Burning Man, a 50,000-attendee festival operated by BlackRock City LLC for $240 to $420, functions as a technocratic hub for Silicon Valley elites like Jeff Bezos and Aaron Rodgers. Hosts analyze it as a counterfeit of biblical events, promoting pantheistic "oneness" through rituals like the effigy burning and orgies, contrasting this with distinct Christian equality. While neo-paganism spreads from desert retreats to urban centers, the discussion highlights a counter-movement where former new agers convert to Christianity, urging the church to understand these worldviews for effective ministry as Western culture shifts away from Christendom. [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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Burning Man and Spiritual Oneness00:11:44
Every year in Nevada, a city in the desert is built from scratch and for a week is populated by tens of thousands of people from all over the world.
Attendees known as burners see it as a grand celebration of life and spiritual transformation.
Burning Man is just one of the countless transformational festivals that encompass the return of the old gods.
All right, here we are.
This episode is on Burning Man.
A harmless event that's fun for the whole family, right, guys?
Absolutely.
Bring the kids.
Yeah, bring the kids.
Have a blast, right?
Just tapping into your inner self and a few demons along the way.
Tell us.
Okay, so.
Well, that's Disney.
Yeah, that's Disney.
Amen.
All right, so tell me about Burning Man.
Yeah, so I want to start off by saying that I want to sort of quote and paraphrase the founders of Burning Man who really described and they said that there's no way you can truly describe or encompass it unless you've been there.
So, I am speaking though.
I want to make sure I'm emphasizing I am speaking, Andrew speaking.
We're all speaking as people who are on the outside looking in.
Right.
So, I'll just talk about how it sort of came to my attention.
So, as we've talked about in previous aspects of our discussion, one of the very first episodes we did where I had Stephen Bancars on, it was our first sort of general overview of the New Age and the occult.
You know, he brought up ayahuasca, and I never even heard of that.
And I was like, what's ayahuasca?
What's that all about?
And so now, That's not part of a normalized discussion.
So, once even five years ago, it wasn't talked too much about.
It wasn't even on my compass.
Now, it's something that's normalized.
You've seen it.
And I even talked about in our last episode that I didn't mention was like Aaron Rodgers from the Green Bay Packers.
He's been very upfront about his ayahuasca use and the ceremonies that he's done to tap into the divine feminine.
And he's very much been like advocating this.
So, in the same way, as I was doing the podcast, as we're seeking out guests, you know, I had a lot of conversations with new agers, both on People that are on the podcast and a couple of just behind the scenes, sort of talking with them, is the subject of Burning Man came up.
And I remember one of my former guests was describing that she taught classes on ayahuasca and how to do an ayahuasca ceremony.
She taught a class at a burn camp at Burning Man.
So that was the very first time I heard of that.
I'm like, okay, well, what's that all about?
And then, you know, as one of my previous guests, and she had pictures of her, like before she came to Christ, dressed, you know, promiscuously out there with a bunch of her friends out in the desert.
And it looked.
My first perception is that I was trying to just like, what am I even looking at?
Looking at pictures of this person, and it would almost be like Lawrence of Arabia, like a promiscuous Lawrence of Arabia intertwined with Mad Max with a bunch of tents in the desert with all sorts of interesting artwork.
And just it's like, oh, well, that's interesting.
What's that all about?
And so, I think when you look at being on the outside looking in, I think what Burning Man does represent, it is sort of a North Star encompassing point that it really sort of points where we are as a culture and really the return of the old gods.
Because while many people would look at Burning Man as something of modernity, this is something that is brand new that's never been done before of you know 50,000 plus.
I think last year, when there was on the news about people being rained out, even the year before, I think the attendee was around 80,000, just a large amount of people that go out into the desert via RVs.
That are out there, there's really nothing new under the sun.
In fact, the idea of pagans moving about, creating a giant festival to raise up a temple, or in this case, a grand statue, and to do all sorts of different rituals and things connected to paganism, that's literally ancient Rome.
That's syncretism.
That was the case.
The Apostle Paul in Colossae, that's what he was dealing with a predominant pagan city.
So a lot of what You're seeing articulated there while there's nothing new under the sun, a lot of people see it as brand new, innovative, but it's very important because while some of you may be like kind of thinking about this for the first time, it does very much represent the culture.
It's not just a bunch of hippies out in the desert, it may have been one time, but there is a point where you're looking at some of the biggest influencers in the world.
But from a celebrity standpoint, you look at a lot of different execs at Google.
Amazon, some of the biggest technocrats out of Silicon Valley, they really have carried over a lot of their ideas, their philosophy, their way of business, their way of work at Burning Man.
So it's gone from just being kind of this wild Mad Max festival from several years ago to sort of really now sort of being a kind of like how Wario was the opposite of Mario if we can utilize video games.
Right.
I would say that this is sort of the like a reverse transfiguration.
So I think it's important as we sort of just talk about it briefly is.
Not sensationalize it, but also not try and sugarcoat it.
Like it's this wonderful, perfectly innocent thing that Christians should just go and attend to because it's inherently neutral.
What about you, Andrew?
When you think of Burning Man, I mean, I know you've sort of seen it in the background.
