Julian Dorey Podcast - #340 - The Vatican, Demons & CREEPIEST Pastor in America | Religion Business

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Nathan Apffel and Chris Ayoub are the creators of The Religion Business, a multi-part docuseries exposing the financial practices and lack of accountability in Western religion. Beyond filmmaking, Apffel and Ayoub are building tech-driven solutions to push for transparency, ethical governance, and redirecting resources toward real issues like poverty and homelessness. RELIGION BUSINESS LINKS: The Religion Business Website - https://www.thereligionbusiness.com IG: https://www.instagram.com/nathan_apffel/# IG: https://www.instagram.com/religionbusiness YT: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkynle-j4cDBB-5_bAp81mQ FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY INSTAGRAM (Podcast): https://www.instagram.com/juliandoreypodcast/ INSTAGRAM (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://twitter.com/julianddorey JULIAN YT CHANNELS - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP ****TIMESTAMPS**** 00:00 - Intro 01:13 – Tommy G, Religion Business, Nate’s Accident, $1 Trillion Christianity, Daughter’s Birth 10:00 – Chris Intro, Christianity, Institutions, Saints Built Orphanages, Can It Stay Pure? 20:43 – Cyclical, Gateway Church, Secular vs Religious Nonprofits, 14 Points, Hells Angels, IRS 30:48 – Scientology, Vatican, Good Intentions to Hell, Tithing, Middle Man, Matthew 25 43:20 – Gift Giving, Transparency, Senator Hatfield, ECFA, Mailers = Money 50:12 – Kenneth Copeland, MLM?, Fear Engine, Mega Pastors Opposite of Jesus 01:01:54 – Blessing?, Mosaic Laws, Leviticus, Black Israelites, Churches as Enterprises 01:10:33 – Clergy Demoralized, Buildings, Parishes, YOU Are the Temple 01:22:20 – Faith in Faith, Mega Pastors, Ignorance, Only 13% Read Bible, Chris Reads as History 01:31:33 – Fooled by Pastors, Self-Focus, Military, Quitting Drinking, Hero Journey = Jesus 01:39:33 – Civilian Life, Missing Danger, Holy Spirit, Everything on the Altar 01:47:01 – Not a Poor Gospel, Parables vs Exceptions, Read Genesis to Revelation 01:51:34 – Socialism, Communism, Republic, Capitalism, Christ’s Social Message, Tribe 01:59:47 – Demons, Stardust, S3xual Energy Transfer, Angels, Humility 02:09:01 – Atheist vs Christian, CIA, 14 Points Control, Religion + Politics = Death Rattle 02:19:21 – Christianity & Gov, Moral Authority, Islam vs Christianity, Johnson Amendment 02:25:00 – Johnson Amendment, Netanyahu, Religion + Politics, Abdication, Read Bible 02:35:00 – Paying Congregation?, No Full-Time Pastors, Traditions as Doctrine 02:39:58 – Charlie Kirk Shot, No Hope, Religion Online, Baby Christians, Revival? 02:52:20 – Murder Charlotte, Beast Train, Hate & Homelessness, Tommy G, Copeland Recap 03:05:37 – Copeland $700M, Debate Pastors, Cayman Drops, Religion Business Beginning 03:16:25 – Christ & Truth Arbiter CREDITS: - Host, Editor & Producer: Julian Dorey - COO, Producer & Editor: Alessi Allaman - https://www.youtube.com/@UCyLKzv5fKxGmVQg3cMJJzyQ - In-Studio Producer: Joey Deef - https://www.instagram.com/joeydeef/ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 340 - Religion Business Music by Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, lease a 2026 X-E-90 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Condition supply, visit your local Volvo retailer

or go to explorevolvo.com. Ten Commandments. Don't take the Lord's name in vain. Copeland, he promised to build six things. A ministry building. His radio station is TV network, a hotel, and then an elderly retirement community. So he raised tens of millions dollars through these mailers. We went to the city and we found nothing. I would call Kenneth a product. And the big thing is estimated to be worth $750 million. Yeah, all in the name of Jesus. And how do you do that? You instill a tremendous amount of fear in them. You're going to be removed from God's list of children if you don't tithe. You give to me because I am prosperous, which will make you prospering. And if you don't give enough, it's because you've got to give more. That is a dark web of a mess. I'll tell you right now, we get evidence dumped on us daily. We've got stories of gun running from the Middle East on private jets.

It's a little more. Cartels, too? We should talk about that. This is a really interesting conversation. Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge huge help. Thank you. All right, we got the religion business guys here.

What is up, brother? Thanks for coming to New Jersey. It's awesome to be here, bro. It's good to talk with you guys. Apologies for the studio under construction right now. We are making some changes. But you guys are the first ones that at least have the new cameras and have the 6,700 on the 3rd C. We're going to have this camera actually over there now, too, but this one's tight.

than it's ever been so we should look good that's exciting as long as i look good you know yeah yeah it's not too hard to do i'm tired do i look do i look old no no no you don't you look not a day under 50 perfect doing awesome but i actually got initially introduced to you guys through our mutual friend tommy g you guys did a fucking amazing documentary with him on kenneth copeland there's a personal cause of mine at least that we haven't covered on the podcast but comes up a lot on the podcast which is people from a place of like bad power taking advantage of people who are trying to use religion for good, particularly on people who may be in a vulnerable point in their life and, you know, manipulating them into giving money.

And I just think it's the lowest thing ever. And so you guys, we're going to talk all about your background, everything today, but you guys have made a crusade out of not only trying to expose this stuff, but eventually provide solutions for it. So that does not happen. So just for people out there who aren't familiar with, you know, your background or who you are or haven't seen the documentary or the Sean Ryan podcast you just did, what even got you into this, Nate? My whole life has led up to this conversation with you and the conversation with Sean. I feel I was raised in, you know, big non-denominational churches on the West Coast.

So L.A. and then San Diego loved it. traveled the world in my early 20s and 30s for filmmaking. So I've been making film since I was 18 because of a head injury I had. I couldn't, I was a big action sports guy. And so I couldn't ride BMX anymore. What happened there? I fell, basically I fell off a cliff, like a 40 foot drop in Mexico. And I was on a quad. Yeah, I was in the dunes. I was 16. I just got my driver's license and we were in Cabo for Christmas. I think it was Christmas. And I was just on a quad and I used to jump motorcycles and BMX bikes and like freestyle and there was just this little wind-swept lip we were out in the sand dunes and I was in third gear I think and I just went off of it expecting

there to be a back and there was none and it was just a 40 feet 40 foot drop yeah and I had my little brother on the back with oh my god and so I went to buck the quad I just threw the quad away and I knocked my brother off but my momentum killed as soon as I hit him so as soon as I was coming up to the lip I realized there was nothing behind it so I just went to chuck the quad um and i knocked my brother off and then i just had no momentum so i was stuck on it and the quad crushed me um and i had a grandma seizure in the dunes and bleeding on my brain and um i was lifelighted from cabo up to scripts in lehoia in san diego and the doctors were like he's got like a 50 50 chance of living um and luckily the they were going to they prep me for brain like to open

up my head to like alleviate the swelling and bleeding and the doctor was just like we're just going to let him sit for a while. And I'm just going to watch them. And so they ended up monitoring me. And over a course of two weeks, I came back, like, fully conscious. And I don't remember those two weeks of my life. Right. And the doctor's like, you are a walking miracle, 100%. And my family's very tied into the missionary community around the world. Like, my uncle's a missionary in Kiev and close family friends have missionaries in Papua New Guinea. And so I literally had people all around the world praying for me. And I fully believe in the power a prayer and that energy, you know, and I believe God saved my life and brought me here. And so that

injury, when you have a near-death experience, they say your perspective on life radically changes. For sure. And so I don't really see death or fear of death is something to be afraid of. And so that's really led into the religion business. And in my 20s, between that experience and then a bunch of personal experiences with faith leaders either sexually abusing kids or stealing money and then watching really close friends of mine walk away from faith like all of that came to a head and that's where I bought the domain when I was 25 so 16 years ago the religion business and I didn't know what it was going to become and I continued to work in film and in commercials and then I just started researching and that's when I realized the rabbit hole was huge. Oh it's fast.

It is bigger than the U.S. military from a budget perspective. Yeah, over a trillion dollars a year is given just to Christianity alone. And so you're talking about money that can sway government. It can sway the New York Stock Exchange, all in the name of Jesus. Hey, that's what the most important thing is. It's all for Jesus. Real quick, though, going back to that event when you're 16, you said you grew up around religion, everything, so you had some form of belief. But then I guess the last thing you remember is pretty much like getting your brother off the quad.

Yeah, I just remember throwing the quad away, just knocking him off, and I was just stuck on it. And it just crushed me. So the dog, I got like brain scans for the next few years. I lost my driver's license and they did scans in my back. And they're like, you should have broken your back in two spots, but you didn't. And I'm not a flexible guy. So they're like, whatever. I basically had folded my spine like backwards, you know.

And so they're like, what, and so my lower back had, like major problems for the next 15 years but they're like you should be dead on all you know accounts and i walked away from it so when you first woke up from the coma though after two weeks you know well i mean you're wrong at first but once you're actually able to have a real conversation and they're telling you all this and you're comprehending it and then you get a moment alone after that was that where it's set in where you put together the two things where like the doctor says that was a miracle and people were praying for you and you're like oh my god i see the light now i understand exactly that that this is real partially in that the biggest one is when my daughter was

born so like um i have a very unconventional christian life i had a daughter not married you know i got a girl pregnant you're going straight to hell yeah yeah i got a girl pregnant and i didn't want to be a father like in my 20s and in my 20s I just I had some fun I traveled the world I did did a bunch of drugs I was just out like I was a loose cannon you know and um I made movies like chick's dig gay guys and I I worked on Temptation Island like I was I was just a dude live in life you know and at that point the church to me was just a bunch of uh heretics and they were just, you know, selling things that they didn't believe. But I had my daughter or my daughter came into the world when I was 32, so nine years ago.

And when I saw her for the first time, like, it was the first time I understood what a creator's love feels like. And I just wept, like just collapsed. And the nurse, who ironically is my brother's mother-in-law. Oh, I thought you were going to say she was the wife. No. No. Tiffany's amazing.

But yeah, she's like, do you want to hold your daughter? And I was just like, just like weeping, you know? And then I grabbed this screaming little redhead. She was just fiery. And that's when I was like, this is what I'm here for. Like I'm here to better my, better the world for my daughter and this next generation. And I want to teach her the idea of why we're here and why we're created, you know, and we're not chance. And that's when everything became extremely real to me. So that's a long, winding many pieces and puzzles and different life events and different life series of whatever that even got you there. So that's very cool. Yeah. But over to you now as well, Chris. Yes, sir. I guess same question for you.

First of all, how do you guys know each other? Let's start there. So before the religion business, before I entered into it, Nathan's been working on this for a long time. I was the president of an HOA management firm, national company. and um was exited that business and i was thinking you know what i'm really sick at chasing the world and so i had a friend of mine that i made and he was like well i've got a friend of mine who's a two-time Emmy award winning filmmaker that's making this dokey series called the religion

business and there's uh discussions about building a technology solution and this isn't just a problem that he wants to also work on a solution and he's at this point of time nathan had like drawn a solution up and such and so i'm like okay, this is super intriguing because I don't want to be a part of just tossing a grenade into something. Right. And I had just, you know, I had just spent a good decade chasing the world and like my soul was completely empty it, you know? And I was like, all right, it's time to pick up the cross and follow Christ, you know. And that meant putting my money resources behind us. That meant putting my life at risk. Because I knew this was going to be absolute chaos. Anytime you

disrupt a person's revenue stream. It's dangerous. Crazy that we're talking about that as it pertains to people who are preaching the word of God. Yes. Look what happened to Christ. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I don't really remember that part of the story about him owning arenas and having like 40-bedroom mansions and probably a lot of hookers around as well. Like I must have, well, there might have been one, but I must have missed a lot of part of that story. Or maybe. you know, Kenneth Copeland, those guys are on to something. But so you basically decide that there's been, and I'm going to put words in your mouth here, so correct me if I'm wrong, there's been some form, at least on some level of a bastardization

of something that you hold very near and dear to your heart that you think should be used purely for good. Absolutely. When you look at the results in the world and Christ says to take care of the sick, the poor, the marginalized right like and you see a trillion dollar river flowing and pennies on the dollar go to those and then the people that have anointed themselves as god's broker are living a fat life you got something's not right here like this river needs to get diverted and so it became a mission to divert the river yeah to follow christ and you guys the trailer you guys

have for the docu series you did which to be very clear is separate from what I was talking about with Tommy G you guys have a whole incredible documentary you put together on this we were just talking about it but in the trailer I loved the buildup of first religion moved to Greece and it became a philosophy then it moved to Rome and it became an institution then it moved to Europe and it became a culture then it moved to America and became an enterprise yeah woo did you come up with that no that that quote is actually a quote from um that he was the chaplain of the U.S. Senate. So he literally told it on the Senate floor and he goes, hey, guys, we got a problem.

Halverson, is that his name? Yeah, Dr. Richard Halverson. Yeah. Was he ever heard from again after that? I don't know. He did pass away. I was looking forward to, I was, I look. I was like, I want to talk to this guy, but no.

Yeah. Well, that really hit at home because something happened here. You know, and I'm so fascinated by history. fascinated by all of it. And obviously when you look at any level of ancient history, all these different religions like kind of converge. And they're all stories that give us a way of having meaning in the world and people believe different things. But like I was saying, I think off camera with you guys, it's like if people are using some sort of peace and belief in an afterlife and using it for good here, I think that's an amazing thing. And to be very clear, we're not talking about congregants today or people that a lot of them are being played as victims here. We're talking about some of the people. We're talking about some of the people. people who are doing that to them. I want to make that crystal clear because I know there's plenty of people listening who follow an organized religion. We're not trying to take that down or anything. But, you know, I'm amazed that something can get to that institution level as early as it did and have the staying power that it did. So maybe a good way into this would be, like obviously

you guys have covered the history of all Christianity and religions. You know, what happened that made the church entrenched in the Vatican, you know, three, four hundred years after, after Christ dies. Well, it's a, you know, it's a, it's a series of events. We always say humans will human, right? So humans are really good at building things. We like to put things in order. We're like ants do the same thing. You know, everything's, we work as a species to build things and box things in. Christ's message was straight counterculture. Like when you look what he did to in Israel, he walked into the temple and he's like, you're all out of line.

Like you've built something that like was never meant to be built. And he talks about this in all the gospels. He says, you've taken traditions of men, culture, and you call it doctrine. So you take what you like today and you call it doctrine when it's not. So that's something that we really pin to the board is all these churches we have. is all culture. This isn't doctrine. It's just what what the 21st century looks like. And so when you look at that early church, I'm obsessed with the early church. And when I say the early church from Christ on earth to like 100 AD, because how did these few thousand people transform Rome? It'd be like

me dropping 2,000 people in New York or Los Angeles and say, hey, with no weapons, right, with nothing and just be like transform this city. You couldn't do it. No internet either. No internet. Yeah. Just by word of mouth and actions. That's the big one in actions. So how did these few thousand people transform Rome to the point where Constantine in early 300 goes, you know what? I'm going to join you guys. Like that is crazy to think about. That I would say is ordained by something way bigger than humans. And so what were they doing? Well, as persecution was happening in those early a couple hundred years against Christians, you know, at the peak of persecution, they were throwing kids, Christian kids and women to wild animals in the Coliseum as for sport, just watching

Christians be ripped to shreds. And then right outside the Coliseum, those same Christians were picking up orphans and widows off the street and bringing them in and sharing what they had and saying like, you know what, we'll still love on everybody, even though they're being persecuted. So it was that love and that action, that love in action, that people, people were like, I'd rather hang out with them than hang out with you throwing kids to the wolves because we are literal barbarians. And they, through Christ's message and Christ's teachings, we're literally transforming Barbie, we're taking us from barbarism and barbarians to humans saying, hey, Julian, your life has equal value to mine. And like one of my favorite guys that we've worked

with is a camera operator and he's an atheist. And he went with me all over. He went with me to Uganda, he probably shot a third of the show what ended up on camera. And he goes, Nathan, even though I don't believe in your Jesus, like from a spiritual perspective, he transformed the world. Like he goes, he goes, our roads are because of his teachings. Our hospitals are because of his teachings. Like, whether I believe he's the son of God or just this, this great man in history, like I have to wrestle with who that man was. And that's such a great thought exercise for anybody is this man was a historical figure he was murdered by the romans and so okay how or by the jews and what we get 20 minutes well i got to correct myself a lot of people want to

correct me lately so so how did this one man who was killed by uh you know transform the road don't play that sound effect um and so that you know you look at rome and what it what did what did um uh what's his constantine do he's like man my people about 10 percent of the population was becoming christians at that point and he's like i want to adopt this it's a good glue to bind my empire together right as rome is fracturing at that point he's like christianity's a good a good you know moral philosophy to bind everybody religion but we run it exactly so but what does he do all the money that was going towards paganism and polytheistic gods at that point started steering towards christianity that's right and so now you have these christian leaders going ooh we could use some of that money

and so i want to be really clear here hospitals orphanages universities all these things are distinctly christian there was no such thing as a hospital before christianity there was no such thing as an orphanage The word didn't even exist. I think I knew the orphanage one. Yeah, there was no such thing as universities. Those are all created by that neck by saints. And so Christianity was creating these brilliant institutions for people, right? For the orphan, for the widow, for the sojourner, for like for the hungry.

So Christianity needed resources to create these institutions. But we always say in the show at what point does the institution disease the organism of Christianity so much that now it's just an institution bastardizing the organism, which is Christ and his church, which is just his people. As a quick sidebar on that, do you think it's possible that you can start something and not have it be infected? Something good. It doesn't matter what it is. I'm not even saying religion itself. Let's not make it about religion. Do you think you can start something and say, wow, this is an amazing thing. It could be planning a shrub or whatever. And then is there a way that that shrub doesn't eventually grow out of control beyond looking good?

