Andrew Isker: Building a Christian Refuge to Fight Wokeness, Transgenderism, and Paganism

Andrew Isker is the sixth generation in his family to live in the same Minnesota town. But when the state declared war on Christians, he fled to Tennessee, where he’s helping to build a new and real community based on faith and freedom. (00:00) Why Isker Is Building a New Christian Refuge (08:42) The Real Reason Left-Wing Cities Collapse (12:19) The Pagan Religious Movement of Abortion and Transgenderism (23:02) Wokeness Infiltrating the Church (29:25) Atheist Morality (36:00) Tim Walz Is Driving Christians Out of Minnesota Paid partnerships with: Hallow prayer app: Get 3 months free at https://Hallow.com/Tucker Policygenius: Head to at https://Policygenius.com/Tucker to see how much you could save Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Tucker Carlson?

  So Andrew, thank you for doing this. So, you're so controversial. I love that. Yeah, married man with six kids who pays his taxes. You're so controversial.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  Very.

• 0:41Tucker Carlson?

  Controversial would be not paying your credit card bill and putting the banks out of business, convincing other people to do the same, not paying your federal taxes, forcing the US 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 body man. But you are doing one thing that's pretty wild, which is participating in the building of a new town. It sounds 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?

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's not quite that.

• 1:13Tucker Carlson?

  It's not the Oneida community?

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're not building some kind of Anabaptist community.

• 1:19Tucker Carlson?

  Okay, you're not the Shakers.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  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.

• 2:10Tucker Carlson?

  Don't hire him to babysit.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  No, I would not. He would be the last person.

• 2:15Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, I think so.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  And, and you know, so we wanted to leave there. Many people want to leave places like that. My, my, my friend CJ left California, Gavin Newsom state to come to Tennessee. And, and so it's, it's a platform to, to be able to, you know, draw all of your, your friends together. It's like, well, we can kind of live anywhere. Why don't we, why don't we all live in the, the same kind of place and bring our, our families, bring our businesses and, and build things together. So it's, it's, it's sort of a platform for drawing, drawing people that are, you know, spread out all throughout the, the country and, and can leave these places that are, that are not great, you know, living in, living

• 2:59Speaker 02

  in large cities or, or suburbs where you're just totally disconnected and, and, you know, really isolated, alienated from, from normal life. And you can, you can have the American small town experience once again.

• 3:13Tucker Carlson?

  So sad to hear you say that about Minnesota as, 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 cheeked children and it's clean and reasonable.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:29Tucker Carlson?

  Not, not the case anymore. Why did you leave there?

• 3:32Speaker 02

  Um, you know, for us, it was.

• 3:35Tucker Carlson?

  Are you from there?

• 3:36Speaker 02

  I'm from there. Yep. Born and raised in, in Wasika, Minnesota. My, my children were the sixth generation of our family that lived in that town.

• 3:45Tucker Carlson?

  Oh gosh.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  And.

• 3:47Tucker Carlson?

  In the town?

• 3:48Speaker 02

  In that town. Yeah. In, in the town of, of Wasika.

• 3:51Tucker Carlson?

  Are your ancestors buried there?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Uh, yes. There's six generations that are buried there. Even, uh, one of my own, my own children that, that passed, um, that, you know, all their, like, we lived, you know, a couple of blocks away from the cemetery where all of, all of my ancestors were buried.

• 4:07Tucker Carlson?

  Oh gosh. Oh, that's very heavy to leave a place like that.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Yes. Uh, and it was, you know, tw- after the 2022 election where the Democrats took control of the, um, the state senate finally and Tim Walz could do whatever he wanted to do. He, um, the first thing he passed was in the, in the wake of the Dobbs decision.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  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. Um, 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, uh, I mean, maybe, maybe, you know, later your guys can pull up that video, but, uh, uh, I just went there and said like, hey, you, you think you won an election. You think you can do this and, and just murder children, but God is not mocked. Like he's, he's, he's going to come with vengeance about what you're doing. And of course they

• 5:09Tucker Carlson?

  The consequences.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. They, they're like all these, you know, 60 year old liberal ladies senators here are looking at me scoffing at me and just staring daggers at me and hating what I'm saying. Uh, how, how dare he come this

• 5:20Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, lots of

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Christian nationalist.

• 5:22Tucker Carlson?

  Lots of luck to them.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and so that's the first bill that they passed. The very, the second bill that they passed. And these are their first two legislative priorities that they had. The second one was, um, a trans, a trans rights bill, which allowed the state to take your child out of, out of their custody or your, the parents custody. Um, if you opposed a transition and my, my oldest child is 12.

• 5:50Tucker Carlson?

  A minor child.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Minor child. Yeah. My, my oldest son, he's, he's 12 years old. Uh, he has autism. Uh, we homeschool all the rest of our children, but we don't have the, the resources to be able to, to educate him with his autism. And so he goes to, you know, special ed and I'm, I'm well aware, especially of, you know, you see the things that happened in 2020, 2021, all of the activism, trans stuff in, in the schools, right? All the libs of Tik Tok kind of stuff.

• 6:16Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  That, um, the majority of like trans children are on the autism spectrum, right? These children are targeted, right? And, and I'm thinking, okay, he, he

• 6:29Speaker 02

  He doesn't talk about school, 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. 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.

• 6:52Tucker Carlson?

  So that's when you go Randy Weaver at that point.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Well, that's yeah.

• 6:55Tucker Carlson?

  For sure. And you don't want to go Randy Weaver. Like it didn't end well for Randy Weaver.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  No.

• 7:00Tucker Carlson?

  Doesn't end well for anybody.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  No, I don't, I don't, I don't want to go down that road.

• 7:04Tucker Carlson?

  No, no, nobody does. Nobody does.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  And so it's like, we need to, we need to get out of here, right? We cannot trust the, you know, the whole system 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? Um, we, yeah, we've been in this place for six generations, but, and it's, it's a wonderful town, you know?

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Amazing place. I mean, it's home. I love the people there and many of them are going to be watching this and.

• 7:54Tucker Carlson?

  Well, you must know all of them.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  From, from my youth, you know, you, you go to the store and you see, you know, my, my wife and children hated when I would go to the store because it would take, you know, an hour to get a thing of milk because I'd just stop and talk to people I've known my whole life.

• 8:10Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, I love that.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  And it's a wonderful place. Like it's hard to leave that, right? Cause it's, you know it. You're familiar with everything and all of the people and just the, the way of life. And

• 8:22Tucker Carlson?

  Gosh, that's where your family's buried. Six generations. That's just, I, I had no idea. That's so much to give up. It must have been.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  I can't, like, it would, it, I can't stay in a place like that. It's, there, there's no future for, for my children, for my family, in a, in a place that's that far gone, right? That, that has been destroyed. And, and you see so many of these other states, you know, California, Washington, adopted all the same things that, that Walz's Minnesota did.

• 8:50Tucker Carlson?

  Why, I, I want to get back to the Ridge Runner and the town that's being built, which I assume is a fascist Christian theocracy?

• 9:00Speaker 02

  That's what the, the TV news in Nashville has said.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Yes, Mr. Phil Williams, the journalist.

• 9:07Tucker Carlson?

  Little Iran, except Christian. Right, okay. But why do you think, so that 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?

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:35Tucker Carlson?

  How did they get there?

• 9:37Speaker 02

  I, I think, I mean, for all of them, the political power was captured by, by the left, political and cultural power. I mean, I went to, to college in Minnesota in the, in the early 2000s, and you could see the seeds of all of these things, right? Beginning to form. And, and so all, all of the institutions were captured. And, and especially culturally in Minnesota, people, people are very nice, right? It's not a, it's not a myth. Minnesota nice is very real. And, right, the ethos is if you don't have anything nice to say, right, don't say anything at all, which I just swim completely against that tide.

• 10:17Tucker Carlson?

  I mean, not to point to Gen X, but it's real. It's Germans, it's Scandinavians, Norwegians, Swedes, some Finns. It's like, these are, these are gentle, non-confrontational people for the most part.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, they're, they're very, they're very kind, very, people that, that are to a fault. Unwilling to give offense.

• 10:36Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  And very, very tolerant of, of other people.

• 10:39Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, they are.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  And that gets taken advantage of, right? So you can have-

• 10:43Tucker Carlson?

  So they take our best qualities and subvert them against us?

