Andrew Isker: Building a Christian Refuge to Fight Wokeness, Transgenderism, and Paganism
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embrace the chaos with fanatic sportsbook this is the only sportsbook that gives you up to 10% fan cash back on every bet win or lose on top of that new customers get up to 300 in bonus bets embrace the chaos all tournament long with fanatic sportsbook so andrew thank you for doing this so um you're so controversial um i love that um

Yeah, married man with six kids who pays his taxes. You're so controversial. Very. Controversial would be not paying your credit card bill and, you know, putting the banks out of business, convincing other people to do the same, not paying your federal taxes, forcing the U.S. government to pay attention to its own citizens. You're doing none of that. So as far as I'm concerned, you're a non-controversial law-abiding man. But you are doing one thing that's pretty wild, which is participating in the building of a new town. It sounds crazy.

almost like a Christian utopian experiment in Tennessee, but I don't really know. Can you tell me what it is and why you're doing it? Yeah, so it's not quite that. It's not the Oneida community? Yeah, we're not building some kind of Anabaptist community. Okay, you're not the Shakers. No. No, really, it's a company. Ridge Runner is purchasing land and sort of facilitating...

A lot of things like you're familiar with the big sort where people are leaving blue states to go to red states and things like that, where it's along those lines where people are leaving. Like I left Minnesota, a very blue state. Everyone's now familiar with our governor in that state, Tim Walz. Don't hire him to babysit. No, I would not. He would be the last person. Yes, I think so. Yeah.

And so we wanted to leave there. Many people want to leave places like that. My friend CJ left California, Gavin Newsom State, to come to Tennessee. And so it's a platform to be able to draw all of your friends together. It's like, well, we can kind of live anywhere.

Why don't we all live in the same kind of place and bring our families, bring our businesses and build things together? So it's sort of a platform for drawing people that are spread out all throughout the country and can leave these places that are not great, you know, living in places.

Living in large cities or suburbs where you're just totally disconnected and really isolated, alienated from normal life. And you can have the...

American small town experience once again. So sad to hear you say that about Minnesota as a Scandinavian. I always thought of it, was told, you know, it's like where all the Swedes are and it's kind of, you know, lots of saunas and, you know, red cheek children and it's clean and reasonable. Yeah. Yeah. Not not the case anymore. Why did you leave there?

You know, for us, it was... Are you from there? I'm from there, yeah. Born and raised in Waseca, Minnesota. My children...

We're the sixth generation of our family that lived in that town. Oh, gosh. In the town? In that town, yeah. In the town of Waseca. Are your ancestors buried there? Yeah, there's six generations that are buried there. Even one of my own children that passed. We lived...

you know, a couple blocks away from the cemetery where all of my ancestors were buried. Oh, gosh. Oh, that's very heavy to leave a place like that. Yes. And it was, you know, after the 2022 election where the Democrats took control of the state Senate finally and Tim Walz could do whatever he wanted to do. He, the first thing he passed was in the wake of the Dobbs decision,

Full, full abortion allowance, even up to birth. Like, you know, there were the stories during the election about, you know, even like post-birth abortions that took place in Minnesota. I went to the, to the state Capitol and, and spoke to the, the first committee when that bill was being heard. And, and I, I mean, maybe, maybe, you know, later you guys can pull up that video, but yeah.

I just went there and said, like, hey, you think you won an election. You think you can do this and just murder children. But

God is not mocked. Like he's, he's, he's going to come with vengeance about what you were doing. And of course the consequences. Yeah. They, they're like all these, you know, 60 year old liberal ladies, senators, you know, are looking at me, scoffing at me and just staring daggers at me and hating what I'm saying. How, how dare he cut this? Yeah. Lots of Christian nationalists. Lots of luck to them. Yeah. And so that's the first bill that they passed. The very, the second bill.

These are the first two legislative priorities that they had. The second one was a trans rights bill, which allowed the state to take your child out of their custody or your parents' custody if you opposed a transition. And my oldest child is 12. A minor child. Minor child, yeah. My oldest son, he's 12 years old.

He has autism. We homeschool all the rest of our children, but we don't have the resources to be able to educate him with his autism. And so he goes to special ed. And I'm well aware, especially if you see the things that happened in 2020, 2021, all of the activism, trans stuff in the schools, right? All the libs of TikTok kind of stuff. Yes.

that the majority of like trans children are on the autism spectrum, right? These children are targeted, right? And I'm thinking, okay, he doesn't talk about school. He doesn't talk about home at school. He categorizes all of his life. He just won't do it. So I would have no way of knowing like what is going on there. They could be putting him in a dress and calling him a girl name or

And I would have no idea. And then when I find out and I oppose it, right, boom, CPS comes, takes him out of our custody and he's gone forever. And they can. So that's when you go Randy Weaver at that point. Yeah, for sure. And you don't want to go Randy Weaver. Like it didn't end well for Randy Weaver. No, it doesn't end well for anybody. No, I don't. I don't. I don't want to go down that road. No, no, nobody does. Nobody does. And so it's like we need to we need to get out of here. Right. We cannot trust the whole system anymore.

with our child they could they could steal him from us right this could happen i don't want to be the the test case for that i don't want to go through the legal battles and do all those fights i want my son i don't i don't want to live in a place where that's even conceivable that that could happen to you it's insane and so it was at that moment i'm like we need to we need to get out of this state this is it's not a place where i can raise my children and i'm thinking like long term

Right. We yeah, we've been in this place for six generations, but it's a wonderful town, you know, amazing place. I mean, it's home. I love the people there. And many of them are going to be watching this.

Well, you must know all of them. From my youth. You go to the store and you see my wife and children hated when I would go to the store because it would take an hour to get a thing of milk because I'd just stop and talk to people I've known my whole life. Oh, I love that. And it's a wonderful play. It's hard to leave that because you know it. You're familiar with everything and all of the people and just the way of life.

Josh, that's where your family's buried. Six generations. That's just, I had no idea. That's so much to give up. It must have been. I can't. I can't stay in a place like that. There's no future for my children, for my family in a place that's that far gone, right? That has been destroyed. And you see so many of these other states, California, Washington, adopted all the same things that

That walls is Minnesota did. Why? I want to get back to the Ridge Runner in the town that's being built, which I assume is a fascist Christian theocracy. That's what the TV news. Yes. Mr. Phil Williams, the journalist. Little Iran except Christian. OK, but.

Why do you think – so the three – I mean, I have my own theories, but you've lived it much more personally than I have. So you tell me, why do you think states like Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, California have gone to a place that I think by any objective global standard – there's no country in the world that would nod and say that's okay except maybe the UK. Yeah. How did they get there? I think –

I mean, for all of them, the political power was captured by the left, political and cultural power. I mean, I went to college in Minnesota in the early 2000s, and you could see the seeds of all of these things, right, beginning to form. And so all of the institutions were captured. And especially culturally in Minnesota, people...

People are very nice, right? It's not a myth. Minnesota nice is very real. And the ethos is if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, which I just swim completely against that tide. It's true. I mean, not to point to genetics, but it's real. It's Germans, it's Scandinavians, Norwegians, Swedes, some Finns.

It's like these are gentle, non-confrontational people for the most part. Yes. Yeah, they're very kind. People that are to a fault...

unwilling to give offense. Yes. And very, very tolerant of other people. Yes, they are. And that gets taken advantage of. Right. So you can have... So they take our best qualities and subvert them against us. Yes. Yes. And you can see that in other places too, like on the West Coast as well. Right. That... And especially...

Right.

how dare you talk about these things from the pulpit, these things going on? Like it offends a lot of people. No, it does. I mean, I come from a family like that with some of them have strong views, but they would never impose their views on you under any circumstances. They're just, it's just not in them. It's a very specific Northern European culture where they just don't want to, don't want to get in your face. No, never. But it leaves them defenseless a little bit, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And, and,

You know, I mean, maybe I'm maybe I'm unique. You know, maybe my personality type is is such that I just I can't do that. I can't see like evil stuff happening, taking place and not say something about it. Not say this is this is insane. Like, how could we I mean, just think 100 years ago.

And that's sort of my book is, right? If you go back a hundred years and you think about your great-great-grandfather and you told him,

Hey, they're going to take little kids and little boys and remove their genitals and turn them into girls, right? Are you okay with that? Do you think that's all right? Like, what would they do if that was even proposed? I thought eunuchs were not within the Ming Dynasty. That's right. I can't believe we have that. Yeah, we're bringing that back. They would go insane. They would fight. They'd become violent if that were happening. And we're like, well...