We've studied a lot of topics.
Like when you see it, like what are like the first impressions that come to mind?
Yeah, when I see Burning Man, it looks like a place I definitely don't want to go.
But I want to give some numbers real quick just to give the audience a good idea of how Burning Man has grown throughout the last.
Let's say 30 years, okay?
30, 35 years.
So 1986 was the first burn.
There's about 20 people there, and it wasn't even something that was organized.
It just happened.
There's 20 people around.
2011, $53,735 to around the last one, around 80,000.
Let me give you an idea of prices.
In 2012, the tickets were $240 to $320, all the way up to $390.
And there were pre sale tickets for $420.
So they're making a lot of money off of Burning Man, so much so that there's even a corporation, BlackRock City LLC, it's a for profit company.
That creates Burning Man every single year.
But on the outside, looking in at Burning Man, I'm seeing a relation to, let's say, Mormon General Conference, which happens twice a year, where all of the LDS individuals from around the world will gather to hear their prophets speak, right?
Revelation from God, and they all gather to go.
That happens twice a year, April and October.
For Islam, they do what?
They go to Mecca, they travel there, the adherents of Islam.
So for, let's say, the Rejects of modern Western culture, where do they go?
They go to Burning Man once a year, right?
So, we're talking about artists other than, you know, political figures, and even Jeff Bezos has gone to Burning Man or sends people to Burning Man.
We have, you know, artists, queers, like people who believe in UFOs, people are doing psychedelics, nudists, people looking for new sexual experiences.
These are all the types of people that are going to Burning Man.
And an interesting fact, even about Burning Man, is that Everything is supposed to run on like charity there in a sense, but the only things that cost money are ice and coffee.
But supposedly the city gets built up, right?
Imagine 83,000 people there.
And then it gets torn down.
There's a burning.
I believe they burn a temple and they do the burning of the burning man because there's also a temple that they build every single year that goes there with its own theme.
But after they're supposed to leave and there's supposed to be no trace of them whatsoever.
So on the outside looking in, I see it as a mecca of sorts for those types of people to go and try to find fulfillment in fantasy in the modern Western world.
Yeah.
And in fact, one of the things that's really emphasized as there's a sign that sort of welcomes burners back.
That they it's basically says welcome home, like when they come back to Burning Man.
So that's what you see.
So there's a lot of community, there's a lot of camaraderie.
But when you come down to it, then there's just the you have all the different burn camps, and you have all sorts of different areas in which there's talks and discussions on how to be a how to do shamanism, how to do different.
There's always new discoveries on transformational psychedelics.
There's a lot of talk on political oneness.
Which is like one world government, so you have those aspects.
Really, a good book, some really good talks I would recommend looking into would be uh Carl Takerib.
He has a book called Game of Gods, which is excellent.
He's been on the podcast before and um, he's really uh talked about it before.
I'm just curious as well.
You did uh, I remember I saw on Right Response Ministries a previous episode on Burning Man.
Like, yeah, yeah, tell us about that.
Like, what just what did you gain from that episode and what do you think your perspective like before and after you did that episode?
Yeah, I did it a while back.
Um Yeah, just false signs.
And thinking of, you know, I showed like a video clip that's pretty popular, and a lot of people have probably seen it, where there were, you know, there were like these little wind tunnels, not like a full blown tornado, but like a dust devil.
Right.
Kind of, you know, small wind cycles happening that just in the weather, but it was happening as they, you know, at the time that they were actually burning.
The man, and uh, and so they were going like nearby, and then one of them kind of went through the man and picked up uh fire in the wind.
And so now there's like the literally a pillar of fire that's moving you know around.
And I was just thinking about you know, uh, the Israelites in the wilderness being led you know by a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire.
Um, and and they're in the wilderness in the middle of the desert in the middle of nowhere.
And so, um, anyways, I you know, I was just looking at that and other aspects, but just thinking that um, you know, it's a lot of it is like seeking a sign, um, some kind of Supernatural experience, you know, that I'm going to go to this place and receive some kind of supernatural experience, some kind of revelation, transformation, you know.
Right.
Yeah.
But it absolutely, but, you know, aside from that and some of the religious undertones, it, you know, it's from everything that I've read, it's filled with sexual promiscuity, lots and lots of drug use, lots of psychedelics.
Um, you know, and then lots of pagan practices, you know, like shamanism, and right, um, it is not, uh, it is not even close to, you know, I was being facetious at the opening of the episode, but like it's, it is not, uh, just a, uh, let's go camping in the desert and hang out and have a good time, right?
Very intentionally, it's a very, uh, sexual, psychedelic, religious experience that has, it seems like it's just a mirror image of, you know, a counterfeit, um, to, uh, To things that are biblical, and then just a mirror image, a replica of a lot of old pagan rituals.
A Ten-Part Series Announcement00:02:25
Real quick, before we continue with the show, I wanted to let you know that this is actually just one episode of a 10 part series that we will be slowly releasing to the public on places like YouTube and your favorite podcast platform over the coming months.
However, if you want to get all 10 of these episodes right now, early access and ad free, we are making them available exclusively for our Patreon members over at patreon.com.
Forward slash right response ministries.
