Answering Brett Keane's Questions For Christians | GodTVRadio LIVE - GodTvRadio | Brett Keane

Episode Transcript
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(01:20):
Ladies and gentlemen, may I haveyour attention please?
The show starts in 987654 321 Go.

(02:10):
I want it to silence my pain butit screamed even louder.
I'm falling and sinking in the blood of my own estate.
I'm falling and losing, falling,falling and begging.

(02:36):
Are we too far to go back or is there still sight?
My darling, my last. Do you still Remember Me, or

(03:07):
have I become a ghost in your memory?
Are you too far away to hear me,or have you forgotten me?
I'm falling. I'm thinking Kronos and Lay.
I'm falling. I'm losing.
I'm losing rolling. Where?

(03:59):
Is redemption. My darling, my last breath give

(04:30):
me redemption. My darling, my last breath give
me redemption. My heart rise down for the end.
Will I be left here? Where are.

(05:03):
You. I feel the weight that's pulling

(05:37):
me down. I whisper, but there's no one
around. The silence echoes in my mind.
I'm trapped inside, with no way to find the light to guide me
through the endless night. I know I can close the door if I

(06:00):
close my eyes and ignore if I let it fade.
Don't close your room, we're almost there.

(06:40):
Don't give up, we're almost there.
The shadows grow. I stand still, but I feel
something deeper will awaken in the void I see.

(07:15):
Don't close your eyes. Almost there,

(07:41):
falling angels at my face, voices with wait, that's as
beard, but I won't fall. I rise, I stand, I hear the
cold. She beckons me.
Should I come down, or has my hands come?
I leave behind the past I know and find you.

(08:15):
Don't give, don't try it. Don't want your eyes almost
there. The shadows grow.

(08:36):
I stand for the light is lost, but I won't drown.
The shadows call. I stand for through the pain I
can see I won't drown. Don't let the we're almost.

(10:16):
There, Hello there everyone, welcome to GOD TV Radio I of
course I'm TTOR and we have overhere Brett Keene Say hello Brett
Weather. Well said.
And as John Lavelle noted about the second song, what a crazy
song lol. And in case you guys are

(10:37):
wondering who that was, I was playing there for the music in
the intro, that was Isla Chan, one of the up and coming YouTube
musicians that uses AI for theircontent.
More specifically, they use AI for the visual elements.
It's unknown how much of the music uses AI, but they're great
songs and I just couldn't help but play them for you guys.

(11:00):
So if you're wondering where youcan find Isla Chan, as soon as I
enable screen sharing, you will know exactly where you can find
the Isla Chan. So you can see Isla Chan on her
YouTube channel, which has over 16,000 subscribers already.
Even though she's only been uploading since late last year,

(11:22):
you'll find she's got her albums, she's got her covers of
older popular songs from pop culture, just great stuff.
She's also on Spotify and she's also on Apple Music.
So if you're looking for someonewho does awesome heavy metal
style music and also does coversof older songs, well then Isla

(11:43):
Chan is probably someone you would be interested in.
But the music doesn't just stop with the intro, because I myself
have been inspired to join in onthis wonderful craze of using AI
to make music. And so for the first time ever,
you guys will see a song by TTORusing AI.

(12:05):
And it's a little bit of a sillysong I made about my parents dog
Buddy. But I think for the more
lighthearted among us, you guys will enjoy this.
Let's take a listen. But he wakes me up with a wagon

(12:34):
tail. He's a king of the park, Never
gonna Chasing squirrels like a pro.
He's on the run with his goofy smile.
He's my #1 Heroes held the plane.
His spirit's so bright. With Buddy by my side,

(12:54):
everything feels right. Rock star in the sky, every
little fuck you open eye you feel feeling so free forever.

(13:17):
My buddy, just my dog and me. We hit the trails exploring the
wild. He's my furry buddy and he's
always smile and in every adventure, toothache and fan
with a bark and lean ready to win.

(13:44):
Man, it's just love. It's the fuel, the lights of my
days with bloody around lobster.Joyful man.
No, nobody or rock star in the sky.

(14:08):
With every little part you open my eyes, running through the
field, feeling so free. Whoever, my body, just my dog
and me. Raise a toast to you, my loyal

(14:55):
friend Buddy by my side of fun. Never it.

(15:28):
And there you have it, my dog Buddy.
Or in the words of John Lavelle.Yeah, Buddy, Buddy, you rock.
He does. You know what the funny part
about that song, Brett, is That I gave almost no prompts to the
AI and it gave me all that. Got the random going up.

(15:50):
Yep. Turned out good and that dog is
cute. Oh, he is.
I saw him today, He's happy as aclam.
Basically all I did was told theAI to make a song about my dog
Buddy, and then I told him to have male vocalist and it had to
be in the rock'n'roll genre. And then I just hit Create and

(16:15):
they gave me all that. The crazy part is that the
song's actually mostly accurate to what the dog is like, even
though I didn't put any of that in the prompts.
Well, you described the dog, didn't you?
Nope. Didn't you?
Didn't say it was about your dog.
Oh, I did, but I didn't say anything about what the dog

(16:36):
does. Not fair enough?
Fair enough. Well, it turned out well, and
the dog is adorable. Yes, he is.
And we had put the radio in GOD TV Radio tonight, but now we're
going to get to the main event answering Brett Kane's questions
for Christians that he gave in aYouTube community post about

(17:00):
almost a month ago. But to really set the scene for
these questions, I think the cool thing to do, the
appropriate thing to do actually, is to read a post by
Thick Shades or Uncle Sam. I am regarding Brett Keene's
post because lately he's been kind of going at Brett Keene

(17:20):
regarding various community posts that Brett has made.
And I just wanted to read this particular response because as
we go through Brett Keene's questions, you're going to
wonder where Thick Shades is getting this from.
You really will. But this is what he actually had
to say here about six hours ago.At the time of this recording,

(17:42):
he said, Brett, let's bring it from the top.
Since your memory seems as slippery as your integrity.
You posted 50 questions, not questions born from the spirit,
but ones you later admitted plagiarizing scrapes put
together by AI. You claim they came from your
heart, but then you confess theyweren't yours.

(18:03):
That alone says everything aboutyour honesty.
Still, I took the High Road. I actually began answering them
carefully, sincerely, point by point, until it became obvious
that this wasn't a mutual exchange.
It was a trap. You weren't interested in
testimony or fellowship. You were interested in control.

(18:26):
You made it clear from the start.
Answer your list or be declared fake and cut off.
That's not love, that's manipulation.
That's not discernment. That self importance trying to
pass his spirituality. Then I realized something else.
You never answered the questionsyourself.
You demanded transparency but offered none.

(18:49):
You handed out a test you couldn't pass and pretended that
gave you the right to judge who belongs to Christ.
So no, I didn't quiver, I didn'trun, I simply stopped playing
your game. You aren't my judge, and you
sure aren't the standard of whatit means to walk with Christ.
As for calling me a poser, let'sbe honest Brett, you've worn

(19:11):
more masks than anyone out there.
Atheist, agnostic, Christian, flip flop Pete.
You don't defend the faith. You orbit whatever personality
gives you clicks, then betray them the moment your ego gets
bruised. The truth is, you were never
looking for a spiritual conversation.
You were looking for someone to bow to your imaginary throne.

(19:32):
So block me, smear me, pretend you're doing God's work from
behind your keyboard throne. But the Spirit knows the
difference between the witness and a wannabe.
And in case you haven't looked lately, the fruits not in your
favor. Your whole performance didn't
expose me, it exposed you. So yeah, that's that's what he

(19:54):
wrote, with my own emphasis on certain parts, basically.
He claims that this. List of, I think this list, he
thinks this list of 50 questionsthat I'm about to start
responding to is a trap. And somehow this is a control
mechanism that Brett Keene is doing because Brett Keene is
somehow the gatekeeper of the Christian YouTube community.

(20:17):
You see. And by doing all this stuff,
Brett Keene is basically trying to how do you phrase it again,
answer the list or be declared fake and cut off.
Problem is, you'll see when we go through the post is Brett
didn't say that. He didn't say Christians answer
my questions or I will cut you off because you're all fakes.

(20:39):
Never happened. It never happened.
As a matter of fact, once you see all these questions, you
will ask the question that I've been asking since I read this
post and looked at Brett Kane's questions list.
Where is the trap? But let's look at the actual
questions list in question, which is on screen, right,

(21:00):
Brett, yours. Yes, but I also had told you
earlier that although I had comeup with a majority of the
questions, it is true that I didask AI if it could come up with
some more interesting theological questions for
Christians. I wanted to make the interviews
as optimal and interesting as possible, and with some people,

(21:22):
sometimes I might even throw in some curves and ask them just
right there in the middle of theinterview.
However, what he failed to tell you, which I told everybody in
interviews, I'm going to say right now, if there's any
questions that you feel are uncomfortable, you are welcome
to say pass and move on to things that you think that are

(21:42):
more up for what you want to discuss.
So how can it be a trap if I'm telling you can walk right over
different questions, right? Right, exactly.
And with that being said, let's start going through these.
I'm going to answer Brett Keene's questions to the best of
my ability, but if Brett Keene wants to just to show thick

(22:05):
shades that he really doesn't know what he's talking about,
Brett is welcome to respond to any of his own questions if he
wants to. So let's.
See I will point out before we get into this, a lot of these
questions I have actually answered.
You've known me for a very long time TTR, so you'll know this
for a fact. I've done countless videos where

(22:27):
I've told my testimony. I've always been an open book
and as far as jumping and flip flopping I was a Christian
whenever I was a kid but I don'treally count that because I was
just an ignorant child and then in my teenage years I became an
atheist and then I became a Christian.
Now as far as philosophies is still held the position but I

(22:49):
did change and upgrade my different positions like last
year year and a half ago I held the philosophy of Mal Theism but
that changed. That didn't mean Christianity
changed, it just means a thoughtprocess on one of the fields of
philosophy within the theology makes sense.
Yeah. And that's also one of those

(23:12):
that's also I, I should point out, that's also one of those
issues that people to this day still hold against you even
though you no longer hold to theposition.
Well, of course they do. It's called an agenda.
Yep, for sure. But anyway, let's go through
Brett Keane's questions. No more delay.

(23:33):
Question number one, Can you share a bit about your
upbringing and how you were first introduced to
Christianity? Well, in my particular case,
it's not all of that inspiring. I grew up in a Christian home.
My parents have always been Christians from my birth till

(23:54):
now. And I grew up going to church
and so I knew about the Bible a bit and knew about Jesus and
knew about God. But I didn't make the personal
decision to have my own faith inthe Lord until I was about 15
years old. And then at that point, I

(24:14):
started my walk and I went through high school and went
through college. And and then, yeah, that led to
a whole another season of growthwhere I started getting into
Christian apologetics and makingvideos for YouTube and other
websites. And that eventually snowballed
until we got to where we are today.

(24:34):
But yeah, I definitely grew up in a Christian home, and I
definitely converted to the faith of my own accord when I
was 15. And I understood what that
meant. And yeah, I've been walking that
road ever since. Were you wanting me to answer or

(24:56):
respond? Well, you can't.
You can't if you want, but you did just kind of answer it as
well before I did because you'vesaid before in past videos you
grew up in a Christian home and then struggles in your personal
life. Things that happened, events
that happened, caused you to getangry at God and be an atheist
for 10 years. Is that about accurate?

(25:17):
That as well as also I was influenced because I will say
this, I've only spoke this a fewtimes, but when my mother became
sick and my grandmother died from cancer, I would eventually
end up in foster care system andI was in a lot of foster homes
and every one of them was Christian.
The only difference was was denomination and their way of

(25:39):
looking at theology. They all believed that Jesus
Christ died for them and resurrected.
But you know, I dealt with Pentecostals, Baptist, you name
it. I've, I lived in a lot of
different homes for a while there until I was old enough to
get out. So I was influenced by a lot of
people, a lot of different views.
And it's probably one of the reasons why I'm so open to many

(26:00):
different ideas is where other people freak out when engaging.
That's all I got on that. Go ahead.
All right, question number 2. Was there a specific moment or
event that led you to embrace your Christian faith?
I wouldn't say a specific momentor event, but around the time

(26:23):
that I made the decision to convert to the faith to have my
own personal saving relationshipwith Jesus.
I was going through a bit of a depression at the time, to the
point where I actually had suicidal thoughts, even though I
never came within 1000 miles of acting on them.