You know, I really want to keep my job, so I'll put the pronouns in my email signature and on my LinkedIn. You know, I'll just go along to get along. I have contempt for them. Yeah. So my theory is that those are the most secular states. Yeah. Yeah.

And Maine is another one of the most secular states, unfortunately. And those trends are rising there as well, famously. And there's something about that, you know, there are lots of left-wing ideas that are liberal ideas or socialist ideas that like, well, I don't disagree with all of them, honestly, but some of them, a lot of them I really disagree with. But the transgender thing, the abortion thing, human sacrifice and turning your children into eunuchs,

Those are so clearly expressions of cultish religion, of pagan religion, that I can't turn away. I'm like, the Canaanites did this. I know what's going on here. This is not—you claim you're secular. You're not secular at all. These are religious rituals. That's the way it feels to me. Yes, absolutely. It is—and that's part of it, too, I think.

The things that happened, like when I was in college in the early 2000s, you know, you had the new atheism and everyone was like, it was just cool to be an atheist. Like, oh, I'm agnostic. I don't really believe in your- Who is that? There's like a really absurd person posing as like a genius who was one of the leader. There are probably a bunch of them, but who was the most famous one?

Oh, like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett or Christopher Hitchens? I knew Hitchens well. He was a marvelous guy, but totally wrong on this. He was legit smart. No, there's another one, whatever, who's always running around. Like today, like James Lindsay is one of those types. Who's James Lindsay? He is a...

This atheist guy that opposed wokeness and things like that, but wants just a free liberal society like it's 1995. I'm all for a free liberal society. It's just that they're

There isn't one. Either you're moving quickly toward... I mean, I will never give up my views of... I will never stop being liberal on the most basic level, which is I actually don't want to control you or your beliefs because I don't think you're a slave. I think you're a human being because God made you. Absolutely. That's my view. Yeah. And so I don't want to break down people's doors to make sure they're adhering to what I believe at all. I hate that. However...

You're either moving toward order or you're moving toward chaos. You're moving toward, you know, a society rooted in some sort of transcendent belief or you're moving toward traneism, which is another like transcendent belief. It's like you pick a religion. Yeah. It's not whether but which. There will be one. And that's part of it is like the new atheism, all of those things that broke down religion.

Christian mores and Christian, you know, just cultural Christianity that was imbued all throughout the American public life takes all of that down, but then there's a vacuum, and that vacuum gets filled up. And what's it been filled up with? Insane stuff like this, child sacrifice, you know, all of it. Like, it is a new religion. It isn't a question of like, well, we're just going to have pluralism, we're not going to have any dominant religion. It's

No, there will be one. There will be a God that you serve. And the one that we are serving now is some kind of demon. Well, I think that's so much better put than I could have formulated that. But yes, exactly. Perfectly put. Exactly. You're going to worship something. Yeah. And now we're worshiping something really, really dark as a society. But it's particularly pronounced in the states that have abandoned Christianity the most aggressively. Absolutely.

come up with this new pagan religion so okay so this is going on in your state you're the six generations in one town boy that's got to be pretty rare right now yeah you've got six children you have a child buried in the cemetery along with all your ancestors

and you leave all of that, what, what's going on in your church? Were you a churchgoer at the time? Yeah, I was, I was pastoring a church. Oh gosh. Yeah. Yes. Okay. So you're involved in church. Yes, I am. Yeah. And it's a church with wonderful people. And, and, you know, they're, they're there because they, you know, more or less think like I do. They like, like hearing what I preach, you know, they like, they like all of these things. And, and,

And so it's extremely difficult to leave them as well. But it was difficult because it was a very small church and the things that I'm preaching, right? So I take the pastorate there in 2021. So after the lockdowns, after all of these things, and there's an incredible amount of discontent among Christians because their church has been shut down, their leaders have failed them. And so we had many families join us after that.

But, you know, overall, right, the people, you know, in Minnesota, right, they don't, they're not used to the kind of preaching that I do, the kind of,

Christianity that I have where it's like, I know, I believe the Bible, like God is real. And he has spoken, he's revealed himself to us in the Bible. And therefore, I believe all of it. And I'm not embarrassed by any of it. I'm not going to like tiptoe around the things that might be controversial. If anything, I'm going to lean into those things.

And I'm going to preach all of it. And that runs totally against the evangelical Christian ethos in America today. Really? It's all about, you need to be nice. You need to make Jesus very inoffensive to people. And that's how you bring people into your church. So I'll say I'm not an evangelical. I've always liked the evangelicals. I've always defended them. I'm very sympathetic to them.

I'm not even exactly sure what an evangelical is. It seems more like a cultural descriptor, but I'm completely opposed to abortion. So that has been, for me, the reason that I've always defended them. But I always thought that the evangelicals were really forthright about their faith, another thing that I liked. And we're way more on the kind of fire and brimstone side, which I'm for, by the way. But you're saying that they're not.

That was certainly, you look at like, you know, the 80s and even in the early 90s, like you have the moral majority where they very much were that kind of fire and brimstone. And they've been vindicated by everything that has happened. Oh, I'd say. I'd say. It's hilarious. Lent is here, the period before Easter, the 40 days, and it's a unique chance to get closer to God. That's the point of it.

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They adopted, you know, very seeker-sensitive movement where it's like, well, people are— I'm sorry, what did you call it? Yeah, seeker-sensitive movement. What does that mean? It was—it was, right, the big movement in evangelicalism in the 90s and early 2000s where we're going to make it as easy as possible for people to come into the church and believe in Jesus and—

And so we're not going to focus on things that might offend them. We're not going to focus on sin and repentance and things like that. We're just just come on in and have a good time and know that you're welcome here. Come as you are. We'll meet you halfway like that. That was more or less the. Why do you think they did that?

Um, I think, you know, a friend of mine, I think I could call him a friend. Aaron Wren, he's written about this like neutral world or negative world, neutral world, positive world where, you know, in the 70s and 80s.

Christianity is generally understood culturally as a positive thing. Like if you said, oh, I go to church, I'm a Christian, I go to that church, people think, oh, that's a good guy. He's an upstanding, decent person. But by the mid-90s, it was sort of neutral, right? It was sort of, well, that's just a cool thing that you do, right? Just like collecting stamps or building model trains or being part of the Lions Club. But by the...

you know, by the Obama years, by like 2015, you're in negative world where if you're an evangelical Christian, you are suspect. You're, you're probably a Nazi. You're probably a bigot. You're probably a white supremacist, right? That's the attitude that people ask you to pause just to state for the 1 millionth time. The Nazis were not Christians. They were not Christians, but they love to throw those things around. Did you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. More Christians were killed by the Nazis than any other group, just a fact. So anyway, no, the Nazis were not Christians. I'm sorry. I had to say that. Good to make – because they'll clip this and they'll say, yeah, oh, Andrew Isker is saying that the Christians are Nazis. But –

So that period of time, like there's these widespread cultural shifts in the country. And so I think a lot of it is just in response to that, where you're in that neutral world. And so you had figures like Rick Warren or Tim Keller who sort of adapted these things. So Tim Keller is in New York City and he tries to adapt Christianity to –

Your, you know, upper middle class, you know, striver people in New York City were to make it easy for them to come to church. So he wouldn't ever talk about homosexuality or if he did, it would be, well, that's not so good for human flourishing. But we're not really going to talk about that too much. There's the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, J.D. Greer, you know, famously said,

I said in a sermon, well, the Bible just whispers about sexual sin, but it shouts about about like financial sin or greed. Right. So they want to downplay shots about both of them. It does. And the two are connected. Right. Yeah. Right. If you're if you're greedy for money, you're also going to be lusting after the flesh like that. The two go hand in hand. Right.

And so, but it's to downplay things that the culture does not want to hear, right? Because you'll be branded as a bigot, as intolerant, as a bad person. If you're just like, well, this is what the Bible says, like this, you know, fornicators, adulterers, sodomites, they will not inherit the kingdom of God, right? If you say, yes, I agree with that. Well, you're a bad person, right? You're, you're, you are outside of polytheism.

polite society if you say those things and you can reject it you can reject christianity itself and you're certainly welcome to in this country and in all countries actually but it doesn't just say this parenthetically no it's like included in a sidebar it says it again and again and again in the church i grew up and they're like well there are only four times where you know in the scriptures where people you know where christian where homosexuality is attacked

And it's like, since no one ever read it in my church, no one knew. But like, I finally read it. What the hell? Why not read it? And I did. And I've never been anti-gay or anything like that. But by the end, I was like, oh, there's a really clear message. Yeah. From like the Hebrew scriptures all the way through the Christian to the New Testament. Yeah.

