know, we're not a free speech platform.
We're not pushing that, you know, you could do, you know, nudity and not safe for work content and stuff.
No, no, no.
We have two rules no blasphemy and no nudity, and then make a great story.
And then we try to give artists freedom to just tell that story without notes from us and all that sort of other stuff.
But we are looking for talented artists.
We are looking for the ones who have done really amazing, skillful work and can deliver a product.
That's awesome, man.
And I like that you said that you're not a free speech platform because if there's anything we've realized over the last couple of years, we've realized that libertarianism doesn't work.
It's not whether, but which, right?
There's always going to be a reigning orthodoxy.
And whatever reigning orthodoxy happens to be in power is going to have certain blasphemy laws, things you cannot say, things that you must do.
So, this idea of, yeah, no, like we want to win.
Conservatives are just, one of the reasons we lose is because it's like they're just so committed to losing.
You know, Christians are no different.
It's like, you know, we want to take a stand, but we also want to make sure that, you know, that we never actually take ground, we never advance.
So, we, yeah, we have laws, we have God's law.
And so it's not, it's not, man's killing versus no law.
It's, it's either man's law versus god's law.
Yeah, there's no such thing as a free speech plat, like a true free speech platform.
Yeah, you're right.
Um um, even GAB has no pornography rules, new rules and, and I think, I think GAB would argue that free speech isn't technically considered.
Uh, i'm sorry, pornography isn't technically considered free speech according to the first amendment, because there's uh, what they call uh, I don't know, like lewd laws or something like that.
That you know so you, but so I don't.
I don't exactly know, But they still have, you know, Andrew Torb is not neutral.
And I say this as someone who thinks Andrew Torb is amazing.
But there's no such thing as a platform that's like look at Getter and Parler.
Right.
You know, Getter, I don't know, Parler banned our ad that we've been running on Gab.
We've had an ad on Gab that just says, no more gay movies.
And it does really well.
The CPCs are really low.
It's a great ad for us.
And then we tried to get it on Parler and they rejected it.
I had actually had a phone call with the marketing team there.
They're like, oh, yeah, that just violates our community standards.
It's like, well, yeah.
So stop calling yourself free.
I think that's just a neutrality thing.
That's just a bonds and neutrality thing.
And then we saw what the blow up with Getter, too, because they're just banning people before they even come on the platform.
Yeah.
Did you see that interview with Tim Poole?
And I did, man.
It was fantastic.
It was really good.
He was very charitable, but like, I mean, they were softball questions, but the guy couldn't answer him because he's not principal.
He doesn't have it.
He's not principal.
You could tell, you know, I always say, never go on a podcast with a suit.
Well, I'm wearing a suit.
Your suit looks great.
I'm wearing a suit right now.
The host can.
Okay.
The guest, I always go, okay, if you're that guy when no one in the room is wearing the suit, Right, right.
And like you come in with a suit, always.
Well, the nice thing about having a podcast with only two guys, you look greasy.
If there's two guys on the podcast, then there's really no dress code, right?
You could wear something, I wear something.
And it's like, you know, but if there's multiple guys on the show and three of them are wearing one thing and one guy is standing out, then I feel a little bit weird.
But yeah, no, I thought he nailed them to the wall.
Like he said, the George Floyd thing.
That was a great example where he's like, so, right?
So, right?
You can't have any video that was somebody getting killed.
And he's like, so what about the video of George Floyd?
And he's like, oh, well, right up to the moment of death.
Right.
What is that?
Yeah.
But basically, what it came down to, what he revealed, Tim Pool revealed, was he said, oh, so there is a standard.
It's not a free for all because that doesn't exist.
Neutrality is a myth.
So there is a standard.
And what you're saying is that you're the standard.
Like every other big tech, you know, you're the standard.
At the end of the day, you're going to make the call based off of whether you like it or whether you don't.
It's subjective.
And you're the person, it's your whims and your desires.
And so you're saying, yeah, we have a standard too.
It's just the difference is it's God's standard.
Right.
Yeah.
I think, you know, everybody has that standard.
And so, you know, but I think that's the other difference is whether or not it's like an actual platform like Gab, where it's more of a tool, whereas we're more of a storytelling propaganda machine.
So we have a little bit more responsibility in terms of what goes out.
But ultimately, we want to trust our artists just to make content that glorifies God or is just good.
That's great.
