00:12:29.320And this was kind of the coverage of some of that ongoing debate
00:12:33.280And then the graphic here was kind of the summary, I guess, of the position of the school boards.
00:12:42.340Yeah. So they say movements like this often try rebranding in an attempt to make their bigotry more palatable to the public at large. Don't fall for it.
00:12:50.380So we're all bigots, obviously, from that post.
00:12:54.020And then here's the illustration. Don't be a sucker for parental rights.0.98
00:12:57.460And they go ahead and say homophobia, anti-vaccination.0.99
00:13:01.060they somehow lump it all into the same little group right under the candy coating of this
00:13:06.200little tootsie pop here intolerance bigotry book bans christophascism conspiracy theories
00:13:15.280there's a nasty taste under the sugar coating so this was what your blog was about your grandma
00:13:21.660was a christophascist um so this is what right we're going to go through this maybe not paragraph
00:13:29.100by paragraph, but you can stop me if you want to go and explain further, Riley, in what
00:13:34.360you're saying here. But Riley says in the blog, this political cartoon was recently
00:13:38.600posted by our very own Borderland Teachers Association. That's in the southern part of
00:13:43.040Manitoba for you guys, not for Manitoba watching this right now. The cartoon depicts a lollipop
00:13:48.480and says, don't be a sucker for parental rights. There's a nasty taste under the sugar0.92
00:13:52.520coating. The inner layers of the sucker have the words homophobia. We've already pointed0.99
00:13:56.940that out. The idea here is that the issue of parental rights in the schools is just the
00:14:02.680candy coating looking to smuggle in all of these self-evidently horrible things. Now, I'll be
00:14:07.900honest, while you're a pastor, you don't have a choice. I had to Google Christofascism. I've never
00:14:15.420heard of it myself. From what I can find, the term gets used to cover everything from violent
00:14:21.480far-right groups and they're certainly out there i don't know have you ever seen a violent far-right
00:14:27.280group in canada not not personally but as i began to look into it you find there are there are groups
00:14:33.940spouting vile things uh and they are doing it in the name of christ uh and um so there would be
00:14:41.400people who would embrace that kind of a label uh who who really are horrible people um and that
00:14:47.560that gets that's how this tactic then functions right you you take this bad thing um that no
00:14:54.040that no person would no godly person would want to be associated with uh and then you
00:14:59.960redefine it or you put this label onto really ordinary christian beliefs ordinary christian
00:15:07.120behavior uh yeah that's intersectionality they call that right like it's it's if one we find
00:15:13.540one group of bad apples than anybody who believes even one of the things that this radical group of
00:15:19.920extremists believes they're all extremists suddenly right there'd be more guilt by association but
00:15:25.480intersectionality is cultural marxism right if you are if you are a victim um who can who can
00:15:32.020find multiple layers to your oppression right so if you're not if you're not only a black person
00:15:37.360but if you're a black woman you're more oppressed you have these intersections that so then this
00:15:42.360would be reverse intersectionality maybe where they try and lump everybody together who happens
00:15:46.780to have similar beliefs just not as extreme possibly like i've never seen an extreme right
00:15:56.340christo nazi group in canada i've never heard of i mean they talk about this diagalon uh that's
00:16:05.140jeremy mckenzie's thing out of atlantic canada and that's just a bunch of guys who sit around
00:16:09.080drinking beer scotch smoking cigars over a campfire and occasionally saying inappropriate
00:16:13.540things about women i don't condone that by the way especially if you're going to put it on tape0.86
00:16:17.780and then put it online it was a stupid thing to do what they did but ultimately they're harmless
00:16:23.500guys they're just you know people who are fighting for freedom but you do go on to say here much like0.94
00:16:28.640the term racism white supremacist or bigot it's a term used to describe something bad that's then
00:16:35.780applied with a broad brush to anyone who voices disagreement with the so-called progressive left
00:16:40.360the cartoon implies that christophascism is the root cause of all of these other bad things
00:16:47.120homophobia bigotry intolerance anti-vaccination conspiracy theories and book bans knowing what
00:16:53.380they mean by all these terms i have very little doubt you say that i'd be labeled as a christophascist
00:16:59.280and so would nearly the entire town of Eltona,
00:23:39.460Well, I was going through some of the biblical texts and there's a passage in Matthew chapter 18 where Jesus gives a very stern warning.