Like again and again and again. So, you know, again, you don't have to believe it, but if you're a believing Christian, it's not whispered at all. Yeah, you do. Shout it! Yeah, you do have to believe it if you're a Christian. Exactly! If you claim that this is the Bible, that God spoke this. I agree. And so they're very fearful of those kinds of things. But, I mean, the interesting thing now that we're in, you know, what Wren calls negative world is,

is that young men who were raised, most of them like raised secular, right? They went through the whole new atheism thing. They never went to church. They never grew up. I mean, I talked to so many guys, so many young men, you know, I see, you know, connect with me on X and places like that where they're like, hey, I was not part of the church at all. I was not a Christian. I was not a Christian.

And I see all of the evil everywhere. Right. I see the things like you're talking about, like they they are sacrificing babies. I guess they care about this more than anything else. The ability to murder a baby. They see things like the Ukraine war where it's like our rulers just decided to have a war. Yes.

and kill millions of people for absolutely no reason. And our proxies have banned the majority Christian faith. Yes. Banned. Yes. Majority Christian faith, majority faith, which is Christian in Ukraine. And I just wonder, just to go back to the atheists for a second, um,

What do they make of this? Like, it just, I understand, certainly understand being agnostic. Like, I don't know. You know, I get it. Yeah, I can see why someone would have that viewpoint. For sure. Yeah. I think that's a pretty normal, you know, place to be. I think it's wrong, but I don't think it's crazy. Yeah. But to be an atheist, to have determined...

That there is no God. Like, what do you make of the things you see around you? Have you never held someone's hand while he dies? Like, what do you think that is? Yeah. You never felt anything that is clearly outside of what science describes? Like, how determined are you to ignore God?

Yeah.

Right. They'll retreat. It's kind of a Mott and Bailey thing where they'll retreat to. Well, I really I'm agnostic. I don't really know for sure. Right. So there's very few people, very few, especially now that are like, you know, I'm an atheist. There definitely is no God. Right. Well, then why is murder wrong? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, because it is because it is. Well, OK, I think it's right.

Yeah. So how does, how can you tell me it's wrong? By what authority? Yeah. Yeah. Because you feel that way? Yeah. That's your authority? Yeah. Your emotions? And you would see this. I remember... So like the people you were saying who are atheists, like are they ever, some of them are smart, I assume. Yeah. Yeah. What do they say to that? I remember...

I remember watching, you know, a previous guest of yours, actually the man who trained me in ministry, Doug Wilson. Yeah. Debate. Wonderful man. Christopher Hitchens. Oh, yes. And they, they had that discussion. Right. And,

It was shocking to watch Hitchens say, well, it's common human experience, solidarity with mankind. That's why I think murder is wrong. And of course, Doug says to him, well, if you saw someone being murdered on the street, you'd think that's bad, right? Well, why? And he goes into his whole spiel.

And he's like, well, what if it's a pregnant woman and her baby's being murdered? Right. You would just say, well, no, no, you need to have a medical license for that to kill that person. Right. What did Christopher say? He's like, oh, you're being flippant. You wouldn't go down that road. What's so sad is I knew Christopher very well and always liked him enormously for his erudition, his ability to recite long passages of poetry, you know, Philip Larkin and –

Orwell. And, you know, he was just a, you know, he's a reader, like a real dedicated lifelong reader and a wonderful dinner and lunch companion. I had many, many highly drunken dinners with him before I quit drinking. And, but he was such, and so I love Christopher, but he was a moralizer. Whoa. And I never, I was much younger, 25 years younger than I am now. And I never sort of put it to my mind, like, how can an atheist be a moralizer? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I think so much of it is atheism really is like – An atheist moralizer. It's hilarious. Well, it's a Christian heresy. Like they want to have all the things of Christianity just without God there, right? So they want to be able to pursue all of these things, right? They want to be able to say this is right and this is wrong but have no authority to ground it on, right? Just atheism.

just by their say-so, right? It's so fatuous, though. I mean, conundrum. Yeah, yeah. What? It's wrong! Well, and you can see why... Okay, why? Yeah, you can see why it's breaking down, though, today. Under the weight of its own silliness. Yeah, yeah. It creates this vacuum, and it's being replaced by something. So all of the moralistic energy is still there, and now it's gone to...

to things like transgenderism, abortion, you know, Gaza, whatever. Like it goes to all of those routes. It goes to, you know, BLM and rioting. Yes, that's right. And so it's highly religious. It's in us. Yeah. It's in us. We can't get away from

the conviction, the true conviction that some things are right and some things are wrong. Yeah. Yeah. It's fundamentally human. Absolutely. So, but an atheist would have to, by definition, be utterly nonjudgmental about everything. You would think they should be, but...

They're the most judgmental people. It's unbelievable. I mean, Christopher at dinner was always lecturing about the Kurds. And I'm nothing against the Kurds. I don't know much about the Kurds. I ran into them in Iraq. They were the most bloodthirsty people in Iraq. I did notice that. But he was so, again, I'm not against the Kurds. I'm not an expert in Kurdishness. But he, man, he would like lay down his life for the Kurds. Yeah.

I remember thinking, what is this? And it was the need to sort of find a good guy and a bad guy and put yourself on the good guy's side. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's human. Like it's human. We want that. That's totally true. So what did you say to your church when you left? Um, that was, that was one of the hardest days of my life. I believe it. Tell them I'm, I'm leaving. I'm going to Tennessee. And, um, it was, it was difficult. Um, and I still, um, have a,

connection with them, relationship with them. I'm still trying to find them a pastor to replace me. It's hard for me to do that because it's like, well, you left, Andrew. Why do you want me to go there now? But they need one. And they're wonderful, wonderful people who have blessed me immensely. And I just told them that, no, I have to leave Minnesota. There is...

There's a place for me there in Tennessee, and it's ultimately what is best for my family's future. There's a place where my children can grow up. Because part of it, too, isn't just the things that we're leaving, the political, cultural things that we're leaving in Minnesota, but it's also overall the things that have been done to the Midwest, to everywhere, where...

My children will grow up, and if they want to have a career and a life and a family and a success of their own, there just isn't much for them in small-town Midwest. And so they'll all just fly the coop. I mean, this is what happened when I graduated from high school.

Most of the people that I grew up with, they all left. They went to the Twin Cities. They went to other cities for work and for careers. And so that same thing was likely going to happen with my children. And I look at it and I think, well, my family's been here for six generations. And whether it's going to end here, right? And

I want to be in a place where we can continue that, where we can be rooted, where my children have the ability to stay in a place. And so many friends are coming to Tennessee where we are. They're bringing businesses there. And once you build things at scale, like the more stuff you're able to do, the more businesses you're able to have, the more opportunity is for young people.

And so, right, if my children want to stay where we are and continue that on generation after generation, like we actually will be able to do that, right? That's, it isn't, it wasn't so much just, okay, we need to leave Minnesota.

But it's also we're being drawn to a place for a particular reason. The Tennessee dream. There's a future there. Yeah. The hope of refugees from time immemorial. Yeah. What did the other churches in the state say as the state itself became...

A place that faithful Christians couldn't live. I mean, there are a handful of churches there that are very strong. There are Christians there that oppose these things, but they're so, so vastly outnumbered. Like when I went to the state capitol to oppose the abortion bill,

um there were lots of activists on both sides uh pro-life activists and pro uh ritual sacrifice activists uh but there were there were no other pastors there i think the one of the catholic bishops um did a skype call zoom call uh but uh beyond that there were there were no other pastors and i'm thinking like my church is is like 30 40 people i'm a i do this you know

I tent make. I do a full-time job and then do this. We're tiny. I'm small. I'm insignificant. And there are churches with 15,000, 20,000 people, prominent men in the Twin Cities. And all I had to do was just send an email to the clerk of the committee like, hey, can I have two minutes to speak?

No one showed up. Right. No one is there. And it's like, no, they're going to like murder babies up to birth, like enshrine this in our law, try to make a constitutional amendment for it, all of these things. And and no one is is opposing it. Like, I'm the only one that came. I quoted the Bible and opposed it as a Christian. They there's just so little fight there. Christians built your state.

Yes. And all of it and every bit of it. And it's so telling when you go to the Twin Cities. I think of them as Protestant and Catholic. Yeah. I think of them as Scandinavian in Minneapolis and Irish. Yeah. And others in St. Paul. Yeah. But both of them, especially St. Paul, just littered with churches and schools. And it's just like the infrastructure of those cities was built by Christians. Yeah.

