LUCAS CURCIO - Choosing Faith Over Fads: The Truth About Power, Ego, and Online Influence

Foreign welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast. This is a weekly interview show where I sit down and talk with authors, thought leaders and influencers who help us understand our changing world. New episodes release every Friday. My guest this week is Lucas Curcio. Lucas was born and resides in New Jersey. He grew up in a Christian family and they attended a Reformed church. In his late teens, he came to Christ by reading the scriptures and hearing what it means to be a true Christian.

Fast Forward to his mid-20s and he felt a call to the pastorate and attended college and graduated with his master's in Biblical Exposition from Liberty University. He recently accepted a call to pastor the Mission church in Paramus, New Jersey. He is married and has one kid. He also hosts and manages Method Ministries along with a podcast, doing talks, debates, interviews, and more. You can follow him on x Instagram and YouTube. Lucas, welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.

Thanks for having me, Will. I generally feel honored to be here. Well, you've been a big blessing to me in building our friendship and I know that you have been for many other men as well, a real inspiration. And one of the things that I've noticed is you. You have your podcasts and live streams and you will interview and do great interviews with many men, but no one really asks you, gets a chance to ask you, who are you? You're kind of like the man of mystery.

I hear a rumor that you're Batman, so I wanted to sit down and confirm or deny those rumors. So thanks for joining me today. I can neither confirm nor deny, but I do say because I live in New Jersey, people don't know this in the comics. Gotham is in New Jersey. So like, on my Twitter, I put Gotham, New Jersey just because I didn't want to share my real location. But now I'm in Paramus. Just to let people know. Hey, as you mentioned, I'm a pastor at the mission church.

So when he's in the area, I want them to come to our church. So now I kind of let people know. But yeah, I mean, congratulations about accepting the pastorate. That's a really big deal and I know that's something that you've been working towards for a while. I mean, when you accepted the pastorate, I didn't know that was the direction that you were going in. But. But it's been amazing to listen to your sermons and see that growth.

So maybe we can just start there, talk about this new pastoring job. I think it's your first pastoring role that you've taken on. So let's Just start there and see where things go. Yeah, so it was a real blessing to get this one because. So me and my wife, we're both born. Well, she was born in New York, but New York is not a couple hours away. It was over the board, like 30 minutes from me or 40. But we didn't want to move out of the area.

I love New Jersey, too, and I care for New Jersey spiritually too. So I've been a Christian since I've been 18, and we're in a blue state and wokeness hit us hard. And, you know, the New Jersey bubble of Christendom around here is all connected. And I think Christendom like. Like, you know, in a broad sense, because most of them are just very typical American Christianity. Very liberal, very, you know, feminized, egalitarian, all this ooey gooey, you know, social justice stuff.

So I. I didn't want to leave New Jersey because there's a real. There's a big need for strong, biblical, faithful churches and pastors, too. So I was really happy to take this position because for a while. So I got married in 2022, I was still pursuing pastoral ministry, but when you get a wife, you know, you have to as. As, you know, like, you know, as engaged, like, you know, you got to provide.

So I was thinking, okay, you know, let me just do my school and I'll just, you know, continue at my job, because I did have a really good job that got answered to prayer right before we got married. After we got engaged, he gave me a good job, thankfully. And so, you know, I was just. Just going to pursue that and keep pursuing ministry. You know, I have my podcast going on, and then, you know, that. That desire to be a pastor still came back, and this.

This opportunity opened up at the mission church. It belongs to the Lutheran Brethren denomination. So I grew up in the Reformed church as. As, you know, but for me, I didn't know what that meant, like, and they didn't really get into the doctrines of what that meant other than just teaching us, like, the Bible and, like, the broad stories that we all know and hear. But I did enter into the Brace yourself, because I know it's a Calvinist po.

I did enter into the Arminian Wesleyan side, but I go to a Lutheran Brethren Church, and we have. Have a lot in common. And there's a need for the Lutheran Brethren churches now, too, because they're hurting with pastors. And so this job opened up, so I was grateful to take it. You know, I was really happy to be Here I am really happy to be here. And hopefully, you know, just God. God can use, you know, this church to, To. To reach New Jersey and build up the church and, and just try to help.

Help us, you know, because, like, the, you know, again, like, there's a real need in, in the state. And usually when you hear about solid churches, like, they tend to be out west, they don't really tend to be in New Jersey. So, like, I'm just trying to plant my flag where the flag needs to be planted for Jesus. Amen. Well, this conversation was foreordained from the foundations of the earth, so. Well, let's talk a little bit about your background.

You mentioned that you became a Christian, I think you said, when you were 18, but you were kind of raised in the Reformed church, so you didn't. Maybe. It sounds like you didn't actually know too much, just kind of grew up around it. And then it was in 18, you actually. When the pieces kind of clicked together for you. Yeah, so we went to church on Sundays. We did, you know, you know, Sunday school in the morning, youth group. It was a good church.

And even looking back now at, you know, being, you know, since being a pastor, I'm actually thinking about how my church used to do it. And even the pastor, Pastor Keuken was his name and some of the stuff that he would do, how he would preach and teach. And I'm seeing, you know, what they actually did did a pretty good job at the whole structure and just like the whole logistics that go behind. But yeah, so for me, reformed again. Like. Like that didn't mean anything.

Like, I didn't know what that meant. It was just going to church on Sundays for us. So they taught us the Bible. My parents were Christians, so they raised us in that too. Again, like, youth group, Sunday school. Then Fast forward to 18. My older brother, he became a Christian and he was in the Navy at the time. And there was a big transformation when he came to Christ. And so, you know, all my family saw it.

It was kind of just like night and day and through him that got me introduced and looking into Christianity. So I started to listen to, like, pastors who were teaching what is true Christianity, what does it mean to be a Christian, you know, using terms like being born again, regeneration, talking about first John, like how we can know if we're saved and if we're not saved, what Jesus did on the cross.

And so while that was happening, while I was listening to that, seeing my brother, I also got into the Word. And so I Started to read the Word, and I started to develop, like, a real hunger for God's Word. Like, I would just spend a lot of time in it, even devouring it, and then listening again, like, simultaneously listening what it means to be a true Christian, you know, what the gospel is.

And I couldn't pinpoint the exact day, but it was during that season where there was a change in me, where I started to believe for the first time. And internally, again, like, I had these hungers, these desires for God. When I sinned, I started to get a conviction, wanted to spend time in His Word. Even when I wouldn't spend time in His Word, you know, I'd be convicted. Like, I would feel like I missed out, like, on a meal. And so the.

Was just a transformation for me through the simplicity of hearing what the Gospel is, what it means to be a Christian, and reading the Word. Because it wasn't through exterior factors like, I guess, going to a church like some other Christians or being handed a track on the street or hearing a preacher. It was through in my bedroom, mostly alone, reading the scriptures, praying, and again, listening on YouTube to pastors. It's a. That's a picture that I didn't grow up with, you know, sitting.

Sitting alone as a. As a young man reading the scriptures, but it's a. It's a moving portrayal. And. And your brother. Your brother inspired that in you. Yeah, so. Because he was, so. He was going down a bad path, and he was in the Navy at the time, too, so that had a real bad, Bad influence on him as well. Yeah. So, like, you know, the whole nine yards. Sadly, he. He's actually walked away from. From the faith in my book now. But, you know, during the time God.

God still used him to introduce me to Christianity. So, you know, it's a part of my testimony. Regardless of what and where he is now, I mean, I hope he's saved now. To this day, he actually doesn't talk to us, and I'm okay saying that. And us being my family, just me, like, my entire family. But, you know, regardless, like, that's a part of my testimony that God used. And so, you know, I'm grateful for that time. So does he know that you're a pastor now? That must be.

Maybe that would be inspiring to him to see that his early explorations of faith inspired you. Now you're a pastor, and perhaps, God willing, that can re. Inspire him. I. Yeah, he. I'm positive he does know because there's like one or two of my family members that he Keeps in touch with. So I'm positive he knows. He knows about, you know, since I've been married, about my kid. So, yeah, he definitely knows. You know, whether or not he listens, who knows? Maybe he does.

Well, pray to God that, that he. That he is inspired. That he. That he is inspired by your story as. As you inspired him. So. So when you discovered the scriptures and. And you, things started to change for you. What path had you been on before when you were getting ready to go to college because you ended up getting a master's, let's say I have it here. Your master's in biblical exposition were. What direction were you headed? And then you diverted into a more ministerial call.

So I went to college late in life. So pre Christ, I didn't think about certain things. Like, I never thought about the gospel. Didn't really think about, you know, so much or really just didn't really think about God. Like, it just wasn't on the forefront of my mind. So 18 is when, you know, I first came to faith, and that's when that. That all changed. But I didn't go to college, and I was without direction for many years.

Like, looking back on my early 20s, I'm like, a lot of guys, I wasted it. I blew it. I just worked. You know, unfortunately, I did not go to college early. I wish I would have. I'm not saying college is for everybody, because I don't think it is, especially with the direction that it's going now. Correct. Correct. I always wanted to go to college. I just didn't know what I would go for. So I didn't have direction. I didn't have that strong, influential father figure in my life.

So I had to learn these things the hard way. Even my younger brother, too, who I'm close with, we had to learn these things the hard way. We had to make a lot of mistakes. So we know what it means to. To suffer. You know, contrary to the color of my skin, I was not that white privileged boy. I was. I. I was homeschooled my whole life, actually, and very secluded in my homeschool upbringing. Like, very isolated. Didn't have a lot of interactions.

You know, there's good ways to do homeschool and there's bad ways to do homeschool. You know, my upbringing was not the good way to do it. So we had to learn when we finally become men, face the real world. We had to learn a lot of things and play catch up. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So I went. I went to college when I was 27 years old. So I'm 34 now. So when I was 27 is when I finally decided, you know what? I want to go to college.

Because I was feeling the call towards ministry, didn't know what to do at the time. So I said, let me pursue this so I can, you know, learn the Bible better, learn to be a better teacher and work towards becoming a pastor. And so that's what I did at 27 years old or 28. That's so. That's so interesting that that isn't what I would have. I wouldn't have. I would have expected, you know, because you. You present yourself and you seem to be quite put together and articulate, you know, and.

And so, praise God, that, you know, I can certainly understand wandering quite a bit through the early 20s. And I think that's a. That's a experience many men have. And certainly I can look back on my own life and see, like, oh, praise God for leading me out of my own version of that. So I'm very. I'm very grateful to hear your story.

And I don't think enough men appreciate the power of the gospel to not just redeem us from sinful choices, but to redeem us from wandering and a aimless lessness and purposelessness. You know what's funny? I. I literally remember in my younger 20s, in my late teens, praying to God, I don't know what to do. Yeah, like, literally, I did not know what to do. I didn't have meaning. I didn't know what path to pursue. And that. And that is, you know, as I said, too, like, that's not uncommon.

A lot of guys with our culture, the way they were raised, we're not set up right. And so we do, you know, men's lives really tend to start in their 30s. Like, my life got better in my late 20s. Like, that's just a fact. That's when I really discovered a lot of these valuable, traditional things that, like, man, I wish I would have done this in my 20s. If I did, I would have crushed it. But that's just the way, you know the name of the game.

It's almost like you have to go through those certain things in life as men. Like, you have to just make those mistakes. And 30s is where it really kicks off for men. Yes. I've long said that you don't actually discover how useful you can be as a man until you're 35. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who you are.

It's the same way, like, puberty Hits when you're a teenager, you as a man do not discover how useful you are until you're 35 years old and there's nothing you can do to accelerate it. Whoever you are at 28, 30, 33, you will not know until you're 35. Because that was, that was what was true for me. I remember everyone was like, oh, you're going to turn, we're going to turn 30. And I turned 30. It was like, okay, nothing happened.

But when I turned 35, suddenly I was forced to contemplate the notion of, of 40. And then it was like this kind of wake up call. Like, oh, wow, there's a whole big ocean of life ahead I better start thinking about. And it was literally that year 2013, that things really started to change for me. So. I know exactly what you mean. How old do you know, if you don't mind me asking, are you 30? 36? I'm 47. You know you're not. Yes, I am. Dude, you look great for your age. What is your secret?

I honestly, it's a, it's a, maybe it's a blessing from God. I don't know. My, my dad's 79 and he looks quite a bit younger as well, so maybe it's just something that runs in my family. Yeah, I always say when I'm 40, so. So as I told you, I just shave, but when I'm 40, I'm going to definitely shave because I'll look like I'm 30, so. Okay. I definitely, I literally shave years off myself. Really? Every time when you, when you take off the beard? Oh, yeah. I definitely look a couple years younger.

Especially when I grow my hair, I look a little bit older, but I'm 40. I'm going to have short hair, clean shave face, so I look like I'm 30 or 25. Got it. That's a good strategy. That's a good strategy. See, if I, if I shave the beard, I don't know who I'd be anymore. I've had it, I've had it for so long. It's just part of my identity now. But you have hair, so. Yeah, I got options. Yeah, God bless me through my Italian father with that. Exactly, exactly.

Well, maybe you mentioned that you didn't have a, have a strong father figure. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because I think a lot of these themes, we don't have to dig too far into your family if you're not comfortable with it, obviously. But, you know, I think a lot of these Themes are very relevant for many men at various stages of their lives. They didn't grow up with a strong father who led them in the ways that they needed. They ended. They ended up in the. Entered.

Entered into the world. And they wandered around for a while and then at some point, God, like, you know, picked them up and said, okay, go that way. Like, yes, Lord. And then they end up finding the traditional path. But they still look back and say, these were the things that I didn't learn, that I wish I knew, and I wish I had learned them when I was younger. But then there's the desire to pass them on to our own kids.

