The Megachurch Scam & Nonprofit Loophole: How Celebrity Pastors Exploit the Bible to Get Filthy Rich

>> Thanks for coming back. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Maybe you can help solve a mystery.

So I've always known that different people

have different views on Israel. I've never been upset about it. Post-gаз that I'm rethinking about. If all those views are legitimate, but I know that decent people have different views on Israel.

Totally fine. And that includes Christians. And but in the past year, it does seem that for some Christian leaders, I'm going to call anyone out by name,

“but Israel's the only thing that matters.”

So they'll approach fellow Christians with one question in mind, where does this person stand on the government of Israel? And so it occupies a much greater percentage of mental disk space than I ever imagined, certainly than it does for me.

So what is that? >> Well, it's the old covenant. You know, I would raise just not the nominal Christian in large-scale churches, and we were pro Israel.

>> Yes, it's just a consistent deal when you look at it.

I'm always going to go back to Scripture.

So I'm always going to use the Bible to reference my perspective in what I think is going on. >> Yes. >> The nation's state of Israel has just become an idol to the church in regards to how they,

not all of them, but how they some of them perceive it, and you have to ask why. And so we've done a little digging in regards to some far-of-fileings and others. And when you look at the old covenant in the Bible,

it's one of those spots or parts of the covenant that you can weaponize.

“Israel's one of them giving in generosity,”

tithing is one of them. And when Christ came, he came to fulfill that old covenant, that whole contract, a new covenant, it's literally a new covenant. So that old covenant is complete.

Done, fulfilled. Put on the shelf, a new contract is in place, and that's Christ contract, Christ covenant. And if you're a Bible-believing Christian, but what that new covenant does is it takes the teeth

out of the old covenant, the old contracts. You know, that mosaic law. But people like to lean on that contract in that law, because you can weaponize it. You can build empires again and build power structures

around basically double dipping in covenant. So you can take some things that Jesus said, grab a couple of things from the old covenant and mash them together, and you have just a different fit.

You have Judeo-Christianity and not Judaism. You have Judeo-Christianity. It's like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Exactly, it's neither or it's so Israel. The nation's state has become one of those cards

that you can pull and say, hey, if you don't back the nation's state, then you clearly don't believe this book or that God is our God.

And so I'll always push back,

I consider myself kind of an auditor in this regard. So I wanted to audit the nation's state of Israel and say, what is it exactly scripture? So that is, boy, it's jarring to hear you put it so plainly, but that is really what they're saying.

If you don't support the Netanyahu government, you're not a Christian. Yeah, I've heard it. I've heard that and some like the dimmer ones, like Huckabee just say it out loud,

but that's the assumption behind a lot of it. Well, and if my fellow brothers and sisters and Christ haven't read the book, and it's entirety, then they'll take what Huckabee or what their potential pastor says from the stage

as scripturally sound.

“And so that's what I've had a great time doing.”

- Yes, I mean, yeah, I've read the book, by the way, more than once, but I didn't need to read it to know that Jesus is probably not endorsing killing the innocent, killing kids. - Well, I would say there's even a naive,

I would say there's a strategic ignorance around that, right? Like in season one of the religion business, a development economist breaks down what strategic ignorance is. And we, as humans, want to stay strategically

ignorant of things that push against us. - Yeah. - That's what I've been there. - Yeah, and so if I, and so that's the thing is as we grow and hopefully mature,

we look at the surroundings and say, "Okay, what is truth and what is not truth?" - Yes. - And a really simple truth is the nation state of Israel is not the ethnic tribe that's described in the Torah.

And so if that's our baseline, then, okay, now we can reshape our, we can look at what's truth and not truth and see where people are leveraging that card or weaponizing that card for their own gain. - But you would think, again, even if you're not familiar

with the details of that book, you haven't read the older New Testaments, you would sort of intuit, you would sense that Jesus is not in favor of, say, like, genocide. - Correct, I would hope.

But there's always a counter argument, like in these far documents, you know, literally the foreign agent is real minister of foreign affairs. - So I keep stepping up. So what are those documents?

So you're basically saying, in order to understand this, you look not just at the theology, but at the money. - Correct, at the money, because, so, okay, yes, I think most people would say genocide and Gaza is wrong, right?

which is well, there's bad things, there's evil inside Gaza that needs to be removed, right? And so that's where this far-adocuments, this interesting is because you can see the nation state weaponizing the American church

to sway their opinion to say, "Hey, you know what? "No, the genocide is rationalized "and we're not gonna call it genocide "because of X, Y, and Z."

“So that's what this document just shows.”

It shows that millions of dollars came from the nation state of Israel to sway massive mega churches in America or at least the pastors, because when you can sway the pastor,

the pastor can sway their congregation. So how does it work? How does it, in regards to the system? - Yeah, this is one of the fair, I mean foreign registration act.

- Correct, what are those documents show? - So this one shows, in particular,

basically, we'll call it like a marketing effort.

And ironically, this is fun, there's multiple pages of just hundreds of churches on the west coast that have very large audiences. And what it is is it's a marketing effort, it's a geo-fensing effort.

So if you go to your church and you walk into that building, there is a digital geo-fence, and if you ping your phone, that geo-fence is triggered, and what that means is, they're gonna get your phones IP address, they're gonna start sending you messages

and sending you advertising that's pro Israel and anti-Palestine for lack of a, and it says all this in the documents.

“And so ironically, this is what I called my dad this morning”

'cause I was like, "Hey, what church did we go to "when we were kids and sure enough, "the churches, the two churches I went to, "from the day I was born to 21 years old "or on that list."

And so that means how I walked into those churches, I could have potentially been geo-fenced, and then they would have tracked my phone, and they could ping me pro, pro-nation state is real material.

And so this effort is funded by Israel, by the nation state of Israel. - And is it, when you say funded, like, does money float to the church? - Does the church know that it's,

we can't congregations being geo-fenced? - No, not necessarily. So that's where it gets dark, is the church doesn't even know that they're being targeted. And so it's like, it's like a subversive targeting.

- This is a foreign government doing this to our churches here. - Correct. A great example would be like, "Hey, if my kids are in college "and the Chinese, the Iranian government

"was doing this to us." - China, Russia, Iran. - And what I'ms if they were targeting our universities, we would be up in arms. So we have a foreign government targeting our churches.

And then at the same time, they also are targeting the pastors, wanting them to come over to Israel in the nation state. They walk through, you know, the, you know, they give them tours of the historical sites,

which is awesome. But they're leveraging the Old Testament

in these historical sites to basically

calcify the nation state and say, "Oh, what we're doing is biblical "and what Palestine and these evil, "these other evil people are doing these to be wiped out." Like a great, like, there's some,

I highlighted it some of it for you in this document, but it's wild. Once you get past the list of hundreds of churches, it's such a long document. But so a Christian ready show, show faith by works,

a Christian education and Israeli information campaign. The goal is to combat low American evangelical Christian approval of the nation state of Israel. It says it right there. So this entire goal to geo-fence your church

is to combat your low approval rating of a nation state. Well, maybe we should question like, why is there a low approval rating? Are you committing genocide? Like that might be a reason why the low--

- That then does affect approval rating. - 100%. And so the messaging that we are gonna use inside this geo-fence, it's all pro-Israel and then anti-Palestinian state. And they list the messaging that they're gonna,

that they're gonna hit the answer. - That's right, palestinian state. - Yep, the first is, of course, Hamas is a palestinian terrorist organization.

