The Grift

00:00 Father, thank you for our time today. What a privilege it is. We truly get to do this and we mean it. So, Lord, I'm asking, we consecrate literally everything before you, and I'm asking that you would touch and bless our conversation today. And, Father, for our friends listening, I pray that this would in some way ignite conversations for them as well about their faith, about what's going on in our culture, in our world, across the world, not just our nation, but across the world. I'm asking for healthy, life-giving worldview conversations about all the things that are happening in our world today. We honor you with it in all things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

00:41 It's Wednesday, July 15th. We get to do this. This is episode number 41. This is the life we've been blessed with. This is a gift for time. We get to do this. This is a chance we dare not miss. This is the life we get to do this. You got your jacket on. You're looking nice. Mighty slick. The only jacket I have in the building is a suit jacket. I'm cold. I'm actually warm because I came in. Of course, nothing was working. You were flying. Yeah, you were on the fly. Usually happens. Good morning. I'm going to bring that down a little more. Yeah. Well, now that you got your jacket on.

01:22 Yeah, yeah. I'll bring it down. Do you have the remote? Don't worry. Don't worry about it. If you don't have the remote, no, no, no, don't worry about it. I'm used to sweating. This is the podcast. Welcome to our living room. Hey, brother. Good to see you again in person. It has been too long. Two weeks. Yeah. Yeah, right at it. Two weeks. And the last couple of days, of course, we were waiting in Amsterdam for hopefully for our granddaughter to arrive. We were praying. Our main prayer was, God, your timing, of course. It'd be great if you could give us a little favor. And God's like, nah, I think you're okay. So the last few days were a little stressful just because, you know, we're like checking in with Christina.

02:04 And she's like, nah, because there was some talk earlier that the baby may come early. And, you know, all things changed. And we're like, okay, whatever. We know we've been there, done that. Exactly. And these first babies, like, you know, they tend to be late. So it's okay. But also, I was just, you okay with this sounds? I'm good. Yeah. I just felt disconnected from home, from our family. You know, you have a dog, the fur baby. Definitely, definitely the fur baby. We've been reunited all as well. You know, and because we were in hotel rooms, it's just at a certain point, like, okay, I've had it now, even though hotels were great and we celebrated Tina's birthday.

02:48 But really, this past weekend was such a big weekend here at the church at Bridge Church. And we knew we wouldn't be here for all the special things that were happening. And so I was like, ah, felt a little disconnected from it. And, you know, I've been trying to catch up, listening to the podcast of the services, but you got to tell me what was happening here because you were just like, I can't wait to do the show. There's stuff I got to tell you. I'm like, I know what that feels like. Yeah, I'm good. Go for it. Well, so a week ago, we had, you know, on July 4th, we had Rick Green, Patriot Academy, 250th, huge celebration, fireworks.

03:31 I mean, everything you can imagine, dinner, all that. So it was a full marathon weekend. We followed that up with another full marathon weekend. What are we saying? Why do we schedule this stuff? Hey, we could have put the 250th off. Anyway, so we had, and we were so blessed to bring in the Caleb Caleb Global, great ministry out of Nashville, Tennessee. The founder, we call him Papa Don. He's known that all over the world. Don Finto, Papa Don. He's 96 years old, and he decided to make the trip to Fredericksburg. He'd never been here before. He grew up in Texas. He was born right outside of La Misa, Texas.

04:13 We had lots to talk about here. We had a lot in common. But he had not been to Fredericksburg in years and so decades. So he came. His daughter came with him to kind of help him. He's 96, so it's helpful to have somebody. But he is, he is amazing. I cannot believe he's not. I tell him, I said, I want to be like you when I grow up. Because I mean, at 96, this man is sharp as a tack. So he was here, and then the one who's really running the ministry now, he's the papa, the founder, but basically the president is his name is Todd McDowell. Todd was with him. We had Todd about it a little over a month ago. Yes. And a couple months ago. He was speaking on a Wednesday night?

04:52 He did a Wednesday night, and he was phenomenal. And what it was, it was eating the first Pringle off the top, you know, off the stack. And you know what happens there? You can't stop. You know, you're done. So that was it. We got a taste of what he was bringing in terms of what it means to appreciate and value our Christian heritage in Judaism and in Israel and Jerusalem and to honor. You know, just on the 250th, we honored our founding fathers of our country. Celebrated all those amazing heroes. But there's also heroes around the Jewish faith and the Christian faith, which Judeo-Christian beliefs.

05:28 It was Judaism first, and then Christianity came in with Jesus. But we went back and we honored our founding fathers spiritually: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the great founders of Judaism and this establishing a one God, you know, one God, not 500 gods and one God, capital G. And so we got to do that. So we got to honor our founding fathers for our nation, but we also got to honor our founding fathers for our faith the very next weekend. And Todd addressed that and did a wonderful job of connecting the dots for us. But really, it was just this idea of what it means to understand.

