"Billy Carson COULDN’T Fight Back" – Wesley Huff DESTROYS Fake Bible Lies & Debate Drama MELTDOWN | PBD Podcast | Ep. 532

Wesley Huff joins Patrick Bet-David on the PBD Podcast to discuss his explosive debate with Billy Carson, diving into faith, historical accuracy, and cultural shifts. They explore the growth of Islam, the challenges facing Christianity, and the impact of theological debates on modern society. --- 👕 GET THE LATEST VT MERCH: ⁠https://bit.ly/3BZbD6l⁠ https://bit.ly/3BZbD6l 📕 PBD'S BOOK "THE ACADEMY": ⁠https://bit.ly/41rtEV4⁠ https://bit.ly/41rtEV4 📰 VTNEWS. AI: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3OExClZ⁠ https://bit.ly/3OExClZ 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON SPOTIFY: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g57zR2⁠ https://bit.ly/4g57zR2 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ITUNES: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g1bXAh⁠ https://bit.ly/4g1bXAh 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ALL PLATFORMS: ⁠https://bit.ly/4eXQl6A⁠ https://bit.ly/4eXQl6A 📱 CONNECT ON MINNECT: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4ikyEkC⁠ https://bit.ly/4ikyEkC 👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3ZjWhB7⁠ https://bit.ly/3ZjWhB7 🎓 VALUETAINMENT UNIVERSITY: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3BfA5Qw⁠ https://bit.ly/3BfA5Qw 📺 JOIN THE CHANNEL: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/4g5C6Or⁠ https://bit.ly/4g5C6Or 💬 TEXT US: Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time! ABOUT US: Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration blog, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 0:26Patrick Bet-David?

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• 0:57Speaker 02

  People like Billy are very confident in the way that they say things, but that confidence isn't always backed up with the reality of the evidence. The sources you use were not primary.

• 1:10Speaker 03

  We're still talking over and over again. There's so much more we can talk about here. We're wasting a lot of time.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Confidence and competence are not the same thing. And I thought what was surprising to me about my interaction with Billy was that I was expecting some sort of rebuttal.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Billy went to Mark's house with a handwritten cease and desist letter.

• 1:35Patrick Bet-David?

  People would never expect to go there. What happened after you guys were done with the podcast?

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Well, we did the podcast and then it was very clear that Billy did not want the podcast to air.

• 1:47Speaker 03

  Why? Because a genius solves problems before they happen. And I'm going to drop the mic on that.

• 1:56Patrick Bet-David?

  Some weird people are going to become Christians next two years.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  And if you watch the interaction I had with him, it's on my YouTube channel. There was no rebuttal.

• 2:07Speaker 04

  So, yeah, yeah, yeah, go on. We'll, we'll, we can do a follow-up.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  I really appreciate it, Billy. Thanks so much for interacting.

• 2:12Patrick Bet-David?

  Mark is here. I didn't even know Mark was going to be here, right? Mark is the fellow that you did a podcast with Billy. Would you have done it if you knew what it was going to turn into? Would you have done it now, looking back?

• 2:29Patrick Bet-David?

  I found out about my guest yesterday, Wes Huff, by a debate that he did with Billy Carson. And Billy Carson, who's been on our podcast before, they had a sit down together, which afterwards, there was a bunch of commotion and, you know, don't release it. He contacts the host, Mark Minard, which by the way, today was the first day that Mark Minard, the host of, I think it's called Elevating, Beyond, or some name like that of a podcast, it was the first time he and Wes met each other. And I even brought Mark at the end of the podcast to speak for a few minutes about his experience with Billy. And it was very interesting watching him. But Wes, what an interesting guy, young guy, who we talked about the difference between, how many times you read the Book of Quran? He's read, I think, three times. And the difference between the Book of Quran and Christianity,

• 3:13Patrick Bet-David?

  he broke down his views on Mormonism. And then I asked the question, I said, so if Quran is what you say it is, why is the religion of Islam growing at the pace that it is, fast in Christian church? And why is attendance in Christian church declining? And he gave his argument that it's grown in different places. I said, why is it not growing in America? And we talked about a handful of different things that I wrote down here, which, why are people, you know, it was very interesting conversation. We talked about Andrew Tate, his conversion to Islam, and Justin Trudeau, Canada, his discomfort on talking about politics, which we got into a little bit at the end with what's going on. I asked him a technical question. I said, hey, you yourself, you know, a Christian

• 3:54Patrick Bet-David?

  man, his struggles as a young man, you know, what did you deal with, right? We talked about biblical times when Jesus came, and what was the OnlyFans of that time? With the amount of sins that we have today, OnlyFans, porn, all this other stuff, are we at a point where he's making a return? It was just an incredible conversation with somebody who is very qualified to speak on this topic. And I really enjoyed it. And I think you will as well with Wes Huff.

• 4:36Speaker 05

  My handshake is better than anything I ever signed, right here.

• 4:40Patrick Bet-David?

  You are a one of one?

• 4:48Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay, so we've got a special guest in the house. This guy decides to sit down and do a podcast with Billy Carson. And two hours later, it's explosive. Everybody in the Christian community and the community that's had Billy Carson on, whether it's us, whether it's Rogan, whether it's Andrew Schultz, oh my God, what, who is this West guy? You know, and he was just recently on Rogan. And I don't know if that's been released yet or not.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Today.

• 5:13Patrick Bet-David?

  Fantastic. So the timing is great. And then I reached that idea and then I said, listen, great work. Good for you. I enjoyed the conversation. Would love to have you on. And boom, now he's here with us. So it's great to have you on.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a pleasure.

• 5:26Patrick Bet-David?

  And so when you went in, and obviously today I want to kind of get to know your background a little bit because it's very interesting. You just told me your grandfather used to sell bibles in Iran.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Well, he worked for the Iranian Bible Society.

• 5:39Patrick Bet-David?

  Iranian Bible Society in 1979, you said?

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, 1979 to 1980.

• 5:44Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay, so that's post-revolution.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:46Patrick Bet-David?

  Then you used to live in Pakistan and you went to school in Pakistan.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Well, I was born in Pakistan.

• 5:50Patrick Bet-David?

  And did you go to school there or?

• 5:52Speaker 02

  No, I was, we left during the Gulf War.

• 5:54Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  My, my parents were accused of the crime of proselytizing, giving, giving a bible to a Muslim. And then we came back from overseas to Toronto, where my parents lived. And then a year after that, went out and for a very short stint of my childhood, we were in Jordan, in, in the Middle East.

• 6:16Patrick Bet-David?

  How long was that?

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Um, between, is it like in the, in the 90s for a few years.

• 6:24Patrick Bet-David?

  You're young, so how old were you at that time?

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Oh, I was, I was, I was quite young. I, we came back when I was like, uh, six or seven.

• 6:31Patrick Bet-David?

  Do you have any memories of?

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I went back after I graduated high school. I went back and worked more rurally. I worked with Bedouin, whereas when, when I was really young, we were in Amman, which was much more of the city. But when I went back after I graduated high school, I did some work with a Bedouin in an area just north of Akaba.

• 6:52Patrick Bet-David?

  So, tell me about your family lineage, like, you know, your father, who's a, is it everybody was a, my pastor Dudley Rutherford, his father was a pastor, his uncles were all pastors, his brothers were all pastors, like, everybody was a, and Biola University, or APU, or Ozark, or all this other stuff. What, I mean, the way you were breaking things down with Billy, it was very obvious, you've been, you know, taught the right way, you went to the school, but tell me about the family lineage.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so my dad is a pastor, you know, he was a missionary, is a, was a pastor, he's retired now. Um, not a long lineage necessarily of pastors, but my middle name is Livingston, and my dad's name is Livingston, and that's the family name going back to a guy named David Livingston, who was a missionary, who was the first, I believe, European to go into Central Africa. So, um, and we're related to him. So, since there was, like, the, because I believe it was his niece, um, married outside of the family, the firstborn male since then has been named Livingston, so my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, um, but, uh, it's my middle name, and it's my son's middle name as well.

• 8:00Patrick Bet-David?

  Very cool.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's a lineage going back into, like, the heritage of Christian ministry and missionaries, um, going back that far, and then, uh, yeah, so.

• 8:10Patrick Bet-David?

  How, did you go on a mission ever yourself, or no?

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Um, by myself?

• 8:14Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did a, I've done some trips, when I was in Jordan, I was working, um, doing that kind of stuff. Uh, I've done some short-term mission trips to, uh...

• 8:22Patrick Bet-David?

  As an adult?

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, just, just after, after I graduated high school, like, between high school and going to university, I had a couple, yeah, a couple of trips, was in Rwanda, um, was in Mexico, and I was quite a bit younger, but, yeah.

• 8:36Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, I mean, I watched the interview with you, and the podcast, the fellow who was on there, his name is Mark, I want to say his last name correctly, Menard, right, if I'm not mistaken? And his podcast is called Elevation Beyond, I think it's called...

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Elevating Beyond.

• 8:49Patrick Bet-David?

  Elevating Beyond, right, with Mark Menard. And so walk me through how this whole thing happened with you and Billy Carson, because when you watch Billy, Billy's been at it for fourteen, fifteen years. I think the first time, if you search up his material, you will hear he started in 2010. And he's gotten tens, if not hundreds of millions of views on many different interviews. I think even if you include TikTok, you know, Instagram and everything combined, it's probably in the billions of views that he's gotten.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:16Patrick Bet-David?

  Until he sat down with you, but walk me through the invitation. Did Mark invite you? Did Billy invite you? How did that happen?

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Mark invited me. He sent me a DM on Instagram the day before. So as far as I understand it, the plan was actually for Mark and Billy to interact. Mark's a Christian, so he has Christian faith and conviction and had talked to Billy because they had been friends. You know, talked a lot about business together and different things like that. And so they were setting up, which had sort of been in the ether for a while, to have a conversation about some of the disagreements that they had about what Billy said about Christianity, how Mark feels about Christianity. And Anton, who is Mark's media manager,

• 10:04Speaker 02

  had compiled a bunch of different sources that Mark could look at and kind of review in plan for this. And I'd done in some of my social media videos, just some short response videos to some things that Billy had said on your podcast, when you had him in, when Andrew Schultz had him on, when Joe Rogan had him on. Just quick, you know, two-minute things, just kind of correcting some of those errors. And so Anton put together a Google Doc of some of this stuff, me, a few other people. And how I understand it is that Mark just kind of said to Anton right before, what happens if we just reach out to Wes? Like, what happens if we just see if he can come and interact?

• 10:48Speaker 02

  So he reached out to me the day before. I saw, I was out at a lunch meeting with a friend and saw the message. And, you know, couldn't get down to Florida to actually do it in person, but said, I'll jump on a call and I'm more than willing to do that and interact with Billy and kind of go back and forth with some of the claims that he's made about Christianity.

• 11:09Patrick Bet-David?

  And what was your biggest takeaway when you sat down with him? What did you see that was maybe different than you had seen him on different podcasts when he's speaking? What did you sense?

• 11:21Speaker 02

  I think people like Billy are very confident in the way that they say things. But that confidence isn't always backed up with the reality of the evidence. And so confidence and competence are not the same thing. And I thought what was surprising to me about my interaction with Billy was that I was expecting some sort of rebuttal. And if you watch the interaction I had with him, it's on my YouTube channel, there was no rebuttal. So we get into the topics. He claims that Jesus wasn't crucified. He kind of has these sources that he uses. He brought those up predictably, as I thought he might. And I addressed why those sources don't work for his claim.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  And then he collapsed. He just said, you know, well, the first claim was that it was from the Sinai Bible, which is Codex Sinaiticus. And I happened to have a facsimile, a photocopy of Codex Sinaiticus on my shelf. And so I simply pulled it off my shelf and said, well, do you mind telling me where you think it denies the crucifixion? Or that the crucifixion isn't there because this is a fourth century Greek Bible. It has the crucifixion. And so he kind of pivoted to saying, well, no, that's I misspoke. I actually meant the Gospel of Barnabas, which is a known forgery. And so I think my surprise was that he didn't try to double down. He just completely capitulated and then tried to move the topics onward.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up require compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 13:17Patrick Bet-David?

  They're running a cover two defense. But you're running to get game day deals on Uber Eats. Keep everyone at tonight's watch party fed with deals from your go to restaurants. Or stock up with deals on your favorite snacks and groceries. Whatever the occasion, get game day deals on Uber Eats all season long. It's not football without food. Uber Eats, order now. Terms apply, product availability varies by region, see app for details.

• 13:50Patrick Bet-David?

  So you're, you're asking him questions because I'm watching the back and forth. You're not being aggressive and disrespectful. You kept posing questions. So can, may I ask where you got this source from? You know, if you don't mind me asking, can you break this thing down for me? And he's given his rebuttal. And what do you know about this, this, this, and that? And he would pause and you would go and say, well, actually I wrote a thesis on this. And the approach that you're going back and forth with him. What happened after you guys were done with the podcast?

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Well, we did the podcast and then it was very clear that Billy did not want the podcasts to air. So he got in contact with Mark and he said, this thing can't go out. And he, he had a couple of different reasons, um, which he verbalized. But the, the reasons did kind of shift. There was some talk of a debate. Well, at first he said, you know, I didn't really understand that this was going to be as of a debate, a debate as it turned out to be. And I, I typically ask a fee. So he says, he, you know, asked 50 grand for a debate. Uh, that was never put forth. And so it was unfair because this is his kind of standard practice is that it costs $50,000 to debate Billy Carson.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Um, and then he brought forward that there was some sort of interaction, formal debate that was being set up with another Christian that this was interfering with. Now, I, I doubt that that was the case. Um, I've been part of events where debates have taken place. And why this conversation would have truly impinged on a later debate is unclear to me. But that was what he said. And so at this point, Mark and, Mark and Billy are friends. They've known each other for years. They live in the same neighborhood and so.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  For the good faith of their friendship, Mark decides to do Billy a solid and holds on to the footage. But Mark contacted me, only a couple of days later and said, you know, here's the situation Wes, it's not going to go out. Billy doesn't want me to put it out. And I think Mark was a little bit uncomfortable with the fact that Billy didn't want it put out. And so I simply said, you know, that's fine. It's your podcast, but I'm going to make a video and simply say that this event happened. And so that's what I did. And as things transpired, it was, it was clear that not everything was adding up on Billy's side. But then also a lot of people were accusing me of actually making up the interaction.

• 16:20Patrick Bet-David?

  Got it.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  And so as that kind of took place.

• 16:22Patrick Bet-David?

  What percentage, your own audience?

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Uh, no, just people online.

• 16:25Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:28Patrick Bet-David?

  So go ahead. So you're saying, here's what happened. Some people are saying, I don't know, you're just making things up. That would have never happened. Billy's strong, he would never be able to, you know, you would never be able to hang with somebody like Billy.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. And then I just kind of say to Mark, as we're talking back and forth, because we're communicating throughout, you know, the course of the aftermath of this. And I said, you know, hey, people are accusing me of lying, of making this up. And Mark was quite uncomfortable with that. Mark was quite uncomfortable with the fact that people are accusing me of dishonesty. And so then he made a video where he said that it did happen. And in that video, he included a number of clips of the actual interaction.

• 17:04Patrick Bet-David?

  But not the whole podcast?

• 17:05Speaker 02

  No, he held on to the podcast for over a month.

• 17:09Patrick Bet-David?

  Oh, so let me get this straight. So when, so this thing, when, when was the actual interview?

• 17:15Speaker 02

  October 18th.

• 17:17Patrick Bet-David?

  On my birthday, October 18th. And he released it when? Because on your channel, it says December 9th.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:25Patrick Bet-David?

  And I don't see it on his channel anymore.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  No, so what transpired was that Mark released it in November. And he released it and it was up for less than 24 hours. In fact, I don't even think it was up for more than six hours.

• 17:38Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Because Billy showed up to Mark's house with a cease and desist letter at 2:30 in the morning.

• 17:46Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay, so is this the part where there's a video of it with the Ring camera?

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, so if people are interested in this, I would recommend two sources. Anton put out a video where he kind of, he chronologically lays out some of the things that led up to it, and then Mark himself, just a couple of weeks ago, put out a video where he, from his side, put out, you know, here's my side of the story of the things happened, that happened because Billy went to Mark's house

• 18:17Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  with a handwritten cease and desist letter, and

• 18:22Patrick Bet-David?

  A handwritten, at 2:30 in the morning?

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:27Patrick Bet-David?

  And then what does Mark do? Mark takes it down?

• 18:30Speaker 02

  So Mark took the video down, it was less, I think, in regards to Billy, more that this was just turning into something that was, because of the complexity of Mark's situation, you know, he lives in the same neighborhood, Billy's wife is friends with Mark's wife, their boys play basketball together, like, this is messy, this is messy for Mark, on a different level than it's messy for me.

• 18:51Patrick Bet-David?

