Pastor Greg Laurie

Greg Laurie is an evangelist, author, and senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Southern California. He founded the church in Riverside in 1973 after becoming a Christian during the Jesus Movement in 1970. Through his Harvest Crusades and broadcast ministry, he shares the Christian gospel with audiences worldwide. His conversion and early relationship with his wife, Cathe, are depicted in the 2023 film Jesus Revolution, based on his 2018 book co-written with Ellen Vaughn. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: AG1 ⁠⁠https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra⁠⁠ ------ Squarespace ⁠⁠https://Squarespace.com/tetra⁠⁠ Use code 'TETRA' ------ Athletic Nicotine ⁠⁠https://www. AthleticNicotine.com/tetra⁠⁠ Use code 'TETRA' ------ Lectio 365 ⁠⁠https://Lectio365.com⁠⁠ ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions ⁠⁠https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter Follow Tetragrammaton: ⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/tetranow⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://www.instagram.com/tetragrammaton.now⁠ Follow Rick: ⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/rickrubin⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/rickrubin

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

• 0:02Rick Rubin?

  Tetragrammaton.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  You know, Jesus said, he used two pictures to describe how a Christian should function in the world, one was salt and one was light. So in the first century, salt was like they used it to preserve meat. They didn't have refrigeration, obviously. When they'd get the fish, they'd either eat it fresh or they would put salt on it to eat it later. So salt was valuable in that culture. Roman soldiers would be paid in salt. I think, number one, it says, you're valuable, your life matters. Number two, salt stimulates thirst, and I think we do that too, hopefully. I think if a person is walking with God as they ought to, they will create in others a thirst for a relationship with God. The greatest compliment you can be paid is when someone says, you know what?

• 1:09Speaker 01

  How can you be joyful at a time like this? What makes you tick? Your marriage, or your family, or whatever it is they notice. And then you can say, well, that's my relationship with God. And the other is preserving. Salt preserves. And as Christians, it's important for us to speak up for what is true. Sometimes speak out against what isn't true and to tell the truth. And so a pastor, my job, pastor is to feed the flock. So I'm there to feed our church spiritually, guide them. But then I'm also called to be an evangelist. And the difference between a pastor and an evangelist are like different callings. Like pastors tending a flock, teaching people the word of God. You're there to be involved in people's lives.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  But an evangelist is one who's proclaiming the message to the culture.

• 1:58Rick Rubin?

  Spreading the message.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, spreading the message. So that's, so it's always been a little bit of a dichotomy inside of me because I'm half pastor, half evangelist. But we do outreach events that we call Harvest Crusades in stadiums, where we're on social media, we're on television, radio. We've always, our kind of, our goal is to reach unexpected people in unexpected places with an unexpected message. So it's like, I want to kind of come into their culture and not blow them out of the water, not condemn them, but to hopefully stimulate a thirst in them and tell them there's a God in heaven who loves them and they can come into a relationship with him. So that means there's a lot of bridge building and attempts to reach people where they're at. I've been doing this for 52 years now. I'm 73.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  I don't feel 73, but I've been doing this a long time. But I love it more today than when I started. I started at 18. I didn't even know I was starting at church when I began. I was just teaching at a Bible study of young people. And I came to faith during the Jesus movement, which is the last great spiritual awakening in America. And so I just was hearing the Bible for the first time. I was a blank slate. I wasn't raised in church. The only thing I literally I knew about Jesus was what I saw in movies, like Ben Hur, King of Kings, The Greatest Story Ever Told. And I always had this admiration for Jesus. My grandparents, there was a portrait of Jesus hanging on the wall.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  And I would just look at it and I just had admiration for Jesus. But I never knew that he could be known today. I just thought of him as a historical figure. So the reason I was living with my grandparents, Rick, was because my mom was married and divorced seven times. She's a beautiful woman. I'm not exaggerating when I say she was a dead ringer for Marilyn Monroe. She was like a man magnet. And she was also a raging alcoholic, meaning she drank to excess and passed out pretty much every night. And sometimes she didn't come home. So I had to grow up really fast and kind of take care of her, even as a kid. In some ways, I was like the adult in the relationship. And I was exposed to things that kids shouldn't be exposed to.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  But that was my life. That was normal to me. So, you know, when I got a little bit older, my teen years, I started drinking and partying at high school. And I thought, I don't like this drinking, partying scene, you know? And this is what my mother's done. And then the whole drug culture was coming in strong. So, and it made sense to me. Because sort of the mentality was the adult world, they don't know anything. It's a youth revolution. So I started smoking a lot of weed and taking LSD. And after about two years of that, I knew this was a dead end street. My background is I like to do art. I'm a cartoonist. I created a little world of art that I would retreat to when I was a kid.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  So I saw all of my creativity being sapped. And I saw that this is bad. This can't be what I'm going to keep doing. So I already knew I wanted to stop doing that. So in my 17-year-old brain, it was like process of elimination. I don't want the adult world of my mother. I don't want the drug culture of my peers. What is it? What am I supposed to do? And I came across a group of very outspoken Christians that we called Jesus freaks on the front lawn of our high school campus. And they were singing songs about Jesus. And I thought, they're crazy, these people. But the problem was I knew a few of them. And I used to be friends with them. And I used to party with some of them. And I saw their life change.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  So I couldn't dismiss them as complete fanatics because I knew they were good people. So one day I was walking across my high school campus and I sat down on the grass, close enough to kind of hear what they were saying, but far enough away where people wouldn't think I was becoming one. And there's this guy named Lonnie Frisbee and he saw the Jesus Revolution film. He's played by Jonathan Rumi, who also plays Jesus in The Chosen. And when I met Jonathan, I said to the director, this guy has to be Lonnie. Lonnie was this very charismatic guy. He had long hair, beard. He kind of looked like Jesus. And so I'm just sitting there listening to this. And this guy Lonnie stands up and he begins to speak. And I, it's like, Jesus is speaking, not literally,

• 6:22Speaker 01

  but it was like, he looked so much like Jesus and he was speaking the words of Jesus. And so there's power in that. And I'd never heard this before. And when he said, Jesus said, you're either for me or against me. I looked around at the Jesus freaks and I thought, well, I'm not one of them. Does that mean I'm against Jesus? Because I don't want to be. But am I for him? I don't think so. And then he said, if you want to pray and ask Jesus to come into your life, get up and walk up here. And I thought, there's no way I would ever do that. Next thing I knew, I was up there. And I prayed this little prayer. I didn't even know what I was doing. And the school bell rang back to class. So that weekend, this was Friday, we had planned to go out into the Ortega Mountains

• 7:05Speaker 01

  and drop acid, take LSD and smoke some weed. And I just was feeling so different. And I broke up from my friends and I went and sat in a rock. And I'm filling up my little pipe and I'm thinking about what's happened to me, trying to process it. And I, like, I wouldn't say I heard a voice, but that seemed strong impression on my heart that happened just hours earlier on my high school campus came back to me and it just was like, you don't need this anymore. And I said, okay, God, I don't know anything about you. I don't know how to do any of this. But if you're real, you're going to make yourself real to me. And they threw my baggie of weed out. And then I went back to school. And I started going to the little Bible study.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  And then I ended up at a church called Calvary Chapel, where the Jesus movement was in full swing. And that's when my life began to radically change.

• 7:58Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about Lonnie Frisbee, the person, who he was.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. He was very charismatic. Like if he walked into a room, it just kind of changed the energy of the room.

• 8:11Rick Rubin?

  I mean, you don't think it was just based on how he looked? It was something about his essence?

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Well, it was everything, but the look contributed to it. Because, you know, he'd wear like these shirts that are almost like robe-like shirts and beads. So it kind of, he almost looked like a Bible character a little bit with the hair and the beard. But then he had this wacky and funny sense of humor. But then you'd just be talking to him and all of a sudden he'd get really serious and says, the Lord's telling me this. And what freaked me out was I just saw the Lord did tell him things. What he'd said to me once, like, I got to know him a little bit and hung out with him after that. And we were praying for somebody else, it wasn't about me. And all of a sudden he turns to me and says, Greg, the Lord just said to me, you're going to preach to thousands of people all around the world. I'm like, what?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  I wasn't a minister. I hadn't spoken ever. It was so out of left field. But it was like, the later that happened, so I can't dismiss it. And I saw him do that with others. So he was very charismatic, but he was not illiterate. But like, when he read, he would stumble over words. I remember once it was one of his Bible studies that would be packed with lots of people, especially young people, sitting in the aisles, sitting up on the stage, people everywhere. And he said, Greg, read the book of Jonah, which is only four chapters. So I'm sitting on the toilet, because he's in the bathroom, and he's brushing his hair, brushing it. Then he goes down and brushes it down. I've never seen a guy do that before. I've seen girls do it. They're really into his hair.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  And I'm just kind of watching him brush his hair, but I had so much admiration for him. And I read him the book of Jonah. He goes, read that again. Read it again. Read it again. And that's, this is in the movie, the Jesus Revolution movie. Then he got up that night and he was speaking from the book of Jonah, based on what I'd read him, which I was excited about. But then he started getting a few parts wrong, like he missed parts in the story. And I was just really young in the faith. So it's like you admire someone so much, but then, wow, he got the kind of, not in a really bad way, just details, parts of the story, not right. But he was just kind of a bundle of contradictions. Because later in life, he ended up falling away from the faith

• 10:26Speaker 01

  and started using drugs, which he had done earlier, before his conversion. And he ended up getting AIDS from sexual contact. Yeah, so very sad thing. And I actually met with him right before he died. He was in hospice care. He was emaciated. AIDS was taking its toll on him. And we're like sitting there in this dark room. It's like a scene from a movie. Fires really strong in the fireplace, so that's all the light in the room. And I'm looking at him kind of partially lit. And he says, "God's gonna heal me, and I'm gonna preach to millions of people." And I was there with the friend, and we're kind of like, "I don't think God's gonna heal you." We didn't say that. We're like, "Okay, great, great. I hope that happens."

