The Tucker Carlson Show - Tucker on Trump’s Desecration of Easter and a Warning to Christians Everywhere

00:00:00.000 Millions of American Christians voted for Donald Trump when he ran for president in the last

00:00:09.320 election, and millions more Christians around the world rooted for him to win.

00:00:14.240 Many still do root for Donald Trump.

00:00:17.200 Now, why is that?

00:00:18.420 Because of his personal piety?

00:00:20.240 Well, of course not.

00:00:21.720 Trump, to his credit, has never claimed to be personally pious, especially religious

00:00:25.160 in any sense.

00:00:25.880 they voted for him and they still support him because he seemed like a protector he seemed like

00:00:33.340 someone who might save them from the growing and highly aggressive agnosticism if not atheism of

00:00:40.560 say the technology class or the bureaucratic class godless nations nations of other religions that

00:00:47.600 oppose us donald trump seemed like someone who would protect christians from that who was committed

00:00:52.240 to the free exercise of religion in this country

00:00:54.320 and who was also committed to ending abortion.

00:00:58.040 Whether or not he himself opposed abortion,

00:01:00.320 whether he was pro-life in any meaningful sense

00:01:01.960 didn't seem to matter.

00:01:03.280 He would appoint justices that opposed abortion,

00:01:07.360 that thought Roe v. Wade was unconstitutional.

00:01:09.240 He did that.

00:01:11.420 And that he would basically carry the flag for their issues

00:01:15.460 and that he was sympathetic to them.

00:01:18.640 And they support him on that basis.

00:01:20.760 Can they still support him?

00:01:22.240 That's the question. And that's a question Christians should have begun to ask themselves

00:01:28.340 on January 4th of this year. And that was the day that the president announced the capture,

00:01:33.460 the arrest of the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, who was no question an anti-American

00:01:39.360 leader and a socialist, not someone most Americans liked or really had cause to like.

00:01:45.840 So the problem is not necessarily that Trump was against an anti-American leader. In fact,

00:01:50.380 that was a benefit in the eyes of most of his voters. The problem was why we did it and why

00:01:57.000 the president told us he did it, and that was for the oil. So in the days before that operation in

00:02:04.680 early January, the president tweeted out, sent out on his Truth Social account, and also said in

00:02:09.900 public, we're doing this because we want the oil, because that oil belongs to the United States.

00:02:16.580 He never explained how exactly the United States would own the natural resources of a foreign country.

00:02:22.760 Apparently, American oil companies helped develop the oil fields in Venezuela.

00:02:27.260 Therefore, we own the oil.

00:02:29.220 That was the idea, and they stole it from us.

00:02:32.060 But there was no real effort to explain how that works, how that makes any sense at all.

00:02:37.920 Instead, you had the President of the United States say, we need the oil.

00:02:41.320 Oil is really important.

00:02:42.980 True and true.

00:02:44.660 Therefore, we're going to take it.

00:02:47.100 And therefore, apparently we did.

00:02:48.580 In 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.

00:02:59.000 Our 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.

00:03:11.680 so why should christians have paused at exactly that moment and ask can i still support this

00:03:18.660 is this what i voted for is this what i want is this acceptable and the reason is really simple

00:03:24.140 because trump at that moment revealed that the motive was taking something that we wanted

00:03:30.460 and that's not acceptable for christians in fact that's not acceptable for americans or

00:03:36.880 any civilized people because taking other people's stuff by force cannot be allowed. In fact,

00:03:42.820 preventing that is the basis of our legal code. If there's one thing that every person knows that

00:03:49.540 is, in a civilized country, you can't steal without penalty. It's not allowed. That doesn't

00:03:54.600 belong to you. You can't shoplift. You can't rob banks. You can't embezzle. You can't invade

00:04:02.000 countries to steal their stuff because they're all varieties of the same theme, which is theft.

00:04:06.880 And theft is wrong. It's wrong under the American legal code, but it's also wrong under the Christian legal code. 0.99

00:04:14.080 Theft is wrong. Spelled out really clearly, it's also intuitive.

00:04:18.740 And here was the president saying, we're just stealing this because we can.

00:04:24.920 Well, 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.

00:04:35.640 Once you set a standard, you will have to live by that standard.

00:04:38.680 Write a law, you'll be judged by that law.

00:04:41.440 So if the new law is, I can take it because I want it, and I have more power than you,

00:04:47.580 at some point, we can rest assured the tables will be turned, and the things that we want

00:04:52.840 and cherish and have earned and that we own will be taken from us by force at the moment

00:04:58.900 when some other power has more force than we do.

00:05:02.860 It's really simple, sometimes called the law of the jungle.

00:05:05.640 And 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.

00:05:12.840 So they create higher laws, or they appeal to the highest law of all, which is God's law, which prohibits that.

00:05:20.380 So 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.

00:05:31.160 No one's ever said that before.

00:05:32.260 Now, they've done it under the guise of ideology.

00:05:36.560 They've made up stories to hide the fact they're doing it.

00:05:39.740 But to say you're doing it implicates everybody else in the crime.

00:05:43.820 You can't say you didn't know.

00:05:45.940 Your president just told you on television, we took out their president because we want his oil.

00:05:51.580 And at that point, you're an accessory to the crime, whether you want to be or not.

00:05:57.760 And it's at that point that a lot of people should have spoken up and said, I'm out.

00:06:01.440 not that I hate Trump or don't like his entire program. Lots of things about it I love. I'm

00:06:06.220 grateful. I'd maybe vote for him again, but I can't support theft because it's immoral.

00:06:13.320 But they didn't. Maybe some did, but certainly the leaders of the American Christian churches,

00:06:19.940 by and large, said absolutely nothing. And maybe because they said nothing,

00:06:24.760 this accelerated these are the same people sort of didn't notice somehow that on inauguration day

00:06:33.780 the president did not take his oath of office with his hand on the bible his wife stood next

00:06:38.780 to him holding it i was about 15 feet away and saw it but he did not put his hand on the bible

00:06:44.180 and that should have been maybe a clue that we need to pause and think about what is this

00:06:53.360 Why wouldn't you put your hand on the Bible?

00:06:55.660 If you don't believe in the Bible, you think it's just a book,

00:06:59.460 there's no cost to you to putting your hand on it,

00:07:01.840 just kind of following the protocol, going along with the tradition.

00:07:04.380 All presidents do it.

00:07:05.180 Why aren't you doing it?

00:07:07.700 And you're not doing it intentionally.

00:07:10.320 You're choosing not to put your hand on the Bible when you take that oath.

00:07:13.720 That suggests not that you don't believe it's real,

00:07:18.400 because if you didn't believe it was real, why would you care?

00:07:21.280 You'd put on the costume and take it off.

00:07:22.680 doesn't matter. That suggests you know it is real and you're rejecting it intentionally.

00:07:29.700 You know what you're doing and you're doing it anyway. But nobody asked questions about that

00:07:35.460 either. It seemed kind of inappropriate given the celebration that in progress to ask, why wouldn't

00:07:41.460 you put your hand on the Bible when you take the oath of office to lead our nation? But pretty much

00:07:46.620 nobody did. I didn't. I'll admit that. I saw it and didn't say one word. Bothered me ever since.

00:07:54.780 But right around January 4th, it became clear that maybe he didn't put his hand on the Bible

00:08:01.040 because he affirmatively rejects what's inside that book. And what's inside that book are limits

00:08:07.300 on human behavior. Because if there's one theme that spans all 66 books in the Christian Bible,

00:08:14.120 it's that you are not God. And you cannot assume his powers. Because you don't have them. You may

00:08:21.340 convince yourself you have them. You may want them. You may have been promised them. But in the end,

00:08:26.680 they're not yours. And you'll never have them. And you can only destroy yourself and the people 0.52

00:08:31.140 around you by pretending that you do. That is the consistent message that spans from Genesis to

00:08:36.780 Revelation. And people who ignore that law are punished. Just like people who ignore gravity or

00:08:41.980 freezing temperatures are punished because these are laws that were not created by people.

00:08:47.000 They supersede people.

00:08:50.860 But on January 4th, when the president of the United States told us he was stealing,

00:08:54.900 that our country was stealing something that didn't belong to us, people should have piped 1.00

00:08:59.300 up and said something, but they didn't.

00:09:00.640 And that got us all the way to yesterday, which was Easter Sunday.

00:09:06.720 Easter Sunday is not just a holy day on the Christian calendar.

00:09:09.860 it is the center of the Christian calendar, is the holiest day in Christian life. Because it's

00:09:16.240 the day that Christians remember the whole point of their religion, which is not that Jesus was 0.98

00:09:20.340 killed, but that he rose from the dead, that he beat death, unique in history. And this is the

00:09:26.600 day that Christians celebrate his resurrection. And in this country, that celebration has been

00:09:30.400 watered down effectively to candy and Easter bunnies. But globally, and certainly historically,

00:09:35.140 Easter is the focus.

00:09:36.640 It's preceded by Holy Week and Lent, 40 days of self-denial and prayer, all leading up

00:09:44.100 to yesterday, Easter morning.

00:09:47.280 And for faithful Christians, it is still the biggest day of the year, and it's a day of 1.00

00:09:52.940 joy, the thing every person fears most is death.

00:09:56.580 We're born fearing it because we're born knowing it's coming, and Christianity, unique

00:10:02.140 among religion's promises victory over it.

00:10:06.060 And Jesus's resurrection is proof

00:10:07.960 that God can beat death

00:10:09.820 because only God creates life.

00:10:12.180 And so the morning of Easter

00:10:13.700 is a uniquely joyful and peaceful moment.

00:10:17.480 And yet that peace yesterday was shattered.

00:10:19.620 That's not an overstatement.

00:10:20.480 It was shattered for many observant Christians

00:10:22.560 by a statement that the president of the United States

00:10:24.780 put out at 8.03 a.m. Eastern time

00:10:27.160 on Easter morning that said this,

00:10:29.580 and we're going to read it in its entirety,

00:10:30.960 not in outrage or self-righteousness, but honestly in horror.

00:10:36.980 Quote, Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day,

00:10:41.100 all wrapped up in one in Iran.

00:10:43.560 There will be nothing like it, three exclamation points. 1.00

00:10:47.420 Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, 1.00

00:10:49.720 or you'll be living in hell. 1.00

00:10:51.240 Just watch, all caps.

00:10:53.960 Praise be to Allah, President Donald J. Trump.

00:11:00.960 Now, a lot of people reading that imagined, of course, this can't be real.

00:11:06.160 Did the president of the United States really just write that?

00:11:09.220 And it is real.

00:11:11.500 It is maybe the most real thing this president has ever done and also the most revealing.

00:11:17.640 On every level, it is vile on every level.

00:11:23.800 It 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.

00:11:44.840 They're being killed by their government.

00:11:46.640 We have to rescue them.

00:11:48.820 And now here's our president, not even a month and a half into the conflict, which we are

00:11:54.580 not winning, by the way, because the Straits for Moos are not open.

00:11:57.420 There's one way to keep track.

00:11:58.580 That's the measurement. 0.99

00:12:01.420 Saying that we're going to use our military to kill the civilians of this country who 1.00

00:12:05.240 didn't choose. 0.99

00:12:05.860 Or they got nothing to do with it.

00:12:06.980 They're like civilians everywhere.

00:12:09.520 Blow up their bridges.

00:12:12.120 Bridges on military bases.

00:12:13.600 No, no, no.

00:12:13.960 Just bridges.

00:12:14.480 bridges that people cross every day to go to school and work and to worship and yes church

00:12:20.320 because there are over a million christians in iran this is their easter too and power plants

00:12:26.920 not the power plants attached to missile factories okay but civilian power plants in a country of

00:12:33.640 almost 100 million people what happens when a modern country and a country that has a nuclear

00:12:39.520 program as a modern country. Sorry. Iran is a modern country. What happens when it loses power?

00:12:45.400 Well, people die. Babies connected to incubators die. People in hospitals die.

00:12:52.040 And those are the first level effects. And then people begin to starve. And then you have

00:12:57.580 refugee crises. People leave the cities looking for food. And yes, they move into other countries 1.00

00:13:02.060 in the region, in Europe, in the United States. You cause chaos and death,

00:13:06.380 mass suffering and death when you do that. And we have done that. We have intentionally

00:13:13.120 bombed civilian infrastructure in Iran. It's totally unacceptable. Not under the phony laws 1.00

00:13:21.540 of some international body, but under moral law, God's law, killing non-combatants,

00:13:27.700 people who did nothing wrong, who didn't choose this war, who were just people created by God.

00:13:33.300 that is immoral. That will never be moral. That can never be justified. That is always wrong.

00:13:39.940 It can be expedient. We need to do this. It doesn't mean that's right. It's the most wrong

00:13:46.820 thing. And we should always remember that what we do will be done to us. Live by the destruction

00:13:54.420 of civilian infrastructure, live by the killing of children, the bombing of elementary schools

00:14:00.400 and colleges. And you will die and your children will die by those same things. That's just a fact.

00:14:08.440 That's never not been true. We don't want it to be true. It's the last thing we want to be true,

00:14:14.020 but it is nonetheless true. And everyone knows that on an animal level, you can feel that that's

00:14:19.500 true. Shouldn't do that. You'll be punished for it in this life or the next, or maybe both.

00:14:25.540 For the president to say that and not bother to tell us, oh, it was an accident we did this?

00:14:32.260 Well, one, it makes you reassess the bombing of the girls' school attached to the IRGC

00:14:37.280 naval base where the children of Iranian military officers were incinerated in a bombing,

00:14:43.000 not one but two, a double tap.

00:14:46.480 Every person has assumed that was a mistake.

00:14:49.040 No American could ever believe the U.S. government would do that on purpose.

00:14:52.880 I still don't believe it.

00:14:54.360 But after this, you have to kind of wonder, how did that happen?

00:14:59.600 Was it bad targeting coordinates given to us, we hope, by Israel, another country? 0.50

00:15:05.720 Maybe it wasn't.

00:15:08.520 Who knows at this point?

00:15:11.380 For the president to call for that, it's worth stopping and saying, no, this is not acceptable

00:15:16.540 under any circumstances.

00:15:18.260 You haven't justified it.

00:15:19.360 You couldn't justify it.

00:15:20.800 And it can't be done in our name.

00:15:22.140 And the point, of course, is to get the Iranians to open the Strait of Hormuz 1.00

00:15:28.540 Well, no sane person thinks that's going to work

00:15:31.740 At which point you have to ask, why would we do it anyway?

00:15:36.820 Well, there are a bunch of possible reasons

00:15:38.920 But the darkest of all is for the sake of doing it

00:15:42.280 For the sake of killing, for the sake of exercising the most obvious form of power

00:15:46.720 Which is extinguishing life

00:15:48.040 That's why we're doing it

00:15:49.980 The thrill is in the killing

00:15:51.820 The power is in the killing.

00:15:53.700 The exertion of force is the point.

00:15:57.380 You don't want to think that.

00:15:59.400 But after a message like this, what could possibly be the reason?

00:16:03.980 There's nobody who thinks that if we do this, and we pray we don't for our sake,

00:16:09.400 as well as the sake of noncombatant, innocent Iranians, nobody thinks this is going to work.

00:16:18.140 But then the tweet continues.

00:16:19.720 pardon me, the ironically named truth continues.

00:16:26.480 There will be nothing like it.

00:16:28.520 Open the effing straight.

00:16:30.080 How dare you speak that way on Easter morning to the country?

00:16:33.720 Who do you think you are?

00:16:35.500 You're tweeting out the F word on Easter morning? 1.00

00:16:41.480 You'll be living in hell. 0.86

00:16:44.780 As if hell is a place, hell is a condition.

00:16:47.360 And this is an example of that condition.

00:16:51.160 Just watch.

00:16:52.660 Praise be to Allah.

00:16:56.420 So obviously you're mocking the religion of Iran.

00:17:02.260 Okay.

00:17:03.400 If you seek a religious war, that's a good idea. 1.00

00:17:07.660 But by the way, no decent person mocks other people's religions.

00:17:13.720 You may have a problem with the theology.

00:17:15.240 Presumably you do if it's not your religion.

00:17:17.360 and you can explain what that is. But to mock other people's faith is to mock the idea of

00:17:23.340 faith itself. And we should never mock that, because at its core is the acknowledgement

00:17:28.140 that we are not in charge of the universe. We did not build it. We won't be here at the end of it.

00:17:33.000 We can destroy life. We cannot create it because we are not God. The message of all faith

00:17:37.980 at the biggest picture level is the message in our Bible, which is you are not God. And only

00:17:44.880 if you think you are, do you talk this way? But it's not just mockery of Islam. And no president

00:17:52.800 should mock Islam. That's not your job. This is not a theocracy. We don't go to war with other

00:17:57.760 theocracies to find out which theocracy is more effective. We are not a theocracy. And God willing,

00:18:02.720 we never will be because theocracies corrupt the religion. No, this is a mockery not just of Islam. 1.00

00:18:11.320 It's a mockery of Christianity. To send out a tweet with the F word on Easter morning promising 0.98

00:18:17.840 the murder of civilians and then saying praise be to Allah without explaining any of it, you are 0.89

00:18:22.400 mocking me and every other Christian because we're Christians. Oh, I get it. We can't support that 0.82

00:18:30.040 under no circumstances can we support that. It doesn't mean you have to hate Trump or take the

00:18:34.960 opposite position on every issue from Trump. You shouldn't. A lot of his positions are the right

00:18:40.700 positions, but you cannot support that. That is evil. That is an intentional desecration of beauty

00:18:48.300 and truth, which is the definition of evil. And you have to ask, where does evil lead?

00:18:55.520 If the core point of evil is to destroy, which it is, God creates, Satan destroys. It's dualism.

00:19:03.480 When you see something of beauty being created, when you hear the truth being spoken, you are

00:19:08.700 witnessing a manifestation of God's power. And when you see the opposite, you're witnessing the

00:19:14.240 opposite. So where does this lead? Well, on a practical level and a spiritual level, they

00:19:20.000 converge in the same place, which is the use of weapons of mass destruction. So on a practical

00:19:26.520 level, on a strategic level, if you're at the Pentagon gaming this out, like how does this work?

00:19:33.100 the president of the United States keeps laying down markers. You can't go past next Tuesday at

00:19:39.440 2 p.m. or whatever. You must open the strait or else you'll be living in hell as if we're not there

00:19:45.960 already. And at a certain point, what we're doing is revealing that we've exhausted conventional

00:19:54.120 power. If there's some tricky way to open the strait of Hormuz by air, probably would have done

00:20:01.260 it by now because we are on a path to plunge the world into global depression and famine.

00:20:07.660 And that's not hair on fire panicanism. That's math. 30% of the world's fertilizer,

00:20:15.120 20% of its energy. Yeah, that's a global depression and famine. What happens to Africa?

00:20:21.140 A billion and a half sub-Saharan Africans without enough fertilizer? Well, a lot of them will be 1.00

00:20:25.500 living in the United States. That's just going to happen. It's right across the Atlantic Ocean.