So, we were talking a little bit before we started recording, and you said something that's fantastic.
So, you got to repeat it.
But basically, I was saying, you know, you first initially reached out to me.
So, for our audience listening, the way that we got connected and decided to go ahead and do this episode was I actually mentioned lore on one of my previous episodes of Theology Applied.
You can watch the episode with Rory Groves.
It was a great episode.
Rory's great.
He wrote Durable Trades, I think, is the name of his book, talking about men, you know, just realizing that, okay, man, we are far more dependent on so many different things than we realized.
And God and His Province in the last couple of years has kind of opened our eyes and revealed to us how much dependency we have.
And so, this idea of wanting to be independent, wanting to be cancel proof, you know, all these kinds of things, being able to work with your hands and attach, you know, commerce to the household, to the family.
CR Wiley has written on this.
And so, that was kind of Rory's gig.
And he said a lot of great stuff that I totally agree with.
But there was one portion where we were talking about, okay, well, what about the Goliaths, the giants in the land?
What about big tech?
What about Twitter?
And what about Netflix?
And what about this?
And And Rory's position is that we can, by having durable trades and being dependent on no one, which the scripture does talk about that, working quietly with your hands, being dependent on no one, then we can outlast them, that Babylon falls.
Embracing Godly Violence in Branding00:16:06
And I said that in agreeing with him.
But you reached out and said, Well, I think, yeah, sometimes God in his sovereignty causes Babylon to fall, but there are also moments where we fight.
And you said a great line.
So pick up right there.
I said that the Israelites wanted to outlast Goliath.
And it was David that wanted to kill him.
Amen.
That's good.
Right.
So, so, so, so, I mean, the Israelites could have outlasted the Philistines.
I'm sure they could have.
They could have also, you know, the Egyptians and the Israelites could have outlasted the Egyptians and Israel as well.
But sometimes you just have to break free, you know, sometimes you just have to send down the plagues and kill the firstborn sons and get out of there.
And so, and so I think, you know, there's this weird thing with like, I think dispensationalism has kind of taught us subconsciously, even if we're postmodern, I think we still sort of.
Especially now, right?
We look around us and we're like, holy cow.
This country is on the, I mean, the entire Western world is on the edge of just destruction.
And, you know, we're still holding to this post mill theology that says, no, no, things are going to get better.
I mean, I believe that.
But I think when we look around, it's easy just to go, man, right now, we just need to figure out how to be self sustaining and not focus on building businesses and economies.
And I think, What we're seeing now in the pagan business world, I mean, you look around, there is not a single Fortune 500 solid Protestant Christian brand that is willing to just defy the government, right?
There's not a single one.
They're all controlled by Marxists.
They're all controlled by big government, or they're just in this pit of Crony capitalism and bribery with politicians, and it's just complete nonsense.
Um, and the fact that, um, you know, you have maybe Chick fil A, maybe Hobby Lobby, but they don't speak out, right?
Like, you don't see the owners of Chick fil A and Hobby Lobby on the news talking about, you know, how crazy Biden is.
Like, haven't seen it, hasn't happened one time.
Um, uh, you know, and so, and so, what I think needs to happen is there needs to be some disruption there in sort of the corporate world, um, that says, look.
We're going to be a massive global brand.
We're going to change the way movies are made, TV shows are made, people stream and watch entertainment from home.
And then now, and then, and then, and then we're going to absolutely put our fists in the air and defy any sort of ridiculous nonsense and diversity standards.
And I think that's important, especially for a storytelling vehicle like Lore is to create a thriving company that can tell.
Amazing propaganda, right?
Like, that's all stories are propaganda.
You know, we definitely see it in Hollywood.
That's absolutely leftist propaganda.
And so let's just not be ashamed about it.
Listen, I'll try to hide it.
Let's not be ashamed about it.
Let's just say, yeah, okay, well, if there's going to be a crazy radical pro abortion law that the government is passing, we're going to start pumping out amazing anti abortion films that no one will touch, that won't get distribution in theaters, that theaters won't run.
We'll stream them on our platform.
You know, if If, you know, there's, you know, let's have, let's have movies where the tranny is the bad guy.
Like, how come you never see that?
Right.
Right.
Like, you know, let's have movies where horror movies like that.
Right.
So, I mean, there's all sorts of things you can do, all sorts of stories that can be told that no one has the guts to tell.