06:12 Here's another beautiful thing. You would have really appreciated this if you hadn't heard it yet. But he talked a lot about Ishmael and how Ishmael was, you know, he was not the planned child, but yet he still was the firstborn. And was going to receive a great nation. He would have received everything. And even though that got removed in the short term, but yet God did make promises to Ishmael that nations would come from him. Yes. And sure enough, they have. Yeah. And so he connected the dots for a lot of things. We unpacked it with our staff on Tuesday, our staff meeting, and we buzzed for an hour.

06:48 I mean, there was so much to talk about. But the short version is just that it gave me such an appreciation for our spiritual founding fathers, just like I have a great appreciation for our national founding fathers. Right. And honor where honor is due. And, man, they just brought it, and they brought it with such love. This was not a political rally. This is not Zionist shills. I mean, this is none of that. I thought I missed the meeting. It's just, here's what the Bible says. Here's why we bless Israel because the Word of God says to, therefore, God says to, and we just want to be in alignment with God's heart.

07:27 This is not political. This is not, you know, MAGA. This is not, you know, dissing on woke left or whatever. It's just, we want to be biblical, period. And there's no debate around it. People can debate it all day long, but there's nothing to debate. God said, God established. And the least likely nation to do it with would be this weak, small nation that ended up being enslaved for a good part of its beginning. And to think that they would be any better now in terms of their very secular nation, high degree of homosexuality and LGBTI, it's all there. Well, they've had all kinds of bad rulers and kings that were no good. Well, they did in Bible times, too, but God redeemed them.

08:12 Here's the point: God chose to pour out his love on someone who wouldn't appreciate it. And we're no different. Wow. We are no different. Gosh, this. So I heard the first sermon. It's on the Godcaster. We make a podcast of it. And intellectually, I already knew a lot of these things. He drew an analogy, which I really loved. And the way he told it was a little too long to clip. But he was talking about how we're grafted into the vine, into the Jews. Yeah. He called it the rootstock. The rootstock. Because he compared it to vineyards here in Hill Country. So I know this story because David Maserano had told this story one time in a dinner.

08:57 This is about the blight, the epidemic that hit French vineyards in the 19th century. And what they found out, and this thing is 1880, I believe, that the rootstock, the wine vines from Denison, Texas, Hill Country, they had evolved to be able to protect themselves against this blight. It has a really cool name. That was an aphid. Well, aphid. Yes, aphid is the bug. And so the condition was Philazara epidemic.

09:35 I just love pronouncing stuff I can't pronounce. So the millions of Texas rootstocks, literally, were shipped across the Atlantic, and the French winemakers grafted their traditional European vine varieties onto these Texas roots. And so I knew this story. and he made the analogy to how we have been grafted into the vine of the Jews and of Israel. And so the and which is, you know, I have friends in Israel, and I'm trying to get my train of thought going here because, you know, part of it is we're supposed to love them so much that they get jealous and that they will become believers, which is a tough one because I love my Jewish brother so much.

10:26 Absolutely. I love you too, brother, but Jesus was an insurrectionist. So they're not really open to that. But then I was also thinking, do we honor our rootstock? And I took this analogy to the rootstock from the French vineyards, and I researched if they still honor our rootstock. Nice. Because I had really only heard it once from one person. This is the second time that I heard from Todd and I'd forgotten it. And the answer is yes. In 1992, Munson's home, where the, I think it was Dr. Munson who delivered this rootstock in Denison, Texas, was honored as

11:11 the place where the rootstock came from. In 2002, the city of Cognac unveiled a permanent bronze statue of Munson in their central square to permanently honor the man who saved their cultural heritage. And I love that. And I think it's probably time, again, that France do something. We're 24 years on. So it proves the analogy to be true. But I don't think we do a good job of it as believers. In fact, I think we've been hiding a lot because of cultural pressure and because words like support and pray and bless, they're all so convoluted

11:54 that that rolls into this giant, well, you're a Zionist, all these words that just get spread around, which is now so clear to me. By the way, that word was co-opted. Zionism is not a bad thing. No, but it's been co-opted. Exactly. Stolen. Well, even Palestinians was co-opted. That was a word the Romans used to basically make fun of Philistines. Yeah, to make fun of the Jews. Another name for the Philistine. So the whole thing has been so convoluted throughout the ages. And that's why I'm so sad that I wasn't there to really get a full download of it.

12:31 But when you go back to the word in Genesis, those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who don't, I will curse them. And Psalm 122, verse 6, I can just spout that off the top of my head. I don't know why. Have I heard that a million times from somebody? We pray for the peace of Jerusalem. There's not a lot we have to do. It's not all, but you know, and we have to be intentional with it, but it doesn't bleed over into this whole cultural nonsense that has been taking place. And I bring news from the front, my brother. I bring news. Something has pivoted.