• 11:11Speaker 01

  And he died not long after that. And then someone mentioned this to me. He said, "Do you think he was seeing how the movie would touch people?" Because that movie went all around the world, and it has touched millions of people.

• 11:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  So maybe the Lord gave him a little glimpse of a future. It was a sad ending, but he knew what he had done was wrong. He knew he'd paid a very heavy price for it, and he was sorry. So he mess up. But you know what? We have people like that in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, that are really used by God, like Samson. And then they mess up big time. And God forgives them, but sometimes they still reap the consequences of their actions. Yeah, so that's Lonnie. He was a lot of things at once.

• 11:52Rick Rubin?

  How do you think he became the person that you first met? Where did that wisdom come from?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  You know, there's a saying, "If you see a turtle on a fence post, you know he didn't get there by himself." And God seems to go out of his way to choose the last person we might choose. And even in the Bible, like looking at King David, and we think King David, but he was just a shepherd boy watching this flock of sheep. Or you look at Peter, the impetuous, impulsive, outspoken fisherman. And you look at so many of the characters that the Lord selected. And the Bible says, "God chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise." So I think sometimes God will choose the most unexpected person, so he gets the glory. And I would just think Lonnie fits that criteria.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  He was abused as a child, you know, he came from a broken home. But God put his hand on him. And you're like, Chuck Smith is the other main guy in the Jesus Movement. He was older. And Lonnie and Chuck were like nitro meets glycerin. It's like Lennon meets McCartney, right? They're both so talented, but together, there was something special.

• 13:04Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about Chuck.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Well, Chuck was the very opposite of Lonnie. Like where Lonnie was, you know, energetic, and you never knew what he was gonna do next. Chuck was steady as she goes, kind of the father figure.

• 13:17Rick Rubin?

  He was older?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, older. But I mean, older forties, you know, but that was older to us.

• 13:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, because you guys were 20.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he's like 45. He's old enough to be our dad. He was also bald, so that made him seem older than he was. But he was the perfect guy, because he saw that the young kids were searching. And so it's sort of like, we came for Lonnie, and we stayed for Chuck. Lonnie was like the magnet that drew us in. If we only had Lonnie, I don't know what this thing would have turned into. But you had Chuck, who was a stabilizing pastor, who knew the Bible. And me being a kid from a broken home, he was like a father figure. And I was learning other things from him as well, not just the Bible. But he had a strong work ethic, and he was a really practical guy. And I got to know him very well personally.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  So I picked up things from him that I, sort of like a son might pick up from a father. So he did that, not just for me, but for a lot of young people. So they were just this unusual combination that God brought together for a moment in time. And Lonnie left not long after this thing exploded. And so then Chuck started giving opportunities for other young ministers. And one of those younger guys was me, a little bit later.

• 14:30Rick Rubin?

  Do you still draw?

• 14:31Speaker 01

  I do.

• 14:32Rick Rubin?

  You do?

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:33Rick Rubin?

  That makes me happy.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  I love it. It's my happy place. If there's a piece of paper and a pen, I'm gonna draw. I've always wanted to do animation, and I have these cartoon characters I've developed. And we animated about six cartoons. That was really fun. That was kind of a dream come true.

• 14:48Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:58Speaker 02

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• 17:11Rick Rubin?

  What were the conditions at the time that allowed the Jesus Revolution to happen?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  It was just like you look back. You don't know what's happening, when it's happening, but you can look back in retrospect with 2020 hindsight and start making a little bit of sense of it. I didn't know I'd walk smack dab into the middle of a spiritual awakening. I just thought, "Well, this is Christianity. It's really amazing. I like this." In fact, it was like, I want to see Christianity on steroids, but in fact, it's not on steroids. It's normal Christianity. I think unfortunately, a lot of times, we settle for a watered-down version. And so I think what I was seeing was vibrant, real, Christian faith, not dramatically different than the faith of the first century of the early church, you know, so.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  And that's what a revival, it's kind of a returning back to that original life. And so it was everything. It was the culture. You know, we've got Kennedy assassinated, then Martin Luther King, then Robert Kennedy. We have our rock icons dying, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, people I used to listen to. They're all gone all of a sudden, kind of heroes of sorts. We have riots in the streets. We have racial tension. We have the Vietnam War raging with young men coming back in body bags. We have the drugs. So you throw drugs into all of this, and that's going on. So all of these things were happening, and I think people are saying,

• 18:43Speaker 01

  "We need a sexual revolution. We need a political revolution." So God sent a Jesus Revolution. What's interesting is Time Magazine coined that term. We called ourselves Jesus People, and we called it the Jesus Movement. But Time Magazine did a cover with this kind of psychedelic image of Jesus, just said, "Jesus Revolution." You'd never see a Time Magazine like this again, I don't think, with the way it was written. But they described it was happening, and I think they really got it right. It was a revolution.

• 19:13Rick Rubin?

  What year was this?

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Probably 1972 or so. It was all those things. And that's why I find it interesting today, because I know you've talked about a quiet revolution.

• 19:23Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  And I think there's real parallels between the late 60s, early 70s, and today. We had a lot of young people really searching for God. Not that that wasn't happening in the 80s or the 90s. It's different right now, in Gen Z especially. They're like returning to church, or maybe many of them going for the first time.

• 19:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and Bible sales have gone up for the first time in 60 years, 70 years.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Right. And the other thing is, it's young men. It's never, almost always in churches, women dominate. They're the ones that kind of lead the way, and the guys come along later. For this to be led by young men is kind of a unique thing. And I think when you look at every spiritual awakening in American history, they're all similar, and they're all different. You know, the first awakening in America was George Whitfield, a preacher from England, who came over. There's a movie out about him called A Great Awakening that's actually very well done. But he came over and preached, and so many colonists came to Christ. 80% of them had heard him preach in person. That's pretty rare. And then when the American Revolution came along,

• 20:34Speaker 01

  it was kind of from the soil of that spiritual awakening. That's one version of it. And the Jesus Movement was so different. Now we have AI. Now we have all of these technologies just blowing up so quickly, even in the last, seems like, seven years. Just like every time you turn around, there's a new innovation. I think you have a generation raised on this stuff. For a lot of the kids, it's kind of remapped their brains, and they live in a virtual world. And they've never been more connected. Digitally, but more disconnected as human beings and spiritually. You know, instead of connecting, it's having the opposite effect. So many of them are looking elsewhere, like they're looking for truth.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  They're looking for answers. Why am I here? What is the meaning of my life? The age old questions.

• 21:25Rick Rubin?

  Was the Jesus revolution only happening in the LA area? Or was it in other places as well?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was happening all around the world. And it was sort of like little wildfires. It started in Southern California and in Orange County. I still live there. That was sort of the epicenter.

• 21:45Rick Rubin?

  Ground zero.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, ground zero, where we would do the giant baptisms at a place called Pirate's Cove. Since the movie was made, you know, people now go down to Pirate's Cove. They want to visit, they want to be baptized there. We kind of felt when we were making the movie that the fame of revival spreads the flame of revival. So the guy who directed it was in his late 30s. His name is John Irwin. And I said, John, I can talk all day about this to people, but if they can feel it, it'll be a different thing if they can feel like they're there. So I did the best of my ability to describe everything I remembered. And I remembered a lot of details, like the carpet was this color. The upholstery and the pews was that color. The chandeliers look like this. And this is what people wore.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  And then when we were doing wardrobe and they were dressing kids up as hippies. I said, no one dressed like that. No, that's too much. And I described it. He's really visual guy. And he got it. He shot one scene in the movie where Lonnie's preaching in the church. And I was there while he shot it. And afterwards I said, John, he got lightning in a bottle. I felt it. I felt like I'd gone back in time. And then the other thing that really resonated were the baptism scenes. Cause first I had to go out and teach the actors how to baptize people. I put an actor baptized anyway. So here's how we do it. There's what we say before we do it. Kelsey Grammer, Jonathan Rumi. But then what was so amazing is we had all these extras on the set. And after we were done baptizing them in wardrobe for the scene,

• 23:15Speaker 01

  they were coming back and saying, I want to be baptized for real. I want to be baptized. So there's this one guy who had a small role in the film. And he was baptized as that character in the film. Then he came up to me and said, I want to be baptized. I go, well, you need to be a Christian. You will tell me, how do I become a Christian? So I sat there in the beach, talked to him for a while. And he prayed with me. And I said, well, there's no reason you can't be baptized. So I took him out. He was still wearing his wardrobe from the film. He had a wig and all this stuff. And I baptized him. And so they're doing this, still shooting the scene, because we only had so much time. The sun was setting and our permit was over with. So they're baptized and they're looking good. Look and they look and I'm baptizing the guy for real. So I think you could feel it.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  So that was kind of the goal, you know? And then we'd hear stories that people after seeing the movie would go down to Pirate's Cove, like at, you know, 12 o'clock at night and get baptized. People were getting baptized in fountains outside of theaters. You can only pray for something like that. That's a move of God.