  For sure, yeah, that's tough, because you're going to practice, I can't believe you did this, kids are now having conflicts.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:59Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, especially if you're, that doesn't help. So during this time when it's up six hours, I'm assuming you get the file and you say, "I'm gonna put it on my channel."

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Well, so I had the file, one of the things that I did do when Mark said, "Hey, you know, I'm just gonna hold on to this, Billy's asked me to, and so I'm gonna do this for the moment," is I said, you know, two things, "I'm gonna put out a video, I'm gonna say that this happened, and I would like you to send me a copy of it." So Mark actually did send me a copy of it, which I said, "I will not put out without your permission." Now, certain things transpired where, you know, it kind of came to light that Mark, because of the complexities of his situation, wasn't going to repost the video, but I decided to repost the video, on my end, in, on early December.

• 19:47Patrick Bet-David?

  And you guys spoke, and you said, "I'm gonna go live with it."

• 19:49Speaker 02

  I said I'm gonna go live with it.

• 19:50Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay, and what was his reaction when he said that?

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Um, uh, he was fine with it. Mark, Mark has been pretty behind the scenes.

• 19:56Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  I, I think on purpose and for good reasons. Uh, he's gotten a lot of flack because of, um, some of the, the way that the conversation transpired with Billy. But if you ask Mark, he will say, and I think he says in his video, he was so surprised during the interaction, he's in the room with Billy and he's just, he's very surprised that Billy, who is Mr. Confidence, Mr. You know, Ancient Evidence, uh, is, is completely collapsing. So for Billy, who usually always has the monologue, to say, well, okay, well, that's fair. Let's move on to the next topic. I think Mark was, not to speak for him, but I think he was genuinely a little bit confused. And so felt like he, to cer- a certain degree, needed to come to Billy's aid.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  In the course of this conversation, because he just felt the kind of secondhand embarrassment that was going on in the room, because Billy was really not acting in the way that Billy usually does.

• 20:53Patrick Bet-David?

  Now, let me ask you, in, in fourteen years since he's been creating content, or he's been out there, Billy. And, you know, he's been sharing his stories that he has. Why do you think this hasn't happened for fourteen years?

• 21:08Speaker 02

  I mean, I think you can strategically put yourself in positions where you're not going to be put on the defense. The thing is with the internet, and I'm sure you know this as well as anybody, uh, Patrick, that like, people love sensationalism. And we live in a world where we know a little about a lot, but we don't know a lot about a little. And so we live in this Wikipedia world, right? You can just hop online. You don't really need to know information. You can kind of, um, you can, you can, uh, shed, shed that out to someone else, right? You can, uh, And someone else being basically the supercomputer in your pocket. And so, and people love sensationalism.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  People like to hear the crazy story, the conspiracy theory. For, you know, sometimes I think genuine reasons. Some conspiracy theories are true sometimes. But I think when you have people who are saying pretty outrageous things, people like to be entertained and people like the more sensationalistic theory than the mundane one. So, I mean, in one sense, it is sensationalistic that you have this first century itinerant Jewish preacher in the backwaters of Roman occupied Judea who predicts his own death and resurrection and then pulls it off.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  But I think people are so used to the biblical narrative about the historical Jesus that they want something else. It's the same reason the Da Vinci Code got so popular, even though there really wasn't anything historical behind the Da Vinci Code. But people like these kind of under the table conversations that are sensationalistic and make you feel like you know something special now. And so I think-

• 22:55Patrick Bet-David?

  Exposing somebody, oh my God, Christianity is finally being exposed, that there was another guy in the past that Jesus replicated his story because there was this person that in India, and exact same story that did this. So finally Christians are being exposed. Is that kind of what you're referring to?

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Or I mean, every Christmas and Easter, it seems that there's some news article about, you know, this lost or missing gospel that has this story about Jesus.

• 23:20Patrick Bet-David?

  Well, I remember Da Vinci Code was massive, even the movie with, was Tom Hanks in Da Vinci Code? Yeah, there was a one and a two, if I'm not mistaken, right? There was a couple of them.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:32Patrick Bet-David?

  And for a person that's not in that world, you can really get caught up in it. Now, have you had a follow up with Billy? Like, did you guys speak? Has he reached out to you directly?

• 23:41Speaker 02

  No, not to me, other than his lawyer sending me a cease and desist letter. But.

• 23:45Patrick Bet-David?

  Was that handwritten or was that typed out?

• 23:47Speaker 02

  No, that was an actual.

• 23:48Patrick Bet-David?

  Well, at least he paid you respect and he typed it.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  I know, I guess so, yeah.

• 23:51Patrick Bet-David?

  That's a level of respect. You're not getting a handwritten one.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  I mean, I think he eventually did send actual cease and desist letters to Mark.

• 23:57Patrick Bet-David?

  So that's fair. He has to pay respect to both people, right? So now, if there was a possibility of a part two, right, with the two of you guys, maybe he had a bad day. Maybe he was sick that day. Maybe he had a lot on his mind. Maybe he had a, you know, challenges with family, siblings, kids, other things that's going on. Sometimes people have a bad day.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:20Patrick Bet-David?

  Would you be open to the idea of another one, the two of you guys together, long form? And maybe he brings somebody with him?

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would be open to it. I mean, that was the original plan was that this interaction that we had online would be kind of a precursor to ideally an in-person thing with Billy. And I actually said when Billy sent me the cease and desist letter, I made a video where I said, "I will actually adhere to all of the terms and conditions of this letter if you decide to run it back with me and we do it in person." Because I think Billy has a lot of claims about the Bible, and I hope that our conversation kind of made him think twice about a lot of the claims he's made about the Bible, especially the ones that are patently false and can be verified even with just a quick Google search. But I think there are still things that Billy has said about the history

• 25:08Speaker 02

  of Christianity, about biblical languages, that do need to be corrected, not because I'm, I have some sort of vendetta against Billy, but because I want people to know what is true. And as someone who has studied this stuff formally and does, you know, read Hebrew and Greek, and I want people to actually know what the reality of what these things concerning the historical reliability and the truthfulness and the verisimilitude of the Bible actually are.

• 25:36Patrick Bet-David?

  Wes, let me ask you, I'm on your channel right now, I'm just kind of wondering who else you react to, right? Who else would be somebody where you would say is like a Billy Carson that, you know, shares certain stories that, you know, has caught some traction? Who else would you say?

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting question. I'm actually scheduled to do an online event with a guy named Aaron Abke, who is a growing individual within. I think Aaron has more kind of, his repertoire is a little bit more than Billy's. But my friend Stephen Boyce, who is, has a PhD, and is brilliant on church history, and I think his PhD research was actually on Gnostic Gospels. Him and I are going to do an interaction with Aaron and another individual as well. But, I mean, off the top of my head, no one necessarily comes to mind, but there are, I mean, the internet is kind of a wild, wild west with this stuff and just claims that are made.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it's emblematic in this conversation. We live in this world, but we live in a world where social media has kind of designed it where we're so used to claims being thrown out, but claims are not actual evidence. And so, you can make a claim where you say something, and, you know, because it's in 140 characters, and we're so used to that, we think that that's actually rationale. But that's not rationale, that's an assertion. An assertion is kind of like the roof of the building. You know, you don't start building the building by the roof. That's the last thing to go on top.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  The foundation, the walls, you know, everything internal, that's the rationale and the evidence, and then you put the assertion on top. But we live in this world where everybody's throwing out assertions, and we've actually forgotten how to articulate what evidence and reasons and rationale actually are. So, that's what we see online.

• 27:42Patrick Bet-David?

  A question about, like, you know, I remember- Back in the days when a friend of mine who we went to high school with, I go to the army, I come out, this is a guy that was a PCP guy, troublemaker, all of a sudden, he's no longer cursing, he's not drinking, he's not going to the clubs. I said, what's going on with you? And him and I both had a 1.8 GPA in high school. Both of us were troubled teenagers. We were just, you couldn't, we had a hard time and, and I went to the military, he went a different route. And he says, Pat, I found Jesus. I said, you found who? He says, I found Jesus. I said, there's no way you found Jesus. He said, I found Jesus. I'm laughing at him. Thinking like, what do you mean, you found Jesus? He said, well, what are you doing next Friday? I says, I'm at the club. What are you doing next? Well, you want to go to the club? Let's go to the club. He said, no, I want to take you to a different club. What's that?

• 28:26Patrick Bet-David?

  Church of the, uh, uh, Paznas of Pasadena, California. I'm like, oh, give me a break, dude. I'm not in. I'm busy. And he keeps trying. Finally, I go on a Friday night. And it's a Bible study with five of us from six to two o'clock in the morning, okay, Friday night. And we start kind of going through this process. And the teacher was a guy that knew a lot about philosophy. So he can go philosophy. You know, he can talk maybe on the philosophy side, on the business side, and he can talk on a spiritual side. So different religions, denominations, what questions you got? What are you struggling? What are you battling with? And it was very interesting to see, you got the FAQs that you go through.

• 29:09Patrick Bet-David?

  Typical objections that'll come up about, you know, why if God is real, you know, how can he have something like this happen? How can let so many innocent, you know, the most innocent objections, like in every business, there's innocent objections that comes up. And then eventually it gets deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And only somebody that went to school and maybe has studied this like a, you know, for many, many years, then realizes, okay, now you're asking some real heavy questions that we got to sit there and process with. How many people you think?

• 29:41Patrick Bet-David?

  Of somebody that went to school and got their, you know, degree from certain universities that we have in America could have sat down with Billy and not exposed, but revealed the number of leaks in his arguments, how many people would be able to do something like that? Somebody that studied theology?

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Oh, I think quite a few.

• 30:02Patrick Bet-David?

  And what's that number like? Is it in the tens of thousands? I mean, was it things that was not level of depth that anybody could have overcame? That's

• 30:11Speaker 02

  100%. Yeah, yeah, I don't, I don't think that the accusations that Billy, Billy was making, they're not, they're not unusual in the sense of, and I'm not, I'm not really sure where Billy got a lot of the arguments that he actually articulates from. Because like I said, Wikipedia articles could debunk him. Like you look on, he uses something like the Gospel of the Holy Twelve for his evidence. Well, the Gospel of the Holy Twelve on the Wikipedia article will tell you this is a 20th century forgery. Like, we don't have any evidence before the 20th century. It was designed by a group that was trying to prove that Jesus was a vegetarian. But it's not a historical document.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  And so if we're going off of something like the Gospel of the Holy Twelve or the Gospel of Barnabas, which is the one he uses for the denial of the

• 31:01Patrick Bet-David?

  Let's go through one of them. Let's start, let's start with the first one, Rob, if you want to go to this. So, so the Gospel of the Holy Twelve?

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there you go. So the Gospel of the Holy Twelve first serialized in the Lindsay and Lincolnshire Star Newspaper between July 30th, 1898 and March 10th, 1901, presents vegetarian versions of traditional teachings and events described in the canonical New Testament. So this isn't something that has historical provenance. So it's not something that has kind of a paper trail going back into the ancient world. There are ancient apocryphal documents that you could capitalize on. Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Peter. But this is not one of them. So to choose this as your document to prove something.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  I'm just not entirely sure why you would go about that particular route. Or the other one is the Gospel of Barnabas, which is the one that Billy brought up with me, which is a clear middle-aged forgery. It's not, and that's not a contested fact. It paraphrases Dante's Inferno. It has glaring historical inaccuracies. It has geographical mistakes. It says that Jesus is the Messiah, but he's not the Christ, indicating that the author had no idea what those two words meant and that they were the same words in different languages. So.

• 32:22Patrick Bet-David?

  Did you actually, did you yourself, do you actually try to go, when you hear him say these things, let me see where he got these things from? Is that where you go? Are you going and saying, I don't know how he came up to the conclusion of this. Is it this book? Is it this fiction book? Did you go that route yourself? Or how do you try to break down his arguments?

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's a both and situation. I think Billy's unusual in that he has brought forward arguments that I've never seen before. So usually you get kind of the typical arguments that are repeated. And sometimes it's repeated ad nauseam. Accusations of the Council of Nicaea in 325 inventing the books of the Bible as the canon of Scripture. That's the sort of Da Vinci Code-esque argument. And you can trace where the paper trail of that goes to. Because you can see that Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code got it from a previous book called Holy Blood and Holy Grail. And Holy Blood and Holy Grail appears to have got it from Voltaire, who used a document called the Sinaitica Vedis. So there's actual like links to where, okay, this is a false statement.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  Where's the false statement coming from? And you can see the dots and connect them. With something like using the Gospel of the Holy Twelve or the accusation that Billy uses for the Sinai Bible, Codex Sinaiticus, denying the crucifixion. I think I can come up with a theory as to how he developed that, which is based on a misunderstanding of a textual variant at the end of the Gospel of Mark that is in Codex Vaticanus. Or sorry, not Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus. But to then repeat this constantly and say that the crucifixion isn't in the Codex Sinaiticus entirely.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  I'm not sure why he would go about that or where kind of the reasoning came from. As far as I can tell, a lot of these are original to Billy and they sound sensationalistic. And a lot of people don't have the repertoire or the background to know what something like Codex Sinaticus is. And so when he's throwing that out to you, or he's throwing that out to Andrew Schultz, or he's throwing that out to Joe Rogan, it's not in your like categories of information that you just kind of have off the top of your head. So you just kind of take it at face value, right?

• 34:40Speaker 02

  But if you take a seminary Greek class, it wouldn't be unusual to even open up Codex Sinaticus, because it's all digitized, you can go to codexsinaticus.org and see the document and actually practice translating some Greek from Codex Sinaticus, because it is a prominent Greek manuscript. So it's a combination of a few things where you have certain arguments that are repeated, you know, often enough and loud enough online that they kind of, people in their minds, it becomes true. And then you have other arguments that are more novel.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  And I find Billy's arguments are more novel than they're not. He does kind of throw in the, you know, Vatican is behind everything and the Council of Nicaea and the books of the Bible and, you know, Constantine is another one that kind of gets, everything gets pegged on Constantine for some reason. But there are other things, like a lot of what he talked about with you, that I think are, as far as I can tell, Billy originals.

• 35:52Patrick Bet-David?

  Billy originals?

• 35:54Speaker 02

  I think so, in as far as I-

• 35:55Patrick Bet-David?

  Meaning, nobody else talked about it? It's just his own assumption that I think this is what's going on?

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Or the way that they're formulated. So I think like Muslims have capitalized on the Gospel of Barnabas, because the Gospel of Barnabas appears to actually have been influenced by Islam in the Middle Ages and uses some sort of typical later Islamic arguments from the Middle Ages and does deny the crucifixion. So it has been capitalized on that way. But the way that it's been used by someone like Billy, I think at minimum it's novel, because I haven't seen it in the same way that Billy has articulated it.

• 36:31Patrick Bet-David?

  And did you, you know how sometimes you see someone and they, like in football, this guy was an assistant coach under this coach. Anyway, I don't know if you're a sports guy, this guy was an assistant coach on the other coach. So he's, he's come through these two lineage and that guy's a run offense, this guy's a defense. So I kind of know what his schemes are gonna be when he's gonna be playing against me. Cause that's who taught him, right? Okay, I'm playing against these two coaches. So when you're prepping for it, you're watching tape, this is kind of how you do it. Were you able to find out who was his teacher that gave him this? Were you able to figure that part out when you were speaking with him?

• 37:07Speaker 02

  No, not necessarily.

• 37:08Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay, got it. Yeah, I wonder because, you know, when you and I were talking offline, a part of my, when I interviewed him, and we had him on a podcast at one time, and I asked him the question about, what happened to you as a, as a youth? You know, what happened? Did you have a bad experience for you to kind of get to this point? Did somebody disappoint you? Did somebody hurt you? Did something happen here where you automatically became super skeptical about all the stuff that's going on? Because what causes someone to get here? Is it, is it just success, money? Is it just eyeballs? Is it just accolades and recognition? Or is it, I'm gonna get even to a person like this? That's what I was wondering. I want to know what, when he, when he made the claims and he said, well, he said, Jesus is an alien.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:53Patrick Bet-David?

  How, how was that for you when you heard that?

