The Tucker Carlson Show - The Megachurch Scam & Nonprofit Loophole： How Celebrity Pastors Exploit the Bible to Get Filthy Rich

00:00:00.000 thanks for coming back yeah maybe you can help solve a mystery so i've always known that

00:00:08.800 different people have different views on israel i've never been upset about it post-gaza i'm

00:00:13.360 rethinking about if all those views are legitimate but i know that decent people have different views

00:00:17.880 on israel totally fine and that includes christians and but in the past year it does 0.78

00:00:24.700 seem that for some Christian leaders, I don't want to call anyone out by name, but Israel's the only

00:00:30.800 thing that matters. So they'll approach fellow Christians with one question in mind, where does

00:00:36.320 this person stand on the government of Israel? And so it occupies a much greater percentage of

00:00:42.980 mental disk space than I ever imagined, certainly than it does for me. So what is that?

00:00:48.380 well it's the old covenant you know i was raised just non-denominational christian in

00:00:55.860 large-scale churches and we were pro-israel yeah it's just a consistent deal when you look at

00:01:00.840 i'm always going to go back to scripture so i'm always going to use the bible to reference my

00:01:05.780 perspective and what i what i think is going on yes the nation state of israel has just become an

00:01:11.540 idol to the church in regards to how they perceive not all of them but how they some of them perceive

00:01:18.100 it and you have to ask why and so we've done a little digging in regards to some far filings

00:01:23.200 and others and and when you look at the old covenant in the bible it's one of those

00:01:29.060 spots or parts of the covenant that you can weaponize israel is one of them giving and

00:01:35.940 generosity tithing is one of them and when christ came he he came to fulfill that whole old covenant

00:01:42.280 that whole contract a new covenant it's literally a new covenant so that old covenant is complete

00:01:47.120 done fulfilled put on the shelf a new contract is in place and that's christ contract christ

00:01:52.480 covenant and um if you're if you're a bible believing christian but what that new covenant

00:01:57.260 does is it takes the teeth out of the old covenant the old contracts you know that mosaic law but

00:02:04.100 people like to lean on that contract in that law because you can weapon i'm going to say weaponize

00:02:09.620 it you can build empires again and build power structures around basically double dipping in

00:02:15.480 covenants. So you can say, take some things that Jesus said and grab a couple of things from the

00:02:19.780 old covenant and mash them together. And you have a, just a different fit. You have Judeo-Christianity,

00:02:25.560 you know, not Christianity and not Judaism. You have Judeo-Christianity. 0.93

00:02:29.780 It's like a Reese's peanut butter cup. 0.86

00:02:31.300 Exactly. It's, it's, it's neither or it's, it's so Israel, the nation state has become one of those 0.66

00:02:39.140 cards that you can pull and say, Hey, if you don't back the nation state, then you clearly don't

00:02:43.720 believe this book or, or, you know, that God is our God. And so I always push back. I consider

00:02:50.360 myself kind of an auditor in this regard. So I wanted to audit the nation state of Israel and

00:02:54.240 say, what is it exactly scripturally? So that is, boy, it's, it's jarring to hear you put it so

00:02:59.580 plainly, but that is really what they're saying. If you don't support the Netanyahu government,

00:03:05.040 you're not a Christian. Yeah. I mean, I guess I've heard it. I've, I've heard that. And some 0.85

00:03:09.560 the dimmer ones, like Huckabee, just say it out loud, but that is the assumption behind a lot of

00:03:14.260 it. Well, and if my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ haven't read the book in its entirety,

00:03:19.580 then they'll take what Huckabee or what their potential pastor says from the stage as scripturally

00:03:25.640 sound. And so that's what I've had a great time doing. I mean, yeah, I've read the book, by the

00:03:31.180 way, more than once, but I didn't need to read it to know that Jesus is probably not endorsing

00:03:37.900 killing the innocent killing kids well i would say there's even a naivete there's a strategic

00:03:42.240 ignorance around that right like in season one of the religion business uh development economist

00:03:47.460 breaks down what strategic ignorance is and we as humans want to stay strategically ignorant of

00:03:52.740 things that push against our bias boy i've been there yeah and so have i and so that's the thing

00:03:57.200 is is as we grow and hopefully mature we look at the the surroundings and say okay what is truth

00:04:02.840 and what is not truth.

00:04:04.160 Yes.

00:04:04.560 And a really simple truth

00:04:06.160 is the nation state of Israel

00:04:07.460 is not the ethnic tribe

00:04:08.800 that's described in the Torah.

00:04:11.760 And so if that's our baseline,

00:04:13.220 then okay, now we can reshape our,

00:04:15.500 we can look at what's truth and not truth

00:04:17.200 and see where people are leveraging that card

00:04:20.580 or weaponizing that card for their own gain.

00:04:24.000 But you would think, again,

00:04:25.860 even if you're not familiar

00:04:27.500 with the details of that book,

00:04:29.660 you haven't read the Old or New Testaments,

00:04:31.560 you would sort of intuit,

00:04:33.700 you would sense that Jesus is not in favor

00:04:36.640 of say like genocide.

00:04:38.500 Correct, I would hope.

00:04:40.360 But there's always a counter argument,

00:04:41.860 like in these far documents,

00:04:42.920 you know, literally the foreign agent

00:04:46.340 is Israel minister of foreign affairs, you know, and-

00:04:49.740 So I keep stepping up.

00:04:50.680 So what are those documents?

00:04:51.720 So you're basically saying in order to understand this,

00:04:53.960 you look not just at the theology, but at the money.

00:04:56.340 Correct, at the money because, so, okay, yes,

00:04:58.660 I think most people would say genocide in Gaza

00:05:00.860 is wrong, right? But then they will always find a counter, which is, well, there's bad things.

00:05:06.840 There's evil inside Gaza that needs to be removed, right? And so that's where this FARA 0.98

00:05:11.920 document's interesting is because you can see the nation state weaponizing the American church

00:05:18.640 to sway their opinion to say, hey, you know what? No, the genocide is rationalized and we're not

00:05:23.860 going to call it genocide because of X, Y, and Z. So that's what this document just shows. It shows

00:05:28.200 that millions of dollars came from the nation state of Israel to sway massive megachurches

00:05:34.740 in America, or at least the pastors, because when you can sway the pastor, the pastor can

00:05:39.120 sway their congregation. So how does it work? How does it, in regards to the system? Yeah,

00:05:45.020 the system. What are the FARA, FARA means Foreign Agent Registration Act. Correct.

00:05:49.320 What do those documents show? So this one shows in particular, basically we'll call it like a

00:05:56.220 marketing effort. And ironically, this is fun. There's multiple pages of just hundreds of

00:06:01.420 churches on the West Coast that have very large audiences. And what it is, is it's a marketing

00:06:07.260 effort. It's a geofencing effort. So if you go to your church and you walk into that building,

00:06:13.400 there is a digital geofence. And if you ping your phone, that geofence is triggered. And what that

00:06:19.040 means is they're going to get your phone's IP address. They're going to start sending you

00:06:22.600 messages and sending you advertising that's pro-Israel and, you know, anti-Palestine for

00:06:30.240 lack of a, and it says all this in the documents. And so ironically, this is what I called my dad

00:06:35.420 this morning because I was like, hey, what church did we go to when we were kids? And sure enough,

00:06:39.800 the churches, the two churches I went to from the day I was born to 21 years older on that list.

00:06:46.600 And so that means had I walked into those churches, I could have potentially been

00:06:50.200 geofenced and then they would have tracked my phone and they could ping me pro pro nation state

00:06:55.980 israel material and so this effort is funded by israel by the nation state of israel and is it

00:07:03.620 um when you say funded like does money flow to the church does the church know that it's we can't

00:07:09.800 congregations being geofenced uh the uh no not necessarily so that's where it gets dark is um

00:07:16.640 the church doesn't even know that they're being targeted.

00:07:19.600 And so it's like a subversive targeting.

00:07:23.800 There's a foreign government doing this to our churches here?

00:07:26.520 Correct. 1.00

00:07:27.300 A great example would be like, 1.00

00:07:28.880 hey, if my kids are in college and the Chinese-

00:07:31.720 What if the Iranian government was doing this to us?

00:07:33.640 Or China, Russia, Iran.

00:07:36.160 What happens if they were targeting our universities?

00:07:38.120 We would be up in arms. 0.98

00:07:39.800 So we have a foreign government targeting our churches. 0.86

00:07:43.420 And then at the same time,

00:07:44.940 They also are targeting the pastors, wanting them to come over to Israel, the nation state.

00:07:49.940 They walk through, you know, they give them tours of the historical sites, which is awesome.

00:07:55.920 But they're leveraging the Old Testament in these historical sites to basically calcify the nation state and say, oh, what we're doing is biblical.

00:08:04.420 And what Palestine and these evil, these other evil people are doing these to be wiped out.

00:08:09.900 Like a great, like there's some, I highlighted some of it for you in this document, but it's wild.

00:08:14.940 once you get past the the list of hundreds of churches um it's such a long document but so a

00:08:22.880 christian ready show show faith by works a christian education and israeli information

00:08:28.360 campaign the goal is to combat low american evangelical christian approval of the nation

00:08:34.120 state of israel it says it right there so this this entire goal to geofence your church is to

00:08:38.820 combat your low approval rating of a nation state well maybe we should question like why is there a

00:08:44.500 approval rating are you committing genocide like that might be a reason why then that does affect

00:08:50.140 approval ratings a hundred percent and so the messaging that we are going to use inside this

00:08:53.840 geo-fenced it's all pro-israel and an anti-palestinian state and they list the messaging

00:09:00.100 that they're going to that they're going to hit the anti-palestinian state yep um the first is of

00:09:05.460 course hamas is a palestinian terrorist organization um there was never a state of

00:09:11.220 Palestine at any time in history. So these are the bullet points that you're going to see

00:09:14.920 on your phones from this campaign. And then you can just keep going. There's a pastoral and

00:09:21.300 education resources. So they're going to give pastors educational resources that's pro-nation

00:09:25.680 state Israel and anti-Palestine. They're going to go to college and Christian college universities

00:09:31.540 and do the same thing. And you can just go through it. So this was millions of dollars was spent

00:09:36.080 on this campaign. And this is my favorite one. Ready? They proudly in their digital support

00:09:39.640 effort. This is the largest geofencing and Christian targeting campaign in U.S. history.