Here are the titles for just a few of those episodes.
We've got transhumanism and artificial intelligence.
We also have DMT and the astral realm.
We also have neo paganism.
And another of my favorite episodes is an entire episode devoted to the grays.
So again, head on over to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries and sign up for our silver tier, which is just $5 a month.
And you'll be able to get all 10 of these episodes ad free right now.
And if you join us at the gold tier for just $10 a month, you'll get early access ad free for the full 10 episodes, plus an additional live stream that I and the guys who join me for this series that's Jeremiah Roberts and Andrew Suncrant the three of us will be doing live streams where we'll be taking questions from you, our gold tier Patreon members, and providing for you the best answers that we possibly can from the Word of God.
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Yeah, I mean, yeah, for sure.
And there's definitely nothing new under the sun.
In fact, Burning Man would be one of those areas in which it's not just Burning Man, but there's also sort of smaller replicated burns around the world.
And there's many other transformational festivals too that still, while they differ from each other, they still have an underlying aspect propagated of oneness.
So there's another really popular festival known as Tomorrowland.
Andrew, you've heard of that.
And in that, like, I remember just seeing the tickets to Tomorrowland.
It was really, the artwork is very well done and just goes to show that a lot of times, man, there's so much reformation that Christians need to have in regards to their art.
Therapists and Cultural Shifts00:03:18
You think about how much of that we sort of like have abandoned and not really given way to.
But some of the art, I mean, the fact of what you, if you actually look at the footage of the different art that takes place of the different burn camps and the different festivals and what takes place, it's, Extraordinarily impressive.
But what they are doing is that they are really articulating a worldview of oneness.
And you see that articulated completely.
And that's where you see a lot of major political influencers, you know, really advocating for things like climate change and a lot of other things that are very tied into the World Economic Forum, as far as even that worldview, which is propagated, is oneness.
So this is no longer, again, this is no longer just a bunch of hippies out in the desert.
This is something where you're looking at policies.
You're looking at, they want to implicate this worldview to push towards an awakening, an awakening you call like of consciousness, of oneness, and really decisions.
And you kind of look at what is talked about within the World Economic Forum.
If you kind of put our tinfoil hats on for a moment, like you will own nothing and you'll be happy, which is their own words.
This is not a conspiracy theory.
And that is on some level advocated within the culture, from what I understand, from the outside looking in.
Not really having any possessions.
And the first thing that came to mind with also being, with knowing you being a Beatles fan is, you know, John Lennon's imagine, like, sort of imagine there's no distinctions between us.
You know, you see like oneness depicted, but really like no possessions.
Like, I just as soon as I heard that described it when I was first trying to understand tangibly Burning Man, and I think this is the thing too.
What I want to try and do, what we're trying to do in this episode is that kind of talking about this.
If you think about someone who's a clinical surgeon, right?
A clinical surgeon, if they're going to do brain surgery, like you think of somebody like Ben Carson, who is a neural surgeon, that takes a level of precision of understanding.
the integral parts of the brain and how it works or how to remove a tumor and what each part does, that requires a skill set that's very unique.
Or if you look at someone who just would fix a broken bone or whatever type of surgery they're doing, you know what parts of the leg are bone.
You'll know which parts are sinew.
You'll know regardless of which person comes in.
You have that.
Now, the difference is somebody who, for example, would be like a therapist or a psychologist.
When they have someone in their office and they're trying to, you know, prescribe and give them treatment and trying to talk with their client, what they're doing and say they're, they're a trauma therapist and they're talking with a veteran who's been through some serious PTSD or a survivor of sexual assault.
What, what they're trying to do, they're trying to prescribe and under look at something that they tangibly like can't see, but there's components that, you know, they're trying to figure out, but still being on the outside looking in because we can't tangibly see like, Our psyche and what's going on, or what's causing a trauma response, we can only sort of look at it at a vague distance.
And I think this is kind of what we would fall into the second camp of, pun intended, of being on the outside looking in.
Renewal Through Fire and Burden00:10:17
So while my perspective will be very different, you know, if I ever end up going specific, there's actually a group that we did a podcast with who have been out for years.
They, it's a really cool story.
They have a can't, a burn camp called the Camp of the Unknown God, homage to Acts 17.
And again, they've been on the podcast before, and they said this is not for every single Christian.
Like, if you, in the same way, going to Planned Parenthood and doing abortion ministry is not for every single person.
And you think about John Barrows, who's now with the Lord, and the faithful work that he has done, that he's done just being out that clinic out in Florida, just being faithful, continually, continually going.
Robert Worley, who's been on the podcast before, he's an older man now, but he was, you came to know the Lord, was saved out, we just kind of had a rough upbringing.
Was in like different like biker gangs and stuff like that, and he just knew that Christians went out of their way to talk to me when I was really kind of a dangerous, you know, sort of an anarchist, sons of anarchy sort of character, presented the gospel to me that changed my heart.
Why would I be scared?
Why would I not want to go to talk to these people?
So, I so he ended up just having a heart for the people at Burning Man, he got connected to it, so he's pretty much been there since it started, um, and just going out there to do evangelism to create relationships to talk with people, but specifically.