• 37:55Speaker 02

  I, I mean, that's a, it's a non-falsifiable claim. You can't prove or disprove that Jesus was an alien. I can prove a lot of things, I think, about the historical Jesus. But claims about aliens are, claims that have no falsification. So they're kind of perfect for conspiratorial arguments. Because they have no ability to be debunked, or to be proven or disproven. So we, I mean, in terms of what do I think of that? I mean, I don't know. Jesus wasn't an alien. So, I mean, I, of what we know about what Jesus was, and I think this gets to the heart of the issue in terms of, I can't speak to trying to get into Billy's head or psychologizing why he does something.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  But at the end of the day, I am two things, right? I am an aspiring biblical scholar and historian, and I am a Christian. And so I'm very concerned with a good history and articulating and using proper methodologies to derive good history. And I believe that Jesus was who he actually claimed to be. That when he Predicted his own death and resurrection and then pulled it off. That people who rise from the dead have more credibility and authority than people who don't rise from the dead. And so I think that should be taken seriously. And I think the claims that Billy articulates. They lead people astray to doubt that. In a way that I don't think is credible philosophically or historically. And are easily debunked.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  And so my first priority is, okay, I want people, when I make a video, any video, you know, a response video, or, you know, when I'm talking about manuscripts on my Instagram page, or whatever it is, um, different levels of kind of nerdy on that scale. It's because I want people to, A, get interested in doing good history and how that's actually performed, and B, I want to show them that the truth claims of Christianity are actually not just defensible, but are backed up by evidence in what we can look at in the timeframe of history.

• 39:58Patrick Bet-David?

  Wes, let me ask you, you know, again, some of this stuff is conviction, faith, some of it is thousands of hours of studying, writing papers and research and all this stuff. How many total hours would you say you've put in this, in learning this?

• 40:17Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't know the hours, years. Um, I mean, there's the whole thousand hours thing, right? That if you

• 40:22Patrick Bet-David?

  The 10,000 hours.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  10,000 hours, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, at minimum, I'm, I'm, I've definitely done that. In terms of my original motivation, and I work for an organization called Apologetics Canada, which is a national not-for-profit organization in Canada. And our goal is that we want to pursue and communicate a biblically sound and intellectually robust and culturally engaged faith. We want to come alongside Christians and help them know what it is they believe and why they should believe it. And so alongside that, um, I, I

• 40:57Speaker 02

  Put in the time, not just because I'm interested in becoming an expert, not because I want to kind of gain some sort of credibility intellectually, although I do want to derive a level of expertise where I can speak knowledgeably on a topic. But ultimately, because I think these topics are important. And I think that they have ramifications that go beyond simply historical inferences. That Jesus is no less than a historical character, but he's also so much more than a historical character. And so my motivation and my interest is ultimately because I think that these things are true. And I adhere to a scripture, a set of scriptures,

• 41:39Speaker 02

  that calls me to love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. And part of that is loving God with my mind. And so I'm going to try to do to the best of my ability, dive into that in order to be able to communicate what I believe is ultimately the truthfulness of the Christian worldview.

• 42:00Patrick Bet-David?

  While you're going through your faith, did you ever hit a wall? And if you did, what was a topic you hit a wall? Because you know how you study Billy Graham when Billy before went on his crusade? He went and met with, I think it's Henrietta Mears, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know if you know the story or not.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  No, I don't.

• 42:14Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, he goes, Rob, can you type in Henrietta Mears? M E A R S and Billy Graham. I think I'm getting the name right. Uh, woman's history of Henrietta Mears. Can you zoom in a little bit for me to read on, uh? Uh, zoom in a little, okay. Let's meet the woman who inspired Billy Graham, Bill Bright and more. I'm someone that has a motivational whisper. Allow me to introduce Henrietta Mears, who blessed countless people, young and old, who crossed their path. And she was the most intentional spiritual perpetual disciple that I've ever read about. She was also never met a stranger, never judged her students. Even when they misbehaved, she loved on them, just as Jesus would. Do I learn about her thanks to a friend? This is the book that was her story, Dream Big. What's the quote at the top, Rob? Rob, top of the book.

• 42:56Patrick Bet-David?

  She is certainly one of the greatest Christians I have ever known. Billy Graham. Meet the woman who shaped the lives of some of the most influential Christians of our lifetime. Uh, go to Laura. Uh, uh, Henrietta was born in eighteen ninety to nineteen sixty-three. You cannot fathom all she did in her lifetime. Upon the last spread, you'll get a first-hand glimpse as you read this book, a little lore. Uh, first generation of the culture. So there, there's a story about her. I mean, I read this twenty years ago. A while back, where he hit a wall. Where it's kind of like you're questioning certain things. You know, what about this? I hit a wall with my faith at one point.

• 43:36Patrick Bet-David?

  And I was, you know, going through it and there was multiple people that played a very important role for me. Uh, and there's different levels of wall. The first one was when I'm living in Iran, I'm getting kicked out of Bible, Bible study. In, in this Syrian church that my dad used to take me on Sundays. And I'm like, you want to tell me about there's a Jesus and a God? Look at all the bombs that we got from Iraq. You want me to believe this? No. And then the pastor eventually has a conversation with my parents. And they kicked me out and then later on you're going through the next one and the next one. I'm like, ah, you know. Uh, the Bible, it's a lot of, uh, this was written at a time that you had to find a way to control the populace. And people's level of naivete was so, they were so naive that it was easier to control people back then.

• 44:17Patrick Bet-David?

  Most people were not educated. Most people didn't know how to read. So they wanted to kind of, you know, believe in something. That made their lives easier. Somebody else is doing a thinking for me. I'm going to be protected. But for you, did you ever have a moment where you hit a wall where you had to go to somebody to help you out with your faith?

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Oh, definitely. I mean, there have been lots of people who've been mentors in my life.

• 44:38Patrick Bet-David?

  Not necessarily mentors. What I'm looking at is like you, a, a, a breaking point for you. You know, like, uh, uh, this is tough for Billy Carson, but this could also be good for Billy Carson. I actually think, uh, Billy Carson's are, are net positive for the world. And let me explain why. Because I think eventually they're going to run into somebody like you. Who is gentle, you were very respectful, you were not condescending. You didn't use that opportunity to embarrass him. You didn't use that opportunity to undermine him. And I think you showed grace. Versus nowadays, there's a lot of people that are debating that want to make the other person look like they're dumb.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:20Patrick Bet-David?

  You didn't do that. I think that's a great example. That shows, wow, you can win an argument. And, you know, I looked at your YouTube channel, what it did after your podcast with Mark when it was released, 22,000 subs, 20,000, you got 100,000 subs within the next week after that podcast was released. And then now you're at 252,000 subs, and you went on the biggest podcast on the world. And this is not even close to what's about to happen to you today. I mean, the number one podcast that beat Joe Rogan's podcast became number one because Joe Rogan told the world to go watch your podcast. So do you understand, like, Joe beat himself?

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:55Patrick Bet-David?

  Because Joe told everybody else to go, what was this podcast, tele, to telep, uh, telepathy tapes?

• 46:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, telepathy.

• 46:02Patrick Bet-David?

  Telepathy tapes. So Joe Rogan says, guys, I just watch his podcast. Everyone goes watch the podcast. It's beating Joe Rogan. Oh, my God, Joe Rogan's losing to this podcast. No, he's not. He promoted that podcast, right? But, you know, these moments of a fighter, George Foreman loses, steps away for three years, comes back stronger. Michael Jordan takes a hit, comes back. Billy Graham had to step away, breaking point, comes back, baptizes 210 million people. Then he's on Johnny Carson, baptizing other people, Woody Allen, all these other things that's happening. What were some of those moments for you, for someone that's putting thousands of hours of setting this topic?

• 46:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good way of putting it. I mean, so when I was young, just before my 11th birthday, I was diagnosed with, or my 12th birthday, I was 11, just before my 12th birthday, I was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition that left me paralyzed from the waist down. So it was, it's called acute transverse myelitis. And what basically happened was that my, I had the flu in my body's immune system. Instead of attacking the flu, attacked the nerves, nerve endings of the base my spinal cord, the myelin sheath, causing inflammation and cutting off the communication between my brain and my legs. And so that was a condition which the prognosis was that I was almost certainly, most likely going to be paralyzed for the rest of my life. And I experienced

• 47:22Speaker 02

  what I believe is a supernatural healing. In that one month from the day, January 8th, when I woke up and I couldn't feel my legs, I woke up on February 8th. Walked, woke up, got out of bed, walked over to my wheelchair and sat down. And that it was the doctors who first used the word miracle because they couldn't explain ultimately the factors that were going on in terms of there being no evidence of the swelling on the base of my spinal cord and also the fact that there was, there was just no muscle atrophy in those 90 days. And so that marked a powerful supernatural experience in my life in that something happened

• 48:01Speaker 02

  that was non-explainable, unexplainable from a natural, materialistic sense of kind of looking at the world. And so although that marked that powerful supernatural experience, later in my teen years, I still really, and maybe this is what you're referring to in terms of hitting a wall, is I was really wrestling with other questions in that, okay, something happened when I was a kid. I'm not sure really how to get around that, but I have these intellectual questions. Questions about whether what I believe or what I've been taught to believe is actually true. And so that started a period of time.

• 48:38Patrick Bet-David?

  And that's exactly where I'm going. This is great.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Where I investigated. And, you know, I lived in a home where we had the Quran on the shelf. And so I pulled it off and I read it at that point in time. Now, I've read it multiple times since then, but the first time reading it through and thinking, okay, could this actually answer the ultimate?

• 48:55Patrick Bet-David?

  How old were you the first time you read it?

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Um, I was 16.

• 48:59Patrick Bet-David?

  And at that time, how many times had you read the Bible?

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Oh, at that point, I probably read the Bible about two or three times.

• 49:04Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Um, so I read the Quran cover to cover. I, I've read it, um, multiple times since, but, um, I also read the Bhagavad Gita. Um, I think it was a, at the time, it was a shorter version. It wasn't the entire Bhagavad Gita that, and, and I read the Book of Mormon. And, and, and digging into some of these. Pieces of worldview literature to try to figure out, okay, I know what my parents raised me to believe, but is believing it because they raised me to it the best reason to believe it? It's not a bad reason, I don't think it is. But is it the best reason? And so exploring some of these questions as much as I could at that age, in looking at these sources, going online, trying to interact with people who held these worldview perspectives. And that was really the process that I think God used

• 49:47Speaker 02

  that set the foundation for what I do now in terms of actually wrestling with, because I think there are good objections to the Christian worldview. I don't think they're true, but that doesn't mean that there aren't good ones. And so I think we have a duty, if we are pursuing the truth, and ultimately I think that Jesus is the truth with a capital T, that we have a duty to pursue what is true even above, say, an allegiance to Jesus. Now, I don't think that that is in competition to each other because I think that Jesus is the truth, but we should ultimately be asking the question, what if this could be false? And looking at the objections from the other side and saying, well, are there any actual reasonable objections

• 50:29Speaker 02

  that invalidate what I believe to the point that I need to rethink this?

• 50:35Patrick Bet-David?

  When you, when this happened at 11 years old to 12 years old, January 8th to February 8th, when you got up and walked up to your wheelchair, were you a, were you still an old soul prior to that? Were you always a pretty old soul? You know, like a 10-year-old, 11-year-old walking around like you're 25, 30 years old? Were you that person?

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't think so. I was a bit of a slacker.

• 50:57Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay, so you were a bit of a slacker, so, but, but were you still interested? Were you personally reading? Were you personally curious in the Bible? And were your parents like, you gotta read every morning, you gotta wake up, read the Bible? We gotta start off with prayer, end the days with prayer every day, read this book? Was it, was it something in the family tradition that you're reading no matter what every day?

• 51:17Speaker 02

  No, not necessarily, not regimental like that, like it wasn't.

• 51:20Patrick Bet-David?

  Meaning at 12 years old, had you already finished the Bible once?

• 51:23Speaker 02

  I think, yeah, most likely.

• 51:27Patrick Bet-David?

  Most people have not finished it first, you know.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we would read every evening. We would read the Bible together as a family. We would pray for the people in our church. So there were kind of those disciplines that were put in place. But I don't think that they were like militaristic in the sense that, you know, I had to read my devotions. You know, my parents were checking up on me on how much I was actually getting through, anything like that. I think that it was much more of an organic kind of just attitude.

• 51:49Patrick Bet-David?

  Just three siblings of yours. Have they all read the Bible pre 12 years old?

• 51:53Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 51:55Patrick Bet-David?

  Was it something where you guys collectively would sit down? Was it a family tradition Bible? So that was a?

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we would do evening devotions kind of thing.

• 52:02Patrick Bet-David?

  So after 12, after that event that happened to you, were you a different person afterwards and people could tell? Was there a certain level of urgency where you felt like you owe it to God? That I'm going to commit my life to you? Was there that kind of a moment for you?

• 52:19Speaker 02

  In some ways, but maybe not in overt ways in other areas. I was very invested in athletics as a kid because of that, because I felt like I had experienced something where God had given me this exposure to understanding what it was like to take advantage of walking in and out of a room.

• 52:40Patrick Bet-David?

  What do you, you have something in your Twitter profile that says something athlete, right? What you?

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Athlete wannabe?

• 52:45Patrick Bet-David?

  Athlete wannabe, yeah, that's what you got, yeah.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  So I was really involved in track and field as a kid. And then I ended up competing all throughout high school and went to university and competed, varsity track and field. And I felt very passionately that that was, and probably to what you're saying, there being a conviction, like this is something that I need to take seriously. Because A, it gives me a structure for my life. But also, I needed to constantly be reminded that I had been in a situation where this was just a complete impossibility.

• 53:20Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay, so let me get into maybe some of the issues here with you. Since you read the Quran, you said two or three times at this point, right? And you read the Book of Mormon? And we'll get to that because I'm curious to know where you're going to go with that. The Quran, after you read the book the first time, what was your impression? Did you say, oh, wow, complete different understanding than what I thought was going to be in a book of Quran? This is actually a great book. I actually enjoyed this. I actually learned this. What was your impression at the end?

• 53:50Speaker 02

  I mean, have you ever read the Quran?

• 53:51Patrick Bet-David?

  I've never read the book.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  Okay, so the Quran is interesting in that when you come to it, especially if you're a Christian and you're expecting things to be chronological. And when you open up a Bible, Genesis-

• 54:01Patrick Bet-David?

  Structured.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  Right. Genesis says, "In the beginning," and that's in the beginning. And by the time you get to the end, revelation is the end, right? The Quran is structured differently in that the biggest chapters are at the beginning and the smallest chapters are at the end. So there's 114 surahs or chapters in the Quran. And the way that it's been put together and structured is very, very different than something like the Bible. In that it's not in a narrative theme or a chronological theme, but it's on the basis of the chapters. And there are various reasons for that in terms of the overall way that the Quran eventually got codified. Because during Muhammad's lifetime, the Quran was oral.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  And actually, there was a hesitancy after Muhammad died in 632, I believe it was. Muhammad dies, I could be wrong on that date, I'm just going off the top of my head. Muhammad dies and actually the Muslims who are following him have a hesitancy to write it down because Muhammad never told them to write it down. But there's this process that eventually gets put into place because Muhammad's successors in the caliphs realized that people have memorized the Quran differently. And so there is-

• 55:16Patrick Bet-David?

  What does that mean? Memorize the Quran differently?

• 55:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you had these individuals who were following Muhammad around and they were memorizing everything he was saying. And so- Part of this process is that people were remembering things slightly differently. And I believe it was when, so Abu Bakr, who I think is the second rightly guided caliph in the succession after Muhammad, he's the person who starts the process of kind of bringing together all of these recitations of the Quran. And then that's finalized under a later caliph by the name of Uthman. And Uthman, I think when they come to Abu Bakr, the statement literally that they say is, "Save us before we differ like the Christians and the Jews before us."

• 56:04Speaker 02

  And that they saw that there were some things that the Christians and the Jews were disagreeing on between their written texts, and they didn't want that to happen with the Quran. And so there's a period of time under Uthman, where it's called the Uthmanic Revision, where he gathers all of these documents together, all of these different recitations, and he codifies it into one document, and he destroys all of the differing ones. So in that sense, you do have a standardized version. But it's what's, in terms of like the history of how texts are produced and disseminated, it's what's called a controlled transmission. And it's essentially a government oversight of it, right? So the great thing about having only one version is that you don't have any disagreements. But if you only have one version, you have to trust that the guy who compiled that one

• 56:48Speaker 02

  version got it right. And there were actually companions of Muhammad within the oral, or within the traditional sources of Islamic literature called the Hadith, that talk about the fact that there were particular individuals who were very close to Muhammad during his lifetime, who did not want to give their Quran, kind of versions, to Uthman because they knew that theirs was going to differ with Uthman's, and he would probably destroy it. And so you have these, these are not, I mean, controversial in the sense that these are part of the Islamic, traditional Islamic sources in the Hadith. But I think within the history of how the Quran gets put together, you see something very different than what you see in the Bible.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  And so when you're reading it, especially if, what I did, you know, open up the front and then read all the way through, there are parts of the Quran that are confusing because they don't necessarily follow what would be considered a like overly...

• 57:48Speaker 02

  Rational Ordnung in Bezug auf den Fluss des Textes. Also, ich öffne es, ich lese es. Einige Sachen klingen in einigen Hinsätzen vergleichbar, weil es über Moses und Noah und sogar, Sie wissen, Jesus, Mary sind in der Aber es gibt Komponenten, die so weit von dem biblischen Narrativ entfernt sind, dass es einfach offene. Und ich denke, es ist eine sehr.