And so it's a little bit crazy that, first of all, it's been taken over by people who have made a point to stick a finger in the eye of Christians to make it impossible for them to live there. It's like you're being driven out of your own homeland, six generations. Yeah, I mean, this is what happened with my wife is from St. Paul, California.

Her father's side of the family is Polish Catholic. Yeah. Went to St. Casimir's Church. That's exactly in my mind what I think of. And the neighborhood that they were in, it was all Polish people. Yeah. But now it's all Hmong. Right. Everywhere. It's all Hmong and Somali. And everyone there just left over the last...

What happened to their churches and parochial schools? Well, St. Casimir's Church is there, but it's largely empty. We went there for a funeral a couple years ago, but there's people still attended, but it's not like it was. Most of the parishes there have shut down. The church schools have shut down, and they've moved out to the suburbs. And so that was a Polish neighborhood. It was this ethnic enclave.

If I can just say, showing myself to be an ethnic nationalist, the Pol—they're just like some of the greatest people I've ever met. I don't think I've ever met a Pol one. I have to say that married one. Yeah, I just think they're great people. I don't know—I've met many I don't like, but just salt of the earth, smart, hardworking, serious about faith and family. Yeah, great people. Yeah.

I doubt it was an improvement, the change to St. Paul. In fact, it wasn't. I've been there. No, it's like when her parents finally moved, like the whole area is just run down, lots of crime. And it's sad because it was – you could see the –

uh the remnants of what was like the the you drive through St Paul you see some of the old buildings and how beautiful they were how much care people put into these places and now they're just falling apart bars on windows everywhere factory workers like basically tithing to build the infrastructure of churches and schools yes and their own homes yeah you know people with no money giving yeah the maximum amount to build all this stuff for their families and then it's just

some politician decides, oh, this is too white, so we need to...

Yeah, destroy it all and destroy all the people. It's a crime on a level that only historians will be able to assess clearly. But yeah, okay, sorry. So can we just, before you get into what's happening in Tennessee, I'm so discursive, it's my fault. But why aren't the fearsome evangelicals, who I will still defend, I'm just saying that. The laity absolutely defend them. Well, the laity, I know a million of them and I love them.

In fact, there's some working here right now in this office. But the preachers, like, where were they during all of this? I mean, I think it's largely the contemporary evangelical mode of being is – I mean, so much of it – I look back to it –

Going all the way back to something like the Second Great Awakening, right? Where the purpose of... The major change that took place there is...

It's all about conversionism, right? And it becomes a big show and marketing and all of that. That's where you got the 10 revival. Yeah, yes. Yeah, Charles Finney, those kinds of things. Well, that's kind of in the DNA, at least somewhat, within evangelicalism. So to put a finer point on what you're saying, the point became...

The more souls we convert, the more people who profess faith, that's like the scorecard that we use? Yeah, that's the metric that everyone follows. And so you look at it and you think, well, if we just water it down a little bit more, make it more palatable to people, you know, just get more butts in the seats, right? Then that's the metric of success.

not right the internal development discipleship of people not not actual repentance and conversion uh not you know fundamental life change and so forth um that traditional christianity always was um it's oh if we just get them here and of course if they put some money in the plate and and they're attending that's what matters so you see churches where it's like okay we have

amazing production values. We have a great band and all of these things. And it's, it's all of these entertainments to get people in or the, or the sermon is, is sort of like a self-help talk. There isn't really Bible in it at all. Or if it is, it's like tangentially related to, to something that the pastor wants to say. It's not, all right, we're going to go through a chapter of Leviticus today and explain what the sacrifices are about. Well, there's no, there's none of those things. And so you, you see, you know, many evangelical people,

have not been taught really any Bible or theology at all. And you see this in like surveys, like the Barna group does surveys and what people believe about different things.

And they haven't been taught any Bible. They don't know it. And so then when the liberal says, well, the Bible condemns eating shellfish and pork in the same way it condemns homosexuality. So what do you have to say about that? And they have no idea how to explain that, what that is about. And their faith is shaken. God didn't destroy two cities with sulfur and fire because people were eating pork. That's right.

You destroy them because they tried to

commit gay rape on an angel. Yeah. And they'll say that with, well, the sin of Sodom was inhospitality. No, it wasn't. Well, I mean, I guess... It was gay rape. Yeah. I mean, the least hospitable thing you can do... I mean, just read it if you want. It's like... Yeah. It's pretty out there. Yeah. It's like, well, yeah, the least hospitable thing you could do to a guest is to anally rape them. Yeah. All the men of the town came out. They demanded... Yeah, we need to know these angels. To have sex with these angels and then...

Lot's like, I've got some daughters in here. Take them. Yeah. Takes a lot off my Christmas card list for saying something like that. But whatever. He does that. It's in Genesis. And they're like, no, we want to rape the dudes. These are not euphemisms. It's pretty straightforward. Yeah. I mean, I actually, I just read Genesis 19 to my children and there were some questions from the kids. It was funny. I read that a couple of years ago for the first time. I'll admit it.

And my wife, who's a very serious and wonderful person, but a serious Christian, we were on a walk and I told her what I had read the night before. And she's like, what? What? You know, she's just like...

she's the model for me as a faithful person, but she was like, no, that's no way. And I was like, it's in there. That's what happened. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And, and so I think about that and it's like, I mean, it's funny. Like even at my little, little church, I, I just preach through the Bible. Right. So I'll just take a chapter and I'll talk about it. I'll explain what's going on, all of these things. And I mean, I have, I have some, you know, wonderful people there.

older people that have been Christians their entire adult lives and they're in their 70s. And one of them said to me, Andrew, that's the first time someone has ever preached from the book of Judges in a church service. I went through the entire book and then, well, let's do Ruth and then 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel. And it's like, wow, there's so much there. So much there. I mean, I had friends come down

That were sort of, you know, new and becoming Christians out of being secular their whole lives. And they're like, whoa, the Bible is extremely metal. This is wild. Like there's so much like political intrigue happening in 1 and 2 Samuel. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, and I'm explaining it, you know, sort of in like this way.

you know, mere chimery, real politic way. And they're just like at the edge of their seats, like, whoa, that's crazy that that happened. And so I love it. And I can see why I don't claim to understand a lot of it, particularly the Old Testament, starting to figure out the New Testament more. But just having read it cold a couple of times, just like a book, like you would read Anna Karenina or Moby Dick.

It's like the wildest, coolest, most interesting, most profound. Those are not overstatements at all. And I think everybody should... It's the basis of Western civilization. I don't know why people don't read it. There's obviously a reason. But even if you're an atheist, how could you not read the Bible? Everything we have is founded on the ideas in this.

And like, you're basically illiterate if you haven't read it. Oh, I know. I mean, you even, you can see this. It's, it's, it's so funny. Like when journalists write about the Bible and they're like, oh, there's this weird illusion here that, that, and it's like, he's talking about a whale swallowing a man. I don't really know what's going on. And it's like, that's

That's the book of Jonah. How do you not know what that's about? But they have no idea. It's just so compelling. Yeah. Of all the New Year's resolutions you're likely to put off, the one you're most likely to put off and keep putting off is buying life insurance. And you should have life insurance. It's kind of crazy not to because the future is unknown. You've got to have life insurance. But you may not have life insurance because it's a huge hassle and it can be a huge ripoff.

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I'm saving so much. Burlington saves you up to 60% off other retailers' prices every day. Will it be the low prices or the great brands? You'll love the deals. You'll love Burlington. I told you so. Even Leviticus, which I ran on a flight to Europe when I made myself, because, you know, I did hours on a plane.

And I texted my wife from the planet. I was like, this is excellent, actually. It's just excellent. I thought it was going to be all like sacrificing doves because you have your period that's in there. But like 95% of it made sense to me. Well, and it's real. Like it's tangible, right? It's, you know, in theological terms, incarnational. Like it's the real tangible world that people interact with, right? That's there. And it...

People always ask me, like, well, Andrew, what's your favorite book of the Bible? And I love to, I mean, sometimes I love to get a rise out of people. But I tell them, well, Leviticus is. And they're like, what? Really? And I'm like, yeah. Like, I mean, I'm a pastor. My calling is to preach the gospel and to lead worship. And that book right there, all of it is about how to

Sinful people draw near and approach the presence of a holy, just, righteous God that cannot bear sin at all. And there it's laid out for us, all of it. And even like you look at...

