The Tucker Carlson Show - Tucker on Trump’s Desecration of Easter and a Warning to Christians Everywhere
Aired: 2026-04-06
Duration: 02:20:02


=== Stealing The Country (08:55) ===

[00:00:04]  Millions of American Christians voted for Donald Trump when he ran for president in the last election and millions more Christians around the world rooted for him to win.
[00:00:14]  Many still do root for Donald Trump.
[00:00:17]  Now, why is that?
[00:00:18]  Because of his personal piety?
[00:00:20]  Well, of course not.
[00:00:21]  Trump, to his credit, has never claimed to be personally pious, especially religious in any sense.
[00:00:26]  They voted for him and they still support him because he seemed like a protector.
[00:00:32]  He seemed like someone who might save them from the growing and highly aggressive Agnosticism, if not atheism, of say the technology class or the bureaucratic class, godless nations, nations of other religions that oppose us.
[00:00:48]  Donald Trump seemed like someone who would protect Christians from that, who was committed to the free exercise of religion in this country and who was also committed to ending abortion.
[00:00:58]  Whether or not he himself opposed abortion, whether he was pro life in any meaningful sense, didn't seem to matter.
[00:01:03]  He would appoint justices that opposed abortion, that thought Roe v. Wade was unconstitutional.
[00:01:09]  He did that.
[00:01:11]  And that he would basically carry the flag for their issues and that he was sympathetic to them.
[00:01:18]  And they support him on that basis.
[00:01:20]  Can they still support him?
[00:01:22]  That's the question.
[00:01:24]  And that's the question Christians should have begun to ask themselves on January 4th of this year.
[00:01:30]  And that was the day that the president announced the capture, the arrest of the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, who was no question an anti American leader and a socialist.
[00:01:41]  Not someone most Americans liked or really had cause to like.
[00:01:45]  So the problem is not necessarily that Trump was against an anti American leader.
[00:01:50]  In fact, that was a benefit in the eyes of most of his voters.
[00:01:53]  The problem was why we did it and why the president told us he did it.
[00:02:00]  And that was for the oil.
[00:02:02]  So in the days before that operation in early January, the president tweeted out, sent out on his Truth Social account, and also said in public, we're doing this.
[00:02:12]  Because we want the oil, because that oil belongs to the United States.
[00:02:16]  He never explained how exactly the United States would own the natural resources of a foreign country.
[00:02:22]  Apparently, American oil companies helped develop the oil fields in Venezuela.
[00:02:27]  Therefore, we own the oil.
[00:02:29]  That was the idea, and they stole it from us.
[00:02:32]  But there was no real effort to explain how that works, how that makes any sense at all.
[00:02:37]  Instead, you had the president of the United States say, We need the oil.
[00:02:41]  Oil is really important.
[00:02:43]  True and true.
[00:02:44]  Therefore, we're going to take it.
[00:02:47]  And therefore, apparently, we did.
[00:02:48]  In the days after that operation, the successful removal of the president of the country and the installation of his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, as president, our president, Donald Trump, held a widely publicized on camera meeting with the heads of American oil companies and talked through how we're going to split up the natural resources of Venezuela and why this is great for America.
[00:03:13]  So, Why should Christians have paused at exactly that moment and asked, can I still support this?
[00:03:18]  Is this what I voted for?
[00:03:19]  Is this what I want?
[00:03:20]  Is this acceptable?
[00:03:22]  And the reason is really simple because Trump at that moment revealed that the motive was taking something that we wanted.
[00:03:32]  And that's not acceptable for Christians.
[00:03:35]  In fact, that's not acceptable for Americans or any civilized people because taking other people's stuff by force cannot be allowed.
[00:03:42]  In fact, preventing that is the basis of our legal code.
[00:03:47]  If there's one thing that every person knows that is, in a civilized country, you can't steal without penalty.
[00:03:53]  It's not allowed.
[00:03:54]  That doesn't belong to you.
[00:03:56]  You can't shoplift.
[00:03:57]  You can't rob banks.
[00:03:59]  You can't embezzle.
[00:04:01]  You can't invade countries to steal their stuff because they're all varieties of the same theme, which is theft.
[00:04:07]  And theft is wrong.
[00:04:08]  It's wrong under the American legal code, but it's also wrong under the Christian legal code.
[00:04:14]  Theft is wrong.
[00:04:15]  Spelled out really clearly.
[00:04:17]  It's also intuitive.
[00:04:18]  And here was the president saying, we're just stealing this because we can.
[00:04:25]  Well, as a practical matter, that's quite a thing to say out loud, given that we know from history that the things you do will be done unto you.
[00:04:35]  Once you set a standard, you will have to live by that standard.
[00:04:38]  Write a law, you'll be judged by that law.
[00:04:41]  So, if the new law is, I can take it because I want it and I have more power than you, at some point we can rest assured the tables will be turned and the things that we want and cherish and have earned and that we own will be taken from us by force at the moment when some other power has more force than we do.
[00:05:03]  It's really simple, sometimes called the law of the jungle.
[00:05:06]  And it may be the law of nature, but people don't want to live under that law because it is a brutal and unforgiving law.
[00:05:13]  So, they create higher laws.
[00:05:15]  Or they appeal to the highest law of all, which is God's law, which prohibits that.
[00:05:20]  So, this was a profound moment in American history, probably in the history of the modern world, where the most powerful nation said, if we want it, we'll take it.
[00:05:31]  No one's ever said that before.
[00:05:32]  Now, they've done it under the guise of ideology.
[00:05:36]  They've made up stories to hide the fact they're doing it.
[00:05:39]  But to say you're doing it implicates everybody else in the crime.
[00:05:44]  You can't say you didn't know.
[00:05:46]  Your president just told you on television, we took out their president because we want his oil.
[00:05:51]  And at that point, you're an accessory to the crime, whether you want to be or not.
[00:05:57]  And it's at that point that a lot of people should have spoken up and said, I'm out.
[00:06:02]  Not that I hate Trump or don't like his entire program, lots of things about it I love.
[00:06:06]  I'm grateful.
[00:06:06]  I'd maybe vote for him again, but I can't support theft because it's immoral.
[00:06:13]  But they didn't.
[00:06:15]  Maybe some did, but certainly the leaders did.
[00:06:18]  Of the American Christian churches, by and large, said absolutely nothing.
[00:06:23]  And maybe because they said nothing, this accelerated.
[00:06:29]  These are the same people who sort of didn't notice somehow that on inauguration day, the president did not take his oath of office with his hand on the Bible.
[00:06:37]  His wife stood next to him holding it.
[00:06:40]  I was about 15 feet away and saw it, but he did not put his hand on the Bible.
[00:06:46]  And that should have been maybe a clue.
[00:06:50]  That we need to pause and think about what is this?
[00:06:53]  Why wouldn't you put your hand on the Bible?
[00:06:55]  If you don't believe in the Bible, you think it's just a book, there's no cost to you to putting your hand on it, just kind of following the protocol, going along with the tradition.
[00:07:04]  All presidents do it.
[00:07:05]  Why aren't you doing it?
[00:07:07]  And you're not doing it intentionally.
[00:07:10]  You're choosing not to put your hand on the Bible when you take that oath.
[00:07:13]  That suggests not that you don't believe it's real because if you didn't believe it was real, why would you care?
[00:07:21]  You'd put on the costume and take it off.
[00:07:22]  Doesn't matter.
[00:07:24]  That suggests you know it is real and you're rejecting it intentionally.
[00:07:29]  You know what you're doing and you're doing it anyway, but nobody asked questions about that either.
[00:07:37]  Seem kind of inappropriate.
[00:07:39]  Given the celebration that in progress, to ask, why wouldn't you put your hand on the Bible when you take the oath of office to lead our nation?
[00:07:45]  But pretty much nobody did.
[00:07:47]  I didn't.
[00:07:48]  I'll admit that.
[00:07:49]  I saw it and didn't say one word.
[00:07:52]  Bothered me ever since.
[00:07:55]  But right around January 4th, it became clear that maybe he didn't put his hand on the Bible because he affirmatively rejects what's inside that book.
[00:08:05]  And what's inside that book are limits on human behavior.
[00:08:09]  Because if there's one theme that spans all 66 books in the Christian Bible, it's that you are not God.
[00:08:16]  And you cannot assume his powers.
[00:08:19]  Because you don't have them.
[00:08:21]  You may convince yourself you have them.
[00:08:22]  You may want them.
[00:08:23]  You may have been promised them.
[00:08:25]  But in the end, they're not yours.
[00:08:28]  And you'll never have them.
[00:08:29]  And you can only destroy yourself and the people around you by pretending that you do.
[00:08:32]  That is the consistent message that spans from Genesis to Revelation.
[00:08:37]  And people who ignore that law are punished.
[00:08:40]  Just like people who ignore gravity or freezing temperatures are punished because these are laws that were not created by people.
[00:08:47]  They supersede people.
[00:08:51]  But on January 4th, when the President of the United States told us he was stealing, that our country was stealing something that didn't belong to us, people should have piped up and said something, but they didn't.

=== Mocking God's Laws (09:24) ===

[00:09:00]  And that got us all the way to yesterday, which was Easter Sunday.
[00:09:07]  Easter Sunday is not just a holy day on the Christian calendar, it is the center of the Christian calendar, it is the holiest day.
[00:09:14]  In Christian life, because the day that Christians remember the whole point of their religion, which is not that Jesus was killed, but that he rose from the dead, that he beat death, unique in history.
[00:09:25]  And this is the day that Christians celebrate his resurrection.
[00:09:28]  And in this country, that celebration's been watered down effectively to candy and Easter bunnies.
[00:09:32]  But globally and certainly historically, Easter is the focus.
[00:09:36]  It's preceded by Holy Week and Lent, 40 days of self denial and prayer, all leading up to yesterday.
[00:09:45]  Easter morning.
[00:09:47]  And for faithful Christians, it is still the biggest day of the year.
[00:09:51]  And it's a day of joy.
[00:09:54]  The thing every person fears most is death.
[00:09:56]  We're born fearing it because we're born knowing it's coming.
[00:10:00]  And Christianity, unique among religions, promises victory over it.
[00:10:06]  And Jesus' resurrection is proof that God can beat death because only God creates life.
[00:10:12]  And so the morning of Easter is a uniquely joyful and peaceful moment.
[00:10:17]  And yet that peace yesterday was shattered.
[00:10:19]  That's not an overstatement.
[00:10:20]  It was shattered for many observing Christians by a statement that the president of the United States put out at 8.03 a.m. Eastern Time on Easter morning that said this, and we're going to read it in its entirety, not in outrage or self righteousness, but honestly in horror.
[00:10:37]  Quote Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day, all wrapped up in one in Iran.
[00:10:43]  There will be nothing like it.
[00:10:46]  Three exclamation points.
[00:10:47]  Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell.
[00:10:51]  Just watch.
[00:10:52]  All caps.
[00:10:53]  Praise be to Allah, President Donald J. Trump.
[00:11:01]  Now, a lot of people reading that imagined, of course, this can't be real.
[00:11:06]  Did the president of the United States really just write that?
[00:11:09]  And it is real.
[00:11:11]  It is maybe the most real thing this president has ever done.
[00:11:15]  And also the most revealing.
[00:11:17]  On every level, it is vile.
[00:11:22]  On every level, it begins with a promise to use the US military, our military, to destroy civilian infrastructure.
[00:11:34]  In another country, which is to say, to commit a war crime, a moral crime against the people of the country, whose welfare, by the way, was one of the reasons we supposedly went into this war in the first place.
[00:11:44]  They're being killed by their government.
[00:11:46]  We have to rescue them.
[00:11:49]  And now here's our president, not even a month and a half into the conflict, which we are not winning, by the way, because the Straits of Hormuz are not open.
[00:11:57]  There's one way to keep track that's the measurement.
[00:12:01]  Saying that we're going to use our military to kill the civilians of this country who didn't choose the war.
[00:12:06]  They get nothing to do with it, they're like civilians everywhere.
[00:12:09]  Blow up their bridges?
[00:12:12]  Bridges on military bases?
[00:12:13]  No, no, no, just bridges.
[00:12:15]  Bridges that people cross every day to go to school and work and to worship and yes, church, because there are over a million Christians in Iran.
[00:12:23]  This is their Easter too.
[00:12:25]  And power plants.
[00:12:27]  Not the power plants attached to missile factories, okay, but civilian power plants in a country of almost 100 million people.
[00:12:35]  What happens when a modern country and a country that has a nuclear program is a modern country?
[00:12:41]  Sorry.
[00:12:42]  Iran is a modern country.
[00:12:43]  What happens when it loses power?
[00:12:45]  Well, people die.
[00:12:47]  Babies connected to incubators die.
[00:12:49]  People in hospitals die.
[00:12:52]  And those are the first level effects.
[00:12:55]  And then people begin to starve.
[00:12:57]  And then you have refugee crises.
[00:12:59]  People leave the cities looking for food.
[00:13:00]  And yes, they move into other countries.
[00:13:02]  In the region, in Europe, in the United States, you cause chaos and death, mass suffering and death when you do that.
[00:13:11]  And we have done that.
[00:13:12]  We have intentionally bombed civilian infrastructure in Iran.
[00:13:17]  It's totally unacceptable.
[00:13:20]  Not under the phony laws of some international body, but under moral law, God's law, killing non combatants, people who did nothing wrong, who didn't choose this war, who were just people created by God.
[00:13:33]  That is immoral.
[00:13:34]  That will never be moral.
[00:13:36]  That can never be justified.
[00:13:37]  That is always wrong.
[00:13:40]  It can be expedient.
[00:13:43]  We need to do this.
[00:13:44]  It doesn't mean it's right.
[00:13:46]  It's the most wrong thing.
[00:13:48]  And we should always remember that what we do will be done to us.
[00:13:53]  Live by the destruction of civilian infrastructure, live by the killing of children, the bombing of elementary schools and colleges.
[00:14:02]  And you will die and your children will die by those same things.
[00:14:07]  That's just a fact.
[00:14:08]  That's never not been true.
[00:14:10]  We don't want it to be true.
[00:14:11]  It's the last thing we want to be true, but it is nonetheless true.
[00:14:16]  And everyone knows that on an animal level.
[00:14:18]  You can feel that that's true.
[00:14:19]  Ooh, shouldn't do that.
[00:14:22]  You'll be punished for it in this life or the next, or maybe both.
[00:14:27]  For the president to say that and not bother to tell us, oh, it was an accident we did this?
[00:14:32]  Well, one, it makes you reassess the bombing of the girls' school attached to the IRGC naval base, where the children of Iranian military officers were incinerated in a bombing, not one, but two, a double tap.
[00:14:46]  Every person has assumed that was a mistake.
[00:14:49]  No American could ever believe the US government would do that on purpose.
[00:14:53]  I still don't believe it.
[00:14:55]  But after this, you have to kind of wonder how did that happen?
[00:14:59]  Was it bad targeting coordinates given to us, we hope, by Israel, another country?
[00:15:06]  Maybe it wasn't.
[00:15:08]  Who knows at this point?
[00:15:11]  For the president to call for that, it's worth stopping and saying, no, this is not acceptable.
[00:15:17]  Under any circumstances, you haven't justified it, you couldn't justify it, and it can't be done in our name.
[00:15:23]  And the point, of course, is to get the Iranians to open the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:15:28]  Well, no sane person thinks that's going to work.
[00:15:32]  At which point, you have to ask, why would we do it anyway?
[00:15:36]  Well, there are a bunch of possible reasons, but the darkest of all is for the sake of doing it, for the sake of killing, for the sake of exercising the most obvious form of power, which is extinguishing life.
[00:15:48]  That's why we're doing it.
[00:15:50]  The thrill is in the killing.
[00:15:52]  The power is in the killing.
[00:15:53]  The exertion of force is the point.
[00:15:57]  You don't want to think that.
[00:15:59]  But after a message like this, what could possibly be the reason?
[00:16:04]  There's nobody who thinks that if we do this, and we pray we don't for our sake as well as the sake of non combatant innocent Iranians, nobody thinks this is going to work.
[00:16:18]  But then the tweet continues.
[00:16:20]  Pardon me, the ironically named truth continues.
[00:16:26]  There will be nothing like it.
[00:16:28]  Open the effing straight.
[00:16:30]  How dare you speak that way on Easter morning to the country?
[00:16:33]  Who do you think you are?
[00:16:35]  You're tweeting out the F word on Easter morning?
[00:16:41]  You'll be living in hell as if hell is a place, hell is a condition.
[00:16:48]  And this is an example of that condition.
[00:16:51]  Just watch.
[00:16:52]  Praise be to Allah.
[00:16:57]  So obviously, you're mocking the religion of Iran.
[00:17:02]  Okay.
[00:17:03]  If you seek a religious war, that's a good idea.
[00:17:08]  But by the way, no decent person mocks other people's.
[00:17:13]  Religions.
[00:17:13]  You may have a problem with the theology.
[00:17:15]  Presumably, you do if it's not your religion, and you can explain what that is.
[00:17:19]  But to mock other people's faith is to mock the idea of faith itself.
[00:17:24]  And we should never mock that because at its core is the acknowledgement that we are not in charge of the universe.
[00:17:30]  We did not build it.
[00:17:31]  We won't be here at the end of it.
[00:17:33]  We can destroy life.
[00:17:34]  We cannot create it because we are not God.
[00:17:36]  The message of all faith at the biggest picture level is the message in our Bible, which is you are not God.
[00:17:44]  And only if you think you are do you talk this way.
[00:17:48]  But it's not just mockery of Islam.
[00:17:52]  And no president should mock Islam.
[00:17:53]  That's not your job.
[00:17:55]  This is not a theocracy.
[00:17:56]  We don't go to war with other theocracies to find out which theocracy is more effective.
[00:18:00]  We are not a theocracy.
[00:18:02]  And God willing, we never will be because theocracies corrupt the religion.
[00:18:09]  No, this is a mockery, not just of Islam, it's a mockery of Christianity.
[00:18:14]  To send out a tweet with the F word on Easter morning promising the murder of civilians and then saying, praise be to.
[00:18:20]  Allah, without explaining any of it, you are mocking me and every other Christian because we're Christians.