• 58:11Patrick Bet-David?

  of in a sense that it's not chronological, you know.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  Chronological.

• 58:17Patrick Bet-David?

  Chronological, es ist nicht, ist das, was du meinst, dass es offene ist?

• 58:20Speaker 02

  Well, die Geschichten sind sehr unterschiedlich, ein paar Mal. Also, was ich denke, wir können aus dem historischen Rekord herausfinden, dass es eigentlich so ist, dass wenn Sie die traditionelle islamicische Geschichte nehmen, Muhammad war unerwähnt. Also, er wurde nicht gesagt, dass er ein erlerntes Individuum war. Und so ist er, wenn wir die traditionelle Geschichte wieder nehmen, er ist ein Karosser in der siebten Jahrhundert Arabien. Und so geht er um Arabien, in der Arabischen Peninsula, Sie wissen, er geht in die Länder, wie heute, moderner Jordan.

• 58:50Patrick Bet-David?

  Was ist das, Rob? Ist das ChatGPT, den Sie eingebaut hat?

• 58:52Speaker 04

  Nein, das war nur Google.

• 58:54Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay, richtig.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Ja, ja, also wenn wir, wenn wir durch die traditionelle Geschichte gehen, ist er ein Karosser, er geht um, er ist gezeigt von Christen und Juden, weil sie alle überall sind in Syrien, in Jordan, in Irak, diese waren Christenstaaten ein paar Mal. Und er hört diese Geschichten über die Christen und Juden, die glauben, dass sie ihre Propheten sind und Individuen, die Teil der Religion sind. Aber er ist nicht in der Lage, zwischen der Unterschiede zwischen einem tatsächlichen historischen Quelle, wie zum Beispiel die Vier Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke und John, und sagen, apokrifische Christen Geschichten, die um die Arabische Peninsula fliegen.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  Und deshalb, weil es diese Unfähigkeit gibt, zwischen diesen Quellen zu unterscheiden, einige dieser Dinge enthalten sich in der Koran. Also, und wir können dies tragen, ein Freund meiner, Andy Banister, hat sein PhD-Doktorarbeit gemacht, und dann hat er ein Buch veröffentlicht, das heißt, es heißt "Der oral-formulare Konstruktion der Koran", wo wir tatsächlich bestimmte Geschichten in der Koran zu apokrifischen Quellen, die um die nachfolgenden Jahrhunderte in der nach Jesus fliegen, verbinden können. Also, es gibt ein Dokument, das "Die Infanzie Gospels von Thomas"

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas, which is very different. But the Arab Infancy Gospel of Thomas has a story where Jesus, the childhood Jesus, is making clay birds beside a riverbank. And the Jewish officials get mad at him because he's doing this on the Sabbath. He's breaking the Sabbath. They go off to get his parents to get him into trouble. And Jesus breathes on the birds. They turn into real birds and they fly away. So this is an apocryphal story. It comes centuries after the actual historical Jesus. It has no historical ties to the historical Jesus. But it's a popular story that's being incorporated into this infancy narrative.

• 1:00:50Patrick Bet-David?

  In the Quran.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  So the Quran adopts it. So we can trace it to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and then later Arab Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The Quran borrows it and incorporates it, but we know that it's not an actual historical story of Jesus. So when I say that there were stories that like they're familiar-

• 1:01:10Patrick Bet-David?

  So what's your point with that? What's your point with that?

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  That there are stories that are familiar in that you're seeing the name Jesus. You're seeing the name John the Baptist. You're seeing the name Mary. But when you're reading these stories about them in the Quran, they're not stories that they're not echoing biblical stories as much as they're talking about these characters in very different ways. That if you don't know about, say, you know, where these sources are coming from, if you're not looking into the infancy narratives, then you're like, well, what is this? Like, this is confusing. Is this more information? Is this right information? And so now later in life, in my formal education, digging into some of those things and figuring out, okay, well, here's how we trace those sources. Here's the paper trail.

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  Here's how we can connect those dots between where potentially the author of the Quran was actually getting them from. That's when I did a lot of that legwork. But originally, I was reading the Quran and I just, I found it unusual, but I also found it did not accurately reflect things that-

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  I was looking for to answer the ultimate questions. Questions of like meaning and purpose and morality.

• 1:02:22Patrick Bet-David?

  While you're going through it the first, second or third time, are you sitting down with a Muslim scholar to debate and ask questions? Have you gone through that yourself? And if you did, what did you learn? Did you see contradictions? Did you say, okay, I understand this part?

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would routinely meet with Muslims. Especially in like my university years, there were times where every Ramadan, my Muslim friends were reading the Quran. And so I would read the Quran alongside them. So we would read the entirety of the Quran during the time of Ramadan. And I would use that as an opportunity both to learn, but also to I kind of, I wanted to be an example to them. So when you were talking about my, you know, my attitude in the way that I approached my conversation with Billy, that's been my attitude all along in that I'm part of an organization that does Christian apologetics. And apologetics is-

• 1:03:17Patrick Bet-David?

  That's the organization in Toronto you were talking about.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's in Canada, Apologetics Canada. But apologetics is just a word that means to give a reason or to give a defense. And it comes from a passage in 1 Peter 3:15, which says, "But in your hearts, revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." But then it's the last part in that verse that I think is just as important. Not just be prepared to give an answer, but Peter says, "But in your hearts, revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks for the reason for the hope that you have. But do so with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ will be ashamed of their slander." And I think when we approach these conversations,

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  whether we're talking to, you know, agnostics, atheists, Mormons, Muslims, for someone like myself who claims to be a Christian, if I'm only giving answers, but I'm not revering Christ as Lord in my heart, and those answers aren't done so with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, then I'm not actually obeying that command in Scripture to give an answer. Because it needs to be sandwiched in between those two things.

• 1:04:29Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, I love that. So, you know,

• 1:04:33Patrick Bet-David?

  Let me, let me go a little bit deeper with this. So, question for you. Somebody may say, okay, so the Quran, you know, and the illiterate prophet Mohammed, right? And, you know, inconsistencies in the book that was written, not like the Bible where you're kind of going through it and it's a Old Testament, New Testament. I kind of feel like, okay, when I'm going through letters or Matthew, Luke, you know, I'm kind of feeling, you know, he's giving his testimony, he's giving it. Maybe there's a little bit of differences, but for the most part, I can see how their point of view while they're walking with Jesus, they see this. Okay. Why do you think the religion, you know, 610, 632, common era, Quran is done?

• 1:05:14Patrick Bet-David?

  From 632 to today, why do you think it's become the fastest growing religion in the world? And now they have, I don't know what the number is, one and a half billion, maybe I'm 1.4 billion, I don't know the exact number, but it's somewhere around there, 1.9 billion. Why do you think it's grown exponentially that at this point, they're saying in the next 30 years, it's going to be the biggest religion in the world? And some even say where 30% of House or Senate in America could be run by Muslims. Why do you think it's grown so big?

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I have a, an exact prognosis. I mean, Islam is a very different religion than something like Christianity in that it's, it has a socio-political component to it that Christianity doesn't. In that it is a political religious system. And it was designed that way from its beginning in that Mohammed, if, once again, we're assuming that the traditional Islamic sources are correct. He was a, a warlord. And so, if from its inception, there's been a different attitude. Jesus was the crucified Messiah in that he was, he said, "I, I've come to not be served, but to serve."

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  And so, when we see the beginnings of Christianity, we see an attitude where people are motivated by "love your neighbor."

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  You know, pray for those who persecute you. Uh, love those who hate you. You know, if a Roman soldier asks for your tunic, you give him, you know, your, your undercoat also. And so there's a different attitude when we look at the substance of something like Christianity in that Christians were willing to be persecuted and die because they believed that Jesus had already won, that he was sitting at the right hand of the Father. And so their, their battle cries were pray and pray, evangelize and be willing to lose your life for this message. Whereas with Islam, there was much more of a, a system where it was designed where to

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  subjugate the entire world under Islam. So you have the Dar al-islam, the House of Islam, and then you have the, the rest of the world. And so I think there's a political component to Islam that is very different than Christianity. I think there's also, especially in the West, we're not, we're, we're basically being outbred in that traditional Muslim homes have more kids. I mean, there's also the, the component of having more wives within majority of Muslim countries that's allowed, but having more kids. And so you have more kids and you have a system that allows for certain things.

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  And so there's, that that's going to grow faster than a society which is dissuading families from growing is maybe even demonizing the, the, the growth of a household for various reasons, whether that be, you know, political or environmental or otherwise. And, and so you just have very different worldview foundations for something like Christianity than you do for something like Islam.

• 1:08:27Patrick Bet-David?

  Do you think the, the world's a better place based on one faith or the other? Meaning when you're speaking with Muslims, there is a pride for them to, you know?

• 1:08:41Patrick Bet-David?

  We're gonna outgrow you and we're gonna be the dominant religion in the world. And, you know, it's gonna be the way we run things, cities, like right now with what's going on with UK. You know, I don't know if you're following the challenges that UK is going through. Um, where the most common name given thirty percent, I think, I don't know what it was, the most common name given to kids in twenty twenty four was Mohammed. And this is UK, right? You're talking about. Hmm. Uh, do you think Christians, the goal is to what? You know, are in your mind, is it if, if, if the faith that we have today, it's the same it was yesterday, it's the same, it's gonna be a hundred years from now.

• 1:09:22Patrick Bet-David?

  You know, where some criticism may be like, well, look, the Christianity, the church has been getting smaller, some data that we have, if you want to pull it up, you see this with Pew Research and they'll show it and say, well, here's what's going on and you know, it used to be church attendance used to be higher. I don't know how many mega churches in America are empty today. And I've gone to many of them and you name them. I've been to a lot of mega churches in America today because you're going places like, I wanna see how this guy preaches. I wanna see how that guy preaches. I wanna see what this is like. You know, why do I mean, why is this so empty here? Why, why do we build a facility that's a fifty million dollar facility, but eighty percent of places empty? Why did you build this place? Why do you think on one side, you know, one religion is growing and the other one isn't? Like, this is the number right here, if you look at, right, from nineteen forty,

• 1:10:04Patrick Bet-David?

  church memberships amongst US adults, seventy three, seventy six, seventy three. So we're on seventy percent for about forty five years. Then it drops, still at seventy percent in two thousand, but in the last twenty years, seventy, sixty four, sixty one, fifty seven, fifty five, fifty, forty seven. And I don't know what that number is today. Why do you think this is happening?

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  So I think we, we do need to be careful with this statistics because we used to live in a culture that was much more culturally Christian than it is today. And sometimes I look at these numbers and I often wonder, okay, yes, you see this kind of downward trajectory, but I wonder, I mean, in Canada, in not that long ago, only a few decades ago, you had something like the Lord's Day Act, where you, you were not allowed to have a business open on Sunday because it was the Lord's Day. And there was just more of a cultural zeitgeist that was not necessarily, I think, Christian in, it was Christian out of convenience, not Christian out of conviction. And so I think a lot of people used to go to church because maybe they were just following along in the society and that that's just part of what you did.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  And the culture shifted and now the culture is not saying that going to church is necessarily something that you should do or need to do. And so I'm always curious as to how many of these people who used to, you know, fill out the little tick box and say, I'm a Christian, I go to church on Sunday. How many of them were doing so because it was just par for the course for their culture? And the culture shifted and they weren't really necessarily convictionally Christian then, and they were following the stream of the flow of the culture and the stream of the flow shifted. And so now it's just more culturally accepted to not go to church. And so I, I wonder whether the people who are going to church now are actually those

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  that choose to go to church convictionally and are what you would refer to as the actual Christians that, that feel that conviction that Jesus is their Lord and Savior.

• 1:12:04Patrick Bet-David?

  You know what I would say to that? So in, in the insurance company I build, we're a high-volume recruiting insurance agency. And we grew from 60 agents to 60,000 agents. And I knew when I went to an office, they used to have 100 agents come into meetings on Saturdays, okay, or Tuesday nights. And then I'd come back a year later and they're down to 20. And I would say, hey, what happened to attendance? Year ago, you guys had 100, this was fired up, now you're down to 20. And then I would see the broker running the office, let's just say he's a senior pastor, he would say, well, it's not about quantity, it's about quality. We have quality attendees, where a year ago, we didn't have quality. We had quantity. I'm, I'm solving for quantity, quality.

• 1:12:50Patrick Bet-David?

  And it was always for me, a sign of lack of enthusiasm in the leader, lack of conviction in the leader, lack of aggressiveness and assertiveness to go out there and baptize, bring people in and baptize them later. Bring them in and share the story with them. Share the testimony of what we've done, how this business works, why it's effective. And I'll go to church and I'll see a fired up pastor at the top and you notice, boom, you know, wall to wall. Good for you, right? But, you know, and I hear what you're saying. I hear what you're saying because I don't think the same can be said about the Mormon church. I think Mormonism is growing. When you look at their data, they're doing... And by the way, you're talking-

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  I'm not convinced about that.

• 1:13:31Patrick Bet-David?

  Well, you can say that, but data when it's shown to me-

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:13:38Patrick Bet-David?

  And let me tell you where I'm going with this. You're talking to a guy that's a evangelical, non-denominational, you're a Baptist, right? And I think it'd be good, one of our guys asked the question, say, "Hey, can you tell me the difference between Presbyterian and Orthodox?" And I said, "You know, I'm gonna ask Wesley. I think that's a good thing for you to break down, but I'll go there in a minute, but let's just kinda stay on this topic here." It's just kinda where I'm going to here right now. Andrew Tate and I are speaking. And I'm sure you know who Andrew Tate is.

• 1:14:07Patrick Bet-David?

  Year and a half ago, he gets out of jail. I'm there, the first person to interview him. He had an issue with BBC. We're sitting there talking and he says, "When I was in jail,

• 1:14:21Patrick Bet-David?

  I decided to convert to being a Muslim. Religion of Islam." Okay. Tell me why. I don't know if you know his reason or not. Have you heard his reason?

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  I have heard him articulate it.

• 1:14:32Patrick Bet-David?

  And he says, "You know when I was there, how many Christian friends of mine and fans wrote me a letter? None. Do you know how many Muslims wrote me a letter? I can't even tell you." And to me, when I saw that, boom, okay. So while we're talking, I'm writing this thing down. And I'm writing why people convert, because I'm actually curious. So this wasn't prepared, I'm literally, when you're talking, I'm writing this stuff down. While we're having a conversation. Why do people convert to Christianity, or Muslim, or Jehovah, or Seventh Day, or Mormonism, or Scientology, or whatever it may be, right? And I've been through all of these guys, I used to go debate Scientologists all the time, to know what they're thinking about, right? In L.A., at their main Scientology center.

• 1:15:13Patrick Bet-David?

  So, one, is through your example, testimony, the way you live. Like, you showed grace with Billy Carson. I walked away and I said, "My son should watch this guy." Because men would benefit from having grace, especially when you can be a bully and you show grace, that's even more honorable.

• 1:15:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:34Patrick Bet-David?

  Right? When somebody knows how to fight and beat you up, and they don't, and they say, "Look, it's just not a good idea, can we not fight?" And walks away, you know this guy can whip this guy's tail, but he doesn't, that's grace, good for you, right? Versus, "Let me go beat him up, show him the fact that I know, Taekwondo," or whatever. So to me, one is example testimony, okay? Was that set there for Andrew? I don't know. Two, the actual content, what's in the Book of Koran? What's in the Book of, you know, what's in the Bible? What's in the Book of Maroni? You know, what's in L. Ron Hubbard's, what's the book called? Dianetics, right? I've found, in my experience, less than 10% of the time is the content. Because most people don't read the Bible, most people don't read the whole book.

• 1:16:18Patrick Bet-David?

  It's the example, somebody in their lives. Third one I wrote down is disappointment, heartbreak, hurt. "Hey, you hurt me, you weren't there, you're a Christian, and because of that, for the rest of my life, I'm gonna be against you, maybe Billy Carson." I don't know, I'm not trying to psychoanalyze, I'm just kinda watching, maybe for myself, for yourself, for everybody. You had a great example, you know, your family, your background, you're coming from a place, organized, structured, a lot of people don't have that. They're coming from a different background. And the next one I wrote down is they were there for you. "Hey, you have nobody for Thanksgiving, come over." "Hey, what are you doing this Sunday? You got nobody? Come spend some time with us, we'll go to church together. Come with me to go to Mecca, come with me to go to this, come with me to go with that," right? So for somebody like Andrew Tate today,

• 1:17:05Patrick Bet-David?

  whose brother's still a Christian, by the way, Tristan is. And he's been going through, Andrew's been going through some challenging times right now because he announced he wants to run for Prime Minister of UK and all this other stuff. And, you know, he's saying, if you're not for the British way, get out. If you're not for this, and indirectly he's calling out the, you know, many of the things that's going on with the, you know, Muslims in UK. The criticism isn't towards Christians, or Jews, or Scientologists, or Catholics. There's a lot of criticism towards Muslims that they're getting. Going back to it, okay? Why isn't the church, the Christian church, the non-denominational church, even some of the other sects you put in it? Why isn't it growing at the pace that Islam is?