There was never a state of Palestine at any time in history.

So these are the bullet points that you're gonna see on your phones from this campaign. And then you can just keep going. There's a pastoral and education resources so they're gonna give pastors educational resources

that's pro-Nation State Israel and anti-Palestin. They're gonna go to college and Christian college universities and do the same thing. And you can just go through it. So this was millions of dollars was spent on this campaign.

And this is my favorite one. Ready, they proudly in their digital support effort. This is the largest geo-fencing and Christian targeting campaign in U.S. history.

“That's what they call it in their own documentation.”

We're targeting Christians. And this is the largest targeting of Christians ever. And then they go to Christian events and this is the funny one for me, if you know Greg Lowry, but his church is harvest in Riverside.

And he puts on these big festivals.

'cause he ran orphanage, his church ran orphanages in, in where was it? Man, it's in the show in Eastern Europe and one of the pastors there allegedly raped in Sodomized hundreds, potentially hundreds of orphans there.

And Greg Lowry knew about it. They sent a team over and he did nothing about it 'cause it was such a big revenue generator. And he's one of the, he's actually, he's ironically, hopefully their main spokesperson,

they've got a photo of him in their deck too. Saying we want Greg Lowry to be the face of this. Seriously? Yeah. So millions of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs

spends millions of dollars geo-fencing our churches for pro-Israeli, pro-Nation State israeli propaganda. And if your pastor's behind it, then hey, your pastor's gonna say this. It's just hard to believe.

You know, there's this line in Mark 13,

“I think where Jesus is saying to the Pharisees,”

he's like, we're saying to others, religious leaders are in trouble 'cause they wander around in their long-flowing robes, they get respect from everyone in the marketplace, but they're actually cheating widows out of their property.

And you read that and you're like, would it religiously really cheat a widow out of her property? Like, that's just crazy. Only in first century Palestine 'cause that ever happened.

(laughing) Like, it's just amazing. It's just hard to believe a religious person would do that. Well, there's religious organizations that are registered at churches

that literally buy out permanent life insurance policies from elderly people that need money for pennies on the dollar. Actually, actually, yeah. Part of their business model as a church

is to basically go up to a widow or elderly couple that's struggling and say, you know what,

“we're just gonna buy your permanent life insurance policy”

that you've been paying down for 40 years for pennies on the dollar 'cause you need money. There's one that's built.

I was told a $700 million war chest

based came off of that. They have $700 million sitting in the bank, off of buying out elderly people's permanent life insurance policies. So they are, and my translation reads devouring widows houses and they're devouring houses in the name of Jesus.

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Registered in my hometown, San Diego, California. But the name of the foreign principle is real ministry of foreign affairs, right on the cover, page one. How many pastors know that there's an effort like this behind their views on Israel?

I'm going to say strategic ignorance.

“I think they just see it as gossip online.”

They don't want to get involved. This is a hot button topic for my family, because I have family that are retired pastors or my uncle's a missionary in Kiev. Like I'm very, very close to this.

So they don't believe that money is actually coming

“from a foreign government to influence the opinions of their.”

Correct. Well, and if I even put this in front of them, they'd point to the book and say what? And they'd say Nathan, like Israel bless Israel and you'll be blessed. Does it say that? No, no, no, no.

And we went through that we had a whole conversation. I just love that. Yeah, we had a great conversation about this earlier. It's this idea. And since our last conversation, when we were talking about it

is finished when Christ says it's finished on the cross, I just went down a full rabbit hole in regards to digesting that old covenant versus new covenant concept. And there is no way, scripturally, you can double dip in both the old covenant

and the new covenant in the Bible. If you are a Christ following Christian,

that old covenant, that old contract is fulfilled and done.

Yes. We don't look backwards. There's a great analogy that I was, I mean, what the curtain in the temple is rent. Yes, let me know if this is a good analogy if I'm way off base.

But like, I'm a laborer, right? And I need a job and you're like, hey Nathan, here's the contract. If you mow my lawns, cut my trees and clean my pool, like we're good, I'll pay you at the end of the day.

So that day I show up. I mow your lawn, I cut your trees to exactly how you want it. I clean the pool and you're like, here's your payment Nathan and I go on. And I'm like, I fulfilled my contract with Tucker.

And I'm going to go to the next house, right? But instead, I wake up the next morning. I go, you know what, I'm going to go back to Tucker's house. And I'm just going to start doing stuff. Cut the trees, mow the lawn again, even though it's already done.

And he's not going to pay me. Because I fulfilled the contract with you. I'm supposed to look forward and move on to the new contract. But this is what churches are doing. They're like, I don't know, we're going to come back

to this old one and play in it. Because we like some of the things in here. We like to cherry-pick parts of the old covenant because it justifies our current model. The tithe justifies how we can fund the business, right?

Israel justifies how we can drum up attention for this idea of old tribal Israel. But we're just grasping at straws, if that makes sense. Because Christ's message in his new covenant is a, it's an unconditional but very unknown.

You march into the unknown in his covenant.

“You have to have full faith in him in the Holy Spirit.”

Legalistic covenants just, they're easy to understand, right? You give me 10% or 23.3% based off of Old Testament tithe laws and you're good, right? You're done, Tucker. Go on your way.

But Christ has not even known you have the capacity and the knowledge to give. What does your heart tell you? Yes. So it means you have to stand up and lead, right?

And Hebrews, it talks about you are your own priest. Now, like there's no mediator between the Holy of Holy's and the Outer Courts. Like you, Christ is that mediator and you walk straight through into the Holy of Holy's.

But that means you have to stand up and understand it and take responsibility and be that priest. But so if you're that priest, what does it mean? You don't need the institution anymore. The model, you don't need to sit in that pew, right?

Like you have, you have Christ, you have his word, his love else, like his in you, on your heart in mind. So you got to lead, Tucker. You got to lead like Christ. That's a dangerous man or woman to be walking around

in any community or any government because, hey, this architecture, this legal architecture of America doesn't hold me in, this, this does, this book does. And so we've, we've knee-capped Christianity and we've put it on a shelf and we've consumerized,

consumerized, we've, you know, we've turned it into a consumer product and now we just have a bunch of knee-capped Christians who walk it around, giving their 10% if that to a church, to an institution that is not publicly sound.

And then we can support nation state of Israel and say, hey, I'm a Bible believing Christian

“when at the end of the day, like, no, I believe in what we've”

built, I believe in the institution we've built, but I don't necessarily believe this book. Well, that's a wrong turn if you arrive at that conclusion.