• 24:19Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the timeline for faith from that time to now.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  As in all things, as we get older, things change. What we were experiencing then, I don't think we're necessarily experiencing now in the same way, but I see hopeful signs. It's kind of like when it starts to rain. I'll be out walking with my wife and I'll say, my wife has really thick, beautiful, long hair. And I'll say, Kathy, it's starting to rain. She'll say, it's not raining. I said, no, it's raining. And I'll say, bald men always know when it's raining first. It's raining and it's good. It is raining. I told you, I can feel it in my head. So I see little drops of rain happening like, oh, there's like this series called The Chosen that's just blown up and around the world.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Oh, there's some song from some Christian artist that's like charting right now. Oh, there's this other. So these can be good things and hopeful things. So I'm hoping we'll see that again. But some of the people who came to faith then walked away from it. Some deepened in it and some continued in it. And I hope to be one of those people that's continued in it. You know, Jesus says, remember from where you have fallen and repent and do the first works quickly. And before that, he said, I see how hard you work, but you've loved your first love. It's not unlike marriage. You know, you can fall in love with someone and you have the romance. And then, you know, you have marriage and then as years go by,

• 25:51Speaker 01

  you can fail to appreciate that and fail to keep your marriage strong. The same can happen in your faith. It has to be cultivated. It has to be watered, you know, that seed. You have to constantly be growing and learning and never resting on your laurels or living in the past. I see people my age retiring. I see people my age living in the past. And I, I'm always kind of want to be in the present and be thinking about the future. Like, what can we do next? And if I see like a new technology or a new this or a new that, I'm always interested like, can this be used for God's kingdom? I'm not afraid of those things. But sometimes people just, they get stuck in a rut.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  And so for us in our life, what happened was 16 years ago, we had a huge event happen. Our son was killed in an automobile accident. Like, that's like the worst case scenario. You never plan on that. And as a pastor, I've done a lot of funeral services for people that have died and a lot of children, which are the hardest ones to do of all. Who can explain that? And then one day, I'm not the guy in the pulpit explaining it. I'm the guy in the front row hearing the preacher. And when I heard the news, I just wondered, how do you survive this? Cause I, though I'm a pastor and all this and a Christian, of course,

• 27:17Speaker 01

  but it's still, I was a father who lost my son.

• 27:19Rick Rubin?

  And you're human. And human beings feel things.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  We sure do. But I have to say though, someone asked me, what moment of your life did you feel the presence of God more than any other? I have to say it was not long after my son died. Our house filled with all these well wishers that frankly, weren't being helpful to me. I just have to get out of here. And I went, we had a little office over the garage, my garage. And I fell on the floor and I just said, Lord, you gave them to me and I give them back to you. And I felt the presence of God. You can have a national awakening and revival and you can have a personal one too. And that renewed me. I was in my late 50s at this point. Nothing, okay.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  I don't know how long I'm going to live, but I want to make every day of my life count. So what can we do now that we've never done before? And I kind of felt kind of this iron enter my soul to try things we'd never tried before. And so we did some pretty big crusades. Went to Dodger Stadium two nights. We went to AT&T Stadium, which is huge in Texas and did crazy stuff I would not have normally done in my late 50s. Started another church in Orange County. We have one in Riverside. They're about 45 minutes apart. So I was just doing a lot of things and I felt a closeness to heaven because my son's there. So that impacted Kathy and myself and my son Jonathan.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  He'd gone prodigal, which means he hadn't walked away from his faith completely, but he was doing drugs. He was going the wrong way in life. And his brother Christopher, who was like 11 years older than him, had done the same thing earlier and had made a recommitment to the Lord and was trying to help his younger brother. And then one night Christopher said, Jonathan, what's it going to take for you to get right with God? And Jonathan that night said, I'm going to talk to my brother about this tomorrow and get this sorted out. And then his brother was killed. I'm not suggesting this is what it took because, you know, tragedies happen that I can't explain. Rick, if you would have met me when I was 21, I could explain anything.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  And I'm saying that facetiously. I just thought I knew everything, but I didn't. And now I know I don't know a lot. But the Bible promises and Romans 828, it says, for we know that all things work together for good to those that love God and are called according to his purpose. So what that means is it doesn't mean that, oh, this bad thing happened. So this good thing can happen. Though sometimes bad things happen that were always bad and will always be bad. But despite that bad thing, God can bring good things. And I would say, yes, that has happened. Many good things have happened, including Jonathan recommitting his life to the Lord. And then he came to me not long after and said, Dad, I want to help you in your ministry.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  And now he's a pastor at our church.

• 30:18Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  That was the very thing he was running from. Cause when you're a preacher's kid, everyone thinks you're going to become a preacher. So people put pressure on you. And they'd say, are you going to be a preacher like your dad? So he was trying to escape that. And he ended up becoming a preacher like his dad. But I think it's a calling. And so this happened in the aftermath of Christopher being called to heaven. So if I could turn back time, I'd bring Christopher back. I'd change everything. I'd gladly have gone in this place, but I wasn't given that choice. But that did bring like a spiritual awakening in me and my wife and in my son.

• 30:53Rick Rubin?

  Over the course of your life, had you had a series of new understandings and openings?

• 31:00Speaker 01

  No. You know, I, I read the Bible a lot. I read a lot of books by a lot of people. I listen to a lot of sermons by people constantly. I feel like there's always more to learn. And then there are things that you learn and kind of forget and need to relearn or you learn them in a different stage of your life and, and they're different now. And so I feel like I'm constantly needing to learn and constantly wanting to learn. In fact, it's sort of like, if you're not feeling well, you go to your doctor. He'll say, how's your appetite? It's a sign of good health. I think the same is true spiritually. If you don't have a hunger to learn more and to grow more and to get closer to God,

• 31:45Speaker 01

  something's not right spiritually. So you need to constantly be feeding that. And it's like never done. I'm done. I'm good, you know, I'm good for a year. Now to me, it's a daily thing of constant growth, constant learning. And I actually love it. My favorite thing to do, I love to do artwork. That's when I do that, I'm kind of playing. Anything creative is like play to me. But I do like to study a scripture, figure out what it means in its original languages and culture and in context, and then build a message out of it and then deliver that message. I love to do that because I'm always kind of amazed at how it comes together. You know, there's a creative element to preaching too.

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• 34:01Rick Rubin?

  Can you think of an example of a piece of scripture that you understood one way when you were younger, and have come to learn a different dimension of it over time?

• 34:11Speaker 01

  I don't think I would say I see it differently, but I see it more deeply. Go back to Romans 8:28. I would just sort of quote that to people and not really think it through. But when you really break it down, and then there's a verse that follows that really explains everything. "For we know that all things work together for good." No, we know this as Christians. And we have to start with, "There's a God in heaven who loves us, who has our best interests in mind." One of my favorite passages is Jeremiah 29:11, where God says, "I know the thoughts that I think towards you," says the Lord, "thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." And interestingly, that verse, I had a watch that I gave to my son Christopher,

• 34:55Speaker 01

  and I inscribed it on the back of the watch, and he was wearing it when he died. So when they brought this plastic bag to me with the watch, and I looked at it and flipped it over and saw that verse, I thought, "How does this verse work now? Doesn't sound like these plans are very good." But then I stopped and thought, "Well, he's in heaven, though." Because people would say, "Are you mad at God?" I said, "I'm not mad, I'm sad. I'm disappointed, not in God, but just disappointed. But I know that he's safely in the arms of the Lord, and that I'll see him again." But anyway, we know that all things, not some things, all things, work together for good to those who love God and are called according to its purpose. But then it goes on to the next verse and says,

• 35:40Speaker 01

  "For whom God did foreknow, he also did predestine to be conformed into the image of his own dear son." So what that means is, God shows us. You know, there's a verse I love where David says, "When I was in my mother's womb, God chose me." And like, I was conceived out of wedlock, I found out later in life. I always thought this guy was my dad, because his name was on my birth certificate. But then I found out later, he wasn't my dad. And the way I found out was, when Christopher was born, I thought, "Well, I should introduce him to his biological father." So he went to my mom, he said, "His name was Kim." I said, "Where's Kim? Is he around?" "Oh, yeah, he still has a dry cleaning business, which he had when I was a kid." "Well, I want to go introduce him to his grandson." "Okay."