Well, it dies. So this is the kicker is when you look at Christ's life, whether you believe he's the son of God or not, whether you believe he was raised from the dead or not, look at the storyline. It's something's born, something dies, and out of that death, something resurrects. Everything has to die before it becomes corrupt and diseased, just like a government. it's sick everything cyclical that's why time like that's why death is so intriguing to me because things resurrect out of it a great example is like gateway church in dallas right gateway was run by robert morris or founded by robert morris he's uh sexually abused a 12 year old girl that comes out

finally and now his church is one of the biggest in the in the united states um tens of millions of dollars flood into it every year. And he's going to probably end up in jail for a long, long time. But the leadership of that church is going, we can't let it die. There's too much good here. Let's save it. And it's no, no, no, it should die. It's diseased by its founder. Let the, let this gateway church die. All of its congregants, all those tens of thousands of people that are trapped with their money will go into their communities and start something new. So I agree with you actually, everything has to die. Yeah.

Or reform. There's no, there's no ifs, ands or buts about it. It needs, it needs light. So the religious system today is the darkest system that exists. There's two types of nonprofits. You have a secular nonprofit and a religious nonprofit. A secular nonprofit turns what's called a form 990 into the IRS. So there's some sort of transparency there.

It's not perfect. But there's a document that could be. held accountable to. Religious organizations have zero obligation to turn any of that in. So it is impossible for humans to not get corrupted and be in this system, taking donations from people, and living in this world and competing for consumers because they're competing for consumers and not get corrupted. It's the same thing as politicians going out there and trying to raise funds. If you're a career politician, likely you're going to get corrupted over a period of time. If you're a career pastor in this dark system, but if there's transparency in there and you're walking in the light, your chances of getting corrupted because of what you're scared of, the accountability aspect of it, you're going to do the right things.

Can you explain that more if you don't mind? So you said that the secular organizations is a form 990. Correct. Religious organizations, they don't have to give anything. They don't have to formulate as a religious organization, though, right? So what is that? Nathan will dive into this because we're right. There's a whole checklist and everything that goes into that.

You mean from a structural perspective? Yeah. Like, let's start the structure. Yeah. We'll come back to the Vatican people. Yeah, Julian's about to start a church, you know. I'm not going to do that. All you got to say is, I want to start church. Do you guys watch the office ever?

That's going to get clipped back, so we're not doing. Yeah. Do you ever watch the office? Yeah, the office is great. So Steve Carell, you know, he walks out of the office and he goes, I declare bankruptcy. Yeah. And they're like, that's not how it works. That's pretty much how it works with a church.

You can say, I want to start a church. And because you are starting a church, you're a church. So you file corporate documents with the state and you say, I am Church of Julian. You can immediately start collecting donations and the IRS doesn't even know you exist. The IRS doesn't know I exist. Nope. Because you do not have to file for nonprofit status. if if if if chris is a secular nonprofit he has to request through lots of due diligence to become

a nonprofit and get tax exempt status sometimes it takes a year or two and then the government might even not grant him 501c3 tax status but because you're a church just by you saying a church steve correll i am a church you're a church the irs does not need to grant you that so you can start collecting money immediately without the IRS even knowing you exist. Now, if you want to give your donors tax right off receipts, then you need IRS 501c3 classification. But since you're a church, they don't look into you. They just grant it to you. Whoa. And so that's why anything can be a church. You have hedge funds as churches. Hells Angels is registered as churches. You have marketing firms registered as churches. You have, there is a talent agency, like a movie talent agency that's

registered as a church. Which one? I don't have the name offhand. It's hilarious. It's not WMA, right? No. Are you repped by WME? Oh, there you go. Shout out. Yeah. But yeah, there's, you can register anything almost as a church today. How did the Hells Angels slip through the cracks here? I feel like that's low hanging fruit. They're legit by the checklist. Yeah. I give massive props to Hell's Angels. You want to know why? Because they check off more of the 14 points than most religious organizations. And what are these 14 points? Sounds like a gang war. So the 14 points, I can't list them all, but it's, you need a formal code of doctrine, which is, I believe in the hell's angels. You need a creed in form of worship, which is I will die for my brand or for what I believe in. I'll put them above

family. You need a facility to worship in. So you need a physical building. They have bars. No, they have actual clubhouses. This room, Julia. Okay. They have clubhouses. You need to meet at least once a month. They meet once a month. And so when I look at the Hells Angels, they will, and I've talked with George Christie,

like I've talked to a bunch of them. They believe their creed and they will die for their creed. Most Christians today, I don't think will die for their creed, bro. And so when I look at the Hell's Angels, you're a religious, you are a religion. now granted we might debate the moral side of it but but to you to what you are you are a religion and you deserve to be a church because you check the boxes more than most of the massive cookie cutter um we'll call them entertainment venues of churches today like those men and what do they call their wives old ladies those men and old ladies will die for their creed and who's

to say you can't who's to say that's not a religion so you file out these 14 points you don't have to hit all of them yeah it's a checklist you're basically like i right so who's checking this like diane in accounting like looks good to me nobody it's just through precedent this is this is the irony of it it's that you don't you since since in the u.s the irs cannot legally define of church because of the first amendment anything goes but so they use this 14 point checklist and then then they also have what's called an associational test and as long as you sort of kind of look like a church you're sort of kind of a church and and then the the crazier part which a lot of people got hung up on which on the Sean Ryan interview is that box that 14 point box that gives you

tax exempt status every single religion has to climb in there to really receive tax exempt status Christianity climbs in there Islam climbs in there Hell's angels Climbing in there So everything's starting to look the same You know You have to check the box

And so you have to say Why would some That box be created in the first place Which is a fascinating Conversation Yeah what is the history there Of the 14 points Even becoming a thing

Like how far back does that go? The 60s So it's not that old That was a hell of a time Yeah And then since then, that's what, like, you got to look at it. So I'll just say this. The CIA was formed in the 40s.

The 14 point checklist was formed in the 60s based off of a lawsuit. There was a church that had a winery and a distillery. And they were running it like they were basically selling wine and liquor. And so they got into a lawsuit because I think it was the federal government. I can't remember if it was the Fed or the state. um i could pull up the court case for you but uh they said you are not a church you're selling liquor like you can't be a church yeah and so the judge basically used the salvation army and said okay i'm going to use the salvation army to prove you're not a church because the

salvation army is kind of one of the most well-known churches in the u.s that was a church yeah salvation i never knew that so the salvation army became the blueprint for organized religion in the 60s And the judge basically said, okay, there's 14 things that we're going to pull from the Salvation Army. This is what we're going to call it church. Wow. That's where it came from. And then flash forward, you know, 10 to 15 years.

And then all of a sudden you have the gym and Tammy Bakers of the world raising a couple hundred million bucks, you know, rolling around in the rolls Royces because, hey, I checked this box. I checked these 14 boxes. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. And you add in mass media, which allows people to get much farther, which we'll talk

about today but so you just check these off and then you become an invisible man effectively technically yeah you like you don't even again to Chris's point you don't have to check them all off you only have to check some of them off now I'm my memory is a little hazy here because it's been a while we're going to be doing another Scientology podcast sometime soon but I've done four in the past with ex-scientologists and people who cover Scientology and they've walked me through it before but there was an enormous like war between the IRS and Scientology for a while where I believe it was and maybe I'm incorrect in remembering this they were trying to argue that Scientology is not a religion and then Scientology was able to continue to stand as a religion and not to defend Scientology at all I think those people are fucking crazy but there is a if we're going to say the Hells Angels are passed through as a church I would say by if you're just looking at the 14th 14 points like Scientology is probably much more of a church than they are. So how did that become a thing where they were getting, if I'm in fact remembering that correctly, where Scientology was

getting attacked by the government and being told like, hey, you may not be able to be a church anymore. All I know is they lost their tax exempt status for a little while and then got it back. Yeah. I haven't done that much research on Scientology just because it's out there. And I'm like, you know what I want to focus on like what I would call the legit faiths. I got you. Christianity, Islam, Mormons, you know, the ones that actually, that their founder didn't say, hey, if you want to get rich, start a religion. You know, I don't think, what's his name who founded Mormonism? I don't think Joseph Smith. I don't think Joseph Smith said that.

He might have been thinking it when he pulled up those golden plates. Yeah, it's a nice golden tablets, but, you know. But he didn't come out and say it. And so, you know, El Ron Hubbard said that. He's like, if you want to get rich, start a religion. All right. Now, going back to what we were talking about with the initiation of the institution, though, you were taking us through the history and how Constantine ends up saying, you know, 10, 15 percent. My population is Christianity. It looks like those people are people you can look up to. We can use this. We're going to therefore start moving funding towards that. The Council of Nicaea, this all ends up becoming a thing. And the Vatican forms. And the Vatican is this like, oh, it's so fascinating. It's such a strange, strange institution that it's still the way it is. I used to live like a quarter mile. from the Vatican when I lived in Rome.

Oh, no way. And at the time... What were you doing in Rome? I was studying there when I was in college. And at the time, I'd like, you know, go and I walk past the Vatican and be like, oh, shit, cool, it's the Vatican. Now I'm like, oh, my God, there's so many secrets of the world in there. I wish I knew all that when I was there. But how did the Vatican form out of that?

Like, what is the exact history of it forming, you know, post-council and I see? And then how did it continue to be the powerful institution that it can be. clearly still is today. And that's kind of like the head of the snake when you're looking at religious power structures, if you will. Well, they're not the wealthiest. I was going to say, that might not be the head anymore, the snake. Okay. I can't, like, I'll speak to what I know about the Vatican. So, or what I've been, what I've sat, gotten to sit with, with historians. So it's really simple, you know, in three, in three 12 or three 15 at that point, Constantine's a Christian, you know, and ironically, do you know about his faith conversion? Refresh me.

So there was, they were, they were in battle. And he believes he saw a cross in the sky with the words conquer by this. So let that sink in. He's in war killing people. And he's, he reads in the sky, conquer by the cross. Jesus liked to kill him. Yeah. So I'm just going to set that out there for Constantine's conversion. But so it's like from, from what I gather and what I've been told from historians, it's really simple. There's no organized structure, right, when he becomes a Christian. But, hey, if you're the bishop in Rome, you know, Constantine comes to my church now. So guess what? Like, my church might get a new building, you know? Constantine's going to sit in the front row.

It's, we always say good intentions pave the way to hell. Yes. It's like he, you have, you have Constantine sitting in your front pew. Like, all of a sudden, your church just becomes the church. That's great clout. And then it slowly starts to grow and build and then flash forward, you know, 1,200 years and you're sitting at the Reformation and, you know, that's the Vatican's in Rome and the basilica's built and, you know, all that power just starts to like codify at the top just over hundreds of years. And so it's, again, good intentions paved the way to hell. I don't think Caesar or Constantine or that early church bishop or whoever it was like had ill intention.

it's just like you said we build things i don't think anything we build cannot corrupt eventually right and so it's just it became this it was organic and then it's slowly institutionalized and that that disease that virus of institution inside christ's message culminated in in the 1500 you know yeah and before we get to the actual protestant reformation though i always it's come up before on different podcasts in different contexts but it's it's always been fascinating to me that the church then also centered around like just all guys running it when Jesus surround himself with both men and women obviously his apostles were all men but he there was nowhere where he was like there's only guys are going to take my ministry and yet there's like this

boys club that forms no pun intended there you know with the Vatican that still persist outside of the little bone they throw like nuns these days you know but it still persists 17 1800, 1800 years later, whatever it is. That has never really made sense to me other than at the beginning there's something, even if it wasn't intended this way, that's slightly sinister and power grabbing. Am I crazy to make that leap there? No, I think it's cultural, right? You look back like women were basically property back then. You know, that's why Christ obsessed about widows because if you're a widow, you're worthless at that time, right? Like your husband's dead. Oh.

Your husband, your husband is the head of the house of that time period, if that makes sense. They wouldn't get remarried back then? Some could, but I mean, like an old 80-year-old woman is just a liability at that point, right? And so, like, same thing with children. You know, orphans, there was no value to life at that time. If my wife had a baby and we couldn't afford it, we'd just throw it on the side of the street and let it die, right? That's what culture was. It was barbarism back then.

Yeah. And so there wasn't this amazing. sense of equality between men and women that there is today. So I just think that's baked into the system too. And then Paul speaks to it in his letters, you know, there's a couple lines in the, in the New Testament in Paul's letters where he speaks about men and women in that power structure. But it's, that's what the entire boys club has built its tenants on, which is a few lines from Paul. And then what I would more lean on is just what was happening at culture at the time, just like tithing right this act of giving 10% or a tithe translates to 10% it's like that was

cultural and somehow it wasn't it was it's in the bible but what i'm saying is this isn't an ordained um idea from yahway our creator if that makes sense polytheistic nations were tithing quick question why wouldn't it be if it is in the bible and to be clear i don't agree with tithing but if it is in the bible why isn't it considered ordained Well, there's purification rituals, like, should we be slaughtering animals to this day? Like, yeah, I mean, I agree. That's what I'm saying. So, but what I'm saying is there was other cultures of the time that weren't Jewish that were tithing, polytheistic nations in that region.

Okay. So think of it as like today I always say most governments collect attacks, right? Most religions back then or faiths collected tithe. And there's really simple ways because in Israel, it's politics and religion combined. the mosaic laws were their legal structure to organize as a civilization so today we live in America where religion and politics should be separate but but so tithing back then was more of a taxation and again it wasn't just Jewish like multiple civilizations were tithing it was basically taxation so that's what I'm saying is it was a cult tithing was a cultural marker just

like inequality between men and women were a cultural marker. And so those have just kind of leaked through religion and Christianity in particular today. Islam collects the same, I think it's two or three percent. Sure. But they do the same thing, right? It's just, it's been cultural and it's just passed down through precedent. I guess on a modern day level, at the base level of it, How do you, without forcing people to give ties or give donations or whatever, how does a church or any religion, don't care what it is, exist and have a physical piece of real estate that go worship in and, you know, jobs covered so that things get done and, you know, the events, whether it be a mass or whatever insert event here can happen. How does that happen without money? Oh, it needs money. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah.

So we're not, this is something about the religion business. Money's not inherently bad. I can put a $100 bill on the table. And that thing has, the only value of that $100 bill is what you and I give it. Yeah, if I roll it up and put a little line right here. Exactly. There's, there is. Chris looked like he took a trip down memory lane right there.

There is no intrinsic good or bad to that, that monetary value sitting there. It's just what you and I bring to the table. in place on that. I can't wait to meet with a pastor and we haven't been able to sit with one yet that just says, yeah, my operation costs X and Y and it is given through the generosity of donors because they enjoy what we've created. Awesome. Just like guess what, I take my daughter to history museums and I put my little donation in the front because I want this history museum to stay open, right? But what they've done is we've built or what we've done, because I'm a part of, this is we've built systems that are extremely money hungry. And so we look back in the Bible and

we cherry pick one or two scripture verses and we mash them together. We say, aha, this is where we're going to get our resources from. Well, you threw out the other 50 pages that explained what that verse actually meant, you know. And so we've built institutions off misunderstood or misrepresented or straight up bastardized scriptures. And now we're trying to justify. it. And so you're trying to justify something that's just culture. Every other pastor I talk with is trying to justify something that's just culture. Sean Ryan, like in our conversation, he was trying to justify it. And I'm like, it's not necessarily bad, the building itself, but we're justifying something that we've built. It has nothing to do. So you want to, and I mean this

in a not negative way, you're like, we got to cut out the middleman here. We've created a middleman. this is supposed to just be like you have a belief system and if i'm referring to christianity believes in like god and jesus yeah and that's what the church is as opposed to like this physical business structure that that we put between it that has its people representing it if you will 100% the people to run it 100% nowhere in the bible does it say there's a middleman right that the biggest one today is is stewards the resources or i like i like it pastors will say i'll invest the we'll invest the resources for God. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that middle man is between you and God.

So we've positioned ourselves there and now we're trying to justify it. So Jesus says, rendered a Caesar what's Caesar's. So he's actually saying like, pay your taxes. And then he says give to God what's gods. So where is man to come in there and say, this is God's money? I want to steward it for you, Julian. And then in Matthew 25. I'm with you. Jesus, God incarnate, saying that if you do to the least of these, and he's talking about the prisoner, the sick, the person who doesn't have a shirt, right, the homeless person, he's talking about all these poor, marginalized people. And to the least of these, you do to them, you're doing it to me. And that's a very powerful scripture, which is on Nathan's forearm for a reason. Because if the money's not flowing that way, we're all for generous giving. There needs to be transparency there.

100%. If the money that you are saying is for God isn't going to where God called you, calls us to put that money, then what are we doing? I think if you are unwilling to share those details as a hypothetical pastor, let's say, then you have something, the assumption is you have something to hide. 100%. And I completely agree that these places, if you are going to have places where people have an outlet to go, bounce things off other people of their faith and have a safe place to practice their religion. Yes, there has, in my opinion, there has to be some money that goes into that to be able to allow

that to happen, including the people who work there. But it should be like, it should be law in this country that you have to be transparent about that, just like politicians allegedly have to be transparent about who donates to them. Why should it be any different if a church enjoys all the IRS rights and the separation from power being able to take them out, shouldn't a requirement of that just be like, hey, we can't tell you what's right or what's wrong, but you at least, if you make $2 million, you have to tell people you make $2. If you make $2, you have to tell people you make $2.00. Like, why is this so hard? Well, the government saw this problem in the late 60s and early 70s. So right after that

14 point checklist comes out, bad players are starting to move into the space. And so I think the senator's name and don't hold me to the fire was, is Mark Hat, Senator Mark Hat, Lee or Hatfield. But he puts together, what was it? Hatfield. He puts together a basically a bill and it says, hey, this is getting out of hand. We have a mouse-sized problem right now. We have the Jim and Tammy Fay Baker's of the world, like starting to raise hundreds of

millions. And this is because of technology, right? So they build this, they put this bill together. And it's basically, hey, Julian, if you have a church or Nathan has a church. and Julian wants to give to my church, all it was was Julian has the right to ask Nathan where the money is going and see the books. Yeah. That sounds pretty reasonable.