So how, I mean, I always want to assume that people are

employing what you called strategic ignorance. They, they don't know because they don't want to know and therefore they're not honestly quite as guilty as someone who knows and does it anyway. But given that, how big is the economy around this question,

like I noticed all these pastors going to Israel and these trips, I've known a lot of them who do that, is that all paid for by donors or the government? Yeah, there's an estimated-- I mean, I want to make sure I pronounce the name right.

It is. Where is it? S.J. something. It's about 320 million a year. It's dumped into this bucket to get pastors overseas.

Oh, there we go. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews

And what that does is it.

“So let's, let's dice that name for a second, right?”

International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

OK, 315 isch million goes into that pool every year.

You'd think it's to educate people on the historical sites, right? I'm a Christian. I'd love to see. Yeah, you know, all of these beautiful historical sites. I've been to Rome and hunched down in the prison where Paul was held.

Like, you get to experience this stuff. And you're like, wow, this is real. Like, it happened. I can see Paul's journey. And I can see the hill Christ died on.

And it's real powerful. But that 315 million is going to border security. It's going to ambulances inside Israel. It's going to border security. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. That's really border security? Yeah. So it says it on their website. This is where this money goes.

“So when you think about this, this isn't an international fellowship of Jews and Christians.”

Because if it was an international fellowship of Jews and Christians, you'd care about the Christians and Gaza. Of course. Care about the Christians and Lebanon. You'd care, you know, you'd care about these Christians in these other parts of this

region. Just being were being literate. Tilt by the government. Yeah. But so what this is, it's actually a fund that's just calcifying the nation's state

of Israel and utilizing the historical sites as the rationale for this fund. But the money is going to the ongoing operations of the government of Israel. Part of it. Yeah. And then what you're doing is you're bringing pastors over and saying, look at all these

beautiful historical sites. Does that make sense? So you're taking the faith and you're using the faith as the as the cookie so to speak or the carrot to explain the nation's state of Israel in their actions. And you're using Christian donor money.

That's 315 million of from Christians, individual Christians that are giving generously to this

“fund with strategically ignorance with their ignorance, you know, with their, what does the”

Bible talk about scales on the ice, right? So you can't see through your scales. But what you're actually funding is parts of this war mechanism. It's just like the LDS Church and their investments in, you know, defense companies. Southern Baptist Convention, same thing, guidestone is heavily invested in weaponry of war.

Are you serious? Yeah. So we've, we've created machines, we've created this, this Christian machine, this apparatus that funds what we think ignorantly is good intentioned international fellowship of Christians and Jews.

But no, what it's doing is it's calcifying a nation state that, that is bombing Christians in other parts of that region, killing them and they're justifying it. And this money is going to those efforts, part of part of that money is going to those efforts is absolutely crazy. Christians ought to be safe in the holy land of all places, but they are not.

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That's a great deal. Cool. We're saying that. Stift on Warringst, computer-based, focus-mani-chip, finance-tape, such a thing. Mega.

But that's not believed. No. A kind of photo of the low-stuyer is done. It's very good. It's very good.

Hold your money, too. With this, very good. How many people who are involved in this now?

Yeah.

I don't think any of them would rationally sit here and say, "Oh, I know about that."

No, no. We want to get our pastor over to Israel to experience the historical sites, Nathan. Okay? Cool. That's not bad, right?

But what you don't realize is you're funding security on the border. You're funding, which I think is great.

“Ambulances when a bomb comes over in Israel, but you should also be funding ambulances when a bomb goes into Gaza.”

If that's your mission. Yeah. You certainly shouldn't be funding bombs into Gaza. Correct. Which is what in effect you're doing because you're freeing up those resources.

Wow. That is really. So now there is, in part thanks to your efforts, unawareness of a lot of this in a way that there wasn't a couple of years ago. There are a lot of people, including the fair report said it.

There are a lot of evangelicals who are skeptical suddenly about whether it's a good idea to support Israel. What are pastors like this are they getting pushed back, like what's their experience? They're kind of, a lot of these paths. So this far dock, a lot of these churches are mega churches.

They went after the, they, they geo fence the big boys, right? Because big, like if, if you geo fence a small rural church in Pennsylvania that has 75 members, what's the point of that? No. Right.

I wanted geo fence the church that has 75 hundred members, 10,000 members. Right. These guys are already big influencers in regards to their church, and then regards to the social media sphere. So they just like calcified together.

You know, you have, you have groups of them now just come going on podcasts sitting doing the same thing. We are. Is that true? Oh yeah.

Defending these positions. Yeah. Yeah. His name is Jack Hibbs. He was on a podcast the other day.

And he said, you know, Israel was created it created in a day. And there's prophetic words in the Bible. Yeah. One of they signed the documents in a day. But the nation state of Israel was decades in coming.

And so it does that make sense. They just take, they'll take a scripture out of context in a play it to the nation state. And then everybody will take that same sound bite similar to what I said with you last that Christianity is more of a socialist construct than a capitalist construct. Everybody goes up.

Nathan's a socialist. Tucker at a socialist on. He's a communist. Same thing. You take three or four words.

And you can create whatever, you know, whatever conversation you wanted to say. So you're not a socialist. I am not a socialist. No. Yeah.

But it's all part of the propaganda machine. I mean, they don't. For sure. Right. So, but like someone like Jack Hibbs or not, you know, to call him out by name.

But he deserves it. But, sorry. Excuse me. Trying to stay Christian. Did he get any pushback or do you or another way it asks would be, do pastors like that

have growing churches or shrinking churches?

“Like is this, is Christian Zionism in retreat or is it expanding?”

I can't speak empirically on that. Yeah. But I would say it's retreating from from just my, my sphere of influence. You know, a lot of these churches now are, are their congregation shrinking in the have these huge buildings.

So what they're doing is they're putting up curtains about halfway through the pews and, and they shove everybody to the front. So people can't sit in the back anymore. So they're starting to stack their churches if that makes sense. They look full, but they're really at 20, 30% capacity.

Really. And then what they do a lot of them do is on their social programs. Like we have, we have a solid online presence.

We will never delete a comment.

We will never block someone unless they're actually threatening someone. But what these guys do a lot of times is they'll curate their comments. So they'll block us or block our followers and just delete any comment that has a negative, you know, negative pushback on what they're saying. And so when you go on on some of these pastors Instagrams, it's just nothing but

hearts and loves and you're 100% accurate pastor, lovely, lovely. But it's because they've just curated the content. And so Christianity, institutional Christianity and these big organizations is just a curated business set on top of the gospel. And so when I look at there, especially Jack Hibbs and these other guys who are very

prozynist in regards to their agenda, most of their comments are just curated. And so that that always makes me smile because it just Jack Hibbs have a congregation.

“Is there like a church where he's preaching every Sunday?”

Yeah, yeah, he's a preacher. Yeah. And is it a growing church, you know? I honestly, I haven't done much research on Jack Hibbs. I just smile whenever I see his social content.

There's a lot of pastors out here, Tucker, there's 400,000 churches in the US. And so, unfortunately, I can't, we can't look at them all. But what we're trying to do is we're looking at patterns, right? We're recently someone sent me a book in the book.

