Why did Christians vote for Donald Trump in 2016? Why did they vote for him? And why did they still support him in 2020? How did they continue to do so after he was deposed as president of Venezuela?
00:02:48.580In the days after that operation, the successful removal of the president of the country and the installation of his vice president, Delcey Rodriguez, as president.
00:02:59.000Our president, Donald Trump, held a widely publicized on-camera meeting with the heads of American oil companies and talked through how we're going to split up the national resources of Venezuela and why this is great for America.
00:03:11.680so why should christians have paused at exactly that moment and ask can i still support this
00:03:18.660is this what i voted for is this what i want is this acceptable and the reason is really simple
00:03:24.140because trump at that moment revealed that the motive was taking something that we wanted
00:03:30.460and that's not acceptable for christians in fact that's not acceptable for americans or
00:03:36.880any civilized people because taking other people's stuff by force cannot be allowed. In fact,
00:03:42.820preventing that is the basis of our legal code. If there's one thing that every person knows that
00:03:49.540is, in a civilized country, you can't steal without penalty. It's not allowed. That doesn't
00:03:54.600belong to you. You can't shoplift. You can't rob banks. You can't embezzle. You can't invade
00:04:02.000countries to steal their stuff because they're all varieties of the same theme, which is theft.
00:04:06.880And theft is wrong. It's wrong under the American legal code, but it's also wrong under the Christian legal code.
00:04:14.080Theft is wrong. Spelled out really clearly, it's also intuitive.
00:04:18.740And here was the president saying, we're just stealing this because we can.
00:04:24.920Well, as a practical matter, that's quite a thing to say out loud, given that we know from history that the things you do will be done unto you.
00:04:35.640Once you set a standard, you will have to live by that standard.
00:04:38.680Write a law, you'll be judged by that law.
00:04:41.440So if the new law is, I can take it because I want it, and I have more power than you,
00:04:47.580at some point, we can rest assured the tables will be turned, and the things that we want
00:04:52.840and cherish and have earned and that we own will be taken from us by force at the moment
00:04:58.900when some other power has more force than we do.
00:05:02.860It's really simple, sometimes called the law of the jungle.
00:05:05.640And it may be the law of nature, but people don't want to live under that law because it is a brutal and unforgiving law.
00:05:12.840So they create higher laws, or they appeal to the highest law of all, which is God's law, which prohibits that.
00:05:20.380So this was a profound moment in American history, probably in the history of the modern world, where the most powerful nation said, if we want it, we'll take it.
00:11:11.500It is maybe the most real thing this president has ever done and also the most revealing.
00:11:17.640On every level, it is vile on every level.
00:11:23.800It begins with a promise to use the U.S. military, our military, to destroy civilian infrastructure in another country, which is to say to commit a war crime, a moral crime against the people of the country, whose welfare, by the way, was one of the reasons we supposedly went into this war in the first place.
00:11:44.840They're being killed by their government.
00:23:46.680Levin's show, written probably not by Levin, which has almost no viewers, has been a place where the future is revealed in its broadest outline.
00:26:22.760in case you couldn't make it through the accent,
00:26:24.280here's what he said. Nearly 10% of all casualties in the Second World War happened at the Battle
00:26:28.440of the Bulge, which, of course, at the end of the war. The Battle of Okinawa, 50,000 casualties,
00:26:32.660nearly 13,000 killed on that island, which is what convinced Truman, Harry Truman, the then
00:26:38.300president in 1945, we'd lose a million men if we didn't drop the atomic bombs that we did.
00:26:44.880Did you hear that? That's Mark Levin's counsel to our sitting president, Donald Trump, right now.
00:26:51.280You are looking at a choice between the catastrophic loss of your troops in a ground war or the use of nuclear weapons, which in a sense, if you think about it, just think about it for a second, is actually an act of peace.
00:45:00.740And I've been to Joel Osteen's church, you know, tens of thousands of seats. I've been to
00:45:06.300Second Baptist, 93,000 members in that church. I know big church, right? It looked like one of
00:45:13.760those metal sheds, you know, one of those big like 5,000 square foot. It looked like an airplane
00:45:18.000hangar basically. And I was like, this is just awkward. It was the parking lot probably fit
00:45:22.34050 cars. And so it was just an overflow in a dirt lot. This is a good size like setting for you.
00:45:30.200They just had a simple coffee maker, like a standard pot coffee for their entire congregation.