And we just want to be that platform where people can just have guts.
And I think there's a lot of opportunity there.
And it is only going to work in the way that we want it to if it's a global brand.
And we've always said from the beginning, This is just something either God is going to bless or He's not.
Right?
So it's like that rock is going to hit Goliath in the head or it's not.
And it's a sovereign will and direction of God, what happens.
But somebody has to throw it.
Someone has to throw it.
And so I think we do see a huge example here where, you know, even in the secular worlds, right?
Like, you know, like take the Daily Wire, who wants to be respected by Hollywood, right?
Like they want to be invited to the parties.
They don't want to completely destroy and end Hollywood, right?
And whereas we're like, no, no, no, we want to make.
Hollywood irrelevant, just like the printing press did to the Catholic Church back in the day, right?
Like, so we see these.
I mean, you know, the printing press, I think, is a great example of a huge, massive global brand that wasn't just about self sustaining, that disrupted the entire world.
Yeah.
And so I think there's a lot more opportunity in the future of the world for those sort of things.
It might not be now, but hopefully, maybe what we do is an example for future generations as to what can be done and stuff like that.
Yeah.
No, I think it's going to.
I like them.
In light of the Daily Wire, you mentioned them.
And, you know, I remember there was something that Jeremy Boring recently said, you know, because they've started to get into film and things like that.
You know, Run, Fight, Hide, I think was one of their films.
They got another one coming and picking up.
They have three.
I just want to say this real quick.
They have three movies coming out.
They've announced, I think.
Yeah.
Or at least two and then maybe one.
But they all contain strong female warrior leads.
Yeah, you're right.
You're right.
Everyone.
And this is.
A conservative group, I want you to see this worldview disconnect.
This is a conservative group that would say, we're against women in the draft, right?
Like that's what they would argue against.
But when it comes to their movies, they're trying to appeal to this Hollywood industry.
And they're trying to, you know, say, no, no, look, our movies have some diversity in it, you know?
And it's like, well, yeah, but you guys are like just disconnected from what you teach on your.
Podcasts, so what your movies are about.
And I think only a Christian worldview can understand that consistent ethic.
You're right.
That's a good point.
You did good pointing out that inconsistency.
I didn't even think about that, but you're absolutely right.
But one of the comments that Jeremy Boring made that I do agree with that I thought was good was he said, you know, we don't want to just make movies that you're supposed to watch or that you should watch, but the movies that you want to watch.
And I think Christians have done that historically.
Like when it comes to any form of art, you know, it's just like, well, this is the thing that you should be watching or this is the thing that you should like.
But you don't actually like it.
And maybe you don't like it because your conscience is so seared by sin and this and that, you know, and you're compromised, you know, morally.
But maybe also you don't like it because it's just not good.
Yeah.
It's just not very good.
Yeah.
I think, you know, PureFlix is not an art industry.
They're not worried about art, they're worried about math and data.
So that's sort of how they determine, you know, here's a, well, I mean, it's a great business, right?
So I mean, when you look at it and you say, your movies aren't going to be in the theaters.
For more than maybe two or three weeks because they're Christian films, right?
So they're not going to have a long life.
So you need to figure out a way to sell your films on DVD.
And so they realized that they could sell their DVDs in the Christian bookstores.
Well, who's the target audience for a Christian bookstore?
Well, it's 35 year old moms.
And so they just started, based on math, just making all their movies and TV shows towards that market.
Like even, you know, I mean, yeah, pretty much everything they do is geared for women to watch, even if it's a A story about men, like let's say courageous or fireproof, it's still for the woman, right?
Like it's for the woman to bring her husband to sit through, right?
That's just how that market is.
And I think you just give artists freedom and just say, man, just make whatever you want.
And you're a Christian.
It's like Athanasius or Augustine said, love God and make what you want.
No, that's good.
Yeah.
So with the Dave and Goliath thing, I think that that's super helpful.
And you're right.
Like whether it be Hobby Lobby or Chick fil A, it's like, all right, we're not going to bend to this or something.
And there have been some concessions, but we're going to hold the line.
We're going to hold the line.
We're going to hold the line.
We're not going to kowtow.
We're not going to compromise.
But David shows up on the scene to hand some cheese to his brothers and check on them, see how they're doing.
He sees all the armies of Israel, and his response is, Why has no one shut him up?
He's out here taunting the armies of Israel day after day.