(26:45):
But I knew as soon as I started having the thoughts, I was like,
oh, that's no good. I guess it's time to embrace
faith in God and a personal saving relationship with Jesus
so that way I can deal with this.
And as soon as I did that, as soon as I had a genuine
conversion to the faith, I stopped having those spots and I

(27:07):
haven't had them since. Do you mind if I throw in a a
curve and ask you something? Why did you feel that way about
your? Why did you feel that way about
yourself? You as far long as I've ever
known you, you've always been a great guy, a good person and all
that. Why would you have those kind of
thoughts? Well, a lot of people can

(27:31):
probably relate to this, but loneliness is a huge factor.
And that's something that even though the suicidal thoughts
went away after conversion, the loneliness is something that has
been a more constant battle, especially when I was younger
and it seemed like everyone around me was in a relationship

(27:51):
or married except for me. So I mean, a lot of guys that
are in that position, they can understand the kind of angst
that can cause, the kind of manydepression, I guess you could
say that causes. Because then it feels like, you
know, you're alone and there's no one for you and makes you
wonder if you are doing something wrong or if there's

(28:14):
something wrong with you. Or in my case, where I knew
there wasn't really anything horrifically wrong with me,
makes me wonder why, why? Why am I going through this
season as a single man? So yeah, I think a lot of that
is what was going on when I was 15.
And then there are probably other things as well, but my

(28:38):
memory is not the best. But that's the one definitive
thing I can remember. One last question for you, Have
you made it easy for people to be able to understand,
especially when you were younger, when you're available,
or that you're even interested? Because one of the big problems
younger men have is they don't let people know.

(28:59):
And then people feel weird or oruncomfortable with just throwing
it out there. Did you ever say, look, I am
single, I am interested and thisis what I'm looking for?
Did you try that? No, I did not try that.
I was really, really shy back then, so the idea of doing

(29:22):
something like that towards a girl I was interested in was way
too scary for me back then. Now as an adult, that's
different. I'm more likely to do that.
But yeah, back then that could not have happened because I was
way too shy. But I, I've gotten less shy over
the years and more normal. I've, I've been able to be in

(29:47):
dating relationships since then,even though none of them have
worked out so far. But yeah, it's something that I,
I've struggled with being shy and I've been working hard to
overcome with moderate success. So yeah, that's probably the
gist of it. Well, I'm really glad that you
were able to persevere in the struggles and deal with the

(30:10):
issues because I don't know whatlife would be like without a
TTOR. You've been a really good
friend. You've been loyal, honorable,
all that, totally respectful at all times.
So I'm really glad that you madeit through.
You do contribute to the world. Anybody that could meet you and
actually talk to you and get to know you would say the same
thing if they just give you a chance.

(30:34):
Oh, thank you, Brett. I appreciate that.
And yeah, that is definitely something that being in my 30s
now, being a established contentcreator has helped me establish
my little corner of the Internet.
And I feel like at this point inmy life that I really am doing
God's work and really doing a service for people who are

(30:57):
seeking the truth about a wide variety of topics, especially in
today's crazy world where the wokeness has spread to both
sides. So I'm hoping in the next season
of time that my channel can be astable point of truth for people
who are trying to swim through this ocean of wokeness.

(31:18):
Would you have a problem TTR with me posting up people's
comments every once in a while throughout the discussion?
Sure, I won't see him for a while, but.
We got one person here, says Brett King.
Still alive. Actually, I was dead for a
while. I just recently resurrected.
There you go. Responded to that and there we

(31:40):
go, Miss Smokey St. says TTOR. We've had our differences.
But please let me be the first one to say I'm so sorry you had
those thoughts and I'm glad you're still here.
Suicide is never the answer. Christ heals all.
I think that was a beautiful comment.
Yes, thank you, Miss Smokey. OK.

(32:04):
I think the next question is up.How has your relationship with
God evolved over the years? Well, I would say that the way
it's changed over the years, especially over the last 13
years, but definitely be knowledge of the Bible because

(32:26):
even though I've always from thebeginning have placed the Bible
in the ultimate place of authority as far as my beliefs
go, as far as my faith goes and doctrine goes, I haven't always
believed everything that the Bible is clearly taught because
I was ignorant about what I really taught.
Like for example, origins. When I started getting into the

(32:49):
faith, I did have older of creationist beliefs.
And when I started getting to Christian apologetics in 2012,
no, it was actually 2013. That's right, 2013.
I, I had older of creationism beliefs at the time, but I
didn't make videos during that time until 2015, which by that

(33:12):
time I had become a younger creationist.
And so there's a lot of people who, if they've known my entire
Internet history on YouTube, they will think that I was never
an older of creationist at any point.
But I actually was up until about, I want to say a few
months before I started making videos on the Internet.
I used to be an older of creationist and I really thought

(33:36):
that I knew what the Bible taught about origins and that
younger of creationists were ignorant about many things.
The usual things that older of creationists say, you know,
ignorant about Scripture, ignorant about writing styles,
language, hermeneutics and all that.
Of course, as I actually startedto study the Bible on that
topic, and I actually started tolook at the arguments that young

(33:59):
earth creationists were making at the time and comparing it to
what old earth creationists weresaying, I quickly began to
realize that, oh man, they were right about that, the young
earth creationists, and I was wrong.
And so I made that change from old to young earth creationism.
And what I found since then is that because I allowed the Bible

(34:21):
to interpret itself when it cameto origins, and I accepted it,
then for me it started unlockingother parts of the Bible because
other parts of the Bible follow the same process.
You accept the straightforward contextual reading of what the
scriptures say on whatever topicit's talking about, and that's
the truth of what it says. And so for me, that opened up

(34:42):
the Bible to better understanding other topics,
like, for example, so dealing with all the anti-Semitic people
in today's modern age, the same methodology that I used to
arrive at young earth creationism being taught by the
Bible is the same methodology I use to figure out very quickly
that the replacement theology beliefs taught by a lot of these

(35:06):
anti-Semitic people are false. And a lot of these other false
teachings that come up for various Christian cults of
personality. I use the same process of
analyzing Scripture on those topics that I did origins.
And that's how I'm able to figure out that a lot of these
people are either liars or heretics or at least severely

(35:27):
misled. So I would say that knowing the
Bible a lot better has strengthened my relationship
with God because it allows me tobe able to analyze and
effectively dissect things that aren't true, that people claim
are true and come from God. And I wouldn't be able to do
that if I didn't start studying the Bible.

(35:50):
Well, it's always good to study and do some research.
As far as the Internet connection goes, If you have
several tabs open in that video background that you got, even
though it's very sexy, very smexy, that could be causing
trouble because that's more processing power on your
Internet, Just to let you know in case you're worried about
that. OK, I'm actually going to go

(36:14):
ahead and change that just to see if that's true.
Let's go back to. JPEG image or something?
GIFs aren't terrible, but Jpegs are better.
So like point. You notice that your Internet
suddenly bounced up to two lights on that.

(36:37):
Yes, I did. OK, Well, I will remember that
going forward. Let's get back to the magical
power of screen share. OK, Now where were we?
OK, yeah. Next question.
Were there any significant people, family, friends, mentors

(36:59):
who influenced your faith? Well, the answer to that one of
is, of course, yes. Growing up, I went to the
Cottage Grove Faith Center, which is a Foursquare church in
Cottage Grove, OR. And at the time of my childhood,
all the way up through my college years, our pastor was
Jim Jenkins, who ended up becoming a personal friend of

(37:22):
mine. He has a doctorate.
He taught classes at Eugene Bible College for a long time.
He also is a military chaplain and he's actually one of the
first military chaplains who wason Ground Zero shortly after the
9/11 attacks. And in his later years he
actually wrote several books dealing with postmodernism and

(37:45):
the attacks on the Bible that come from so-called Christians.
But then he also made a whole book detailing his experience
going to Ground Zero at 911. And his book even got promoted
by some of our local news outlets back in the day.
So he's someone who was very instrumental in influencing my
faith when I was younger, especially as I started doing

(38:08):
Christian apologetics and dealing with the same kinds of
issues that he was. Let me think.
I'd say, yeah, he's one of the biggest influences.
And then if you look at the Internet in particular, I say in
my early years of apologetics, Ifound people like people like

(38:31):
Frank Turek to be very influential, even though later
on I figured out where he falls short by a lot.
And that's putting it mildly. But then I found some guys who I
also was influenced by who are still going rock solid and
steady. Guys like David Wood of Acts 17
Apologetics or Doctor Thomas Kendall, who's a very well

(38:53):
spoken, really intelligent youngearth creationist apologist who
has put out many presentations of various creationism
conferences over the years. I also was influenced somewhat
by my friend Doctor JD Mitchell,who runs well.
He ran a creation engineering ministry up in the Portland, OR

(39:16):
area for a long time, and I think he now runs out of
Washington. But he's somebody who actually
has written some of the best creationism apologetics books I
ever read, including the only fossil guidebook on the planet
that is written from the young Earth creationism perspective
and not the evolutionary billions of years perspective.

(39:39):
So those guys I all found to be very influential with my faith
and my apologetics and really understanding where some of the
key battles lie and all these areas.
And I kind of just took it from there and it's gone down my own
path. But those guys definitely
influenced me. What about you, Brett?
Have you had any significant people who've influenced your

(40:01):
faith? Well, some of the people that
you mentioned, actually, Frank Turek, I started seeing him
after his debate with Christopher Hitchens back when I
was a former atheist and I thought the guy was brilliant.
I thought that he walked all over Hitchens, even though I was
a non believer in actually rooting for Hitchens at the
moment. William Lane Craig, I find him

(40:24):
fascinating, though obviously he's got some views that
disagree with both of us and some of our philosophies.
I understand. And, and also David Wood, I
remember the first time I checked him out, he was doing a
subway train video where he was sharing his testimony about
family issues and all that and coming to Christ and jail time,

(40:45):
that kind of stuff. And I thought it was one of the
most phenomenal creative videos I've ever seen in my entire
life. It was just brilliant.
But I do have to ask you, you can't leave us sitting on the
edge on this. You mentioned Frank Turek, but
you then said but he fell short and some stuff.
This I got to hear guy. Well, back on my old YouTube

(41:09):
channel, it's no longer Up, I actually did several videos
exposing his fallacious arguments towards young Earth
creationism and in support of old Earth creationism that he
used to do. And it turns out that he
actually has a very low view of the Bible when it comes to
origins, and he reinterprets it in light of evolution, billions

(41:31):
of years, and Big Bang cosmology, even though he knows
he's not supposed to. It's a problem that William Lane
Craig suffers from too. So things like that really
bothered me and I just couldn't roll with someone like that as
far as following them after a while.
Is it? Do you feel like they somehow
belittled your views in some kind of way, or was it just

(41:55):
simply disagreement? Yeah, like William Lane Craig,
Frank Turek is very dismissive towards young Earth creationism.
He always tries to frame it as aside issue that should only be
talked about among Christians, but then when Christians try to
talk to him about it, he doesn'twant to talk about it.

(42:16):
So yeah, I, I find that to be very dismissive and arrogant and
very dishonest in terms of his rhetoric.
Now, there are times where he does pay lip service to young
earth creationism and he says itcould be true.
But the reason why he does that is because he knows the Bible
teaches A6000 year old earth anduniverse when it's read in a

(42:39):
straightforward and contextual manner.
That's why he has to pay Idlib service.
I mean, it's such an obvious truth that as I showed in my
recent video, even all of the Silicon Valley based AI programs
out there understand this to be true as well.
I mean, those same AI systems will tell you young Earth
creationism's not true and that evolution in billions of years

(43:02):
and Big Bang cosmology is true. But when it comes to the Bible,
even the AI systems will acknowledge that, yeah, it does
teach a young earth when you read it in a straightforward,
contextual manner and you don't stretch the the text,
reinterpret the text. So yeah, that's the kind of
stuff that causes people like Frank Turek to pay lip service

(43:22):
to young earth creationism, eventhough he then turns around and
tries to avoid talking about it all together.
That's the kind of thing that I found to be incredibly
disingenuous back in the day with not just him, but with also
people like William Lane Craig who said the same things at
various points. And so I, I tend to just stay

(43:45):
away from guys like that, even if they have good arguments on
other things. And I just try to find people
who are more in line with what the Bible says that also say the
same thing. So people like Doctor Thomas
Kendall, for example, or a greatexample of that.
They can tell you all the same stuff and they don't compromise
on the Bible's origins account. That's fair enough.