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. And, and you can see that in, in, in other places too, like on, on the west coast as well, right? Uh, that, that, um, and especially with like Christians, um, this is, this is done all, all of the time.

• 11:01Tucker Carlson?

  I know.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Right, where, where you're told, well, we need to love other people and, and be kind and, and be Christ-like. And, and that ethos gets subverted and used to these ends, right? Where, well, how, how dare you, you know, talk about these things? Like, how, how dare you talk about these things from the pulpit? That these things going on, like, it, it offends a lot of people.

• 11:21Tucker Carlson?

  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 wanna, don't wanna get in your face.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  No, never.

• 11:38Tucker Carlson?

  But it leaves them defenseless a little bit, I think.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I, I mean, maybe I'm, maybe I'm unique, you know, maybe, uh, 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, how, how could we, I mean, just think a hundred years ago? And that's, that's sort of, you know, uh, my book, uh, is, right? If you go back a hundred years and you think about your, your great, great grandfather and you told him, hey, they're, they're gonna take little kids and little boys and remove their genitals and turn them into, to girls, right? Are, are you okay with that? Do you think that's, that's all right? Like, what would they do if that was even proposed? Like, they-

• 12:25Tucker Carlson?

  I thought eunuchs went out with the Ming Dynasty.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 12:27Tucker Carlson?

  I can't believe we have that.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we're, we're bringing that back. And like, they, they would go insane. They would, they would, they would fight. They'd become violent if, if that were happening. And, and we're like, well, you know, I, I really wanna keep my job, so I'll, I'll put the, I'll, I'll put the pronouns in my email signature and on my LinkedIn, uh, you know? I'll, I'll just, you just go along to get along.

• 12:48Tucker Carlson?

  I have contempt for them.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:50Tucker Carlson?

  So, um, my theory is that those are the most secular states.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:55Tucker Carlson?

  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 the, you know, 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 I did, a lot of them I'd really disagree with.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:14Tucker Carlson?

  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 like, I can't turn away. I'm like, the Canaanites did this. Like, 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.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  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, to like, oh, I'm agnostic, I don't, I don't really believe in your-

• 13:57Tucker Carlson?

  Who was that, there was 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?

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Oh, like Richard Dawkins, or Daniel Dennett, or Christopher Hitchens?

• 14:10Tucker Carlson?

  I knew Hitchens well. He was a marvelous guy, but totally wrong on this. He was legit smart.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:17Tucker Carlson?

  No, there's another one, whatever, who's always running around.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Like, today, like, James Lindsay is, is one of those types.

• 14:22Tucker Carlson?

  Who's James Lindsay?

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Uh, he's, uh, he is a, um, this atheist, atheist guy that opposed wokeness and things like that, but wants, uh, wants just a free liberal society, like, it's 1995. Yeah, yeah.

• 14:39Tucker Carlson?

  I'm all for a free liberal society, it's just that there, there isn't one. Either you're moving quickly toward, um, I mean, I, 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.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 14:59Tucker Carlson?

  That's my view.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:00Tucker Carlson?

  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 trannyism, which is another like transcendent belief. It's like you pick a religion.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not whether, but which there will be one. And that's that's part of it is like the the new like the new atheism, all of those things. It broke down, you know, Christian mores and and and Christian, you know, just cultural Christianity that was imbued all throughout the American public life. Yeah, 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? Yeah, you know, all of it like it is. It is a new religion. It isn't. 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 and the one that we are serving now is some kind of demon.

• 16:07Tucker Carlson?

  Well, I think so much better put than I could have than I could have formulated that. But yes, exactly perfectly put exactly. You're going to worship something.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:16Tucker Carlson?

  And now we're worshiping something really, really dark as a society. But it's it's particularly pronounced in the states that have abandoned Christianity the most aggressively and just come up with this new pagan religion. So, OK, 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.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:35Tucker Carlson?

  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?

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was. I was pastoring a church.

• 16:46Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, gosh.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:48Tucker Carlson?

  Yes. Okay. Yes. So you're involved in church?

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Yes, I am. Yeah. And it's a church with wonderful people. And and, you know, 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 so it's extremely difficult to leave them as well. But it was it was difficult because it was a very small church. And and the things that I'm I'm preaching, right? So I I take the pastorate there in 2021. So after the lockdowns, after all of these things, and there's 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 we had many families join us, you know, after that.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  But you know, overall, right, the people, you know, in, in Minnesota, right, they don't, they're not used to the, the kind of preaching that, that I do, the kind of Christianity that I have where it's like, I know, I believe the Bible, like, 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 gonna like tiptoe around the things that might be controversial. If anything, I'm gonna lean into those things. And I'm gonna preach all of it. And that's, that runs totally against the evangelical Christian ethos in America

• 18:21Speaker 02

  today. It's, it's, it's all about, you need to be nice, you need to, you know, make, make Jesus very inoffensive to people. And that's how you bring people into your church.

• 18:32Tucker Carlson?

  So I'll, I'll say, I'm not an evangelical. I've always liked evangelicals. I've always defended them. I'm very sympathetic. As an evangelical, I'm not even exactly sure what an evangelical is. It seems 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.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  That, that was certainly, you, you look at like, you know, the eighties and even in the early nineties, like you have the moral majority where, where they very much were that kind of fire and brimstone. And they've, they've been vindicated by everything that has happened.

• 19:19Tucker Carlson?

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• 20:03Tucker Carlson?

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• 22:26Speaker 02

  But throughout the 90s and early 2000s, they really changed course, right? As the cultural trajectory is changing, they adopted, you know, the very seeker-sensitive movement where it's like, well, people are-

• 22:42Tucker Carlson?

  I'm sorry, what did you call it?

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, seeker-sensitive movement is-

• 22:44Tucker Carlson?

  What does that mean?

• 22:45Speaker 02

  It was, it was, right, the big movement in evangelicalism in the 90s and early 2000s where we're gonna, we're gonna make it as easy as possible for people to come into the church and believe in, in Jesus and, and so we're, we're not gonna focus on things that might offend them. We're not gonna 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, right? Well, come as you are. We'll, we'll meet you halfway. Like, that, that was more or less the-

• 23:17Tucker Carlson?

  Why do you think they did that?

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Um, I, 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, as a positive thing. Like, if you said, "Oh, I go to church, I'm a Christian, I go to that church," people will think, "Oh, that's a good guy. He's, he's an upstanding, decent person." But by the, by the mid 90s, it was, it was sort of neutral, right? It was sort of, "Oh, 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.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  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-

• 24:15Tucker Carlson?

  I was gonna ask you to pause just to state for the 1,000,000th time, the Nazis were not Christians.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 24:20Tucker Carlson?

  So, they were not Christians.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  But they loved to throw those things around, did-

• 24:25Tucker Carlson?

  Nazis were Christians? No. Um, yeah.

• 24:30Tucker Carlson?

  More Christians were killed by the Nazis than any other group, just a fact. So anyway, no, the Nazis were not Christians. So I just, I'm sorry.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Good to make, you know, yeah, because they'll clip this and they'll say, oh, Andrew Isker is saying that the Christians are Nazis. But, um, so that, that, that period of, of time, like there, there's these widespread cultural shifts in, 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, you had figures like, like Rick Warren or Tim Keller, who, who sort of adapted these things. So Tim Keller is in New York City and, and he, he tries to adapt, you know, Christianity to your, you know, upper middle class, you know, striver people in, in New York City, where to make it easy

• 25:22Speaker 02

  for them to come to church. So he wouldn't ever, you know, 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, uh, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, J.D. Greer, you know, famously 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, they want to downplay.

• 25:52Tucker Carlson?

  It shouts about both of them.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  It does. And the two are connected, right?

• 25:56Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  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. Um, and, and so, but it's to downplay things that the culture does not want to hear, right? Because you'll be branded as, 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, 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 polite society if you say those things.

• 26:29Tucker Carlson?

  And, and you can reject it. You can reject Christianity itself. And you're certainly welcome to in this country and in all countries, actually.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 26:36Tucker Carlson?

  But it doesn't just say this parenthetically.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  No.

• 26:40Tucker Carlson?

  Like included in a sidebar. It says it again and again and again. And the church I grew up in, they're like, whoa, 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, 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.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:12Tucker Carlson?

  From like the Hebrew scriptures, all the way through the Christian, to the New Testament. And 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, it's not whispered at all.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, you do. You do have to believe it if you're a Christian.

