#408 - The Vatican is Covering Up the Most EVIL Crime In History | Nathan Apffel

Summary

Danny Jones Podcast #408: “Trump’s Pastor & Vatican’s Most Evil Crime in History” with Nathan Apffel
June 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this wide-ranging and probing episode, host Danny Jones sits down with documentary filmmaker and religious critic Nathan Apffel. The conversation focuses on Nathan's crusade against corruption and lack of transparency within religious organizations—particularly American megachurches and the broader nonprofit sector. They delve into the capitalist perversion of Christianity, historic and present-day financial and sexual abuses in the church, the weaponization of faith by political actors (including Trump and his spiritual advisor Paula White), and the mechanisms that allow such abuses to persist. The discussion is peppered with biblical scholarship, reflections on personal faith and doubt, and a call to reform one of America’s most lucrative, secretive business sectors. Nathan also announces details of his ongoing documentary series and drops insights on infamous church figures and criminal coverups, tying these systemic issues back to issues of power, accountability, and the original ethos of Christianity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Obsession With Reforming Religion

Obsession as a Force for Good

• Nathan and Danny early on agree that being "obsessed" is necessary to make a difference in exposing religious corruption. Nathan:

  “You have to be obsessed with this stuff to be, to be good at it, to be effective at it, you know?” [01:01]

2. Early Personal Experience with Church Abuse

• Nathan grew up in megachurches and remained a believer, but was deeply shaped by witnessing cases like a youth pastor being groomed into leadership while secretly abusing children:

  "He gets arrested for sexually abusing his adopted child... And I was like, whoa, how is this guy being groomed to take over this church?” [01:39-02:30]

3. Contrasting Models: True Charity vs. American Megachurch

• Nathan recounts visiting a seminary in Brazil run by missionaries who never took money, teaching orphans skills—"antithetical to the American church system" where church is "subscription-based" and run for profit:

  “American churches... the pastors love to say, hey, yo, like, we need your money. We need 10%... But then if you need help, they go, we're not gonna. You need to learn to fish.” [04:52]

4. The Packaging and Sale of Christ

• The crew riffs on "Righteous Gemstones" as satire—but not far from reality. Danny:

  “We’ve turned it into a subscription model, basically.” [06:57]

• Nathan:

  "We capitalize and consumerize a faith that was never meant to be sold... if you can figure out how to package it, then you can sell it." [06:33-06:40]

5. Doubt, Faith, and the Bible ("Faith in Faith")

• Discussion of believers who "have faith in their faith in God, but they don’t have faith in the God of their faith." Only 13% of Christians, Nathan claims, have read the entire Bible. [08:49]

• Nathan’s pivotal moment:

  “For the first time ever, I actually read the book. Cover to cover. And I'm like, whoa, this book is way different than what we preach... It’s actually antithetical to it.” [10:16]

6. Who Was Jesus? Pendulum Theory

• Nathan presents his "pendulum theory of Christ"—from literal conservative to pure historical figure, yet sees the message as enduring regardless:

  "...No matter where you fall on that pendulum, I believe the ethos of Christ, the Logos of Christ is going to meet you there." [16:46-18:46]

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7. Christianity, Capitalism, and Corruption

• Nathan rails against “crony capitalism” and corruption of Christian institutions. On his Tucker Carlson appearance:

  “Capitalism should have nothing to do with Christianity.” [21:28]

• Churches and nonprofit "sandboxes" explained. Churches have unique legal status:

  “Religious organizations do not have to file [Form 990]. There’s no legal document a religious organization could be held to account on.” [52:37]

• Staggering Figures:

  “About $550 billion domestically, and then globally, about 1.1 trillion a year in individual donor giving. That’s just Christian churches.” [47:03]

• On moral hazard:

  “If I’ve got $50 million and no one’s going to really know what I’m doing with it... I’m going to get a little loose with my spending.” [53:24]

8. Real Estate Scams, Family Dynasties, and Lack of Accountability

• Nathan describes aggressive transfer of assets, lack of member voting, massive salaries, and “parsonages” (pastor mansions):
  • "His church is tens of millions a year in revenue. No one knows where the money goes. No one knows his housing allowance. No one knows his salary. He drives golden Range Rovers." [63:36]

9. Abuse of Tax Exemption, Legal Protections

• Churches “play in the darkest legal sandbox.” No ownership, no taxes, but total control:
  • "You don't own a nonprofit... It's not about profits, it's become about profits." [57:02]

10. Church as a Breeding Ground for Abuse and Secrecy

• Financial secrecy is linked to sexual abuse coverups:

  "Where there's financial abuse, there's sexual abuse right behind it. Because if... people don't know your finances, I can use those finances to cover up other crimes." [75:51-76:16]

• NDAs used to silence child sex abuse victims ("Trey’s Law" now in DC):

  "Churches were using NDAs to silence victims. So a church is using a non disclosure agreement to tell a kid they can't tell people they were at this church." [80:47]

11. Satirical and Scathing Observations

• On Franklin Graham’s defense of Trump’s non-Bible inauguration:

  "So the, one of the biggest spiritual voices in America said, screw the spiritual significance. It's about ceremonial timing. Like, what a pathetic excuse.” [31:44]

• On megachurch security:

  “These churches are so, like, obsessed with themselves... I got buddies... they're talking about sniper teams. Like, I feel like we got too much time on our hands.” [99:41]

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the true call of Christ:

  "When you really get into the weeds of Christ, that is the way — to love others above yourself. That is the truth. Actually put the ego aside, you know, and that is the way I experience life." — Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic [17:06]

• On church finance secrecy:

  “The institution that is supposed to be the beacon of truth and integrity and transparency, which is the church, actually plays in the darkest legal sandbox of all sandboxes.” — Nathan [53:56]

• On the modern church:

  “We went from one Vatican to just 400,000 mini Vaticans in the US now.” — Nathan [45:25]

• On capitalist churches and profit:

  “What are the three main tenets of the Christian church? Love no other God before me, love your neighbor as yourself, and share... So when I said capitalism has nothing to do with Christianity, I meant it.” [55:32]

• On American Christianity as a commodity:

  “In the beginning, the church was a fellowship of men and women centered on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe where it became a culture. And finally, it moved to America where it became an enterprise.” — Quote by Richard Halvorson, cited by Nathan [175:18]

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• Origins of Nathan's religious reform mission & childhood revelation:
  [01:27–04:52]

• Contrast: Brazilian charity vs. American megachurch model
  [03:02–05:46]

• Subscription Model, Consumer Religious Culture, Faith in Faith
  [05:59–09:34]

• Only 13% of Christians have read the whole Bible, personal faith crisis
  [08:49–10:16]

• Pendulum theory of Christ (literal Son of God ↔️ historical figure)
  [15:46–18:46]

• Capitalism corrupting Christianity, legal structures, financial figures
  [21:28–47:03]

• How churches avoid financial transparency (Form 990 & the law)
  [52:37–53:56]

• Nathan's arrest at megachurch for asking about pastor's house/salary
  [57:37–64:31]

• Sexual abuse coverups, NDA silence, child safety, Trey's Law
  [76:17–88:57]

• Why church architecture breeds secrecy and abuse
  [93:58–99:44]

• Historical manipulation of faith by government and moneyed interests
  [25:55, 174:21]

• Role of pastors like Paula White, Franklin Graham, Kenneth Copeland
  [28:06–32:07, 93:00–97:25]

• Reformation’s fatal mistake: not reforming the church power structure
  [44:24–46:37]

• What everyday people can do to demand church transparency
  [153:48–156:16]

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Additional Highlights

• On Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley, and the new “Christian Tech” movement:
  Nathan and Danny discuss the instrumentalization of faith in business/tech, new church models, and the ancient roots of selling Christ for personal gain. [102:23–105:21]

• Apocrypha, canonical edits, how “dangerous” forms of Christianity and Islam are neutered by state control & IRS checkbox religiosity
  [161:37–174:08]

• Personal spiritual experiences, near-death visions, power of belief and placebo, psychedelic/mystical experiences in religion
  [107:20–118:53, 140:27–146:58]

• Practical advice for churchgoers: Don’t leave, demand transparency, and force churches to adopt standard nonprofit reporting
  [153:48–155:48]

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Takeaway: Reform or Rot

Nathan’s message is unambiguous: The American church (and broader nonprofit sector) is a vast, lucrative business empire protected by arcane legal carve-outs, where lack of transparency breeds immense financial and sexual abuse. True Christianity, as shown by ancient models and outlier churches/charities, is antithetical to capitalist accumulation and profit-driven secrecy. Only consumer/donor pressure and internal reform will save the institution from itself — or else, as he notes, “we have gone from one Vatican to 400,000 mini-Vaticans.”

“…if you put it all into the refiner’s fire, you’re trusting God that the impurities are going to burn off. And that’s a beautiful time in the church’s life. Because new growth happens, dude.” [179:18]

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For More:

• Nathan’s docuseries "The Religion Business" streams on Tucker Carlson’s TCN for the next three months; season 2 (covering child and ritual abuse, homelessness, and government collusion) releases October/November.
• [Link in show notes]

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Transcript

[Nathan]

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[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

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[Nathan]

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[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

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[Nathan]

ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up, required compatibility and availability. Veris 18 Choice Hotels get you more of what you value. Comfort Inn.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's calling your name. Save on the stain. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. [e-mail].

[Nathan]

You like the RFK of Christianity now?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's crazy. It's crazy.

[Nathan]

Trying to weed out all the corruption in the world.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. Someone called me obsessed this morning. Morning. They're like, you have a. Like a sick obsession. And I'm like, you can call it.

[Nathan]

You have to be obsessed with this stuff to be, to be good at it, to be effective at it, you know?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

Like anyone worth their salt and anything is obsessive over for sure, whatever they do, you know?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And I'm like, it's not. Is it bad that I'm obsessed about, like, bringing transparency into religious organizations?

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I don't think that's a bad thing.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

But they did say, you're gonna, you're gonna account for this one day with God. And I'm like, okay, I think he's on my side in this one, you know? But.

[Nathan]

Yeah. So how did this start, dude? How did, how did this whole religious crusade start for you?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Are we rolling, by the way?

[Nathan]

Yeah, Are we rolling? We are rolling. Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

When I was, I grew up in the church, so I grew up in mega churches, big churches, and loved it. You know, I sang in choir as a kid and went to all the youth programs, the winter camps, the summer camps, and I loved it. I was volunteered. You know, I gave my 10. I did it all. My parents sing in choir. I sang in choir. I'm one of six kids. And there was just a couple things in my late teens and twenties that really, I would say, shaped me. And I consider it, like, I consider it God. I'm a firm believer in God. And. And I'm like, God just put me in situations that I couldn't look away. And, like, one of them was my youth pastor. So he was my junior high pastor. And then as I grew up, he got, you know, he moved up to become the high school pastor and then was being groomed to take over this large megachurch that I went to, he gets arrested for sexually abusing his adopted child. And he just got out of jail like 20 years later. And I was like, whoa, how is this guy being groomed to take over this church? And he's had decades in churches now and no one realized that he was his child. You know, like, this is just bizarre to me. And then, and then I went to Brazil. I was in Rio. Yeah, that same trip actually. And one of my buddies, bodyboarder, a pro bodyboarder from Brazil, is like, hey, I want to take you to this seminary.

[Nathan]

Speed bump. Pro speed bump.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Exactly, exactly. Spongers. There's all sorts of names, but. But he's like, I want to take you to the seminary in the mountains, in the favelas, like in the poor regions of Brazil. And I'm like, let's go. And the seminary is basically like where you go to learn and study the Bible, right? And so I roll up to it and he's like, you're gonna love it. It's this old white guy from Texas and his wife that run it. And they've never taken a dollar, Ever taken a dollar. And he's like, you need to hear their story. So what happened was they graduated seminary in Texas in the, like, I think the late 70s, I can't remember the year. And they just felt led to leave America. So they go to Brazil with $3,000 and they want to spread the gospel, the message of Christ. And he's like, this guy had one, like, main point. He is not taking money from anybody. And so he bought this brick making machine. And so he would make bricks during the day and then go out and teach people about Jesus at night. And they. They ended up building this little brick house out of their brick making machine. And they took one orphan off the street in, and they're like, we're going to teach. You know, you can live with us. We want to teach you the gospel. We're going to teach you how to make bricks. So not only are they teaching you the love of Christ, that the scriptures say, but we're going to teach you how to do something to make money. And 50 years later, they have hundreds of orphans running through their program every year. And they have different skill sets that they teach these kids, whether that be sewing and dressmaking, whether that be mechanics. They have a mechanic shop. Whether that be brick making, they still make bricks. And so they take these street kids in off of the streets, give them a roof over their head, give them something to eat and teach Them the gospel and then send them out when they're grown up. And it's like, you've got a career now and you've got a great way to spread the gospel. And they never took a dollar.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And I was like, this is such a beautiful system because it's so antithetical to the American church system because American churches, you know, the pastors love to say, hey, yo, like, we need your money. We need 10% or even more. Give us go above and beyond 10%. But then if you need help, they go, we're not gonna. You need to learn to fish.

[Nathan]

Well, it's the American way, right? That's. That's the American way to do religion.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Correct.

[Nathan]

You know, like righteous gemstones. Nailed it. Yeah. That is one of my favorite shows of all time.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. That is reality.

[Nathan]

It's a wash, Baby Billy. It's a while. It's a wash.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's not after I pay my scientists.

[Nathan]

What's his elixir called?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, I don't remember.

[Nathan]

He's like, Baby Billy's Jesus Christ elixir. It'll cure COVID 19. Oh, you got it. You don't have to play it.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's so good. His. His character.

[Nathan]

It's one of the greatest shows, dude. It's so funny.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, and it's. It is reality. Like, they, they, they did go above and beyond a little bit. But like, watching this right now, this is mega church and this is the prosperity gospel, right?

[Nathan]

Yeah. There it is. The QVC with baby Billy's health elixir.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's so good. And you can take that business. So this is what a lot of people don't know is you can take for profit businesses and bring them under. Dude, this is so good. Sorry.

[Nathan]

Oh, yeah. So he dies and then he gets stung by a bee, comes back to life. Then he tries to sell what he. He's. Then he says he talked to God when he was dead. He tries to sell the information he got from God.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's so good.

[Nathan]

That's what we do. We sell here.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, we, we. We capitalize and consumerize a faith that was never meant to be sold.

[Nathan]

Right, right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You know, I always tell people the message of Christ is not easy to sell, but if you can figure out how to package it, then you can sell it. So that's what all the add ons are like. Hey, you gotta give 10% or above and beyond to really be blessed, Danny.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Like, none of this is scriptural. These are just add ons that man has built and wrapped Around.

[Nathan]

We've turned it into a subscription model, basically.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, exactly. And subscription models are the most lucrative models.

[Nathan]

It's the future, baby. So you said you were bor. Born like in the Catholic Church, right?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Like, no, I was born in like, non. I was born in that, like, I was like that type that's over a little louder than what I was born in. But like, I was born in the non denominational, what I call the wild west side of Christianity.

[Nathan]

So most people that I know personally who grew up like hardcore being pushed into that with their parents, they usually like, reject it by like their teenage years, you know what I mean? They kind of, they don't really stay with it the whole time. Was there ever, like a period of your childhood where you like, weren't seriously religious?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Not my childhood. It was when I got into my 20s. And so, you know, like I said, it's one gentleman, a Catholic professor and theologian and philosopher. In the show, he says, Nathan, most people have faith in their faith in God, but they don't have faith in the God of their faith. And he's like, it's a really subtle shift. So people have faith in their faith in God. So if I go to Billy Bob's church or whatever his name is, and it's big and loud and flashy and I feel all warm and fuzzy when I go, that's my faith. I have faith in this system that we've built, but I don't have faith in the God that's supposedly behind it. Because if you actually believe what this book said.

[Nathan]

Oh, you brought your Bible.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, yeah. This God calls you to do serious, like seriously dangerous things and things that aren't necessarily for your. For the betterment of yourself a lot of times. Right. And so you'd rather just put your faith in your faith in this institution, in that, in that healing formula and, you know, the subscription model, because that's safe. And so I, I'm sure a very

[Nathan]

low percentage of Christians who call themselves Christians or go to church every week have actually read the entire Bible.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Only 13%.

[Nathan]

Oh, wow, that low.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, yeah, 13%. So you're technically. You don't even know what you're believing. So you have faith in the faith, in the institution. And so it wasn't until my late teens where I started questioning that faith. I was like, this is all a sham. You know, I, I had, I realized, like, in high school, I'm like, every, every kid wanted, Most kids wanted to go to youth group because that's where they, you know, you wanted to be seen by. With the cool kids. You know, I wanted to be sitting in that front pew with the cool kids. And I've just. I've always been, like, a counterculturalist. Like, I don't. Like, like, one of my mentors always said, nathan, as soon as you're with the majority, you're doing something wrong. And, like, so I would always see everybody going to these youth groups, because that's where the cool kids went. And I'm like, what? Like, I started. It started rubbing me wrong. Yeah. And that's when I started poking holes in the in or asking questions. And I. I realized by. When I was 25, I bought the domain religionbusiness.com. so that was 17 years ago now, because I just felt there was something wrong with this institution, with the faith that we had built. And. And as I started asking questions, I realized it's just a house of cards. And you can flick one card and the whole house will crumble, whether that be the finance card, whether that be the accountability card. And so, yeah, so that's really where I question my faith and my faith. And so for the first time ever, I actually read the book.

[Nathan]

Oh, wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Cover to cover. And I'm like, whoa, this book is way different than what we preach, you know, from that stage and what we've built. It's actually antithetical to it. It's totally the opposite.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so that's when I picked up my. My proverbial cross and was like, okay, let's go.

[Nathan]

I just started reading the Bible not long ago for the first time, and I was advised to read it backwards. So I'm sorry, I started with Revelation.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

That's big.

[Nathan]

Is the crazy as fuck, dude.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It is.

[Nathan]

It is. It is insane that's going on. Like, I don't know. I can't make a valid assessment yet. I'll wait till I get through it.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Where are you at now?

[Nathan]

I'm on. Like, I don't know which part I'm at, but I got through basically everything about the messages about all the seven churches or whatever, and it's like.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So you're still in Revelation?

[Nathan]

Yeah, I'm still. I'm still in Revelation.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You're just starting?

[Nathan]

Yes, I'm just starting. And, you know, some of the stuff in there is just, you know, to imagine that somebody was sitting somewhere on an island or somewhere on earth writing this shit.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

Is kind of hard to imagine, you know, because they're writing about, like, this figure, this ghostly figure with the. The sword of a tongue, the Tongue of a sword or a dagger. Tongue.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And Revelation. Who told you to start in Revelation if you don't? It's a bold move.

[Nathan]

It's a bold move. A gentleman who's been on the show a couple times who is a classicist, okay. Who's an expert in ancient Greek, he told me to read it. Well, first he said, you gotta read it in Greek and read it backwards. I said, learn Greek. Yeah, but I'll. I will read it backwards.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

So I'm going to try and see what. See what.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Interesting. Yeah. I always tell people, like, the, The Bible is. People see it as, oh, my gosh, it's 66 books. It's so complicated. Or at least the. The current canonized, most popular version is 66 books. It's just one story, though, you know, and it's about creation and then the fall of creation and the redemption of that creation. And so when you. I always tell people look at it as one massive historical story. And that's what really. I've been in church. I was raised in church, like in a car seat, you know, And. And so when I finally read it cover to cover, I said, nathan, I'm going to read it without any. I don't want to try to get any revelation from it. I'm not trying to see how it applies to my life. I just want to read it for what it is as a history book. And when I read it just as history, without my, like, youthful bias, you know, being raised in an institution, that's when the book came alive. Because you realize, like, oh, my God, there's fire raining down from heaven onto altars and bur up altars, you know, dead men are raising up and like, it's a wild story. It's like Lord of the Rings, you know?