00:09:46.200 That's what they call it in their own documentation. We're targeting Christians. And this is the 1.00

00:09:50.980 largest targeting of Christians ever. And then they go to Christian events. And this is a funny

00:09:54.940 one for me, if you know Greg Lowry, but his church is Harvest in Riverside, and he puts on

00:10:01.280 these big festivals. And he's in a big scandal right now because he ran orphanages. His church

00:10:08.080 ran orphanages in um in where was it ah man it's it's in the show in eastern europe and one of the 0.71

00:10:17.400 pastors there allegedly raped and sodomized hundreds potentially hundreds of orphans there

00:10:22.960 and greg lowry knew about it they sent a team over and he did nothing about it because it was

00:10:28.840 such a big revenue generator and uh he's he's one of their he's one of their he's actually he's

00:10:34.580 Ironically, hopefully their main spokesperson, they've got a photo of him in their deck too,

00:10:39.180 saying, we want Greg Lauer to be the face of this.

00:10:41.920 Seriously?

00:10:42.820 Yeah.

00:10:43.800 So millions, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs spends millions of dollars geofencing

00:10:48.840 our churches for pro-Israeli, pro-nation-state Israeli propaganda.

00:10:55.700 And if your pastor's behind it, then hey, your pastor's going to say the same thing.

00:10:59.400 It's just hard to believe.

00:11:00.740 you know there's this line in mark 13 i think where jesus is saying to the pharisees he's like 1.00

00:11:06.900 we're saying to others religious leaders are in trouble because they wander around their long

00:11:11.060 flowing robes they get respect from everyone in the marketplace but they're actually cheating 0.50

00:11:14.680 widows out of their property and you read that and you're like would a religious leader really 0.82

00:11:19.980 cheat a widow out of her property like that's just crazy only in first century palestine could

00:11:25.460 that ever happened? And then you hear, like, it's just amazing. It's just hard to believe a

00:11:32.760 religious person would do that. Well, there's religious organizations that are registered at

00:11:36.620 churches that literally buy out permanent life insurance policies from elderly people that need

00:11:41.120 money for pennies on the dollar. Actually? Actually. Yeah. Part of their business model

00:11:47.960 as a church is to basically go up to a widow or elderly couple that's struggling and say,

00:11:53.920 we're just going to buy your permanent life insurance policy that you've been paying down

00:11:57.820 for 40 years for pennies on the dollar because you need money. There's one that's built. I was

00:12:02.620 told a $700 million war chest came off of that. They have 700 million sitting in the bank off of

00:12:08.180 buying out elderly people's permanent life insurance policies. So they are, and my translation

00:12:14.720 reads devouring widows' houses, and they're devouring houses in the name of Jesus.

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00:13:55.940 Who registered for this? This was an LLC named Show Faith by Works, registered in my hometown,

00:14:05.820 San Diego, California. But the name of the foreign principal is Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

00:14:10.340 It was right on the cover, page one.

00:14:13.880 How many pastors know that there's an effort like this

00:14:18.420 behind their views on Israel? 0.83

00:14:24.560 I'm gonna say strategic ignorance.

00:14:26.320 I think they just see it as gossip online.

00:14:30.080 They don't wanna get involved.

00:14:32.460 This is a hot button topic for my family,

00:14:34.880 because I have family that are retired pastors

00:14:37.720 or my uncle's a missionary in Kiev.

00:14:39.600 like i'm very very close to this and most of them just don't want to believe it you know so they

00:14:45.740 don't believe that money is actually coming from a foreign government to influence the opinions of

00:14:49.800 their correct well and and if and if i even put this in front of them they'd point to the book

00:14:54.520 and say what and they'd say nathan like israel bless israel and you'll be blessed does it say

00:14:59.760 that no no no no and we went through that we had a great conversation i just love that yeah yeah

00:15:05.820 We had a great conversation about this earlier.

00:15:07.400 It's this idea.

00:15:09.820 And since our last conversation,

00:15:11.560 when we were talking about it is finished,

00:15:13.320 when Christ says it's finished on the cross,

00:15:14.920 I just went down a full rabbit hole

00:15:17.440 in regards to digesting that old covenant

00:15:19.840 versus new covenant concept.

00:15:22.440 And there is no way scripturally you can double dip

00:15:26.640 in both the old covenant and the new covenant in the Bible.

00:15:30.140 If you are a Christ following Christian, 0.72

00:15:32.620 that old covenant, that old contract is fulfilled and done. 0.83

00:15:37.260 Yes.

00:15:37.680 We don't look backwards.

00:15:38.520 There's a great analogy that I was, or maybe I want-

00:15:40.820 Why the curtain in the temple is rent.

00:15:42.880 Yes, let me know if this is a good analogy

00:15:44.980 or if I'm way off base, but like, I'm a laborer, right?

00:15:48.500 And I need a job and you're like,

00:15:49.780 hey, Nathan, here's the contract.

00:15:51.540 If you mow my lawns, cut my trees and clean my pool,

00:15:55.720 like we're good, I'll pay you at the end of the day.

00:15:57.960 So that day I show up, I mow your lawn,

00:15:59.880 I cut your trees to like exactly how you want it.

00:16:02.380 I clean the pool and you're like, here's your payment, Nathan. And I go on and I'm like,

00:16:06.200 I fulfilled my contract with Tucker and I'm going to go to the next house, right? But instead I wake

00:16:10.660 up the next morning, I go, you know what? I'm going to go back to Tucker's house and I'm just

00:16:14.280 going to start doing stuff, cut the trees, mow the lawn again, even though it's already done.

00:16:18.440 And he's not going to pay me because I fulfilled the contract with you. I'm supposed to look

00:16:23.180 forward and move on to the new contract. But this is what churches are doing. They're like,

00:16:27.060 I don't know. We're going to come back to this old one and play in it because we like some of

00:16:31.100 some of the things in here. We like to cherry pick parts of the old covenant because it justifies

00:16:35.600 our current model. The tithe justifies how we can fund the business, right? Israel justifies how we

00:16:43.820 can drum up attention for this idea of old tribal Israel. But we're just grasping at straws, 0.63

00:16:52.120 if that makes sense. Because Christ's message in his new covenant is an unconditional but very

00:16:59.420 unknown. You march into the unknown in his covenant. You have to have full faith in him

00:17:03.680 and the Holy Spirit. Legalistic covenants, just they're easy to understand, right? You give me

00:17:09.100 10% or 23.3% based off of Old Testament tithe laws, and you're good, right? You're done, Tucker.

00:17:15.760 Go on your way. But Christ says, no, no, no, no. You have the capacity and the knowledge to give.

00:17:21.900 What does your heart tell you? So it means you have to stand up and lead, right? In Hebrews,

00:17:27.080 that talks about you are your own priest now. 0.74

00:17:29.840 Like there's no mediator between the Holy of Holies

00:17:33.820 and the outer courts.

00:17:35.760 Like you, Christ is that mediator

00:17:37.800 and you walk straight through into the Holy of Holies.

00:17:40.520 But that means you have to stand up and understand it

00:17:42.660 and take responsibility and be that priest.

00:17:45.760 But so if you're that priest, what does it mean?

00:17:47.340 You don't need the institution anymore.

00:17:49.660 The model, you don't need to sit in that pew, right?

00:17:52.860 Like you have Christ, you have his word, his logos,

00:17:56.260 like is in you on your heart and mind so you got to lead tucker you got to lead like christ 0.68

00:18:02.420 that's a dangerous dangerous man or woman to be walking around in in any community or any

00:18:08.980 government because hey this this architecture this legal architecture of america doesn't hold me in

00:18:13.780 this this does this book does and so we've we've kneecapped christianity and we've put it on a

00:18:20.660 shelf and we've consumerized, we've turned it into a consumer product. And now we just have a

00:18:29.060 bunch of kneecapped Christians walking around giving their 10%, if that, to a church, to an 0.99

00:18:33.820 institution that is not biblically sound. And then we can support nation state of Israel and say, 0.94

00:18:38.880 hey, I'm a Bible believing Christian. When at the end of the day, like, no, I believe in what we've

00:18:44.200 built. I believe in the institution we've built, but I don't necessarily believe this book.

00:18:47.720 well that's a wrong turn if you arrive at that conclusion so how i mean i always want to assume

00:18:55.020 that people are employing what you called strategic ignorance they they don't know

00:18:59.880 because they don't want to know and therefore they're not honestly quite as guilty as someone

00:19:04.840 who knows and does it anyway but given that how big is the economy around this question like i

00:19:12.640 notice all these pastors going to israel on these trips i've known a lot of them who do that is that

00:19:18.320 all paid for by donors or the government yeah there's there's an estimated let me i want to

00:19:24.820 make sure i pronounce the name right it is um where is it sj something it's uh about 320 million

00:19:35.800 a year is dumped into this bucket to get to get pastors overseas oh there we go uh the international

00:19:40.860 fellowship of christians and jews generates about 315 million a year in individual donor giving

00:19:47.260 and what that does is it so let's let's let's dissect that name for a second right

00:19:52.680 international fellowship of christians and jews okay 315 ish million goes into that pool every

00:19:59.100 year you'd think it's to educate people on the historical sites right i'm a christian i'd love

00:20:04.380 to see yeah you know all all these beautiful historical sites i've been to rome and hunched

00:20:09.580 down in the prison where Paul was held.

00:20:11.220 You get to experience this stuff

00:20:12.960 and you're like, wow, this is real.

00:20:14.480 It happened, I can see Paul's journey

00:20:16.700 and I can see the hill Christ died on

00:20:18.820 and it's real powerful.

00:20:20.660 But that 315 million is going to border security.

00:20:24.060 It's going to ambulances inside Israel.

00:20:27.040 It's going to-

00:20:28.900 Border security?

00:20:30.100 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:20:32.360 Israeli border security?

00:20:33.620 Yeah.

00:20:34.560 So it says it on their website.

00:20:36.220 This is where this money goes.

00:20:37.780 So when you think about this,

00:20:38.900 This isn't an international fellowship of Jews and Christians, because if it was an international

00:20:44.060 fellowship of Jews and Christians, you'd care about the Christians in Gaza.

00:20:47.120 Of course.

00:20:47.740 You'd care about the Christians in Lebanon.

00:20:49.140 You'd care about these Christians in these other parts of this region just being obliterated. 0.82

00:20:54.320 Who are being killed by the government. 0.57

00:20:55.420 Yeah.