=== Exhausted Conventional Power (03:46) ===

[00:18:25]  Oh, I get it.
[00:18:29]  We can't support that.
[00:18:30]  Under no circumstances can we support that.
[00:18:32]  It doesn't mean you have to hate Trump or take the opposite position on every issue from Trump.
[00:18:38]  You shouldn't.
[00:18:39]  A lot of his positions are the right positions, but you cannot support that.
[00:18:44]  That is evil.
[00:18:45]  That is an intentional desecration of beauty and truth, which is the definition of evil.
[00:18:52]  And you have to ask, where does evil lead?
[00:18:55]  If the core point of evil is to destroy, which it is, God creates, Satan destroys.
[00:19:02]  It's dualism.
[00:19:03]  When you see something of beauty being created, when you hear the truth being spoken, you are witnessing a manifestation of God's power.
[00:19:11]  And when you see the opposite, you're witnessing the opposite.
[00:19:16]  So where does this lead?
[00:19:17]  Well, on a practical level and a spiritual level, they converge in the same place, which is the use of weapons of mass destruction.
[00:19:25]  So when a Practical level, on a strategic level, if you're at the Pentagon gaming this out, like, how does this work?
[00:19:34]  The President of the United States keeps laying down markers.
[00:19:37]  You can't go past next Tuesday at 2 p.m. or whatever.
[00:19:42]  You must open the straight, or else you'll be living in hell as if we're not there already.
[00:19:48]  And at a certain point, what we're doing is revealing that we've exhausted conventional power.
[00:19:55]  If there's some tricky way to open the Strait of Hormuz by air, probably would have done it by now because we are on a path to plunge the world into global depression and famine.
[00:20:07]  And that's not hair on fire panic inism.
[00:20:11]  That's math.
[00:20:13]  30% of the world's fertilizer, 20% of its energy.
[00:20:16]  Yeah, that's a global depression and famine.
[00:20:19]  What happens to Africa?
[00:20:21]  A billion and a half sub Saharan Africans without enough fertilizer?
[00:20:24]  Well, a lot of them will be living in the United States.
[00:20:27]  That's just going to happen.
[00:20:29]  It's right across the Atlantic Ocean.
[00:20:30]  Check a map.
[00:20:33]  So, getting the strait open is the essence of the mission.
[00:20:37]  It is the strategic goal.
[00:20:39]  By the way, not to be bitter, it was open on February 27th and had been for, you know, since there were pirates roaming the strait for modern history to have been open.
[00:20:50]  Now it's closed because of this war.
[00:20:51]  Okay, so there's that.
[00:20:53]  But leave that aside.
[00:20:54]  Okay, that was then.
[00:20:55]  How do we get it open?
[00:20:58]  Conventional airstrikes will not open the strait for very obvious reasons.
[00:21:02]  You can close it with mines.
[00:21:05]  So if you reach the end of your conventional power, where does that leave you?
[00:21:11]  Oh, with non conventional power.
[00:21:13]  What's that a euphemism for?
[00:21:14]  Nuclear weapons.
[00:21:16]  And the effects of that hardly need to be explained.
[00:21:19]  Well, they can't be fully known because modern nuclear weapons have never been used.
[00:21:25]  But you can just draw obvious conclusions.
[00:21:30]  Like life in Iran, not possible.
[00:21:34]  So you wipe out a country of 92 million people.
[00:21:37]  What about directly across the Persian Gulf?
[00:21:42]  What about the seven other countries, all of them allies of the United States, the biggest oil producing countries in the world?
[00:21:47]  Could you live there?
[00:21:48]  What about the 100 odd million people who live in those countries?
[00:21:52]  Maybe not possible for them either.
[00:21:54]  Would a nuclear strike be followed by peace?
[00:21:56]  Probably not.
[00:21:58]  The US isn't the only country in the world with nuclear weapons.
[00:22:02]  You could have a global nuclear war.
[00:22:04]  That's why we haven't used nuclear weapons in 80 years.
[00:22:07]  No one has.
[00:22:09]  Because you don't know where it goes from there.
[00:22:11]  This is insane.

=== Nuclear War Arguments (15:51) ===

[00:22:12]  Okay.
[00:22:12]  This is insane.
[00:22:16]  It's hard to believe you even need to say this out loud.
[00:22:18]  Oh, but you do.
[00:22:21]  Because all things being equal, that's where we're heading.
[00:22:25]  And how do we know that?
[00:22:27]  Well, there are a million signs.
[00:22:29]  But the most obvious is the dumbest neocons in Trump's orbit are saying it out loud.
[00:22:36]  Now, in some cases, you don't even want to mention their names because these are not decision makers.
[00:22:41]  These people are very much like Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:22:43]  They're not actually the evil mastermind.
[00:22:45]  Jeffrey Epstein is kind of an idiot.
[00:22:47]  He's an employee, obviously, he's a communications hub.
[00:22:50]  He's to get the message out to your people.
[00:22:55]  And it's the same with America's most prominent neocons.
[00:22:58]  They're not making policy, they don't understand anything.
[00:23:02]  They don't have huge audiences.
[00:23:04]  They have no organic power.
[00:23:06]  They're messengers and flak takers.
[00:23:10]  They're the ones who get the abuse for the policies of others.
[00:23:12]  Put some lunatic on TV.
[00:23:14]  Everyone can hate him.
[00:23:16]  But is he coming up with the plan?
[00:23:18]  No, of course not.
[00:23:18]  He's got a weekend show on Fox.
[00:23:21]  But it's useful to watch what he says.
[00:23:24]  In fact, the president of the United States himself has said this watch Mark Levin on Saturday night.
[00:23:30]  You think Trump is dumb?
[00:23:32]  You think he's doing this to juice Mark Levin's ratings?
[00:23:35]  No.
[00:23:35]  It's not possible to increase the ratings of someone nobody wants to watch.
[00:23:40]  The point is to send a message.
[00:23:43]  That's not a conspiracy theory.
[00:23:44]  It's true.
[00:23:46]  Levin show written probably not by Levin, which has almost no viewers has been a place where the future is revealed in its broadest outline.
[00:23:58]  It's a place to test ideas.
[00:24:02]  It's a place to announce obliquely what's going to happen.
[00:24:07]  And his most recent show should get you sitting bolt upright in your chair.
[00:24:12]  And yes, this ran this weekend, Easter weekend, as if the defiling of beauty couldn't be more obvious.
[00:24:20]  Easter week, could you pick another weekend to give the finger to Christianity other than Easter weekend?
[00:24:25]  Apparently not.
[00:24:26]  In fact, of course you couldn't.
[00:24:27]  That's the point.
[00:24:28]  Do it on Easter.
[00:24:29]  Anyone who will accept this will accept any humiliation.
[00:24:34]  In any case, here's what Mark Levin said on his Easter weekend show about what we ought to do next in Iran.
[00:24:41]  Watch.
[00:24:42]  And the casualty numbers, as horrible as any casualty is, need some context.
[00:24:48]  Let's look at World War II.
[00:24:50]  The Battle of the Bulge, 80,000 to 90,000 plus casualties, deaths and injuries and so forth.
[00:24:57]  Nearly 10% of all the casualties in World War II happened at the Battle of the Bulge near the end of the war.
[00:25:03]  The Battle of Okinawa, 50,000 plus casualties, over 12,000, nearly 13,000 killed on that island, which is what convinced Truman that we would lose a million men.
[00:25:15]  If we didn't drop the atomic bombs that we did.
[00:25:18]  So, this is a war or a peace mission to stop nuclear weapons that can blow away millions of Americans.
[00:25:29]  Every bit as important as World War II.
[00:25:31]  This is a crucially important military operation war, call it what you want, peace mission.
[00:25:37]  And we ought to be celebrating the success of our military, unifying around our military and our commander in chief, and urging them.
[00:25:49]  To complete the task so our country is safe from nuclear weapons by insane suicidal primitives from the seventh century.
[00:26:00]  Did you catch that?
[00:26:00]  Did you make it through the whole clip?
[00:26:02]  It's not easy.
[00:26:02]  It's not easy, but embedded in there, and that's why we prefer a transcript over the actual audio.
[00:26:08]  Embedded in there is something you need to know.
[00:26:09]  It's an argument that is being test driven.
[00:26:12]  And since no one, to our knowledge, has pushed back against it, may be in full operation now.
[00:26:17]  It's an argument for nuclear weapons.
[00:26:20]  Weapons against Iran.
[00:26:21]  And here's to restate, in case you couldn't make it through the accent, here's what he said.
[00:26:25]  Nearly 10% of all casualties in the Second World War happened at the Battle of the Bulge, which, of course, at the end of the war.
[00:26:30]  The Battle of Okinawa, 50,000 casualties, nearly 13,000 killed on that island, which is what convinced Truman, Harry Truman, the then president in 1945, we'd lose a million men if we didn't drop the atomic bombs that we did.
[00:26:45]  Did you hear that?
[00:26:46]  That's Mark Levin's counsel to our sitting president, Donald Trump, right now.
[00:26:51]  You are looking at a choice.
[00:26:53]  Between the catastrophic loss of your troops in a ground war or the use of nuclear weapons, which in a sense, if you think about it, just think about it for a second is actually an act of peace.
[00:27:09]  It's an act of peace.
[00:27:11]  The most humane thing you could do is to end this now with nuclear weapons.
[00:27:15]  That's the case Mark Levin is making to the president who just last week recommended that all Americans watch Mark Levin's show.
[00:27:23]  Okay.
[00:27:24]  This is not like crazy dot connecting here.
[00:27:28]  This is one to one.
[00:27:30]  This is really obvious where we're moving.
[00:27:34]  And again, we're moving toward the use of weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction, possibly nuclear weapons.
[00:27:43]  But non conventional weapons, not bombs dropped from the air, missiles launched from launchers, but the use of weapons that have never been used in war ever.
[00:27:54]  And the argument is the same argument that you heard in 1945, or didn't hear, by the way, if you're an American civilian, no one ever cuts you in on this.
[00:28:01]  Thank heaven for Mark Levin saying it out loud so the rest of us could at least follow along and know what we're in for and implicated in.
[00:28:08]  But the argument that it's actually much more humane to kill tens, hundreds of thousands, millions of civilians than it is to like, Fight it out with the Marine Corps on the rocky shores of mainland Iran.
[00:28:22]  That's the argument.
[00:28:24]  But it's not just the argument that one guy in cable news is making.
[00:28:28]  It is the logic of escalation in this war because, in some sense, Mark Levin is right.
[00:28:35]  We are not going to open the straits with the United States Marine Corps, the 82nd Airborne, or the tier one operators that everyone in cable news seems to know so much about.
[00:28:44]  The tier one operators, who are tier one?
[00:28:47]  Just guys like some of the best guys actually in America could be killed in this.
[00:28:51]  That's a better way to put it.
[00:28:52]  It's a more real way to put it.
[00:28:55]  They are not going to open the straight.
[00:28:57]  And so, unless somebody puts the brakes on right away, we're going to wind up in a place that we can't even imagine.
[00:29:05]  Not just Iran, us and the rest of the world.
[00:29:07]  And so, that means because this is obvious to anyone who's paying any attention that if you work in the White House or in the US military, now it's time to say no, absolutely not, and say it directly to the president no.
[00:29:17]  In case you're thinking about using some weapon of mass destruction against the population of Iran, in whose name we liberated Iran, we killed their religious leader for their benefit.
[00:29:26]  Do you remember that?
[00:29:27]  This was last month.
[00:29:30]  Those people who are in direct contact with the president need to say, no, I'll resign.
[00:29:38]  I'll do whatever I can do legally to stop this because this is insane.
[00:29:42]  And if given the order, I'm not carrying it out.
[00:29:44]  Figure out the codes on the football yourself.
[00:29:47]  Because everything hangs in the balance right now.
[00:29:49]  This is not hysteria.
[00:29:50]  This is 100% real.
[00:29:53]  And yet, the people in this country, by and large, are sleepwalking along.
[00:29:58]  No, the future will be pretty much like today, maybe a little different.
[00:30:03]  That's not the lesson of history.
[00:30:04]  Things change fast and forever.
[00:30:07]  There are pivot points where nothing is the same.
[00:30:09]  Sometimes it's better, but mostly it's not.
[00:30:11]  And this is one of those cases where it might not be at all better.
[00:30:17]  But there's something else to think about, something maybe even more important than whether we have a nuclear war.
[00:30:22]  What could be more important than that?
[00:30:23]  Well, your soul, the way we worship God, whether we acknowledge God or not, that's more important ultimately than anything else.
[00:30:35]  And you have to think through could there be a spiritual component to what we're watching?
[00:30:40]  Is it just a conventional escalation ladder in a badly thought out war with ill defined goals, and we just wind up in this really tough?
[00:30:50]  Place where we face either humiliation on the one side or a nuclear launch on the other.
[00:30:57]  That's, yeah, that's part of what it is.
[00:30:58]  But could it be something bigger than that?
[00:31:01]  Is it possible that what you're watching is a very stealthy, yet incredibly effective attack on what, from a Christian perspective, is the true faith, belief in Jesus?
[00:31:15]  Is that what really is under attack here?
[00:31:16]  Is that what, maybe that's what's been under attack for a long time?
[00:31:21]  Maybe our whole lifetime.
[00:31:23]  Maybe almost everything we see is an attack on that faith.
[00:31:29]  The one faith that is always attacked, always and everywhere for 2,000 years.
[00:31:34]  It's one, many faiths have been attacked.
[00:31:36]  Many religious people of different religions have been killed over the past 2,000 years.
[00:31:41]  But there's been only one sustained effort to exterminate a faith, and that's the Christian faith.
[00:31:49]  Could that be part of it?
[00:31:52]  And is it possible that the president sees this not just in geostrategic terms and military terms and economic terms?
[00:31:59]  Got to open the straight.
[00:32:00]  Okay.
[00:32:01]  Is it possible the president sees this in bigger terms?
[00:32:06]  Sees this as the fulfillment of something or the elevation to some higher office beyond President of the United States?
[00:32:14]  That's entirely possible.
[00:32:16]  And that's not an attack, but it's also not a guess because at every turn, Since the inauguration last January, there have been religious leaders on the scene telling us, telling us out loud.
[00:32:29]  Most of us ignored it because we're just so secular.
[00:32:31]  We just sort of ignore it.
[00:32:33]  Got some sleazy Southern Baptist preacher who says whatever for money.
[00:32:36]  Okay.
[00:32:36]  Got it.
[00:32:38]  We've ignored that this could actually be real.
[00:32:40]  There's something going on here.
[00:32:45]  And we shouldn't ignore that.
[00:32:46]  We should always remember that just because we're a secular nation, have been overwhelmingly secular, maybe not coincidentally since we dropped those atom bombs 80 years ago, doesn't mean that we live in a world where everyone else is secular.
[00:33:02]  And it definitely doesn't mean that the spiritual realm has been eliminated, that is not real, that the only things that matter are the things that we can see and hear and feel and taste and measure.
[00:33:14]  Talk about fake.
[00:33:16]  Talk about a silly religion.
[00:33:18]  That's the silly religion.
[00:33:20]  In real life, in the life that every person lives, no matter what your religion or lack of it, there is a daily recurring experience of the transcendent things you cannot explain or see or touch or feel or taste or measure.
[00:33:34]  That is every bit as real.
[00:33:35]  In fact, it may be determinative.
[00:33:36]  Maybe the most important things in your life are the things you don't fully understand.
[00:33:42]  All of us know that.
[00:33:44]  And so when people start making reference to mystical religious principles that we don't understand, it doesn't mean.
[00:33:51]  That it's fake, they may be getting it wrong, but it doesn't mean there's not something real at the center of this.
[00:33:57]  Of course, there is.
[00:34:00]  And only a civilization as bereft of spiritual language as ours wouldn't pick up on that immediately.
[00:34:05]  What do you mean, praise be to Allah?
[00:34:09]  What does that mean?
[00:34:10]  Why are you standing this out on Easter morning?
[00:34:12]  I mean, obviously, it's designed to offend and degrade and defile.
[00:34:16]  Got it.
[00:34:17]  But is there something else going on here?
[00:34:21]  One of the keys to this is the behavior of a woman called Paula White.
[00:34:25]  In a moment, we're going to speak to a man who studied her, who went to her church yesterday, called Nathan Abfell.
[00:34:31]  Fascinating conversation with him, which we just finished, where he tries to understand who are these people encouraging the president of the United States to see himself as a millennialist figure, as part of the eschatology of like part of the end time story.
[00:34:47]  Who are these people who are encouraging the rebuilding of the third temple in Jerusalem, whatever that is?
[00:34:51]  Like, what is this?
[00:34:53]  Is this Christianity?
[00:34:54]  Is it something else?
[00:34:56]  And he knows a lot about it, and it's a fascinating conversation that I hope that you will watch.
[00:35:01]  But at the center of this is the most unlikely person of all, a ludicrous figure, someone who's so absurd on one level that it's impossible to take this person seriously.
[00:35:08]  That would be Paula White, the president's spiritual advisor.
[00:35:13]  And because she's so self evidently not worth taking seriously, most people don't, and they just tune it right out.
[00:35:18]  Who cares what she says?
[00:35:19]  What does F do with the economy?
[00:35:21]  Oil prices, GDP, reopening the straight?
[00:35:25]  I don't know.
[00:35:26]  Maybe you should listen a little more carefully.
[00:35:28]  So, Here's one example.
[00:35:31]  This is something that Paula White said about the president right before this recent escalation during Holy Week at the White House, a gathering to which many American Protestant leaders, big ones, Franklin Graham included, were invited.
[00:35:47]  And they gave a blessing to Donald Trump as he accelerated this war against the civilian population of Iran.
[00:35:57]  Here's what she said about Donald Trump.
[00:35:59]  Watch this.
[00:36:00]  Jesus taught us so many lessons through his death, burial, and resurrection.
[00:36:05]  He showed us great leadership, great transformation requires great sacrifice.
[00:36:13]  And, Mr. President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price.
[00:36:18]  It almost cost you your life.
[00:36:22]  You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused.
[00:36:29]  It's a familiar pattern.
[00:36:31]  That our Lord and Savior showed us.
[00:36:34]  But it didn't end there for him, and it didn't end there for you.
[00:36:38]  It's hard to believe that's real.
[00:36:40]  That is so vile.
[00:36:41]  It's such a sacrilege.
[00:36:44]  Standing in front of American flags in the White House with some kind of beta evangelical leader nodding along as you liken the President of the United States to Jesus, the Christian Messiah, God in human form.
[00:37:00]  How could you say something like that?
[00:37:02]  How could the rest of us sit by and not protest when she said something like that?
[00:37:05]  How could any Christian watch that and not feel revulsion?
[00:37:12]  Well, because people didn't pay attention or they didn't think about it.
[00:37:15]  Oh, it's just the praise that Trump demands.
[00:37:17]  Fine.
[00:37:19]  Not the first vain president, not the first vain leader, that's for certain.
[00:37:23]  But to compare him or any president to Jesus has got to be a deal killer.
[00:37:33]  That is the end.
[00:37:34]  You cannot allow that in good faith.
[00:37:36]  If you're a Christian, you have to say no to that.
[00:37:39]  Doesn't matter whether you voted for Trump, campaigned for Trump across many states, defended him for 10 years, still like him.
[00:37:46]  Doesn't matter.
[00:37:47]  You cannot compare a president, a secular president of the United States, or anybody, any human being, to Jesus.
[00:37:56]  Why?
[00:37:57]  Well, because again, it is sacrilege prima facie.