They defined my character type and yours is an auditor, basically.

Like you guys are here to audit the systems we've built, whether that be our government, whether that be our religious institutions.

So in Christianity, what part of the machine that we've built the tradition isn't aligning with Scripture?

And the nation state is one of those. You know, tie this one of those running organizations with no external accountability where millions funnels in is one of those. None of that is inherently biblical or Christlike, right? Hiving is not scriptural.

Tithing is not scriptural for a modern day Christian. Huh? Yeah. So where does the notion come from? It's actually only flaired back in the last couple hundred years.

So Tithing was not a thing. You can go through the history of Christianity from Christ, from Christ on, and Christians weren't tithing. And Tith literally means a tenth. Translates to a tenth.

And so most not all, but a lot of churches today

“and pastors today present that hey, you need to tithe.”

Give us 10% of your revenue because the Bible says to tithe. Well, the Old Testament, the Mosaic laws say to tithe. But what's funny is there's not one tithe in the Old Testament. There's three. So if a tenth, me or if tithe means a tenth,

technically you're supposed to be paying three tenths.

Now the difference is the third tithe was only once every three years.

So there's three tithes. So if you're a pastor out there preaching tithe, you need to be preaching twenty three point three percent from your congregation. Not ten percent. If you want to lean on the biblical tithe. But so when you look at the tithe laws,

Israel of the Bible is a theocracy. So those tithes were actually a form of taxation. It's what can stop government and religion. It was fine. Today we're not a theocracy.

We're a democratic republic. So what the church is done is the recent church, the modern church in the last couple hundred years

“is they needed to figure out a revenue stream.”

So I'll get, I'll say with good intentions, these pastors look to the Old covenant, the Old Testament and said, hey, like the Levites were asking for ten percent or demanding ten percent based off the Mosaic law.

So we should ask for ten percent. And it baked in this legalistic demand from your congregation. And then hey, if you don't tithe, Tucker to me, your bad boy, the Bible says to tithe.

But when you look at the New Testament, remember Paul was a Pharisees Pharisee. Yeah. He was the man who knew the law better than anybody. So Paul wrote a book of the modern New Testament.

So if Paul expected you to tithe, you better believe he would have said in his epistles, hey Tucker, you're going to tithe to your body and then we're going to distribute it.

He didn't say that.

Christ never said that. Instead, it was free will

generosity. So Tucker, you're going to give from the desire and passion of your heart. And you're not going to know what your left hand is doing or your right hand is doing because we don't want you to basically build systems on top of this generosity.

And the crazy part about the New Testament generosity is when these early churches would pull resources, it would always go to poorer gatherings to poorer communities. They weren't insulating themselves in building corporations. They were just distributing it wherever there was a need.

And so what the tithe has done is in the last 200 years is it's given a fixed revenue stream to an institution to a tradition we've built on top of Christ. And now that we've been taught, I was taught tithing from childhood. Now that we've been taught this tithing model,

they can't, it'd be really bad for them to go, hey, actually the tithe really isn't, isn't biblically accurate. We need you just to be generous. And here, this is a fun one. Or it's not fun, it's very sad.

Someone sent me this. And it's a slip that a child brought home.

“And so this was going to a, he was, I think,”

the child was between 10 or 14 years old. And this is what they were taught in their youth group. My commitment, I am expanding my generosity to multiply by committing to the following over the next year. So tucker, you're a 12 year old boy, ready?

You're going to tithe tucker, 10% from your allowance. Those are on the sheet, ready? You're going to give a percentage of your birthday money or Christmas money to the church. You're going to earn money, yard work, etc.

And specifically, you're going to do that for multiplication. Here's the other, ready? You're going to sell some of your electronics. You're going to take clothes to a resale shop. And you're going to give a portion of your savings to the church.

This went to a little kid. And at the bottom, you're going to add it all up and tell this church what your total commitment is. In writing. In writing.

That went to a child. That is wild. Where is any of that scriptural?

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We have the Dragon and Wicked. And it's up north by Euro at the 90th Monat. It's streaming, but not me so well. So, what do the churches do with the money? Well, they'll say they give some of it away,

but statistically based off the financial, but the financial data about 70% just goes to buildings and salaries. And less than six cents of every dollar ever leaves the institutional walls now. And so, what we've built is just traditions.

Like, it takes me back to the story of Christ in the temple.

“You know, when he's whipping and he said,”

"You've turned my father's house into a robber's den." We've built institutions on top of the teachings of Christ. And that institution now is so hungry financially that it just pulls all resources in to the point where you're telling kids to sell their electronics and give us the money.

Hey, actually, no, take your clothes to a thrift store and then bring us that money. Hey, give a portion of your savings to us as well. Like, you're in a man. You're indoctrinating a child into this thinking.

And none of that is in the New Testament. Well, Jesus doesn't say sell everything you have and give it to the church. He's not giving it to the poor. Poor.

Correct. So, what we've done is we've just built businesses, unaccountable, non-transparent businesses, on the top of Christ, and on the top of the Scriptures. And when you look at what the church was in America,

the church was actually the institution that pushed back against government encroachment. It pushed back against human greed. And it did rightfully so. It was the community.

It was like the community think tank for lack of a better term. And this is, we'll go to the socialist comment, right? So I said last time, Christianity is more socialist than capitalistic. America is our economy is built on capitalism. A great social concept because it lifts people in nations out of poverty.

But there is that marginalized that's left behind. Christianity is in that marginalized.

“That's why we pull our resources and give to the poor.”

And so Christianity is not about ownership. Christianity is not about growth and profits at all costs. Christianity is the opposite. And so Christianity is the hard line against power and against authority. But what's happened is we've taken those structures.

Those capitalistic structures and brought it into the church. And brought it into an institution that is antithetical to that. And so now the institutional church has been co-opted by the very mechanisms that's supposed to push against all the name of Christ. So I bring more money.

And it's been co-opted by the politics now too. And so the church, the beautiful body of Christ, is now an MLM multi-level marketing scheme for lack of a better term. It's a franchise. And you can see it play out.

A lot of, as denominations die, evangelical non-denominational churches are flourishing. And so what's happening is now they're building satellite campuses. So it's like we're going to build as many campuses as possible. We're going to get you guys to turn in burns. So you're going to come in.

You have an hour and a half grab a coffee. Grab a donut. We're going to sing some emotional songs. We're going to give you some a couple of scripture verses. And then get out.

We got to do it again. And so we franchiseed faith.

I feel we franchised it in like a fast food way. Right, it's like the cheapest, fastest, quickest way to turn and burn this thing. And so what we've done is we've commoditized Christianity when it wasn't supposed to be commoditized. And now we've tribalized them too. Now we're either right or left.

So now you can see the politics grabbing onto it and weaponizing it as well. Are the most churches pretty open about their politics now? Oh, very. Yeah, really. Yeah, very.

Well, the Johnson amendment was supposed to like keep that at bay, but Trump basically wiped the Johnson amendment out.

What was the Johnson amendment? The Johnson amendment was you couldn't. I don't have the exact language, but you couldn't advocate for specific candidates from the pulpit. Yes. And so and you'd get in trouble.

You could potentially lose your tactics and status if you did that. Well, Trump basically wiped that out. So what's happened is you literally have pastors from the pulpit.

“And I've been to these churches saying exactly who you should vote for because there's no fear anymore about losing your tactics.”

I'm status. So the church, not all churches, but many churches where the right or left are just champions for tribal party political parties at this point. And like you'll be hard pressed to go. Actually, I would love anybody to DM us if you go to a church that doesn't preach tithe and doesn't preach politics from the pulpit. You're going to be hard pressed to find a successful church.

Really? I've never seen that. Really? No. Do you go to many big churches, many big churches?

No. Oh, that's a problem. That's a problem.

Yeah, I go to a lot of them.

That's what I visit. And they're open about this for that candidate. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They can't just give to Caesar what Caesar's.

They have to like. Well, that's a funny one. Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and Render to God, the things that are God's. Because that's an inflection point for the church too. Right?

Your congregation pays taxes. But why do you?

“Why does the church have this interesting carve out where they don't pay tax?”

I don't know. Well, it's, it goes back to 1913. And yeah, the, I said, we talked last. I talked about kind of the weaponization or the box that church is climbed into. Yeah.

Resetions climbed into, which is the 14 point checklist. The, I think tax exemption was the carrot for them to climb in. Let's say, Tucker, we're going to give you church taxes. I'm status. You don't have to pay taxes, but you can have to play by these rules.

And so you climbed into the box. And now this box can be weaponized right or left. Now, foreign agents can come in and just sell concepts to the box. If that makes sense. And hey, if I do anything wrong, if I don't live inside these 14 points,

I might get kicked out of this box, which, which, what is getting kicked out? Lose your taxes. I'm status. Great. Who cares?

Lose it. Are there churches that don't claim tax exemption status? There's a couple. Yeah. Very, it's, there's a, I would, there's, there's a new model that, um, you know,

like I called us kind of auditors on systems. We don't get anything perfect. But we, we, we, we were just trying to get things right. Yeah. And so I don't only want to be an auditor.

I want to be, um, a reformer. I want us to help usher in. Change that's more Christlike. And so as we look at the system, there are legal structures that, um, hedge against man's.

Evil hearts for lack of a better. Yes. We corrupt things. There's no better term.

“And so I, I think it'd be really brilliant if we were honest enough”

with ourselves as Christians and as, as leaders to be like, hey, let's build a system and our founding fathers did this brilliantly. They're like, let's build a system that keeps it safe from ourselves. Exactly. And so I think there's going to be a new wave of pastors and a new wave of Christian leaders

that say, how do we build a system? Because we do need a system that is protected from ourselves. And I think it starts with open source accounting. So everybody can see where the money goes. And then there's legal architecture that you can play in too.

That's not tax exemption. That doesn't have to do with tax exemption. That builds a better ecosystem for a transparent church. And that's what we're working on. We have some really cool stuff happening over the next few months because of that.

God gave me a Ferrari. He gave a son. And you want to argue about to be Christian. Millions of Christians donate to their church every week. It's generous.

And it goes to a nonprofit. I get another amen.

Well, it turns out that nonprofit designation is one of the most powerful legal

and financial protections in all American law. 53 billion dollars is stolen every year. Mine. Your own business. In fact, one of the most powerful financial institutions in America are not banks.

They are churches. The for-profit world, if you went out and raised money for something like this and didn't build it, that would be called fraud. But in the religious world, we call it faith.

This is not a series that attacks faith.

This is a series that attacks people who are using faith to get rich.

“At what point do we call this not only a business, but a straight-up scam?”

We have a new multi-part series called the Religion Business and it covers it all. It's now available at Tucker Carlson.com. Café in a best-in-form. With Cuba, with jeder café of Knoff, drugs and gunner's moment. With the new Cuba-1 capsule machine from Chibo, it's known for its most expensive café

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I would assume all churches would have transparent accounting. No, very. As denominations, denominational structure, you had to be transparent with the denomination, which is good. But as denominations die, and non-denominationalism is rising, non-denominational churches are accountable to no other church.

Most usually. Some people will say, "Oh, no, this church." This past you said something affiliated with. Yeah, but it's like there's no handing over of PNL statements or budgets. So what's happened is a lot of churches, like there's a church in Florida.

Their budget is 91 million a year.

Their congregation gets a single sheet of paper with three pie charts on. And so here's where your 91 million went. What does it actually go, do you think? There's this buckets. There's this massive buckets. I don't have the pie charts in front of me, but 27% goes to salary.

Okay, well, what does the head pastor make? You don't need to know, Tucker. They don't tell you what the past. No. You don't know what the pastor makes. This is the crazy part. You don't know their retirement packages. And I've heard about his retired, this individual's retirement package.

This church, in particular, we did a series of videos on because they took a PPP loan. A $1.7 million PPP loan in 2020. A few months later, they bought a $12.7 million hunting ranch. And then a few months after that, the PPP loan got forgiven, and it was dumped on the American taxpayer.

No. And they forgave those loans.

“And my question, my only, my question was, hey, is this Christlike?”

To claim financial hardship, take a $1.7 million PPP loan

as you're buying an almost $13 million property for the church that's not essential.

And then you dump $1.7 million worth of debt onto the American taxpayer. That doesn't sound very Christlike, and I got eaten alive for that comment. What was Jesus' real estate portfolio? Huge. The world.

Son of man has no place to lay his head. I think he said zero real estate portfolio. What kind of negative reactions to that? Horrible. How?

Yeah. Because it goes back to Israel. This is a good correlation, actually. They said Nathan, look at how many baptisms they're doing. Look at how many salvation they're doing.

And they go, how dare you. And then one individual even put the percentage of the total PPP loan forgiveness debt in a comment, and he goes Nathan, this is all it is to the American public. He tried to rationalize it. He's like, it's 0.002% or whatever of the total PPP loan debt.

So why do you care? And that is the biggest issue I have with all of this is. I mean, that reasoning justifies like, I don't know, shoplifting from a grocery store. They got tons of food. Exactly.

What percentage of I steal this candy bar? What percentage of the total candy bar inventory is that? It's just 0.0 point point point point point point point point point. That sounds pretty Christlike, right? Yeah.

Oh man, it's it's.

“So the, but here's the thing is an auditor and I'm going to use this term.”

It's exhausting because there's just so much corruption in the system. And so I'm really excited for the next six months because it's okay. How do we become the leaders in the change? You know, and how do we show different models and say, hey, here's how we can do it differently. Here's how we can build systems to protect it against ourselves.

So if you don't mind, do we describe the ideal model for an American church? I don't like where or what would be a massive improvement. Transparent accounting is base level step one. Like your congregation, your donors should know where every dollar goes. And they should be able to ask your pastor, salary should be public knowledge.

Just like if if I invest in a for profit publicly traded company, I know those executive salaries of course. I know where the money goes. So why should that, I invest in that company. If I donate and fund this organization, I should know where the money goes as well.

But they don't disclose that. They don't disclose that, no. Many churches do not. So there's, there's great, I have a lot of friends and denominations. Methodist, Methodist, Baptist, you know, and their salaries are known for the most part.

There is that check if that makes sense.

“And my Methodist friends and Florida, you guys know who you are, like their hilarious because they're by vocational.”

And they're like, Nathan, half our views are filled with drug addicts and homeless. You know, but we're on the front lines. And their program is so awesome. And they basically turn their church into a co-op. We're all these community nonprofits can thrive and encourage each other.

And they've just given parts of the building to the nonprofits. And it's become this community hub. And I'm like, oh, Jesus is right here. You know, I feel him. You got you got homeless people coming in and getting meals. You have a handicapped children in the little school there.

It's beautiful. You know, and then you have people in the community packaging up food. And I'm like, oh, I feel it. I feel the work, you know. And then I walk into a church where I don't know the pastor's salary.

Where he just acquired a $12.75 million hunting ranch.

And, and I'm like, okay, I'll grab a donut and a cup of coffee and see the performance. And usually the performance is on the projective screen. I don't even see him in person. Really? Yeah.

And no one knows what his salary or retirement packages. I'm sure a few people on the elder board do.

“But yeah, it's, what would happen if a church just declined non-profit status?”

I think that's the most brilliant option out there. Because what it does is it holds you liable to the fed in the state. You're rendering the Caesar, the things that are Caesar's. And then you're not liable to get in that box. I think it'd be like, I think it'd be a really fun experiment.

All of this is an experiment, right? America is an experiment, a governing experiment. Yes. Our institutions that we've built on top of Christ, those are just experiments. Those are traditions of men.

And when we can see it for that, and that's not doctrine, then we can audit the experiments and say, where are we failing? And I think a really cool experiment would be to start a church as a for-profit vehicle. And here's a great example. If the religion business takes off, and we're doing season three and four,

and we keep going as we reform the system, we'll need a space. Eventually to build our sets out, because our sets are sitting in storage right now. And we're talking about internally, okay, how does our for-profit business help the community? Well, all of a sudden, we have warehouse-based, let's hold a church. Let's hold a gathering.

I hope two a week right now, one's in my house, and I'm like, well, we can make it a little bigger, and we don't even need to ask people for money, because God's blessed us with this space. You know, we could start a church organically like that, to wear a for-profit vehicle, funds the ability to hold church.

It's a whole begathering, if that makes sense. So why don't people do it? I think it's just nonprofits, status is a really easy thing to grab. You know, in 1913, when the nonprofits sector was carved out, there was 12,000 organizations.

Today there's 1.9 million nonprofits.

So you say, okay, Tucker, well, you know, population expansion. Well, the population only expanded through 4.3% in the last 110 years. So you do the math, that would put us around 65,000 organizations.

“So you have to ask, why is there a gap from 65,000 organizations to 1.9 million?”

The sector just exploded, and it's because there's less accountability in the legal architecture, and then religious exemptions are just completely dark. And what I mean by that is, they file no 990 with the IRS. They file very few documents with the state. And so the church, the institution which is supposed to be the beacon of light,

plays in the darkest legal architecture there is in the US. And it just becomes status quo. Now it's like, hey, let's start a church. And now what's cool is, not what's cool, it's, I shouldn't say that. It's very pathetic is certain denominations have lobbied the government over the last 50 years

to add, add vocabulary in front of the word church. So now, if I have a church, that's not a nonprofit that has religious exemption. So I don't file an N90. I can start acquiring for profit companies and pulling them under my church banner as a church. So I can have an investment fund registered as a church.

I can have a TV network registered as a church. I can have a radio station registered as a church. I can take almost any vehicle, any legal for profit business and bring it under my church. And it gets to reclassify as a church.

You have organizations like Compassion International. Robbie's Aquarius Ministries. These organizations used to file 990s because they were in regular nonprofits and they reclassified as a church. So it means they no longer had to file 990s.

You can do it with any business. If you have a church, you can bring it under your fold as what's called an auxiliary convention or association. There's different classifications.

And you can basically build a conglomerate as a church.

So a thrift store. That same church in Florida has a thrift store. A thrift store is registered as a church. It files 990s. You're selling clothes.

Well, let me erase that. You're taking clothes for free. Wash you come in selling them. As opposed to just giving them away to people who need clothes.

But why would a thrift store be registered as a church? So you can start building these businesses. These conglomerates and all under the banner of one church. And none of them pay taxes. None of them.

No, they do not pay taxes. And what's crazy is that same church. They have a new business relatively new.

It's basically consulting from to build your church.

So you can hire my consulting firm. And I'm going to teach you how to build your church. I'm going to lay it out for you. Talk about the screens and everything. That's registered as a church as well.

So a consulting firm to teach you how to build a building is registered as a church. So that means it files 990s. No one knows what people are making at the executive level. It's just like religion is organized. Organized non profit religious exemptions are the perfect vehicle to just abuse the system.

And I'm not saying everybody's doing that. But I'm saying the legal architecture is the perfect vehicle for abuse. The Mormon, the LDS church, Mormon church is one of the biggest landowners in the United States. Yeah, they were the second largest private landowner. They might be the first now.

Oh, yeah. So what?

“Like how big is the enterprise and what's its purpose?”

The LDS church? Yeah.

The LDS churches, their net assets are about 350 billion.

Billion with a B. They have over 300 billion in the market just invested. Uh, through a, through a hedge fund called enzyme peak advisors. They'll hit a trillion dollars if they continue the growth rate. They'll hit a trillion dollars in net assets in the next 15 years. And the crazy part about the LDS church is they make so much profit in the market.

They made 25 billion last year in interest alone in the market. The entire global LDS church costs around $7 billion to run. So that means they could fund the church in perpetuity just off a percentage of the interest they make in the market. But they still demand that their congregants give them 10% a year. And they'll push more, my more, my more, my more, my more, my more, my more, my more, my more, my friends are going to push back and say anything like, hey, you know, we, we don't have, it's not a demand.

Yes, it is because you don't get to get into your celestial kingdom unless you pay your type, the, the, your 10% your type. And so, they could cut off, they could say, hey, guys, stop giving us right now, give to the community, give to people in need. Take that 10% and give to people in need, but they don't, they say, give it to us, still. And they could fund the church in perpetuity just off a percentage. So what are the interest?

What's the point of all this? There, I'll, I'll argue for them. They're going to say Nathan, you know, Joseph and Egypt, he stockpiled for seven years for the seven year famine. That's what we're doing. Well, you've stockpiled indefinitely.

Like, you, you could fund the church and definitely just off the interest, so I don't know what they're doing.

“That would be their only rationale, but I, I see it is, it's like the Lord of the Rings, right?”