00:20:55.940 But so what this is, it's actually a fund that's just calcifying the nation state of

00:21:00.740 Israel and utilizing the historical sites as the rationale for this fund.

00:21:05.380 But the money is going to the ongoing operations of the government of Israel?

00:21:08.480 Part of it, yeah. And then what you're doing is you're bringing pastors over and saying,

00:21:12.560 look at all these beautiful historical sites. Does that make sense? So you're taking the faith

00:21:16.560 and you're using the faith as the cookie, so to speak, or the carrot to explain the nation state

00:21:23.440 of Israel in their actions. And you're using Christian donor money. That's $315 million from

00:21:28.480 Christians, individual Christians that are giving generously to this fund with strategically 0.97

00:21:33.380 ignorance, with their ignorance, you know, with their, what does the Bible talk about? Scales 0.98

00:21:37.640 on the eyes, right?

00:21:38.560 So you can't see through your scales,

00:21:40.180 but what you're actually funding

00:21:41.720 is parts of this war mechanism.

00:21:45.500 It's just like the LDS church

00:21:46.980 and their investments in defense companies.

00:21:51.780 Southern Baptist Convention, same thing.

00:21:53.360 Guidestone is heavily invested in weaponry of war.

00:21:56.680 Are you serious?

00:21:57.660 Yeah.

00:21:58.580 So we've created machines. 1.00

00:22:01.460 We've created this Christian machine, 0.99

00:22:03.340 this apparatus that funds what we think, 1.00

00:22:06.420 ignorantly is good intentioned

00:22:09.260 international fellowship of Christians and Jews. 0.96

00:22:11.640 But no, what it's doing is it's calcifying a nation state

00:22:13.960 that is bombing Christians in other parts of that region, 0.92

00:22:18.700 killing them, and they're justifying it. 1.00

00:22:21.160 And this money is going to those efforts. 0.99

00:22:23.760 Part of that money is going to those efforts.

00:22:25.160 That is absolutely crazy.

00:22:27.780 Christians ought to be safe in the Holy Land of all places, 1.00

00:22:30.580 but they are not. 0.99

00:22:32.420 Keep in mind, these are the descendants of the first converts,

00:22:35.080 the first people who followed Jesus, people whose families have worshipped in the land

00:22:39.720 Jesus walked for centuries, for thousands of years. And these same people are now facing

00:22:45.080 enormous pressure to leave, fleeing their homes amid war and anti-Christian terrorism.

00:22:51.560 Untold numbers of innocents are lost and without hope, fellow Christians. But how do you support

00:22:57.500 them? There are groups out there who claim to support them whose real agenda is to move them

00:23:02.500 out of their actual homeland.

00:23:04.560 We think that's wrong.

00:23:05.440 We think that's evil, in fact.

00:23:07.420 And so we've looked far and wide to find a group 1.00

00:23:09.480 that is actually supporting Christians in the Middle East.

00:23:13.280 And we found one.

00:23:14.620 It's called the Vulnerable People Project, VPP.

00:23:17.560 It's one of the very few groups

00:23:19.120 consistently helping vulnerable Christians

00:23:20.960 throughout the Holy Land.

00:23:22.360 They deliver food and water to Christian communities

00:23:24.940 trapped in Gaza, for example.

00:23:27.460 They help rescue civilians.

00:23:28.640 They provide emergency aid to families

00:23:30.200 who have nowhere else to turn.

00:23:32.380 Today, they are helping Christian churches

00:23:33.980 and families safely remain in the communities

00:23:36.780 where their ancestors worshiped Jesus.

00:23:39.420 There should be a lot of groups doing this,

00:23:41.340 and trust us, we have looked for over a year now,

00:23:44.200 and there aren't.

00:23:45.600 But the Vulnerable People Project is doing exactly that,

00:23:48.520 and their work makes an amazing difference

00:23:50.020 in people's lives.

00:23:51.800 A gift of just $33 helps provide a day of protection

00:23:55.100 and support for the vulnerable Christians

00:23:56.780 in the West Bank.

00:23:58.460 Who's looking out for them?

00:23:59.720 Nobody.

00:24:00.120 Well, they are. A monthly gift with $83 helps sustain that protection throughout the month.

00:24:06.080 So visit SaveWestBankChristians.com and stand with Christians in the land where Christianity began.

00:24:13.520 That's SaveWestBankChristians.com. We are proud to partner with them. Thank you.

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00:24:49.980 How many people who are involved in this know?

00:24:53.360 Involved in this fund?

00:24:54.400 Yeah.

00:24:54.820 I don't think any of them would rationally sit here

00:24:57.840 and say, oh, I know about that, you know?

00:25:00.780 No, we want to get our pastor over to Israel

00:25:02.920 to experience the historical sites, Nathan.

00:25:05.500 Okay, cool.

00:25:07.140 But that's not bad, right?

00:25:09.540 But what you don't realize

00:25:10.440 is you're funding security on the border.

00:25:12.760 You're funding, which I think is great,

00:25:14.780 ambulances when a bomb comes over into Israel,

00:25:17.260 but you should also be funding ambulances

00:25:19.000 when a bomb goes into Gaza, if that's your mission.

00:25:22.220 Yeah, and you certainly shouldn't be funding bombs into Gaza, which is what, in effect, you're doing because you're freeing up those resources. Wow, that is really—so now there is, in part thanks to your efforts, an awareness of a lot of this in a way that there wasn't a couple of years ago.

00:25:41.140 Like there are a lot of people, including the fair report said it, there are a lot of evangelicals who are skeptical suddenly about whether it's a good idea to support Israel.

00:25:50.620 What are pastors like this?

00:25:52.460 Are they getting pushback?

00:25:53.440 Like what's their experience?

00:25:56.180 They're kind of, a lot of these, so this, this, this far doc, a lot of these churches are mega churches.

00:26:01.200 They went after the, they, they geofenced the big boys, right? Because big, like if, if you geofence a small rural church in Pennsylvania that has 75 members, what's, what's the point of that? No, I want to geofence a church that has 7,500 members, 10,000 members. And so these, these guys are already big influencers in regards to their, their church and then in regards to the social media sphere. So they just like calcify together.

00:26:26.440 You know, you have groups of them now

00:26:28.040 just going on podcasts,

00:26:30.520 sitting, doing the same thing we are.

00:26:31.840 Is that true?

00:26:32.720 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:26:33.520 Defending these positions?

00:26:34.840 Yeah.

00:26:35.820 Yeah, his name's Jack Hibbs.

00:26:37.580 He was on a podcast the other day

00:26:38.860 and he said, you know,

00:26:41.460 Israel was created in a day

00:26:43.280 and there's prophetic words in the Bible that say that. 0.82

00:26:46.240 Well, no, they signed the documents in a day,

00:26:48.100 but the nation state of Israel was decades in coming.

00:26:51.820 And so does that make sense?

00:26:53.040 They just take,

00:26:53.820 they'll take a scripture out of context

00:26:55.440 and apply it to the nation state.

00:26:57.660 And then everybody will take that same soundbite.

00:27:00.680 Similar to what I said with you last, 0.99

00:27:02.560 that Christianity is more of a socialist construct

00:27:04.920 than a capitalist construct.

00:27:06.600 Everybody goes, oh, Nathan's a socialist.

00:27:08.120 Tucker had a socialist on, he's a communist.

00:27:10.220 Same thing, you take three or four words

00:27:12.040 and you can create whatever conversation you want around.

00:27:16.520 So you're not a socialist?

00:27:17.700 I am not a socialist, no.

00:27:20.620 Yeah.

00:27:22.280 But it's all part of the propaganda machine.

00:27:24.520 I mean, they don't-

00:27:24.960 For sure.

00:27:25.280 Right. So, but like someone like Jack Kibbs or not, you know, to call him out by name, but he deserves it. But sorry, excuse me. Trying to stay Christian. Does he get any pushback? Or another way to ask would be, do pastors like that have growing churches or shrinking churches? Like, is this, is Christian Zionism in retreat or is it expanding?

00:27:50.240 I can't speak empirically on that,

00:27:53.340 but I would say it's retreating

00:27:55.200 from just my sphere of influence.

00:27:59.100 A lot of these churches now,

00:28:01.420 their congregation's shrinking

00:28:03.140 and they have these huge buildings.

00:28:05.060 So what they're doing is they're putting up curtains

00:28:06.640 about halfway through the pews

00:28:08.540 and they shove everybody to the front

00:28:10.860 so people can't sit in the back anymore.

00:28:12.760 So they're starting to stack their churches,

00:28:14.780 if that makes sense.

00:28:15.420 So they look full,

00:28:16.240 but they're really at 20, 30% capacity.

00:28:19.020 Really?

00:28:19.920 And then what they do,

00:28:21.040 a lot of them do is on their social programs,

00:28:23.200 like we have a solid online presence.

00:28:26.640 We will never delete a comment.

00:28:28.180 We will never block someone

00:28:29.500 unless they're actually threatening someone.

00:28:32.120 But what these guys do a lot of times

00:28:33.560 is they'll curate their comments.

00:28:35.360 So they'll block us or block our followers

00:28:37.860 and just delete any comment

00:28:39.700 that has a negative pushback on what they're saying.

00:28:43.500 And so when you go on some of these pastors' Instagrams,

00:28:46.500 it's just nothing but hearts and loves

00:28:47.920 and you're 100% accurate, pastor.

00:28:49.780 Lovely, lovely, lovely.

00:28:51.540 But it's because they've just curated the content.

00:28:54.120 And so Christianity, institutional Christianity

00:28:56.040 in these big organizations

00:28:57.080 is just a curated business set on top of the gospel.

00:29:02.480 And so when I look at their,

00:29:04.160 especially Jack Hibbs and these other guys 0.65

00:29:05.920 who are very pro-Zionist in regards to their agenda,

00:29:09.940 most of their comments are just curated.

00:29:11.860 And so that always makes me smile.

00:29:14.120 But does Jack Hibbs have a congregation?

00:29:16.920 Is there like a church

00:29:18.240 where he's preaching every Sunday?

00:29:19.700 Yeah, he's a preacher, yeah.

00:29:21.520 And is it a growing church, do you know?

00:29:23.720 I honestly, I haven't done much research on Jack Kipps.

00:29:26.080 I just smile whenever I see his social content.