=== Comparing Presidents To Jesus (04:20) ===

[00:38:03]  But because it distorts who Jesus is, it is a lie about Jesus.
[00:38:11]  Did Jesus command the disciples to go out and kill people?
[00:38:15]  Where in the New Testament is that?
[00:38:17]  Well, most people probably don't even know because they don't read it because their understanding of Christianity comes filtered through people like Paula White and Franklin Graham and many others of varying levels of good faith or maybe entirely good faith, but they don't read it themselves.
[00:38:32]  Kind of weird.
[00:38:33]  If you think about it, it's a great story.
[00:38:35]  You don't have to believe in it to enjoy it, to learn from it, to love it actually.
[00:38:40]  And if you're a believer, you need to read it and it's not hard to read it.
[00:38:43]  By the way, it's on Amazon.com.
[00:38:46]  Try this New Living Translation, NLT.
[00:38:49]  Just probably the most modern colloquial English translation of the Bible.
[00:38:53]  Easiest to read.
[00:38:56]  It's great.
[00:38:57]  It's $4.30 on Amazon delivered to your house.
[00:39:00]  NLT.
[00:39:01]  Just read it.
[00:39:02]  Just read the four Gospels.
[00:39:03]  You don't have to believe it.
[00:39:05]  What do you think of that?
[00:39:06]  What's the picture that emerges?
[00:39:07]  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
[00:39:08]  Just four stories about Jesus from slightly different perspectives.
[00:39:14]  Is the man that you read about?
[00:39:17]  The Messiah, you read about, recognizable as you listen to these people talk about him?
[00:39:24]  Does he send his disciples out to kill?
[00:39:26]  Well, I'll answer the question having just read him.
[00:39:29]  No, he sends them out to be killed.
[00:39:33]  He says to them, Go out, tell the truth.
[00:39:37]  The world will hate you for it.
[00:39:38]  Take no weapon, take no food, take no money, take no talking points.
[00:39:42]  I'm not even going to tell you what to say.
[00:39:43]  Just tell the truth.
[00:39:45]  God will speak through you.
[00:39:46]  Totally unprepared.
[00:39:47]  Doesn't give them a map.
[00:39:50]  Doesn't give them a plan of any kind, and it gives them no defense.
[00:39:55]  And he says point blank again and again, you could be killed for this, probably will be.
[00:39:59]  In fact, they all were.
[00:40:01]  So far as we know, they were all killed.
[00:40:04]  That's the Christian message.
[00:40:05]  Now you may think that's absurd.
[00:40:08]  Many have.
[00:40:09]  Nietzsche was revulsed by it.
[00:40:11]  Get it?
[00:40:13]  But that is what Jesus said.
[00:40:15]  He did not say bomb the bridges and the hospitals and the power plants to what?
[00:40:20]  Bring my kingdom?
[00:40:23]  No.
[00:40:24]  He said just the opposite.
[00:40:28]  If you want to change the world, you cannot kill.
[00:40:31]  It doesn't work anyway.
[00:40:32]  It never works.
[00:40:33]  You have to be willing to be killed.
[00:40:37]  You have to lay down your life.
[00:40:40]  And that is the message.
[00:40:41]  You think God couldn't come and throw the Romans out of Jerusalem?
[00:40:44]  Oh yeah.
[00:40:45]  Of course.
[00:40:46]  He chose the opposite.
[00:40:48]  He chose to submit to them.
[00:40:52]  Why?
[00:40:53]  Because in that submission is victory over death.
[00:40:57]  That's the true victory.
[00:40:58]  That's the whole story right there.
[00:41:02]  And anyone who perverts that is doing a grave crime against the faith itself.
[00:41:08]  And that actually matters.
[00:41:10]  You can argue about all kinds of points of doctrine and transubstantiation, and there are a million things you can argue about.
[00:41:16]  And Christians have argued about them for 2,000 years.
[00:41:21]  But you can't argue that Jesus sends his people, God's people, his disciples out to kill.
[00:41:27]  He sends them to do the opposite thing, to die.
[00:41:30]  And they do.
[00:41:31]  And the world is transformed because they did.
[00:41:35]  That's the message.
[00:41:38]  And anyone preaching the opposite gospel of any Christian denomination is saying something vile and dangerous and should be called out for saying it because the message is not of conquering, it's of submission.
[00:41:58]  Put your hand on the Bible when you take that oath because, in doing that, you acknowledge I am submitting to a law greater than myself.
[00:42:07]  My own desire, my own whims, my will is not the final word.
[00:42:16]  There is a limit to what you can do.
[00:42:19]  And that limit is set not by you or any other person, but by God.

=== Submitting To God's Will (12:56) ===

[00:42:24]  That's what that means.
[00:42:26]  Submit.
[00:42:26]  There is time to fix this.
[00:42:28]  There is time to prevent whatever is coming next, whether it's the murder of civilians and children by air, or whether it's something even worse than that.
[00:42:40]  There is time to fix it.
[00:42:42]  All is not lost.
[00:42:44]  But the first step, and this is also the first step toward faith, is submission.
[00:42:51]  There are things I want to do that I will intentionally not do.
[00:42:55]  I will submit to a law higher than my own desire.
[00:42:59]  That's the first step towards civilization.
[00:43:03]  And it is the first and absolutely mandatory step toward averting the true disaster that is coming.
[00:43:13]  And we pray that the president will take that step and that those around him will take that step because everything hangs in the balance.
[00:43:21]  And with that, here's our conversation with Nathan Apfel.
[00:43:25]  So, thank you for doing this.
[00:43:27]  Yeah, thanks for having me.
[00:43:28]  I think you will unravel many mysteries.
[00:43:29]  I'd never heard of Paula White.
[00:43:32]  I ran into Paula White for the first time, heard her name for the first time, and I ran into her in person right outside the Oval Office last winter, right after the inauguration.
[00:43:39]  And she introduced herself to me and said, I'm the head of the Religious Liberty Commission or something.
[00:43:42]  And I remember thinking, I'm so glad there is such a thing because we need it.
[00:43:46]  We need religious liberty.
[00:43:48]  Almost more than anything.
[00:43:49]  And I said, I felt moved to say, just like escape from my lips.
[00:43:52]  Thank you.
[00:43:53]  And I really hope that you will do something to protect the Christians of the Middle East, particularly in the Levant.
[00:43:58]  There are a lot of great Christians there and they're being hurt and nobody seems to care.
[00:44:02]  And she like recoiled.
[00:44:05]  I remember thinking she doesn't like this at all.
[00:44:08]  That was my first and only experience with Paula White.
[00:44:12]  And so I've wondered ever since who is Paula White and how did she become the president's main spiritual advisor?
[00:44:20]  You told me this morning that you went to church on Easter Sunday, which was yesterday at her church.
[00:44:27]  And so before you give us the overview, can you just describe what that was like?
[00:44:32]  It was an interesting experience.
[00:44:33]  You know, when you see Paula on stage next to Trump or you see any big evangelical leader, Kenneth Copeland, Franklin Graham, you'd expect their church to be massive.
[00:44:42]  Yeah.
[00:44:43]  Thousands and thousands of people.
[00:44:44]  They're pastors.
[00:44:45]  They have a church.
[00:44:45]  They're pastoring people.
[00:44:47]  They are the shepherds.
[00:44:48]  Exactly.
[00:44:48]  They're the shepherd.
[00:44:49]  Yeah.
[00:44:49]  And so we pull up and I expected a very big building.
[00:44:54]  Where is it?
[00:44:55]  It is in Opopka.
[00:44:57]  I think I'm saying it right, Florida.
[00:44:59]  So just north of Orlando.
[00:45:00]  Okay.
[00:45:00]  And I've been to Joel Osteen's church, you know.
[00:45:04]  Tens of thousands of seats.
[00:45:05]  I've been to Second Baptist, 93,000 members in that church.
[00:45:09]  I know big church, right?
[00:45:11]  It looked like one of those metal sheds, you know, one of those big, like 5,000 square feet.
[00:45:17]  It looked like an airplane hangar, basically.
[00:45:19]  And I was like, this is just awkward.
[00:45:20]  It was the parking lot, probably fit 50 cars.
[00:45:23]  And so it was just an overflow in a dirt lot.
[00:45:27]  This is a good size setting for you.
[00:45:30]  They just had a simple coffee maker, like a standard pot coffee for their entire congregation.
[00:45:36]  And so I walked in, I counted about 400 chairs.
[00:45:40]  And when I got there, which was the time the service started, there were seven people sitting on Easter Sunday?
[00:45:46]  On Easter Sunday.
[00:45:47]  And so we walked in, they put us two rows from the stage.
[00:45:52]  And ironically, Paula's daughter in law approached me.
[00:45:57]  And I was there with my girlfriend, and she approaches us and goes, Who are you?
[00:46:01]  And I'm wearing a floral shirt, yellow sunglasses, and an Alabama hat.
[00:46:06]  Like, I try to be awkward in these situations.
[00:46:08]  And she comes straight up and she goes, I'm Paula White's daughter in law.
[00:46:12]  And I'm like, I'm Nathan.
[00:46:13]  I don't hide who I am.
[00:46:14]  And she's like, Would you take a photo in front of our Easter display?
[00:46:18]  And I'm like, Sure.
[00:46:20]  And so I walk over and Paula White's daughter in law is taking a photo of me.
[00:46:24]  And I'm like, Okay, can we get it?
[00:46:26]  And I wouldn't be surprised if it's on their Instagram this morning because it was for like their Instagram.
[00:46:31]  So we go and we sit down and It packs out to about 200 people on an Easter Sunday.
[00:46:39]  One of the two biggest Christmas and Easter, the two biggest holidays for Christianity.
[00:46:44]  200 people show up to this thing, mostly African Americans.
[00:46:48]  I was one of six white people.
[00:46:50]  And then you got this white woman on stage.
[00:46:53]  And that was the setting.
[00:46:55]  That's her church?
[00:46:56]  Her church, yeah.
[00:46:56]  Well, that's.
[00:46:58]  Don't get me wrong.
[00:46:59]  They got the lights and the fog machine and the jib arm that flies over the crowd.
[00:47:02]  It's a production studio, is what I would call it, production stage.
[00:47:05]  So the point is not to minister to the people in the church, take care of their problems, counsel them, bring them closer to Jesus.
[00:47:14]  The point is to produce a TV show.
[00:47:15]  Is that what you're saying?
[00:47:16]  That's what I would say.
[00:47:17]  Similar to Joel Osteen, he's a TV producer by trade.
[00:47:19]  You know, Kenneth Copeland, same thing.
[00:47:21]  When I went to Kenneth's church, it was very small.
[00:47:23]  Sat maybe four or 500 people, and it was a massive studio with multiple jib arms, multiple cameras, security, massive stage.
[00:47:31]  I produce TV.
[00:47:32]  Like they produce TV.
[00:47:35]  That's fascinating.
[00:47:37]  So, did she preach?
[00:47:38]  No, her son preached.
[00:47:41]  So, she got up and gave a little message in the morning, a little prayer.
[00:47:45]  And there was a really weird dynamic between her and her son.
[00:47:48]  And I've got their bylaws, which I think explain why.
[00:47:52]  But her son gave and got up and gave, honestly, a really sound message.
[00:47:56]  Like, I give a shout out to Brad.
[00:47:58]  Like, that dude knows the Bible.
[00:47:59]  And it was very interesting to me because I saw him visibly wrestling with this idea of shepherding and then the idea of the institution.
[00:48:08]  And there were times where he would look at his mom and just throw daggers at her about corruption, power.
[00:48:15]  It was a very interesting dynamic.
[00:48:17]  And she would belittle him too.
[00:48:19]  It was wild.
[00:48:20]  During the service?
[00:48:21]  Yeah.
[00:48:21]  Yeah.
[00:48:22]  On Easter Sunday.
[00:48:22]  On Easter Sunday.
[00:48:23]  And then she, once he finished the service, the sermon, which, hey, Brad, great sermon.
[00:48:28]  Until the very end, because then he's like, I don't want to do an altar call, but I'm a charismatic, so I have to do an altar call.
[00:48:33]  And I'm like, Well, you don't have to do an altar call if you're.
[00:48:36]  What's an altar call?
[00:48:37]  It's basically him saying, Hey, if you're not a Christian, come down to the stage.
[00:48:40]  You're going to say Jesus is my Savior.
[00:48:42]  I'm a sinner.
[00:48:42]  And boom, you're a Christian.
[00:48:44]  And that's a relatively new technique in Christianity.
[00:48:48]  You know, 200 years ago, altar calls were not a thing.
[00:48:51]  And so altar calls are just a kind of a new tool that churches use to read metrics.
[00:48:56]  You know, because at the end of the day, how are we performing?
[00:48:58]  Oh, here's how many salvations we've had and how many baptisms we've had.
[00:49:02]  And so he's not for the altar call, but you can tell he's wrestling with the institution that his mom gave him.
[00:49:10]  And then after the altar call, she got up and I'll quote her here.
[00:49:13]  She goes, I'm going to speak for 60 seconds.
[00:49:16]  She spoke for eight and a half minutes.
[00:49:18]  I have the recording how to give her money.
[00:49:22]  And yeah.
[00:49:23]  She did an eight and a half minute money pitch in church.
[00:49:25]  Correct.
[00:49:26]  Yeah.
[00:49:26]  At the end.
[00:49:27]  What did she say?
[00:49:28]  She said, and she had an envelope and she goes, My son moved me so much in this envelope.
[00:49:34]  I have a sacrificial gift.
[00:49:36]  For him in this church.
[00:49:38]  She didn't tell us what it was or how much it was.
[00:49:40]  And she goes, Well, if I could, I'd sell my house, but I can't sell my home.
[00:49:44]  Why?
[00:49:45]  I don't know.
[00:49:46]  I would ask her the same thing.
[00:49:47]  And she goes, I have shoes and jewelry, but I can't sell those.
[00:49:51]  And so this is my sacrifice.
[00:49:53]  And then she looked out and she goes, You guys need to sacrifice.
[00:49:56]  She goes, That nice Easter dress you're wearing, your sacrifice should be more than that dress.
[00:50:01]  And she goes, Christ was the sacrifice and the offering and the tithe, but that doesn't mean it stops with Christ.
[00:50:08]  Oh, this is a hard sell.
[00:50:10]  Hard sell.
[00:50:10]  So you need to sacrifice.
[00:50:12]  Jesus died, so send me money.
[00:50:14]  Well, and then it was cute.
[00:50:15]  She goes, she goes, oh, and you know, we do so much for the community, which they do things for the community.
[00:50:19]  She goes, we, we do a food pantry and we give away food.
[00:50:22]  Well, you don't pay for that food.
[00:50:25]  That food is delivered to the church and then the church distributes it.
[00:50:28]  So you're raising money for a food pantry that you have, but you don't have to buy the food.
[00:50:33]  And so it's, it's, it's the carrot.
[00:50:35]  I always say churches will use a carrot or organizations will use a carrot to get you to give.
[00:50:40]  And out of your gift, let's say it's 100 carrots that they get, and they're going to use that one carrot to kind of dangle in front of your face.
[00:50:46]  Did you get a sense that Paula White was leading like any kind of pastoral care?
[00:50:50]  You know, people have problems in churches as in everywhere else.
[00:50:53]  And one of the main jobs of a pastor is to be the shepherd for that flock, right?
[00:50:59]  It sounds like her daughter in law likes to do that.
[00:51:02]  Charismatics are very charismatic, you know, so she prays in tongues and, you know, they do all that.
[00:51:06]  So they're very into that.
[00:51:08]  But Paula walked in after the service started.
[00:51:10]  I saw her come in and she walked out before it left.
[00:51:13]  Or before it ended and she left.
[00:51:15]  Actually?
[00:51:15]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:51:16]  I wouldn't say there's any on site shepherding that Paula does.
[00:51:20]  So, who is Paula White exactly?
[00:51:22]  And pardon my ignorance, but it's just she's become this figure.
[00:51:25]  She's one of the people who prayed over the president and encouraged this war with Iran, a country with over a million Christians in it.
[00:51:35]  But she's played a role in our foreign policy.
[00:51:40]  So, I think it's, and of course, she's been used.
[00:51:44]  And has allowed herself to be used to justify this war and violence in the name of Jesus.
[00:51:49]  So I think it's worth asking, like, where does she come from?
[00:51:52]  Who is this person?
[00:51:52]  I don't know her upbringing, but I'll start with this.
[00:51:55]  I will give Paula the benefit of the doubt that she came into the church space wanting to do good.
[00:52:02]  Yes.
[00:52:02]  She wanted to save souls, she wanted to preach the gospel.
[00:52:06]  I believe that.
[00:52:07]  But I also believe I think that's a, that's, we should always extend that benefit of the doubt to people.
[00:52:11]  Okay.
[00:52:11]  So when you, when you, when she's presenting that gospel, she has to play in a certain legal realm, which is religious.
[00:52:18]  Institutions, corporations in America.
[00:52:21]  I firmly stand on my word that that legal architecture will corrupt anybody that goes into the mission or that ministry full time.
[00:52:31]  So she started a church in Tampa called Without Walls with her husband, Randy Knight.
[00:52:38]  I went to the building Saturday because I wanted to see where that was.
[00:52:41]  So I drove up to Tampa and now it's a bar, it's like a restaurant bar.
[00:52:49]  And so I went in.
[00:52:50]  But the church is a bar?
[00:52:51]  Well, so I went in and talked to the restaurant.
[00:52:53]  I'm like, hey, was this.
[00:52:54]  Paula White's church, Without Walls.
[00:52:56]  And the manager was like, Yeah.
[00:52:57]  So he's like, We get this question a lot, actually, which is fascinating.
[00:53:01]  So I don't know the financial exchange or the real estate side of things, but the original Without Walls church was bulldozed.
[00:53:07]  And then that restaurant bar was built on the property.
[00:53:10]  So she and her husband started a church in Tampa.
[00:53:13]  They started a church in Tampa called Without Walls.
[00:53:15]  There's some scandal wrapped around that church.
[00:53:20]  They used to work, or they're very loudly talking about how they work in prostitution.
[00:53:25]  They help prostitutes, they help the needy in that.
[00:53:27]  Area.
[00:53:28]  And so I talked with a past employee who said that, and we're getting the tapes right now.
[00:53:35]  We found some old VHS tapes from Paula back in the day.
[00:53:37]  So those are actually just, they just arrived in my house.
[00:53:39]  Very excited to look at those.
[00:53:41]  But they said, oh, there's a rundown hotel on the property next to us.
[00:53:45]  We bought that hotel.
[00:53:46]  We're going to turn it into a rehab facility for prostitutes and drug addicts.
[00:53:50]  And that's going to be our main witness.
[00:53:52]  Awesome.
[00:53:53]  That's right where I think Christ would be hanging out with the hurting, the needy, the prostitute, the widowed.
[00:53:58]  Yeah.
[00:53:59]  And so they started raising money for this hotel that they had built.
[00:54:04]  And they raised, I don't have the exact amount, but hundreds of thousands of dollars.
[00:54:09]  And some of their congregants mortgaged their homes for it.
[00:54:13]  Well, come to find out, they never even bought the hotel.
[00:54:15]  This was just all theory and a good intentioned idea.
[00:54:20]  And so that really crippled the church.
[00:54:22]  And at the same time, her husband kind of, I'll just say, fell off the wagon.
[00:54:29]  And so they got divorced.
[00:54:31]  And Her spiritual advisor was T.D. Jakes.
[00:54:34]  Do you know who T.D. Jakes is?
[00:54:35]  Yes, I've met T.D. Jakes.
[00:54:37]  So her spiritual advisor.
[00:54:38]  Famous black preacher, built like a linebacker.
[00:54:40]  Yep, huge.
[00:54:41]  Yep.
[00:54:41]  Yep.
[00:54:41]  He was her spiritual advisor.
[00:54:43]  He was also another pastor's spiritual advisor in Opopka.
[00:54:47]  And unfortunately, that pastor in Opopka OD'd in a bathtub.
[00:54:54]  On drugs?
[00:54:55]  On drugs, yeah.
[00:54:55]  And he was with a prostitute.
[00:54:57]  The prostitute made the call, the emergency call.
[00:55:00]  He died.
[00:55:02]  TD Jakes, as Without Walls is Crumbling, TD Jakes, as the spiritual advisor, tells Paula to go take over this church in Opopka.
[00:55:11]  So Paula Weit moves to Opopka, takes over that church, which they rebranded to Story Life Church, and that became her home church.