Sounds reasonable. It's like, hey, Julian, you've retired. You want to give me $500,000. Hey, Nathan, just show me your budget for the last year and where it went. Well, this is where this idea of separation of church and state comes to play is the evangelical community is all pissed about this. They're like, we don't want the government telling us what. to do or telling me that, telling Nathan that I have to show Julie in my books. And so Billy Graham

and a couple evangelical leaders get together and they create another organization called the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. I love those words. Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. They spin it up. It's another nonprofit. And the goal is, hey, Julian, if you have a church, you can be part of my, my, this accountability association. And I'm to make sure you're above board. Well, the problem is, guess what? I have overhead as the ECFA. And so you're going to pay me once a year for to use my little, my little seal on your website or on your mailers. And lose good. I'm going to hold you accountable. So it's a conflict of interest right away. My organization is supposed to be holding you accountable and you're paying

me money. So that's not a watchdog group. That's like a handshake group. If I, not to defend this at all, if people open their eyes, myself included, this is something I missed a lot on and looked at all the different industries around the world where this type of thing is to practice, for sure. You would never look at any product you ever bought the same. 100%. Yeah. And so, but our argument is religion and then the faith we believe in should be held to much

higher standards than everybody else. And so the ECFA's formed, I think in 72, maybe 73. And that gets the government to back off. So the bill is dead on arrival and boom, the ECFA has formed. Another good intentions pave the way to hell, right? So now we've got this institution that's supposed to regulate the entire Christian industry and they're giving out these little markers like hotcakes to everybody. Guess who is one of the first ministries to climb on board?

PtL, which is Jim and Tammy Faye Baker's ministry. They were one of the first to become an ECFA member. The dude went to jail. for fraud. When was that? He was jailed in the 70s. I can't remember the year. Yeah, I'm not really familiar with that story.

Yeah, so basically, back in the day, mailers were a big thing, right? It was before pre-internet, TV was around, but like mailers were a big thing. My grandma, tell her death probably, you know, five or eight years, five or eight years ago, would still receive envelopes from pastors and ministries all around the U.S. asking for money, and she would put a check in and mail. him back. It's just a generational thing because that was they're stealing that before she put it in the mailbox. No, I should. I never got there. Well, she wrote the pastor's names on them. That's the problem. But you know what I mean? So this is a, this is a generational deal. But so

these guys would send out 100,000 mailers or 500,000 mailers, depending on how big their list is, and they would get X amount back with cash. And I can't remember, I think it was Barry and Pete at the Trini Foundation. They said the average. mailer would come back with $60 in it. That doesn't sound like a lot. Add that up. But add that up 100,000 times in the 70s. You're talking about a lot of money. So all you do is you blast one mailer out a month and boom, X amount comes back with 60 bucks on average. And you're raising, I think PTL on average one year their budget was like $140 million for a church. And they were building a Christian theme park. A water park. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

a water park, hotels, like all under the guise of a church with no accountability systems in place. So did Copeland get that idea from them or did they get that idea from Copeland? Which, whose idea came first? Because Copeland had a similar idea. Yeah, it was just, I think it's, you know, it's when you, it's when you put on these conferences, you know, and you get the top 500 pastors in the U.S. in a room and they all start talking about what they want to do. And all of them are like a hotel. I'm here to serve. Oh, exactly. And you're going to come with me. I think it's just brainstorming. You know, again, good intentions paved the way to hell. Like, why don't we build a hotel on our church property where people can come and, my goodness,

I'm going to pipe in my face 24 hours a day on those TVs for you to learn the Bible from me. Not read it yourself, but from me. Isn't Kenneth Copeland also like five foot six too? He's a little guy. Yeah, that's part of the problem. I've never seen it. I've never seen it.

He won't get close to me. My buddy, Matt, he's got a huge head, though. Yeah, I mean, that's a fucking super dope. He looks like an alien. I mean, we're... I would go a step farther. I don't even... I'm not even one to believe in this stuff.

Maybe you are with your religious background. But like, if there were a demon on Earth, like, that's it. That's him. Like, he literally looks like it. But what really strikes me about that guy, I think we should talk about that because that's... I mean, he's a huge megapastery, someone that the research you guys did on him was insane. You have a map of his whole compound physically. I thought it was like you were about to invade fucking Candahar.

But this guy What really struck me about his setup and his initial promises And I'm going to have you talk about that in a minute But I was thinking about what he does And then the Pressuring that he does of people now in his ministry And I could not formulate a difference between that And Scientology except Scientology

Like isn't leading with Jesus Christ This one supposedly is It was the same thing thing. Everyone seemed brainwash. He had security around him. They didn't want cameras there. They told people to watch what they say in church because you never know if you're being recorded. They play these infomercials where they tell them about all the great stuff they're doing and then make sure you give your money, like almost on a loop repeat. They got gift stores that are going to help them improve in their life so that they can go buy things to try to make more money that they can then

give to the church. He lives on a compound with a mansion. He's got an air strip. There's probably private areas that are completely blocked off and gated and they don't let anyone on, let alone people who pay the ties, including Tommy, who was nice enough to give him $69. Give him a $69 donation. Can't get on the airstrip. But like, is there any difference there between him and Elron Hubbard? They all are starting to fall. MLMs, right, multi-level marketing.

They all look like a multi-level marketing company. It's, and it's not rocket science when you start having businessmen and women, like, move into powers of position at religious organizations. They're going to run it like a business. And the best business to scam people is MLMs. Like, and so you can overlay an MLM like structure almost onto every Scientology, mega churches and non-denominational, like big church. Anything that looks to scale. because you have to get buy-in, right? And so it's, I would say Scientology and Kenneth Copeland run very similar. And they're both, they're both MLMs. You give to me because I am prosperous, which will make you prosperous. And if you don't give enough, it's because you got to give more, you know, and also bring

your friends to do the same thing. Yeah. You know. I think it's more disgusting because they're using our Savior's name. Well, of course. I mean, like, from that, from that standpoint. And like the greatest, great, in all my. years of business, the greatest form of sales is needs-based selling. You have a need. And if the person

doesn't have a need, you create the need. And how do you do that? You instill a tremendous amount of fear in them. You're going to be removed from God's list of children if you don't tithe. You are not going to be protected on the day of vengeance if you don't tithe. And if you do, I'm going to sell you a plot of land in heaven. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Which I wish were fake. But that was a real thing. someone to try to do that yeah it's that's that's that's a great point it goes back to basic basic human functionality you look throughout history that explains everything that's happened in society you look at anything evil that's ever happened it starts with being fed on with fear now does that mean that there you should never have something to fear or there isn't legitimately sometimes

something in the world that's like that is scary we need to pay attention to that no but there's like lines with stuff and when you blur those lines especially like you said and you're doing it in like the name of jesus i don't know that there's anything lower well let's let's the 10 commandments okay don't take the lord's name in vain right what do you think that means my bed no no what do you think that means what were you taught i've been breaking it all day today but yeah it means like not saying it you know like saying the name out loud in a way that's negative no oh i'm wrong no so yes the bible says your tongue is like a double-edged sword you know you want your words to edify the lord but don't take your the lord's name in vain means don't build your own vanity off the name of the lord

taking in another level up yeah don't like my own vanity would be hey i want to build a church and give me your money because god told me to do this i am literally using the lord's name for my own vanity right and so when you look at that commandment under that new light you can look at almost every branded church today and be like it's just they're taking the Lord's name in vain in every aspect of the business yes because you're using the Lord's name to build your business and people could probably say the same thing about us actually yeah but it's like it's why would they say that about you that's the pushback we get is hey Nathan and Chris how dare you sell your show or how dare you um ask well we don't ask people for money you know and we are our our

Our argument is always like, because basically they're saying, hey, you're telling Pete pastors that they're abusing the system and here you are abusing it. You're monetizing something surrounding faith. Yes. And our argument is, well, we're a for-profit business making goods. You don't have to buy our goods. But our business has overhead. Right. And we're not technically, like I'm not.

And the big one is we're not asking for donor dollars. Or manipulating scripture. Yeah. You're giving them a product that's helping expose something else and you're not trying to hold. any power over them as it pertains to what could or could not happen to them in the afterlife, which is effectively what religion can be used as a weapon to do. So don't take the Lord's name in vain. I never thought, that's interesting idea.

I went to Catholic school too growing up. I never thought about that. You and me both, bro. At the second level, though, you know what I mean? Like, you always just thought of it like, oh, I don't say Jesus Christ, something like that. But no, that's when you actually literalize it and go through what that could mean, like actually using that for a form of yourself, it gets interesting because to your point, all these guys do it. And this is what really doesn't make sense to me, you know, and that is if you actually

read the Bible and read the example of the historical figure, Jesus, regardless of what you believe he was, seems like a pretty cool guy. Seems like a guy who did a lot of cool stuff and was very good to people. And there's this theory that my friend Charlie Rock it came up with like seven years ago called the IMU theory. Have you ever heard this? No. Apologies to people who have heard me say this on the podcast, but I have to explain it for you guys to understand. It's going to make sense. But he was trying to, he was thinking one day about how, you know, there's all these superheroes. And he was wondering which superhero across comic books, movies, TV shows was the highest grossing superhero of all time. So he Googles it. And,

to his surprise the answer was spider-man and he's like that's interesting i would have thought it was like batman or superman good-looking guy chiseled chin you know flies through the air whatever instead it's the guy who's more of your average-looking schmo couldn't get the girl had a weird talent grew up in a lower class or lower middle-class house his parents were dead he was raised by his aunt and uncle he ended up losing his uncle on a tragedy that was his own fault he was like whoa that's interesting that guy's like relatable he's not like this thing

up here so he said all right what's the largest religion in the world by following googles it christianity he's like okay who led Christianity Jesus Christ carpenter wore regular clothes hung out with poor people

had a basic mom and basic dad you know he lived in a time where if he had ridden around on a golden horse with nice Roman armor he would have had all kinds of people following him instead you know he dressed more like everyone else and had his 12 apostles and occasionally gave a sermon it's like okay what what about if this works for corporations we're onto something what's the most famous company of all time he's like Apple who led Apple Steve Jobs first guy to drop the suit as a corporate honcho had a beard he looked like your dad and in a business

where everyone named things in Spiron 6,000 or Windows 48 million or whatever it was he named his products Lisa iPhone iPod like he named the products after you and then he went to sports and he's like who is the biggest mega sports star of all time it's Michael Jordan it's not because he had the most talent ever though he was very talented it's because like now he's Jordan he's this brand he's this larger than life figure but on his come up this is a guy who was cut from his high school basketball team he was put on North Carolina won a national title but got drafted behind Sam Bowie you know he to come back from an injury early in his career. When he gets to the height of his fame,

his father gets gunned down and he leaves and embarrasses himself on TV trying to play baseball, you know, going through like this midlife kind of thing, just like everybody else. And so he put together, you know, superheroes, religion, corporations, sports, culture. Throughout time, everyone relates to the people who are most like them and are telling them they're most like them rather than these people to try to say,

I'm above you, look at me, look at me, at all these things i have on instagram like my post you're never going to have this which the which is the implicit recommendation if you will in modern culture and so when i look at these mega pastors they are literally doing the opposite of what jesus did in his life where they are trying to tell people i'm so above you i ain't even got to preach at this church anymore just give your money to my daughter and i'll show you when i'll show up when i want to show up and no problem and to me you have to be a sociopath to not look in the mirror and see that i don't don't see any other outcome or possible explanation there, I should say. Would you guys agree with

that or, you know, correct me from wrong? Definitely agree with it. Nathan read a book. It's called was it the wisdom psychopaths? Wisdom of psychopaths, yeah. Yeah. And one of the top professions for a psychopath is clergy. Wow. Yeah. You find a lot of narcissists in that. What were the other top professions? Lawyer, doctor, you know, anybody in position of power, basically. yeah but you get a stage right yeah you get a microphone you feel good power preaching the word of god yeah yeah it's like i'm ordained to do this you start to you start to feel like you're him you're anointed yeah you can use the word anointing you know and that's something i'm fascinated with too is you know a lot of these guys will say they're anointed you know don't touch the anointed

and i'm like well let's just look at it from the other side of the coin you're just leveraging tax loopholes and the generosity of a vulnerable population, which I am that vulnerable population, right? It's like I want to deepen my faith. I want to connect with my creator. I want my daughter to do that too. So it's like had I not started down this journey, I would still be a part of that. So you're not necessarily anointed. You just have a really vulnerable population. And now based off of misinterpretation of cultural, a cultural marker called tithing and the Mosaic covenants, now you have an endless supply of revenue as long as you have butts in your seats. I wouldn't call that anointed. You're just a good businessman or woman

who's figured out the loopholes in the game. And then you get to brand it as anointing. And now they say, hey, the better off you are, because what is a blessing? You know, it's like a lot of these guys love to leverage the scripture Malachi 3, where it talks about, hey, if you bring your full tithe into the storehouse, God is going to open up the windows of heaven and dump out of a blessing on you. Well, in America today, we see that blessing is what? Money. Yeah.

It's all about money. We worship it. The Jews did not see that as money necessarily. And those blessings are spelled out in the Torah. And then on the reverse side of this, which nobody talks about, is there's a set of curses. A set of curses. So the law, the mosaic law is actually a curse on the Jewish people. the bible calls it this it goes you are a cursed nation can you explain this i never heard of

um yeah so basically israel leaves egypt as the biblical story goes um moses leads them out they stop at mount sinai moses goes up to the top of mount sinai where he gets the 10 commandments in a set of like 613 or 30 laws um i can't remember the exact total but he comes down with all these laws that are the legal structure of israel and that law is a curse on the people. The Torah says this. It is a curse set of laws because it proves you can never live up to these laws. You'll never be able to, from purification laws to sacrifice laws to tithe laws to everything. And so it's a curse set of laws for a cursed people. And so they basically carry this yoke around them all the way through their years in the wilderness and then they get to the promised land and now they have to live under this set of laws. But the laws are a curse is that foreshadows the coming of the Savior, which is Christ, because Christ removes that yoke. He removes the law. He removes this binding legal structure that's been placed on the Jews. That's how the story goes. Wow. Yeah. And so, so literally, there is a literal

sets in Leviticus of blessings and curses. They're numbered out. And so, but today, pastors don't go back to that. They go, oh, no, this is about money. No, it's literally written out in the Torah. But You don't want to reference it. And so it's just fascinating how, again, when we, when we have a pastor that doesn't read the Bible line by line or a teacher that doesn't read you, like when you go to synagogue, if you're Jewish, you will read line by line. There's no jumping around, you know. Yeah, yeah. But pastors today, they'll just jump from Malachi to, well, jump from Malachi to Leviticus to Matthew to craft their narrative that they want to craft. you know what's amazing to me i had in captain tzariak familiar with him

he's another tommy documentary oh nice so he is the leader of the black hebrew israelites in in new york city and obviously respect to captain t i think he's certainly bastardized the i guess interpretation of the bible but the one thing that i have to say i could give him that I wouldn't give these other guys, as you're pointing out right now, is that I don't know that we've ever had a guy in here who knew line by line the Bible like he knew it. And Alessi, who's now had a content for what I do, but was the producer in here. He's like a huge God guy, like goes to church, like four times a week. And he was sitting over there like, I'm like looking at him.

He's like, yeah. He got that right. And it was like funny how he's doing it. But it's crazy that someone who has changed. it i think not for the better because i don't i don't think we should enslave anyone let alone you know everyone who's not a part of the hebrew israelites but you know he at least could point to all these things and then we're talking about some of these guys that run billion dollar enterprises and they're like yeah that chapter don't worry about that yeah exactly and someone asked them about it

yeah uh let me bring pastor here to answer your question and they bring security out it's like yeah it's like what what what movie dystopian reality are we living in here? Well, we've built, we've built enterprises to ourselves. This gentleman, I'll ask you the question and then he has the greatest answer

I've ever heard. So Christ calls his church, the term, the Greek term is ecclesia. Okay. And ecclesia translates to literally a gathering. So it's a secular term. It's not a strictly religious term.

But like, so a gathering at the Coliseum would be called an ecclesia. The ecclesia comes together. Just people come and, together. So Christ says, this is my body is my ecclesia. So it's the people, right? So today we've built, we've built institutions on top of him in his teachings and on top of that ecclesia. And now we say, hey, Julian, you and I are going to go to church. Well, if we are the church, we don't go to church. Like, we are the church. The church can gather, right? But so what do we call the buildings today?

because the church is not a location right we're not going to church so what can we call and i've asked probably a thousand plus people this question what can we call the buildings with the stages and the child care and the coffee and donuts and the air conditioning or heating depending on where you're at what can we call that what's a term for it like you're asking me what i would call it yeah because i like i i don't know what to call it like um charles spurgeon one of the greatest evangelists in england back in the day he called it a meeting or a meeting house like we're going to the meeting so what would we call it right the jesus center the jesus center there we go so i'm talking to this guy who knows the bible in and out and he goes and i asked him and this is like two weeks ago three weeks ago

and i'm like dude what do i call these things like i don't know what to call him and he nonchalantly goes they're loved ends and i was like they're what i was like yeah they're loved ends that could be misconstrued i know well or not but but uh so what are they loved ends for for ourselves. We built the stage where we see ourselves. We see, we stare at the stage. We sing songs that make me feel good. I get a cup of coffee and a donut for me. I drop my kids off into youth programs because I don't want to teach them in the Bible. Man, that sounds awful. So we're going to tuck them over there. It's all about me. It's I've built a loved end to myself and to all of us. And we get to love on ourselves and do think for ourselves and say, hey, Julian, come join

my love done. It's great in here. When Christ said the exact opposite, he said, go out. you're going to do dangerous things you're going to be sheep among wolves and so we've literally built a little safe haven with the comfiest accoutrements for lack of a better term of modern day and we call it church no it's just all consumerism and it's all for ourselves and then we'll say jesus every now and again and pat ourselves on the back and out you go and i'm going to go out and repeat the same the same sins i've been repeating for most of my life where's that $100 bill you know it's like that's the and then I'm going to come in and repent on Sunday and do it again I remember there's just little moments you never forget that maybe at the

time you're like that was interesting then later you're like oh I remember going to a Catholic mass like with my dad one time I had to be eight years old nine years old and the priest who was like the guy there forever got up there and for his homily, he was like one of those old school, like, totally mailed it in Irish guys. He's like, listen, I'm getting too old for the shit. But he's like, listen, you know, the walls are falling apart. I can't even get two ushers back there. We're bringing the basket around.

And he's literally saying it like this in like 20 minutes. You know, would $5 kill you? And this is like the homily. He's supposed to be interpreted what Jesus just said. And I'm perking up. I'm looking at my dad. my dad's like this guy but that always stayed with me because like as far as when we're talking about extreme examples here this was a very light example like i don't think it was like that bad

but the fact that that's like worked into like a celebration it's i think it's literally called like the celebration of the eucharist or whatever right which is supposed to be like the body of christ the fact that something like that is normalized institutionalized if you will in the middle of that so that that guy who's been doing this for 50 years can just get up there like it's a tuesday And say this line and then, you know, the few people in there are like, all right, yeah, I can give something like that down. But let's break that down. That's such a fascinating story. Like, why is this pastor so or this clergy is so demoralized? Yeah. Because he's having to pay. He's having to raise money for a building that's falling apart. And the Bible talks about this all the time.