• 36:23Speaker 01

  And when I got there, he's standing behind the counter, I said, "Hi, Kim, I'm Greg, your son." "Yeah, hi, Greg." "Okay." "Well, this is your grandson, Christopher." He's looking, "Oh, nice." He didn't even come out from behind the counter. So we drove away, and I said to my wife Cathe, "That's not my father. I mean, that's your grandson, you would react differently." So I asked one of my favorite aunts, "See, I had this really weird thought. I don't think he's my dad." She said, "How did you know?" I said, "Well, I didn't know until you said that." So I found out he wasn't my dad, but I was conceived out of wedlock. So one might say, "I wasn't planned, right? I was an accident." But I wasn't. God had a plan for my life, in my mother's womb, he called me. So, anyway. "For whom he foreknew, he knew us before we knew him,

• 37:09Speaker 01

  to conform us into the image of his own dear son." So the big picture is, we look at life, and things happen, good things happen, we go, "Ah, that's good, all things work together for good." And bad things happen, and then later, something good comes out of the bad thing even. And we go, "Yeah, all things work together for good." Then this crazy, horrible things happen, and it never makes sense. But we have to look at the big picture. Ultimately, God wants to change us and make us more like Jesus. Because heaven is a prepared place for prepared people. Jesus said, "I've gone to prepare a place for you." So I just realized that God has a big plan. He loves me. He'll ultimately work it out together for good.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  And I've certainly seen that, looking back in retrospect. So I trust that he'll continue that. So I'd say I've deepened in my understanding of that passage. I think I've deepened in my understanding of suffering. And when I minister to people who are suffering, I realize sometimes saying less is more effective than saying more. That I don't have to explain things to people. And sometimes the best thing I can do is just say, "I'm so sorry." And I'll just say, "You're gonna get through this. You're gonna have joy again. You're gonna have a lot of sorrow. This is gonna be very hard, but life is gonna get better again."

• 38:36Speaker 01

  And I think when you meet somebody who survived it, they'll listen to me. You know, it's been said, "Failure builds bridges, success builds walls." So if I seem to have it all together, and I have all the answers, it's like, I can't relate to you. But if I say, "Hey, I've suffered," and they know I've suffered, they'll listen. If you preach to hurting people, you'll never lack for an audience. And there's just so many hurting people. So it's given me more compassion for people who are hurting. Where before I might walk away from a situation, all these people just lost their child, I'd be, "Oh, okay, maybe someone else will help them." Now I'll just walk into it, because I know what it's like to be there, and I want to help them. So I have a ministry I didn't have before, administering to people who lost children.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  I never wanted that ministry, but I accept it. And I did find, even early on, when I took my focus off of my own pain and put it on others, it helped me. I'd feel better after I talked to somebody else.

• 39:34Rick Rubin?

  Yes. How did you learn about Christianity? After your experience with Lonnie?

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:41Rick Rubin?

  Tell me the process of learning.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  I would phrase it as just learning about Jesus. And the Bible is about Jesus. He's in the Old Testament, concealed. He's in the New Testament, revealed. So it's one continuous truth from Genesis to Revelation. But it all really comes down to him. He's the son of God, who was sent to this world. He was fully God, but he was fully man. And we can't understand that completely, but he is the way that we come into a relationship with the Father. So it's just learning about him. Paul said, "My determined purpose in life is to know him and to become more like him." So that happens through Bible study.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  It happens through prayer. It happens to being involved in church. Happens to having strong Christian friends that you encourage one another doing it. It even happens in sharing this message with others. You know, that's even life-giving, to tell others about it. The Bible says, "He that waters others will be watered himself." And I've found, you know, when I tell others about Jesus, it kind of like revitalizes me even. So I mean, pretty much every day, I started with the Bible. And throughout the day, I'm absorbing it. That's not all I do, I do other things. I go out and have fun, I play tennis, I, well, now pickleball, I guess, racquetball. Occasionally, I ride my Harley, but the battery just died, so I haven't done that for a while.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  I like to listen to music. Occasionally, I surf if the water's really warm and I'm in the right mood. I like to spend time with my grandkids. So, yeah, I love to have meals with my friends and family. So I do all the normal things of life. But that's all kind of interwoven, and all of that is my faith in growing spiritually. And people know who I am. And so I have opportunities to minister to people a lot, you know, because I can get recognized a little bit here and there. So that's just my life, you know, it's just doing that every day, but I love that.

• 41:48Rick Rubin?

  What is Harvest?

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Well, that's the name of our church. And it's from the Bible. Jesus said, "The harvest is great, but the labors are few." So it's sort of compared like a, you know, field ready to harvest to people that want to believe. These people want to believe. But someone's got to go out there and reap where the seed has been sown. And so, considering that I've always done evangelism, I just thought that'd be a cool name for a church. So that's how we ended up with it. Then our ministries just became Harvest this, Harvest that. And so it just kind of has carried on.

• 42:25Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about building a church.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  You know what, I was starting out. I didn't know I was starting a church. Start of churches, you see a lot of them today. I'd never heard of anything like that back in 1972. There were just older established churches, and the pastor would eventually leave, and a new pastor would come. But it was only called, "Oh, we're starting a new church here, let's start a new church there." Well, so there was a group of young people meeting in Riverside. And I was living in Orange County, which they're about 45 minutes apart. And Lonnie had actually started it, Lonnie Frisbee. And he left, and it sort of shrunk down. And they were looking for someone to take it over. So I was hanging around Calvary Chapel.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  And there was a bunch of pastors who are about nine, 10 years older than me, who had been rotating and speaking. And one day, one of them said, "Hey, who's going to Riverside this week?" One said, "Well, I went there last week." Another said, "Well, I'm going there next week." "Well, I don't want to go." And they looked at me and said, "Hey, Greg, you want to go?" And I had my drafting board set up in the corner of the office, and I was doing freelance graphics to sort of support myself, and pretty much doing what nobody else wanted to do. I said, "I'll go, yeah, I'll go." So I went up to Riverside, and I showed up, and no one had told them I was coming. And there was like some... Deacon guy in charge and I walked up high and Greg Laurie, I'm from Calvary Chapel. I'm here to speak. Someone told me you were speaking. I said, well, I am. Yeah, I'm here.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know that you're here to speak. I just sit there and I'll let you know. Oh, brother. Okay, I'm just sitting there. Well, no one else showed up because I was the guy. He said, go ahead. So I spoke. It went well. I went back the next week. It went well. They said, well, you can keep coming. Then it started growing. And then people were starting to call me pastor. And I go, wait, I'm like, I'm like 19 years old. I've been a Christian two years. I'm still learning these things myself. I'm not really qualified to be a pastor. I was looking for other people to take it over and no one would. So I thought, well, if I'm going to be their pastor, I better work at this harder. So I started building a library of books and started studying and literally there would be things, things

• 44:37Speaker 01

  I believe, but I would be studying them and teaching them that night. And man, if you want to really learn something, if you teach it, you'll have to learn it, you know? So I'm getting it sorted out and then I would teach it that night. And I had a great example of Chuck Smith, who I would still go and listen to. And so it grew. And then we eventually left that little church we're meeting in, found our own facility. Then we became a church. Then it grew more. Now, fast forward to the 80s. One day I get a phone call from some Christian magazine. Well, as a mega church pastor. I go, what? Oh, you're a mega church? I'd never even heard that term before. I never set out to be a mega church pastor. I just set out to do the best job I could do. I just want them to be the best taught

• 45:19Speaker 01

  people around and do the best job I can for them. So then it just continued to grow and we built a bigger building and added to our facilities and we started doing outreach things. And then we got into other things as well, radio and TV and now online stuff. So it's just been constantly growing. But the weird thing was I had this desire to go be an evangelist, to travel around more. So in 1990, Pastor Chuck came to me and said, why don't you come down to Calvary and do a Bible study for young people? Because I think they were losing young people at that point. And I was still pretty young, late twenties. And so I said, okay. And I started doing it and it started to grow. And Chuck

• 46:01Speaker 01

  said, why don't we go and do this on a larger venue? I said, well, like where? And he goes, in the Pacific Amphitheater, which seats like 17,000 people. I'm like, whoa, that's pretty big. And he goes, well, we serve a pretty big God, Greg. Let's do it. Okay. So we went there. And then the next year, we went to Angel Stadium. And we've been doing that now for like 34 years.

• 46:21Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Every year. And so we've gone around the world to do it as well and done it all across the United States. So it's sort of like that desire I had to be an evangelist came later. One thing I left out was I got to be very good friends with Billy Graham.

• 46:37Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about him.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  So going back to my grandparents' house, Portrait of Jesus on the wall, they would watch Billy Graham. So I always kind of liked Billy Graham. So then after I became a Christian, I thought, man, I, yeah, I'm going to go hear him. So I went to a Billy Graham crusade. And he does the thing where he calls people forward to accept Christ, you know, walk forward and ask Jesus into your life. And I walked forward, even though I was a Christian and already a pastor, just to get a closer look at him. Like, oh, I want to look at this guy. And so I had a little envelope, manila envelope with an article that had been written about our new church. And I was going to give it to him that night. And so I wrote his name on the envelope. And there's a little line as he's leaving and I'm, and I reached out the envelope and someone grabs it to give to Billy. And I

• 47:23Speaker 01

  realized, yes, since it left my hand, I misspelled his last name. It was like, not G R A, H A M is just G R A M. So, oh, no, I misspelled his name. Then I met him in 1985. And our church was growing at that point. And then he was getting older. And so as he was ending his crusade ministry, I was starting mine. And he was aware of what I was doing. And I was friends with the son Franklin. And then he asked me to come in as board of directors, which had been on for 25 years. And so then Billy said, would you help me with my messages? And I said, yeah. He goes, I need help with my illustrations. They were kind of dated. I remember in Minneapolis, he was speaking. So Smashing Pumpkins had