• 1:17:49Speaker 00

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• 1:18:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think what we see globally is that we're seeing a shift in the demographics in that for a long time, the Western world was Christianized. Maybe it wasn't necessarily Christian, but it was Christianized. And I actually think we're seeing a shift statistically in that's moving to the global south. That if you look at the continents of Africa and Asia, that the church is growing at a rapid rate in those countries. And I think there are various reasons for that, but I think we are genuinely seeing that.

• 1:19:14Patrick Bet-David?

  Can I give a rebuttal to that?

• 1:19:16Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:19:16Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay. So. Again, I'm gonna take you back to my example of running an insurance company. Somebody could say, "Well, look, you know, yes, we're not growing in California, but I can tell you, we're growing in Florida, and we're growing in Texas, and we're growing in Tennessee." That's because we were never in Texas, Florida, and Tennessee. We just moved into that market, right?

• 1:19:34Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:19:35Patrick Bet-David?

  Somebody may say, "Well, that's because we're just breaking into that market in Asia, or in, you know, uh, uh, south, whatever, you know, Africa, or some of these places, or even the Middle East." By the way, Christianity's grown in Iran in ways that most people don't know. The percentage is exponential in Iran that's grown. The stories I get and the testimonies, it's unbelievable when I see some of this data that comes back.

• 1:19:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:00Patrick Bet-David?

  And I'm glad you're saying that, because my main focus is really the West.

• 1:20:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Patrick Bet-David?

  Because West is the one that's got a black eye. UK is West. Us, you know, West.

• 1:20:09Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:20:09Patrick Bet-David?

  You know, Canada, West.

• 1:20:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:11Patrick Bet-David?

  Why do you think the West has taken a hit when it comes on to attendance, the church? Why do you think?

• 1:20:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna back up, I'm gonna answer that question, but I'm gonna back up and say that, um, to the kind of rebuttal of, "Well, we're introducing Christianity into those places." I would actually say that Christianity was there long before it was ever in the West. In that North Africa was where a lot of the major church historians come from. Um, apart from the Apostle Paul, uh, you have, um, individuals like Athanasius of Alexandria. Um, you know, these are, these are people who are, who are Augustine. Saint Augustine was a North African. Like, some of the most prominent individuals within early church history were from the Middle East, were from Africa, and, um, Christianity, uh, was in, you know, Asia and Africa

• 1:21:00Speaker 02

  long before it was anywhere remotely close to places like North America. And so, I think what we're seeing actually is not an introduction, but the revival of a lot of those countries.

• 1:21:12Patrick Bet-David?

  I think that's a fair, and I think it'd be both, right? Because some places, it is a revival.

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:21:17Patrick Bet-David?

  "Hey, let's revive, right? Let's get the attendance going again. Let's get excitement there again." But some of it is also because it was a smaller percentage of it there, right?

• 1:21:26Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:21:27Patrick Bet-David?

  In Iran, if you're looking What percentage is Muslim? You will see a ninety-eight percent number all over the place, right? If you go in Asia, you will see some high numbers as well. So I can see that part, like if you're gonna go into Indonesia, I think Indonesia is ninety-nine percent, if I'm not mistaken. It's some big number.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, the biggest Muslim country in the world.

• 1:21:44Patrick Bet-David?

  Right, exactly, that's what I'm saying, it's the biggest Muslim country in the world. But, but the West.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:21:48Patrick Bet-David?

  The West, you, you have no idea how excited I get when I get, when I see people like you. I can't tell you how much it excites me when I see guys like you. When I saw that, I'm like, you know what? I think you were good for Billy, because Billy can't hate you, walk away from you. Billy has to walk away and like you. It, it, it, we need that, we need those. I have a theory, I'm trying to see from you that this is your world, what theories do you have?

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:14Patrick Bet-David?

  Because you're doing your part, it's not like you're not doing it, this isn't criticism towards you.

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:18Patrick Bet-David?

  You understand what I'm saying? You're doing your part, you're going out there, you're sharing your testimony, you're doing it in a graceful way. You're setting the right example, you've grown your family, you have three kids, you're trying to, you know, set the example, but I'm, again, responsibility of everybody else. One side, one point nine billion, growing faster than us. The other side, flatlined with churches declining.

• 1:22:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think there have been a number of things that have happened in the West. I, in the last few decades, I think we want to hold on to the fruit of our Judeo-Christian values, but we want to ignore the roots that actually grew that fruit. And so I think you can look at individuals like, there's a historian named Tom Holland, he's not the Spiderman actor, that guy is also named Tom Holland? Not this Tom Holland, he wrote a book called Dominion, he's out in the UK. Now, he's an agnostic, but he, this giant, like, brick of a book, Dominion, and talks about the fact that a lot of the things that we assume within our society, that we consider good, even things like just the idea that humans have intrinsic worth by nature of being human, that that is fundamentally a Christian value.

• 1:23:22Speaker 02

  Because it comes from the biblical testimony of humans being created in the image of God. Now, a friend of mine, Glenn Scrivener, out in the UK, he runs an organization called Speak Life, wrote an excellent book that you, Patrick, need to make sure that you get your hands on, called The Air We Breathe. And in The Air We Breathe, he takes a lot of this stuff that Tom Holland Kind of encapsulates and he synthesizes it into a more bite-sized kind of portion. And in the air we breathe, he goes through these qualities that we look at in the West in particular. Things like if you, yeah, so the subheading is how we all came to believe in freedom, kindness, progress, and equality.

• 1:24:07Speaker 02

  And that he traces those roots directly back to Christianity. And I think one thing that's happened in the West in particular is we want to hold on to these values that are inherent to building the West, that are fundamentally Christian values, but we want to then also strip God from them. And what we're seeing, I think, in a lot of the confusion in the West is that that doesn't work. In that the ability to- What doesn't work in the West? To stripping the actual foundations of where those things came from.

• 1:24:48Speaker 02

  So you can say, okay, humans have value and we should take care of people who are weaker than. Sure. But where does that come from? Because if all you are is matter and motion. Right. If you're just a product of time plus matter plus chance. Right. Then survival of the fittest actually should mandate that, no, not all people have intrinsic value. In fact, some people have extrinsic value in that what they can contribute to society is actually how we should ascribe their worth. And so say if they're, and we're seeing this in Canada with made, medical assistance and dying, if they're elderly and they can no longer contribute, if they're sick, then the best option for them is actually to be eliminated. Because although we're going to dress this up in language like care and dignity, ultimately

• 1:25:32Speaker 02

  what it's saying is that this person no longer has enough to contribute to society, so we should remove them from society. And so I think we, our world wants to hold two things at the exact same time, which are fundamentally contradictory. In that it wants to say, values, freedom, you know, unity, purpose, kindness, progress, equality, these are things that built the West.

• 1:25:58Speaker 02

  But we also want to say, well, no, all that God stuff, we want to get rid of that. And once you start to do that, you run into issues with foundation. Where are you getting your actual reasoning to say, so Glenn Scrivener, my friend who I mentioned, who wrote the book, The Air We Breathe, he always says-

• 1:26:15Patrick Bet-David?

  I just ordered the book.

• 1:26:16Speaker 02

  Great, I'll make sure I, let me know.

• 1:26:19Patrick Bet-David?

  You got him a sale.

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  You did, I might even get him to sign it for you. The, one of the things he says is, you know, when people say that morality, like where you get your morality from, and, and I've done this with, you know, atheists who, who want to ascribe, say that rape is wrong. Now rape is wrong, rape is objectively wrong. And I say, okay, why is rape wrong? Where do you get the objective morality to say that something like rape is wrong? And they say, how dare you say, I don't have any morality. I'm saying, no, no, no, I'm not saying you don't have morality. I'm saying, where do you get that from? And Glenn has this analogy where he says, it's like saying, where did you get your pants from? Where did you, where did you buy them? And you say, how dare you say, I don't have

• 1:27:05Speaker 02

  any pants on? Like, no, no, I'm not saying you don't have any pants. Where's the source that your pants came from, Patrick? Where did you purchase them from? And so I think when we look at something like equality, or morality, or freedom, and we say, okay, where is the standard by which we can actually ground these things in order to use them as the objective goods that they are for our society? Where's that coming from? Now, I can ground that as a Christian in the objectivity of scripture and in a God who does not change. And that's, you know, where a lot of the founders of Western civilization got it from. Even if they weren't necessarily sold on Christianity wholesale, they're, they're

• 1:27:47Speaker 02

  borrowing that from Christianity. It's the infrastructure that builds these things. And so I think we, we-

• 1:27:55Patrick Bet-David?

  I get that. And, and, okay, so I, I understand where, you know, there's a book out there called, How to Start a Country, okay? And we'll play a game. And I'll say, okay, if you start a country, what religion-

• 1:28:09Patrick Bet-David?

  Is gonna attract the types of people you want where they wanna raise their kids there.

• 1:28:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:15Patrick Bet-David?

  To have the most opportunity, to build as big of a business that you choose to, have safety, security, what would it be? And we'll have that debate back and forth. Well, you know what? I would want it to be Christian. Okay, great. Why is that? And then you'll kinda go through the values and principles and grace, you know, that we're talking about. Okay, great, I understand that. Meaning, even a Bill Maher says the values and principles. I, America was founded on a Judeo-Christian. Oh, stop saying that Judeo-Christian. I'm so sick and tired of hearing the fact that it was started like that. It was not really true. Thomas Jefferson, when you think about that, that whole debate that takes place. But the reality of it is, you're right. Where did those values come from? So now, I'm gonna keep going back to it, because this is your world.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:55Patrick Bet-David?

  I agree. It has been proven.

• 1:28:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:59Patrick Bet-David?

  That a country based on Christian values can have Muslims living there and feel safe, can have Jews living there feeling safe, can have Scientologists living there feel safe, and produce a good environment that produces results and allow us to coexist, 340 million of us, in one place. Fair. Why isn't it doing better? Why isn't it growing?

• 1:29:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean-

• 1:29:26Patrick Bet-David?

  Why has it flatlined? What has caused that?

• 1:29:28Speaker 02

  I think that should be a conviction to us who are Christians, to say, well, maybe we have done a complacent job in our actually communicating to people why they should be, you know, submitting their lives to Jesus as their Lord and Savior. I, I think a number of things are going on at the same time. I think, I agree with you 100%. People need to be convictionally motivated to be examples. Right? I, I've, I've said in a number of my presentations that there are five Gospels. You know, we've talked about the first four, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But the fifth is actually the life of the believer.

• 1:30:11Speaker 02

  In that if you are a Christian, you are claiming your identity in Christ and that is good news. You and Gellian, it's the gospel. And if people are seeing you, they should be encouraged to then go back and read the other four Gospels. Because that's where that source is going to come from. And so I think that we as Christians need to be doing a better job, and so many people are, and I'm actually, I'm optimistic about the church in the West. I'm optimistic about the churches I see that are doing good things. Now, that's aside from maybe the mainstream church, or like larger denominational churches that are capitulating on certain issues that have been true within historical Christianity.

• 1:30:56Speaker 02

  But at the exact same time, Patrick, I think one of the other factors that needs to be incorporated in this conversation is that a worldview can be true even if all of its adherents are terrible examples of it. In that, I don't think they should be terrible examples, but if you brought in a cello into this room and told me to play Beethoven, and I start squeaking away on it, your conclusion shouldn't be, wow, Beethoven, man, that music is terrible.

• 1:31:25Patrick Bet-David?

  I understand what you're saying. I mean, I understand that analogy.

• 1:31:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:30Patrick Bet-David?

  You know, there's plenty of other examples for me to see it, to say, okay, well, that guy can play it.

• 1:31:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:35Patrick Bet-David?

  You know, like I listen to this guy's YouTube channel, Jacob's Piano. I love the way he plays piano.

• 1:31:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:31:40Patrick Bet-David?

  I don't know how many millions of subscribers he's got. He doesn't owe me, I don't know him, but I love listening to the way he, go to videos and go to most viewed, and I can tell, go to popular. That right there, that first one that's got 141 million views, I've probably, don't play it because it will, I've probably listened to this.

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:58Patrick Bet-David?

  I don't know how many hundreds of hours I've just put it on repeat and he plays.

• 1:32:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:32:04Patrick Bet-David?

  And it's just, it's four songs, and it's so phenomenal. So there's examples for me to be able to go to somebody and say, great. Just like we have it right now, we got plenty of great examples of guys like you. We got it. We got plenty of examples. All I'm sitting there while I'm going through this, is which one of these areas is our leak?

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:32:21Patrick Bet-David?

  Are Muslims beating us in a better example testimony, Christians? Is that why they got Tate? And a lot of young people nowadays are converting because of that. Is it because of our content? Is it because of structure that Quran is written better than the Bible? Okay, i- is it because of, you see where I'm going with this? Is it because of our, uh, uh, they're disappointed, heartbreak, hurt, we, too many letdowns? Is it because of, you know, they're there for them more than we are? Or maybe it's because, uh, somebody stepping up that's vocal, that's got conviction, that's willing to, you know, be a little bit out there and, you know, when I'm sitting there the other day watching Billy Graham on Johnny Carson, I don't know if you've seen Billy Graham on Johnny Carson or not. If you haven't, I think it's worth you watching to see what he does.

• 1:33:05Patrick Bet-David?

  You know, this guy goes on his mission and, and, you know, he does what he does. Sometimes Christians right now, you know, walking on eggshells, you see the Muslim religion. I'm just right, wh- while we're talking, you know, and, and you know this better than I do. This is your world, is what happens if I choose to leave the Christian church? What if I say I'm done? I don't want to be a Christian anymore. What does the church do to me?

• 1:33:28Speaker 02

  Well, if they're a good church, I think they should follow up with you. They should pursue you.

• 1:33:33Patrick Bet-David?

  But will anything happen to me? Am I in trouble?

• 1:33:36Speaker 02

  Oh, no, you're not in danger.

• 1:33:37Patrick Bet-David?

  I'm not in danger.

• 1:33:38Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:33:38Patrick Bet-David?

  If somebody's sending me a write-up, a- is the senior pastor gonna write me up? And I'm gonna have to go see HR department at the church?

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:33:46Patrick Bet-David?

  Now, what happens if I leave the religion of Islam?

• 1:33:49Speaker 02

  Well, the, the penalty could be death.

• 1:33:52Patrick Bet-David?

  The penalty could be de- death, right? And we've had that debate here on the podcast ourselves. So is it the fact that the fear-based? And the tough, intense structure is working? But then that would not work in a country like US? Because when you look at the number of people in America that have converted to Christian, to Muslim, I don't know if you've seen the number or not. You know what the number is?

• 1:34:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:34:19Patrick Bet-David?

  What do you think? I'm actually curious because it's your world. What do you think the number is?

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  To con- that I've converted to Islam?

• 1:34:24Patrick Bet-David?

  Not you. Like, how many, uh, how many Christians in America converted to Islam in America?

• 1:34:29Speaker 02

  Oh, I, I have no idea.

• 1:34:30Patrick Bet-David?

  What do you think the number is?

• 1:34:30Speaker 02

  I'm terrible at numbers. I'm a history guy, not a math guy.

• 1:34:33Patrick Bet-David?

  Give me a guess, 340 million people live in here. What do you think the number is?

• 1:34:38Speaker 02

  340 million people.

• 1:34:40Patrick Bet-David?

  In America, how many do you think have converted?

• 1:34:43Speaker 02

  From Christianity.

• 1:34:44Patrick Bet-David?

  To Muslim.

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  To Islam.

• 1:34:46Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, Islam.

• 1:34:49Speaker 00

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• 1:35:14Patrick Bet-David?

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• 1:35:51Patrick Bet-David?

  You're getting deep, so you are a numbers guy if you think.

• 1:35:53Speaker 02

  No, I'm not, I'm not. I'm trying to figure out how to not make a fool out of myself.

• 1:35:59Speaker 02

  Two, 2 million.

• 1:36:00Patrick Bet-David?

  What's the number, Rob?

• 1:36:03Patrick Bet-David?

  Look at that. It's a small number.

• 1:36:05Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:36:06Patrick Bet-David?

  And by the way, Huffington Post says it's only 20,000. But it's annually.

• 1:36:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:36:12Patrick Bet-David?

  So, you know, 20,000 annually.

• 1:36:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I don't think Islam is necessarily a religion where we're seeing converts. I think Islam is a religion where we're seeing importation.

• 1:36:20Patrick Bet-David?

  Yes.