Yeah, you know, so what's really interesting for me is that being that I'm married and have a daughter, I look back on my dad's life and I understand him better. Even his struggles. And I didn't see at the time, going through that. In the moment there was anger, there was tension, there was fighting. But now, as I get older, it's like, man, I understand him. Like, I understand why he was going through this. And, you know, when he.

When he was at this point in his life and when he was even times upset and down and depressed because life. Life is hard as a man, you know, it really is. And it's interesting seeing that because, like, the older you grow up. Elliot hall said this. I don't know if you know who Elliot Halse is. Elliot Hulse. Yes, of course. Yeah, he's a Roman Catholic. I still listen to him time to time. But there was a time in my life where I used to listen to him more and he said some good things.

And still to this day, fathers. And I think it's really important that men respect their father, not just girls. I think girls should respect their father too. But men also have to respect their father. And what happens in life with men is they enter. So it starts off with the affection of your mother. You love your mother. She's kind, she's warm. And with your father, it kind of seems like you're at odds with him. But as you get older, you have to come to reconciliation with your father.

There has to be this acceptance with him. And you see that older as you become older, in life, as you do the things that men do, like go to work, you know, get married, become fathers. You start to understand your father more. You fall back on his lineage, his heritage, his tradition. You pick up on what he did.

Even if he didn't tell you directly or teach you directly, you realize, wow, actually I didn't know that seeing him do certain things and, you know, like just fixing toilets, you know, when it's clogged, actually helps me to know what to do in certain situations. So you become reconciled with him, if not explicitly. It's implicitly. And so it's really important, you know, that men do that because it's represented. It's. It's represent. I can't say it right. It's representative. There we go.

Of your relationship, you know, with, with God the Father got, you know, God the father, you know, he's the patriarch of us. And I use that word, patriarch. It's okay. I don't mean like an abusive way. Yeah. You know, there's an order, you know, there's a hierarchy. And it's, it's super important that men respect their earthly fathers.

Honor your father and mother, you know, your mother too, definitely honor your father and be reconciled with him and don't hold it against him, because you can easily go down the path. And I did in my 20s. I went down the path of. I was a victim. I victimized myself. I told myself a story, and I would not take responsibility for myself. And once you do, as a man, when you reconcile with your father, when you forgive him, you start to see your own faults.

And even if you went through bad things in life, like, your father wasn't here for you, he didn't give you this direction. My actions, my choices are still my fault. I still did this. I shouldn't have done this. This was my mistake. I have to start taking responsibility for it. And once you do it, it's like almost then just like the light comes on, then things start to get better. And it's really important that men do not victimize themselves in any way, shape, or form.

And the end goal should be, I'm going to respect my father. And that includes reconciliation and forgiving him for the, for, for the ways that he's failed you or wasn't there for you or, you know, offended you. Honestly, I want to invite you to just keep going down this thread, like, if you have more to say on this, because this is, this is so important. It's so incredibly important right now. So please keep going.

I mean, naturally, I can ask a lot of questions and facilitate conversation, but I think that there's more here to pull on. So if you have more to say, I invite you to. Yeah, I think men should always be on the lookout. Anything that any kind of ideology that tells you you're a victim, just get, get rid of it. It's not going to work. And like, especially like, you know, as you have, I've seen on Twitter.

Yep. With wokeness even, you know, I don't want to use wokeness in the right sense because some people don't like that now. But, you know, just whatever. Just for the sake of what we're talking about. Yeah. People want to blame people like the Jews, you know, it's their fault. Or the boomers. It's the boomers fault. And it's. It's a trap. It's a total trap. Just because there are people out there who are against you going after you.

Dude, you can sit online in your mom's basement on Twitter complaining, or you can live in the real world, get to work and work towards a mission and hit the gym, hit the Bible, serve your church, find a wife, become a husband, become a father. It's going to be a night and day difference versus just let me just get on Twitter and try to ratio this guy because there are evil people out there trying to attack me. Yeah. I just did a podcast with Mick Olson. I think it was yesterday. Oh, yeah.

And we talked about this, the same issue. And this is so relevant for me and everything that I've done since starting my podcast in 2020. I started out as a masculinity podcast called the Renaissance of Men, but I've been thinking about men's issues since 2001, so almost 25 years. And so, you know, traveling through the manosphere. I've been to Elliot Hulse's home in Florida and spent a couple, three days with his family when I was working on my documentary.

Yeah. So I know and have met all these guys and particularly in the manosphere. And it's almost like all of these issues that I've been looking into for a long time have burst into the reform Christian Twitter world. Like, they just kicked down the door and flooded in and no one knows what to do with anything. But it's literally like watching the manosphere take over the Christian Twitter with all the manosphere's flaws. And it's like appealing lies that are concealed in.

That are concealed in little bits of truth. You know, it's exactly like watching this is like, guys, wake up. This victimhood ideology. You know, what I said? What I said to Mick Olson, I don't want to spoil too much of it is like, okay, let's say you are a victim. Right. So for 30 days, we are going to monitor every dollar you spend and every 15 minutes of time you're going to log it. Right.

And we're going to watch and we're going to see at the end of 30 days, whether it's the Jews who are holding you down or it's your own bad decisions. Y. Right. Yeah. At least as. At least as much. And, you know, guys don't like that. 100. Even with dating, you know, they can look at how the girls. Because of culture. Dating is horrible. It's. It's brutal out there. It is. I can. Facts and, And. And I experienced that myself too.

But one of the things I had to do, actually, even going back to my younger 20s, I had to learn the skill of dating. I could have just. Just, you know, complained and more and just stay there in my complaint, but I realized I had to take responsibility for myself. Even if. Even if things like, you know, this girl was this certain way and she's, you know, didn't have her heart. Right. Okay. But there's still a reason why she rejected me.

And when you take a hunt, you know, like, when you just commit to I'm going to be responsible for everything, that's a game changer. And that is a sign of true masculinity. Yes. You know, can you be responsible because that, you know, and this is the old path, like so many people talk about. Oh, you know, like the dissident. Right. This is just what everybody believed prior to the 19th century.

Well, he also took responsibility and told you that you got to go out there and you got to get it for yourself, and nobody else is going to do it for you. And so that is crucial. That will separate the men from the boys. Can you be responsible for yourself? Admitting, including when you fail, even if there are other obstacles, like if somebody set up a trap for you, I got to take responsibility somehow with not anticipating that, you know, that trap, it's hard. It's super hard.

One of the hardest things to do, even, you know, like, even when I'm a preacher or being a preacher now, like when I go in that pulpit and make a mistake, it sucks. I beat myself up about it. I was like, man, why did I say it that way? I should not have said it that way. Or when I did debates in the past, like, I should not have framed it that way. It sucks to admit it, but unfortunately, I just got to take responsibility.

And next time when I get to that, hopefully I don't make that same mistake. Because, you know, what else am I going to do? I'm just going to stay locked away, blaming everybody, blaming my father, not being reconciled, not trying to improve myself. You Tell me what's better. It's definitely 100% better to be this way. Even if there are obstacles in your life, take responsibility. Learn to be strong so you can overcome those obstacles. Because if not, you're going to stay stuck.

Yeah. This is a well documented phenomenon called the victor victim cycle, that if you believe that you are a victim, then there is a victor who is over you. So you will work to then, you know, to then triumph over the victor, and then they become the victim and they do the same thing to you. And so it's around and around the circle we go. There's a new victor on top and a victim on the bottom, and then, et cetera. And it's like the way out of that trap. And it is a trap.

It's a trap that the left has been in, I don't know, for a long time. Let's say at least 15 years, if not more. The way out of that is responsibility and accountability. That's it. That is the way out to say, look, my life looks the way that it does because of a combination of circumstances that are out of my control and choices that are within my control. I cannot change my circumstances. You can't change what decade you're born in, but you can change your choices.

And as long as you're thinking that you have to change circumstances to change your life, you're going to be a victim. But as soon as you start saying that, you know what, I can control my choices, I'm going to make better choices and take responsibility. You exit from that whole cycle, then you lift up other men. But that's, you know, that's not as profitable as being like, you know, follow my podcast and I'll tell you why you're a victim this week. It's manipulating them. It is, is what it is.

You know, you know, like how many movie characters are out there where, where there's this angry person, that villain comes along and tries to manipulate their anger and, and, and their bitterness. And a good analogy for this, speaking of Batman earlier, is the movie, you know, the Dark Knight trilogy, or even Batman versus Superman, you know, with Ben Affleck, Batman, you know, was bitter. And what happened with his bitterness is he tried to kill Superman.

And the Bible warns about being bitter. When you're bitter, once you discover that enemy, you feel justified in how you go about trying to overcome that, even to the point of trying to kill Superman. So men have to watch out for bitterness, which is a huge thing. Hebrews 13 warns about the root of bitterness springing up and troubling you and then causing not just problems for you, but for your church. And that's what we're seeing a lot with young men.

And there are wolves out there, sadly, who are saying, oh, there are disaffected young, poor white men. And now let me give you an outlet where you can take your anger out. That guy is like Ra's al Ghul. He's telling Bruce Wayne, you got to burn down Gotham City. And we need to be like Batman is saying, no, I'm going to stand in the way, even if I'm the only guy doing it, and not fall for this contra munthem, which is what Athanasius did.

He stood against what, you know, felt like the whole world, saying, no, Jesus Christ is, is God. I'm not going to, you know, going to capitulate. Even if everybody over here is saying so, I'm still going to plant my flag here. But the problem is so few people, so few men want to do that.

You know, we talk about being strong and masculine and it's easy to say that, but at the end of the day, how many people really want to live the life of what these men in the faith, like Athanasius, like Martin Luther, you know, who would want to be Martin Luther? You have the entire Roman Catholic world pointing its entire arsenal against you. And not just in the theological realm, but even in the political realm, because that was all connected, all coming down on you.

How many people actually want to be that person where everybody thinks you're an idiot. What are you doing? You're heretical. Nobody wants to imitate these men. We love to read about them, love to talk about them, put them in our profile pictures. But at the end of the day, there it's few men. Few men know the truth. And even. And even fewer men will stand for the truth, unfortunately. That's right.

And just to be clear about something, just because you're standing against the world doesn't mean that you're right. It's not a one to one thing. You could stand against the world and say the sky is yellow. It's like, ah, you're all wrong. It's like, no, that we can just. That's a good point. Yeah, so. But the trick is to find what is true and right and to work to falsify it within yourself before you're going to take a stand against the world.

Really find out within yourself with a sincere, open minded approach to say, okay, I'm going to try and falsify my own beliefs as if Someone else would try. And then if you find that you can't falsify your own beliefs with this honest and sincere attempt, then you stand against the world. If it's a moral enough issue, an important enough moral issue to do that. So just don't just stand against the world for the sake of it, to prove yourself right.

Like actually try to prove yourself right or try to prove yourself wrong. And that's what I see a lot of men just don't do. They look at the post war consensus and they say the post war consensus is a lie. So the first person to come along and give you something else as the truth, did you ask them any questions? Oh, you just don't understand. Like, wait, what? Like just try to falsify your own beliefs before you go on this crusade.

But it's again, it's that bitterness, it's that resentment, it's that victimhood ideology that gets itself wrapped around men's hearts and men get manipulated and used this way. It's so sad. It is so sad to watch. I'm learning too recently, men have to watch out for overcorrecting. Yes, I've seen that in my life too, where I overcorrected. And you can go from being in that woke evangelical, like Acts 29 is a great example.

Acts 29 was, you know, I don't know if you were around that time or if you remember, you know, what happened. I know kind of what it is sort of church planting network for sort of, for sort of more conservative churches. But that ended up kind of going woke and soft in its own way. Do I have that right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like wokeness was in it from the start because I actually went to 2 Acts 29 churches in New Jersey. I had to leave both of them because of wokeness.

And, you know, one of the pastors ended up telling me that basically, you know, this church isn't for me and I should just find another church. So. Which is what I did. Thanks, bro. Wow. Yeah, actually it was during 2020, during George Floyd. And he. I forget what he told me, but he essentially told me just kind of like, buzz off, you know, this is what our church does. And so whatever, Buzz off. This is what our church does. Basically what he told me because he wouldn't meet with me in person.

He didn't want to meet with me in person. So I said I felt weird going to a church where the pastor doesn't want to meet with me. So I just left, you know, didn't want to talk about and work through these issues of wokeness. But you know, my point was, is that you can go from like that woke evangelical leftism to saying like, you know, I have to be missional. Like there was one guy on Twitter that made a good analogy of this. I forget his name, but he was, he is acts or x Acts 29.

And he talked about how this is men in this, you know, urban ministry in the city, ordering his $11 chai latte, trying to reach a he, they, them, you know, barista and just waiting for the right opportunity to talk to him about Jesus, pursuing him through friendship evangelism. And his wife was working and he's going to be that servant leader and he's going to cook because his wife has to stay late because her boss is saying, hey, can you stay late and work. The analogy is this is all wrong.

You don't have to move to the city, do urban ministry and try to spend $11 on coffee just so you can have that one little small moment of telling they them person, hey bro, Jesus loves you. You can go from that, realizes that's wrong. I shouldn't live like that. I don't have to be this ooey gooey Mr. Nice Guy. Jesus is my homeboy. Let's pursue social just justice. You can go from that and say, okay, this is wrong. But let me go over here now and say Jews are the problem. Feminism is a problem.