00:29:29.660 There's a lot of pastors out here, Tucker.

00:29:32.120 There's 400,000 churches in the US.

00:29:34.020 And so unfortunately, we can't look at them all.

00:29:37.420 But what we're trying to do

00:29:38.300 is we're looking at patterns, right?

00:29:41.340 Recently, someone sent me a book in the book.

00:29:44.080 they defined my character type and yours as an auditor basically like you guys are here to audit

00:29:49.940 the systems we've built whether that be our government whether that be our religious

00:29:54.180 institutions right and we're here to say hey what part of these systems isn't aligning with with the

00:30:00.080 ethos underneath it so in christianity what part of the machine that we've built the tradition

00:30:04.200 isn't aligning with scripture and the nation state is one of those you know tithe is one of those

00:30:09.440 running organizations with no external accountability where millions funnels in

00:30:13.760 is one of those. None of that is inherently biblical or Christ-like, right?

00:30:17.840 Tithing is not scriptural.

00:30:20.120 Tithing is not scriptural for a modern day Christian. 0.99

00:30:24.200 Huh. So where does the notion come from?

00:30:27.080 It's actually only flared back in the last couple hundred years. So tithing was not a thing. You

00:30:31.960 can go through the history of Christianity from Christ on, and Christians weren't tithing.

00:30:38.700 And tithe literally means a 10th, translates to a 10th.

00:30:42.980 And so most, not all, but a lot of churches today

00:30:46.960 and pastors today present that, hey, you need to tithe.

00:30:49.940 Give us 10% of your revenue

00:30:52.840 because the Bible says to tithe.

00:30:55.800 Well, the Old Testament, the Mosaic laws say to tithe.

00:30:59.340 But what's funny is there's not one tithe

00:31:01.580 in the Old Testament, there's three.

00:31:03.840 So if a 10th means, or if tithe means a 10th,

00:31:07.080 Technically, you're supposed to be paying three-tenths.

00:31:09.960 Now, the difference is the third tithe

00:31:11.700 was only once every three years.

00:31:14.400 So there's three tithes.

00:31:15.960 So if you're a pastor out there preaching tithe,

00:31:18.440 you need to be preaching 23.3% from your congregation,

00:31:23.380 not 10%, if you want to lean on the biblical tithe.

00:31:26.400 But so when you look at the tithe laws, 0.78

00:31:28.620 Israel of the Bible is a theocracy. 0.92

00:31:31.600 So those tithes were actually a form of taxation. 0.95

00:31:34.280 It's what kept up government and religion.

00:31:37.800 It was combined.

00:31:38.820 Today, we're not a theocracy.

00:31:40.760 We're a democratic republic.

00:31:42.640 So what the church has done, the recent church,

00:31:45.180 the modern church in the last couple hundred years,

00:31:47.080 is they needed to figure out a revenue stream.

00:31:50.300 So I'll say with good intentions,

00:31:52.860 these pastors looked to the old covenant,

00:31:55.020 the old Testament, and said, 0.86

00:31:56.500 hey, like the Levites were asking for 10%

00:31:59.680 or demanding 10% based off the Mosaic law.

00:32:03.000 so we should ask for 10%.

00:32:04.460 And it baked in this legalistic demand

00:32:09.300 from your congregation.

00:32:10.540 And then, hey, if you don't tithe, Tucker, to me,

00:32:12.980 you're a bad boy, the Bible says to tithe.

00:32:15.580 But when you look at the New Testament,

00:32:17.520 remember Paul was a Pharisee's Pharisee.

00:32:20.900 He was the man who knew the law better than anybody.

00:32:23.780 So Paul wrote a bulk of the modern New Testament.

00:32:26.860 So if Paul expected you to tithe,

00:32:29.380 you better believe he would have said in his epistles,

00:32:32.200 hey, Tucker, you're gonna tithe to your body

00:32:35.080 and then we're gonna distribute it.

00:32:36.560 He didn't say that.

00:32:37.740 Christ never said that.

00:32:38.680 Instead, it was free will generosity.

00:32:41.520 So Tucker, you're gonna give

00:32:42.860 from the desire and passion of your heart.

00:32:45.620 And you're not gonna know what your left hand is doing

00:32:48.320 or your right hand is doing

00:32:49.200 because we don't want you to basically build systems

00:32:52.060 on top of this generosity.

00:32:53.960 And the crazy part about the New Testament generosity

00:32:55.700 is when these early churches would pool resources,

00:32:58.940 it would always go to poorer gatherings

00:33:01.480 to poorer communities.

00:33:03.340 They weren't insulating themselves

00:33:04.860 and building corporations.

00:33:06.180 They were just distributing it

00:33:07.720 wherever there was a need.

00:33:10.400 And so what the tithe has done

00:33:12.980 is in the last 200 years

00:33:15.480 is it's given a fixed revenue stream

00:33:17.720 to an institution,

00:33:19.040 to a tradition we've built on top of Christ.

00:33:22.360 And now that we've been teaching,

00:33:24.140 I've been taught,

00:33:24.940 I was taught tithing from childhood.

00:33:27.320 Now that we've been taught this tithing model,

00:33:29.500 they can't it'd be really bad for them to go hey actually the tithe really isn't isn't biblically

00:33:36.820 accurate we do we need you just to be generous and here this is a fun one or it's not fun it's

00:33:42.500 very sad um someone someone sent me this um and it's a it's a slip that a child brought home um

00:33:52.240 and so this was going to a uh uh he was i think that the child was between 10 or 14 years old

00:33:59.020 and this is what they were taught in their youth group.

00:34:03.160 My commitment, I am expanding my generosity

00:34:06.080 to multiply by committing to the following

00:34:08.640 over the next year.

00:34:10.000 So Tucker, you're a 12-year-old boy, ready?

00:34:12.700 You're gonna tithe, Tucker, 10% from your allowance.

00:34:17.220 Those are on the sheet, ready?

00:34:18.540 You're gonna give a percentage of your birthday money

00:34:20.560 or Christmas money to the church.

00:34:22.700 You're gonna earn money, yard work, et cetera.

00:34:25.320 And specifically, you're gonna do that for multiplication.

00:34:27.640 and then here's the other, ready?

00:34:29.700 You're going to sell some of your electronics.

00:34:32.160 You're going to take clothes to a resale shop

00:34:34.440 and you're going to give a portion

00:34:36.200 of your savings to the church.

00:34:37.940 This went to a little kid.

00:34:39.600 And at the bottom, you're going to add it all up

00:34:41.620 and tell this church what your total commitment is.

00:34:45.180 In writing.

00:34:46.000 In writing.

00:34:47.860 That went to a child.

00:34:51.720 That is wild.

00:34:53.920 Where is any of that scriptural?

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00:36:33.620 So what do the churches do with the money?

00:36:36.860 Well, they'll say they give some of it away,

00:36:39.360 but statistically based off the financial,

00:36:42.460 but the financial data,

00:36:43.900 about 70% just goes to buildings and salaries

00:36:47.340 and less than six cents of every dollar

00:36:50.080 ever leaves the institutional walls now.

00:36:52.800 And so what we've built is just traditions.

00:36:55.580 Like it takes me back to the story of Christ in the temple.

00:36:58.460 You know, when he's whipping and he said,

00:37:00.400 you've turned my father's house into a robber's den.

00:37:02.560 We've built institutions on top of the teachings of Christ.

00:37:06.440 And that institution now is so hungry financially

00:37:09.880 that it just pulls all resources in

00:37:12.800 to the point where you're telling kids

00:37:15.920 to sell their electronics and give us the money.

00:37:18.660 Hey, actually, no, take your clothes to a thrift store

00:37:21.540 and then bring us that money.

00:37:23.100 Hey, you know, give a portion of your savings to us as well.

00:37:26.840 Like you're-

00:37:28.100 You're a middleman.

00:37:29.320 You're indoctrinating a child into this thinking.

00:37:33.080 And none of that is in the New Testament.

00:37:35.640 Well, Jesus doesn't say sell everything you have

00:37:37.820 and give it to the church.

00:37:38.720 He says, give it to the poor. 1.00

00:37:39.720 Poor, correct.

00:37:42.720 So what we've done is we've just built businesses

00:37:45.020 unaccountable, non-transparent businesses on the top of Christ and on the top of the scriptures. 0.71

00:37:50.280 And when you look at what the church was in America, the church was actually the

00:37:56.820 institution that pushed back against government encroachment. It pushed back against human greed.

00:38:04.580 And it did, rightfully so. It was the community. It was like the community think tank, for lack

00:38:11.220 of a better term and this is we'll go to this socialist comment right so i said last time

00:38:15.800 christianity is more socialist than capitalistic america is our economy our economy is built on

00:38:21.580 capitalism a great social concept because it lifts people in in in nations out of poverty but there

00:38:28.960 is that marginalized that's left behind christianity is in that marginalized that's why we

00:38:35.640 pool our resources and give to the poor. And so Christianity is not about ownership. Christianity

00:38:42.800 is not about growth and profits at all costs. Christianity is the opposite. And so Christianity 0.85

00:38:50.280 is the hard line against power and against authority. But what's happened is we've taken

00:38:55.980 those structures, those capitalistic structures, and brought it into the church and brought it

00:39:01.600 into an institution that is antithetical to that.

00:39:05.020 And so now the institutional church has been co-opted

00:39:08.540 by the very mechanisms it's supposed to push against,

00:39:11.900 all in the name of Christ.

00:39:13.900 So, hey, bring more money.

00:39:15.220 Hey, and it's been co-opted by the politic now too.

00:39:18.800 And so the church, the beautiful body of Christ,

00:39:23.040 is now an MLM, a multi-level marketing scheme,

00:39:26.820 for lack of a better term.

00:39:27.600 It's a franchise, and you can see it play out.

00:39:30.660 You know, a lot of, as denominations die, evangelical non-denominational churches are

00:39:36.240 flourishing. And so what's happening is now they're building satellite campuses. So it's like,

00:39:40.820 we're going to build as many campuses as possible. We're going to get you guys to churn and burn.

00:39:45.640 So you're going to come in, you have an hour and a half, grab a coffee, grab a donut. We're going

00:39:48.940 to sing some emotional songs. We're going to give you a couple of scripture verses and then get out.