• 1:36:21Speaker 02

  In that we're seeing a lot of people come from other countries, and we're seeing families grow. And so, I think that, I mean, when you mentioned the Mormon church, I think the back door of the Mormon church is a lot bigger than the front door. I think a lot more people are leaving the Mormon church than are actually.

• 1:36:34Patrick Bet-David?

  I don't disagree.

• 1:36:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:35Patrick Bet-David?

  I don't disagree. I can't tell you how many people I meet where they tell me I used to be, and they almost apologize. And I say, you know, you know, I'm from Bountiful, or I'm from, you know, Salt Lake, and you know, I used to be, I'm not, no longer right now.

• 1:36:51Patrick Bet-David?

  But also, I think they're very systematic. I think they're very structured. I think they're very systematized. I think they lift each other up, and they support each other. I don't know how many times. I've been told to go watch Napoleon Dynamite, one of the worst movies of all time, but the actor was

• 1:37:03Speaker 02

  Oh, well, we need to have a debate on that. That's that's the real debate.

• 1:37:05Patrick Bet-David?

  Stop it.

• 1:37:06Speaker 02

  Napoleon Dynamite is one of the best pieces of film of all time.

• 1:37:09Patrick Bet-David?

  We're gonna have a problem here right now together if you go there. But but you see, so for me, think about, I'll give you another example here, and then I'm we'll go change the topic here to go somewhere else. And I want to see if you have a message for Andrew Tate. So for me, during COVID, COVID happens. And a lot of big companies, Goldman Sachs, you know, Merrill Lynch, and you know, Chase and all these guys, Morgan Stanley. We are not gonna go see our investors in, you know, private equity money. You have to only zoom because we have to be COVID protected.

• 1:37:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:37:44Patrick Bet-David?

  You know, and David Solomon's going and sitting down with people on the jet and he's talking to guys.

• 1:37:50Patrick Bet-David?

  Jamie Dimon is going out there and talking to the guys. A bunch of other guys are flying and meeting with the guys, right? So what happens? They got their business during those four years. A lot of people didn't. What happens four years later? Some of them grew, some of them went out of business. Guess what? You're not going there to them during a time like that. You know, I I I I think I think there's gotta be the the. You know how the league every 10 or 20 years needs a new superstar? Sometimes baseball or sports go through a flat time where they don't have the next Brady, the next Mahomes, the next whatever that they're going through.

• 1:38:23Patrick Bet-David?

  I think this is a big opportunity for, like, when I watch what Charlie Kirk did in the last 12 months on TikTok. It's like, whoa, amazing. You know, the other day Trump's talking about, why would I want to shut down TikTok? Look at the numbers that we have. We're doing this, we're doing that, we're doing this, we're doing that, we're doing this, right? And so what is that? What does Charlie Kirk get credit for? I think one of the things I give Charlie Kirk a lot of credit for, Charlie Kirk goes on school campuses and sits there and says, ask me anything. Is this the one, Rob? Zoom in a little bit on the data with this.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  It's cut off. I have to go find the original.

• 1:39:00Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, but just zoom in on the bottom. I'll show that shows how many views on the bottom. 2.4 billion views, Team Trump, Donald Trump, 1.4. Four billion, Kamala Harris, one point three billion, Charlie Kirk, one point three billion. And you see at the bottom, Taylor Swift, two hundred and fifty one million. You know, Beyonce, hundred and thirty one million, Kardashian, hundred and twenty one million. So why would we take down TikTok? I, I, I think today, believe it or not, I think it's the season where a bigger Billy Graham's gonna come. That's using the tools. I'm actually very optimistic about the future. And by the way, here's a crazy prediction I'll make to you. With us being here right now as well, I think.

• 1:39:34Patrick Bet-David?

  Some weird people are gonna become Christians next two years.

• 1:39:38Speaker 02

  Oh, and I, I agree with you. And I think we're already starting to see that with the Iron Hirsi Ali's and others where we're, we're seeing a resurgence.

• 1:39:44Patrick Bet-David?

  Oh, I'm talking bigger.

• 1:39:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:46Patrick Bet-David?

  I, I'm talking bigger. I'm talking to some guys that people would never expect to go there. I think that's happening next two years.

• 1:39:53Speaker 02

  No, I think you're right. And I think we're in a particularly, um, interesting age where you had. The new atheism with the Richard Dawkins and the Daniel Dennets and the Sam Harris's. And I think. We saw those seeds planted and they grew into dead trees. And people realize that if you tell individuals that they're just a product of time plus matter plus chance, that they have no ultimate meaning. Then they're gonna struggle in finding purpose and drive.

• 1:40:19Patrick Bet-David?

  What do you think happened with Sam Harris? Do you think that's what it is?

• 1:40:22Speaker 02

  No, I think, I think the new atheism, as it was articulated in the early two thousands, was a movement that was largely. Motivated in print and was theoretical, but actually the practical implications were dangerous. And that people, even people like Sam Harris, have realized that they are inefficient to actually be applied. In real life. And so that's why you see, I think, people becoming the quote unquote spiritual, but not religious. And the new age becoming far more popular than, I don't run into atheists in the like. Uh, Richard Dawkins types anymore. I don't. I run into a lot of people who are into. Manifestation and meditation and Christ consciousness and all of this kind of esoteric, very vague. I want.

• 1:41:08Speaker 02

  The, I want the, the things I like about religion, but I, I don't actually want to be held accountable to any, anyone or anything. I'm finding that more and more, and that's also empty. And so I, I think you're a hundred percent right in that. We live in a particular age where the clarity that's going to be spoken into the confusion, I think, is the truth of the gospel message and Christianity. Because ultimately, in what you were saying before, when you're looking at this meta-analysis in terms of, okay, well, where are the leaks? Where are the problems that we're seeing in terms of why, say, something like Islam is outgrowing us? Well, I think if you look at the Christian worldview, it's different than religions

• 1:41:48Speaker 02

  like Islam in that Islam spread largely by occupation, where Christianity was a grassroots movement, because it looked at Jesus, the crucified Messiah, the Lord of Eternity, who stepped out of his throne into humanity, in the second person of the Trinity, in Jesus, and then died the death that we deserve, and then said that your goal is to stand before the Father and hear, "Good and faithful servant." Faithful, not influential, not world-shifting, not, you know, everybody wants to have a presence online. No, you just need to be faithful, and you need to be a servant in that faithfulness. And God is going to do great things with that.

• 1:42:33Speaker 02

  God's going to produce the Martin Luthers and the Billy Grahams and these individuals who change the world fundamentally through faithfulness, not through occupation, not through militaristic movements, but if we're faithful to the gospel message, that's really going to-

• 1:42:53Patrick Bet-David?

  Do you think Billy Graham was faithful?

• 1:42:54Speaker 02

  Oh, Billy Graham is definitely faithful. Yeah, yeah. When we see these people, and, I mean, I have slight disagreements with some of the things that Billy Graham believed, but ultimately, you see a testimony of someone.

• 1:43:07Patrick Bet-David?

  Like what?

• 1:43:08Speaker 02

  Um, I mean-

• 1:43:09Patrick Bet-David?

  Is it specifics? Is it like, uh-

• 1:43:11Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:43:12Patrick Bet-David?

  Theological, more-

• 1:43:13Speaker 02

  Very minor theological issues, I think.

• 1:43:17Speaker 02

  I mean, I think later in his life, he became a lot more soft to things like universalism. And where he kind of was more open to people not confessing Jesus Christ, but there being an aspect of they could be saved. And I ultimately, I don't think that's compatible with biblical Christianity. But I, I mean, talk about a guy who was faithful in his Christian witness, in his proclamation, was zealous. And I think, you know, just because I'm saying you need to be a faithful servant, doesn't mean you don't need to be bold. I mean, Paul was bold. Paul was, his life was threatened, he was beaten, he was shipwrecked. He ultimately died for his profession of faith.

• 1:44:00Speaker 02

  So it's, we don't need to be wallflowers. We need to be bold. We just need to make sure that we're doing, as I quoted before, that doing so with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience.

• 1:44:11Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah. So today, 2025, okay? We see some of the stuff that's happened the last five years. Yeah, you know, LGBTQ, totally fine. Hey, school, kids, transgender, totally fine. Hey, you, totally fine. Everything is like, totally fine. Comparing today to when you read about the city of Corinth and how immoral it was. And you see the many times a comparison being made of Corinth with the modern day Las Vegas, or whatever, some of these other cities that we have in America. And of course, you don't know the definite question, you know, and when I make this comparison, I'm just curious to know what you're gonna be saying about this.

• 1:44:52Patrick Bet-David?

  What caused Jesus to, you know, what was the level of immorality where God's, hey, man, we gotta go handle this right now? And then he comes down and, wait a minute. Or is, is the world today at that level of immorality where God's sitting up there saying, I think it's time? So how do you compare today's times to biblical times, Corinth, that era?

• 1:45:18Speaker 02

  Oh, I think the, the time period that we live in is much more emblematic of the early church in those first few centuries of its existence. In that you have a culture that was very much accepting of, say, promiscuous sexual ethics and idolatry and was open to things and misrepresented and misunderstood Christianity fundamentally. In that, you know, there was a common practice within ancient Rome called exposure, where if you had a baby and you didn't want it, you would put it outside the city gates, you would put it in the garbage dumps. And Christians were notorious for going and saving these babies. And so the Christian movement actually grew in part because they were against this

• 1:46:02Speaker 02

  form of abortion in the ancient world. And so they would collect these babies and they would raise them. And a lot of these babies were girls, which actually meant that the early Christian movements became a statistically predominantly women, because a lot of these women, these little girls were exposed in this. Now, the society around them heard about these strange Christians who were talking about, you know, with the Lord's Supper, drinking blood and eating flesh, and then they knew that they were going out and they were taking these babies from the garbage dumps. And so they started to develop rumors that Christians were cannibals. And yet, despite what is a pretty heinous accusation, complete misunderstanding

• 1:46:44Speaker 02

  of what's going on, Christianity still grew. And some of the earliest critics of Christianity referred to Christianity as the religion of slaves and women, because it gave agency to these groups that were marginalized within society.

• 1:46:58Patrick Bet-David?

  So funny. The mob's been around always, and it confuses and gaslights people all the time.

• 1:47:02Speaker 02

  Definitely. And Christianity were accused of, Christians were accused of being atheists, A being the negative participle, and then Theos meaning God, because they denied that the gods existed, and antisocial, because they wouldn't participate in the goings-on within society that were inherently religious. And so it's in this context that Christianity, grassroots, from the bottom up, eventually goes from 11 scared disciples hiding in an upper room when Jesus is crucified, to fundamentally taking over the Roman world within, you know, half a century, half a millennium. And it's because of the faithful witness of the Christians,

• 1:47:42Speaker 02

  who were being persecuted, and yet were still proclaiming Jesus as Lord, and were fundamentally speaking into the society that they lived in with a message that overturned

• 1:47:56Speaker 02

  The norms because it gave people purpose and ultimately it gave them truth. That the idea of God stepping out of eternity changes the paradigm. I mentioned Glenn Scrivener, he has this really good illustration where he talks about all, all worldviews are some version of survival of the fittest. I'm paraphrasing him here, but what he says is all, all worldviews are some version of survival of the fittest in that you need to do right, you need to think right, or you need to feel right. And Christianity is different in that the fittest steps down and sacrifices himself for the survival of the weakest.

• 1:48:34Speaker 02

  And that message, you know, we just, we're just over the Christmas season, right? The, the Christmas message of God becoming a baby and becoming vulnerable is both an example to us of humility and how we should live, but ultimately in worlds where might and power in a very abusive way are often seen as the way to go, Christianity subverts that. In that Jesus could have taken cues from, you know, all the rulers of his day of, of

• 1:49:12Speaker 02

  Caesar and of Herod and later on during his earthly ministry of Pilate, right? He doesn't do that. He comes down, he humbles himself, he lives a life of a servant and he gets murdered. And that changes the narrative and then he rises from the dead and conquers sin and death. And so because of that, those 11 scared disciples are now willing to go out into the world and suffer persecution and beating and death for the sake of this message that ultimately spreads out through all the ancient world and gets us to where we are today, where we're talking about things like freedom.

• 1:49:56Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:56Speaker 02

  And that's because of the Christian revolution.

• 1:50:00Patrick Bet-David?

  Now, if I'm, Tom, Rob, can you Google this? Did they have OnlyFans back in the days? You almost Googled it. Rob, just so you know.

• 1:50:09Speaker 02

  What are you talking about?

• 1:50:11Patrick Bet-David?

  Was there OnlyFans back then? I mean, was there, uh, what was the quality of porn back in the biblical times? What was the quality of all the other things that they had? I guess where I'm going to right now is, okay, Jesus is coming back.

• 1:50:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:50:26Patrick Bet-David?

  To those people. I'm a Christian, faith, I'm there. To those that are saying, oh, really? He's gonna come back, he's gonna return? I mean, how much worse does it need to get than where we are today? Than what we've seen the last few years? Is it, are we less immoral? Are we less, you know, than what happened back then? That caused, you know, you're telling the story about the infant. It was a form of abortion where it's kinda like, hey, here you go, somebody's gonna come and pick him up and Christians would come and cannibalism? What a weird thing to accuse Christians of that other people started believing in. Isn't it, is it worse today? Or are we not there at the level of sins that we used to commit 2,000 years ago?

• 1:51:08Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, I think sin has always been heinous and terrible. And, you know, we're, we're worse than we assume we are. I mean, the, the biblical message is that we're always going to overestimate how good we are and undervalue how truly heinous and terrible sin is. And that sin is always a cosmic rebellion against our Creator. So, that, that doesn't mean that some sins aren't worse than others. Of course, murder is worse than lying. And, um, Jesus even says this when he gets handed over to Pilate. He says, you know, the one who handed you over to me has committed the greater sin. So, all sin is sin in that it is a rebellion against our Creator. And it's that, um, it's that cosmic treason.

• 1:51:51Patrick Bet-David?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:51:51Speaker 02

  But, some sins are worse than others. I mean, I don't, I don't know if I can stratify, okay, this is a period of time when it seems worse than others. I mean, at the end of the day, I think. We're always worried with the evil out there and we forget about the evil in here. And the Christian message is that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus. And so I think it goes, it starts with you and me, Patrick, submitting our lives to Christ and realizing that our hearts are sinful.

• 1:52:33Speaker 02

  John Calvin described our hearts as a factory of idols. We're always going to look for a way, because we're stuck in this world that's beautiful yet broken, to find the loophole. And this is why rules aren't going to save us. And this is what I think is interesting about, I've talked to atheists and Muslims in the same room about this, like, how do we create a good society? And my Muslim friends and my atheist friends and my agnostic friends, a lot of the time, basically, it devolves down to, well, we need to make better rules. Like, we need to make sure people are obeying the rules, right? That's what Islam is all about. And I think what Christianity says is, that doesn't work, because everybody's always

• 1:53:18Speaker 02

  going to try to find the loophole. They're either going to obey out of fear and obligation, or they're going to try to find the loopholes. And so the Christian message is not obey the rules, it's that you can't obey the rules, you need to submit to Christ, because he can do what you can't. And it's not about how much you can do, it's about what Christ has done. And so we don't need to come up with better rules, we need to change people's hearts. And that's ultimately what God can do. So, was there an ancient version of OnlyFans? Well, yeah.

• 1:53:59Speaker 02

  I mean, there was this concept within the ancient world, that you had 25 different ways to say prostitute in Latin, but male virgin was, you can't really, in classical Latin, write male virgin. It's an awkward phrase. Because it was assumed that if you were a male, and particularly a Roman male, you would not be a virgin. Because you would have had access to sex with anyone at any time, whenever you wanted, with whoever you wanted. And so when Paul, in particular, but Jesus also kind of hinted

• 1:54:39Speaker 02

  this when he talks about marriage as well, but when Paul says that husbands need to submit to their wives and wives need to submit to their husbands, in that society, that would have been holding the male in the relationship to the standard that the female was expected to, but the male was never expected to. And that was countercultural. And that was seen as foolish, in that sexual promiscuity was the norm and was expected. I mean, brothels were everywhere in ancient Rome. And they weren't considered, you know, seedy. You could find brothels in archaeologically in relatively high Roman neighborhoods. And

• 1:55:19Speaker 02

  it's because that was what you were owed. And so when Jesus says, "One man, one woman, for all time, that's it. And if you don't like that, well, there isn't another option. You can become a eunuch for the kingdom. You can submit yourself to celibacy." Those are the options. That's countercultural in the day, in a world that is prolifically sexual, and doesn't see sex as something that is sacred. Whereas Christianity says sex is sacred, because bodies are sacred, and image bearers are sacred. And there's a respect and an accountability. And so these concepts that we have in modern society about sex,

• 1:56:04Speaker 02

  I think, they're confused, because in one sense, we want to say, like, you know, OnlyFans, you can give your body to whoever you want, it doesn't matter, it's just, it's just, you know, bodies rubbing together. And at the exact same time, we also realize that rape is a terrible violation. Well, which is it? Is sex just something you can give away at any time? Or do you realize that this is something that holds a pretty significant intrinsic value? That when it's violated, it goes beyond the physical?