And his rhetoric, it's not enough to just like, Well, we can't compromise, or We can't go back to our homes.
We've got to hold the line.
We've got to stay here as long as it takes, and try not to let them see you shiver.
But David actually goes up and says, You uncircumcised Philistine, who are you to taunt the armies of the living God?
Today, I will chop off your head and feed your carcass to the birds.
And you don't see, you know, the CEO of Chick fil A saying that, you know, and that's what you're saying.
And I think you're right.
We need people who are.
You don't see the CEO of Pureflex saying that.
Yeah, you're right.
Right?
You're right.
Yeah.
You don't see, you know, you don't see, you know, Reach Records, right?
They're not saying that, right?
They're, you know, Sony bought both of them.
And we should ask a question.
It's like, why is Sony buying up all these Christian media companies?
And why are we letting them?
Right.
And so, and so, like, there's all these sort of things.
And I think part of it is just because Sony's a Japanese company and they look at America from, you know, overseas and they're like, well, Christianity is still important to America.
It's part of what it is.
So Sony just thinks, well, if we're going to be in the family business, we need to have the Christian media companies.
I don't think it's any, I mean, I would think that it's probably not more.
Sinister than that, but also could be.
Right.
You just don't know.
Yeah.
So, real quick, my point with the whole David thing is I think in God's providence and his sovereignty, there is an incredible mercy in these last two years with all the madness coming out and really the veil being lifted with just neo Marxist and totalitarian government and all these kinds of things.
Here's the mercy.
I think the mercy is so David goes forward and he challenges Goliath, you uncircumcised Philistine, somebody needs to chop off your head and I'm going to do it.
You know, and feeds your body, you know, your carcass to the birds.
Now, if that had happened, well, still, even today, we'd probably have some trouble from the evangelifish.
But if that had happened, you know, just even two years ago, five years ago, a David type goes and challenges the enemies of God and uses that kind of rhetoric, the first thing that he should watch is not his front, but his back.
Because Israel, aka the American church, would actually be the ones slamming him, throwing rocks at him, throwing spears at him, saying, You're harsh and you're not being like Jesus.
Right.
But the beauty of the David situation is.
Is that the Philistines were at war and they had made their intentions of war clear.
The Philistines made it clear to Israel that they didn't want to coexist, that they weren't a neutral party, but that they wanted everything and that they were going to kill or enslave every single last one of them.
And so, because Philistines' intentions were clear that they hate us, they hate us and they hate our God, Israel didn't mind David standing up to them.
So, David didn't have to face two enemies flanking him simultaneously the actual enemy, and then the people wearing the Christian t shirt that really should just go ahead and walk over to the other side because that's where they actually belong.
So, my point is I think that in God's providence, as things have heated up and as the enemies of God, the pagans in our land, have more overplayed their hand and revealed their intentions, that they actually hate liberty.
They hate wealth.
They hate children.
They hate marriage.
They hate family.
They hate God and they hate Christians.
And everyone who loves those things, they want to absolutely dismantle, destroy all those kinds of things.
As that's becoming more and more clear, I've just even realized, just as podcasting and as a pastor, I get far less criticism.
I'm sure I'll get some even with this video, but I get far less criticism for being harsh than I used to.
And I think part of it is because all of a sudden, I don't have to convince as many people.
That there actually is an enemy that actually hates God and hates God's people.
Whereas before, I think one of the reasons why there was always the criticism of you're being too harsh is because there was too much sympathy.
There was too much intermarriage and mixing between the people of God and the pagans.
And now I think that so that things have been hard these last couple of years, but I think that's a real mercy.
And I'm encouraged by that.
You know, with the post mill perspective, I see that as how things get better.
So, how do things get better when a nation is compromised and apostatizing?
Well, I think one of the ways that it gets better is first it gets a little worse, you know, and that's what God uses to call men to courage and to stand up and fight.
So, all that being said, I hope that, you know, even though it's horrible on the one hand, the grace in it on the other is as Hollywood is unapologetic and unashamed with like cuties on Netflix, you know, and as they're even starting to normalize not just gay, you know, relationships, but pedophilia, as they just completely overstep their bounds and overplay their hand.
I think that you're going to have an even better and better chance, not just being neutral and not just free speech, but actually being blatantly against that.
Well, I think that's why you have the effeminate B side gospel coalition writers, right?