00:39:54.580 We got to do it again. And so we've franchised faith and we haven't franchised it in a good way

00:40:00.260 either i feel we franchised it in like a fast food way right it's like the cheapest fastest

00:40:05.400 quickest way to turn and burn this thing and so what we've done is we've commoditized christianity

00:40:10.580 when it wasn't supposed to be commoditized and now we've tribal we've we it's tribalism too now

00:40:16.320 we're either right or left so now it's you can see the politic grabbing onto it and weaponizing

00:40:21.620 it as well are most churches pretty open about their politics now oh very yeah really yeah very

00:40:27.820 well the johnson amendment was supposed to like keep that at bay but trump basically wiped the

00:40:33.360 johnson amendment out what was the johnson amendment the johnson amendment was you couldn't um uh i

00:40:39.700 don't have the exact language but you couldn't um advocate for specific candidates from the pulpit

00:40:44.120 yes and so uh and and you'd get in trouble you could potentially lose your taxism status if you

00:40:49.360 did that well trump basically wiped that out so what's happened is you literally have pastors

00:40:54.380 from the pulpit. And I've been to these churches saying exactly who you should vote for because

00:40:58.940 there's no fear anymore about losing your tax exempt status. So the church, not all churches,

00:41:04.100 but many churches, whether right or left, are just champions for tribal party, political parties at

00:41:11.540 this point. And you'll be hard pressed to go. Actually, I would love anybody to DM us if you

00:41:17.680 go to a church that doesn't preach tithe and doesn't preach politics from the pulpit. You're

00:41:22.980 gonna be hard-pressed to find a successful church really doing that today yeah

00:41:27.400 i i've never seen that really no oh do you go to many big churches many like mega churches okay

00:41:36.280 well that's a problem yeah so that's the problem yeah i go to a lot of them that's that's what i

00:41:41.080 visit and they're open about this or that candidate oh yeah yeah they can't just say

00:41:46.160 give to caesar what caesar's they have to like well that's a funny one render to caesar the

00:41:50.900 the things that are Caesar's and rendered to God,

00:41:52.620 the things that are God's,

00:41:53.400 because that's an inflection point for the church too, right?

00:41:57.220 Your congregation pays taxes,

00:41:59.600 but why does the church have this interesting carve out

00:42:02.420 where they don't pay tax?

00:42:04.760 I don't know.

00:42:05.960 Well, it goes back to 1913.

00:42:09.440 And yeah, I said, we talked last,

00:42:14.500 I talked about kind of the weaponization

00:42:15.940 or the box that churches climbed into,

00:42:18.420 religious organizations climbed into,

00:42:19.720 which is the 14-point checklist.

00:42:21.740 I think tax exemption was the carrot for them to climb in.

00:42:25.080 It's, hey, Tucker, we're going to give you a church tax-exempt status.

00:42:27.660 You don't have to pay taxes, but you're going to have to play by these rules.

00:42:30.940 And so you climbed into the box, and now this box can be weaponized right or left.

00:42:36.300 Now foreign agents can come in and just sell concepts to the box, if that makes sense.

00:42:43.260 And hey, if I do anything wrong, if I don't live inside these 14 points,

00:42:47.180 I might get kicked out of this box.

00:42:49.080 What is getting kicked out?

00:42:50.900 lose your tax-exempt status.

00:42:52.840 Great.

00:42:53.300 Who cares?

00:42:54.400 Lose it.

00:42:54.800 Are there churches

00:42:55.440 that don't claim tax-exempt status?

00:42:57.580 There's a couple.

00:42:58.500 Yeah.

00:43:00.440 There's a new model that,

00:43:05.280 you know, like I called us

00:43:06.120 kind of auditors on systems.

00:43:07.680 We don't get anything perfect,

00:43:09.260 but we're just trying to get things right,

00:43:11.920 more Christ-like.

00:43:12.840 Yeah.

00:43:13.300 And so I don't only want to be an auditor.

00:43:17.240 I want to be a reformer.

00:43:19.220 I want us to help usher in change that's more Christ-like.

00:43:23.360 And so as we look at the system,

00:43:25.200 there are legal structures that hedge against man's evil hearts,

00:43:32.660 for lack of a better term.

00:43:33.380 Yes.

00:43:33.640 We corrupt things.

00:43:34.640 There's no better term.

00:43:35.780 Thank you.

00:43:36.700 And so I think it'd be really brilliant

00:43:38.380 if we were honest enough with ourselves as Christians

00:43:41.100 and as leaders to be like, hey, let's build a system.

00:43:43.640 And our founding fathers did this brilliantly.

00:43:45.520 They're like, let's build a system

00:43:46.780 that keeps it safe from ourselves.

00:43:49.920 And so I think there's gonna be a new wave of pastors

00:43:52.900 and a new wave of Christian leaders

00:43:54.240 that say, how do we build a system?

00:43:56.060 Because we do need a system

00:43:57.200 that is protected from ourselves.

00:44:00.080 And I think it starts with open source accounting.

00:44:03.360 So everybody can see where the money goes.

00:44:05.640 And then there's legal architecture

00:44:07.040 that you can play into that's not tax exemption.

00:44:09.700 That doesn't have to do with tax exemption

00:44:11.020 that builds a better ecosystem for a transparent church.

00:44:15.340 And that's what we're working on.

00:44:17.220 we have some really cool stuff happening over the next

00:44:19.660 few months because of that. God

00:44:21.500 gave me a Ferrari. He gave his

00:44:23.580 son, and you won't argue about two percent.

00:44:25.880 Millions of Christians donate to their church

00:44:27.680 every week. It's generous, and it goes

00:44:29.640 to a non-profit. Can I get another amen?

00:44:31.900 Well, it turns out the non-profit designation

00:44:33.700 is one of the most powerful legal and

00:44:35.700 financial protections in all American

00:44:37.680 law. Fifty-three billion

00:44:40.020 dollars is stolen

00:44:41.440 every year. Mind

00:44:42.940 your own business.

00:44:45.500 In fact, some of the most powerful financial institutions in America are not banks, they are churches.

00:44:50.860 In the for-profit world, if you went out and raised money for something like this and didn't build it, that would be called fraud.

00:44:56.300 But in the religious world, we call it faith.

00:44:58.400 Filmmaker Nathan Apfel set out to find out what is happening here.

00:45:01.760 You have been warned for criminal trespass.

00:45:03.600 You are being detained.

00:45:04.780 This is not a series that attacks faith.

00:45:07.040 This is a series that attacks people who are using faith to get rich.

00:45:10.740 At what point do we call this not only a business, but a straight-up scam?

00:45:15.460 We have a new multi-part series called The Religion in Business, and it covers it all.

00:45:19.100 It's now available at TuckerCarlson.com.

00:45:26.600 Feel free to skip this ad and all of them.

00:45:30.580 With a $3,000 a month payday for life, you could spring to go ad-free without it feeling like a splurge.

00:45:36.320 Every $20 ticket supports life-saving cancer research at Princess Margaret Cancer Center.

00:45:41.620 Feel free to buy yours today.

00:45:43.200 License number RAF 155-2194.

00:45:46.420 Please play responsibly.

00:45:51.100 I would assume all churches would have transparent accounting.

00:45:55.300 No, very.

00:45:56.700 As denominations, denominational structure, you had to be transparent with the denomination, which is good.

00:46:03.620 but as denominations die and non-denominationalism is rising non-denominational churches are are

00:46:09.840 accountable to no other church most usually some people will say oh no this church has this pastor

00:46:15.840 sits on my board affiliated with yeah but it's like there's no handing over of pnl statements

00:46:20.120 or budgets um so what's happened is a lot of churches like there's a church in florida their

00:46:25.820 budget is um 91 million a year their congregation gets a single sheet of paper with three little

00:46:31.240 like three pie charts on it and says,

00:46:34.160 here's where your 91 million went.

00:46:36.120 Where does it actually go, do you think?

00:46:38.020 Like there's just buckets, you know,

00:46:39.860 there's just massive buckets.

00:46:41.200 20, I don't have the pie charts in front of me,

00:46:43.460 but 27% goes to salary.

00:46:45.440 Okay, well, what does the head pastor make?

00:46:47.020 You don't need to know, Tucker.

00:46:48.420 They don't tell you what the pastor makes?

00:46:50.220 No, no.

00:46:50.820 You don't know what the pastor makes?

00:46:52.260 This is the crazy part is

00:46:53.080 you don't know their retirement packages.

00:46:55.400 And I've heard about this individual's retirement package.

00:46:58.520 um this church in particular uh we did a series of videos on because they took a ppp loan

00:47:05.620 a 1.7 million dollar ppp loan in 2020 a few months later they bought a 12.7 million dollar

00:47:12.040 hunting ranch and then a few months after that the ppp loan got forgiven and it was dumped on

00:47:17.600 the american taxpayer no and they forgave those loans and my question my only my question was hey

00:47:24.000 is this christ-like to claim financial hardship take a 1.7 million dollar ppp loan as you're

00:47:31.060 buying an almost 13 million dollar property for the church that's not essential and then you dump

00:47:36.880 1.7 million dollars worth of debt onto the american taxpayer that doesn't sound very christ-like and i

00:47:43.340 got eaten alive for that comment what was jesus's real estate portfolio huge the world the son of

00:47:52.020 man has no place to lay his head, I think he said. Zero real estate portfolio. You got a

00:47:57.600 negative reaction to that? Horrible. How? Yeah, because it goes back to Israel. This is a good

00:48:02.780 correlation, actually. They said, Nathan, look at how many baptisms they're doing. Look at how

00:48:07.420 many salvations they're doing. And they go, how dare you? And then one individual even put the

00:48:12.860 percentage of the total PPP loan forgiveness debt in a comment. And he goes, Nathan, this is all it

00:48:19.720 is to the American public. He tried to rationalize it. He's like, it's 0.000022% or whatever of the

00:48:27.440 total PPP loan debt. So why do you care? And that is the biggest issue I have with all of this.

00:48:35.340 I mean, that reasoning justifies like, I don't know, shoplifting from a grocery store. They

00:48:38.980 got tons of food. Exactly. What percentage, if I steal this candy bar, what percentage of the

00:48:43.060 total candy bar inventory is that? It's just zero point, point, point, point. That sounds pretty

00:48:47.120 christ-like right yeah oh man it's it's so that but here's the thing as an auditor and i'm going

00:48:53.580 to use this term it's exhausting because there's just so much corruption in the system and so

00:48:59.740 i'm really excited for the next six months because it's okay how do we become the leaders in the

00:49:05.800 change you know and how do we show different models and say hey here's how we can do it

00:49:09.900 different differently here's how we can build systems to protect it against ourselves so if

00:49:14.080 if you don't mind, will you describe the ideal model for an American church?