[Nathan]

Right. Yeah, no, it is. I kind of. I kind of got corrupted, though, because I've talked to so many religious experts on this podcast and so many, like, scholars in different parts of, you know, ancient religion, ancient history involving Christianity and the Romans and the Greeks. I kind of have like a. I already have a warped perspective, so I wish I could. I, you know, I try to, like, reset myself and like, go at it with a blank mind. Because I hear a lot of people talk about the same way you talk about it, how it's just like. It's this. It's this crazy kind of. It opens like a portal to, you know, when you read it, and it's like you can connect with it and it does something to you. And I'm trying To get there.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I always say it. For me, it's like I see it as, it's the history of humanity. It's, it's the greatest literary work of mankind. And so there's something whether, because I sit with a lot of atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Christians, and I like, I. A love for everybody. And I'm like, now this book will teach you something, whether you believe it's divine or not. Like, it's a brilliant book. And then Christ, like I'm a. How would I say it? Like, I push against everything. So I pushed against that book most of my life and I really. Oh yeah, and I pushed against like the deity of Christ and you know, he says I'm the way, the truth and the life. No one gets to the Father except through me. And I pushed against that for 35 years. I just couldn't, I couldn't rationalize it in my head how, you know, there's only one way technically to, to our Creator, to our Father. And, and so I wanted to disprove it actually. I'm like, this is, I want to prove this thing wrong. And, and, and over the last 10 years, just like you, I think it's divinely inspired, but I've gotten to sit with some of the leading theologians and scholars in the world and it's just, it's fascinating to hear from brilliant minds and different perspectives and, you know, different theologies on that book. And so the book, I'm obsessed with the book now. It's, it's, it is a literal obsession.

[Nathan]

Yeah, I mean that's one of the, that's one of my, my biggest interests is like, who the hell was Jesus Christ and what was he really doing? Like, if you could take a time machine and go back 2000 years and see like what he was really doing and what, who, who he was talking to and like who he really was. Because, you know, with that telephone game, that 2000 year telephone game, I imagine it's going to be really hard to keep that story accurate. And there's people that have warped it over time. Not just with literal translations of languages to, and being generous with those translations to fit whatever their narrative is, but also people, not just now, but throughout history, these church fathers have profited, been profiting off this for a very long time.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

So there's a, a very high potential that that story's been warped to an extreme.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. I have this theory and I call it the pendulum theory of Christ. And I don't present it publicly very often. So I'm Going to present it to you. And when I. When I see Christ in that book, I'll. You know, you know how pendulums swing left to right? And there's always, like, so over here I see, like my mom and my brother, who are these extremely conservative Christians who believe this book is. Is the divinely inspired the word of God. It's infallible, you know, in Christ is the literal Son of God who was born and died a virgin, died on a cross, raised and resurrected, and is coming back. Like, that's this literal, conservative version of this book. And if you swing the pendulum all the way over, historians unanimously agree that there was a historical figure named Christ who was crucified by the Romans.

[Nathan]

Yes.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So let's.

[Nathan]

There's a couple of wackos out there who don't believe he was real for sure. But what are they called? Mythicists. Is that right? Is that right?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, I don't know.

[Nathan]

I think they're called mythicists. They think he was a myth.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

But let's swing that as the other side of the pendulum. Right? And so Christ is on this pendulum. And his teachings, though, were so profound in Israel at the time that they killed him for it. Right. Because he was pushing against an institution so hard. So I always say, like, if we see Christ on this pendulum, whether you believe, whether you believe he's. He's the Son of God and the infallible word of God is accurate and he was born and raised and resurrected, or he was a man who taught to love your neighbor as yourself and love no other God before me, but he died on a cross but didn't resurrect. That's the pendulum. And this is where I see that verse where Christ says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one gets to the Father except through me. No matter where you fall on that pendulum, I believe the ethos of Christ, the Logos of Christ is going to meet you there. Because when you look at his teachings about loving your Neighbor and Matthew 25, about helping the hungry and the thirsty and the naked and the sick and the poor and the prisoner and the sojourner, when you really get into the weeds of Christ, that is the way to love others above yourself. That is the truth. Actually. Put the ego aside, you know, and that is the way I experience life. Like you as a father, I'm a father. Like giving yourself to a child. And like you're. They are above you, their needs are above yours. That is like the ultimate. And so I always talk about this pendulum like wherever you fall on that pendulum, if you're searching for Christ, true the Logos behind Christ, you're gonna find it. And yeah, so it's really like, I love that you don't have to be this legalist obsessive. This is infallible word of God. No, Christ is gonna meet you. His teachings are gonna meet you where you're at if you're searching, you know, but so many people just don't search. And so that's the beauty of Christ is I think I love talking to people wherever you're at on that line and that spectrum. Cause it's like I've wrestled with it from, from this side of the pendulum all the way through, you know, and I'm kind of moving along the pendulum like this sometimes, you know.

[Nathan]

If you enjoy watching our show on Spotify or YouTube and you want to be more involved, I encourage you to please come check out our Patreon community. Not only does our Patreon community get every episode you see on YouTube early, fully uncensored and ad free, but we're also doing Patreon exclusive episodes as well as live Q and A's. And you can get your personal questions answered by our guests and every single week. For me, being able to collaborate and communicate back and forth with our Patreon community every week has been huge. And this is my way of saying thank you for the cost of a cup of coffee a month. Now back to the show. Religion itself is just also very, it's very interesting to me because I feel like it fits in to the human psyche perfectly. You know, it's like the fact that humans have this ability to like, unlike any other animal on earth, to have reason, to be able to reason and game things out and think ahead into the future and also think into the past. We are able to figure out that, okay, my parents made me, their parents made them, everything created something, right? So we can't create ourselves. So therefore there must be this other thing that we don't know that created us. There's this gap in our knowledge and we figured out a way to fill it. Like some people call it like the God shaped hole in the psyche. So I do think that like the human brain is perfectly constructed to fit this and it's a perfectly reasonable thing, especially if it's something that will help bring communities together or make people's lives better. But you know, like, with everything you're doing, there's also this huge segment of society which unfortunately in today's media is the only thing you hear About. You don't hear about the good stories. You only hear the negative stories that use this stuff as either a crutch or an excuse or a shield. Like really bad people, like, all of a sudden embracing the Bible and like, look at this. I'm a Christian now. You know, don't look at anything else. And then, you know, people that are just, like, making insane amounts of money, which, you know, I wrestle with that all the time with all kinds of subjects where you have these mega corporations behind things that are good and they're just making insane profit and monopolizing them, you know? You know, they are good things. It's just like at any level of society, any sort of product, any sort of idea or ideology out there, there's always somebody behind it or some corporation behind it that's profiting from it.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, that's where Christ's message is the reverse of that.

[Nathan]

Right?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And I said something on Tucker and just got obliterated for it. I'm like, capitalism should have nothing to do with Christianity.

[Nathan]

Of course. You gotta. It is the worst part of capitalism, right? There's a cat, there's a scale with capitalism, right? And when it goes way off the charts, that's when you see society start to decline. Like when you see what's happening with capitalism getting baked into the government and getting baked into our polit and wars and religion, that's when it goes off the rails.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, I call it crony capitalism. It's like. Like the capitalistic structure is a beautiful economic structure, but it does corrupt without. If you don't keep it on guardrails, you know, and we constantly, always talk about reform. We constantly need to reform systems. And even the biblical narrative is this idea of birth, death and resurrection over and over again. When something corrupts, you kill it as quickly as possible because new life comes out of that, you know, beautiful new life. It's like a forest fire. You know, forests have to burn, the deadfall, because if it doesn't, it just chokes out the forest. And that's the point of a forest fire. And so we have institutions and systems now that don't let the forest fire move through. And that's politics and religion, right? We bail out corporation because it's too big. And it's just. So that's why I. I beat this obsessive drum of reform over and over again. Because these systems have leveraged capitalism to a point where it's just. I call it crony capitalism. And people will their excuses. Nathan, capitalism is wonderful, but it's like, sure, two things can be true at once. Capitalism can be a great economic driver to lift a nation up out of poverty or up its gdp. But at the same time, if you don't have guardrails on that capitalism, when new technologies come into play, it just creates opportunity for abuse. And that's what we're seeing in government and in religion, in organized religion, is the systems haven't reformed, the laws haven't kept up with technology, and so now politic and religion are the two most abused systems out there.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And they claim, oh, if you, if you're trying to reform us, you're, you're a socialist or a communist or you're against us. It's, it's just pathetic.

[Nathan]

What do you, what do you make of this new Christian surge in the US government and using it to justify these foreign wars and stuff like this?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I think this is history. Humans aren't that smart. History repeats itself. Look at Iran and what happened in the late 70s. You know, the sexual revolution dipped into Iran. Morals were in decays. So a big part of the country was like, hey, we need to get our morals in line. What are we going to do? Oh, Islam is the way to do it. So they forced Islam down with the Ayatollah. So Islam became a theocracy. Right. Islam became the moral dictator in Iran. And for a couple decades it kind of worked. But again, systems corrupt. Islam became a massive tool for abuse. And this is. And we've culminated here. I see the exact same thing happening in the us. The church is corrupted. The institutional church is so corrupt morally. And what I mean by that is you can go to a Sunday service in any denomination and usually you'll hear a relatively decent sermon from that stage about, hey, Danny, be a good person, like, love your neighbor, give. But then the structure of that institution runs antithetical to the message.

[Nathan]

Right, right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And that can only hang on for so long. And so I believe we're at a, a tipping point, an inflection point in Christianity, which is the majority religion in America. And so the populist Christian senses something wrong with the institution. They can't really articulate it. And that's what the religion business is doing, is it's articulating this inflection point. And so now the pastors are like, well, shit, we're like, we're not that. Like, we're not going to renege on, on our business model because it's very beneficial to us. So we're going to try to force Christianity from the politic down when you switch to geico, you've got claims reps available around the clock. So whenever you need, you'll have people around to help. It kind of feels like having the TV on in the background when you're home alone.

[Nathan]

Isn't that soothing? It feels good to have support.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It feels good to geico. It happened in Rome as well. Constantine saw Christianity as a glue to bind the empire together.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Like Carl Truman in the religion business calls it. He's a reformation thought expert. He calls it like a. He calls it a common, imaginative ground. And every nation state needs this. If you don't have a common goal, the nation fractures. And so Constantine was like, Christianity can be a great common goal for Rome. So he brought Christianity up as he became a Christian, which would eventually turn Rome into a Christian nation. And so the same thing's happening here. America's fracturing. And so the politic, the right side of politic, the conservative side. I'm not saying the right, but, you know, the rights. The right side of politic, the conservative side, not the current administration. Yeah, the current administration sees Christianity as a mechanism to move its agenda. That's what I believe. And so it's catalyzing that.

[Nathan]

That's so interesting.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And it's using scripture. It's using out of context scripture to promote its agenda.

[Nathan]

Yeah. And it's. It's so transparent, too, you know, Like, I think Trump's one of the only presidents who was sworn in who didn't touch the Bible, didn't put his hand on the Bible.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

That's a big problem. Right.

[Nathan]

Isn't that weird? Did anyone ever ask him about that?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, I wonder.

[Nathan]

And there was that whole moment when the riots were happening during his first administration in D.C. and he came out and he did this thing in front of this church and he was like, they handed him the Bible and he was holding it like it was, I don't know, a dirty diaper or something. Reading from it. Like, he doesn't seem like a historically. A very religious person.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, he doesn't. When I can't remember the exact quote, but someone was like, hey, what's your favorite book of the Bible? And he's like, the Old and the New Testament, all of it.

[Nathan]

All that I saw that I would be. They were even trying to be generous with him, like, oh, maybe this one. Maybe this one. You know what? Yeah, all of it. I don't want to get. I don't want to get hung up on any details.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's just. And that's what. Man, that Arrogance of the scripture is saturating in. In the national church.

[Nathan]

Yeah, that's him being sworn in this time. Find out if anyone ever asked him about it. And then that lady Paula White, what's her story? That's his personal pastor.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Spiritual advisor.

[Nathan]

Spiritual advisor.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So Paula White is. Yeah. Trump's president. Trump's spiritual advisor. She's just, I'll say, been a. A leech in the Christian system for decades now. You know, she's started multiple churches or taken over churches. And there's a pattern in one specific niche where someone will move into a church, an institution, and basically drain it of its resources, then move on. It's. That's what Paula White does. She'll take over a larger church, drain it of its resources. People usually fracture or leave, and then she moves on to the next one.

[Nathan]

Didn't she marry, like, the keyboardist of Journey?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Journey, yeah. I love Journey.

[Nathan]

She's a rock star.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Good, good songs.

[Nathan]

Good for him.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

He got himself a good preacher lady.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, no, now he's just plays the keyboard in worship. I feel bad for him. I'm like, you went from Journey to this. It's a demotion, in my opinion.

[Nathan]

But say, well, didn't. Didn't you go to. Doesn't she have a church here in Florida?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I went to her church in Apopka, yeah.

[Nathan]

Oh, really?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, it's her son's church now.

[Nathan]

Oh, okay. Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

But I went to my wife, and I went to Easter Sunday service at her church. Yeah. So a couple months ago.

[Nathan]

Does she have a. Like, a chain of churches or just one?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Just one.

[Nathan]

Oh, well, that's good. At least she's not, like, turning it into a chain.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

She actually has none now because to. To. To become a special government employee, she could not have that outside job, so she gave it to her son. She passed the church down to her son. Yeah. Which is baked into the bylaws. Oh, wait. Whoa, this is big. Reverend Franklin Graham explains why Trump didn't swear on the Bible.

[Nathan]

Zoom in a little bit. During Monday's inauguration ceremony after the incident sparked a flurry of speculation amongst Christians on online. Speaking to Premier Christian News, Graham insisted that the omission had no spiritual significance and said it was simply an issue of ceremonial timing. You're supposed to be sworn in by 12, Graham said. And I think it was now 1201. And so that was just kind of hurried, and he didn't have time to put his hand on the Bible.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Okay, I want. I want to break this down for you, because do you know who Franklin Graham is.

[Nathan]

I have no idea.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Okay, so this is big. I've never seen this. So Franklin Graham is Billy Graham's son. Billy Graham is one of the biggest evangelist, like old school evangelists in America. The fact that Bill or Franklin Graham would. Franklin Graham also runs Samaritan's Purse, which is a multi billion dollar a year or multi billion dollar organization. Samaritan's Purse.

[Nathan]

Samaritan's Purse.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And then he also took over the bgea, which is the Billy Graham Evangelical association, which was his father's. Another, another organization that his father had started. And so he's taken multiple salaries. But the fascinating thing about this is Franklin Graham is a spiritual figure for President Trump as well. So I'm going to read this. Graham insisted the omission had no spiritual significance and it was simply an issue of ceremonial timing. Franklin Graham, as a Christian leader, why do you care at all about ceremonial timing as opposed to spiritual significance? If I was up there with him, I'd be like, you're going to swear on this Bible, this is our faith. Like my uncle, a congressman for multiple terms, swore on the Bible. Like when I got married, I swore on the Bible because there's more significance to this book and loving your neighbor and being an honest man of integrity than ceremonial timing. Does that make sense?

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So the, one of the biggest spiritual voices in America said, screw the spiritual significance. It's about ceremonial timing. Like, what a pathetic excuse.

[Nathan]

Yeah. That's kind of a silly cop out, right?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. But same thing is, is, you know, Billy Graham would be rolling. I'd confidently say he's rolling over in his grave. In regards to Franklin, his son's stance on the, the Iran war, You know,

[Nathan]

what is his stance on the Iran war?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Can you pull up Franklin's. He just made a. I don't want to misquote him, but he's, he's. Franklin's using scripture to justify the war.

[Nathan]

Oh, really?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. And it's just a bold. Again, a bold. His father was adamantly against that type of movement and his father talked. His father was well versed on the Synagogue of Satan. And just this whole idea. Yeah. And so Franklin's just totally gone in a different direction. And it's. When this book.

[Nathan]

What is the Synagogue of Satan? I've had somebody call our studio the Synagogue of Satan before.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, really?

[Nathan]

Yeah. Somebody in the comments said this is the synagogue of Satan.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, let me, let me. Because I don't want to misquote the scripture. I thought it was pretty cool.

[Nathan]

It sounded metal. Yeah, you should be like the one guy who's the English dude who was on Piers Morgan, who was going through his bible for like 20 minutes.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, who was?

[Nathan]

Russell Brand.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Russell Brand.

[Nathan]

Did you see that?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. Okay, so revelate, you're in Revelation tonight, so.

[Nathan]

Oh, yes, I do remember reading about the synagogue of Satan in Revelation.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yep. I know your afflictions and your poverty, yet you are rich. I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And then in Revelation 3, 9, I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars. And so the synod, like, I'm not an ex, Like, Revelation is a book that terrifies me because it is, it's a vision. Like, I read it, I, Revelation 18 is one of the most interesting books to me because it talks about trafficking souls and bodies. And I think the church is doing that, the institutional church is doing that. But I'm not an expert on, you know, I, I would never fake, like, I'm a prophet trying to foresee into the future. And that's what a lot of these big name, you know, preachers are doing now. And I'm like, that's not my cup of tea. I'll just stick to what I know of the scriptures and, you know, be a, try to be a good human.

[Nathan]

Right, right, right. What were you just talking about before?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

We talking about Franklin Grant? Oh, yeah, his comment on the war.

[Nathan]

Right, yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Let me pull it up.

[Nathan]

So he's using the Bible to justify this world as are, as is everyone.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Same thing with Mike Huckabee, you know, and you know Mike Huc, who's the

[Nathan]

Department of War again. What's his name?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Pete Hegse. Yeah, yeah, same thing. They're just, they take one scripture who's, oh, Netanyahu, the other day read one scripture verse out of the Bible and was like, this is why we're at war, because the Bible speaks about war. And I'm like, wait, what?

[Nathan]

That dude's an atheist?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, it's just, it's so wild to me when you look at. And I, I, I'm not an expert on scripture, but I've read it probably 16 times at this point.

[Nathan]

The whole Bible?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. And I've read a lot of the early apostolic writings. And then you should learn Greek and

[Nathan]

read the Greek version, bro. I want, it would probably be like a whole nother fucking experience.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So there's this awesome app. You should download it if you're really interested in the Greek, and it's called the Blue Letter Bible.

[Nathan]

The Blue Letter Bible.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And you can, if you're reading the scripture or you've got a verse you're interested in, you can pull it up and it pulls up the Greek, the Hebrew, the Aramaic, whatever religion it is or whatever language it's in, and it shows you all the cross references. So you start. I'm starting to understand a little bit of Greek because of, because of that app.

[Nathan]

Yeah. What fascinating language. 1.2 million unique words in Greek. You know how many unique words are in Hebrew? It's like 80,000. It's less than a hundred thousand.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, wow.

[Nathan]

Less than a hundred thousand words in Hebrew. Over a million in Ancient Greek.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

That's, that's intense.

[Nathan]

And I think modern English is only 500,000.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Wow.

[Nathan]

Such a deep language.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. And Hebrew, Hebrew is such a brilliant language too, because it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a mathematical language.

[Nathan]

So there's like, there's a Semitic language.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. There's a beautiful undertone in regards to, like, 666, you know, in the Bible and the Mark of the Beast. And that actually translates to Nero Caesar.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so that's where the Geneva Bible, the, the, the, the first translation out of, out of Latin, the monks wrote in the side columns or in the margin notes that 666 was, was political power, was the monarchy.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And that's why King James was like, get this stuff out of here. Like, you know, it's a fascinating journey with biblical translations.

[Nathan]

Yeah, it is, man. It goes so many. It goes. So where it goes, it goes everywhere. It connects, everywhere. It's fascinating.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

But I do want to get back to that 666 and that idea of. Of monarchy, power, eventually, just, just. It's an interesting topic to talk through.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So this is Franklin. What is this?

[Nathan]

Stephen says Trump is justified to fight evil. Any round amid. Oh, yeah, he's beefing with Pope Leo, whose brother lives right down the street from here. We just found.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, no way.