00:20:30.600 Check a map. So getting the Strait open is the essence of the mission. It is the strategic goal.

00:20:39.220 By the way, not to be bitter, it was open on February 27th and had been for, you know,

00:20:46.220 since they were pirates roaming the Strait, for modern history, it had been open. Now it's closed

00:20:50.560 because of this war. Okay, so there's that. But leave that aside. Okay, that was then.

00:20:55.320 How do we get it open?

00:20:58.340 Conventional airstrikes will not open the strait for very obvious reasons.

00:21:02.840 You can close it with mines.

00:21:05.540 So if you reach the end of your conventional power, where does that leave you?

00:21:11.820 Oh, with non-conventional power.

00:21:13.160 What's that a euphemism for?

00:21:14.760 Nuclear weapons.

00:21:16.680 And the effects of that hardly need to be explained.

00:21:19.360 Well, they can't be fully known because modern nuclear weapons have never been used.

00:21:22.960 but you can just draw obvious conclusions like life in iran not possible so you wipe out a 0.61

00:21:34.860 country of 92 million people what about directly across the persian gulf

00:21:40.120 what about the seven other countries all of them allies of the united states the biggest oil

00:21:46.380 producing countries in the world could you live there what about the hundred odd million people

00:21:50.200 live in those countries. Maybe not possible for them either. Would a nuclear strike be followed

00:21:55.940 by peace? Probably not. The US isn't the only country in the world with nuclear weapons.

00:22:02.700 You could have a global nuclear war. That's why we haven't used nuclear weapons in 80 years. No one

00:22:07.720 has. Because you don't know where it goes from there. This is insane. Okay? This is insane.

00:22:13.780 it's it's hard to believe you even need to say this out loud oh but you do

00:22:19.460 because all things being equal that's where we're heading and how do we know that 0.98

00:22:26.340 well there are a million signs but the most obvious is the dumbest neocons in trump's orbit 0.98

00:22:33.800 are saying it out loud now in some cases you don't even want to mention their names because 0.98

00:22:39.160 these are not decision makers. These people are very much like Jeffrey Epstein. They're not

00:22:43.380 actually the evil mastermind. Jeffrey Epstein is kind of an idiot. He's an employee, obviously. 1.00

00:22:48.620 He's a communications hub. He's to get the message out to your people. And it's the same

00:22:56.440 with America's most prominent neocons. They're not making policy. They don't understand anything.

00:23:02.140 They don't have huge audiences.

00:23:04.340 They have no organic power.

00:23:06.500 They're messengers and flack takers.

00:23:10.440 They're the ones who get the abuse

00:23:11.760 for the policies of others. 0.99

00:23:12.860 Put some lunatic on TV. 0.99

00:23:14.440 Everyone can hate him. 0.99

00:23:16.320 But is he coming up with the plan?

00:23:17.900 No, of course not.

00:23:18.900 He's got a weekend show on Fox.

00:23:21.600 But it's useful to watch what he says.

00:23:24.300 In fact, the president of the United States

00:23:25.120 himself has said this.

00:23:27.280 Watch Mark Levin on Saturday night. 1.00

00:23:30.760 You think Trump is dumb? 0.99

00:23:31.620 You think he's doing this to juice Mark Levin's ratings? 1.00

00:23:34.780 No.

00:23:35.780 It's not possible to increase the ratings of someone nobody wants to watch.

00:23:40.360 The point is to send a message.

00:23:43.200 That's not a conspiracy theory.

00:23:44.540 It's true.

00:23:46.680 Levin'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.

00:23:58.500 It's a place to test ideas.

00:24:02.180 It's a place to announce obliquely what's going to happen.

00:24:07.340 And his most recent show should get you sitting bolt upright in your chair.

00:24:12.680 And yes, this weekend, Easter weekend,

00:24:15.960 is if the defiling of beauty couldn't be more obvious.

00:24:20.180 Easter week, could you pick another weekend

00:24:21.700 to give the finger to Christianity other than Easter weekend?

00:24:25.620 Apparently not.

00:24:26.520 In fact, of course you couldn't.

00:24:27.740 That's the point.

00:24:28.400 Do it on Easter.

00:24:29.980 Anyone who will accept this will accept any humiliation.

00:24:34.360 In any case, here's what Mark Levin said on his Easter weekend show about what we ought to do next in Iran.

00:24:41.160 Watch.

00:24:42.160 And the casualty numbers, as horrible as any casualty is, need some context.

00:24:47.940 Let's look at World War II.

00:24:50.580 The Battle of the Bulge, 80,000 to 90,000 plus casualties, deaths and injuries and so forth.

00:24:56.920 nearly 10% of all the casualties in World War II happened at the Battle of the Bulge near the end

00:25:01.900 of the war. The Battle of Okinawa, 50,000 plus casualties, over 12,000, nearly 13,000 killed

00:25:10.060 on that island, which is what convinced Truman that we would lose a million men if we didn't

00:25:16.360 drop the atomic bombs that we did. So this is a war or a peace mission to stop nuclear weapons

00:25:24.280 that can blow away millions of Americans. 0.97

00:25:29.240 Every bit as important in World War II. 0.71

00:25:31.740 This is a crucially important military operation war.

00:25:35.100 Call it what you want, peace mission.

00:25:37.620 And we ought to be celebrating the success of our military,

00:25:42.660 unifying around our military and our commander-in-chief

00:25:45.920 and urging them to complete the task

00:25:50.340 so our country is safe from nuclear weapons.

00:25:54.280 by insane suicidal primitives from the 7th century.

00:25:59.900 Did you catch that?

00:26:00.860 Did you make it through the whole clip?

00:26:01.860 It's not easy.

00:26:02.640 It's not easy, but embedded in there,

00:26:04.680 and that's why we prefer a transcript over the actual audio,

00:26:08.120 embedded in there is something you need to know.

00:26:09.880 It's an argument that is being test-driven,

00:26:12.620 and since no one, to our knowledge,

00:26:14.400 has pushed back against it,

00:26:15.440 may be in full operation now,

00:26:17.360 it's an argument for nuclear weapons against Iran.

00:26:21.500 Here's to restate,

00:26:22.760 in case you couldn't make it through the accent,

00:26:24.280 here's what he said. Nearly 10% of all casualties in the Second World War happened at the Battle

00:26:28.440 of the Bulge, which, of course, at the end of the war. The Battle of Okinawa, 50,000 casualties,

00:26:32.660 nearly 13,000 killed on that island, which is what convinced Truman, Harry Truman, the then

00:26:38.300 president in 1945, we'd lose a million men if we didn't drop the atomic bombs that we did.

00:26:44.880 Did you hear that? That's Mark Levin's counsel to our sitting president, Donald Trump, right now.

00:26:51.280 You 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.

00:27:09.080 It's an act of peace.

00:27:10.780 The most humane thing you could do is to end this now with nuclear weapons.

00:27:14.840 That's the case Mark Levin is making to the president, who just last week recommended that

00:27:19.780 all Americans watch Mark Levin's show. Okay. This is not like crazy dot connecting here.

00:27:28.140 This is one-to-one. This is really obvious where we're moving. And again, we're moving toward the

00:27:36.640 use of weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction, possibly nuclear weapons,

00:27:42.740 but non-conventional weapons, not bombs dropped from the air, missiles launched from launchers,

00:27:49.680 but the use of weapons that have never been used in war ever. And the argument is the same argument

00:27:56.220 that you heard in 1945 or didn't hear. By the way, if you're an American civilian, no one ever cuts

00:28:00.440 you in on this. Thank heaven for Mark Levin saying it out loud so the rest of us could at least follow

00:28:04.120 along and know what we're in for and implicated in. But the argument that it's actually much more

00:28:10.820 humane to kill tens, hundreds of thousands, millions of civilians than it is to fight it

00:28:17.300 out with the Marine Corps on the rocky shores of mainland Iran. That's the argument. But it's not

00:28:25.060 just the argument that one guy in cable news is making. It is the logic of escalation in this war

00:28:31.860 because in some sense, Mark Levin is right. We are not going to open the straits with the United

00:28:37.500 States Marine Corps, the 82nd Airborne, or the tier one operators that everyone in cable news

00:28:42.940 seems to know so much about. The tier one operators, tier one. Just guys, like some of

00:28:49.080 the best guys actually in America could be killed in this. That's a better way to put it. It's a 0.71

00:28:53.000 more real way to put it. They are not going to open the street. And so unless somebody puts the

00:28:58.880 brakes on right away, we're going to wind up in a place that we can't even imagine. Not just Iran, 1.00

00:29:06.200 us and the rest of the world. And so that means, because this is obvious to anyone who's paying

00:29:10.000 any attention, that if you work in the White House or in the U.S. military, now it's time to say no,

00:29:14.100 absolutely not, and say it directly to the president, no. In case you're thinking about

00:29:17.900 using some weapon of mass destruction against the population of Iran, in whose name we liberated 0.99

00:29:23.860 Iran, we killed their religious leader for their benefit. Do you remember that? This was last month. 0.98

00:29:30.220 Those people who are in direct contact with the president need to say no.

00:29:36.200 I'll resign. I'll do whatever I can do legally to stop this because this is insane. And if given

00:29:42.700 the order, I'm not carrying it out. Figure out the codes on the football yourself because everything

00:29:48.220 hangs in the balance right now. This is not hysteria. This is 100% real. And yet the people

00:29:55.660 in this country, by and large, are sleepwalking along. No, the future will be pretty much like

00:30:00.860 today, maybe a little different. That's not the lesson of history. Things change fast and

00:30:05.800 forever. There are pivot points where nothing is the same, and sometimes it's better, but mostly

00:30:10.400 it's not. And this is one of those cases where it might not be at all better. But there's something

00:30:17.960 else to think about, something maybe even more important than whether we have a nuclear war.

00:30:21.980 What could be more important than that? Well, your soul, the way we worship God,

00:30:27.680 whether we acknowledge God or not, that's more important ultimately than anything else.

00:30:35.800 And you have to think through, like, could there be a spiritual component to what we're watching?

00:30:40.300 Is it just a conventional escalation ladder in a badly thought out war with ill-defined goals?

00:30:48.280 And we just wound up in this really tough place where we face either humiliation on the one side or a nuclear launch on the other.

00:30:57.620 That's, yeah, that's part of what it is.

00:30:58.900 But could it be something bigger than that?

00:31:00.460 is it possible that what you're watching is a very stealthy yet incredibly effective attack

00:31:10.020 on what, from a Christian perspective, is the true faith, belief in Jesus? Is that what really

00:31:16.080 is under attack here? Maybe that's what's been under attack for a long time, maybe our whole

00:31:21.700 lifetime. Maybe almost everything we see is an attack on that faith, the one faith that is

00:31:30.780 always attacked, always and everywhere for 2,000 years. Many faiths have been attacked. Many

00:31:36.440 religious people of different religions have been killed over the past 2,000 years.

00:31:40.940 But there's been only one sustained effort to exterminate a faith,

00:31:45.920 and that's the christian faith could that be part of it and is it possible that the president sees

00:31:54.680 this not just in geostrategic terms and military terms and economic terms got open the straight

00:32:00.220 okay is it possible the president sees this in bigger terms sees this as the fulfillment of

00:32:07.720 something or the elevation to some higher office beyond president of the united states

00:32:14.440 That's entirely possible.

00:32:16.660 And that's not an attack, but it's also not a guess.

00:32:20.880 Because at every turn since the inauguration last January, there have been religious leaders 0.89

00:32:26.860 on the scene telling us, telling us out loud, most of us ignored it because we're just so

00:32:31.420 secular, we just sort of ignore it.

00:32:33.020 Got some sleazy Southern Baptist preacher who says whatever for money. 0.99

00:32:36.300 Okay, got it.

00:32:38.340 We've ignored that this could actually be real.

00:32:40.900 There's something going on here.

00:32:43.520 and we shouldn't ignore that.

00:32:46.680 We should always remember that just because we are a secular nation,

00:32:50.340 have been overwhelmingly secular,

00:32:52.620 maybe not coincidentally since we dropped those atom bombs 80 years ago,

00:32:55.920 doesn't mean that we live in a world where everyone else is secular,

00:33:01.840 and it definitely doesn't mean that the spiritual realm has been eliminated,

00:33:07.020 that is not real,

00:33:08.300 that the only things that matter are the things that we can see and hear

00:33:11.360 and feel and taste and measure. 0.97

00:33:13.520 talk about fake talk about a silly religion that's the silly religion in real life in the 0.96

00:33:21.360 life that every person lives no matter what your religion or lack of it there is a daily 0.96

00:33:27.260 recurring experience of the transcendent things you cannot explain or see or touch or feel or

00:33:33.020 taste or measure that is every bit as real in fact may be determinative maybe the most

00:33:37.240 important things in your life are the things you don't fully understand all of us know that

00:33:43.520 And so when people start making reference to mystical religious principles that we don't understand, it doesn't mean that it's fake.

00:33:52.020 They may be getting it wrong, but it doesn't mean there's not something real at the center of this.

00:33:57.680 Of course there is.

00:34:00.220 And only a civilization as bereft of spiritual language as ours wouldn't pick up on that immediately.

00:34:05.580 What do you mean praise be to Allah?

00:34:08.880 What does that mean?

00:34:10.220 Why are you setting this out on Easter morning?

00:34:11.860 I mean, obviously, it's designed to offend and degrade and defile.

00:34:16.120 Got it.

00:34:17.620 But is there something else going on here?

00:34:21.060 One of the keys to this is the behavior of a woman called Paula White. 1.00

00:34:25.520 And in a moment, we're going to speak to a man who studied her.

00:34:28.140 We went to her church yesterday called Nathan Abfel.

00:34:31.640 Fascinating conversation with him, which we just finished,

00:34:34.080 where he tries to understand who are these people

00:34:36.660 encouraging the president of the United States to see himself

00:34:39.860 as a millennialist figure

00:34:42.380 as part of the eschatology

00:34:43.540 of like part of the end time story?

00:34:47.000 Who are these people

00:34:47.840 who are encouraging

00:34:48.720 the rebuilding of the third temple

00:34:50.320 in Jerusalem,

00:34:51.060 whatever that is?

00:34:51.800 Like, what is this?

00:34:53.520 Is this Christianity? 0.99

00:34:54.780 Is it something else?

00:34:56.820 And he knows a lot about it

00:34:57.700 and it's a fascinating conversation

00:34:58.660 that I hope that you will watch.

00:35:01.080 But at the center of this

00:35:02.900 is the most unlikely person of all, 0.98

00:35:04.400 a ludicrous figure, 0.93

00:35:05.360 someone who's so absurd on one level 0.98

00:35:07.120 that it's impossible

00:35:07.900 to take this person seriously.

00:35:08.980 That'd be Paula White. 0.98

00:35:09.860 the president's spiritual advisor.

00:35:13.600 And because she's so self-evidently

00:35:15.340 not worth taking seriously,

00:35:16.440 most people don't

00:35:17.140 and they just tune it right out.

00:35:18.060 Who cares what she says? 0.98

00:35:19.360 What does it have to do with the economy?

00:35:21.280 Oil prices, GDP, reopening the street.

00:35:25.440 I don't know.

00:35:26.160 Maybe you should listen a little more carefully.

00:35:28.760 So here's one example.

00:35:31.100 This is something that Paula White said

00:35:32.980 about the president

00:35:34.480 right before this recent escalation

00:35:36.680 during Holy Week at the White House

00:35:39.620 a gathering to which many American Protestant leaders, big ones, Franklin Graham included,

00:35:45.960 were invited. And they gave a blessing to Donald Trump as he accelerated this war against the

00:35:53.540 civilian population of Iran. Here's what she said about Donald Trump. Watch this.

00:36:00.540 Jesus taught us so many lessons through his death, burial, and resurrection. He showed us

00:36:06.240 great leadership, great transformation requires great sacrifice. And Mr. President, no one has

00:36:14.740 paid the price like you have paid the price. It almost cost you your life. You were betrayed

00:36:22.940 and arrested and falsely accused. It's a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us,

00:36:33.020 but it didn't end there for him

00:36:35.620 and it didn't end there for you.

00:36:38.320 It's hard to believe that's real.

00:36:40.060 That is so vile.

00:36:41.660 It's such a sacrilege.

00:36:44.160 Standing in front of American flags

00:36:46.600 in the White House

00:36:47.520 with some kind of beta evangelical leader

00:36:50.060 nodding along

00:36:50.860 as you liken the president of the United States

00:36:53.960 to Jesus, the Christian Messiah,

00:36:56.600 God in human form.

00:36:59.780 How could you say something like that?

00:37:01.740 How could the rest of us sit by and not protest when she said something like that?

00:37:05.860 How could any Christian watch that and not feel revulsion? 0.88

00:37:12.180 Well, because people didn't pay attention or they didn't think about it.

00:37:14.900 Oh, it's just the praise that Trump demands.

00:37:17.520 Fine.

00:37:19.040 Not the first vain president, not the first vain leader.

00:37:21.680 That's for certain.

00:37:22.280 but to compare him or any president to jesus has got to be a deal killer that is the end

00:37:33.880 you cannot allow that in good faith if you're a christian you have to say no to that doesn't

00:37:39.780 matter whether you voted for trump campaigned for trump across many states defended him for 10 years

00:37:45.800 still like him doesn't matter you cannot compare a president a secular president united states or

00:37:51.520 anybody, any human being to Jesus. Why? Well, because again, it is sacrilege

00:38:00.280 prima facie, but because it distorts who Jesus is. It is a lie about Jesus.

00:38:10.880 Did Jesus command the disciples to go out and kill people?

00:38:14.900 Where in the New Testament is that? Well, most people probably don't even know because they

00:38:19.580 don't read it because their understanding of Christianity comes filtered through people like

00:38:25.760 Paula White and Franklin Graham and many others of varying levels of good faith or maybe entirely

00:38:30.060 good faith, but they don't read it themselves. Kind of weird if you think about it. It's a great

00:38:35.100 story. You don't have to believe in it to enjoy it, to learn from it, to love it, actually.

00:38:40.820 And if you're a believer, you need to read it, and it's not hard to read it.

00:38:43.440 By the way, it's on Amazon.com.

00:38:45.900 Try this, New Living Translation, NLT.

00:38:49.500 Just probably the most modern colloquial English translation of the Bible.

00:38:53.280 Easiest to read.

00:38:54.780 It's great.

00:38:56.280 It's $4.30 on Amazon delivered to your house, NLT.

00:39:01.040 Just read it.

00:39:02.280 Just read the four gospels.

00:39:03.600 You don't have to believe it.

00:39:05.500 What do you think of that?

00:39:06.360 What's the picture that emerges?

00:39:07.640 Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

00:39:08.700 Just four stories about Jesus from slightly different perspectives.

00:39:13.440 Is the man that you read about, the Messiah you read about, recognizable as you listen to these

00:39:22.040 people talk about him? Does he send his disciples out to kill? Well, I'll answer the question,

00:39:28.260 having just read them. No. He sends them out to be killed. He says to them, go out, tell the truth.