Leviticus chapter 9, like you read that, maybe you remember reading it. I'm actually going through this with my church right now in Tennessee. But Leviticus chapter 9 is the entire liturgy of the church right there. Each of the sacrifices and all of the Western liturgy for 2000 years basically follows it. Right. You you're called into the presence of God.

You confess your sins. I mean, probably like your Episcopalian upbringing, Book of Common Prayer, like you probably track with this, right? They never admitted that in our church. Maybe they didn't have a confession of sin of yours, but there's a confession of sin.

Right. Then there's an ascension, right? The ascension offering in chapter one of Leviticus, right? The entire, the worshiper puts his hand on the animal, right? Saying like this animal's me. And then the entire thing is, is consumed, is burned up, right? Ola, right? Where the word Holocaust comes from. Consumed, burned up, goes up to God in smoke, right?

And that's you, right? That's when, and then the New Testament where it says, right, the word of God is living and active sharper than any two-edged sword. What's the sort of the priest that cuts up the animal and puts it on the altar and burns it up? Well, that's what's happening when the church hears the Bible read and hears it preached, right? You're being cut up by the word of God and ascending up to God in smoke.

And then the next part of the service is the peace offering. Well, that's communion, right? You sit down and have a meal with God and then you're sent out, right? The entire liturgy is right there. Like our actual worship that we do now, right? After the death of Jesus and resurrection of Jesus, right? Sacrifice is done away with because he is that sacrifice, right?

And we're going through all of that each time we worship and renew the covenant with God. And like you see that in Leviticus, and it's like, whoa, actually, there's so much to learn here in this book about what we are doing every Sunday when we worship God. So I'm like, yeah, this, of course, is my favorite book, right? Not just because I'm autistic and like lots of rules and regulations, right? It's like reading the Bible.

Reading the instructions on the Monopoly game, you know, like, no, it's there. Like, so much is happening. It's beautiful. And the prescriptions or the prohibitions, more precisely, are surprisingly, like, sensible. Yeah, yeah. And one of the challenges to atheism is to explain why the atheist would agree with the overwhelming majority of what's prohibited. Yeah.

Yeah. Because it's in him. He knows that's wrong. Don't have sex with your sister. Okay. And most people, most atheists would be like, yeah, well, obviously. But of course, he has no grounds upon which to say that. Yeah. There's literally no law he can appeal to to say that. He says that obviously because like he grew up and was reared and absorbed by osmosis like Christian culture where that's prohibited. I think that's right. But I also think in primitive cultures that have never had exposure to

I mean, I don't know that there are many cultures where most of the prohibitions in Leviticus would be considered crazy. No. Or esoteric or like, why would you ban that? It's like everyone. I'm like, of course. Well, even like you think about this, there was there's a pastor, theologian, brilliant guy, Peter Ledhart, who wrote a book delivered from the elements of the world. And in that book,

I mean, there's tons of just amazing stuff in this book. But one of the things that he shows is that, right, God makes these restrictions for Israel in the old covenant that sets them apart as this holy people, as the priestly people. And, but elsewhere in the world, right, they all have something like that, right? All throughout the ancient world, right, their gods had something like a funhouse mirror version of Leviticus where it's like, okay,

right, here's all these rules about sex and what makes you clean and unclean and food you can't eat and can't eat. Like the Egyptians had this, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, all of them have these kinds of, the Mayans, the Incas, the Aztecs. The Norse, like my ancestors, the Germanics, like they all had these rules and it's, well, it's because in the ancient world, right, they're all under their own particular gods, right? And,

What Jesus does is he comes and he takes the world back from Satan and from all the demons that ruled over the ancient world. And now he's reigning over heaven. That's actually like the book of Revelation.

That's actually like what's going on in that book. The much maligned book of Revelation. Yeah, like I know you had John Rich on last year and he's talking about dispensationalism and things like that. And I was like, oh, I'm going to be in Tennessee. I need to meet him and talk to him about this. Did you? I haven't. No, I have no way of getting in touch with him. Maybe after this. If he's watching. He's a good man. Oh, I love. I mean, he was.

Like the soundtrack of my youth of country music, like he wrote all those songs, right? So on that basis alone, right? But he's talking about like dispensationalism and what has happened in American Christianity for the last 130 years, how it's actually a novel new thing. And for me, it was like, yeah, I looked at that. I mean, I remember growing up and that's just everything like left behind and the rapture is coming and all of that.

So I missed all of that? I don't even know what you're talking about. Yeah, it's a thing. Like, especially, and of course, like, I'm very critical of it. But like, these are the...

These are the best people in America that believe it. Like the people that have like six Trump flags on the back of their truck. I totally agree. Like they they also believe that all the rapture is coming tomorrow. We need to be ready for it. And so I'm anytime I'm critical of it, I'm like, OK, I'm not critical of the people like there's not a moral defect that they believe these things. I totally first of all, thank you for saying that. Second, I feel what you're saying.

Especially with evangelicals. I look at these, you know, greaseball preachers who I honestly I find disgusting. And then I see the people go to their churches and I'm like, oh, I love you. You're exactly my kind of people. You're the most decent people in this country. You're trying your very hardest against headwinds that are so unfair.

And you're doing a great job anyway. And I just love that. I really mean it. I love them. So I never want to criticize. Yeah. Right. Because. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so like, and so like, whenever I'm critical of that theology, I'm like, I have to make sure people know, like, I'm not criticizing you because you're great, awesome people. Like, even when I, when I first went to the town in Gainsborough before we decided to, you know, before we made our move, it was right after the hurricane, which it wasn't far from there. And,

And this is a town that like they don't have a whole lot. The median income is not very high in this town, but I'm driving around and every gas station. Where is it? Gainsborough, Tennessee is in Jackson County. It's like north central Tennessee. OK. And yeah. And so every gas station, every gas station has like signs up like, hey, we're going to we're going to Western North Carolina to go help out. And it's like.

Like people that don't have a whole like they're taking their time and what little money they have to go help people. And meanwhile, you know, the Biden administration is sending billions more to Ukraine and to Israel and everything. And they're taking their time. It's like these are wonderful people. They are. And I will say for Trump, whatever people think of Trump, I know Trump well enough to have talked to him about this kind of stuff. And, you know, away from cameras.

And his affection, love, gratitude toward those specific people is totally real. Yeah. And you can argue about whether, you know, which policies serve those people best or whatever, but it all, the leadership begins with love. If you don't love the people you lead, you'll mistreat them. And you see it reciprocated, right? But it's totally real. Yeah. And completely real and it's emotional. Yeah. And he's like, I love those people. Yeah. And he eats McDonald's in private. Yeah, it's real.

So that is, I just want to say that because I know that for a fact, you know, a lot of politics is obviously fake and yeah, but that part, that specific part of Trump, like loving people like that. Oh man. Well, and it's the people that are, you know, the most maligned in our country. Like,

Like the only people you can make fun of are like rural southern Appalachian people. Right. That's free game. You can criticize them all you want and mock them. Like, you know, Jimmy Kimmel can can make fun of them all day long on his show. No other group of people can you do that for? And and they're the people that have been have been dispossessed of their country the most.

And, and you, I like, that's just a big reason why we moved to this place is these are the people that are hated. I want to go live with them. Yes. I want to be around these because they're great people. With the despise and cheerful too. Yeah. Wonderful people. Yeah. I live in a place with a lot of people like that. And, you know, every third person has a child or grandson who's died of a drug OD and like there's no year round work and there's just a lot of problems. And these are like,

You can pull into their driveway on a Sunday and they will just, they'll have a six pack and they'll give you two of them. I mean, they really are just the most generous, kind, hilarious, wise, just good people. The best, the best that this country's ever produced, in my opinion. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm not, I'm not from those people at all. So I'm like coming at this like, wow, these people are incredible. Yeah, absolutely. And, and so I, you know, I think about that, right. And I think about

the theology that has been, that has shaped their outlook. And it's understandable because like you're, especially in the midst of like serious decline, it's like, well, actually,

It's sort of attractive to have this eschatology where everything is coming to an end, right? You can understand why people would eat that up. But the people that actually built America, right, you know, the Puritans and all of the settlers of this country, you think of even like the founding generation, that theology did not exist yet. That wasn't until the middle of the 19th century that it came into being. Like, they were actually optimistic, right? They viewed, right, this continent as...