13:10 Something has flipped. Come on. Yes, this is. Okay, now I'm excited. Something has changed just around this whole weekend. Everything is happening in the same week. And it all started with, funny enough, the preliminary hearings of Tyler Robinson, who was being accused of killing Charlie Kirk. Nice segue, by the way. That was brilliant. Keep going. Keep 45 years later. You're on the flow. Don't spike the ball yet, man. But what happened is all this nonsense that we've been hearing for a year, which started with Israel killed Charlie Kirk, and it was because

13:50 he didn't want to take money and Netanyahu and all of this stuff, which just culminated into ultimately our president is completely remote controlled by Netanyahu and he's weak and does only what they say. This all of a sudden reached this crescendo. I've always said throughout my show business career, you have to be very careful of how you use or manipulate media. So if you manipulate media for your benefit, and I used to mean just newspapers or articles or television or radio.

14:28 Now it's social media. It has a boomerang effect. So if you throw that boomerang and you use it, it always, always, always, always comes back and whacks you in the head and knocks you down. I've seen this in my own life time after times. I'm very careful with interviews because it just comes back at you. you're using it or abusing it. So there was a lot of this going on. And I would say one of the main progenitors was Candace Owens. Correct. And she just came up with so many. Now, there's another little piece I have to bring in here.

15:07 The number one podcast category since, you know, for the past 15 years is true crime. And it's particularly women who listen to true crime. It is extremely popular. It started with serial, and that was an NPR production. And there's something about our cultural development, watching crime shows, even your CSI stuff that you used to watch. There's something about tying it all up in a bow within 20, 27 minutes without the commercials. And I have resolution and we've solved it and the bad guy goes to jail. And there's always these twists and turns.

15:48 And so we're almost conditioned to want to dive into conspiracies and find out what's behind it. I myself, for years, have just been looking at before it was popular. And that's why I call myself now a conspiracy therapist because I know the dead ends and most of them are dead ends. So this got to a level of exploding microphones and Egyptian military planes. And with just a few hours of recording of the preliminary trial, forget what the prosecution is saying. This young man's defense is not saying, well, what about the Egyptian military play?

16:28 So the evidence is so overwhelming that it just cracked everything and the boomerang came back. Yes. And it came back so hard that the number one progenitor of anti-Israel sentiment, I won't say anti-Jewish per se, I don't want to call anyone an anti-Semite, Nick Fuentes. You've seen him, you know who I'm talking about. Yes. And he did a piece two days ago. I brought a couple clips. They're relatively short. And he explains exactly what happened, exactly why it happened.

17:06 And it comes down to what I think I categorize as audience capture, where your whole audience is saying, you've got to talk about this. What do you mean? It was an exploding microphone. The Jews are doing it. They didn't, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I brought these three clips. The first one, I bleeped out one or two words just because we don't, you know, we know what they are. It's not necessary to have those. The first clip, a little hard to listen to, but stuff, not stuff we haven't heard. And we're all adults, and I'm sure we can handle this. But it's important because he kind of sets up what happened and what changed in our culture. And as we get through it, you'll see that the tide has changed at this very moment with all these things happening.

17:51 So it's really good. If criticizing Israel makes you lose PayPal and lose access to the platforms and lose your job, grifters are not going to criticize Israel because there's no money in it. There's no easy money. It's not an easy grift. So what were they doing? They were praising Israel. That was the easy grift. You're looking for a black Republican to say Blexit? Yo, you're looking for a black Republican? I'm a black Republican. Give me a million dollars a year. That was the grift. That was, you could go to the black leadership summit and say, black, don't vote Democrat. Here's your million dollars. Have a nice day. You could be any black person, any brown person.

18:33 I'm black and we ain't got to vote for no Democrats necessarily. Understandable. Here's your million dollars, sir. Have a great day. That was the grift. What changed in 2024 and 2025 is it became really in vogue and really popular for people to talk about Jews in Israel in a negative way. Also, just to talk about conspiracies in general. Suddenly, that became the grift. And it attracted people that were looking for notoriety, people that were looking to build a social platform. It's interesting that he's saying this. And I appreciate that he's saying it.

19:13 Because I think he's probably more principled than I even considered. So now he explains the mechanism. Here's what I mean by this. If tweeting Israel critical sentiment gets them engagement and money, then like a mouse or a cat or any animal in one of these experiments, if they press a button and get a treat, if they press a button and get a treat, they're trained that this is what they're going to do every single day. So if I'm an influencer on Twitter, I want to grow my following. I want to. want to make my ex revenue dollars. How do I get my reward? How do I get my treat? I press the button every day. Every day I press the button.