[Nathan]

Yeah. Come on, play it. Let's see what he says. Oh, yeah, we need these to hear it.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Good old Hannity hate Hitler analogies. I think they've been overused. However, if the world had an opportunity to take out Hitler before he killed millions of people, would that have been the morally right thing to do, Reverend? In my opinion, absolutely. And I think war is justified to fight evil. The second World War to stop Hitler, no question, was the right thing to do. And this thing with Iran. Iran has said that they want to wipe Israel off the face of the map. They wanted. They want to destroy the Jews and drive every one of them in the sea. They've said that they call America the Great Satan. They took our embassy, held our Marines and our embassy staff. I think it was 444 days. These people are dangerous people, and they're danger to the world and all of Gaza. That is the Iranians. You take what's happening in southern Lebanon. That's the Iranians. So, yes, I think President Trump has done the right thing. I hate war. I don't like war. Don't support war. But sometimes you have to fight evil, and that's exactly what President Trump is doing. And it will be a much safer world, much safer in the Middle east when President Trump gets this done.

[Nathan]

You know, that's. From what I understand is a lot of bullshit, too, the whole way that our government has tried to paint Islam as, like, the most evil thing in the world that doesn't meld with Christianity. I've talked to a few Islamic folks who say that, who made the case that Islam is more compatible with where Christianity than Judaism is. Because they reject Jesus Christ.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Correct.

[Nathan]

And Islam at least thought he was a prophet. And they, like, worshiped the Virgin Mary or whatever. Or Mary.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I don't know about Mary, but I know that Islam sees Christ is a prophet.

[Nathan]

Right, right. And there's a lot of similarities with Christianity and Islam way more than Judaism.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. The one.

[Nathan]

Like, it's just the cultural things different. Like, it's. There's a big, bigger cultural divide. Judaism is more Westernized.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, Yeah. I. I think I have a lot of good friends that are. That are. Is Islamic. And I. And I visited multiple imams and sat with multiple imams because I'm fascinated with the faith.

[Nathan]

The.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I do see Christianity in Islam as oil and water, though, because Islam will eventually say, hey, if you don't convert, you know, we've got a serious problem. And so there is a. It's a sledgehammer type faith, whereas Christianity is the reverse. And so when I hear Franklin Graham speak like that, I'm like, you're not speaking like a Christian.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And it's just ironic. You know, they talk about, like, he's like, oh, I don't want to talk about Hitler, but. But we're going to talk about Hitler, you know, and it's just the assumptions made in that. In that statement. And then you put Franklin Graham up there. You're selling. You're using Christianity to justify a war. You know, you're using Christianity to justify. Or you're using the Old Testament to justify the nation state. And it's like, that doesn't make sense. And that's where Mike Huckabee was so interesting is on when he. When Tucker was interviewing him. You know, Tucker's like, well, why don't you just. Why don't they take all the land, the promised land? And he's like, well, maybe they should. And I'm like, there's the quiet part out loud. And it's like, you. You want to take all this land, and on top, want to make it.

[Nathan]

They want to turn it back into ancient Babylon.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

They. Yeah, they want to.

[Nathan]

If you look at the Greater Israel and you look at ancient Babylon, it's almost identical.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. They want to reclaim. And I said this on Tucker. I said, you know, there's a nefarious. They behind all of this. And all these people online are like, he's talking about Jews. And I'm like, no, I'm not. Actually. I think there's something even behind Jews.

[Nathan]

Whatever.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Like, there's something behind that. That. When you read Revelation and you read this full book in regards to reclaiming that promised land and building the Third Temple there, I think it's the banking systems. I think there's something so big, and there's something about reclaiming this, and the nation state is just a. The nation state of Israel is just the first foot to do it. And they're leveraging this area as the excuse, saying, oh, the Jews need this. You know, we need to give them land. But they're not even doing it for the Jews. They're doing it for a much more nefarious reason. And I think Israel is being used

[Nathan]

as a pawn just the way. Same way United States people who run our country are being used as pawns.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Correct. There's not. There's. There's a global agenda, but I think behind all.

[Nathan]

Who do you think is behind it? Just speculating.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Like, the banking. Like the banking system.

[Nathan]

The Rothschilds.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. The big banking families. Yeah.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And I don't know why. You know, maybe it's just. You're so. Like, when you look at this book, when you read it from COVID to cover, you realize you have no real power. Like, if you believe in Christ, and he said, it's finished on the cross. It's done. Like, there's nothing I can do except love my neighbor and enjoy this amazing life that I'm. That I've been able to experience. And so and then, and, but when I look at this book, you. Everything's cyclical. Someone's got a round trip back to something. And greed in man always round trips back to the beginning. And what's the beginning of this book? The promised land, you know, well, the Garden of Eden, but the promised land, right. And so I think there's some weird cultish desire to rebuild that third temple, that physical temple. Pete Hegseth talked about this. He talks about building the third temple.

[Nathan]

So what's supposed to happen when the third temple is built?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Christ comes back.

[Nathan]

Oh, that's when Christ comes back.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Let me quadruple check. But when the third temple is built,

[Nathan]

I believe Steve can look it up. Steve's got the quick fingers over there.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, there we go. Yeah. What happens when the third Temple's built?

[Nathan]

So that's where the, the Al Aqsa Mosque is, right? I think they want to build that third temple on the, on top of the Al Aqsa Mosque.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I don't know the exact area. I just know that there's, there's. I can see it's. When you, when you read the scripture, you're like, oh, people are trying to rebuild.

[Nathan]

The construction of the third Temple is a highly anticipated and debated concept depending on the original religious and prophetic framework. Judaism, Christianity, Islam. The event carries drastic different meanings, ranging from literal fulfillment of biblical script to severe geopolitical conflict. Orthodox Judaism, rebuilding the temple is a center of prayer. Arrival of the Messiah. Yeah, okay. The building, okay. The building of the physical structure is closely associated with the arrival of the Jewish Messiah, marking the end or marking an era of global peace, the in gathering of the Jewish exiles to Israel and the universal knowledge of God.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So right here, this one.

[Nathan]

For many evangelicals, this is the end times prophecy, right? This is what everyone's talking about right now. For many evangelical and dispensational Christians, the third Temple is a critical marker of end times and the events leading to the second coming of Jesus. The tribulation. According to interpretations of the book of Daniel and Revelation, the temple will be rebuilt at the start of the seven year period of tribulation.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So it's just it, you're trying to rush in the end times, which is so fascinating to me. It's like, let's rush in a shitty time for everybody, you know, like, I don't, I don't get it. But yeah, I think, I think there's a nefarious day behind all this because

[Nathan]

they want to be raptured or they want to, they want, they think they're going to be raptured.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, whatever your theology is in regards to Revelation, that's why Revelation is such a, a crazy book.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And like, I'm the first to say I don't understand that book. I think it's brilliant. I think it foreshadows a lot of like, of where John, who's the author's like, mind, was at the time. But I don't fake like, I will never fake to know or be able to interpret Revelation. And a lot of people will confidently say this is what it is. And it's like that's the future. I don't know the future. I'm just in the now and I'm trying to love my neighbor and I'm trying to get people back, my fellow, quote unquote, self professed Christians back to loving their neighbor instead of building these, these monarchies that we've built. Yeah, it's like you look at every church in the US It's a literal Vatican. So when the Reformation happened in the 1500s with Luther and Calvin and Zwingli, you know, they really went after the Roman Catholic Church and they did some really good things. They got the Bible out in multiple languages. So the Vatican didn't own the Bible anymore. You didn't have to go to the church to read it. Right. Because someone had to read in Latin. So now the common plow boy or the common farmer could read the Bible in their own language. But what they didn't do is they didn't reform the institutional structure of the church. So this is the one, Ms. I think during the Reformation is they democratized Christianity, but they didn't democratize the institutional structure. So what happened, like we came to America and the institutional structure today just mirrors the Vatican. It's hey, you don't need transparency of your finances. Hey, all power sits at the top. Hey, they need to just trust you with, with what, with your teaching and then with the money and how it's, how it's being used. So I always say we went from one Vatican to just 400,000 mini Vaticans in the US now. And that's the one miss with the Reformation is they didn't reform the institutional structure. And so that's what I'm here to encourage is let's reform the institutional structure. And now the government is to the point of End Times prophecy, the government is using all these 400,000 mini Vaticans and what I would say, the idolatry and selfish greed of their leaders for the government's own gain. If that Makes sense.

[Nathan]

Yeah, yeah, that certainly makes sense. So explain, explain like the base layer of this whole thing for people, like when it comes to like becoming a church, right, and getting like, how do you actually become a church and why is this system not working?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. So there's estimated of 400, 000 registered quote unquote churches in the US and

[Nathan]

how, sorry to interrupt. How much money do they make too?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Domestically about 550 billion, and then globally, about 1.1 trillion a year in individual donor giving. So that's just Christian churches.

[Nathan]

That doesn't include, this is all donations. All donations, 1.1 trillion.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So it's bigger than the US military budget for now. You know, they're asking for 1.5 trillion now, but, and they're going to take from social programs, American social programs to fund that, that, that military, industrial.

[Nathan]

Really? Yeah, yeah, but so we're becoming the Antichrist country.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yes, dude. I, I, yeah, we can talk about the Antichrist and just theoretical ideas. Yeah, but so you have to pick a sandbox, right? If you're accepting money, you are a business. And so in America, there's really like three main buckets of business. There's for profit companies, there's nonprofit companies, and then inside that nonprofit sandbox is religious exemptions. Got it. And so the government created these sandboxes to play in because you just have to, you have to pick a sandbox to play in. What rules control this, this, this business. And so in 1913, the government was like, hey, churches do something really beautiful. They, they help in the, in the lower marginalized communities of parts of our communities. And so we're going to give them a special tax exemption where they don't have to pay taxes. So nonprofit, the nonprofit sector is only 112 years old, which doesn't seem like much, but that's a very new sector. And so what the government saw was religious organizations are helping in the spot that capitalism leaves behind. And so what I mean by that is as capitalism raises the net worth or GDP of a nation, there is a group that's always left behind. And so that is where Christianity thrives, with the needy and the helpless and the elderly and the orphaned and the widowed and the marginalized. And so at the time in 1913, churches, your life was pretty, pretty small. Your world was about an 80 mile radius. Right. You wouldn't be going past 80 miles because we didn't have cars really. And we didn't, we didn't have technology.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so your local community was your world. So we wanted to Better our local community. I wanted to better the park down the street because I wanted all our kids to be safe. So it's this idea of social capital. So we wanted to build social capital in our local communities in the government. The US Government, rightly so, said, hey, let's carve out this sector for organizations that are helping in their local communities that we can't, as a federal government and state government go do. Awesome. And so There was about 12,000 organizations at the time that got this exemption. And so what did they do? They worked in their local communities. They had food pantries and homeless shelters, and they did beautiful things. Well, as technology develops, we have radio, tv, Internet. Now these nonprofits start looking out because there's more money to be had outside the local community. Right. So this is no one person's fault. But as you start looking and you're saying, hey, there's, there's 5,000 people in my town, well, with radio we can reach 50,000. With TV we can reach 500,000. With the Internet, we can reach 5 billion. So instead of your vision as a nonprofit being about the local community, now it goes global. And now it becomes how much money can we scrape off the table? And our mission and our marketing angle is these helpless people. But the nonprofit sector has totally lost its original site. The government saw this sector as building local, local social capital in your local community. And now the most successful nonprofits, sucking the majority of the money are looking global. And so now they don't really care about that, that local fabric anymore. And so remember I said there's 12,000 organizations in 1913 that got that exemption.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Today there's 1.9 million in the US and the only argument that you can push back on as well, Nathan, population increase. Okay, right. Population increased 4.3% over the last 112 years. So if you do that math, there should be about 60,000 organizations. But today there's 1.9 million.

[Nathan]

And how many of those are churches?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

400,000.

[Nathan]

400,000.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yep. And so you have to ask why

[Nathan]

that each church, I mean, okay, 400,000 churches, religious institutions. And are they all Christian?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

No, those are religious institutions.

[Nathan]

Just religious institutions. Okay.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. And so, so you have to ask why the explosion in the sector? It's not because our social fabric's getting any better. It's because people have realized, smart businessmen and women have realized that the non profit sector is the greatest sector to put money and raise money. And then religious exemptions in particular are the best sector to play in a totally dark World. And I'll explain what I mean by that. So you have the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit has to file what's called a Form 990. It's an annual informational sheet. It just shows the federal government where your money goes, whether you raise 10,000. Well, whether you raise $50,000 or $50 million. It's just a simple waterfall of, hey, here's the top executive salaries, and here's where the bulk of our money went. Awesome. No one should be afraid of that document. But churches, religious institutions do not have to file that document. And so what that does is it means there's no legal document a religious organization could be held to account on.

[Nathan]

They don't report anything to the irs.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

They report nothing to the irs.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so what I mean by that is, if I take. If Your church is 500,000, and this is an argument that we get all the time, Nathan, you're always going after. Sure, the big churches are bad. The small churches are good. There's a lot of. And I want to preface this. There's a lot of good churches and a lot of good pastors that want to do the right thing. But. So I've got a $50 million church, you've got a $50,000 church. My $50 million church. That $50 million. There is no document that my congregants or donors can hold me to account on. So it's all about them trusting me and me being a moral person, an upright person. If I've got 50 million in an account and no one's going to really know what I'm doing with it, I know human nature. I'm going to get a little loose with my spending, most likely.

[Nathan]

And so secrecy does not enable good behavior, it enables bad behavior.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yes. We always say ultimate power ultimately corrupts.

[Nathan]

Yes.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so even if your church is only $50,000 a year, you play by the same rules that I play by. So it all falls back on the moral integrity of man. And that is a brutal, you know, place or status to live by. Because I. Based off this book, I know the hearts of man.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And it's like, I don't. Like, we need external accountability. I need external accountability in my life. You know, you need it as well. Right, right. Right. And so it's right now the. The institution that is supposed to be the beacon of truth and integrity and transparency, which is the church actually plays in the darkest legal sandbox of all sandboxes. And then as soon as you question the sandbox, they say, oh, you heretic. You Antichrist, you spawn of Satan. You know, and I'm like, no, no, no. I'm just questioning the box. You know, like, we should bring accountability into this box. Why? Because I said it. 550 billion is given annually to Christian churches in America. That means the Christian church could radically transform the social fabric of America almost overnight if we utilized and stewarded those resources properly. But we're not. And so what has happened? Capitalism has crept into Christianity over the last 112 years and now capitalistic mindset, which is what? Ownership, profits and growth, those three main, like, tent poles of capitalism have crept into Christianity. What are the three main tenets of Christianity or of the Christian church? Love no other God before me, love your neighbor as yourself, and share like it's antithetical. So when I said capitalism has nothing to do with Christianity, I meant it. Capitalism is not a bad thing. Two things can be true at once. Capitalism can be a good economic driver, but it shouldn't be involved in Christianity because Christianity in its own book says this runs antithetical to the desires of man. In James, it says, pure and undefiled religion is to help the orphaned and widow that in their distress and to be unspotted of the world. That means to fight every natural instinct of Nathan, which is, I want to build wealth, I want things. I want to be comfortable. I want, I want, I want, I

[Nathan]

want to surf the wave pool.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I want to surf the wave pool. Exactly. And so it's like, we have to run like Christianity is a beauty is. Beauty is so beautiful because it pushes against the instincts of Nathan. But capitalism has crept into it now. And now it's, hey, Danny, if you believe hard enough, you're going to be blessed. If you give enough, you're going to be blessed. And so capitalism has corrupted the nonprofit sector, which is, which is the social system of America. That's why in. In the nonprofit sector. So in a for profit, in the for profit world, Danny, you can start a business, you own that business, you can finance it yourself, and then guess what, like, you deserve the profits off of said business because it's based off of your work ethic. You own that business. In the nonprofit world, you don't own a nonprofit. This is my favorite question when I'm almost getting arrested at a church, is I always. All their security guard surrounds me and they're like, you got to get off this. This is private property. And I go, who owns the property? And they all go, oh. Because none of them can answer the question.

[Nathan]

They all say, it's Private property.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, it is private property. It's owned by the corporation. Right, but who owns the corporation? No one owns the corporation.

[Nathan]

Legally.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Legally. And so that's the beautiful thing about the nonprofit sector is it was never meant to be a capitalistic sector. There is no ownership. It's not about profits. It's become about profits, but it's not about profits. And so what's happened is the nonprofit sector is corrupted. And you learn this in the religion business. And so now it's. There's only two solutions to reforming the nonprofit sector. One is the government, and then two is we clean up our own house. And so that's what I'm encouraging is let's clean up our own house. We don't want the government to do it because the government's not very good at doing much.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So let's clean up our own house.

[Nathan]

So you've almost been arrested multiple times going into these churches.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, yeah, I've been arrested once. I spent the night in jail in Texas.

[Nathan]

Really?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. Yeah. Just for being on the property. Just for standing there with a sign.

[Nathan]

Where did you go there?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

That was in Grapevine in Dallas, Texas. I had reached out to this church for a couple years. So this pastor in particular, there's in religious exemptions, pastors, there's this interesting thing called a housing allowance. So if you're a pastor, you're going to be taxed on your salary, but you won't be taxed on your housing allowance. It's a tax free stipend. Okay. And so there's this gimmick now where you can offset a lot of your tax burden if you take the majority of your. Of your quote unquote salary as a housing allowance. Does that make sense?

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so you might take $100,000 in salary, but then 500 grand in a housing allowance. And so there's one pastor in particular who through a lawsuit, the only way you can find this data out, because remember, there's no legal documents holding churches to account. So the only way you find any of this information out is through discovery and lawsuits. And so there was a lawsuit, I believe in 2005. And in discovery, the housing allowance list got put out to the public. So this pastor, his housing allowance was $240,000 a year on top of his salary. And so I'm reading the housing allowance doc, and it's going to pay for your down payment, your home, your mortgage, your property insurance, and it lists everything down to light bulbs and home cleaners and house cleaners and I'm like, this is pretty nice. So this pastor can spend a quarter million dollars, basically a year on whatever.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So the problem with that is that's 2005. This is 2024 at this point. So you've got. 19 years have passed. And I have his real estate. So he owns a beachfront home in Florida, which I think is valued at 10 million.

[Nathan]

Oh, my God.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

He owns a $6.5 million home in Dallas. And so the. The mortgages alone totaled about 300 grand a month. And so my question is. Or the estimated mortgages? So my question is, what's your housing allowance today? Because that'd be 3.6 million a year in housing allowances. And so I just would call him, and I'd call the church. Hey, I have a question. I have a question. No one would answer. No one would answer. So I finally reached out to their lawyers, and I was like, hey, I'm in town. And this is in the show. I'm like, I'm in town. No one's called me back. Like. And it was a. It was a Friday morning when I called the law office, and I left a message, and I'm like, I'm in town. I'd love the chat. And if I don't hear from you, I'm gonna come to church on Sunday, you know, so I'll see you there. I don't gotcha anybody. It's like, I want to talk, right? And so we show up to the church service. They ID Me before I even walk in. So I'm walking in the front door, and this is all on the show too. And there's this big officer. He sees me, so he jumps on his comms. I walk in. As I'm walking through the door, their head of security passes me and looks at me, and I walk into their bookstore, and I'm trying to buy a book, a sweatshirt, and get a cup of coffee, and then I'm gonna go into the service. I'm not here to disrupt. I'm here just to do my little due diligence and do my thing. And instead, they surround me. They walk me outside, and they're like, you need to leave. They wouldn't let me buy the sweatshirt, and I'm like, that's. I want to buy your goods. Like, you've got a store. Let me buy your sweatshirt. They wouldn't let me buy it.

[Nathan]

And so this isn't the one. I saw the first episode where the chick walks by with the 400 beanie she was wearing.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, no, no, no, that's. That's. That's another one. I think it was like, it was more than 400 bucks. Yeah.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

That's a funny one. But. So this is episode four.