Going as a Christian, not trying to blend in, not trying to look like a burner.
But again, it's not for everyone because you have promiscuity.
You'll have to deal with probably what a lot of Christians in the first century had to deal with a lot of nudity and a lot of just promiscuity.
I mean, that's what you saw in Corinth.
That's what you saw in Colossae with the temples that were dedicated to certain fertility gods who were full of prostitutes.
So I just see when I look on the outskirts, I see really.
Not any different, not too much difference between what's taking place at Burning Man.
It's like it's a technocratic.
I feel like I would describe it from the outside looking in of a technocratic version of first century realm.
Because you're looking at what they're trying to do, because you have all this background, you have like syncretism, and that's what you really have.
And so that's where, as a Christian, you would be okay, well, I'm looking at this, and you look at all the worldviews being depicted, you look at all the type of idolatry that's there.
And I feel like as a Christian, you shouldn't feel like anger or feel like you want to be disparaging in a drug-torto ways towards any of the burners, but be overwhelmed, like Paul was in Athens, knowing that the city is full of idols.
And then.
Go in there and start bringing in the unknown God.
So, my friends who have been out there, when they have this camp, the camp of the unknown God, they're literally having people who come by who are just into this, that, and the other and say, Who is this unknown God?
Like, tell me about them.
And it's like a trip because it's like all of a sudden the Act 17 becomes alive in real time.
Like, you're living that out right then and there.
And so, another example of the Transformational Festival, and it actually got mentioned by Carl Tacrib.
Who did the book Game of Gods would even be the festival out at the Hari Christian Temple in Utah.
That's one of the big ones.
You've done evangelism as well as there too.
So that would be another example of a transformational festival, which is really nothing that's brand new.
I think what you'd really understand is that with, you know, it just was about Richard Dawkins kind of hit the main prominence.
Was it like 10 or whatever, like 10, 20 years ago when he kind of dropped God is not great and he kind of had him and Hitchens, they sort of.
Ran the new atheism.
Well, I think that really fell short.
Even now, he's a cultural Christian.
That's what he just said.
Yeah.
So I think atheism, and honestly, it's not really, it was really a fad.
I think what you've seen is that neo paganism surpasses the encompassing part of atheism because you get to still be your own God.
You get to be autonomous, but you also get to be inherently spiritual too.
Like we know people inherently know they're in the image of God.
We know we want to ascend and experience something bigger than ourselves.
And I think that's where.
I think a place like Burning Man and the hunger for that, it really taps into really getting a thorough understanding of just the Lord has created a journey in the hearts of men.
And I think that's the draw that you see there.
And so, yeah, those are some of my initial thoughts.
Yeah, it's very interesting to me thinking about Burning Man that it doesn't, they're creating a city that pops up and then goes away, right?
Well, the reason is because that type of life can't exist in God's world.
Indefinitely, right?
So it's only there for a minute, then goes away.
It's a place of free self love and radical self expression.
And what they want to accomplish is that these things happen at Burning Man there's the burning of the man, and then everyone dissipates, and there's nothing left behind, right?
So come here, enjoy yourself, express yourself to the fullest, even against capitalism, even though it's a for profit company in a capitalistic society that's making money off them.
I find that ironic.
But The reality is that what happens at Burning Man doesn't just stay there or disappear, right?
There is sin happening in the wilderness.
And I find it also ironic that the wilderness represents, you know, sin in general.
It's not a garden, it's the wilderness, it's the desert.
And we have people going out there to commit shameful acts with one another, thinking that just for a time they're doing it and then getting back to their normal life.
But in reality, those things stay with them, right?
That's sin.
And it's anger to God.
And they need a sacrifice for their sins, who is Jesus.
And that's why they go out there to preach the gospel to them, the unknown God, right?
Right, right.
What about the burning of the man itself?
Because I've read a few different descriptions of what that's actually supposed to represent.
What can you guys tell me about that?
Why do they burn a huge effigy?
They build this, construct this wooden man.
And right, I think it's the last night or something like that, towards the end of the festival, that they set it on fire.
And I've heard multiple different descriptions.
One is that it represents you, yourself, and your old man being burned up.
And so, renewal.
Transformation.
I'm starting fresh, right?
Kind of like almost like a pagan version of Lent, you know.
Yeah.
But I've heard other things also.
What is that supposed to represent?
Yeah.
And again, I'm someone who's on the outside looking in.
What we'll probably do is there's an article, probably a link I'd recommend.
There's a great art, there's a great magazine called the Spiritual Counterfeits Project.
And there's a friend of mine, Steve Matthews, who's been on the podcast before, who's given a lot more integral details.
It is loosely connected to the Wicker Man.
And kind of that story of the Burning Man, I believe it came from that.
But I think ultimately you nailed it just in the very general sense.
And I feel like I'm kind of being on the outside looking in.
I want to just give it speak as generically as I can.
There is a part of renewal of it.
So, like the final burn, it's like a very, from how I've heard it described from Carl Takerib and people who've been there who've witnessed it.
And I think Will Spencer would be great to give like a thorough commentary on it.
It's a very, It's a very sombering moment.
So throughout the entire festival, it's very loud.
You have different techno rays, different music.
It's just nonstop craziness.