Who are just can't get a single retweet on any article they share on Twitter.
And then you have someone like AD, who's getting more.
Views on his YouTube channel than the Gospel Coalition is on, you know, right?
And it's like, why is that?
You know, why is Joe Rogan the most listened to podcast in the history of the world?
Right.
Well, it's because people want a man, right?
People want to be, they want someone who's going to be harsh.
I mean, you know, the judgment on us is that it's Joe Rogan and not someone, you know, not a Christian podcaster, right?
And I think that's the judgment.
But I think it should give us.
Strength to go, you know what?
We can be hard too.
We can go harder and we don't have to worry about being winsome and all that other nonsense that the Gospel Coalition is failing with, right?
They're pushing this narrative of winsomeness and niceness and effeminacy.
And the thing is, and again, and they're losing.
Look at their data, right?
Go to their YouTube channel.
You can see their upload rates are like they maybe have 200 or 300 views.
I go to Apologia Studios' channel, who talks about abortion and all sorts of stuff the algorithm hates on YouTube, and they're still killing the niceties of the Gospel Coalition.
The Market for Restrained Evil00:06:52
So I think when you see that, you just go, okay, there's obviously a market there for violence.
I like to say there's a market for violence.
There's a market for that.
If nothing else, a godly violence.
Right.
There's a market for a godly fight.
Godly violence.
And really, what you're saying, there's a market for masculinity.
Yeah.
Literally half the market is a market for masculinity.
You don't even have masculinity in the fashion industry.
Look at Carhartt.
Right.
Yeah.
Like they have all these strong men who, like, you know, farmers and, you know, blue collar people wearing this stuff.
And Carhartt just backed out and they're like, and their whole audience base is like, wait a minute.
We don't even have fashion.
Right.
Like what?
There's nothing for men, not even a shirt.
It blew my mind that, like, Starbucks dropped their mandate for the vaccine.
I have a theory as to why they did that.
Why?
Yeah.
What is it?
My theory is because thus saith their Lord.
And so the Supreme Court ruled and they obeyed their government.
They, I mean, they obeyed their master, right?
So I think that's why they did it.
I don't think it was like, yeah, we're anti.
Everyone's like, yeah, we're anti.
Here's my theory.
I think it's because.
Starbucks is, you know, it's all over the nation, all over the world, but a lot of higher ups and people, you know, from the ground up where Starbucks started is Seattle, Portland, you know.
And even though these are people who are super liberal when it comes to sexual agenda and all those kinds of things, they also, there's this weird overlap where it's like, yeah, we're all homosexual, but we also are anti vax.
Yeah.
They're also, I think, I think the hippie, you know what I mean?
The hippie vibe might have won the day.
But yeah, they're also capitalists in the sense of, you know, Their job is to make a lot of money.
Right.
Right.
I'm not maybe, maybe they might publicly, they don't speak like they're capitalists, but in their work, they certainly do.
And so I think, you know, there's this I like to say that like capitalism is one of those tools that God has given man to restrain evil.
Yeah.
I think you see that with, you know, when a while back ago when Chick fil A, you know, stood their ground against the homosexual movement.
It just emboldened the conservatives even more.
And then eventually the homosexuals just disappeared and stopped worrying about Chick fil A.
And so, you know, there was just sort of this there's always seems to be this sort of thing where like God in his common grace has given it to, given economics as a means to restrain evil.
Because I know like if I want to buy something you do or you've made, I would trust.
Based on the transaction alone and the covenant we're making in that purchase, is that I'm giving you money and I expect it to be good.
And you're going to work hard and make it good and not rip me off because you want to make more money and you want me to tell my friends and that word of mouth sort of thing.
So that is complete common grace to stop evil and greed.
We see this too, like with all these, everyone's like, oh, we need to regulate the Bitcoin market, we need to regulate the Bitcoin industry.
And there's all these scammers, everybody, like there's tons of scams in the Bitcoin industry.
But I feel like people are being made more aware and they're being more cautious in their investments and like which coins they invest in and not.
So it seems like even without the government involved, there's this complete free market sort of thing where you see, you know, there's YouTube videos exposing scammers and all this sort of stuff.
People are just becoming more and more aware, just completely without any government involvement, of hey, maybe I shouldn't invest in that.
So you're always going to have wicked companies and all that sort of stuff, but ideally they go out of business.
Like Carhartt.