• 27:29Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  If you claim that you, that this is the Bible, that God spoke this, right?

• 27:33Tucker Carlson?

  I agree.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  And so they're, they're very fearful of those kinds of things. But, I mean, the interesting thing now that we're in, you know, what Ren calls negative world, is, is that young men, who, who were kind, who were raised, most of them, like raised secular, right? They went through the, the whole new atheism thing. They never went to church, they never grew up. I mean, I, I talked to so many guys, so, so many young men, you know, I, I see, you know, connect with me on, on X and, and places like that, where they're like, hey, I was not part of the church at all. I was not a Christian. And

• 28:14Speaker 02

  I see all of the evil everywhere, right? I see the things like you're talking about, like, they, they are sacrificing babies. Like, it's, they, they care about this more than anything else, that 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, and kill millions of people for absolutely no reason.

• 28:40Tucker Carlson?

  And our proxies have banned the majority Christian faith.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:43Tucker Carlson?

  Banned the majority Christian faith, the majority faith, which is Christian, in Ukraine. And I just wonder, just to go back to the atheists for a second, 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.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can see why someone would have that viewpoint.

• 29:02Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:08Tucker Carlson?

  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?

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:19Tucker Carlson?

  You've never felt anything that is clearly outside of what science describes? Like, how determined are you to ignore your life?

• 29:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:31Tucker Carlson?

  That you become an atheist? Like, what is that?

• 29:33Speaker 02

  I know, it's crazy. Yeah, I mean, it's funny, because most of the people that you talk to are like, when they espouse atheist ideas, right? They'll retreat. It's kind of a Martin Bailey thing, where they'll retreat to, well, 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, no, I'm an atheist. There definitely is no God.

• 29:56Tucker Carlson?

  Okay, well, then, why is murder wrong?

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 29:59Tucker Carlson?

  Well, because it is, because it is, well, okay, I think it's right.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:03Tucker Carlson?

  So, how can you tell me it's wrong? By what authority?

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:07Tucker Carlson?

  Because you feel that way? That's your authority? Your emotions?

• 30:10Speaker 02

  And you would see this. I remember...

• 30:11Tucker Carlson?

  So, like, the people you were saying who are atheists, like, are they ever? Some of them are smart, I assume?

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:16Tucker Carlson?

  What do they say to that?

• 30:17Speaker 02

  I remember, I remember watching, you know, a previous guest of yours, actually, the man who trained me in ministry, Doug Wilson, debate.

• 30:26Tucker Carlson?

  Wonderful man, nice man.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Christopher Hitchens. And they had that discussion, right? And it was shocking to watch Hitchens say, well, it's, you know, it's common human experience, you know, solidarity with mankind, that's why I think murder is wrong. And, of course, Doug says to him, well, you know, well, if you saw someone being murdered on the street, you 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?

• 31:02Tucker Carlson?

  What did Christopher say?

• 31:04Speaker 02

  He's like, oh, you're being flippant. You wouldn't go down that road.

• 31:08Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, 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, 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...

• 31:34Tucker Carlson?

  But he was such, and so I love Christopher, but he was a moralizer. Whoa.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:40Tucker Carlson?

  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?

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:48Tucker Carlson?

  Doesn't even make any sense, actually.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:51Tucker Carlson?

  And I agreed with him on some things and disagreed on others, but he was always like in the pulpit, actually.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:57Tucker Carlson?

  And a lot of the atheists are.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:59Tucker Carlson?

  What is that?

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Well, I think so much of it is atheism really is.

• 32:04Tucker Carlson?

  An atheist moralizer. It's hilarious.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Well, it's a Christian heresy. Like, they want to, they want to have all the things of Christianity, just without, without God there, right? So they, they want to be able to pursue all of these things, right? They, they want to be able to say, this is right and this is wrong, but have no, no authority to ground it on, right? Just, just by their say so, right?

• 32:25Tucker Carlson?

  It's so factious, though.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Conundrum. Yeah, yeah.

• 32:28Tucker Carlson?

  What? It's wrong!

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Well, and you could, you could see why.

• 32:31Tucker Carlson?

  Okay, why?

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, you could see why it's breaking down, though, today.

• 32:35Tucker Carlson?

  Under the weight of its own silliness.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. It, it, it creates this vacuum and it's being replaced by something. So all of the, all of the moralistic energy is still there, and now it's gone to, to things like transgenderism, abortion, you know, Gaza, whatever, whatever. Like, it goes, it goes to all of those routes. It goes to, you know, BLM and, and rioting.

• 32:59Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, that's right.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  And, and so it's highly religious.

• 33:02Tucker Carlson?

  It's in us.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:04Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. It's, it's fundamentally human. Absolutely.

• 33:13Tucker Carlson?

  So, but an atheist would have to, by definition, be utterly non-judgmental about everything, like on.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  You, you would think they should be, but they're the most judgmental people.

• 33:24Tucker Carlson?

  It's unbelievable. I mean, Christopher at dinner was always lecturing about the Kurds.

• 33:29Tucker Carlson?

  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. You know, I'm not an expert in Kurdishness. But he, man, he would like lay down his life for the Kurds.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:47Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's human. Like, we want that.

• 33:57Tucker Carlson?

  That's totally true. So what did you say to your church when you left?

• 34:03Speaker 02

  That was, that was one of the hardest days of my life.

• 34:05Tucker Carlson?

  I believe it.

• 34:06Speaker 02

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

• 34:47Speaker 02

  And it's, it's ultimately, you know, what is best for my family's future, right? There, there's a place where, where my children, you know, can grow up. I guess part of it too is, it isn't just the things that, that we're leaving, you know, the political, cultural things that we're leaving in Minnesota, but it's also, you know, overall, the things that have been done to the Midwest, to, to everywhere where my, my children grow up. And if, if they want to have, you know, a career and, and a life and a family and a success of their own, there just isn't much for them in, in small town Midwest. And

• 35:27Speaker 02

  And, and so they'll all just fly the coop. Like, I mean, this is what happened, um, like when I graduated from high school, most of the people that I, I grew up with, they all, they all left. They went to the Twin Cities. They went to other, other cities for work and, and for, for careers. And, and so that, that same thing was likely going to happen with, with my children. And I, 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, I want to be in a place where we can continue that, where we can be rooted, where, where my children have the ability to stay in a place. And, and so so many, so many friends

• 36:10Speaker 02

  are, are coming to, to Tennessee where, where we are. They're bringing businesses there. And, and once you, you know, 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, for young people. And, and so, right, if, if my children want to stay where we are and continue that on, uh, generation after generation, like we, we actually will be able to do that, right? That's, it isn't, it, 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.

• 36:41Tucker Carlson?

  The Tennessee dream.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  There's a future there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:44Tucker Carlson?

  The, the, the hope of refugees from time immemorial.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:49Tucker Carlson?

  What did the other churches in the state say as the state itself became a place that faithful Christians couldn't live?

• 36:57Speaker 02

  I mean, there, there are a handful of, of churches there that are, that are very strong, right? There, there are Christians there that, that oppose these things, but they're so, so vastly outnumbered. Like when I went, when I went to the state capitol to, you know, oppose the abortion bill, um, there, there were lots of activists on, on both sides, uh, pro-life activists and pro, uh, 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.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  I'm a, I do this, you know, it's, it's a tent make. I do, I do a full-time job and then do this. I, I were tiny. I'm, I'm small. I'm insignificant. And, and there are churches with 15, 20,000 people, prominent men in, in the Twin Cities.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  And, and all I had to do was just send an email to the, 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, 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, I'm the only one that, that came. I, I quoted the Bible, I, and, and opposed it as a Christian. They, there's just so little fight there.

• 38:29Tucker Carlson?

  Christians built your state.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 38:31Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:40Tucker Carlson?

  I think of them as Scandinavian in Minneapolis and Irish.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:44Tucker Carlson?

  And, and others in St. Paul.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:47Tucker Carlson?

  But both of them, especially St. Paul, uh, just littered with churches and schools. And it's just like the infrastructure of those cities was built by Christians.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:55Tucker Carlson?

  And so it's a little bit crazy that, first of all, it's been taken over by people who, who have made a point.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:02Tucker Carlson?

  Just, you know, just 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.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, this is what happened with, with my, my wife is from St. Paul. Uh, her, uh, you know, father's side of the family is Polish Catholic.