• 1:56:38Speaker 02

  I think that's where our society is confused and that's where we need to speak into these situations. And show that some of these things are actually sacred.

• 1:56:46Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, uh, how old are you by the way?

• 1:56:48Speaker 02

  Thirty-three.

• 1:56:49Patrick Bet-David?

  And, oh wow, what an age. Really? You're thirty-three. It's Alexander and Jesus, thirty-three.

• 1:56:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, right, right. I just, I just gotta get over this, cause uh...

• 1:56:59Patrick Bet-David?

  You gotta, what do you, you got what, uh, six more weeks, right? Seven more weeks, February twenty-fourth until you're protected. So we gotta hurry up, February twenty-fifth's gotta come around the corner. But, uh, okay, so, uh, did you go to a private school? Were you homeschooled or did you, you went to public?

• 1:57:15Speaker 02

  So when we were overseas, I, I was raised in the, uh, the British school system, um, when I was really young. That's why, um, Canadians think I have an accent. Because a lot of people here assume this is a Canadian accent. It's not. It's the leftovers from being like a few years in the British school system overseas. And then I was in the public school in Canada and then, um, yeah, public, all, all the way along.

• 1:57:37Patrick Bet-David?

  Were you ever exposed to porn?

• 1:57:39Speaker 02

  Oh, of course. Yeah. I mean, I think fortunately, I'm not your typical guy in that that is not my struggle and proclivity. And I think I'm very blessed. I have other vices that I need to submit to the, to, to the cross of Christ. Um, but that one in particular isn't the one that I struggle with, but it is prolific in our world today.

• 1:58:03Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah. A lot of people deal with that. And, you know, it's, it's, it's, when I was, uh, you know, again, military, we had a guy in the corner that had a thousand VHS tapes of all the different kind of porns in the military. He was the coolest guy on campus. Everybody wanted to go find his big sergeant that we put up and you would hear the craziest noise. You always knew he had something going on. And he was a rock star for a lot of guys at that time. And then I come out and I run a insurance company and a business nationally and I hear, hey man, I'm really dealing with porn. I'm having a hard time with porn. I'm having a hard time with porn. What do I do with this? What do I do with that? And it was kinda like weird for you to, uh,

• 1:58:41Patrick Bet-David?

  and a lot of people right now, the level of accessibility, what you're seeing, expectation, how does somebody that's a young man, maybe it's the how and maybe it's also the why. How does somebody fight it and why should somebody fight it? You know, if you were to talk to a young sixteen-year-old boy. You know, fourteen year old boy, or eighteen year old man. What would you say to him? On, you know, the negative effects of porn on them, and why should they do whatever they can to not consume it?

• 1:59:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think there are multiple layers to that. In that the scientific data on porn changing your brain is hugely problematic. In that it changes your dopamine receptors and that you, it's very easy to become addicted. I think especially in our day, day and age, I think it was a little bit different, you know, when, when you were growing up, Patrick, and then when I was younger. Where you before the onslaught of the internet. Porn was something that you kind of had to pursue in a way that was a little bit shameful. The magazines or the video shops.

• 1:59:49Patrick Bet-David?

  We had LA Express, we had Hustler. We had Playboy magazine. I'm trying to see what we had. That's really like we had, that's what we had.

• 1:59:58Speaker 02

  Well, and I think the difference between that and what we're dealing with now is that there's just so much now. It's so accessible. And it's designed in a way where it's quick. So it's designed to, you know, I once heard porn described as it's like the highlight reel on ESPN. You know, you see soccer, for example, and the crazy moves and the kicks and you just watch that and you go, wow, soccer. Soccer is an exciting sport. And then you go and you go to a match. You're like, why, why isn't anybody scored in two hours? And so it gives you an unrealistic expectation of what sex should actually be, because sex is something that's good. And something that's beautiful.

• 2:00:43Speaker 02

  And, and something that is God ordained. But when we're given this kind of faulty, very

• 2:00:53Speaker 02

  dramatized perspective on what sex is in pornography. It changes the way that we understand ourselves and others in a very dangerous and, and not just problematic, but actual.

• 2:01:08Speaker 02

  Actually harmful way in shaping how you view other people. You know, I've talked to young men who struggle with porn and a lot of them struggle with looking at women as not being objects because of the way it tunes your brain. That's a terrible thing to look at someone else as an object. You know, we used to, we used to use things and love people. And now we use people and we love things. And I think that's, that's a dangerous shift in our society in that there are, apart from the fact that I think that, you know, sin is, or sorry, porn is sinful, lust is sinful

• 2:01:49Speaker 02

  and is going to have implications that are going to harm you spiritually, that are going to have echoes that go into eternity. I think even if you move that aside, although I think that that's the most important part of the conversation, the health aspects of the way it's going to shape your thinking as a young man, the way it's going to shape your perspectives on discipline and how you view the people around you, how you're going to respect them. I think, I think that that's dangerous. And we see in, in our society in that like a lot of, I mean, I think this is a problem in places like, like Asia a little bit more.

• 2:02:33Speaker 02

  I don't know if you've seen the statistics on places like Korea where like

• 2:02:37Patrick Bet-David?

  Sexless society.

• 2:02:38Speaker 02

  Sexless society, yeah. And, and part of that is porn is that they're getting this like dopamine hit. They're getting the highlight reel. And so they don't feel like they need to get, they don't need to pursue the actual connection. And, and sex is a spiritual thing. And so it's meant to be created, like the first promise, the first covenant that God made when he created humanity was that he gave woman to man and man to woman. To be unified, to become one, to reflect that image of God. You know, both men and women are symbols of the image of God. And when they come together in unity, that's the perfect reflection of what the image of God is.

• 2:03:18Speaker 02

  And so there's a spiritual component that I think we understand in what I was talking about before with rape. There's something that's sacred about that, that we know is when you see these OnlyFans models talk on these podcasts and they're just talking about their body count and how many times they're having sex with different guys and...

• 2:03:38Patrick Bet-David?

  Who's that one girl that didn't, isn't there a girl that just said a thousand or a hundred? I don't know what she, we may have talked about on the podcast.

• 2:03:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:45Patrick Bet-David?

  Slept with a hundred men.

• 2:03:47Speaker 04

  Lily Phillips.

• 2:03:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, this is, I mean, this, this kind of thing breaks my heart because this is someone who is an image bearer and this is, this is defilement, right? And I think even I saw a clip of afterwards, they were trying to interview her and she just breaks down crying. If sex is just like any other thing you can just give away, why would it impact her?

• 2:04:12Patrick Bet-David?

  Do you remember what she cried about?

• 2:04:15Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:04:15Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, she was crying, it was such a weird thing on why she was crying. It, it, it was, it was a, Rob, just make sure you're not playing a clip like last time, you know, we, is this a safe video?

• 2:04:29Speaker 04

  Yes, I believe there's no nudity.

• 2:04:30Patrick Bet-David?

  Go ahead, Rob.

• 2:04:31Speaker 02

  Oh, oh dear.

• 2:04:32Speaker 06

  I think sometimes like feeling so like robotic, like by the, I think like the 30th, you know, like when we're getting on a bit, I've got like a routine of like how we're gonna do this and like it just, sometimes you'd like disassociate and be like, you know, like it's not like normal sex at all. In my head right now, I can think of like five, six guys, 10 guys that I remember.

• 2:04:55Patrick Bet-David?

  That's unbelievable.

• 2:04:56Speaker 06

  And that's it.

• 2:04:58Patrick Bet-David?

  Do you know what he just said, Rob?

• 2:05:00Speaker 06

  I don't know, it's just weird, isn't it?

• 2:05:01Patrick Bet-David?

  Out of the 100 guys, she can only remember five or six of them. Keep playing it.

• 2:05:05Speaker 06

  I wouldn't have known after 100 guys, you know? But yeah. I think that was kind of the hard part is like conversing with them. And like, like when they'd kind of be like, oh, like we've only had two minutes or three minutes. And you said five on the message.

• 2:05:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you see that.

• 2:05:24Patrick Bet-David?

  The emptiness.

• 2:05:24Speaker 02

  You see that in her demeanor, in her voice, like this is a publicity stunt. But it it has ramifications for her as a person, which which are sad, which which are are a picture of brokenness because you shouldn't. This isn't sex. This isn't what sex is meant to be. This this is this is an abuse of what the goodness of something is meant to be. And we all understand when when something is is abused, right? Like, like whether it's a worldview system or an idea or when other people are taken advantage

• 2:06:07Speaker 02

  of, um, this is not what it's meant to be. And and you can see that very starkly in the way that she is reacting.

• 2:06:17Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, I mean, it's tough when you see this. I think one of the best breakdowns I saw on porn was from somebody that you least expect me quoting was Pamela Anderson. Pamela Anderson explains to her this interview she's doing, and she says, look, when I talk to my boys, I prepare them about porn. Says, because it gives you an expectation, says, I used to, because she says, I'm guilty of it. Some may say, I come from that. I maybe even started that because of my tape or whatever she talks about. And then she says, I can't tell you how many times I'm, you know, I was with men. I'm like, why are you doing this? This is not what I want. I'm not, it just gave you a different image of it.

• 2:06:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:56Patrick Bet-David?

  And Pamela Anderson is not a pastor, by the way, if you're wondering, like, she's not preaching out there.

• 2:07:00Speaker 02

  I don't think I was confused on that matter.

• 2:07:02Patrick Bet-David?

  No, yeah, I just want to make sure qualified for you so you don't go out there and, you know, seeing what she has to say. But, okay, I want to bring up Mark, but before I do, there's one question I want you to answer, which is from Humberto, if you remember. And the question is, what is the difference? Okay, basic difference, Christians, Catholic, Orthodox, Presbyterian, Baptist, Mormon. If you could simplify for the average person to say, "Oh, okay, I didn't know that."

• 2:07:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:28Patrick Bet-David?

  "Oh, okay, I didn't know that." What's the difference between those different sects under Christianity?

• 2:07:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think you have different categories in that you have like Christianity broadly in the statistic sense where you have the major Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, Toledo, Ethiopic, and then, what's the Oriental Orthodox? So Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox are not the same thing, but they're similar. Oriental just means Eastern, so that's a little bit confusing. But those are kind of the overarching umbrellas in terms of what we're talking about global Christianity. I mean, inside, I'm a Protestant, and I'm a Protestant out of conviction, not out of convenience

• 2:08:15Speaker 02

  or complacency, in that I truly believe that the tenants of historical Protestantism coming out of the Protestant Reformation of individuals like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Zwingli, Melankin, Knox, these are guys who reformed the church back to what it was meant to be. And so in that, there's a smaller conversation under the umbrella in, okay, well, now you have all these denominations. Now, I actually think denominations are a good thing because humanity is very different. Right, Patrick, you and I don't look like each other, right? I can't wear my skin after Labor Day, I'm so white. There's problems with that, right? So we're different in that people think differently, they look differently.

• 2:09:00Speaker 02

  I live in Toronto, it's a multicultural city. The amount of different cultures represented in my church is phenomenal. And so I think there is something to say of if we agree on the centrality of the gospel and the message of what, who is Jesus and what he came to do to be saved. Now, there's obviously caveats to that. If it's just that, then, I mean, it is just that in one sense, but if it was only that, then you have a lot of people in the New Testament writing a lot of letters and wasting their time. So there's obviously more to that. But I work for an organization, Apologetics Canada, where I'm a Baptist.

• 2:09:39Speaker 02

  And all the other individuals who are on my speaking team along with me are not Baptists. So my colleague Steve is Anglican. Andy is, I believe, is Mennonite Brethren. And then Troy is non-denominational charismatic. And we work fine. In fact, I think we complement each other in a lot of ways. In that we have our disagreements theologically. But the disagreements are always on secondary issues. And I think there's room for that. There's room to disagree on secondary issues as long as when we are coming down to what matters. When we are going out and we are articulating what is ultimately true with a capital T in the Gospel.

• 2:10:24Speaker 02

  We all do agree on that. So I am actually a fan of denominations because I think it gives an opportunity for people to be reflective of the diversity within the Kingdom of God. And unity does not always mean uniformity. And that's a good thing.

• 2:10:41Patrick Bet-David?

  Unity doesn't always mean uniformity.

• 2:10:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:10:44Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay, I like that. I actually, by the way, as a Canadian, do you have any opinions on Justin Trudeau or no?

• 2:10:49Speaker 02

  No opinions whatsoever on Justin Trudeau. I mean, I have to be careful what I say politically, but let's just say I'm not mad that he's resigning.

• 2:11:01Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay. Got it. Got it, interesting.

• 2:11:05Speaker 02

  Well, actually, we can skip that. Billy actually, in his response video, said that I was part of the NDP, which is the New Democratic Party in Canada, which is a left-leaning party. That was one of his accusations against me. And I have had people reach out and say, Wes, why do you support the NDP? They're obviously not in favor of lots of things you do with Christianity. And I can say definitively, I'm not part of the NDP. I don't know where Billy got that.

• 2:11:32Patrick Bet-David?

  Would you consider yourself a Conservative?

• 2:11:34Speaker 02

  Yes, definitely.

• 2:11:35Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay. So politically, you would be?

• 2:11:38Speaker 02

  Politically, I would be Conservative, yeah. Whether that means that the Conservative Party of Canada, or there are others, the People's Party of Canada, like there are. But yes, politically.

• 2:11:46Patrick Bet-David?

  What do you think about this Pierre guy?

• 2:11:49Speaker 02

  Pierre Poliev?

• 2:11:50Patrick Bet-David?

  Yes.

• 2:11:50Speaker 02

  I like him. Yeah, I think he's good. I think he's bright. I think he's intelligent. He, I believe, was the Finance Minister under Stephen Harper. And so he knows what he's doing. And Canada is in a very dire situation right now in terms of its housing market, in terms of its economy. I think it needs a lot of help. And if Pierre is going to do the things he says he is, I'm all for it. I like it.

• 2:12:15Patrick Bet-David?

  You know, he's pro-choice and pro LGBTQ marriage. That's, I don't know if you knew that or not.

• 2:12:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'm not, I obviously have caveats.

• 2:12:24Patrick Bet-David?

  Right.

• 2:12:24Speaker 02

  And, and I'm never going to find a political party that's going to agree with me on everything because I think, you know, the problem with politics is it's full of politicians. And so based on that, you're never going to find anybody who agrees with everything you say.

• 2:12:37Patrick Bet-David?

  I think, I think he's, I think he's a 10 times better candidate than who, what Trudeau did the last few years. I can't tell how many people I run into here in school, kids whose parents escaped Canada to come down here to Florida because they're not comfortable with the politics that's in Canada. Maybe that's a different thing.

• 2:12:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'm encouraged by the things that Poliev says he's going to incorporate. I hope that those play out well because as a young person, living in one of the most expensive cities, not just in Canada, but in the world, and looking at our housing market, looking at our economy, I want my family to grow. I don't want to, you know, I'm only planning on having more kids. And so there are, there's a trickiness to that right now in Canada with everything that's going on.

• 2:13:26Patrick Bet-David?

  What do you think about Trump? Any opinions on him?

• 2:13:31Speaker 02

  Um, once again, need to be careful politically. Um, I

• 2:13:35Patrick Bet-David?

  Why do you say that?

• 2:13:36Speaker 02

  I work for a national not-for-profit that has charitable status. And so, uh,

• 2:13:44Speaker 02

  within the way that that works in Canada, advocating overtly for a political candidate could compromise our charitable status.

• 2:13:57Patrick Bet-David?

  Is that a law?

• 2:13:58Speaker 02

  Yes. You can have your charitable status revoked if you're advocating for politicians too overtly.

• 2:14:10Speaker 02

  And that has happened in Canada.

• 2:14:13Speaker 00

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• 2:15:14Patrick Bet-David?

  How do you feel about that?

• 2:15:16Speaker 02

  I don't love it.

• 2:15:19Patrick Bet-David?

  Are you gonna be in Canada the next 20 years?

• 2:15:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I work, I love my country.

• 2:15:24Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay.

• 2:15:24Speaker 02

  I, I, I'm a Canadian. I'm proud to be a Canadian. I wish Canada would, um, would sort itself out.

• 2:15:33Patrick Bet-David?

  Would you want to be the 51st state?

• 2:15:37Speaker 02

  No, and I don't think Canada, Canadians want that either. I mean, I think the partnership with the US should grow more. We, we are the biggest trading partners in the world. We have the, what is it? The longest border?

• 2:15:52Speaker 02

  Is it unmanned border? That's probably not the right way to describe it.