19:55 And what's the button? JFK said Hitler's spirit will rise from the grave. Israel. Jews did everything. The liberty was intentional. Every day, press that button. And always escalating, always going in the same direction. Does it ever get refined? Is nuance introduced? Counter-arguments entertained? Do we discuss the limitations, the limitations of this theory? No. Press the button. And if we're not getting the same reward, press the button harder. Press a button twice. Press a button 12 times. Slam the button. So he's calling it out.

20:40 I call this audience capture. He's calling out exactly what happened. And it's not all monetary. It's also, you know, it's ego, like people are retweeting me. I'm getting attention. I'm ratio. There's all these terms online. It's crazy. Last clip here. Well, look at Jackson Hinkle. Jackson Enkel, I think, gained like 3 million Twitter followers in nine months. What explains the explosion in engagement for people criticizing Israel? No one's going to like to hear this. You're going to call me a grifter. You're going to call me a shill. You're going to say controlled opposition. Switch sides. Honest to God, truth. This is the truth. Probably it was being driven from foreign countries and the left. That's just true.

21:25 Why oh why? All of a sudden, did it become supercharged? If you criticize Israel on Twitter, boom, 100,000 likes. You could literally tweet, Israel, 100,000 likes. Did everyone in America all of a sudden start hating Israel? Well, some people did. But I think it was driven in part, or maybe a lot, by the Muslim world, which is very engaged online because they were the ones at war with Israel, because Palestine is their regional cause. Palestine is their religious ethnic struggle. So I think a lot, like Jackson Hinkle, how many of his 3 million followers that he gained in those nine months, how many of them came from the United States of America?

22:10 People knew what he was up to before. All of a sudden, you have this regional conflict between Israel and the Arab League, effectively, or you could say the axis of resistance would be more precise. Now, all of a sudden, anyone going after Israel, supercharged, and we all know it's being driven by these Muslims. We all know it's being, we all see it on Twitter. That's who's promoting it. That's who's doing it. I have respect for him for doing this because he's exactly what he said. They're calling him out for that. But it's true. I mean, this I feel is true. But it has changed things dramatically online. And this pivot is taking place in rapid tempo.

22:54 And I think it's fantastic to watch it too. This is really cool to see this happen. And it's just like it was a spiritual war to begin with. And it just took the right things to line up for this to turn around. And it is turning around really quickly. Wow. I mean, it's to this point now where, you know, there was this whole, we've got to stop giving money to Israel $3.8 billion a year, which is military aid. Actually, I did the calculation that is literally, because people say, why are you giving money to Israel, America first? Two weeks of two weeks, two weeks of snap benefits equals 3.8 billion.

23:37 Nine days of money that goes to things that don't deserve it in America, squandered, fraud, nine days is $3.8 billion. So if you look at all the things that we put where we put our money in context, we are definitely very much an America first spending country. We got a lot of problems. And so now, Congress, there's several elements within Congress who want to really cut Israel out from everything from the money, from military knowledge sharing, which is already being sold online as they're merging the IDF with our military. Okay, no, it's just not.

24:20 That's not true. Now you see Democrats voting against Democrats to stop this nonsense. I mean, it's all small in the details right now. You're not reading a lot about it. The tidal wave is big. A big change is coming. Big change. Big, beautiful tidal wave. Yes. President. Yes. And And to get a biblical perspective on this, Galatians 6, 7 says, Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever one sows, that will he also reap. And this is the thing about online life. People don't realize that what they say, not only does it matter, it's forever. Yeah. We know that in physics, you know, your sound wave produced never stops.

25:04 I mean, dribbling. There's words still dribbling around this room from days ago. But in the digital world, once it's out there, I mean, you see people not getting jobs or getting fired from jobs because of what they felt so bold behind a keyboard and they jumped on the bandwagon, started beating whatever it was they're beating, whatever drum. But our words matter. We will be held accountable for the words we say. And I love, or I appreciate, it's probably a better word. I appreciate when we see it happen quickly. It doesn't always happen that way. No, it can take decades. Exactly. Exactly. But to see this boomerang come around this quickly is telling.

25:49 I'm telling you, I'm going to come from a biblical perspective every time. And the Bible is clear and God is clear that if we bless Israel, we will be blessed. But if we curse Israel, we will be cursed. And the word curse, there's several ways to break it down, but the one that makes the most sense to me in terms of today's relevance, blessing means an empowerment to succeed. Cursing is an empowerment to fail. You set yourself up for failure. Yeah. When you go after them, and we're watching that boomerang happen very quickly. And we don't even have to do anything. You don't have to go out there and say, don't have to post anything.

26:30 Nope. I feel no need to do that. It's all good. It's not necessary. The boomerang has come back all by itself, just as it always does. It's almost like physics. It's a law of nature with sound waves, with energy waves. They just come back and it's turning everything around. Doesn't mean that there aren't problems in Israel. It doesn't mean there aren't problems here. There's problems everywhere. But that's never been the point. That is never the point. It's so much simpler. That's what gets me. It's like, please, people, it's so it's just praying. That's it. Blessing and praying. You don't have to do anything else. You can. You don't have to do anything else. The prophet Hosea was a righteous man. And God gave him an assignment.