I need to preserve my Anglo white skin. We're the best white boy Summer. Both of those versions are far from scriptural Christianity. Neither of those versions are scriptural Christianity. And men have to watch out for the trap of overcorrecting. We have to pursue Jesus is what it is. And people will mock me for that. Let's call it Jesus juke. But what else should I do? It's like Peter told Christ, where else are we going to go? You have the words of eternal life.

What in the world other than going all in for Jesus in this life? What else am I going to do? That's the best place to be. And it goes to show you that people are still mocking you to this day for following Christ when you talk about the gospel, say we need to preach the gospel, teach the gospel, not lose it. You know, this is what the gospel is. I'm going to die for it. People to this day will still mock you for doing that. Call it Jesus juke. You're being a biblicist.

You're trying to be a third way liberal. Still, you're just being a gatekeeper. And it's like, okay, cool, bro. You can say that, but he has the words of eternal life. There it is. I'm going to follow him, and I'm not going to go from one extreme to another just because I want to be based according to your definition. And then keep up with my penance. Keep on trying to post things on Twitter, keep on trying to be this guy who ratios people just so I can be approved.

Because those people don't love you. Those people don't care for you. And the moment you fall out of line, they'll just as quickly as they turned on men like Owen Strand, they're going to turn on you and just try to eat you and give you to the lions for dinner. I cannot tell you how correct you are, because I discovered that before I came into the reform world, I was in the manosphere.

And so the manosphere is, you know, always, again, against feminism and against a lot of liberalism and about strong and confident men. But as I got further into that world, I saw that obviously it has its own serious problems with degeneracy. It has its own problems with ego and arrogance and. And, you know, prior priority, like a misprioritization of certain values in the family. And, you know, I was prepared when I was creating content, I was prepared to be bullied by feminists.

I was prepared for that. But as I went into the manosphere and was like, hey, guys, this is. This is obviously not okay. I was not prepared for the. For the bullying from men. Not that it, like, bothered me, but, like, whoa, guys, like, I'm just trying to say that there's, like, a moral standard here. Like, this is not good. And the blowback that I got for that was. Was terrible. It was. It was legit terrible.

And then I got kicked out of the manosphere, which was one of the best things to ever happen to me. But, you know, but the dynamic that you describ. Absolutely correct. Like, okay, you can easily overcorrect and leap into the other ditch. And then when you try and crawl out of that ditch, it becomes a real crab pot kind of mentality with the bullying and the shaming and, you know, the sort of the. The collectivist kind of ideology. No, we all think the same.

And you know, what's really sad about it is I think of the movie Fight Club now. You know, Fight Club is written by Chuck Palahniak. Chuck Palahniak is in a. Is an avowed homosexual. And there's all kinds of overtones in the book. Book, you know, which we. We don't have to get into. But it does describe something accurate, which is that communities of men that are not driven by a higher ethic do become toxic and destructive. And that's what that book is about.

It's all these men that are kind of embedded in the everyday working world. And then they discover true masculinity through this fight club thing. And they find out who they are as men. And it's like. And at first it's a big blessing for them, but because they're unguided by a higher principle, it's just Nietzschean power. The whole thing turns toxic and destructive and the men become antisocial psychopaths. And that's the thing that Christ is supposed to.

That's the commentary that he was trying to do. And that's the thing that Christ is supposed to fix is like, whoa, hold on, wait, let's snap out of this, guys. There is still an objective, higher standard. The same one that led us out of the left ditch should also be used to draw us out of the right ditch. But the problem is now you have pastors that are in the right ditch as well. And so men have the. They have the approval of their conscience. Like, oh, well, a pastor said it.

Well, what's his authority? And that's the part that's, that's the part, I think, that is so unique in many ways. So one of the things that I also have become aware of as well is that one of the things that you know, exactly to your point that you know, like that manosphere world, they. They tell men, like, you have to be your own, essentially Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Yes. You have to just aspire to a really big mission in life so you can get your.

The stars, and that's their own version of salvation. They're trying to reach the heavens by living a life worthy, by leaving a lasting legacy. And when you look at the gospel, you don't have to do that. You can rest. You might hear my daughter in the background crying, by the way. But one of the things that the gospel calls you to, pretty clear, pretty explicit, is to pick up your cross. And that's a sign of death. The point of the gospel is not to make a name for yourself.

The point of the gospel is Jesus Christ is the hero and the victor. Now die to yourself, get on the cross with him. Paul says, I've been crucified to Christ. It's not I who live, but Jesus who lives in me. That's the gospel right there. And it's not about Let me just go out and build a name for myself and a legacy. We like to talk about that verse, John 3:30, where John the Baptist says, he must increase and I must decrease.

But again, going back to the same thing, how many of us want to live it? Do we really want to live for ourselves? So I can make a name for myself? Because you can do that, even as a pastor, even as a Christian, you can think, okay, I'll do these things so I can put my name in the stars. And that's a trap. It's like, let your name dissipate, and who cares about it? Great John the Baptist Jesus says, nobody was born greater than him among the sons of men.

But yet he says, let me decrease and him increase. Paul the Apostle Paul, let me be crucified. Or I was. I have been crucified with Christ. He's not there anymore. He says, well, who lives in you, Paul? Jesus. It's his victory. And that's totally like. You can't reconcile that with the Andrew Tate theology, with the red pill theology. Those guys are trying to make a name for themselves. Jesus would look at Andrew Tate and say, andrew, die. Sell everything you have.

Sell your clout, your followers. Die. Die to yourself. And if you can't, then you can't be my disciple. So men like Andrew Tate have two choices. Either I die to myself, or I live in this life for my name and then lose my soul. And Jesus says, what's the profit of that? So you can do that, but it's not going to be following Jesus. And following Jesus means you die. That's what that means. The cross. It's not just this nice symbol. It was a bad symbol.

It was the Roman government saying, this man is an enemy of the state. Everybody can know it. We're going to shame him. We're going to mock you. And it's funny, because today I saw a tweet by a pastor saying, we need to get back to mocking people. I saw that one, too. The cross was the ultimate mockery, the ultimate shame. And Jesus says, pick up the cross. Be mocked, be ridiculed, be shamed. But nobody wants that. Christianity, nobody wants that. But again, the cross is a symbol of death.

And if you don't do it, you can't be his disciple. And it's not vainglory. Let's go on a crusade. Let's go on a mission. Let's get a name for ourselves. Let's be Christian nationalists and take this country back for Jesus. You can have the right motives of that, but you can also. And men should watch out for the wrong motives of that, because if it's in it for yourself, you can use Christianity as a guide for yourself. You can have a form of godliness, but deny its power.

And the true power is when men die to themselves. That takes a supernatural work of God. And you can't buy that. You can't get that on a podcast. You can't get that on Twitter with people retreating. You. You can go on Joe Rogan's podcast. You can do all these great things. And if you're not dead to Christ, and if men aren't dying to Christ, then what power is there? Well, there's no power. That's not Christianity. Christianity is that men who you don't know. He's all by himself.

Paul says, leave a quiet life. He's not on Twitter, he's not on X, he's not on Facebook. He doesn't have tons of followers. But he's faithful to Jesus and God is pleased with that man. And I think on Judgment Day, we're going to be shocked. I think on Judgment Day, there's going to be people who are getting far better rewards and nobody has heard of them. That's right. Nobody's going to know. Who in the world are these people? Who is this guy? I didn't know about him. We'll be expecting.

It's this pastor over there who has 100,000 subs. It's this man over there who has 50,000 likes. That guy's going to get rewarded. And I think we're in for one big awakening on Judgment Day. I think you're absolutely right. And just a couple quick things about that you can also see in the notion of dying to self. Even that idea can also be twisted and perverted into servant leadership and leftism and all that. So these ideas.

Satan is very good at taking these ideas and lacing poison into them that drive men either into the ditch of arrogance or drive men into the ditch of humiliation. And in some sense, they're kind of the same ditch. You know, like a man who is arrogant will ultimately be humiliated. Right? And a man who allows himself to be humiliated will eventually snap out of it and become arrogant. They're very much the same ditch.

But simple, humble obedience and faithfulness, even if it doesn't build a great name, is ultimately the way to have peace with God. That doesn't mean that God might not just bestow a great name on you. He may do that. That. But if he does that, it's for his glory, not Yours. And so this is these manosphere ideas, you have these Nietzschean manosphere ideas that are kind of trying to wrap themselves in Christian language very skillfully in many cases. But the heart of it is wicked.

The heart of it is very wicked. And you might not be able to spot it, but you can kind of feel it. And that's something that James Lindsay said in one of his Secret Religions of the west talks is when the Gnostic parasite infects your community, it uses your language so you can't spot it, but you can spot it in someone else's community because you're not part of it. And so that's kind of what I think is going on here, where you have this Nietzschean kind of view this man as will to power.

And then you wrap that in Christian language and it sounds really appealing to disaffected, whatever, young men. But that's not the gospel. That's absolutely not the gospel. But men want power, they want authority, they want vengeance and vindication and retribution and they slide right off, they slide right off the path of righteousness and then it becomes self righteousness. And when you say these things, sadly you get called a simp. That's right. You get called weak liberal cuck. Yeah, yeah.

And it's easier for me like when leftists call me a Nazi and a fascist, like, whatever, you know, but it's, but it's hard for men who were in that, that conservative world too to be, to endure the mockery of them saying you're a liberal, to endure the mockery of saying, you know, you know, to your point, you're a cuck. But it's like, well again, like this is, you know, this is just basic Christianity and Christianity really is basic.

Like, like I'm going to be preaching on Ephesians 6, this, this, this Sunday on putting on the armor of God. And Paul's just mentioning the basic stuff, stuff, truth, righteousness, your feet showed with the preparation of gospel of peace, the word or the sword, which is the word of God, prayer and supplication. That's just basic stuff. But that's the weapons of our warfare. It's not these new fads. And the problem is, it's like, how many times are we going to fall for.

There's this new movement. This is the thing that's going to get everybody. This is the base thing. This is what it means now to follow Christ. How many times are we going to repeat this? Like, you know, I'm only 34, but I know enough now to realize that man, next time a new fad comes out, you know, just reject it. It's not going to work. It's just a Repeat of Acts 29, just a repeat of social justice.

It's just a repeat of, you know, things like, not all Christian nationalists are like this, but it is a repeat of many Christian nationalist movement and the Crusades movement. It's just them trying to do it. And the reality is, you know, these pastors are not here long. Like, I've been realizing this too, because I'm going through also in my own studies, the Second Chronicles. And you just see this king came. He just, you know, he didn't follow God with his whole heart.

Next came, King came, he followed God not perfectly. Then he was gone. And then repeat and repeat. And it's so easy to lose track of these kings and what they did. Some of them are good, some of them are not so good, but they still did good things. But all these men are just in the annals of time and lost to us where we don't even remember them. 200 years from now. How many people are going to remember the names of many of these pastors that we see online who are just pushing or you and me?

Yeah, honestly, they're not. And it's a vapor, and what value is it? And I look forward to the day of when we're all in heaven one day and hopefully we can reconcile with a lot of these people and realize, man, what a waste of time. What vanity did we just waste? That's right. That's right. Just trying to pursue something new. We should have just stuck to the basics, which is what the Bible consistently, over and over again, pushes on us.

First scripture reading, we make war with the word of God. That's how we do it. It's not these new movements and fads. Yeah, I mean, I think about Jay Gresham Machen, Christianity and liberalism. I think it's in the second half of that book, maybe towards the end, where he says that a conservative social gospel is not better than a liberal social gospel gospel. He actually says that, as I recall, in that book.

And so for a long time in evangelicalism, it seems to me there's been a liberal social gospel. And now with Trump winning the presidency, now there's a snapback happening to try and impose a conservative social gospel. But that's not what the gospel is. The gospel is not a social project. It's not a trend. And that's one of the things I'm seeing from influencers outside the Christian space that are becoming Christian, like, oh, maybe Christianity can fix our broken world. Yes, that may be true.

But Christianity, the gospel is supposed to fix you first. It's like maybe if everyone started going back to church. Great idea. How about you? Oh, well. But not me. Oh, really interesting, right? And that's the odd thing is there's this trendiness to Christianity as well that's happening that makes it seem like this sort of more masculine version of it is achieving popularity, but it's still a distortion. Guys, wake up.

I think the next things that we're going to battle as Christians is nominal Christianity and fascism in the church. And I don't mean fascism as the left uses it. You vote for Trump. Because I'm a third time Trump voter. I got my Trump photo right over here. You can't see it, but it's when Trump was shot, he was saying, fight, fight, fight. So I love Trump. So I'm not using fascism in the left sense. I mean, like actual real fascism is coming, like Protestant Francois.

I think that's going to be on the rise. And again, nominal Christianity. But there might be some good that comes with it, because when you look at the Great Awakening, the backdrop to that was nominal Christianity. Everybody just pretty much went to church. Everybody was pretty much just baptized as a kid. They still did communion, they still did confirmation, but there was a deadness to them.

And so the message of the Great Awakening, like John and Charles Wesley, George Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards, it was simple. And that's why I said the message is simple. It was the new birth, you know, regeneration, holiness, you know, the gospel, dying to yourself. This is what it means to be a true Christian. Everybody needs to come to Christ. You can have a real assurance of salvation. That was a message and revival, you know, that was the message and that was the thing that God used.

Like, again, we look at the Great Awakening, but nobody wants to imitate them. That was what they were pushing. It wasn't, let's take over, you know, I'll be Christian nationalists and all just be based and just, you know, go on a crusade and, you know, it's all Israel's fault. Let's all get them. No, it was the gospel. And the problem is that people say they believe it, but they don't really believe it or they act like that. The gospel stops short of salvation, which is a form of.