• 48:07Speaker 01

  a song out called Rat in a Cage. And I saw I use the lyric from Rat in the Cage, put it in there. And then I explained in the notes, Smashing Pumpkins is a band, you know, because I didn't want them to think I meant Smashing Pumpkins, you know? And so he was up there speaking and, and Billy Graham cadence and Smashing Pumpkins said, and there's a song by Smashing Pumpkins. And I was, yes. And so I was just trying to help him with stuff that would connect to a younger audience. So I spent a lot of time hanging out with him. And now another thing, when I was, always I sought out older people. Instead of wanting to hang out, people that were my age, I wanted to meet older people. I think it's probably because I didn't have parents. So I would say, everything

• 48:52Speaker 01

  I learned about pastoring, I learned from Chuck Smith. Everything I learned about evangelism, I learned from Billy Graham. And to me, he was the gold standard of evangelists. Because Billy was a really humble guy. And he was obviously a very famous person, but he was always approachable and very down to earth. I mean, just the way he dealt with Johnny Cash. Because Johnny, you know, him, they were friends, but Johnny would, oh, this happened and that happened. And, and people would say, Billy, don't bring Johnny out to your crusades anymore. He goes, oh, he's my friend. He's coming. And I love that, that friendship that he maintained. And they really appreciated each other. And I thought that

• 49:35Speaker 01

  was, said a lot, you know, that he would build a bridge to someone who may be struggling, but not write them off, but encourage them and help them. And they're almost like opposites, but they actually had a lot in common. They're both Southern boys, both raised in the church, gospel roots.

• 49:51Rick Rubin?

  And Johnny really loved him, talked about him a lot.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Did he?

• 49:54Rick Rubin?

  Really loved him.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

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• 51:35Rick Rubin?

  How are Jesus' teachings and church theology the same? And how are they different?

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Well, I think if church theology is what it should be, it will be based on the teachings of Jesus. Now, sometimes people set up kind of a false dichotomy of, I believe in the red letters only. And you know, the, there's certain translations of the Bible, they'll take the words of Christ and put them in red. So when you get to the Sermon on the Mount, it's pages of red letters. But then, you know, then it'd be read here and there as Jesus spoke. But I believe all of the Bible is red letters, if you will. In other words, the Bible says, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. Like I said earlier, Jesus is in the Old Testament concealed, meaning Jesus isn't walking around. And then the Old Testament is Jesus. But I think he makes some special appearances on what we

• 52:25Speaker 01

  call Christophanes, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego on the fiery furnace. And Nebuchadnezzar throws them in, everyone thinks they're dead. And next thing he knows, they're walking around. And then he says, wait, there's a fourth guy in there. And he looks like the Son of God. We would classify that as an appearance of Jesus in the Old Testament. So then in the New Testament, he's born in Bethlehem, he has this ministry, he's crucified, he rises again. Theology is just the study of God. We don't have to be afraid of the word theology, because it's just learning more about God. And I'm a theologian in a technical sense. And maybe I'm not an academic, but, but I study God and the Bible all the

• 53:06Speaker 01

  time. So church theology, if it is being done as it ought to be done, will reflect the teachings of Jesus, but really the teachings of all of the Bible.

• 53:17Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about faith.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  The Bible technical definition of faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith is not just believing God can do it, it's believing God will do it. It's taking action, it's movement. You know, when you read about faith in the Bible, it's always doing things like in Hebrews 11, sometimes called the Hall of Faith, because it's like a gallery of all the great men and women of faith of the Old Testament. It's about things they did like by faith. Noah built the ark. By faith this happened, by faith that happened. So it's actions of God's people. So, you know, we have the Bible and we have the promises of God.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Faith is when I choose to believe them for myself and I put it into practice. So I'll give you an example where faith can overpower even emotions. Not long after my son died, something would trigger a memory of him and I would just, and I would like say or think, I'll never see him again, I'll never hear his voice again. Then I would quote scripture to myself. Sometimes I'd say, Greg, shut up. Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. Whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Greg, you'll see your son again in heaven."

• 54:39Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden, it would just lift me out of this pit of despair and darkness, and I would just get a heavenly perspective again. Or faith might be, hey, that person over there, I think, you know, someone needs to talk to them. They look like they're hurting, like they're, they're in pain. Maybe I can help them. I find that very few people will turn me down if I say, could I pray for you? Almost anyone will accept a prayer. But I might tell them about Jesus, or it might be, let's go try this thing. Let's do this thing. That's an act of faith. Someone's sick, let's pray that the Lord heals him. We don't know that God will heal everyone, but we know he heals many. And so by faith, we pray.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  You know, so it's just, it's action and it's taking the promises of God and putting them into effect. And now sometimes it can be exaggerated, like it's some mystical force that we can harness and just speak things into existence. It's not that. Jesus summed it up in John 15, when he said, "If you maintain a living communion with me and my words are at home in you, you can ask at once for yourself whatever your heart desires, and it's yours." So we immediately gravitate toward the, a lot of part of the words, oh, ask for whatever my heart desires, or my heart desires and whatever, and some crazy thing. Well, no, if you maintain a living communion with me, Jesus says, and my word is at home in you, when you are reading the Bible and you're walking with the Lord, I think your

• 56:07Speaker 01

  desires begin to change. But you know, ultimately it has to be according to the will of God. But, but the Lord will, I think, put something in our heart that we will then pray for, that he will answer. So ultimately prayer is not getting God to do what I want him to do. It's getting myself in alignment with God. And how do we know what his will is? Well, he speaks to us through his word.

• 56:30Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the Holy Spirit.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Well, he's the third member of the Trinity, probably the most misunderstood member, because we have the Father. I think we can all have a basic concept of God as a Father. God the Son, that's pretty easy to wrap our mind around. The perfect example is the story of the prodigal son. We have a father, was the son go astray? Now, that's not speaking of Jesus, it's us wandering away from God, but we can see these pictures. But the Holy Spirit is compared to the wind, he's compared to fire. He comes on Jesus in the form of a dove. So because these pictures are used, we can think of him almost like the force, like Star

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Wars, trust the force, but he isn't a force, he's a he.

• 57:20Rick Rubin?

  He's more earthly than God, the Father?

• 57:23Speaker 01

  He's just a part of the Trinity. And I think it's very hard to distinguish like, because I think I could say to you, the Holy Spirit just spoke to my heart to tell you about Jesus, so you can come into a closer relationship with the Father. So they work together. So it's not like, here's this, and then he's over here somewhere. They're, they're working in harmony. Like here's an example of all of them in action at the same time. Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. As he's being baptized, the Holy Spirit comes upon him in the form of a dove. And then the Father says from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased." Are we reading Genesis at creation?

• 58:06Speaker 01

  "The Spirit of God hovered over the waters, and God said, 'Let there be light.'" And then God says, "Let us make man in our image." Oh, wait, who's he talking to? Angels? No, we're made in the image of God. So we see Father, Son, Holy Spirit, working in harmony together. It's actually not that easy to fully wrap your mind around. But the Holy Spirit is a person, he has a personality. Jesus spoke of him and said, "When he has come," not when it has come, "he will convince the world of righteousness and the judgment to come." So the Holy Spirit has a work, and the primary work of the Holy Spirit is to bring us to Jesus. And so I think when someone feels like guilt or remorse for their sin, or they sense, I

• 58:51Speaker 01

  need Jesus, and they're drawn to Jesus, that's the Holy Spirit doing his work, bringing you to Christ. And then how do we approach the Father? We go to the Father through the Son. So, and it's interesting, because if he's a force, because the Bible says we can insult the Holy Spirit, we can resist the Holy Spirit, and we can blaspheme the Holy Spirit. So you can't blaspheme the wind. I can't insult a force, though there's a force. But because he's a he, he can be resisted, insulted, lied to even. Because on one occasion, two people named Aniah and Sapphira were lying to the people in the church, and Peter said, "You lied to the Holy Spirit." So it's very interesting.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  You know, he is a personality with a distinct plan and purpose, working in harmony with the Father and with Jesus.

• 59:42Rick Rubin?

  Does the Holy Spirit exist in the Old Testament as well?

• 59:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Like, like I said, in the beginning of creation, the Spirit brooded. Bible uses the word brooded, kind of like hovered, you know? Oh, yes, well, the Holy Spirit came upon the prophet Elijah. The Holy Spirit would come upon Samson, when he would do his supernatural miracles and destroying Philistines and all the things that he did. So yes, the Holy Spirit is very much active in the, in the Old Testament as well.

• 1:00:11Rick Rubin?

  When did burnt offerings stop happening?

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Well, they, all the burnt offerings were pointing to one thing, Jesus. Like the first verse in the Bible that points to Jesus is in Genesis 3. "After Adam and Eve sinned, ate of the forbidden fruit, God says to Satan, 'There is coming one who will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel.'" So after Satan misleads Adam and Eve, God kind of puts Satan on notice. It's like game on. There's coming one who's going to crush your head. So Satan knows Jesus is coming. And I think he was doing everything he could to stop it, starting in the book of Exodus, all the little Jewish baby boys, the Pharaoh commands they be put to death, the book of

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Esther decree given out, kill all the Jews, because Jesus was going to come as a Jew through a messianic line that came through King David, on through the New Testament, all these passages that point to him. Isaiah 9:6, "Unto you a child is born, unto you a son is given. His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor of the Mighty God." Then Micah 5:2, "You, Bethlehem, though you be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth one whose origins have been from everlasting." So all these are like pointing to the New Testament. So Old Testament sacrifices, you take the lamb, you slay him on the altar, you sprinkle the blood, that's a symbol of the Lamb of God. So when Jesus begins his public ministry, John the Baptist, his cousin says, "Behold

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." In other words, it's done now. And so when Jesus died on the cross, he gave seven statements, and one of those statements was-

• 1:01:48Rick Rubin?

  It was done?

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  It is done. That's what was done. All the Old Testament sacrifices were fulfilled, all of that was complete. So we no longer have to slay the, the animal at the altar. The Lamb of God has been slain, his blood has been shed, and so now we can approach the Father through the Son.

• 1:02:11Speaker 06

  There's a long tradition of reading sacred texts slowly, allowing each word to settle, echo, and reveal meaning over time. Rather than rushing to conclusions, this practice invites reflection, listening, and attention. For centuries, this repetition has been used to stay close to wisdom, not by studying words as information, but by receiving them as something lived and experienced over and over again. This tradition is known as lectio divina.

• 1:02:55Speaker 06

  Emerging in early monastic life, it engages scripture through four gentle movements: reading, reflection, repetition, and rest. A short passage is read, a single phrase is held. Silence becomes part of the practice, creating space for insight to surface naturally. Lectio 365 brings that ancient rhythm into the present moment. Designed for modern life, it offers brief, guided scriptural reflections throughout

• 1:03:33Speaker 06

  the day, to begin with intention, pause at midday, and wind down at night. The readings are less about information gathering and more for returning to wisdom again and again, letting familiar words meet new moments. A modern way to keep biblical wisdom close, quietly present, steady, and alive within everyday life. Lectio 365 is a free resource. Find inspiration there now and always. Learn more at lectio365.com.

• 1:04:26Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about baptism.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  It's kind of like communion, they're what we might call ordinances of the church. Baptism is in the Bible, it's described as like going into a grave, like as many of you were buried in baptism with Christ. So it's sort of like the old life in a symbolic way is ending. It's not like when you're baptized, your sins are washed away. Your sins are forgiven when you put your faith in Christ and ask Him to come into your life. But baptism is an outward showing of that. I've described it as an outward showing of an inward doing. Like, okay, now I'm going to publicly proclaim to everyone and anyone that I'm a follower of Jesus.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  And so the criteria for baptism is you have to repent and be baptized. Repent means to change your direction, turn from your sin. And there's a story in the book of Acts of a guy from Ethiopia who came searching for God and Philip, an evangelist, led him to Christ. And the man said, what hinders me from being baptized? And Philip said, if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, all of your heart, you may be. He says, I believe. So they baptized him. So you need to believe, you need to repent. And if you don't do those things, then it doesn't have any great significance. So it's a symbol, but a beautiful one. There's been like this whole like baptism movement, like thousands and thousands of people being baptized.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  We alone have baptized like 5,000 people in the last three years.

• 1:06:01Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  We called it the Jesus Revolution baptism, kind of connected to the film. And people were lining up out on the beach, long lines coming down to be baptized. So that's another kind of recent phenomenon. I've not seen that anywhere. This is kind of something that's happened in the last few years.

• 1:06:19Rick Rubin?

  What's the meaning of wearing a cross?

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  It's a symbol. You know, it's interesting, the early church, they didn't wear crosses. They didn't have crosses on churches. Symbol of the early church was the fish. But the cross came later. Of course, Christ died on the cross. But you know, you can wear a cross and not believe in what it says. It can be a fashion accessory. You can tat it on your arm, whatever. People put them on jackets, all kinds of things, you know?

• 1:06:45Rick Rubin?

  But if you were doing it with meaning, what would the meaning be?

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  It would mean that I'm a Christian. I identify as a follower of Jesus Christ and I don't care who sees it and I'd be happy to maybe have a conversation with you about it. I don't wear a cross and it's not because I'm against it in any way. Maybe I'll wear one tomorrow. A lot of people do. My wife wears one. I know a lot of people who wear them. I think it's a beautiful way to express your faith.

• 1:07:07Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about communion.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Jesus had the Last Supper. This kind of comes back to the Old Testament, old sacrifices. So he's, you know, they had a lot of meals together. And Jesus said, they could tell something was different. They didn't know it was the Last Supper. They weren't all lined up behind the table like in the Da Vinci painting. They were just probably like sitting probably like we're sitting with low to the ground and cushions with the table and you take the different foods and dip them and such. And so he says, take this and eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. And when you drink this cup, and they realize this is different. And he was instituting what we call communion. It's also called the Lord's Supper.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  So Paul talks about it, the apostle, and he says, when a man receives communion, a woman too, obviously, let him examine himself to see if he is in the faith. So when we do communion, I always say to people, look at your life and if there's anything that is not right with God or something you need to pray about or repent of, this is the time to do it. But I also say, maybe there's somebody here that needs a healing touch from the Lord. And it's funny because Kelsey Grammer has a communion scene in the Jesus Revolution film. So he didn't, so I had to explain like this is what communion is.

• 1:08:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  And this is what we say. And this is why we say it in this specific way. He did a great job of it too. Anyway, so the bread symbolizes his body and before Jesus was crucified, they whipped him 39 times. And the Bible says, by his stripes were healed. So I believe that there's healing power from Jesus that can happen through communion. I don't think it's like now in the Catholic Church, coming back to them and what they call the Eucharist.

• 1:08:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  They believe that the bread literally becomes the flesh of Christ and the juice or wine literally becomes the blood of Christ. I don't believe that. Most Protestants don't believe that. But we believe they're very important symbols. And Paul kind of emphasizes it, coming back to him, let a man examine himself. He says, don't take of these elements in an unworthy manner. So don't do it in a flippant way or just it's a ritual. Now this symbolizes the body of Jesus. This symbolizes the blood of Jesus. So take this seriously. And this is for a believer in Jesus Christ. And then you receive these elements and then the cup, you know, the juice or the wine symbolizes his blood that was shed for us.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  And so when we receive communion, we'll pray and I'll say, Lord, thank you for shedding your blood for us because the Bible promises that we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sins. So Lord, just cleanse us of our sin and we drink together. So it's, it's a really beautiful thing that the church does. And Jesus said, do this in remembrance of me until he comes. So when we're in heaven, we don't need to do it anymore. But there's an interesting little thing in the Greek where it could better be translated, do this in affection, remembrance of me. And so there's an affection, there's an intimacy and a closeness to Jesus. It's not a cold religious ritual.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  It's a warm connection of love that we're expressing to God and we're remembering the sacrifice that Jesus made. Because if it wasn't for that sacrifice, we would have no access to God. We'd still be back in the Old Testament with sacrifices, with animals.

• 1:10:43Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about preparing a sermon.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  It's a lot of things at once. I heard about one preacher. He said, I study myself full, I pray myself hot and I let myself go. First you study. For me, a sermon is based on a text. So I'll read a text and I'll try to figure out, what is this text saying? What is Jesus saying?

• 1:11:05Rick Rubin?

  Always from the Bible.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Always and only. I pull from all kinds of sources. I quote all kinds of people and thinkers and different things that illustrate it, but...

• 1:11:15Rick Rubin?

  Starts with the Bible.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  Starts with the Bible and I'd say ends with the Bible. But like take John 15 as an example. So John 15, Jesus speaks about a woman who lost a coin and searched for it until she found it, a shepherd who lost his sheep and searches for it until he finds it, and a father who had two sons and one went astray and the father welcomed him home. So the theme is lost things found, right? So you figure out the theme, then you figure out, okay, who was he speaking to? He's speaking to the audience of his day and he's kind of directing this toward the religious leaders. Because in the story of the prodigal son, there's another son people forget about. The son goes astray and drags the family name to the mud and messes up and says, father, I've sinned and returns home.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  But there's this older brother who's ticked off at his younger brother because he's gone out there and disgraced their family. And he goes, man, you know, you never threw a party for me. You never slew the animal for me and the dead says, son, you've always been with me. So Jesus was speaking to the religious leaders. They're like the older brother. They're resentful because Jesus was hanging around sinners. That was the backdrop of this. Why are you hanging around these people? This tax collector and this prostitute, these other people? Yeah, outcasts. You can't do that. And he goes, let me tell you a story. So in the story, he's really directing it toward them. You guys are like the older brother. You should be happy when this prodigal son comes home again.

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  So, so you figure out all those things, any interesting things in culture and the language as an example, in that culture, it was considered undignified for an older man to run. Older men did not run in general. So I'll jokingly say, not to mention the fact that it's harder for an older man to run, I can say from experience, but the father sort of like is willing to lose his dignity to get to a son as quickly as possible. And God, this is a picture Jesus gave us of God, how much he loves us and the lengths he's willing to go to, to reach us. And so we get all those little cultural things, language things. Now bring it into the present day. Now it depends who I'm sharing this with.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  If it's with an audience of non-believers, I might quote various people in the culture today talking about the emptiness of life. There's a Jim Carrey quote I've used before. I wish everyone could get all the things they ever wanted in life and realize that's not what it's all about. That's a very listener phrase. Sometimes I'll even begin my message with quotes from people they know and I won't even quote the Bible at first. Or I might start with my own story because I want people to understand, I'm just a person like you. I'm not better than you. But here's what God says, and I want you to hear this. That's if it's an evangelistic message, and then I'll get to my text. Then I'll explain it, and then I'll apply it and say something like, "You can come into a relationship with God."