00:45:36.600And so I walked in, I counted about 400 chairs. And when I got there, which was the time the
00:45:43.020service started, there was seven people sitting. On Easter Sunday? On Easter Sunday. And so we
00:45:47.880walked in, they put us two rows from the stage. And ironically, Paula's daughter-in-law approached
00:45:56.000me. And I was there with my girlfriend and she approaches us and goes, who are you? And I'm
00:46:02.000wearing a floral shirt, yellow sunglasses, and an Alabama hat. Like I try to be awkward in these
00:46:07.700situations. And she comes straight up and she goes, I'm Paula White's daughter-in-law. And I'm
00:46:12.420like, I'm Nathan. I don't hide who I am. And she's like, would you take a photo in front of
00:46:16.560our Easter display? And I'm like, sure. And so I walk over and Paula White's daughter-in-law is
00:46:23.700taking a photo of me and I'm like, okay, can we get it? And I wouldn't be surprised if it's on
00:46:28.200their Instagram this morning because it was for like their Instagram. So we go and we sit down
00:46:33.320and it packs out to about 200 people on an Easter Sunday. One of the two biggest, Christmas and
00:46:41.380Easter, the two biggest holidays for Christianity, 200 people show up to this thing. Mostly African
00:46:47.140Americans. I was one of six white people. And then you got this white woman on stage.
00:46:52.780And that was the setting. That's her church? Her church. Yeah.
00:46:58.200Well, don't get me wrong. They got the lights and the fog machine and the jib arm that flies
00:47:01.800over the crowd. It's a production studio is what I would call it. Production stage.
00:47:05.500So the point is not to minister to the people in the church, take care of their problems, counsel them, bring them closer to Jesus. The point is to produce a TV show? Is that what you're saying?
00:47:15.920That's what I would say. Similar to Joel Osteen, he's a TV producer by trade. You know, Kenneth Copeland, same thing. When I went to Kenneth's church, it was very small. Sat maybe 400 or 500 people, and it was a massive studio with multiple jib arms, multiple cameras, security, massive stage. I produce TV. Like, they produce TV.
00:47:34.140that's fascinating so did she preach no her son preached uh so she got up and gave a little
00:47:42.440message in the morning a little prayer um and there was a really weird dynamic between her
00:47:47.720and her son um and i've got i've got their bylaws which i think explain why but uh her son gave and
00:47:53.620got up and gave honestly a really sound message like i give a shout out to brad like that dude
00:47:58.720knows the Bible. And it was very interesting to me because I saw him visibly wrestling with this
00:48:04.660idea of shepherding and then the idea of the institution. And there was times where he would
00:48:09.400look at his mom and just throw daggers at her about corruption, power. It was a very interesting
00:48:16.620dynamic. And she would belittle him too. It was wild. During the service?
00:58:22.180And I do think in order to maintain credibility, I also think like your faith requires you to like explain that and show people that it's, you know, true and repent, apologize, be better, or prove it's not true.
00:58:37.260But like that seems all kind of unaddressed.
00:58:39.700So how did she wind up, given all that, the president of the United States, chief spiritual advisor?
00:58:48.000I've talked to a past employee of hers who, Paula's a very bold woman, very loud.
01:11:27.880And so we've taken traditions of men and call it doctrine.
01:11:32.420One of those traditions is the legal architecture of the nonprofit sector and then the religious exemptions applied to all churches, mosques, temples, you name it.
01:11:42.700They play by the same rules in America.
01:11:44.580That legal architecture, there's only one conclusion to it, and that's corruption.
01:17:12.660And naturally, the system just becomes a production, like just production.
01:17:18.440And we need consumers in, so we got to keep them entertained.
01:17:22.120And so the nonprofit sector has just corrupted over time because of the lack of accountability.
01:17:30.040And from the secular side, nonprofits used to look local.
01:17:34.480And that's why it was carved out originally, right?
01:17:36.640A nonprofit was supposed to build their local community.
01:17:39.320Well, now with globalism, nonprofits want to look global. It's way more appealing for me to put a starving kid from Africa on the cover of my newsletter than a white kid who needs some school books down the street. And so the secular side went global. So they forgot about the local community and the church started pitting against each other for consumers. And so the nonprofit sector just naturally is corrupted and it's never been reformed.
01:18:06.780So that's how you wind up with churches, air quotes, that are actually TV studios.
01:29:46.340And I want you to think about that carrot.
01:29:48.780There's always that carrot that nonprofits dangle.
01:29:51.400This is their 2021 990, which is just an informational sheet that churches do not have to file.
01:30:00.440So the beautiful part about the 990s, these are the first two pages.
01:30:03.880A 990 is just an informational sheet that every secular nonprofit files annually, and it shows the IRS and then their donors roughly where the money goes.
01:30:13.620So there's two things I want to bring up, and if I forget, I want to talk about Alaska.
01:31:14.040It's the same thing with the LDS church.
01:31:15.880They've realized that the nonprofit can do some good with a carrot, but then just stockpile money.
01:31:24.020And so donors are giving, looking at the carrot, saying we're doing good work as the nonprofit itself, as the corporation just stockpiles resources.
01:32:35.780So what I see is nonprofits, the nonprofit structure right now is just draining and taxation is draining the American populace of resource, of wealth, for what end? I don't know.