There's the shiny ring, like their, their hedge fund is their ring, and they just can't give it up. And so it's just, it's just growing. Do pastors actually get rich doing the job? Are there some who do? Oh, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, um, kind of Copeland, I've seen estimates, no one knows what their, no knows the exact number, because it's, it's not, the salaries aren't known.

But some estimates kind of Copeland is worth 700 million around 700 million.

Yeah. Is that, I mean, that's, I mean, since Jesus does say it's harder for a rich man, again, to heaven than a camel through the eye of a needle. But possible. Yeah. It seems like very obviously the wrong path for a Christian church.

Well, there's a, there's a beautiful part of the New Testament where Paul defines leadership qualifications. Yes. And a lover of money is, is one of them. You cannot be a lover of money. You need to live modestly, right?

And it's painted in there. And there are amazing pastors and shepherds out there that live by that standard. There's this growing number in, and again, it goes back to that socialist comment when we see Christianity as a capitalist adventure. And we build businesses on top of Christ with capitalism in mind. That's what happens.

It does, I mean, this is, as someone who loves America and is very pro-America, it pains me to say this.

“But I do think that Christianity as religious faith as the, you know, the key to eternal life as, is something bigger than”

any nation state, even your own. And so you probably want to keep your religion from becoming infected by cultural assumptions that are just by definition bound to a time in place. Like, this is about eternity, right? Yeah. And to what extent do you think?

So, that's my preference just to, it does not an anti-American statement at all. I love America. But I don't want Christianity to reflect America. I want Christianity to change America. Amen. And Christianity was the hard line against corruption.

Yeah, corruption.

“And instead, the system, and this is, I really want people to ask why has it corrupted is the institutional model has corrupted to mirror our corruption in government.”

They run simultaneously now. The government says we're going to collect taxes, you know, and you're going to give it to us.

And with these, with these massive bills, you're never going to go to know where the spending goes.

You just got to give us more money. The churches are doing the same thing. They're saying, hey, you're going to give us your money. We're going to build the system. You got to trust us.

And now we're going to start petitioning your kids to go sell their electronics to give us, you know. To give it to us in the name of Jesus, you know. It's just, it's such a sad spot to be right now to look at the body of Christ that I love. And it's just, I always use the analogy, we've built the tradition. We've built an institution, an expensive machine, a consumerist machine that entertains us and keeps us fed.

But that institution has chained us to the pews financially. Because if we leave, if you actually, if you actually preached this whole book in its entirety, a lot of people would get up and leave. Because they'd be called to go out. They'd say, hey, God's calling me to do this other thing. But with that goes my money and my time and my attention.

And so the model we've built is actually antithetical to the calling in the gospels. So the analogy that these churches preach serve the church, not the kingdom of God. Yes, and I've said one statement that people have hung me for. I've said anybody who plays in this system for a full career gets eaten by the system.

And you've nailed that when you play for the institution, when you are on stage and you have this 70 million dollar a year operating cost.

Your message, your theology, everything you preach from giving kids sheets on how to give you more money shifts to build and calcify the machine we've built on top of Christ. No, that makes total sense. And I've talked to amazing pastors who've just been eaten by the machine and then the good ones, here's the sad part, as the big ones grow, they drain resources from the small churches that are actually still embedded in the community doing the good work. And a lot of those small ones shut down, statistically right now, church closure is outpacing church expansion and the churches that are closing with the small ones.

And those small churches are the backbone of their local communities. And so when I say all pastors who play by the system die by the system, even though even the good ones get eaten by the system, because the big church gobbles up their congregation and gobbles up the resources that funded this beautiful small community church.

“Is anyone pointing any of this out? Do you feel like a voice in the wilderness?”

I did for a couple years, but I think our message is starting to resonate, and there's other, there's other watchmen on the wall, so to speak. That's an Ezekiel, I think Ezekiel 3. So there's clearly a religious revival going on in the United States, a Christian revival where people going. That's a really good question, I think people are searching. They don't, they're, they're some go to the mega church, some hopefully go to scripture and just sit quietly and read scripture and pray.

Yes. My, my encouragement would be to go find a small church in your area. Yeah. Like that church needs your help, those smaller pastors that are often bivocational, because even there, even their congregation can't fund a full time salary, go support them with your time with your with your talent with your with your resource like those small ones. And, and ironically, with the small ones need your help.

It's like, they need you to to help with the kids. The bivocational means that the pastor is a. Carpenter River 100%. Yeah. And that's with the beautiful pastors that I've sat with, because I've sat with probably a thousand plus pastors around the US at this point over last five years.

Is the bivocational ones are usually the ones preaching the, the, the most biblical theology. I've noticed that yes, I've noticed that because their salary, their livelihood, their, the food that sits in front of their kids is not dependent on this book. Well, that was Paul's model.

You know, the first great evangelist was making tents.

Yeah. Well, and there's a, you know, it's the Bible speaks about, hey, if you, if you make your living from from the gospel, you have your reward. You've been, you've been paid your reward. And I, I want my, my reward to be upstairs.

“You know, how do you, the big denominations you think are less corrupt?”

No. The big, I wouldn't say that. The big denominations just have hierarchical oversight on the, on the financials. And so, um, it used to, it, it does bring some accountability to the system, but it's not, it's not quality accountability.

Um, like method, methodists, for example, you know, um, what your methodist pastor makes. It's a baseline.

And so you're, you're not joining the methodist church to get rich. But you're not. No. But like Baptists have slipped a bit. You know, I know, I know, Baptist pastors that are very well off, you know, and how, um, just because they've kind of taken the non-denominational model.

Uh, a great example is there's a, there's a, a massive church.

“And, and here's another example to the capitalist mindset, remember when we talk about franchises, like Christianity's almost becoming franchises.”

So, when you bring really smart businessmen and women in the leadership of these churches, they bring their capitalist business mindset into the machine. And it, it's corrupting the machine and what I mean by that is, I'm going to give two examples. There's a, uh, there's a very large church in Houston.

Or your family goes second Baptist, right? So that's a billion dollar enterprise that's been funded by Houstonians for almost a hundred years.

So local Houston Christians generously gave to build this tradition, this awesome tradition, this is the school, it's a church, it's a lot of things. But now it's all that power has been consolidated into six people's hands. And they can decide what to do with that billion in assets. They can move it out of state. They can sell off parts of it.

And so what I mean by that is when we franchise out Christianity, the resources don't stay in the town that funded it. And a great example is there's this small church in Sarasota that I visited and it was acquired by a church in Dallas. And so these individuals in Sarasota funded this building for years. And now the church in Dallas can just sell it off whenever it wants and all that resource heads to Dallas.

“And so the people in Sarasota, the Christians in Sarasota, gave generously and that's what I mean is all money and resource ends up siloing at the top.”

Now, why would a church in Dallas want a church in Sarasota? I've got my opinion, I think it's to justify the beachfront home in Florida. Wow, yeah. But so what I'm seeing is what we're seeing is money siloing at a national level.

And then what does that mean? It means you can all of a sudden these national groups and these big conglomerans become like become political apparatus, basically.