I was just funny.
I was watching the Ten Commandments over the Easter weekend and just the part where Aaron was forced to build the calf while Moses is taking that.
I'm like, that kind of looks like Burning Man, just with a different, what was depicted by C.C. DeMille showing there's nothing new under the sun.
But it's very.
The burn at that moment is a very sombering moment.
So, they have, there's two main things, from what I understand.
And it's the man, and it's also, there's a temple that's built.
And each year, the temple has a different theme.
And there is a part where you sort of take your burdens and your traumas.
And I think it's the temple where they go and like they'd sort of write it down, or they just kind of go there to sort of just alleviate, to kind of lay your burdens there, and then they burn it up.
So, it'd be kind of like the equivalent of saying, you know, you have a bunch of letters from like your ex girlfriend and you just want to take them and then you want to burn them up as far as an evidence.
You're saying you're leaving that behind.
Yeah.
So, part of looking at the article here, part of the ceremony of burning the man, let's try to think about it in terms of Christianity.
So, we have the body of Christ, right?
Different members make up the body of Christ the eyes, the ears, the hands, the feet.
In terms of burning man, what the article that we'll link to talks about is that.
These pagans or different subcultures are all essentially different parts of a body, and the man itself represents the whole.
Okay.
And so there are rituals that go on all throughout the week.
And I'll read this from quotes, it's very interesting here.
So it says this utilizing the sun in a spiral mirror, Crimson Rose extracts a flame from the sun, and a fire is lit in the center camp cauldron.
For the flame to continue burning, it must be stoked, disturbed, and kept alive throughout the entire week.
So this happens at the beginning, and they keep this one flame alive.
We encourage all those that encounter this special cauldron to help keep this flame alive.
On Saturday night, the fire that we extract from the sun, drum and dance around, that has been burning all week long, will be transferred to a special lantern, the Lumen Ferros.
The procession of the ceremonial flame in great fanfare will process to the great circle where the fire conclave in its full force will utilize that same fire for dances dedicated to the man before he is brought to life in a pyrotechnic delight.
So, the burning of the man is burning of the whole, right?
Chaos, Addiction, and New Age Paths00:06:22
That's the man represents all of them, all of the cultures that are there.
Very interesting to me, but it's not a surprise that most false worship tries to counterfeit Christianity in so many ways, right?
All of them together, the head, the eyes, the ears, the legs of paganism brought together to burn this man in worship.
Whereas in Christianity, the body of Christ is to bring about the kingdom of God on earth, not a burning of a man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you think from a Christian perspective, you're looking at unity, but unity through a lens of twoism, where you're looking at we are distinct, we're unique, we have equal value because we are both equal in the eyes of God, not equal because we're some part of one divine, you know, and personal consciousness through a realm of pantheism, where No, we're equal in the sight of a God because he is the transcendent lawgiver.
He has declared us equal before God, regardless of race, ethnicity, and background.
That would be the primary distinction.
And I think it's just, you know, and also another thing I would just say from just my conversations of what I've had with Will Spencer, some of my other previous guests who have been burners, is that when the people, like the interactions of the group that's been out there, when they, talk with people who are burners, a lot of them come from very difficult and rough upbringings.
They have usually a lot of family abandonment, a lot of abandonment trauma, which is very interesting because when you hear backgrounds of new agers, a lot of them come from very broken homes.
So I think as well, too, I've realized too, just the importance of self-government.
And as a man, like a good patriarchal family government where you are looking after and spiritually nurturing your children because while patriarchy is inevitable, There's that saying where a lot of women, for example, they usually have a lot of father hunger because they had a very abusive, a very neglectful father.
And now they're trying to fill in that spiritual vacuum through the new age.
But instead of having their heavenly father for validation, now they're usually trying to find some sort of male guru.
Like in India, especially the white new age women who go to India, you always see them find confidence in some sort of Hindu guru.
Like over there and that becomes their father patriarchal figure.
But what you really end up here seeing is that a lot of them, who people who burn, who come there for the burn, they come from a very broken background.
They come from just a lot of chaos in their life, usually like a background like of addiction, and usually that's a catalyst for going into the new age.
Uh, so Theresa Gentry, she was in the podcast and she was an avid burner, like so she got into the new age because she was actually in San Francisco and she was a very fun.
She taught.
She's very open about this in the podcast, but she was a By the time she was 14, she was a functioning alcoholic.
And that had to do with because there's all this family trauma that she didn't really know how to deal with.
And because of that, that created a lot, a lot of health issues.
Then she got that by way of getting into a lot of organic and raw food eating.
And that actually helped her, you know, recreate her microbiomes and stuff like that.
But one, a lot of these areas of the new age, there is a lot of gateways.
One would be alternative medicine, alternative medicine.
And a lot of times in the health food industry, nothing wrong about.
To me, you know, having eating healthy, you should do that.
We should be responsible for the bodies that God has given us.
We should do that.
But a lot of times what you'll see is a lot of those movements, they end up having the new age tied into them.
Then it ends up being the caboose or the hook to rule people in.
So this raw food restaurant that she was working at, that became a catalyst for her to be introduced to the new age and some of these like seances and getting into one thing over another.