=== Pastor President Scandals (11:16) ===

[00:55:21]  So there is the coolest movie we can imagine it's a new film adaptation of George Orwell's amazing novel, Animal Farm.
[00:55:32]  1984 gets all the attention, but Animal Farm is better.
[00:55:36]  It's coming to theaters May 1st.
[00:55:38]  You probably remember that Animal Farm is not actually about animals, it's about human nature, the desire for authority, and how quickly people tend to fall in line and give up all of their God given rights.
[00:55:50]  The movie follows Lucky, a young pig whose curiosity and courage guide viewers through the farm's rise and fall.
[00:55:57]  We see hope, betrayal, and above all, the danger of totalitarian power.
[00:56:02]  This is a movie to watch with your.
[00:56:03]  Kids, especially if they're old enough to ask real questions and to notice when the answers don't add up.
[00:56:08]  The book affected generations of American school kids, no longer taught, of course, because it's too true.
[00:56:16]  What do you do when the rules start changing and you're told you're not allowed to notice?
[00:56:20]  Do you speak up or just go along with it because, hey, that's easier?
[00:56:24]  That's the conversation you should have with your kids about power, corruption, and freedom.
[00:56:30]  This movie's entertaining, it's sharp.
[00:56:32]  Not many studios would do it at this point, but Angel did because their guild members voted to bring it to the big screen.
[00:56:38]  So, see it, talk about it, decide for yourself what it means.
[00:56:40]  Animal Farm Theaters, May 1st.
[00:56:42]  Tickets available now at angel.comslash Tucker.
[00:56:46]  That's, wow, that's quite a story.
[00:56:48]  So, then what happens?
[00:56:50]  She gets remarried or?
[00:56:52]  She's remarried to one of the band members of Journey, that awesome band that I love to listen to.
[00:56:57]  Yeah.
[00:56:58]  So, he plays piano for her on stage, you know, as she preaches.
[00:57:02]  It's a great husband-wife duo.
[00:57:04]  Yeah.
[00:57:05]  So, she now, well, she did.
[00:57:08]  Pastor, this church.
[00:57:10]  She's since passed it down to her son, Brad Knight.
[00:57:13]  And why did she pass it down?
[00:57:16]  Because she became a special government employee under Trump.
[00:57:20]  And you can't run a church.
[00:57:22]  You can't write it.
[00:57:23]  I believe the rule is you can't run a nonprofit or you can't be raising money outside.
[00:57:27]  So I don't want to judge her as a person.
[00:57:29]  There's a lot written about her personal life.
[00:57:31]  I don't know what is true and what is not true.
[00:57:34]  So I don't want to repeat it.
[00:57:35]  But it's, I mean, it's kind of defined by personal scandal.
[00:57:40]  Correct.
[00:57:41]  True or not.
[00:57:41]  There's a lot of personal scandal that I won't even go into.
[00:57:44]  Well, of course, because I don't know and I don't want to repeat things that are not true.
[00:57:47]  But it's sexual scandal.
[00:57:49]  Those are the allegations.
[00:57:50]  So there's that.
[00:57:52]  And I do think, in order to maintain credibility, I also think your faith requires you to explain that and show people that it's true and repent, apologize, be better, or prove it's not true.
[00:58:07]  But that seems all kind of unaddressed.
[00:58:09]  So, how did she wind up given all that?
[00:58:12]  The president of the United States, chief spiritual advisor.
[00:58:17]  I've talked to a past employee of hers who.
[00:58:22]  Paula's a very bold woman, very loud.
[00:58:25]  I had never seen her.
[00:58:26]  I don't consider that a compliment at all.
[00:58:28]  I just want to be clear.
[00:58:29]  What, bold and loud?
[00:58:30]  Yeah, I'm not into it.
[00:58:31]  No, neither am I.
[00:58:32]  And so I had never been around her before.
[00:58:34]  But when her son was preaching and her son would say something, she would always be the loudest one yelling, Amen, brother, go, go, son.
[00:58:42]  You know, she just wanted to.
[00:58:44]  I find that awful.
[00:58:45]  And we're like told we have to think that's great.
[00:58:47]  I don't think it's great at all.
[00:58:49]  Yeah.
[00:58:49]  But so I.
[00:58:52]  Well behaved women really make history.
[00:58:53]  I don't know about that.
[00:58:55]  I mean.
[00:58:56]  Stop.
[00:58:56]  Yeah.
[00:58:57]  But, uh, excuse me.
[00:58:59]  I would agree with you.
[00:59:00]  But so the stories that I've heard from her employees are she Trump was a mark from the early 2000s.
[00:59:08]  So she would go down to Mar-a-Lago and hang out at Mar-a-Lago, just waiting for Trump to pass.
[00:59:14]  And when Trump would pass, she'd approach him and she's a very bullish, bold woman.
[00:59:19]  So she kind of had a mark on Trump for decades.
[00:59:22]  And then same thing in New York.
[00:59:24]  She rented an apartment in Trump Tower.
[00:59:26]  And she stayed in Trump Tower waiting to have FaceTime with Trump.
[00:59:31]  So she's been playing the long game with Trump.
[00:59:33]  Has she, I mean, is she like a well known theologian?
[00:59:37]  No.
[00:59:38]  No.
[00:59:39]  So, but I guess all I'm saying is there are all kinds of predators around all power centers, including the White House, right?
[00:59:45]  It's just that's the nature of power.
[00:59:47]  It's like a bug light, it draws the Michael Cohen's of the world into your orbit, right?
[00:59:51]  People who want power and money.
[00:59:52]  But if you're going to be the spiritual advisor, you would think there'd be some like track record of.
[00:59:58]  I don't know, Christian living?
[01:00:01]  So I got a question for you, Tuck.
[01:00:03]  Tucker, can I call you Tuck?
[01:00:05]  Call me whatever you want.
[01:00:05]  Tuck.
[01:00:06]  So, should your business model, if you're a pastor, should your business model emulate Christ?
[01:00:13]  I think your whole life is supposed to emulate Christ.
[01:00:15]  Perfect.
[01:00:15]  So here's your bylaws, which are marked confidential, by the way.
[01:00:20]  So her church cannot read her bylaws.
[01:00:23]  The people who fund her cannot read her bylaws.
[01:00:26]  The only reason why they came out was because of a lawsuit.
[01:00:30]  I'm going to jump to page two really quick about membership.
[01:00:35]  Members of the congregation are non voting, members of the board of directors are voting.
[01:00:40]  So congregants who fund it have no say over anything.
[01:00:43]  We'll jump a few pages further about removing officers.
[01:00:48]  So, if for some reason she had a scandal, right?
[01:00:52]  Usually we remove officers from corporations that have scandals or abuse their control and power, but not for her.
[01:00:59]  Ready?
[01:01:00]  Any officer except the pastor president, she is the pastor and president, may be removed from his or her office by the board of directors.
[01:01:07]  The pastor president shall have the authority to remove any officer from his or her office at any time at her discretion.
[01:01:15]  So she cannot be removed because any officer except the pastor president can be removed, and then she can fire anyone at any time for anything.
[01:01:24]  So she has unilateral control.
[01:01:26]  It gets better.
[01:01:27]  Ready?
[01:01:28]  Section five is resignation, removal, succession of pastor president.
[01:01:32]  If the pastor president voluntarily resigns, she may designate her successor.
[01:01:37]  The pastor president shall serve as president and a member of the board of directors until her death or resignation without need of election or appointment.
[01:01:47]  She shall not be subject to removal.
[01:01:52]  It says that?
[01:01:52]  It says that.
[01:01:53]  Is this a monarchy?
[01:01:54]  What is this?
[01:01:55]  It's a monarchy.
[01:01:56]  It's a monarchical power.
[01:01:57]  Death.
[01:01:58]  Upon her death, the pastor president shall be succeeded in the office of pastor president and as a director by her son, Brad Knight.
[01:02:06]  It's a dynasty in bylaws that congregants can't see.
[01:02:10]  Is this a Christian principle?
[01:02:12]  No.
[01:02:12]  No.
[01:02:14]  And then this is the banger.
[01:02:17]  Ready?
[01:02:17]  Powers of officers.
[01:02:19]  The senior pastor is the president of the corporation.
[01:02:23]  And this is a sticking point for me because most pastors will say, my church is not a business.
[01:02:28]  Well, no, it's a corporation registered with the state.
[01:02:30]  It's very much a business, right?
[01:02:32]  So the senior pastor is the president of the corporation and is referred to within these bylaws as pastor president.
[01:02:39]  Here's the drum roll.
[01:02:40]  The church finds its headship under the Lord Jesus Christ in its pastor president.
[01:02:50]  So, you don't find your headship in Jesus Christ.
[01:02:52]  You find it under the Lord Jesus Christ in Paula White.
[01:02:57]  So, if I want to get to Jesus Christ, I have to go through Paula White.
[01:03:00]  I believe we had a Protestant Reformation to get away from this idea.
[01:03:03]  You can keep that copy.
[01:03:04]  That the leader is infallible and the leader speaks always and everywhere for God himself.
[01:03:09]  Yes.
[01:03:10]  Isn't that why we had the Reformation 500 years ago?
[01:03:12]  Well, that's the point of Christ.
[01:03:13]  Christ came to remove middlemen, to remove the Levitical priesthood.
[01:03:18]  That's what I thought.
[01:03:19]  Yeah.
[01:03:21]  Wow, that's so unusual.
[01:03:24]  I've never heard of anything like that.
[01:03:26]  How unusual is that?
[01:03:27]  That's pretty aggressive bylaws, but here's Second Baptist bylaws.
[01:03:31]  So I had a fun interaction in Houston the other week.
[01:03:33]  This is a church with a billion dollars in assets in Houston, a billion.
[01:03:38]  It's 98 years old.
[01:03:40]  So that means generation after generation of generous, Christ centered Houstonians have funded this building.
[01:03:47]  Some of my favorite people in the world and relatives of mine who I really look up to as Christians.
[01:03:53]  You know, have spent a lot of time in that church and helped fund it and whatever.
[01:03:57]  So I know that there are true, amazing people, Christians in that church.
[01:04:01]  93,000 members had voting rights.
[01:04:05]  And voting rights are, hey, just like a democracy, just like America, a republic.
[01:04:09]  We want to have a say in how.
[01:04:10]  Just like the church in Acts.
[01:04:12]  Yes.
[01:04:12]  We want to have a say.
[01:04:13]  The earliest church.
[01:04:14]  And that's what we should probably be modeling ourselves after, right?
[01:04:17]  We want to have a say in how this all operates.
[01:04:20]  A couple of years ago, one very interesting lawyer from Dallas who I've had multiple interactions with, And then the young family decided to, in a shady back end deal, remove voting rights of 93,000 members like that.
[01:04:38]  So, a billion dollars in assets that was voted on by 93,000 members in a single meeting on page seven removed the voting rights.
[01:04:50]  As such, members are not entitled to vote in person by proxy or otherwise.
[01:04:55]  So, a billion dollars in assets were put into the hands of six people, five of which are related.
[01:05:00]  When did that happen?
[01:05:02]  2023.
[01:05:03]  And now there's an ongoing lawsuit because the congregants are suing for their rights back.
[01:05:08]  How can you do that?
[01:05:10]  You can't, but shady lawyers.
[01:05:13]  So, this is a big thing that we talk about in the religion business in season one.
[01:05:17]  The church was never meant to be a capitalistic endeavor.
[01:05:21]  No, it's not a business.
[01:05:23]  Yes, but capitalism has crept into it, and shrewd, smart businessmen and women and lawyers have realized it is the perfect legal architecture to either scam people or build empires in the name of Jesus.
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=== Corrupt Church Structures (03:43) ===

[01:06:37]  And your point is, and you've devoted, I mean, I think people can watch your documentaries and look you up, but your point is the problem with a lot of American Christianity is not the faith, of course, you are a Christian.
[01:06:51]  But is the structure that corrupts by its nature?
[01:06:56]  It's like almost, I think you said to me this morning, it's like almost impossible to get out of this without being corrupted if you're leading a church with a structure like that.
[01:07:03]  Correct.
[01:07:03]  Is that fair?
[01:07:04]  A hundred percent.
[01:07:05]  It's, I say that you can go in with the best of intentions, but if there's no external accountability on the system, that system will inevitably eat you alive and corrupt you.
[01:07:14]  Your sermons, your messaging will all tilt to protect that institution.
[01:07:19]  And it's, I would, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.
[01:07:22]  They're doing it unconsciously.
[01:07:24]  Whether that be the idea of tithing, whether that be Zionism and Israel, it all tilts towards protecting the status quo of the institution.
[01:07:34]  Boy, you see this in all institutions, though.
[01:07:36]  Isn't the point of every institution over time to protect and enlarge the institution itself?
[01:07:41]  100%.
[01:07:41]  That is the mission.
[01:07:42]  But that's the need for reform in everything.
[01:07:46]  The Bible story is so beautiful because it's a story of birth, death, and resurrection over and over.
[01:07:52]  And Christ talks about when the seed falls, it has to die in the soil for rebirth.
[01:07:56]  But what we've created is an institutional structure that can't die.
[01:08:00]  We can't reform this because too many people feed off the system.
[01:08:02]  There's too many parasites.
[01:08:04]  But if we killed systems and reformed them, which we need for new birth and regrowth, then people lose power.
[01:08:11]  People lose their control.
[01:08:13]  And it's baked into human nature.
[01:08:15]  And loss of power and control is a prerequisite for letting, well, for religious transformation, for letting God take control.
[01:08:23]  Correct.
[01:08:24]  So that's a big deal.
[01:08:26]  Christ literally gave up all control and hung on a cross.
[01:08:31]  And this is one place I want to get to whether you're a Christian, my 160 million self professed American Christians out there, my brothers and sisters out there, we can see the Bible as the word of God.
[01:08:41]  And I could speak to it on that.
[01:08:43]  My atheist and Gnostic friends, let's see it as a history book.
[01:08:46]  And today I want to talk with you about when he said it is finished on the cross, the last words that came out of his mouth, he meant it.
[01:08:53]  So if you're a Christ follower, We're going to break down a lot of scriptures that, depending on your theological approach, you will have to say it isn't finished.
[01:09:03]  And so that's what I want to get into.
[01:09:05]  And power structure is one of them.
[01:09:06]  When he hung on that cross, he broke all power structures.
[01:09:11]  He is the only way, the truth, and the life.
[01:09:12]  And no one gets to Jehovah the Father except through him.
[01:09:16]  So, what does that mean?
[01:09:18]  I mean, I understand.
[01:09:19]  I mean, I always understood Jesus to be talking about his life on earth.
[01:09:26]  When Christ said it is finished, he was talking about the old covenants, the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic laws, all 613 of them.
[01:09:34]  Huh.
[01:09:35]  Is that acknowledged by churches?
[01:09:37]  No.
[01:09:38]  Because if you acknowledge it, then your church structure, modern day church structure, has to really rethink and reform.
[01:09:46]  And what are you left with?
[01:09:49]  The gospel, the saving grace of Christ, love.
[01:09:56]  So it's interesting when you look at even churches that you know you agree, I'll speak for myself, that I agree with and love.
[01:10:05]  You love the liturgy, love the people of the people.
[01:10:09]  I mean, you can have pure hearted people in a corrupt system.
[01:10:14]  You know, the congregants, as I just said, it's about Second Baptist in Houston.