00:49:17.420 I don't like we're, or what would be a massive improvement?

00:49:21.880 Transparent accounting is, is, is base level step one. Like your congregation, your donors

00:49:28.020 should know where every dollar goes and they should be able to ask. Your pastor's salary

00:49:32.400 should be public knowledge. Just like if, if I invest in a for-profit publicly traded company,

00:49:37.840 I know those executive salaries. Of course. I know where the money goes.

00:49:41.040 so why should that i invest in that company if i donate and fund this organization i should know

00:49:47.460 where the money goes as well but they don't disclose that they don't disclose that no

00:49:51.260 many churches do not so there's there's great i have a lot of friends and denominations methodist

00:49:56.480 methodist baptist you know and and their salaries are known for the most part and so i love it

00:50:02.520 because it checks them at the door there is that check if that makes sense yes and my methodist

00:50:06.960 friends in florida you guys know who you are like they're hilarious because they're bivocational

00:50:10.660 and they're like, Nathan, half our pews are filled with drug addicts and homeless,

00:50:15.120 but we're on the front lines and their program is so awesome. And they basically turned their

00:50:20.580 church into a co-op where all these community nonprofits can thrive and encourage each other.

00:50:26.220 And they've just given parts of the building to the nonprofits and it's become this community

00:50:29.640 hub. And I'm like, oh, Jesus is right here. I feel him. You got homeless people coming in

00:50:35.860 getting meals. You have, um, uh, handicapped children in the little school there. It's

00:50:40.640 beautiful, you know? And then you have people in the community packaging up food and I'm like,

00:50:44.420 oh, I feel it. I feel the work, you know? And, uh, and then I walk into a church where I don't

00:50:50.920 know the pastor's salary, where he just acquired a $12.75 million hunting ranch. And, um, and I'm

00:50:59.100 like, okay, I'll grab a donut and a cup of coffee and see the performance. And usually the performance

00:51:03.240 is on the projector screen.

00:51:04.560 I don't even see him in person.

00:51:06.320 Really?

00:51:07.260 Yeah.

00:51:08.700 And no one knows

00:51:09.560 what his salary

00:51:10.140 or retirement package is.

00:51:11.780 Well, I'm sure a few people

00:51:12.680 on the elder board do.

00:51:14.520 But yeah, it's...

00:51:16.060 What would happen

00:51:17.160 if a church just declined

00:51:18.920 nonprofit status?

00:51:20.780 I think that's the most

00:51:21.540 brilliant option out there.

00:51:23.720 Because what it does

00:51:24.640 is it holds you liable

00:51:25.640 to the Fed and the state.

00:51:28.200 You're rendering to Caesar

00:51:29.500 the things that are Caesar's.

00:51:31.120 And then you're not liable

00:51:33.120 to get in that box. I think it'd be a really fun experiment. All of this is an experiment,

00:51:38.980 right? America is an experiment, a governing experiment. Our institutions that we've built

00:51:44.020 on top of Christ, those are just experiments. Those are traditions of men. And when we can 0.99

00:51:47.900 see it for that, and that's not doctrine, then we can audit the experiments and say,

00:51:52.900 where are we failing? And I think a really cool experiment would be to start a church

00:51:57.480 as a for-profit vehicle. And here's a great example. If the religion business takes off

00:52:02.980 and we're doing season three and four 0.98

00:52:04.440 and we keep going as we reform the system,

00:52:06.440 we'll need a space eventually to build our sets out

00:52:08.900 because our sets are sitting in storage right now.

00:52:11.560 And we're talking about internally,

00:52:13.420 okay, how does our for-profit business help the community?

00:52:17.980 Well, all of a sudden we have warehouse space.

00:52:19.560 Let's hold a church, let's hold a gathering.

00:52:21.260 I hold two a week right now, one's in my house.

00:52:23.640 And I'm like, well, we could make it a little bigger

00:52:25.400 and we don't even need to ask people for money

00:52:27.160 because God's blessed us with this space.

00:52:29.460 You know, we could start a church organically like that

00:52:31.940 to where a for-profit vehicle funds the ability

00:52:34.920 to hold church, to hold the gathering,

00:52:37.480 if that makes sense.

00:52:38.480 So why don't people do it?

00:52:40.280 I think it's just non-profit status

00:52:43.160 is a really easy thing to grab.

00:52:44.800 You know, in 1913, when the non-profit sector

00:52:47.300 was carved out, there was 12,000 organizations.

00:52:50.100 Today, there's 1.9 million non-profits.

00:52:53.420 So you say, okay, Tucker, well, you know,

00:52:55.960 population expansion.

00:52:57.660 Well, the population only expanded through 4.3%

00:53:00.020 in the last 110 years.

00:53:01.940 So you do the math, that would put us around 65,000 organizations.

00:53:05.780 So you have to ask, why is there a gap from 65,000 organizations to 1.9 million?

00:53:11.820 The sector just exploded, and it's because there's less accountability in the legal architecture.

00:53:17.520 And then religious exemptions are just completely dark.

00:53:21.300 And what I mean by that is they file no 990 with the IRS.

00:53:24.560 They file very few documents with the state.

00:53:27.120 And so the church, the institution, which is supposed to be the beacon of light,

00:53:30.340 plays in the darkest legal architecture

00:53:32.620 there is in the U.S.

00:53:34.080 And it's just become status quo.

00:53:36.280 Now it's like, hey, let's start a church.

00:53:37.940 And now what's cool is,

00:53:39.260 not what's cool, I shouldn't say that, 0.98

00:53:40.600 it's very pathetic, 1.00

00:53:41.660 is certain denominations have lobbied the government 0.99

00:53:44.100 over the last 50 years

00:53:45.280 to add vocabulary in front of the word church.

00:53:49.080 So now if I have a church that's not a nonprofit

00:53:51.740 that has religious exemption,

00:53:53.820 so I don't file a 990,

00:53:54.740 I can start acquiring for-profit companies

00:53:57.020 and pulling them under my church banner as a church.

00:54:00.340 So I can have an investment fund registered as a church.

00:54:03.500 I can have a TV network registered as a church.

00:54:05.860 I can have a radio station registered as a church.

00:54:08.380 I can take almost any vehicle,

00:54:10.820 any legal for-profit business

00:54:12.740 and bring it under my church

00:54:13.960 and it gets to reclassify as a church.

00:54:17.320 You have organizations like Compassion International,

00:54:20.860 Ravi Zacharias Ministries.

00:54:22.600 These organizations used to file 990s

00:54:25.200 because they were regular nonprofits

00:54:26.940 and they reclassified as a church.

00:54:28.760 so it means they no longer had to file 990s.

00:54:31.500 You can do it with any business?

00:54:33.340 If you have a church,

00:54:34.960 you can bring it under your fold

00:54:37.680 as what's called an auxiliary,

00:54:39.060 a convention, or association.

00:54:40.360 There's different classifications.

00:54:42.080 And you can basically build a conglomerate as a church.

00:54:45.160 So a thrift store,

00:54:46.280 that same church in Florida has a thrift store.

00:54:51.180 A thrift store is registered as a church.

00:54:52.900 It files no 990s.

00:54:54.400 You're selling clothes.

00:54:55.680 Well, let me rephrase that.

00:54:56.620 You're taking clothes for free.

00:54:57.740 washing them and then selling them

00:54:59.820 as opposed to just giving them away

00:55:01.140 to people who need clothes,

00:55:02.500 but you're making a profit off of that.

00:55:04.420 But why would a thrift store

00:55:05.800 be registered as a church?

00:55:08.040 So you can start building these businesses,

00:55:10.440 these conglomerates

00:55:11.340 and all under the banner of one church.

00:55:13.860 And none of them pay taxes.

00:55:15.760 None of them, no, they do not pay taxes.

00:55:18.560 And what's crazy is that same church,

00:55:20.840 they have a new business, relatively new.

00:55:24.260 It's basically a consulting firm to build your church.

00:55:27.740 So Tucker, you can hire my consulting firm

00:55:30.000 and I'm going to teach you how to build your church.

00:55:31.800 I'm going to lay it out for you,

00:55:33.320 talk about the screens and everything.

00:55:34.680 That's registered as a church as well.

00:55:37.200 So a consulting firm to teach you how to build a building

00:55:39.780 is registered as a church.

00:55:41.220 So that means it files no 990s.

00:55:43.000 No one knows what people are making at the executive level.

00:55:46.220 It's just like religion is the organized nonprofit

00:55:50.520 religious exemptions are the perfect vehicle

00:55:52.740 to just abuse the system.

00:55:55.800 And I'm not saying everybody's doing that,

00:55:57.140 but I'm saying the legal architecture

00:55:58.440 is the perfect vehicle for abuse. 0.95

00:56:00.780 The Mormon, the LDS church, Mormon church

00:56:03.460 is one of the biggest landowners in the United States.

00:56:06.980 Yeah, they were the second largest private landowner.

00:56:08.760 They might be the first now.

00:56:10.160 Wow.

00:56:10.800 Yeah.

00:56:11.400 So what, like how big is the enterprise

00:56:15.040 and what's its purpose?

00:56:16.640 The LDS church?

00:56:17.480 Yeah.

00:56:18.300 The LDS church is, their net assets

00:56:20.280 are about 350 billion, billion with a B.