[Nathan]

Okay.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so they're like, you need to leave. And I'm like, why? I want to come to church. I'm not bothering anybody. Like you're bothering me, actually. Like, why are you kicking me out? And they're like, you need to leave this private property. And so that's where I go. Like, who owns the property? They couldn't answer it. I leave. But the night before, I figured they would do that. So the night before we made signs, and all it said was, pastor Ed, what is your housing allowance and what is your salary today? Because I also know who's on the new housing allowance list for. For this year. And he had put his wife on it and he had put his lawyer on it.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So the church's lawyer. This is ironic, who was also the CFO of the church at this point. So you have a general. The general counsel who's also managing the money. That's called a conflict of interest of this multi million dollar church, very big church in Dallas.

[Nathan]

Is that not allowed? Can the CFO be a lawyer? Like a. Hired, like a legal counsel for any corporation?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, it's just a conflict of interest. Right, because you're representing your own financial decisions for a multi million dollar organization. Like, you're either the CFO or the general counsel. Like, it's just a conflict of interest.

[Nathan]

Right, I see what you're saying.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so I show up the second service with my signs. I just walk into the parking lot. I don't even go into the building. And I'm just standing there in 20, like, probably 20 armed security guards surround me. And it's hilarious because they're all like. They're all Mickey Mouse. Like, one's wearing all black, one's an all camo. You know, one says, like, private security, like they've just bought it all on Amazon. And they like. Like most of them have gun, though. Guns, though. And then they do bring their one deputy out to, quote, unquote, arrest me, but his other guy had already put his hands on me. So there, you know, they violated my civil rights multiple times. My elbow. They tore a ten into my elbow.

[Nathan]

What?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went to the doctor because I couldn't straighten my elbow. And he's like, you can either have surgery or just. Or just PT it for a long time. So I still can't straighten it.

[Nathan]

You Gotta get some stem cells, dude.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, yeah. But it's. So they arrest me and they charged me with criminal trespassing for just wanting to ask him about his housing allowance.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so get out of jail the next day. And to like, he's one of my favorite guys because, because I like, I want to know because he's such a.

[Nathan]

What's his name?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

His Name's Ed Young Jr. Ed Young Jr. So this is what I mean by capitalism creeping into, into religious organizations. His church is tens of millions a year in revenue. No one knows where the money goes. No one knows his housing allowance. No one knows his salary. He drives golden Range Rovers. He just did an extension on the church that has a parking, an underground parking garage for his cars and a pickleball court for himself.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

This is the church. And then they're doing another raise to, quote, unquote, build a new building and they're raising 30 something million bucks. No one's even seen a budget for the build. It's called the anchor project.

[Nathan]

And he's legally not. And this guy legally doesn't have to report shit to the irs.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Nope. And this is the thing is we've turned churches into capitalistic ventures. And so smart businessmen and women have taken leadership roles and the sky's the limit in the sector.

[Nathan]

Let me ask you this, are these guys also lobbying politicians to keep it this way?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yep.

[Nathan]

That's not surprising.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. You know, so like this guy's Ed Young Jr's dad runs a 90,000 person church in Houston called Second Baptist. We were just there and got escorted off by their police. Awesome, awesome. Gentle, amazing police, by the way. But so this is how shady it is. So his dad took over that church in the 70s. They have a billion dollars worth of assets, that church. A billion in assets, 90,000 members. That church is a Baptist church. So that means that those 90,000 members get to vote on what happens with the money budget, all that. That's really healthy. Right. Ed Young jr's church in Dallas and Grapevine does not allow voting rights. Well, him and his lawyer, the CFO in Dallas, go down to Houston, remove his dad out of. Out of power, put his other brother in power and remove the voting rights of 90,000 members.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So now a billion dollar corporation in assets no longer has voting rights from its members who funded the whole thing. And it's managed by six people. Those six people, four are related and the other fifth is the lawyer I'm talking about and the sixth is the random. So they now have carte Blanche Reign over a billion in assets, all in the name of God and. Right. There's a lawsuit happening right now over that.

[Nathan]

Who's suing them?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

A group of Congress that want their voting rights back. Yeah.

[Nathan]

Wow. And how do they convince all these people to donate this money?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Misinterpreted scripture. Give us 10% of your money. You need to tithe to us. Hey, give above and beyond. And Christians are generous people. This is the thing. Christians are the most generous people in the world. They give a lot of. But the Bible doesn't say just to give. The Bible teaches you to steward your resources, which means, hey, I'm not going to give to something that is just building an enterprise or institution. I'm going to give to where Christ told us where to give the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the poor, the prisoner, the sojourner. And so what the churches do now, like the Mormon Church, for example. The Mormon church is worth 300 billion. Probably closer to 350 now. 350 billion. They'll hit a trillion dollars in market assets in the next 15 years. A church.

[Nathan]

They got a new TV show. You see that? Mormon Wives.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, yeah. It's right in my backyard. I'm in Utah.

[Nathan]

Is it?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, but so they'll hit a trillion in assets. The Mormon church made 25 billion in in profits in the market last year. 25 billion. And guess what? That is untaxed because they're a church. And so this is where it gets even crazier though. They gave away $400 million to humanitarian aid.

[Nathan]

That's good.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, that's 2% of their profits. They demand their congregants give them 10% and they keep 98% and put it back in the market. It.

[Nathan]

Oh my God.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So talk about the Antichrist. Talk about institutional power.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Talk about 666 Neuro Caesar, where everything combines. Religion in a monarchy is a theocracy with unlimited power, unlimited resource, accountable to no one. And again, every religious institution in in the US is set up like this. So what's happening is you can also. There's a church. Ed Young Jr. The guy in Dallas that had me arrested, he also acquired a church here in Sarasota. Oh, wow. So the thing with churches is. Or nonprofits in general, is when you shut a nonprofit down, you can't just take the cash and walk away. You either have to give the assets away to another charity or give the money away to other organizations. So what you do is you can keep a failing. Like let's say I had A nonprofit. And you were a successful nonprofit. But I had a business, a church that was paid off. So 20 years of congregants have paid down this beautiful, you know, cathedral. Cathedral that you and I are sitting in. The building's worth 25 million bucks. Well, I can just sell you the building. You take over the debt. So you're going to go to your congregants and say, hey, guys, I need 25 million to buy this building. I take the 25 million, put it in my pocket, and just never shut the church down, the entity down. So the real estate side of this scam is the biggest financial scam happening in churches right now. Because what you're doing is you're leveraging generation after generation to remortgage a building, and leadership is just sucking that money out and doing what they want with it. So generation after generation is paying down the same building.

[Nathan]

That's bananas.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's crazy.

[Nathan]

The same thing's going on with Church of Scientology. They own, like, they're one of the top real estate holders in the United States with all the real estate that they own.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You know who's bigger? The Mormon Church.

[Nathan]

Oh, really?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

The Mormon Church owns hundreds of thousands of acres here in Florida. They actually want to build their own city. They're planning on building their own city outside of Orlando.

[Nathan]

What? Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's called Deseret Ranch right now.

[Nathan]

Uhhuh.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

That's crazy, dude.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, the.

[Nathan]

The Scientology thing's wild, too, because this whole area that we're in right now is, like, one of the hubs of Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard was literally had his boat parked like. Like, less than a mile away from here.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

What's that great L. Ron Hubbard quote? If you want to get wealthy, start a business. If you want to get rich, start a religion.

[Nathan]

Yes, yes. Great quote. You know, he was buddies with Aleister Crowley, and he was buddies with Jack Parsons. He was. He was a wild dude. Wrote a lot of science fiction. And, you know, it's interesting that Scientology is, like, one of the cults that has been able to survive. You know, like, there's so many evil cults that have been taken down, right? Yeah. Like the Children of God. The Children of God cult. And there's a ton of them like that. Right. That preyed on children and trafficked people and stuff like that. And it seems like Scientology was able to get away from that kind of stuff. And I wonder if that's maybe how they survived, because they. I mean, there has been accusations of them abusing people and, like, Enslaving people. And they have their cadet org where they raise the babies, they keep the babies away from the parents. And they also have the Sea Org where people work inside of Scientology for basically no money. And you can see them walking around the town here. They wear these like little blue vests and they look like zombies.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Crazy.

[Nathan]

And it's just. It's alive and well here, at least. I don't know how it's like how it is all around the rest of the world. But yeah, Scientology, you mean Scientology. Yeah. You know, and some people, when I've talked to them, explain, you know, that Scientology at the base level, at the introductory level isn't like that bad. It's kind of like it's all about eliminating all the negative influences your life, you know, becoming a better version of yourself. And it's kind of. It's very self help, Tony Robbins type stuff.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

And it isn't until you get to like, all the way through the hierarchy of whatever it's called, Xenu, that you start to learn about, like, intergalactic aliens and all that kind of weird stuff.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

The Mormon Church is kind of like that too. I just, I'm filming. I just shot up an interview with. With a couple people that were ritualistically abused from three years old on.

[Nathan]

Really?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And you know, they alleged that they saw kids get murdered. Oh, they would take this thing called the blood oath. And so a child would be murdered in front of them and then all the kids would drink the blood.

[Nathan]

What?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And it's, it's. And they say the same thing. They go, this isn't a fringe part of the faith. It's baked into the very foundation. But for the most part, the lay people at the bottom are like, this is amazing. This is a great. A great faith.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's do good, like love your neighbor, you know, pool our assets. But then as you move up the hierarchy, it gets darker and darker. Yeah.

[Nathan]

Was this like some weird offshoot of it?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

This is how they allege it happens in the temple, one of the temples

[Nathan]

in Salt Lake and like one of the main primary temples.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

We're gonna. This is in season two, episode one. We're gonna drop names. These girls drop literal names. And I'm trying to corroborate two bits of evidence. And we're about to corroborate one. And it's. You're talking about blood oaths, which is blood and blood atoning. And then this idea of sin atoning, which is if you have sex with a child, you basically. That's how you purify your sin. And so these girls claim they were three years old on. Oh, my God, dude. Yeah, it's a big, big story. So season two, episode one is about child sexual abuse, because that's the. So season one is all about the problem, the financial mismanagement, the legal architecture in the U.S. season 2 is all about how the Christian church can actually solve most of the social issues in America, from homelessness to foster care to prison systems. But it starts with sexual abuse. Most of our social ills in America stem from child sexual abuse and trauma that happens when you're a child. And so the first episode is about child sexual abuse and how religious institutions often incubate it as opposed to keep it at bay and find it.

[Nathan]

Well, I had a guy in here who was part of the Children of God cult, and he said when he got into it, he was basically like a hippie, roaming wanderer, kind of like just roaming around the country. He had no job, he had no purpose or meaning to his life. And he came across these people that were, like, preaching the Bible to him and Jesus and he. He was very desperate, right. And he. He really had nothing going on for him. And he. He was seeking purpose, a community, something to be a part of. And when he got into it and he started recruiting people, that's the exact type of look for other than, like, you know, they would use this thing called. What was it called? Flirting something. Flirting. Fishy flirting or something. Something weird.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Flirty fishing.

[Nathan]

Flirty fishing, yeah. Where they would use, like, attractive women that were in the cult, young women, to basically, like, honey trap people into joining, like, getting men and, like, having sex with them and then like, convincing them to join.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

And again, like, it seemed to aggregate all of the most desperate people who had no sense of purpose, no sense of community, no job, what have you. You know what I mean?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, that's what.

[Nathan]

And those are the most vulnerable people that get preyed on when it comes to things like, you know, sexual abuse and any kind of. You talk to any prostitute on the street or any like, drug dealer or someone who's, you know, and go to skid row. And I guarantee you all of those people had. Had no parents growing up or lack. Very close to that. Bad situations.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. So. So, exactly. And to your point, Christianity does. Is like Christ says, I didn't come for the righteous, I came for the hurting and the broken.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And it's like. But the hurting and the broken are vulnerable. And when you have a capitalistic system that their Main target audience is the hurting and the vulnerable. We got a serious problem, you know, and. Yeah, so I always say where there's financial abuse, there's sexual abuse right behind it. Because if you, if people don't know your finances, I can use those finances to cover up other crimes.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And you. This first episode of season two is wild. It's clocking in at three hours and two minutes right now. We're gonna try to get it down to two hours.

[Nathan]

This is the first episode.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's huge.

[Nathan]

We go out, you have like a cap on how long it can be.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Two hours. Yeah.

[Nathan]

Okay.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So every episode. So season two is a rolling release. So we focus on child sexual abuse. We talk about how, you know, the state, our country's icacs, which is Internet Crimes Against Children units, are hyperly underfunded. You know, the war on drugs at the border, I think gets 40 billion a year from our federal government. Our entire national ICACS get less than 40 million, and I can't.

[Nathan]

And iTax is what exactly?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

ICAC is an Internet Crimes Against Children's task force.

[Nathan]

Internet Crimes Against Children.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So it's like our main front line for child sexual abuse in America. And these, these, these guys are badasses. And you meet, you meet a bunch of these men.

[Nathan]

So they're like, they're like online, like, like monitoring, NSA type.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, they're the ones scrubbing roadblocks and all that. And so. But. But it, it comes down to less than one point. No, no, it comes down to less than a million dollars a year per ICAC that they get federal funding on. So they're extremely underfunded. What you learned about this in, in this episode, one ICAC officer from Florida, actually from Pensacola, an amazing dude, he's like, I had to turn a dad away. A dad comes into my office or he asks for me and he comes in, he goes, hey, someone's asking my 6 year old for naked photos. Like, can you please track this? And he goes, I had to turn the dad away because we couldn't buy a 300 hard drive. We didn't have the budget to buy the hard drive to put the files on. And he's like, I had to send this dad away. And he goes, So I come back to work the next day and I'm working on my computer, and the front desk calls and they're like, hey, can you come down? There's a man here. And he's like, I walked down and it was this dad. And the dad goes, will this hard drive work?

[Nathan]

He buys the hard drive.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And he buys the hard drive. And Chris goes, yeah, that'll work. And then he pulls another hard drive out and he goes, I bought this for the next child's dad that walks in and pushes it over. And he goes, that's the main problem with ICAC is we're so underfunded. And so my goal with this episode is to say, hey, Christians, we can 10 to 50 x ICAC funding. And it would be a rounding error for our churches. We wouldn't even see it on our financials so we can become the front lines for children. And so every episode in season two is a. Is a problem and a major in a solution on how we can actually get it done. Wow. But, yeah, so the problem right now is again, religious institutional structure. It goes back to 1913. The guardrails on that system have been corrupted with technology, and we haven't reformed it to the point now where that 1913 structure is so corrupted, it doesn't only incubate financial abuse, it proliferates it. And then it incubates sexual abuse and predators right behind it. And so everybody's like, why are there so many predators coming out of churches? It's not rocket science. Look at the structure of the church. You don't need to legally background check your employees. If I want to. If a predator wants to volunteer in a youth group, oftentimes I don't need to be background checked.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Guess what? Religious organizations are not federally mandated to be reporters. And so here's my question. Ready? If we run a big church, a $50 million a year organization, and a young girl comes in and says, hey, this pastor me in the bathroom, our natural instinct is going to be to say, oh, shoot, like, we got to keep this quiet. This is going to hurt the brand of the church. And since we're not mandatory reporters, we don't have to call the police. Churches, clergy should be mandatory reporters. If someone comes in, there's seven states. I believe it's seven states that are mandatory reporters. Other states are not. So instead, we want to fix this internally. Which means what? I'm going to use donor money to silence to pay off this victim's family. And so a good friend of ours, Elizabeth Phillips, is pushing Trey's Law right now. It's in D.C. right now. It'll be on Trump's desk hopefully within a month. And it just passed with a unanimous vote in the Senate. I believe it's on the House floor in the next few days. It's called Trey's Law. But churches were using NDAs to silence victims. So a church is using a non disclosure agreement to tell a kid. They can't tell people they were at this church.

[Nathan]

That's just evil personified 100%.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And it's like this is the church. This is supposed to be the beacon of light, the beacon of truth. And instead. And this again, it's about the legal architecture of the system.

[Nathan]

Yeah. You know, one part of me wants to think that, you know, any good Christian person or any Bible believer would want to do everything they can to abolish this. And the other part of me is like, I could be wrong, but I feel like most people, just like you say, only 13, have actually read the Bible. Most people are just using this as a, for lack of a better word, just like a coping mechanism, a way to make themselves feel better about everything that they do in their lives. That may be.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You mean the religion or like enjoying religion.

[Nathan]

All the people that donate this money, like, they donate the money because they think that they are going to be forgiven of sins or Jesus is. They're going to go to heaven or whatever.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Here's a big one. So an economist in the religion business, season one says this. He goes, nathan, giving is not a selfless act. He goes, we actually contract dopamine spikes.

[Nathan]

Oh yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

When you give money, definitely it's a consumerist action. If I just get to give money and walk away, that makes me feel good.

[Nathan]

It does.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

If I have to sit down with that smelly homeless person and sit there and look at him in the, in her, in the eyes and see myself and her or his humanity, that's biblical giving.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

But no one wants to do that because it's dirty and hard and it takes time. No one wants to sit with their suicidal friend because that is like really terrifying. Right. No one wants to like go out. And we did this a couple weeks ago. Like I went out with a great nonprofit in the streets of San Diego and we walked and talked to prostitutes down in the Blade. And it's like, to do that takes like serious intention. And instead I want to watch my football game and drink a couple beers.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You know, so giving that giving is a straight dopamine kick.

[Nathan]

What is this? The Vatican office has ruled that Bishop Michael W. Fisher erred in the way he went about collecting money from parishes to be used towards a bankruptcy settlement with nearly 900. 900 child sex abuse. Oh, dude, that's nothing. This right here, what is this?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

This is from last year. 300 million. First they collected 300 million for 1300

[Nathan]

cases of sexual abuse.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

That was last year.

[Nathan]

And, and then this year they collected 800 million.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I have a video right here for the LDS Church.

[Nathan]

800 million.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Wow.

[Nathan]

This year. How long is this video? Three weeks ago. How long is this video? This video is three minutes. I got to play it.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

$800 million to settle claims from 1300 sex abuse survivors. I went to. Zoo's anchor Sandra Bookman is live in

[Nathan]

the newsroom right now with much more

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

on the proposal and what it means

[Nathan]

for the survivors and the future of the church. Sandra?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

This case stems from claims under the Child Victims Act. That legislation, if you recall, was passed back in 2019 and it gave a wide year window for sexual abuse survivors to file civil lawsuits barred by the statute of limitations. This proposal is the result of years long negotiations and it is still subject to full survivor agreement before it can be finalized. The proposed settlement comes months after the Church sold off valuable properties, laid off staff and cut its operating budget to come up with the funds. The Catholic Archdiocese of New York has agreed to pay $800 million to settle lawsuits with 1300 sex abuse survivors, marking one of the largest U.S. clergy abuse payouts.

[Nathan]

These negotiations follow six years.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Attorney Jeff Anderson represents 250 abuse victims. He says their reaction to the settlement proposal has been mixed.

[Nathan]

For some, it is a real relief to know that there is some reckoning

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

and some responsibility being taken.

[Nathan]

For others, there's just anger because there is no way the pain can be alleviated.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Under the proposed settlement, the $800 million will be paid into a trust for survivors over 15 months. With a 615 million dollar initial payment. Accusers would have a $250,000 quick pay option. The church has also agreed to release documents regarding offenders and maintain a public list of accused clergy.

[Nathan]

Today I love how this whole podcast, I'm just going, Jesus Christ. Everything you tell me.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, the interesting thing I want to reference there is.

[Nathan]

Sorry, I don't mean to offend anybody.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

No, the statute of limitations, I think they said one year, look back. So this is a huge problem. So that $800 million, they said you can come forward for one year to claim that to, to, to say you've been abused.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So some people might not know this,

[Nathan]

they might not even see this memo.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so this is the, this is a major problem. And so my friends who are like, again, Elizabeth Phillips is a, is a beast in the best way possible in her team, but they're going after statute of limitations because statute limitations, there's, there's Potentially hundreds of thousands of victims out there that, that they've, they've. They've basically timed out of their window to be able to come forward. And so that's what happened with the Epstein files. Yeah.