That's what we want to see, right?
We want to see Carhartt go out of business.
Yep, that's right.
Back to the winsome thing, I hate that word.
If I had a dollar every time I said you should be winsome, I'd be a rich man.
But with the Gospel Coalition and advocating for winsomeness, I think one of the things is, again, that's been revealed recently, and one of the reasons why people aren't clicking on their stuff, I don't think it's just because it's unattractive, the message of niceness.
I think it's because it's being revealed that they're not nice, right?
It's at the end of the day, again, it's not whether but which.
The reason why they're shoving winsomeness and niceness and effeminate gentleness, gentleness is not effeminate, but an effeminate form of gentleness down their listeners' throats, is not so that they'll be, Nice to everyone, not so that they'll be gentle to everyone, but so that they'll be nice and gentle towards liberal progressives, so that they'll be nice and gentle towards Biden, so they'll be nice and gentle.
David French.
Yeah, David French.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, Colin, what's the other one?
What's the other one?
Francis Collins.
That's it.
Yeah, that's it.
Francis Collins.
That guy.
Yeah, well, yeah, he was right there with Russell Moore, you know, with Tim Keller and all those guys.
What?
Yeah.
That's it 100%.
Yeah.
So it's just wicked and corrupt.
Be nice to them.
But what simultaneously is happening is, In their demands that Christians fulfill the law of love and be nice to this party over here, what happens by way of consequence is hatred towards this party over here, right?
That all these people are losing their jobs now, you know?
So because we're being nice to them and we're not allowed to fight, they're getting their way and tyranny is taking the day and people are losing their jobs and their livelihoods and there's, you know, no more medical freedom.
And, you know, and so, you know, kids are having to wear masks at school.
And so I think people are just starting to realize it's not just that.
Nice doesn't sell because it's uninteresting or it's boring.
It's the fact that people are realizing they're not actually nice.
They're not nice.
They're nice to the bad guys and they're cruel to their own.
Yeah, that's right.
I was just, by the way, you mentioned bodily autonomy and that sort of thing.
Isn't it interesting that it's now the Christians that are pushing the my body, my choice narrative?
Yeah.
Right.
Like, isn't that God's poetic justice?
I think towards them, I think that's sort of the judgment.
They've brought upon themselves is they've been pushing this.
Oh, my body, my choice.
I'll die for this right.
And now they've given it up immediately.
And now the Christians are like, okay, well, we'll tell you exactly what this means in the right way to wield it, that right.
And so that is a good story.
Every judgment God does has some sort of poetic artistry to it.
And I think that's part of it.
Surprise Comedy Funding Transition00:08:02
Yep.
That's a good story.
Well, okay.
So let's spend the rest of our time.
We don't have to spend too long, but just tell our listeners more about lore and how they can get involved and what's Coming down the pipeline, dates, times?
What can we expect?
Yeah.
So, we're going to be doing our beta very soon.
And I mean, very soon.
Hopefully, within, I would say, the next month.
Wow.
And so, one thing you want to do is you want to join the mailing list.
If you go to lore.tv, there's a subscriber mailing list and join that mailing list, and we'll send out an email once the beta starts.
And then that'll be an invite only thing.
And then from there, we'll slowly transition into an actual functioning product where you're funding films and TV shows.
And hopefully, we'll just continue to snowball from there.
But that's the plan.
So that's very soon.
We don't have an exact date, but I'll just say it's coming up pretty quickly.
And then the goal really is we're.
We have amazing projects that just are not going to be made anywhere else.
If you look at like Sage, for example, that we just dropped, Cody Halford is the guy that did it.
And he pitched this story of it's a new age couple where one of the persons in the couple, Becomes a Christian.
And then the other person takes them on a tour across the United States to all this new age stuff to try to get them back to new age theology.
And it was just such a dark place for PureFlix.
And this is a guy who's already sold stuff.
So there's stuff like that.
And then, of course, Laura Claussen's project, which actually has Kevin Sorbo with it, who's doing the voiceover for.
They're doing these short animated cartoons, sort of like you would see on Disney Plus, right?
You have these shorts.
But these are all shorts related to.
Uh, graphically telling you about abortion, um, animated like through animation, and uh, man, let me tell you, um, it is one of the sketches of the first episode, and it's one of the most powerful pieces of art I've ever seen in my life, um, just truly incredible.