• 39:18Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Went to St. Casimir's church.

• 39:21Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly. That's exactly in my mind, what I think of.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  And the neighborhood that they, they were in, it was all, all Polish people.

• 39:26Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  But now it's all, it's all Hmong, right? Everywhere. It's all Hmong and Somali. And everyone there just left over the last two or three generations.

• 39:37Tucker Carlson?

  What happened to their churches and parochial schools and?

• 39:39Speaker 02

  Um, like, well, St. Casimir's church is there, but it's, it's largely empty, right? We went there for a funeral a couple of years ago, but there's, I mean, people still attended, but it's not like it, not like it was. Most of the, most of the parishes there have shut down. The church, the church schools have, have shut down and, and they've moved out to the suburbs. And so that, I mean, it was, that was a Polish neighborhood. It was, it was, uh, right, this ethnic enclave.

• 40:04Tucker Carlson?

  If I can just say, showing myself to be an ethnic nationalist.

• 40:10Tucker Carlson?

  The Pol- they're just like some of the greatest people.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:12Tucker Carlson?

  I've ever met. I don't think I've ever met.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  I have to say that married one, so.

• 40:15Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, I just think they're great people. I don't know. I've met many I don't like, but um, just salt of the earth, smart.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:21Tucker Carlson?

  Hardworking, serious about faith and family. Yeah, great people.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:26Tucker Carlson?

  Um, I doubt it was an improvement to change to St. Paul. In fact, it wasn't. I've been.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  No, it's um, like when, when her parents finally moved, like the, the whole area is, is just, is rundown, lots of crime. You know, and it's, and it's sad, uh, because it was, it was, you could see the, 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.

• 40:52Tucker Carlson?

  Unbelievable.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  These places. And now they're just falling apart, bars on windows everywhere.

• 40:56Tucker Carlson?

  Factory workers, like basically tithing to build the infrastructure of churches and schools.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:02Tucker Carlson?

  And their own homes.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:04Tucker Carlson?

  You know, people with no money giving.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:06Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:15Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah. Destroy it all and destroy all the people. It, it's a crime on a level that only historians will be able to assess clearly. But um, yeah, okay, sorry. So, uh, so can we just, before you get into what's happening in Tennessee?

• 41:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:29Tucker Carlson?

  So discursive, it's my fault. But what, why aren't the fearsome evangelicals who I will still defend?

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 41:37Tucker Carlson?

  I'm just saying that.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  The laity, absolutely defend them.

• 41:39Tucker Carlson?

  Well, the laity, yeah. Know a million of them.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:41Tucker Carlson?

  And I love them. Um, in fact, there's some working here right now in this office, but uh, the, the preachers, like where were they during all of this?

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, I, I think it's, it's largely, uh, the, the contemporary evangelical mode of being is, is, I mean, so much of it. I, I look back to it, um, being, you know, going all the way back to something like the second great awakening, right? Where, um, the purpose of, of, uh, the, the major change that took place there is. It it's all about conversionism, right? And and it becomes a big show and and marketing and and all of that.

• 42:25Tucker Carlson?

  That's where you got the 10 revival.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes. Yeah, Charles Finney, those those kinds of things. Well, that that's kind of in the DNA, at least somewhat, within evangelicalism.

• 42:34Tucker Carlson?

  So to put a finer point on what you're saying, the point became the more souls we convert, the more people who who profess faith.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:42Tucker Carlson?

  That's like the scorecard that we use?

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the metric that that um that everyone follows. And and so you look at it and you think, well, if we just if we just water it down a little bit more, make it more palatable to people, you know, just get more 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, not, you know, fundamental life change and so forth, that traditional Christianity always was. 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

• 43:25Speaker 02

  matters. So you you see churches where it's like, OK, 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 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 see, you know, many evangelical people, right, 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 right, what people believe about different things. And

• 44:07Speaker 02

  and they just they haven't been taught any Bible. They don't they don't know it. And so then when, you know, when the the liberal says, well, the Bible condemns eating shellfish and pork, and 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 and their faith is shaken.

• 44:29Tucker Carlson?

  God didn't destroy two cities with sulfur and fire because people were eating pork.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 44:34Tucker Carlson?

  He destroyed them because they tried to. Commit gay rape on an angel.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's just. And they'll say that with, well, the sin of Sodom was in hospitality.

• 44:44Tucker Carlson?

  No, it wasn't.

• 44:45Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I guess.

• 44:46Tucker Carlson?

  It was gay rape.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the least hospitable thing you could do.

• 44:49Tucker Carlson?

  Just read it if you want. It's like, it's pretty out there. Yeah.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  It's like, well, yeah, the least hospitable thing you could do to a guest is to anally rape them.

• 44:58Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, so all the men of the town came out. They demanded.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, we need to know these angels.

• 45:03Tucker Carlson?

  To have sex with these angels. And then lots like, um, I've got some daughters in here. Take them.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:09Tucker Carlson?

  Which kind of 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. Like, it's like, it's, these are not euphemisms. It's pretty straightforward.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I actually, I just read Genesis 19 to my children and there were some questions.

• 45:31Tucker Carlson?

  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 was, I was told her what I had read the night before. And she's like, what? What? You know, she's, I mean, 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.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  That's what happened. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And, and so I think about that. 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, you know, their entire adult lives and they're in their, you know, seventies. And, and one of them said to me, you know, Andrew, that's, that's the first time someone has ever preached from the book of Judges in a church service.

• 46:34Tucker Carlson?

  It's a good one.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  I went through the entire, entire book and then, well, let's do Ruth and then First Samuel and Second Samuel. And, and, and it's like, wow, there's so much there.

• 46:44Tucker Carlson?

  It's unbelievable.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  So much there. I mean, I had, 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, this is wild. Like, there's so much like political intrigue happening in

• 47:03Tucker Carlson?

  Always shocking.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  First and Second Samuel. Yeah. And, and I'm like, yeah, and I'm explaining it, you know, sort of in like this, you know, Mearsheimer-y, realpolitik way.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  And they're just like at the edge of their seats like, whoa.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  That's crazy that that happened.

• 47:18Tucker Carlson?

  I know.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  And, and so I love it. And

• 47:21Tucker Carlson?

  I can see why. I, I don't claim to understand a lot of it, particularly the Old Testament. Starting to figure out the New Testament a little more, but just having read it cold a couple of times, just like a book like you would read, Anacron or Moby Dick. It's like the wildest, coolest, most interesting, most profound, like, those are not overstatements at all.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:42Tucker Carlson?

  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? Like, everything we have is founded on

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:53Tucker Carlson?

  the ideas in this. And like, you're basically illiterate if you haven't read it.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  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 the book of Jonah. How do you not, how do you not know what that's about? But they

• 48:18Tucker Carlson?

  Well, it's just so

• 48:19Speaker 02

  They have no idea.

• 48:19Tucker Carlson?

  It's just so compelling.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:21Tucker Carlson?

  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 gotta have life insurance. But you may not have life insurance because it's a huge hassle and it can be a huge ripoff. But there is an answer. Policygenius. It makes it very easy and much cheaper. You can find life insurance policies that start at just $292 per year for a million dollars of coverage. And some options, and this is the best part, are 100% online and lets you avoid unnecessary medical exams, the guy with the gloves.

• 49:03Tucker Carlson?

  You don't want that if you can avoid it, and you may be able to avoid it. 40% of people wind up looking back and wishing they'd had better life insurance, or any life insurance. It could have helped their families enormously. Policygenius can fix that for you. Peace of mind, that's what they're really selling. The address? Policygenius.com/Tucker, or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much money you could save and how much hassle you could save. Policygenius.com/Tucker.

• 49:37Speaker 05

  It's me, the

• 49:40Speaker 05

  We don't need the jingle twice.

• 49:43Speaker 05

  Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars.

• 49:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app.

• 49:58Speaker 05

  Fine. No one deals more deals than Please stop. Touche.

• 50:05Speaker 00

  LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot make your email response time faster. We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you find space for your three desk drinks. Why do you have three? And while we can't help you find the perfect volume for your presentation video, LinkedIn can help you find the perfect audience for your business. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.

• 50:35Tucker Carlson?

  Even Leviticus, which I read on a flight to Europe one night, I made myself, because you know,

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:39Tucker Carlson?