(44:10):
I can understand that and I would suggest for Christians,
you might listen to the show later, try to be open minded and
try to be understanding of otherpeople's views.
There's reasons why people thinkthe way they do.
Christians instead of being divisive and fighting against
each other, discuss it, hammer it out, sharpen iron, that kind
of thing. Don't just, you know, completely

(44:32):
refuse to have a discussion withsomebody because you think that
their ideas or views are lower than yours.
Kind of things. I've always been open to many
different views and I even go sofar as going outside of my
position to hear what other people have to think because
sometimes people come up with clever ideas, you know, It
happens. Yeah.

(44:56):
Now this next question, though, boy, people could tell some
stories about this one. Have you always been part of the
same Christian denomination or has your affiliation changed
over time? Now, I did say earlier in the
live stream that I used to go toa church that was a Foursquare

(45:17):
church. Foursquare is a denomination of
Christianity, or at least a denomination of churches within
Christianity, but I personally have never held to a particular
Christian denomination. For me, it's always been the
Bible is what determines your faith in terms of doctrines,

(45:38):
beliefs, creeds, and nothing else.
So I was never tied to a particular Christian
denomination. Of course, you go on the
Internet and you find Christiansarguing with each other over
their denominations all the time.
And there is a lot of different Christian denominations to the
point where Catholics like to make fun of those Christians for

(46:00):
all their different denominations.
But yeah, I've never been part of 1, but the denomination wars
I personally find to be very distracting because what happens
is people get distracted from what the Bible says on topics,
and they start tying themselves down to what their denomination
teaches on topics and what the leaders in their denominations

(46:23):
say on topics. And they start arguing with each
other over whose leaders are more correct than the other and
stuff like that. And after a while, it's just
divisive and it doesn't really accomplish anything.
It just distracts people from the main issue, which is the
Bible. Well, I'm a what?
About you, Brett. How do you go ahead?

(46:44):
I was going to say myself, I would call myself denominate and
denominational homeless. I'm not in any kind of
denomination. There are ideas from each
denomination that I may agree with, I might even support, but
I have never found a denomination IA 100% agree with.
As far as theatrics, though, I like the Phantom of the Opera

(47:08):
thing that the Catholics got, and I like the yelling and
screaming and fire and brim stone and the charismatic
Baptist preachers. I like the yelling and the
punching of the podium. It gets me excited.
Like I'm at a rock concert. But as far as the green with
their flossies and views, I'm different.
Especially when it comes to hell.
I'm an annihilationist, remember?

(47:30):
Yes, I do remember. So am I.
Exactly. But but anyway, that is an
excellent answer. And then the next question is
what role did your family play in shaping your spiritual
beliefs? And to that, I would say my
parents, in particular, my mom and dad, played a huge role in

(47:54):
shaping my spiritual beliefs. Because as much as I learned
from my church groups growing up, you know, going through Kids
Church, Cosgrove Faith Center, going through the middle school
group at Cosgrove Faith Center, going through high school group
at Cosgrove Faith Center, and then sitting in the pulpit with
the other adults in the main sanctuary at the Cosgrove Faith

(48:15):
Center. For a couple of years before
Pastor Jim retired, my family was my primary influence in
shaping my spiritual beliefs. Because, you know, I go to
church once a week, maybe go to a couple of camps during the
summer, but at home seven days aweek.
Most of the time I'm with my parents.

(48:35):
And my parents were instrumentalin teaching me about the Bible
and Jesus and God and helping meto have some kind of a solid
foundation that I could fall back onto on my own later.
And then basically from there, Ibasically grew my own foundation
and just added on to what they had taught me.

(48:56):
But they were very instrumental in getting my initial footing in
the Christian faith as far as teaching me what the biblical
worldview says during a time where I was biblically
illiterate. So I'd say they were very huge
in shaping my spiritual beliefs in those early formative years.

(49:18):
I guess what I would throw out there, ladies and gentlemen, is
I do believe that Christianity and religion eventually is
something that is taught and helps children to be able to
process and understand what their instincts and senses tell
them. According to science, we are all
born with an innate belief that there is a higher power, but I

(49:40):
think that our parents actually help us adjust and adapt and
understand and comprehend what it is that we're sensing, if
that makes sense. Yeah, that's actually something
I've made many videos about in the past talking about how child
psychology studies have shown that even in secular societies,

(50:00):
children are born with an innatebelief in intelligent design and
a creator God. They just don't know much about
this God. They just know based on what
they see in reality that he exists because they realize or
recognize, I should say, design and reality.
And we saw in the last decade that evolutionists have
basically been publicly talking about, well, since these beliefs

(50:23):
of theirs seem to be intuitive from birth, we need to figure
out how to override those early intuitions.
And so that's when they start talking about indoctrinating
your children before they can form and fully develop their
cognitive abilities so that theycan disrupt those early
intuitions and get them to be atheists, get them to be
agnostic, get them to believe inevolution.

(50:45):
And billions of years. It's a very calculated, sick
plan by those people. And the fact that they have to
do this proves once and for all conclusively that nobody is born
an atheist. Atheism is something you
literally get indoctrinated into.
That's what child psychology studies have proven.

(51:07):
Right, there's some people. The only argument I've heard
against the innate design and understanding comprehension of
children is, well, even childrenwill believe in monsters like
that. Some kind of joke or something
funny. There are monsters in the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, this research, the Holocaust and
Adolf Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, goahead and continue on.

(51:28):
Good answers, by the way, that you've been given towards the
questions. Proud of you.
Thank you and if you guys are watching from home, watching the
live stream, can you comment andask and tell me where the trap
is and all these questions? Thick Shades really seem to
think there's a big trap here, but I don't see it yet.
But anyway, let's keep going. OK, that that.

(51:53):
How do you describe your personal relationship with Jesus
Christ? Now there's a doozy of a
question. I think the way I would describe
my relationship with Jesus is actually a biblical image.
I'm the sheep. He's the shepherd.
I do my best to understand what he's saying and follow it and

(52:15):
implement it into my own life. I try to do the things that he's
called me to do. But there are times where I'm
going just a little bit of strayon something like, you know, an
action or maybe I'm thinking about making a video that I
think is a good idea, but it really isn't.
There are times where, metaphorically speaking, and

(52:37):
spiritually speaking as well, you can almost feel the Lord
putting a crane around my neck and basically just redirecting
me in the direction that he wants to go.
Just like how if a sheep starts to wander off and wander astray,
the shepherd will hook his craneof his cane around the sheep's
neck and guide it back to where it needs to go.

(52:58):
That's the relationship I have with Jesus.
He is definitely my shepherd. And he lets me do what I need to
do when I'm going in the right direction.
But when I'm not going in the right direction, he is not shy
at stepping in and redirecting me to where I need to go.
So I'd say the sheep shepherd analogy is the best way to

(53:19):
describe my relationship with Jesus.
I'm the I'm sitting here listening to you and eating
dinner at the same time. Good answer.
No wonder there is dead air. Brett's eating.
I apologize. It's fine.
It's fine. But yeah, the sheep shepherd

(53:39):
analogy is also interesting because one of my friends, Josh,
seeking the truth as you know him on the Internet, Brett, he's
talked about for years with me, like behind the scenes and
whatnot, about how just so many people out there believe so many
false things and that people arebasically just sheep.

(54:00):
And when he would tell me that, I'd think to myself, you know
what? He's almost there.
Because when God talks about what human beings are like and
compares them to an animal, he compares us to sheep.
Even the smartest and the greatest of human beings are
nothing but sheep to an almighty, all powerful, all

(54:24):
knowing God who is omnipresent. So yeah, I think the sheep
analogy not just as a good description of my personal
relationship with Jesus, but it's actually a good description
of humanity in relation to God. We are all sheep to him.

(54:44):
And people should also keep in mind the fate of a sheep.
Usually sheep are extremely intelligent animals actually and
they for some reason some peopledowngrade them for whatever
reason, but according to science, they're actually smart
animals and they and they stay together which makes them
stronger and they're able to defend themselves better.

(55:04):
It's when they stray away and they don't listen to the
shepherd. Whenever they get out by
themselves and don't have that extra force or mechanism, they
end up becoming food for wolves.So when God jumps in like you
were talking about earlier and says, all right, dear buddy
can't do that, it's not because he's being mean.
It's because you don't want you to become dinner.

(55:27):
Exactly. Great analogy and point.
Now the next question is an interesting one, and this one
might actually make some people laugh.
Was there a time in your life when you questioned your faith?
How did you navigate that? Believe it or not, there was one
time, very briefly, where I did question my faith, and it was

(55:51):
the first time I came across thetheory that none of the Gospels
or the New Testament or the Bible were written by any of the
people that the Bible claims they were written by.
It was all just a bunch of Romans making up this false
religion to basically mind control Jews and mind control,

(56:11):
you know, the Christians. Basically.
The first time I heard that theory, I was very panicky for
about like 3 minutes, like, Oh my God, what have I done?
What is this faith I have embraced?
And then once the panic kind of wore off after three minutes and
my brain turned back on, I'm like, wait a minute, wait a

(56:34):
minute. We got Roman historians who
wrote about Jesus in the early Christians, and not only is what
they wrote about those people congruent with what the New
Testament says, but you look at the language used to talk about
them and relation to the rest ofthe documents that they're from.
The Romans did not have a very high opinion of Jews and

(56:57):
Christians. They rarely ever address them as
individuals, and they would often address them in a
dismissive, brief way as people groups.
So the fact that they singled out Jesus by name to talk about
in their documents is actually pretty significant because they
otherwise didn't care about Jews.

(57:18):
They didn't care about Christians all that much, other
than when it was time to blame them for something the emperor
did, and then, oh, that's OK, then it's OK to kill them all.
But yeah, that was the one time that I kind of sort of
questioned my faith for like 2 minutes until my brain turned

(57:39):
back on, and then I realized really quickly how stupid it
was. But go ahead.
I've actually heard that view before where people said things
like that, that the Romans may have done this and that.
But the problem is, is besides the Bible, I also admire and
enjoy reading about history. Yeah, at least most of it, I
believe, is true. I do think some things in

(58:00):
history have been twisted a little bit.
You know how it does winner getsthe right history kind of thing.
As far as the Romans, they considered themselves the most
civilized and the most sophisticated and they look down
on Jews as though they were primitives, primates,
troglodytes, cave dwellers type of thing.
They did not respect the Jews. Only reason why Pontius Pilate

(58:22):
listened and had any order whatsoever is because he would
have been thrown into the Colosseum or gotten killed in a
very slow terrible way had he went against the Empire.
Well, and the other problem was that he was literally dealing
with an angry mob at that time with the Jews, because they were
literally forming an unruly angry mob to pressure him into

(58:45):
crucifying Jesus. And so he gave in to their
demand because he was trying to appease them.
I don't know if you've ever seenthe movie Risen.
It's about a Roman soldier investigating the resurrection
of Jesus. One of the things that's
historically accurate in that movie is that pilot.