You know, everything russes. And it's like he's having to raise money for this building that Jesus never told us to build. We, we come into this system, and I tip my hat. I even think Kenneth Copeland came into this system with good intentions. You do. I'm going to tip my hat to him. I think he was he was trained under Oral Roberts, which Oral Roberts is like the OG evangelist, private planes and all that. And so that's just what he saw as this is what needs to happen. But I firmly believe he probably had good intentions to spread the name of Jesus. And so just like this guy, he had good intentions. And 50 years later, he's having to ask people for five bucks to plaster the wall. Right. You know, it's like we've missed the mark. We've built temp. We've, in the LDS church

literally calls them temples, but we've built buildings when we were never told to build buildings. Like Christ says, you are the temple, Julian. I am the temple. But we can't seem to get that through our heads. So instead, we history repeats itself. We just revert back to what we know, which is let's build a building. Build something. Build something. Build like, I said, at the beginning we like to build things we're good at building things all right let's break that down then how else would you form an organized religion for the right reasons right where you're trying to adhere to actual beliefs let's say like you really it's 200 ad and you really or let's make it after the council and i see it's 400 ad and you really believe in everything that happened to jesus

you think he's the son of God, he's this amazing guy, and you want to follow this religion. We are naturally communal creatures, which means we want to come around other people who can relate to us on that level, which I think is perfectly fine and literally, evolutionarily built into us. How else are you going to do that if you don't have a set place to meet, which what I'm getting at is, are you going to sit in the park with four people and that's where you meet, or are you going to have a nice private, for lack of a better term, here, like, safe place to be able to do this? Like, how do you, I don't, to defend the institution, I guess, I don't see how you get around building a building, whether it be called a church or whatever you want to call it, but building a place where it's like, that's what this is for. I'm not really sure if there's another example of us doing that other than, you know, living outside our IRL on the internet with people.

where that's the case where which even there you build communities you might build a discord or something like that you know it's like a virtual building so how do you get around that well christ one of my favorite lines from megachurch pastors is jesus had the first mega church and it's the stupidest thing ever because there's stories in the in the gospels where jesus you know thousands of people would follow him and so the story of the fish and the loaves right i think there's 5,000 people there was more that was just the men that they had counted but there's 5,000 people so yeah that's a big gathering they didn't count the women kids no they just don't count them they don't count them back in the day no like I talked about right culture and so that is a huge gathering they were together for

three days I think three days in the story and then what happened all those people dispersed back to their homes so when when megachurch pastors say Oh, Jesus had the first megachurch. No, he didn't. He just had massive ecclesias coming together sometimes, and then they'd all go back home, and they might never see Jesus again. But so what does that mean?

It means the home is where all this starts, right? So a great example is a shepherd has to know. So the term pastor literally translates to shepherd. And the shepherd has to know their flock. so if you're taking like an animal, an animalistic look at shepherd and sheep or shepherd and goat or whatever, you're going to intimately know every one of your sheep. And so when you look at a pastor today, I can't remember what book this is offhand, but you can only know about 100 to 120 people. That's all you'll know. Everybody else you won't be able to know. You won't remember their names.

Like there's too much information. And so even the biblical number of 100, like, you know, the shepherd will leave the 99 to go find its one, you can only shepherd a very small group of people. You can only pastor a very small group of people. Outside of that, you're just a speaker on stage. So we've created massive systems that are hyper expensive and none of it's biblical. I think there's a huge difference. Maybe I'm misinterpreting like where you're going with this, but I don't think I am. like there's a huge difference between being a guest speaker that can inspire people and go around to different crowds and do that versus actually setting up a home base and telling people to join your organization saying that that means you get direct direct access to you as a pastor yeah but see you said it right there and this is a really interesting point it's not your organization right it wouldn't be mine right like there is and again the guy who told me about the loved ends blew my mind because i've been working on this for 16 years and he goes, Nathan, you know there's only one church, right? And I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, it's Christ Church. It's Christ gathering. As soon as you hear someone say, come to my church,

you've lost the plot. As soon as you put that name above the door, Ridgeline Church or Gateway Church or you name it, you're a brand. You've-TM. TM on the end. T-M, yeah, yeah. You've missed the mark, bro because now you've created a brand on top of jesus which has nothing to do with christ church that's what jesus might have had an instagram you never know maybe that's where i tip my hat to the lds you know the church of jesus christ they get it they're like they're like we got to tuck his name into this puppy um but it's like we've built brands and institutions you even say it organizations like we build an organization where does it say in the bible we build an organization we don't we just justify the need because we want to build something. Christ Church is an organism. And this is one thing

that I love to visualize for people because we see this in today. You know, a lot of pastors want to stand next to President Trump right now. You know, they want that photo up. Paula White, all of them. You know, they're paying money. And we know the business model. They pay money to get to stand next to President Trump and say, I'm part of his evangelical counsel or whatever, faith counsel. Okay. When did Christ ever say, you know what? Take me to Rome. I want to talk to Caesar. He didn't give two craps about Caesar. He cared about your heart, Julian. Like he's like, Caesar, do what you're going to do. You know what? Pay the tax. If he's asking for tax, pay the tax. If there's a poll tax, pay it. Stop complaining. Because why governments will come and go. But he goes, I care about the heart. He cared about humanity and people. And so what was, what? was that early gathering, that early body that transformed Rome? What Christ was is an organism. He even says it. It's a body. I am the head and you are different parts of this body. Each part of the body has a unique purpose. So if it's really an organic, tangible body, it can move through things. It was

never meant to be boxed in. Because it boxes, structures, whether that be governments, whether that be, you know non-profits you name it we build systems rigid systems and that body is supposed to be able to move through the systems if that makes sense so that's how christianity transformed rome if it was a rugged institutional structure no one would be picking those kids up off the streets those orphans and widows no we have structure yes no julian come in and this is great about the lDS church we're dropping a video today you need help okay there's there's there's structure you have to do if you want my help if you want our help that's what they say in Scientology you got to follow the rules

well who made those rules you did that's right Jesus didn't you did and so we've built we've boxed in the organism like to the point where it's changed why I always say it's chained to the pews we've chained the organism to the pews of the church why because the church needs your money I don't know

I could see how this is something where, let's take, for example, those mega pastors who go in and meet with their political candidate of choice, whoever it may be, I could see where those people, even if they know they're lying to themselves doing it, but I could see those situations where maybe they don't think they're lying to themselves doing it, where they say, well, Jesus didn't worry about Rome and then he got killed. So now that we've built a church around him and we feel like our values are being infringed upon or something, he would want us to go have our political saying. I'm not defending it. I mean, I am a true believer in separation between church and state

and respect in both directions, by the way, when I say that. But like, I could see where that argument gets made there and the context changes because of how it, I guess, like how Jesus's life went down and also how the world works now where there's mass scale and global governments and you know what I mean like it's a it's a little different could you see what I'm talking about I know exactly what you're talking about I think that's very much like human nature and when we analyze things but when when Jesus says pick up the cross and follow me he meant pick up the cross and follow me that means mimic the mimic his behavior his actions his heart so I think like as humans we'll be like we're we're trying to like hey the story could have been a little bit different

if Jesus had done this. Maybe we should do this. A little revisionism. Yeah. Be like maybe if he was friends with the Romans, this wouldn't happen, right? So we need to do that. And that's not like at the end of the day, that's not picking up the cross and following them. Well, and, you know, most of those early disciples were killed.

I think if you were a bishop, I can't remember the exact year. But for the first 100 to 150 years, you had an 80% chance of being a martyr if you were a bishop. Yeah, I could see that. 80% chance. That is a horrible business. model. Not great. If you want something to spread. So if you make it, you should enjoy your wealth. That's what I'm saying. Exactly. So when Christ says pick up your cross, that means everything comes with you, which means your life is no longer in your hands. If you feel led to do something,

you will die for that belief. And that's why I said in the beginning, Hell's Angels is more of a religion, in my opinion, than most religions today is the Hell's Angels live and die by their creed. And I tip my hat to them. Whether I agree with their moral, those or not, like, they are true to their creed in form of worship. Christians aren't. Dan Bramer in the show says, people have faith in their faith in God. People have faith in their faith in God. So what I mean by that is I put faith in the institution that I go to that that pastor's working, that the child care is teaching my children right? Because when you put your faith in the God of your faith,

dangerous things happen. If I put my faith in Christ, which leads me to Yahweh, you read what those prophets did in the, they were, most of them were murdered. You know, read what, like, how God had, like, certain prophets walking out into battlefields where they were coming to kill them.

Like, it's, it's, in God either protected them or he didn't. Like, when, as soon as you put your faith in the God of your faith, things get real dicey. Even today, though, would you say that? Yeah. I mean, I totally see the argument, especially like at the beginning of the church, like you're saying, I completely believe that number as well. You had an 80% likelihood to be murked in the early days.

But now we're something like Christianity is followed by billions of people around the world. To be clear, there are places where people are literally getting killed for that right now. But let me focus on like the United States. It's the most prominent religion here at this time. Like, do people still even? have that in their lexicon that like oh if i actually speak out about this deliberately i could have the guns turned on me i guess some people i've got guns turned on me all the time and i would say i'm trying to live out my faith in my creator it's dangerous let's say an lDS member

and i'm going to tip my hat to my lDS friends and our lbs we're talking about the mormons are our mormons are our mormon friends out there just think if you finally walked into your ward and said hey i'm not giving you my tithe anymore. I'm going to give it to the person who needs it down the street because you don't need my money. Even that small gesture is a dangerous gesture because guess what? You're going to lose your temple recommend card, which means guess what? You don't get to get to the celestial kingdom. I see. Yeah. Okay. All of a sudden, guess what? That institution starts crumbling and cracking because we're now living out the tenets of our savior. We put our faith in our God of our faith, not in the faith.

It's clocking for me now. So what you're saying is like you may still think you're put in your faith like in God himself. But if you are changing any behaviors or working any of your behaviors around supporting this institution and doing that, I'm going to put a word in here in an almost robotic just expected kind of way. Therefore, even if you think you're going directly to God, you are going through that middleman and there's a difference in what your faith. Okay.

100%. I got you. Yeah. If we look at a lot of what's going on in the world today are just like how Nathan says this brilliantly about this concept of culture becomes doctrine, right? So like a lot of events that we've happened, like I'll go ahead and say even COVID, right? Like with everything, like the church, like a lot of churches were out there like, let's do this. The backs and like everything that was going on, right?

but no one was speaking out. I shouldn't say no one. A lot of brave people were speaking out. A lot of women were speaking out. But a lot of, like, the, the representation of Christianity wasn't necessarily holding the line because it's very safe not to. It's very safe to be in this box. You're not going out in the world and putting yourself on the line.

And you see that with all these movements that we have and within society, where are the religious teeth? Well, they sold that with a. 30% tax exemption when they got put into that box. Yeah. So that's the lack of danger or danger, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. Religion is fascinating. It's beyond. I mean, it's one of those things. Like, we're talking about one tenet of it today, which is, I mean, we're talking about a lot of history, too, but we're focusing on how it's gotten to this point where it's this enterprise in America. but when you look through every era of religion and history it is a rabbit hole that i mean

if you wanted to make a youtube channel on it you'd be making videos so that you die and you don't even get a 0.1 percent through it i mean it's it's insane but at the center of all this and we said this a couple times today but at least to bring it back around to them for the time being like at the center of all this are people who are preyed upon right now the people who go to kent kovlin's church, for example, not every single person in there is someone who just, I'm going to give some examples, who just recovered from being a heroin addict, or, you know, just lost three family members in a blazing fire, or insert something traumatic here. There are also people who, you know, have their normal life traumas like we all do, but are kind of your everyday folks who make a decision

to go there. And it is also not a reasonable expectation and just say, well, these people are stupid. I don't think that's fair at all. I think a lot of them are perfectly intelligent people. I think we all have some sort of blind spot when it comes to being psychologically manipulated. I am no different. You're no different. It's just how it is. But what do you think it is for those people, the non-traumatic event people who go to a place like Kenneth Copeland's church and give money to them every week, whatever percentage it is of their paycheck, and continue to believe every single thing that a guy like that is selling, like, how, how does that continue? Let's say I've been at Kenneth Church for 30 years. My dad, I'm a 33-year-old male.

My dad and mom, I live in Fort Worth. And so my dad and mom went there. They took me since I was a kid. You know what? Kenneth taught, taught prosperity. So I've been giving 10% of my money every year since I've been 12 years old off my, off my, what do you call it? when you give your kids uh allowance you know everything i've been drilled into this so 33 years old now i've bought this institution i've had faith in my faith which is kenneth kilpin's church i've had this hook line and sinker it takes a massive slice of humility to realize i've been duped dan bramer in the show says people will not what does he say he goes people do not believe in something that they think is stupid

As soon as I have to question, as soon as I question what I am in, all of a sudden, man, that 100 grand that I've given this church over the last two decades is gone. Man, my mom was buried by this man. Probably should I add someone else bury her. Or does that make sense? You have to question all your decisions. So Dan Bramer goes, we don't believe something we think is stupid. And you have to call it stupid for lack of a better term once,

once you start doing the research. And so Bruce Wideck, he's a development economist, he calls it strategic ignorance. And he goes, people stay strategically ignorant because they'd rather not know. Strategic ignorance is a hell of a term. Yeah. There's a statistic out there that I think that's part of the root cause of this, that only 13% of Christians have actually read the Bible. I would believe that. Yeah.

Now, when you say read the Bible, The whole thing. The whole thing. Yeah, the whole thing. And then 9% have read it more than once. It's not an easy read. Oh, it's a vicious book. Yeah.

And like, thank God for my brother Nathan here. It started to make a lot more sense to me when I started reading it as a history book, right? Because it's written not to you, but for you. And so you weren't reading it as a history book at first. I was not. I was like trying to read it as if like, what can I get out of this? What can I get out of this instead of understanding like the culture? and why people were saying certain things at the time.

It completely changed my view on it. But like if you don't have those moments and understand that, you're going to get faked out. Yes. Very easily. And so very vulnerable people are there. And then they don't have the knowledge as a foundation. So they easily get faked out. Now that makes perfect sense.

But if you don't mind, I'd like to ask you how it changed for you. Like if you could be specific on that, like once you changed how you read. I got over myself. I was looking at it for myself. What can I get out of this for me? What's God trying to tell me right now instead of understanding like the concept of what led to Christ and what Christ set us free from as humanity instead of like, oh, what does this one line mean? Because I was notorious. I used to be like on Joel Osteen's subscriber list.

I used to love getting his, you know, God's going to turn your life around tomorrow. and then his statement dot dot dot dot dot don't run to him in a hurricane though no no i'm going to mattress mac that's right yeah but uh but yeah that was the big the big the big thing for me is i stopped making it about me me me me and looking at it as like this is a like a history book that tells this beautiful story about how we ended up getting to where we had our lord and savior all right let's actually stay with this for a minute because you're you're a perfect example we were talking off camera obviously you're an extremely successful guy, very intelligent guy, you're a man of faith very clearly through and through. And yet in the

past at some point, there were guys, even if you weren't necessarily going there, there were guys like a Joel Osteen that you're like, you know what? This makes sense to me. And from what you said right there, it sounds like a lot of it has to do with you were, like you were saying, you were looking at it for what can I get out of this regardless of who that speaker is. I wanted to feel good. But was it, was, were there anything else there that, like, drew you to, you know, a podcast with Joel Osteen? Like, inspirational speaking. Like, let's talk about positive. Like, positive energy.

Right. And it's positive energy and everything. And, hey, I love a good, I love a good TED talk, right? And then, uh, it, it felt good. But there was this, like, real heaviness thing that I was scared because in that period of time, I got injured in the Army in 2012. Um, I picked up the book. at that time. And I ended up getting medically discharged in 13. I picked up this book called Not a

fan. And it was about how it was a great book. It was a great read about how everybody is a so many Christians. They put the bumper sticker on. They're they're fans of Christ. And then I had this like, you know, you have this aha moment that ends up like coming full circle where you're like, wait a second. I'm not picking up the cross and following Christ. And then you realize, well, the devil believes that Jesus is the son of God. The devil believes in the resurrection. The devil believes in all the same things I believe in. But the difference is, is do you pick up the cross and follow Christ? This wasn't a Joel Osteen book, was it? No. It's a different one. But like, that was like, I remember that. Like, I'm not a fan. I'm a follower. And so I did, I was so scared of giving up

the world. I'm in pursuit of money. I'm in pursuit of greatness. I'm in pursuit of this big dream I have. Hey, and Chris, if you want that, come to my prosperity preaching church because I preach all of that. So that's what I want. I'm going to do that now too. I wanted to go somewhere where it was what I wanted to hear. You know, when I look at the darkest parts of my life when I made the most mistakes, I surrounded myself with people who would only encourage me. They wouldn't tell me, dude, what you're doing is not okay. Like, call me out on it. And those guys are going to call you out. Hey, everything's rosy out there. God wants you to be prosperous. Right. Yeah. How long were you in the Army?

So I graduated from the Air Force Academy. I started off there, and then I was active duty Air Force. A total of about six years did. I went to Iraq while I was in the Air Force, but I was in a joint army. I was predominantly Army, but it was a joint unit there. And then after that, I was like, I think I'm going to cross-commission in the Army. So then I did about three years in the Army. Okay, so you, wow.

So you lived in, you straddled both. And then in the Army, you got injured. Yeah, I got injured in 20. Well, so I went to, I went in the Army. I went to the field artillery captain's career course, went to airborne school. Then I went to selection for special operations forces civil affairs. I did great there. It was in the, in the, in the, uh, in their Q course. And then a week before graduating in our, like, finishing exercise. I forget what the exact they call it. Um, Operation Sless Tiller. That's what I remember what it was. Seven of us ended up getting injured. It was, June and they screwed up like where you put water at different points and all that. So seven of us ended up in the hospital. I got exertional rhabdomyalysis had like a heat like stroke type thing. And I woke up and I was like, yeah, I said like it's going to be, it's about five years for

your hypothalamus to reset. I'm like, yeah. Yeah, I'm done. I mean, it's like being a professional athlete at that, like at that low and you're like, yeah, you're not going to play for a few years. So you're also like going through the most grueling training camp of all time. you make the team and then you get injured and they're like yeah yeah it was you can't play it was real it let that that time led to a a rising uphill of chasing the world while completely

falling apart like I have a drink alcohol in five and a half years I've been I like congrats man that's thanks man but like leading up to that right so from 32 to 40 I drank like crazy and I partied And I was a married man and had kids. And I made a lot of mistakes. And it cost me my marriage. It cost me my family. And I had to have a real like come to Jesus. Like, what the hell are you doing?