  Eighty-eight hours on a plane. And I text my wife from the plane, I was like, this is excellent, actually. It's just excellent. I thought it was gonna be all like sacrificing doves, because you have your period that's in there.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  It is, yeah.

• 50:51Tucker Carlson?

  But like, 95% of it made sense to me.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  Well, and it's, and it's real, like, it's, it's, it's tangible, right? It's, you know, in theological terms, incarnational, like, it's, you're, you're, the, the real tangible world that people interact with, right? That's there, and it, and people always ask me, like, well, Andrew, what's your favorite book of the Bible? And I, and I love to, I mean, sometimes I love to get a rise out of people, but I, I tell them, well, Leviticus is. And, and they're like, what? Really? And I'm like, yeah, like, I mean, I'm, I'm a pastor, my, my calling is to, is to preach the gospel and to lead worship. And, and that book, right there, all of it is about how do sinful people draw near and

• 51:34Speaker 02

  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, and even, like, you look at Leviticus, Chapter nine, like, you read that, maybe you remember reading it. I'm actually, you know, going through this with, with my church right now in Tennessee. But Leviticus, Chapter nine, is the entire liturgy of the church, right there, each, each of the sacrifices. And all of the, like, Western liturgy for 2,000 years, basically follows it, right? You, you're called into the presence of God, you, you confess your sins. I mean, you, you probably, like, your Episcopalian upbringing, Book of Common Prayer, like, you, you probably track with this, right?

• 52:19Speaker 02

  You confess your-

• 52:20Tucker Carlson?

  They never, they never admitted that in our church.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. Maybe they didn't have a confession to sin of yours, but, but there's a confession of, 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, hola, right, where the word Holocaust comes from, consumed, burned up, goes up to God in, in smoke, and that's you, right, that's when, and, and then the New Testament, where it says, right, the word of God is living and active sharper than any two-edged sword, well, it's the sword 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

• 53:06Speaker 02

  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, 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, he is that sacrifice, and we're going through all of that each time we worship and, and renew the covenant with God, and, and like, you see that in, in Leviticus, and it's like, whoa, actually, there's so much to learn here in this book about what we are doing every, every Sunday when we, when we worship God, uh, so I'm like, yeah, this, of course, it's my favorite book, right, not just because I'm autistic and like lots

• 53:51Speaker 02

  of rules and regulations, right, it's like reading the, uh, reading the instructions on, on the Monopoly game, you know, like, no, it's, it's, it's, it's there, like, so much is happening, it's, it's, it's beautiful.

• 54:03Tucker Carlson?

  And, and the prescriptions, or the prohibitions, more precisely, are surprisingly, like, sensible.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:13Tucker Carlson?

  And one of the challenges to atheism is to explain why the atheist would agree with the overwhelming majority of what's prohibited.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:21Tucker Carlson?

  Because it's it's in him. He knows that's wrong. Don't have sex with your sister.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 54:25Tucker Carlson?

  Okay. And most people, most atheists would be like, yeah, well, obviously. But of course, he has no grounds upon which to say that.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:34Tucker Carlson?

  There's literally no law he can appeal to to say that.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  He says that obviously because like he grew up and was is reared and and absorbed by osmosis, like Christian culture where that's prohibited.

• 54:43Tucker Carlson?

  I think that's right, but I also think in primitive cultures that have never had exposure to Christianity, I mean, I don't know that there are many cultures where most of the prohibitions in Leviticus would be considered crazy.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  No.

• 54:57Tucker Carlson?

  Or esoteric are like, why would you ban that? It's like every one of them are like, of course.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  Well, even like you, you think about this, there was, um, there's, um, a pastor theologian, brilliant guy, Peter Leidhard, who wrote a book, Delivered from the Elements of the World. And and in that, he shows, 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 for Israel in the Old Covenant, um, that sets them apart as as this holy people, as the priestly people. And but elsewhere in the world, right, they all have something like that, right? All 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

• 55:44Speaker 02

  these rules about sex and 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, Greeks, all of them have these kinds of the the.

• 55:55Tucker Carlson?

  The Mayans, the Incas, the Aztecs.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  The Norse, German, like my ancestors, the the Germanics, like, they all had these these rules. And it's well, it's because in the ancient world, right, they're all under their own particular gods, right? And, um, what what Jesus does is he comes and he he takes the world back from Satan and from all the the demons that ruled over the ancient world. And and now he's reigning over heaven or that's that's actually like the book of revelation. Um, but that's actually like what's going on in that book.

• 56:26Tucker Carlson?

  The much maligned book of revelation.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, like I I know you had, uh, you had John Rich on, you know, last year and he's talking about dispensationalism and things like that. And I was like, oh, oh, I'm gonna be in Tennessee. I need to meet him and talk to him about this.

• 56:40Tucker Carlson?

  Did you?

• 56:41Speaker 02

  I I haven't. No, I have no way of getting in touch with him. Maybe after this, uh, if if you're watching, yeah.

• 56:46Tucker Carlson?

  He's a good man.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Oh, I 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, um, where he's talking about like dispensationalism and what has happened in in American Christianity for the last, you know, 130 years, how it's actually a novel, new thing. Um, and and for me, it was, it was like, yeah, I I looked at that. I mean, I remember, you know, growing up and that's just everything like left behind and and the rapture is coming and all of that.

• 57:17Tucker Carlson?

  Signing this to all of that?

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:19Tucker Carlson?

  What you're talking about?

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's it's a thing like, like especially, and of course, like I'm very critical of it. Um, but like, these are the, these are the best people in America that believe it, like the the people that have like six Trump flags on the back of their truck.

• 57:36Tucker Carlson?

  I totally agree.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  Like, they they also believe that, well, 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, okay, I'm not critical of the people. Like, there's not a moral defect that they believe these things.

• 57:48Tucker Carlson?

  I I totally, first of all, thank you for saying that. Second, I I feel what you're saying, especially with evangelicals. I I look at these, you know, greaseball preachers who I 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.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:18Tucker Carlson?

  Because.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And so like, and so like, whenever I'm, I'm critical of that theology, I'm like, I have to make sure people don't like, I'm not criticizing you. Because you're great, awesome people. Like even when I, when I first went to the, the town in Gainesboro before we decided, 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, I'm driving around and every gas station.

• 58:45Tucker Carlson?

  Where is it?

• 58:46Speaker 02

  Gainesboro, Tennessee is in Jackson County. It's like north central Tennessee.

• 58:50Tucker Carlson?

  Okay.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  And, yeah, and.

• 58:52Tucker Carlson?

  So every gas station?

• 58:54Speaker 02

  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, they're taking their time and, 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, into Israel and everything. And they're taking their time. It's like, these are wonderful people.

• 59:16Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:30Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 59:39Speaker 02

  And you see it reciprocated. Right.

• 59:41Tucker Carlson?

  But it's totally real.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:43Tucker Carlson?

  And.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:44Tucker Carlson?

  Completely real and it's emotional.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:46Tucker Carlson?

  And, uh, he's like, I love those people.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:50Tucker Carlson?

  He eats McDonald's in private.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:54Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 59:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:00Tucker Carlson?

  But that part, that specific part of Trump, like loving people like that. Oh, man.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  Well, and it's the people that are, you know, the most maligned in our country, like, like the, if, and 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. Um, 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.

• 1:00:41Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  I want to be around these because they're great people.

• 1:00:43Tucker Carlson?

  With the despite and cheerful too.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, wonderful people.

• 1:00:47Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Tucker Carlson?

  The best, the best that this country's ever produced, in my opinion.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:01:14Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And, and so I, you know, I think about that, right? And I think about the theology that has been, that it, that has shaped, you know, their outlook. And, 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, would eat that up. But the people that actually built America, right? You know, the Puritans and all of the, the settlers of this country, you think of even like the, the founding generation, that, 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, they viewed,

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  right, this continent as, as a place for, for Christians to, to build, to, to grow, to have a future.

• 1:02:12Tucker Carlson?

  What an interesting point. Well, 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.

• 1:02:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Tucker Carlson?

  Okay? So it's like, it's a super electric topic, both theologically and politically.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:02:36Tucker Carlson?

  And people get utterly hysterical about it and start calling you names or whatever.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:40Tucker Carlson?

  So there's that. But you're saying that the deeper, or a deeper problem with it is that it makes people pessimistic.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:50Tucker Carlson?

  Can you flesh it out a little bit?