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  Maybe you feel like, "Oh, God would never accept me. I've done too many horrible things." Well, the Father accepted the Son. And notice, He didn't make the Son clean Himself up first. The Son came as He was.

• 1:14:19Rick Rubin?

  Accepted Him as He was.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  As He was. And so I might say something like, "Jesus said, 'He that would come to me ever in no way cast out.'" So you just come as you are to God. You come with your sins, you come with your questions, you come with your addictions. You come to Him, not unlike what I did. I mean, I came as a drug user, effectively. "Oh, I didn't have to clean my life up and come to God." You come to God, He'll clean your life up. And so, in the context of an evangelistic message, then I would say, "And you can come to Christ right now." And I'd tell them how to do it, and I invite them to walk forward, if it's in a stadium, and I lead them in a prayer. Now, if I was teaching that at our church, I might do that as well, but I might say, "And we need to remember that there's a lot of people like this prodigal son out there, and we need to reach them."

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  Or maybe you have a prodigal son, or a prodigal daughter. I had two prodigal sons. I like the man in the story, and my father of two sons. Let me tell you about my sons. And my son Jonathan preached on it a few weeks ago, and I said, "You should teach on this, because you've lived it."

• 1:15:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  And he brought it home in a really personal way. So, you know, that's just an example of one text. Now, if I'm teaching an epistle, one of the letters of Paul, that's different, because it's not a story like that. It's more like he's addressing certain topics. And then if it's an Old Testament narrative, that's another kind of sweeping story, you know, like David and Goliath. And so we'll tell the story, but then I would bring applications to dealing with challenges that we all face, the giants in your life, so to speak. And so it kind of just depends on what the text is. But I'm always, right now, I'm teaching through the Gospel of Luke. We call it the Gospel for everyone. I'm just teaching through these things that Jesus said and did, and show how they apply to our life today.

• 1:16:06Rick Rubin?

  In the Old Testament, God seems judgmental, and in the New Testament, not so much. What changed?

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  I don't think anything changed. I think He's the same God in the Old and New Testament. As an example, God called Jonah to go preach to the Ninevites. The Ninevites, they're really wicked people. They were known for their atrocities. They wouldn't just kill their enemies. They would skin them alive, they would stack skulls as tributes to what they had done, really evil people. So God comes to Jonah the prophet and says, "Go preach to Nineveh." Jonah's like, "No way." And he gets in a boat going in the opposite direction. He disobeys God. Why? Because Jonah himself says, "I know you're gracious and willing to forgive, and I don't want to go to them." Because his thinking was, "If I go and preach to these people,

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  God will forgive them, and I don't want Him to forgive them. I want Him to destroy them." A great storm comes, he's swallowed by a great fish. Everyone makes a big deal about Jonah and the whale. The Bible never says whale, it says a sea monster. We don't know what swallowed him, some creature swallowed him. He repents, and God brings him right back to Nineveh, and he preaches to them. And sure enough, when he tells them, "Forty days and you'll be overthrown," they all repent, and God doesn't judge them. So, yes, God judges people in the Old Testament, but He forgives them as well. And God doesn't want to judge people. He says, "I take no delight in the death of the wicked." I mean, take hell as an example.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  I did a teaching last time I spoke on what Jesus taught about hell. I called it, "What Happens One Minute After You Die?" And I tried to explain to people the fact that the last thing God wants is for anyone to go to hell. I do believe hell is real, because Jesus talked about it more than all the other preachers in the Bible put together. But God doesn't want people to go there. It wasn't prepared for people. Jesus said it was made for the devil and his angels. God wants us to join Him in heaven. That is why He sent Jesus. But as C.S. Lewis said, "The gates of hell are locked from the inside." In other words, say there's a building on fire, and I'm standing in front of the building, and people are walking in.

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  "No, don't go in this building. Don't go in this building, you'll die. Go over here, we have a banquet, a feast prepared for you. Come on over here." "No, everybody's in line for the building. We're going there, we're going to party in hell with our friends." No, you aren't. It's judgment, you don't want to do that. If I'm stopping people, even standing in their way, and they push me aside, well, I did what I could.

• 1:18:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  You have to climb over Jesus to get there. He doesn't want you to go there, but you have a choice in life. If you don't want God in this life, "I don't want God," well, then you don't have to have Him in the afterlife either, because hell is separation from God. So I think the nature of God is to forgive and to pardon and give second chances. I think you see that in the Old and New Testament.

• 1:19:14Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the role of music in Christianity.

• 1:19:17Speaker 01

  Well, I believe, of course, God gave us music, okay? So, really, the Psalms are prayers set to songs. There were melodies, and David was a musician. David played a stringed instrument and sang to the Lord. In fact, there was power in what he did, because King Saul was being tormented by demons, because he had rebelled against God, and kind of like going into mental decline. And these demons would torment him, and they would bring David in, who would sing, and there would be temporary relief. So I think there's actually spiritual power in music, and I've seen it, and I love music. And before I became a Christian, I loved the Beatles,

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Hendrix, Buffalo Springfield, et cetera. So I became a Christian, I'm like, "Well, that's the end of that. Now I just listen to hymns and weird Christian songs." And so there was this guy named Larry Norman, who had a record, and I came across it. And it's Capitol Records. I thought, "Well, that's a Beatles label, isn't it?" And he was a really creative guy. And it was kind of like the first Christian's album. So, you know, he's a really talented writer, and I loved his music. I thought, "Well, there's actually some good Christian music here." I'm kind of surprised, because a lot of the rest of it wasn't that great. So coming back to Calvary Chapel, when the spiritual awakening is happening,

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  all these musicians are coming to faith, and they're writing music. And one of the groups, and this is in the Jesus Revolution film, was called Love Song. Chuck Jarrett, the lead singer, he was in a band called The Hondales, not a big band, but he had a Beach Boys kind of sound and had an amazing voice. And then these other guys, it was kind of like The Beatles meet The Beach Boys with gospel in it. And so, they came out one night and started singing. I was like, "Wow, this is amazing." So I kind of watched the birth of what we call contemporary Christian music. It just started out as guys and girls coming to the Lord who wanted to express their faith. In fact, the big difference between

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  the first wave of Christian music and the waves today would be the first wave was kind of more organic, and it was more almost telling people about what we believed. Like, there was one song by Love Song, the lyrics were, "We're all gathered here because we all believe. If there's a doubter in the crowd, we ask you not to leave. Give a listen to our story, hear the message that we bring. Let the faith swell up inside you, lift your voice with us and sing. Accept Him with your whole heart, and use your own two hands. With one, reach out to Jesus, with the other, bring a friend." So I love that it was directed toward the culture. And the original idea was, "Let's go to the culture

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  and talk about what's happened to us." But then in time, it became an industry. And now, today, I work with a lot of these artists. I like them, I think they're great. A lot of them are friends of mine. And it's fine, I don't have a problem with it being an industry. But I'm just saying, in its original intent, it was organic, and it was more oriented toward the culture. And I would like to see some more artists write songs of that nature. I've told a lot of them that. "Hey, why don't you write songs like kind of to the non-believer a little bit, not always just to the Christian?"

• 1:22:39Rick Rubin?

  Can we listen to that song?

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's called "Two Hands."

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  We're all gathered here because we all believe. If there's a doubter in the crowd, we ask you not...

• 1:23:14Speaker 07

  Give a listen to the story. Hear the message that he brings. Feel the face well up around you. Lift your voice with us and sing. Accept him with your whole heart. And use your own two hands.

• 1:23:55Speaker 07

  With one reach out to Jesus. And with the other. Bring a friend. Many know him well. Brothers just by name. If you don't know for what he stands. You've really much to gain.

• 1:24:40Speaker 07

  With faith you can move mountains. These are common words but true. We aren't quite a mountain. But he's moved us here to you. Accept him with your whole heart. And use your own two hands. With one reach out to Jesus.

• 1:25:20Speaker 07

  And with the other. Bring a friend. And with the other. Bring a friend.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  Chuck had the really high boy is kind of a little Brian Wilson. Of course, that brings back memories to me, so I can't remove myself from that, but that was typical of what it was. And I mean, what I love about what you do is you strip stuff away and get to the essence of it. So the artist can come out or the song can come out, punctuating the elements of the song. And I feel like this industry is very slick and polished and a lot of it's great. But I would like to see a return to that sort of thing.

• 1:26:14Rick Rubin?

  You could make the argument also that the church started as a grassroots thing and has also turned into a big industry.

• 1:26:22Speaker 01

  Yep, it can do that. And it's kind of like, that's why we just start and we start over again and again and again. And even churches have like lifespans. The church doesn't have a lifespan, but churches do. Like, there might be a church that was once impactful and packed out. And then one day it's a big empty auditorium. But then you hear of a new thing that just started up down the street in some abandoned supermarket that they've converted into a church or a movie theater. So there's always new expressions of it and it just, it's life. Honestly, we mess things up. God doesn't.

• 1:27:00Rick Rubin?