It's almost similar to Gnosticism in a certain way where the gospel can just save me and that's it, nothing else. And now let's get to the real meat. Let's get to natural law. Don't be a biblicist. Don't be a Jesus Jew person. Don't be a liberal, don't be a gatekeeper. Nobody actually just wants to follow that. But again, this is what God used in time and the Great Awakening. And I think nominal Christianity is on the rise. Like Russell Brand, right?

He's a Christian, but is he really a Christian with what he's saying? Oh, my goodness. I get in so much trouble when I'm like, I'm not so sure about that guy. Just give him time. He's a new believer. We're all so innocent once. Like, bro, he has 12 million followers on one platform alone. Can someone please hold this man accountable to what he's saying? Just anybody, Back off. Don't hurt his feelings. He's a big boy. He's a multi millionaire. He's a superstar.

He can handle a few words of rebuke and chastisement. He'll be okay. And people just don't. They don't want to hear that. I don't understand it. Or it's like, Joe Rogan is going to church now, which I do think is great. Yeah, of course. But I'm also realizing, too, is like, these people might get a little freaked out as we don't know what kind of church he's going to. What if it's a Roman Catholic church? Yeah, same with Russell Brand. Does he even go to church? Oh, he doesn't go to church.

Oh. I mean, I don't know. If you ask me, I think he's starting his own church. He's baptizing people. He was baptizing people in the ocean last week, and then he's leading a Jesus prayer this past weekend in, like, literally cult leader sunglasses. Like, literally Jim Jones sunglasses. I'm not even making that up. Wearing a shirt with astrological symbols on it and baptizing people with a Jesus king flag. And it's like, guys, is someone gonna say something about this anybod?

Or it's like when they say Christ is king followed by swear word. And then we call it out. We call it out. Are you kidding me? You're trying to say that we can't say Christ is king? It's like, dude, do you seriously think that's my problem? Right? When God says, don't blaspheme my name, do you think God was saying, don't mention my name, don't say my name, or was he concerned with these people? Christ is king. You dirty insert this derogatory term. You dirty J O, O. Which is what they say.

Yeah, it's like a rapper name, the dirty Joo. I don't want to say and get in trouble because it is a bad word. You shouldn't be saying that to somebody. That's right. That's right. And you can feel the intention. And that's the part that is just maddening sometimes is the retreat into pietism. Like, oh, look, I just found this one scripture verse that I took out of context that says, this is okay, or you're a slanderer or stuff like that, as, oh, thank you for adopting the most pious posture.

Like, oh, you know, it's like, give me a break. You know, and it's really wanting to have things both ways and that. And that's what it is. And unfortunately, we can never have things both ways. We just can't. Eventually, every man is forced, and we've been talking sort of in a larger theme about our growth as a man. Every man will be forced to choose between one of two paths. The Christian path goes this way. Paul is explicit about the fruits of the spirit. Right. And that's what it looks like.

There's no funny exegesis you can do about that. This is what Christians are called to look like, and this is who we're called to be. And that sets us away from the world. And so you can have this, which is the Christian call, or you can have what you're doing, and you'll be forced to at some point say, okay, you know what? I don't need those silly fruits of the spirit thing. I want power. It's like, well, go have that. By all means, go have that. Just don't call it Christian.

And that's sort of where we're at as that process is unfolding right now. It's just so antithetical to the Scriptures. Like, there's no way you can read through the New Testament and just get, you know, like, imagine if we wanted to say, okay, let's just do a scientific inquiry and let's just form a hypothesis. The Apostle Paul was a Christian nationalist. We would predict him to be saying certain things like, let's take over Rome. Let's play the long game. Let's get married and have 10 kids.

That will do it. Bada big bada boom. Let's start mocking and shaming people. But then you read the New Testament. Oh, love your enemies. Oh, forgive those. Oh, vengeance is God. Oh, submit to Romans 13. Submit to your government. I'm not saying there's not a room for civil Disobedience there is, but if they're telling you to go 75 miles an hour, don't go 85 miles an hour. You don't have to play the long game to be a Christian nationalist. You just don't find it.

And then people try to redefine these things. Like, oh, there's this public. This weird distinction between there's this public enemy and then there's a different kind of enemy. And I can hate this guy over here and this guy I can't really hate. It's like, dude, just realize, come on, dude. Trying to point them and get them to look at the Scriptures. Open up your eyes. It's like that meme, trying to get somebody to look at the scriptures. Here it is. Love your enemies. God loves his enemies.

God makes his rain shine on them. God is merciful. What more proof do we need? When Jesus says, you shall be merciful as your father in heaven is merciful. And he says that God makes the sun shine on the unrighteous too, and gives them rain, just as he does to his people. And Jesus saying, be like that. Be like your heavenly father. Matthew 5, 6, and 7, the Sermon on the mouth. If you live that out, it's totally not.

Not this manosphere red pill theology, overcorrection, dissonant Reich theology that's going on right now. And men need to completely get it out of. If it's in their system, get it out of your system. It's in your church. Get it out of your church. It cannot be allowed to have an inch because it's a poison and you're going to be bitter. It's the same as the poison of feminism. There were consequences. There will be consequences. There are consequences for confronting feminism inside churches.

Pick any one of a number of different doctrines. Just read Ephesians 5. Just read the whole thing, you know, from. From the pulpit, or pick any number of passages and. And see what happens, you know, and all things. You mean all things. And you'll see it start to come up. And so I think pastors failed to confront that for many generations, it seems to me. And now there's a response to it, which is like the masculine version of feminism, sort of. Chauvinism is probably a good word for it.

And so there will also be consequences and a totally different set of churches for confronting that. And the reality is you just gotta do it. You just gotta do it, because these ideologies, they spread virally. Hey, man, did you know that such and such a thing is true? Or, hey, girlfriend, did you know such and such a thing is true? And the root of bitterness, this is what I think it means. The root of bitterness springs up and defiles many because bitterness doesn't just stay in its own lane.

It brings other people into the project and you gotta cut it. We gotta rip it out of your own heart. You gotta rip it out of the heart of men and women in your congregations. And they have to help each other doing that because if you don't, your entire congregation is going to be choked with weeds. And that's what we're watching in real time in front of us. Oh, I know, it's a shame.

Like, you know, I look at some of these churches, I'm like, man, what in the world is going on behind closed doors? Because if this is what they put out there in the public, which is your best behavior, what does it really look like to be in that church? And you know, a lot of these are very cult like churches, unfortunately. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, cults of personality. Like the cult of personality.

I saw that inside the manosphere like you have, the cult of personality is based around the person of a bully. The bully has their inner ring that's around them. And everyone on the outside is trying to get into the inner ring to get closest to the bully, to get attention or favors or contribute to the mission or whatever. And it becomes about the individual. It does not become about Christ. It becomes about worshiping the the man who's standing in that position.

That is exactly how the manosphere worked. You had all these little cults of personality that could be quite profitable for the men who were, who were leading them. And then what happened in 2022 is Andrew Tate came along and I called him the apex predator of the manosphere. I've said this many times. And he was the guy who did all the things that all these other cults of personality, these guys talked about. He was a billionaire or maybe a multi hundred millionaire.

You know, he was really fit and had actually like done fights and you know, for better or worse, didn't have seemed to have problems with women. So he was the guy everything the manosphere talked about. And he made hundreds of millions of dollars. Like his war room is. You can look up how much money it made at the peak in 2023. And the thing is that guys are looking at Andrew Tate as a model to follow. How can I start my own little cult of personality like he did?

Because he's leading so many men and making so much money and it's like no he's not a model to follow for anything. Well, he said some good things. No, he doesn't. It's interesting. It's baffling to watch because men blind themselves like, well, he says some good things while turning a blind eye to exactly who he is. I just Preached through Ephesians 6:1:9 and I titled that sermon Rules for Slaves and Tyrants.

And what I realize is that the Bible has check marks in place like these safeguards to keep tyrants from abusing their power. And I define tyrants as anybody who has authority, not like an actual tyrant. You know, it's like the American Constitution. It's purposely set up to avoid the abuse of power. It's to give it to the we the people. We have the First Amendment, freedom of speech. The Second Amendment is there to keep that in check in case anybody turns, you know, tyrannical.

And Ephesians is set up like that. It says, wives, submit to your husbands. The next verse, husbands, love your wives. That's the check mark. You go in Ephesians 6, it says, Children, obey your parents. In the Lord. You go to verse four. Fathers, don't provoke them to wrath. That's the safeguard. He has the authority. You're under the authority. Here's your job. If you're under the authority, obey, submit those in authority, don't abuse it. Then you go into the slaves.

It tells the slaves to obey your masters, and then it tells the masters, warns them, says, do the same things in terms of doing it all for God and glorifying him, knowing that their Master is in heaven and there's no partiality. And so Paul is saying that God is going to reward you and hold you to the same standard, whether you're a slave or free, and is purposely set up to keep these safeguards in place because men will abuse power.

It's like the people who say, well, you know, there's nothing wrong with power. Well, that's true, but there's check marks in place because you are prone to the temptation of being abusive. It's like that. You know that red dress controversy that happened a little while back where men, you know, Ephesians 5, again, wife, submit to your husbands in every everything, not in some things. And everything. Well, that means that I can tell my wife to wear a red dress for 30 days in a row.

Dude, you're abusing your power. Why in the world would you want to tell your wife to wear a red dress 30 days in a row? Dude, come on. There's check marks in place and it's not unlimited power. And the Bible has these signs up just like any other sign, like, don't pee in the pool. There are signs like that because people pee in the pool. There are signs to love your wife and for masters not to abuse their slaves and fathers not to abuse their children.

Because, you know, these things actually happen. And it's not woke. It's not liberal, it's not gatekeeping and just trying to be a libertarian to try to, you know, push these things. It's just. It's just being a Christian. That's what it is. It's just rejecting false ideologies, no matter how good they sound. Even if you put it in the form of being based. I want to be based, dude.

It's like, you know, you can be based, but not, you know, like I said yesterday on Twitter, I don't know if you saw it. You can be based, but not based in Christ. And that's another way to say that's Christless, you know, Conservatism. That's right. That's right. Yeah. No, please, go ahead. Oh, yeah, I was gonna say it's just.

It's, you know, it's just without a foundation of being in Christ and those people, you guarantee it on the day of Judgment, we're also going to have those people saying Jesus similar, if not exactly. But I was base, right? Yeah, but I was in a part of the crusade. I was a Christian nationalist. I wasn't liberal role. I wasn't woke. I was fighting for one of these, you know, these camps and these teams.

I was, I was the one, you know, ratioing, you know, this person and Jesus say, I never knew you. Exactly. That's exactly what I was thinking, is that. Did we not cast out demons in your name? Did we not do all these things depart from me? I never knew you. Like, sure, you could have done all these things in my name, but I. But I wasn't in your heart. We didn't have a relationship. You know, you can do things in my name, but that doesn't mean I know who you are. Yeah, and. And that's.

That's so much what I think is going on. The red dress example is a great one. Like, okay, yeah, as a thought experiment, sure. You could tell your wife to wear a red dress for 30 days in a row. And technically speaking, yeah, I suppose she does have to submit to you, but as if that's all there is to your relationship with your wife. As if there isn't a thing called relational equity. This idea of give and Take.

And so, yeah, if you want to make a massive withdrawal from your relational bank account with your wife to demand that she wear a red dress every day for 30 days and she doesn't do it, go ahead and do that and see where that gets you. See where that gets your. See where that gets your intimate relationship with your wife. See where that gets her overall happiness. See where that gets you in terms of her respect for you when you abuse that authority.

And so you're absolutely right to say the Bible is full of checks on human authority because no man has an absolute authority. That's the point of scripture. One guy, just one guy, is the absolute authority, and it ain't you. And to see men distorting these things to make sort of lame political points, lame right wing, extreme right wing political points, is like, what are you guys doing?

You have the most precious gift in human history, the blood of Christ, and instead you're using it to legitimize your own sins. And we get called names for saying things like that. Well, bring on the names. Yeah. You really do have to endure being called a liberal. Not to everybody, but to this camp. The cost of following Jesus now is you have to endure being called a gatekeeper or a liberal. It's like, whatever, dude.

And it's like, you know, they think it's such a win win if you get ratioed online, but it's too, you know, it's like, who cares? And that's. And that's another thing I also been. Been thinking of too. It's almost like maybe we have to think about online as that person that. That dude who just plays video games all day long where it's not the best, it's not productive. He needs to go out there and be on his, you know, quote unquote mission.

And I'm not saying get rid of social media because that's also an overcorrection too, because it is a public square. It is how we reach people. But it can get to the point where. And even video games, it's okay to play video games, I think, but it's like, if you're always doing that, it gets to the point where it's too much. And how much are we spending time doing the basics of Christianity to the people in front of us?

You might be known on Twitter, but your cousin probably doesn't know a thing about your profile on Twitter or your podcast past and what you do. And why is that? Because there's a disconnect with my online Persona or, you know, world with my in life world, and I think a great way, too. And this is something that I'm trying to get back to, evangelizing in person. Yeah. Realizing, you know, going from the online world to a small church.

You know, we have a small church, we have about consistently like 17 people coming, sometimes 20, 22, but consistently 17. It's humbling. And it made me realize, man, how much time have I spent trying to reach my local area of New Jersey and just trying to spread the gospel and reach people? And one of the ways that I think is helpful for that is spending less time on Twitter, on podcasts, especially as a pastor.