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:03:01Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  That I'm going to float up into heaven and my clothes will be here and, and everything, everything, we, we're gone. It's, it's done. It's over. Um, well, that, that takes a people that ordinarily are, are very low time preference, that, that build things for the future, that, 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?

• 1:03:31Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  For today. And you can even see this in terms of architecture, right? You think of the, the buildings that, that churches have, well, they, they, they're in strip malls or they're, you know, just, um, they're kind of ugly.

• 1:03:43Tucker Carlson?

  It's garbage.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And, and you look at the buildings that-

• 1:03:46Tucker Carlson?

  It's like a former, former pet store in the strip mall.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:03:57Tucker Carlson?

  I know.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  And, and it's like that, that, that right there, like you see it tangibly, that, and you think about that in terms of all of life.

• 1:04:06Tucker Carlson?

  That is so smart. And what, what was the phrase you used? Low time preference?

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Low, low time preference. So it's like an economic phrase, right? So, right? Your, your preference in terms of time.

• 1:04:15Tucker Carlson?

  Please respect my ignorance.

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  Yes. It, 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?

• 1:04:29Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  Where the one where like in five minutes, you'll get two marshmallows, or he can eat this one right now, right? Well, the the child that says, oh, I'll wait, I want to, 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 that's low time preference.

• 1:04:47Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  It's it's people that will delay gratification, who will save and invest and and build things for the long term, for the future.

• 1:04:56Tucker Carlson?

  And for future generations.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 1:04:58Tucker Carlson?

  They plant oak trees.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:05:00Tucker Carlson?

  Who plants oak trees?

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, we're going to in Tennessee, we want to have bring back the American chestnut in Tennessee.

• 1:05:07Tucker Carlson?

  Ah.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  We want to bring that back.

• 1:05:09Tucker Carlson?

  Are you putting in evergreens, please?

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  Oh, I think everything. Yeah, I mean, there's there's pines. Yeah, there's.

• 1:05:14Tucker Carlson?

  Please don't neglect the pine.

• 1:05:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:17Tucker Carlson?

  I know it's a fast growing tree, relatively speaking, but it's.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  It's beautiful.

• 1:05:20Tucker Carlson?

  It's the answer. And cedars, if you can, if you have water.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know if we'll be able.

• 1:05:25Tucker Carlson?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  Now we're gonna get into.

• 1:05:27Tucker Carlson?

  Since you're a preacher and Old Testament scholar, what was the inside of the temple clad with?

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  Ah, cedar, yeah, from Lebanon.

• 1:05:34Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:35Tucker Carlson?

  God himself said cedar.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  That's right, yeah.

• 1:05:37Tucker Carlson?

  An accident? He was pretty specific about it.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it smells great.

• 1:05:42Tucker Carlson?

  Maybe there's a reason my sauna has cedar on the inside.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:05:45Tucker Carlson?

  I always tell my kids that.

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  Just think of it like the temple.

• 1:05:48Tucker Carlson?

  It's my cedar church, yeah.

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:05:49Tucker Carlson?

  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. Looking back, American Country Network could have demanded a lot of money. They could have held us up at gunpoint in exchange for the name TCN, and a lot of businesses would have done that, but they didn't. They were incredibly nice. They gave us the name for free, and they gave it to us quick.

• 1:06:23Tucker Carlson?

  That's when we realized, this is not your average company at all. These are really, really nice people. And we're glad this happened because it let us get to know the American Country Network. It turns out, it's a great place. Its leaders are excellent people of the same values that we do and we think that you do. American Country Network is a family-friendly conservative Christian group, bringing the best country music to millions of households across the country, and it's growing fast. They launched just last year. They plan to reach 40 million homes in 2025. As the only Nashville-based country music network left, there's only one, American Country Network is here to stay. We really cannot recommend them highly enough to you, and we're grateful to them for their kindness to us. They did it for no reason other than to be nice, so we're especially grateful for that. We always are.

• 1:07:07Tucker Carlson?

  So go to ACNCountry.com to enjoy everything they have, including their 24/7 livestream. We hope you will.

• 1:07:16Speaker 05

  It's me, the

• 1:07:19Speaker 05

  We don't need the jingle twice.

• 1:07:22Speaker 05

  Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars. Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app. Fine. No one deals more deals than Please stop. Touche. Priceline.

• 1:07:44Speaker 00

  LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot make your email response time faster. We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you find space for your three desk drinks. Why do you have three? And while we can't help you find the perfect volume for your presentation video, LinkedIn can help you find the perfect audience for your business. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.

• 1:08:14Tucker Carlson?

  I'm sorry, I've gone so far. But so your point is that dispensationalism not only has specious theological elements, which I think very obviously it does.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:27Tucker Carlson?

  By the way, it, it, the whole theology was like, laid out in the end notes. It's not actually in the Bible.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:08:35Tucker Carlson?

  It's like interpretation in the

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, John Nelson Darby and Cyrus Schofield and it's, and there's, I mean, they'll claim that they're antecedents from the early church, like, well, this guy believed in, in something like the rapture. And it's like, ah, it's always very, like you said, specious.

• 1:08:50Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, that's, that's my read as a non-theologian, but it does seem incredibly silly, but, but sincere, so.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, people, yeah, exactly. People sincerely believe it, so I don't want to mock them.

• 1:09:02Tucker Carlson?

  A hundred percent. A lot of people I really like and respect believe.

• 1:09:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:09:05Tucker Carlson?

  So 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?

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so. And it, it also, yeah, so it, it, it forces you into, into an immediacy, right? We got to do everything right now because there isn't going to be a future, right? There's not going to be, I mean, and I heard this all the time growing up, well, you know, we're not going to be around, we're going to be raptured. So why, why plan for the future? Why build things for the future? Why, why plan?

• 1:09:44Tucker Carlson?

  You heard that growing up?

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. This was, this was just everywhere in evangelicalism.

• 1:09:48Tucker Carlson?

  Did you grow up in that?

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did. And I remember, I remember in college, when I was first getting into more historical theology, we're thinking like, what did people believe before the 19th century about things? And

• 1:10:05Tucker Carlson?

  For the first 1800 years?

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. What did they, well, there were, there were 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. I remember being in college and in campus ministry and telling people this, like, I don't know if I actually believe in that. I mean, it was, 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,

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:11:12Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, it seems like that theology is dying. That's just my sense. But I'd be the last to really know.

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:11:45Tucker Carlson?

  I wasn't even aware of that. So the idea was 1988, saying the world?

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  Forty 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 sure, it sold a lot of copies. And then, of course, didn't happen.

• 1:12:05Tucker Carlson?

  Wow.

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  But

• 1:12:07Tucker Carlson?

  Mike Tocacus lost.

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:12:10Tucker Carlson?

  No, I mean, that's not obviously the rapture. But, you know, whatever, we'll take it.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  For people in Massachusetts, maybe it was. But, but, yeah, it's, you know, it's just so interesting. Because, like, I look at it, like, you look at Matthew 24, right? That's the big, you know, the big text that people point to. And

• 1:12:32Tucker Carlson?

  What does it say?

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  Uh, where Jesus says, well, there, you know, there's going to be wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes in various places and plagues and, and things like that. Um, but right before it, right, well, Jesus is in the temple and he's fighting with the chief priests. And he, 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

• 1:12:56Tucker Carlson?

  His boldness is really shocking.

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:13:00Tucker Carlson?

  To people who haven't read it before.

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:13:01Tucker Carlson?

  The rage that he displays at the leadership.

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:13:05Tucker Carlson?

  The religious leadership is just like

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  Like it's nothing else.

• 1:13:09Tucker Carlson?

  It comes right off the page.

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  And, and, and which is so ironic because you see evangelicals who are like, you need to be more Christ-like. Right. You need to be, which means like wimpy and weak and inoffensive.

• 1:13:18Tucker Carlson?

  Sweeping into the temple and knocking over tables and driving people out with a whip?

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  And then, and then going into the temple and giving this parable, right, where of the vineyard. Where he's like, first, uh, I sent, uh, I sent this servant, you beat him and, and stoned him. And then you killed the other, another one. Well, I'll send my son and they'll respect him. And then it's the air, right? If we kill him, we could take the vineyard for ourselves. Right. And he asks, what, 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?

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  What's that about? I don't really know. Like, 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, that's about us.

• 1:14:14Tucker Carlson?