00:23:47.540He says to anybody who would cause one of these little ones to believe in me to sin, it would be better for them to have a great millstone tied around their neck and for them to be thrown into the sea.
00:23:59.120So it's a warning from Christ of the great judgment that will come upon those who would lead children astray.
00:24:05.240um and so i i read that or and talked about that and and gave that fairly stern warning to uh
00:24:13.360librarians right it's like if you were going to lead children into sin uh this is what your judge
00:24:19.000says to you uh this is this is the the kind of warning it's it's uh it's a common warning used
00:24:24.960by a common kind of warning used by christ used by the apostles um to say uh there is judgment coming
00:24:31.880and it will be severe um and with that uh the hope that's then offered is repent and turn to christ
00:24:39.520and forgiveness is offered right so that that was my message um but uh there were some people who
00:24:45.240kind of just zoomed right in on the the millstone tied around your neck thing uh and then accused me
00:24:50.900of having been inciting violence against librarians as if i wanted them drowned so they
00:24:56.820they said that you were actually personally going to tie a millstone to their neck if they didn't
00:25:03.020smarten up that's how they took it or that my my messaging was uh going to be encouraging others
00:25:08.800to do that kind of thing were you visited by any law enforcement after that or was it just a
00:25:14.340disagreement that was settled without their i got i got uh confronted fairly angrily in the grocery
00:25:21.040store by a librarian what did she say or he well like i you know what i keep like immediately i
00:25:28.820hear librarian and i go she because of my upbringing but like what did the librarian
00:25:33.180say to you exactly well i was i was standing in line and then i think the first question was uh
00:25:37.940do you do you want to drown me right here and i'm like what no no context right i'm not
00:25:45.040i haven't yeah i haven't been recording i'm in the grocery store i'm i'm thinking through this
00:25:49.840i'm like what are you talking about uh and she goes on for a little while and i figured out she
00:25:54.700was upset about what was on the on the podcast hey now this is interesting because it would
00:26:00.700afford you the opportunity to possibly because you're one-on-one with this person i understanding
00:26:05.360that she was upset right you want to drown me right here but you're you're one-on-one with
00:26:11.860this person which would give you the opportunity to possibly have an actual conversation with this
00:26:17.820person so you can hear each other's views without an audience right did you did you have that or
00:26:25.120did she just walk away in a huff she was pretty mad um i i tried to get clarification i tried to
00:26:30.600give clarification um she wasn't having it uh once i i tried to explain i was quoting scripture
00:26:36.540and that just shut things down she wasn't interested so i didn't want to hear it i did
00:26:41.380go and record another response uh kind of going back and commenting on what i had said and trying
00:26:46.720to just explain it as clearly as possible oh yeah so that could possibly you see the one thing that
00:26:54.040we can't do with this crowd is ever appear to be apologizing or backing down or backpedaling from
00:27:00.500something we said yeah and that that's because if we do that then all they see is blood they're like
00:27:05.680sharks yeah right and they're gonna go hi i got them now and that'll be it that's how they cancel
00:27:10.860that's how they shut us down have you noticed um riley an increase in the amount of people
00:27:17.540coming to church in the last few years or has it gone down um well our church is fairly new
00:27:24.260we planted here in 2019 we had we had six blissful months pre-covid pre-lockdown um and so what we
00:27:33.540were seeing fairly slow growth uh initially and uh kind of with with all the lockdowns and and
00:27:39.580the stance that we ended up taking we saw a lot of people coming um and we have continued to see
00:27:45.300growth um so i can't i can't speak to the church situation more broadly than that but i will say
00:27:52.640our church has been experiencing a lot of growth um you you seem like you may be open to talking
00:27:59.980about what your stance was through the lockdowns are you able to talk about that publicly or no
00:28:04.820yeah i think so but by this point we can yeah yeah so uh we uh for the first three or four
00:28:11.340weeks we were trying to uh just figure out what covid was we're trying to figure out what the
00:28:15.980lockdowns were about like is this the black plague like it's been made out to be are people all going
00:28:20.440to be you know bodies piled up in the streets and that kind of thing um and uh within within a
00:28:26.420couple couple weeks um they uh they opened the public parks um and so i i actually called the
00:28:34.020police station and was asking um so how far apart do groups of 10 have to be in order to not be
00:28:39.900considered one group because in a in a park you could have groups of 10 so i'm just thinking okay