And that's what you're really looking at.
And I think one of the areas too, And again, I'm fully talking from the perspective of someone on the outside looking in.
Is I, this past year at Burning Man, it was very interesting because I was, I had some friends who I had spoken with and they were part of the team that was out there.
And, you know, there was a downpour and all of a sudden it became this like crazy Woodstock situation.
And it was very interesting because I was following on X. Some of the posts that people were making, in some sense, really going above and beyond having, you know, warranted, serrated edge.
You know, there's a place for that mocking the prophets of Baal, but really at a point, really demeaning and mocking and disparaging the people that were there at Burning Man at the expense of seeing them less than how you should view them as a Christian, as people who need to know Christ and need to know the gospel.
And then there were also a lot of different conspiracies about, you know, FEMA camps being set up there and supposedly some sort of weird.
Flesh eating virus or something like that where people were killing each other.
I mean, it was just.
There were all sorts of crazy, you know, tick tock theories about all these conspiracies that are going on.
And I met, I got a whole the guy uh Carl, he didn't have what he didn't have.
Uh well minimal, he had minimal receptions, he would give updates, but he just said like like, where's your compassion for people?
Like what happened to being seeing the crowds and being like moved with compassion to reach these people?
And I think it's just as a whole.
It's very, it's very easy to look at people Who are going to transformational festivals or going to those guru weekend retreats where people are like screaming out their traumas and trying to do all those things.
And I'm hesitant a lot of times now to post those even on our socials because people tend to speak about them in a very demeaning way.
Whereas, like, they're doing their best to try and transcend, they just have a very broken, dysfunctional way in hell to do so.
So I think that's the most important thing is that people who are burners, they are trying, They're made in the image of God.
They know that the attorney is written on their hearts.
They know they're made to transcend.
They're just trying to do it in an empty, futile way where there's no end in sight since they're doing it through the lens of oneness.
Escaping Paganism in Christendom00:15:06
Right Response Ministries 2025 conference is a go.
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So, I'm going to give you some names of events that happen at Burning Man.
And remember, these are people who desperately need the gospel, and not every single individual is going to every single one of these events.
If there's kids, I'd say earmuffs, or maybe this wouldn't be the best time for them to be listening, but I'm just going to go over some names of events that occur there.
Well, if you go to Black Rock City, if you're going to Burning Man, you could have short term weddings.
You can get married for just a very short time there.
You can have also Black Rock temporary divorce.
So you can just temporarily divorce the individual you're married with, go have fun for a while, right?
There's also Elvis weddings.
There's Queer Sex Magic, Gender Bender Night at the Boobie Bar, ATTOL's Famous Orgy Dome, BDSM, Rides of Passage, Satan's School for Sluts.
These are all things that occur.
We'll have the articles so you can read the descriptions if you want.
But more than that, let's get into like the shamanism.
So there are shamanistic healings, classes, shaman's path, transmuting suffering, shamanism, psychedelics, and neuroscience, animal totem meditation, advanced shamanistic technique, tantric meditation, tantra energy for flow, sacred sex.
These are things that are happening at Burning Man, tantric touch for intimate partners, tantra Tao, sexual healing for women.
And then there's all the other ones, right?
On attaining Buddhahood in this lifetime, losing my religion, going there to lose yourself, get involved in all these other things.
Atheist agnostic sore at Yuli Baba's, channeling voices from other dimensions.
So I would imagine at Burning Man, we have a slew of different types of people, right?
There's people that are obviously making a mockery of God, of marriage, of the sanctity of marriage, of gender roles and distinctions, going there, maybe being atheistic and saying it doesn't matter whatsoever.
Being, you know, agnostic in a sense to where they're like, I'm just looking for myself in general.
But in reality, what's going on there is people, like you said, looking to try to find anything in life to justify their passions or desires without involving God, right?
Like that's kind of what happens there at Burning Man.
So I'm glad that there is a group of people called the Camp of the Unknown God who are there to tell these people, no, you need to stop what you're doing and you need to believe in Christ.
He is the one who has made himself known to all men.
Amen.
All right.
Any final thoughts for this one?
Yeah, I think, you know, as someone who just from the outside looking in, I think one is that just you would, I would say, you know, this is going to come up in the future.
You're going to see this more and more.
And in fact, the way that these transformational festivals are growing, in the same way how psychedelics have just been normalized just in the last five years, you know, just being named by, you know, I talked in previous episodes, like with the Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox and like Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, all the people normalizing it, you're seeing transformational festivals normalized.
So, what would have been You know, the norm for first century Christians in Rome, we're going to be seeing not, it's not going to be isolated in one area, even in the desert.
I think you're going to see as we continue to free fall, as we continue to plunge into neo paganism, and you can't fix this through secular conservatism.
You can't fix this through Trumpism.
That's that there's no end in sight for that.
You're going to see this normalized.
It's going to be no different, I think, from, you know, just your average Arizona State Fair.
Or carnivals that are around.
I think that you're going to see it even like in lower sub-sex, and you're going to see like literally like farmers markets burning man.
Yeah.
You'll see that normalized.
So, I think that's an area in which you need to think about how you conduct yourselves and how you deal with those people and just look for relationships and a lot of times, and understand worldview implications.