00:39:36.800 The world will hate you for it. Take no weapon. Take no food. Take no money. Take no talking

00:39:41.880 points. I'm not even going to tell you what to say. Just tell the truth. God will speak through

00:39:45.880 you, totally unprepared. He doesn't give them a map. He doesn't give them a plan of any kind,

00:39:51.660 and he gives them no defense. And he says, point blank, again and again, you could be killed for

00:39:58.520 this. Probably will be. In fact, they all were. So far as we know, they were all killed. 0.98

00:40:04.640 That's the Christian message. Now, you may think that that's absurd. Many have.

00:40:08.840 Nietzsche was revulged by it

00:40:11.520 Get it

00:40:12.220 But that is what Jesus said

00:40:14.540 He did not say bomb the bridges

00:40:17.080 And the hospitals and the power plants

00:40:19.220 To what? Bring my kingdom?

00:40:22.460 No

00:40:23.060 He said just the opposite

00:40:25.880 If you want to change the world

00:40:30.240 You cannot kill

00:40:31.220 It doesn't work anyway

00:40:32.160 It never works

00:40:33.360 You have to be willing to be killed

00:40:36.880 You have to lay down your life. 0.97

00:40:40.280 And that is the message.

00:40:41.140 You think God couldn't come and throw the Romans out of Jerusalem? 1.00

00:40:43.860 Oh, yeah.

00:40:45.060 Of course, he chose the opposite.

00:40:48.140 He chose to submit to them.

00:40:51.720 Why?

00:40:53.220 Because in that submission is victory over death.

00:40:56.880 That's the true victory.

00:40:58.760 That's the whole story right there.

00:41:00.600 and anyone who perverts that is doing a grave crime against the faith itself and that actually

00:41:09.000 matters you can argue about all kinds of points of doctrine and transubstantiation and a million

00:41:15.780 things you can argue about and christians have argued about them for 2 000 years but you can't

00:41:22.120 argue that jesus sends his people god's people his disciples out to kill he sends them to do the

00:41:28.180 opposite thing, to die. And they do. And the world is transformed because they did. 0.98

00:41:35.040 That's the message. And anyone preaching the opposite gospel of any Christian denomination 0.99

00:41:43.020 is saying something vile and dangerous and should be called out for saying it

00:41:50.820 because the message is not of conquering, it's of submission.

00:41:55.880 put your hand on the Bible when you take that oath 0.66

00:42:00.460 because in doing that you acknowledge

00:42:03.380 I am submitting to a law greater than myself

00:42:06.480 my own desire, my own whims, my will

00:42:11.020 is not the final word

00:42:15.760 there is a limit to what you can do

00:42:18.300 and that limit is set not by you or any other person

00:42:22.600 but by God

00:42:23.740 that's what that means

00:42:25.400 submit. There is time to fix this. There is time to prevent whatever is coming next,

00:42:32.700 whether it's the murder of civilians and children by air or whether it's something

00:42:37.860 even worse than that. There is time to fix it. All is not lost. But the first step,

00:42:45.780 and this is also the first step toward faith, is submission. There are things I want to do

00:42:52.860 that I will intentionally not do.

00:42:55.700 I will submit to a law higher than my own desire.

00:42:59.380 That's the first step towards civilization.

00:43:03.140 And it is the first and absolutely mandatory step

00:43:06.660 toward averting the true disaster that is coming.

00:43:13.280 And we pray that the president will take that step

00:43:15.920 and that those around him will take that step

00:43:17.900 because everything hangs in the balance.

00:43:20.340 and with that here's our conversation with nathan apfel so thank you for doing this yeah thanks um

00:43:27.800 i think you will unravel many mysteries i'd never heard of paula white i ran into paula white for

00:43:33.340 the first time heard her name for the first time when i ran into her in person at the right outside

00:43:36.720 the oval office last winter right after the inauguration and she introduced herself to me

00:43:40.520 and said i'm the head of the religious liberty commission or something and i remember thinking

00:43:43.660 i'm so glad there is such a thing because we need it we need religious liberty almost more than

00:43:48.700 anything. And I said, I felt moved to say, just like escape from my lips. Thank you. And I really

00:43:53.800 hope that you will do something to protect the Christians of the Middle East, particularly in

00:43:57.400 the Levant. There are a lot of great Christians there and they're being hurt and nobody seems to

00:44:01.660 care. And she like recoiled. I remember thinking she doesn't like this at all. That was my first

00:44:09.200 and only experience with Paula White. And so I've wondered ever since, who is Paula White and how

00:44:16.260 did she become the president's main spiritual advisor? You told me this morning that you went

00:44:22.020 to church on Easter Sunday, which was yesterday, at her church. And so before you give us the

00:44:28.340 overview, can you just describe what that was like? It was an interesting experience. You know,

00:44:34.180 when you see Paula on stage next to Trump or you see any big evangelical leader, Kenneth Copeland,

00:44:39.620 Franklin Graham, you'd expect their church to be massive. Yeah. Thousands and thousands of people.

00:44:44.380 They're pastors. They have a church. They're pastoring people.

00:44:46.820 Pastoring. They're shepherds.

00:44:47.840 Exactly. They're the shepherd.

00:44:49.140 Yeah. And so we pull up and I expected a very big building.

00:44:54.700 Where is it?

00:44:55.520 It is in Opopka. I think I'm saying it right. Florida. So just north of Orlando.

00:45:00.180 Okay.

00:45:00.740 And I've been to Joel Osteen's church, you know, tens of thousands of seats. I've been to

00:45:06.300 Second Baptist, 93,000 members in that church. I know big church, right? It looked like one of

00:45:13.760 those metal sheds, you know, one of those big like 5,000 square foot. It looked like an airplane

00:45:18.000 hangar basically. And I was like, this is just awkward. It was the parking lot probably fit

00:45:22.340 50 cars. And so it was just an overflow in a dirt lot. This is a good size like setting for you.

00:45:30.200 They just had a simple coffee maker, like a standard pot coffee for their entire congregation.

00:45:36.600 And so I walked in, I counted about 400 chairs. And when I got there, which was the time the

00:45:43.020 service started, there was seven people sitting. On Easter Sunday? On Easter Sunday. And so we

00:45:47.880 walked in, they put us two rows from the stage. And ironically, Paula's daughter-in-law approached

00:45:56.000 me. And I was there with my girlfriend and she approaches us and goes, who are you? And I'm

00:46:02.000 wearing a floral shirt, yellow sunglasses, and an Alabama hat. Like I try to be awkward in these

00:46:07.700 situations. And she comes straight up and she goes, I'm Paula White's daughter-in-law. And I'm

00:46:12.420 like, I'm Nathan. I don't hide who I am. And she's like, would you take a photo in front of

00:46:16.560 our Easter display? And I'm like, sure. And so I walk over and Paula White's daughter-in-law is

00:46:23.700 taking a photo of me and I'm like, okay, can we get it? And I wouldn't be surprised if it's on

00:46:28.200 their Instagram this morning because it was for like their Instagram. So we go and we sit down

00:46:33.320 and it packs out to about 200 people on an Easter Sunday. One of the two biggest, Christmas and

00:46:41.380 Easter, the two biggest holidays for Christianity, 200 people show up to this thing. Mostly African

00:46:47.140 Americans. I was one of six white people. And then you got this white woman on stage. 1.00

00:46:52.780 And that was the setting. That's her church? Her church. Yeah.

00:46:58.200 Well, don't get me wrong. They got the lights and the fog machine and the jib arm that flies

00:47:01.800 over the crowd. It's a production studio is what I would call it. Production stage.

00:47:05.500 So 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?

00:47:15.920 That'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.

00:47:34.140 that's fascinating so did she preach no her son preached uh so she got up and gave a little

00:47:42.440 message in the morning a little prayer um and there was a really weird dynamic between her

00:47:47.720 and her son um and i've got i've got their bylaws which i think explain why but uh her son gave and

00:47:53.620 got up and gave honestly a really sound message like i give a shout out to brad like that dude

00:47:58.720 knows the Bible. And it was very interesting to me because I saw him visibly wrestling with this

00:48:04.660 idea of shepherding and then the idea of the institution. And there was times where he would

00:48:09.400 look at his mom and just throw daggers at her about corruption, power. It was a very interesting 0.98

00:48:16.620 dynamic. And she would belittle him too. It was wild. During the service?

00:48:21.080 Yeah. Yeah. During the service.

00:48:22.120 On Easter Sunday.

00:48:22.840 On Easter Sunday. And then once he finished the service, the sermon, which, hey, Brad,

00:48:27.260 Great sermon until the very end.

00:48:29.200 Because then he's like, I don't want to do an altar call, but I'm a charismatic, so I have to do an altar call.

00:48:33.820 And I'm like, well, you don't have to do an altar call.

00:48:35.920 What's an altar call?

00:48:37.120 It's basically him saying, hey, if you're not a Christian, come down to the stage.

00:48:40.760 You're going to say, Jesus is my Savior.

00:48:42.300 I'm a sinner.

00:48:42.780 And boom, you're a Christian.

00:48:44.260 And that's a relatively new technique in Christianity.

00:48:48.440 You know, 200 years ago, altar calls were not a thing.

00:48:50.920 And so altar calls are just a kind of a new tool that churches use to read metrics.

00:48:56.860 You know, because at the end of the day, how are we performing?

00:48:58.920 Oh, here's how many salvations we've had and how many baptisms we've had.

00:49:02.320 And so he's not for the altar call, but you can tell he's wrestling with the institution

00:49:07.180 that his mom gave him.

00:49:10.280 And then after the altar call, she got up and I'll quote her here.

00:49:13.700 She goes, I'm going to speak for 60 seconds.

00:49:16.400 She spoke for eight and a half minutes.

00:49:18.080 I have the recording, how to give her money.

00:49:22.240 And yeah.

00:49:23.040 She did an eight and a half minute money pitch in church? 0.95

00:49:25.920 Correct.

00:49:26.360 Yeah, at the end.

00:49:27.100 What did she say?

00:49:28.740 She said, and she had an envelope and she goes,

00:49:31.980 my son moved me so much in this envelope,

00:49:34.440 I have a sacrificial gift for him in this church.

00:49:38.500 She didn't tell us what it was or how much it was.

00:49:40.400 And she goes, well, if I could, I'd sell my house,

00:49:43.160 but I can't sell my home.

00:49:44.560 Why?

00:49:45.160 I don't know.

00:49:45.540 I would ask her the same thing.

00:49:48.100 And she goes, I have shoes and jewelry,

00:49:50.140 but I can't sell those.

00:49:51.700 And so this is my sacrifice.

00:49:53.380 And then she looked out and she goes,

00:49:54.440 you guys need to sacrifice. She goes, that nice Easter dress you're wearing,

00:49:59.160 your sacrifice should be more than that dress. And she goes, Christ was the sacrifice and the

00:50:03.920 offering and the tithe, but that doesn't mean it stops with Christ.

00:50:08.640 Oh, this is a hard sell.

00:50:09.980 Hard sell. So you need to sacrifice.

00:50:12.120 Jesus died, so send me money. 0.55

00:50:13.920 Well, and then it was cute. She goes, oh, and we do so much for the community,

00:50:17.980 which they do things for the community. She goes, we do a food pantry and we give away food. 0.94

00:50:22.440 Well, you don't pay for that food. 0.99

00:50:24.980 That food is delivered to the church

00:50:26.420 and then the church distributes it.

00:50:28.060 So you're raising money for a food pantry that you have,

00:50:30.780 but you don't have to buy the food.

00:50:33.280 And so it's the carrot.

00:50:34.960 I always say churches will use a carrot

00:50:36.480 or organizations will use a carrot to get you to give.

00:50:39.960 And out of your gift,

00:50:41.260 let's say it's a hundred carrots that they get

00:50:42.780 and they're going to use that one carrot 0.52

00:50:44.080 to kind of dangle in front of your face.

00:50:46.220 Did you get a sense that Paul White was leading

00:50:48.000 like any kind of pastoral care?

00:50:49.700 You know, people have problems in churches as in everywhere else.

00:50:53.340 And one of the main jobs of a pastor is to be the shepherd for that flock, right?

00:50:58.940 It sounds like her daughter-in-law likes to do that. 0.97

00:51:02.140 Charismatics are very charismatic, you know.

00:51:03.780 So she prays in tongues and, you know, they do all that.

00:51:06.400 So they're very into that.

00:51:07.980 But Paula walked in after the service started. 1.00

00:51:10.360 I saw her come in and she walked out before it left or before it ended and she left. 0.69

00:51:15.200 Actually?

00:51:15.840 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:51:16.280 I wouldn't say there's any on-site shepherding that Paula does.

00:51:19.700 So who is Paula White exactly? And pardon my ignorance, but it's just she's become this figure.

00:51:25.060 She's one of the people who prayed over the president and encouraged this war with Iran, a country with over a million Christians in it.

00:51:35.020 But she's like played a role in our foreign policy.

00:51:40.080 So I think it's, and of course, she's been used and has allowed herself to be used to justify this war and violence in the name of Jesus.

00:51:49.240 So I think it's worth asking, like, where does she come from?

00:51:51.860 Who is this person?

00:51:53.020 I don't know her upbringing, but I'll start with this.

00:51:55.380 I will give Paula the benefit of the doubt that she came in to the church space wanting to do good.

00:52:02.340 Yes.

00:52:02.700 She wanted to save souls.

00:52:04.700 She wanted to preach the gospel.

00:52:06.040 I believe that.

00:52:07.100 But I also believe—

00:52:07.860 I think that's—we should always extend that benefit of the doubt to people.

00:52:11.440 Okay.

00:52:11.780 So when she's presenting that gospel, she has to play in a certain legal realm,

00:52:16.800 which is religious institutions, corporations in America. I firmly stand on my word that that

00:52:25.360 legal architecture will corrupt anybody that goes into the mission or that ministry full-time.

00:52:31.040 So she started a church in Tampa called Without Walls with her husband, Randy Knight.

00:52:37.640 I went to the building Saturday because I wanted to see where that was. So I drove up to Tampa

00:52:43.080 and now it's a bar.

00:52:46.340 It's like a restaurant bar.

00:52:49.500 And so I went in-

00:52:50.040 The church is a bar?

00:52:51.140 Well, so I went in and talked to the restaurant.

00:52:53.580 I'm like, hey, was this Paula White's church without walls?

00:52:56.020 And the manager was like, yeah.

00:52:57.380 So he's like, we get this question a lot actually,

00:52:59.660 which is fascinating.

00:53:00.920 So I don't know the financial exchange

00:53:03.340 or the real estate side of things,

00:53:04.660 but the original without walls church was bulldozed.

00:53:08.000 And then that restaurant bar was built on the property.

00:53:11.120 So she and her husband started a church in Tampa.

00:53:13.080 started a church in tampa called without walls um there's some scandal wrapped around that church

00:53:18.840 uh they they used to work or they're very loudly talking about how they work in prostitution they

00:53:25.400 help prostitutes they help the needy in that area um and so i talked with a past employee who said

00:53:32.760 that and we're getting the tapes right now we found some old vhs tapes from paula back in the

00:53:37.160 day so those are actually just they just arrived in my house very excited to look at those um but

00:53:41.640 But they said, oh, there's a rundown hotel on the property next to us.

00:53:45.260 We bought that hotel. 0.98

00:53:46.560 We're going to turn it into a rehab facility for prostitutes and drug addicts. 1.00

00:53:50.660 And that's going to be our main witness.

00:53:52.660 Awesome.

00:53:53.700 That's right where I think Christ would be, is hanging out with the hurting, the needy, the prostitute, the widowed.

00:53:59.260 And so they started raising money for this hotel that they had built.

00:54:04.560 And they raised, I don't know the exact amount, but hundreds of thousands of dollars.

00:54:08.920 and some of their congregants

00:54:11.300 mortgaged their homes for it.

00:54:13.140 Well, come to find out

00:54:13.820 they never even bought the hotel.

00:54:15.720 This was just all theory

00:54:17.260 and a good intentioned idea.

00:54:20.180 And so that really crippled the church.

00:54:22.960 And at the same time,

00:54:24.620 her husband kind of,

00:54:27.240 I'll just say fell off the wagon.

00:54:29.040 And so they got divorced

00:54:30.900 and her spiritual advisor was T.D. Jakes.

00:54:35.040 Do you know who T.D. Jakes is?

00:54:35.860 Yes, I've met T.D. Jakes.

00:54:37.020 So her spiritual advisor.

00:54:38.180 Famous black preacher, built like a linebacker. 0.79

00:54:40.400 Yeah, huge.

00:54:40.960 Yeah, yeah.

00:54:41.640 He was her spiritual advisor.

00:54:43.540 He was also another pastor's spiritual advisor in Opopka.

00:54:47.860 And unfortunately, that pastor in Opopka OD'd in a bathtub.

00:54:54.180 On drugs?

00:54:54.800 On drugs, yeah. 0.99

00:54:55.620 And he was with a prostitute. 0.99

00:54:57.800 The prostitute made the call, the emergency call. 1.00

00:55:00.460 He died. 0.99

00:55:01.760 And so T.D. Jakes, as without walls is crumbling,

00:55:05.140 T.D. Jakes, as the spiritual advisor, tells Paula to go take over this church in Opopka.

00:55:10.960 So Paula White moves to Opopka, takes over that church, which they rebranded to Story Life Church, and that became her home church.

00:55:20.840 So there is the coolest movie we can imagine.

00:55:25.260 It's a new film adaptation of George Orwell's amazing novel Animal Farm.

00:55:29.860 1984 gets all the attention but animal farm is better it's coming to theaters may 1st you

00:55:38.460 probably remember that animal farm is not actually about animals it's about human nature the desire

00:55:43.220 for authority and how quickly people tend to fall in line and give up all of their god-given rights

00:55:50.120 the movie follows lucky a young pig whose curiosity encouraged guide viewers through the

00:55:55.340 farms rise and fall. We see hope, betrayal, and above all, the danger of totalitarian power.

00:56:02.080 This is a movie to watch with your kids, especially if they're old enough to ask real questions

00:56:05.740 and to notice when the answers don't add up. The book affected generations of American school kids,

00:56:12.620 no longer taught, of course, because it's too true. What do you do when the rules start changing

00:56:18.280 and you're told you're not allowed to notice? Do you speak up or do you just go along with it

00:56:21.960 because hey that's easier that's the conversation you should have with your kids about power

00:56:28.180 corruption and freedom this movie's entertaining it's sharp not many studios would do it at this

00:56:33.780 point but angel did because their guild members voted to bring it to the big screen so see it

00:56:38.480 talk about it decide for yourself what it means animal farm theaters may 1st tickets available now

00:56:43.820 at angel.com i want to love what i'm learning to think beyond the basics to build real skills for

00:56:49.860 the future. To create things that matter. And to see how far I can go. At Blythe Academy, learning

00:56:54.660 feels exciting again. In small classes and close-knit school communities, students get the

00:56:59.420 support they need to think boldly, engage in hands-on learning, and build the confidence and

00:57:04.180 future-ready skills that prepare them for university and the world ahead. For students

00:57:08.560 grade 4 to 12, four campuses in the GTA. Full year enrollment for September is now open at

00:57:14.220 blytheacademy.ca.