Um, and uh, Kevin Zorba did a great job with that, and then um, but but the thing is that these are all being animated by like secret Disney animators, right?
Like you know, either past or present.
And so, you know, this is, you know, these people exist out there and they want to make stuff like this.
And so, you know, so they're not just nobodies who we found on YouTube who can draw.
Like these are professionals.
And, you know, so there's that.
And then, you know, Dark Holler is a reform perspective of ghost hunting, is probably the best way to say it.
It's a documentary series, except, you know, it's a real, A biblical look at, you know, demon possession, you know, actual demon possession and, you know, a small coal mining town where everyone's on meth and drugs.
I've always wanted to see some kind of, you know, exorcism, you know, demonic kind of thing that's not Catholic.
It's always Catholic.
Yeah, I think in the Reform perspective, I think, you know, an exorcism is just salvation.
Yeah.
And so it's really cool ghost hunting sort of, you know, like series.
And then the other thing we have is, you know, Uh, follow the dead is an amazing, um, uh, comedy, Irish comedy, zombie movie, horror movie.
That's cool.
So, so that's just something you know, you're just not going to get that sort of stuff.
And so, these movies will be progressing on the platform.
And, um, as our subscriber base grows, you'll be able to fund more and more.
Um, and you know, we're we are we have uh, you know, the PKs, by the way, um, is fantastic.
What's that?
The PKs, yeah, the PKs is a comedy sitcom starring Sho Baraka.
I don't know if you're familiar with him, he's a hip hop artist, Christian hip hop artist.
So, it's starring Show Baraka, and it's about a multiracial family who is trying to, the father is the pastor of a church, and he's balancing, you know, keeping his household in order and his church in order all at the same time.
And it's a really cool, really cool comedy that you see as the household deteriorates, the church does too.
And then, like, it's this really cool narrative on that.
And so, that pilot's actually, we already shot that, it's being edited now.
And so there's a lot of stuff, and there's a lot more stuff that I'm really excited about that we'll be announcing as we grow.
That's awesome, Marcus.
So, real quick, tell our listeners and tell me, I'm curious.
So, how does the financial model work?
Like, do people, you know, Netflix, it's a monthly thing, but you said you get to choose what.
So, what does somebody pay to watch lore?
Yeah.
I'm not going to answer those questions yet.
Okay.
That'll all come out as we do beta testing.
And get the data and stuff like that that we need to be able to answer those questions and the specifics of it.
But yeah, I'll keep that as a surprise.
Okay.
But yeah, so when you talk about the financial model, I say that we've been very successful with very little at this point.
We've raised half a million for our first seed round, which is nothing in the film industry.
I mean, people spend.
20 or 30 million dollars on a Christian movie.
And that's just one movie, right?
And we've done, you know, we've raised 500,000 and we've already acquired, you know, at least maybe 10 to 12 projects that we hope to launch soon.
So, I mean, like we're crushing it.
And so, you know, which is good for, you know, could perhaps some people in your audience are really experienced investors just to know that, you know, you don't have to.
Invest in one movie, you can invest in the platform that'll make all the movies, right?
Like that's the real, the real goal, especially for Christians.
We want to take dominion.
And so, one of the ways we do that is take dominion over stories.
Cool.
Surprise, surprise.
We'll save it for a surprise.
$500 a month.
That's the surprise.
That's why you don't want to save it.
If you want.
Yeah.
All right.
Cool.
Well, if the market allows, I'm cool with it, right?
Right.
That's true.
Yeah.
There's no, there's no, there's no cap.
You can always pay more.
Yeah.
Um, All right.
Any last final thoughts for our listeners?
No, just go to Lore TV.
I said there's a subscriber tab, but there's also a creator tab.
And then if you're an artist or filmmaker, you work in the industry and you have an idea you want to pitch to us, go to the creator tab.
And then there's an investor tab too.
If you're an accredited investor and would like to know more about what we can do in that sense, just let us know.
We're looking for.
Obviously, investors with money, but our main priority is that they're not cowards and they have a backbone and they're not going to cave to cancel culture.
That's really important to us.
Cool.
Well, thanks so much for coming on the show, Marcus.
I appreciate it.
Yeah, man.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks so much for listening.
But, real quick, before you go, do us a small favor take a moment and leave us a five star review if you enjoyed the show.
This is undoubtedly the best way that you can help us get this biblically faithful content to as many people as possible.