• 2:15:56Patrick Bet-David?

  I don't know about unmanned border, but it's the largest border.

• 2:15:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:59Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:59Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I mean, I think Americans and Canadians are probably more similar than either of us want to admit. And I think that's a good thing. And we're a little bit more British because of our colonial heritage and the fact that we still have the monarch on our money. But, um, I think both countries can only benefit from more open trade, more open border, more open, you know, in the right ways.

• 2:16:26Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, it's gonna be so interesting. When he said the tariffs, it's like you can't put the tariffs there. It's really gonna hurt our society and our country. Boom, and then the other financier, whatever her name was, and then she stepped down and then he's stepping down and. And Trump's gonna do what Trump's gonna do. By the way, you were right. It's the world's longest undefended border. I don't want to get you in trouble. I want you to keep your charity status where you're at. So what I'd want to do, and we talked about this earlier, and you seemed like you were open to the idea. Mark is here. I didn't even know Mark was gonna be here, right? Mark is the fellow that you did a podcast with Billy Carson. Rob, if we can bring him in here. And by the way, this is gonna be very short. Ten, five, ten minutes is what it'll be. And he's got a beautiful white jacket representing Miami. Mark, if you want to grab a seat there.

• 2:17:11Patrick Bet-David?

  So Mark, you're the guy that got everybody in trouble, man. I mean, if you can grab that, the hats, and if you put it on.

• 2:17:20Patrick Bet-David?

  Mark.

• 2:17:21Speaker 02

  While he's saying, while he's doing that, let me just say like, I, I've, Mark's gotten a lot of flack online. And I think, you know, I have nothing but good things to say about this guy. He, his work in his business is so good and noteworthy. And he's a great guy. We've become good friends over the last, however many, three months. Mark was saying when he drove me over here, like, it feels like it's longer. It feels like we've known each other longer because of what's taken place and transpired. And so I think it's really good for people to see that in this whole crazy situation, Mark and I are, we're not just advocates for one another, but we're friends.

• 2:18:02Patrick Bet-David?

  You know, Rob, can you pull up, so everybody knows, pull up the podcast that took place, so everybody knows. Mark's got his own channel as well. Mark Minard, actually, yeah, 242,000 subs. That's not easy to get to 100,000 subs, let alone 242. So, good for him. If you can go to the podcast to show Wes Huff and Billy Carson. So Mark's the one that set this up. So if you go to Wes Huff's right there, and if you let Neil deGrasse Tyson give us a wonderful commercial here on his masterclass. That's, so that's Mark, right there in the middle. Now, Mark, I, if you guys can fix his audio, because I can't hear him. So if you're, if Mark can you speak? Okay, we got Mark. Mark is officially live.

• 2:18:47Patrick Bet-David?

  Mark, did, did you know when you set this up that it was gonna turn into what it turned into?

• 2:18:57Patrick Bet-David?

  If I, if I knew it was gonna turn into what it turned into.

• 2:19:01Speaker 04

  You should be hiring me as like the biggest marketing genius. I wish I could say I was that smart.

• 2:19:08Patrick Bet-David?

  Would you have done it if you knew what it was gonna turn into? Would you have done it now, looking back?

• 2:19:17Speaker 04

  So.

• 2:19:20Speaker 04

  Yes, and I'm gonna tell you why.

• 2:19:27Speaker 04

  First of all. Going through this whole process, Billy being a good friend of mine.

• 2:19:36Speaker 04

  This whole situation has been just insanity, but. What I didn't realize, like through all the attacks and everything that was going on. Now that this has gone as viral as it has.

• 2:19:54Speaker 04

  I've started to receive hundreds of messages a day. From people telling me. This like chokes me like. This, this podcast has brought them from a dark spot back to God. And. I didn't realize, I didn't have a clue. How many people had been so steered away from their beliefs in God and were.

• 2:20:27Speaker 04

  Just fallen into darkness from the, I mean, I've had so many people.

• 2:20:31Patrick Bet-David?

  If I ask you this, you know, what's interesting is it looks like when you're doing it, you and Billy are friends, like I was saying earlier.

• 2:20:37Speaker 04

  We are.

• 2:20:38Patrick Bet-David?

  You are friends.

• 2:20:38Speaker 04

  Well, we were.

• 2:20:39Patrick Bet-David?

  Yeah, you were friends. What, it maybe give us your version, and again, I want to keep this less than five minutes because we gotta wrap up. Maybe give us your version. While it's going on, after it's done, conversation with Billy and what happened with that. And you made a video reaction to it, and every time you said the word Billy, you bleeped yourself out. So maybe give us your perspective.

• 2:21:02Speaker 04

  Try to keep it in five minutes. So.

• 2:21:06Speaker 04

  I've been on Billy's show, he's been on mine, we've known each other for business, and we talked for a while about. You know, I'm a Christian. It'd be cool to have you on and just be able to talk about your beliefs and mine and let people see we can still respect each other and that we have similar core values. And then as we got closer to it, I'm like, I don't know anything about like the Emerald Tablets and all that good stuff. So that led me to Wes, 24 hours notice, had got ahold of Wes to be on. Then I let Billy know, hey, I got, I gave him his name. I said, he's a historian, a linguist, gave all his credentials.

• 2:21:47Speaker 04

  I'm like, would that be cool if he joined us? Cause I don't know anything about that stuff. I can talk about my faith, why I believe in God, but when it comes to that, like, I'm not shy to say I'm clueless. And he's like, oh, oh yeah, bro. Like it'll be cool. Like I'm used to doing that. So I went into this thinking, we're just gonna have a great and amazing conversation as usual. And in all honesty, you came off as very humble and Billy, and honestly, I thought Billy did. The, the one that gets the most flack that looks like an idiot is me. That's overly interrupting throughout it and people thought I was a moderator. And I got thrown off when

• 2:22:32Speaker 04

  you started having your responses. I'm used to talking to my good man Billy as a great friend. And we're sitting in my backyard by my pool and he's talking about aliens and stuff and it's just fascinating. And he's like, da da da da, here's where we found it in the pyramids. So when you started doing the first rebuttal and you gave your response, I was sitting back and I was totally ready for Billy to be like da da da da da da and have this full. And when he was just like, fair enough.

• 2:23:06Speaker 04

  I'm sitting there and there's, it's different when you're in room than when you're online. And I'm just like, like, what is happening right now? Like I, I was really caught off guard from that.

• 2:23:17Patrick Bet-David?

  You seemed very uncomfortable. That's what I, you seemed very uncomfortable. Now, when you made the reaction video, why were you? What happened afterwards? It ends, and I think that's the one part I want to address like in the next two minutes. Sure, sure, sure. What happened afterwards, you know, uh, when you guys ended the podcast? So I got a call from a message from him and his wife asking me to call him. I talked to him and they had asked me not to, they had requested, not, I didn't get anything and write anything. They're like, can you not air that right now? Because his wife said, we're planning on having another debate set up.

• 2:24:01Patrick Bet-David?

  And she's like, I didn't realize you guys were having a debate, even though we talked about this for, for some months.

• 2:24:08Patrick Bet-David?

  And I don't want it to interfere with that, is what I was told. And

• 2:24:15Patrick Bet-David?

  Billy chimed in, love you to death, Billy, kinda had a different version of how he felt it went.

• 2:24:23Patrick Bet-David?

  Some behind the scenes stuff, I explained, I thought Billy, Wesley was very respectful, had tons of knowledge. And I said, and I thought you came out respectful. But anyway, for now, we won't air it. Wesley did the response video. People found out the show was done. That it wasn't, they requested it to not be aired. They found out it was on my show. I continued to get attacked for like a month on every level about this. I made time to meet with Billy and try to mediate about, can we do like a follow-up show, like some, something? You know, if, if you want to even prepare more, we could do it and have it more structured. And

• 2:25:09Patrick Bet-David?

  he's like, I don't, I don't know. I don't want to have anything to do with that Wes guy.

• 2:25:15Patrick Bet-David?

  The attacks, everything just continued. At a certain point, I finally made a decision a month later. To go live with it. To release it. And I wrote a long explanation as to why. To Billy. Yep. Okay. And it explained how I was having attacks, defamation of my character, and every-

• 2:25:35Patrick Bet-David?

  Everything anyway, we released it. I think it was like at nine P M. On Friday and. Two thirty in the morning, you got a knock on the door. I went to bed after we released it. I guess he started texting me, calling me two thirty in the morning. My teenage daughter wakes me up. She's seventeen, turns eighteen today, actually. Happy birthday. Happy birthday, Navea. And she's like, Dad, Dad, someone's at our door. I'm really scared. And I'm like, what? And I I look on my phone, we have the video and I see it's Billy. And he's dressed up, holding the paper.

• 2:26:11Patrick Bet-David?

  And I'm like, then I see my texts and he's sending me and I told him like, just, it's gonna be okay. Let's just not answer it right now. I didn't see anything good out of coming from answering the door, the any type of good conversation. Did so you you never open a door at two thirty? Two thirty A M. I said, honey, it's Navea, let's just chill out. Took the video down right there. No, my wife was out of the country. They started calling my wife in a different time zone. My wife calls me not knowing what's going on. And she's like, Mark, I don't know what it is. You released it.

• 2:26:51Patrick Bet-David?

  They're asking to take it down. She's like, I'm exhausted. Let's just just take it down, honey. Like, I don't want drama. I said, okay. For my wife, I took it down. And my wife flew back in. I'm trying to sum this up the best I can, Pat. I mean, people can watch my response video. I really go through like. No, we'll give that. The the whole thing. Have you and Billy spoken since that day? No, uh, my wife actually flew in after she talked with them.

• 2:27:25Patrick Bet-David?

  We thought it would be a mediation to move onward and they still had their lawyer right.

• 2:27:32Patrick Bet-David?

  I think the following Monday.

• 2:27:36Patrick Bet-David?

  We followed up.

• 2:27:37Speaker 02

  Everything, listen to me, I would just say this very clearly. Everything I took down, I chose out of good faith to take it down. My, my lawyer made it clear, this was a frivolous claim. I hadn't done anything wrong. There's First Amendment rights in the state of Florida. And he willfully, willfully came on to be on the show at my house. But in good conscience, I think she wrote in good faith. Mark is choosing to take this down. I took the previous show when he was on my podcast down. Everything they requested, because my wife and I just wanted to make peace and move forward.

• 2:28:18Patrick Bet-David?

  Have you guys seen each other yet or no? Have you guys had, because kids, sports, all that stuff, have you guys been in the same?

• 2:28:24Speaker 02

  We're, yeah, we're in a private gated neighborhood.

• 2:28:26Patrick Bet-David?

  So you see each other all the time, you just are not talking?

• 2:28:28Speaker 02

  I haven't seen them.

• 2:28:29Patrick Bet-David?

  Okay.

• 2:28:30Speaker 02

  Um, I see their son and of course, we're gonna be loving to each other's sons. Our kids, they have a, there's a basketball hoop there, they play. It got nastier, then they did this, this live stream that I, I couldn't even watch the whole thing. People shared clips with me, a lot, a lot of terrible things were said.

• 2:28:52Patrick Bet-David?

  About you?

• 2:28:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're just, just lies. About all three of us? Yeah. Um, Mark, Anton and myself. Um.

• 2:28:58Patrick Bet-David?

  Anton?

• 2:28:59Speaker 02

  Anton, Anton is the- Social media manager. Oh, okay. Media manager, who set it up? It, it's been crazy, but-

• 2:29:06Patrick Bet-David?

  Well, you know, you know what I would say? Here's what I would say.

• 2:29:08Speaker 02

  I wish the best for him.

• 2:29:10Patrick Bet-David?

  Look, you, you, you know, we watch, I don't, you guys watch UFC, are you a fighting fan at all or no? Okay. What's more embarrassing than getting publicly knocked out? Think about it. I mean, that's very embarrassing, right?

• 2:29:23Speaker 02

  But what's more respectful than when Kobe Bryant loses, goes out in the first game, misses-

• 2:29:33Speaker 02

  All those shots and comes back and says.

• 2:29:37Patrick Bet-David?

  That's right.

• 2:29:38Speaker 02

  I'm gonna get better.

• 2:29:39Patrick Bet-David?

  Right, and so the point.

• 2:29:40Speaker 02

  And owns it.

• 2:29:41Patrick Bet-David?

  Right, the point is, but, but, you know, for a person that that happens to, that's been winning, winning, winning, winning, winning. And you're, you're not used to it, it's not easy for anybody. So I understand.

• 2:29:52Speaker 02

  Fair enough.

• 2:29:52Patrick Bet-David?

  And, and for, and by the way, I don't, you seem like a straight up guy in what you've done. We don't have a relationship. You came in and just said, the guy who had him on, I'm like, no way. I brought you in to induce myself, so maybe at the end we bring you on here.

• 2:30:03Speaker 02

  Fair enough.

• 2:30:04Patrick Bet-David?

  The fact that you did it, I applaud you. I applaud Billy who did it. And, you know, now that it's up, of course, I'm sure they're not too happy about it. We learn about Wes. I love the fact that I learned about Wes. I'm so happy that he was on Rogan. I'm so happy that we're having a conversation right now. And for the people that are gonna see this as well, and a part of it, you made that happen. So good for you for doing that. What I would like to see happen is the following. I'd like to see.

• 2:30:31Patrick Bet-David?

  A part two with Billy and yourself. And you've already said you're open to it. And whether it's gonna be with you, whether it's gonna be with anybody, whether it's gonna be anywhere, uh, uh, that could be another one to be taking place. And I think the. At the end of the day, when I watch discussions, and we've had a lot of heated debates.

• 2:30:49Speaker 02

  I think, I think you should do it. You should, you should moderate it.

• 2:30:53Patrick Bet-David?

  My, we would be more than happy to do it.

• 2:30:55Speaker 02

  Read the comments of people thinking I'm a moderator and that, that's, that got some.

• 2:31:00Patrick Bet-David?

  Well, again, I think the audience wins. That's, that's who's important to win. And, you know, we'll have that conversation with Billy. We have a good relationship with Billy. Same, you know, that we're having a conversation with guests that here. But having said that, I appreciate you guys for coming. Obviously, the last few minutes, I wanted to bring you here to kinda give your story. I appreciate you for doing that.

• 2:31:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:31:23Patrick Bet-David?

  Wes, uh, you already know how I feel about the way you handled yourself, and I think you're a class act. You're thirty-three years old, soon to be thirty-four on February twenty-fourth. You gotta hurry up, bro, because this is, this is a tricky age you're at. But, uh, more than anything else, I love seeing men like you having a lot of kids, cuz what is the world? look like if more kids like you are turning into adults that you are today. That gives me optimism about the future and I applaud you for it. Your family for raising somebody like you. And what are you working on? Where should people go look? Is there anything you're working on that maybe you want to share with the audience?

• 2:31:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know what? So at Apologetics Canada, we've been doing a series, which is kind of my baby, that is called Can I Trust the Bible? And so there are two episodes out right now on the Apologetics Canada YouTube channel. You can also go Wes Huff on YouTube is mine and Wesley Huff dot com is mine. But Can I Trust the Bible is a series that we are doing where we go to the places. So two years ago, we flew over to Egypt and we went to the places where the majority of our biblical manuscripts come from. I explain those discoveries. We went to Nag Hammadi. We visited the Coptic Museum in Cairo and we we looked at the Gospel of Thomas. We went where the Gospel of Thomas was discovered and talked about, you know, okay, we have these books in our Bible.

• 2:32:43Speaker 02

  Why Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and not Thomas? And so this upcoming year, well, it is 2025. This year, we're going to be producing, I'm heading off to overseas again. We're going to be going to a number of countries and we're going to be filming more. Why we can have historical solid truth in terms of the historicity and the content of the Bible.

• 2:33:03Patrick Bet-David?

  So history, history.

• 2:33:05Speaker 02

  Historicity.

• 2:33:05Patrick Bet-David?

  History city. I know he drops some words like orality. Can I say one thing on that? Wesley, I said, if Wesley and Billy could join forces. Cause I know Billy well, he's, he does work hard. He's always traveling. They both kind of remind me of Indiana Jones in like two different ways. If they could collaborate and join forces. Very, very interesting. That would be a beautiful thing. And you're very interesting. Wes, we're going to put the link below to Can I Trust the Bible? For people to find, we'll also put the channel there as well. And Wes, this was a blast.

• 2:33:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was great. Thank you so much for having me.

• 2:33:44Patrick Bet-David?

  And I know you got to go on an international flight, so I want to make sure you make your flight as well. So let's get you out there, Wes, again.

• 2:33:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I appreciate it, brother.

• 2:33:51Patrick Bet-David?

  Gang, I think the audience won today. Thanks for tuning in. We're going to put the link below. Go support this man. God bless. Bye bye.

• 2:34:03Patrick Bet-David?

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• 2:34:33Patrick Bet-David?

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