The number one thing has to be in front of me and just even at times, too, being okay, not having to show everything I do. If you go evangelizing, you don't have to show it. Just evangelize, preach. It doesn't have to get clicks and blow up on YouTube for it to be glorifying to God. How many people in the past. What we're experiencing today is a phenomenon in history. The Methodist, the Great Awakening.

They didn't have podcasts, they didn't have YouTube, they didn't have social media accounts, but they reached more people and brought more people to Christ. And many of them are going to have more rewards. How is that that. How is it that the guy on Twitter has 30,000 followers and his tweet goes viral?

How is it that people like George Whitefield on the Day of Judgment probably are going to be more rewarded than him, more rewarded than me on this one video that got blown up and people know my name, and I did some debates and I had a good short that just got really good feedback and clicks. Am I not going to be rewarded for my engagement in heaven? Well, you know, the point is that they reach more people than us.

And it's humbling to think about is that they just, you know, they were on horseback going down to town getting, you know, stoned and mocked and ridiculed and said, you can't come to our church and preach because you're a fanatic out in the field preaching. It's humbling. And look at us like, you know, what are we doing? We're just so. Let me just respond to this person. Let me just do that. And I'm not saying this is bad. And, you know, because again, that's an overcorrection to get rid of it.

But there has to be the focus where we can't lose basic, simple, primitive, to use the word of John Wesley, primitive Christianity, the basics, bare minimum, which is the fundamentals. And fundamentals is another way to say basic, basic Christianity, because that's what it means to be a Christian. And this is what Christians do. And it's not these new things that we can add on to it.

So talk a little bit about Leonard Ravenhill, because you're one of the few men that I've heard that knows his name, and you've sent me and recommended a number of his sermons. I think he was a 20th century preacher, but it seems like a lot of his work. I hear people mention Francis Schaefer and guys like that quite often. But Leonard Ravenhill's name is one that I don't hear very often. So sort of speak about him sometimes.

I don't want to listen to him because I know I'm going to get convicted. I kid you not, every sermon that I've heard from him, he always beats people me up. And that's a good thing. You know, sometimes if you don't want to go to the light, you know, you got to go, you know, go to the light. So he is a. Yeah, 20th century. He died. I. I believe in 94. He died. He was a UK revival preacher, and his big thing was revival holiness. The first 20 years of his life.

I read his biographies about, I want to say, 500 pages. The first 20 years of his life wasn't really known. And he was out in the streets pretty preaching with, you know, a couple other faithful men. They were literally just like circuit riders. They just went around everywhere preaching for years, and they would get big crowds. Like, they would cause traffic. People would, you know, just come and just listen to them. You know, they would see people come to the faith.

You know, they experience, you know, the Holy Spirit, you know, moving, revival, conviction of sins. Because that's what happens when the Holy Spirit shows up. He convicts men of their sins. There's this real brokenness. There's real humbling and humility, this real transformation. So the first 20 years of his life is pretty much just not really well known, but that's a good thing. And yeah, again, his big thing was revival. He was big and huge because of that on prayer.

And he would always say, no man is greater than his prayer life. And he would literally spend hours and hours in prayer. And he would even talk about how there were certain men out there they would, back in their day, equivalent to podcasts, they had their mailing list. I don't know if you remember that. You know, there would be like, well, if you grew up, you know, in the Christian world, in like the 90s or 2000s, there, you know, there'd be mailing lists where you would get on.

It would just be like a, you know, subscribing to a YouTube, right? You know, you get the notifications. They, you know, they would send out their mail to his mailing list and he would talk about how there are men who have these mailing lists. And, you know, it doesn't matter because if I'll, you know, if I follow them around in their life and share their prayer life, it's probably not going to be good.

And I'll let you know how godly a man is, by the way, amount of prayer time that he spends in prayer. And so he lived it. He lived the true Christian life. I think every man should be listening to him. He convicts you of sin and it just makes you realize and puts a focus on we are not who we should be. And we're in a huge, huge problem and we need the true working of God.

And one of the things that he said in one of his sermons that I heard recently, he says he was thinking about writing a book, entitling it Revival God's Word Way. And he said, you know, revival God's Way. Because we tried just about every other way out there. And, you know, it just makes you realize, like, you know, again, he's right. You know, we're trying to do revival our way.

Like one of this, you know, preachers on X says, like, America isn't ready or doesn't have the stomach, you know, for revival. And when I look at him, what he thinks revival is, is he thinks exactly the things that we're talking about. Crusade, vainglor, Christian nationalism being based in Christ. Revival has to come from God. It can only come from God. And we always think revival happens to Johnny down the street, who's an atheist, right?

Not realizing revival happens to Bob the mechanic, who goes to church and has been going to church his whole entire life and finally comes under the conviction of sins, confesses his sin because he's broken over it and has a true transformation. Revival happens in the church. Church. It doesn't happen outside the church. It happens in the church. And that means this is the big part that nobody wants. You have to acknowledge, confess and forsake your sins.

And for people in the church, the religious people, those are usually the most people who are hardened and cold and callous because they just been hearing this the whole life. Jesus loves you. This is the gospel. Yeah, I know it. I don't need to hear it. I know. Pick up your cross. I'm good. Good. When revival comes, all that gets real and all that gets pressed upon you and you feel the weight of it. And then what happens is you get clothed with power from on high. Just like on Pentecost.

You go out and you preach and teach. But it starts with the people of God coming together, praying, waiting for the Holy Spirit, not making a fake fire, because fake fires, you know, are just a bunch of worldly entertainment that's not real. And Ravenhill would always say, is that you can never imitate a fire. So in other words, if God sets a man on fire, you're going to know it. You're not going to mistake it. Get on the day of Pentecost, you couldn't deny that was a moving of God.

Men were convicted of their sins. They saw the power and the working on it. You couldn't buy that, you couldn't imitate that. You couldn't duplicate that. It comes only from God. And we have to be desperate for God. That's our only hope. And once you have it, it, like if you're full of the Holy Spirit. Why in the world would I want all this cheap, stupid entertainment? It's. It's so vain. It's so empty. It really is the best thing to be filled with God, the Holy Spirit. You cannot.

I never experienced, you know, something better. Like. Like there is nothing greater out there than being filled with the Holy Spirit. Like, I. I always. I wish I could just experience it all, all the time. And sometimes, you know, when you do experience it, you know, you feel like I just want to die or just explode because it's too great sometimes. But it is that good. And that's what we have to pursue. And once you get a taste for it, hopefully we realize, man, that's the real deal.

This is why I should be pursuing God. This is why I should not be pursuing that. That's a waste of time. This is what I want. I want true Holy Ghost fire, not hellfire. People will say, we need hellfire preachers. Really what you need is heaven. Fire preachers. It's the fire from heaven, you know, it's a fire from God, the Holy Spirit, not hell. Because that's the true anointing that we need. That's the doctrine. Amen to all that, by the way. That's the doctrine of regeneration.

Like, you can actually be regenerated in Christ and be interned from sin and live a godly and righteous and sober life. You can actually do that and then you have true peace. That doesn't mean that you have an easy free, easygoing kind of life, but it means you have true peace with God. God. And that's what true revival looks like, I think, if you ask me, as opposed to, you know, we need to impose social, political, and moral values on a wayward country by force, from the top down.

That's not revival. My church prays every week. You know, Paul's prayer that I am the chief of sinners. And when men get to the point where it's like, yeah, no, I think I'm pretty good. I'm pretty free of sin. Sin, that's when you can reliably say no. That's when you're. That's when you're the most in sin. Because I guarantee you that you are not keeping the first commandment in view all the time, which is, are you doing everything that you're doing to the glory of God?

Because if you really are reflecting all of your thoughts, words, and actions in his glory, you're seeing yourself reflect in that light, you'll realize I'm a man of unclean lips. And then it's so profoundly, it's humbling. It can be humiliating. If we reject the call to humility, we get humiliation. And then we're brought down to our knees. But then God lifts us up to stand again and we serve Him.

And men are just short circuiting that entire process to think that, like, yeah, no, like, I read some verses that say I can go do this. Like, I can go hate people. And so, yeah, I'm good. Like, no, man, you just completely missed the entire point of everything. Well done, by the way. And then if you mention you got to forgive, you know, your enemies. Oh, you're just being a biblical natural law. You got to just read the book. You won't debate this guy. Go be Catholic.

Serious, just go be Catholic. If you want to do the natural law thing, have fun with that. You know, that's a whole separate conversation. But, yeah, I think many of them will be Catholic. I fully agree. I fully agree. And that. And that's why I'm kind of surprised. Do you want to take. Do you want to take a moment to go chat? No, no, I'm good. It's okay. Lon, I'll be out the in bet. Family life and. Babe, this is too important. I'm doing a podcast.

Babe, are you podcasting again about those Twitter Anons. Exactly. Exactly. No, that's why I'm actually just maybe not to divert the conversation too far. I'm actually quite surprised that The Catholic Church didn't appoint a conservative Pope because I think if the church had appointed a truly, genuinely conservative Pope, I think we would have seen a lot of reform guys just swim the Tiber. But that didn't happen. So I don't know, we get stuck with them maybe. I don't know.

I was expecting that actually. I was thinking that we were going to get a, you know, a base Catholic and then, man, you would have seen some, you, you definitely would have seen some conversions. But, you know, I guess they just wanted to go middle of the road again. Moderate guy, you know, just a typical. Was it Francis was a lot. Was the last Pope. I, I, I honestly don't pay too much attention to right, you know, the popes myself, but I was shocked and you know, American Pope too.

I, I was wondering what their, the reasoning for that is, but who knows? I don't, I, I honestly, honestly have no idea. But I think it's going to continue the slower leftward slide of the, of the Catholic Church for sure. And I think what's, so what's sad about it is that like, you have to either go along or risk excommunication. And if you believe that your salvation is tied to belonging to a formal, you know, ecclesiastical organization, they kick you out of your church, your dance damned.

It's like they have that power over your soul. It's an incredible, it's an incredible place to be and not in a good way. It's hard too to be Roman Catholic, because if I were to convert, you can't just accept one thing. You have to accept everything. That's right. And the big issue is, well, what does that mean? I honestly want to ask even these Eastern Orthodox guys, it's funny how we're talking about this now, but I want to ask these Eastern Orthodox guys, it's okay.

It's like when they convert to Eastern Orthodox, like after becoming or after being a Protestant, do they view themselves as if they weren't saved all those years that they were earnestly following and believing in Christ? I wonder how that works out in their minds. Or do they try to make a nuance where it's like, well, there was a fullness of the faith and I wasn't really. I was a part of the body in some mystical way, but not really. And now I really am experiencing that.

That, because that's the hard reality. Where you look at these churches, they both have dogmatized each other. I know the problem is if you say I'm infallible and I'm Going to dogmatize an anathema on you. Both of you guys are forever locked unless you admit I don't have that infallible authority. And then the whole thing just crumbles. And so it's like if they said, okay, Eastern Orthodox, says the Roman Catholic Church, you're anathematized, vice vice versa. You're now eternally locked in.

You know, you're not the one true church until you come and join us. And it's like, you know, do you really want to be a part of that? I. I don't see the. I mean, I guess I do see the appeal sometimes, but then when you think about it, it's like lying down on that pillow, that's hard. That's a hard bed to. To, you know, make, you know, your home in. Yeah, it. It seems to me that the way that these churches. This is just what I observ.

The way that these churches frame regeneration is, you know, that you're regenerated by how happy you are doing our sacramental system. That's Roman Catholicism. If you faithfully and enthusiastically perform the sacraments, congratulations. That is your regeneration. And the same seems to be true for Eastern Orthodox that the more you can engage in our rigorous disciplines, you know, that that is your regeneration.

So I would imagine that a Protestant who, who joins one of those churches, like, yeah, I had faith, but I wasn't being sanctified because I wasn't doing all of these sacraments that were determined by traditions of men. And, you know, I just. I don't see freedom in Christ coming from any of that. That's not to say someone can't be saved in those churches. Obviously they can, but these, These systems don't save. And because I haven't seen it. I haven't. I haven't seen it. And it's. It's very sad.

And, and I think a lot of people are rightfully disappointed with, With Protestantism, American Evangelicalism for the past hundred years, like, I don. Say that there aren't valid criticisms there. But leaping into a sacramental system isn't actually what you're looking for. You're not looking for pomp and circumstance and pageantry and beards and incense. Like, that's not actually going to do it. I know it feels holy, but your feelings are not in themselves sources of authority.

God's word is the authority. It's less. And isn't it less obvious? That's such a good point. It feels holy, but your feelings aren't validated or the standard for truth is Less. It's not obvious sometimes that men are also falling for the trap of sensationalism and emotionalism. Because I was even thinking about this this week. What's the fruit of many of these guys who either go Rome or go Eastern Orthodox?

The fruit of their conversion is let me create a Twitter account and argue all day long and anathematize everybody. That's the fruit of them joining this church rather than, as the scripture says, the fruit of the spirit. And it's fruit. So it's not just fruit, it's fruit, singular. So Paul is saying this is what the fruit is. It's all of this. Not one love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.

Rather than let me create a non Twitter account, go EO bro, and just argue again. Argue all day long and anathematize and watch Jay Dyer, you know, YouTube and get in the chat that, you know, if some, something's wrong, if that, that's what convert your conversion meant. Rather than I'm going to love Christ and demonstrate the fruits of the spirit, love the church again, people can mock that, but this is just biblical Christianity. And what is the fruit?

You know, you're going to know them by their fruit. Some people do earnestly, you know, convert to EO and Rome and you know, I believe a lot of them are Christians, but a lot of them online, I don't know, dude, like, I, I worry about them. If this is what your Eastern Orthodoxy has led to, this is your fruit. And this is what I'm seeing. And I just don't see how this is like, why should I join EO so I can be in your click and get in on the hate? It's like, you know, what's the point of that?