As a place for Christians to build, to grow, to have a future. What an interesting point. I've never thought of that before. So dispensationalism, for those who haven't followed it, is normally criticized and defended because of its interpretation of what biblical Israel is now. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

So it's like, it's a super electric topic, both theologically and politically. Absolutely. And people get utterly hysterical about it and start calling you names or whatever. Yeah. So there's that. But you're saying that the deeper or a deeper problem with it is that it makes...

people pessimistic. Yeah. Can you flesh it out a little bit? Yeah. So I think if, I mean, if you think, if you go your entire life believing that any minute the world is going to come to an end, that I'm going to float up into heaven and my clothes will be here and, and everything, everything we were gone, it's, it's done. It's over. Um,

Right. Well, that takes a people that ordinarily are very low time preference, that build things for the future, that delay gratification, all of those kinds of things. And it flips it around and makes them very high time preference where it's like, well, if the world's not going to be around tomorrow, why invest in anything for today? And you can even see this in terms of architecture. You think of the buildings that churches have, right?

Well, they're in strip malls or they're, you know, just they're kind of ugly. Yeah. Yeah. And you look at the buildings that... It's like a former pet store in a strip mall. Yeah. Yeah. And you look at the buildings that Christians had before this was the dominant theology and they're gorgeous. They're beautiful. And there were very poor people that made them like you said earlier. I know. I know. And...

And it's like that right there, like you see it tangibly that – and you think about that in terms of all of life. That is so smart. And what was the phrase you used? Low time preference? Yeah, low time preference. What does that mean? It's like an economic phrase, right? So, right, your preference in terms of time. Please respect my ignorance. Yes. It just means that you –

you're going to wait longer for things. It's sort of like the marshmallow test with little kids, right? Where the one where like in five minutes you'll get two marshmallows or you can eat this one right now, right? Well, the child that says, oh, I'll wait. I want two, right? Well, he's going to go on and have more success and so forth versus the one that has, that immediately grabs the one and eats it, right? Well, that's low time preference. It's people that will delay gratification who

Who will save and invest and build things for the long term, for the future. And for future generations. Yes. They plant oak trees. Yes. Who plants oak trees? Yeah, well, I mean, we're going to in Tennessee. We want to bring back the American chestnut in Tennessee. We want to bring that back. Are you putting in evergreens, please? Oh, wow.

Oh, I think everything. Yeah. I mean, there's pines. Please don't neglect the pine. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I know it's a fast-growing tree, relatively speaking, but it's... It's beautiful. It's the answer. And cedars, if you can, if you have water. Oh.

Yeah, I don't know if we'll be able... Well, okay, okay. Now we're going to get into ecology. Since you're a preacher and Old Testament scholar, what was the inside of the temple clad with? Cedar, yeah, from Lebanon. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. God himself said cedar. That's right, yeah. An accident? He was pretty specific about it. Yeah, yeah.

It smells great. Maybe there's a reason my sauna has cedar on the inside. That's right. I always tell my kids that. Just think of it like the temple. It's my cedar church. That's right. No sacrifices, however. Well, here's something you may not have known. This network almost didn't exist. Trademark issue almost prevented us from launching by blocking us from using the name TCN. Now, a company called the American Country Network owned the rights to that trademark, and we were not sure if they would give them up.

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specious theological elements, which I think very obviously it does. By the way, the whole theology was like

laid out in the end notes. It's not actually in the Bible. It's like interpretation in the version of the Bible. John Nelson Darby and Cyrus Schofield. And it's, and there's, I mean, they'll claim that their antecedents from the early church were, well, this guy believed in something like the rapture. And it's like, it's always very, like you said, specious. Yeah, that's my read as a non-theologian, but it does seem incredibly silly, but sincere. So.

Yeah, exactly. People sincerely believe it. A hundred percent. A lot of people I really like and respect. Yes. I just want to say that. But you're saying that the cost is even deeper because it changes your worldview.

And makes it very difficult for you to engage in the labor of, like, for example, loving people around you and building something beautiful, which are also Christian imperatives. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, I think so. And it also, yeah, so it forces you into an immediacy, right? We got to do everything right now because there isn't going to be a future. There's not going to be. I mean, I heard this all the time growing up. Yeah.

You know, we're not going to be around. We're going to be raptured. So why plan for the future? Why build things for the future? You heard that growing up? Oh, yeah. This was just everywhere in evangelicalism. Did you grow up in that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did. And I remember...

I remember in college when I was first getting into more historical theology or thinking like, what did people believe before the 19th century about things? And, uh, and it's for the first 1800 years. Yeah. What, what did they, well, there were, um, there are various different eschatological schools. Like there's all sorts of different views of, of how the end works. But when I first get into that and I'm thinking like, Oh, I don't know if I actually believe in the rapture. And I remember being in college and in campus ministry and telling people this, I'm

Like, I don't know if I actually believe in that. I mean, it was like I just uttered the greatest heresy of all time. Like, I could have said...

I probably could have said, well, you know, just denied the Trinity or something. Right. And they would have been like, oh, that's interesting. But saying, I don't think there's a rapture. What? Are you serious? Right. Like that is central doctrine to many Christians. And it has this deep emotional connection because, I mean, if you've been if you've grown up your entire life hearing this.

And it's just assumed by everybody, right? It's hard to break out of that, even though the everybody of the historic church of millions or billions of Christians, right? It's actually a tiny minority in the history of the church that has believed that. But presently, it's a majority of evangelicals. Yeah, it seems like that theology is dying. That's just my sense, but I'd be the last to really know. No, I think your instincts are correct. I think some of it is, I mean, some of it too, especially in the latter half of

the 20th century right after right israel is formalized as a state in 1948 well that that gives like big confirmation that okay things are happening like

There's an Israel in Revelation and a temple in Revelation. So it's happening, guys. So we've got 40 years, right? 1988, that's the end. Well, then that doesn't happen. And then people make all sorts of other guesses. I wasn't even aware of that. So the idea was 1988, the end of the world. Yeah, 40 years after 1948, right? That that's when the rapture is coming. That was a, you know, I think it was...

There was a book like 88 Reasons Why Jesus is Coming Back in 1988, right? And I'm sure it sold a lot of copies and then, of course, didn't happen. Wow. Mike Takakis lost. Yes.

No, I mean, that's not obviously the rapture, but, you know, whatever. We'll take it. For people in Massachusetts, maybe it was. But yeah, it's just so interesting because I look at it like you look at Matthew 24, right? That's the big text that people point to.

What does it say? Where Jesus says, well, there's going to be wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes in various places and plagues and things like that. But right before it, right, well, Jesus is in the temple and he's fighting with the chief priests and he's telling them, you know, he's just, he's fighting with them at Passover. So thousands of people surrounding them, he's embarrassing them in the temple and

And his boldness is really shocking. Yes. People haven't read it before. Yes. The rage that he displays at the leadership. Yes. The religious leadership is just like, like it's nothing else. It comes right off the page. And, and it, which is so ironic because you see evangelicals who are like, you need to be more Christlike, right? You need to be, which means like wimpy and weak and inoffensive sweeping into the temple and knocking over tables and driving people out with a whip. And then, and then going into the temple and giving this parable,

Right. Where of the vineyard where he's like, first I sent I sent this servant, you beat him and stoned him and then you killed the other another one. Well, I'll send my son. They'll respect him. And then it's the air. Right. If we kill him, we could take the vineyard for ourselves. Right. And yes. What's he going to do to these people? Well, he's going to he's going to come and he's going to destroy all of them. And it's like.

And they knew, right? The hilarious thing, I think, like reading the gospels is, right? Jesus is giving parables. And the point of the parables is actually to conceal what he's saying. And people are like, whoa, what's that? Even his own disciples are like, what? What's that about? I don't really know. It doesn't make any sense. But he's telling parables to the chief priests and the Pharisees and all the leaders of Israel. And they're like, oh, wow.

That's about us. I think it says they understood it was about them. They knew it was. And they decided to kill him. Yeah. So the parables are like obscure to everybody else. But when it's about them, like, oh, he's talking about us. Right. And. But talk about speaking truth to power. I mean. Yeah. Like. Yeah. I don't know how that Jesus was kept for me as a.

you know, lifelong church goer. I have no idea. Yeah. But you just read it. I would recommend everyone read it. Non-Christians alike. But he's there. He's right there. And especially the gospel of Matthew. I love it because it is. But Mark too. All four. I mean, obviously all four of them, but like Matthew in particular is so cool to me.

Because like you read it and the way it's organized is Jesus is recapitulating the entire history of Israel, right? So right in the very beginning, he goes out into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, right? Just like Israel's in the wilderness for 40 years.