[Nathan]

Now that they finally come out, a lot of people that are in there, like, the statute of limitations is expired. If they would have released them in the last administration. Yeah, those people would probably be in version.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So I was in Missouri at the, at the. What do you call it, the Capitol for a hearing. And they were lobbying for Trey's Law. So they were sitting there presenting the argument for why, for why children should. Child victims shouldn't be silenced with an NDA. And then, and then they're going to talk about statute of limitations. Guess the two groups that push against this, there's only two churches and pastors. I don't want to get insurance companies.

[Nathan]

What? Oh, wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Because the insurance companies are gonna have to pay out claims. Wow.

[Nathan]

Churches and pastors and insurance companies do not want to take away NDAs for child sex abuse victims.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's the only two groups pushing against it because they're the two groups that, that are going to have to pay out or their house of card. There's, there's a lot of skeletons in those closets. And so we're going after three things and Elizabeth is crushing it on Trey's law, which is NDAs. And then that'll probably go into effect as soon as possible. Like very soon. Then you have statute of limitations reform and then mandatory reporting. Clergy should be mandatory reporters. And if we can get those things across the finish line with this first episode dropping, like, we've done our job and everybody can call me the Antichrist all they want because I'm like, I help protect the kids a little bit. It, you know, and it's like, that's, this is when I, when I look at Christ, he went into the temple and flipped tables and he said, you've turned my father's house into a den of thieves. And I just see churches as that today. And there's a very broad statement, but we've taken a capitalistic mindset, applied it to a faith that's antithetical to capitalism. And now the, the, the casualties of that are child safety and the needy that we were supposed to help. And so I'll go back to the LDS Church. Of that 25 billion in profits they made in the market, only 2% went to humanitarian aid. And then a bunch go to silencing victims. And so we're building systems that insulate and calcify themselves, which is kind of the definition of an Antichrist.

[Nathan]

Have you ever talked to, like a congregation of like a big church or anything like that? Or corralled a bunch of these people, people say, you know, who. Who are maybe peripherally aware of this but not really exposed and like, just basically dropped all this on them and gotten feedback.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I've talked to hundreds of pastors and thousands of congregants over the years, but no, it wasn't until a couple weeks ago in Houston that a church there was, for the first time ever, I got to stand in front of a church and actually talk to him. And so that's where I do believe there is hope. Like, I do the congregation and a lot of good pastors know there's a problem. And so I'm like, I'm gonna do a PSA right now. I'm begging one of you pastors that run a big church to step out and say, I'm ready to be the face of change. Like, let's change the system. Let's run our institution with accountability and integrity so we can gain the trust of our congregation. And let's lead by example. I will talk to any pastor out there who is willing to pick up that banner with us, which I don't think that's a very big ask, but for five years now, we've been filming. It's a much bigger ask than I think it should be. So there's my PSA to pastors out there, like, be the leader, be the tip of the spear in this reform. You can do it.

[Nathan]

Yeah. And didn't you say. I think I heard you talking to Julian Dorie about this, but you were saying that these churches, or maybe it's just the mega churches, they have like full on marketing campaigns where they'll blast out like, mailers and they know there's a certain percentage of return they'll get on these mailers that are literally asking people, like old people to just send a check or send cash back to them. Right?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, that's been around since the 70s. So that's an old school model. So that's the Kenneth Copeland's of the world. You know, you've got 200,000, 300,000 mailers and you just blast them out and, you know, a certain percentage are going to come back with a, with a. You know, it's like every politician, our average donation is 80 bucks or whatever. Yeah, the same thing. The pastors have their average donation. So they know, hey, if we send 50,000 mailers, out. We're going to raise 400 grand. You know, it's a math game. The young pastors today, they're doing geofencing other churches. So, like, if I. And we call it religious economic theory in the show. So if all three of us have a church in this area, I'm competing against you, bro. Like, I want your congregants. Because with congregants comes money, and so

[Nathan]

you can manipulate the ads based on where they are.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So I'll geofence your community, and they'll see my ads. I'll geofence your community, and they'll see my ads. It's. It's literally just business. It's the shrewdest, most like, cutthroat form of capitalism. And it's in churches.

[Nathan]

So crazy.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And they use tithe money. They use donor money to fund all this. And then they say, look at how God blessed us. We have all this big stuff. It's like, no, you're just a better marketer, bro. You're a better speaker. You figured out the model, and then you have no external accountability. So you can scale as fast as you can. And now a big thing is I can bankroll my congregation so I could put future debt on my congregation. So if I'm like, let's say I've got a thousand people in my pews and they give $2 million a year. Well, we want to do a new build. So I'm going to go to the bank and get a $15 million loan because, hey, this is our forecast off their donor, off their generosity. So I'm bank.

[Nathan]

Look at my last two years tax return.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, I'm bankrolling my congregation for future debt.

[Nathan]

Wow. You're leveraging them to buy more real estate.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It is the biggest racket. And then people look at us and they go, you are tearing down the body of Christ, Nathan. And I'm like, I don't think I am. I think we're just saying, hey, there's a lot of really dirty business practices in this system. And, like, let's get back to preaching Christ and living like Christ.

[Nathan]

Yeah. What. What is Kenneth. Speaking of Kenneth Copeland? Is he still alive? Oh, yeah, he's still doing his thing.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

He said he's going to die at 120 years old. He made a prophetic. A prophetic statement that God's taking a wild one, man. Yeah.

[Nathan]

I mean, that famous video of him talking down to that reporter. He looks like, yeah, we went to.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, we went to Kenneth Copeland's property. I've Been to this.

[Nathan]

Oh, is that with Tommy G? You went there?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Tommy G. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Nathan]

What happened with that?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

They didn't want to arrest us. They were. Their security was smart. But.

[Nathan]

So where was his property?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

His property is in Eagle Mountain, so outside Dallas.

[Nathan]

Okay, okay.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

In Fort Worth.

[Nathan]

Something about Texas and Jesus. Dude. Dude.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, because. So Texas has some of the loosest laws for churches. State laws. And so your private planes can be registered as houses of worship, which means you don't pay taxes on them.

[Nathan]

Your plane can be a house of worship.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, yeah. So that's why all the big boys want to be there, because it means you can buy a plane and not pay tax on it.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Because. Because you worship in it. So that's why he's saying, like, I. I don't want to be in the tube with demons, you know, he needs to worship in his own tube, you know, is what he's insinuating. Yeah, but. So the kicker with him is. So he bought a. I'm gonna. I don't remember the exact acreage. A 1200 acre ranch. And he called it. Dang it. What would he call it?

[Nathan]

The.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

We got a copy of the original mailer brochure that he sent out to thousands of people in the 70s.

[Nathan]

Oh, really?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So they buy. He buys this 1200.

[Nathan]

Try to find that image of that thing.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Thing. The revival capital of the world. There it is. It's in the show. So it might pop up. The revival capital of the world. But he claimed to build. He was going to build five things. A radio station, a TV network, the ministry facilities, the elderly retirement home. Oh, six. The park and a hotel for people to come and stay at when they come to his church.

[Nathan]

So that like Disneyland.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

That was his pitch on raising all this money. He only ever built three of them. Can you. Can you guess the ones he built? The radio station, the TV network, and the ministry buildings. The three things he needed to build his brand. But people gave to the elderly home, they gave to the hotel, they gave to the park. In the for profit world, that would be called fraud.

[Nathan]

Yeah. You'd be investigated by the sec and you'd be in prison.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yes. No, but he calls it faith. Just keep giving in faith. And so today at the. At the. At the end of the property, so it sits on a lake. So at the very tip of it, that sits on this beautiful lake. His 19, 000 square foot home is there. There it is right there. Wow, look at that, dude.

[Nathan]

Yeah, it's a bunker.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So Tommy and I just wanted to get there.

[Nathan]

Go to the one below it. With it. Yeah. To the right. Yeah. Look at that, dude.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. So if you actually go back to the other one. So this is. It's. So that one. He actually dug that canal. Yep. Click on that one. So that that waterway was not there. So they built that for what? For personal use.

[Nathan]

Extra fishing, man.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, Biblical fishing. Yeah, biblical fishing.

[Nathan]

Well, and ironically, probably to make it more private.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Ironically. Is there one that's a little more zoomed out, a top down like that?

[Nathan]

You can find a more zoomed out top down. There you go. The left.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, the left, yeah. So if you zoom in, if it's a high res enough, there's a. He has a high fenced hunting ranch. Oh, it's going to be low res. So he has deer. So he has a deer blind and he just shoots deer from his deer stand in his high fenced hunting property.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. But so the kicker with this home is Kenneth does not own this home. So if you get a housing allowance, you own the home as the pastor like Ed Young Jr. Right. So he's acquiring all this real estate. Buy tax free housing allowances. But this is different. So this is called a parsonage. So the church can build you or you can buy. The church can buy you a parsonage, which means basically you get to live in it rent free. So the church owns this house. Kenneth doesn't own this house. So that photo will do if that one's big enough. And so we wanted to see it. Tommy and I were like, let's go see it. No one's seen this house. Like, we want to see it. We just want to see if we can even get to it.

[Nathan]

It.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so we did. Dude. Gates were just automatically opening for us. We made it all the way to that T section above the tennis court. We made it all the way there.

[Nathan]

No.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And there was a fight on the roads. Yeah. And then there's a final gate there. That was a keypad. But ironically, you had to drive on his private Runway. So he has his private airstrip on this church property as well. Yeah.

[Nathan]

So we keep his planes there.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

He did. But his planes got too big. He bought bigger planes that couldn't land on that Runway. So now he owns. He has a private hangar at another airport.

[Nathan]

You know, it's never enough.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's never enough. Kenneth. Kenny boy.

[Nathan]

Didn't some guy, like, come up and like flash his gun at Tommy?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Nathan]

We were standing there like, how about that, buddy?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. Yeah. Well. And he was, from what We've heard he was Kenneth's private, like, main security guy.

[Nathan]

Okay.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And. But that guy has bounced around the US to different churches because he keeps getting fired at different churches for doing cowboy, cowboy, cowboy like that, showing his guns to people.

[Nathan]

And now why would Kenneth need so much security? Why would he need any more security than any other random billion? Would he need more than, like, you know, just pastors today?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Because there's this concept of persecution, and Christians love this concept of persecution. So American pastors, it sells. I'm being persecuted. The Bible talks about persecution. Christians in Nigeria are being persecuted. They're being killed. These pastors are just arrogant, and I feel like they want to feel persecuted. But. So when we walk down there, there's one shot in the religion business where in the front lobby alone, there's six armed security guards. Like, what do you guys like? You're. You're. This is what's ironic. We all have kids, they go to schools. Most schools have one resource officer to protect our kids.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

These churches have like 10, 20, 30 armed security guards. Well, I have a buddy, I won't tell to say his name, but he. He started going to a church that I attended for a minute, and he's like, Nathan, they asked me to be on their sniper team. And I was like, what? He's like, yeah, they want me on the roof during outdoor events. And I'm like, let that sink in. These churches are so, like, obsessed with themselves. They're like, let's put a sniper, a private sniper on the roof. I think that's more of a liability than anything, right? Yeah. You've got a guy with a sniper rifle.

[Nathan]

They think like, some, like, suicide Islam person is going to come try to bomb their church or something.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. And you look at, you look at the stats. Yes. There are churches that do have horrific act like, shooting. Shootings.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

There are schools as well. But it's like any mass casualty shooting is awful, but the juice is. Is squeezed different for our children compared to churches. There's one resource officer at the school that's up. And then I got buddies who go to a. We go to a small church and they're talking about sniper teams. Like, I feel like we got too much time on our hands.

[Nathan]

Small church.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

No less.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

We got too much time on our hands, guys.

[Nathan]

And what. So what was the. Speaking of, like, violence in churches, what was that recent thing in San Diego where those dudes with the guns with the crosses on them at the mosque, or was it a mosque?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I. I knew. I know A mock was.

[Nathan]

Maybe it was a mosque. Yeah, there was somebody, somebody who went and shot up a mosque in San Diego. Can you find this, Steve?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It was a school. I think they had a school in session, a kid's school in session.

[Nathan]

And these dudes had crosses carved into their guns. And somebody was telling me that like there was no media reporting of these dudes being Christians at all. Like typically if it's the other way, right? If you have like an Islamic, a terrorist or something that's doing stuff like this, the media is always going to lab them. Like Islamic extremists or like Muslim extremists. But from what I heard, based on somebody who told me about this, is that all the reporting on this San Diego thing, no one like actually called them Christians.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

That'd be fascinating and I could see why. Right?

[Nathan]

Yeah. Maine. Oh, wow. That recent. Three people killed. How many days ago was this? Literally last seven days ago, Three people killed in Islamic center of San Diego shooting tried to draw gunmen away from the mosque. Police say three people were killed in Monday's shooting in San Diego's largest mosque. Two teen shooters, who both. Who have both now been identified by police were found dead with self inflicted gunshot wounds nearby. Keep going. What do you got going on here, Steve? Is this another story? I think that is a different story. I think that's it. Maybe it's just a video. Okay, the video. Find out something else. Get off cnn.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, division sells, right? So of course, divisive news cells. But people do a lot of bad things in the name of Islam and people do a lot of bad things in the name of Christianity, right?

[Nathan]

100 but yeah, it's just interesting how the media tries to spin stuff. It's like the media always tries to lock in on Islam, right? It's never like when's the last time you heard a story of a Christian extremists doing anything? You know, you never, you never hear that in the media.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Rarely for sure. Well, because what's going to sell the continue to sell this Iran war, right?

[Nathan]

Well, one of the craziest things too, which we've talked about ad nauseam on this podcast, is like the whole Peter Thiel thing, trying to, trying to paint everything in Silicon Valley under this guy, under this umbrella of Christianity, you know, have you heard, have you looked into this at all?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I haven't looked into it much. Educate me. You know, I know he did that big seminar on the Antichrist.

[Nathan]

Yeah, he did the seminar on the Antichrist. But there's been this movement that he's been a part of in Silicon Valley where him and a few other guys, few other AI techno billionaires have been, they started, they opened up a new church I think in Silicon Valley. And now you know, Silicon Valley, a place who's that's been historically not religious, been godless, you know, is now like everyone in Silicon Valley is like becoming very, very Christian because all of these CEOs and all these business leaders there that are connected to Peter Thiel are encouraging their companies to be more Christian and to go to church. And it's becoming very much part of the culture in Silicon Valley now, which

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

is very interesting to me because Christianity sells. They figured out how to package it. You know, it's again, 62% of the US is Christian, I believe, or self professed Christian. That's 160 something million people. You know, you're talking about find like

[Nathan]

the New York Post or New Yorker or one of those big articles on that.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Stephen, that's just fascinating to me. It's again, Christianity has been monetized. So yeah, so there's a really cool book that most people, most Christians haven't heard of called the Didache. It was written, they estimate around like 70 A.D. so you know, 35 years after Christ, Christ died. And if you believe in, in the scriptures, you know, Rose, what's it called again? The Didache.

[Nathan]

Didache.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And in the Didache it talks about trafficking Christ in. Trafficking the name of Christ. So only a few decades after Christ dies, the early apostles already see that people are selling his name. And so in chapters 12 and 13 of the Didache, it talks about if someone comes to you because the Bible talks about what the disciples should do and how they should go out and you should go into someone's home and you stay with them and eat what they put in front of you and drink what they put in front of you because the laborer is worthy of his wage. So if I'm out there telling people about this, this itinerant Rabbi Christ and how he's here to, you know, present a saving gospel and save you like you should, you should provide sustenance and shelter for me because I'm, I'm giving you this gift, right? So at that point in the Didache, people were already just leeching off of other people. So it's like, hey, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a rabbi teaching the name of Jesus. I'm going to stay with you for a couple, a week. A couple weeks. And all of a sudden you just start leeching off of, of people.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so the didache, these early apostles are like, hey, here's how we get around this. If someone stays with you for more than three days, tell them to get a job. They got to go get a job. Because it literally says they are trafficking the name of Christ.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so when I look at a lot of institutional churches today in America, I'm like, you're just trafficking the name of Christ. Like you're selling it and you're commoditizing every aspect of that name. And yeah, so yeah, the system's broken, bro.

[Nathan]

It is. And it goes so deep, man. It really does have you. There's also another thing, this study on psychedelics called the, it was called the John Hopkins religious professional study, where Johns Hopkins, they got leaders of every big faith, right, Like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and I think a couple others. And they brought them into this study and they gave them all, I believe, psilocybin. And the goal of it, I believe, was to find some sort of common core to all religions. I think the term for this is perennialism, which is the idea that every religion started from one idea and branched off into its own little thing. And what they found was the drugs enhanced or solidified all of their pre existing beliefs. So when they had their experience on psilocybin, they had. The Christian leader had a very Christian experience, like when he went to wherever he went in his TR on his trip. And the Islam person, the same thing, like their whole experience was Islamic. And it's really interesting because you see the same thing with near death experiences. People historically who've had near death experiences explain wherever they go being directly tied to whatever their belief is. And that goes for Christians, Jewish people, etc. So I find that very, very interesting. Like which one's supposed to be real, right? If each person, when they have near the death experiences, their pre existing belief that's already inside of them is manifested into this. Whatever the, is happening in your brain when you die and you come back or when you take some sort of a psychedelic drug. What does that mean, dude? Like what? How do you explain that?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I don't know, I. I almost died. I had a traumatic brain injury when I was 16 and, and I didn't like go up to heaven, but I was lifelighted from Cabo to San Diego and I firmly believe, like I firmly remember I was laying like I don't remember two weeks of my life, but I do remember being on the plane and really there was a female angel just sitting right above me. And I just never. I just stared at her the whole time until I. Until I touched down. And then I don't remember anything else.

[Nathan]

How did you get a traumatic brain injury?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I fell off like a 40 foot cliff, basically. Yeah. I was on the. I was on a quad with my brother and we were just in the sand dunes and I used to.

[Nathan]

In Mexico.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

In Mexico and I used to jump bikes and motorcycles and so I just saw this little windswept lip and I just hit it. I think I was in like third gear and there was just no back. So the wind had just torn this whole dune up. And so it was like a. Probably a 40 foot drop. And so I chucked the quad. I was 16, I just got my license and I like chuck the quad. And I knocked my little brother off and so I had no more momentum. So I just stuck on the quad and the quad flipped over and just crushed me. Oh, yeah. And so, yeah, I had bleeding on my brain and that was a mess. And so they just duct taped me to a stretcher, put me on the back of a quad and like got me out. And then that was.

[Nathan]

They put you on a plane, right, to San Diego?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, they had to wait. I don't remember the exact details, but

[Nathan]

were you unconscious most of the time?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Most of the time, yeah. Yeah. I just don't remember anything for two weeks. And. And I. I don't remember the exact details, but my grandpa had to get a private plane from Arizona to pick up a nurse and fly down. So. Because I don't think Life Flight would go international, so a private plane had to come down and pick me up. And they had to keep the airport open because it was in the middle of the night the plane came in. So it was a miracle for sure. So that's why I firmly believe in miracles and I firmly believe in the power of prayer because my family's a big. Like I have. My uncle and aunt were missionaries in Kyiv, Ukraine, and there was missionaries in Papua New guinea that we knew. And so there was people all over the world praying for me that whole time. And I firmly believe in the power of prayer, and I think I'm here today.

[Nathan]

What would have happened if you couldn't have gotten that flight?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I probably would have died.

[Nathan]

Really?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

They wouldn't have been able to take care of you, the hospitals there?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

No, this is Mexico. What is that, 25 years ago? This is Cabo before it blew up. So it was like, it was tiny. And I remember the little, tiny hospital I was in, they gave Me, blood thin, like some pain drug which thinned my blood, so the bleeding got worse on my brain. So it was just. It was a tr. I wouldn't have made it in Mexico. And, yeah, when you got.

[Nathan]

When you got back to the States, what do they. What do they end up doing? Like, how do they.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

They were gonna. They were prepping me for, like, brain surgery. I don't remember. They were prepping to relieve the pressure off my brain, and the doctor was like, let me just watch and wait. So they, they. They left me for a few hours and he just monitored me. And the swelling didn't get worse and the bleeding didn't get worse. And so I think I was in there for two weeks. I can't remember the exact time. And the bleeding and swelling just slowly subsided. And I woke up one day just wide awake. And he's like, you're a walking miracle. The doctor said, whoa. And, yeah, I left the hospital and went back to school and I lost my driver's license because I had a grand mal seizure in the dunes. And so.