  I think it says they understood it was about them.

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  They knew.

• 1:14:17Tucker Carlson?

  And they decided to kill him.

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they, they, the parables are like obscured everybody else. But when it's about them, like, oh, he's talking about us, right? And, and

• 1:14:26Tucker Carlson?

  But, but talk about speaking truth to power. I mean,

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:30Tucker Carlson?

  Like

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:31Tucker Carlson?

  I, I don't know how that Jesus was kept for me as a, you know, lifelong churchgoer. I have no idea.

• 1:14:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:39Tucker Carlson?

  But you just read it. I would recommend everyone read it, non-Christians alike.

• 1:14:42Speaker 02

  But he's there. He's right there. And especially the gospel of Matthew, I love it because it is

• 1:14:47Tucker Carlson?

  But Mark too.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. All, all four of them. 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, um, right in the very beginning, he, he goes out into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, right? Just like Israel's in the wilderness for 40 years, right? It's tempted by Satan. Um, he comes, right? Uh, after, after he crosses the, or 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,

• 1:15:28Speaker 02

  right? And, and after this, he's telling parables of the kingdom, like he's, like he's David, or like he's Solomon, um, writing proverbs, uh, writing Psalms. Um, and then he begins all of these excoriations of, of the high priesthood and the Pharisees and all the leaders of, of Israel. Well, what's that like? It's like the prophets, right? So he's, he's reliving the whole history of Israel in his, his lifetime. It's 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, as the Apostle Paul says, he's the chosen seed of Abraham, right? He's the one that carries out Israel's mission, um, which is, you know, I'm, I'm kind of doing the weave too, like, like, uh, doing the weave.

• 1:16:14Tucker Carlson?

  It's, it's Trumpian.

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  It is. Uh, people, I mean, when I'm preaching, people are like, Andrew, you're, you're doing the weave like President Trump.

• 1:16:20Tucker Carlson?

  But like Trump, it's interesting.

• 1:16:21Speaker 02

  I try not to do the hand motions and things like him too. Um, but we all have our own rhetorical style. Um, but, um, it, it's interesting because, right? Like the whole dispensational thing where it's like, okay, right? The old covenant still somehow sort of exists and there's still this, you know, this distinction between Jew and Gentile out there. Um, well, like the whole three testament talks about this, that no, right? Those, that, that separation. 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

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  over, right? Those distinctions between Jew and Gentile, they're gone.

• 1:17:08Tucker Carlson?

  It says that only about 1,000 times.

• 1:17:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:11Tucker Carlson?

  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?

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and, and exactly. And, and

• 1:17:21Tucker Carlson?

  Whether you believe it or not, that's just not what it says at all.

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  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 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, and now here is this Roman, right? This Gentile. And, and the interesting thing about that too, is there's this misconception 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-fears that believe in God. And Cornelius is one of them in the New Testament.

• 1:17:59Tucker Carlson?

  Well, it's all through, it's all through the New Testament. And in fact, Jesus calls out repeatedly Gentiles as the most faithful, repeatedly.

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:18:09Tucker Carlson?

  The Roman officer.

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  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, in the resurrection, right? Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon, they'll, 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? If, and, and Nineveh, right? This Gentile city in the Old Testament of Assyrians, right?

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  Brutal, bloodthirsty people, right? Noah shows up, or Jonah shows up.

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  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. Uh, and the king hears about it. He, he repents. He makes all the people in the city, um, uh, wear sackcloth and ashes. And it's like, well, I don't really know what's going to happen, but this, this looks serious. Uh, we better repent. And, and it, I mean, we're going to go into deep weeds here. If you, uh, let me, you know, this is, I'm not filibustering like, uh, like President Putin did, but, uh, uh, but, uh, um, right. You look at the book of Jonah in particular, um, he is, he, he flees,

• 1:19:42Speaker 02

  uh, 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, he's arguing with God at the end and he, he's saying, I knew that you would show mercy on these people. Right. I knew you would show them mercy. That's why I didn't want to go. Right. He's trying to, he was trying to outwit God, like trick God into not being gracious to these Gentiles. Uh, because he knows in, in the law, right? In Deuteronomy, right? One of the signs that Israel's 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.

• 1:20:28Speaker 02

  And that means judgment is going to come upon Israel. So, uh, Jonah knows this and he's like, I am going the opposite direction. I'm going to Tarshish, to Spain.

• 1:20:36Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:36Speaker 02

  Um, 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's, he's talking about the resurrection, being in, in the ground for three days and three nights. And it's like, that's, I mean, that's, that's symbolic. That's typological. He's drawing on the typology.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  But it's not about that. It's that what's going to happen? Gentiles are going to hear the gospel and not you.

• 1:21:08Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  Right? And that judgment is going to come on Israel, right? 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 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 you it boggles your mind how

• 1:21:33Tucker Carlson?

  Megaliths.

• 1:21:34Speaker 02

  Human beings could move these things and build this stuff without, you know, modern power tools, right? They're marveling at the temple. 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?

• 1:21:53Tucker Carlson?

  Well, 37 years later, actually.

• 1:21:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I think it's, we could, we could debate, you know,

• 1:21:57Tucker Carlson?

  Well, whenever.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  Forty years later, but

• 1:21:59Tucker Carlson?

  Forty years later, but I mean,

• 1:22:01Speaker 02

  I'll be autistic on that point.

• 1:22:03Tucker Carlson?

  The second revolt.

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:04Tucker Carlson?

  It's normally said to be 70.

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  I think the resurrection is in 30. I mean, we're, we're coming up on 2,000 years of

• 1:22:10Tucker Carlson?

  The point is, the Romans, it's actually crazy, the effort that they, I mean, I'm sure you've been there to the site.

• 1:22:19Speaker 02

  I haven't. Maybe one day.

• 1:22:20Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, you should go. Jerusalem is the most amazing city and they've, anyway. But, um, but they just went to such a great effort to separate every stone.

• 1:22:30Speaker 02

  Destroy everything.

• 1:22:31Tucker Carlson?

  So how much, they didn't just burn it and sack it. Okay, got it. But they actually dismantled it.

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:22:37Tucker Carlson?

  Piece by piece. How many slaves did that take? How much money did that take? How much effort, human effort did it? Why would you do that? Why would you bother to do that?

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:45Tucker Carlson?

  So, um, okay, I just want, and I'm so sorry for the discursions, but I want to get to your destination, which is Tennessee.

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:22:56Tucker Carlson?

  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?

• 1:23:09Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:23:27Tucker Carlson?

  Has someone already bought the land?

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, Ridge Runners bought the parcels, it's being divided up and sold, you know, as we speak. And one of them, you know, my church is going to build a church, like right at the center. And so it's, so imagine, you know, so there's kind of two kinds of development that happen, or really just one kind. It's just build massive cul-de-sacs, subdivisions, houses for BlackRock, that kind of thing. And, and like, that's not how America was built, right? Like, my town, you know, is founded in the, in the middle of the 19th century, and like, the first thing that gets built, like everywhere else, were churches, and then schools. And that's not featured anywhere in any, you know, subdivisions or, or real estate developments at all.

• 1:24:13Tucker Carlson?

  There's no place for people to congregate and have an actual community.

• 1:24:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, like, you, 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 any, anything that the old America once had. And, and so, yeah, my, my church is going to build, it's building there. Families from all over the country, some of them, you know, know me, I've, I've known them, and they've been dying to get out of their, their blue state city, you know, horrible existence, out of the traditional subdivision, into, into a place where they can have land, where they can have, you know,

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  have some chickens, maybe a cow, like, like, live like Americans, you know, used to. And, and be out in nature, and, and, and enjoy, you know, beautiful things, right? To build something like that, because that, that's happening, like, everywhere, like, its development, right? All, especially in Tennessee, like, it's, it's like here in Florida, just exploding, right? 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.

• 1:25:30Tucker Carlson?

  Hideous.

• 1:25:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and very anti-human, right? And so this is development that is is human scaled. It's built for people to enjoy actual life, right? For for people to to congregate in the same area where they hold, you know, similar values, right? You don't want to you don't want to live in a place where everybody hates you and hates what you think and hates that you you love Donald Trump, you love your country, you love your God.

• 1:25:58Tucker Carlson?

  I've done that.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

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

• 1:26:29Tucker Carlson?