  The human factor.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, the human factor. But it keeps marching on and, and Jesus said that gates of hell will not prevail against us. So I'm a big believer in the church and the local church and the importance of it. Cause I've always remained as a pastor, so I'm involved in people's lives and what they're facing and dealing with. And I think that you can just get into an industry of it and be disconnected from people. And I feel the best thing is to be part of a church. And we even encourage what we call small groups where we get people into like eight or nine, maybe 10 people. And we'll study things together, but then friendships develop and then, you know, they become a little world in the world. And then, you know, all of a sudden you have a network of people to help you.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  Like as an example, we find people who are in small groups almost never come in for counseling. Because in the small group, they have that already. They have people to talk with, people to pray with, people to do life with, you know? We really encourage people to do that. And, you know, the church gets slammed a lot, it gets criticized a lot. And sometimes people critique maybe exaggerated versions of it, which you might see on television or elsewhere. But there's so many churches faithfully making their impact. In this very community, you have them, I'm sure. And maybe a lot of people have never heard of these pastors or these churches.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  But they're, they're doing their work and marrying and bearing and counseling and putting families back together and doing the thing that the church does. We get criticized a lot, but I feel like it's the only organization Jesus ever started.

• 1:28:38Rick Rubin?

  How has Christianity stayed the same and how has it changed since Jesus's time?

• 1:28:45Speaker 01

  I think it comes down to how close we want to stay to him and close we want to be to his message. I think if we adhere to scripture, we're good. And I don't believe that what I do today is remarkably different than what I did when I started. I'm older. I hopefully am a little wiser. But I've tried to adapt to changes in our culture without changing my essential message. We didn't have social media 30 years ago. We didn't have a lot of things we have now, but the essential needs that people don't change and the essential answer doesn't changes. So I think for those that stay close to what the Bible says, and Jesus has gone to all the world

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  and preached the gospel, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, loyum with you even to the end of the age. That's called the Great Commission. I think as long as we are close to that, we're in good shape. Sometimes we deviate from that. Oh, it's political, it's all about politics, or it's all about this agenda, or it's all about that agenda. That's when, what we might call Christianity or an expression of it, or a lack of expression of it. Because it's really getting away from what it should be. Cause to me, ultimately Christianity is Christ. My message is not Christianity. My message is Jesus. And how to come into a relationship with them.

• 1:30:11Speaker 01

  Now, you can call what I do Christianity and it is. And it is religion. Someone would describe me, oh, you're religious. Yeah, you can say that and it's not inaccurate. But I don't really consider myself religious. I think it's always been about a relationship with God for me, more than religion. The closer we stay to Christ, the better off we are. The more we deviate from that, the worse we are.

• 1:30:35Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the role of social media in Christianity today.

• 1:30:40Speaker 01

  There are a lot of people are being influenced by a lot of voices out there that maybe will talk about issues of faith that don't necessarily know what they're talking about. It seems like if you want to get more reaction, you pick more controversial subjects. In some cases, you just spread false information to get clicks. I dislike that a lot. I try to offer encouragement through my social media. I try to point people to Christ. And they have a little fun with it here and there. So I think it's a tool. It's a tool we can use like any tool. We live in a social media world now in the church. If we're not using it, we're missing a huge communication opportunity. I remember when Twitter was first coming out, now X.

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  And I remember we were doing a pastors conference and a lot of pastors were saying, I'm not going to Twitter. Twitter's evil. Like, what do you mean Twitter's evil? Twitter's like a microphone hooked up to two speakers. I'm a speaker, why wouldn't I speak in the microphone? I'm not afraid of that. I mean, sure, there's bad stuff out there, but there's bad stuff everywhere. What, am I never going to talk to anybody because somebody misuses it? So I'm going to go and use those mediums and try to get the gospel to people. Cause there might be someone you could reach on social media or online or on TV or on radio that you would not reach otherwise. There's a guy, like he was gonna kill himself. He was a Vietnam vet. He had his gun loaded.

• 1:32:05Speaker 01

  He had it in his hand and he was holding it up to his head to pull the trigger. And he was afraid and he laid it down and he turned on the TV and he saw me speaking. And I was speaking from one of our crusades. I led a prayer and he prayed the prayer. And his father and him needed to reconcile. He got on his motorcycle, rode halfway across the country, reconciled with his father. And he wrote me a letter and told me the story and put the bullet in the envelope.

• 1:32:32Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:32:33Speaker 01

  Why do I use television for people like that?

• 1:32:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  Like, how would I reach that guy?

• 1:32:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, no way.

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  He's not gonna darken the doorway of our church, but he was flipping the channels with a gun in his hand. I've heard a lot of crazy stories like that of all kinds of things.

• 1:32:47Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the Sabbath.

• 1:32:49Speaker 01

  Really, originally it was given to the Jewish people as a day of rest. God rested after he created the world. And so he told his people to take a day of rest. I think as time passed, people perverted the meaning of it. Like they got angry at Jesus for healing people on the Sabbath, doing a miracle on the Sabbath. And that was obviously a violation of what the Sabbath was ever meant to be. They were missing the point completely. I think for a New Testament person, for a Christian, a day of rest is a great idea. Taking time off is a great idea. I'll be honest, if there's any area I fall short in, it's that. It's hard for me to unplug. It's hard for me to vacation and rest.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  I have to really almost force myself to do it. And I, like many people, I'm distracted by this and other things that I do. But I think it's a really good thing to take time off. Now, I don't think a Christian is required to strictly observe the Sabbath, like from sundown to sunup. But if someone wanted to do it, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. The Bible says, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For he that has entered into this rest has ceased from his labors, as God did from his. So the idea is for us, in New Testament people that believe in what Jesus did. It said, he paid the price so I can rest in that work, but I'm not bound by a single day.

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  But if someone said, we take Saturdays off and put all of our devices away or Sunday, I go, me? That's great. I respect that. I probably should do that more.

• 1:34:26Rick Rubin?

  Were you around when Bob Dylan was born again?

• 1:34:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:34:30Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Well, that was a big deal. We were all excited. And I actually think Slow Train Coming was a brilliant record. Mark Knopfler on guitar. Dylan, I thought he wrote some amazing songs. Slow Train Coming. Of course, You Got to Serve Somebody. And they were very biblical. And I knew people who knew him, who went to the same Bible study he went to, Vineyard, it was called, which is an obstute of Calvary Chapel. And Dylan was like, not just going to church, he was like in a little Bible school thing. He was really studying Scripture. And so I actually wrote a book called Lennon, Dylan, Alice, and Jesus. And it's about the spiritual search of different rock stars. So talk about John Lennon,

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  who actually did make a profession of faith for a short period of time. Then Dylan, of course, who made the same. And Alice Cooper, who I know, who came to the Lord many years ago, and then how they encountered Jesus. But my understanding of Dylan, even at this moment, I don't think he's ever abandoned that faith. He's never said anything like that. And I was looking at a set list from his recent concert. He's still doing songs off his Slow Train Coming record, including one called Every Grain of Sand, based on the Psalms. And he ends with that. I don't think Dylan, Dylan walked away from it. Well, maybe he wasn't as vocal about it as he was

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  in Slow Train Coming and then his other two so-called gospel records. But he's done some songs since then that I think still allude to it. So it seemed to me like a real conversion. And the lyric content was brilliant. And I still think it's one of the best records he ever did.

• 1:36:13Rick Rubin?

  Do you feel like you chose Jesus or Jesus chose you?

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  Both. And Jesus said, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth much spiritual fruit." I did choose Jesus. And the Bible appeals to our choice. "Choose you this day whom you will serve," Elijah said in Mount Carmel. "If the Lord is God, follow him," then Joshua says. "Ask for me and my house, we will follow the Lord." God says, "They sit before you with choice, life and death, blessings or curses. Choose life that you may live." So there's many verses that appeal to my choice. "Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved." I have to call upon Him. If I'm drowning and there's a lifeguard, they're not going to read my mind. I got to call out for help.

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  Here's God who wants to save me, but I have to ask for His help. So I'm choosing Him, but He chooses me. And I don't know the basis of that. And that's coming back to a subject called predestination. And that's a hard one to figure out. I heard it illustrated this way. You're walking down the road and you see a door. And it's written on the door, "Whosoever will, let him come." You go, hm. You walk by it, walk by it again. "Whosoever will, let him come." Because that's what the Bible says. "Whosoever will, let him come and drink of the water of life freely." Yeah, I'd like to do that. I've heard other people have done that. Then one day, you open the door and you walk in. And you shut the door. And on the other side of it says, "Chosen in Christ from the foundation of the world." So who chose who?

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  Well, God chose you, but you had to exercise your free will. So people have said, well, how do you reconcile that? You don't have to reconcile friends. The free will of man and the choosing of God are predestination are both taught in Scripture. Maybe I can't completely explain it, but they're both there. But having said that, as far as it goes for me, I have to choose to follow Christ. And that's why, as an evangelist, I challenge people to come to Christ. It's not like you're just born a Christian. Jesus said you have to be born again. He said that to Nicodemus, a very religious man, who others looked up to. And he said, "You must be born again." "Nicodemus, how can this be?" "You mean like entering my mother's womb again?"

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  Jesus says, "No, that which is born of flesh is flesh. That which is born of spirit is spirit." You must be born again. It means a spiritual rebirth. And that happens when you choose Christ, when you believe in Christ and you're born spiritually.

• 1:39:10Speaker 05

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• 1:39:25Speaker 06

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• 1:40:12Speaker 06

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