Right. Is tempted by Satan. He comes right after after he crosses the goes is baptized in the Jordan is like crossing the Red Sea, goes into the wilderness. Then after that, right, he is he's preaching a sermon on a mountain, expounding the law, which is which is Moses on Sinai. Right. And after this, he's telling parables of the kingdom like he's like he's David or like he's Solomon writing Proverbs, writing Psalms.

And then he begins all of these excoriations of the high priesthood and the Pharisees and all the leaders of Israel. Well, what's that like? It's like the prophets, right? So he's reliving the whole history of Israel in his lifetime. What's Matthew doing there? What's the Holy Spirit doing there? It's showing that Jesus is Israel, right? He's the true Israel, right? He is the, as the Apostle Paul says, he's the chosen seed of Abraham, right? He's the one that carries out Israel's mission, right?

which is, you know, I'm kind of doing the weave too. Like, like, I'm doing the weave. It's, it's Trumpian. It is. People, I mean, when I'm preaching, people are like, Andrew, you're, you're doing the weave of President Trump. But like Trump, it's interesting. I try not to do the hand motions and things like him too. But we all have our own rhetorical style. But it, it's interesting because,

Right. Like the whole dispensational thing where it's like, OK, right. The old covenant still somehow sort of exists and there's still this, you know, this distinction between Jew and Gentile out there. Well, like the whole New Testament talks about this, that no, right. Those that that separation exists.

that existed in the old covenant, right? They're brought together as one in Jesus, who is the true Israel, the true, the successful Israel, the Israel that's obedient and goes to the death and is vindicated by being resurrected.

Right. And that old covenant, it's done. It's over. Right. Those distinctions between Jew and Gentile, they're gone. It says that only about a thousand times. Yeah. In every book of the New Testament. So to come to the opposite conclusion does make you sort of wonder, like, have you read it? Yeah. And exactly. Whether you believe it or not, that's just not what it says at all. Yeah. And so you think about that and it's like, okay, these two are brought together. I mean, the whole book of Acts is about this, right? That the...

The Holy Spirit not only goes to the apostles and the Jews in Jerusalem, but the Gentiles get it too. Like Peter goes to Cornelius and he believes. And now here is this Roman, right? This Gentile. And the interesting thing about that too is there's this misconception that

that the only people in the Old Testament that believed in God were Jews. But it's like everywhere they go, there are these Gentile God-fearers that believe in God. And Cornelius is one of them in the New Testament. Well, it's all through the New Testament. And in fact, Jesus calls out repeatedly Gentiles as the most faithful. Repeatedly. Yes. The Roman officer. Yes. Yes. Again, like, I mean, he says this in...

in the gospels like he's he's talking about right the faithful or faithless and adulterous generation right he's talking about israel and right he's saying

In the resurrection, right, Sodom and Gomorrah and Tyre and Sidon, they'll rise, right? Sodom destroyed for trying to rape angels. They will rise up in judgment on this generation because if the things that I'm doing, right, if the Son of God appeared to them and preached to them, they would have repented, right? And Nineveh, right, this Gentile city in the Old Testament of Assyrians, right, brutalized

brutal, bloodthirsty people, right? Noah shows up or Jonah shows up and he, he preaches and his only message is 40 days. Nineveh is going to be destroyed, right? He's, he's gleeful about this. And the King hears about it. He, he repents. He makes all the people in the city wear sackcloth and ashes. And it's like, well, I don't really know what's going to happen, but this, this looks serious. We better repent.

And I mean, we're going to go in the deep weeds here if you let me. You know, this is I'm not filibustering like like President Putin did. But but right. You look at the book of Jonah in particular. He is he he flees not because he's afraid of the Assyrians. Right. Like that's the what people think is like he's scared to go there. No. Like you read the end of the book of Jonah.

And he's arguing with God at the end. And he's saying, I knew that you would show mercy on these people. I knew you would show them mercy. That's why I didn't want to go. He was trying to outwit God, like trick God into not being gracious to these Gentiles because he knows in Christ,

In the law, right, in Deuteronomy, right, one of the signs that Israel is about to be cursed is that he is going to call nations, right, the Gentiles, right, nations that do not know him to himself. He's going to go to the Gentiles and away from Israel.

And that means judgment is going to come upon Israel. So Jonah knows this. And he's like, I am going the opposite direction. I'm going to Tarshish, to Spain. Yeah. Because I am not going to let God judge my people. Right? That's why he's angry about this. And it gets even more interesting because Jesus talks about the sign of Jonah to Israel. And people think, oh, well, Jonah, he's talking about the resurrection, being in the ground for three days and three nights. And it's like, what?

I mean, that's symbolic. That's typological. He's drawing on the typology. But it's not about that. It's that what's going to happen? Gentiles are going to hear the gospel and not you. And that judgment is going to come on Israel. Judgment is going to come on this generation. And that's what Jesus says at the beginning of Matthew 24 is...

These things are going to happen in this generation, right? He's walking with the disciples in the temple and they're marveling at the building. We would marvel too. I mean, beautiful. Like the whole thing is clad in gold on the outside. It's gorgeous, beautiful, giant, massive stones that it boggles your mind how human beings could move these things and build this stuff without, you know, modern power tools, right? They're marveling at the temple, right?

And Jesus is like, what are you looking at? Do you not know that not one stone is going to be left upon another very soon?

And they're like, oh boy, when's this going to happen? Well, 37 years later, actually. Yeah, well, I think we can debate. Well, whenever. 40 years later. Okay, 40 years later, but I mean— I'll be autistic on that point. The second revolt, it's normally said to be 70. I think the resurrection is in 30. I mean, we're coming up on 2,000 years. The point is, the Romans, it's actually—

the effort that they, I mean, I'm sure you've been there to the site. I haven't. Maybe one day. Oh, you should go. Jerusalem is the most amazing city and they've, anyway, but they just went to such a great effort to separate every stone. Destroy everything. So how much, they didn't just burn it and sack it. Okay, got it.

But they actually dismantled it. Yes. Piece by piece. How many slaves did that take? How much money did that take? How much effort, human effort? Why would you do that? Why would you bother to do that? Yeah. So, okay. I just want, and I'm so sorry for the discursions, but I want to get to your destination, which is Tennessee. Yeah. Yeah. Can you be a lot more specific about what you're doing there? I know there have been attempts to paint this as some sort of

white supremacist enclave or theocracy or whatever, what actually is it? Can you describe it? No. So, so really it's, it's a, you know, a real estate venture to build, to build communities, to build. And, and I'm even hesitant, you know, to call it like subdivision because it's not subdivisions. It'll be, it's large properties, you know, two, three, 10 acre lots where people. Has someone already bought the land? Yes. Yes. The Ridge runners bought the parcels. It's being divided up and sold, you know, as we speak.

And one of them, my church is going to build a church right at the center. And so imagine, so there's kind of two kinds of development that happen or really just one kind. It's just build massive cul-de-sac subdivisions, houses for black rock, that kind of thing. And that's not how America was built. Like my town was.

is founded in the middle of the 19th century. And like the first thing that gets built, like everywhere else, were churches and schools. And that's not featured anywhere in any subdivisions or real estate developments at all. There's no place for people to congregate and have an actual community. Yeah. Yeah. You see all of these ones. I mean, I've seen some of the plans in like places around like the Dallas-Fort Worth area where it's like they have a lazy river and they have all these nice amenities like that.

There's never like a church, right? There's never anything that the old America once had. And so, yeah, my church is going to build. It's building their families from all over the country. Some of them,

I've known them and they've been dying to get out of their blue state city, horrible existence out of the traditional subdivision into a place where they can have land, where they can have

have some chickens, maybe a cow, live like Americans used to. And be out in nature and enjoy beautiful things. To build something like that, because that's happening everywhere, is development, especially in Tennessee. It's like here in Florida, just exploding. So many people moving there because they're trying to get out of these places.

And so what gets built, right? Black rock style subdivisions and just hideous buildings. Hideous. Yeah, and very anti-human, right? And so this is development that is human scaled. It's built for people to enjoy actual life, right? For people to...

congregate in the same area where they hold similar values. You don't want to live in a place where everybody hates you and hates what you think and hates that you love Donald Trump, you love your country, you love your God. I've done that. You don't want that. And tons of people, it was like, oh, wouldn't it be great if I had neighbors that

You know, we pretty much agreed on everything. We agree on everything politically, culturally, all of that. And then you don't even have to talk about it. It's just have normal life together, right? Your kids can play with their kids and grow up together, right? That's the kind of thing that, you know, that's being built there in Tennessee. Yeah.