00:57:16.860 That's, wow, that's quite a story.

00:57:18.700 So then what happens?

00:57:20.580 She gets remarried or? 0.97

00:57:22.180 She's remarried to one of the band members of Journey,

00:57:25.060 that awesome band that I love to listen to.

00:57:27.540 Yeah, so he plays piano for her on stage,

00:57:30.860 you know, as she preaches.

00:57:32.240 It's a great husband-wife duo.

00:57:34.860 Yeah, so she now, well, she did pastor this church. 0.88

00:57:40.480 She's since passed it down to her son, Brad Knight.

00:57:44.060 And why did she pass it down?

00:57:46.720 Because she became a special government employee under Trump.

00:57:50.900 And you can't run a true, you can't write it.

00:57:53.360 I believe the rule is you can't run a nonprofit

00:57:55.220 or you can't be raising money outside.

00:57:57.800 So I don't want to judge her as a person.

00:57:59.880 There's a lot written about her personal life.

00:58:01.580 I don't know, you know, what is true and what is not true.

00:58:04.640 So I don't want to repeat it, but it's, I mean,

00:58:07.160 it's kind of defined by personal scandal.

00:58:10.460 Correct.

00:58:11.240 True or not, right?

00:58:12.280 There's a lot of personal scandal that I won't even go into.

00:58:14.240 Well, of course, because I don't know, and I don't want to repeat things that are not true, but it's sexual scandal.

00:58:19.560 Those are the allegations.

00:58:20.760 So there's that.

00:58:22.180 And 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.

00:58:37.260 But like that seems all kind of unaddressed.

00:58:39.700 So how did she wind up, given all that, the president of the United States, chief spiritual advisor?

00:58:48.000 I've talked to a past employee of hers who, Paula's a very bold woman, very loud.

00:58:55.620 I had never seen her.

00:58:56.600 I don't consider that a compliment at all.

00:58:58.180 I just want to be clear.

00:58:59.440 What, bold and loud?

00:59:00.580 Yeah, I'm not into it.

00:59:01.600 No, either am I.

00:59:02.420 And so I had never been around her before.

00:59:04.920 But when her son was preaching and her son would say something, she would always be the loudest one yelling, amen, brother, go, go, son.

00:59:13.280 You know, she just wanted to over. 1.00

00:59:14.860 I find that awful.

00:59:15.900 Yeah.

00:59:16.040 And we're like told we have to think that's great.

00:59:18.300 I don't think it's great at all.

00:59:19.520 Yeah.

00:59:20.060 Sorry.

00:59:21.980 Well-behaved women really make history. 1.00

00:59:24.020 I don't know about that.

00:59:25.360 I mean, stop.

00:59:27.080 Yeah.

00:59:28.220 Excuse me.

00:59:29.300 I would agree with you.

00:59:30.120 But so the stories that I've heard from her employees are she, Trump was a mark from the

00:59:37.200 early 2000s. So she would go down to Mar-a-Lago and hang out at Mar-a-Lago just waiting for Trump

00:59:44.300 to pass. And when Trump would pass, she'd approach him. And she's a very bullish, bold woman. So she

00:59:49.940 kind of had a mark on Trump for decades. And then same thing in New York. She rented an apartment 0.99

00:59:55.600 in Trump Tower, and she stayed in Trump Tower

00:59:58.160 waiting to have FaceTime with Trump.

01:00:01.100 So she's been playing the long game with Trump.

01:00:03.520 Has she, I mean, is she like a well-known theologian?

01:00:07.400 I don't know.

01:00:09.260 No.

01:00:09.500 But I guess all I'm saying is there are all kinds of predators

01:00:12.540 around all power centers, including the White House, right?

01:00:15.560 It's just that's the nature of power.

01:00:17.440 It's like a bug light.

01:00:18.580 It draws the Michael Cohens of the world into your orbit, right?

01:00:21.700 People who want power and money.

01:00:23.260 But if you're going to be the spiritual advisor,

01:00:25.100 you would think there would be some like track record of,

01:00:28.560 I don't know, Christian living.

01:00:31.340 So I got a question for you, Tucker.

01:00:33.740 Tucker, can I call you Tuck?

01:00:35.020 Call me whatever you want.

01:00:37.140 So should your business model, if you're a pastor,

01:00:40.560 should your business model emulate Christ?

01:00:43.580 I think your whole life is supposed to emulate Christ.

01:00:45.820 Perfect.

01:00:46.160 So here's her bylaws, which are marked confidential, by the way.

01:00:50.720 So her church cannot read her bylaws.

01:00:54.220 The people who fund her cannot rate her bylaws.

01:00:56.740 The only reason why they came out was because of a lawsuit.

01:01:00.180 I'm going to jump to page two really quick about membership.

01:01:05.520 Members of the congregation are non-voting.

01:01:08.260 Members of the board of directors are voting.

01:01:10.580 So congregants who fund it have no say over anything.

01:01:14.000 We'll jump a few pages further.

01:01:17.180 About removing officers.

01:01:18.640 So if for some reason she had a scandal, right?

01:01:22.060 Usually we remove officers from corporations that have scandals or abuse their control

01:01:27.860 and power, but not for her.

01:01:29.840 Ready?

01:01:30.240 Any officer except the pastor president, she is the pastor and president, may be removed

01:01:34.900 from his or her office by the board of directors.

01:01:37.780 The pastor president shall have the authority to remove any officer from his or her office

01:01:42.860 at any time at her discretion.

01:01:45.440 So she cannot be removed because any officer except the pastor president can be removed

01:01:50.480 and then she can fire anyone at any time for anything. 1.00

01:01:54.680 So she has unilateral control. 0.98

01:01:56.900 It gets better, ready?

01:01:58.540 Section five is resignation, removal,

01:02:00.540 succession of pastor president.

01:02:02.520 If the pastor president voluntarily resigns,

01:02:05.360 she may designate her successor.

01:02:07.680 The pastor president shall serve as president

01:02:10.140 and a member of the board of directors

01:02:11.520 until her death or resignation

01:02:14.160 without need of election or appointment.

01:02:17.520 she shall not be subject to removal.

01:02:21.940 It says that?

01:02:22.980 It says that.

01:02:23.440 Is this a monarchy?

01:02:24.480 What is this?

01:02:25.120 It's a monarchy.

01:02:25.740 It's a monarchical power. 0.99

01:02:28.300 Death. 0.92

01:02:28.680 Upon her death,

01:02:29.440 the pastor president

01:02:30.180 shall be succeeded

01:02:31.280 in the office of pastor president

01:02:32.720 and as a director

01:02:33.960 by her son, Brad Knight.

01:02:36.660 It's a dynasty

01:02:37.360 in bylaws

01:02:39.220 that congregants can't see.

01:02:40.800 Is this a Christian principle?

01:02:42.560 No.

01:02:43.680 No.

01:02:44.900 And then this is

01:02:45.920 This is the banger, ready?

01:02:48.060 Powers of officers.

01:02:50.340 The senior pastor is the president of the corporation.

01:02:53.860 And this is a sticking point for me

01:02:55.220 because most pastors will say,

01:02:56.800 my church is not a business.

01:02:58.520 Well, no, it's a corporation registered with the state.

01:03:00.740 It's very much a business, right?

01:03:02.700 So the senior pastor is the president of the corporation

01:03:05.940 and is referred to within these bylaws as pastor president.

01:03:09.500 Here's the drum roll.

01:03:10.620 The church finds its headship

01:03:13.300 under the Lord Jesus Christ

01:03:15.260 Christ in its pastor president. So you don't find your headship in Jesus Christ. You find it 0.80

01:03:23.560 under the Lord Jesus Christ in Paula White. So if I want to get to Jesus Christ, I have to go

01:03:29.580 through Paula White. I believe we had a Protestant Reformation to get away from this idea. 0.80

01:03:33.960 You can keep that copy. That the leader is infallible and the leader speaks

01:03:37.460 always and everywhere for God himself. Yes. Isn't that why we had the Reformation 500 years ago? 0.62

01:03:42.600 Well, that's the point of Christ. Christ came to remove middlemen, to remove the Levitical 0.99

01:03:47.700 priesthood. That's what I thought. Yeah. Wow. So, how unusual? I've never heard of anything

01:03:55.940 like that. How unusual is that? That's pretty aggressive bylaws, but here's Second Baptist 0.97

01:04:00.740 bylaws. So, I had a fun interaction in Houston the other week. This is a church with a billion

01:04:05.180 dollars in assets in Houston, a billion. It's 98 years old. So, that means generation after

01:04:12.000 generation of generous christ-centered houstonians have funded this building some of my favorite

01:04:18.740 people in the world and relatives of mine who i really look up to as christians you know have

01:04:24.920 spent a lot of time in that church and help fund it and whatever so i know that there are true

01:04:29.380 amazing people christians in that church 93 000 members had voting rights and voting rights are

01:04:36.620 hey just like a democracy just like america a republic we want to have a say and just like the

01:04:41.220 church in Acts. Yes. We want to have a say. The earliest church. And that's what we should

01:04:45.740 probably be modeling ourselves after, right? We want to have a say in how this all operates.

01:04:50.440 A couple of years ago, one very interesting lawyer from Dallas, who I've had multiple

01:04:56.720 interactions with, and then the young family decided to, in a shady back-end deal, remove

01:05:03.720 voting rights of 93,000 members like that. So a billion dollars in assets that was voted on by

01:05:12.800 93,000 members in a single meeting on page seven removed the voting rights. As such, members are

01:05:21.520 not entitled to vote in person by proxy or otherwise. So a billion dollars in assets were

01:05:27.300 put into the hands of six people, five of which are related. When did that happen?

01:05:32.080 Uh, 2023. And now there's an ongoing lawsuit, uh, because the congregants are suing for their

01:05:37.180 rights back. How can you do that? You can't, but shady lawyers. So this is a big, this is a big

01:05:45.100 thing that we talk about in the religion business in season one. The church was never meant to be

01:05:50.460 a capitalistic endeavor. No, it's not a business. Yes. But capitalism has crept into it and shrewd,

01:05:57.680 smart businessmen and women and lawyers have realized it is the perfect legal architecture 0.98

01:06:03.180 to either scam people or build empires in the name of Jesus. 0.56

01:06:07.740 Spring is the most refreshing time of year.

01:06:10.200 Nothing compliments it better than Black Rifle Coffee.

01:06:13.080 Lots of it.

01:06:14.260 It's an American company founded by veterans with conviction.

01:06:17.260 They built the whole thing around a simple idea.

01:06:19.080 Do it right or just don't do it.

01:06:21.020 They're definitely doing it right.

01:06:22.080 We know because we drink it all day long.

01:06:23.280 if you want coffee without theatrics

01:06:25.540 start with just black, whole bean

01:06:27.440 if you grind it yourself, ground if you don't

01:06:29.740 no sweeteners designed

01:06:31.220 disguise mediocrity, no seasonal gimmicks

01:06:33.540 masking weak beans

01:06:35.120 just bold American roasted coffee

01:06:37.360 that delivers what it promises

01:06:38.980 and if you prefer variety without lowering the bar

01:06:41.240 try these supply drop variety

01:06:43.660 rounds, a curated lineup of

01:06:45.240 pod roasts that rotate in

01:06:46.880 but never compromise strength

01:06:48.680 consistency, standards, discipline

01:06:50.800 out with watered down blends, in with pure

01:06:53.240 American coffee. You can grab

01:06:55.360 Just Black or supply Drop Variety

01:06:57.440 Rounds on Amazon or go right to

01:06:59.040 blackriflecoffee.com to stock up

01:07:01.320 from the source. Black Rifle Coffee,

01:07:03.440 veteran-founded, American-roasted, still standing,

01:07:05.960 still brewing.

01:07:07.320 And your point is,

01:07:09.300 and you've devoted, I mean, I

01:07:10.680 think people can watch your documentaries

01:07:13.080 and look you up, but your point

01:07:15.360 is the problem with a lot of

01:07:17.420 American Christianity is not 0.98

01:07:19.320 the faith, of course, you are a Christian,

01:07:21.300 but is the structure that corrupts by its nature.

01:07:26.520 It's like almost, I think you said to me this morning,

01:07:28.560 it's like almost impossible to get out of this

01:07:30.120 without being corrupted if you're leading a church

01:07:31.960 with a structure like that.

01:07:33.540 Correct.

01:07:33.920 Is that fair?

01:07:34.360 A hundred percent.

01:07:35.840 I say that you can go in with the best of intentions,

01:07:39.320 but if there's no external accountability on the system,

01:07:41.780 that system will inevitably eat you alive and corrupt you.

01:07:45.120 Your sermons, your messaging will all tilt

01:07:47.540 to protect that institution.

01:07:50.100 And I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

01:07:52.820 They're doing it unconsciously, whether that be the idea of tithing, whether that be Zionism 0.89

01:07:59.460 and Israel, it all tilts towards protecting the status quo of the institution.

01:08:04.660 Boy, you see this in all institutions, though.

01:08:06.720 Isn't the point of every institution over time to protect and enlarge the institution

01:08:10.780 itself?

01:08:11.680 100%.

01:08:12.060 That is the mission.

01:08:12.820 But that's the need for reform in everything.

01:08:16.060 The Bible story is so beautiful because it's a story of birth, death, and resurrection over and over.

01:08:23.420 And Christ talks about when the seed falls, it has to die in the soil for rebirth.

01:08:26.780 But what we've created is institutional structure that can't die.

01:08:30.180 We can't reform this because too many people feed off the system. 0.97

01:08:33.260 There's too many parasites.

01:08:35.000 But if we killed systems and reformed them, which we need for new birth and regrowth, then people lose power. 0.90

01:08:41.920 People lose their control.

01:08:44.120 And it's baked into human nature.

01:08:46.060 And loss of power and control is a prerequisite for letting, well, for religious transformation, for letting God take control.

01:08:53.380 Correct.

01:08:54.100 Yeah.

01:08:54.860 So that's a big deal.

01:08:57.240 Christ literally gave up all control and hung on a cross.

01:09:01.880 And this is one place I want to get to, whether you're a Christian.

01:09:04.800 My 160 million self-professed American Christians out there, my brothers and sisters out there, we can see the Bible as the word of God.

01:09:11.760 And I can speak to it on that.

01:09:13.200 My atheist and agnostic friends, let's see it as a history book.

01:09:16.060 and today I want to talk with you about

01:09:18.280 when he said it is finished on the cross

01:09:20.660 the last words that came out of his mouth

01:09:22.380 he meant it

01:09:23.400 so if you're a Christ follower

01:09:25.400 we're going to break down a lot of scriptures

01:09:27.700 that depending on your theological approach

01:09:30.400 you will have to say it isn't finished

01:09:32.900 and so that's what I want to get into

01:09:35.500 and power structure is one of them

01:09:36.740 when he hung on that cross

01:09:37.740 he broke all power structures

01:09:39.860 he is the only way the truth and the life

01:09:42.980 and no one gets to Jehovah the Father

01:09:44.480 except through him

01:09:45.400 so what what does that mean i mean i understand i mean i always understood jesus to be talking

01:09:51.960 about his life on earth but you're saying that when christ said it is finished he was talking

01:09:58.860 about the old covenants the abrahamic covenant and the mosaic laws all 613 of them huh is that

01:10:06.000 acknowledged by churches no because if you acknowledge it then your church structure

01:10:12.340 for a modern day church structure has to really rethink and reform and what are you left with

01:10:18.420 the gospel the saving the saving grace of christ love so it's it's interesting when you look at

01:10:30.240 even churches that you know you agree i'll speak for myself that i agree with and love

01:10:34.840 love the liturgy

01:10:36.840 love the people

01:10:38.080 I mean you can have

01:10:40.980 pure hearted

01:10:43.040 people in a corrupt system

01:10:44.200 you know the congregants

01:10:46.360 as I just said it's about second baptist in Houston

01:10:48.440 but

01:10:51.440 the church itself

01:10:54.420 is like

01:10:55.820 seems like almost all of them have deep

01:10:58.540 corruption in them

01:10:59.400 Christ said in multiple

01:11:02.740 gospels it's one of my favorite lines

01:11:04.320 He says, you've taken traditions of men and you call it doctrine.

01:11:08.680 Yes.

01:11:09.060 Our churches today are nothing but tradition.

01:11:12.020 And they're based off of a 14-point checklist that the government put forward.

01:11:16.000 They're based off the nonprofit sector created in 1913.

01:11:19.600 That's all just traditions of men. 0.91

01:11:21.220 That's not inherently bad.

01:11:23.300 This room, there's no inherent goodness or badness to it outside of what we apply to it.

01:11:27.420 Right.

01:11:27.880 And so we've taken traditions of men and call it doctrine.

01:11:32.420 One 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.

01:11:42.700 They play by the same rules in America.

01:11:44.580 That legal architecture, there's only one conclusion to it, and that's corruption.

01:11:50.440 There's only one.

01:11:51.820 When you look at how it's structured, there's no external accountability from an exterior source to hold the institution accountable.

01:11:58.780 The government does not hold religious institutions accountable.

01:12:02.420 So what it means is we hold ourselves accountable. 1.00

01:12:05.740 That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard scripturally. 0.99

01:12:08.280 Like we can't hold, should we just sit around and be like, 1.00

01:12:10.740 hey, Tucker, you and I,

01:12:12.100 we've got a million bucks sitting on this table.

01:12:13.380 What should we do with it?

01:12:14.400 Well, let's just hold each other accountable

01:12:15.680 with what we're going to do with it.

01:12:17.180 No, we need some outside pressure saying,

01:12:20.360 hey, let's oversee what we're going to do

01:12:22.320 and how we're going to steward those resources.

01:12:24.480 And the best part about that million

01:12:25.720 or the ironic part is it's not even yours and my resources.

01:12:28.700 It's the donors who gave it to us.

01:12:31.200 And so the system right now is just set up for failure.

01:12:36.200 Inflation makes credit card statements particularly scary.

01:12:38.960 You work 40, 50 hours a week just to buy groceries and gas,

01:12:41.640 things you used to be able to afford without thinking that much about it.

01:12:45.120 Then the banks charge you 20% interest.

01:12:47.300 If the system is designed to keep you underwater, it's working.

01:12:50.980 But there's another option.

01:12:52.920 Our friends at American Financing are doing something the big banks despise.

01:12:56.280 They are helping people.

01:12:57.880 Mortgage rates in the fives,

01:12:59.360 supporting the American dream of homeownership.

01:13:01.660 And they're showing homeowners

01:13:02.740 how to take their hard-earned equity

01:13:04.840 to wipe out high-interest debt.