00:28:45.060we can have 10 here and 10 there and we can have our church service with uh with a loudspeaker
00:28:50.080system and away we go uh didn't really get any answers um and then around that time uh was all
00:28:57.140the the black lives matter riots um uh marches parades whatever they called them um and then
00:29:03.700the media is just falling all over themselves trying to explain why that's not a danger to
00:29:07.880public health but outdoor church still is and so that was the point where we were like okay this
00:29:14.900there's something else going on here there's some political motivations it would seem and so we began
00:29:20.760outdoor services then and never looked back did you have any interruption from the police did
00:29:26.200they come and stop you blockades arrests tickets uh thank by the grace of god never any never any
00:29:33.020tickets or or arrests uh i did get a phone call uh from uh first from one of the volunteer
00:29:38.740safety patrollers the the covid uh ticket people that were the just added on um right right right
00:29:46.280the extra hires they're creating jobs during the pandemic amazing yeah that guy was pretty
00:29:52.720zealous on the phone he had there had been somebody had reported us i guess and uh um
00:29:56.940and then uh follow up with the rcmp called as well um just kind of asked what we were what we
00:30:03.440were doing and i i said i declined to answer on the phone and he said okay fair enough he was very
00:30:08.560polite very respectful um and we had we had one sunday school interrupted by the police um they
00:30:15.620kind of warned us and we said okay thank you for the warning we'll continue on here and and they
00:30:21.920never came back and then right after that things all kind of opened up anyway yeah yeah there were
00:30:26.300certain pastors that stood up and made a lot of noise about it. Arthur Pavlosky obviously comes
00:30:31.320to mind and Hildebrand out in Ontario. And we had one here as well, who was part of the notorious
00:30:38.580Manitoba Five, who stood up and spent some time in jail. What do you think of all the churches
00:30:47.100that shut down? I mean, that goes against the word of God and the word of Jesus, doesn't it?
00:30:52.580Yeah, well, that was our conviction. We were just so convinced that, you know, there's a section in the book of Acts where the apostles get arrested for preaching about Christ. And they get beaten and they get reprimanded and told, do not preach in this name anymore. And they said, we must obey God rather than men.
00:31:16.760so our very firm conviction is that no human authority or no authority at all has the the
00:31:24.160true authority to command what god forbids or to forbid what god commands and so we look to
00:31:30.380the scriptures and we see that public corporate worship is commanded by god this is something that
00:31:36.200matters to him and something that we desperately need as well you know you mentioned earlier all
00:31:41.940the people who are um really lonely really depressed really struggling uh and this is in
00:31:47.780part because god made us for community now we are designed to need each other um and we we were
00:31:53.200convicted that uh zoom church was not a uh legitimate substitute for uh the corporate
00:32:01.440gathering of god's people right you just you just look at all the things that god uh instructs um
00:32:06.680and it is it is preaching and hearing of the word it is singing and even addressing one another
00:32:11.400in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, right? Try that over Zoom. It is the Lord's Supper,
00:32:17.940the big takeaway that Paul gives to the church in Corinth after he slams them for how they've
00:32:23.300been making a mash of things is, therefore, wait for one another, right? This is something we're
00:32:29.320meant to do together. There's meant to be community here. We're meant to be strengthening
00:32:32.660and upbuilding and singing together and hearing the word preached together. And so we didn't
00:32:38.120believe that Zoom was a suitable replacement for that. And then the big concern, which I think has
00:32:43.660proven so true, is that what are these pastors going to do when COVID is over, lockdowns are
00:32:50.300done, and they're now wanting their people to return? And then they look around and say, you
00:32:56.040know, we've only got about half our congregation that's come back after COVID. And then they call
00:33:00.140them up on the phone and say, hey there, Smith, how you doing? Good, pastor, how are you? It's
00:33:05.640like well good uh it's everything okay we uh we haven't seen you in church uh and you know there's
00:33:10.960the command in hebrews not to neglect the assembling of ourselves together uh what gives
00:33:15.020and he says well i haven't been pastor you said online church was a suitable replacement for the
00:33:20.840gathered worship of god's people i watch the sermons every sunday online not the same not the
00:33:27.800same and you know people would use things like you know render to caesar that which is caesar's
00:33:32.780And I think Tim Stevens was the one who had that beautiful rebuttal.
00:33:36.960The worship of God does not belong to Caesar.