And so I'm so excited to be a part of it. The fact that there's a church at the center of it is a red flag for the authorities in most places, and certainly for the cultural commentators and the media. If it was any other religious institution, of course, it would be great. That would be your community. They're praising the Muslim communities in Texas, for instance. Right, or the illegal alien communities in Texas or whatever. But a Christian church is...

and i don't think any christians should be surprised i mean the bible says you're gonna be persecuted for believing this so um and they are all right prediction come true yeah but yeah tell us the response to this this dangerous venture of yours ah well you know like locally uh the people in town are and and in the uh surrounding area even despite like the news attacking us and things like that uh the people that i that i've i've spoken to the people i've met in the town

are very you know they're they're like like very enthusiastic actually that yeah uh especially when they see you know see the things that i do see the podcast i do or various things like oh like you're not at all like the tv man said you are and of course these are people that you know that we've been describing like they they don't trust the media they don't trust journalists uh so they're already they're already just distrusting of of that

I'm like, oh, it just seems like you really like Donald Trump and the United States and Americans and the Constitution and our freedoms. And I was like, you seem like a just normal, you know, conservative kind of guy. And I'm like, yeah, I am. That's I'm an open open book. Like, there's no competition.

What you see is what you get. What I believe, I earnestly believe. And so people have been very kind to us. But the state legislature hasn't tried to mess with your zoning permits or anything like that? No. And the thing is, it's like, well, the company itself is not saying, well, this is a community. Like, that would violate the Fair Housing Act, right, to say this is a Christian-only community.

Um, it's just that my church is allowed to build a church there. Right. Um, there's no law against that at all. And, um, and I can, I can call up friends and say, Hey, you want to move here and be part of our thing? What are the costs like? Oh, the cost of living is extremely low. Like there's no,

There's no income tax in Tennessee, just like Florida. And so it's especially compared to large cities, you know, much, much cheaper place to live. So a lot of people are like, oh, wow, it's only going to cost me this much for a home. It would cost me two or three times that if I were to build something like this and I get land to have. Are houses being built there?

They're starting to be. Yeah. Yeah. My my my friend CJ actually is right in the right in the beginning stages of building his his dream house. He's going to be one of the first ones. That's quite a concept. Do you think that and you've written a book about this called The Boniface Option, which was controversial but also loved?

Like all good things. That's right. Maybe you're speaking self-referentially. No, no, no, no, no, I'm not. No, I was just saying like, you know, it's pistachio ice cream. You know, like not everyone loves it, but the people who do really do. They really do. So, but I think you suggest that, that like it's time for sincere Christians to be in fellowship with each other, like physically. Yeah, yeah, especially because...

You know, you see, you know, sort of like online communities where people are like, oh, I like this pastor. I like the sermons that he preaches. Right. I agree with this theology and I'm being formed and shaped. You kind of you band into into groups online where you sort of self sort. And and there are these massive communities on on the Internet where.

It's like, well, what if we took that, this digital community that exists, and what if we made it in real life? What would that be like? And that's sort of what, at least for me, what I'm trying to do is...

what if we bring people together in real life? What kind of stuff can we do? Like, I'm trying to just make it on my own, right? Just eke out an existence. But what if we all did that together and multiplied, you know, our respective bandwidths, right? What kind of stuff would we be able to accomplish? And you expect to have businesses there too? Yeah, people are already moving their businesses there. Yeah. And, and,

And the exciting thing is, and it wouldn't be just like the people moving in right there, the only ones working at these businesses, like it will help people.

The people that are from there, the local community, which is, you know, throughout the, you know, because of macroeconomic forces, geopolitical things, things that were done to our country, all the manufacturing and real good jobs that used to exist in a place like this, those are all mostly gone. And so what would it look like if we brought those things back? How would it bless the people in that area? Right. That's a major part of it. Yeah. And so...

That's the exciting thing is, well, we come to a place like this. We bring our friends that have – some of them have remote jobs and good incomes. They can – people will spend money locally and businesses will spring up because of that. People will bring businesses and need employees and the –

the people in the area will flourish in a way that they haven't for quite a while. That's the pioneer spirit. For people who are interested, what's the name of this again? Ridge Runner. So the Highland Rim Project. Highland Rim Project. Highland Rim Project, yeah. So the website is ridgerunnerusa.com. So I have one last question for you. Do you expect, I mean, what you described in your home state, in your hometown,

It's basically the persecution of Christians, the people who built the United States. And that is a trend. Where do you expect that trend to go to the extent you can predict it?

That's the most difficult thing, of course, always making predictions. It is, of course. But I think it will go in two directions. So, you know, you have the left. I mean, you see this right now, just how violent they are. They're just itching to destroy things, destroy people. They're burning Teslas. They shot President Trump, right? They...

They're very, very, very violent people. And of course, like the political apparatus on their side loves that. Right. They never condemn it. They never say these things are bad. And we saw the same thing. Their youth brigades. Yeah. Their militia. We saw the same thing in 2020. Right. The same exact thing. And so I think, you know, and there have been, you know, instances of churches being, you know, shot at and burned down and bombed and things like this. I think those kind of things will...

will continue to happen and continue to get worse, especially in blue states and blue cities where it's basically allowed. You know, George Soros just handpicks all the prosecutors and they're not going to enforce these laws. And but on the flip side, they're

There's still like tens of millions of Christians, very conservative evangelicals and the like. They just got President Trump elected, right? And political power is being wielded. And that's always the thing is like for so many years, we were told –

That no, no, no, we – our enemies have all this political power, but we're going to restrain ourselves. We're going to follow the constitution and we're just going to expect them to disarm themselves for reasons. And that sort of way of thinking among conservatives is quickly being discarded that the only –

the only thing you could do is confront power with power right um and and president trump and vice president vance they're wielding power and and that wielding of power is going to defend christians in this country yes it will and and so i i think like that conflict will continue to become more stark right the two visions for the country um will will become more black and white right it will become more obvious

that, um, that Christians need to band together, um, to leave places where they have no protection whatsoever, where people like Tim Walls or, or the next governor of Minnesota, probably Keith Ellison, who is an Antifa Muslim. Um, like they, I mean, that was a terrifying thing too. It's like this guy, maybe he knows who I am and what, what could that guy do to me? Right. Um,

to leave a place like that where you will very likely be persecuted, right? They want to have a foil. Like the whole thing on Christian nationalism, I mean, this is why I wrote a book on that is in 2022, the media is just attacking like normal, decent evangelical people that happen to like Donald Trump and have skepticism about the election, the vaccine, everything.

and make them the boogeyman. And they would always say white Christian nationalism. They always put those things together because they happen to be white. And even though they espouse no white nationalist ideology,

tendencies at all. They have no race theology whatsoever. Whatsoever at all. They're like, well, I'm totally colorblind. They have a universalist theology. Yeah, absolutely. Unlike the fascists who run the U.S. media who are like Nazi race mongers. Totally race-brained. How many people of color? We're going to count you by race, which they literally do in this country. Who's the Nazi? Oh, yeah.

I know. They're obsessed with it. They don't do that in church. No. When people come to your church, they're like, how many blacks do we have today? How many Hispanics? How many Pacific Islanders? You're like, we have Christians. Well, the evangelical leadership definitely does, right? Well, they've fallen for this stuff. Yeah, of course. But never forget how poisonous it is. Absolutely. Yeah. I think. Yeah, it is. It's like, well, no, we just have Christians, right? And so...

No, I think those trends will continue. But I'm hopeful. I'm optimistic. I'm espousing this optimistic eschatology. So, of course, I'm optimistic. I'm always hoping for the very best. And I think that especially if...

If the kind of evangelical Christianity, right, historic Christianity, the Christianity that built Christendom, that built the West, that built America, if that comes back, right, the kind of Christianity that sees Jesus in the Gospels, like we were talking about earlier, and sees a man, right, a man that is on a mission and is totally courageous and courageous.

God's enemies right to their face, knowing it's going to get him killed, right? That kind of Christianity that preaches like that, that speaks like that, that, that sees a God that is real and is, is, is your God. And he is, he, he loves you and he, he loves what's true and good and right. And there's justice and he is going to bring justice to,

To all of his enemies, right? To all of the people that hate him, all the people that do just monstrous evil, right? That kind of Christianity, that makes a comeback in America. Well, that's an America that has a future. I have to say, I think that the hallmarks of courage among them

are cheerfulness and optimism. I do think that. And you have that. Oh. You know, for a dangerous theocratic fascist, you seem very optimistic and cheerful. So thank you for spending all this time. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. It was great to meet you. Yes. Nice meeting you as well. Thank you.

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