[Nathan]

What kind of seizure?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Grand mal. It's like the worst type of seizure. Basically, your brain's just disconnected from your body. And so for a couple years, I got brain scans and I think most of the things fell back into place, you know, but. Yeah, so my favorite. My favorite memory of all this is I get back to school and everybody in my class, I'm in June, I think I'm a sophomore. And they made me this big card. And one. One girl, all she wrote was, I thought you died. And just signed her name.

[Nathan]

Oh, no.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And that just stuck with me.

[Nathan]

How old were you?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Pretty funny. I was 16.

[Nathan]

16?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. God, dude.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

But, yeah, Grant, like those. So those near death experiences really reshape the way you think and see things. And. Yeah, but I. I didn't have, like, a Christian experience, if that makes sense. I just. I just saw this being that just sat with me the whole time. It was just right above me, a foot above my head.

[Nathan]

And it was like a woman. Like a male figure.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, it was a female. It was a blonde female.

[Nathan]

And what makes you say it was an angel?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Because she just didn't. She didn't move. She literally, like, hovered there. She. She was. I don't remember her face. I don't remember any detail.

[Nathan]

She just sat just like a presence.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

A presence, but. But a physical. Like, I could see it, you know, And I. And I just stared at it.

[Nathan]

That's bizarre. And you never forgot that?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Never forgot that. Yeah. Now There was a nurse on the plane, so maybe the nurse, like, maybe she was blonde. I don't know. But, like, just. I remember this being right. Like, right there with me the whole time. And then as soon as we landed, it dis. She. That energy disappeared. That being disappeared.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Dude. Yeah, it's. So.

[Nathan]

Yeah. I hear these stories all the time, and it just always blows my mind, you know, because, like, the.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

The.

[Nathan]

The power of belief is a real thing, you know, and you can expl. You can see that when you go into these. When you see the videos of, like, you know, Kenneth. Kenneth Copeland, when he does the things where he, like, the people are lined up and, like, touches them, like.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. Like Benny Hinn whipping them with convuls.

[Nathan]

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there's even people that are, like, exorcists that do this stuff, and they charge money to do exorcist on people, where they even do them over Skype or, like, Zoom.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

And they'll charge, like, 300 bucks a pop to do an exorcism or whatever. And, like, the. Somebody can be in their presence. And they believe so much in the devil. They believe so much that the devil has penetrated their soul. As soon as this guy comes up to them and starts doing something, they start, like, speaking in tongues like a demon and doing these things when that's probably bullshit. Right. That these people believe this stuff so wholeheartedly. And this con man is coming in and convincing you you're possessed by a demon, that you literally. It affects every fiber of your being. You start convulsing.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

Uncontrollably. Because your belief. And there's the perfect analogy that describes this is. There's this. There's this. This voodoo cult in Haiti. I forget the name of it. But they basically. They had this belief. They have this voodoo religion where they. And this is like an. It goes. It's, like, ancient for them. It goes way back where they have this ritual where they will take this. It's a pufferfish venom that they consume. And what it does is paralyzes the body. So they. They take this venom and then they bury the person up to their neck.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, geez.

[Nathan]

Like. Like they're dead. Because that literally paralyzes you. You're conscious and you kind of trip, I think, but you can't move anything. So they bury you. And then they give you this drug called scopolamine. And then when they come back, they believe they're zombies. And they look and they move like zombies. And this religion's been Happening forever. And scientists went down to study them, pharmacologists went down to figure out exactly what they're doing. Anthropologists, they've been studying these guys, these, these, this tribe for years. And they figured out the drugs they were taking, that, that puffer fish venom and the scopolamine and they're like, okay, does this make you, does this really turn you into a zombie? Does this somehow affect your, your psyche at all and make you believe that you're put, turned into a zombie?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

And what they found out was no, like if me and you took this, it wouldn't do that to us. But when you take those drugs in that cultural matrix and in with that belief system that that's going to happen to you, it literally does this to these people.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

So that, that has to be the same thing that's happening with these people that are in these churches that believe so much in this stuff. And these people are coming in there convincing them that, you know, when they touch them, they're going to get blasted by back six, a demon is going to come out of them.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, I don't want to knock anybody's experiences, but I, I agree with you. A lot of this is just stimulus related, you know, But I, I, I do think Kenneth Copeland fully believes he's, he's, he's doing the right, right. He believes in what he's doing. I think Paula White believes that she is, you know, the authority in the word of God. Like I, I think these people actually believe it. On the, on the flip side, there's a church in North County, San Diego. We did a video about it a couple months ago. They have this healer come and he's healed, quote, unquote, healed lots of people. And I know two people personally that this guy's healed their family members and then the family members have died. And there's video in the post about this of this healer praying on this man and he's saying, your cancer is out of your body, you know, in Jesus name, your cancer is gone, you are healed. So this man firmly believes his, his death sentence, cancer that he's about to die from is gone. So he's not taking his treatments. He's like, I'm healed, dies. My, my friend's wife, really sick. Same thing. This guy's coaching her, saying, hey, you're, he have the faith, you're going to be healed. She dies, leaves behind three kids and a husband. At what point do these healers become liable for the medical advice they're giving?

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so this is crazy.

[Nathan]

So like, so.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

But here's his.

[Nathan]

He's convincing them they're healed. So they in turn don't take any sort of like, correct standard caution.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Hey, if I have enough faith, God's going to continue.

[Nathan]

I don't need to take any medicine. I don't change my life at all.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

But here's what's crazy. His rationale is, Nathan. Well, some people do get better, right? And I'm like, are you serious? Of course some people would get better, dude.

[Nathan]

Like, what percentage of them?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I can't remember. I think he said 60. Like he threws. One of his followers threw the stat out. And I'm like, dude, that's probably average in general.

[Nathan]

Well, I think there's something to that, though. I think when you. I think when somebody gets a cancer diagnosis, most, most of the time they. They lose all hope. Yeah. And when they go in there and they get treatment and they're in this hospital, which is a terrible environment to be in, and you're around all these other sick people and like, getting cancer is not a great thing. You probably, you know, it's going to affect your mind, it's going to affect your psyche, it's going to affect everything about you. And you start to become depressed and that has a cascading effect. You know, it has a snowball effect, the negative. And that can weigh on you. And then you start to, like, every day you lose a little bit more hope and to where eventually you mentally give up and then that can literally kill you. So I think there's definitely something to be said for what if you are, it's better to be in the mindset that you are healed, that you are miraculously healed. Right. And other compared to thinking I have this, you know, this terminal illness, it's a death sentence. I only have this much time to live. I guarantee if you took a hundred people and you put them in a study and you took half of them, like a placebo control thing that have like the same cancer, you say 50%, we're going to tell them that they're healed by God and they're going to live. The other 50%, we tell them they're going to die. I guarantee. Like, I would be very curious to see the outcomes there.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I would, I would, I would agree with you on that. That probably is. You could probably perform that study in, in this group. Would. It's like yelling at a plant for, you know, first putting Mozart and letting the plant grow.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Those studies are real, but at the same time, you're claiming multiple. You've healed these people and then they die.

[Nathan]

It's a problem when you're doing it that way.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I don't think that's your power, bro. Now, is mindset a real thing? A hundred percent. Like, I, I, I always tell people in all this arena, whether that be, like, exorcisms or deliverances or healings, it's like I can only speak from my perspective, but I firmly hear God when I'm quiet and when I'm meditating and praying and reading this book, that's when I feel his presence. And that's when I see actual transformation in my life. Me going to these big, loud rooms and being around people, like, and singing songs and getting emotional. That makes me feel good. But I grow when I know the Word and when I know what it does to me and how it transforms me and sanctifies me. And so I actually, as I get older, I get quieter and quieter with that book and with my prayer and my thought, which is that mental exercise of, like, God has me. Right. But the beautiful part is, like, it's a beautiful, painful part. But, like, when Christ, the books, the book claims that when Christ knew he was going to the cross, this guy who's technically God incarnate, per the Scriptures, he sits there and he goes, God, take this cup from me, man. I don't want to drink this cup. And he's. And he's talking about getting crucified, and he's like, I don't want this cup. Like, I'm not ready for this.

[Nathan]

When he's on the cross.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

No, right before. Right before they come and arrest him in the garden of Gethsemane. So he's sitting there and he's praying and he's going.

[Nathan]

There's a lot of speculation about that, about that.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, is there?

[Nathan]

Have you read it?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

No. It's beautiful, though, because he goes, but not. And this is where I'm going. Not my will. Will, yeah, but yours be done. And that is the biggest arc of Christianity, is it's not about me. So it's like, yeah, I want to live a big, beautiful, fulfilled life and see my children age and see grandkids and do all that, but it's not my will. Like, so use me in this moment, God.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And like, you know the way Christ tells us to pray, give us this day. Like, God, give me today. That's the only thing I can see. Everything else out there, I'm not stressed about. I'm not stressed about tomorrow because I can't stress about it. What, what is that going to do? What is, how is that going to benefit me at all? You know, and so when, when I see these healers, it's like you're focused on the, I believe they're focused on these exorcists and all this. You're focused on the wrong outcome. It's like it's not about me.

[Nathan]

Right?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And like that's the beauty and that's the differentiator of I would say of Christianity compared to all other religions. Is, is there, there's, there's major differentiation.

[Nathan]

And all these people too, all these tech people, these tech bros who are like becoming super Christian. They also, at the same time they want to live forever.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, but see that's.

[Nathan]

So put their brains in a vat

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

and then the book talks about Satan coming as light. You know, Satan isn't going to come as this, as this devil with horns and a red cape. He's going to come looking and sounding like this book, but he's not going to be the book.

[Nathan]

Interesting.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

He's going to shift the truth just enough to, hey, you can live forever. This is what the second coming means. We need to build that third temple. This is, you know, this is the thousand year reign of Christ. Man has always tried to build empires, right? And we're just, we're trying to build empires using Christianity as the sales, the sales tool. So there. I haven't done much research on teal in Sacramento or I'm sorry in San Francisco, but I just, I just see them, they see Christianity as a great sales tool. It's the next, the next sales tool.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And you look at Trump and you look at Hegseth and you look at Huckabee and they have such a twisted perspective on this book and most Christians have never read it to where they can use it to leverage their own bias and their own gain is what's happening at scale. So that's why I always tell people, read the book. Please just, just read the book. I don't care anything out of everything, just read the dang book.

[Nathan]

Yeah, no, it's, it's very interesting. I haven't, I obviously I haven't read the whole thing yet, but I've, I've discussed it with lots of people on the show before and there was one pass, that passage you were talking about. I think it's Mark 14 where Jesus is in the park in the garden of Gethsemane and it's like the middle of the night and he's with a naked boy and the boy runs away naked or whatever when the cops come. When the cops come to arrest him. There's lots of classical scholars and Greek scholars and religious scholars in general that there's this like, underground war over what this passage actually means. Not what it means, but like, why would they put that in there? What was happening in there? And so when he gets it marked.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Mark, could you.

[Nathan]

All right, it's mark.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Is it Mark 14?

[Nathan]

Yeah. Pull it up. Steve can pull it up.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Mark 14. What was the verse? Do you know?

[Nathan]

14. 1451. 14.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And now a certain young man following him.

[Nathan]

Yes, that's it. Was that right?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Dude, you nailed it.

[Nathan]

No.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

1451.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Now, a certain young man followed him, having a linen cloth thrown around his naked body, and the young man laid hold of him and he left the linen cloth and fled from them. Naked.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So what's the. What's the.

[Nathan]

So there's people that have questioned, what was Jesus doing in a Park at 1am with a naked little boy? You know, the young man. There you go. Wearing linen cloth, Flood naked. And then allegedly. I've done whole podcasts on this, on this segment, and I've talked with. With religious scholars, I've talked with classical scholars. I've had two classical scholars debate debating this, each debating each other on people that literally dedicate. Dedicate their whole entire lives to translating and reading ancient Greek. Yeah, because when you read the actual Greek. Yeah, it's crazy. The. The words in Greek can have multiple meanings.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

For sure. Yeah.

[Nathan]

You know what I mean?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Multiple meanings.

[Nathan]

So when Jesus was arrested and the cops come, the Roman cops, he goes, why are you coming at me like I'm some lay stace? So the word lay stace has multiple meaning. It can mean a pirate, which also can mean a human child trafficker. So allegedly, when Caesar was kidnapped as a kid, the p. The pirates that kidnapped him, they were like human traffickers. And they took him. He was a child. And then he said, you guys are fools or whatever, you guys need to return me or whatever. There was a ransom that was paid to get him back. And they then as soon as they returned Caesar, he went out and hunted them down and he crucified them. And they called him Lace days cuz they were traffickers. So Jesus is telling the cops, why are you arresting me? Like I'm some trafficker or something like this. And he's in a park with a naked kid. So there's all kinds of weird speculation about this, like, what was Jesus really doing? You know, and we had one guy on here who thinks that Jesus was literally tripping on some sort of a psychedelic drug in the garden and, and using the boy's bodily fluids as an antidote to get over the drug.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

That sounds pretty speculative.

[Nathan]

Like there's a. Bro, there's scholars that debate this. It's, it's, it's wild. And then there's this also this author named Lucian who writes all about viper venoms. Dots, like antidotes and stuff like this.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, yeah.

[Nathan]

And I've read a little bit. So in the ancient world, like, like snake bites were very common. People were always dying from venoms. From snake. Snake bites, right. Yeah. And like even the, the Surgeon general of the Roman Empire, Marcus Aurelius, wrote all about this stuff and they were constantly coming up with antidotes for snake bites. And like the emperors would take these drugs, these cocktails of venoms, like low dose venoms to boost up their immune systems. So because people are constantly trying to get assassinated using venoms. Right?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

So the emperors are paranoid they're going to get killed. And Lucian was saying. I forget exactly what it was. There was a, there was a specific word because Jesus is on the cross and he's very thirsty. Yeah, Right. And apparently those viper venoms make you like extremely thirsty. Like one of the, one of the symptoms of being bitten by one of those vipers that were in that area that caught that part of the world was like extreme, extreme thirst. So like, apparently what Lucian was saying, who's another author, I forget. I think he was like maybe 300 A.D, 3, 3 to 400 A.D. okay. Was speculating that there could have been an antidote to the venom on the sponge, but Jesus refused it. Okay, but like, take this all with a grain of salt for sure. It's just interesting how there's so many authors from the time of Christ, like through the centuries after Christ that were writing and hypothesizing about him.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

And there was even people that were, that were trying to discredit him, people that were trying to make up ancient propaganda about him. And this is the problem with ancient texts, in my view, is that you can read all this ancient Greek.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Greek, yeah.

[Nathan]

Work that has been through the Greek right now, over the centuries.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

And it's like, how do you know what is like an ancient tabloid that's, you know, trying to assassinate the character of some figure or some political figure or some religious figure or whatever it is. Like, you can't just read something and be like, aha, this must be true.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

100. Well, that's why the pendulum of Christ that I talked about is so fascinating.

[Nathan]

Yeah, right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You know, because. Because people say, oh, Nathan, this new King James translation is the infallible word of God. Some people say the NLT is Nathan.

[Nathan]

Right?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And it's like, no, to your point. Gre. Greek has multiple. Like. Like, I love diving into the Greek because there's even words that don't. Like John 1:1 actually ties really closely to Hebrews 6:1. But they use different words, but the Greek is the same.

[Nathan]

And you want to know there's another whole layer to this, bro. There's. There's. There's dictionaries that exist that their whole goal is to change the meaning of words. So, like, I've had people on here debating the meanings of. In the Bible, and they'll be like, well, this one guy will say, no, this was. This is what it means. Means look it up on the dictionary. On the, on the tlg, Right. The Greek dictionary. We look it up. He's like, okay. He's like, no, no, no, no, no. You got to go to this dictionary. You got to go to my Mormon dictionary to find out the real meaning. Like, dude.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

But that's the beauty of. Of Christ is. Is you can be a literalist and believe everything, you know, because I've heard, oh, Nathan, this is just a great example of how the Gospels are accurate because. And they were their own interpretations of what they saw. Because if everybody had written that same thing, that means they're copying each other. But the fact that that Mark, or whoever wrote Mark most likely like that, is the sign that, hey, this is authentic to the. To Mark, to the book of Mark. Right. And so that's the argument I've heard there. But that's what's. Again, that's why the pendulum's so fascinating me.

[Nathan]

Yes.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Because nothing like this scares me about my faith.

[Nathan]

Right. And it shouldn't.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

No, nothing about me questioning the institution scares me. It actually deepens my faith because I'm like, ooh, man made. Traditions are just man made, actually.

[Nathan]

It's just fascinating on every level.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

But we cling to it like nobody's business. Nathan, that church, that business, that institution you were raised in, you're attacking it. I'm like, no, I love the people in that building. I want to actually preach and teach some truth, some biblical truth to them about kind of what that building actually is, you know, and it's. But we, you know, Christ talks about it. You know, the blind lead the blind into a ditch. It's like, we have scales over our eyes because we love our own traditions and our own biases. And as soon as those are questioned, the problem is, hey, if I've given to this church all my life, I'm an idiot. If all of a sudden they're taking advantage of me or the system's taking advantage of me. I have to admit, man, I've been taken advantage of. And that takes humility, right? To be able to say, dude, I've been given to this system, them. And they've kind of been robbing me, you know? And when you look at the institutional church, 6 cents of every dollar given only, like, only 6 cents goes outside the walls to actually help the people that Christ told us to help.

[Nathan]

Yeah, that's crazy.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And that's just, like, all. And I love. I got. I want to listen to some of these podcasts that you have, because I love you, too. Yeah, I love the debates because, again, it only deepens my faith because I'm like, I actually want to know as much as possible, and I want to live like Christ. Like, there's no. In my opinion, there's no more ultimate way to live than live for others. And so it's like, sweet. If I can do that.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Home run.

[Nathan]

That's a very good message.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. And someone. Someone said, well, Nathan, what happens if it's all a sham? What happens if, like, it's not real, right? Like, what happens if you die and you just go dark?

[Nathan]

Well, how do you prove it? You can't read a time.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You can't. But I'm like, awesome. What a great way to live then, right? I've followed a book that, hey, there's no heaven, there's no Jesus, but I followed this book and lived for others. I'll take that any day of the week still.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so it's like, that's where. That's where I'm like, you know what? I have my faith in Christianity. My faith has just been deepened. And the more I'm in this word and soaking in it, the more it radically changes my life. And, yeah, so that's. That's my encouragement to people in regards to Christianity. And Christ is like, don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid of verses like that.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I'm proud that you nailed it.

[Nathan]

Yeah, you can't.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

1451.

[Nathan]

Right? I mean, there's been a lot of books critical of the Bible and. And, you know, the Bible, from what I understand. And I've heard smarter people than me explain that it's full of Contradictions. There's, you know, lots of the stuff. Lots of the stuff that's mostly testimony, right? Like, unbelievable testimony. Like, you know, there's that guy, Thomas Paine, I think he was a philosopher who wrote a book called the Age of Reason, where he does, like, a thorough examination of the Bible. And, like, he's very critical of the Bible. And he was one of the founding fathers. He was, like, close to Thomas Jefferson. And, you know, one of the cases he makes is like, oh, the Bible, you know, it's a book composed of testimony with anonymous sources that. With claims that are unimaginable, right? So he's like, he uses the example, like, imagine you're in court or. Or imagine you're in your everyday life. Are you going to believe somebody's testimony just based on the fact that they told it to you? Now claim that the testimony came from an anonymous source. Now claim that. That. That testimony that came from the anonymous source is that somebody moved the sun and the moon. A human being was able to move the sun and the moon or have a conversation with God. Like, that's what the Bible is. It's composed of testimonies that are like that. So, like, some people, like, they want to just look at that, like the hard materialist view of that, of the book, and that's the reason they. They can't believe it. Or they want to call themselves an atheist or something like that. But for me, it's like, you know, I'm in the boat where I don't believe and I don't not believe, right? I'm just fascinated by 100%, and that's

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

a great place to be. And in regards to the contradictions in the book, I find it a fascinating study. And I talk to lots of Christians who I firmly respect who believe this book is the infallible word of God. And I play with them. I'm like, okay, Judas died. How did he die? He died three different ways, right? I don't think you can die three different ways, right? You can only die one way. Like, did he hang himself? Did his guts explode in the field? Like, how did he die? And in my opinion, those subtle differentiators in these stories, if the three of us go out to dinner and we walk around downtown, our three stories tomorrow, when we write them down, will be slightly different. And so that's the beauty of it is it's like, to me, it confirms the authenticity. It doesn't mean. Nathan, like, look at every small nuance that is actually a contradiction, because these stories do contradict each other sometimes. But when you look again, the story of the Bible is one story. It's creation. It's, are we created or are we chance? I think we are created. And I wrestled with that for 30 years of my life. And then the fall, like there's an inherent sin I believe, like baked into humanity. I do agree with that. And like, I firmly believe that. And so, okay, what's the outcome of that?