  The fact that there's a church at the center of it is is a red flag for the authorities in most places, and certainly for the cultural commentators and the and and the media. And if it was any other religious institution, of course, it would be be great. That would be your quote community.

• 1:26:44Speaker 02

  They're praising the the Muslim communities in Texas, for instance.

• 1:26:48Tucker Carlson?

  Right. Or the illegal alien communities in Texas or whatever. But a Christian church is, and I don't think any Christian should be surprised. I mean, the Bible says you're going to be persecuted for believing this. So and they are. All right. Prediction come true. But yeah, tell us the response to this, this dangerous venture of yours.

• 1:27:05Speaker 02

  Ah, well, you know, like locally, the people in town are and in the surrounding area, even despite like the news attacking us and things like that, the people that I that I've spoken to, the people I've met in the town are are very, you know, they're they're like,

• 1:27:25Speaker 02

  Very enthusiastic, actually, that

• 1:27:28Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:28Speaker 02

  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 don't trust the media, they don't trust journalists. So they're already, they're already just distrusting 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'm 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, you know, what you see is what you get. What I, what I believe, I earnestly believe.

• 1:28:13Speaker 02

  And so, so people are very, have been very, very kind.

• 1:28:17Tucker Carlson?

  But the state legislature hasn't tried to

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:28:20Tucker Carlson?

  Mess with your zoning permits or anything like that?

• 1:28:22Speaker 02

  No, and, and, and the, the thing is, it's like, well, the, the company itself is not saying, well, this is a community, like, that would, you know, violate the Fair Housing Act, right, to say, this is a Christian-only community. It's just that my church is allowed to build a church there, right? 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?

• 1:28:49Tucker Carlson?

  What are the costs like?

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  Oh, the cost of living is extremely low. Like, there's no, there's no income tax in Tennessee, just like, like Florida. And, and so, it's, it's especially compared to large cities, you know, much, much cheaper place to live. So a lot of people are like, oh, wow, that'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.

• 1:29:16Tucker Carlson?

  Are, are houses being built there?

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  Uh, they're starting to be, yeah, yeah. My, my, my friend CJ actually is right in the, uh, right in the beginning stages of, of building his, uh, his dream house. He's one of, gonna be one of the first ones.

• 1:29:29Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:29:44Speaker 02

  Maybe you're speaking self referentially, but, or...

• 1:29:46Tucker Carlson?

  No, no, no, I'm not. 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.

• 1:29:54Speaker 02

  They really do.

• 1:29:54Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah. So, um, but I think you suggest that, that like, it's, it's time for,

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:01Tucker Carlson?

  for sincere Christians to be in fellowship with each other, like physically.

• 1:30:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, especially because, you know, you see, you know, sort of like online communities where, where people are like, oh, I, I, I like this pastor. I like the, you know, sermons that he preaches, right? I, I, I agree with this theology and I'm being, you know, formed and shaped. You kind of, you band into, into groups online where you, you sort of self-sort and, and there are these massive communities on, on the internet. It's like, well, what if, what if we took that, this like digital community that exists? And what if we made it in real life, right? What would that, that be like, right? And that's kind of sort of what, at least, at least for me, uh, what I'm trying to do is what if we, we bring people together in real life? What, what

• 1:30:50Speaker 02

  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, our respective bandwidths, right? What kind of stuff would we be able to accomplish?

• 1:31:05Tucker Carlson?

  And you expect to have businesses there too?

• 1:31:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, people are already moving their, their businesses there. Yeah. And, uh, and the, the exciting thing is, um, and it wouldn't be just like the people moving in, right? They're the only ones working at these businesses. Like, it will, it will help, uh, 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? Right? How would it, how would it bless the people in that area? Right? That's, that's a major part of it. Yeah. And, and so that's,

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  that's the exciting thing is, well, we can, we, we come to a place like this, we bring our friends that have, you know, some of them have remote jobs and, and good incomes. They can, they'll, people will spend money locally and businesses will spring up because of that. People will bring businesses and need employees and, and the, you know, the people in the area will, will flourish in a way that they haven't for, for quite a while.

• 1:32:17Tucker Carlson?

  That's the pioneer spirit. For people who are interested, what's the name of it, this again?

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  Uh, Ridge Runner. So the Highland Rim Project.

• 1:32:24Tucker Carlson?

  Highland Rim Project.

• 1:32:26Speaker 02

  Highland Rim Project. Yeah. So the website is ridgerunnerusa.com.

• 1:32:33Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah. So I have one last question for you. Do you expect, I mean, what you described in your home state, in your hometown, is basically the persecution of Christians, the people who built the United States. And that is a trend. Do you expect, where do you expect that trend to go, to the extent you can predict it?

• 1:32:49Speaker 02

  That's the most difficult thing, of course, always making predictions. But I, I think it will go in, 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're, they're, they, 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

• 1:33:23Tucker Carlson?

  It's their youth brigades.

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:25Tucker Carlson?

  Their militia.

• 1:33:25Speaker 02

  In 2020, right? The same, the same exact, exact thing. And so I think And there have been instances of churches being shot at and burned down and bombed and things like this. I think those kinds of things will continue to happen and continue to get worse, especially in blue states and blue cities where it's basically allowed. George Soros just handpicks all the prosecutors and they're not going to enforce these laws. But on the flip side, there are still like tens of millions of Christians, very conservative

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  evangelicals and the like. They just got President Trump elected, and political power is being wielded. And that's always the thing. For so many years, we were told that, no, no, no, 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 thing you can do is confront power with power. And President

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  Trump and Vice President Vance, they're wielding power. And that wielding of power is going to defend Christians in this country.

• 1:34:55Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, it will.

• 1:34:56Speaker 02

  And so I think that conflict will continue to become more stark. The two visions for the country will become more black and white. It will become more obvious that Christians need to band together, to leave places where they have no protection whatsoever, where people like Tim Walz, or the next governor of Minnesota, probably Keith Ellison, who is an Antifa Muslim. That was a terrifying thing, too. It's like, this guy, maybe he knows who I am, and what could that guy do to me?

• 1:35:38Speaker 02

  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 on Christian nationalism. I mean, this is why 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 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 tendencies at all.

• 1:36:12Tucker Carlson?

  They have no race theology whatsoever.

• 1:36:14Speaker 02

  Whatsoever at all. Like they're like, wow, I'm totally colorblind.

• 1:36:17Tucker Carlson?

  They have a universalist theology.

• 1:36:18Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:36:19Tucker Carlson?

  Unlike the fascists who run the US media, who are like Nazi race mongers.

• 1:36:24Speaker 02

  Totally, totally.

• 1:36:25Tucker Carlson?

  How many people of color? We're going to count you by race, which they literally do in this country. Who's the Nazi?

• 1:36:30Speaker 02

  I know, I know.

• 1:36:32Tucker Carlson?

  They don't do that in church. When people come to your church, like, how many blacks do we have today? How many Hispanics? How many Pacific Islanders? You're like, we have Christians.

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  Well, the evangelical leadership definitely does, right? They.

• 1:36:42Tucker Carlson?

  Well, they've fallen for this stuff.

• 1:36:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:36:44Tucker Carlson?

  But never forget how poisonous it is.

• 1:36:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• 1:36:47Tucker Carlson?

  I think.

• 1:36:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. It's like, well, no, we just have Christians, right? And so, no, I think I think those those trends will continue. And but I'm I'm hopeful. I'm optimistic, right? I'm espousing this optimistic eschatology. So of course, I'm I'm optimistic. I'm always 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?

• 1:37:29Speaker 02

  A man that is on a mission and is totally courageous and attacking 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 sees a God that is real and is is is your God and he is, he loves you and he loves what's true and good and right and there's justice and he is going to bring justice. To all of his enemies, right, to all of the people that hate him, all the people that that do just monstrous evil, right, that kind of Christianity, that makes a comeback in America. Well, that's that's an America that has a future.

• 1:38:15Tucker Carlson?

  I have to say, I think that the hallmarks of courage among them are cheerfulness and optimism. I do think that.

• 1:38:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:24Tucker Carlson?

  And you have that.

• 1:38:26Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:38:26Tucker Carlson?

  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.

• 1:38:34Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:38:35Tucker Carlson?

  It was great to meet you.

• 1:38:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's nice meeting you as well.

• 1:38:37Tucker Carlson?

  Thank you.

• 1:38:42Tucker Carlson?

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