01:13:07.180 Now, we're against debt in general,

01:13:09.360 but in this economy,

01:13:10.420 most people have no choice at all.

01:13:12.400 So don't go bankrupt

01:13:13.600 and slaving yourself to a lender.

01:13:16.760 Average savings are about 800 bucks a month,

01:13:18.940 and it takes only 10 minutes

01:13:20.240 to talk to a salary-based mortgage consultant.

01:13:23.300 No upfront fees or obligation

01:13:24.720 to see how much you can save.

01:13:26.360 Give American Financing a call,

01:13:27.920 800-685-5696.

01:13:32.980 That's 1-800-685-5696

01:13:35.440 or visit AmericanFinancing.net slash Tucker,

01:13:38.680 America's home for home loans.

01:13:40.700 And you think it's uniquely bad in this country

01:13:42.440 because of the nonprofit structure devised in 1913,

01:13:45.800 same year as the income tax, I think, correct?

01:13:47.800 Same thing, same year as Jekyll Island

01:13:49.620 and all sorts of interesting things.

01:13:51.720 And then you made reference to the 14-point checklist. 0.73

01:13:55.300 Can you just fill us in on all of that since I'm ignorant?

01:13:57.920 Yeah, so in 1913, the IRS carved out

01:14:01.020 or the government carved out the nonprofit sector.

01:14:03.400 It looked at all the institutions in America

01:14:05.340 and it said, wow, there's really brilliant institutions

01:14:08.180 that help social good.

01:14:10.280 And this is a big one.

01:14:11.220 They build local social capital in their community.

01:14:14.500 1913 is pretty really technology.

01:14:17.340 You know, your life was like an 80 mile radius basically.

01:14:21.240 Yes.

01:14:21.540 So you cared about your local community.

01:14:24.260 And so the government said,

01:14:25.240 hey, these businesses do things that we can't. Salvation Army was a great example. So the

01:14:31.420 Salvation Army does things for its local community that the federal government and state government

01:14:35.360 cannot do. So we're going to carve out these businesses and say, hey, you don't have to pay

01:14:39.600 taxes. You have more freedom to pursue your mission, which is building social capital in

01:14:46.040 your community, helping the homeless, the needy, basically Matthew 25, which is who Christ told us

01:14:50.780 to help. Flash forward to today, there's 1.9 million nonprofits. So it went from 12,000

01:14:58.600 organizations in 1913 to 1.9 million. And you have to ask why the jump? And most arguments are,

01:15:05.800 Nathan, population increase. Okay. Population increased 4.3% in America from 1913 to present

01:15:12.720 day. If you do the math, that's around 50,000 organizations today. So population increase

01:15:19.920 didn't increase the nonprofit sector. So how do we go from 12,000 to 1.9 million? Well, I think a

01:15:26.180 lot of good intentioned people wanted to help people, but the lack of accountability in the

01:15:30.840 system has turned the nonprofit sector into an opportunity for massive abuse, an inurement.

01:15:37.020 An inurement is, I don't have the definition in front of me, but it's basically no founder,

01:15:41.580 family member, or executive can inure themselves by the benefit of the organization's net assets

01:15:47.040 or net resources.

01:15:48.340 So I can take a salary,

01:15:50.220 but I can't use it like a personal piggy bank.

01:15:52.620 Right.

01:15:53.100 And these guys use it like a personal piggy bank.

01:15:57.280 And most people use the nonprofit sector

01:15:59.200 now like a personal piggy bank.

01:16:00.840 How do they do it?

01:16:02.680 From a church perspective?

01:16:03.980 Yeah.

01:16:04.500 Well, you can, Tucker, start a church right now.

01:16:07.060 You can just say, I'm a church.

01:16:09.160 And because you say you're a church,

01:16:12.260 you get that designation from the IRS immediately.

01:16:15.460 They don't have to approve you of it.

01:16:17.040 because of what I would argue separation of church and state.

01:16:21.480 And that's like a double dip.

01:16:23.040 They love to say separation church and state

01:16:25.240 until they want the state to help them out.

01:16:27.100 And it's an interesting rabbit hole to go down.

01:16:30.320 But then you just file with the state.

01:16:32.860 You file your articles of incorporation

01:16:34.280 so you are a business,

01:16:35.060 but you never have to tell the Fed

01:16:36.500 what you're doing at all.

01:16:38.720 And then if you're in the evangelical world,

01:16:41.340 in the non-denominational world,

01:16:43.580 there's no denominational hierarchy.

01:16:46.780 So then it's the sky's the limit.

01:16:48.240 It's how charismatic are you?

01:16:50.840 How good of a teacher are you?

01:16:52.360 How good of an entertainer are you?

01:16:54.280 And at that point, it just becomes how quickly you can scale.

01:16:57.580 And we call it religious economic theory in the religion business.

01:17:02.220 Because it's now, if I started Church Tucker down the street from yours, now we're pitted 0.78

01:17:05.760 against each other for consumers.

01:17:07.680 And so I'm going to get a better stage than you, and then you're going to get a better

01:17:10.620 lighting system.

01:17:11.260 So I got to out-compete you.

01:17:12.660 And naturally, the system just becomes a production, like just production.

01:17:18.440 And we need consumers in, so we got to keep them entertained.

01:17:22.120 And so the nonprofit sector has just corrupted over time because of the lack of accountability.

01:17:30.040 And from the secular side, nonprofits used to look local.

01:17:34.480 And that's why it was carved out originally, right?

01:17:36.640 A nonprofit was supposed to build their local community.

01:17:39.320 Well, 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.

01:18:06.780 So that's how you wind up with churches, air quotes, that are actually TV studios.

01:18:12.680 Correct, correct.

01:18:14.040 And ironically, so the 14-point checklist, which I originally thought came from the IRS,

01:18:20.120 because there were so many churches popping up, someone was like, how do we define what a church is?

01:18:26.300 There was a big lawsuit, I can't remember, it was in the 50s or 60s,

01:18:30.680 and it was literally a wine distillery was registered as a church.

01:18:34.720 And so there was a lawsuit about it

01:18:37.260 because they're like, you're not a church, dude.

01:18:38.280 You're just selling wine, you know?

01:18:40.740 And so the word on the street is the IRS was like,

01:18:43.540 hey, we got to put some structure to this.

01:18:45.840 And so out popped this 14 point checklist.

01:18:48.320 And the checklist came from that lawsuit.

01:18:50.280 And it was in California.

01:18:52.240 And it's really simple.

01:18:53.540 You need a house of worship.

01:18:54.740 You need a place.

01:18:55.460 You need a physical building.

01:18:57.200 You need a congregation.

01:18:59.340 That congregation has to, what do they call it?

01:19:03.720 it's basically a faith statement.

01:19:06.520 Your congregation has to have

01:19:07.780 a specific faith statement to itself.

01:19:10.540 And then you have to meet once a month physically.

01:19:13.380 And most churches already acted like that somewhat.

01:19:16.300 And so boom, you get the exemption.

01:19:18.240 Well, what that does is it shoves all religion

01:19:20.660 and faiths into that simple box.

01:19:23.980 And so Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism,

01:19:28.140 you name it, Scientology,

01:19:29.380 they just play by the same rules now.

01:19:32.000 And so that was-

01:19:32.820 If they want the tax exemption, they have to behave this way.

01:19:34.660 If they want the tax exemption.

01:19:35.620 But what does that do?

01:19:36.100 So that's not really separation of church and state.

01:19:38.200 That's actually the state constraining church. 0.98

01:19:40.980 Correct.

01:19:41.820 And you have to ask, like, why?

01:19:45.120 Let's talk about, okay, we'll give everybody the benefit of the doubt.

01:19:48.760 Why?

01:19:49.480 What happens?

01:19:50.180 What's the byproduct of that 14-point checklist?

01:19:53.000 Every mosque looks like every Christian church. 1.00

01:19:55.500 Looks like every Jewish synagogue. 1.00

01:19:57.020 It's the same thing.

01:19:58.020 The exterior might be looking a little different.

01:19:59.960 Your message from the pulpit might be a different.

01:20:01.680 But structurally, they're all the same.

01:20:04.860 And what it does is it pulls all resources inward.

01:20:08.320 It calcifies the institution as opposed to going out.

01:20:12.640 And the beautiful part about Christianity is it was an outward gospel.

01:20:16.920 It was help your neighbor.

01:20:18.220 It was go out and make disciples.

01:20:20.540 Of course, Jesus sends the disciples out.

01:20:22.740 But now it's come in.

01:20:24.860 And naturally, what does that do?

01:20:26.120 If I'm bringing everybody into my church, hierarchy starts building.

01:20:30.460 We need resource to do this.

01:20:32.320 And it's just a natural conclusion to what happened in 1913 and then the 14-point checklist.

01:20:38.820 That's amazing.

01:20:40.380 So some of these churches have become very rich, it sounds like.

01:20:43.760 Very.

01:20:44.380 Yeah.

01:20:44.600 The LD, the Mormon church, they're sitting at like $350 billion in net assets, billion

01:20:50.800 with a B.

01:20:51.860 They're the second largest private landowner in the U.S. now.

01:20:54.740 They'll hit a trillion dollars in market assets if they keep the market profits in

01:20:59.980 the next 15 years why what's the point of a church any church having that much money well they'll say

01:21:05.440 it's for um a famine and they'll say it's for the second coming that's literally their argument

01:21:10.080 yes um and so you go okay i'll even give you that ready so and they use the story of joseph

01:21:15.840 and the famine in egypt yes as an example they have the largest farm largest ranch in florida

01:21:21.420 well they're turning it into a city deseret yeah yeah they want to build a uh i can't remember

01:21:27.600 133,000-acre city.

01:21:30.780 Yeah, they're working on that right now.

01:21:32.340 Interesting.

01:21:33.340 But so what they say is they point to Joseph.

01:21:37.280 Well, Joseph only stockpiled for seven years.

01:21:40.140 Right.

01:21:40.800 The Mormon church has stockpiled indefinitely.

01:21:44.380 So they've reached something that the widows might report

01:21:47.140 calls escape velocity.

01:21:48.720 They make so much in the market in interest alone,

01:21:52.120 they could fund the global LDS church

01:21:54.820 just off a fraction of the interest.

01:21:57.600 and grow in perpetuity.

01:22:00.680 They would never have to ask a dollar

01:22:01.940 from any congregant again,

01:22:03.640 but they still ask you for your money.

01:22:05.020 It's interesting that they point to Joseph.

01:22:06.680 I mean, it's a wonderful, amazing story.

01:22:09.300 I mean, it's a huge chunk of Genesis, right?

01:22:12.080 Yeah.

01:22:12.860 And a great, great story.

01:22:14.740 But it's kind of the opposite

01:22:16.340 of the way Jesus commanded his own disciples.

01:22:20.440 He sends them out with nothing.

01:22:21.840 Correct.

01:22:22.280 With no preparation whatsoever,

01:22:23.820 No food, no arms, no extra sandals, no extra clothes.

01:22:29.080 He doesn't even send them with talking points.

01:22:30.420 He doesn't tell them what to say.

01:22:31.680 Well, and can I ask you, why do you think he sent them out with nothing?

01:22:36.440 So they would rely on God.

01:22:37.880 He says, when you're hauled into court, don't think about what you're going to say.

01:22:40.820 The Holy Spirit will speak for you.

01:22:42.020 Just open your mouth and start talking.

01:22:43.580 Amen.

01:22:43.860 And so they would rely on the generosity of others.

01:22:47.580 Yes.

01:22:48.080 And of God.

01:22:49.320 Yeah.

01:22:49.480 Like, put yourself out there and God comes to the rescue.

01:22:54.100 Display weakness and God will become your strength.

01:22:56.840 So he's like telling very explicitly people not to prepare for that eventuality.

01:23:04.960 I mean, all of us disobey it.

01:23:06.180 I certainly do.

01:23:07.400 But I hope I'm not sounding self-righteous.

01:23:09.700 But like, that's not the message of the gospels that I can tell.

01:23:13.020 I agree.

01:23:13.600 So what have we built?

01:23:14.460 We've built corporations labeled with Jesus on them.

01:23:19.480 we've built products labeled with Jesus.

01:23:22.320 We've built energy drinks labeled with Jesus.

01:23:24.660 We've built, we're selling Jesus in man. 0.96

01:23:27.940 Does he talk about selling him his name

01:23:29.700 and his father's name?

01:23:31.320 He does.

01:23:32.320 Yeah.

01:23:32.780 Explain.

01:23:33.740 Well, there's a story 0.62

01:23:34.860 and it's right before they want to kill him.

01:23:37.300 He walks into the temple

01:23:38.660 and he starts flipping tables over

01:23:42.080 and he has this whip and he's whipping people.

01:23:44.340 Like whipping people.

01:23:45.760 And he goes, you've turned my father's house

01:23:47.900 into a robber's den.

01:23:50.500 And the place of worship

01:23:52.100 where you're supposed to worship Jehovah, my father,

01:23:54.540 you've turned this house into a robber's den.

01:23:57.360 You're making money in my father's name.

01:24:00.580 And what are we doing?

01:24:04.500 We've turned the entire religious structure in America, 1.00

01:24:09.120 Christian structure, into a money-making endeavor. 0.94

01:24:12.560 Even well-intentioned denominations,

01:24:14.880 they have to accept money to keep the machine moving.

01:24:17.900 It's a hungry machine financially.

01:24:21.540 And so I believe the model's totally backwards.

01:24:24.440 We've, Americans are good at, well, all humans are good at building, but Americans are really 0.99

01:24:28.680 good at building.

01:24:29.980 And we've just built things to the point where they've corrupted.

01:24:33.900 And the casualty of that is the true body of Christ is now chained to the pews of the

01:24:41.200 institution because they have to be.

01:24:44.220 Yes.

01:24:44.860 Yeah.

01:24:45.860 Yeah, I grew up in a church like that.

01:24:47.900 a church that built buildings that were so beautiful

01:24:50.680 that you could not go to them even when they became pagan.

01:24:55.140 Yeah.

01:24:55.840 It's like such a beautiful church.

01:24:58.460 I mean, there aren't many of those left in the United States,

01:25:00.720 but the Episcopal Church built the prettiest buildings

01:25:03.200 probably in the whole country.

01:25:04.400 Some of my, I love cathedrals.

01:25:05.980 I travel a lot and my favorite thing are cathedrals.

01:25:09.780 But, you know, during the Protestant Reformation,

01:25:11.880 they burned most of them down.

01:25:13.260 They broke the stained glass.

01:25:14.700 They were over building things.

01:25:16.580 because when Christ came, he goes, you are the temple.

01:25:21.520 The Holy Spirit dwells in you.

01:25:22.980 There's no more physical temple.

01:25:24.920 And so what are we building?

01:25:26.980 We're building physical temples.

01:25:28.200 And the LDS side of things is fascinating too

01:25:30.320 in regards to the temples they love to build.

01:25:32.500 And you have to ask why they want to build those temples.

01:25:36.340 And that just goes into the history

01:25:37.700 of Joseph Smith and Mormonism.

01:25:40.440 But I tip my hat to the Mormon church 1.00

01:25:43.040 in regards to you figured out the cheat code.

01:25:45.340 like in any video game.

01:25:46.720 You figured the cheat code out

01:25:47.820 in the religious exemption side of things

01:25:49.500 because the only reason why they got rolled

01:25:51.640 and busted by the SEC

01:25:53.620 is they had so much money invested

01:25:55.620 and they weren't filing what's called a 13F.

01:25:58.420 So when you have a hundred million bucks

01:26:00.180 invested in the market,

01:26:01.240 you have to fill out an informational 13F,

01:26:04.860 which is just an informational filing saying,

01:26:06.680 hey, here's our stock portfolio

01:26:09.400 because you could technically sway the market.

01:26:11.480 Of course, yeah.

01:26:12.140 And they have billions,

01:26:14.840 tens of billions invested in the market.

01:26:17.440 Do we know where?

01:26:18.160 Can you know where?

01:26:19.360 Yeah.

01:26:20.100 Now they fill out the forms now.

01:26:22.940 And so they're heavily invested in pharmaceuticals.

01:26:25.380 They're heavily invested in machinery of war.

01:26:28.660 Actually?

01:26:29.500 Yeah.

01:26:30.020 The LDS Church profits from war and from COVID.

01:26:36.320 Is that true?

01:26:37.220 Yeah.

01:26:37.580 How from COVID?

01:26:38.960 They are heavily invested in Pfizer and Moderna

01:26:41.380 and all the vaccine companies.

01:26:44.840 So that's verified.

01:26:46.960 Verified, yeah, verified on their 13 Fs.

01:26:49.060 So when the government under Biden,

01:26:52.340 you know, very liberal, anti-Mormon,

01:26:54.140 you would think government starts pushing,

01:26:57.740 commanding the population to take the vaccine,

01:26:59.880 how does the Mormon hierarchy respond to that?

01:27:03.260 They put out a marketing video saying you should get the jab.

01:27:06.120 You should get the vaccine.

01:27:07.420 Actually?

01:27:07.840 Yeah, and the prophet got a shot live on camera. 0.88

01:27:11.040 I don't know if it was a real vaccine or just a dummy.

01:27:14.480 For his sake, I hope it wasn't.

01:27:16.220 Yeah.

01:27:16.760 But yeah, they encouraged their church congregation to get the vaccine.

01:27:23.300 That's true.

01:27:24.260 True.

01:27:24.640 Fact.

01:27:25.120 Fact.

01:27:25.720 On camera.

01:27:27.220 I mean, it's only been five years, but that's like so shocking that any church would do that.

01:27:31.240 But they weren't the only church that did that.

01:27:33.880 Yeah, lots encouraged it.

01:27:35.840 Churches have become political, whether right or left.

01:27:39.140 and churches have become a weapon of the political party.

01:27:45.560 It's a box on a shelf.

01:27:47.160 When I need that evangelical vote, I'm going to pull it off. 1.00

01:27:49.560 So you know for a fact that the LDS church is invested in weapon manufacturing? 0.59

01:27:55.820 Yeah, they're heavily invested in Northrop Grumman and multiple other...

01:28:01.560 How can a church invest in weapons that kill innocents?

01:28:07.760 I think it's extremely antithetical to what they believe,

01:28:12.860 but their argument is,

01:28:14.500 Nathan, we're just following the status quo of the market.

01:28:18.080 Whatever the index is, we just invest in.

01:28:21.320 They don't care about what they're invested in.

01:28:24.980 Then they've said that?

01:28:26.520 That's their rationale.

01:28:27.220 I just want to be clear.

01:28:28.040 I like a lot of Mormons.

01:28:28.860 I like a lot of them.

01:28:30.860 And let me be very clear, Tucker.

01:28:33.120 There are so many good Christians, Mormons,

01:28:36.300 like people are awesome. Institutions are what I can't stand because they corrupt. So it's how do

01:28:44.680 we bring accountability and reform into institutions, whether that be religious

01:28:48.820 institutions or government institutions, there has to be accountability, transparency and

01:28:53.580 accountability. Right. No, it's totally right. I mean, you run into, you know, the longer you

01:28:58.000 live and the more you travel and the more people you meet, you'll run into people and institutions

01:29:01.860 that you revile that are just obviously evil,

01:29:06.200 CIA, FBI, IRS, you know, who are just great people.