This, it's just, you know, it's just another form of the manosphere world really, you know, seeping into that is this. Men trying to find a purpose themselves. They get really excited about something and this becomes their whole world. And it's just, it's just vanity. And I think a lot of those EO converts and, and the conference to Rome, I think maybe after five, 10 years, even in the Christian nationalist world, I think they're going to look back and realize, yeah, I was a cage stager.

Yeah, you know, I was a little hot headed, I needed to cool down, you know, I shouldn't have went so hard. And hopefully, you know, it's, that's the consistent fruit, you know, from there on out. But it's definitely not the Holy Spirit moving in those men Right there. Because we know what the Holy Spirit, what it looks like from the Scriptures. Again, there's conviction of sin. There is a genuine humbleness and brokenness over yourself person.

There's a burden for the Lord and there's the fruits of the Spirit. And that's how we know who is and has experienced that new inner, transformational working of God that only comes through the Gospel. It's not that guy on Twitter arguing all day because he just recently converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. Yeah, when I started my podcast in 2020 in the manosphere, I had already been baptized.

And then, so not too long after that, maybe within a year or two, two, a lot of other men started discovering Christianity as well. And they all went Eastern Orthodox, almost all of them. And then a whole. Yeah, oh yeah, a whole bunch of other ones went Roman Catholic late. At first they were Protestant and then they went Roman Catholic. And I was the only guy to my knowledge, who has main. Who has remained a Protestant.

So of, of this initial small group of guys on Instagram in the manosphere since then. And the, the, the thing that breaks my heart is that since sanctification started kicking in for me, but when I first recognized it for what it was after a couple years, the transformation in my life and my everyday feelings of peace with God, you know, obviously it's not something that I can take for granted and don't, but has, has just radically transformed the way that I see the world.

And the men that I know who have been Eastern Orthodox, I've not seen a similar change in them. And it grieves me very deeply. And I had heard, I went looking into Eastern Orthodoxy to try and understand the doctrine.

And I listened to a sermon or a lecture about it or something like that, and the person who was delivering lecture said, like, look, this is a common thing that men get into Eastern Orthodoxy and they think it's like they answered all their problems and they find after a few years that the guild falls off the lily and they see there are more divisions in there. It's not the one true unified church. And the scales fall off of your eyes and you see what's really going on, on.

And there's a giant disillusionment process that happens. And you know, that's, you know, I don't wish that for my friends. However, like, it makes a lot of sense that, you know, it's like, okay, so now I've committed to this lifelong ritualistic practice of quote unquote spiritual disciplines, but it's not producing the fruit of the spirit. In my life, it's not producing the peace that passes understanding. I don't have that peace with God. God. It's like, well, you can actually have that.

And biblical Christianity promises it. And just because your parents got it wrong, just to come back to the whole parents issue, just because your parents got Protestantism wrong or were part of some non denominational dispensationalist church or whatever, does not say anything about the biblical faith as a whole. And you can actually find peace with God through biblical Christianity and by finding a faithful church. Church.

But you know, you might, you might have to realize like, hey, this isn't what I thought it is. And there are so many, there are so many traps for young men today in so many different ways. I don't doubt that there are many people that have had incredible experiences in Eastern Orthodoxy and they're being sanctified. Maybe the Holy Spirit's come upon them. Same with Rome. Like, you know, there are saved people in those churches.

But that doesn't automatically mean that joining that church is going to save you in the way, the ways that we're talking about. And young men are lost and wandering and aimless like you and I talked about earlier, earlier in our lives. And you know, we both profoundly blessed to have found God in His Word first and what a gift that is from Him. It's a gift from Him. I mean, maybe we disagree with, disagree on that to some extent actually. No, no, it's a gift. Yeah, definitely a gift.

Yeah. So, so, and, and I just, I want to encourage men to think more deeply about some of the issues that we're talking about because you and I both were wayward men in, in various ways. And now we're very blessed to meet at this moment in our lives where you're married, you've got a child. I'm about to get, I'm engaged, I'm getting married soon. And it's like that's a gift from God to live that way. And those are fruits of the spirit. Those are fruits of obedience.

They're not the point of the thing. And so just to be, I want to be in the midst are talking about many problems with the faith right now, of which there are many. Like, there is always hope in his word. There is always hope in His Word. And that's the true thing that I think is so important for men to give get.

So we just went evangelizing on Saturday with, with a couple of my Christian brothers and I met a Jehovah's Witness and, and couple Catholics and What's interesting is when I was reminded that there is a big, you know, speaking of Roman Catholicism, there is a big problem with a lot of these very high church, liturgical, apostolic, quote unquote, they don't preach the gospel. Because when I asked the Jehovah's Witness what is the gospel, he couldn't tell me.

And then when I asked the Catholic, who is a Roman Catholic and goes to a Catholic Church, they also couldn't answer the question. And it just reminds me of a lot of these people. Some of them are saved, I don't know how many. I don't doubt it.

But I also know that there is a big problem in these high churches where the gospel, it is not preached and people don't know it because especially with Eastern Orthodoxy when it's very mystical and a lot of those things are, are very beautiful, as we talked about, but how much of it is communicating and teaching the word of God where they can understand what it means to have that, you know, that, that true faith and assurance of salvation in the preaching of the word.

Like Martin Luther was saved by the reading of the word when he understood it. John Wesley actually heard Martin Luther's commentary being read on Romans and that's where he had his, his Alders Gate experience, that, that, that where his heart was strangely warm and he felt like that he did trust in Christ alone for his salvation.

Where a lot of these churches, you know, you go get the sacrament, you know, you do the prayers, you say, you know the words back, you participate, there is beauty all around you. But when you ask them, what's the gospel? I don't know it. I mean that's a huge, huge, you know, major problem. And it shows, shows us and reminds me that, you know, the Reformation was needed, it was a good thing because it was.

And you know what's funny too is, and this is what these Christian nationalist bros don't realize. And by the way, I'm not saying all Christian nationalists are like this because a lot of them aren't. But I mean like the dissident right people, when you look at Martin Luther, he was not arguing his white Anglo Saxon race. He was not arguing Christian nationalism. It was about the Gospel. What is the gospel and what's our authority? And is it in the Scriptures or is it in men?

And that's what he was pushing. And it was again a gospel issue, to use that term as the Gospel Coalition likes to say it all the time. Well, they're obviously saying it in a wrong way because they're attaching it to leftist ideas. But Martin Luther was saying no justification by faith alone is where the church stands or falls. That's what it was, that's where it needs to be.

And again, if we substitute these other things going back full swing circle, all these things can really just be reduced down to it. It's like surprise, the Bible really is telling you the truth that men need the gospel and that's the only of salvation. You can all just boil all this down. It always just circles back to this true Christianity, the scriptures, it always just falls down to is the word of God true or is the word of men true? And it depends on what we put our faith in.

We're either going to be damned or we're going to be saved. And that's the difference. Well if the word of God is true, which it is, but if it is, we should expect to see, see blessings for faithfulness in the covenant. Right? So the word of men says that men should be their own authorities, men should assert their own power and take the things that they want by force. Right. But you should grow in power. This is kind of the Nietzschean model, this is just the human model.

Nietzsche is just a philosopher who put words to what humanity had been doing for thousands of years. But you can rise in your physical or financial power, power and just take what you want and then congratulations, you've got, you got a wife and you got kids and you got a house and a car and you know, whatever, millions of dollars and like, haha, look how righteous I am. Right? But it's all built on a rotting, it's all built on a rotting foundation.

Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. But if instead, you know, and, and that's the preaching of the manosphere is you should grow in power and take the things you want, whether it be, you know, just go take it. Right? You can just do things. I believe is what people are saying now, right? You can actually just do things. Yeah, and that's true.

You just do things and you don't need the approval of everybody to do it, but you have to be checking your heart when you're doing the thing. Or you can repent for sin and you can trust God as the author of all victories and you be obedient to him and you pray and you stay in the scriptures and you make sure to keep your own passions in check and you live that out daily. It's long slow discipline. You live that out daily and you watch the blessings come to you.

When God, when God gives riches, he adds no sorrow with it. Something like that I believe, is the verse. And do we actually believe that? Or is it like, nope, I just got to take this. I just got to take this for myself. Even though the Psalms say, you know, victory is not with force of arms and horses, it's with the Lord. You know, like, that's where it comes from. It comes from him, and there's no sorrow in that victory.

But men are so longing and anxious, you know, for this earthly victory that they're just going to go take it and we'll sort it out later. There's no time for the gospel. We have to save the West. It's like, yeah, dude, that's so true. What. What a shame, right? Yeah. No, it, that is a hundred percent so accurate, where it's like, you want to just preach the gospel, bro, and just, you know, spend time in prayer. Like, it's so funny how they mock you, but they can't see it. That's right.

It's, it's, you know, like, I remember I was talking to my friend that I lost in this, and I was quoting the scripture. Scripture, and, and he just had this mockery and like, this, like, you got to be kidding me. Like, you're quoting to me the scriptures. Like, you know, like, I like natural law and stuff like this. This is about politics. It's about winning. It's like, I, I, I look at that and I just see apostasy is what it is. Like, that's what happened.

Like, this is what it looks like when men just forsake God's word. They scoff and they mock you. Yes. I've. I've seen it in my own life. Life. Several times. Like, not just once with close friend. Not just with close friends, though. That has also happened. And it's been a great grief to me. I've lost the friends who are maybe not close friends. And I've just watched so many men walk down this path over the past couple years, and it's, it's accelerating. It's frightening to watch.

It's like, I thought we were gonna. I thought we were gonna do life together, right, with our families and stuff. But, like, where. I'm not gonna follow you that way. I can't follow you that way. Way. And then I'm the bad guy. And it's like, I don't under. I don't understand it. It's so seductive. And it blinds men's eyes and sears their consciences, and we're seeing it all around us, and when you try and point out the very obvious thing that this is happening. Oh, you're making that up.

Or you're some liberal or something like that. Examples of that. Yeah, that doesn't exist. Then the bullying and the shaming comes out, you know, and it's like, okay, like, you want to, I mean, call that Christian, I guess, but you can just flip your way through the, the, through the New Testament and see that, like, that's not the overall character of how Christians conduct themselves.

There's no, there's no call, like, I love your bit about, like, well, if Paul were, If Paul were really saying this, we would see it. And that's not what we see at all. Even in, you know, even in his epistles, he's not like, watch me kick down the door and tell you what's. What. It's like, no, I came to you with, like, lack of skillful words and was not a physically imposing presence, but he spoke with authority and his words resonate. Resonate.

And men were called to attention and souls were saved. And, you know, that didn't mean they overthrew the Roman Empire, you know, through force of arms. Certainly that was a victory that belongs to God in many ways. And the gospel spread from there, but it wasn't through their own. Through their own strength. In fact, it was through their own death. Christianity spreads by martyrdom. Do we remember that? Do we believe that? Yeah. Well, what's that quote? Martyr.

The blood of martyrs is a seed of the church. Who said that? Was it Augustine? Maybe somebody said it. Great quote. But, yeah, they don't realize that. It's like, look at the apostles. All of them died pretty much like horrible deaths. I'm pretty sure I'm being faithful to that. Paul definitely lost his head. Peter crucified upside down. Jesus. Jesus was a martyr. That's right. Jesus was the first martyr. Right. And, you know, we don't. Look, Stephen. Stephen, Yep, he was getting stoned.

But again, you know, people nowadays on the dissident, right, they're preaching the gospel of vain glory, you know, we're going to win down here. And you know what's funny is there is truth to that. Like, in Christ, you win, but I'm going to win regardless if they chop my head off or not. Like, Paul wasn't a loser when Rome chopped his head off. And he didn't get Christian nationalism in his lifetime. But again, that's his. Oh, you're just a loser. You're just a defeatist.

You're just loser theology. Yeah, Loser. Yeah. Remember that not so much anymore. It used to be more of a push for before post male. Now it's just Christian nationalism. Now it's just nationalism. It's not even Christian nationalism. It's just nationalism. Now some of them are even saying we don't even need the Christian in front of the nationalism, which is bollocks. But. Right. Yeah, it is a very difficult call. I was saying this to Mick Olson on my podcast with him.

There's a supernatural level of difficulty to living the Christian life, which is why only one guy did it perfectly, and that would be Jesus. One person of the Trinity. He pulled it off. That's. You know, But. But the rest of us, we're always going to fall short. And we're called to always be skeptical of our motivations and our intentions and to constantly be comparing them to God's word. And, yeah, of course, that will lead to a necessary amount of uncertainty in ourselves.

And it's much more, you know, sexy or masculine to be confident out there in the marketplace. Like, well, guess what? We're not called to be that. We're called to be salt and light. We're called to be. Be, like, more. Almost more human than. I don't want to use this phrase, actually, because it's from Blade Runner. So I was going to say more human than human, but that's not a right way of putting it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because they're talking about androids and stuff like that. So I don't want to.

I don't want to borrow that. But the idea is, like, we're called to a level of being that we can't achieve on our own, but certainly the Nietzschean ideal, yeah, you could achieve that in your own strength. Demons can help you do it for sure, but the Holy Spirit can help you achieve a level of holiness, us, that truly inspires the world and that truly leads to real revival and repentance, because guys are throwing that out in favor of political power and authority, and it's a tragedy to see.

In fact, just this past weekend, I spoke to a good friend and a mentor, an older man, and he himself is not a believer. And he was saying, like, look, Christians have a chance to really make a difference in America right now, and you guys are screwing it up. What's going on? Like, well, sorry to say that, you know, X, Y, and Z. And so it's just. People could see it. It's like. But I. That's probably the.