00:56:23.980 They have over 300 billion in the market

00:56:26.720 just invested through a hedge fund called Enzyme Peak Advisors. They'll hit a trillion dollars if

00:56:33.900 they continue the growth rate. They'll hit a trillion dollars in net assets in the next 15

00:56:37.600 years. And the crazy part about the LDS church is they make so much profit in the market. They made

00:56:44.820 25 billion last year in interest alone in the market. The entire global LDS church costs around

00:56:52.340 seven billion dollars to run so that means they could fund the church in perpetuity just off a

00:57:00.320 percentage of the interest they make in the market but they still demand that their congregants give

00:57:06.360 them 10 a year and they'll push mormon my mormon my mormon my mormon my mormon friends are going

00:57:10.740 to push back and say nathan like hey you know we we don't have it's not a demand yes it is because

00:57:15.320 you don't get to get into your celestial kingdom unless you pay your tithe for your 10 your tithe

00:57:20.040 and so they could cut off they could say hey guys stop giving to us right now give to the community

00:57:26.840 give to people in need take that 10 percent and give to people in need but they don't they say

00:57:31.360 give it to us still and they could fund the church in perpetuity just off a percentage

00:57:36.240 so what are they doing what's the point of all this they're i'll argue for them they're going

00:57:42.620 to say nathan you know joseph in egypt he stockpiled for seven years yeah um for the

00:57:47.480 seven-year famine, that's what we're doing. Well, you've stockpiled indefinitely. You could fund

00:57:53.800 the church indefinitely just off the interest, so I don't know what they're doing. That would be

00:57:56.820 their only rationale, but I see it as it's like the Lord of the Rings, right? There's the shiny

00:58:02.040 ring. Their hedge fund is their ring, and they just can't give it up, and so it's just growing.

00:58:08.900 Do pastors actually get rich doing the job? Are there some who do?

00:58:12.060 Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. Kenneth Copeland, I've seen estimates, no one knows the exact number

00:58:20.060 because it's not, the salaries aren't known, but some estimates Kenneth Copeland is worth 700

00:58:25.440 million, around 700 million. Yeah. Is that, I mean, that's, I mean, since Jesus does say it's

00:58:33.620 harder for a rich man to get into heaven than a camel through the eye of a needle, but possible.

00:58:38.100 Yeah. 1.00

00:58:39.440 That seems like very obviously the wrong path for a Christian church. 1.00

00:58:44.880 100%. 0.80

00:58:45.280 Well, there's a beautiful part of the New Testament where Paul defines leadership qualifications.

00:58:51.880 Yes.

00:58:52.360 And lover of money is one of them.

00:58:53.960 You cannot be a lover of money.

00:58:55.680 You need to live modestly, right?

00:58:57.540 And it's painted in there.

00:58:59.480 And there are amazing pastors and shepherds out there that live by that standard.

00:59:02.980 but there's this growing number in and again it goes back to that socialist comment when we see

00:59:09.800 christianity as a capitalistic venture and we build businesses on top of christ with capitalism

00:59:15.700 in mind that's what happens it does i mean this is as someone who loves america and is very pro

00:59:22.640 america it pains me to say this but i do think that christianity as a religious faith as the

00:59:29.800 you know the key to eternal life as is something bigger than any nation state even your own and so

00:59:37.120 you probably want to keep your religion from becoming infected by cultural assumptions that

00:59:42.180 are just by definition bound to a time and place like this is about eternity right yeah and to what

00:59:47.440 extent do you think so that's my preface just to it it's not an anti-american statement at all i

00:59:51.840 love america but i don't want christianity to reflect america i want christianity to change

00:59:56.420 america amen and christian again christianity was the hard line against corruption like like the

01:00:03.820 church was supposed to be the antithesis like the antithesis yes of corruption and instead

01:00:08.720 the system and this is i really want people to ask why has it corrupted is the the institutional

01:00:15.360 model has corrupted to mirror our corruption in government they run simultaneously now the

01:00:21.580 government says we're going to collect taxes, you know, and you're going to give it to us. And

01:00:25.540 with these massive bills, you're never going to know where the spending goes. You just got to

01:00:30.060 give us more money. The churches are doing the same thing. They're saying, hey, you're going to

01:00:33.960 give us your money. We're going to build the system. You got to trust us. And now we're going

01:00:37.180 to start petitioning your kids to go sell their electronics to give us, you know. To give it to us. 0.99

01:00:41.900 To give it to us in the name of Jesus, you know. It's just, it's such a sad spot to be right now

01:00:50.140 to look at the body of Christ that I love.

01:00:52.800 And it's just, I always use the analogy,

01:00:55.060 we've built a tradition, we've built an institution,

01:00:57.380 an expensive machine, a consumerist machine

01:01:00.440 that entertains us and keeps us fed.

01:01:02.760 But that institution has chained us to the pews financially.

01:01:07.700 Because if we leave, if you actually preached

01:01:10.660 this whole book in its entirety,

01:01:12.980 a lot of people would get up and leave

01:01:14.780 because they'd be called to go out.

01:01:17.460 They'd say, hey, God's calling me to do this other thing.

01:01:19.680 But with that goes my money and my time and my attention.

01:01:25.680 And so the model we've built is actually antithetical to the calling in the Gospels.

01:01:32.480 So the theology that these churches preach serves the church, not the kingdom of God.

01:01:39.220 Yes.

01:01:40.020 And I've said one statement that people have hung me for.

01:01:42.120 I've said anybody who plays in this system for a full career gets eaten by the system.

01:01:47.280 And you've nailed that.

01:01:48.680 when you play for the institution, when you are on stage and you have this $70 million a year

01:01:55.680 operating cost, your message, your theology, everything you preach from giving kids sheets

01:02:02.200 on how to give you more money shifts to build and calcify the machine we've built on top of Christ.

01:02:07.380 No, that makes total sense. And I've talked to amazing pastors who've just been eaten by the

01:02:11.480 machine. And then the good ones, here's the sad part. As the big ones grow, they drain resources

01:02:16.640 from the small churches that are actually still embedded in the community doing the good work.

01:02:21.660 And a lot of those small ones shut down. Statistically right now, church closure is

01:02:26.140 outpacing church expansion and the churches that are closing are the small ones. And those small

01:02:31.820 churches are the backbone of their local communities. And so when I say all pastors

01:02:38.440 who play by the system die by the system, even the good ones get eaten by the system because the

01:02:43.240 big church gobbles up their congregation and gobbles up the resources that funded this

01:02:47.920 beautiful, small community church. Is anyone pointing any of this out? Do you feel like a

01:02:54.180 voice in the wilderness? I did for a couple of years, but I think our message is starting to

01:03:00.780 resonate. And there's other watchmen on the wall, so to speak. That's in Ezekiel, I think Ezekiel

01:03:07.040 3. So there's clearly a religious revival going on in the United States, a Christian revival.

01:03:12.540 where are people going that's that's a really good question i think people are searching

01:03:18.580 they don't know there there's some go to the mega church some hopefully go to scripture and just

01:03:23.780 sit quietly and read scripture and pray yes um my my encouragement would be to go find a small

01:03:31.500 church in your area yeah like that church needs your help those smaller pastors that that are

01:03:36.960 often bivocational because even their even their congregation can't fund a full-time salary

01:03:41.980 go support them with your time,

01:03:44.520 with your talent, with your resource,

01:03:46.640 like those small ones.

01:03:48.380 And ironically, the small ones need your help.

01:03:52.060 It's like they need you to help with the kids.

01:03:54.600 So bivocational means that the pastor is a carpenter,

01:03:59.680 roofer.

01:04:00.320 Yeah, 100%.

01:04:00.860 And that's with the beautiful pastors that I've sat with

01:04:03.460 because I've sat with probably a thousand plus pastors

01:04:06.340 around the US at this point over the last five years

01:04:08.140 is the bivocational ones are usually the ones

01:04:10.740 preaching the most biblical theology.

01:04:14.280 I've noticed that.

01:04:14.960 Yes, I've noticed that.

01:04:15.960 Because their salary, their livelihood,

01:04:18.020 the food that sits in front of their kids

01:04:20.800 is not dependent on this book.

01:04:23.120 Well, that was Paul's model.

01:04:24.280 The first great evangelist was making tents.

01:04:27.540 Yeah.

01:04:28.080 Well, and the Bible speaks about,

01:04:30.880 hey, if you make your living from the gospel,

01:04:33.460 you have your reward.

01:04:35.620 You've been paid your reward.

01:04:37.160 and i i want my my reward to be upstairs you know how do you the big denominations you think are

01:04:44.900 less corrupt no the big i i wouldn't say that the big denominations just have hierarchical

01:04:51.480 oversight on the on the financials and so um it used to it it does it does bring some accountability

01:04:59.860 to the system but it's not it's not quality accountability but there is some structure

01:05:04.340 um like method methodists for example you know um what your methodist pastor makes it's a baseline

01:05:11.100 and so you're not joining the methodist church to get rich let's just say no but like baptists

01:05:18.560 have slipped a bit you know i know i know baptist pastors that are very well off you know and how

01:05:24.740 um just because they've kind of taken the non-denominational model

01:05:31.200 A great example is there's a massive church.

01:05:34.720 And here's another example to the capitalist mindset.

01:05:37.020 Remember when we talked about franchises, 0.83

01:05:38.680 like Christianity is almost becoming franchises. 0.98

01:05:41.100 So when you bring really smart businessmen

01:05:43.800 and women into leadership at these churches,

01:05:45.780 they bring their capitalist business mindset 1.00

01:05:48.940 into the machine.

01:05:50.680 And it's corrupting the machine.

01:05:52.360 And what I mean by that is,

01:05:53.480 I'm gonna give two examples.

01:05:54.360 There's a very large church in Houston.

01:05:58.860 Or your family goes, Second Baptist, right?

01:06:00.360 So that's a billion-dollar enterprise that's been funded by Houstonians for almost 100 years.

01:06:06.580 So local Houston Christians generously gave to build this tradition, this awesome tradition.

01:06:13.040 It's a school, it's a church, it's a lot of things.

01:06:15.580 But now it's all that power has been consolidated into six people's hands.

01:06:19.880 And they can decide what to do with that billion in assets.

01:06:23.020 They can move it out of state.

01:06:24.480 They can sell off parts of it. 0.78

01:06:25.780 And so what I mean by that is when we franchise out Christianity, the resources don't stay in 0.80

01:06:31.740 the town that funded it. And a great example is there's a small church in Sarasota that I visited

01:06:36.480 and it was acquired by a church in Dallas. And so these individuals in Sarasota funded this building

01:06:43.100 for years. And now the church in Dallas can just sell it off whenever it wants and all that resource

01:06:48.020 heads to Dallas. And so the people in Sarasota, the Christians in Sarasota gave generously.

01:06:54.260 And that's what I mean is all money and resource 0.60

01:06:56.240 ends up siloing at the top now.

01:06:58.020 Why would a church in Dallas want a church in Sarasota?

01:07:01.200 I've got my opinion.

01:07:02.300 I think it's to justify the beachfront home in Florida.

01:07:06.520 Wow.