=== Financially Hungry Machines (13:51) ===

[01:10:20]  But the church itself is like, it seems like almost all of them have deep corruption in them.
[01:10:30]  Um, Christ said in multiple gospels, it's one of my favorite lines.
[01:10:34]  He says, you've taken traditions of men and you call it doctrine.
[01:10:38]  Yes.
[01:10:38]  Our churches today are nothing but tradition.
[01:10:41]  And it's, they're based off of a 14 point checklist that the government put forward.
[01:10:45]  They're based off the nonprofit sector created in the 19, in 1913.
[01:10:49]  That's all just traditions of men.
[01:10:50]  That's not inherently bad.
[01:10:52]  This room, there's no inherent goodness or badness to it outside of what we apply to it.
[01:10:57]  Right.
[01:10:57]  And so we've taken traditions of men.
[01:11:00]  And call it doctrine.
[01:11:02]  One of those traditions is the legal architecture of the nonprofit sector and then the religious exemptions applied to all churches, mosques, temples, you name it.
[01:11:12]  They play by the same rules in America.
[01:11:14]  That legal architecture, there's only one conclusion to it, and that's corruption.
[01:11:20]  There's only one.
[01:11:21]  When you look at how it's structured, there's no external accountability from an exterior source to hold the institution accountable.
[01:11:28]  The government does not hold religious institutions accountable.
[01:11:32]  So what it means is we hold ourselves accountable.
[01:11:35]  That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard scripturally.
[01:11:37]  Like, we can't hold, should we just sit around and be like, hey, Tucker, you and I, we've got a million bucks sitting on this table.
[01:11:43]  What should we do with it?
[01:11:43]  Well, let's just hold each other accountable with what we're going to do with it.
[01:11:46]  No, we need some outside pressure saying, hey, let's oversee what we're going to do and how we're going to steward those resources.
[01:11:54]  And the best part about that million, or the ironic part, is it's not even yours and my resources, it's the donors who gave it to us.
[01:12:01]  And so the system right now is just set up for failure.
[01:12:05]  Inflation makes credit card statements particularly scary.
[01:12:08]  You work 40, 50 hours a week just to buy groceries and gas, things you used to be able to afford without thinking that much about it.
[01:12:14]  Then the banks charge you 20% interest.
[01:12:16]  If the system is designed to keep you underwater, it's working, but there's another option.
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[01:12:31]  And they're showing homeowners how to take their hard earned equity to wipe out high interest debt.
[01:12:36]  Now, we're against debt in general, but in this economy, most people have no choice at all.
[01:12:42]  So don't go bankrupt, enslaving yourself to a lender.
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[01:13:10]  And you think it's uniquely bad in this country because of the nonprofit structure devised in 1913, same year as the income tax, I think, correct?
[01:13:17]  Same thing, same year as Jekyll Island and all sorts of interesting things.
[01:13:21]  And then you made reference to the 14 point checklist.
[01:13:25]  Can you just fill us in on all of that since I'm ignorant?
[01:13:27]  Yeah.
[01:13:27]  So in 1913, the IRS carved out, or the government carved out, the nonprofit sector.
[01:13:33]  It looked at all the institutions in America and it said, wow, there's really brilliant institutions that help social good.
[01:13:39]  And this is a big one.
[01:13:40]  They build local social capital in their community.
[01:13:44]  1913 is pre-really technology.
[01:13:46]  You know, your life was like an 80-mile radius, basically.
[01:13:50]  Yes.
[01:13:51]  So you cared about your local community.
[01:13:53]  And so the government said, Hey, these businesses do things that we can't.
[01:13:58]  Salvation Army was a great example.
[01:14:00]  So the Salvation Army does things for its local community that the federal government and state government cannot do.
[01:14:05]  So we're going to carve out these businesses and say, Hey, you don't have to pay taxes.
[01:14:09]  You have more freedom to pursue your mission, which is building social capital in your community, helping the homeless, the needy, basically Matthew 25, which is who Christ told us to help.
[01:14:21]  Um, flash forward to today, there's 1.9 million nonprofits.
[01:14:26]  So it went from 12,000 organizations in 1913 to 1.9 million.
[01:14:31]  And you have to ask why the jump.
[01:14:33]  And most arguments are, well, Nathan, population increase.
[01:14:37]  Okay.
[01:14:38]  Population increased 4.3% in America from 1913 to present day.
[01:14:43]  If you do the math, that's around 50,000 organizations today.
[01:14:48]  So population increase didn't increase the nonprofit sector.
[01:14:51]  So how do we go from 12,000 to 1.9 million?
[01:14:54]  Well, I think a lot of good intentioned people wanted to help people, but the lack of accountability in the system has turned the nonprofit sector into an opportunity for massive abuse and inurement.
[01:15:06]  And inurement is, I don't have the definition in front of me, but it's basically no founder, family member, or executive can inure themselves by the benefit of the organization's net assets or net resources.
[01:15:18]  So I can take a salary, but I can't use it like a personal piggy bank.
[01:15:22]  Right.
[01:15:25]  These guys use it like a personal piggy bank, and most people use the nonprofit sector not like a personal piggy bank.
[01:15:30]  How do they do it?
[01:15:32]  From a church perspective?
[01:15:33]  Yeah.
[01:15:34]  Well, you can, Tucker, start a church right now.
[01:15:36]  You can just say, I'm a church.
[01:15:38]  And because you say you're a church, you get that designation from the IRS immediately.
[01:15:45]  They don't have to approve you of it because of what I would argue separation of church and state.
[01:15:50]  And so, and that's like a double dip.
[01:15:52]  You know, they love to say separation church and state until they want the state to help them out.
[01:15:57]  It's an interesting rabbit hole to go down.
[01:15:59]  But then you just file with the state, you file your articles of incorporation, so you are a business, but you never have to tell the Fed what you're doing at all.
[01:16:08]  And then if you're in the evangelical world, in the non denominational world, there's no denominational hierarchy.
[01:16:16]  So then it's the sky's the limit.
[01:16:18]  It's how charismatic are you?
[01:16:20]  How good of a teacher are you?
[01:16:22]  How good of an entertainer are you?
[01:16:23]  And at that point, it just becomes how quickly you can scale.
[01:16:27]  And we call it religious economic theory in the religion business.
[01:16:31]  Because it's now, if I start a church tucker down the street from yours, now we're pitted against each other for consumers.
[01:16:37]  And so I'm going to get a better stage than you.
[01:16:39]  And then you're going to get a better lighting system.
[01:16:40]  So I got to out compete you.
[01:16:42]  And naturally, the system just becomes a production, like just production.
[01:16:48]  And we need consumers in.
[01:16:49]  So we got to keep them entertained.
[01:16:51]  And so the nonprofit sector has just corrupted over time because of the lack of accountability.
[01:16:59]  And from the secular side, nonprofits used to look local.
[01:17:04]  And that's why it was carved out originally, right?
[01:17:06]  A nonprofit was supposed to build their local community.
[01:17:09]  Well, now with globalism, nonprofits want to look global.
[01:17:13]  It's way more appealing for me to put a starving kid from Africa on the cover of my newsletter than a white kid who needs some school books down the street.
[01:17:22]  And so the secular side went global.
[01:17:25]  So they forgot about the local community.
[01:17:27]  And then the church started pitting against each other for consumers.
[01:17:31]  And so the nonprofit sector just naturally is corrupted and it's never been reformed.
[01:17:36]  So that's how you wind up with.
[01:17:38]  Churches, air quotes, that are actually TV studios.
[01:17:42]  Correct.
[01:17:43]  Correct.
[01:17:43]  And ironically, so the 14 point checklist, which I originally thought came from the IRS, because there were so many churches popping up, someone was like, How do we define what a church is?
[01:17:55]  You know, like there was a big lawsuit.
[01:17:57]  I can't remember.
[01:17:58]  It was in the 50s or 60s.
[01:18:00]  And it was literally a wine distillery that was registered as a church.
[01:18:04]  And so there was a lawsuit about it because they're like, you're not a church, dude.
[01:18:08]  You're just selling wine, you know?
[01:18:10]  And so the word on the street is the IRS was like, hey, we got to put some structure to this.
[01:18:15]  And so out popped this 14 point checklist.
[01:18:17]  And the checklist came from that lawsuit.
[01:18:19]  And it was in California.
[01:18:22]  And it's really simple.
[01:18:23]  You need a house of worship.
[01:18:24]  You need a place.
[01:18:25]  You need a physical building.
[01:18:27]  You need a congregation.
[01:18:28]  That congregation has to, what do they call it?
[01:18:34]  It's basically a faith statement.
[01:18:36]  Your congregation has to have a specific Faith statement to itself.
[01:18:40]  And then you have to meet once a month physically.
[01:18:42]  And most churches already acted like that somewhat.
[01:18:45]  And so, boom, you get the exemption.
[01:18:47]  Well, what that does is it shoves all religion and faiths into that simple box.
[01:18:53]  And so, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, you name it, Scientology, they just play by the same rules now.
[01:19:01]  And so, that was.
[01:19:02]  If they want the tax exemption, they have to behave.
[01:19:04]  If they want the tax exemption.
[01:19:05]  But what does that do?
[01:19:05]  So, that's not really separation in church and state.
[01:19:07]  That's actually the state constraining church.
[01:19:10]  Correct.
[01:19:11]  And you have to ask, like, why?
[01:19:14]  Let's talk about, okay, we'll give everybody the benefit of the doubt.
[01:19:18]  Why?
[01:19:19]  What happens?
[01:19:19]  What's the byproduct of that 14 point checklist?
[01:19:22]  Every mosque looks like every Christian church, looks like every Jewish synagogue.
[01:19:26]  It's the same thing.
[01:19:27]  The exterior might be looking a little different.
[01:19:29]  Your message from the pulpit might be different, but structurally, they're all the same.
[01:19:34]  And what it does is it pulls all resources inward, it calcifies the institution as opposed to going out.
[01:19:42]  And the beautiful part about Christianity is it was an outward process.
[01:19:45]  Gospel.
[01:19:46]  It was help your neighbor.
[01:19:47]  It was go out and make disciples.
[01:19:50]  Of course, Jesus sends the disciples out.
[01:19:52]  But now it's come in.
[01:19:54]  And naturally, what does that do?
[01:19:55]  If I'm bringing everybody into my church, hierarchy starts building.
[01:20:00]  We need resources to do this.
[01:20:01]  And it's just a natural conclusion to what happened in 1913 and then the 14 point checklist.
[01:20:08]  That's amazing.
[01:20:10]  So some of these churches have become very rich, it sounds like.
[01:20:13]  Very.
[01:20:13]  Yeah.
[01:20:14]  The LD, the Mormon church.
[01:20:16]  They're sitting at like 350 billion in net assets, billion with a B. They're the second largest private landowner in the U.S. now.
[01:20:24]  They'll hit a trillion dollars in market assets if they keep their profit, the market profits, in the next 15 years.
[01:20:30]  Why?
[01:20:31]  What's the point of a church, any church, having that much money?
[01:20:34]  Well, they'll say it's for a famine and they'll say it's for the second coming.
[01:20:38]  That's literally their argument.
[01:20:40]  Yes.
[01:20:40]  And so you go, okay, I'll even give you that.
[01:20:43]  Ready?
[01:20:44]  So, and they use the story of Joseph and the famine in Egypt as an example.
[01:20:47]  They have the largest.
[01:20:49]  Largest ranch in Florida.
[01:20:51]  Well, they're turning it into a city.
[01:20:53]  Deseret?
[01:20:54]  Yeah.
[01:20:54]  Yeah.
[01:20:55]  They want to build a, I can't remember, 133,000 acre city.
[01:21:00]  Yeah, they're working on that right now.
[01:21:02]  Interesting.
[01:21:02]  But so what they say is they point to Joseph.
[01:21:06]  Well, Joseph only stockpiled for seven years.
[01:21:09]  Right.
[01:21:10]  The Mormon church has stockpiled indefinitely.
[01:21:14]  So they've reached something that the widows might report calls escape velocity.
[01:21:18]  They make so much in the market in interest alone, they could fund the global.
[01:21:23]  LDS church just off a fraction of the interest and grow in perpetuity.
[01:21:30]  They would never have to ask a dollar from any congregant again, but they still ask you for your money.
[01:21:34]  It's interesting that they point to Joseph.
[01:21:36]  I mean, it's a wonderful, amazing story.
[01:21:38]  I mean, it's a huge chunk of Genesis, right?
[01:21:41]  Yeah.
[01:21:42]  And a great, great story.
[01:21:44]  But it's kind of the opposite of the way Jesus commanded his own disciples.
[01:21:50]  He sends them out with nothing.
[01:21:51]  Correct.
[01:21:52]  With no preparation whatsoever, no food, no arms, no.
[01:21:56]  Extra sandals, no extra clothes.
[01:21:58]  He doesn't even send them with talking points.
[01:22:00]  He doesn't tell them what to say.
[01:22:01]  Well, and can I ask you, why do you think he sent them out with nothing?
[01:22:06]  So they would rely on God.
[01:22:07]  He says when you're hauled into court, don't think about what you're going to say.
[01:22:10]  The Holy Spirit will speak for you.
[01:22:11]  Just open your mouth and start talking.
[01:22:13]  Amen.
[01:22:13]  And so he would, they would rely on the generosity of others.
[01:22:17]  Yes.
[01:22:17]  And, and of God.
[01:22:18]  Yeah.
[01:22:19]  Like put yourself out there and God comes to the rescue, display weakness and God will become your strength.
[01:22:26]  So he's like telling very explicitly people not to prepare for that eventuality.
[01:22:34]  I mean, all of us disobey it.
[01:22:35]  I certainly do, but I'm not, I hope I'm not.
[01:22:38]  Sounding self righteous, but like that's not the message of the gospels that I can tell.
[01:22:42]  I agree.
[01:22:43]  So, what have we built?
[01:22:44]  We've just built corporations labeled with Jesus on them.
[01:22:49]  We've built products labeled with Jesus.
[01:22:51]  We've built energy drinks labeled with Jesus.
[01:22:54]  We've built, we're selling Jesus in man.
[01:22:57]  Does he talk about selling him his name and his father's name?
[01:23:01]  He does.
[01:23:02]  Yeah.
[01:23:02]  Explain.
[01:23:03]  Well, there's a story, and it's right before they want to kill him.
[01:23:07]  He walks into the temple.
[01:23:08]  And he starts flipping tables over and he has this whip and he's whipping people, like whipping people.
[01:23:15]  And he goes, You've turned my father's house into a robber's den.
[01:23:20]  And the place of worship where you're supposed to worship Jehovah, my father, you've turned this house into a robber's den.
[01:23:26]  You're making money in my father's name.
[01:23:30]  And what are we doing?
[01:23:34]  We've turned the entire religious structure in America, Christian structure, into a money making endeavor.
[01:23:42]  Even, even well-intentioned denominations, they have to accept money to keep the machine moving.
[01:23:47]  It's a hungry machine financially.
[01:23:50]  And, and so I believe the model's totally backwards.
[01:23:54]  We've, Americans are good at, well, all humans are good at building, but Americans are really good at building.
[01:23:59]  And we've just built things to the point where they've corrupted.
[01:24:03]  And the, the casualty of that is the true body of Christ is now chained to the pews of the institution.

=== Turning Temples Into Robber Dens (03:46) ===

[01:24:12]  Cause they have to be.
[01:24:13]  Yes.
[01:24:15]  Yeah, I grew up in a church like that.
[01:24:17]  A church that built buildings that were so beautiful that you could not go to them even when they became pagan.
[01:24:26]  Yeah.
[01:24:26]  It's like such a beautiful church.
[01:24:28]  I mean, there aren't many of those left in the United States, but the Episcopal Church built the prettiest buildings probably in the whole country.
[01:24:34]  Some of my, I love cathedrals.
[01:24:35]  I travel a lot, and my favorite thing are cathedrals.
[01:24:39]  But during the Protestant Reformation, they burned most of them down, they broke the stained glass, they were overbuilding things.
[01:24:46]  Because when Christ came, he goes, You are the temple.
[01:24:51]  The Holy Spirit dwells in you.
[01:24:52]  There's no more physical temple.
[01:24:54]  Right.
[01:24:54]  And so, what are we building?
[01:24:56]  We're building physical temples.
[01:24:57]  And the LDS side of things is fascinating too, in regards to the temples they love to build.
[01:25:02]  And you have to ask why they want to build those temples.
[01:25:06]  And that just goes into the history of Joseph Smith and Mormonism.
[01:25:09]  But they've, I tip my hat to the Mormon church in regards to you figured out the cheat code.
[01:25:15]  Like in any video game, you figured the cheat code out in the religious exemption side of things.
[01:25:19]  Because the only reason why they got rolled and busted.
[01:25:22]  By the SEC, they had so much money invested and they weren't filing what's called a 13F.
[01:25:28]  So, when you have 100 million bucks invested in the market, you have to fill out an informational 13F, which is just an informational filing saying, Hey, here's my stock, here's our stock portfolio because you could technically sway the market.
[01:25:41]  Of course, yeah.
[01:25:41]  And they have billions, tens of billions invested in the market.
[01:25:46]  Do we know where?
[01:25:47]  Can you know where?
[01:25:49]  Yeah, you can now they fill out the forms now.
[01:25:52]  And so they're heavily invested in pharmaceuticals.
[01:25:55]  They're heavily invested in machinery of war.
[01:25:58]  So the LDS Church profits from war and from COVID.
[01:26:05]  Is that true?
[01:26:06]  Yeah.
[01:26:07]  How from COVID?
[01:26:08]  They are heavily invested in Pfizer and Moderna and all the vaccine companies.
[01:26:14]  That's verified.
[01:26:16]  Verified.
[01:26:16]  Yeah.
[01:26:17]  Verified on their 13Fs.
[01:26:18]  So when the government under Biden, very liberal, anti Mormon, you would think government starts.
[01:26:26]  Pushing, commanding the population to take the vaccine.
[01:26:29]  How does the Mormon hierarchy respond to that?
[01:26:32]  They put out a marketing video saying you should get the jab.
[01:26:35]  You should get the vaccine.
[01:26:37]  Actually?
[01:26:37]  Yeah.
[01:26:37]  And the prophet got a shot live on camera.
[01:26:41]  I don't know if it was a real vaccine or just a dummy.
[01:26:44]  For his sake, I hope it wasn't.
[01:26:45]  Yeah.
[01:26:47]  But yeah, they encouraged their church congregation to get the vaccine.
[01:26:53]  That's true.
[01:26:53]  True.
[01:26:54]  Fact.
[01:26:54]  Fact on camera.
[01:26:56]  I mean, it's only been five years, but that's like so shocking that any church would do that.
[01:27:00]  But they weren't the only church that did that.
[01:27:03]  Yeah, lots encouraged it.
[01:27:05]  Churches have become political, whether right or left.
[01:27:10]  And churches have become a weapon of the political party.
[01:27:15]  It's a box on a shelf.
[01:27:16]  When I need that evangelical vote, I'm going to pull it off.
[01:27:19]  So you know for a fact that the LDS church is invested in weapon manufacturing?
[01:27:25]  Yeah, they're heavily invested in North of Grumman and multiple other.
[01:27:32]  How can a church invest in weapons that kill innocents?
[01:27:37]  I think it's extremely antithetical to what they believe, but their argument is Nathan, we're just following the status quo of the market.
[01:27:47]  Whatever the index is, we just invest in.
[01:27:51]  They don't care about what they're invested in.
[01:27:54]  Then they've said that.
[01:27:56]  I just want to be clear.
[01:27:57]  I like a lot of Mormons.