01:48:42.780So that was the model that Jesus left us.
01:48:45.120That was the model of the early church was humility.
01:48:47.220Well, I find it ironic too. We have the shot in the show. Oh, to get the veterans and their wives up there, they need private planes too. So they bought these other aircraft that they look like military transporters almost.
01:49:03.200Yeah. And they land and they circle around because it's a small runway. And so they circle around. Who's the first person off the plane? Who? Their staff photographer. Because they got to get the marketing photos of these wounded veterans getting off the plane. And I just laughed.
01:49:20.480And the best part is I'm there waving an American flag
01:53:04.740And then I'd come back to the megachurches that I would go to, and I'd walk in, and I'd be like, oh, it's just fog machines fill in the room for sure.
01:53:12.800But it was just performance, and so that really made me rethink what is a church.
01:53:18.220Yeah, I mean, especially since Jesus is pretty tough on the rich and on money, and it's a challenge to any of us, you know, who have excess money.
01:53:32.760Right. That's what Paul said. And Jesus says, famously, it's harder for a rich man to get to heaven than a camel through the eye of a needle. So, yeah, the idea that you follow God and get rich is like a perfect inversion of what he said.
01:53:46.040But that's capitalism creeping into the church. And I would actually argue, and this is a bold statement, a democratic republic is the greatest government experiment in the history of humanity. I would say that.
02:00:28.160Okay, so then you have people just arrive out of nowhere 150 or 200 years ago, and they're like, well, actually, there's one group that doesn't need Jesus?
02:09:16.740and they're being walked into a ditch rapidly
02:09:19.640in the name of Jesus and in the name of this book.
02:09:22.160what what does that mean ushering in the antichrist
02:09:27.820um well i'd get into my opinion because i don't know like like i personally think is that where
02:09:40.100we want to go i i want you to tell the truth as you understand it okay this is my truth i think
02:09:45.280the Antichrist is power and ultimate power and authority. It's institutional power.
02:09:52.460When you look at the world, we were a conquering world. People were moving out. Well, once you
02:09:58.700conquer the world, it's all conquered. Where do you go back to? We're not that smart.
02:10:04.220We go back to this. Well, we need to reconquer the promised land.
02:10:10.400That's what I think is there's a group that wants to retake that promised land. They do
02:10:15.100believe this book has significant power and so they want to reclaim it and they're using
02:10:20.080dispensationalist arguments to do that for the sake of controlling the world for the sake of
02:10:24.240controlling the world yeah i mean that's just so clearly true yeah it's so clearly true and it
02:10:30.160grieves me to say that i think the president united states is may not fully understand that
02:10:35.100theology or that argument but clearly sees this war in iran as a way to achieve power over the
02:10:43.440world there's no doubt in my mind yeah and this book the beautiful saving grace of this book is
02:10:50.720being weaponized to do it so do you believe there's a spiritual component to this it's not
02:10:59.440just like 100 i i think i i do firmly believe there's a demonic component to this behind it
02:11:04.980all um and the church is again the church and its resources are being used to do it
02:11:11.640that's kind of obliquely described in the new testament right in the deception that jesus
02:11:18.740promises will come at some point the people you think are going to save you are actually working
02:11:23.180to destroy you well satan came as light and then he says my workers will come as light also
02:11:28.640right that's a very very terrifying so if you're hoping to understand the nature of evil which i
02:11:35.700think a lot of people are trying to understand like what does it look like it's not just the
02:11:39.400obvious monster under the bed stuff no true evil seems like salvation true evil comes as a half
02:11:46.160truth it comes looking like christ sounding like christ but it's not christ and how do we know
02:11:53.240how do we know the difference between christ and something that looks like christ you have to know
02:11:58.780his word his scripture what are the fruits love joy peace exactly kindness goodness gentleness
02:12:04.660It seems to me that people who are coming in the name of God and doing God's will, who are holy, throw off around them kind of an umbrella of peace.
02:12:16.360And they don't leave chaos in their wake.
02:12:18.740Like we can judge the tree by its fruit.
02:12:20.340This is just my half-baked thought of in my living room theology to myself.
02:12:24.800But let me run it against you with deeper knowledge.
02:12:27.900That we know when someone's on God's path because that person is at peace.
02:12:33.240That person is not seeking power and control over others.
02:12:35.940That person is not besotted by greed or lust or pride, obviously.
02:13:02.320Well, because we've we've. So if you claim you're you're acting in God's name and like speaking God's word, then the people around you should be at peace. Right. The leader should have a good father has happy children. Correct. Right. Yeah. And a bad father has screwed up children. It's like kind of that simple. It all flows down from leadership.
02:13:22.080So the world around a true Christian leader should be a harmonious, peaceful world and the people should be thriving.
02:13:30.780Now, by which I don't mean they're all getting rich.