[Nathan]

That's interesting.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I want to redeem myself. Like, I want to be redeemed and I can't redeem myself. My Creator has to. That's the story of this book.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And that's it. And then all the other nuance, the translation issues, the hiccups and humanity and how we've leveraged and weaponized this book. I'm all for all those discussions because at the end of the day, the book's about one story. And like, that's what I love about it. But we get so obsessed because a lot of the times I always say people have their. And my Christian friends love to hang me on this. I'm like, I think there's a big difference between belief and faith. So belief is, I believe this. So my, my understanding is rigid. This is my belief. It's usually a bias that you're raised in. Like, I was raised in a non denominational church. I was raised, you know, sex is wrong and drinking is wrong and cussing is wrong. And I was raised, you know, you

[Nathan]

know, follow the rules.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Follow the rules. And when you get married, you have a ceremony and you do this and you sign this contract. Contract. And that's my belief structure. But faith, I'm not a. When you have faith, you're looking only forward and you're saying, God, you've got me, like, teach me, pour into me. And you're not afraid of, of conflicts, you're not afraid of constructive criticisms or even outright, you know, individuals arguing against your point because you're like, hey, like, my God's got me and I am created. I do firmly believe that. So other than that, it's like, I

[Nathan]

do think some of the people like that. That too. They also do the, they do Christianity a disservice by acting like that. It's like you're, you're acting like a fool. I had a guy on here once, this one of the, those exorcist dudes who we got into a back and forth about drugs. And you know, he was making the case that he was trying to argue with me that drugs were the devil. And if you go, if you use drugs, you're. It's an apostasy. You're going to go to hell. And all this stuff, it's not what God would want it. And then I was like, well, what about legal drugs? What if they're legal on. Under the Constitution and they're being used to cure ailments or, like, things like PTSD or cancer or whatever like that? Oh, well, that's a different thing. Don't try to play that game with me.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, my God.

[Nathan]

I'm like. And I'm like. And I'm like, also, how come every time I get really high or smoked a ton of weed, all I think about is spending more time with my kids?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

Is that the devil?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. You know, or put that illegal substance against illegal substance, like alcohol.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

A lot more people die from alcohol.

[Nathan]

Oh, yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You know, like. Yeah, that's an interesting one.

[Nathan]

I do believe, like, my point is, like, people like him.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

They bastardize it and they give it a bad name.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. Well, because it's a legalistic faith or a legalistic belief.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You follow these rules, you're good.

[Nathan]

Yes.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You're going to get into heaven. It's like, I don't really care about heaven, to be honest. Like, you know, when Christ prays, he goes. When he tells you how to pray, he goes, you know, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We're trying to bring heaven down, and I think we can do that. I think there's moments where heaven comes and clips the earth.

[Nathan]

What do you think happens when we die?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I have no idea, man. I'm excited for it. It's the last great adventure, you know, Like, I've lived a pretty cool life, pretty wild life, and I'm like, it's gonna be the biggest adventure yet.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You know.

[Nathan]

So you don't think there's a heaven?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

No, no, I believe there's. I do believe there's something, but I don't. I don't think the streets are paved with gold.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You know, like. Like the. Like the Psalms. And there's beautiful. The stories in the Bible about the streets being paved with gold and. And it's more beautiful than you can imagine. But you're talking about the quote, unquote, God that made gold. Like, I think a lot of these stories are poetry. And it's like when the author was sitting there writing, what is the most beautiful thing he could imagine? Streets of gold. Do I really think, my God, who. When I've seen a child Be born and just weep over that. That is so much more beauty. Like, there's so much more beauty in that moment than in every street in America being paved with gold. I could care less about gold. So do you think, my God, who would give us glimpses of heaven, like, that would. Would be like, okay, I'm gonna pave my streets with gold? No.

[Nathan]

No.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's like, I have no idea what that is gonna be like, but it's gonna be. I. I use this analogy of, like, I think our God is a loving being who gave part of himself in us. That's the breath of life in man. And I think when I die, my breath's just going back to him. Like, whatever sliver of him that's in me, it's going back to him. And I've seen a lot of people die, and I've seen footage from ICAC officers, actually, where they show me murder victims, and. And. And you'll see a mist rise off some of the bodies.

[Nathan]

Whoa. What?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, so he's like, check this out. And. And, yeah, there's literally, like, a white mist that hovers and then goes, like, the soul, something.

[Nathan]

That's wild.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. And I'm like, see? And I'm like, that's the. That's that energy going back. That's that sliver. And I'm like, who am I to be like, okay, God, when I get to heaven, I want to surf perfect waves, you know? I want to. I want to sing and have fun. No, dude, he just wants his energy back, and I'm stoked. I'm like, let's go. Bring me home, whatever that is. You know? But until then, I want to live like Christ. And whatever happens up there. I don't know, like, whatever happens in Revelation, I'm not the foreseer. I'm not a prophet. I won't.

[Nathan]

It's just interesting to think. Have you ever done psychedelics?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

No. I've. In my 20s, I had fun, but I was terrified of psychedelics because my mind is already super jacked up.

[Nathan]

You never tried psychedelics? No.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I've had a lot of friends who have, and we have this discussion a lot because I'm like, I think my business partner does psilocybin. I think Psilocybin. Don't quote me on that. And he talks about how he's had great experiences, and I know a lot of military people in the military that have come out and gone down to South America and down Ayahuasca, and they come back transformed. I know. I know. Victims who have done that, and they come back, like, literally transformed. And I, I, I've gotten to talk with a lot of them, and I'm like, there's something super healing about that. I just. Since I've, like, I said, I've messed. I was an idiot in my 20s. Like, I'm very glad to be here today.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

But when I look at drugs in illicit substances, even alcohol, like, because I. I love a good tequila, but I'm like, I think God gave us the power to work through all of that.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

In meditation and in prayer, if that makes sense. And in silence. And that's just my take on it is, I think. And who was I talking with? Do you know Blurry Creatures that podcast? Luke Rogers, Aaron Rodgers? They talk about the Nephilim.

[Nathan]

Aaron Rodgers.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Aaron Rodgers, brother Luke, Roger. Creatures, Blurry creatures. Great guys.

[Nathan]

Talks about Nephilim.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And, yeah, they're obsessed with the Nephilim and the Apocrypha. They're great.

[Nathan]

That's amazing.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

But we were talking with them, and. And they're like, yeah, we feel like. I can't remember it was Lucas or his. One of his counterparts, but they were like, yeah, I feel like it shortchanged, the payoff of the healing, so to speak.

[Nathan]

Shortchanged.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Like, it rushes the process.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Like, there's beauty in the struggle.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. You know, like, I sat with one of my close friends last night, with my wife, and. And we went to dinner, and. And he just lost his wife. And he's, you know, he's just, like, exhausted and beat up, and, you know, just. He's like, I. I'm so. I can't remember the exact language he said, but it was. He's like, I'm in so much pain, but I know, like, God is sitting here with me, and, oh, man, my wife brought up a Spurgeon quote, and it was basically about, in the darkest moments, like, that's where the biggest growth happens.

[Nathan]

Yes, that's totally true.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And it's like, so you don't want to shortchange that, you know, like. Like, don't ignore it. Don't try to manage it. Like, sit in the pain like your creator sitting there with you. And that's when the growth truly happened. So I'm just saying, like, I don't know if. If psychedelics shortchange that at all, you know, because. Because I've been in some really, really dark moments in my life where I just sit there and I, like, feel the. Feel the weight of eternity and, you know, just resting on my Shoulders. I'm like, oh, this is, this is real.

[Nathan]

Yeah. You know, because like, when I'm reading Revelation, that was the first thing I thought of when I was reading drugs. I'm like, are these dudes on psychedelics?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, for sure.

[Nathan]

How else do you explain this? Yeah, how do you rationally explain this? Like, are they making it up or are they on drugs? But you know, when you think, are they aliens?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. He talks about, you know, there's a. John talks about like, like being pulled up in the spirit. You know, it talks about his spirit being pulled up. And it's like, there's moments where you have these out of body experiences, you know, where it's like I feel like John was on some massive trip, whether drug induced or not.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You know, but he's sitting there and being shown this, you know, this revelation. It's like that's, that's a pretty powerful trip. But I feel like again, as I get quieter in my life and as I like, meditate on the scripture more and I pray, I'm like in constant prayer. I feel like my life is a prayer. Like I'm actually seeing so clearly for the first time. Not for the first time, but I'm seeing patterns and I'm seeing things. So I almost feel like there's moments where I'm in the spirit too, if that makes sense. Where I'm quiet enough, where I'm seeing, I'm like, oh, I see you, God. I see the path, and we call them breadcrumbs in the religion business. But like, I. I feel like I always talk about the show. God, like, would put a breadcrumb in front of me and I'd walk and pick it up.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And eat it. And then there'd be another one, you know. But now it's like I see us. I see the trail more.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And I'm like. And I feel like that's what. What, what the will of God is. And like, so I'm like, oh, I see the will of God. And it's sometimes not to my benefit, you know, but I'm like, oh, I see it. And I see where I need to go. And so I like yearn for that feeling now where I'm like, like in lockstep. I feel, I'm like, oh, I see what you're doing with me. I see where you need me to go. And sometimes it's good for me, sometimes it's not, you know, but I see it. And I'm going to walk that path.

[Nathan]

Can you give me, like, an example of one of those moments.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. So what is sin? I'm going to back up real quick. Like, when you translate sin, it just means missing the mark, like an archer.

[Nathan]

Okay.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You know, I'm looking for that bullseye. So what's the bullseye? Is what I ask most Christian friends, and they can't answer. And I'm like, well, you have to know what the bullseye is if. If you're talking about sin.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I think the bullseye is. Is the will of God. It's if I'm in lockstep or behind God and I can see the bullseye, that's where I'm being used. That's where I'm safest. So a good example is, so God is the bullseye. God, his will.

[Nathan]

His will is the will of God.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So when Christ says prays in the garden, you know, like, take this cup from me, but not my will, but yours. Christ is showing his humanity, going, like, I don't want this. I don't want to hang on this cross. It's going to be brutally painful. Like, take this from me, but not my will. Because he's saying, this is my bullseye. I don't want it, but your will. And so if the bullseye is me hanging on a stake of wood, I'm going to do it. And so that's what I mean is like. It's like, okay, like, how do I get in line to the will of God? Like, how do I click in.

[Nathan]

In?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And it's. It's. I have to completely drain myself of Nathan. Like, Nathan can't. My desires, my flesh, like, it has to be totally drained out. And that's when I feel like most in line. And so it's literally like a meditative state for me. It's like when I'm. When I feel I don't have to do anything, if that makes sense. Like, I have my skills. I'm a filmmaker. I'm like, I love people. I want to help. But so it's almost like I feel, when I feel myself be pulled, like a flow state. A flow state, Exactly. Like, it's that moment on a wave exactly where you are so locked in that you're not thinking. You're watching the ribs of the wave come up, you know, and you're just like. You feel your rail and you're not doing anything. Like, you're just leaning into it. Sister Rosemary talks about it in the religion business, season one. She's this. This Catholic. What would she call a mother? I don't even know out in Uganda. And she took about a vow of celibacy, a vow of poverty, and a vow of charity. And I mean, like, this woman is just like, amazing and wow. And she pulled like she would all these young women that would be abducted. These kids that would be abducted in Gulu and in northern Uganda, they'd be taken into the rainforest and they'd be turned into child support soldiers. The boy would be. The boys would be turned into child soldiers. The girls would be taken on as child wives. And so she basically said, hey, any girl that wants to come out of that forest, you can. You have safety on. My comment.

[Nathan]

What episode is this?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

She's in three of the seven episodes. Yeah, season episode one and two are like super legal. So you learn that. You got to learn the architecture, but then it starts speeding up.

[Nathan]

Got it.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are super adventurous. But so now she's got like 300 women on her convent and their kids. And I'm like, how much does it take to run this whole operation? And she's like, I don't know, like $80,000 a year. And I'm like, wait, what? To run this multi acre facility with schools for the kids and the women are learning trades. I'm like, this is cool. But she goes, nathan, I'm like, how do you pull this off? And she goes, I don't know. And I'm like, what do you mean you don't know? And she goes, I don't know. I just. When I see a need, I fill it and I just step out into the unknown. And so this is that flow state. And I'm like, what do you mean? And she goes, yeah, if I. If I see something I feel led to do it, I just do it. And I fall into the unknown. And that's where I find God. Because God is the unknown, because he's been there before. He's everywhere. And I'm like, holy crap. That's where I want to get to. That's that flow state where you feel so locked in. And I see Sister Rosemary, and she's so locked in. Got the biggest smile on her face, you know?

[Nathan]

How does she pay for all that?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Donors. She. She has to. She doesn't get a dollar from the Catholic Church. This is what's so crazy.

[Nathan]

What's her mansion look like?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, it's. I've been. I've been to her. Her. It's. It's one room in a. In like a. A building. And this is my favorite part, too. I'm like, okay, Sister Rosemary. So we're in Uganda. She shows me this beautiful. Like, this beautiful space.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And she's trying to get it to actually where it becomes break even. This is a brilliant model to where she never asks for a dollar again. And so I'll get to that. But I'm walking around with her, and I'm like, hey, where's your church? Like, where do people worship? And she goes, you don't want to see my church building. And I'm like, why? She's like, it's a storage facility. And I'm like, wait, what? She's like, yeah, that's just where we keep all our boxes and stuff. And I'm like, well, where do you worship? And she's like, everywhere. She's like, right now she's like, I go and pray with the girls. We do this. She's like, we don't need that. Like, we need places to store things. So the church is. The building is where we store things.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And I was like, that is so awesome. She's so busy outside the walls of the church, she doesn't even have time. That place is a storage unit for her. And so what was the other. Oh, so this is what's cool. So she needs 80,000 a year right now to run the school for the women. She keeps 300 women full time with their kids in school. And then she also has an orphanage in a town away. And then she feeds a couple hundred orphans in South Sudan. And so everything has a little cost, but she's like, yeah, we just started a farm. And so in a couple years, the farm's going to be able to feed all the kids in Sudan. And then the women learn to make clothes at the school. So we sell the clothes in the markets, and then we also have contracts with the. With the restaurants. So we make their aprons and their shirts. And I'm like, are you. And then she has a little auto body shop. And I'm like, and then they have a restaurant on site that the public can come in and eat at. And she's like, yeah, I want to get to the point where we never have to ask for a dollar again. And I'm like, this is cool. You flipped the model, right? Because right now you go into an average church, and the average leader will say, hey, I'm not going to give you a fish, because you need to learn to fish for yourself. Which is a good. Hey, teach a man to fish. But what is the institution doing? Doing? Give us all your fish. We need fish constantly. Give us your Money, Give, give, give, give. And we've created an institutional model that is so donor hungry, it's literally just beggars. 400000 beggars. Whereas you have women like Sister Rosemary who are like, we're gonna flip the model. The husband and wife in Rio, remember in Brazil that I told you about, they never took a dollar because they're like, we're gonna make bricks and we're gonna teach people how to work work. Like the model is just flipped. But so it's.

[Nathan]

Yeah, it's just so anti Western society.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Correct.

[Nathan]

You know.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, and that's, that's the thing is

[Nathan]

when we look at why it works. Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, when we look at our culture, it's like in, in our institutional structures. I don't, like, everybody's like, oh, you hate on pastors. I don't. They're byproducts of the system they were raised in, just like you and I are. But we have to be hopefully wise enough and discerning enough to step back and look at the systems we play in and say, how can we better this? And for churches, it's, how can we bring transparency back into the financials? That shouldn't be a rocket. Like a big question to ask for politics. How can we clean up our government so foreign lobbies aren't buying us out. Right. You know, these shouldn't be difficult questions to ask, but for some reason they are. And so, yeah, we're here. People always ask me, they go, okay, you have this unquenchable desire to call out pastors. And I'm like, it's very quenchable. Like, just bring reform into the system. Bring transparency into the businesses. And you will never hear from me again about this. Like, that's all I care about. Like, just bring transparency into the financial system. That's it. I'll be gone. I'll go surf ringcon. I haven't surfed much in, in five years. I'd love to be surfing.

[Nathan]

What can, what can like everyday people do? Like everyday churchgoers do?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

That's a great question because, because we have a lot of people. So we started an online Wednesday night, like meeting where my biblical mentor comes on and just teaches for 20 minutes. Then we have this big conversation and it'll usually last about two hours. And it's awesome. And a lot of people are like, well, I don't like, should I leave the church? And I say, no, don't leave your church. It's your job to reform that church. Like, it's your job as A leader as someone who sees the problem to go back in and say, hey, we need to clean this up up.

[Nathan]

Right?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And so my encouragement to people is start asking questions and look at your pastor and say, hey, when a p, when you ask a pastor, hey, what is your salary? And they won't tell you. Say, I understand that this is nerve wracking and scary, but you got to do it for like when you look at the, look at industries in the, in the publicly traded space in every publicly traded company, salaries are known.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Budgets are numb. Stake shareholders know where the money goes in the non profit sector. Donors know where the money goes on Form 990 in public institutions and libraries and hospitals. You know where the money goes in churches for some reason, all of a sudden you don't know where the money goes. I think, I think it's a super nefarious actor behind all this. That, that is. So here's a big one. Well, let me finish the statement about the church. So, so as a congregant, it's your job to bring transparency and accountability back. And so pray on it, meditate on it. Like a church should be regulated and operated like every secular nonprofit. You should file a 990 or at least your donors and congregants should know the basic Data on the 990, if that makes sense. And that's all we're asking for from a transparency side of things. And so, and I think we can get there. And I think it's not an unreasonable thing to ask. And I think all we need is a couple pastors, like well known pastors to stand up and say, I agree, like it's a dark, it's a dark, it's a dark industry. A dark trillion dollar a year industry. Let's clean this thing up, you know?

[Nathan]

Yeah. What would that do? If it all became transparent?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Dude, it would kick the wolves out. So the people who are in the system that are taking advantage of it would leave. They'd be booted. And then for the.

[Nathan]

But who would boot them if they're in charge?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

The congregants, you think, oh yeah, if. So here's an example. If you went to a church and, and you give, you make 100 grand a year and you've been giving 10. So you give 10,000 bucks a year to this church and you've been going for a decade, so you've given them a hundred grand.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

If all of a sudden you find out that your pastor is making $6 million a year, would that rub you wrong?