What are you doing? And it was in those moments where it's like, yeah, you lose your soul chase in the world. It's true. I remember reading that. And were you, were you like this is during your Joel Osteen phase, right? Oh, yeah. Like this is during. Oh, you were partying during Olstein.

Well, because it's positive, bro. Oh, prosperity, baby. Yeah, let's go. So it's, and that goes, that's the difference between, I like that fan and follower. You know, this is a fun one. Like, Christ never said in any of the gospels, hey, Julian, worship me. Right. No, I know that.

Follow me. Right. Yeah. Like, and when you do that, all of a sudden, like, boo, my sin or my, like, lust or my, like, alcohol problem, if you have an alcohol problem or whatever, this doesn't bode well for me if I'm trying to follow this dude and it's a radical transformation of how you see the world so like i'll just put a button on that like you have faith in your faith in god you know but you have to have this radical rethink of you got to put your faith in the god of your faith because then it gets dangerous and like i've watched

chris over the last few years and it's been so awesome to be a brother with him in the trenches because i've seen his life just deepen and his relationship you know it's been amazing to watch um and so it's It's amazing. Like, it's just so cool when someone really dives into the word and says, into the scriptures. And I always say when I first read it as a history book, it looked like Lord of the Rings all of a sudden. Like you read these battles and you read about giants and Nephilim and you're just like, what is going on? You know, and no longer, I'm like, I'm just going to find the verses I like. It's like, no, this is a cruise.

Brodo, Jesus. So, you know. Well, oh, this goes back to that analogy you said about, you know, Spider-Man and all that. And they're all like Jesus figures. So in Hollywood, the best, most successful films of all time are nothing by the Bible story. And what I mean by that is there is a Christ figure who goes through this journey, who is tempted all along the way, who finds salvation, who usually ends up a martyr. You know, those are all my favorite movies, Man on Fire. You know, Denzel Washington.

It's like the greatest movies mirror biblical stories. It's the greatest story ever told. So it makes sense. yeah it's got perfect plot points exactly yeah ups and down all you got to do is pick your protagonist is that paul slash saul was he killing christ and then was the like literally the leads you know spreader of the gospel is that christ like you pick your protagonist and on the opposite of all those stories there's an antagonist you don't even have to write the story it's in the bible and to your point they can have arcs yeah can have arcs where they flip for the good or turn for the bad it's

all in there yeah no that makes sense now The other thing, Chris, like, I've had the opportunity to speak with a lot of guys from the military over the years, including on this show. I've had a lot of tier one dudes as well who have gone and done some pretty serious training, just like you were referring to doing. And one of the things that I don't think a civilian like me can ever properly simulate because we didn't live it, one of the many things, is that void that can happen when you do. don't have it anymore, right? So, as an example, a lot of my Navy SEAL guys I talk to, they talk about how the action and energy they would get from what they did, they cannot replicate, and they have to watch themselves and how they may try to fill that now in civilian life. And some have some very interesting, deep-rooted ways of having to do that. So without referring

to faith or anything like that, even a level below that, do you think, having like the shock of suddenly you have this thing, you're all hands on deck, you're operating at the top of your capacity, you train your ass off and now boom, it's gone. Do you think that part of filling that void just from a human perspective was you're like, I got to go do something.

So in this case, you just went out and partied. I worked my tail off and I used the partying as, as, like, I use that partying to numb the things that want to deal with. But I was, I mean, and part of the prosperity side, I mean, the harder to party, the more money I made. Interesting. Yeah. And I always had that like in the military, like, you know, I turned 21 and that's when I like started hitting the sauce, started drinking a lot and partying and having fun with my, with my boys. And I was always afraid to stop doing that. And like it's like

the devil would say like, hey, like, if you stop doing this, like, you're not going to be like successful, right? I mean, I was in the, I was, there's a sword in the Pentagon with my name on it. I was in the Oval Office for being the number one ranked cadet in the United States Air Force in 2003. I got an award in 2004. And my recipe for that was work hard, party hard. Hmm. Have fun. And you can mix the two, right?

You're not the first guy to think that, by the way. Yeah. And so, and it felt good and it was fun. But there was a lot of things in my life that I wouldn't work on. And then eventually you become a husband and a husband. father and you don't deal with the things that you need to deal with it'll break you it'll break your family apart and so for me it was when i got injured the military was my identity so when i got injured i was like i can't lose like i need my identity and something i got to be something special

like god didn't put me on this earth to sit on the sidelines so i just went all in in the corporate world right and i was in a job where you know a lot of my function we did we grew a lot by m&A so it's like parting right entertaining traveling wine and dining yeah whining and dining laughing doing all that kind of stuff and and and uh you know when all that's like said and done and you have like i had a good chance you know we've been working on this with nate for over two years now and a lot of reflection leading up to that and then since then it's like i miss the i miss like the danger of of things i miss that and it's in my DNA yes but it's like now i'm doing this as a member

of the body of Christ, and that feels fulfilling. Because this isn't a joke. This is a very dangerous thing we're doing. Just to refresh me, I think you mentioned this very early on. I just want to make sure I have a right. At what point in your life did you start to consider yourself a Christian? I've always considered myself Christian, always. When did you start really practicing, if you will, like heavily? So when I was in my, when I was in my late teens, my dream was to go to the Air Force Academy, and I was, like, very locked in. I mean, I was following Christ, like, to the tea, as much as, like, possible with everything. I was so straight and narrow. It was when I turned 21, and I started getting a lot of success in the military, and I started drinking a lot,

that I started being, I saw all the success coming from this recipe that I was afraid to follow Christ anymore, like, to the tea. So it's like, hey, I got all these results here. I'm good. And then it was when, you know, the personal destruction of like the family side of things and me really working through the healing on that side with like my kids and my kid's mom and jump jumping on board with with this. So it was like a process from like I'm 45 now. So I would say probably from like 42 through now is when I started doing a lot of real hard work on myself. So, you know, it's been about three years. Right. So it, no, it's interesting both of your stories with that because there's a lot of a lot of years and a lot of different life events like we were saying earlier with yours as well, Nate. But it's like, you know, looking from the outside in a lot of ways you can still have that North Star of like faith, but your life kind of without you're passively getting off track with that and not realizing it because you're sinking your teeth so hard into other things. And then you get just kicking the ass. And now you're like, oh, wait a minute. Okay. Let me. reshuffle some things here.

Nathan and I always talk about this and we challenge each other with this. And this is a great thing about our brotherhood is, you know, God, you know, told Abraham to put Isaac on the altar, his son. That's when he went to kill... Yeah. And then, like, Angel came in.

So it's like, I finally got to a point and we've had this conversation where it's like, I've got to put money, relationships, my life, my relationship with my kids, everything, just on the altar. And just trust. And as soon as you do that, crazy amounts of testing happened. I mean, you get hit pretty, pretty hard, and your faith gets tested. And it's in those moments where you're like, I want to go back to the safety.

Yeah. And God's like, no, Christ is like, follow me. Can I ask you a hard question here? And it's not a gotcha question. Oh, I hate that shit. But, Is it about psychedelics? No, no, it's about money. It's about money. You're obviously putting your foot forward with that now because you put your full teeth into this. It's not like you guys are making millions of dollars doing this. It's more to really do good and try to reform some of the darker sides of ministry, if you will.

But like you were a very successful guy before that. And I never like this idea that like, oh, if you're going to have faith or something, you need to be poor or something. I don't believe in that at all. But do you ever, if I came to you today and said, hey, I'm going to make up a number right now. Yeah. You know, Chris, you're worth $10 million.

If you really believe in Jesus, guess what? You're going to have to be worth $100,000 now. Are you at a point in your life where you're like, well, that's really what it was. I'd go with it? No, like, that's the like operating within the, within the Holy Spirit and having the Holy Spirit within you. Like, I truly trust that that money could be, like, it might not be for what that is. It means that, like, every penny in my bank account goes towards following Christ.

And so everything that I do has to follow that. So if that means it's with the religion business and it means helping somebody out, like, I really feel like God will put those opportunities in my life. It's not, I'm not going to be manipulated by anybody to say, yeah you shouldn't be worth this you need to have this yeah well and there's a there's a big misconception a lot of people think we preach like a poor gospel which is basically like you should give it all away uh yes paul never well we'll start with paul right so paul when a lot of pastors will look at what they did in the in the the letters or what paul did in letters because he

would go around and ask people for money and what he was doing is he was pulling resources. This is the kicker out of people's surplus. He'd say, bring your surplus. We're going to bring it together. And this is the kicker. Give it to the poorer churches. So they'd give monetary gifts to poor churches or a church where there was a famine so they couldn't buy food at that time. So that's what Paul was doing. Socialism. This is a really interesting conversation. We should talk about that. Yeah, let's do it. This is really, socialism. I had to say it. It was I yes it is a you will be the first person that we've had the conversation with let's do it but I would love we'll come back to socialism um but you know in Jesus when he told

I'm trying to try to think of his name the the rich man maybe he wasn't named in the Bible but the rich man in the gospels you know the last thing you'd need to do is sell everything you have and follow me the reason why he said that is because it was the one thing the man held onto it wasn't hey go be poor and walk and be homeless and destitute no it's the one one thing that you can't give up and put on the altar, so to speak. And what did that man do? He left dismayed and saddened. And so Christ or not Christ, if you are a Christ follower, everything follows behind you, which is your resource, right? And so wealth is not inherently a bad thing. And so in America, though, we see poverty and then wealth, poverty and blessing. It's like, no, some of the most

blessed people I've ever met are destitute in third world countries they sit around and they live in the middle of like I've gotten to travel the world to most developing nations and some of my greatest moments in life came sitting with the poorest people in the world and it's because they didn't care about money they cared about community and so um yeah it's it's wealth is not inherently bad it's it's sore it number one it's sore it gain the Bible talks about sord gain. Shored gain. Soared like creating or generating, generating wealth off of sordid gains. Yeah. Okay. I see what you're saying. I would almost say most, not most, a lot of pastors, they make their gains off of sord gains. I agree. And so it's that $100 bill sitting

on the table has no value until you and I put value on it. And so yeah, I would just emphasize that. your resources come behind you and what that means is first and foremost I will use my resources to protect my ministry and my ministry as my child right and so that doesn't mean I will never and I think it's very antithetical to Christ to not be able to provide for your children I would agree and so there's just a there's there's so much nuance in the scriptures where if you just look at Paul or just look at Christ I can demand you give everything for Jesus if I just read that one story. There's a difference between using a parable for symbolism versus creating an exception that becomes a rule. Yeah. And that goes to Chris's point when you read the

Bible for history as opposed to how do I apply this? It's like the story of, you know, Christ saying, hey, poke out your eye if the eye makes you sin. We would all be blind. My dick would be chopped off. Like every, I would be done, you know. I would, I would literally just be one nub, just letting it on the ground. That's two inches. The world's never even up that. One and a half. Don't give me that much credit.

But, uh, baby carrot was my nickname. But, uh, I'm joking. That was not my nickname, but who knows? Oh, I'm not an asthma. Woo. But, uh, but yeah, it's, it's, again, when you. read the Bible and try to just randomly apply parables to your life or scriptures to your life, bad things happen. So we'd encourage you to read the book from Genesis 1-1 all the way through

Revelation and read it as a history lesson. And I believe God will speak to you through those scriptures and ways you've never been spoken to. All right, let's do the socialism thing, though. We can't leave that off the table. It is an interesting conversation. Yes. And to be clear, I don't think that the Bible preaches socialism, but there's people, based on some of those teachings, including the example you give with Paul, like, setting up the church, they could be like, ooh, old Stalin on to something here? You know what I mean? So, yes, he was. So I'm going to say this.

He looked at me so fucking serious when he said that. Communism and socialism in their purest forms on paper is genius. What's the outlier in it? Humans. Right. Humans will human. Good intentions pave the way to hell. and socialism and communism ends up being an abusive system through and through we live in a democracy

where the first amendment separates religion for freedom of religions and so you do are you are supposed to have that gap between religion and politic i think democracy or the republic is the greatest experiment in governmental history i mean that's america like the most brilliant legal structure. So we need to look at, so this is where it gets fun. What is a legal structure? It's a set of laws that we all play by. So capitalism in its purest form is amazing. I firmly believe that. I think we live in a world of crony capitalism right now, but capitalism in its purest form is brilliant. Democracy in its purest form is brilliant from a legal government perspective. Now let's look at Christianity. The message of Christ is,

a social message. The message of Christ is help the poor, help the widow, help the orphan, help the sick, help the thirsty, help the hungry, help the sojourner, help the prisoner. We do that on a one-on-one community perspective. Oh, thank you, sir. Keep going. So what I'm saying is when you look at Christianity as an organism, right, when I look at Christianity as that organic, body with Christ as the head, social practices are baked into that. I am here to help Julian. Julian is here to help me. There's this concept of reciprocity in that. As soon as we build a structure around it, it doesn't work anymore. So what I mean by that is Christ's message is a social message. Socialism is meant from is meant and socialism is such a derogatory term for it. Yeah. But you and me

helping each other is a beautiful thing. It's supposed to happen on the personal level. Government can never be socialist or communist, but on a so on a singular community level, it works. It's like if I want to go down this, if I go down the street and I see three people I know are suddenly homeless and I know some tough things have happened in them and I care about them. And I want to give them some of my money, which is like if you're looking at the leather of the law, this is like, we're just preachery wealth in a way to help them out. I love the idea that, A, I want to do that, and B, I can do that. I think where this is where the dichotomy is extremely important that you're pointing out. When a government run by men who are also, I might say, secularly loyal to

themselves and no one else are telling you, you must give it to us so that we can decide what to do within. By the way, we're just going to screw over all the poor people anyway. That's where it gets weird. Correct. So socialism in a community setting with no structure around it is very close. It is a lot of what Christ taught. But what that is is it's you and me actively participating in this that's right. In what? An organic body, which is the freaking church, the true church. As soon as you box it in, as soon as you build organization and institution on top of it, you're done. And it's size too right there's a guy Sebastian younger who wrote some great books one of them's called tribe which is like a really amazing book really easy read too I don't even remember as I read it about

six years ago I don't even think he had this takeaway because he was just writing the book and telling the story and explaining it but there was something brilliant that came out of his book and if he did have this takeaway apology Sebastian but the tribes he would talk about where he's talking about early human history and then as times went on and nomadic tribes would travel around together. They practiced simultaneously the perfection forms of socialism and libertarianism depending on the situation. But he talked about in his book how once a tribe got above a certain size, whether it was 100 or 150, whatever it was, it got harder to control. And I think that is a perfect example for what we're talking about because in theory a lot of libertarianism is amazing in theory a lot of socialism

is amazing but once the tribe gets too big what is experimentation this is brilliant what did i talk about a shepherd what was the number 100 is 100 exactly like it's thinking that when you said that it's like you once you get outside of that you start building legal structure around it yep and it's like government is one thing community is another and it's fascinating when they're why the government carved out the nonprofit sector in 1913. And it was because there were certain organizations, 12,000 of them, to be exact, in the U.S., that were building what we call local social capital in the show. So it's, hey, Julian, you and I live down the street together.

You have kids. I don't. But guess what? I care that the park is nice and safe for your kids because I want my community to thrive. And so the government saw that these organizations, they're like, wow, they're really building local social capital. Right. So they carved it out and gave them a tax break. Well, what happens when you layer technology, you know, radio, TV, internet, social media on top of these original organizations that were meant to build local social capital. Now I can look global and do it like, oh, my audience is no longer my community, these hundred people that I want to make like benefit their life. No. Now my world is a billion people. And so the nonprofit sector has literally lost sight of their true cause. calling which is in its purest form socialism like you i'm a random or i'm a food pantry i should

not question julian if he and his kids are hungry if they need food and i have it give it to them right like i don't dangle a carrot over their head don't let me rephrase that dangled that carrot no baby carrots don't don't put some constriction on the food just give it to them right and then there's this but the the whole system as technology technology developed, it's just become bastardized and reform. Governmental reform hasn't cut up. And we just, we talked about the ECFA forming like government saw this. And then the government also in 2008 saw, saw this issue. And they tried to wrangle it again. But then what happened? The housing crisis hit and government had to focus their shift their attention. And there was, they were going after Copeland. They were going after Benny Hin in a couple other. Oh, really? Benny Hin spent five million dollars fighting. that inquiry in 2007 and 2008. Thank you to his congregants.

Five million of dollars, yeah, of donor funds. This is a battle for the Lord. Exactly. Well, Kenneth Copeland literally said, it was Kenneth Copeland, right? It was his son-in-law. Kenneth Copeland's son-in-law said that the housing crisis was a miracle of God, right? Miracle or? Yeah, God crashed the housing market in 2008 to spare Kenneth Copeland.

Weaponizing, weaponizing. We were physically. We were physically there when this was said. And then Kenneth walked out on stage afterwards. They're like, our prophets here. And he looked at us and you could just like, it was not a good. The demon. I can feel it.

Yeah. Yeah. But do you guys believe in demons? Yeah. Oh, yeah. You do. What do you think a demon is? A dark spirit.

Yeah, spirits. The Bible says that they, you know, they can be attached to you. And so it's energy. I like we're going to get into theoretics here yeah but um i everything's energy right and energy isn't lost it's just transferred energy doesn't disappear um and there's a theoretical physicist in the show who's at oxford and i feel like he's the most brilliant man i've ever sat with what's his name uh ard louis okay and um most of his stuff didn't make the show because i just it was six and a half hours at that point and but he says this brilliant line you know he goes everything in your body outside

of hydrogen and helium is stardust like we're cooked up in the furnace of stars and and so he talks about energy transfers and it'll it'll end up going somewhere um all this material but if everything's energy why can't there be bad there's bad energy there's good energy you know if you believe in the biblical structure of power um and so we had a really interesting moment with victor marks I'm a brilliant friend of ours and he's on the front lines of the battle with C-SAM in the U.S., which is child sexual abuse material.

Is that the, that's not the dude who can flip the guns around? Yeah, that is. That's him. He did it tonight. He did it to me. He's a beast. If you ever want to talk with him, I'll get... I would love to talk with that guy.