27:14 And it was harsh. He said, I want you to go marry this woman over here. She's a prostitute. Hosea was representative of God and his love. Right. The prostitute was representative of the heart of Israel. Wow. The behavior of his behavior. The character of Israel. And he told him to marry her. He marries her. They have children. She steps out on him. That's just an easy way of saying it. She begins to have other affairs. What does God tell him to do? Take her back. Forgive her. Over and over and over again.

27:51 And he continued to reach out to her with unrequited love. I mean, she never, she would not love him back and she would continue to run away and sleep with others. And of course, the punchline in Hosea is Israel has played the harlot lover anyway. This is God's heart. He chose that nation not because they're successful, not because they were big, and not because they honored him. He chose them to show this is how much he loves people. It's a picture of his unconditional love. Agape, we read it out of the Greek, agape.

28:30 This love that does not require condition. The covenant that he cut with Abraham is called the Abrahamic covenant, not the Abraham Accords. This is back in Genesis 15 and 17. It predates the Abraham Accords quite a bit. He cut that, but he actually put Abraham to sleep when he cut the covenant. Usually when you cut a covenant, you state terms to one another. You agree on the terms, and then each of you walk through the animal that's been slain, and it's called the blood trail. And you go through, and that's you symbolically saying, if I do not uphold the terms of this covenant, maybe it be done unto me as it is to this animal.

29:12 And when God made the covenant with Abraham, he put him to sleep. He had nothing to say or do about it. And he said, it will be a covenant forever. And in the Hebrew, that literally means forever. It's an everlasting covenant. In other words, it takes you forever. Some of the other covenants, the Mosaic covenant, other Aaronic covenant, the Davidic covenant, a lot of those were time. periods. Those were, and they were dependent on both parties. But this was not. This was the one covenant that God made where Abraham, where the person, the other party had no say in it. It also means there's no dependency on the other party. If the other party chooses not to uphold the terms of the covenant, God still will.

29:55 This is some really good stuff you're saying here because I'm just taking it all in. It's exactly how Jesus always, you know, Jesus didn't want to go hang out with winners and people who were doing great. He wanted to go with the broken people, with the losers. For people outside the faith, it must be so hard to understand this unconditional love for fellow man, unconditional love, just like God has for Israel. But I think even for believers, it's difficult. Like, it is. Logically, you think, to what end? Like, how long do I have to do this? Will they ever listen? Maybe not. I mean, how do we approach that as believers? It means we have to be radically biblical.

30:38 We have to make a decision up front. Am I going to follow God's word, God's promises, God's mandates, God's commands, or am I going to try to fashion my own kind of Christianity, my own designer, you know, like the back cover of Aqualung, you know? And in the beginning, man made God in his image. Right. That's what it starts at. I remember reading that. And I wasn't even a Christian. I went, ooh, that sounds blasphemous. And I wasn't even a believer. I was like, oh, I don't know if I'd go that far. But that statement of, you know, people trying to make Christianity work for them, where Christianity becomes the addendum, it comes the add-on, not the primary driver of your life, your faith life.

31:23 And so we have to make a decision. Who's going to be on the throne of my life? Me? Or am I going to put God there? And no matter what it looks like to the culture around me and the time period in which I live, I've already made my choice. I don't change my mind in the middle of the game to fit the culture. And that's what we see a lot of, because I think there are a lot of believers who haven't bought in. They haven't stepped over the line. They made an emotional decision. They heard a sermon, heard a good song, and it got their emotions moving. And in the moment, they meant it as far as their emotions, but it wasn't made, it wasn't a rational decision they made that I will follow Jesus.

32:05 I will obey God's word no matter what it costs me, no matter what it takes. Now let's talk about balance. So as a believer, so when we have these weekends and we have these conversations, these discussions, it can feel very much like that's what I'm supposed to do as a Christian. I am supposed to be blessing Israel, praying for the peace of Jerusalem. But it's not, you know what I mean? It's like it becomes the focus. Like, is that what I'm supposed to do? Is that what it's all about? Pastor Jimmy, help. It's not what it's all about. It's one spoke in the wheel. Yeah. You know, you look at a wheel, it's got like a motorcycle tire, you know, wheel. It's got a lot of spokes in it. It's one spoke of many. And so I don't go now, sow my entire life into this.

32:48 It's just a part of who I am as a follower of Jesus. You know, we don't spend, we don't preach about Israel from pulpit, but we pray for them every week. Is it an analog to how we are supposed to be towards our fellow man? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Again, the picture of Hosea marrying a prostitute and loving her no matter what. It wasn't dependent on her. It was dependent on Hosea's love. Same way with God. Same way with us. How many times do you forgive your brother who offends you, the scripture says? Seven times seven? No, seven times 77. I mean, he's given an infinite number because it's going to happen. But we already in culture don't do that. I know. That's what I do. We don't. We don't do that. We don't forgive.