It's just surprising, but I guess not really surprising to learn that what's happening to every other part of our society is happening to churches where your vet is now owned by some private equity concern out of New York and your stores in your town are gone because of Amazon and Walmart. Yeah, and like the big things get bigger, the small things to superior. We call it the Walmart effect in the religion business when a mega church moves into a town, it has to find consumers somewhere. Yes. So it looks, so it attracts, you know, everybody's not Christian. There's only so many Christians in your town.

So what happens is that the mega church draws Christians and consumers from the small churches, entertains them and be dazzles them and gives them a good sprinkle donut. And then the small church is closed and what happens is usually the Walmart moves on the mega church corrupts is usually a sex scandal or a financial scandal. That shuts down and then there's no small churches anymore, which were the backbone of the community. And so the Walmart effect is in full effect. And again, I don't want to just be an auditor.

There's, there's beautiful reform on the horizon because I'm seeing home churches spring up all over the, all over to us. I'm seeing people actually go back to the small churches in their community because they're looking for authenticity. The, the non-denominational kid, me who ran around on stage and did every, you know, goofy thing my church would put on and I had a great time is I'm, I love exploring Catholicism and orthodoxy and I call it the kaleidoscope of Christianity.

“Because I want to see where every denomination thrives and then where I think theological pinch points are because then I can build my own perspective on this on this book and now my faith is my own, if that makes sense.”

And so I love going to small churches now. It's kind of like my, my jam. Well, they're great. Yeah, they're great. I've been to, yeah, regular been to a church with three other people. And I'll tell you this, I get arrested at big churches. I get kicked out of big churches even when I'm just going to visit without cameras. If I just want to go see sit, but I have never had a bad experience ever at a small church. Totally agree. I usually have people come up and they're like, oh, you're the religion is this guy and they like hug me or want to, you know, want to sit with us and it's, it's awesome. And they're like, oh, you're great. Cool awesome.

Yeah. So last question, which is like a big question. Well, it's a small topic, but I think it's a metaphor. And it's about the treatment of Palestinian Christians, which is how I get into all this drama in the first place, because I just noticed that Christians. In the United States, some of whom loved Israel and that didn't bother me at all, but we're going out of their way to ignore what was happening to their brothers and Christ in the Middle East.

It's seeing greater concern from Christian churches about what's happening to Christians in the Middle East, the Holy Land. I wouldn't say it's changing at the institutional level. It's changing at the individual level.

“Is it? I think it is. Yeah. I have so many healthy conversations with my Christian brothers and sisters about this topic in particular.”

And people are just Christians are waking up. And they don't really know where to go.

Right. You know, it's when the scales fall off for the first time you're looking around and you're like, whoa, this is far more beautiful and far more complex than I realize.

Yes, exactly. But it's, we as Christians can just look to the scripture and look to the Bible and say, this is our road map. And that's it. And God will walk us out. And so I do think at the institutional level, I haven't seen change, but at the individual level, I've seen massive, massive theological change over the last couple of years. Really. And who's leading that? Or people is independently coming to. I'm going to say, watchmen on the wall. Like there's, there's a lot of people out there that are digging.

And then they'll put their, they'll put their research online. They'll put it on social media. They'll reach out to us. I'm, I'm just one of many. We're just one of many that are starting to pick up the Bible and say, let's read this cover to cover.

And it used to be that the critics of Christian churches, the United States of their corruption of their scandals were all anti-Christian.

So it was way to undermine it. You know, the boxing low with its spotlight series. We really got the sense like they just hate the Catholic Church for other reasons. But I think it's true. But now you're seeing criticism of this kind of behavior of church behavior from people who are mad because they're released in tier Christians. And I even have massive, like, there's a pastor who's been on your show. Great guy. He's a good friend of mine. And we're developing a relationship and he, he's, he works at a very large church. One of the biggest in the U.S.

And he none of what I say scares him. He's like, I agree with everything really. Yeah. And I'm like, awesome. So even even at the pastoral level, they're starting to be a shift where they're like, we should be the beacon of truth.

And the beacon of light and transparency. Yes. And so I think there's going to become a tipping.

There's going to be a tipping point in the next six to 12 months where the whole machine, the apparatus starts steering away. Also, to me a tip off is defensiveness. We're all defensive when called out on what we're doing wrong. Yeah, certainly. But we're not supposed to be. Yeah. And we're number one quality humility. That's like the ticket price for admission. I think is, you know, we're screwed up and need help.

“That's why we're here. Yeah. So to hear that people are willing to acknowledge what they're doing wrong without being defensive seems like the best sign.”

It's, I'm really excited. And I think could you and I both agree that we sit here as, as men who are evil, like at our core in Christ gave us the example to chase after. And I think if we can get more people around the table with that as the baseline, then we can look at the institutions, my own institutions. The corporation that we built on top of the religion business, we're looking at because we're like, is this the best vehicle? Like to do what we need to do. We don't think it is. Right? We want to be, we want to be the beacon of transparency. So.

So you haven't go to an A, A meeting? No. You've got to go to an A, a meeting. If you don't need to be an alcoholic to enjoy the beauty of an A, a meeting, I don't want to drink. So like I love A meetings because the, the price of being able to speak is admitting in public how screwed up you are. And it just changes the vibe completely. Like there's no hierarchy at all. Yeah. The one thing that unites every person in the room is their common flaw.

Yeah. And it's, that's the basis of like truth and love. So what happens if the church took that model and said, okay, let's all gather around this table. Let's just admit that. Okay. How do we fix this, right? How do we fix what we've built? I think it would be the most collaborative fulfilling experience for totally agree. Small pastors, big pastors alike. I totally agree. So let's get that together.

“You should go to an A meeting and I don't go off in enough, but occasionally I go and there's like there's always the guy who's like still shaking.”

You know, he's just got off it. And then there's the guy who's, you know, but off for 40 years and he's like got his life together. Maybe rich and they're exactly the same. Yeah. As people, as we all are, every person is united in. Well, that's like Christ crushed hierarchy.

Exactly. He's like all of you guys are the same. There's no hierarchy except the father. We got one good teacher. You know, and it's, but we've built hierarchies again on top of Christ. I say, you know, prior to the reformation, there was one church. This monarchical Roman Catholic church and the reformation columns, vingley, you know, Luther. They came in and they, the leaders of the, the leaders of the reformation really shook the church.

They didn't shake the institutional structure.

“And so what happened was the reformation came through. They broke the stained glass.”

They burned cathedrals down. You know, they're like, we're going to do it differently, which was awesome.

Good intention, but as they came over to America, we just built the same structure again.

“We built a non-transparent, unaccountable, financially hungry machine with usually one person at the head.”

So I always tell people, we have 400,000 minivatekins in America now. There's 400,000 estimated 400,000 churches.

We've just built 400,000 minivatekins, right? And so we just built hierarchy again.

“And it's like now we've got to, we've got to crush all of them. I agree with that.”

I agree with that, absolutely vehemently. Thank you for this film and for all the work that you've done on it. Thank you for having me talking. On this topic, despite the abuse you've taken. Yeah, thanks. Thank you.