=== Prosperity Gospel Creeping In (09:58) ===

[01:27:59]  I like a lot of them.
[01:28:00]  And let me be very clear, Tucker.
[01:28:03]  There are so many good Christians, Mormons.
[01:28:06]  People are awesome.
[01:28:08]  Institutions are what I can't stand because they corrupt.
[01:28:13]  So it's how do we bring accountability and reform into institutions?
[01:28:17]  Whether that be religious institutions or government institutions, there has to be accountability, transparency, and accountability in this.
[01:28:24]  Right.
[01:28:24]  No, it's totally right.
[01:28:25]  I mean, you run into, you know, the longer you live and the more you travel and the more people you meet, you'll run into people in institutions that you revile that are just obviously evil CIA, FBI, IRS, you know, who are just great people.
[01:28:42]  And you're like, wow, you know, I feel sorry for you.
[01:28:46]  But it's also just important to make the distinction between individuals in whatever institution they're serving.
[01:28:53]  100%.
[01:28:53]  I love people.
[01:28:53]  Yeah, I do too.
[01:28:55]  I love people.
[01:28:56]  I do too.
[01:28:56]  So, Franklin Graham, like how much money has Samaritan's Purse amassed?
[01:29:02]  Franklin, Billy's son.
[01:29:04]  So Samaritan's Purse does great work.
[01:29:09]  They work with refugees, they work immigration, they work natural disasters.
[01:29:14]  They do good work.
[01:29:16]  And I want you to think about that carrot.
[01:29:18]  There's always that carrot that nonprofits dangle.
[01:29:21]  This is their 2021 990, which is just an informational sheet.
[01:29:28]  That churches do not have to file.
[01:29:30]  So, the beautiful part about the 990s, this is the first two pages.
[01:29:33]  A 990 is just an informational sheet that every secular nonprofit files annually, and it shows the IRS and then their donors roughly where the money goes.
[01:29:43]  So, there's two things I want to bring up.
[01:29:45]  And if I forget, I want to talk about Alaska.
[01:29:47]  Just say, let's talk about Alaska.
[01:29:49]  This is 2021.
[01:29:50]  Up in this top right, there's two numbers highlighted.
[01:29:53]  What's the first?
[01:29:55]  And then the first number highlighted, holy smokes, is 923,718,989.
[01:30:09]  The second number is 1,222,609.
[01:30:14]  So from 2020 to 2021, their net assets jumped from 900 billion to 1.2, right?
[01:30:23]  Yes.
[01:30:23]  This is their 2024.
[01:30:25]  So remember, guys, 900 million in 2021.
[01:30:29]  This is 2024, a few years later.
[01:30:32]  It jumps to almost 2.5 billion.
[01:30:35]  2.5 billion.
[01:30:36]  What does that mean?
[01:30:37]  How can a charity have $2.5 billion in assets?
[01:30:42]  They're building a war chest.
[01:30:43]  It's the same thing with the LDS church.
[01:30:45]  They've realized that the nonprofit can do some good with a carrot, but then just stockpile money.
[01:30:53]  And so donors are giving, looking at the carrot, saying, We're doing good work as the nonprofit itself, as the corporation just stockpiles resources.
[01:31:02]  But to what end?
[01:31:04]  To the LDS church's end, they figured it out to the point where there's no end inside.
[01:31:08]  At least the Mormons have a consistent theology where there's going to be a famine and we're banking against it.
[01:31:13]  But yeah, but that's, I get that, okay, for seven years, but you're talking about indefinitely.
[01:31:17]  They're banking on an indefinite famine.
[01:31:20]  Right.
[01:31:20]  Then I don't really see where God fits into that.
[01:31:23]  No, he's not there, bro.
[01:31:25]  Okay.
[01:31:26]  Yeah.
[01:31:27]  But why would Samaritans Purse, which is not a Mormon organization, why would they have $2.5 billion banked?
[01:31:35]  I don't know.
[01:31:36]  Or in assets.
[01:31:37]  In assets.
[01:31:37]  I don't know.
[01:31:38]  It's a great question for Franklin.
[01:31:40]  And so, how much do they spend a year helping the needy?
[01:31:45]  Estimates are 60 to 100 million.
[01:31:48]  So, but they're raising hundreds of millions annually.
[01:31:50]  So, they're building this war chest.
[01:31:52]  And this is how can Franklin Graham be raising that much more than he's spending on the needy?
[01:31:59]  Because he's a good fundraiser.
[01:32:01]  Yeah, but like, isn't the money, don't people give to him to do good?
[01:32:05]  Yes.
[01:32:06]  So, what I see is.
[01:32:10]  Nonprofits, the nonprofit structure right now is just draining, and taxation is draining the American populace of resources, of wealth.
[01:32:22]  For what end, I don't know.
[01:32:23]  But life's getting more expensive.
[01:32:25]  Nonprofits are cheerleading, saying they're doing more as homelessness rises, as poverty rises.
[01:32:32]  The entire system and architecture is broken.
[01:32:35]  In institutional religion and politics in America go hand in hand, even though they say they do.
[01:32:38]  Yeah, I mean, I always gave to land trusts because I don't like.
[01:32:42]  You know, ugly development, and I really love nature so passionately.
[01:32:46]  But then you realize the land trust kind of exists, not all land trusts, but a lot of land trusts exist for their own benefit, and then they gate the land and you can't use it.
[01:32:54]  Yeah.
[01:32:54]  So you can't hunt or fish on their land.
[01:32:56]  So, like, what's the point of this exactly?
[01:32:58]  Like, I hunt and fish on timber land, paper company land.
[01:33:01]  Yeah.
[01:33:02]  But the second some nonprofit from Vermont takes over, you can't go on the land.
[01:33:06]  So, like, why do you exist exactly?
[01:33:08]  And they own all the land in a lot of places.
[01:33:10]  Why does the nonprofit sector exist?
[01:33:12]  It's a great question for itself.
[01:33:14]  Yes.
[01:33:15]  That's what it's corrupted into.
[01:33:17]  So, can I ask you?
[01:33:17]  And I don't want to focus too much on Samaritan's Purchase because I know that there are many groups like it, but they're at $2.5 billion, clearly one of the biggest.
[01:33:27]  A lot of these guys fly private.
[01:33:30]  And as someone who flies commercial, often coach, I mean, because you should, because, like, why would you be wasting money on a private plane all the time?
[01:33:38]  Like, how does a Christian organization justify having a private jet?
[01:33:43]  It's usually their schedules are too busy, Tucker.
[01:33:46]  That's their rationale.
[01:33:47]  Copeland, Duplantis, they say no one could fly public with my travel schedule.
[01:33:55]  Maybe you slow down your travel schedule a little bit.
[01:33:57]  Maybe.
[01:33:58]  I only say that because I've flown private enough to know that it's like next level expensive.
[01:34:03]  Like there's no way to, even for businesses, rich people don't buy their own planes because like I just can't justify that.
[01:34:09]  I'll charter if I need it.
[01:34:11]  There's a funny story.
[01:34:11]  So to have a private jet that you own and pilots whose retirement you pay, fuel costs that you shoulder, the endless maintenance on the plane, incredibly expensive.
[01:34:21]  Like ask any rich person that rich people don't do, I mean, some do, but most rich people are like, I'm not rich enough for that.
[01:34:28]  Yeah.
[01:34:29]  Right.
[01:34:29]  There's a great story of.
[01:34:30]  I know a lot of rich people trust me.
[01:34:31]  They'll be like, I'm rich, but I'm not that rich.
[01:34:33]  Then you see some preacher who's got a private jet.
[01:34:35]  It's like, what world are you living in?
[01:34:38]  What is this?
[01:34:38]  Well, and the congregation will justify it too.
[01:34:41]  That's what's so backwards.
[01:34:42]  Sorry, that makes me mad.
[01:34:43]  The blind lead the blind into a ditch, as the scriptures say.
[01:34:46]  But how common is that?
[01:34:47]  You've got your own jet?
[01:34:49]  I wouldn't say it's that common.
[01:34:52]  There's some.
[01:34:53]  A lot of pastors try to get into that space, and then their congregations do sometimes push back.
[01:34:59]  And so, who was I just talking to?
[01:35:01]  If I had a pastor in a church that I was attending on Sunday say, we need a private jet.
[01:35:05]  I mean, I'd stand up in the middle of the service and say, son, I know more about this than you do.
[01:35:10]  You do not need a private jet.
[01:35:11]  Jesus didn't fly private, he rode a donkey.
[01:35:14]  Like, what are you doing?
[01:35:14]  Well, then they'll say, oh, but the donkey was literally, I've had someone say, that was the fastest mode of transportation.
[01:35:20]  It wasn't, it was the most humiliating form of transportation.
[01:35:23]  That's why he chose it.
[01:35:24]  Yeah.
[01:35:25]  Yeah.
[01:35:25]  But they'll justify it.
[01:35:27]  Samaritan Spurs has, I didn't print their entire 2024.
[01:35:32]  But last year, they had, I think, 134 million in plane assets.
[01:35:39]  What?
[01:35:40]  Let me see.
[01:35:42]  Dang it.
[01:35:42]  Yeah, it's not on this doc.
[01:35:44]  I'm way more comfortable with a pastor sleeping with his assistant, which is totally immoral, than I am with him having a private jet.
[01:35:49]  I agree.
[01:35:50]  I agree.
[01:35:50]  Because at least everyone realizes, like, you're not supposed to sleep with your assistant.
[01:35:53]  It's totally sinful, it's wrong.
[01:35:55]  Well, the planes are the same.
[01:35:56]  But a plane is like a subtle kind of evil.
[01:35:59]  It's like no one even notices, oh, we're so important.
[01:36:01]  He's got a plane.
[01:36:02]  Well, that's the prosperity gospel message creeping in.
[01:36:04]  What is that exactly?
[01:36:06]  This is Paula White.
[01:36:07]  This is Kenneth Copeland, Duplantis.
[01:36:09]  This is, if God favors me, I will be prosperous.
[01:36:13]  And it comes from Malachi 3.
[01:36:15]  Malachi 3.
[01:36:18]  Yeah.
[01:36:18]  Opening the windows of heaven and you're going to be prospered.
[01:36:22]  Malachi 3 is talking about one thing it's talking about rain for their fields.
[01:36:28]  It's saying, if you bring into the storehouse, I will open the windows of heaven to you and pour out a blessing like you've never seen.
[01:36:35]  Malachi was talking about rain falling on the land so you could refill your storehouse.
[01:36:41]  He wasn't talking about a private plane.
[01:36:43]  Well, especially for a Christian to be like, well, you know, why are you doing that?
[01:36:46]  Malachi 3.
[01:36:47]  It's like we've got a whole New Testament and four Gospels in that.
[01:36:51]  And like, why don't you read those and tell me if you should have a private plane at other people's expense?
[01:36:57]  Well, this goes back to our conversation earlier about Malachi 3.
[01:37:01]  If you don't read the scriptures in its entirety and see it as one book, In one glorious story, you can bastardize a couple verses that have detrimental effects on the global church.
[01:37:13]  The body of Christ, when I say the church.
[01:37:17]  I'm sorry to do this.
[01:37:18]  Now, I just want to be totally transparent and say that Franklin Graham called me an anti Semite.
[01:37:24]  So I'm obviously noted with Franklin Graham.
[01:37:28]  So I should just say that just so people understand that I probably have mixed motives in doing this.
[01:37:32]  I'm not a pure person.
[01:37:34]  But I also think it's worth just pausing on Franklin Graham for a second because his father was a great man.
[01:37:39]  I think Franklin Graham is like a sober, serious person in a lot of ways.
[01:37:42]  He's not a transparent, ridiculous figure like Paula White.
[01:37:45]  It's just, I mean, it's almost too easy to beat up on Paula White.
[01:37:48]  Okay, yeah, the great theologian, Paula White.
[01:37:51]  But Franklin Graham is a much more serious person and he's always on Fox News and all that.

=== Franklin Graham And Paula White (12:39) ===

[01:37:58]  And so that's why I do think it's worth pausing and having you restate how much do they own in private aircraft?
[01:38:06]  Around 130 million.
[01:38:11]  That's just, Trey, bonkers, as the French say.
[01:38:14]  Like, that's just beyond $130 million.
[01:38:19]  And this is a great track to move into Alaska.
[01:38:22]  So he.
[01:38:24]  Bought a piece of land with his wife on Lake Clark in Alaska, very remote.
[01:38:29]  I've been to Alaska a few times, so I understand how remote Alaska is.
[01:38:32]  Beautiful.
[01:38:33]  Some of the most pretty country in the world.
[01:38:35]  Hard to get to, though.
[01:38:37]  Very.
[01:38:37]  And this is what gets interesting.
[01:38:39]  So I believe I can't, I don't have the document in front of me.
[01:38:42]  He and his wife bought this little lakefront, half acres.
[01:38:44]  I believe it's a half acre or maybe even a quarter acre, very small property on beautiful Lake Clark.
[01:38:50]  A few years, and that was, they purchased it personally because Franklin loves Alaska.
[01:38:54]  He loves fishing.
[01:38:56]  He loves bear hunting.
[01:38:57]  He loves to be outdoors.
[01:38:59]  Yeah, no, I like that about him.
[01:39:00]  And I, yeah, I'm a big outdoorsman.
[01:39:02]  You are.
[01:39:02]  And, well, what happened was a few years later, Samaritan's Purse bought the lot next to him.
[01:39:09]  And flash forward in the little town called Port Allsworth, there's only a couple hundred people that live there full time.
[01:39:16]  There's no signals.
[01:39:17]  You can't drive to it.
[01:39:18]  There is no road that gets you from Anchorage or any other city to Port Allsworth.
[01:39:24]  The only way to get there is by flight, private plane, and there's a dirt runway.
[01:39:28]  There's two of them, or by boat, by barge up these rivers.
[01:39:33]  Yeah.
[01:39:34]  And, and this is a good story for backstory.
[01:39:36]  So I was up in Alaska probably four years ago.
[01:39:39]  No, longer than that, five years ago.
[01:39:41]  And we're in the middle of nowhere.
[01:39:42]  I'm with Inuits.
[01:39:44]  Like we're going back, hacking on float planes to find a property that my friend was inheriting from her parents.
[01:39:50]  I'm like, I'll go with you.
[01:39:51]  This sounds awesome.
[01:39:52]  Right.
[01:39:53]  So I'm carrying a, I got a 10 mil strap to my chest.
[01:39:56]  A shotgun, a bear gun.
[01:39:57]  And I'm like, we're going.
[01:39:59]  We're in the middle of nowhere.
[01:40:00]  We're sitting with this Inuit.
[01:40:02]  We're staying at her cabin and she's making us a meal.
[01:40:05]  And she asks, What do I do?
[01:40:07]  And I say, The religion business.
[01:40:08]  And I give her the story.
[01:40:10]  We're filming it.
[01:40:11]  And she goes, Oh, you won't believe it.
[01:40:13]  Her husband owns a barge and barges equipment up and down these rivers.
[01:40:19]  And she goes, We just barged a soft top Ford Bronco, brand new, 2021.
[01:40:26]  So it's right when the Ford Bronco came out.
[01:40:28]  And I'm like, what is a soft top Ford Bronco being barged up a river in the middle of nowhere for?
[01:40:37]  And this is when you couldn't get them.
[01:40:38]  They were, you know, they were very hard to get.
[01:40:40]  And she goes, yeah, we barged it up for Samaritan's purse.
[01:40:44]  And I was like, what?
[01:40:46]  And she goes, yeah, here's the invoice.
[01:40:47]  And she put the invoice in front of me that said Samaritan's purse on.
[01:40:51]  Ah, this is so corrupt.
[01:40:52]  I can't believe this is real.
[01:40:53]  And this is where it gets crazier.
[01:40:55]  So I was like, wait, what do they do?
[01:40:57]  And she goes, they have this camp for, which is awesome.
[01:41:01]  My brother's a Marine.
[01:41:02]  My best friend's a Marine or a military.
[01:41:04]  My business partner's retired military.
[01:41:06]  I have massive respect for our armed forces.
[01:41:09]  So they started a nonprofit up there called Heal Our Patriots.
[01:41:16]  They bring couples, husband and wife couples up there to reinvigorate their relationship and retune them to Christ.
[01:41:23]  Awesome idea, right?
[01:41:25]  And so, but I'm like, what's a soft top Ford Bronco doing in the harshest environments in the world?
[01:41:30]  I mean, like, no one takes nice things up there because they all rust and get destroyed within a few seasons.
[01:41:35]  So I start doing some research.
[01:41:38]  Sure enough, I find it.
[01:41:39]  They bring a couple hundred people up there a year for three months out of the year.
[01:41:44]  They have these massive lakefront cabins now.
[01:41:46]  They bought, I said there were two dirt runways.
[01:41:48]  Samaritan's Purse bought one of the runways.
[01:41:50]  So now they have their own private airstrip.
[01:41:53]  And so Franklin and his wife have a house and they bring a couple.
[01:41:57]  Mike Pence has been there multiple times.
[01:42:00]  Yes, he has.
[01:42:01]  And so, ironically, I'm like, I'm going.
[01:42:04]  So, a camera operator and I went to Anchorage, took a plane to a little Cessna to somewhere else.
[01:42:11]  Then we got on a float plane and we landed.
[01:42:12]  We're in the middle of nowhere, Tucker.
[01:42:15]  And all of a sudden, there's it's have you seen the movie Truman Show?
[01:42:19]  No.
[01:42:20]  Great movie, but it's about a fake world.
[01:42:22]  It was a fake world.
[01:42:24]  There wasn't a blade of grass out of place.
[01:42:28]  Like the amount of upkeep and care to make this place look perfect.
[01:42:33]  And then the crazier part is this is where I go conspiracy theory.
[01:42:37]  There's these massive fuel storage tanks, massive, 20,000 gallons at a time.
[01:42:42]  And this plane would fly in and land and just refuel these tanks.
[01:42:46]  And I talked to the pilot and he's like, yeah, this place is like a bunker basically to just camp out.
[01:42:52]  And I'm like, oh, this is like Franklin Graham's World War III like hideout.
[01:42:56]  Like, if things go south, he's going to ping up here.
[01:42:59]  He's got, they've got gardens, they've got full greenhouses.
[01:43:03]  I'm like, this is like, this is the bug out zone.
[01:43:07]  And that's just my conspiracy theory.
[01:43:08]  But it's not, I mean, every rich person in the world thinks that way.
[01:43:12]  So the reason why I'm saying this is this organization is paid for by donor dollars.
[01:43:18]  It is a multi million dollar a year operation.
[01:43:22]  Franklin Graham, I have his flight logs.
[01:43:24]  Flies his private jet back and forth from North Carolina to Alaska during this three month window.
[01:43:31]  If you really wanted to run a successful, humble nonprofit, this is where it gets crazier.
[01:43:39]  Like you live in North Carolina, almost on the water.
[01:43:41]  You could start a great operation there in your backyard.
[01:43:43]  But here's my kicker their 990s show donors where the money goes.
[01:43:50]  This isn't their full 990, so you wouldn't be able to see it.
[01:43:52]  But in the back of a 990, they line itemize.
[01:43:55]  Where you're supposed to line itemize where your money goes.
[01:43:58]  There is nothing in their 990 that has anything to do with Alaska.
[01:44:04]  So it's buried in another line item that no donor knows about.
[01:44:10]  So I just get, I get this story specifically because that's every rich guy in the world wants, you know, who's a sportsman, wants a camp on a remote lake in Alaska, easy access, and wants a bug out spot.
[01:44:24]  Everybody wants that.
[01:44:25]  I mean, I would know.
[01:44:27]  Yeah.
[01:44:27]  And that's what everyone talks about.
[01:44:29]  You know what I mean?
[01:44:30]  Yeah.
[01:44:31]  And that's the opposite of a conspiracy theory.
[01:44:33]  That's like the thing people want most.
[01:44:36]  And if you can find a way to get your nonprofit to pay for it and a way to morally justify it to yourself, Helping wounded warriors keep their marriages together.
[01:44:46]  That's just, that is so corrupt.
[01:44:49]  I can, if what you're saying is true, that's like.
[01:44:51]  I've been there.
[01:44:51]  We filmed there.
[01:44:52]  We got, this is the best part.
[01:44:54]  So there's so many good parts of the story.
[01:44:56]  So at the end of the runway, there's a food truck that they barged up.
[01:45:00]  Get this, they barged this food truck up there to be there too.
[01:45:03]  And it's called, oh, what's Franklin's daughter's name?
[01:45:06]  Cece or she goes by?
[01:45:07]  I don't know.
[01:45:08]  Can't remember her name.
[01:45:09]  It's named after his daughter, this food truck.
[01:45:12]  They serve a very specific hamburger that's Franklin Graham's favorite hamburger.
[01:45:17]  His favorite meat patty.
[01:45:18]  And so we just picked a random date to go.
[01:45:21]  Like I didn't coordinate this or anything, but you can only go in the summer.
[01:45:25]  And so I'm sitting there and it's the only place to eat.
[01:45:29]  So literally we ate there every day.
[01:45:31]  And we're sitting there and we had hiked this ridge line to get a shot looking down.
[01:45:39]  And Franklin Graham pulls up in the Bronco.
[01:45:44]  And I'm like, well, my camera operator's like, dude, that's the Bronco.
[01:45:48]  And I was like, what?
[01:45:48]  And Out drives from the side road, this soft top Bronco pulls up, gets out, walks straight into the food truck, not goes up to order, walks into the back of the kitchen and starts making himself a burger.
[01:46:01]  And we have a camera.
[01:46:02]  And so I just put the camera on the table and it starts rolling.
[01:46:05]  And there's only two picnic tables.
[01:46:08]  And so I'm looking this way.
[01:46:09]  Franklin makes his burger, walks out, sits in the other picnic table, staring right at me.
[01:46:14]  Wait, can I ask, like, where is there to drive?
[01:46:17]  There's nowhere to drive the runway.
[01:46:19]  So, the Bronco is to drive from the runway to the camp?
[01:46:23]  The Bronco is to drive from his house down the airstrip to the main setup.
[01:46:27]  How far is it?
[01:46:28]  Probably a quarter mile, third of a mile.
[01:46:30]  What?
[01:46:30]  Yeah.
[01:46:32]  And they barged a brand new Bronco in to drive a quarter mile?
[01:46:35]  Yeah.
[01:46:36]  Most people use quads or golf carts, you know, because there's nothing there.
[01:46:39]  They're a walk.
[01:46:40]  There was one other car that I saw.
[01:46:43]  It was like a 1988 Chevy Suburban, and I know it because it was my first car.
[01:46:47]  So, great vehicle.
[01:46:49]  Yeah.
[01:46:49]  454, that big one.
[01:46:50]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:46:52]  Big time.
[01:46:52]  But that was the only other car.
[01:46:55]  And then a brand new Ford Bronco, soft top Ford Bronco.
[01:46:59]  Yeah.
[01:46:59]  Wow.
[01:47:00]  I don't think most really rich people who actually made the money honestly, or not honestly, but who made it themselves and didn't just like not pay taxes on donor money designed to help starving Africans, I don't even think they would go to that expense.
[01:47:14]  It was impressive.
[01:47:15]  That's very extravagant.
[01:47:16]  Well, and he's using donor money to justify it.
[01:47:20]  And then on their 990s, you can't find the line item cost of the operation.
[01:47:26]  That's the problem I have.
[01:47:28]  What do people say when you tell them?
[01:47:29]  I've never heard any of this, but.
[01:47:32]  I would say it's 50 50.
[01:47:34]  The people who don't like abuse are like, that's incredible, but I would never, I don't think that's Franklin Graham.
[01:47:41]  Because they look at Billy Graham, who I respect, and they go, he's the son of Billy Graham.
[01:47:47]  But again, all systems corrupt, and anybody who goes into this system eventually gets eaten by it.
[01:47:53]  And the other side actually try to justify it.
[01:47:58]  So many people try to justify this type of abuse.
[01:48:00]  Really?
[01:48:01]  How?
[01:48:02]  Franklin's a godly man, Tucker.
[01:48:05]  A godly man is a humble man.
[01:48:07]  That's the first sign of godliness humility because you're not God.
[01:48:11]  Yeah.
[01:48:12]  Right.
[01:48:12]  So that was the model that Jesus left us.
[01:48:14]  That was the model of the early church humility.
[01:48:17]  Well, I find it ironic too.
[01:48:18]  We have the shot in the show.
[01:48:21]  Oh, to get the veterans and their wives up there, they need private planes too.
[01:48:28]  So they bought these other aircraft that they look like military transporters almost.
[01:48:33]  Yeah.
[01:48:33]  And they land and they circle around because it's a small runway.
[01:48:37]  And so they circle around.
[01:48:39]  Who's the first person off the plane?
[01:48:42]  Who?
[01:48:42]  Their staff photographer.
[01:48:44]  Because they got to get the marketing photos of these wounded veterans getting off the plane.
[01:48:49]  And I just laughed.
[01:48:50]  And the best part is I'm there waving an American flag because they bring out the whole town because there's so few people on this little strip.
[01:48:56]  They want it to feel like it's something.
[01:48:59]  So cooks, everybody are coming out with a little American flag waving it.
[01:49:03]  So I'm sitting there waving my flag with them and, uh, it's all in the show.
[01:49:07]  And the first person off is the staff photographer just making sure they document it to get all the shots.
[01:49:13]  And then ironically, so I'm, I, I, Told you I spent six years in Maui during the Lahaina fires, which was awful.
[01:49:21]  I have really close friends in Maui.
[01:49:23]  A couple of my friends are firefighters that worked at the airport there.
[01:49:27]  Samaritans first flew their jet or their jumbo, their cargo plane from North Carolina to Lahaina.
[01:49:34]  I'm sorry, to Kahului.
[01:49:36]  They landed at Kahului.
[01:49:38]  And the first person off that jet, too, staff photographer, they've got to get the shot that they're bringing in materials to help the people of Maui.
[01:49:46]  And then Edward Graham, Franklin's son, walks off.
[01:49:49]  And I was told what was on that plane, all of it could have been bought at Costco down the street.
[01:49:56]  Water, blankets, just, but they spent tens of thousands of dollars in fuel to get the marketing shot.
[01:50:02]  Hundreds of thousands.
[01:50:03]  So they could raise hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
[01:50:07]  So they could get the marketing shot, so they can raise money saying, look at us help the victims of the Lahaina fire.
[01:50:13]  And those victims still, like, I have such a heart for Maui and what happened there.
[01:50:18]  But Samaritan's Purse, I would confidently say the majority of it is all just smoke and mirrors.
[01:50:24]  At this point, they do good work.
[01:50:26]  They do some good work.
[01:50:26]  Well, two and a half billion dollars where you're not spent, if, you know, I mean, just do the math.
[01:50:32]  That should be billions a year spent on the poor.
[01:50:35]  I agree.
[01:50:36]  Yeah.
[01:50:36]  Just by definition.
[01:50:37]  Yeah.