01:07:07.280 Yeah.

01:07:08.080 But so what I'm seeing is,

01:07:10.300 and what we're seeing is money siloing at a national level.

01:07:13.420 And then what does that mean?

01:07:14.820 It means you can, all of a sudden,

01:07:16.660 these national groups and these big conglomerates

01:07:20.100 become political apparatus, basically.

01:07:22.440 It's just surprising, but I guess not really surprising to learn that what's happening to every other part of our society is happening to churches where your vet is now owned by some private equity concern out of New York and your stores in your town are gone because of Amazon and Walmart.

01:07:40.880 And like it just the big things get bigger, the small things disappear.

01:07:44.820 We call it the Walmart effect in the religion business.

01:07:47.000 When a megachurch moves into a town, it has to find consumers somewhere.

01:07:52.140 yes so it looks so that it attracts you know there's everybody's not christian there's only

01:07:56.900 so many christians in in your town so what happens is the mega church draws christians and consumers

01:08:03.880 from the small churches entertains them and bedazzles them and gives them a good sprinkle

01:08:07.620 donut and then the small churches close and what happens is usually the walmart moves on the mega

01:08:12.720 church corrupts it's usually a sex scandal or a financial scandal that shuts down and then there's

01:08:18.680 no small churches anymore, which were the backbone of the community. And so the Walmart effect is in

01:08:24.540 full effect. And again, I don't want to just be an auditor. There's beautiful reform on the horizon

01:08:32.160 because I'm seeing home churches spring up all over the U.S. I'm seeing people actually go back

01:08:38.600 to the small churches in their community because they're looking for authenticity.

01:08:43.280 The non-denominational kid, me, who ran around on stage and did every goofy thing my church

01:08:49.940 would put on and I had a great time is I love exploring Catholicism and orthodoxy and I

01:08:56.500 call it the kaleidoscope of Christianity because I want to see where every denomination thrives

01:09:02.540 and then where I think theological pinch points are because then I can build my own perspective

01:09:07.380 on this book and now my faith is my own, if that makes sense.

01:09:10.960 And so I love going to small churches now.

01:09:14.320 It's kind of like my jam.

01:09:16.600 Well, they're great.

01:09:17.660 Yeah.

01:09:18.100 They're great.

01:09:18.780 I've been to, yeah,

01:09:20.540 regularly been to a church with three other people.

01:09:22.980 And I'll tell you this,

01:09:24.340 I get arrested at big churches.

01:09:26.580 I get kicked out of big churches,

01:09:27.680 even when I'm just going to visit without cameras,

01:09:29.360 if I just want to go sit.

01:09:31.180 But I have never had a bad experience ever

01:09:34.340 at a small church.

01:09:35.040 I totally agree.

01:09:35.660 I usually have people come up and they're like,

01:09:36.980 oh, you're the religion business guy.

01:09:38.680 And they like hug me or want to, you know,

01:09:40.460 want to sit with us and it's, it's awesome. And they're like, oh, you're great. Cool. Awesome.

01:09:44.980 That's yeah. So last question, which is like a big question. Well, it's a small topic,

01:09:50.220 but I think it's a metaphor and it's about the treatment of Palestinian Christians, 1.00

01:09:54.100 which is how I got into all this drama in the first place, because I just noticed that Christians

01:09:58.140 in the United States, some of whom loved Israel, and that didn't bother me at all, 0.51

01:10:01.980 but we're going out of their way to ignore what was happening to their brothers in Christ

01:10:06.800 in the middle east and i was offended by that and so began all of this but um is that changing

01:10:13.180 are you seeing greater concern from christian churches about what's happening to christians

01:10:19.800 in the middle east the holy land i wouldn't i wouldn't say it's changing at the institutional

01:10:25.020 level it's changing at the individual is it i think it is yeah i i have um so many healthy

01:10:31.400 conversations with my Christian brothers and sisters about this topic in particular. And

01:10:38.200 people are just, Christians are waking up and they don't really know where to go. 0.98

01:10:42.580 Right. 0.99

01:10:42.860 You know, it's when the scales fall off for the first time, you're looking around and you're

01:10:45.780 like, whoa, this is far more beautiful and far more complex than I realized.

01:10:49.900 Yes, exactly.

01:10:50.560 But it's, we as Christians can just look to the scripture and look to the Bible and say,

01:10:55.800 this is our roadmap and that's it. And God will walk us out. And so I do think at the

01:11:00.800 institutional level i haven't seen change but at the individual level i've seen massive

01:11:05.120 massive theological change over the last couple years really and who's leading that um or people

01:11:12.140 just independently coming to i'm gonna say watchmen on the wall like there's there's a lot

01:11:16.780 of people out there that are digging and then they'll put their they'll put their research

01:11:21.060 online they'll put it on social media um they'll reach out to us i'm i'm just one of many we're

01:11:26.440 just one of many that are starting to pick up the Bible and say, let's read this cover to cover.

01:11:32.520 It used to be that the critics of Christian churches in the United States, of their corruption,

01:11:37.040 of their scandals, were all anti-Christian. So it was a way to undermine it. You know,

01:11:41.220 the Boston Globe with its Spotlight series, you really got the sense like they just hate the 1.00

01:11:45.780 Catholic church for other reasons, which I think is true. But now you're seeing criticism of this 0.52

01:11:52.260 kind of behavior of church behavior from people who are mad because they're really sincere

01:11:56.980 Christians. And I even have massive, like there's a pastor who's been on your show,

01:12:02.740 a great guy. He's a good friend of mine. And we're developing a relationship and he works at a very

01:12:09.720 large church, one of the biggest in the US. And he, none of what I say scares him. He's like,

01:12:13.880 I agree with everything. Really? Yeah. And I'm like, awesome. So even at the pastoral level,

01:12:19.900 they're starting to be a shift

01:12:21.500 where they're like,

01:12:22.600 we should be the beacon of truth

01:12:24.220 and the beacon of light and transparency.

01:12:26.380 Yes.

01:12:26.760 And so I think there's going to become a tipping,

01:12:28.680 there's going to be a tipping point

01:12:29.620 in the next six to 12 months

01:12:31.280 where the whole machine,

01:12:32.820 the apparatus starts steering away.

01:12:34.720 Also, to me, a tip off is defensiveness.

01:12:38.240 We're all defensive when called out

01:12:39.800 on what we're doing wrong.

01:12:40.560 I certainly am.

01:12:41.580 But we're not supposed to be.

01:12:43.040 Yeah.

01:12:43.840 And we're number one call to humility.

01:12:46.320 That's like the ticket price for admission, I think. 0.77

01:12:49.900 is, you know, we're screwed up and need help. 0.71

01:12:52.080 That's why we're here. 0.82

01:12:53.160 Yeah.

01:12:53.620 So to hear that people are willing to acknowledge

01:12:57.400 what they're doing wrong without being defensive

01:12:59.400 seems like the best sign ever.

01:13:02.020 I'm really excited.

01:13:03.520 And I think, could you and I both agree

01:13:04.920 that we sit here as men who are evil,

01:13:09.260 like at our core,

01:13:10.380 and Christ gave us the example to chase after.

01:13:14.400 And I think if we can get more people around the table

01:13:16.460 with that as the baseline,

01:13:18.340 then we can look at the institutions.

01:13:19.600 my own institutions, the, the, the corporation that we built on top of the religion business,

01:13:23.660 we're looking at. Cause we're like, is this the best vehicle like to do what we need to do?

01:13:28.060 We don't think it is right. We want to be, we want to be the beacon of transparency. So.

01:13:33.380 Do you ever go to an AA meeting? No. You got to go to an AA meeting. You don't need to be

01:13:38.780 an alcoholic to, to enjoy the beauty of an AA meeting. I don't want to drink, but I still like,

01:13:43.460 I love AA meetings because the price of being able to speak is admitting in public how screwed up 0.99

01:13:50.660 you are. And it just changes the vibe completely. Like there's no hierarchy at all. The one thing 0.97

01:13:56.820 that unites every person in the room is their common flaw. And that's the basis of like truth

01:14:02.820 and love. So what happens if the church took that model and said, okay, let's all gather around this

01:14:08.340 table. We're, we're all POSs. Let's just admit that. Okay. How do we fix this? Right. How do

01:14:13.000 we fix what we've built? I think it would be the most collaborative, um, fulfilling experience for

01:14:18.900 small pastors, big pastors alike. I totally agree. So let's get that together. You should go to an

01:14:25.580 AA meeting and, and I don't go often enough, but occasionally I go and there's like, there's

01:14:30.200 always the guy who's like still shaking, you know, he's just got off it. And then there's the guy

01:14:33.640 was, you know, but off for 40 years and he's like got his life together, maybe rich, and they're

01:14:38.660 exactly the same. Yeah. As people, as we all are, every person is united in. Well, that's why

01:14:46.040 Christ crushed hierarchies. Exactly. He's like, all of you guys are the same. There's no hierarchy

01:14:51.460 except the father. We got one good teacher, you know, and it's, but we've built hierarchies again

01:14:57.000 on top of Christ. I say, you know, prior to the Reformation, there was one church, this monarchical

01:15:02.980 Roman Catholic Church. And the Reformation, Calvin, Zwingli, Luther, they came in and

01:15:07.720 the leaders of the Reformation really shook the church. And all we did though, they shook

01:15:14.380 everything except one thing. They didn't shake the institutional structure. And so what happened was

01:15:21.580 the Reformation came through, they broke the stained glass, they burned cathedrals down. 1.00

01:15:25.800 They're like, we're going to do it differently, which was awesome, good intention. But as they 0.98

01:15:29.520 came over to america we just built the same structure again we built a non-transparent

01:15:34.940 unaccountable financially hungry machine with usually one person at the head

01:15:39.520 so i always tell people we have 400 000 mini vaticans in america now there's 400 000 estimated

01:15:45.660 400 000 churches we've just built 400 000 mini vaticans right and so we just built hierarchy

01:15:51.520 again and it's like no we gotta we gotta crush all of them i just i agree with that i agree with

01:15:57.400 that absolutely vehemently thank you for this film and for all the work that you've done on it

01:16:01.280 thank you for having me on this topic despite the abuse you've taken yeah thank you

The Tucker Carlson Show - June 19, 2026

The Megachurch Scam & Nonprofit Loophole： How Celebrity Pastors Exploit the Bible to Get Filthy Rich

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