(59:06):
I believe it is. Or is it?
I think it's pilot that the maincharacter interacts with
basically is talking about how the emperor's coming in a short
amount of time and, you know, Jerusalem and Israel is in
chaos. And we have to have order.
We have to, you know, squelch all this stuff.
And we have to have, you know, aunified society where none of

(59:26):
this rebelling is going on. And that's literally the
environment of the time of Jesusthat the Romans were dealing
with. Pilot being in the position of
power he was in Jerusalem, was not an enviable seat.
It was actually seen as not a good thing, him being there
because of how chaotic and how inciting towards violence a lot

(59:50):
of the Jews were. So when he had Jesus crucified
on the cross, that was literallyto appease an angry mob.
But if you remember, he also, healso did it to humiliate the
Jews as well. A lot of people don't realize
that, but whenever he said, I wash my hands of this man's
blood and it's all on you, he basically said it's because of

(01:00:11):
your filthy decisions why this happened.
He actually questioned Jesus andgave Jesus an out.
But Jesus did as God will go ahead.
Oh, I, I was meaning to. I was meaning to ask you
something real quick. I'm sure some people would want
to know this and it's not in thequestions, but why do you, why

(01:00:33):
do you believe as well as some young Earthers believe that it's
a salvation issue on old earth, Young earth?
Just curious. The reason why I believe it is a
salvation issue is because anything that is clearly taught
by the Bible is a salvation issue.

(01:00:55):
Like for example, Jesus being God that's all over the place in
the New Testament. Jesus himself in John 858
literally says that he is Yahwehwhen they were questioning him
about ha ha, you know you, you're alive and 50 years old
and you've claimed to have seen Abraham.
And what does Jesus say in response before Abraham was

(01:01:16):
born? I am, I am is the shorthand form
in English for Yahweh. It's literally the same words we
see God call himself in Exodus chapter 3 at the burning Bush.
And yet, despite all of that clear biblical evidence that
Jesus is God, believe it or not,there are some Christians out

(01:01:40):
there who will insist to their dying breath that Jesus not only
is not God, but never claimed tobe so young Earth creationism,
the 6000 year timeline that we get from the genealogies and
time spans provided by Genesis and Exodus and 1st Kings chapter

(01:02:02):
6 verse one, we Add all that together, which that timeline
when you Add all that information together ends about
940 years before Jesus was born.And then it's been 2000 years
since Jesus was born. And so that's how they get the
6000 number. But most of that information
comes from those three places inthe Bible and it is clearly

(01:02:24):
taught. And in I believe it's Numbers
chapter 12, God himself, when hehad the whole showdown with
Moses, Aaron and Miriam, and they were challenging Moses's
authority as God's spokesperson,God himself literally told them
to their face. With some prophets, I speak to
them in dreams and visions, but not so if my servant Moses, with

(01:02:48):
him, I speak face to face with him.
I speak clearly and not in riddles.
So God is literally himself saying that when he revealed his
revelations to Moses, He did notreveal them in some kind of
coded language that, you know, thousands from years from now we
would finally be able to properly decipher and figure out

(01:03:09):
its real meaning. Now God said that what He had
Moses reveal is what God said. That's it.
He's not playing games with us. He's telling us the bare basic
facts and all that information about the young Earth
creationism timeline of history.Almost all of it is found in
Genesis and Exodus 2 of the books that were written by

(01:03:31):
Moses, which are revelations he got from God, as well as some
other sources that he put together as an editor.
And those sources, since they were written by Moses, the
proper interpretation of those sources is the straightforward
reading. There's no reinterpreting those.

(01:03:52):
What it says is what it means. And so that's where the number
genealogies and the time spans all get added together and you
get the 6000 year timeline that young earth creationists have.
And because it's as clearly taught as Jesus's deity, it's a
salvation issue. A better way to put it in like a

(01:04:15):
logical form is that basically biblical authority is a
salvation issue. That's premise 1.
Premise 2, if you reject biblical authority, if you
reject something that the well, premise 2 is that if you reject
something that the Bible clearlyteaches, then you're rejecting

(01:04:37):
biblical authority. Premise 1 and 2 is premises that
no old earth creationist or young earth creationist would
disagree on. But the third premise is 1 where
the disagreement happens. The Bible clearly teaches a
young earth, A6000 year old earth and universe.
And so if all three of those premises are true, if biblical

(01:05:00):
authority is a salvation issue, if rejecting anything that the
Bible clearly teaches is a rejection of biblical authority,
and if the Bible clearly teachesA6000 year old earth and
universe, if all of those premises are true, then the
logical inescapable conclusion is that young Earth creationism

(01:05:20):
is a salvation issue. That's the logical formula for
that question, if you want to have it put that way.
I feel like you you communicatedthat quite well and you got some
good points. But doesn't it put us both in a
dichotomy here, The old earther and the young earther?
And what dichotomy are you talking about?

(01:05:42):
Because even though you believe that the Bible teaches 6000
between 6010 thousand years old and here I am going along with
what I've been indoctrinated in by science and the public school
system. If I if someone were to come in
here and ask me, well, how old do you actually think the
universe of the earth is? Brett?
I don't know. I'm not a, you know, geologist.

(01:06:05):
I am interested in cosmos, but Iwouldn't be able to give a down
to the minute down the week downto the second deal.
And I suspect that the people who are young earth creationist,
although you have a rounded off number that you believe that the
time frame will be in probably alimited some kind of point on
how long God's going to let thisgo.

(01:06:26):
You don't know the day you're down to the second or week
either. Do you just kind of have a round
off number so it puts us both ina a deal if it's that strict.
Am I correct or or do you have adifferent way of looking at it?
I forget the name of the guy whodid that who had the creation
date at 4004 BC. I'm blanking on his name, but I

(01:06:49):
know who you're talking about and I'm not exactly sure how he
got such an exact date and time for when creation happened, but
I just know from basic what the Bible teaches.
The earth and universe is roughly 6100 years old, but the
Bible itself doesn't actually give a specific day or time that
the creation occurred at. We just have the general time

(01:07:12):
span provided by the data. And so I tried to not go beyond
that. Now a lot of younger
creationists, they will go beyond the biblical text to try
and answer some of those detailsand questions, and they are free
to do so. We all have freedom of inquiry,
especially academic inquiry. But for me personally, I don't

(01:07:35):
dwell too much into those because the safe place to stay
is when what the Bible says. And the Bible definitely
provides a clear timeline of roughly 6100 years between Adam
and Eve and the universe and Earth being created and us
today. So I stick with that and any

(01:07:56):
speculation beyond that. I tend to let other creationists
just go ahead and inquire all they want.
Fair enough. Well, I don't want to continue
to interrupt you because there is a lot of questions there and
I appreciate you going in it. I would like to do a show with
you sometime where we talked about some of the studies or

(01:08:18):
discussion that Russell Humphrey, I believe I brought it
up with you yesterday about his time dilation idea and and see
what your thoughts are on it if you want to.
Yeah. Well, I'd have to find because
I'm pretty sure I have a book onthat somewhere in my apologetics
bookshelf. So I'm going to have to find
that book and then reread it to basically get myself back up to

(01:08:41):
speed. And then once I'm up to speed,
then we can probably do something like that.
But anyway, where were we? Can I offer you a suggestion so
you don't lose your place? Simply take your mouse and
highlight the latest question that you've answered, and then
when you go back to answer, you'll.
Know whatever this is where we're at.

(01:09:05):
What does being a Christian meanto you on a day-to-day basis?
Now that is a good question because it's one thing to
profess faith, it's another thing to act it out.
So for me, being a Bible believing Christian means that I
have to believe anything that the Bible clearly teaches.

(01:09:26):
And that means if the Bible clearly teaches how I'm to act
on a day-to-day basis, then I have to follow that teaching.
And because I believe in the Bible, I believe that all
knowledge and wisdom comes from Jesus, which is what Colossians
teaches in the New Testament. And so when I think about that

(01:09:48):
passage, when we talk about things that are true in reality,
I tend to look at things as the truth can never contradict
itself. So if I come across, you know, a
scientist or a group of scientists who are teaching
things about reality that contradict what the Scriptures

(01:10:09):
say, I'm going to go with the scriptures on that.
But if they're teaching things that are obviously true and
don't conflict with the Bible atall, I'm going to accept those
as true, at least providentially, because there's
no reason not to reject them at that point unless it comes up
later than I would. But you kind of have to navigate

(01:10:32):
the waters, so to speak. But the important thing with
being a Christian on a day-to-day basis is that you
have to view everything through the lens of what you read in the
Bible. A lot of people will interpret
the Bible through the lens of what the world tells them, which
is where we get a lot of this divide between conservative

(01:10:52):
Christians and liberal Christians, older versus younger
creationism. The lens you interpret the world
through is what's going to determine how you interpret the
world. So when you interpret the world
through the Bible instead of theother way around, you're going
to come to much different conclusions than people who

(01:11:12):
interpret things the other way around.
It's just a fact. It's the way it works, and
there's no shame in that. If you find yourself on the side
that doesn't conform to what theBible says, first and foremost,
people have to grow in their ownway and their own time.
And over time, people who are truly saved and meant to be

(01:11:34):
saved, they will eventually comeout of their false beliefs and
their false faiths, and they will submit to true faith and
true beliefs, but they have to have the freedom and space to do
it. And he's gone.

(01:11:55):
No, I'm still here. I just don't want to hold it.
Up. I just kidding.
I know, I know, that's OK. I'll just go right to the next 1
then. I think I just scrolled up too
much. How do you feel your faith has
shaped your identity? Well, I kind of just answered
that question too, because I interpret the world through the

(01:12:18):
lens of what the Bible says whenit's read in a straightforward,
contextual manner. So like, for example, on the
whole origins debate, we got thescientific and academic
community telling me that the world was made through a
designerless naturalistic process called evolution over
the course of billions of years.And I got my Bible telling me,

(01:12:42):
no, actually it was spoken into existence by God over the course
of six ordinary days 6000 years ago.
So when I interpret what they'resaying through the lens of what
the Bible says, I'm going to reject evolution.
I'm going to reject billions of years, I'm going to reject Big
Bang cosmology. Or let's try another biblical

(01:13:03):
belief when they tell us that dead people don't rise from the
dead, and therefore Jesus couldn't possibly have risen
from the dead. And yet I got the Bible in front
of me, specifically the New Testament Gospels telling me
that. Yeah, Jesus did rise from the
dead, and that's why it's a miracle, because dead people

(01:13:25):
don't rise normally. I'm going to go with the Bible
on that one. You know, stuff like that.
Set some. I have my I have wireless
headphones are and I'll be listening then I got to use the
rest area, but I will listen OK,right, cool.
So the next question is what spiritual practices, prayer,

(01:13:48):
Bible reading, worship, etcetera, are most important to
you? Now this is a good question
because the answers are different for different people.
There's some people who are really into worship or they're
really into prayer, or they're really into Bible reading, and
they have different prioritizings when they come

(01:14:11):
when it comes to those things. But I would say for me, the most
important spiritual practice youcan have is Bible reading.
Because if you don't know your Bible, then you will not be able
to discern true spirits from false spirits when they tell you
things that are true or false. But if you know your Bible and

(01:14:33):
you know what it says, then whenthis evil spirit or some kind of
satanic spirit comes along and tries to slip deceptive lies
into your head that contradict the Bible, you'll recognize it
immediately because it doesn't jive with what the Bible says.
But then when a spirit comes along that says things that

(01:14:55):
agree with what the Bible says or fall right in line of what
the Bible says, you'll recognizethat too.
Because you know your Bible so well, you'll be able to discern
which spirits are telling you the truth, which spirits are
not. When I say spirits telling you
the truth, I could be referring to angels.
I could be referring to other messengers.
God has I I don't know how else to put it without making it more

(01:15:18):
awkward than it already is. But however you want to
interpret it, knowing your Bibleis key because you will be able
to discern those true thoughts from those false thoughts, those
true teachings from those false teachings, etcetera, etcetera.
So I would say knowing your Bible is the most important one,
not just for me, but the most important one in general,

(01:15:40):
primarily because one, it's the one that people neglect the
most. It's been an issue for most of
my life that the Christian community at large is biblically
ignorant. They don't actually know what
their Bible says on a wide variety of topics.
And I also find that if you knowyour Bible, other things will

(01:16:01):
fall into place for you in termsof theology and beliefs, and
prayer and worship will also fall into proper alignment for
you once you know your Bible. So I would say Bible meeting is
the most important one in general.
Next question is how do you maketime for prayer or meditation in
your daily routine? Well, the good news is I work

(01:16:26):
full time at a church, so we have a prayer room in the same
building where my office is. So if I ever need to break away
and go pray or break away and spend some time reading my
Bible, I will literally just go into the prayer room for a bit
and I will pray. I will read my Bible and get

(01:16:47):
that spiritual nourishment that we all need, and then I go back
to work. And of course, I do that at my
home as well. But the bottom line is that's
the way I make time for prayer and meditation in my daily
routine as well as my Bible reading.
Next question. Is there a particular Bible
verse or passage that has been especially meaningful to you?