01:29:13.120 And you're like, wow, you know, I feel sorry for you.

01:29:17.040 But it's also just important to make the distinction

01:29:19.260 between individuals in whatever institution they're serving.

01:29:23.040 100%, I love people.

01:29:24.480 Yeah, I do too.

01:29:25.380 I love people.

01:29:26.340 I do too.

01:29:26.700 So Franklin Graham, like how much money has Samaritan's Purse amassed?

01:29:32.720 Franklin, Billy's son.

01:29:34.940 So Samaritan's Purse does great work.

01:29:39.420 They work with refugees.

01:29:41.100 They work immigration.

01:29:42.240 They work natural disasters.

01:29:44.800 They do good work.

01:29:46.340 And I want you to think about that carrot.

01:29:48.780 There's always that carrot that nonprofits dangle.

01:29:51.400 This is their 2021 990, which is just an informational sheet that churches do not have to file.

01:30:00.440 So the beautiful part about the 990s, these are the first two pages.

01:30:03.880 A 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.

01:30:13.620 So there's two things I want to bring up, and if I forget, I want to talk about Alaska.

01:30:18.300 Just say, let's talk about Alaska.

01:30:19.320 This is 2021. Up in this top right, there's two numbers highlighted. What's the first?

01:30:26.200 And then...

01:30:28.080 The first number highlighted, holy smokes, is 923,718,989. The second number is 1,222,600,910.

01:30:44.660 So from 2020 to 2021, their net assets jumped from $900 billion to $1.2 billion, right?

01:30:53.280 Yes.

01:30:54.200 This is their 2024.

01:30:56.000 So remember guys, $900 million in 2021.

01:31:00.100 This is 2024, a few years later.

01:31:02.640 It jumps to almost $2.5 billion.

01:31:05.780 $2.5 billion.

01:31:07.080 What does that mean?

01:31:08.080 How can a charity have $2.5 billion in assets?

01:31:12.240 They're building a war chest.

01:31:14.040 It's the same thing with the LDS church.

01:31:15.880 They've realized that the nonprofit can do some good with a carrot, but then just stockpile money.

01:31:24.020 And so donors are giving, looking at the carrot, saying we're doing good work as the nonprofit itself, as the corporation just stockpiles resources.

01:31:33.380 But to what end?

01:31:35.120 To the LDS church's end, they figured it out to the point where there's no end in sight.

01:31:39.080 At least the Mormons have a consistent theology where there's going to be a famine and we're banking against it. 0.99

01:31:43.680 But yeah, but that's, I get that, okay, for seven years, but you're talking about indefinitely. They're banking on an indefinite famine.

01:31:50.740 Right. Then I don't really see where God fits into that.

01:31:53.420 No, he's not there, bro.

01:31:56.040 Okay.

01:31:56.960 Yeah.

01:31:58.120 But why would Samaritan's Purse, which is not a Mormon organization, why would they have two and a half billion dollars banked?

01:32:06.440 Or in assets?

01:32:07.660 In assets. I don't know. It's a great question for Franklin.

01:32:11.580 So how much do they spend a year helping the needy?

01:32:15.540 Estimates are 60 to 100 million.

01:32:18.500 But they're raising hundreds of millions annually.

01:32:21.400 So they're building this war chest.

01:32:23.200 How can Franklin Graham be raising that much more than he's spending on the needy?

01:32:29.500 Because he's a good fundraiser.

01:32:32.060 Yeah, but don't people give to him?

01:32:34.900 To do good, yes.

01:32:35.780 So 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.

01:32:53.580 but life's getting more expensive.

01:32:56.360 Nonprofits are cheerleading,

01:32:57.580 saying they're doing more

01:32:58.460 as homelessness rises,

01:33:00.220 as poverty rises.

01:33:02.240 The entire system in architecture is broken

01:33:04.680 and institutional religion and politic in America

01:33:07.580 go hand in hand,

01:33:08.540 even though they say they do.

01:33:09.160 Yeah, I mean, I always gave to land trusts

01:33:11.040 because I don't like, you know,

01:33:12.740 ugly development

01:33:13.560 and I really love nature so passionately.

01:33:16.800 But then you realize the land trust kind of,

01:33:18.860 not all land trusts,

01:33:19.900 but a lot of land trusts exist for their own benefit

01:33:22.360 and then they gate the land

01:33:23.420 and you can't use it.

01:33:24.500 Yeah.

01:33:25.100 So you can't hunt or fish on their land.

01:33:26.720 So like, what's the point of this exactly?

01:33:28.560 Like I'm hunting fish on timber land,

01:33:31.100 paper company land.

01:33:31.980 Yeah.

01:33:32.420 But the second some nonprofit

01:33:33.940 from Vermont takes over,

01:33:35.580 you can't go on the land.

01:33:36.620 So like, why do you exist exactly?

01:33:39.080 And they own all the land in a lot of places.

01:33:41.040 Why does the nonprofit sector exist?

01:33:43.240 It's a great question to ask.

01:33:44.560 For itself.

01:33:45.260 Yes.

01:33:45.940 That's what it's corrupted into.

01:33:47.340 So can I ask you,

01:33:48.240 and I don't want to focus too much

01:33:50.280 on Samaritan's Purchase

01:33:51.000 because I know that there are many groups

01:33:53.140 like it but they're at two and a half billion dollars clearly one of the biggest a lot of

01:33:58.140 these guys fly private and as someone who flies commercial often coach i mean because you should

01:34:05.440 because like why would you be wasting money on a private plane all the time like how does a

01:34:10.180 christian organization justify having a private jet um it's usually their schedules are too busy

01:34:15.060 tucker that's their that's their rationale copeland um duplantis they say no one could fly public

01:34:22.620 with my travel schedule.

01:34:25.240 Maybe you slow down your travel schedule a little bit.

01:34:27.620 Maybe.

01:34:28.180 I only say that because I've flown private enough

01:34:30.940 to know that it's like next level expensive.

01:34:34.100 Like there's no way to, even for businesses,

01:34:36.360 rich people don't buy their own planes

01:34:38.220 because like, I just can't justify that.

01:34:39.720 I'll charter if I need it.

01:34:40.800 There's a funny story.

01:34:42.240 So to have a private jet that you own

01:34:44.220 and pilots use retirement, you pay,

01:34:46.520 fuel costs that you shoulder,

01:34:48.160 the endless maintenance on the plane,

01:34:51.120 incredibly expensive.

01:34:51.960 Like ask any rich person that rich people don't do.

01:34:55.940 I mean, some do, but most rich people are like,

01:34:57.520 I'm not rich enough for that.

01:34:58.700 Yeah.

01:34:59.460 Right?

01:34:59.960 There's a great story.

01:35:00.900 I know a lot of rich people trust me.

01:35:02.100 They'll be like, I'm rich, but I'm not that rich.

01:35:04.240 Then you see some preacher who's got a private jet.

01:35:06.100 It's like, what world are you living in?

01:35:08.120 What is this?

01:35:09.400 Well, and the congregation will justify it too.

01:35:11.840 That's what's so backwards.

01:35:12.900 Sorry, that makes me mad.

01:35:14.000 The blind lead the blind into a ditch as the scriptures say.

01:35:16.820 But how common is that?

01:35:18.040 You've got your own jet?

01:35:19.720 I wouldn't say it's that common.

01:35:21.960 But there's some, a lot of pastors try to get into that space and then their congregations

01:35:27.700 do sometimes push back.

01:35:29.520 And so, who was I just talking to?

01:35:31.460 If I had a pastor in a church that I was attending on Sunday say, we need a private jet.

01:35:36.720 I mean, I'd stand up in the middle of the service and say, son, I know more about this

01:35:39.960 than you do.

01:35:40.440 You do not need a private jet.

01:35:42.480 Jesus didn't fly private.

01:35:43.700 He rode a donkey.

01:35:44.500 Like, what are you doing?

01:35:45.500 Well, then they'll say, oh, but the donkey was, literally, I've had someone say that

01:35:49.000 was the fastest mode of transportation.

01:35:50.920 It wasn't.

01:35:51.880 It was the most humiliating

01:35:52.840 form of transportation.

01:35:53.800 That's why he chose it.

01:35:54.880 Yeah, yeah.

01:35:56.280 But they'll justify it.

01:35:57.920 Samaritan's Purse has,

01:36:00.080 ooh, I didn't print

01:36:00.780 their entire 2024.

01:36:03.040 But last year they had,

01:36:04.500 I think, 134 million

01:36:06.060 in plane assets.

01:36:09.760 What?

01:36:10.580 Let me see.

01:36:12.900 Dang it.

01:36:13.440 Yeah, it's not on this dock.

01:36:14.520 I'm way more comfortable

01:36:15.540 with the pastor sleeping

01:36:16.580 with his assistant,

01:36:17.620 which is totally immoral,

01:36:18.660 than I am with him

01:36:19.240 having a private jet.

01:36:19.980 I agree.

01:36:20.840 I agree.

01:36:21.180 Because at least everyone realizes, like, you're not supposed to sleep with your assistant.

01:36:24.040 It's totally sinful.

01:36:25.580 It's wrong.

01:36:26.340 Well, the planes are the—

01:36:27.340 But a plane is like a subtle kind of evil.

01:36:29.640 It's like no one even notices.

01:36:30.960 Oh, we're so important.

01:36:31.700 He's got a plane.

01:36:32.540 Well, that's the prosperity gospel message creeping in, right?

01:36:35.380 What is that exactly?

01:36:36.640 This is Paula White.

01:36:37.780 This is Kenneth Copeland, Duplantis.

01:36:40.200 This is if God favors me, I will be prosperous.

01:36:43.660 And it comes from Malachi 3.

01:36:46.620 Malachi 3.

01:36:48.440 Yeah.

01:36:48.660 opening the windows of heaven

01:36:50.440 and you're going to be prospered.

01:36:52.760 Malachi 3 is talking about one thing.

01:36:55.120 It's talking about rain for their fields.

01:36:58.620 It's saying, if you bring into the storehouse,

01:37:01.040 I will open the windows of heaven to you

01:37:02.940 and pour out a blessing like you've never seen.

01:37:05.560 Malachi was talking about rain falling on the land

01:37:08.820 so you could refill your storehouse.

01:37:11.840 He wasn't talking about a private plane.

01:37:13.760 Well, especially for a Christian to be like, 1.00

01:37:15.580 well, you know, why are you doing that?

01:37:16.720 Malachi 3.

01:37:18.140 It's like, we've got a whole New Testament

01:37:19.660 and four Gospels in that.

01:37:21.660 And like, why don't you read those

01:37:23.720 and tell me if you should have a private plane

01:37:25.900 at other people's expense?

01:37:27.560 Well, this goes back to our conversation earlier

01:37:29.580 about if you don't read the scriptures

01:37:32.980 in its entirety and see it as one book

01:37:35.220 and one glorious story,

01:37:37.200 you can bastardize a couple verses

01:37:39.180 that end up have detrimental effects

01:37:41.340 on the global church.

01:37:43.380 The body of Christ, when I say the church.

01:37:45.580 i'm sorry to do this um now i just want to be totally transparent and say that

01:37:51.500 franklin graham called me an anti-semite so i'm obviously known with franklin graham

01:37:57.020 uh so i should just say that just so people understand that i probably have mixed motives

01:38:02.140 in doing this i'm not a pure person but i also think it's worth just pausing on franklin graham

01:38:07.440 for a second because his father was a great man i think franklin graham is like a sober serious

01:38:11.700 person in a lot of ways he's not a transparent ridiculous figure like paula white it's just i

01:38:17.040 mean it's almost too easy to beat up on paula white okay yeah the great theologian paula white 0.51

01:38:20.980 but franklin graham is a much more serious person and he's always on fox news and all that

01:38:27.740 and so that's why i do think it's worth pausing and having you restate

01:38:33.060 how much do they own in private aircraft uh around 130 million

01:38:38.640 that's just tre bonkers as the french say like that's just beyond 130 million dollars

01:38:48.880 and this is a great track to move into alaska so he bought a piece of land with his wife

01:38:56.120 on lake clark in alaska very remote i've been to alaska a few times so i understand how remote

01:39:02.360 me too alaska is beautiful some of the most pretty country in the world um hard to get to though

01:39:07.220 very and this is what gets interesting so i believe i can't i don't have the document in

01:39:12.160 front of me he he and his wife bought this little lakefront half acres i believe it's a half acre

01:39:16.040 maybe even a quarter acre very small property on beautiful lake clark um a few years and that was

01:39:21.520 they purchased it personally because franklin loves alaska he loves fishing he he loves bear

01:39:27.240 hunting he's a he's a he loves the outdoors yeah no i like that about him and i yeah i'm a big

01:39:32.180 outdoorsman you are and uh well what happened was a few years later samaritan's purse bought the lot

01:39:38.420 next to him and flash forward in um the little town called is called port allsworth there's only

01:39:45.200 a couple hundred people that live there full-time there's no signals you can't drive to it there is

01:39:49.620 no road that gets you from anchorage or any other city to port allsworth the only way to get there

01:39:56.540 by flight, private plane, and there's a dirt runway. There's two of them. Or by boat, by barge

01:40:02.820 up these rivers. And this is a good story for backstory. So I was up in Alaska probably four

01:40:09.240 years ago. No, longer than that, five years ago. And we're in the middle of nowhere. I'm with

01:40:13.700 Inuits. Like we're going back, packing on float planes to find a property that my friend was

01:40:19.800 inheriting from her parents. I'm like, I'll go with you. This sounds awesome. Right? So I'm

01:40:23.900 carrying a tag. I got a 10 mil strap to my chest, a shotgun, a bear gun. And I'm like, we're going.

01:40:29.540 We're in the middle of nowhere. We're sitting with this Inuit. We're staying at her cabin 1.00

01:40:34.000 and she's making us a meal. And she asked what I do. And I say, the religion business. And I give

01:40:39.760 her the story. We're filming it. And she goes, oh, you won't believe it. Her husband owns a barge

01:40:45.860 and barges equipment up and down these rivers. And she goes, we just barged a soft top

01:40:53.240 Ford Bronco, brand new, 2021. So it's right when the Ford Bronco came out. And I'm like,

01:40:59.680 what is a soft top Ford Bronco being barged up a river in the middle of nowhere for?

01:41:06.380 And this is where you couldn't get them. They were very hard to get. And she goes, yeah,

01:41:11.680 we barged it up for Samaritan's Purse. And I was like, what? And she goes, yeah,

01:41:17.420 here's the invoice. And she put the invoice in front of me that said Samaritan's Purse.

01:41:21.820 Oh, this is so corrupt. I can't believe this is real.

01:41:24.440 And this is where it gets crazier. So I was like, wait, what do they do? And she goes,

01:41:28.720 they have this camp for, which is awesome. My brother's a Marine, my best friend's a Marine

01:41:34.100 or a military, my business partner's retired military. I have massive respect for our armed

01:41:38.760 forces. So they started a nonprofit up there called Heal Our Patriots. And they bring couples,

01:41:47.600 husband and wife couples up there to reinvigorate their relationship and retune them to Christ.

01:41:53.900 Awesome idea, right? And so, but I'm like, what's a soft top Ford Bronco doing in the harshest

01:41:59.640 environments in the world? I mean, like no one takes nice things up there because they all rust

01:42:03.460 and get destroyed within a few seasons. So I start doing some research. Sure enough, I find it.

01:42:10.060 They bring a couple hundred people up there a year for three months out of the year.

01:42:13.220 um they have these massive lakefront cabins now they bought i said there was two dirt runways

01:42:18.720 samaritan's purse bought one of the runways so now they have their own private airstrip

01:42:23.120 and uh so franklin and his wife have a house and they bring a couple mike pence has been there

01:42:29.400 multiple times um and so ironically i'm like i'm going so a camera operator and i we went to

01:42:37.000 anchorage took a plane to i can't a little cessna to somewhere else then we got on a float plane

01:42:42.240 and we landed we're in the middle of nowhere tucker and all of a sudden there's it's have

01:42:47.820 you seen the movie uh truman show no uh great movie but it's about a fake world it was a fake

01:42:53.980 world there wasn't a blade of grass out of place like the amount of upkeep and in care to make

01:43:01.780 this place look perfect and then the crazier part is this is where this is where i go conspiracy

01:43:06.300 theory. There's these massive fuel storage tanks, massive, 20,000 gallons at a time.

01:43:13.320 And this plane would fly in and land and just refuel these tanks. And I talked to the pilot

01:43:18.320 and he's like, yeah, this place is like a bunker basically to just camp out.

01:43:23.120 And I'm like, oh, this is like Franklin Graham's World War III hideout. If things go south,

01:43:28.600 he's going to ping up here. They've got gardens. They've got full greenhouses. I'm like, this is

01:43:34.980 like, this is the bug out zone. And that's just my conspiracy theory. I mean, every rich person

01:43:41.360 in the world thinks that way. So the reason why I'm saying this is this organization is paid for

01:43:46.980 by donor dollars. It is a multi-million dollar a year operation. Franklin Graham, I have his

01:43:54.200 flight logs, flies his private jet back and forth from North Carolina to Alaska during this three

01:44:00.840 month window. If you really wanted to run a successful, humble nonprofit, this is where it

01:44:08.500 gets crazier. Like you live in North Carolina, almost on the water. You could start a great

01:44:12.540 operation there in your backyard. But here's my kicker. Their 990s show donors where the money

01:44:19.060 goes. This isn't their full 990, so you wouldn't be able to see it. But in the back of a 990,

01:44:23.960 they line itemize where you're supposed to line itemize where your money goes.

01:44:28.600 there is nothing in their 990 that has anything to do with Alaska.

01:44:34.840 So it's buried in another line item that no donor knows about.

01:44:39.940 So I just, I get this story specifically because that's every rich guy in the world

01:44:45.760 wants, you know, who's a sportsman, wants a camp on a remote lake in Alaska,

01:44:52.480 easy access, and wants a bug out spot.

01:44:54.840 Everybody wants that.

01:44:55.940 I mean, I would know.

01:44:57.600 Yeah.

01:44:58.180 And that's what everyone talks about.

01:44:59.980 Do you know what I mean?

01:45:00.840 Yeah.

01:45:01.360 And that's the opposite of a conspiracy theory.

01:45:03.960 That's like the thing people want most.

01:45:06.340 And if you can find a way to get your nonprofit to pay for it

01:45:10.360 and a way to morally justify it to yourself

01:45:12.180 while I'm helping wounded warriors keep their marriages together,

01:45:16.820 that's just, that is so corrupt.

01:45:19.640 If what you're saying is true, that's like-

01:45:21.460 I've been there.

01:45:22.260 We filmed there.

01:45:23.380 This is the best part.