33:31 There are people still so mad with their actual brothers and sisters and family because of what happened with separations during COVID, which I think is all a part of this, by the way. It all flows into some strategy there. There was some demonic stuff going down. Man, there's a lot of healing to do. A lot of healing. When we pray the Lord's Prayer, which we do that every week as well. I'm very intentional with these things. The reason we do the Lord's Prayer is because in the Lord's Prayer, it says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. But really, I actually slipped up in one of the services, I think the first one, and I said, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those, because that's how I learned it as a kid.

34:11 Old school. So it comes up. But when I'm praying that prayer for myself, I say, Father, forgive me my offenses as I forgive those who offend me. Now, who's it dependent on? Me. As I forgive them. Then you will be forgiven. Exactly. Exactly. It's conditional. We call it a covenant statement. And so it's covenantal in that I'm saying only as I forgive will I be forgiven. But that's biblical, too. So that's part of the prayer. So we do that. So we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, but I'm not going to go out and buy, you know, Star of David necklace to hang around my neck just to show everybody.

34:53 That would be pretty awesome if you had your shirt open and one of those little hairy chests. That would be pretty cool. Look like an Italian pastor. Hair, some bling, some Christian bling. Yo. Yo. That's the thing: people can get swept up just like anything. They get swept up into America, patriotism. They get swept up into now, you know, I hated Israel. I went to a seminar. Now I love Israel. And then they go nuts. We're always like over-correcting the car. Exactly right. My dad used to teach me driving because everything was rear-wheel drive growing up, right? And he teached me. He said, All right, I'm going to throw the car into a power slide. What do you do? Steer into it. You don't overcorrect.

35:35 It's how you roll a car and it's how you roll a life, too. Yeah. Well, I mean, yes, there's so much to think about and to learn from this. And I think that's kind of my takeaway: look at the analogies. Look at what you're being shown. Try, continuously try, and I fail to apply this to my own life. Actually, I find online is a really great place to do it. When someone just says something really horrible, I don't respond. I just bless them right at that moment. There it is. It's difficult because if you fail at it, we want to validate time and time and time again.

36:19 And it's like, man, there's a lot. There's a lot stacked against us in this world. There's a lot stacked against us. One of the things that you've helped me do, Adam, is not put the weight of public opinion on in the online world. I mean, the representative population of the world that's sitting there pecking out negative comments towards you and dissing on you is so infinitesimal to the world. It is. There's a good world with good people out there. And it's a smaller, much smaller population that's sitting online waiting to jump on your next statement.

37:01 I'm over that. And much of this is dead internet bots. Exactly. Bots, you know, programmed to talk back and to manipulate opinion. And that comes from governments. It comes from corporations, comes from stock traders. Somebody that has an agenda. You'd be amazed how. I want to live with no agenda. Let me just say that. It's a great life. It's the international lifestyle. It's peaceful when you succeed at when you can step back and pause. I mean, I get crap all the time online, and I just go, whatever. Oh, you just identified yourself. All right, I bless that. I pray for you by name. Thanks for giving me your name or your handle, whatever.

37:45 We got so many great emails and feedback coming in. Now, we got a note from Holly. She's in France right now. Yeah. Yeah. She's traveling, riding her bicycle all over. Holly, our Holly, who sings here. Yes. And she's like, I already miss the church family. I love it. And we miss her. We do. And as she said, I've only been gone for four days, already missing my church family. This episode, so that was 40, I guess, was exactly what I needed. And I loved hearing this so much. I know. You know, because this podcast to me is, that's the impact. That's success. I've had so many projects in my life where it had to be numbers. What's the number?

38:28 What's the download? What's the size? What's the rating? What's the this? What's the that? And even my devotional this morning, my goodness, I should have brought that with me. It was talking about this very thing about how God is not impressed by big numbers, and he will not bless based upon the numbers. You know, it's just not important. And man, once you get yourself through that, life changes so much. It's like, oh, I look at things quite differently now. I really do. It's so good. So good. Here's one that I think I mentioned to you the other day. We got a note from Aaron Newberry, and he's in Colorado.

39:11 And he had heard us talking about Victor Marx. And he said, Marks is running for governor of Colorado. I think he actually won the primary. He's for the Republican Party. I'm a Christian. he says. I just have this leery feeling about him. I'm not sure what it is. I've been praying about it. Maybe it's just me and my paranoia. And he would love to know our thoughts about Victor Marx. So I'm going to toss that right into your court there, bro. And then you'll land on that because he had some great ministry in your direction as well. So, yeah, Victor Marx is a solid, solid, strong conservative believer, follower of Jesus, committed to his family to the core.