(01:17:11):
Why? Well, there's a lot of really
cool Bible passages that have made an impact on me as well as
made an impact on others. But I would say the most
important one is Matthew 7, verses 21 through 23 where
people come to the Lord and theysay, Lord, Lord, we did all
these amazing things in your name, in your name, we drove out

(01:17:35):
demons in your name. We did all these miracles and
mighty works. And Jesus's response to them is,
I never knew you away from me, you evil doers.
This passage indicates that they're going to be a lot of
people who seem like good, godly, Bible believing
Christians who don't actually have a saving, personal

(01:17:57):
relationship with Jesus. And they are going to go to hell
along with the rest of the world.
They're going to be tossed into the lake of fire and cease to
exist along with everyone else whose name is not found written
in the book of life. And because this is the case,
because of that verse, then it makes you really sober and makes

(01:18:17):
you really analyze yourself like, hey, am I really jiving
with what the Bible says? Do I really have saving faith?
It's one of those humbling passages that makes Christians,
you know, really check themselves at the door and make
sure they have a true saving faith because no one wants to be
that guy who thinks he's a savedBible believing Christian only

(01:18:40):
to find out from Jesus's own mouth on Judgement Day.
No, actually, you're not. I never knew you'd go away to
the lake of fire with you. No one wants to be in that
position, really. So yeah, that's how I would
address that. Now, we kind of touched on this
next question earlier. How do you approach reading and

(01:19:01):
interpreting the Bible? Well, the Bible was meant to be
read in a straightforward and contextual fashion.
And I say contextual because theBible is not all historical
narrative. It's not all poetic form, it's
not all this or that. There are different writing

(01:19:22):
styles in different books of theBible.
So the key to interpreting the Bible is to accept the
straightforward and contextual reading.
And by contextual reading we take into account language.
We take into account writing styles and hermeneutics and all
of that. But also when interpreting a

(01:19:43):
verse or a passage, you have to look at the verse or passages
before it, the verse or passagesafter it.
You have to look at the context of the book.
You have to look at the context of the Bible as a whole when it
comes to interpreting what the Bible is saying in a particular
passage. So that in particular is the

(01:20:05):
approach I take when it comes toreading the Bible.
The same approach that I take todetermine that the Bible teaches
A6000 year old earth and universe is the same approach I
take to determine that the Bibleteaches that Jesus is God.
It's the same approach I take when determining that
replacement theology is false. It's the same approach I take

(01:20:28):
when determining that Jews and Gentiles alike will be Co heirs
in the Kingdom of God because the Gentiles will be turned into
spiritual Jews by accepting the gospel.
Which is when Galatians 326 through 29 teaches.
I apply the same methodology when it comes to Bible
interpretation, to all those topics.

(01:20:51):
And then wherever the chips fall, that's where they fall.
That's what I go with. So that's my approach to reading
and interpreting the Bible. Now the next question is, what
role does worship play in your life, whether in church or
personally? And I would say that even though
I have no musical abilities whatsoever, I can't play an

(01:21:14):
instrument. I Can't Sing to save my life.
I can't. I literally can't carry a tune,
which is unfortunate because my dad can carry a tune very well
and he has sang in church in thepast and he's actually on my
church's worship team now, and he's still got it.
So yeah, I don't have any of those abilities, but I do like
listening to Christian rock music.

(01:21:37):
I like listening to certain kinds of Christian music in
general, and it's important to listen to lyrics and songs that
are uplifting in a spiritual way, because the stuff you put
into your head, well, that can influence the decisions you make
in the life you live. And if you're putting junk in

(01:21:58):
your head, if you're putting satanic stuff in your head and
you're going to be dealing with those kind of thoughts all the
time, and it's going to make making good decisions in your
life all that much harder. But if you're putting things in
your head that are uplifting spiritually, things that don't
contradict the revealed Word of God, well, then you'll be fine.

(01:22:18):
You won't have the same kind of struggles in your thoughts if
you're putting uplifting, spiritually mature things into
your head via worship, via music.
Well, as far as. Next question.
Well before before you continue,I was going to say, although you
don't give yourself much credit for singing and vocals and and

(01:22:40):
music and all that, you do have a pretty high station.
I would stay say if they actually indulge what it is that
you're you're capable of doing video editing and the kind of
work you're doing is extremely difficult and challenging for a
lot of people. And I'm sure a lot of your
Christian members in the church would even say so they wouldn't

(01:23:01):
know what to do if they had to do the kind of things you're
doing. And also the fact that you're
sowing seeds and social media aswell shows that you're an
extraordinary part of that church.
So don't get that down on yourself and realize what you're
capable of. Thank you, Brett.
And yeah, you are right, video editing is definitely not for

(01:23:22):
the faint of heart, whether it be for, you know, a social media
site like YouTube or Rumble or Facebook, or if you're making
stuff to air on TV. It's all a very laborious,
tedious process because it's notjust like the one action that
you do to make an edit. It's the fact that you often

(01:23:45):
have to make the same types of edits repeatedly over and over
and over. Especially if you're doing
weekly programs like I do for work.
You're basically doing the same kind of tasks for the most part
in every project you put together.
So that kind of tedious repetition turns a lot of people

(01:24:06):
off. I actually had someone, I've
come through my ministry at the church recently, who was
initially interested and being apart of the television ministry
and helping put together programs and putting together
content for social media. But then once he realized all
the tedious, repetitive work that goes into that, he lost his

(01:24:26):
drive to do that and he ended upgoing off to do something else.
So I know through personal experience that the kind of
content that I make for my job and the kind of stuff I do here
on the Internet is definitely not for the faint of heart.
And it's not something that justany old person can do.
You got to be really committed and driven in order to do this

(01:24:48):
kind of thing for a living like I do.
Right. If you'd if you were not doing
the video editing and engineering of it and producing
it, then the show would be it would look garbagey.
And also if you weren't in control over being able to edit
the audio as well. It doesn't matter how
professional someone sings or how great they are musically, if

(01:25:10):
they're not properly produced and video and dubbed with it,
it's going to all sound like this absolute garbage.
So you do play a huge part and Ihope that people up there are
praising you for that. I get some thank yous for from
time to time in my church, but yeah, I, I appreciate that,

(01:25:33):
Brett, very much. I don't.
Mean praising you, like getting on your knees, worshipping you
or anything I'm saying. I know what you mean.
Giving you kudos, you know what I mean?
Yeah, I do know what you mean. Where were we?
Oh yes. So how do you discern God's will
or guidance when making decisions?
Now, this touches on what I was saying earlier about the Bible

(01:25:55):
and how to interpret it and how to determine whether or not
you're being told the truth in your thought life.
Basically, you need to know whatthe Bible says.
Because when you know what the Bible says, then when his God's
messengers or his angels are telling you things or the Holy
Spirit is telling you things, you'll be able to recognize

(01:26:17):
their voice because what they say will line up with what the
Bible says. And you will know, hey, that
voice is to be trusted. That thought is to be trusted.
That idea is to be trusted because I know where it comes
from. And if you know your Bible and
you come across a thought or an idea in your head that

(01:26:38):
completely contradicts what the Bible says, then you will know,
hey, I should reject that thought or idea.
I'm not going to go with that. So that is the kind of, that's
the kind of discernment you needto exercise when you're trying

(01:26:59):
to figure out God's will or guidance when making decisions.
Because knowing your Bible will make that so much easier.
Because if you don't know your Bible and then you have all
these conflicting ideas and thoughts in your head that are
put there by angels, by the HolySpirit, by by demons and by evil
spirits, then it will be really,really difficult to discern

(01:27:21):
whether or not what you're beingtold is true or not.
And as you know, Brett, evil spirits and demons, they are
very good at putting a lot of truth in with a little
devastating lie in order to get you to accept a lie.
So it's really important that weall know our Bibles because
that's how you can discern God'swill or guidance when making

(01:27:44):
decisions. As far as the next question
goes, what are your thoughts on the go ahead I?
Was going to say I agree with you.
Unfortunately, and I brought this up with you a long time ago
when I was a former non believergetting into discussions and
debates. I found that a lot of religious

(01:28:05):
folks, they weren't reading their Bible cover to cover.
They weren't even trying to understand and they would say
they were too busy to do any research or study.
A lot of them would justify it by saying, well, I believe in
Jesus and that's it. That's all I need to do.
And I tried to explain to them kind of the same thing that you
did. And unfortunately, almost every
time they lost debates, discussions and everything else

(01:28:28):
because they simply had no foundation to work from.
And we're surprised when things were brought up in the Bible
they'd never read about. You see what I mean?
Yeah, I do see what you mean. I appreciate that.
And then let's see, Oh yes, thisis a fun question 'cause we know

(01:28:48):
some people on the Internet who talk about this all the time.
What are your thoughts on the concept of grace and
Christianity? Oh boy, oh, all the free grace
people just said, huh? So grace and Christianity is not
like a blanket pardon 'cause there are some people who think

(01:29:09):
that you can just at one point in your life profess faith in
Christ, but then almost immediately completely backslide
and basically being unsaved heathen the rest of your life.
And because you made that one profession a long time ago,
you're saved regardless of the fact that you had no fruit in
your life to show that you were saved.

(01:29:31):
Whereas when it comes to good works, and we're kind of
addressing the follow up question as well, how do you
view the balance between faith and works in your Christian
walk? The grace that we are given by
Jesus is what enables us to do any good work.
So when you repent of your sins and you bow your knee to Jesus

(01:29:52):
and you enter into a personal saving relationship with Him, if
that was genuinely done, then what's going to happen
eventually is that you are goingto start in some way, shape or
form, doing good works. And it's not the works that save
you. The works are the fruit that

(01:30:13):
prove that you're saved. It's kind of like how an apple
proves that an apple tree is an apple tree.
You know it's an apple tree because apples are growing on
it. Well, that's the same thing in
Christianity. You know that you're saved
because you're doing the good works that come with being
saved. So it's not that the works save

(01:30:34):
you, it's that the works prove that you're saved.
You know what I mean with that analogy.
I do. Unfortunately, I'm having a tiny
bit of delay and that's the reason why it takes just a
moment for me to respond. That's OK.
What does forgiveness mean to you and how do you practice it

(01:30:55):
in your life? Well, forgiveness has to run
deep in the lives of Christians,especially in our day-to-day
lives because human beings are sinful.
They make mistakes, they burn you, they sin against you.
It's inevitable, happens to everyone, and you have to be
able to forgive them because as the New Testament teaches, God

(01:31:17):
has forgiven us much and so we are therefore obligated to
forgive others when the opportunity arises.
And Jesus had parables where he talked about people who accepted
forgiveness from the Lord, but then were refusing to offer that
same forgiveness to people who had committed lesser crimes

(01:31:38):
against them. And then the Lord gets mad with
that person and punishes them for what they've done and what
they did to the other person. So being able to forgive people
is important. It is a must.
If you're a Christian, you have to forgive people.
Now, it won't always be easy. Sometimes it might take you a

(01:31:58):
while to forgive someone, depending on the severity of the
sin or the crime they've committed against you or against
God. But you do have to be able to
forgive them at some point, and the timing is all in God's hands
when it comes to that. But forgiveness is absolutely
essential. You can't go, you can't get away

(01:32:19):
from it. You can't go around it.
You can't skip over it. Forgiveness is incredibly
important, and so when people have wronged me in my life, over
time, I've had to forgive them. And I do forgive them.
I especially at one point used to harbor a lot of resentment
towards my old basketball coach from high school because me and

(01:32:41):
my teammates were a really talented team for our
classification in Oregon back inthe late 2000s, and we had all
the potential in the world to run the table and win a state
championship. But our coach, unfortunately,
for reasons I don't understand, hated when his best players
succeeded and he would not put my teammates and myself in the

(01:33:03):
best position to succeed. And so even though we still
ended up having a great team in my senior year, we never reached
the potential that I knew we had.
And I used to hold that against him for many, many years.
And it was only when I got into like my mid late 20s where I
eventually just forgave him because I couldn't hold on to

(01:33:26):
that kind of resentment anymore.That was something I had to
really just process for a long time and not really address it.
And it kind of just took care ofitself.
But forgiveness in general, though, is really important, not
just to me, but it's important to being a Christian in general.