You've seen that video, right? The guy just stands there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, let us know. We'll plug you into his group. Oh, yeah. He's cool of shit. But he prayed over both Chris and I,

and he's like, hey, I don't want to get too much into the, get too much into the weeds because it was a gnarly story. But he's like, yeah, I'm going to pray and I'm like, I'm going to call out if you have any demons. And I was like, kind of, yeah, it's not, you know, it isn't what it isn't much. But like as soon as he started praying, my veins would pulse up and down. And I could, I was watching them just like bubbles moving through my veins. And then my eyelash, my eyebrows started twitching so fast. And, uh, the moment he finished that prayer.

my everything went black like super calm and uh and he's like okay everything is going to change after this and sure enough like full systems of my life just started collapsing like people in it people turning on me like it was crazy um and i'll leave it at that but like i had like there i believe i had five demons attached to me five oh you counted him he i oh it was very specific his prayer is very specific interesting and it's about letting go so you know know, he's like, say what comes to mind. And I was always, like, in the beginning, battling it, you know, because I'm like, ah, no, that's not it. That's not it. And then as soon as I started talking, he would ask me more questions, and it just started going. And he's like, I've had people

lunge at me and try to kill me when I'm praying this prayer. Not a good idea. Yeah. What do you think, Chris? Oh, I meant demons. Like, would you agree with that type of explanation, or do you have a little bit of a different interpretation? I think, uh, I'm going to go one, level deeper, I do think that like, and, um, and I'd say this, I was going to resist saying it, but like when two people have sex and their bodies become one, that concept of, of demons, like you, you pick up that, that energy when you're with a person. Um, I wish that wasn't necessarily true, but it is, I believe. Wait, every time.

Well. So, wait, so. So, so. I think it's one person. I was going to say, if I have sex with like a nice girl, I mean, I'm not going to like suddenly start speaking in tongues or some shit, right? I mean, I don't know. You don't have to let me know. And it's Kenneth Copeland's daughter, maybe.

I ain't touching that with him. But it's, it's when you're, I mean, when two bodies become one, right, in that sense, right? And it's something that's necessarily like it says design for marriage that that you can, you can pick that kind of stuff up. So, like, I, I, uh, I went through this exercise that a guy that's mentoring Nathan and I, I'm just being super vulnerable here, man. Like, he was like, go through every woman you've ever slept with in your head. Yeah. And ask God to remove like, uh, spirit, soul, body.

Those, those three levels. And there's biblical references for that. Um, the ones that are bad or just all of them? All of them. All of them. Yeah. To remove that, right? Because there's still an attachment that's there.

Whether that's good or bad. Okay. So you're not defining it as good or bad. No, I'm just saying like whatever that is, right? But there's an attachment that's there. But oftentimes, like, all of us have, all of us have bad energy within us. We're not perfect, right? Yeah.

So you do pick up bad with just about anything, right? Yeah. What I was tracking when you were explaining. in this Nate is like you're using the term energy legit and I'm thinking also vibes and I actually kind of like what you're saying I didn't have the experience like you did or anything but rather than you know what you see in the movie was some gargoyle infesting inside of someone's soul and being sucked out it's not that it's like if there are bad intentions around you whatever that is where someone's given in to what from the simplest shit to

the more serious, the most serious type stuff, then that energy can infect you if you let it in your life and that in and of itself is like a demonic. Yeah, so like a good, I've also believed, I believe in angels too. Like there was, when I was on my life flight back, when I was 16, I fully remember this, this white being just sitting right above me.

It's the only thing I remember those two weeks. and it was on the plane the whole flight back and it could have been the nurse i don't know but it all i remember is this thing never left me the whole flight back and then as soon as i went into the ambulance on the runway it went away there's things in the world that cannot be explained right whether it be something like that or a traumatic event or you know things lining up in a weird way sometimes just like weird patterns and you're like wait why is that person why were they at that thing when I'm not that thing that you know and whatever it is I don't know I'm not God and I can't define that but that's my my one real pushback with people who are just like a pure atheist

I'm like how does it all come from nothing I just can't maybe it's beyond my human ability to comprehend that that could be the case I don't know even if there's 10 quadrillion layers between me and whatever's at the top i i've no idea could be one could be 10 quadrillion or whatever the number is it's like there's some energy there and there's something that sometimes puts things in your path that you're like you either need to say no to or say yes to or say thank you to yeah and that might be that example right there and i don't think that's what i'm saying i i don't the demon and angel thing even if it's just more symbolic rather than literal i'm okay with that i i i think there's some there's something to it though for sure have you felt that in your life like just these moments

like where you have like this yeah absolutely i'm like all the time and sometimes i blow it too with good situations and i'm like damn it like that was that was there for me to do something and i didn't do something with that and then i think about the probability like the math in my head of that thing having been in that situation. I'm like, that was so low and that happened. And that's the third time that's happened in a week and I blew that. It's like, yeah, yeah, I definitely think there's something there. Even if you go like beyond to like dream states, like deja vu's and stuff. I mean, come on. Like, where's that coming from? That happens to me once a month. Wow. Minimum. Yep. Yep. I'll get one. I've been in this studio before and had people say stuff.

And in my head, I'm saying the words before they say it. You know, and I see that. And I see that. And I'm like yeah that's not I don't do mushrooms you know what I mean like that's not that so what's going on there like I just I'm I try I'm sure I fail plenty times but I try to be humble in the face of what I don't know that's how I live my life and like I try to live my life and do way more good than bad and try to learn from when I do when I do things that are wrong because I'm going to have to answer to something yeah whatever that is I hope that's going to be a very good day for me you know what i mean well it does this i can't man i can't remember who who said this but it's it's an atheist and it was an atheist to christian and they were debating um they're they're

pretty well known short of peterson i can't remember it's it's but but richard dockins and it might have been dockins but the conclusion was like hey we both put faith in something even if you're atheist you're putting faith in your faith in that in that idea And so we both have faith. Yes. So, hey, when I die, if nothing happens, what a crappy way to live like Jesus, helping people, being there for people. You know, I'm being facetious here. It's like, I'd much rather have believed in something than nothing.

And then, hey, if it's actually, if I wake up in heaven or I, you know, or my energy goes back. Like, I see it as, I'm like, we were just with blurry creatures. I don't know if you know that podcast. rad dude his name's luke rogers um and he's all about the weird things and then he correlates it to scripture so like bigfoot nephalum giants you know and he has all these really unique like extraterrestrials he has all these brilliant science scientific minds on the show um but we were talking about like this idea of energy and okay if there's a creative energy out there that created everything our solar system us and it

created this out of love, it just wants its energy back. And I fully like, this is just this idea. And I talked with Ard-Louis about this. Like, when I die, isn't that just my soul going back? You know what I mean? Like my physical body dies. The matter of my body dissolves and it goes into some other brilliant animal or plants, you know, but that energy, that sliver just kind of goes back to the creator. And I'm like, that's just this visual I have in my mind right now, like this energy that's that's outside of our dimensions but it created this it breathed as the bible story goes it breathed life into our nostrils and it just wants that life's going to go back home yeah you know and in the in the interim you and i julian can connect in in a deeper realm than

just um just you know well now they're seeing like create like plants talk and everything you know communicate it's like everything's come in this form of communication but it's like maybe it's it's that energy in you and energy and me talking to each other maybe that maybe it's chris's energy and him and in me talking to each other that's not even our own energy when i saw my daughter be born and i just broke down out of sheer amazement and awe that wasn't me like i honestly i was like this energy is so much more powerful than anything i've ever something was forcing you something was letting allowing me to experience this overwhelming like from my head to toe you know it and sometimes but that's not you it is i think it's the

energy in me allowing me to feel that that is what ultimate love is seeing this pure undefiled like brand new life be born you know i'm a big bow hunter and even taking life like is so powerful for me um that it's like there's just this energy transfer and shift and um yeah so i don't know why i went down that rabbit hole but i love that idea of i'm going back one day you know and no one knows what that back is but i have faith in that back you know the point you make about if you were wrong and it and it turned out you know what insert your religious beliefs whatever they are here that's not exactly what it is when it's all said and done if you use the good of what that's supposed to show in your life to put that forward and let's be honest there's also a beautiful like even

selfish aspect to that which is that when you're doing good and helping people out, you feel great about it. If that's how you lived your life and you live long and you're remembered as someone who left this world better than the way you found it, then who the hell cares what it is afterwards? That's not up to you. You know what I mean? And that's also that veers towards kind of how I think about things. It's like, you know, I don't know if this is right or that's right or that's right or they're all wrong or they're all a little bit right. I don't know. But your guess is as good as mine. But I do know while there is plenty of gray area in the world some that makes us more uncomfortable than others there is an overall objective good and an

overall objective not good if that's what you want to call it and like i want to lean on on the good side of things so that's that's that's that's that's kind of what's clocking me here yeah now it's that's interesting i i'd roll man right yeah yeah well let's and i love this i'm going to give you another first okay i was waiting for joe to take this one but i'm going to give it here so look at joe rogan see jesus on the pendulum so jesus on a pendulum like everything's on a pendulum, right? Our politic, everything swings on a pendulum. So I see on this left side of the pendulum, my mom, conservative Christian woman, like believes every letter of the Bible is the literal word of God, even through translations and all that. And it's really hard for me to rationalize

that. And then I can swing all the way to the other side of the pendulum of Jesus. And who is Jesus. He's a, he's a history, a figure in history who had massive implications on society in the world. He was murdered and that's it. The resurrection is faked. You know, Pentecost is just folklore. You know, the, the apostles who died and all those early bishops who died died, died for a lie or died for a made up story, but whatever. But his life and his teachings pulled us from barbarism all the way to this day where you and not. I see each other as equal value and equal life, right? So I see Jesus on those pendulums.

Wherever you, or on this pendulum, wherever you fall in your quote unquote faith or idea of Christ, Christ is going to meet you there. Like even if you just think he's a historical figure who taught grace lessons and man, I want to be the good in the world, like you said. Like you're over here. My mom's over here. You're on the same pendulum, actually. And Jesus will meet you there if you look at him and actually just read his teachings.

and that's what I always encourage people to do is like just study his life like a history book and the stuff you will glean out of that you'll have wherever you end up on that spectrum like that's where Christ will meet you and you will be the good in the world but right now it's like if we look at it like that we look at it like okay we're all going in that trajectory and we all want to be we want to better our world what does that mean we're going to go back to the socialist conversation real quick it means Everything's equal. Well, if everything's equal, then how do I build my institution on top of this?

You can't. Okay, so I have to differentiate myself from you, Julian. I have to differentiate myself from Chris. So what does that mean? Well, now I have to find differences. I'm a brand. You're a brand. You're one of 50,000 denominations of Christianity now.

It started with one. And it's because we have to be different. When in reality, Christ is saying we're all one and the same. that's heavy man yeah now you you had said something earlier because i do i do want to get back to copeland and the full investigation you did but i've had something in the back of my mind that we got off very early on that was interesting you were making a draw between i want to say it was in the 60s where they were coming up with the code of how to declare yourself as church or religion and you just kind of tossed in there on the side that, you know,

the CIA was invented in the 40s. Why did you say that? What was the tie between those two? I got a call maybe, I can't remember now. Several months ago. Several months ago from an unknown block number. And I don't know why I answered this one, but I did. Maybe I was in a good move.

And I answered this call. And it was a gentleman who, who goes, hey, I've watched a lot of what you're doing. What do you know about the 14 point checklist? And so I gave him kind of my history spiel because I had sat down with the gentleman that oversaw the nonprofit sector for five years at the IRS. So basically like the leading brain at the IRS to oversee 1.5, well, not 1.5 because that's global, almost a trillion dollars in individual donor giving every year. So that's not including government grants. So this guy is like the brain that understands it all. So I regurgitated

to this gentleman on the other line. Hey, this is where it started. This is how it has come about. And he goes, okay, why would the U.S. government want to build that box? And I'm like, well, what do you mean? And he goes, is Christianity dangerous? And I said, yeah, true Christianity is super dangerous. And people ask why.

And I go, well, these few thousand people without weapons transformed rum. Islam is dangerous. True Islam is dangerous. The Ayatollah, look what it's done to the Middle East. True religion, whatever you believe is dangerous. Okay, well, if religion is dangerous, governments can't control it. So the government needs something to control organized religion. So they built the box with 14 points that you just need to check off. To get someone to climb into the box, we're going to give you tax exemption. So you save some money. That box, box holds everything. Islam and Christianity is like oil and water. It does not mix. So we need everything in a box that plays by the same rules. Now we can put that box on the shelf and any politician or any president or any political

party that's in power can pull that box off and move it where they need it to go. And if you step outside of that 14 points, you lose your taxes up steps. What do you mean move it where they need to, where they need it to go? this is a this is where we call the death rattle in the show um it's happened in history before but when religion and politics combine usually it's either the political power is losing authority or the the majority religious power is losing authority and so right now christianity is trying to shove its moral compass and its moral authority down through the political structure. You can see it in D.C. right now. 100%. And it's because they've abdicated

their moral authority from the pulpit. The church is no longer looking like the church. The pastor doesn't look like a shepherd. They look like a celebrity. They have lost their moral authority and their moral high ground. So they're trying to do it from D.C. And this happens all throughout history and everywhere. And so right now, you've got the death rattle going in D.C. But if, and basically what that means is reform is coming. It doesn't mean necessarily anything's dying physically. It just means reform to a system, whether that be political or religious is coming. And so reform is coming. You can hear the death rattle clanking around. And so if I am right or left, I don't care, I want to be able to use that where I need to use it. If true Christian, or I want to be able to place it where I need to

place it, if that makes sense. And, um, yeah, we're going to, we're going down a fascinating rabbit hole here, which, well, I just, I can't speak to it, but I'm saying, you know, as, as Islam grows in the U.S., you know, like I said, it's oil and water. So, yeah, why, why do you say that? And it's oil and water? Because they do believe like Jesus was a prophet. They do believe Jesus was the prophet. I actually have great conversations with Muslims. One of my favorite restaurants in Utah is owned by this great Muslim guy named Mo, Mohamed. Shout out Mo. Shout out Mo, bro.

Best rivai in the business. Wait, are they allowed to make that? Hello. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I'm the wrong religion. Sorry. I love halal food. He does sell bacon.

Can they have bacon? I don't think so. You're looking to me like I know. No, I don't think so. Okay. Capitalistic Muslim right there. Um, Mo, you're the man. Um, but what I mean by that is like, theologically, it's oil and water. Um, and,

um, and, how can I say this? Christians are meant to love their enemies. Um, Christianity doesn't. We have to be different. Is what I'm saying. Okay. That's interesting. So Christianity, the institution doesn't. Doesn't. But individual Christians, if they followed the Bible, are supposed to... Correct. That's why I call myself a Christ follower.

And I know it's kind of silly. But it's like the term Christian has so much stigma attached to it that I'm like, I'm a Christ follower. Like I... Interesting. I believe in Christ. I follow Christ. Okay. Who came up with the name Christian?

I don't know. The original... Jesus never said you're a Christian. Yeah, no. The original group of Christians called themselves followers of the way. Yeah. They said, I follow the way. because that's what he called himself.

I don't know in Christianity. I mean, that's the English term as well. I mean, I'm just looking at it like you take Christ and then you throw the Eon on it. Yeah, like all these other terms. I don't know. But like, what did they call it when they were in Greece? And what's the phonetic laws there with how they do that? I don't know.

I'd have to get my boy Nico on the phone. But, you know, that's interesting. From a government perspective, think if you have, two very contrasting religions like Christianity in Islam. And that's the thing. I have great conversations with my Muslim friends. Like I walk into Islamic mosques and I'll talk to imams. I think it's fascinating to me. Most Christians are terrified of those buildings. Terrified. Absolutely terrified of them. Yeah. They see it as like, you know, the enemy's coming to the states. And so it could create a massive problem or it already is um uh but so why you need them both in a box in the same box

yeah i think i think a big part of it looking at it from the outside is just some of the cultural things you know where you in strict forms of islam you have women that are completely covered up it's not it's not western i i think sometimes you make an equivalence and it's fair to do it between like Westernism and Christianity because that is a huge part of what what built the West. And so when you see something coming in, then this case is in the form of another religion that is different than those values on that level. Some people have a certain type of reaction to that. And I guess that's just culturally how we're wired.

Well, cultures, you know, like some cultures don't mix either. Sure. And that's why assimilation, like now we're just. getting into geopolitics and no no like like how often do you see a turk marry in armenian i'm sure it happens but like yeah you know what i mean yeah it's it's cultures are our oil and water too you know it's we are a culture that respects women's freedoms you know whether you agree with all of them or not whether that be uh you know pro life or pro choice or whatever but we america is a culture western democracies or cultures of equality basically is

Islam is not a culture of equality. And so that right there is oil and water. Yeah. And yeah, I don't want to speak too much to the political side. But so that's what I'm saying is oil and water. And so that's why if you can put dangerous faiths into a box and kneecap them basically, then that box can be moved. It can be weaponized.

And you can use it as a sciop, a psychological weapon if need be. Or you look at, you know, the Johnson Amendment and what's going on right now. The Johnson Amendment. The Johnson Amendment is an amendment that basically said, hey, if you have tax exempt status, you cannot endorse candidates from the pulpit. And then only a small percentage, and I can't remember the exact percentage of your revenues can go to fundraising and lobbying. And if you do, if you give more money than is allotted or if you endorse, your tax exemption could be threatened. So that. That. You could see that as kneecapping, you know, but it's, when was it, when was it, when was it, uh, established the Johnson Amendment? The 70s. What do we got? Yeah.

54, even, okay. We're way back. Yeah, so 1954. So the Johnson amendment. Trump has sought to repeal the provision. Well, it, well, he did technically. So the IRS just came out and said, we will no longer, um, come after you if you endorse candidates from the pulpit or if you lobby. So religions or churches in particular can now be

platforms for political campaigns and technically they can be fundraising arms for politicians. So they've officially weaponized the church whether that be right or left. This is this is a crazy crazy rabbit hole to go into because it affects politics where politics skits in my opinion bastardized and mixed up with religion as well a great example is Benjamin Netanyahu you have to give him a ton of credit for and I

don't like this but you got you got to see what he did like if you have read books about him read his own biography which is like fucking 1,200 pages or whatever it is a guy he's a long-winded dude but like this guy was openly setting up

alliances in the United States with evangelical Christians for decades before going over to Israel and taking power and then pulling back on that thread to funnel money and completely warped political beliefs, if I may say so myself, where they use the Bible to try to justify things that are not justifiable and also completely change what it is. That's why you have someone like Ted Cruz come out and talk about the Bible says we have to respect Israel when the Israel of the Bible is not the country that was created

in 1948 that's not that's objectively what that wasn't that's greatest moment yeah no i i could think of a few of those but you know i see this and it's particularly jarring and hilarious like darkly hilarious when you consider the fact that like benjamin net yahoo is an atheist thinks religion's funny like even even practicing jews yeah stuff but the minute you need some war went some some some you know war whistles to go off yeah he'll get up there and say amaluk tells us that we must bum gaza and like he expects to pull back on that thread so when i see like american churches whether they're mega church i don't care what they are that have like ties to that and are just are getting up there on a pulpit and saying oh this is right something tells me you

know i don't care who you were i i i something tells me jesus didn't like what people did on October 7th? And something tells me he doesn't like what they're doing in Gaza right now. And I don't make any distinction between the two. And yet politically, money seems to funnel back and forth within our own government and other governments that leads religious figures to become political figures who are just talking heads for people who are doing everything that is against what Jesus teaches. Amen, brother. Brilliantly said, yeah. Politics and religion run in parallel veins and the veins are crossing right now like I said in the death rattle and they will cling on to any politic and religion will cling on to any power they can yeah and like

thankfully we live in a like one good side of technology is is you can learn about this all this all this stuff very quickly and so it's it's yeah I'm going to reiterate the Israel of the old Testament is not the government that is currently in power that's right and that goes back to this concept of like actually like picking up the Bible and reading it because like I'm not here to say whether Ted Cruz has or he hasn't but when he referenced what he was taught in preschool about the Bible as his theology like that says that you've got a pretty weak foundation on what the Bible actually says and you're making some pretty large bets there Senator Cruz well he's making big bets with money he's been paid too that's yeah and and it's always tough it

Adam Friedland just did a did a brilliant podcast with Congressman Richie Torres because This is both sides of the aisle with this problem. And, you know, it's a very strange thing when you watch someone who you know objectively has a brain up there. Make a facial expression in response to listening to a question where you can see. You could have the TV on mute and watch their face and know that in their head right now, the thought that's going in there is, well, I know what I want to say, but what can I say? when that when you see that it's over yeah and like adam did an incredible job he wasn't even trying to it just like happened where it was very clear that there were i don't know some lobbying type reasons why richie torres could not give what should be the obvious answer and instead gave the

captain idiot answer on certain things and you have freeland who's also like a jewish guy by the way like dude can't we objectively like agree on something here the difference between Torres though and Ted Cruz and some of the people were talking about though is is like I would argue that my expectations for politicians are low you know what I mean my expectations for people who are leading a religious movement trying to follow Christ are high yes fortunately people like you are proving that my expectation should be markedly lower yes yes one thing my brother who's brilliant um like big student of the bible um loves checking hebrew against greek against armaic against you know the translations like he's he's very brilliant um

and spends hours a day doing this the dude gets up like 3 30 every day and just studies this he's going verse by verse across translations it's incredible in the afternoon uh no in the morning um make sure yeah and uh we had a great conversation the other day about convictions and whether you have political convictions or religious convictions as soon as you and i and i always use this word abdicate as soon as you abdicate your conviction for the system you're a part of you're done and so i've come to the conclusion that every single paid pastor in the world abdigates their convictions for the institution no matter how much money they no matter how much money they take at some point if you're a full-time pastor if you're like a bivocational

vocational pastor who has a job outside who might take a small stipend from the church that's different because your livelihood is not totally dependent on the system okay but if your livelihood is dependent on the continuation of an institution you'll eventually abdicate your some part of your convictions to it and as soon as you have especially in religion as soon as you have to get a little bit of your faith you're done you're compromised because you are now um a byproduct of the system and I think it's similar in politics, right? Like the founding fathers believed that our politicians should be servants of the people. They come into that public role, stay for a bit, and then they go back to their farm or their job and continue to work. They are servants of the people. And so my uncle was

a multi-turned congressman. He led the impeachment trials on Bill Clinton. And like, he would say the same thing. You go in with good intentions. And as soon as you abdicate on your belief or convictions a little bit you're a byproduct of the system and then God forbid you've been there for 40 years or 50 years you know you're worth 300 million bucks or whatever like you you have no authority anymore to speak from the position you are because you're just a byproduct of the system so politics and religion eats everybody that hops into it at the moment yeah I was talking with a lessee the other guy was talking about earlier who used to be the producer in here and now now does the content I was talking with him earlier

because he had listened to your whole Sean Ryan podcast and really enjoyed it, by the way, and thought he made a lot of amazing points. And he's like a really religious guy. And so one of the things he was saying is he's like, the one part that I was like, I don't know how that could possibly work is similar to what you're saying now, which is that if someone's going to be a full-time pastor, they're automatically, they're just at some point there's going to be something where you abdicate your beliefs for the future. he's like if you're going to be a pastor you have to be available to your congregants you have to be

there not just preaching you got to be there for people in need you got to go do house calls and something like that you are filling your life with it so he's like i don't know how you can't make any money doing that and i thought about it and i didn't want to agree with them because i'm with you i'm like i don't think you should make any money on god that's just what i believe but from a from a perspective of if you are actually going to serve your full congregation and you legit don't have time for a part-time job because of that to supplement your income. What is the way around that? I don't have an answer. That right there is tradition and culture as well. Nowhere in the Bible does it say you should be a full-time pastor. Give up everything else.

It doesn't say it. We've created that role in the institution and now we fall back on it to justify it. And it's it's really tough to like, because most of my formative memories, and I used to call my best memories as a kid, but now I call them my formative memories because they're not really the best memories. It's the bias that I was raised in, but came from the institution, if that makes sense. And so, hey, why do we need that full-time youth pastor? Well, because my kids need to be taught the Bible. Shouldn't I be teaching my child the Bible? What if you're not, what if you're not the best person to do that? Then my life is out of order and I need to get in order. And this is something one of our mentor says too. Look at your life, Nathan. And this was the most terrifying. He's like,

look at your life, Nathan. And what part of your life is out of biblical order? And I was like, oh, crap. Like there's a lot of it. You know? And he's like, most of your problems come because your life is out of order. Um, and when you look at the church, the institution, it's all out of order. We've just built roles because the institution demanded that role. We built the institution that now needs that role. And so your friend, like, or your editor, like, I feel like he's almost to the, to, he's almost come to understand it. But it's still to Christ's point in most of the gospels, we've, built traditions and call it doctrine. I am, I have everything I need to, to understand that

book. I've got two eyes that work, like a mouth that can speak. And we, we abdicate our roles so much, like I abdicate my role for teaching my daughter of the scriptures. I abdicate my role for prayer because I'm tired with her. I abdicate my role to make sure like she's learning what I think she should learn in schools because I don't have time. It's like, same thing. Yeah, I don't want to go down too many rabbit holes. But it's like in America, we've built, we've cluttered our lives so much that we forgot making the main thing, the main thing, which is family.

And so it's, I agree with that. It's, I need to take. So that's why we always say our first ministry, like when you look at biblical ministry is my family. Like if I cannot find time to teach my daughter. the scriptures and i believe this is my salvation like crisis i'm my order is way off you know what though and and this does need to be said and i'm not saying your order's not off with that but i'd love your guys thoughts on this you know 30 years ago the like i i believe in the american dream i

believe it's still alive i believe this is best place to live i i think i think you can go make something to yourself and i'd like to think you know there's plenty of examples out there listening right now of you guys who can attest to that. That said, I would never argue with the fact that the deck has been stacked much harder than it used to be. And if we're looking at the post-9-11 world, but more specifically the post-financial crisis world and the world since the beginning of the 1980s, when you can go back and see that V-form on the chart where the middle class gets legislated away, we are now in a position where society

has generationally placed all these expectations. on people and families to the point that families are being monetized away people can't afford to have kids and then the people that do well guess what

they got to pay the bills and their check hasn't their salary hasn't kept up with the inflation that's happened over the past even 10 years to the point that they struggle not only to put food on the table but how the fuck am I going to put a kid through college or whatever

and so maybe they haven't if they're a Christian or something like that or any religion. They haven't fully prioritized and nor starve their religion, but through no fault of their own, the world has sent so many challenges there away that that hasn't even been a realistic option. And I know that's like, as men of faith. The rabbit hole, I was like, I don't want to go down.

This rabbit hole was dual income, the need for dual income. Okay, well, let's go down it. Because that, I got a piss. Oh, yeah, yeah. We'll be right back. Just tell me next time. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, oh, man.

All right, we're back. Before we get into that, we're going to talk about dual income and something like that. We just got off air and saw we're recording this. Charlie Kirk just got shot and it's, I don't know, it was an hour ago. So this is coming out probably a couple weeks after we record. So hopefully there was some sort of good outcome here. But that did not look good. And like, I don't care what you think about what people say or what.

what you agree with or not, there's just something really broken in society that stuff like this happens. You know, everyone right now is fighting over. Also, what happened to that poor girl on that train the other day? In Charlotte, it was just viciously attacked. And it's just like, I got the picture outside the studio, Bill the Butcher from gangs in New York, and that's the scene where he's looking at Leonardo DiCaprio and non-sequitur says civilization is crumbling. And some, I really am an optimist, but sometimes it's hard not to look at that and wonder, like, man was that movie they were making while september 11th was happening you know really onto something there yeah that's the most horrific like i yeah i am just disgusted it um that and you know i didn't

know charlie or i don't know charlie personally but that society is just crumbling it's yeah so my prayers are with charlie and his family and i know our prayers are um because it's just so sad like you have a father, you know, who's, I always say to people who are dissenters against our opinion or whatever is we're just on the opposite sides of the same coin. Like, you and I are actually brothers or sisters or whatever. And we don't see, we were talking about that freaking sliver in you and in me. And when we don't see that, when everything is chance, Julian when life doesn't fucking matter like I'll go out guns blazing and that's what we're missing is we're missing hope and we're missing that sliver in you and sliver in me and sliver

in Charlie whether I agree with Charlie or not like he is created for something bigger than just chance and we take it you know just like the just like that horrific thing on the train the train like when we have no hope we just have no value in life and so I think it's ironic that we were talking about the pendulum with Jesus and where you fall on that pendulum because it's like when Christ says I am the way the truth and the life like that's what I believe society is missing right now and and you know that's order yeah it's it's just so sickening to see that's that I just have a pit in my stomach I don't where does this like what like you you mentioned this right like society's crumbling and that's

like within our america like and you see all these uh yesterday there was the the strike in katar you know guitar had just donated uh that that that plane to trump right and they're investing a lot of money in the united states and then and then they got they got struck and then you have all these nations across the world that are fighting each other and then we have all this interfighting going on within the united states like where do you think this goes i mean i'm a YouTuber so I don't know you know but but you but you're you're you're you've dedicated your life and career to like a lot of these issues right and and in researching and talking about them and interviewing different people and from different walks of walks of life right like

yeah do you think we end up in a like a civil type war here again I'm I'm an optimist Are the things that I'll say like, oh, I'm cynical about this or that, and I really am? Yes, but like I do like to see the good in people. I don't think we would end up in something like that, and I'm very careful about bringing it. That is a big, big, big term. And part of it is also you can't get caught up in the world you live. And I live in a world where a job of mine is to understand what's happening on the internet. And there's a lot of people who care about that.

But there's a lot of people who don't. And I've always talked about this Wawa theory. When I was living in my parents' house during COVID for three and a half years building this thing, you know, I was sociable in the fact that people came through my, through the house. But I was, I locked myself off from the world while I was building this. And so one of the rare respites or whatever, if that's a proper use of that term, I would get is when I would pick up guests from the airport on the way home, we'd stop at Wawa, you know, and I'd, you know, get them whatever they wanted before the podcast. and when things were getting weird I mean they were weird the whole time but you know when shit would be going down online

I would just look and watch people in the wawa and I would see the pink-haired girl with three nose rings holding the door for the guy with the nom hat and there was no like hmm or anything like that I was like oh thank you so much and people went about their life and I realized I'm like those two people if they were behind keyboards right now

if they are would probably be dehumanizing each other but in the real world it's not the keyboard sometimes though we see that come out in like what we just saw and that's what scares me that's where I worry about like would people go in the streets with stuff

and and I don't I don't want to see that and I think I think I take it really seriously to have a whatever responsibility I have doing what I do

to have voices represented across the spectrum of different ideas obviously I'm a generalist I do a lot of different topics but also to try to not go to extremes with you know what regardless of what side it's on with people who have extreme beliefs and that's for someone else to do you know what I mean I like to think the average person is the average person and we'll be all right that's kind of my long-winded answer but yeah when you see stuff like that it's uh I mean that that's horrific but that's brilliantly said, and that goes back to that sliver in each of us, you know, that blue-haired

earring, three-earing's girl, like, respects the dignity of this other individual and vice versa. And that's literally what the true church is supposed to be. It's supposed to be this organic body that moves and moves through these shitty systems that we've built, these vulnerable, like, greed and ego. go driven systems. And when the church isn't the church, everything else goes to shit. And the church is not the church. And it's like, that's all I can say to that literally disgusting video. And then the other one of the girl on the train. The church has totally lost its way. And so how can any other system find its way if the literal beacon of light is dark as hell?

You defined it well today when you separate church from like physical church or organizational church or whatever you're saying. The church is supposed to be like, and I'm paraphrasing here, but it's really supposed to get the core of what it is, which is the belief in like Jesus and God and doing things the right way. I think as annoying as it is to see some of these organizations take advantage of this and you guys are doing a great job exposing that as you should. But if I were looking at it from your perspective as like true Christians who want the right things, you do have to say in the last two or three years, whatever it is, I don't know, but there's a massive movement publicly. And I would say, like even to define it, like on social media of like people becoming Christians or becoming spiritual or becoming religion and, you know, turn into something that's higher

than themselves and you know what sometimes i'll see it and i'm like uh someone feels like a bandwagon jumper but a lot of times i see it i'm like dude good for that person they seem like they seem like they're really into that and they found some peace and there's something in the world maybe it was covid itself or whatever came with that i don't know something in the world maybe move that in that direction do you do you see that too when that happens that creates one of the most vulnerable bodies of people. Maybe you can call it baby Christians, but Nate, and if you want to talk a little bit about like the scriptural references to to that along with like why Jesus said that was such a protected group. Yeah. You know, Jesus said I'd rather have a millstone hung around someone's neck and

thrown into the water and kill them, you know, then lead a baby astray or lead a child astray. And he was speaking about young Christians. So when you find faith, you have the utmost joy, which we see all over social media. Where do you go from there? If you walk into Hillsong or one of these mega churches, like you're officially about to be fed a false gospel, something that looks nothing like Christ. So I feel like our role is more important than ever. ever the religion business role because we're here pre i believe we're preaching the gospel i believe we're preaching who christ is how we should live our life and that's what this whole wave of young

baby christians needs to hear um they need to know that hey read the bible cover to cover it's actually not that hard when you read it as a history book because it comes alive like start praying get in prayer alone um those two things are the greatest tools for you to expand your faith and deepen your faith. And like there, there was a Stanford study done. There was a mega church out of Chicago, one of the first in the U.S. 30,000 seats. I tipped my hat to leadership at this time. I think it was 98 or late 90s. They hired Stanford and their economists to study how their congregants could deepen their faith because congregants were kind of frustrated. It was a conveyor belt. you know you and this is the this is the danger of these systems these baby christians come in

sit for six months give their money it's all like fun in games and then they just stop coming yeah the only reason why they keep their numbers up is because a new person sits in that seat for six months and then leaves new person sits in that seat and leaves and so the church was like dang how can we retain these amazing young believers and how can we deepen their faiths Stanford does this multi like in-depth study i think it was over two years they come back with two things read your Bible alone and pray alone. That's how you deepen your faith. Everything else is just man-made tradition.

And so what everybody, like, I'm just trying to correlate it back to Charlie. Like, you are right. There's this huge wave of a lot of pastors are screaming revival, but it's like revival to what? Like to singing more songs to giving you more money, like unless the person's heart is changed and they live out because it says faith without works is dead and they live out carrying that cross that's what the world needs more than ever right now the world needs literally people that are willing to sit with that dude who's so broken that he feels his his only resort is to

shoot charlie like that dude needs to be like loved on somewhere in his life his ecclesia there was no body around him and so he just gave up and he goes this is the last last last thing that that career criminal who stabbed that poor girl like that's just that is demonic like yeah talk about let's talk about demons right now like that was my thought there yeah any time you feel you need to pull a weapon and shoot a guy sitting in the chair no matter how much you disagree with him there is something evil there he look like when when you're watching it on the on the footage it looked like a character like in a joker movie like just starts playing with the knife she's not doing anything and then just and it's just yeah that that that's

it's impossible to see that stuff and not wonder how far back the fork in the road went wrong because guess what it wasn't yesterday i mean him we know that for a fact but like you know and we were just saying off camera someone who shoots charlie kirk like that is obviously someone who doesn't like what he has to say you want to immortalize someone do that that to them. You want to make what they have to say carry that much more weight. If you don't like it, do that. I mean, that's, it's, it's having that, it's going to have the opposite effect. Yeah. One, one thing that was fascinating, Nathan was talking to Sean Ryan. And I think you had had a conversation with a former MS-13 member and this concept of your 10 bad decisions away

from murder. Would you mind breaking that down? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I used to, it spent a lot of time in Mexico and Central America back in the day and I did get a comment wrong on the train name that there's a train that runs from the Guatemala border to the U.S. border and it's called the beast and gangs run it and basically you climb on top it's a transport train for produce and all that and you climb on top and it'll just take you all the way to the border and certain gangs run certain lines and you have to pay your way. And so I interviewed a girl who was trying to get to America and she brought her little cousin along and didn't tell her female cousin that you're going to be raped because you're, you're my payment to get me to the border. Oh, my God.

And so I would go to that there was a convent next to one of the stops. And so this convent would take anybody in, gang member, traveler, whoever. They would just love on anybody that walked through that door. And so I did a bunch of interviews and then I got to this gang member. And he was young. I can't remember. I want to pull this footage, actually. It's on my LTO tapes from over 20 years ago.

And I want to find it because I wasn't even thinking about bringing this up on Sean, but it just came. So we're going to pull this off these analog tapes. And I have my translator next to me because I didn't speak Spanish. And this guy's fluent in Spanish. And he's like, yeah, I was raised on the streets, was hungry, and MS-13 picked me up. They gave me food. And he goes, I'll tell you right now, you,

He was talking to me, or 10 steps away from murdering someone. And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, you're 10 bad decisions in a row away from murdering someone. So you and I aren't that different, actually. And it, like, really rocked me. And I started looking at all my actions in life like that. You know, and I always use the analogy of, like, road rage. You know, I'm driving down the road.

I carry. And some guy cuts me off and I flip him off and honk. That's like bad decision one. I should just let him go. Bad decision two is I pull up alongside him and tell him to pull over. Bad decision three is both of us get out of our car. He's armed two. You know, you just see the escalation of ego and pride and all of this.

And so I can't help but think like through this gunman, like what poor decisions and bad decisions did you make that you felt that was your conclusion? Here's the one thing I would disagree with the MS-13 guy on. he might and maybe I'm wrong here maybe this isn't what he meant but it seems like he's making the leap that like we're not that different because we're both capable of that I think there is a huge difference between recognizing that all human beings including yourself are capable of the worst things if you go the wrong way and understanding that there are a lot of choices to happen in most cases along the way to get there it kind of reminds me like that old Jordan Peterson thing where he's like you could all be a Nazi you know I haven't heard that one you know where

He's like, you'll have the capability of being one. And I think psychologically, he's onto something there. The idea that you would actually full-blown become that, you can't know until you get the opportunity to do that. Do you make this the A or B decision? Then do you make the next A or B decision? Are you making the right one or the wrong one? But to be aware of the capability, your capacity to be a monster. Yeah, 100%.

Yes, it's real. 100%. Yeah. And so I just look at this guy. And I'm like, he looks like a grandpa, you know, when he's like bald white hair. It's like white. Like you look like a, ironically, it's Utah, which is just gnarly to think about. But yeah, we are in charge of our own decisions, you know, but what leads a guy to do that?

Like, I know, I know. There's a pastor that is up in the Pacific Northwest, right, that he came out on, on, on his last sermon or whatever. And he said that somebody was trying to put a hit on him. of what he was speaking up against. Yeah. So, I mean, this stuff's like running all over. Yeah.

So it's like, like, I know it's super cliche, but what the world needs right now is Jesus, you know. And we're all supposed to pick up our cross and follow him, which means, hey, like, if we were actually acting like, there's 2.3 billion Christians in the world. Christians own 55% of the world's wealth. Like, and we can get into the positive side, I guess, here. but it's like how are i live in the mecca of Mormonism like how is there so much hate

and so much homelessness and so many problems right in like utah's backyard which is you know there's supposed to be the light on the hill they're the temple and it's like all the money in resources silo at the top and i've like all i can think when i when i look at that is just people have no hope. Yes. And that's why I was asking earlier, like, what makes someone eventually follow that? And the, or like, go to Kent Coplein or whatever. And you were saying, well, you know, they could start at 12 and it's very hard for people to admit they're wrong. But also the people that maybe don't have that traumatic event I was referring to have happened to them who are just, you know, 24 years old and going through a tougher time and looking for something. They go there and they feel

something because that day they get quite the right way then it becomes a part of their belief system and they assume they overlook all the other stuff they could come with that and again that does not make them stupid we are all susceptible to something like that and they could fall for something like kenneth but that's why it's important like what you guys are doing to point that out with with your documentary but before i get you out of here i i do want to talk about when you guys actually confronted this because it was it was amazing amazing work with tommy g first First of all, how did you get connected with Tommy? What was the, I forgot to ask him.

Tyler. Tyler. The guy named Tyler Sherman, who. Come on. Yeah, you know Tyler. He's a legend, right? Everybody knows Tyler. Tyler calls you off and says, hey, yeah, would you be interested in talking with Tommy G?

He does a documentary on you. Okay, I'll let him know right now. Yeah, that's literally. He's not good. He's not good. Shout out Tyler. Yeah. Yeah, we met him through.

We did, the first big podcast we did was Sean Kelly's, and then we got put in Sean Kelly's mastermind. And then I put a message out there introducing the religion business, and then he, like, within five minutes, had a phone call for him and then he introduced us to Tommy and then obviously stuck. And then what was the other guy, Turkey Tom? Turkey Tom. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's Brandon Buckingham's, buddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

So Tommy, obviously, really good friend of mine, does amazing work. Covers a lot of stories that people are, like, afraid to cover. And, man, he's good at it. And he does a whole bunch. It's a wide gamut at this point, but did, was it like from, from day one when you're talking with them, are, were you guys already plotting like, yeah, let's see if we like break onto an air strip here. Well, I can't remember the exact, the exact flow because I've just got, we've got so many

investigations that we had open. But I just watched some of the stuff and I'm like, oh, he'd be good. I had already strategized about wanting to see the parsonage, you know, because I'm like, no one's been to it. Like, it's never been publicly seen. the church owns it I had been giving to Copeland for a while and I'm like

who would have the balls to jump on this this story with me and like as soon as I saw Tommy's work I'm like Tommy G for sure I'm gonna give him $69 I love that you just kept hitting that I gave him $69 you guys a guy flashes

like if people haven't seen this you guys literally ended up on his private air strip but security rolls up. It looked like a South Park episode. Yeah, it pretty much was. And then some dude that literally look at like a South Park character rolled up in one of those like I have a small dick machines.

Yeah. Like hit the brakes, came out and showed a fake badge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tommy's like, let me see that patch again. I gave 69 dollars. Well, the best part about that whole thing is people thought it was staged. They're like, this is Hollywood because it was so good. Like just his outfit.

And ironically, I had gone with our camera operator to the thrift store, the day before and I just decided to buy the stupidest get-up I could so like that whole setup I bought at the thrift store for like 40 bucks and the pants were like three sizes too big they were like six inches too long but it was the only ones they had and so I already looked like a freaking cartoon character and then this guy comes up and our our clothes actually matched that was that we were both wearing orange like it was the funniest like stand-all but yeah it was it was hilarious that video Joe was that like the 21 minute mark it's a 39 minute video

but oh my god I remember when that because you got he was here in New York filming episode 242 with me and then I think he went right out there this was last year yeah and then so you guys had to wait a while to put this out and I didn't ask him about this

because I was going to ask you about this was part of that like legal ramifications and stuff like that because of where you went and you're worried about any blowback or no we just wanted both Both videos to hit at the site, like we wanted our show, the religion business and his to drop at the same time just for the biggest punch. Okay. By the way, great acting on your part on the phone.

And you're like turning to him like, it's like Ari Gold talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But every, this is what I love about Tommy. Like, just the little things while you're on the phone, you're saying all these fake things to him and the guy on the other end's like, like, what do you say here to answer your prayer or something like that? Yeah, yeah. Like it was something that was just like off. But you're talking and you're saying things. And he's like, yeah, I'm here with my friend.

He gave $69. And I was like, yeah. He blows and kiss to the sky. Did I really say that? I don't remember that. Let's play. But he started, he was like playing along with it. Let's play this, Joe.

It is, yeah. How can I pray you through today? Oh, I would love to. How can I play you through the day? Is there a way to meet him? I was just really praying to be able to sit with him and get some wisdom from him. So I've been praying for a while to be able to meet him. I've reached out to him a few times and he hasn't responded.

Yeah, we're at the gate to his house, but it's not open. You see the deer blind? Yeah. I'm not sure how that works. Oh, no, we're already by his house. Yeah, we're at that. There's three gates, and ironically, the two first gates opened for us, and I see that as an act of God, to be honest.

We got to look at a break. It takes a passcode and I don't have it. Do you have that pass code? Oh, okay. We've all become members. I donated $69. Now that's a big number. Good thing.

Should we be praying for the gate code, but apparently there's another road, but it'll have the same. God's busy right now. So we're going to go to the private tarmac that he has, named after himself, and we're going to further explore. Kenneth. Oh, Kenneth. When we discovered there was this huge mansion right there.

So you guys will see, we'll put the link down below. You guys can see the full confrontation that I was describing a couple minutes ago happened, but like keeping your wits. The guy flashed a real gun. Oh, yeah, yeah. Keeping your wits during that. And then you got the two security honchos there that look like PC principal from South Park. Well, I'm going to give them props.

They were like a legit security detail. Like they, their goal was to de-escalate. You know, so they showed up. And you could, there's this really fascinating dichotomy between professional security and then most church security. Because like my brother runs church security. He's a sniper. He was a retired sniper from the Marines and he helps his church with security.

so you have these really strategic trained men and women and then like two thirds of their armed forces are just like cowboys that want to like you know want to protect the quote unquote church serve the lord exactly so the first car approach is and they get out no hands on guns like immediately de-escalation hey what are you guys doing here and i'm like we have some questions and they're like one of them was kind of snippy he's like i ask the questions here you don't ask me questions. And Tommy and I are just talking to him. And then out of nowhere, like John Ritter comes pulling up in his car almost hits us, jumps out, flashes his gun assaults both of us, like just grabs us. And that's when the professional security grabbed him. Because they're like,

you just assaulted both these dudes. And they're like, kind of push him against his vehicle. And then of course, Tommy and I are just kind of jackasses. So we snip at him a little bit. And then he comes barreling back again and opens his coat again. And it was just a fun interaction. And the goal with that is Copeland is estimated to be worth $750 million. You know, he lives on a,

I think the property is 1,200 acres, the church property now. He promised to build six things in his pitch. So he would send out mailers saying he wanted to build these six things in like the 60s and 70s. And it was the ministry building, his radio station, his TV network,

a hotel for his congregants, a park, retirement community. So he raised tens of millions dollars through these mailers. He builds the ministry facility, his radio station, and his TV network. He never builds the hotel. Never builds. Be Kim Jong-Coplin. Exactly. Well, and the big thing is we went to the city because we wanted to see if he had even pulled or saw if he could get power and water out there. Like if you're building, his church is out there in the boonies. So how far outside Dallas? it's outside fort worth yeah it's like a good hour drive from dallas so west yes yeah and i mean like

it's out there and there was nothing there when he bought this property so if you're claiming to build a hotel in a retirement community just to get utilities in there i don't even know tens of millions to pipe utilities oh yeah so we went to the city to see if we could find any record of him even seeing if he could build these and we found nothing so you know maybe it's buried in some archive, but the city gave us no documentation, said they couldn't find anything. So, we don't even think Kenneth even really tried to build any of these that he said he was going to build. And that's why- So he's a fraud. I would call Kenneth a fraud. He promised to build those three things, never even tried to build them. And in the for-profit world, we call that

fraud. Allegedly. Allegedly. And in the nonprofit world, we call it faith. God just hasn't blessed him enough to build them yet. I had to buy it. Exactly. It looks so good. Tyler gave me such a good deal. It's such a good deal. God you're pretty good at impersonations. Oh, impersonations, yeah. We were talking about socialism earlier.

I thought you were going to break out Bernie Sanders in personations. Billions. The oligarchy. I haven't worked on Bernie in a while. I've got to work on that one. If you want me to do RFK, I can give you a whole day about everything that they're putting in the church water doing

infect us with this disease and the CIA killed my father that's pretty good that one's that one I could wet back but that's probably your best that's your best thank you thank you that's a hard one to hit I don't my Trump is yeah I got to work on that yeah I haven't done the mirror thing enough you know yeah to get the hand motions down as we were driving over here I said I would love and we're going to put a post out on this in about a week I'm calling out every pastor that we've got in this show. Copeland, Ed Young, you name it. I want to debate one of them publicly. Have you heard from any of Copeland's people since this documentary went out? Any lawyers, any congregants saying he's really not like that.

Tons of congregants. But they all agree with us. Oh, they agree with you? Yeah. I'll tell you right now, what's happening is untouchable. So is we get evidence dumped on us daily. more evidence from congregants from accountants from security guards oh that's awesome yeah they're like we saw we saw your show or we saw you on Sean and here you go

that's awesome that that's you having an effect in the real world yeah yeah oh he's probably punching so much air in that mansion yeah there's there's uh and we believe you know since there's no 990 that's filed with churches their finances are all opaque so no one knows the true finances

and everybody's like are you guys worried you're going to get sued. And I'm like, or we're like, not really because we're going to do discovery if we get sued, which means you have to show us the financials, which means, hey, that little pie chart that you're going to put on the table, we're going to say, we can't trust this. We want bank statements. Yeah. And so none of them want to play that game. No. And so we got a lot of our evidence in the first place was lawsuits. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, this is where it can be used as a good tool for sure. Yeah. They can outspend you guys. Maybe not with Chris's pocket. No, they can ask you.

You know, they're probably still outspend you. But you have the discovery thing on your side because they've built an entire system where they're not transparent. So the best they can do, and I'm not a legal scholar, but the best they can do is trying to like throw a few extra hearings on your bill in there. But it gets to that part pretty quick. Yeah. And like we've had, again, congregants call us.

We've had leadership call us in churches. And they're like, hey, we watched your documentary. we went in and asked a few questions they wouldn't answer so we left or we quit and i'm like okay one in particular i was like okay so what do you think their next play is because they're a big this one institution in particular is really big and they're like they're hoping your story's just going to go away because like they're begging for it to just they're probably praying copeland's like god bring another 2008 disaster um another miracle but uh yeah but uh yeah I wanted him to have $750 million.

That's probably the next sale. For sure. Then Sean Ryan happened. Then Sean Ryan happened. And that's like one pastor reached out to Sean's team already. And all said what? All I told him was tell him I'll publicly debate him on Sean's show. What did he say to that?

We're going to find out later tonight. And that's what I'm saying. If you really believe in what you're doing, go put your voice behind it. Go stand with a guy like you who studied it. you know you guys this is what you do right you shouldn't be afraid of that all debate any of them listen i will if someone ends up being legit i don't know how you can be legit with hundreds of millions of dollars but like if there's a way to prove that or whatever and and in the public forum they prove that may i'll sit here and say right good for you yeah but like they've never done

it and they live in their little ivory towers and i i just appreciate those people who also come at it, you know, you're not outside the religion. You're very much, you're believers yourself and you're doing this job. I like that a lot. There is a lot of evidence that was not put forth in the dokey series because people wouldn't have believed it. And so just to be fair to a warning out there, to those that may have that idea, we have more. Can you give one example of that that you're willing to give publicly? Money drops in the Caymans. We've got lots of money drops and things. Meaning like private planes landing in the Caymans for 90 minutes and bouncing out with cash. We've got that's not I 1,000% believe that. I'm sure they do

that check Switzerland too. We've got stories of of gun running from the Middle East on private jets drug running yeah it's a little more we have stories are they working with the cartels too I don't know we have stories of murder like literal um uh stories on people people being murdered i i security guards in particular i unfortunately a hundred percent believe that security for uh people refer to uh security for a for a pastor refer to as his hired gun not security being very clear about that yeah all in the name of jesus you know yeah no that's not that's not in the name of anything well you it's a name of the brand you're protecting a brand right you know that's what they say yeah but it's like same thing that when when

people do war in the name of religion that makes no sense it's like yeah you're just using it for your own means and i'll tell you right now everybody's like oh so the seven docucese the seven part docu-series the religion business it's done oh we're just getting started so it's like just no we always say you know christ in john 316 for god so love the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. It's one of the most, like, I learned that verse when I was like four years old. What people don't read is the verses right after it, where it talks about why Christ came into the world. And he came to be the light, but men loved the darkness rather than the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed and his deeds are evil.

And so we say right now, we're just turning the light on. That's all we're doing. We're turning the transparency light on and the cockroaches and rats will run. And then the pastors who are for the light, will walk towards us. And we do see that already. So this is the positive side is there's so many pastors hitting this up being like, I agree with you or I partially agree with you. What can we do to be more accountable? And I'm like, hey, we've got a great conversation going here. But then the rats and roaches are running. Transparency. Well, that's why we created broken shepherds. So Nathan and his due diligence discovered 10 loopholes where a couple hundred billion every year just disappears to fraud, fraud, waste, abuse, and in Urimet. And in Urimet's a new word for a lot of people, Nathan,

want to yeah what is expand on that yeah so in your min's a legal term um if you want 501c3 status you can't in your yourself okay so in your men is basically no net profits of a 501 c3 can take the benefits of that profit and in you're the leadership which basically means like hey you can't use the nonprofit for your own game if your mission is to help homeless people all those net profits need to go to helping homeless people. You can take a salary, but all those net profits need to go to there. Ennurement is basically, hey, I don't want the headache of flying public, so I want to buy a jet. I would call that in yearment.

In the IRS, sadly goes, it's a gray area and really hard for the law to like bring justice into that system. So you're trying to prove intention behind what they're doing. Correct. Yeah. And so it's like, okay, and we don't even care actually about this. Like, if your pastor's got a private jet from a broken shepherd's perspective, even a religion business perspective, the shows, we don't care. If your pastor makes $20 million a year, we don't care.

As long as your congregants know that you're paying yourself $20 million and have a private jet. But right now, no one does. And so it's like, yeah, exactly, because you're inuring yourself, you know. And so at what point? we can't be the arbiter of truth and we're not the arbiter of the truth we believe christ is the arbiter of truth and his teachings are so okay what are we doing we're just flipping that transparency light on and through precedent through the last 100 years 115 years since the nonprofit sector was defined like religions or Christianity in particular and churches have been able to do whatever they

want pretty much so it is a think of decades sometimes generations of abuse that is a dark dark web of a mess well there's listen we're living in a world where transparency is much more sought after and attainable because of the power of the internet and people's ability to go find information or leak information or you know get messages out whatever it may be and like if you think about it in the concept of world history or even history like post Jesus last 2,000 years or so. We're basically 18, 19 years effectively into the social media era, internet 2.0, where people can really share their ideas. So generationally, we're just going to college. It's a flash in the pan. It's a flash in the pan. So these are still the very

early days of learning how to use these tools to be able to hopefully use them for good like you guys are doing. So it's great to see like you guys are just beginning with this and there's going to be more to come but we will link the documentary link down below so people can check that out you guys worked on this for a long time there's going to be more content after that and you know I try not to let I try to let people decide for themselves on some things on on pretty much everything naturally I do have some opinions on on people that that sell God it's just a it's it's a personal pain point for me so I appreciate that there's guys like you who are out there you know shining a light on it yeah thanks brother all right awesome do it again sometime

thanks so much for having us all right everybody else you know what it is give it a thought get back to me peace thank you guys for watching the episode if you haven't already please hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video they're both a huge huge help and if you would like to follow me on instagram and x those links are in my description below