=== Smoke And Mirrors Charity (11:24) ===

[01:50:38]  And there's the silver lining here American Christians and global Christians, but American Christians in particular are so generous.
[01:50:44]  Yes, they are.
[01:50:45]  That we could solve through the money we give most social issues in America.
[01:50:49]  The church could do it.
[01:50:51]  But the money is not being stewarded properly, it's being shelled up in massive corporations and people are leveraging.
[01:50:58]  Um, donor generosity to build their bug out spaces in Alaska.
[01:51:02]  All in the name of Jesus.
[01:51:04]  People don't fear God very much anymore.
[01:51:06]  Well, the most effective Christian mission I've ever seen, I think that exists in the country, is not even explicitly Christian, but it is Christian and it's AA.
[01:51:15]  And it raises no money.
[01:51:16]  They won't even take money from you.
[01:51:18]  And no one gets paid.
[01:51:19]  There's no one in charge.
[01:51:21]  And they take people who are killing themselves, literally killing themselves, and they change them completely.
[01:51:27]  Not all of them, but they have a better success rate than any other rehab by far.
[01:51:31]  And they accrue zero power.
[01:51:34]  Wow.
[01:51:34]  It's the most Christian thing that happens in most churches.
[01:51:37]  You'll have some like rotting congregational church.
[01:51:40]  No one goes.
[01:51:41]  You got a trans preacher lady or something.
[01:51:43]  And then on Wednesday, they'll have the AA meeting and Jesus will fill the room.
[01:51:49]  Cost nothing.
[01:51:51]  It's amazing.
[01:51:53]  When I was traveling, like back in the day, I traveled to developing nations because I worked in the action sports world.
[01:51:57]  So surf and snow.
[01:51:58]  And so you usually go to some pretty remote spots.
[01:52:00]  And I would always want to go to churches and seminaries in those regions.
[01:52:05]  Oh, I bet.
[01:52:06]  And so I've gotten to worship in tin roofs in the back.
[01:52:10]  Rivers of Honduras and the favelas in Brazil, like the most beautiful things.
[01:52:15]  And that's what really started the religion business for me.
[01:52:18]  I would, these people would never ask for money.
[01:52:20]  They would never, they wouldn't have coffee and donuts.
[01:52:22]  They were huddled under a tin roof as the rain was pouring down.
[01:52:25]  There was no instruments.
[01:52:26]  Most of the time, they were just singing a cappella, and someone would pull out a little Bible and read some scriptures.
[01:52:31]  And I believe God just filled those rooms.
[01:52:34]  I believe that.
[01:52:34]  And then I'd come back to the mega churches that I would go to, and I'd walk in and I'd be like, oh, it's just the fog machines filling the room for sure.
[01:52:42]  But it was just performance.
[01:52:43]  And so that really made me rethink what is a church.
[01:52:47]  Yeah.
[01:52:48]  I mean, especially since Jesus is pretty tough on the rich and on money.
[01:52:52]  And it's a challenge to any of us, you know, who have excess money.
[01:52:55]  It's like, what is he saying?
[01:52:56]  Well, money is the root of all evil, right?
[01:52:58]  Well, that's what it's the love of money.
[01:52:59]  Yes.
[01:53:00]  The love.
[01:53:00]  The love of money is not the money.
[01:53:02]  Right.
[01:53:02]  That's what Paul said.
[01:53:03]  And Jesus says, famously, it's harder for a rich man to get to heaven than a camel through the eye of a needle.
[01:53:08]  So, yeah, the idea that like you follow God and get rich is like, Like a perfect inversion of what he said.
[01:53:15]  But that's capitalism creeping into the church.
[01:53:17]  And I would actually argue, and this is a bold statement, a democratic republic is the greatest government experiment in the history of humanity.
[01:53:26]  I would say.
[01:53:26]  I've enjoyed it.
[01:53:27]  Yeah.
[01:53:27]  I've enjoyed it.
[01:53:28]  Yeah.
[01:53:28]  So we enjoy it.
[01:53:29]  I love America.
[01:53:30]  You love America.
[01:53:31]  I do.
[01:53:32]  Capitalism should not be anywhere near Christianity.
[01:53:36]  You think?
[01:53:38]  Christianity is more, and I don't like the word socialist with the weight it carries, but Christianity and its.
[01:53:46]  Is socialism at its core non authoritarian?
[01:53:50]  It's the marker to build social capital.
[01:53:53]  You look at that early church of Acts, and it transformed Rome within a couple hundred years the greatest superpower of its time to where Constantine was like, I'm a Christian hanging out with these dudes.
[01:54:02]  They had no money, they had no buildings, but somehow the love of their neighbor transformed the greatest superpower of its time.
[01:54:10]  That's dangerous.
[01:54:13]  It needs to be constrained.
[01:54:14]  Right.
[01:54:15]  Today, it's just we've let capitalism and Carl Truman, he's a Reformation thought expert, brilliant guy from England.
[01:54:22]  He calls it the rugged American individualistic experience.
[01:54:26]  And he goes, that has detrimental effects on Christianity.
[01:54:29]  How about greed?
[01:54:30]  I mean, it just looks like greed to me.
[01:54:33]  But yeah.
[01:54:34]  So let me ask about I never paid any attention to any of this stuff ever.
[01:54:39]  I just didn't ever encounter it at all because America is like a collection of cultures that don't sort of meet each other very much.
[01:54:46]  But yeah.
[01:54:48]  The only reason I became aware of any of this is because of its effect on foreign policy, which I have followed closely for a long time.
[01:54:53]  So all of a sudden, you see these preachers endorsing violence.
[01:54:58]  And my understanding of the gospel, it's like Jesus does not command anyone to go kill anybody else, like just the opposite.
[01:55:04]  So I'm like, what is this?
[01:55:05]  So you press a little bit and you find that they're serving this theology or ideology or demonic influence.
[01:55:15]  I mean, I don't know what it is, but this conflation of the nation, modern nation state, secular nation state of Israel with.
[01:55:21]  Biblical Israel, whatever that was, you find this thing called Christian Zionism.
[01:55:27]  And I still don't understand it.
[01:55:29]  It's not Christianity.
[01:55:31]  But what is it?
[01:55:33]  Where does it come from?
[01:55:34]  And is it as widespread among the leaders of these institutions as it seems to be?
[01:55:38]  Let's start last question first.
[01:55:40]  They're all, they all seem to be, the people you're talking about all seem to be Christian Zionists.
[01:55:45]  Yeah, I would argue it's dispensationalism.
[01:55:48]  Okay.
[01:55:48]  Is the, is the, is the bedrock of it, right?
[01:55:50]  Like, so I feel like Zionist, anti Semite, all these hot button words are just thrown around.
[01:55:56]  That's for sure.
[01:55:56]  So yeah, dispensate.
[01:55:58]  I don't care what anybody calls me.
[01:55:59]  Like, I'm going to reach.
[01:56:00]  Oh, and I have my business partner and I have something for you because I'm going to go back to this right now.
[01:56:06]  This is a preacher's Bible from 1668.
[01:56:09]  Wow.
[01:56:10]  So, preachers, this is what a preacher carried around.
[01:56:15]  And a good friend of mine is one of the biggest Bible collectors in the world.
[01:56:20]  So, 1668, right on the spine there.
[01:56:23]  And this is what you and I are going to reference for the next time to understand dispensationalism, Zionism, anti Semitism.
[01:56:33]  Um, yeah, printed in, in 1668.
[01:56:37]  And it's amazing in England.
[01:56:39]  Yep, in England.
[01:56:41]  And yeah, I just figured it's, it's, it's, um, whenever anybody starts talking about subjects like this, I will always refer to the scriptures for truth, nothing else, not popular belief, not opinion.
[01:56:54]  It's incredible.
[01:56:55]  Just the scriptures.
[01:56:55]  So that's for you, um, from, from Chris and I.
[01:56:58]  Well, that is so kind.
[01:56:59]  Thank you.
[01:57:00]  Um, I love that.
[01:57:01]  Yeah.
[01:57:01]  I'll actually read it.
[01:57:02]  Yeah.
[01:57:02]  Yeah.
[01:57:02]  It's a good one.
[01:57:03]  So it's a good book, guys.
[01:57:05]  Um, whether you see it as a history book or the Word of God, it's a, it's a great book.
[01:57:09]  Um, dispensationalism is a very new thing.
[01:57:11]  It's only a couple hundred years old.
[01:57:14]  A guy named Darby kind of spun it up.
[01:57:16]  The Schofield Reference Bible had it in its margin notes.
[01:57:19]  And so it's the idea that the world is broken into dispensations or periods.
[01:57:25]  And so Darby had this idea that Israel, the 12 tribes which came from Abraham, are different from the body of Christ that Christ talks about in the Gospels and that Paul pushes for and really closes down in the epistles.
[01:57:44]  And so dispensationalism is.
[01:57:46]  Israel, the tribe of Israel is set apart from the body of Christ.
[01:57:53]  And part of that is this idea of reclaiming the promised land, the physical promised land.
[01:57:58]  How?
[01:57:58]  Where does that, I mean, Paul, who wrote the majority of the New Testament, who was a Jew, was a Pharisee, a persecutor of the church, and then met Jesus, he goes out of his way to say that the opposite of that.
[01:58:12]  Romans, he destroys that argument.
[01:58:14]  Like he levels dispensationalism with a sledgehammer in Romans.
[01:58:18]  Hebrews, same exact thing.
[01:58:21]  Galatians hits on it too.
[01:58:22]  Oh, I know.
[01:58:23]  Yeah.
[01:58:23]  And, um, so it goes back to this idea when we don't see the scriptures, and this is what I want to encourage everybody out there Christians, atheists, agnostics, I don't care.
[01:58:32]  Like it's the greatest history book of humanity.
[01:58:35]  We can see it as that.
[01:58:36]  And you have to see it as one story.
[01:58:39]  It's not 66 different stories for the 66 book canon.
[01:58:43]  It is one story.
[01:58:45]  When we dive into this book and start cherry picking verses or parables and applying it to our life, that's a very dangerous practice because we become Our own storyteller, which is idolatry.
[01:58:57]  Yes.
[01:58:57]  And so you have to see this book as one complete story of birth, death, and resurrection or creation and fulfillment and redemption.
[01:59:08]  And so dispensationalism is the 12 tribes of Israel still deserve this land.
[01:59:15]  And so I don't know where we want to.
[01:59:16]  And don't need Jesus?
[01:59:18]  And don't need Jesus, no.
[01:59:19]  Okay, so that's the.
[01:59:20]  Leaving aside the land and what you do with the Levant and all that, and what the boundaries of that land are, I mean, these are all questions I tried to get answers from in my conversation with Mike Huckabee to no avail.
[01:59:32]  But that's secondary as a theological matter to the core question, which is how do you get to heaven?
[01:59:37]  How are you redeemed?
[01:59:39]  And I think the New Testament could not make it clear.
[01:59:42]  Jesus couldn't make it clear.
[01:59:43]  Paul, the Jewish Pharisee, couldn't make it clearer.
[01:59:46]  It's through Jesus.
[01:59:47]  It's an exclusive claim.
[01:59:49]  It's that or nothing.
[01:59:50]  Correct.
[01:59:50]  And Jesus is so.
[01:59:51]  That's what it says, right?
[01:59:52]  Am I missing something?
[01:59:53]  100%.
[01:59:54]  A chapter I don't know about?
[01:59:55]  Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
[01:59:56]  No one gets to the Father.
[01:59:57]  Okay.
[01:59:58]  So then you have people just arrive out of nowhere 150 or 200 years ago and they're like, well, actually, there's one group that doesn't need Jesus.
[02:00:05]  Is that what they're saying?
[02:00:06]  Correct.
[02:00:06]  And this goes on.
[02:00:07]  Where does that come from?
[02:00:09]  It comes back from pride, is where I'll take it.
[02:00:12]  So there was only one church, and it's not the Roman Catholic Church, it's not the Orthodox Church.
[02:00:19]  Those are great traditions.
[02:00:20]  I respect those.
[02:00:20]  Traditions.
[02:00:21]  I do too.
[02:00:22]  But there's only one church, and that's the Church of Christ.
[02:00:25]  That's the body of Christ.
[02:00:26]  And in 1054, you have the Great Schism, the original split.
[02:00:31]  Right.
[02:00:32]  Denominational split.
[02:00:33]  Boom.
[02:00:33]  Now you have Catholicism in the Vatican and you have Orthodoxy.
[02:00:37]  Well, today there are over 40,000 denominations.
[02:00:41]  And you have to ask why, Tucker?
[02:00:44]  If you and I preach the same gospel, what does that mean?
[02:00:48]  We're equal.
[02:00:49]  There's nothing different about you and I.
[02:00:51]  We have the same God, the same Christ.
[02:00:53]  We believe in the same healing power through the resurrection.
[02:00:56]  And we are here to help the hungry, the sick, the poor, the naked, the prisoner, the sojourner, the orphan and the widowed.
[02:01:03]  But I don't want to be like you, Tucker.
[02:01:06]  I want to be unique.
[02:01:07]  I need something different.
[02:01:09]  So I'm going to go to this book and say, oh, these guys, Tucker got it wrong.
[02:01:13]  Like dispensationalism.
[02:01:15]  Then I have a new message to sell and I can sell it.
[02:01:17]  Then I can package it and sell it.
[02:01:20]  Power and money is at the root of all of this.
[02:01:23]  Power and money.
[02:01:24]  But if all the new messages, I mean, that just seems like an explicitly anti Christian message that you don't, that some people don't need Jesus to be saved.
[02:01:33]  I 100% agree.
[02:01:34]  If you were to, some are, I mean, you can believe it or reject it.
[02:01:37]  Most people reject it.
[02:01:38]  That's fine.
[02:01:38]  You know, it's not my job to save people.
[02:01:41]  But the Christian message is you need Jesus.
[02:01:44]  So if you have Christian preachers all of a sudden standing up and be like, well, actually, not really, then they're not Christian preachers, are they?
[02:01:51]  No, they're dividing the body of Christ.
[02:01:53]  Right.
[02:01:53]  But on the basis of, Of theology that's the 180 degree opposite of the Christian message.
[02:02:00]  Correct.
[02:02:01]  I would say.