[Nathan]

Me it would, but I don't know if it would rub everybody wrong. Well, that's like the thing, like the 65 year old woman who is a widow and goes by herself and literally goes to church three times a week, what have you. I feel like there's a huge chunk of people that would just find a way to justify it.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So I agree with you on that. So that's where people go. Nathan, why do you. Who makes you the arbiter? It. I'm not the arbiter. Right. Just bring transparency in. And if mama Joe doesn't mind that her pastor makes 6, 6.5 million a year, so be it. It's not my, it's not my judgment call, but just bring the transparency in. And I do think Christians, and I know this book enough that Christians would have a problem because there's this awesome topic that, no, I've never heard a pastor preach on called sordid gain in the Bible. So basically misappropriated gain or unjust gain. And if, when you look at institutions, a $6.5 million salary for being a pastor, a shepherd is unjust gain. And I would bet 7 out of 10, like Christians would think that is unjust gain. And what would they do? They'd leave and go to another church and they'd take their money with them. And so it's like anything, pinch the, pinch the money funnel and people will, the system will change. Same thing with politics. Pinch the lobby funnel, pinch the foreign aid or the foreign lobbying funnel. And, and it would change overnight.

[Nathan]

Are there any big forces, like big forces pushing back against this? Just pastors other than like people like you, grassroots people.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, you mean pushing back for transparency?

[Nathan]

Yes. Like, are there any people in power who want this to happen?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yes, but it's, it's off, it's quiet because they understand the, they understand the, the handshake between politic and religion in America.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So Phil Hackney, he's in season one. He oversaw the whole nonprofit sector for the irs. So basically the lead brain to, to understand this whole mechanism. And he's like, the government's not going to get involved, Nathan. He's like, go clean up your own house. Because it would be a, it would be a, a death wish for the government. Right. It would. Civil war would start. People would start talking about civil war if you tried to reform the institutional church from the politics.

[Nathan]

Really.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So we just need to get like, we as Christians need to take control. Start talking about civil war Christians. Oh, have you not? Like, they love a good persecution. If, if I would, I would bet most pastors, if you said, hey, if the government started filing a 990, would that be persecution of the church? Most pastors would say yes.

[Nathan]

Wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And all you're saying is, hey, just give an information. A legally informational. A legally binding informational sheet on where your money goes. And they say that's persecution. No, those Christians in Nigeria being murdered, that's persecution for their faith.

[Nathan]

What is your take on. There's a lot of chatter online in the White House. Just released those alien files or whatever. What do you think? How do you think that affects religion or the church or. My take on it? A lot of people think that it's going to like, destroy religion. I don't think that. I think people are going to find a way to cope with it. And just like, I can cope just how, you know, any, any person like you.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

Can get over a contradiction in the Bible. I think most people are going to get. Are going to be able to cope with the fact that, like, aliens are real. You know, I think that that's not going to.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well for most people.

[Nathan]

I think people find a way to get over it or get well.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And what would you call an angel? What would you call a spirit?

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

That can, that can, you know, transfer through realms. I would call that alien. You know, it's like, who knows what's out there? I don't know what's out there. I don't know what the files have. But again, it goes back to that idea of belief for faith.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Like a belief of the legalistic and rigid eye of faith. Like, and I'm excited. Like, show me whatever you got, bro.

[Nathan]

Like, yeah, well, there was this guy who was on, this guy named Hal put off, who was on Joe Rogan's podcast, and he was on a bunch of other podcasts recently, and there was like a huge thing that came out with him. He worked for the government in like the 70s or 80s whenever Nixon was. And under Nixon, he was tasked to put together a report on what would happen if they disclosed all the UFO stuff. And part of the report was like a pros and cons list. And on that pros and cons list was like organized religion. What would happen to society and people who have believe in or a part of organized religions. And that was one of the cons, is that it would have a drastic negative effect on religious institutions and people's faith and stuff like that. And that was one of the reasons they decided under Nixon not to release the UFO stuff. So I'm Always curious to hear people's takes. And there's lots of people, like another professor of religious studies that we had in here, Diana Pasolka from North Carolina. She is of the belief that a lot of the stories in the Bible and stuff, even stories that were taken out of the canon, she thinks that they were likely the same thing that we're seeing in the sky now, whether you want to call them angels or whether you want to call them UFOs. Yeah, she thinks a lot of that same stuff is probably. It's probably a lot of the same stuff.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, have you read the Apocrypha or any of the apocryphal writings?

[Nathan]

No, but I heard it's great.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's amazing. Like. And you got to realize the Apocrypha was in the Bible until 200 years ago. So you had a whole set of books that have been removed from this Bible. Every Christian read those books or studied those books up until a couple hundred years.

[Nathan]

A lot of Christians stay away from that, right?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yep. And you got to think why. You know, it talks about dragons, it talks about all sorts of things. Christ actually, actually quotes one of the. One of the writers in the Apocrypha. And so that's my favorite play is like, for my Christian friends. I'm like, well, don't you want to read the guy Christ was quoting? And they're like, nope.

[Nathan]

Who did he quote?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I think it was the Book of Sirach. It was a parable about. I believe.

[Nathan]

I can't remember.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It was a parable about a wet flower. And basically this guy. I don't want to butcher the story, but. But makes cakes. Yeah, he makes cakes for, I think, the needy. And it was supposed to be for his daughter's wedding. And he goes back, and the. The flower just keeps magically appearing.

[Nathan]

What did you search, Steve?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

No, you gotta type in Jesus's quote.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, Type in story about flower. Yeah, there we go. So, book of Apocryphal. Book of Siroc.

[Nathan]

Jesus quote.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. The flutes disclosed. Yeah, it's so. So all I'm saying is that the Apocrypha is a brilliant set of books, but it doesn't bode well for the modern institution. You know, it's. It's very. They talk about Nephilim, they talk about giants. It really goes down. That is.

[Nathan]

Is the Enoch part of the Apocrypha.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Enoch's part of the Apocrypha.

[Nathan]

Okay, I see.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

It's. It'd be considered an apocryphal writing.

[Nathan]

Right, right, right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And what's crazy is the book of Jude. Like you flash forward to the book, Right. And this is what's crazy.

[Nathan]

I read that too.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, you did? Okay.

[Nathan]

Not the book. I read the letter to Jude. Is that what it is?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, it'd be Jude.

[Nathan]

It was like a one page thing.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, it's right, right before Revelation. So this is what's cool about Jude. Here we go. Jude. Yeah.

[Nathan]

What's he asking for the soldiers or something there? He's like, give me your soldiers.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, the, the, the crazy thing about Jude is he quotes the book of Enoch. And so it, it's just fascinating to me that you have books in this Bible that quote apocryphal writings, but people don't want to read the apocryphal writings. And you have to ask why like our original, like the 66 book Canons, Authority authors want to quote the apocryphal writings. Why don't we at least want to read them?

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You know, and again they were in the canon until a couple hundred years ago.

[Nathan]

And then you have the Infancy Gospel where Jesus kills a kid.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Oh, that's not. There is a lot of, there's a. Yeah, there's a lot of gospels that I don't know about and a lot have been, you know, there's a lot of scholarship on certain books. If they were, if you, if they were written by an anonymous writer who was running writing under the pseudonym of one of the apostles, you know, decades or 100 years later, there's a, of stuff. I am not a biblical scholar in that regard. There's far more brilliant, brilliant men and women out there than, than me in that regard.

[Nathan]

But the, the, the Infancy gospel about Jesus when he, he kills a kid in the infancy B gospel and then I think he brings him back to life afterwards, I'm not sure. But yeah, there's so many of them.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

But it's like, like this shouldn't scare any Christ followers.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And again, I go back to that pendulum. It's like anything that comes onto the table, read it and pray on it and meditate on it and you know, do research on it. Like research is a brilliant thing.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You know, we've got a lot of scholarship out there and it sounds like that's what you thrive in, which is awesome.

[Nathan]

Yeah, I just love hearing people's different takes on the biblical stuff and you know, the ancient religions and you know,

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

well, let's go like, I wanna, I wanna get.

[Nathan]

And like even like the, like the, the Eleusinian mysteries is what got me into all this stuff. This book by. It was called the Road to Elusis by Carl Ruck, Gordon Wasson and Albert Hoffman. And Carl Ruck was a Harvard classical scholar. So basically a Harvard Greek expert. Yeah, and Gordon Watson was a, like a mushroom expert. I forget what the word for. Is it ethno, ethnobot, biologist or something. And then the other guy was the guy who made LSD and they wrote this whole book about the Illusinian mysteries in ancient Greece. How the people, these people there would be this yearly thing where people would go to Elusis, this temple in Elusas where they would partake in these mysteries, these mystery rights where they would consume wine that was allegedly contained that this fungus called ergot that grows off wheat and it would produce a psychedelic effect. And they. Basically the idea is this is where the whole story of death and rebirth comes from. And Persephone, is this where they found it?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

In the jar? The, the jars, They've like trace, they've traced it into the jars.

[Nathan]

Yeah, this is.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

They found the psychedelic laced in the jars.

[Nathan]

Yeah, that's part of it for sure. What is this, Steve? Because this is the Infancy Gospel. Because you have such a boy, you can't live with us in the village or else teach him to bless and not curse. No, that's not the quote. Anyways, read the Infancy Gospel, I'll check it out.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I've never even heard of it.

[Nathan]

It's interesting.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, yeah, but so there's this idea of, you know, I'm really fascinated with the early church in Acts and you know, they shared all. And this is that idea of socialism versus Capitalism. Socialism and communism don't work. Work from a government perspective, right? Socialism is an individual perspective. A social ideology is. Hey, when I have, and this is in the scripture, when I have plenty, I share like. And when I need, someone's going to help me, right? This, this idea of social communities, this

[Nathan]

works with a small village, right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And it works from, it works from an individual to individual level. And that's what the gospel is like. Christ's message is an individual to individual. It's relationship. It's you and me, it's in our God. And so if I see you in need or you see me in need, I will help you. And so when you look at the early church of Acts and then the early church for the next 300 years before Constantine adopted Christianity and became a Christian, you have to see what, what the early Christians were doing in Rome to really transform an entire superpower. So think of think of dropping 2,000 people in the middle of the US and be like, transform this nation. Odds are it wouldn't happen.

[Nathan]

Right?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

There's only a couple thousand Christians, Christ followers after he's crucified, but they go into Rome and it's because of their actions they were living out Christ. So what were they doing? They were picking up the orphans on the streets. Like back then, there was no value in life. So if I couldn't afford a baby and my wife just had her, our seventh baby, we just. Just throw it on the street. You can't afford it. There's no value to that life. And so the Christians were picking up these orphans. Same thing with the elderly and the widowed. A widowed woman, an old widowed woman. There was no value. She was a. She's a carrying capacity or a carrying issue. Right. So the Christians were bringing the elderly widows into their houses too. And the Romans were going like, I'd rather hang out with them than hang out with the individuals persecuting them, them. Because at the same time, in the worst persecutions, they were throwing Christian kids as meat and sport to the wolves and the wild animals in the coliseums. So at one moment you had Christians being persecuted, then you look over the wall and you see these same people you're watching get killed. Pick up the orphans and the widows and take them in. So naturally, the culture started shifting in a positive direction to these people that lived out this message of Christ. Christ. So when you look over that. And then what did Constantine do? He became a Christian. He adopted Christianity. Polytheism was slowly wiped out, and Christianity got the resources of their polytheistic gods at that moment. So Christianity for a moment in time, became really brilliant because it was like a startup. It had money. So hospitals were a byproduct of this collision of, of, of business and commerce and government and faith. So hospitals are a direct byproduct of Christianity. There was no such thing as a hospital before.

[Nathan]

Yeah, there was. What about that? What about the Asclepian temples of 400 BC?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

I'm pretty sure.

[Nathan]

Hospitals and orphanages, the ancient Greek temp, Ancient Greek hospitals.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Those ancient Greek hospitals.

[Nathan]

Yeah, the temple temples of Asclepius, I believe it was. Pull it up, Steve. Steve, you look like a samurai today, bro.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

He does. Slaying these. These web searches. Oh. Modern hospitals are heavily shaped.

[Nathan]

Asclepia were ancient Greek and Roman healing temples dedicated to Asclepius, the God of medicine, functioning as the world's first holistic healthcare centers. Over 300 of these sanctuaries yeah. Which combined physical remedies, natural therapies and spiritual rituals were established across the Mediterranean. Does it give you a time? What's the time frame? Type in, say what year.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Gotta love AI.

[Nathan]

Yeah, right. Okay, so I was right, 400 BCA.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, yeah. So, so Chat says Christianity contributes to something closer to a public, public charitable hospital. Caring for the poor, the strangers and the sick is a religious duty. And so. But orphanage, the word orphanage did not exist prior to this collision. So orphanages were, that were a direct byproduct. And the modern hospital will say is. That's interesting. I've never, never heard that. But. So there's this beautiful moment where an organic faith gets the, the backing of a big institution. Right. And so beautiful things happen. Modern hospitals created orphanages are spun up for the kids in the streets. But then what happens is it naturally corrupts.

[Nathan]

Yeah. So, yeah, look at, I mean, look at people who own hospitals today. Like. Oh, yeah, this same, this same story permeates into every industry.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. So when you look at Christianity in early Rome, it was actually dangerous to Rome because it transformed this, this simple religion that had no real money, no real power, transformed the biggest superpower of its time.

[Nathan]

Time.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

You look at before the war in Iran, the Ayatollah, one of the top national security threats for Iran was underground Christian churches. The Ayatollah came out and said this, you're talking about underground Christians who have no money, no resources will be arrested, sometimes killed.

[Nathan]

The death penalty for that.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, sometimes killed. But that's a national security threat to Iran.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And they have no muscle, they have no flex. And so when you look at America today, Christianity and Islam, they're both dangerous. They're dangerous faiths because they transform empire. And so what is the. And this is where I was talking about that I think there's a nefarious action behind the current religious institutional structure in America because it's kneecapped every faith. So Islamic mosques, Jewish synagogues, Buddhist temples and Christian churches all have to adhere to the same 14 points from the IRS to become, to get that religious exemption. And so you walk into a mosque, it's identical to a Christian church, and it's because they all are ran off the 14 point checklist, which was created by the IRS. And so what that means is you take the teeth out of religion. When you look at the 14 point checklist, you need to build it, you need a creed, a formal creed. You need to meet at least once a month in person, you need child care. So it's Commoditized religion to be this place that you go. And so what I mean by it's removed the teeth from religion is Christianity and Islam are both dangerous to institutional power because it pushes against the monarchical structure of institution. And so Christianity, you gotta kneecap it and you gotta kneecap Islam because either could take over America. So what do you do? You put it in a box, this 14 point, you give it a carrot. The carrot to get into the box is tax exemption. And now the box just sits on a shelf. Everybody goes to their.

[Nathan]

Because they need you and you need them.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Exactly. So you've taken the teeth out of religion in America and now it's a consumerist adventure.

[Nathan]

Well, whoever did that was a genius. Not in a good way.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Exactly. Because religion, again, true religion, is dangerous to institution, both Christianity and Islam. And so that quote in the beginning

[Nathan]

of your doc is the best about how it started as a. You could probably repeat it better than I did in ancient.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

In ancient Greek, I've been so busy.

[Nathan]

In ancient Greece, it was a spiritual practice.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

Rome, it became a culture.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Philosophy, philosophy, culture.

[Nathan]

And then ancient Greek philosophy, Roman. Ancient Greek philosophy, Roman culture. And then basically an empire in an American enterprise or something like that.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Religion to enterprise. It's. The chaplain of the U. S. Senate said it. Chaplain.

[Nathan]

Yeah, that was. That guy was on it. He nailed it.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah. It was a very powerful statement and it's true. It's. We come out. Yeah. Richard Halvorson. In the beginning, the church was a fellowship of men and women centered on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next it moved to Europe where it became a culture. And finally it moved to America where it became an enterprise.

[Nathan]

Enterprise, right.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And you just. It's a box on the shelf. So any political leader right or left, can pull that box off and utilize it and say, hey, my people, we need to do this. And if you don't know that book and only 13% of Christians have ever read it, you're going to think, cool, this is what I need to do. This is what the dude behind the pulpit is saying. I need to do this, dude.

[Nathan]

It's crazy. It seems like this whole thing is almost too big to take down. But I mean, the way you're explaining all this stuff and shining light on it, I think is brilliant, man. And thank you for doing this. And tell people about where they can find your work, your documentaries and then about your upcoming stuff.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

We just partnered up with Tucker Carlson oh, really? So you can find the religion business on TCN exclusively for the next three months.

[Nathan]

Oh, no way.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So, yeah, that's awesome. It's gonna be cool.

[Nathan]

Cool. We'll link it below.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, link below.

[Nathan]

And when's that new one dropping?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So season two, episode one is gonna drop around end of October or November and it's big. And so we're dropping.

[Nathan]

Is the whole thing already shot?

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Already shot. Cut. So season two is a rolling release. So we have a full length documentary dropping every six months. Months.

[Nathan]

Oh, wow.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

So the first documentaries on child sexual abuse and ritualistic abuse. Episode two is on homelessness and prison systems. Episode three is on foster care and elderly. And episode four is on the collision of church and state in D.C. and that one's going to drop during the primaries. The 2028 presidential election.

[Nathan]

Whoa, dude.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah, we're here to. We're here to reform the church.

[Nathan]

Heavy. Yeah, that's very heavy, man. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, the 2028 election is going to be crazy because, like, you're gonna like, after this, I feel like, I mean, if you ever spend any time listening to Tucker, he. He lays this all out amazingly. I mean, Tuck, Tucker's like such an anomaly because he was literally like the headline act at the Republic Republican Convention or whatever. Him and Hulk Hogan.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

And now he's like the one person that is like calling out all. All like the, the crazy stuff that people voted for that they feel like they were betrayed by his, by his administration on this stuff and with the foreign aid stuff and this religious stuff. Because it's all tied together.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

It's so intertwined how they're trying to use the religion to promote the foreign wars and all this stuff. There's a lot of people that speculate Tucker could run for president in 2028. And personally, I don't, I don't want to see that happen because I don't want to lose the media voice of Tucker Carlson. And you can't be the same thing. 100 can't be the leader and the person.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

Giving out the truth. You have to have people that are combat, like pushing back against that stuff. But whoever it is, like, this is going to have to be, I think, a huge point of what they're discussing when they're running. And it's gonna, it's gonna be a, A contention, a contentious point of debate between whoever the people vote, vote for. Because this is like something that's really become a big thing that Americans are interested in and that, that Want people to take accountability for.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

Well, that's my calling. My calling is to separate the church and the state.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

And say these should not be intermingled. And like I said, There's 160ish million Christians in America. And it's like, I want all of them to read that book before the 2028 presidential primaries and, and hopefully, God willing, we have a. We're able to influence our, our Christian brothers and sisters that, you know, there's a lot of wolves out there. And one thing I would love to encourage everybody on is this idea of a refiner's fire. So in the Bible it talks about a refiner's fire. And you throw everything into this fire and whatever burns off is just impurities and whatever's left is of God. And I am all about like this idea of taking this institutional church that we've created, the 501C3 tax status incentives, the religious exemptions, our buildings, everything, and chuck it into the metaphorical refiner's fire. And that means being brutally honest about financials, about ownership, about assets, about salaries, and whatever's left standing is of God. Everything else that begins is just of men. And Christ talks about in three of the four gospels. One of my favorite quotes is he say, you honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me, preaching as doctrine the precepts of men. So he's saying, you could say all the nice things you want about me, but you're far from me because you take your traditions and what you've built and you call it doctrine and it's not doctrine. And that's the most. Like, if I could leave everybody with this. Don't be afraid. It's like Isaac putting or. Sorry. It's like Abraham putting Isaac on the altar in the Torah. Like, we gotta put everything on the altar. And that's how you swing in line with the will of God we were talking about. It's like, it's all yours. It's not mine. It's all yours. So then all of a sudden you're like, when you put it all on the altar, when you throw it all into the refiner's fire, you're trusting God that everything, the impurities are going to burn off. And that's a beautiful, beautiful time in your life and in the church's life. Because new growth happens, dude.

[Nathan]

Wow. Well, I'm going to keep reading my Bible.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

There you go.

[Nathan]

Backwards. And we'll keep in touch. We'll have to do. Oh, we got a Patreon. We got a couple Patreon questions for you. Cool. But that's a wrap for the podcast. Thank you, brother. And we should do another one down the road when comes out.

[Documentary Filmmaker / Religious Critic]

100%.

[Nathan]

All right, good night, folks.