(01:33:47):
The next question. Is I had no idea that you played
basketball and you were good at it.
I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn.
Good man. Yeah, I was.
Since you brought it up. I was third team Allstate and
first team all league in my senior year in high school, and

(01:34:08):
I was playing in a league where most of the top 25 players in
our classification in the state of Oregon were in.
So guys who would go on to play college football, guys who would
go on to play college basketballin some way, shape or form.
The Oregon State athlete of the year was actually one of those
guys. He was a guy who was like first

(01:34:29):
team all league in football, first team all league in
Allstate in basketball, He was first team all league in
baseball. And he actually ended up walking
on at the University of Oregon and being on their practice
squad for a couple of years, which if you know Oregon
football from the late 2000s, early 20 tens, that's when they
started hitting like primetime college football and they became

(01:34:50):
a national power. So to even be on the practice
squad at a program like that is a huge accomplishment.
And I had to play against guys of that kind of athletic level
on the regular in my senior year.
And yet I was one of the better players in the state in the
league and I did a lot of great things.
And I in retrospect, I can look back on it.

(01:35:14):
I had such a big impact on my team that I was literally the
difference between my team beinga top ten team like we were and
being an also man that was a total dumpster fire.
Like I was literally the glue holding my team together.
For reasons that I don't quite understand but also reasons I

(01:35:34):
can think of that makes sense. Mainly my height and my ability
to play defense down low and score inside and draw a lot of
double teams and make life easier for my teammates.
But yeah, I was really good at basketball.
I actually played a year of college basketball at Linfield
University before I ended up getting cut and then focused in

(01:35:58):
on my academics the rest of my college time.
But I was really good at basketball.
I used to be in really good shape.
Now I'm like 3035 lbs over my playing weight and I don't have
any stamina for running. So I would suck at basketball if
I tried today because of that. That's fair enough.

(01:36:18):
How about have you ever thought about doing A, at least for your
church, maybe doing like a whereyou, you're the the guy, you're
the coach and you teach young people how to do it, or actually
a coach inside of the school? Yeah, I have thought about that.
I think I actually did apply fora coaching job once, but I never

(01:36:40):
heard back on it. And as far as doing that within
my church, I wish I could. There just currently is not
enough time to do that. I'm the only TV producer we
have. And so basically I do
everything. I do all the filming, all the
editing, and I film all the sermons on Sundays.

(01:37:04):
And there's just, it takes so much time just to do the things
we do every week with live streams and making programs that
there's just no time for me to do all that and do something
extracurricular like basketball with the church and then do all
this stuff that I do on the Internet.
You know, something's got to give.
And unfortunately, the basketball part is the one that

(01:37:26):
can go the easiest. Well, I hope, you know, for you
and I, it's second nature to do a lot of video editing and stuff
because we've been doing video for years.
But I hope the church is actually not considered that
they're in it like some kind of charity.
I hope you're getting paid. There's people get paid
thousands of dollars to do the kind of work you're doing.

(01:37:49):
Yeah, I, I get paid pretty solid.
I mean, I get paid more than I ever did when I work as a
caregiver for 11 years. So there's that.
And I got an increase in my pay around the time that my house
was being renovated because I told them about my living

(01:38:10):
situation and all on their own. My church decided to increase my
pay so that I could have an easier time paying my bills and
I didn't have to worry about that.
That's good. I'm just saying I I wouldn't
want people to devalue what you're doing, what the kind of
work you're doing is worth thousands of dollars.

(01:38:33):
Go ahead. Yeah, I, I, I don't make like I
don't make 6 figures, but I make, I can make a good amount
per year on my current salary. So I'm definitely not lacking.
Just as long as you're able to afford a Big Mac and a chocolate
shake every now and then. There you go.
Yeah, I, I just load up on my local Winco grocery store where

(01:38:56):
things are really cheap. So I actually like making my own
food now and then. So, but anyway, OK, so we kind
of went through those two. We went through forgiveness.
How do you stay grounded in yourfaith during busy or stressful
times? Well, one way is knowing your

(01:39:16):
Bible and reading it on a consistent basis.
That is the best way to stay grounded in your faith because
then it's fresh on your mind at all times.
But prayer is another way to stay grounded in your faith if
you don't have time to do any kind of Bible reading in
particular. So like, for example, this
fireworks season I just went through with my church, we're

(01:39:37):
talking 4 weeks, no breaks, no days off.
We're talking 1215 hour days most of the time.
And yeah, and it was basically, for the most part, just me and a
couple other people at a big oldfireworks tent we were running.
So I'm so tired by the end of the day when I finally go home

(01:39:57):
that there is no time for me to just sit down and read the
Bible. So, you know, you find times
during the day when you're at down times at your tent or you
find down time at home right before you go to bed to engage
in prayer and engage in staying grounded in your faith in other
ways. So that's a way that you can

(01:40:20):
stay grounded. Next question is actually very.
Well, I was going to point out something real quick.
As you know at the beginning of our conversation, the answering
the questions, Mr. 6 shades and said, oh, this is all a trap.
I wanted to inform you that there is another reason why I do
this, not just for social value and learning, but it helps me as

(01:40:42):
a Christian myself. I do go through major depression
all the time. Even in my adulthood.
I have severe depression issues and I try to find different ways
and outlets and ways for me to be able to adjust or get through
this. And the belief in God and all
that actually does help me very much.

(01:41:02):
I was going down in a downward spiral as an unbeliever.
So listening to Christians tell me the kind of things that they
do and advice or suggestions that they do for themselves,
some of it works for me, some ofit helps.
So I consider it a huge beneficial thing to do.
These things I learned from people.

(01:41:23):
And you know, I also just found out that you were pro
basketball. That's awesome, dude.
I did not know that before. Well, if you're talking about my
basketball past, then yeah, I was able to play college ball,
but I definitely was not a pro. I'm just good at the basketball

(01:41:44):
to other because I I have been to a couple of NBA games in
person. You know where the real pros
are, all those monstrous people walking around to play
basketball. Well, I weren't.
Very good. Michael Jordan or Larry Bird?
Or something like that. I'm.
Just saying you had skill, probably still do if you were
to, if you were to put some timeinto it, but the end.

(01:42:05):
If I was in shape, yeah, yeah. If I was in shape physically, I
I still have my basketball skill.
I just don't have a body to utilize it.
But you. Understand what I was saying
about the aspects of the questions though, and how it can
benefit me personally as well asI think help others.
And I, I, I really do think it'svery educational and plus it

(01:42:29):
gets people to be able to engageconversations and talk about
things and learn things about each other they may not have
known. So I, I think that it's good for
common ground type of things in educational.
That makes sense. Yeah, Now the next question is a
fun story because I'll have to do a little self censorship due

(01:42:50):
to some of the words that YouTube still likes to censor
you for. How did you find your current
church community and what drew you to it?
Well, the church that I work at now, I actually started
attending back in 2021, back when we were going through those
dark times with the EIU and people were forced to wear masks

(01:43:14):
basically everywhere they went. And the current church I go to
now, I start going to in 2021 because I didn't have to wear
one of those in order to walk inthe door and participate in the
service. And so I started going and then
I just went for a couple of years.
And then my predecessor in the TV ministry left.

(01:43:37):
And since my father was good friends with the pastor and
always talking about me as well as, you know, other things in
general, my pastor remembered that and went.
So what does Justin do again? Because he knows that I do all
this stuff and have been doing all this stuff since before I
started working there. So yeah, I was on boarded in May

(01:44:00):
of 2023 at my church to be the head TV producer and it's just
been gravy from there. It's actually very interesting,
Brett, when you're a part of a church and you get to see what
things are like behind the scenes.
Like what goes into putting together a Sunday service?

(01:44:21):
What goes into putting together outreach ministries?
What goes into putting together fundraisers to raise funds for
all that outreach stuff? What goes into putting together
like a kids camp or a youth campfor middle school, high school
students, or putting together a Valentine's Day banquet for a
community? Or like we do every Thanksgiving

(01:44:43):
the day before anyway, our own Thanksgiving dinners that we put
on where basically the whole community is opened up to our
doors and able to share a Thanksgiving dinner with us,
especially if they don't have family to do that with.
So being there for the last couple of years has really shown
me a lot about the behind the scenes stuff of what goes on to

(01:45:05):
make church stuff happen in a church that is legitimate and
trying to honor God. And it's very eye opening,
especially when you see how it impacts the community and how
much they appreciate what you dofor them.
Because our church puts out foodboxes 3 weeks a month where we
have food boxes that have like amonth's worth of food.

(01:45:28):
And we have like a drive throughstation set up in our parking
lot. And what we do for 150 to 200
families a week, every week we're open is that they come
through the drive through, they get their box and they drive out
with a week's worth of food for free.
And they go on and they're able to make it through whatever

(01:45:48):
they're going through. Because a lot of the families
that come through are not necessarily poor, but they're
just poor enough that they're kind of stuck where they are.
And if they are able to not spend money on food, they can
focus that on other things that will help them to get ahead and
get beyond that situation. And so that's the primary
audience of people that are foodboxes benefit.

(01:46:10):
As a matter of fact, the guy whocut my hair yesterday at the
barbershop, he actually a few years ago used to be one of
those people who relied on our church's food boxes to get by
while he improved his, you know,position in life so that he
could be more independent and buy his own food and not have to
rely on such outreaches. But he used to rely on our

(01:46:33):
church's outreach with our food boxes.
And so when I was telling him about the fireworks season and
how our food box ministry was funded by that, he was like, oh,
I used to get those food boxes. That makes a lot of sense now.
So, yeah, you get to see a wholenew world when you work at a

(01:46:54):
church and you see what goes on behind the scenes, especially
when you're at a church that does a lot of community
outreach. It really opens your eyes to
what the world is like and what people in general and the real
world are concerned about. And then it gives you
perspective when you go back to the Internet and you look at all
the things that people on the Internet are focused on arguing
about, etcetera. But that is how I found my

(01:47:27):
church. Have you had all that?
That ties into the next question.
Have you ever served in a leadership or volunteer role in
your church? What was that like?
I am in a leadership role because I run their television
ministry. I'm not like a pastor that, you
know, counsels people and does all the stuff that our main
pastors do. But I literally run a ministry.

(01:47:51):
And that ministry is all about putting our content on the TV
and on the social media and the Internet.
And so that's as involved in a church as you can possibly be,
especially when you're the only one doing all of it.
So every week I am putting together new TV programs from
our Sunday sermons. And I'm running prayer service

(01:48:13):
live streams on Tuesdays. I'm running announcement live
streams on Wednesdays. I'm filming announcement videos
that are aired on our youth group and on Wednesday nights
and that are Sunday services. And I'm filming and live
streaming those Sunday services and it's just, that's a lot of
work. And I'm also maintaining and
updating our website and also keeping our social medias up to

(01:48:36):
date, which for our church, we use Twitter, Gab, Getter, True
Social and Facebook as the way of putting our stuff out there.
So yeah, I do a lot of the same things I do for TTOR as far as
social media goes. I do that as part of my workflow
at work. But then at work I do so much
more. Honestly, there's more work to

(01:48:57):
do in a week at my job then I'm capable of doing.
It'll be nice one day if I had someone else who could do what I
do, because then we could get stuff done quicker and put out
more. But yeah, I'm as involved in my
church as you can get. I'm at all the staff meetings
and I do all that stuff during the weekend on Sundays.

(01:49:19):
So yeah, I'm as involved in a church as one can possibly be.
You guys got a flyer board? I don't have like a graphic to
throw up on screen, but I can't throw up.
No, no, no, no. I mean like a flyer board at the
church. I like a like a like a bulletin

(01:49:43):
board. Yeah, somewhere you can post up
if there's any young adults thatare interested in video editing
or know anything about it or have you.
I don't know if you know everybody in your church, how
big it is, but there might be some younger people who actually
do YouTube and their own videos and understand some amount of

(01:50:03):
editing. Maybe you can train a, you know,
a young Jedi. What do they call it?
A power or something like that? Padawan.
Yeah, an apprentice. There you go.
Yeah, that is a great idea. Unfortunately, we do not have

(01:50:23):
such people in our church at themoment.
Like we have young people, but they're not into that kind of
work. They have a lot of the, and I do
know a lot of the adults at the church too, and unfortunately,
they are not that interested in doing the kind of work that we
do that I do, I should say. So a lot of people at our

(01:50:47):
church, they'll get on board forhelping out in youth groups.
They'll get on board for helpingout in kids ministry or the
nursery or getting involved withthe Bible studies and all the
other stuff. But yeah, the television
ministry is not a huge draw at my church for volunteers because
of the professional nature of the work.

(01:51:08):
Are you allowed to work with people online that you trust?
Do you have any Christian brothers and sisters that's
really good at editing? I mean, you could send it, send
the footage of people and have them clean it up.
Only people you trust, obviously, and then they can do
it back and forth with you. I've actually worked with people

(01:51:29):
musically like that, where you send them something and see what
they can do with that. Send it back and tell them you
love it or extinct kind of thing.
Right, that is something I'll have to look into and see what I
can do. Sounds good.
Because I have tech people who can help me with tech problems
when they come up, but I don't have anyone like that currently.

(01:51:50):
So that's something I'll have tolook into in my own time.
But let's get back to the question list.
So yeah, how has being part of aChristian community impacted
your faith? Well, I would say that being

(01:52:14):
part of my church community in particular has had a big impact
on my faith because for the mostpart we function like a big
church family. Which kind of ties into some of
the next couple of questions is basically we do a lot of things

(01:52:35):
together in terms of not just like the services we do and the
things that I produce, but like all the outreach events we do,
the fundraisers we do. I've had to run video for a lot
of different funeral and celebration of life services.
I even got to film a wedding at one point and I got to film a
rock concert on New Year's Eve acouple years ago.

(01:52:57):
So that was held in our church. So I, I get to be a part of a
lot of, we get to be a part of alot of things together.
And basically we act like a family and we have each other's
back. And when issues come up, we try
to work through them. We try to do conflict resolution
when conflict comes up. And we just do all the things

(01:53:20):
that we do to try and keep things running as smoothly as
possible and make sure that we're all in as good of a
relationship with each other as we possibly can be, because
that's how a church family is supposed to be.
Now, no one in our church is perfect.
We all have our flaws and issuesthat we deal with.
But it very much is a family where at the church that I'm at,

(01:53:45):
especially with the staff and all the stuff we do together to
make things happen during the week, during the months, during
the year. So yeah, I would say it
functions very much like a family.
What about social media? Christian Community.

(01:54:06):
Not so much of A family. Now, granted, you know, there's
people like you and I who get along fairly well, and there's
other Christians that get along with each other fairly well as
well. But then as you know, there's a
lot of people out there in the Christian YouTube community who
basically they feed off of drama, they feed off of feeling

(01:54:28):
important. They feed off of their own ego.
They have a dopamine addiction that comes with getting views,
getting Subs, getting followers and all that stuff.
So a lot of times those kind of people will do anything they can
to keep the dopamine flowing. So they'll get really wacky and
outlandish with their theatrics,with their behaviors, with the

(01:54:50):
things they say and do. I mean, you know all about that.
I know all about that. But yeah, that's definitely not
a family. It's kind of like a it's kind of
like going through a mosh pit full of half the people being
murderers. There's always someone looking
to stab you in the back on the way through.

(01:55:12):
I agree with that. If it wasn't for guys like you
TTR and a few other people I could mention, I I don't know
how I would have been able to get through some of the
aggravation and nonsense. And some of these people are
real bastards. I really I could be in a room
filled with half Christians and half atheists and I wouldn't be

(01:55:32):
able to tell the difference. Oh yeah, I've.
I've been there. Yeah, been there, done that.
OK, I kind of addressed all thischurch community stuff.
Do you, how do you connect with other Christians outside of

(01:55:52):
formal church settings? Well, unfortunately, I don't get
to do that very often, mostly because our church does so many
outreach events and stuff that we very rarely have that
opportunity to do anything outside of a formal church or
formal fundraiser setting. But you know, if Christians like

(01:56:13):
you and me who are states apart and can't possibly meet up in
person, we get on the Internet and we do live streams together.
We DM, we share posts, send us emails.
I mean, you know, we have lots of ways of communicating online
outside of our church families, but.
Unfortunately, I hope you realize that if you ever are

(01:56:35):
given the opportunity to come visit me, you wanted a few I'd
allow to my home and I'd feed you some BBQ if you like it.
And if you ever come visit me, there are several really good
restaurants I'd treat you to. And by good restaurants, I mean
good food, not necessarily five star, you know?
There you go. Well, I'm not really into the

(01:56:57):
whole fancy push paw kind of stuff.
Anyway, I like a good burger, some fries and a good time.
Go ahead. Oh I I know many places like
that in my area. You'd love them.
Where are we? Oh yeah, we were right there.
Have you participated in missiontrips or outreach programs?

(01:57:19):
What were those experiences like?
Well, I've never been part of like a missionary trip to
another country. But as far as outreach programs
go, because I work at my church,I get to see some of our
outreach programs first hand, like with our food box drive
that we do 3 weeks a month. I see what that's like and I see

(01:57:41):
how many people come through there and how that benefits them
and just how much food they're really getting.
And you know, I go to the kids camps and the high school camps
to get videos and pictures so that I can make highlight videos
of the camps. And you know, I get to see first
hand just just what those experiences are like for the

(01:58:02):
campers and for the counselors that are there.
And I know from my own experiences growing up going to
church camps, that church camps can either be really life
changing and get you going on the right path for the rest of
your life, or at the bare minimum, they can be a really
fun time that gets you away fromthe normal rhythms and routines

(01:58:23):
of life and can help you do likea reset mentally.
Whichever one it is, I think there's very little downside to
people going to kids camps, going to youth and high school
camps. And so when I see those as
someone who's capturing it all on video and picture, I feel
like we're really making a difference in kids lives.

(01:58:44):
Because some of the kids that goto these camps, they come from
families that actually can't afford to pay the fees for their
kids to go. But their kids often during,
like our fireworks season, for example, that we just did, are
able to fund their own way to camp by helping sell raffle
tickets at the tents. And a lot of kids end up paying

(01:59:06):
actually for their entire camp funds because they did such a
good job selling raffle tickets.So to see those kids go to those
camps and get to enjoy the timesthat they have there.
And I know for a fact that, you know, they earn their way there.
It's just it's a really special thing to see it as an outsider.

(01:59:31):
The next question is how do you share your faith with others,
whether through words or actions?
Well, I tend to share my faith when the opportunity prevents
itself, but I usually wait untilthe other person asks or in the
rare occasion the Lord prompts me to ask first.

(01:59:52):
But generally speaking, I tried to figure out where people stand
and why they believe what they believe.
So that's why when you see me engaging with people like Smokey
St. or you see me engaging with the atheists I've engaged with
over the years, or the other Christians who have had beef
with me and decide to confront me head to head, I often try to

(02:00:14):
let people talk as much as possible.
Because many of those people. I don't really know where
they're coming from other than what they're saying to me in a
lot of video or on a live stream.
And so basically getting them talking to understand where
they're coming from and what their thought process is like
and whatnot. That's all very important for me

(02:00:35):
when it comes to sharing my face.
So I like to be able to let themkind of set the stage to where
they're at mentally and spiritually and emotionally.
And then what they say determines how I approach them.
So sometimes you approach them intellectually, sometimes you
approach them from a sympathetic, emotional,

(02:00:55):
spiritual support level, which is you got to really get an idea
of what the person's like and what they're going through in
order to determine which approach is best for sharing
your faith with them. And that's something that takes
time and experience and discernment.
On myself, I've discovered personally that I get people who

(02:01:16):
I don't know anything about I I don't know where they're coming
from and I'll get mentioned and I'll go look at their videos or
read their post and they come off really hardcore at me.
And this is religious people as well as non believers.
And I say to them every time I say why didn't you just approach
me? I do live shows all the time.

(02:01:38):
You have 100 different ways to contact me.
Why don't you ask me the questions instead of assume?
And why can't we just have a chill conversation and we'll get
to know each other? Instead they just seem like they
want to. It's right for kill mode, you
know, right for the throat instead of just chilling out
having an adult conversation. That's really odd.

(02:02:01):
Yes, that is very odd indeed. The next question, though, is
very interesting. It is what's your perspective on
the role of the Church in addressing social issues today?
Oh boy, talk about a loaded question.
Because that can mean all kinds of things a lot of people don't.

(02:02:22):
Like the it's a trap, Luke, it'sa trap.
That's where the trap is. Just kidding.
All right, All right. Thick shades.
We found the trap. Just kidding.
So, yeah, it really depends how you go at it.
Like, you know, most of our lives, you know, the world has

(02:02:44):
basically told the church that on the cultural issues of
abortion, homosexuality, climatechange, etcetera, that you need
to either conform with us or youneed to shut up.
That's basically the message that the church has gotten for
many, many years, for most of mylife.
And we see many, many churches do exactly that.

(02:03:05):
They either shut up on these issues, or if they talk about
these issues, they accept what the world says and try to
integrate it with the biblical worldview, which is like mixing
together oil and water doesn't work.
But if you're talking about the church addressing the social
issues, exposing the harms and the evils of things like

(02:03:26):
abortion and homosexuality and transgenderism and climate
change and, you know, all this Christian nationalism stuff and
all of this, you know, cultural stuff that they don't want
people to criticize, when the church takes a role in
criticizing those things and exposing them for what they are,

(02:03:47):
that's very important. And that's something that needs
to happen. It's a bare minimum really in a
lot of ways. So that's my perspective of the
role on the of the church in addressing social issues.
Basically, they have to avoid going woke and they have to
speak the truth about those issues.
It's basically the church's job.Next question, What's been the

(02:04:08):
biggest challenge you faced in living out your Christian faith?
I'd say the biggest challenge I've faced is probably people
tuning me out and disregarding anything I have to say.
As soon as I say, Oh yeah, I'm aChristian, or, Oh yeah, I'm a

(02:04:28):
young earth creationist, there'sso many people who I'll be
talking with and we'll be talking about things and they're
like, Oh yeah, that guy's reallysmart and he's got great
insight. I like this guy.
That is, as soon as they find out I'm a Christian or they find
out I'm a young earth creationist, it's like, never
mind, forget all that. Total moron, disregard

(02:04:49):
everything he says. He's low IQ.
I deal with that a lot. I dealt with that a lot,
especially in the last, you know, 10 years doing content
creation. And that's something that's
tough because it makes spreadingyour spreading your message
hard, spreading what God wants you to spread and makes it hard.
But I just keep plowing through and trust God to help me reach

(02:05:12):
the people that he wants me to reach and who need to hear it.
But yeah, that's. The biggest challenge?
The bullet. Sounds like you dodged a bullet.
I know it might come off aggravating for you, but have
you ever thought of it as you dodged a bullet?
There are some things I thought of as dodging a bullet,
especially when I see where those things go.
It's like, oh wow, glad I didn'tget hitched onto that.

(02:05:38):
Speaking of which word, have youever experienced doubt or a dark
night of the soul? How did you work through it?
Well, we kind of already addressed that with the whole
Romans made-up Christianity thing, so I think we'll skip
that question. How do you handle situations
where your faith conflicts with societal or cultural norms?