And I'll give up one example too.
I'll just tell just two stories.
There's a great episode.
Any of you who haven't checked out the podcast, it was done at the end of last year.
It's called Burning Man Stories from the Frontlines, where he interviewed the team that was out there this past year.
And one of the things he talked about, talking about oneism or twoism, my friend Carl, he was talking with an individual.
And he was talking there, an artist, and he was talking about what has more value, a single value.
Is your art as valuable as you?
Is it unequal with you?
And he said, Well, no, I made the art.
Well, then you realize, No, well, your distinction.
So, in the same way, how you have more value in the art, your value doesn't come from yourself, it comes because you have a creator who's made in your image.
Right.
And just understanding the relatability.
In fact, like one of the things that for me was very touching with, The team that was out there was when Robert would just sort of his stick or what he would say to people is that he's like, You are they would they would they would sort of have this unity, this unit like brotherhood or whatever that they would sort of identify with each other.
He would say, You are my brother, but you're my brother in Adam, but but I want you as my brother in Christ.
And so, I think if you if you just look at that, I think it'd be I was very convicted about how I want to reach out to those people.
It's I don't think it will happen this year, but it's very much possible I may end up.
You know, joining the team to be out there, which would be a very unique thing.
It's a very unique calling.
It's not for everyone.
So it's one thing I'm still kind of weighing out if this is even the right thing that I should do.
So, but yeah, I think it's something to be paying attention to because it is very much a pinnacle, like a wind, like would see the which way the wind is blowing.
If you want to see how this worldview of one ism is affecting the culture, I think Burning Man is really the.
Central hub and ground zero to understand where that's headed.
Because everything from public policy to just many aspects of our life, they see that as the transfiguration.
Now it's like, dissemble, dissemble, now go ye into the world.
Make disciples of the nations under one of oneness.
You know, what's really interesting to me, and I'd like to get your perspective on this, Joel, is they're using words like transformation, right?
And then we also hear terms like, let's think about France, the French, they would call it the revolution.
Right, which I would call it more a French rebellion.
Uh, what's going on at Burning Man isn't a transformation, right?
Like, there's this weird play on language that's being used as if what's going on there for the individuals is actually something good, right?
Would you call the French Revolution the revolution, or why not if not?
And why would Burning Man not be a transformation?
What would it be in your eyes?
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, like, you know, that's what I don't like calling it the Revolutionary War.
Speaking of America, um, you know, I'd rather.
I think it's more accurate and more helpful to call it the War for Independence, you know, because when you call it the Revolutionary War, it's like, oh, well, this was a revolutionary war, like there were others, you know, the French Revolutionary War being a more popular one, but there were several around the world, and most were negative.
America's war for independence was not a revolutionary war in the way that we typically think of it as distinct in many ways.
But to answer your question, my point is that I think it depends.
It just all depends.
What are you being transformed from?
And to, you know, what are you revolutionizing from and to, you know, so I, you know, those words are being used, they're picked intentionally, you know, because they connotate, you know, some kind of positive experience.
People think of it positively.
But at the end of the day, the bottom line that makes it positive or negative is what is it precisely that we are abandoning?
What is it that we're rejecting?
What is it that we're transforming?
Out of and into.
So, and I think most, you know, just as a rule of thumb across the board, you know, most revolutions and transformations and these kinds of things as major cultural and historical events over at least, I would say, the last three to 500 years, the vast majority of them you should just, when in doubt, assume are negative.
And the reason why is because the dominant thing, at least in Western culture, Western civilization.
In Western civilization over the last three, 500 years, if there is a revolution or a transformation, the big thing that people are revolutionizing against and transforming from is Christendom, because that was the hegemony.
That was the dominant worldview.
So, to me, it makes sense.
The whole time you were talking, Jeremiah, I was just thinking it'll be interesting if God does not send revival and if we kind of have to.
If his judgment continues, because I believe that we are currently under judgment as a nation, if his judgment continues and intensifies, becomes more progressively severe, and it tarries, his judgment grows and tarries for, let's say, for instance, 30 years, and things get worse before they get better, I wonder if Burning Man will make sense.
And what I mean by that is, I I can't help but think that part of the idea of leaving the city and civilization and going into the wilderness and the desert.
Because with Israel, it was like even before they left, right?
They wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.
But even before that, there was kind of a probation, a temporary period where Pharaoh actually let them leave for a little bit to go into the wilderness.
And the reason why they went into the wilderness to have this.
This powwow with Yahweh, you know, with Moses, and to hear from God and to make sacrifices and worship, and it is because the civilization at the time was pagan, right?
So, if they wanted to go and do something holy, truly holy, by God's standards, the one true God, they went into the wilderness to seek righteousness and left the city that represented pagan idolatry.
And I think because of Christendom, Burning Man made sense 35 years ago in its inception, right?
Leave the public square, leave civilization, leave your family, your friends, your house, your suburbs, your job, your town that is maybe not overtly, but even 35 years ago, there was plenty of sin, but still, in a general sense, is a Christian milieu.
And leave that and go into the wilderness and we'll set up a temporary pagan town.