39:56 And his wife is a rock star. Yes. He's one of those that when he preaches, he looks over at her and bounces things off of her mid-message. He did that. So we hosted Victor Marx in our church. And I just, I felt like I met a brother from another mother as we got to know each other. And we had a lot of conversations. We're about close to the same age. So we had a lot of conversations about physical fitness because we're both, you know, we're trying to steward our bodies, you know, and go for the long game. But what I appreciated was his heart, his heart to protect the broken because his testimony. And whoever wonders about Victor Marx should go back and look for his testimony online.

40:35 It's going to be on YouTube. There's videos. There's a little documentary about it. And realize what this man came from, kind of like a J.D. Vance who was just very abused, very neglected as a child, extremely abused, really. Yeah, raised in poverty, and yet overcame that to become a world changer, you know, somebody who's going to make a difference in the world. And that's Victor Marx. That's his heart. His heart really is for protecting the innocent. Yes. Much of his later in-life ministry has been directed towards rescuing children from trafficking, sex trafficking, slave trafficking. And they do that in some of the most dark and dangerous parts of the world.

41:20 And so when he came here, and so I'll just add my two cents here. And I've been trying to think about this question because I can see how he looks, how he may portray himself, how an Instagram post looks, words that he might use. He's certainly not refined necessarily in his speech. I can see how that can be, can come across as, hmm, you know, what was the term that he used here? That was an interesting term, leery feeling. That's a lot of that is just programming that's been hammered into us from media and entertainment. But if you look at his heart, and what happened to me with Victor is I never met him. He didn't know who I was.

42:03 He had no idea of my background. He said, I need to speak with you. Did we talk about this on the show at some point? No, no, not this one. And he brought me down to Patriot Academy where he was staying. And he said, I need to talk to you. I need to, what is the term that I'm looking for? Is it like a deliverance? Yeah, yeah, it's freedom ministry, but it's something prayer. Retool. Yes. He says, I do this with special forces. I've done this with CEOs. I think he said a president or two. I'm going to do this to you because I don't know, but you need this. And he just went to town praying over me and helped me identify the actual

42:46 evil that surrounds me and that, you know, that is somehow connected. And this can be from childhood and years, but it's an actual kind of a physical thing that you can't see. And it was so powerful that at a certain point, as he's telling these entities to leave me, I don't want anyone to think that this was like crazy voodoo woo-woo stuff. Your head didn't spin around. You know, no piece of anything, right? But the lights in the entire power in the Patriot Academy went out, which doesn't happen at the Patriot Academy. Yeah, right when we're in the middle of the day. Right when he's in the middle of this prayer. And to this day, that retooling that he's done, I repeat it every single day on my prayer walk because it protects me.

43:32 And I know, you know, like you may just say, not today, Satan. You have no power here. You have no authority over my family. You're weak. This has already been, you know, been fought. And so I add to that, get out of my light, you Kujo. That's the name I gave it. And, you know, all you can do is kneel down at the throne of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, whose blood was shed on the cross for us. We're protected. We're covered. And this goes for my family, for my wife, for my dog, for my friends, for our daughters, and for my sisters and their families. And I got to tell you, it takes my starts my day off good. It really does. And I feel powerful. So that's the Victor Marx that you and I know. And so we've been following his campaign.

44:14 You know, certainly when you got a guy like this, a lot of people come out of the woodwork and try to discredit him. And and knock him down. That so far that has not worked. And Colorado is definitely the state has changed throughout the years. So he's got quite a run ahead of him. But yeah, I endorse him. I would just say that. I really endorse what he's doing. And he's another man who's not a politician. This part of the value. We've got people that are grassroots beginning to say, all right, Donald Trump wasn't a politician, and he's holding the highest office in the land. So maybe I can make a difference. Funny how that's kind of where our founding fathers came from. Interesting enough. They were like 20-year-olds. They were farmers, farmers,

44:58 printer, ironsmiths, exactly. Exactly. Normal, regular people. I just want to congratulate code name Pete. Remember, we talked about Pete who was suffering for alcoholism. And I went back and forth with him. And I wanted to share this because I'm so proud of his bravery because he knew he had to go through. He had to go through a detox, and he was trying to white knuckle this stuff. I said, Brother, I recommend AA because they have a faith-based program. I've seen it work. It's literally saved dear friends of mine. And he was very afraid to tell his wife about it.

45:36 And I said, Ma'am, you got it. You got to talk to your wife. This is your partner. If she's a Proverbs 31 wife, she will be there for you and she will see it through with you. And he did. And he's going into the program, is doing the detox. Fantastic. And I said, that probably takes more courage than the actual detox part. Absolutely true. So I was just so proud that he did that. Yeah, that's great. And I look forward to hearing from him again as he goes through this journey. Wow. I've got a friend. Can I share a please moment from Rhett Rogers? Rhett Rogers is one of the carnivore brothers. Yeah, you know, I'm connected to the carnivore community.