(02:05:59):
Actually, this is a really easy question.
If the societal or cultural normconflicts with the Bible, the
societal or cultural norm is outon the chopping block.
John does not take any precedence in my life if it
conflicts with the Bible. So that was an easy question to

(02:06:19):
answer. Have you ever faced criticism or
misunderstanding because of yourChristian beliefs?
How did you respond? Well, that one's an interesting
one. Because of the fact that I am a
young Earth creationist, there'sa lot of people who
automatically think that I don'tunderstand hermeneutic language
or anything like that when it comes to contextual reading,

(02:06:42):
when it comes to text. And there's a lot of people who
automatically assume I reject everything in biology and
geology and astrology and astronomy and all that stuff,
that I reject everything about every form and field of
knowledge because of my creationism beliefs.
And sometimes, you know, I really talk about with people on

(02:07:05):
that stuff and they find out that, oh, he actually doesn't
reject everything that, you know, we say in order to come to
his beliefs. He actually does accept science
to a degree that's reasonable. He actually does accept evidence
in other fields of knowledge to a reasonable degree.

(02:07:26):
You know, there's a few people who have figured that out about
me after initially misunderstanding where I really
stand. And then I think you were
talking to me yesterday about how Smokey St. did his live
stream yesterday, I think it was.
And he somehow was under the impression that I really wasn't

(02:07:46):
a younger creationist and I was just pretending to be 1 to
aggravate him. In my early years, I used to get
that a lot, a lot of atheists, when they weren't, you know, bad
mouthing me on my channel, they would come into my comments
section and they would act like I was one of them pretending to
be a younger creationist. And they were like, yeah, man,
that's excellent parody. Because, yeah, for some reason a

(02:08:09):
lot of people think that I'm just faking it.
They think that I'm just pretending to be a Christian,
pretending to be a young Earth creationist just for
entertainment or for engagement on the Internet.
But I'm a real deal real Christian, real young Earth
creationist, never once pretended otherwise.
So that's kind of where I stand on that.

(02:08:31):
I think people are starting to get more accustomed to it due to
guys like Ken Toven being out there and some of the other
folks who are young earthers that are up there.
But it's it's hard to determine if somebody's trolling nowadays.
The internet's full of the dopamine thing that you were
talking about and people wantingto be theatrical, so don't take
it personal. Yeah.

(02:08:55):
How do you cope with unanswered prayers or when life feels
unfair? Well, for me personally, when I
have unanswered prayers or when things happen in life that suck
and just don't seem fair, I haveto remind myself that God is in
control and that he will work everything out to my good in

(02:09:16):
accordance with His will, not mine.
And when I do that, that helps me get through that kind of
situation and it helps me to getback on track and doing what I
can do and controlling what I can control within what God has
allowed me to control. And then I just, you know, plow
forward and let God sort it out basically is my philosophy on

(02:09:39):
that. What's a lesson God has taught
you through a difficult season in your life?
Well, I would say going through the fireworks seasons is
difficult in my church because for the most part I don't do my
job as ATV producer at my church.
I basically air some reruns during that season and I spent
almost all my time, like 12 to 15 hours a day, you know,

(02:10:02):
setting up these firework tents,you know, working at these tents
for two weeks for sales and thena week to tear everything down.
Usually really long days, with the exception of this year.
This year we managed to cut our days down to like 9 hours thanks
to the modern technology of forklifts.
But anyway, when I go through those brutally hard seasons that

(02:10:25):
take a physical toll on me for obvious reasons, that's when I
really have to take hold of the lessons that God is teaching me
in terms of perseverance and working unto the Lord.
And then him just opening up my eyes to how the things we do
with selling fireworks, not just, you know, funds all of our

(02:10:48):
outreach programs at church, butalso how it impacts the
community directly because we sell is by Oregon standards in
accordance with Oregon laws. We sell the best fireworks in
the state and our tents and the stuff that we put out, people
come in droves to get at any oneof our locations because they

(02:11:09):
love it. They love all the fountains,
especially the really big ones. They especially like all the
assortment bags that we put together that usually are like
hundreds of dollars worth of products sold for half or more.
And they love coming for other things that we sell as well,
like the smaller stuff like sparklers and smoke balls and

(02:11:31):
whatnot. But so the community really
loves and appreciates all the fireworks that we sell.
And a lot of them either will light them all off, you know,
that night on July 4th, or they buy a bunch of stuff and they'll
light it off on New Year's or they'll light it off the next
July 4th and just get all their product a year in advance when
it's on sale. But they really love and

(02:11:52):
appreciate those fireworks. That's a really good time for
them and just to see the joy when they're coming through
tents and looking for products and you're providing adequate
customer service. When you're, you know, helping
them check out and bag all theirstuff.
And sometimes having to help them get stuff down from shelves
or help them take their stuff tothe cars and they got just too

(02:12:14):
much stuff to do by themselves. You can really see in the
immediate moment how you're benefiting your community.
And so God is really open up my eyes to that through all of
these fireworks seasons that I've done.
And I'd say each year that I've gone through that he's opened up
my eyes to it just a little bit more.

(02:12:34):
I mean, really this particular season we just finished was
really eye opening for me personally just to see, wow, the
community really, really appreciates what we sell them.
Because part of the reason why we had such a huge boom at the
tent I was at was because a lot of people from Eugene and
Springfield who I would thought would have gone to a tent closer

(02:12:58):
to them in town, like in Springfield, they chose to come
all the way out to my tent because getting that product was
important. There was even a on July 3rd,
there was a period of time for like 40 minutes where all of the
sudden our card readers went out, like our debit card credit
card readers went out for like 40 minutes.

(02:13:20):
And we were panicking because wewere afraid a whole bunch of
people were just going to leave and go get fireworks somewhere
else because, you know, they didn't want to wait, you know,
that long to be able to pay for with their card.
And fortunately for my intense, we didn't really have that kind
of walk out. We had, like, one person walk
out who was going to buy like $300 worth of stuff, and they

(02:13:40):
didn't come back, but everyone else stayed.
Either they already were planning on paying with cash,
and so we could pay them, we could get them through.
Or they left to go get cash fromtheir bank, and then they came
back and bought their fireworks.Or they just waited to pay with
their cards until our card readers were working again,
which they started doing later. And fortunately, yeah, we didn't

(02:14:05):
really lose much business duringthat time.
But when that happened and I realized how little we lost from
that horrible delay, it's like, wow, the community really
appreciates and loves what we'redoing for them with these
fireworks sales. And so that's one of those
things that really opens your eyes to just let people in the
real world are like and what they value I'm.

(02:14:34):
Right. OK.
Next question, how has your faith helped you overcome
personal struggles or hardships?Well, when you know your Bible,
you know what the Lord says, youknow what his nature is, you
know what His will for you is, generally speaking, as far as

(02:14:55):
his general will for you. And so when you're going through
personal struggles or hardship, your faith is very important for
keeping you grounded and keepingyour eyes on the prize as far as
the bigger picture goes. And so when you are able to keep
your eyes on that prize, which is Jesus, it makes the stuff

(02:15:15):
you're going through that's hardseem secondary.
And I think that's the way I look at that.
Now this next question. How do you approach
conversations with people who hold different beliefs or world
views? While we kind of already touched
on that earlier, basically you got to see people where they're
at mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and see how they

(02:15:38):
think and how they talk and understand where they're coming
from. Because once you do that, then
you can know how to talk to themin an attempt to converse with
them or convert them. And if you do that, then they're
more likely to listen to you because they know that you
listen to them and you understood what they were saying

(02:15:59):
and you in a sense, validated what they were saying because
you understood why they believe what they believe after
listening to them talk. So I think when it comes to
conversing with people of different world views, it's
important to hear people out andsee where they're at.
That's something that the atheist Internet community

(02:16:21):
really struggles with. They almost refuse to level with
Christians and see where they'recoming from and why we believe
what we believe before they try to deconvert US.
Basically, they mock us, they insult us, they browbeat us,
they make no attempt to humanizeus when they're putting together
their contents. That reminds me of the time I

(02:16:44):
did a video response to the UtahOutcasts, and they were
basically what one of the hosts called me a liar on the basis of
the fact that I was a younger creationist.
And then most of the video was the whole panel of the Utah
Outcast arguing among themselvesabout whether or not it's really
a good idea just to accuse a creationist of being a liar

(02:17:07):
simply for being a creationist. It was one of those hilarious
things that I saw that was really funny.
But yeah, the way you converse with people who have different
beliefs will determine whether or not they'll even be receptive
to what you have to say. And so I think it's important as
Christians to really hear out non believers in terms of what

(02:17:31):
they believe and why they believe it and why it is they
don't believe in our faith. You really got to hear them out
before you can attempt to converse with or convert them.
That's how I try to approach it when I have the chance.
Wow, we we almost got through all the questions, Brett.

(02:17:54):
Sweet, and it sounds like an effective way to handle people.
Ah, yes, I see some new commentsup here, A lot of new comments
Yeah, I. See Kevin there.
Hello, Kevin. Good to see you.

(02:18:18):
Music by Brian I have a questionif someone or two people choose
to lie everyday about their identity, for instance being
Joshua Nathan Marks rebel, is itfair to assume they're not
actually a Christian? So I think he's referring to
Smokey St. here. Yeah Smokey St.

(02:18:40):
I would really question his salvation in Christianity, but
it's more than just that. It's the fact that he just
treats people like garbage. I mean, even if he wasn't lying
about his identity, even if he never had done what he did to
that girl when she was 13 years old and he was 21, even if he
had done none of that. Just the way he treats people

(02:19:03):
like garbage, like subhuman animals that he can just be
rayed and Rage Against all day, every day.
That alone makes me think he's not a real Christian.
So yeah, I did all the other stuff.
And yeah, it's obvious. Captain.
Let's see what else we got here,boy.

(02:19:32):
Yeah, he had other things to say.
I'll just let that one sit on the air.
I know he's calling out Miss Smokey for, you know, not
affirming that Smokey St. is Joshua and Nathan marks her
bell. But I really have no, I really
have no beef with her. I really don't because I don't

(02:19:53):
know her, never met her. She has made some comments
towards me on social media, but I I don't know her at all.
So I don't really want to even bring her into that discussion,
at least not now. Not while I'm sure she doesn't
know much, but you know, she does kind of strike me

(02:20:15):
potentially as someone who, if Smokey shows his real colors to
her, she could end up getting out of that situation in a real
hurry. Wouldn't be the first time
that's been done. Boy.

(02:20:39):
She well, I know that's how you feel.
And in a sense it's true. But you got to realize that
women like that are very devotedto their men.
You know, women who are Christians and are serious about
it. They're going to be faithful to
the guy that they hitch their wagon to, especially if they are

(02:20:59):
going to get married and spend alife together potentially.
Loyalty is a big thing. So yeah, I wouldn't expect her
to do anything but defend Smoky St. in public while she's with
him. I wouldn't expect anything else.
Wow, we have been going on so long.

(02:21:22):
Let me see how many questions wegot left.
Jeez, that's that's quite a lot,Brett.
There's a few, but we got through most of it.
So if you want to, we could finish up some stuff later on
the next show if you want. Yeah, I think that's why it

(02:21:42):
originally planned. I just didn't realize time wise
where we were at. So I'm going to go ahead and.
You also got to realize you extended it whenever you said at
the beginning, hey Brad, if you'd like to answer some of the
questions and I think that you asserted that one because you're
interested in hearing what I think would appreciate any other

(02:22:03):
thing is you were wanting to show thick shades that he's a
wire as useful and I get that. Well, mission accomplished, but
I think Brett is right. We will have to finish up the
questions on his post in the next live stream that we do.
So thank you all of you who tuned in and watched and listen

(02:22:25):
to us answer these questions. I hope it was in educational and
informational. And what's the word not
lethargic, but it's a cathartic basically.
I hope this benefits you guys insome way in that regard.

(02:22:48):
Hopefully it helps you with yourown lives and your own walks
with God. But anyway, we're going to call
it good here. And we will see you in the next
GOD TV Radio live stream where we will go through the rest of
Brett Keene's questions. And then we will probably just
have a big open panel. So see you guys in the next one.

(02:23:10):
Peace out.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Answering Brett Keane's Questions For Christians | GodTVRadio LIVE