01:45:24.760 So there's so many good parts of the story.

01:45:26.760 So at the end of the runway, there's a food truck that they barged up.

01:45:31.020 Get this.

01:45:31.460 They barged this food truck up there to be there too. 0.95

01:45:34.080 And it's called, oh, what's Franklin's daughter's name?

01:45:36.620 Cece or she goes by?

01:45:37.920 I don't know.

01:45:38.860 Can't remember her name.

01:45:39.580 It's named after his daughter, his food truck.

01:45:42.920 They serve a very specific hamburger that's Franklin Graham's favorite hamburger, his

01:45:47.640 favorite meat patty.

01:45:48.840 And so we just picked a random date to go.

01:45:51.440 Like I didn't coordinate this or anything, but you can only go in the summer.

01:45:55.100 and so uh i'm sitting there and it's the only place to eat so literally we ate there every day

01:46:01.620 and uh we're sitting there and we we had hiked this ridge line to get a shot looking down

01:46:09.720 and uh franklin graham pulls up in the bronco and i'm like well my camera operator's like dude

01:46:17.580 that's the bronco and i was like what and out drives from the side road this soft top bronco

01:46:23.180 pulls up, gets out, walks straight into the food truck, not goes up to order,

01:46:28.560 walks into the back of the kitchen and starts making himself a burger.

01:46:31.680 And we have a camera.

01:46:33.440 And so I just put the camera on the table and it starts rolling.

01:46:36.240 And there's only two picnic tables.

01:46:38.540 And so I'm looking this way.

01:46:40.200 Franklin makes his burger, walks out, sits in the other picnic table, staring right at me.

01:46:45.060 Wait, can I ask, like, where is there to drive?

01:46:47.640 There's nowhere to drive.

01:46:48.760 The runway.

01:46:49.980 So the Bronco is to drive from the runway to the camp?

01:46:53.180 The Bronco is to drive from his house down the airstrip to the main set up.

01:46:58.080 How far is that?

01:46:58.980 Probably a quarter mile, third of a mile.

01:47:00.440 What?

01:47:01.040 Yeah.

01:47:02.260 And they barged a brand new Bronco in to drive a quarter mile?

01:47:06.160 Yeah.

01:47:06.880 Most people use quads or golf carts, you know, because there's nothing there.

01:47:09.760 They're a walk.

01:47:10.280 There was one other car that I saw.

01:47:11.780 It was like a 1988 Chevy Suburban, and I know it because that was my first car.

01:47:18.780 Great vehicle.

01:47:19.740 Yeah.

01:47:20.080 454, that big old.

01:47:21.420 Yeah, big time.

01:47:21.760 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:47:22.280 Big time.

01:47:22.640 Um, but that was the only other car.

01:47:25.440 And then a brand new Ford, soft top Ford Bronco.

01:47:29.660 Yeah.

01:47:30.380 Wow.

01:47:31.000 I don't think most really rich people who actually made the money, honestly, or not

01:47:36.120 honestly, but who made it themselves and didn't just like not pay taxes on donor money designed

01:47:41.500 to help starving Africans.

01:47:42.640 I don't even think they would go to that expense.

01:47:44.960 It was impressive.

01:47:45.540 That's very extravagant.

01:47:47.180 Well, and he, he's using donor money to justify it.

01:47:50.400 And then on their 990s, you can't find the line item cost of the operation.

01:47:57.160 That's the problem I have.

01:47:58.400 What do people say when you tell them?

01:47:59.980 I've never heard any of this, but.

01:48:02.200 I would say it's 50-50.

01:48:04.120 The people who don't like abuse are like, that's incredible.

01:48:09.020 But I would never, I don't think that's Franklin Graham.

01:48:11.860 Because they look at Billy Graham, who I respect, and they go, he's the son of Billy Graham.

01:48:18.140 But again, all systems corrupt and anybody who goes into this system eventually gets eaten by it.

01:48:23.880 And the other side actually try to justify it.

01:48:29.040 So many people try to justify this type of abuse.

01:48:31.360 Really?

01:48:31.900 How?

01:48:32.580 Franklin's a godly man, Tucker.

01:48:35.320 A godly man is a humble man.

01:48:37.400 That's the first sign of godliness is humility because you're not God.

01:48:41.820 Yeah.

01:48:42.520 Right.

01:48:42.780 So that was the model that Jesus left us.

01:48:45.120 That was the model of the early church was humility.

01:48:47.220 Well, 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.

01:49:03.200 Yeah. 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.

01:49:20.480 And the best part is I'm there waving an American flag

01:49:22.760 because they bring out the whole town

01:49:24.480 because there's so few people on this little strip.

01:49:27.200 They want it to feel like it's something.

01:49:29.740 So cooks, everybody are coming out

01:49:31.740 with a little American flag waving it.

01:49:33.760 So I'm sitting there waving my flag with them

01:49:35.620 and it's all in the show.

01:49:37.960 And the first person off is the staff photographer.

01:49:41.100 Just making sure they document it to get all the shots.

01:49:44.240 And then ironically, so I told you I spent six years

01:49:47.460 in Maui during the Lahaina fires.

01:49:50.480 which was awful. I have really close friends in Maui. A couple of my friends are firefighters

01:49:55.640 that worked at the airport there. Samaritan's Purse flew their jet or their jumbo, their cargo

01:50:01.720 plane from North Carolina to Lahaina. I'm sorry, to Lahaina, Kahului. They landed at Kahului.

01:50:08.420 And the first person off that jet too, staff photographer, they've got to get the shot that

01:50:13.880 they're bringing in materials to help the people of Maui. And then Edward Graham, Franklin's son,

01:50:18.620 walks off and uh i was told what was on that plane all of it could have been bought at costco down

01:50:25.260 the street water blankets just but they spent tens of thousands of dollars in fuel to get the

01:50:32.100 marketing hundreds of thousands so they could raise hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars

01:50:36.080 so they could so they can get the marketing shot so they can raise money saying look at us help

01:50:41.140 the victims of the line of fire and and those victims still like i i have such a heart for

01:50:46.940 Maui and what happened there. But Samaritan's Purse, I would call, I would confidently say 0.98

01:50:52.940 the majority of it is all just smoke and mirrors at this point. They do good work. They do some

01:50:56.960 good work. Well, two and a half billion dollars where you're not spent, if, you know, I mean,

01:51:01.520 just do the math. That should be billions a year spent on the poor. I agree. Yeah. Just by

01:51:07.060 definition. Yeah. And there's the silver lining here is American Christians and global Christians,

01:51:12.180 but American Christians in particular are so generous.

01:51:14.880 Yes, they are.

01:51:15.400 That we could solve through the money we give

01:51:18.000 most social issues in America.

01:51:20.260 The church could do it,

01:51:21.480 but the money is not being stewarded properly.

01:51:23.500 It's being shelled up in massive corporations

01:51:26.180 and people are leveraging donor generosity

01:51:30.120 to build their bug out spaces in Alaska,

01:51:33.060 all in the name of Jesus.

01:51:34.720 People don't fear God very much anymore.

01:51:37.080 Well, the most effective Christian mission I've ever seen, 0.66

01:51:40.820 I think that exists in the country

01:51:42.200 is not even explicitly Christian,

01:51:43.480 but it is Christian and it's AA.

01:51:45.500 And it raises no money.

01:51:46.880 They won't even take money from you.

01:51:48.580 And no one gets paid.

01:51:50.100 There's no one in charge.

01:51:51.620 And they take people who are killing them,

01:51:53.760 literally killing themselves.

01:51:55.100 And they change them completely.

01:51:57.480 Not all of them,

01:51:58.280 but they have a better success rate

01:51:59.620 than any other rehab by far.

01:52:02.140 And they accrue zero power.

01:52:04.620 Wow.

01:52:04.880 It's the most Christian thing

01:52:06.000 that happens in most churches.

01:52:07.700 You'll have some like

01:52:08.540 rotting congregational church

01:52:10.580 No one goes.

01:52:12.200 We've got a trans preacher lady or something. 1.00

01:52:14.380 And then on Wednesday, they'll have the AA meeting and Jesus will fill the room.

01:52:19.840 Cost nothing.

01:52:21.940 It's amazing.

01:52:23.420 When I was traveling, like back in the day, I traveled to developing nations because I

01:52:26.860 worked in the action sports world, so surf and snow.

01:52:29.220 And so you usually go to some pretty remote spots.

01:52:31.100 And I would always want to go to churches and seminaries in those regions.

01:52:35.560 Oh, I bet.

01:52:36.040 And so I've gotten to worship in tin roofs in the back rivers of Honduras, in the favelas in Brazil, like the most beautiful things.

01:52:45.440 And that's what really started the religion business for me is these people would never ask for money.

01:52:51.340 They wouldn't have coffee and donuts.

01:52:53.280 They were huddled under a tin roof as the rain was pouring down.

01:52:56.100 There was no instruments.

01:52:57.080 Most of the time they were just singing a cappella.

01:52:59.040 And someone would pull out a little Bible and read some scriptures.

01:53:01.720 And I believe God just filled those rooms.

01:53:04.280 I believe that.

01:53:04.740 And 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.

01:53:12.800 But it was just performance, and so that really made me rethink what is a church.

01:53:18.220 Yeah, 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.

01:53:26.240 It's like, what is he saying?

01:53:27.400 Well, money is the root of all evil, right?

01:53:28.660 Well, that's what it's the love of money, yes.

01:53:30.680 Love.

01:53:31.140 The love of money.

01:53:32.280 It's not the money.

01:53:32.760 Right. 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.

01:53:46.040 But 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.

01:53:57.420 I've enjoyed it.

01:53:58.220 You've enjoyed it? Yeah. So, we enjoy it. I love America. You love America.

01:54:01.900 I do.

01:54:03.400 Capitalism should not be anywhere near Christianity. 0.99

01:54:06.920 You think?

01:54:08.620 Christianity is more, and I don't like the word socialist with the weight it carries,

01:54:14.800 but Christianity is socialism at its core.

01:54:18.220 Non-authoritarian.

01:54:20.980 It's the marker to build social capital.

01:54:24.200 You look at that early Church of Acts and it transformed Rome within a couple hundred years,

01:54:28.600 the greatest superpower of its time

01:54:30.200 to where Constantine was like,

01:54:31.660 I'm a Christian hanging out with these dudes.

01:54:33.240 They had no money.

01:54:34.560 They had no buildings.

01:54:35.660 But somehow the love of their neighbor

01:54:38.020 transformed the greatest superpower of its time.

01:54:40.740 That's dangerous.

01:54:43.300 It needs to be constrained, right?

01:54:45.600 Today it's just, we've let capitalism

01:54:47.680 and Carl Truman, he's a Reformation thought expert,

01:54:51.440 brilliant guy from England.

01:54:52.740 He calls it the rugged American individualistic experience.

01:54:55.880 and he goes that has detrimental effects on christianity how about greed i mean it just

01:55:02.020 looks like greed to me um but yeah so let me ask about um i never paid any attention to any of this

01:55:08.900 stuff ever i just didn't ever encounter it uh at all because america is like a collection of

01:55:14.660 cultures that don't sort of meet each other very much but um the only reason i became aware of any

01:55:19.940 of this is because of its effect on foreign policy which i have followed closely for a long time so

01:55:23.860 all of a sudden you see these preachers endorsing violence and my understanding of the gospel it's

01:55:30.540 like jesus does not command anyone to go kill anybody else like just the opposite so i'm like

01:55:35.460 what is this so you press a little bit and you find that they're serving this theology or ideology

01:55:43.840 or demonic influence i mean i don't know what it is but this conflation of the nation modern

01:55:49.960 nation state, secular nation state of Israel with biblical Israel, whatever that was,

01:55:54.600 you find this thing called Christian Zionism. And I still don't understand it. It's not Christianity.

01:56:02.080 But what is it? Where does it come from? And is it as widespread among the leaders of these

01:56:07.280 institutions as it seems to be? Let's start last question first. They all seem to be,

01:56:13.300 the people you're talking about all seem to be Christian Zionists.

01:56:16.240 Yeah, I would argue it's dispensationalism.

01:56:18.560 Okay.

01:56:19.000 Is the bedrock of it, right?

01:56:21.260 Like, so I feel like Zionist, anti-Semite, 0.85

01:56:23.220 all these hot button words are just thrown around.

01:56:26.320 That's for sure.

01:56:27.100 So yeah, dispensationalism.

01:56:28.580 I don't care what anybody calls me.

01:56:30.200 Like I'm going to reach, oh, and I have,

01:56:32.040 my business partner and I have something for you.

01:56:34.540 Cause I'm going to go back to this right now.

01:56:36.560 This is a preacher's Bible from 1668.

01:56:40.280 Wow.

01:56:40.600 So preachers, this is what a preacher carried around.

01:56:44.100 um and a good friend of mine is one of the biggest bible collectors in the world so 1668 right on the

01:56:51.800 spine there um and this is what you and i are going to reference for the next uh for this this

01:56:59.080 time to understand dispensationalism zionism anti-semitism um yeah printed in in 1668 and

01:57:08.560 It's amazing in England.

01:57:10.280 Yep, in England.

01:57:11.680 And yeah, I just figured it's,

01:57:15.300 whenever anybody starts talking about subjects like this,

01:57:19.000 I will always refer to the scriptures for truth, nothing else.

01:57:22.820 Not popular belief, not opinion.

01:57:24.840 It's incredible.

01:57:25.520 Just the scripture.

01:57:26.160 So that's for you from Chris and I.

01:57:28.900 Well, that is so kind.

01:57:29.920 Thank you.

01:57:30.760 I love that.

01:57:31.840 I'll actually read it.

01:57:32.860 Yeah, it's a good one.

01:57:34.100 So it's a good book, guys.

01:57:35.900 Whether you see it as a history book or the word of God,

01:57:38.200 It's a great book.

01:57:40.620 Dispensationalism is a very new thing.

01:57:42.460 It's only a couple hundred years old.

01:57:45.080 A guy named Darby kind of spun it up.

01:57:47.380 The Schofield Reference Bible had it in its margin notes.

01:57:49.980 And so it's the idea that the world is broken into dispensations or periods.

01:57:55.920 And so Darby had this idea that Israel, the 12 tribes which came from Abraham, are different

01:58:03.400 from the body of Christ that Christ talks about in the gospels and that Paul pushes for and really

01:58:10.600 closes down in the epistles. And so dispensationalism is Israel, the tribe of Israel 0.87

01:58:19.420 is set apart from the body of Christ. And part of that is this idea of reclaiming the promised land,

01:58:27.460 the physical promised land. Where does that, I mean, Paul, who wrote the majority of the New

01:58:32.020 Testament, who was a Jew, was a Pharisee, a persecutor of the church, and then met Jesus,

01:58:38.300 he goes out of his way to say that the opposite of that.

01:58:42.500 Romans, he destroys that argument. Like he levels dispensationalism with a sledgehammer in Romans.

01:58:49.340 Hebrews, same exact thing. Galatians hits on it too.

01:58:52.900 Oh, I know.

01:58:53.540 Yeah. And so it goes back to this idea when we don't see the scriptures, and this is what I

01:58:58.580 want to encourage everybody out there, Christians, atheists, agnostics, I don't care. It's the

01:59:03.220 greatest history book of humanity. We can see it as that. And you have to see it as one story.

01:59:09.900 It's not 66 different stories for the 66 book canon. It is one story. When we dive into this

01:59:16.680 book and start cherry picking verses or parables and applying it to our life, that's a very

01:59:21.840 dangerous practice because we become our own storyteller, which is idolatry. And so you have

01:59:29.320 to see this book as one complete story of birth, death, and resurrection, or creation and fulfillment

01:59:37.400 in redemption. And so dispensationalism is the 12 tribes of Israel still deserve this land. 0.54

01:59:45.860 And so I don't know where we want to- And don't need Jesus?

01:59:48.120 and don't need Jesus, no.

01:59:50.000 Okay, so that's the leaving aside the land

01:59:52.120 and what you do with the Levant and all that

01:59:54.180 and what the boundaries of that land are.

01:59:56.740 I mean, these are all questions I tried to get answers from

01:59:59.680 in my conversation with Mike Huckabee to no avail.

02:00:02.200 But that's secondary as a theological matter

02:00:05.400 to the core question, which is how do you get to heaven?

02:00:07.920 How are you redeemed?

02:00:09.740 And I think the New Testament could not make it clear.

02:00:12.560 Jesus couldn't make it clear.

02:00:13.540 Paul, the Jewish Pharisee, couldn't make it clearer. 0.87

02:00:17.400 It's through Jesus.

02:00:18.120 It's an exclusive claim.

02:00:19.400 It's that or nothing.

02:00:20.660 Correct.

02:00:21.360 And Jesus—

02:00:22.220 That's what it says, right?

02:00:23.140 Am I missing something?

02:00:24.280 A chapter I don't know about?

02:00:25.880 Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

02:00:27.260 No one gets to the Father.

02:00:28.160 Okay, 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?

02:00:35.800 Is that what they're saying?

02:00:36.640 Correct.

02:00:37.260 And this goes back—

02:00:38.060 Where does that come from?

02:00:39.220 It comes back from pride is where I'll take it.

02:00:42.720 So there was only one church, and it's not the Roman Catholic Church.

02:00:48.120 it's not the Orthodox Church.

02:00:49.580 Those are great traditions.

02:00:50.500 I respect those traditions.

02:00:51.860 I do too.

02:00:53.200 But there's only one church

02:00:54.300 and that's the Church of Christ.

02:00:55.280 That's the body of Christ.

02:00:57.000 And in 1054, you have the Great Schism, 0.95

02:01:00.880 the original split.

02:01:02.200 Right.

02:01:02.880 Denominational split, boom. 0.95

02:01:04.200 Now you have Catholicism in the Vatican 0.95

02:01:06.260 and you have Orthodoxy.

02:01:07.480 Well, today there's over 40,000 denominations.

02:01:11.740 And you have to ask why, Tucker?

02:01:14.260 If you and I preach the same gospel,

02:01:16.920 what does that mean?

02:01:18.120 we're equal. There's nothing different about you and I. We have the same God, the same Christ. We

02:01:23.980 believe in the same healing power through the resurrection. And we are here to help the hungry,

02:01:29.020 the sick, the poor, the naked, the prisoner, the sojourner, the orphan, and the widowed.

02:01:33.880 But I don't want to be like you, Tucker. I want to be unique. I need something different.

02:01:39.620 So I'm going to go to this book and say, oh, these guys, Tucker got it wrong.

02:01:43.340 like dispensationalism,

02:01:45.520 then I have a new message to sell

02:01:47.060 and I can sell it

02:01:48.300 and I can package it and sell it.

02:01:50.620 Power and money

02:01:51.540 is at the root of all of this.

02:01:53.740 Power and money.

02:01:54.560 But if all the new messages,

02:01:56.480 I mean, that just seems like

02:01:58.080 an explicitly anti-Christian message

02:02:00.200 that some people don't need Jesus

02:02:02.800 to be saved.