46:16 In fact, I'm doing a couple of premieres and I want to hear about that. Alice in Austin. Talk about Rhett first. I want to hear about that. So Rhett's fantastic. He's just become a dear brother in the Lord. That's the thing that was interesting is when I didn't actually step into this space, I got pulled into it. And turns out there's a ton of people that are in that world, the health and fitness world, that are Christians. They're just trying to steward their life, steward their body, the physical side. So I met Rhett at several different meetups. M-E-A-T. Meetups. Yeah, exactly. And so he wrote, he said, hello, Pastor Jimmy. This is Rhett Rogers. We met in Austin and Tennessee. Just had to message you today. I hope you don't mind. I was having a terrible day.

46:57 One of those no good, very bad, terrible, I'm going to go eat worms kind of days. Eat worms. At least he's staying carnivore. I got in my car after work and I was angry. I couldn't get let go. So before I drove off, I said a quick prayer. Lord, I don't know why I'm so angry. I love you. Please take this from me. I started to drive. I remembered I missed your podcast from yesterday. This would be last week. Had 51 minutes on my commute, and your episode was 51 minutes. Wow. Exactly. I just felt a warm hug from this experience. Wanted to share with you. Absolutely love what you do and want you to know you are encouraging and blessing people all the way in Washington State. I don't miss an episode, though. Sometimes I'm late. In this case, the timing was perfect. God bless you, my friend.

47:40 We get to do this. And I thank you and Adam again for all you do. Sorry for the book. I love that. You know, that's what it's about, though, is we want to help people. That is the bottom line. This is not, we're not selling something. This isn't MLM. You know, we're not multi-level marketing anything. It's just we want to get good news into people's lives. Yeah. In the world that's the internet world, that's got a lot of bad news. Yeah, I think we're a balance. I like to think of us as a balance to what else is out there. Yeah, like a counterbalance. A counterbalance. I wrote something down. I don't know why.

48:20 I'm just going to bring it up here today. I heard someone say, busy is a burden under Satan's yoke. The tyranny of the urgent as a counterfeit. Surrender brings you into the Lord's boot camp of belief. And I just wrote these things down. And for me, it's like every day I have to remind myself, like when you get to the angry, I want to eat worms part, I'm not in control. I'm just, it's the best thing I've learned in the past, you know, almost four years. I'm not in control. And Lord, just help me. Man, Tina and I have gotten really good at this now.

49:03 Like something happens and stop, pray. We're not in control. Lord, it's your control. That's usually after the initial spin-up. Because we all get real good at that. It's quicker. Like the time's shorter and shorter. Yes, compresses. And your recovery time's quicker. Oh, you can see it right away. And it's in our faces. I love that. Oh, wow. You're right. You know, this is the enemy. Let's look at this from this angle. Wow. It's so good. It's so good. It doesn't mean that crap doesn't happen because it does. But yeah, I think the recovery. I mean, that's so good when it's like 15 seconds instead of 15 hours.

49:45 Yeah, a day and a half. I was thinking day and a half. Easily. That was our joke when Annette and I were young, married. You know, okay, if she was mad at me, you know, we'd have the conversation, but it's still going to be a day and a half of coldness, you know, cold atmosphere. Feel bad. Right, right. Pit in your stomach. Yeah. Yeah. Awkward conversations. You're tiptoeing. Pretending to be really nice to each other. Like, I know what's going on. But that's the beauty of building your life on a solid foundation. Amen. Faith. Amen. And I brought this in here on purpose. This is my reminder. Yeah, I saw it. So, what it is, I've got sitting on the table in front of Adam and I is the national monument to the Forefathers. I don't have the actual one. It's 81 feet high. This one's a foot, maybe.

50:29 It's good. We were there in Massachusetts. We went to see it. But I've got a replica of it. And what I love about this, I keep it on my desk. I put it on my desk now. I used to have it over on a table, but I actually want it in front of me all day long to remind me of this initial piece. And that's faith. The top of that monument is a female, and she's holding her finger up in the air. And she's called Faith, and she's holding a Geneva Bible. Yes. One of the original Bibles that was brought over on the Mayflower, actually. And then you've got the four foundations that support faith. One is liberty. The other one is morality. The other one is law. And the other one is education.

51:09 And all of these work together to support and create a foundation that you can build a life on, but that we also built our nation on. And so to go forward, sometimes you need to look back. You need to remember your foundations. Remember your founding fathers and mothers, you know, both now for me, not only nationally, but also spiritually. I mean, you touched down on the numbers. You got the whole runway. You got a perfect three-point landing, brother. All right, everybody. We'll be back next week, and we look forward to it because we get to do this. Have a great week. This is the life we've been blessed with.

51:51 This is a gift we get to do this. This is a chance we dare not miss. This is the life we get to do this.