I wonder if we don't repent and God doesn't send revival and things continually get worse and rebellion intensifies and God's judgment becomes more severe.
I wonder if 30 years from now it'll make sense to go off into the desert for a pagan activity when pagan activity, the capital of pagan activity, would just be right there at home.
Yeah, right.
Like, why go off into the desert when you could just be in Austin?
You know, New York or, you know, like, so, anyways, I, you know.
Yeah, Colossae and Corinth, that was just ingrained within their city.
So they didn't have to go out to the camp.
Exactly.
They weren't going out.
That's what I'm saying, is that, yeah, so everything you're describing, whether it's the Mars Hill kind of, you know, situation or, you know, Rome or Ephesus, you know, the thing, the pagan activity that was going down there or, yeah, yeah, as Paul writes to the Colossians, you know, all of these are not wilderness type experiences.
These are metropolis.
The metropolis is the context.
It's the lightning rod, the focal point for all this pagan activity.
But what we have the privilege of, and it is God's mercy in this great post millennial hope, is that we were born at a time where Christendom has been dominant.
We're coming off, working off of, depending how you count, 500 years if we're looking at the reformers and the Reformation, 1,000 years if we're looking at King Alfred, 1,500 years if we're looking at Constantine.
I mean, arguably five to 1500 years, centuries for sure, perhaps a millennia and a half of this progressive, growing not paganism, but Christianity.
And so, what do you do if you want to have a pagan party?
Well, you have to leave the dominant areas because Christ reigns.
Christ is king over the West.
At least he was.
You know, I mean, he still is, of course, in the objective sense.
But as we are apostatizing as a civilization, the West, I think Burning Man in its inception, they may continue it just for nostalgia.
But if Burning Man was to be completely erased and someone came up with the idea for a pagan festival 30 years from now, I don't think it would cross their minds that this should be in the desert.
The Great Price of Revival00:03:58
I think that that was probably escaping.
Israel is escaping Egypt to do something righteous.
And I think it was the reverse Burning Man is escaping, you know.
Civilization to do something wicked because civilization has been won by Christ, right?
Um, but that is shifting, and I obviously we're all post millennial in our eschatology, so we don't think that shift is permanent, but we do believe that on our way to Christ's rule and reign being you know further and further expanded over the earth, we do believe that it's not a perfect incline, but that there are severe dips along the way, and right now we're in a heck of a dip, yeah.
Oh, for sure.
And I think one of the areas when you look, even having a post mill perspective.
Looking into this, it's very interesting too.
The majority of new agers who come to Christ end up really getting heavily into pre male eschatology.
And I just tend to like look past that because, you know, tell me you're in the end times.
Like, okay, that's all right.
Let me, let me see.
Let me talk to you about four end times from now and see how you're doing.
Right.
But what I have really seen when it comes to just sort of being in the, just in the arena in this realm now for five years, kind of being in the game here with cultish is that.
You do see an aspect while we are unequivocally free falling into a neo-paganism for sure.
And you're seeing the resurgence of that in so many levels in the arts and in film and even in technology, we talked about the transhumanism and so many aspects of it.
But there is, I do see that post-millennial aspect of God's sovereignty where the Lord looks at the conspiring of the nations and that he laughs.
So the spiritual zeitgeist of the age and the agendas that are there and how they want to implement public policy and how they do want to do all these things.
The reality is, is that since 2020, in the midst of all that chaos, there have been just a plethora of people coming out of the new age to Christ who are the very idols that they're trying to build up in the desert.
People, by way of the conviction through the Holy Spirit, they're saying, no, I'm burning that down.
And it's a very interesting dichotomy, too, of the pearl of great price, because we're seeing this huge movement among evangelicalism of the deconstruction movement, which is really a byproduct of.
You know, wisdom is justified by her children.
And so you're seeing so many ways in which the evangelical church has failed to disciple their kids, you know, having substituting youth ministry for family worship.
That's one small aspect of it.
But you're looking at now this revival that's taking place amongst new agers who are saying, well, you have a lot of the children of evangelicals who are rejecting Christ, who are deconstructing.
God is now saving a new remnant.
Just saying, no, I'm just going to call a bunch of people who just have no understanding of.
God, the gospel, or trying to be an astro, former astronomy, former astrologers, former witches, former warlocks, former this, that, and the other.
They're now saying, No, like Christ is Lord, Christ is King.
I've tried to, I've tried, I've tried everything under the sun when it comes to the new age and have been left wanting.
Having a Philippians 2 resume of every new age and occultic practice under the sun, but still have been left wanting.
And all of a sudden, what has been rejected by, you know, the CCM artists who have deconstructed and the Derek Webbs of the world.
Is now being embraced as the pearl of great price by people who I'm talking to on a regular basis who are coming out of Burning Man.
So I think that's why it's one of the most important things of the church is to know, uh, understanding the worldviews that come behind transformational festivals like these so we can know how to minister to those coming out.
Because I've seen just a small trinkling, but I think what was once just a little bit of like a dripping is now going to be a flowing faucet, and we have to be able to have formulated apologies of how to give answers for those coming out.
Amen.
All right.
Thank you guys for tuning in.
Watch the Full Series Now00:00:57
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