And. And it's ironic, too, because, you know, you know, these guys will say, like, you Know, they're tough and strong, but they're so afraid to get called out on, again, Twitter and. And X and get ratioed. Yeah, it's like, you know, they, you know, they can't be upfront with what they actually say and believe and, you know, talk about irony.

It's like you, you know, you're supposed to be the strong and masculine one, but you can't even endure getting ratioed by some, you know, like, who knows if these guys are even real? A lot of them, like, I think a lot of them are bots. I agree. Or multiple. Or one guy running multiple accounts, honestly. Yeah, you know, there's definitely a group chat out there where they coordinate their strikes. You know, we definitely know that. And yeah, that's a good point.

Maybe there's multiple accounts and all this, you know, teaming up on you, and it's like, that's what I'm afraid of. And I said this before, actually, on Carrie Smith's show. I was like, you know, say you do get ratioed. You know what happens? You put down your phone, you go back to your family and your church. Like, who cares? Like, this is the real world world. It's not something on Twitter that the people in my life don't even know what that means.

And if they heard that, they would just be like, whatever, that's stupid. They don't even care. Nobody cares about it. Men are just so afraid of that because really, it seems to be mostly the smaller guys, not the bigger names, that are really speaking out against this. And I think it's because the bigger guys, they know it will cost them. And a lot of people, when the Bible says count the costs, a lot of men, they don't really want to count that cost.

They don't want to ensure losing people because they will lose their followers. And they're just too afraid. And so they revert to nuance. Like, it's so. It's so hard to just get a straight answer out of these guys. Listen to my three hour podcast. Read this book. It's like, bro, what are you saying? Just give me a straight answer. Like, this is not complicated. This is Twitter, sir. Yeah, tweet to me right now in a couple sentences and words. What you actually believe.

Do you believe that this is evil? That what we're seeing, that just blaming everything on Jews and Hitler was right? Is this evil? Yes or no? You don't have to dance around it. I don't have to listen to your three hour podcast to understand the complexities behind this statement. Just Tell me. And they won't do it because is that a little bit amount of words that is going to lose them, their clout and followers and get ostracized by these men? You know what that is? That's a weak man.

That's what that is. That person who won't give you a straight answer. That's weakness. That's the man who's not being strong. And that's, that's the difference between the real men and just the fake men. The fake men is the guy who shows you, oh, look at me, I'm an alpha male. That's right. But the real man is the guy who doesn't have to show it. And that's a classic, that's a timeless rule that everybody just knows the loudest guy in the room is not the strongest guy.

That's the man who has insecurities. It's the man who's quiet who doesn't need to show and display his strength. Yes, I talk about gravitas versus bravado. Bravado is something you can put on a credit card, you can buy a flashy car, you can buy a bunch of followers too. And you can make yourself seem like a big deal with flashy sunglasses and stuff. That's bravado. But gravitas is the sort of man that orients men towards him without, without saying a whole bunch of words.

Like they just kind of naturally feel the man has weight and substance and gravity to him. But bravado is, it's so flashy and it catches so much attention in our hypermediated age. And gravitas takes time to develop. We talked about, you know, men come into themselves starting at around age 35. Gravitas starts to develop after that point. Like you've never met like a 30 year old guy with gravitas. Like, and that's not an ins to 30 year old guys. You've met a guy that has the seeds of that.

But men who have gravitas are in their 40s and they're in their 50s or sometimes they're like when you meet a man who's in his 70s or his 80s and has gravitas, it's like you're just quiet because like this guy, like I don't know what this guy has, but he has real weight and substance to him because he's lived his life in this way and you can't fake that.

And that's why we have online we have so many seductive fakers because you have men who grew up when they were boys Their fathers didn't have gravitational. And there are many reasons for that, right? And so the first thing they see that looks like gravitas is bravado. It's like, oh, that's. That. That's what I was looking for. And then they get sucked into this fake world and they don't want the veil to get ripped off. And you see who these guys really are behind the scenes.

And that was the manosphere. Like, I can't. I don't know how much louder I can bang this drum, that this entire world of the manosphere is full of grand guys with bravado. And then Andrew Tate blows up, and then the veil got ripped off of all of them. And one by one, they all just popped because they never had it to begin with and they were faking it.

And we're seeing that again in the Christian sphere with Christian language and just calling it out, just calling it out and say, we as Christian men have a standard that we're accountable to and we can do better. We're calling, called by God to do better, not to take back America, right? But our own relationship with God, who gives us eternal life. And that's the real, the meat of the thing. I like First Timothy 2, where Paul says to pray for all men.

And he goes in kings and those who are in authority. And he says, the purpose of that is that so we may live a quiet and peaceful life and think about that phrase, a quiet life. That's the kind of life that's God. You know, it doesn't have to be loud. People don't have to know my name. I don't have to be famous. I don't have to have a big following clout. And when you realize that that gives you peace.

Like, I don't always need to be banging my drum online or trying to get people to, you know, to notice me and building, you know, get a name for myself. I can be a man who's praying for all men, praying for their salvation, for revival, and being a man who's having a quiet life in all godliness and sincerity. This is, you know, one Timothy too. That's, you know, that's. That's really beautiful, you know, and that's happiness.

Like true or true peace, I should say, you know, it's a better word, you know, happiness too, because happiness is. Is an emotion that can be directed towards God. You can be happy in the Lord, have joy in the Lord, you know, rather than just trying to, you know, like, you look at these guys online, they got big followings but it's like, are they really like how satisfied are they? Because it gets to you.

Like when you're just arguing with people all day on online, that, that does put a bitterness in you. Like you can be again like this, you know, new a newly recent EO convert and you're just battling with Protestants all day. You're thinking about it, you're consumed about it, you're talking about it. You like, you know, let's be real. There's some kind of bitterness that, you know, that's in you. You have to take a break from that and just, you know, be quiet. It's okay.

You don't need to respond to everything. You don't need to be invested in everything. Try being kind to somebody. Try, try loving somebody and serving somebody. Somebody. And that's, and that's a good thing, that's not a bad thing, that's not a weak thing. I appreciate you saying that because, you know, I, I see myself reflected in that there are times when, you know, when I've posted things and gotten a lot of blowback from them and maybe, maybe even I was wrong in posting them.

And so I've learned since then to be quite a bit more disciplined with how I use my ex account simply because I don't want to be glued to my phone and distracted all day by the thing that I said. Like back in, I think of back during the Christmas holiday, there was that whole thing with Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk talking about like, you know, that whole thing. So Vivek. Yeah, right.

Okay, so, so Vivek wrote this thing and I wrote a long post in response, but there I am up in Moscow visiting my, my now fiance and her family and I've got this thing on my phone and it's maybe the day after Christmas. I think it's the day after Christmas this all went down and I'm like, if I post this right now, I know I'm going to be distracted about it all day and I'm not going to be present with my fiance, with my now fiance and my, and her family, which is what I'm supposed to be be doing.

Delete. Put my phone away. Go back about my life. Yeah, dude, that's awesome. Yeah, it was a huge thing and that thing became a multi day disaster. And it's like, no, I just want to enjoy the simple like the people that I'm around right now, they don't know about this. They're probably never going to hear about it. They're not going to care. And I'm supposed to be here right now in this moment.

And that was a very special moment for me, just for that reason, because life has lived with the people around you versus through the screen that you don't even know. These people you're talking with online, are they people? Are they AI? Is it someone pretending to be someone they're not? Like, for example, tragically, Josh Bice, you don't know.

But the people around you, they need your time and they need your attention, and they need your best, most sanctified self, particularly if you're a man. And so I think another big tragedy of all this is how much time we end up spending in this world, that there's a reality to it. It's not completely empty. But I think once on Judgment Day, once we see how little reality was actually in it, I think we'll be shocked and saddened and grateful in a sense. Well, you know, think about it.

So these guys are online. And, you know, even myself, too, I'm trying to dial back from everything that I do online, too. Yeah, you got people to shepherd. Yeah, you do. But even if you think about what it means to be a man, another quality in addition to responsibility, respecting your father, I think, is you are working. And so that means is you're not this guy online, who's this arguing with people on social media, on Twitter.

Because imagine if we saw Andrew Tate arguing with somebody holding a phone. He'd be on the couch, just tweeting away, spending hours and hours about going back and forth with certain people. Is that what it means to be a man? Like, we should start to view it. I think we need to really view a lot of this. Like, the guy who plays video games, he's just wasting his time. He should be out there working. And again, it's okay to play video games.

But the idea is that the man is just wasting all of his time and energy just inside, cooped up alone, where he should be out there working, which is what men do. Men build. Because we can't just tear down. We can tear down, but we also have to build, build. There has to be something that can last for our families. And what that means is it's not the man who's online arguing all day, not being present with his family.

Because to your point, yeah, you could post that, it could go viral, and then you would just be distracted all day long when you could otherwise just be putting that away and spending time with your friends and family. That's right. That's better. That's more manly. And it takes true masculinity to realize, okay, here's the clout over you here. I can be really loud, get a lot of attention, but it's okay. I don't need to do those things.

I can be the quiet alpha male who's with his family, loving, providing, and protecting, as I should be as a man taking responsibility. That's more masculine. And I really do think we need to start looking at it that way, especially pastors, too. Pastors should be primarily invested in their church, because I think of some pastors who are out there, like, just podcasting three times a week, and I'm like, there is no way you're being a faithful pastor master.

Yeah, maybe there's some way, you know, that they're doing it, and I just don't know about it. And I'm just a young buck. I'm highly suspicious about all this time they're spending online when they should be doing other things with the people, the community surrounding in front of them. Oh, I can relate to that, absolutely. Like, I've got a lot of things that I enjoy writing and creating my own content and, you know, mentoring men as well.

And, and I jump on a lot of podcasts with people, and I enjoy these conversations, but conversations like this take a lot out of me. And so just over the past week alone, I've turned down, like, a number, like, five or so different invitations to appear on people's shows because I want to put my best self into it, but I got other stuff that I got to build, especially with a wife and a family inbound.

And so, of course, yeah, a man can get to a point where he has excess bandwidth that he can put into the online fight, and I have no problem with that. I'm not saying we all need to throw our phones out in the ocean. We should throw our phones in the ocean. But, but, but at the same time, you know, I, I, I really. And I'm very convicted by the idea, like, oh, my gosh. Like, I should really think about this as, like, an unjust use of video games.

I don't have a problem with video games either, or watching Netflix or whatever. I don't do either of those things, but that's fine. But, like, you know, is this really the best. Is really this really the best use of my time in this moment? Is this the main thing I need to be working on? And I just. He probably won't hear this, but I want to give a shout out to shout out to my buddy Nate Spearing and Nathan Spearing had a podcast, Life on Target podcast.

Great influencer, former U.S. army Special for U.S. army Ranger Special Forces. Elite level soldier. Right? So he's a. He's a. He's the kind of guy that, like, he did all the stuff. He did all the things, all the things that a lot of guys talk about. He did them. He could be a very successful influencer right now if he wanted to. But instead he's building his business, which is general contracting and building a home for his family. He ain't got a lot of time for content.

He'll post a reel or occasionally on. On Instagram where it's like, this is my. These are me and my kids literally building our family home, you know, and it's like, praise God for doing that, because that will last down through the generations versus look, I'm grateful for podcasts and Twitter. I don't mean to say that, you know, these things are meaningless, but there's something very like, like ephemeral about that.

You're not building a legacy of, of podcasts, of digital, of digital contents. And I have to remember digital content. I have to remind myself of that, that there are things that I want to build of more subs. Substance. And very rarely does creating content specifically on social media, particularly about everyday trends like this is what everyone's talking about today. Very rarely does that make any meaningful contribution for the long term.

But again, it's the other thing that men can get so wrapped up in. Like, I'm part of this fight. It's like, but when you turn it off, do you see that fight around you anywhere? No. Yeah. Well, you know what? James. James White said that, you know, things online with trends happen so fast, where the moment you even try to respond to some, you know, something, people would just be like, dude, that's so old, you know? You know, you know, like, what are you talking about?

When really it was just two weeks ago. That's how fast trends happened. And then you get, you know, stuck in that trap of, you know, the trend train where people are always trying to jump on the latest, you know, controversy so you can get those clicks and likes where the moment it happens, you got to jump on it fast. And sometimes it's, you know, get again. It's freeing to not care about that and just do it at your own leisure.

And just to realize, again, the people in front of me, that quiet life, like one Timothy in all godliness, that's a better life than being stuck on that controversy trend train where I just Got to jump on the latest thing. And the reality is people get over it so fast. For one week they're talking about this controversy. Next week it's talking about this controversy. One week it's Churchill is the main villain. Next week it's like, Shiloh Hendricks. Yeah, yeah.

Or my wife has to wear a red dress for 30 days in a row. Then we try to respond to that. It's like, bro, what are you talking about? You know, we got to talk about my. Right. White Anglo Saxon race. Yeah, yeah. It's always something. And it'll all be gone. It'll all. It'll all be gone in a matter of years. I don't think we're still going to be talking about these topics in a couple years. But you know what? We'll remain as your family.

What remain is it any businesses you've built will remain as your physical health. All these things will remain. But, you know, these digital products that we create, meaning conversations and tweets and stuff, they don't have the substance that I think we imagine that they do. But everything's so mediated online now. They feel substantial, but in a very real sense, like they're not. What do you think is going to happen in the future with where we're going? Because we're definitely woke.

Leftism is definitely dying. Dying. It's still here in power, but there's definitely been a shift with this last election. We can definitely see that. What do you think is going to happen with the church? What do you think is the next battle? I said nominal Christianity and fascism, but I'm just curious of what you predict. I think you're right about the fascism part, particularly. I think this phenomenon. Dissident. Right, New Christian, right, woke. Right.

Whatever term you want to use this week. I think that there's reality to that. I think it's. What we see online is very much the tip of the iceberg. And I think that has been building for decades. I don't think it's new. I think it's something that was in the underground of the Internet for many years and now it's burst up through Elon X and has its own particular front in the Reformed world. It's happening everywhere. But the reformed world is dealing with a particular manifestation of it.

And I think it's real. And I think on some deep level, it's coordinated. And I think it's a push. I think that we'll call it a machine is going to continue pushing. Right. And it's concealing itself as a response to Leftism, but that's not really what it is. It's going to try and push right and to swing the pendulum the other way. And then there's one of two choices.

It's either going to succeed and we're going to end up in this sort of fascist top down dictatorship, or it's going to fail and generate this massive swing back to the left. And so that's, you know, if it's allowed to continue pushing forward, if it isn't stopped by men holding the line and pointing to it and identifying it over and over and over again and dragging it into the light, it'll continue. The tricky part is that Trump is not a fascist. Trump is not a right wing extremist.

He never has been. So the question is, once it rises to the awareness of the Trump administration, how do they handle it? Do they go with it? Do they push back on it and deal with the consequences? That's the part that I'm really unsure about. But long before it gets there, courageous men need to stand up in the public square and point at it and, and say, that's wrong, that is evil, that is Antichrist. And I'm not going to say otherwise.

And you can bully and you can shame me and you can call me names all you want, and yet I see you and I think that's what's going to be required to slow it down. Just imagine if it does go, a repeat of 1930 Germany. Like, because if you, you know, as you and I have studied and talked about this and I love studying World War II. Yeah, it was, it's so interesting because those first couple years they, you, you can see this, the exact same mentality with, we're going to win, bro, we're winning.

They were so excited. They genuinely felt like this was the beginning of a thousand year Reich. We won. Yeah. Like the kingdom of God is here now. Our guys in power. And then fast forward, just utter destruction and that. And that's the vanity of, of investing all in this life. Those, like, there's no difference between the dissident Reich and those guys now. It's just the same mentality. We're going to win down here, guys. This is it. Let's get the power.

Let's wield it for our own good and create our own utopia. Bring in the kingdom of God. And the end of that was 12 years. And their country literally got destroyed. In an absolute real sense, destroyed, annihilated. And that's, that's the, you know, that's the end goal of trying to do your own thing and build. Build, you know, your kingdom. Even if you think you're righteous because, you know, we forget the villain in stories. It's not like I'm evil, guys. I just want to do this.

It's always, I have a justification. That's how. How every. Pretty much every villain is depicted. He always has his own version and justification. Even Satan's version. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds reasonable. To wipe out half of the universe, right? Yep. Yeah. Ra's al Ghul, you know, we're doing this in the name of justice. We're going to destroy Gotham City because, you know, it's too decadent and we just gotta, you know, hit the reset button. This is a good thing.

This is what, you know, we have to have the stone to do this. And, you know, we've heard talk like, you got to have the will. I forget the terminology they use, but you have to have the will to crush your opponent completely. Or something like that. Something like that, yeah. Yeah. It's just, you know, just. Just horrible stuff, but, you know, that's what it is. And now look at it. You know, they're gone and that. And, you know, life's a vapor.

What I think would be profoundly ironic and perhaps even possible is you have this, you know, young rising tide of angry white, quote, unquote, Christian, Christian men who really are going apostate fast and slow. Some are on the faster road and. And they've. They've seared their consciences and they're already there. Some are shaving off bits of it to fit in with their bros or to be part of the in thing, whatever reason. But wouldn't it be.

It be ironic if all of these men are just carved out of the trees? And then there's a massive revival amongst immigrants in the United States. You know, you see this big swing that all these. In all these Indian, as in from India, and this massive revival of all of. All of people of various shades of brown from around the world inside America, all make these giant profession of face or like China becomes Christian or something like that.

It's like, yeah, we didn't actually need the white guys to spread the gospel. Like, God's got this covered, dudes. I don't know that I want to pray for that scenario specifically, but, you know, the gospel is going to spread one way or another, and it's not tied to a skin color. Well, that's what's happening in Africa. They're doing far better than us, right? Us white people over here, we're Woke. That's what it is. Our ladies are purple hair, short hair, feminists.

You go to Africa, the Christianity is growing. Take that Corey Mallor. That's right. Well, James White told a wonderful story about how he went to go. He went this, I think he said this was in the 90s or something like that. It was on this post debate stream after the breakdown. I think he was doing it with Luke Pearson of apology. I think it was that one, the mashup I think they called it.

And he was talking about how earlier in his career he had traveled to Africa to a remote tribe and he was preaching out there. And all these Africans, they were all converted Christians and they didn't have one Bible amongst them. Whenever they would receive a new Bible, they would take all the books out so they could all read the books individually instead of one big book together. And that they were sitting asking the most in depth theological questions through a translator.

And they're just sitting on this dirt floor taking notes on little scraps of paper that they're in that small like church in Africa were more faithful and committed and devoted believers than he had seen in most places in the United States. And I love that story because it's very, very true that, you know, to say that the gospel has something to do with your skin color ultimately in, in essence, eternally, like you have no grounds to say that. You can't say that at all.

And I think time will demonstrate that that's not true. I mean, you have persecuted Christians in China, you have persecuted Christians all around the world and no one talks about them. But to say that it's all just based on, it's all just based on this, it's. I think it's probably, it's an insult to God. You know, he can, he can raise up sons wherever he wants. And, and you better watch out because God hates pride. Like, absolutely. God is going to humble prideful people, if not in this life.

Definitely the next, like a good verse. I love First Corinthians where Paul, Paul says, and I don't know how these, these race realists get around this verse. You know, I mean, honestly, they probably just don't even read their Bibles or if they do, they just twist it. But Paul says specifically God chose the foolish of this world to shame the wise, show his power and strength. So that means God is picking like, yeah, you know, like all the immigrants in this country. Right.

He would pick that over the guy who is, I'm just going to use a name. He would, he would purposely pick him over a Joel Weapon like guy who thinks that because he's white that he, his vote is worth 50 points and he's the best we got. He would pick somebody like this specifically to shame Joel Weapon, to show his power and strength and with, you know, wisdom. And I'm just using Joel Webman's name not to try to make about him, but to show like. Like this is a reality. God is going to humble you.

And he's doing this to show his strength and his wisdom. Even if that means that, you know, this is the person that we all just going to gang up on and mock and ridicule God. You know, God, at the end of the day, he's going to have the last laugh and his, his power, his might is going to be demonstrated. You know, we're supposed to, we're called to, to fear the Lord, to really fear him.

And, and you know, that doesn't mean to cower in terror because he's still a loving father, Father, but to recognize that his judgments are perfect. You know, when he, when he wants to wipe out a city, he wipes it out. And he has, you know, he's the Lord of hosts, right? Like Lord of hosts, like, have angels, armies of angels. And I think about one of the stories of David where there's the angel of the Lord standing with the sword and he's just like striking down all these people with a plague.

It's like, that's one angel. That's one angel. Just one, you know, what is, what does 12 legions of angels look like? Like. And I think that that should drive us to such intense humility and fear of God and obedience to live within the shelter of his law and to not want to deviate from it from our own purposes. And there we will find security and blessedness and peace. And that's the Christian life. And you trust that God has got you and you don't have to do it all in your own strength.

And that's the beauty of the Christian life that I've found, found and that I'm very grateful for. And that is a gift from God. But, you know, that comes with fear of the Lord. And there's no fear of the Lord on their lips, I think is repeated if a frame that's repeated over and over again. And oh, man, like, I, I would love to see more of that. And I don't, I don't know how the cross fits into this, this manosphere dissident right theology either.

If it's all about power, then why did Jesus Die. In your view, why do you need the cross? And why does Christ call you to die to yourself? Right. It's such a contradiction where you really wouldn't predict that Jesus would, the son of God would die. Like you would not predict it. And there was a real, I guess, lack of a better word, deception going on for the rulers of this world that Paul talks about. He says if they knew it, they wouldn't have crucified him. That's right.

They thought that this was victory because they were playing a game of power, power. But yet Christ dying got the victory. He flipped it on their head. And that's crucial. I mean, that's, you know, again, look to the cross. The cross is not a symbol of life. You get on the cross to die to yourself. You get life through death. That's how Christ did it. You know, there's this real strong biblical motif of Christus Victor. Jesus, through his atonement, got the victory for us.

He is a true conquering king through dying and giving himself up for us. And you know, you compare that to the gospel, the Crusade boys online, that's, you know, that's definitely not their gospel. Their gospel is let's just get in power because this is what it's about. You know, let's just get the victory. Let's just get it, wield it and use it and bring in the kingdom of God. Christ got it by picking up his cross and dying and giving, you know, giving himself over to sinful men. That's right.

That's right. And I think the way that they get around that is the intoxication of power and by the celebration of the Roman Empire. I remember a couple years, I've talked about this a number of times, but I remember it was last year, 2023, 2024 maybe, where there was like how, you know, your man is always thinking about the Roman Empire. And I thought that was really odd. I mean, maybe guys think about the Roman Empire all the time.

I know some guys are, are into it, but I thought that was very odd. Especially now considering you have what the, what the Nazis were actually trying to do was they were trying to, to bring back their own renewed version of the Roman Empire. That was their very explicit aim. And so now you have, you have the Roman, the Roman Empire sort of like being this reapprais raised kind of historically.

And so I think what the men actually doing is rather than like being like Christ, they want to be like Rome. They want the power, they want the power of Rome and they don't see it, they don't see that they are to be crucified by the powers that be. Not, they're not to become that. And that's not to say that, you know, faithful men shouldn't pursue positions of authority and the state and in the marketplace, we absolutely should.

But again, taking power for your own righteousness and for your own aims and not always giving that power over to God in the way that he describes power, the way that men are supposed to wield it. I don't think that, I don't think that that's, that's going to end up with a good aim. And that's, that's why I think we're seeing this reinvigoration of notions of Rome where it's like the last great Western empire before Christianity, right? It's like, well, you know, maybe it wasn't all that great.

Maybe the Roman Empire, you can read through the New Testament, you can see incriminations of everything that the Roman Empire was dreaming, doing all throughout it. And you know, but that's, you get intoxicated by power itself and you put those blinders on and you miss that. As you say, we're called to die to self. And it's ironic too, because if you're a race realist, being white is not a catch all term. So the Romans were not considered Anglos, a part of their people, nor were the Greeks.

You know, in my father's day, you had the Italians and you had the Irish and they didn't like each other. That's right. And they kept their own people. White is not a catch all term. So trying to use the Rome to bring in your white boy summer, it's just a contradiction. And it's like, you know, again, like you're not even believing what you're actually preaching and you're not even accurate to true historical thought as you preach that you are. And it's like, you know, just the inconsistencies.

And how ironic this is, is that again, like you're not, you're not Roman. I have more of a name to the Roman Empire. You know, my father was born in Naples. Okay, yeah, not Roman. But you know, the point is that just because we're white doesn't mean we belong to a certain category. And these, these guys use it for a catch all term where they can take all the glory of, you know, what the Germans did, what the Romans did, what the Greek did.

And that's just another attempt of them trying to find, find meaning in their own lives. What they're Trying to do. It's, you know, again, it all comes full circle to what we talked about, you know, this entire conversation. Yes, absolutely. You seek meaning now that you didn't have in your young 20s, but you're picking the wrong one. Yep. Well, brother, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for the generosity of your time. I know that you're a family man. You got.

Got your kid running around back there, and you got your wife as well. So I appreciate you sitting down with me this evening to talk for a couple hours. This has been. This has been fantastic. I didn't expect to talk about all this stuff, but I love all of these subjects of conversation. I'm very grateful for you. Yeah, same, you know, glad that you're doing well and, you know, you know, you're getting married soon, too, and generally appreciate you like, you're one of the faithful guys.

So, you know, you've been a good ally to have fighting against all this craziness that we've seen online, because there is some good that comes online. We get to meet true Christians like you. Absolutely. And talk and converse. So, again, we're not overcorrecting. So generally appreciate you. Yeah. And I appreciate the blessing that you've been in my life as well, and our interaction and the growth of our friendship. So I'm equally grateful for your presence in my life. Awesome. Awesome.

Well, where would you like men to find out more about you and what you. You do? Don't. All right, can do. Bye. I die to myself. Well, if you want to, you can. I feel like such a hypocrite. Well played, sir. No, that's a. Here we are talking about the stuff on the podcast. Don't even display my name. All right. Exactly. I'm just going to block this out. Yeah, do like a. Like, what are. Like a face mask with, like, one of those, like, deep, you know, robotic voices. Yeah, exactly.

If you want, I'm on Method Ministries podcast. I'm on primarily on YouTube. YouTube and social media. I have Instagram and Twitter and also if you're in the area in Paramus, New Jersey, that'd be awesome to meet you. Come, you know. You know, come to our church. You want to be a part of our church? You know, I'd absolutely love that. We're trying to reach, you know, New Jersey with, you know, the Gospel for Jesus Christ.

So we're at the mission church and Method Ministries is the YouTube name for the podcast as well. And, yeah, you can find all my links on there. Great. Thank you so much, Lucas. I appreciate you and what you do. My pleasure. Thank you. Sam.