02:02:03.940 I 100% agree.

02:02:05.140 If you were to summer,

02:02:06.200 I mean, you can believe it or reject it.

02:02:07.580 Most people reject it.

02:02:08.500 That's fine.

02:02:09.100 You know, it's not my job

02:02:10.000 to save people.

02:02:11.260 but the Christian message is you need Jesus.

02:02:14.680 Correct.

02:02:14.840 So if you have Christian preachers all of a sudden stand up and be like,

02:02:17.000 well, actually not really.

02:02:18.740 Then they're not Christian preachers, are they?

02:02:21.480 No, they're dividing the body of Christ. 0.52

02:02:23.580 Right.

02:02:24.000 But on the basis of theology,

02:02:26.480 that's the 180 degree opposite of the Christian message.

02:02:30.440 Correct.

02:02:32.140 I would say-

02:02:33.080 What is going on?

02:02:35.080 I would say most Christians,

02:02:37.540 especially dispensationalists or Zionist Christians,

02:02:39.580 are Talmudic Jews wrapped in Christianity.

02:02:42.920 What does that mean?

02:02:45.760 Okay.

02:02:46.820 So where should we start?

02:02:49.460 Can I start in the Bible?

02:02:51.400 Because I want to lean on scripture here.

02:02:53.420 So we have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

02:02:58.240 Jacob becomes Israel. 0.85

02:03:00.260 Israel has 12 sons.

02:03:01.620 Those are the 12 patriarchs.

02:03:03.880 Ironically, the word Jew, do you know what it means?

02:03:06.400 It comes from Judah.

02:03:07.300 Of Judah.

02:03:08.200 Right, which is one of 12 tribes.

02:03:10.540 There's so many muddled terms here

02:03:12.360 that is so ironic to me.

02:03:15.120 But so the story goes,

02:03:16.980 Moses leads them to the promised land.

02:03:19.700 I'm sorry, leads them to the promised land.

02:03:21.760 They wander through the desert for 40 years

02:03:24.040 and Moses is about to lead them into the promised land.

02:03:27.600 This is the land that in the Abrahamic Covenants,

02:03:31.440 and then the Mosaic laws,

02:03:33.860 the Israelites are going to inherit this land, right? 0.96

02:03:36.500 This is the story.

02:03:38.000 So they're about to cross into the promised land. 0.64

02:03:40.620 Moses does something silly first

02:03:42.120 and he slaps a rock to get some water out 0.86

02:03:44.840 and he doesn't give credit to God.

02:03:46.560 He takes the credit instead.

02:03:48.540 And so Jehovah says, 0.91

02:03:49.620 hey, you're not gonna enter the promised land.

02:03:52.360 And I'm gonna give you someone who will.

02:03:55.100 It ends up being Joshua.

02:03:56.880 So Joshua is the next book of the Bible after the Torah.

02:04:00.100 Joshua leads them into the promised land.

02:04:02.380 So in Joshua 21, it says,

02:04:06.640 all has come to pass not i actually want to read it because it's such a powerful line um

02:04:13.160 but this is the fulfillment of the abrahamic covenant and joshua himself says it and so

02:04:20.100 the abrahamic covenant remember is israel deserves the land um let's see where is this 0.95

02:04:25.820 sorry i'm a big note taker where's it on the back oh dang it it's not in this copy i have so

02:04:33.240 many copies of things. So, in Joshua 21, he says, I've given you peace in the land. No one's warring

02:04:38.960 with you. God has given us everything. All has come to pass, which means that covenant is fulfilled.

02:04:47.640 Jehovah had given Israel the land. They settled in it. And so, dispensationalists will go, no,

02:04:52.600 well, the Abrahamic covenants are still in effect. Well, no, the very man that led them in, 0.82

02:04:56.860 in the scripture says, all has come to pass.

02:05:00.160 And then on the cross, Christ says, it is finished.

02:05:04.240 And what the whole story of this book is,

02:05:06.600 the Old Testament is a physical reality

02:05:10.440 and it's a shadow of a future spiritual fulfillment.

02:05:14.320 And so the promise-

02:05:15.280 Jesus says this repeatedly.

02:05:16.660 Repeatedly.

02:05:17.140 So the promised land,

02:05:18.600 God did fulfill his covenant with Abraham.

02:05:21.480 Yes.

02:05:22.080 Joshua led them in and he said, all has come to pass.

02:05:26.540 And then what did they do?

02:05:28.260 They didn't listen.

02:05:29.400 They fell out.

02:05:30.140 They bred with other nations. 0.98

02:05:32.600 The Philistines, yeah.

02:05:33.280 And boom. 0.96

02:05:34.320 Okay, that doesn't mean you get the covenant

02:05:35.680 over and over and over and over again, right?

02:05:38.000 And so Christ comes and he takes what is a physical nation

02:05:42.400 and Romans is clear on this.

02:05:44.420 And that if physical Israel becomes a spiritual nation,

02:05:48.000 it becomes the body of Christ.

02:05:49.740 Yeah, Jesus calls himself the temple.

02:05:51.440 Yes, so Israel today is the body of Christ.

02:05:55.560 christ-believing christians christ-following christians israel the nation state is something

02:06:02.860 else entirely and there's an there's a geopolitical argument to be had that yes like they deserve their

02:06:09.320 their country they deserve the land sure right that's a great conversation don't use this book

02:06:14.140 though to justify current well exactly i don't think the bible commands you to hate modern israel

02:06:22.540 I don't think that, and I don't hate modern Israel, but the claim that the Bible tells 0.86

02:06:28.720 you you have to support Bibi is so deranged that it's a threat to our faith.

02:06:32.960 Correct.

02:06:33.700 The physical promised land is fulfilled in a spiritual promised land.

02:06:37.800 The physical nation tribe of Israel becomes a spiritual nation that all are invited into.

02:06:42.660 This is the story in this book.

02:06:44.480 So the only reason why you would dip back into old covenant theology, dispensationalism,

02:06:49.580 zionism is for two things power and control our god christ is a unifying god he's not a divisive

02:06:57.340 god he doesn't divide he doesn't say you're different than you nope all are my children

02:07:02.620 all come under me and so the only reason why you divide is for power and control

02:07:07.740 that is so wise that is true that is true i mean that's the that's the story of history

02:07:12.620 And so when Christ said it is finished on the cross, he meant it. Anybody who dips back into

02:07:21.140 old covenant theology, it is not finished on that cross. And that's what Talmudic Jews think. 0.99

02:07:29.000 So how did it wind up becoming not just like this eccentric boutique view,

02:07:36.520 non-christian view but it became the dominant position of evangelical not exclusive no they're

02:07:44.260 not they're not they don't all think this and i think it is changing but for the past 40 years

02:07:48.660 it's been the dominant view how did that happen i think there's a very nefarious i'm gonna call

02:07:56.160 them they right now behind all of this and i'm gonna go down some called conspiracy theory

02:08:02.760 rabbit holes or whatnot. I think the church, and especially the evangelical church, is being used

02:08:07.380 as a tool for a far greater agenda that most people can't see or fathom at the moment.

02:08:14.200 I feel that so strongly. I can't see it either, but I feel that. It's so obvious. So what

02:08:18.440 is that agenda?

02:08:22.480 Huckabee said the quiet part out loud in your interview. He said, if they were to take the

02:08:26.800 product, you said, you positioned it, hey, well, why don't they just take all the land? And you

02:08:30.220 said, well, maybe they should, or I'm paraphrasing there, but whatever he said, that was the quiet

02:08:35.200 part out loud. There's a group that wants to reclaim that promised land, the original Nile

02:08:42.420 to the Euphrates and rebuild the third temple. And there's only one thing that does in this book

02:08:50.040 and it ushers in the Antichrist. So why in God's name would anybody want that?

02:08:56.200 In God's name, that's right.

02:08:57.380 Yeah, and I'm here to present this argument

02:09:02.160 that right now the evangelical church

02:09:04.480 and most Christian leadership

02:09:07.540 is being used for something far more nefarious

02:09:11.900 than they understand and can fathom.

02:09:14.640 They're all blind.

02:09:15.260 The blind lead the blind into a ditch

02:09:16.740 and they're being walked into a ditch rapidly

02:09:19.640 in the name of Jesus and in the name of this book.

02:09:22.160 what what does that mean ushering in the antichrist

02:09:27.820 um well i'd get into my opinion because i don't know like like i personally think is that where

02:09:40.100 we want to go i i want you to tell the truth as you understand it okay this is my truth i think

02:09:45.280 the Antichrist is power and ultimate power and authority. It's institutional power.

02:09:52.460 When you look at the world, we were a conquering world. People were moving out. Well, once you

02:09:58.700 conquer the world, it's all conquered. Where do you go back to? We're not that smart.

02:10:04.220 We go back to this. Well, we need to reconquer the promised land.

02:10:10.400 That's what I think is there's a group that wants to retake that promised land. They do

02:10:15.100 believe this book has significant power and so they want to reclaim it and they're using

02:10:20.080 dispensationalist arguments to do that for the sake of controlling the world for the sake of

02:10:24.240 controlling the world yeah i mean that's just so clearly true yeah it's so clearly true and it

02:10:30.160 grieves me to say that i think the president united states is may not fully understand that

02:10:35.100 theology or that argument but clearly sees this war in iran as a way to achieve power over the

02:10:43.440 world there's no doubt in my mind yeah and this book the beautiful saving grace of this book is

02:10:50.720 being weaponized to do it so do you believe there's a spiritual component to this it's not

02:10:59.440 just like 100 i i think i i do firmly believe there's a demonic component to this behind it

02:11:04.980 all um and the church is again the church and its resources are being used to do it

02:11:11.640 that's kind of obliquely described in the new testament right in the deception that jesus

02:11:18.740 promises will come at some point the people you think are going to save you are actually working

02:11:23.180 to destroy you well satan came as light and then he says my workers will come as light also

02:11:28.640 right that's a very very terrifying so if you're hoping to understand the nature of evil which i

02:11:35.700 think a lot of people are trying to understand like what does it look like it's not just the

02:11:39.400 obvious monster under the bed stuff no true evil seems like salvation true evil comes as a half

02:11:46.160 truth it comes looking like christ sounding like christ but it's not christ and how do we know

02:11:53.240 how do we know the difference between christ and something that looks like christ you have to know

02:11:58.780 his word his scripture what are the fruits love joy peace exactly kindness goodness gentleness

02:12:04.660 It 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.

02:12:16.360 And they don't leave chaos in their wake.

02:12:18.740 Like we can judge the tree by its fruit.

02:12:20.340 This is just my half-baked thought of in my living room theology to myself.

02:12:24.800 But let me run it against you with deeper knowledge.

02:12:27.900 That we know when someone's on God's path because that person is at peace.

02:12:33.240 That person is not seeking power and control over others.

02:12:35.940 That person is not besotted by greed or lust or pride, obviously.

02:12:40.720 And that person can admit fault.

02:12:43.280 He's humble.

02:12:44.720 And that his world, the people around him are at peace.

02:12:48.640 They're not filled with, right?

02:12:50.500 I mean, if the message is-

02:12:51.800 You're a good baker.

02:12:53.040 I would hear you baked it well.

02:12:55.260 No, I mean, that just all seems super,

02:12:56.980 I understand everything on the most obvious level.

02:12:58.920 So it's not rocket science, the book.

02:13:00.660 Well, it kind of feels that way.

02:13:01.860 It's not.

02:13:02.320 Well, 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.

02:13:22.080 So the world around a true Christian leader should be a harmonious, peaceful world and the people should be thriving.

02:13:30.780 Now, by which I don't mean they're all getting rich.

02:13:33.280 Yeah.

02:13:33.580 They may be poor.

02:13:34.660 Yeah.

02:13:35.240 But they should be joyful.

02:13:37.040 100%.

02:13:37.480 And they should be content.

02:13:39.320 Yes.

02:13:39.520 I think contentment is such a big part of this book.

02:13:42.360 Tell me, flesh that out.

02:13:43.540 I know that you're right, but I don't quite understand how.

02:13:45.620 contentment is, you know, there's this term called shalom, but contentment is just being at peace in

02:13:51.700 the position you're at. And it wasn't until I had my daughter that I actually started to understand

02:13:58.560 that because I realized, hey, this isn't about me. This isn't about Nathan anymore. This is about

02:14:03.960 something so much more profound and beautiful. And when I had, I didn't have my daughter,

02:14:08.740 when her mom had my daughter or our daughter, it's when I went back to this book. And that's

02:14:15.260 where I started finding contentment and fulfillment. And you find fulfillment in Christ.

02:14:20.980 He said, I have come to fulfill it all. I have fulfilled the Old Testament. I have fulfilled

02:14:24.680 the old covenants, the Mosaic laws. And everybody goes, oh, Nathan, that doesn't mean he abolished

02:14:30.600 them. I didn't say he abolished them. I said he fulfilled them into something greater,

02:14:35.540 which is Hebrews. It's what the book of Hebrews is all about, where of necessity there takes

02:14:40.280 like the death of a priesthood,

02:14:42.500 there's a change in covenant also.

02:14:45.140 Christ ushered in an entirely new covenant.

02:14:47.840 And that's right through him.

02:14:49.680 It's through his teachings.

02:14:50.820 He is the way, the truth, and the life.

02:14:53.060 And no one gets to Jehovah except through him. 0.99

02:14:55.200 That's the only way.

02:14:56.520 And I didn't understand it.

02:14:57.700 I was raised in the church my whole life.

02:14:59.660 I didn't understand it until I had my daughter

02:15:01.480 and I started reading the Bible cover to cover.

02:15:03.640 Here's the problem, Tucker.

02:15:04.500 Only 13% of American Christians have ever read the book.

02:15:07.480 how

02:15:10.360 how about i show you a trailer of a movie a two and a half minute trailer and you go this is my

02:15:16.940 favorite movie of all time done you wouldn't do it no you wouldn't you say hey i need to see the

02:15:24.400 whole movie because the other the other 90 minutes might be total crap or it might be completely

02:15:29.760 different from what the trailer portrays yeah or maybe nathan's description to you of the movie is

02:15:34.840 totally wrong worse so a pastor's description of this book might be totally wrong but it just

02:15:40.740 seems obvious that if you're calling for violence against innocence what you're saying has no

02:15:46.420 connection to what jesus said at all right or am i just being too autistic about this no no you're

02:15:52.080 on it i voted for trump oh well yeah i campaigned for it was a lot when i look back on it i was

02:15:59.600 sold a straight lie. You think? Yeah. And I want no wars. I believe in Christ teaching peace and

02:16:09.020 love and loving your neighbor. And again, I'm going to go back to something positive because

02:16:14.880 everybody always says everything's negative about my conversations. But the generosity of Christians

02:16:20.700 can transform our nation. We don't need to give more. We need to be better stewards, which would

02:16:25.840 be the biggest light to the world. And right now, it's going down a really dark path really quick.

02:16:33.460 And in one breath on Easter Sunday, we have pastors claiming similarity from Trump to Christ

02:16:41.400 in regards to the beatings and the lies. And then the next day, he's threatening to blow up

02:16:48.420 power plants and bridges, hurting civilians, saying, fuck, like literally the most disgusting 1.00

02:16:55.000 evil in a, in a tweet that I could, I've ever read. Totally agree. From a president. And I'm 1.00

02:17:00.220 like, wait, wait, but, but our Christian leaders are still going to try to protect that and justify

02:17:04.500 that. How dare they? Yeah, I agree. It's, it's disgusting at all levels. And we were talking

02:17:13.220 about spiritual war. I think there's a massive spiritual war going on in the white house right

02:17:18.220 now. And it starts with the spiritual leaders that are standing next to and over Trump.

02:17:26.620 I think a lot of us were too cynical and approached this as theater, which it may have

02:17:32.020 been intended to be, you know, get whatever money hungry dispensationalists or, you know,

02:17:37.420 fallen, screwed up people who don't have real congregations and get them to sort of put the

02:17:42.460 imprimatur of the New Testament on what is clearly in violation of, like, basic Christian 0.94

02:17:48.340 principles. And, you know, let's get the evangelicals on board for this. I don't think that's the whole 0.52

02:17:54.960 story. I think this is, these are instruments of spiritual war, these people. This is not just

02:18:01.920 theater. Like, this is real. 100%. Yeah. Well, like, we live in a, so when we look, let's go

02:18:09.540 into the Old Testament again, you know, the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, and then the

02:18:14.720 outer rooms, there was a veil that separated spiritual from physical. When Christ died on

02:18:21.760 that cross, what happened to that veil? It was rent in half. It tore down, which meant the

02:18:26.180 spiritual world and the physical worlds combined. And hence the bridge from physical nation Israel 0.92

02:18:31.840 to spiritual nation. We are bridged now through something far greater than physical, nationality,

02:18:38.520 genealogy, all that. But that also brings deadly things with it, which is there's a darkness in

02:18:45.460 the spiritual realm as well. And we live in that right now. And again, the devil comes as light.

02:18:54.540 What better way to completely steer off good, generous Christ-fallen Christians than sell 1.00

02:19:02.340 something that kind of looks like Christianity? Create institutions that have literally all the

02:19:07.760 resources of the world, but will keep you chained to their pews. Again, we're going to go back.

02:19:11.940 Christianity is dangerous. The book of Acts, that church was dangerous to power an institution. 1.00

02:19:18.260 Right now, the current institutional church structure is being used as a weapon

02:19:23.740 for ill-gotten gain. Against God's people. Against God's people. 0.93

02:19:30.160 We're being used. The evangelical church, most Christians are being used to kill. 1.00

02:19:37.760 children, women, yeah. 1.00

02:19:42.300 And all in the name of this old covenant.

02:19:46.360 Pete Hogsworth or whatever his name is,

02:19:48.140 he's quoting that.

02:19:50.680 Trump's quoting it.

02:19:52.020 That's why you have to read this thing as one story.

02:19:56.520 It's one complete story of redemption.

02:19:59.340 And so if you're looking to Trump

02:20:01.580 and looking to what we're doing

02:20:02.980 and looking to the nation state of Israel

02:20:04.840 and saying, oh yeah, this is why that's justified.

02:20:07.440 instead of geopolitical reasoning,

02:20:09.960 you are being duped

02:20:11.580 and you are saying it is not finished on that cross.

02:20:18.280 Amazing, amazing conversation.

02:20:20.300 Thank you.

02:20:21.200 Yeah.

02:20:22.900 I'll be thinking about it.

02:20:24.240 Yeah, think about it.

02:20:25.380 I don't know.

02:20:25.960 I don't know what I'm doing.

02:20:26.900 I'm just doing my thing, bro.

02:20:28.280 You're speaking the truth.

02:20:29.560 I know that.

02:20:30.600 Nathan, thank you very much.

02:20:31.480 Yeah, thank you, Tucker.

02:20:37.440 You

The Tucker Carlson Show - April 06, 2026

Tucker on Trump’s Desecration of Easter and a Warning to Christians Everywhere

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript