Episode 230: Flat Earth Conversation with Chris from Minnesota

one you won't want to miss. He has the testimony, the conviction, and the courage to call out what most are too afraid to question. So grab your coffee, open your mind, and get ready, because once you see it, you can't unsee it. This is the Flat Earth files.

Right we have maybe Facebook groups or whether whatever social media tool you use to have this kind of conversation, but face to face in person, I'm willing to bet that most people don't have a lot of people to talk Flat Earth with and their journey to the truth and I've been blessed to have talked over two hundred people over the last few years, and about fifteen more

as we close the podcast out. So again, thank you for your time, and why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience.

off to college here in August. Beautiful moving day on the August twenty third, so going to University of North Dakota where it's even colder and windier. So, and then my youngest daughter is actually going to be also going to the University of North Dakota. She committed to play Division one basketball for them as well. So we are going to be a und fighting Hawk family for the remaining future. So that's kind of cool been married now for nearly twenty three years, and in the next two

weeks it would be our twenty third wedding anniversary. Never you know, about ten years ago, you would have never thought I would have made it to my twenty third wedding anniversary. And I'll kind of get into that a little bit. But married to my beautiful wife now for nearly twenty three years. And for an occupation, I'm a

regional sales manager at a medical device company. So the reason I wanted to come on this podcast is just I kind of see myself as just an average person out in the world who happened to kind of catch wind of flat Earth and just kind of caught on fire for it, and for whatever reason, just kept digging, kept digging, kept digging, and really started to find the truth and finally became awake. Even after being a Christian for X number of years. It's amazing how flat Earth

can just even bring you closer to Jesus. And so, you know, for me personally, growing up, I was raised Lutheran, like most probably Minnesotans are. It's a very Lutheran community here, Scandinavian Lutheran community, you know, and you just ended up checking the boxes and going to church as a kid, and I got confirmed, and I was baptized as a baby, and you just do all the box checking that you do, and so I just I don't really feel like I ever had a true relationship with Jesus. Growing up. I

would say I was a believer. I believed in God, but beyond that, that's all it really was. It was more about when I was growing up, about all right, getting good grades, portraying that you were a good person. And then I was heavily involved in basketball growing up, right, and so that ended up taking me to being recruited and going out on the West Coast and playing Division one basketball out on the West Coast, you know, in the late nineties, early two thousands, which was a ton

of fun. Absolutely wouldn't have traded it for the world. Got to really travel the country, and eventually I played professionally in Italy for a year until a back injury caught up with me from my senior year in college. And so you get to travel, you know, the United States, and you get to travel the world and see beautiful things and meet great people. But you know, at that point, you know you have your back injury, and you're like, all right, now I got to give up basketball and

it's time to hit the real world. So thankfully I did get my degree. And you know, when I was back actually from Italy, is when I actually ended up meeting my wife. So I traveled the world and I married a local girl. That's just how life goes, right, So I ended up we graduated two years below each other in high school, didn't really know each other too well, knew of each other and that's about it. And so I ran into her when I was back rehaving my back from Italy, and all it took was two and

a half months George and we were engaged. So I tell my daughters, you know, don't get any ideas two and a half months is pretty pretty pretty short engagement period there. So we got we got engaged very quickly, and then married about eleven months after that. So you know, when you get married young. It seems like people are married older and older these days, but we were twenty

three and twenty one. We decided to take about four four and a half years to ourselves and just be a married couple without the kid thing, which was fantastic, but one of the things I noticed about myself was, you know, you don't have a relationship with Jesus. You lose basketball, which was your identity, that was who you were. And I was struggling through our marriage. I was just struggling through what I wanted to do for a job and who I was If without basketball, was I really anything?

And I think that I really struggled with my identity, which you know, it leads to drinking more. And then you have three back surgeries in your mid thirties to fix what happened to you in college. And you know, for thirteen months, I had three back surgeries and you're on pain pills and opioids that whole time, just trying to manage the pain and go through all the surgeries.

And so you know that moment, I feel so really I kind of all came to a culmination in twenty fifteen, the wheels just kind of came off my marriage, and all of a sudden, my wife looks at me, She's like, you need to move out. I'm like, oh my gosh, where am I at now? So thankfully God had a plan for me, even though I wasn't what I would

call a true believer at that point. In time got me in connection with a kind of a buddy of mine that i'd lost contact with, good Christian buddy of mine who was living in an apartment above the soup kitchen here in town, if you want to believe that one. So I really had to re evaluate my life and figure out, Okay, where did I want to go at this point in my life. To be honest with you, I thought my marriage was over. I'm like, all right, I just need to become a better person for my kids.

You know. At the time, my kids were in you know, second and fourth grade. I've got to come up with a planned at least be a good father to them if my marriage is going to be over. So, throughout that period of living away from home, you know, I started to kind of get into the world a little bit and explore Jesus a little bit more on what

that meant for me. I got involved with a local AA group that was more than just talking about higher power but talking specifically about Jesus Christ, and so really got involved with that, got involved with the church. In November fifteen, I decided to give my life to Christ and get baptized, which my wife attended. My baptism. So I'm like, well, this is a good side here. He's

got my baptism. That's kind of cool. And then a few months I went by and I think my wife saw the person that she knew I was and knew she wanted, and in February of sixteen asked me to move back into the house. And since that moment in time, our marriage has never been better. It was really cool to just you know, be a part of, you know, raising my kids and coaching their sports teams and all sorts of stuff like that. And now they're nineteen and seventeen,

and I'm very open with them. I think it's important that my kids know the struggles of life and the struggles that that Satan can bring upon us here on this earth. And that's okay, and they need to be wary of that as well. So, you know, they don't really quite remember the details of it all back in twenty fifteen, but I remind them, you know, here and there of hey, you know, mom and I we were split up, and here's why, and here's kind of the pitfalls I want you guys to avoid when you get bolder.

So yeah, I mean, that's kind of what brought me to my kind of solid Christian faith right now, and then you know, you start living that Christian faith and it can kind of plateau at times. And I'm you know, involved in a local church here, I'm on the governing team and we're you know, trying to make some difficult decisions about the direction of the church. And then all of a sudden twenty twenty three, for whatever reason, a bunch of videos started coming across my TikTok for you

page about flat Earth. And I had no idea what this was, what this concept was, and I don't know why. It just kind of captured me and I started and then, you know the TikTok algorithm, if you stay too long on a video, then they start throwing more flatter and stuff at you. And I just kept getting into it and getting into it. I got introduced to flat Earth Dave, and then the Fittest Flatter through, which I know is

a guest on your podcast. A little bit ago, ran across a guy who was offering a true Earth kind of manifesto book that was a free download. So I went and got that and I was I was reading and it's constantly kind of pursuing this flat earth thing, because it was just very, very fascinating to me some of the things that were going on. So I just became obsessed with my research. And then through through this research,

it's interesting. You know, I don't think people realize that when you when you start researching flat earth, it's it's going to bring you closer whether you want to or not, it's going to bring you closer to the truth, and it's going to bring you closer to Jesus in your life.

It just it just is what it is, right, and and it's you start seeing what the Bible says about it, and you start reading the various verses out there of of you know, the Earth is stationary, not moving, and the creation and Genesis, and it was just it kept my mind going. And so then you start sharing it with people. And I know you've talked about this many

of times, George. There's just not a lot of people to talk flat earth with, right, So I start talking with the people that i'm you know, at least they're comfortable in my life. I bring it to my dad and my brother met with you know, they're not believers. They're like, no, there's no way, you're crazy. So that was a little discouraging, and like, well, they're not buying into flat Earth and I'm you know, I'm the son, and I could tell almost my dad was a little

angry about it. It was interesting. My brother just kind of shakes his head and he, you know, it's just like, wow, this is you know, this is something. Chris is on it. He'll get over it. And then I do a men's group. I do a Bible study group on Tuesday mornings. I kind of brought it up to them. I'm like, what do you guys think about flat Earth and kind of the Biblical model of Earth and the creation and all that stuff, And with met with much resistance, to be

honest with you, which I was surprised about. Probably shouldn't have been surprised about it, but you know, I was excited to share it with them of something that kind of was bringing me closer to Jesus. And they just kind of poo pooed it and had a lot of questions and we're trying to contradict everything. And I'm like, all right, so there's that. Where I've had the most

successful is my immediate family. It'd be quite awser if you specifically my daughters, my wife, my oldest daughter, super cool. She talks about it often with her friends who are eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old. And I have fielded my phone and

O ring at ten thirty at night. She's up visiting some friends up in college, some of her older friends that are already in college, and I'm fielding a forty five minute phone call because they have all these questions for me, and they want to talk flat Earth and they want to learn more. So I thought, that's just super cool. I just I fined that the younger generation seems a little bit more open to this particular concept than the older generation, who have been so programmed our

whole lives. It's harder for the scales to come off our eyes, and we have to admit that we were wrong, and that kind of is a kind of a blow to our pride, so you know, And then I started searching. I'm like, well, I drive a lot for my work. You know, I'm in sales. I'm a regional sales manager, and I got to go visit my reps and I got to kill some time. Let's see what podcasts are out there. So then I search up a flatter of

podcasts and here you come with your podcast. And so I probably latched onto your podcast about a year and change, about eighteen months ago roughly, and just started listening to to you know, all your amazing guests and all that stuff, and so I guess that's what kind of brought me here. And then you always announce well, if you want to be a guest on the show, email the show, and probably took me six months to get the guts to do it. And then you know I was telling you

before the show. Then you do it, and your time is coming to come on the show, and you get a little nervous and you're like, gosh, do I have enough content? Do people really want to listen to a guy like me talk about, you know, flat Earth and my journey to Jesus and all sorts of stuff like that. And then you know, my wife just said just do it. You'll be fine, and I'm like, all right, so I do back out. I thought about it and not going to lie to you, but I'm glad I didn't and

I'm glad I'm here. So thank you for the time.

want to talk to people about it and so. And then once you get introduced to flat Earth, that that's when you start going down other rabbit holes.

get too much into it. And I think that's the that's the secret of Satan is just kind of keep us distracted, and it just keep us, you know, status quo, and we won't ask too many questions and it'll just kind of pass on its own and we'll all still believe it. So I would say flat Earth. It started with flat Earth, and then it really kind of morphed into all right, I got to look at some other things here, because this is a big this is a big lie. Why the lie? And you have a great

podcast on that, Why the Lie? And then you start going down other rabbit holes of nine to eleven and the you know, eighty six challenger and the Oklahoma City bombing and COVID, and it just it starts tail spinning and your eyes just become wide open.

these other quote unquote conspiracies. You're from Minnesota, like you mentioned, a significant Lutheran population, I think from the eighteen twenties or so forward, the huge influx of German and Scandinavian folks up until I guess fifteen years ago, and then you've seen a huge influx of I don't know if they're African or Middle Eastern descent, but you have a lot of Smollion actually yeah, and you somoum, yeah, a lot of state reps. But still such a huge representation

of Lutherans here in Delaware. Very Methodist but still Protestant. I'm shocked when you ask someone who started Protestantism that their clue is like that they just don't know even what Protestant means. That it comes from protesting Catholicism, and then Martin Luther and the Reformation started it. But I would assume in your neck of the woods that's not the same.

the RCIA classes to become Catholic. In two thousand and one, I'm sitting in RCIA classes on Bowl Sunday and missing one of the best Super Bowls ever was the Rams uh Rams Patriots that year, right the Vinitary kick, And I'm sitting in RCI classes like, oh man, I'm missing the Super Bowl for this. So I became Catholic. Uh really just to appease my wife's family and my wife and and obviously that doesn't stick for you as well when you're when you're doing it for the wrong reasons.

So I've been you know, exposed to the Lutheran side of things. I've been exposed to the to the Catholic side of things. And then when we started kind of getting into some challenges in the marriage, We're like, all right, we're going to go to this non denominational church across the street, and that was fantastic. And that's actually where I met one of the guys in my Bible study. A couple of those guys actually from that church in my Bible study on Tuesday mornings. Uh So that's fantastic.

H And then we just kind of ended up venturing off to h I guess the church would be classified as a Baptist church, and so was, you know, and then it just recently changed over to a different Baptist churches that has a lot of many locations throughout Minnesota.

So I've kind of had a journey to to to Jesus that you know, I think a lot more people end up on that journey than they'd like to admit, where you kind of you hop around and then you really find something that that that sticks and you find something that makes sense to you and you're just like, wow, this is this is my home and this is where I need to be. And so we've been there now for about eight years and it's just been a fantastic experience.

or they make you feel amazing. And unfortunately for me, they made me feel amating. Right. My wife has the luxury of getting nauseous on them. She doesn't like them. She never takes them, so, you know, and once you get introduced to that, and then you know, you mentioned your time serving And for me, that was playing basketball. I could go to the health center on campus as a Division one athlete and get a prescription written for me pretty much anytime that I wanted because something was

hurting all the time. And so you get introduced. So that kind of went through my college years and then all of a sudden, you get into the surgeries. And I would say, Gemerge, to be honest with you, opioids are probably the hardest one to kick. When it came to alcohol, I was blessed God just kind of relieved that urge from me. And you know, you just ask me, ask him in a prayer, Hey, you know, just help

relieve me of this urge to drink. And and I felt like that happened so much quicker and easier than it did for the opioids. To be honest with you, that's a that's a stronghold that I feel that we know there's an epidemic going on here in the in the United States, and and I know President Trump is trying to address the fetanol, you know, epidemic that's going on in this country, and so it's it's it's nothing

to shy away from. It's something I think we need to talk about more because you know, and to be honest with you, you know when you run out you mentioned running out of your prescription. So when you run out of your prescription or you get flagged like I did for you know, getting too many refills, then where do people typically go. They typically go on the street, right, I mean prescription opioids. It's basically prescription heroin. And so then you go on the streets to go pursue heroin

or whatever. And that's when the really the wheels come off. And for me, probably I just had probably too much pride, but that was something that I was like, I'm not going to do that. So then you get off of them. And I tell you it was a wild ride getting off of them. It was seventy two hours of a struggle of just kind of going cold turkey and saying enough's enough. I got to get off this stuff and just get back to myself.

you get seventeen, you get your wisdom teeth out. That that is something that I encourage people to go about. There's a lot of papers that have been written on that over the years, So go check that out before you just send little Johnny off to get his wisdom teeth pulled out, Like yeah, I can go ahead, And no, no, I was just going to say, I think there's something to it. When you think about it, it's all of

these things are just automatic. Out of ten million, only twenty proved to be necessary and urgent.

is a big part of their business. It's a it's a lucrative part of their business, and it's a it's a quick, quick hit type thing where they can get them in and get the wisdom teeth out. So I think it also boils down to the business side of things too, where it's it's quick, easy money and the profit margins are there, and so it's it's interesting to see the wave of when that happens in our industry versus not happen.

it being covered with just a simple copay. The other thing is what's nice in my industry is that now the insurance companies don't have their hands in it either. So these these dentists, these oral surgeons, these periodontists can now make decisions or at least present cases to the patients that they feel would benefit them without having to play the insurance game and the ridder mall that all comes with all that. So there's there's positives and negatives

to it both. To be honest with you, before I was in medical device on the dental side of things, I was in the pharmaceutical industry, and I would see how you would visit with doctors. They would say, man, your drug is is fabulous. I believe in it. I believe the studies, and it does what it says it's going to do. However, it's not on our formulary, so I can't write it, so I'm forced to write this

other prescription. Right, And so you've got patients that are getting lesser drugs, lesser efficacious drugs, because it just happens to be on that particular formulaity of their insurance or

the hospital or wherever they're at. And so you're really kind of sacrificing things for the patients when you're you've got insurance so heavily meddling in that particular industry, and then with dental it's less right, and so yes, it's more expensive for these patients in cash pay, but they are able to then pay for what they actually know will be good and what will work for them in their particular case.

little ones anymore. But now I even question I don't beat myself up about it, but even the stories of Santa and things of that nature, because I think that plays intentionally a part into programming children into believing things they don't feel, see or touch. My wife and I were watching an old fifties western last no, the one before that, what was it? But it wasn't a western,

but there was a globe. We kept looking at each other like there was one scene where the actor's face was literally and the camera was straight ahead and the globe was right behind him and we're looking at each other. And we watched two fifties movies last night. It was like a nore. The second was a western, but the first one was literally, like every five minutes there was

a globe in it. So I'm the older I get, the more we are all about not beating around the bush, being truthful, and we've even considered counseling our children, even the ones that don't have children yet, that this may be something you want to consider. And here's the reason why. Because I think it does play very subtly into the psychological manipulation of individuals.

And so, you know, my wife and I are extremely transparent with our children, and some may say too transparent, but I think for them to see the lies in life, the pitfalls in life that you can fall into, is really beneficial to them, especially as they're heading out into this you know, sinful world, as they go to college, and they're going to be exposed to so many different things that maybe they haven't been exposed to in small

town Minnesota. And so my wife and I are just we're really diligent about you know, let's let's talk truth, let's let's talk facts, and introduce them to as many things as we possibly can. We have amazing family conversations over the dinner table. We make a point of doing dinner with each other as much as we possibly can around all their activities and things that that nature. But I think that you know, in the United States and maybe across the world, we just lost touch with just

that general family unit. And I think that Satan has done a fantastic job of breaking that family unit apart and making us so busy and so distracted, you know, with the wives have their jobs, and the husbands have their jobs and we're trying to come up with time

to even have as a family. And what we're doing in in you know, in hindsight, is we're letting social media, we're letting the television, we're letting Hollywood raise our kids if you're not careful, right, And so we've really taken a diligent perspect of just being truthful with our kids. And I think it's really important that as a parent, you relay your mistakes to your kids so they know that when you're giving them advice, it's not that you

feel you're perfect. It's that you don't want them to make the mistakes that you've made. And that doesn't mean that they're not going to. But at the end of the day, when you've made a mistake, come to us, let's talk about it. There might be consequences, but we're going to figure this out together and we're to go from there. And that's kind of the stance we've taken in our parental journey here over the last nineteen years or so exactly.

their college years. Okay, So this study that we saw, and there's more than one to cite this, they suggest that between sixty to eighty percent of young adults experience a decline in religious participation or a complete shift away during that period. And I was one of those people. You almost it may sound horrible, but when you graduate high school, you had.

They don't see the need for Jesus in their life, right, They're like, well, you know, I got my friends, I've got school, i've got this job, I've got whatever's going on, and so, you know, there's just again, it comes down

to distractions. How distracted are we? And then you know those who have had maybe the seeds planted in their lives as children and growing up as young adults, they you know, some tend to circle back and come back and bring you know, Jesus back into their lives, either when they've got a boyfriend or a husband, newly married or starting a family. But that period of eighteen to twenty five is just it's unfortunate the statistics that are

that are based within that. And my buddy who runs his ministry really tries to He travels all over and talks to colleges and tries to come up with some sort of college ministry for these particular individuals to be involved with while they're on campus, because you know, and he's got to fight that tooth and nail to try to get that involved within the universities because they're doing all they can to keep that away from the kids, right and make that All these worldly things are important,

but when it comes to your faith and your in you living for Jesus in your life tends to take a back seat to everything else that's going on in their life. And so I take my hat off to my buddy who does that ministry because he's he's doing amazing work and he's making a lot of head roads out there. But yeah, you're right that eighteen to twenty five ranges is where people tend to lose themselves, for sure.

away from the face of great work. Andy and that is actually a layup if I can use a basketball term to our next kind of segue, which is being on a church board and the struggles of kind of what do you seem on your your church boards? The difference is do you think they fall into the secular world or is it about like the statement of faith and or the topics of the day, homosexuality and things of that nature.

from an outsider when I was not a really strong believer. Uh, and you look at other people, you think that they've got it all together and that they're uh, they don't have as much sin in their lives as as as I do. And and that's intimidating to those who maybe want to pursue going to church more. And then you get involved in church and you realize we're just all humans, we're all making mistakes, we're all sinful in our nature. And you see that on church boards, you see that

within pastors, you see that all over. And so the struggles that we were coming across as we had a long term pastor who had an opportunity to kind of move up and become a regional director over this Baptist church community, and he took it. And I think that's another issue, George, when it comes to churches, is we tend to put these pastors and priests on pedestals and when they leave, when they leave the church, it's like it falls into a tailspin. And that's not how it

should be. It should be about more of the church body and what we have as a group. But you know, we tend to put them on their pedestals and that kind of becomes our idol of worship within the church at times, and so when they leave, it put our church into a tail spin. And we were out there trying to I'm the right pastor, and I'm a business guy, so I like to move and shake, and I can

make quick decisions. And when you're on a church board, there's no such thing as a quick decision, right, It's it's very slow moving and we're going to pray about this and we're gonna you know, look at all these other options, and we're gonna move really really slowly, which I think there's huge advantages of. You don't want to just make a you know, a quick miss, you know,

a quick decision that can lead to a mistake. And so as we were looking at different pastures, you know, we ran across one who was on the surface looked amazingly fantastic, and then we find out, you know, he has married homosexual couples and believes in doing that, and we're like, oh my gosh, well we can't, we can't go with this. And so we just kept tail spinning into not being able to find a pastor. And so,

you know, I was telling you pre show. We we then had a church out of Minneapolis, one of our bigger churches out of Minneapolis, who wanted to plan a church up here in kind of the resort community of Minnesota and called us, and it was just it was a perfect fit at you know, God's timing is amazing, and so we ended up becoming under their umbrella of churches in September here of twenty four. So yeah, I

mean it's interesting. I think that we view churches as these perfect places and perfect people, and it's just imperfect people in an imperfect world trying to, you know, worship Jesus the best they can. It's interesting we're sitting in on these board meetings and we know, we even talked

about it. We're like, Satan is attacking this church. We could admit that we could see it, yet it didn't prevent us from attacking each other at times too, And it was just unfortunate that it led to people leaving the church or leaving the board, or you know, our church split into two sides, pro this pastor, pro that pastor, and so it's just it's something we can't avoid it. It's in our human nature, unfortunately, and you know, thank God, it's his timing and we made it through it and

we're a super strong church now. But it was a rough couple of years.

Minneapolis still hasn't. Minneapolis just has not rebounded the way I thought it could and would. It's it's a different city since twenty twenty. To be quite honest with you, I don't take my family down in Minneapolis as much as I used to. We go to Twins games, we usually catch a matinee game. We're not there at night, and it's just it's a different vibe, and you know, you can get into the politics of it all and you know who's been in charge and where things have gone.

But to be honest with you, my wife and I have always talked about like cash, we got to I think we got to get out of this state. But we live in such a beautiful part of the state and we're kind of out of the mess of it all. But at the end of the day, we still feel the repercussions of some of the political stuff that's going on in Minnesota, and it makes it hard. You know, You've got the Dakotas to our west, and we're like, oh, maybe Sioux Falls or you know, maybe Fargo or you know,

just something to get out of it all. But you know, at the end of the day, this is where my wife and I were were born and raised, and like I said, we live in a beautiful community with great public schools and great people around us and great churches, and so you know, we're going to be here for a little bit. Our daughters aren't going too far away from from us from school. They'll be on the Dakota side of things, So who knows, we might have to

get a little residency over there. But yeah, I mean, Minnesota has definitely changed, not for the better, unfortunately, but it you know, it is what it is, and you know, the things that are going on in Minnesota right now, they continue to go on, to be quite honest with you, and I don't see that changing unfortunately, George. I see that as a lot of people complaining. But when it comes to the elections, it just seems to keep happening

and keep happening and keep happening. And so I think we are who we are, unfortunately, and we've kind of made our bed and now it's time to land it.

going to dig in. This is my home and I'm gonna, you know, fight the fight with the tools that I have and let the chips fall where they may.

And so you know, we're hoping to do that. We we did that with our local church here in town. And it would have been very easy to leave, be very easy to pick up and move out of Minnesota. But at the end of the day, we we we our roots are here and we want to make an impact the best way we possibly can.

or the style that it's taught. It's just again, if the United States of America was run by the rules and regulations as originally stated, it shouldn't really matter who's in control, right, and it should be the same with the church if the theology and doctrine is being taught the way it should be. But that's we're human and we're flawed, and we're opinionated, and we have certain things

we want to prop up. And that that's something that I struggle with too, is when you go through that change and the pastor's not going to change, do you just stay in and you know, listen every Sunday. It is something that you struggle with when there's not any citation of scripture and you know, they're just bringing up secular things constantly from the altar. It's it's a struggle. And that's, you know, ultimately is the reason why you know,

we want to plan a church. It's like if we're going to complain, well, we better do something about it.

of scripture within their sermon? When are we referencing God's word? And sometimes it's right away and sometimes it's five, six, seven, eight minutes in until we really break into the word of God and see what he has to say on things. I think it's so easy for for pastors and I

would probably fall into the same thing. We give our opinions on certain things and rather than let's let's see what God had to say about this, and then let's try to interpret it the best way we possibly can and maybe realize that our interpretation isn't what was intended.

But at the end of the day, this is the best we can do with what we've got, right, And so I think it's it's hard, and you know, people struggle with church going, and we see, you know, we've got probably five or six pretty healthy churches here in where I live here in central Minnesota, and it's interesting to see all the faces that kind of bounce around and they're kind of testing some things out and I think, you know, there there's good things about it because they

want to find a pastor that speaks their language, who is biblically sound and all that sort of stuff. And then there's the other side of it, where you know, maybe something was said that was biblically sound and they don't really care for it, and then they type of take off from there too. So there's good and bad sides to both of that. But I think as long as we're staying in God's word, we can't go wrong.

like that. It leaves me wondering as kind of a flailing Christian or a part time Christian as I was in my earlier life of Okay, well, where's God, Where's Heaven, Where's you know, how does this fit into the Bible. And to be honest with you, George, I had a a really disappointing conversation with my luth and pastor as I was growing up because I had a lot of questions. I had a lot of questions about creation. I had a lot of questions about dinosaurs. What I'm being caught

in school isn't what I'm reading in the Bible. And I got a very terrible answer, to be quite honest with you, and it left me more confused than anything. And honestly, I think that I was going to save this point for later, but I'm extremely disappointed in the Christian community in how we tend to avoid the topic of the creation right. So you know, it very clearly states in Genesis the creation story, and we tend to fall back on what we're taught in school and on

the science side, of things. But yeah, but God is there. He's just you know, yes, science is right, but you know the earth is how many million years old? But God created it and all this sort of stuff, and it's like, well, no, the earth is about sixty five hundred years old, right, and Heaven is right above us, and we've got a firmament above us that you can

only get when you read the King James version. You read another version doesn't say the word firmament, and so you've got to be in the right version of the

Bible to get exactly what you need to get. But it left me really confused as a young teenager looking for answers of why am I getting contradicted in school versus what I'm reading in the Bible, And to not have that taught to me in a biblically sound way just left me more confused, and to be honest with you, left me flailing for probably longer than I should have been in my life.

our churches. Right, And so you start talking truth, and you start talking you've mentioned the possibility of the earth being flat as God describes and created. That's going to cost you, probably church attendants. And unfortunately it comes down to the business side of things of churches as well. Right, Yeah,

it is what it is. Yeah, it's tough, you know, you don't And I think that's also what pastors kind of they It's a slippery slope what pastors have to do, and I wouldn't want to do it at all because I probably won't be very good at it, But they have to balance speaking truth, speaking God's word, and then they have to balance, you know, what we're taught outside of church, which you mentioned the number of hours of

discrepancies that we're getting between the two. And you're so programmed from from the age of three four years old when you're going to a pre k first thing you see you walk into a pre k schoolroom is a globe or a map of the globe, and that is just programmed into you. And so I think we just need to do a better job of trying to contradict a little bit of maybe what we're hearing in the school systems, what we're hearing in the world, and just

trying to find the truth behind that. But it leaves a lot of us flailing to be honest with these George, where we're just we're not sure what to believe. We're believers in Jesus. We know we eyed for us, we know he was real, but we don't know where he is, and we don't know the history behind everything, and how old is the earth? And did dinosaurs really exist? Or

what are they finding right? And so there's just so many questions that I think people struggle with that when they become eighteen years old and they go off to college, they just say, well, you know, it's too much for me. I'm just not going to pursue it anymore.

And number two, how does that make you feel knowing that seventy million dollars of our a day, of our tax dollars go to basically Hollywood Studio.

So what's in Houston. Oh, let's go see, you know, let's go see the NASA and alls. It's just to play. Part of me, just curiosity wants to just go there and ask a bunch of you know, off the wall,

you know, really critically thinking type questions. But I just I can't even you know, fathom touring that place, just knowing now what I know and the lies that go into to NASA and who was behind it with Warner, Vron Braun and all these people and Walt Disney, and how much not only are we getting seventy million dollars Georgia year to NASA, how many millions and billions go into the movie industry that glorify this and show this

type of thing. You know. I heard a speaker talk about He's like, have you ever seen the movie Gravity with George Clooney and Sandra Bullet. Well, yeah, I've seen that movie. Well, they spent one hundred million dollars on that movie. What do you think they could do with seventy billion dollars a year? Right? And that movie looked fantastic. It was super believable, it was super amazing. And so I think that when you go back to the Moon landing,

we didn't have that technology. And I'm I'm not sure if NASA had the forethought to really think about, you know, when we're fifty years down the road, can we poke holes in the bs that they served us up in nineteen sixty nine. I think, you know, it's so glaringly obvious now that that particular spacecraft could not make it to the Moon. They could not get through the vat Alan Belt. That thing would have fallen apart about thirty

thousand feet into the air. So I think that when it comes to NASA, not enough people know one the fact that you just spit out with the seventy you know, billion dollars, and I just think that there's just not enough awareness of what NASA is doing. And then you get these news stories of you know, these actronauts are now going to have to have, you know, scuba gear or they're gonna have to have snorkels in their helmets because they're filling with water. Why are they filling with water?

What's going on? Right? And so I think that it's just it's interesting that we just take this information in and I would have fallen into this too, and you do a great job of we cannot condemn people for not knowing the truth, for not being awake to what's going on, because I was that person, right, and we

were all that person at one point in time. And so just trying to create awareness and to try to get people to think critically and ask the right questions specifically when it comes to NASA is a huge It's an uphill battle. It shouldn't be an uphill battle, but it's an uphill battle because they just the truth sometimes is really difficult to hear.

Is it the unwillingness to say I was wrong, you know? Or is it just psychological barriers?

just happens. And so I think that people are really reluctant because they don't want to admit that they have been duped and lied to and that they bought into the lie, because it is a blow to our pride, you know, to say, all right, I believe to lie, whether it's somebody in our lives too, right, we just tend to ignore the truth at times, just because we don't want to have to admit the truth, because the truth can kind of hurt and sting and be a

blow to our pride sometimes. So I think when it comes to the to the NASA story and what we're being taught and programmed in school, it's so embedded in us that it's hard for us to get over it, right, And you know, you just the bigger the lie. You just keep telling it, keep telling it, keep telling it,

and eventually people will stop asking questions. And I think that's where we've come to in this world, is that we just stopped asking questions because we're like, you know, well, NASA exists for a reason, and why would they lie to us? And I think that's where you really got to get into it. So when I start talking to people when they find out, and it's usually my oldest daughter who outs me, well we're flat Earth. There's my dad's a flat Earth, And I'm like, oh my gosh,

here we go. Now I got to get into a conversation. So what I've noticed is is I can drop as many data points as as I can, and I can get into the science of flat Earth and all sorts of stuff like that. My question usually to them is, tell me why you believe in a glob birth the heliocentric model without talking about NASA, right, So let's get into the science of it all, without you just relying on Well, I saw pictures on the Internet, which we also know are cgi and fake and all sorts of

stuff like that, but to them, it's real. So you've got to speak their language. So to them, they think those are real. All right, So let's take those out of the equation. Let's take NASA and what you've seen on the Internet as far as pictures out of the equation. Why do you believe in the heliocentric model of birth? And then they don't know because they don't know the science behind the heliocentric model and basically how the heliocentric

model debunks the heliocentric model. And I think if they started looking into that a little bit more, they would realize it. So that's one question I always ask. I don't really get into throwing out a bunch of flat Earth facts to them right off the bat, because they're just going to shut down. So then I start engaging them, well, why do you think it's round? Take nass out of the question and tell me why you think the Earth

is a globe? And they don't have usually any statistics or they don't know how fast the Earth is spinning, or how fast we're coutscrewing through the galaxy and how fast we're going around the Sun and flat Earth. There's no that because it helps our case to prove that it is incorrect.

and pushing this propaganda is truly amazing. And you look at you know, all the like I said, Star Treks and Star Wars and Gravity and all the movies that are done in Hollywood. It's truly amazing what we see in our eyes. And to be honest with the George, it's fun. It's fun to watch, right, It's cool to watch and you're like, wow, this is amazing. And so we buy into that lie that that is possible, and we buy into the lie that we could at one point have you know, people living on the Moon or

Mars and all sorts of stuff. It feels really good to think that way. And then you realize that all the pictures that we've seen a Mar are fake. They come from you know, Algeria and Devon Island, Canada and Greenland, and you're seeing exact photos that are tinted red of Mars, and then you see what it actually looks like on Earth and you're like, huh, that's the same exact picture.