=== Spiritual War Deceptions (15:20) ===

[02:02:02]  What is going on?
[02:02:05]  I would say most Christians, especially dispensationalist or Zionist Christians, are Talmudic Jews wrapped in Christianity.
[02:02:12]  What does that mean?
[02:02:15]  Okay.
[02:02:16]  So, where should we start?
[02:02:19]  Can I start in the Bible?
[02:02:20]  Because I want to lean on scripture here.
[02:02:23]  So, you have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.
[02:02:27]  Jacob becomes Israel.
[02:02:30]  Israel has 12 sons.
[02:02:31]  Those are the 12 patriarchs.
[02:02:32]  Right.
[02:02:33]  Ironically, the word Jew, do you know what it means?
[02:02:36]  It comes from Judah.
[02:02:37]  Of Judah.
[02:02:37]  Right.
[02:02:37]  So, who are the 11?
[02:02:38]  He's one of 12 tribes.
[02:02:39]  Who are the 11?
[02:02:40]  There's so many muddled terms here that are so ironic to me.
[02:02:45]  The story goes Moses leads them to the promised land.
[02:02:51]  They wander through the desert for 40 years, and Moses is about to lead them into the promised land.
[02:02:57]  This is the land that in the Abrahamic covenants, and then the Mosaic laws, the Israelites are going to inherit this land, right?
[02:03:06]  This is the story.
[02:03:07]  So they're about to cross into the promised land.
[02:03:10]  Moses does something silly first, and he slaps a rock to get some water out, and he doesn't give credit to God.
[02:03:16]  He takes the credit instead.
[02:03:17]  And so Jehovah says, Hey, you're not going to enter the promised land.
[02:03:22]  And I'm going to give you someone who will.
[02:03:24]  It ends up being Joshua.
[02:03:26]  So Joshua is the next book of the Bible after the Torah.
[02:03:29]  Joshua leads them into the promised land.
[02:03:32]  So in Joshua 21, it says, All has come to pass.
[02:03:39]  I actually want to read it because it's such a powerful line.
[02:03:43]  But this is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant.
[02:03:46]  And Joshua himself says it.
[02:03:49]  And so the Abrahamic covenant, remember, is Israel deserves the land.
[02:03:53]  Let's see, where is this?
[02:03:56]  Sorry, I'm a big note taker.
[02:03:59]  Where's it on the back?
[02:04:00]  Oh, dang it, it's not in this copy.
[02:04:02]  I have so many copies of things.
[02:04:03]  So in Joshua 21, he says, I've given you peace in the land.
[02:04:07]  No one's warring with you.
[02:04:09]  God has given us everything, all has come to pass, which means that covenant is fulfilled.
[02:04:17]  Jehovah had given Israel the land.
[02:04:19]  They settled in it.
[02:04:20]  And so dispensationalists will go, no, well, the Abrahamic covenants are still in effect.
[02:04:24]  Well, no, the very man that led them in, in the scripture says, all has come to pass.
[02:04:29]  And then on the cross, Christ says, it is finished.
[02:04:33]  And what the whole story of this book is the Old Testament is a physical reality and it's a shadow of a future spiritual fulfillment.
[02:04:43]  And so the promise Jesus says this repeatedly.
[02:04:46]  Repeatedly.
[02:04:46]  So the promised land, God did fulfill his covenant with Abraham.
[02:04:51]  Joshua led them in and he said, All has come to pass.
[02:04:56]  And then what did they do?
[02:04:58]  They didn't listen.
[02:04:59]  They fell out.
[02:04:59]  They bred with, you know, um, other nations.
[02:05:02]  Philistines.
[02:05:02]  Yeah.
[02:05:03]  And boom.
[02:05:03]  Okay.
[02:05:04]  That doesn't mean you get the covenant over and over and over and over again, right?
[02:05:07]  And so Christ comes and he takes what is a physical nation.
[02:05:12]  And Romans is clear on this.
[02:05:14]  And that if physical Israel becomes a spiritual nation, it becomes the body of Christ.
[02:05:19]  Yeah.
[02:05:19]  Jesus calls himself the temple.
[02:05:21]  Yes.
[02:05:21]  So Israel today is the body of Christ, Christ believing Christians, Christ following Christians.
[02:05:29]  Israel, the nation state.
[02:05:31]  Is something else entirely.
[02:05:33]  And there's a geopolitical argument to be had that yes, like they deserve their country, they deserve the land.
[02:05:40]  For sure, right?
[02:05:41]  That's a great conversation.
[02:05:42]  Don't use this book, though, to justify current geopolitical class.
[02:05:47]  Exactly.
[02:05:48]  I don't think the Bible commands you to hate modern Israel.
[02:05:52]  I don't think that.
[02:05:53]  And I don't hate modern Israel.
[02:05:54]  But the claim that the Bible tells you you have to support Bibi is so deranged that it's a threat to our faith.
[02:06:02]  Correct.
[02:06:03]  The physical promised land is fulfilled in a spiritual promised land.
[02:06:07]  The physical nation tribe of Israel becomes a spiritual nation that all are invited into.
[02:06:12]  This is the story in this book.
[02:06:14]  So, the only reason why you would dip back into old covenant theology, dispensationalism, Zionism, is for two things power and control.
[02:06:23]  Our God, Christ, is a unifying God.
[02:06:26]  He's not a divisive God, He doesn't divide.
[02:06:28]  He doesn't say, You're different than you.
[02:06:30]  Nope, all are my children, all come under me.
[02:06:33]  And so the only reason why you divide is for power and control.
[02:06:37]  That is so wise.
[02:06:38]  That is true.
[02:06:40]  That is true.
[02:06:40]  I mean, that's the story of history.
[02:06:43]  And so when Christ said it is finished on the cross, he meant it.
[02:06:49]  Anybody who dips back into old covenant theology, it is not finished on that cross.
[02:06:54]  And that's what Talmudic Jews think.
[02:06:58]  So, how did it wind up becoming not just like this eccentric boutique view?
[02:07:07]  Non Christian view, but it became the dominant position of evangelical church, not exclusive.
[02:07:13]  No, they're not, they're not, they don't all think this.
[02:07:15]  And I think it is changing.
[02:07:16]  But for the past 40 years, it's been the dominant view.
[02:07:20]  How did that happen?
[02:07:22]  I think there's a very nefarious, I'm going to call them they right now behind all of this.
[02:07:28]  And I'm going to go down some called conspiracy theory rabbit holes or whatnot.
[02:07:33]  I think the church, and especially the evangelical church, is being used as a tool.
[02:07:39]  For a far greater agenda that most people can't see or fathom at the moment.
[02:07:43]  I feel that so strongly.
[02:07:45]  I can't see it either, but I feel that it's so obvious.
[02:07:47]  So, what is that agenda?
[02:07:51]  Huckabee said the quiet part out loud in your interview.
[02:07:55]  He said, if they were to take the promise, you said, you positioned it, hey, well, why don't they just take all the land?
[02:07:59]  And he said, well, maybe they should.
[02:08:00]  Or I'm paraphrasing there, but whatever he said, that was the quiet part out loud.
[02:08:06]  There is a group that wants to reclaim that promised land.
[02:08:10]  The original Nile to the Euphrates and rebuild the third temple.
[02:08:15]  And there's only one thing that does in this book, and it ushers in the Antichrist.
[02:08:22]  So, why in God's name would anybody want that?
[02:08:25]  In God's name, that's right.
[02:08:27]  Yeah.
[02:08:27]  And I'm here to present this argument that right now the evangelical church and most Christian leadership is being used for something far more nefarious than they understand.
[02:08:43]  And can fathom.
[02:08:44]  They're all blind.
[02:08:44]  The blind lead the blind into a ditch, and they're being walked into a ditch rapidly in the name of Jesus and in the name of this book.
[02:08:55]  What does that mean, ushering in the Antichrist?
[02:09:03]  Well, I'd get into my opinion because I don't know.
[02:09:07]  Like, I personally think, is that where we want to go?
[02:09:10]  I want you to tell the truth as you understand it.
[02:09:13]  Okay.
[02:09:13]  This is my truth.
[02:09:14]  I think the Antichrist is power and ultimate power and authority, it's institutional power.
[02:09:22]  When you look at the world, we were a conquering world.
[02:09:26]  People were moving out.
[02:09:27]  Well, once you conquer the world, it's all conquered.
[02:09:30]  Where do you go back to?
[02:09:31]  We're not that smart.
[02:09:34]  We go back to this.
[02:09:35]  Well, we need to reconquer the promised land.
[02:09:40]  That's what I think there's a group that wants to retake that promised land.
[02:09:44]  They do believe this book has significant power.
[02:09:47]  And so they want to reclaim it.
[02:09:49]  And they're using dispensationalist arguments to do that.
[02:09:51]  For the sake of controlling the world.
[02:09:53]  For the sake of controlling the world.
[02:09:54]  Yeah.
[02:09:56]  I mean, that's just so clearly true.
[02:09:58]  Yeah.
[02:09:58]  That's so clearly true.
[02:09:59]  And it grieves me to say that I think the president of the United States may not fully understand that theology or that argument, but clearly sees this war in Iran as a way to achieve power over the world.
[02:10:14]  There's no doubt in my mind.
[02:10:15]  Yeah.
[02:10:16]  And this book, the beautiful saving grace of this book, is being weaponized to do it.
[02:10:24]  So do you believe that there's a spiritual component to this?
[02:10:28]  It's not just like.
[02:10:30]  100%.
[02:10:30]  I think I do firmly believe there's a demonic.
[02:10:33]  Component to this behind it all.
[02:10:36]  And the church is, again, the church and its resources are being used to do it.
[02:10:43]  That's kind of obliquely described in the New Testament, right?
[02:10:47]  In the deception that Jesus promises will come at some point.
[02:10:50]  The people you think are going to save you are actually working to destroy you.
[02:10:53]  Well, Satan came as light, and then he says, My workers will come as light also.
[02:11:00]  Right.
[02:11:00]  That's a very, very terrifying.
[02:11:03]  So, if you're hoping to understand the nature of evil, which I think a lot of people are trying to understand, like what does it look like?
[02:11:08]  It's not just the obvious monster under the bed stuff.
[02:11:11]  No.
[02:11:11]  True evil seems like salvation.
[02:11:14]  True evil comes as a half truth.
[02:11:16]  It comes looking like Christ, sounding like Christ, but it's not Christ.
[02:11:22]  And how do we know the difference between Christ and something that looks like Christ?
[02:11:27]  You have to know his word, his scripture.
[02:11:29]  What are the fruits?
[02:11:31]  Love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, gentleness.
[02:11:34]  It seems to me that people who are coming in the name of God and doing God's will, who are holy, throw off around them kind of an umbrella of peace and they don't leave chaos in their wake.
[02:11:48]  Like we can judge the tree by its fruit.
[02:11:50]  This is just my half baked thought of in my living room theology to myself, but I want me running against you with deeper knowledge that we know when someone's on God's path because.
[02:12:01]  That person is at peace.
[02:12:02]  That person is not seeking power and control over others.
[02:12:05]  That person is not besotted by greed or lust or pride, obviously.
[02:12:10]  And that person can admit fault.
[02:12:12]  He's humble.
[02:12:14]  And that his world, the people around him are at peace.
[02:12:18]  They're not filled with, right?
[02:12:19]  I mean, if the message is.
[02:12:21]  You're a good baker.
[02:12:22]  I would.
[02:12:23]  He baked it well.
[02:12:24]  No, I mean, that just all seems super obvious.
[02:12:26]  I understand everything on the most obvious level.
[02:12:28]  So it's not rocket science, the book.
[02:12:30]  Well, it kind of feels that way.
[02:12:31]  It's not.
[02:12:32]  Well, because we've.
[02:12:33]  So, if you claim you're acting in God's name and like speaking God's word, then the people around you should be at peace, right?
[02:12:41]  The leader should have a good father has happy children.
[02:12:45]  Correct.
[02:12:45]  Right?
[02:12:46]  Yeah.
[02:12:46]  And a bad father has screwed up children.
[02:12:49]  It's like kind of that simple.
[02:12:50]  It all flows down from leadership.
[02:12:52]  So, the world around a true Christian leader should be a harmonious, peaceful world and the people should be thriving.
[02:13:00]  By which I don't mean they're all getting rich.
[02:13:02]  Yeah.
[02:13:03]  They may be poor.
[02:13:04]  Yeah.
[02:13:04]  But they should be joyful.
[02:13:06]  100%.
[02:13:07]  And they should be content.
[02:13:09]  Yes.
[02:13:09]  I think contentment is such a big part of this book.
[02:13:11]  Tell me, flesh that out.
[02:13:13]  I know that you're right, but I don't quite understand how.
[02:13:15]  Contentment is, you know, there's this term called shalom, but contentment is just being at peace in the position you're at.
[02:13:22]  Right.
[02:13:23]  And it wasn't until I had my daughter that I actually started to understand that because I realized, hey, this isn't about me.
[02:13:31]  This isn't about Nathan anymore.
[02:13:33]  This is about something so much more profound and beautiful.
[02:13:35]  And when I had, I didn't have my daughter, when her mom had my daughter or our daughter, It's when I went back to this book.
[02:13:44]  And that's where I started finding contentment and fulfillment.
[02:13:47]  And you find fulfillment in Christ.
[02:13:50]  He said, I have come to fulfill it all.
[02:13:52]  I have fulfilled the Old Testament, I have fulfilled the Old Covenants, the Mosaic Laws.
[02:13:57]  And everybody goes, Oh, Nathan, that doesn't mean he abolished them.
[02:14:01]  I didn't say he abolished them.
[02:14:02]  I said he fulfilled them into something greater, which is Hebrews.
[02:14:06]  It's what the book of Hebrews is all about, where of necessity there takes place a death of a priesthood.
[02:14:11]  There's a change in covenant also.
[02:14:14]  Christ ushered in an entirely new covenant.
[02:14:17]  And that's right through him.
[02:14:19]  It's through his teachings.
[02:14:20]  He is the way, the truth, and the life.
[02:14:22]  And no one gets to Jehovah except through him.
[02:14:24]  That's the only way.
[02:14:26]  And I didn't understand it.
[02:14:27]  I was raised in the church my whole life.
[02:14:29]  I didn't understand it until I had my daughter and I started reading the Bible cover to cover.
[02:14:33]  Here's the problem, Tucker only 13% of American Christians have ever read the book.
[02:14:42]  How about I show you a trailer of a movie, a two and a half minute trailer, and you go, This is my favorite movie of all time.
[02:14:47]  Done.
[02:14:51]  You wouldn't do it.
[02:14:52]  No, you wouldn't.
[02:14:52]  You'd say, Hey, I need to see the whole movie because the other 90 minutes might be total crap.
[02:14:58]  Or it might be completely different from what the trailer portrays.
[02:15:01]  Yeah.
[02:15:01]  Or maybe Nathan's description to you of the movie is totally wrong.
[02:15:05]  Of course.
[02:15:05]  So a pastor's description of this book might be totally wrong.
[02:15:09]  But it just seems obvious that if you're calling for violence against innocence, what you're saying has no connection to what Jesus said at all.
[02:15:18]  Right?
[02:15:19]  Or am I just being too autistic about this?
[02:15:20]  No, no, you're on it.
[02:15:22]  I voted for Trump.
[02:15:23]  Oh, well, yeah, I campaigned for Trump.
[02:15:25]  It was a lot.
[02:15:27]  When I look back on it, I was sold a straight lie.
[02:15:30]  You think?
[02:15:31]  Yeah.
[02:15:31]  Yeah.
[02:15:32]  And I want no wars.
[02:15:34]  I believe in Christ teaching peace and love and loving your neighbor.
[02:15:40]  And we.
[02:15:42]  And again, I'm going to go back to something positive because everybody always says everything's negative about my conversations.
[02:15:48]  But the generosity of Christians can transform our nation.
[02:15:52]  We don't need to give more.
[02:15:53]  We need to be better stewards, which would be the biggest light to the world.
[02:15:58]  And right now, it's going down a really dark path, really quick.
[02:16:03]  And in one breath on Easter Sunday, we have pastors claiming similarity from Trump to Christ in regards to the beatings and the lies.
[02:16:14]  And then the next day, he's.
[02:16:16]  Threatening to blow up power plants and bridges, hurting civilians, saying fuck, like literally the most disgusting evil in a tweet that I've ever read.
[02:16:28]  Totally agree.
[02:16:28]  From a president.
[02:16:29]  And I'm like, wait, wait.
[02:16:31]  But our Christian leaders are still going to try to protect that and justify that.
[02:16:34]  How dare they?
[02:16:35]  Yeah, I agree.
[02:16:37]  It's disgusting at all levels.
[02:16:40]  And we were talking about spiritual war.
[02:16:44]  I think there's a massive spiritual war going on in the White House right now.
[02:16:48]  And It starts with the spiritual leaders that are standing next to and over Trump.
[02:16:56]  I think a lot of us were too cynical and approached this as theater, which it may have been intended to be, you know, get whatever money hungry dispensationalists or, you know, fallen, screwed up people who don't have real congregations and get them to sort of put the imprimatur of the New Testament on what is clearly in violation of like basic Christian principles.
[02:17:19]  And, you know, let's get the evangelicals on board for this.

=== Institutional Church As A Weapon (02:39) ===

[02:17:22]  I don't think that's the whole story.
[02:17:25]  I think this is, these are.
[02:17:28]  Instruments of spiritual war, these people.
[02:17:30]  This is not just theater.
[02:17:31]  Like, this is real.
[02:17:34]  100%.
[02:17:34]  Yeah.
[02:17:35]  Well, like, we live in a.
[02:17:37]  So, when we look, let's go into the Old Testament again.
[02:17:40]  You know, the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, and then the outer rooms.
[02:17:46]  There was a veil that separated spiritual from physical.
[02:17:50]  When Christ died on that cross, what happened to that veil?
[02:17:52]  It was rent in half, tore down, which meant the spiritual world and the physical worlds combined.
[02:17:59]  And hence the bridge from physical nation Israel to spiritual nation.
[02:18:04]  We are bridged now through something far greater than physical nationality, genealogy, all that.
[02:18:09]  But that also brings deadly things with it, which is there's a darkness in the spiritual realm as well.
[02:18:17]  And we live in that right now.
[02:18:19]  And again, the devil comes as light.
[02:18:24]  What better way to completely steer off?
[02:18:29]  Good, generous, Christ fallen Christians than sell something that kind of looks like Christianity.
[02:18:34]  Create institutions that have literally all the resources in the world, but will keep you chained to their pews.
[02:18:40]  Again, we're going to go back.
[02:18:41]  Christianity is dangerous.
[02:18:44]  The book of Acts, that church was dangerous to power and institution.
[02:18:47]  Right now, the current institutional church structure is being used as a weapon for ill gotten gain against God's people.
[02:18:58]  Against God's people.
[02:19:00]  We're being used, the evangelical church, most Christians are being used to kill children, women.
[02:19:09]  Yeah.
[02:19:12]  And all in the name of this old covenant.
[02:19:16]  Pete Hogsworth, or whatever his name is, he's quoting that.
[02:19:20]  Trump's quoting it.
[02:19:21]  That's why you have to read this thing as one story.
[02:19:26]  It's one complete story of redemption.
[02:19:28]  And so.
[02:19:29]  If you're looking to Trump and looking to what we're doing and looking to the nation state of Israel and saying, oh, yeah, this is why that's justified instead of geopolitical reasoning, you are being duped and you are saying it is not finished on that cross.
[02:19:47]  Amazing, amazing conversation.
[02:19:50]  Thank you.
[02:19:50]  Yeah.
[02:19:52]  I'll be thinking about it.
[02:19:53]  Yeah, think about it.
[02:19:55]  I don't know.
[02:19:55]  I don't know what I'm doing.
[02:19:56]  I'm just doing my thing, bro.
[02:19:57]  You're speaking the truth.
[02:19:59]  I know that.
[02:20:00]  Nathan, thank you very much.
[02:20:01]  Yeah, thank you, Tucker.