That's interesting. So I think that people again aren't asking the right questions, aren't doing their research, and I think it's just because it takes I mean, it can be exhausting at times, as you know, right, I mean, researching this stuff and finding out how much we're being lied to. It's truly an exhausting journey. But it's a worthwhile and really enriching journey that you can go through, but it

takes time and you've got to invest in it. And I just think people are just, you know, kind of tired of it all, and there's a lot going on in the world and distractions are thrown at us left and right that we're just exhausted by the time we get home for the day and from work, and we'd rather just bed out in front of our phones or in front of our televisions and not ask the right questions.

The other thing that is taught in school that I had a hard time getting over was gravity, right, and in talking with gravity and you're trying to figure out, okay, does gravity exist? And then you realize that Neil de grass Tyson can't even describe what gravity is. He's been he's kind of he's put on the spot and he's like, tell us about gravity, what is gravity? Well, we don't know what gravity is, he says, And I'm like okay. So then I started looking into gravity more and it's

just density and buoyancy is all it is. And it has nothing to do with us being grounded on this earth. But it's taught in school like it is a law and not a theory. I grew up thinking that gravity was a law and not a theory. I knew that the the evolution was a theory, and so I kind of went into that into eleventh grade science class very skeptical. But when it came to gravity, no one questioned it because it was put into your brain that it was this law of gravity, and it's not, and no one

can explain it. No one knows what it is. It's just another piece of the narrative that they have to have to make them fit into the helocentric model of what we're being taught. And so to me, that was just so astronomically, you know, asinine in the fact that I grew up not knowing that gravity was a theory

was embarrassing to me. Again, maybe what keeps people from researching more about flat Earth or any other conspiracies out there is that you have to kind of face yourself and be like, wow, I was duped and I you know, I didn't even know it, And so I think that to me was a blow to my ego as well. So gravity was another huge one for me. And you

do a great job. Anybody listening who hasn't listened to your first ten podcasts, your very first ten where it's just you going over the facts and the figures and the scheme of it all with Walt Disney and Walter von Braun and all these things. They need to go back two hundred and twenty nine episodes or whatever it is, and listen to one one through ten because you do such a great job of dissecting it all and really showing the lies that we've been told our whole lives.

And it's okay that we believed them. I mean a lot of people believe that. Most people believe them, but it's time that we kind of take a little self reflection and figure that out as well.

in Italy. I would fly from San Francisco to Italy and I would watch that god awful map that they display for you as you're flying right yea, and it was this high circle coming down into into Venice and I'm like, what, this makes zero sense, but we just all take it like it's supposed to be. I'm like, wow, I was top off, the Great Circle route, and because it's the globe, we've got to go really far on Earth to get south. And I'm like, that doesn't make

much sense either. So I started talking to it to Beth a little bit and she wouldn't admit that the Earth was flat. But there is no curvature. They don't account for any curvature. We've seen all of the NASA documents saying that it's a flat stationary Earth, you know, and you need to fly as if it's a flat stationary Earth. Gyroscopes prove that. Flight patterns prove that, and so I think that's a hard one to you know, show people and say, look at these flight patterns. Do

they make sense to you? Well, no, they don't. But my science teacher said, it's the Great Circle Route and that's why we have to do it, because of the helobe. And so I think we just need to examine ourselves a little bit more and what we've been taught. And to no fault of the science teachers, that's what they're told to teach, that's what they've learned. And so I don't want to, you know, come at all these high

school science teachers that are misleading us. But the I go so deep that we you know, it's interesting you talked about NASA, right, Well, is everyone involved in NASA part of this lie? No, probably not, there's probably maybe you know, out of out of all of the people they employ, maybe five hundred people that could probably be involved in a lot like this. And we know the Freemasons, and what a freemations do they They love to lie

into the public. Can absolutely absolutely, And so it's it doesn't take but a small group to deceive a large group. And I think that's where we've fallen into and we just we have this doctrine that we've been taught and we just kind of fall into it and it is what it is.

propagated with That is a very serious question. Then when you go back and actually do the research and find out that people who were associated with Epstein owned those textbooks for many, many years, then maybe, just maybe you can get people to understand how big the conspiracy actually is.

teach them this and only teach them this. And I say, you know, I've even I've even dove into the conspiracy of Tartaria and then the free energy and and you know, you look at some of those those those photos from the Chicago Fair in the eighteen nineties, and you're like, how did they build these amazing facilities, amazing buildings using horse and buggy back in the day, right, and no power tools? And it's just people see that like, oh

Chicago Fair is beautiful. Look at all these bums, Like do you not ask the questions of how this even happened? Like how how are we able to? So I think you can again, like you mentioned, you just you start with flat earth and then you just get exposed to all these other things. And I've gone down these rabbit holes where I'm just like, it's truly incredible the lies we've been sold and what I have believed in, what the world has believed, and it's just it's it's amazing.

But you know, credit to flat Earth for getting me to to other lives out there, because I wouldn't have had it without it.

I mean education, What a ripoff? My goodness, it's something for sure. This has been an outstanding conversation. Was there any bullet points or subjects that you had on the list that you wanted to mention before we close?

involved in that. But you know, you look at all those certain things, and I don't know about you, George, but it's a beautiful We don't have a cloud in the sky today. And then all of a sudden, about mid afternoon, I'll start seeing planes fly over and chemtrails are going on. We're not supposed to worry about that, that's just exhaust and whatever. And then it just becomes this hazy, cloudy day and it's supposed to be for solar radiation protection and all this sorts of stuff, and

it's just we're not asking the right questions. And then you start going down the rabbit trail of sunscreen. And that's a hot topic in our house right now, right all those chemicals that were spraying on and why are so many people getting skin cancer now than when there were my grandfather's age. I mean, he lived on a farm in North Dakota, and never used sunscreen his entire life and was just fine. And here we are putting on these chemicals and doing all sorts of things to

protect us from the sun. When God gave us the sun, right and it's just it's amazing what he provides for us. And then we kind of tainted with our human nature and chemicals and it's just it's it's interesting. And you know, I was driving we were driving in North Dakota, speaking of the sun. We were driving to North Dakota for my daughter's orientation last week, and it was kind of a partly cloud He would rain a little bit, then

it'd be sunny. It would rain a little bit to be sunny, and we've got I had my wife take this picture of the sun coming through the clouds, and literally you could draw a point in the sky to where the sun was because all the rays bent perfectly to the sun. Talking on the far right and left side, you had probably forty five degree angles coming right up

to a perfect point. And the fact that the sun's ninety three milion miles away tells me that those rays should be coming straight down through the clouds and not at the angles that they were coming at us. And I was like, man, I look at that. You're trying to tell me that's ninety three million miles away. And my wife's eyes are wide open. She takes a picture of it and it turned out beautifully. There's just so many things out there. I could go into five G

and Bluetooth as I'm talking to you. I have my AirPods in which I know are bad for me, and I try not to wear them often and for long periods of time. But you you know, you read Apple. No one reads the Apple instructions when they get a phone. You're not supposed to put your phone to your ear and have a conversation because you know, the radiation is too bad. It's like, wow, what you know the things

that we don't know? And you tell people about this, they're like really, I'm like, yeah, you're not su used to put your phone to your ear. You're supposed to talk either on Bluetooth, which isn't great for you either or speaker or the wired headphones are supposed to be the best for you. So yeah, it's just there's so many things out there, George that I think that are

just insane. And I look at the information that we're fed on a daily basis, The distractions that were fed on a daily basis, right, prime example was what about a week and a half ago, all of a sudden, on everybody's YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, was the Coldplay couple that was caught having an affair at the Coldplay concert. Okay, in less than twenty four hours, we knew everything we needed to know about that woman and that man yep,

all right involved in that capture. Yet I look at the young man who attempted the assassination on Donald Trump, and we know nothing about him, and fun. That tells me that we're being fed a narrative to distract us. Here's the Coldplay couple. Everybody's enthralled talking about it on talk radio and sports talk radio. It was amazing. And yet the things that we need to know we don't know because that's not part of the propaganda that needs to be pushed.

super details about. We've got to start asking questions, why why is the cold Play couple on everybody's algorithm today? Right?

Flat Earth community. For the last two or three days, it's been a mysterious object spotted in space, could be a hostile alien spacecraft, and it could attack our planet. In November, and this has been whoever the New York Post and again that came hours just after Trump said a Harvard president was on the f Stein list. All of this, it's like, where should we really be looking?

and all sorts of stuff like that. But I think where we've gotten away from and you talk about it a lot on your podcast, is we just don't teach kids in school how to critically think. We're programmed to think a certain way and if you ask questions, you're dismissed. And so I think that the more we can teach people to critically think, it doesn't mean that everything's not true. But go find out for your Go find out for yourself, you know, and do the research and figure things out.

Again goes back to my point of that that can be exhausting at times, so we tend to just be tired and we just kind of take the truth for what it is. And I don't have time to really research this. But the more we research, the more we know, and the more we really find out the true scheme of this world and who's in charge. And you talk about it a lot, George, and this is Satan's realm, and we're being distracted often to distract us from getting into God's word.

And so I just want to thank you personally for everything you've done for those of us who are kind of struggling and trying to figure out what's going on, and as we're kind of getting into our flat Earth story and uncovering the truth, when I can go into a podcast and search flat Earth and yours is the top search for me, and I can kind of get involved in that, and it's been such an eye opening sixteen eighteen months from me just listening to your podcast.

So I just, first of all, just wanted to say thank you to that. You know, I think when it comes to flat Earth, when it comes to really anything in this world, I think we need to ask because I think a lot of people are skeptical. Why the lie, right, Why the lie? Why would they lie about Epstein? Why are they lying about, you know, flat Earth? Why are

they lying about anything NASA? And I think that we've really got to get to the point of the lie is about distracting us from the truth that God has just literally given us in front of our faces, and everything on this earth is set upon us to be distracted, to not pursue the truth, and to just accept what

is told to us. And I think that when we're trying to weigh the options of who to believe and what should I believe as we're doing our research and what we're doing our research in I really press people. And I can't credit the guy who said it, but I was. I was watching a podcast, a video podcast, and he said, when I'm weighing the options of do I believe in flat earth or do I believe what the government is telling us? And he says, just let

God be true and every man a liar. And I think that that is so correct, and if we can have an honest conversations with ourselves about the government, human nature in general, the lie is always about money, power, whatever is you know, entailed within that, and we have to accept that we're being lied to on a daily basis, and it's up to us to kind of filter through all of that stuff that we need to filter through.

But yeah, I mean, for me, it's it's when I heard that quote, I'm like, yes, you know, and as a believer, that hit me rate in the heart right, But I also think for maybe people who are pursuing Jesus, they're not really sure about who this Jesus guy is. And do I give my life to this would I

would definitely say do some research. I think the more you get into flat Earth, the more you get into if you realize the world that we live in, you'll realize that there's a greater force at play and that will bring you closer to Jesus in your life at

times as well. So for me, I just encourage everybody who's listening to this podcast, thank you, and just continue to fight the good fight, continue to do the research, continue to ask the right questions and critically think, and I think at the end of the day will be a better place for it. And again, George Is, thank you for what you've done for this community and what you're currently doing with your next chapter in your life. And just really thankful for people like you.

and that's exactly what it was. So God bless you and your family, and to all the listeners, thank you for your continued support. And God bless each and every single one of you. And until we meet again, my friends, we will see us.