March 27, 2025 • 59 mins
When six-year-old Nate Arnold watched Governor George Wallace block Black students from entering Alabama State University in 1963, he asked God a question that would shape his entire life's journey: "Why did you make me a Negro?" Growing up in the segregated South during the civil rights movement, Nate experienced firsthand the terror and trauma of American racism, including the aftermath of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing just one month after that pivotal moment.
This powerful conversation traces Nate's path from religious disillusionment to authentic faith. Disillusioned by Christianity's complacency toward racial injustice, Nate embarked on a quest for truth that led him away from the church and deep into studies of African history, Kemetic traditions, and the untold stories of American history. His research culminated in his controversial first book, "Genocide Files," a novel about dismantling white supremacy that was banned in federal prisons.
The turning point in Nate's spiritual journey came through personal experiences that demonstrated God's presence in remarkable ways. After the 2008 financial crisis devastated his successful real estate business, Nate experienced what he can only describe as divine intervention when facing foreclosure on his $2.3 million home. Through prayer, fasting, and faith, he witnessed the impossible: the bank reduced his mortgage to just $315,000—a miracle that became the foundation for his renewed trust in God.
Nate's testimony reveals the critical distinction between God and how Christianity is practiced in America. His "My Story, His Glory" book series now helps others navigate this same territory, emphasizing that our journey to freedom begins with separating truth from the myths America has created about race and history. For Black men struggling to thrive in a system that seems stacked against them, Nate offers practical wisdom gained through his own experience: focus deeply on developing expertise in one area, use time efficiently, and build from a foundation of truth and relationship with God.
This conversation challenges listeners to examine the historical myths that shape our understanding of America and to find freedom through embracing truth, even when it's uncomfortable. What myths might you need to unpack in your own journey toward authentic faith and freedom?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Coming back into it, I had to learn that there's a
difference between God andChristianity where it's
practiced in this country.
Understanding that differenceis what helped me to reconcile,
both with God and with myself,the dissonance I experienced.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Okay, welcome to another edition of the Journey
to Freedom Podcast.
I'm Dr B, I'm your host.
That is the excitement today.
One, because when you think oflast names, there can only be so
many last names in the worldthat are the best last name ever
.
So my last name has to beArnold, and so does my guest,
(00:51):
and so maybe we'll get to talkabout where that came from at
some point in our conversation.
But you know, I was born herein Denver, Colorado.
He was born out in Mobile.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Alabama, alabama South.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
He was born out in Mobile, alabama, south, and so
three weeks ago I went to, Itook a, I did a what do you call
it?
A civil rights victory tour?
I took 18 black men and westarted out in Birmingham.
And we learned all aboutBirmingham and you know we were
at the 16th Street Church and wewent on a tour and then we had
(01:25):
a lady named Janice Kelty whowas part of the children
marchers that were part of thattime and she got to talk about
her experience there and then wewent to as soon as we finished
that night and the tour, we dida whole bunch of stuff about
story with our group there andthen we went over to Selma and
then we went over to the bridgein Selma.
Then we went over to Selma, wewent to the AME church there and
(01:46):
we walked from the bridge tothe church to kind of get a feel
for what that looks like.
And then the next day, onSunday, we decided to drive down
to the Equal Justice Museum inMontgomery and then so I don't
know if you've been to that oneyet, but if you ever get the
opportunity to that one yet, butif you ever get the opportunity
(02:06):
, oh, my lord, I've been to the.
You know the african americanhistory museum in dc, uh, which
is phenomenal, and you kind ofstart at the top and work your
way down, uh.
But there's just somethingdifferent about the.
You know brian stevenson andhis lynching focus the
african-american slave trade andsegregation and mass
incarceration and whoo, allthose, all the things that you
(02:28):
just kind of get yourself angry.
But you know you're supposed tobe there, you know that you
need to find out who theshoulders of the Giants that
were standing on, and so it was.
It was awesome so we didn'tmake it down to Mobile.
You know, someday, you know, Ithink I may make it down there.
I don't know.
I've only been to Alabama twice.
Both were these tours.
I felt like maybe you can testthis Nate is.
(02:51):
I felt like I was back in 1970.
It's like, oh my God.
I talked to a waiter there thatwas serving us and we were just
talking about how tough it isand how many people don't come
to the restaurant and that kindof stuff.
I asked him how much he wasmaking an hour.
I said Mike, can you tell mehow much you make an hour to
(03:11):
work here at this restaurant?
He said, and he was in his 30s,so it wasn't like he was a
young kid doing it.
He said he makes $2.15 an hour.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I said it's $2.55.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
It's $25.
He goes yes, I know, this iswhat they pay us $2.
Then I make tips, but the tipsaren't a lot because there's not
a lot of customers coming inhere.
I'm thinking to myself that'slike $90 for a 40-hour week.
That is just oh my gosh.
(03:42):
Then you think in a a monththat's less than $400 a month.
I know it costs the greatest in25 cents in Alabama.
Wow, how are you doing that, ohmy gosh.
And so you know I startedthinking about.
You know, hey, what is thejourney to freedom all about and
how do we help people?
And you know, last year I wasable to interview over 105 Black
successful men.
(04:02):
You know, last year I was ableto interview over 105 black
successful men.
You know, this year we're about45.
I'm going to get to another 100.
And hopefully over the next 10years we'll get to 1,000.
And just figure out what it isthat we need to do to change our
circumstances in some way.
What's so neat is when I thinkabout successfully including the
people that I get to talk to,the different things that
(04:23):
they've done, and opportunityhas been the key.
Everybody that has beensuccessful has found some way to
take advantage of opportunitiesthat have been given to them
and I think of so many peoplelike this gentleman that's in
Birmingham and what are hisopportunities, what are the
opportunities that he has andwhere he's at.
And so I thank you for being on, nate, I thank you for spending
(04:46):
the time with us.
I know, for those of youwatching, I've asked Nate to
tell his story and then we'regoing to talk a little chop it
up later with the, you know,with our pillars and his book
and all the wonderful thingsthat he's doing to maintain this
successfulness.
But I really just want to kindof start out with your story and
who you are.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Well, it's a pleasure to be here and I am so
delighted just to have you on.
I'd like to just open up with aword of prayer, though, if
that's okay, absolutely, and totell my journey.
My father, our father and ourGod.
We just thank you, lord, forthis opportunity.
I thank you for Dr B Lord forhis vision.
(05:26):
I thank you that we are able toconnect right now.
Pray that you will be in themidst of us and that all those
who hear this will benefit andwe ourselves will grow together.
Lord, god, grow closer to you.
We thank you, we praise you InJesus' name.
Amen, amen.
I think I love your process, thequestions you give me, and the
(05:50):
reason I do is because it fitsright into my story.
The name of my book is a seriesand it's my story, his glory,
and I chronicle my experiencesfrom Mobile, from my birth,
(06:12):
mobile, alabama, in late 1950.
To my transportation here to mymatriculation into the
metropolitan DC area.
I just start where my bookstarts, my first book.
And I was brought up in areligious family.
Our background was Baptist,southern Baptist.
(06:35):
My mother was the daughter of a.
She was a PK preacher's kid,and so we grew up.
I grew up in a segregated SouthBrian.
I grew up in the heart and youjust mentioned it because you
(06:56):
talked about your tour throughAlabama.
I grew up in the heart of asegregated South and in the
midst of the civil rightsmovement.
So it was very real to me ofthe civil rights movement.
So it was very real to me.
My religious experience wasvery real because of my
immediate family.
But then, because of theenvironment that I was in in
Alabama, I thought we were thecenter of the universe.
(07:19):
As a child, I was only like sixor seven years old.
A child, I was only like six orseven years old.
But one incident reallychanneled my life's direction
and that was August day in 1963.
I was at home watchingtelevision I was not quite seven
(07:42):
years old and Governor GeorgeWallace many of you may not know
who he was, but he was thegovernor of Alabama and he had
been inaugurated earlier thatyear and his motto was
segregation now, segregationtomorrow, segregation forever.
And in August of 1963, he stoodin the doorway of Alabama State
(08:17):
University and refused to allowtwo people that looked like me
and Wallace was a man ofauthority.
I didn't understand quite whythe situation.
Then, immediately from that, acommercial came on a commercial
(08:37):
break and that commercial breakshowed a white woman with long
flowing hair, twirling it fromside to side.
And as a six-year-old I lookedat that and I saw the
juxtaposition of American beauty, what America considered as
beautiful, and I looked at whatthe disdain they had for people
(09:00):
that looked like me.
And so, brian, I asked God asimple seven-word question why
did you make me a Negro?
Why did you make me a Negro?
And God has answered thatquestion for me, as I have
(09:21):
written these books.
And so conflicted, as I was notunderstanding and not really
able to articulate what I wasfeeling, because I had an
unsavory mix of emotions I feltanger, I was shamed, I was
intimidated, I was terrorizedand a whole bunch of other stuff
(09:44):
.
I was intimidated, I wasterrorized and a whole bunch of
other stuff.
And only a month later it'sfunny that you mentioned a month
later we had the 16th BaptistStreet bombing, wow.
And so the terror that I felt,the trauma that I felt, just
continued to grow and thequestions that I felt.
And so my life became a journeyto help me understand, to help
(10:13):
me understand exactly what wasgoing on.
Can you hear me?
I can hear you.
Great, I'm sorry.
So you're good.
So to help me understand whatwas going on in America and why
it was going on, and so I beganto study to figure out.
(10:37):
I began to I actually went andmajored in psychology later in
school but my whole life beganto revolve around the conflict
that I saw in America and tofind resolution to it, and so
that's how I got started withwriting.
My very first book was calledGenocide Files, and it was a
(11:02):
fictional novel talking aboutthe problem that we were having
in this country and what Iconsidered at that time a
resolution to the abuse I sawhappening to Black men, to
African American men.
You still there.
(11:24):
Yeah, I'm still here.
I don't know if you had aquestion or oh, no, I was just
listening, right, right.
So I wrote a book in 1997 afterI watched the Rodney King's
beating and his subsequentexoneration of the police
(11:49):
officer that had done that, andI wondered what would it take to
stop police brutality in theAfrican American community.
And so I wrote this book calledthe Genocide Files.
And the Genocide Files was afictional novel and it talked
(12:11):
about a group, a secret groupthat was called Triangle.
Now, this was a fictional group, but it was black men and women
on the continent of NorthAmerica, south America and
Africa, and they came togetherfor the sole purpose of turning
(12:31):
over the system of whitesupremacy in the country and in
the world.
And the group was calledTriangle, and so my fictional
hero was Matthew Peterson andAwanake Briscoe, and they were
members.
(12:51):
They didn't know each other,but they became members of this
group.
And so that was my first, and inorder for me to do that book, I
had to read, I guess, over 40,close to 45 books on African
history, kemet history, kemetichistory, american history that
(13:12):
we are never taught in ourschools, in our American schools
, and I developed basically thepremise of how it could be done,
and the book received a lot ofaccolades.
In fact I actually had someonethat wanted to buy the rights to
(13:33):
make a movie.
It was also banned in thefederal prison system because of
the content, but it also usedthe teeth in certain
universities on the West Coast,and so it was a book that kind
of introduced me in a unique wayto the African-American
(13:57):
struggle in this country.
Along the way I met someauthors that had been involved
in the struggle as well AnthonyBrowder, dr Ivan Van Sertema,
who had written several similarworks on pre-colonial Africans
(14:19):
in the Western hemisphere.
I met Dr Francis Welsing and wason a podium.
So it was a very interesting,very beneficial experience for
me to learn these things.
I was not necessarily, I wasnot practicing Christianity at
(14:42):
that time, and so I was doingthese things apart from the
church, but then later Iactually came back to the church
, to the Seventh-day Adventistchurch, and became an active
elder in the church, and it wasthere that I picked up my
(15:06):
writing tradition again, andthat's where I began to write
the books that I'm writing now,the series, my Story.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Wow, that's cool.
All right, so you're doing mystory, His Glory, and I guess,
from switching over, I mean,were you angry.
I'm trying to think aboutidentity now and the identity
that you had.
You write a book, like you knowwhat's it called?
The Genocide.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
The Genocide Files.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
right, like you know, the genocide files right, how
do you write that book and notbe angry with all the research
you're doing and all the things,and how does that not affect
your spirit and everything else,because you're really looking
deep into how people have beenmistreated, right?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Oh, yes, definitely.
Well, the initial reaction I hadwas, of course, that I had been
lied to.
Ok, and that's very offensivefor me for a person to lie to me
and then to do it repeatedly.
So the learning, the learningthat I was going through, made
(16:20):
me turn away from reallyAmerican culture, and from
Christian culture as well,because a lot of the dissonance
that I had was because of theway Christianity responded to
how African Americans weretreated in this country, and so
(16:41):
it was a natural it's kind oflike a natural step for me to
throw out the baby with thebathwater, so to speak, and so
trying to reconcile what I hadlearned as a child about a
loving God a loving God thatwould tolerate such mistreatment
of people that he made for mewas something I could not digest
(17:10):
, and Christianity was also apart of that situation, and so I
had to, and that's one of thethings that drove me away from
the Christian faith, and so,coming back into it, I had to
learn that there's a differencebetween God and Christianity,
(17:33):
the way it's practiced in thiscountry, and understanding that
difference is what helped me toreconcile, both with God and
with myself, the dissonance Iexperienced and to put in proper
context, america as a country.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Wow, wow, as I think through what that means in your
identity, and so maybe kind oftalk to me a little bit.
Let's even go backwards beforethat, because I kind of want to
know how you became the personthat would write this book.
So you were born in the South,he's up.
(18:17):
When you were nine years old,right, and you said your
grandfather was a.
Baptist minister so he's in thethick of things.
Was he in Mobile as well?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yes, we all grew up.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
How did you grow up?
Because he's in the thick of.
Hey, we are fighting for everyinch of space, that rights that
we can possibly get, and you'rein the middle of this and you're
watching this.
How does being around yourfamily and everything shape the
identity that you need to writethis?
Speaker 1 (18:53):
book Right.
Well, my grandfather, by thistime, was an invalid.
He had had diabetes and so hisleg was cut off and he was aging
.
But there was a lot of angerand distrust and actually fear
in the South.
A lot of people like we talkedabout the bombing, the 63
(19:17):
bombing, the racial brutality,the dogs and the police officers
, the racial brutality, the dogsand the police officers.
That created a lot of fear.
It was basically Americanterrorism?
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Of course it was.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
And so we grew up, and one of the reasons why I
think my mom actually left theSouth was to seek more
opportunity, to seek a moreamenable place to let her
children grow up, and because,you know, alabama is, to this
day, still Alabama, as youmentioned, the red state and not
(19:53):
much has changed.
Honestly, man, in Alabama and,for that matter, the South, we
see that with the election ofDonald Trump, the issue of
racism has never really beendealt with in this country.
The issue of white supremacyhas never been dealt with by the
(20:19):
majority population here.
It it's affectedAfrican-Americans, black people,
adversely as well, because wedon't really understand the
dynamics of it ourselves.
We look at it as something onthe surface, but it's not.
It's not Brian, it isentrenched, it is part of our
(20:40):
culture, it is a scaffoldingthat holds up Western culture,
it is in everything that we do,it is in our school books, it is
in our DNA, so to speak,because we have to understand
(21:06):
these things in order to freeourselves from them, and we
understand.
We need to understand also howGod looks at these things and
what his plans are, because wecan't do anything without him.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
So when I think about , like one of the pillars that
we talk about for black men,being able to move forward and
to know where we came from, sothen we can move forward, uh, is
is an issue of trust, and Ithink we struggle with trusting
ourselves many times.
I think we struggle withtrusting each other.
(21:37):
I think we trust we have atrouble trusting our not our
moms, but the other women thatare part of our life, and we
have an issue trusting whitesociety or beyond us.
How did you reconcile beingable after writing this book, or
why the process of being ableto trust, because you said this
(22:02):
was even before yourrelationship with Christianity
in a big way, how were you ableto trust others, or did you not
trust anybody and they had toprove themselves before you
could?
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I looked at your five pillars and I'm gonna kind of
use those to answer thatquestion.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
All right, I love it.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
You asked about the pillars and I had my own pillar.
Okay, okay, and I think itreally begins with this one, and
that is truth.
Okay, christ told us that hewants to be worshipped.
God wants to be worshipped inspirit and in truth.
(22:45):
Ok, and we cannot do anything,or anything that we will do
Apart from truth Will lead usdown the wrong path.
So first we have to discoverwhat truth is.
I'm not talking about my truthor your truth, that's not truth,
(23:07):
okay, no, there's only onetruth, and so we need to
understand what that truth is,what God has shown us.
The narrow path, the narrow way,because if you look at what
happened in this country, inAmerica and, for that matter,
the world, they took us from ourland, they took us from our
(23:33):
homes, they stripped us of ournames, of our identity, so we
really don't even know who weare as a culture, as a people,
so we don't know our culturalheritage, and subsequently we
are sort of like bouncing backand forth.
One of the things that I talkabout in my book is that while
(23:55):
we've been on these shores, wehave been colored, we have been
Negroes, we have beenAfrican-Americans, we have been
Black, we we have been AfricanAmericans, we have been Black.
We are still searching for ouridentity, you know.
And so, unless we reallyunderstand truth, who we are in
(24:16):
God's eyes, we'll always haveissues with trust.
We'll always have issues withtrust.
We'll always have issues withreconciliation with this country
, because we are still unpackingthe lies that they have been
throwing at us, and the majorityof African-Americans and for
Americans that matter, brianbelieve in myths.
(24:40):
We believe in things likemanifest, destinyest Destiny,
the Lost Cause of the South, andthese things are inculcated
into our very history books, andpart of what I have had to do
is to understand where the mythsend and where the truth begins.
(25:05):
And once you can reconcile that, you can begin to reconcile
every other thing in your life.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
So at what point were you able to start reconciling
that?
Were you able to, you know, say, hey, I understand the truth.
And now that I understand thetruth, I can now begin to not
only heal myself but be able tofeed into others.
Because when I think aboutbeing in purpose, I don't think
(25:34):
you can be in purpose withoutserving others.
Right, and you're an example ofdoing that as an elder in the
church, when for you were youwere, you had enough peace to be
able to now begin to say Iunderstand truth now.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
I understand these are myths.
Now I can begin the healingprocess.
That's a great question, brian,and it actually started when I
began to trust God.
That was the foundation for me,because I had turned my back on
Christianity as a falsereligion.
I had exposed myself to otherreligions New Age stuff,
(26:18):
meditation, yoga.
I looked at my friends who werein Islam and all of that.
So I had explored otherreligions, and one thing that I
noticed about all of thosedifferent things that I was
studying they all had anantipathy toward the Bible and
(26:40):
toward Christianity.
So that kind of picked myinterest.
I remember reading a book calledMeta-Nature.
It was a book on ancientEgyptian mysticism, and some of
the things that it said harkenedme back to my younger days of
understanding the Bible.
(27:01):
And so, as I began to do moreresearch and I began to pray,
things in my life began, and mywife, by the way, and my mother
were both praying for me, soprayer does work All right, and
so things began to occur in mylife.
I was a successful businessmanin real estate, making quite a
(27:22):
bit of money, and then the greatrecession hit and everything
dried up in real estate 2008.
And so that forced me to beginto evaluate where I was in life
At that point.
I took another.
(27:43):
I had a very similar experience.
I had gone to church with mywife I hadn't planned on it and
that same day I was supposed tobe going to a Metta Nature
meeting and they were going tohave what was called a reading.
And so I went to church thatday and that was also, as I
(28:07):
recall, it was a day in thesummer and I remember the
minister asking if anyone wantedto give their life to God, and
I said you know what?
This is?
A bunch of foolishness.
Really, this is what I'm saying.
I'm there with my wife and I'm,like you know, I done been
(28:28):
through this, I done beenthrough this, I went through
this.
And then he said so at any rate,the whole congregation stood up
.
So I stood up and then he saidnow, if anybody wants to, you
know, come up front and givetheir life to Christ.
And I started praying.
I said I asked God.
I said God started talking toGod and I said if you really
(28:54):
want me to do this, you're goingto have to.
Let me know in no uncertainterms, let me know in no
uncertain terms.
And, brian, right at thatinstant somebody pushed me on.
They didn't tap me on the arm,they hit me on the arm, okay.
(29:15):
I opened my eyes and I lookedaround and there was nobody
there.
Nobody there, oh my gosh,nobody there.
And so I went down and I gaveand I stood up and, man, there
was so many people cryingbecause they knew my wife and my
mother both went to that churchand they knew that I was not
(29:37):
thinking about church.
You know what I'm saying.
They would rarely see me andthat was my turning back.
And so, as I began to walk thewalk of faith, god began to
reveal things to me that justshored up my faith.
Things began to happen to methat were just miracles, just
(30:02):
miracles, and that was a largepart of my growth.
So for me, it was trust.
One of the greatest things oftrust building was my house that
I live in now.
We had built this house in.
I bought the land in 2004,built my dream home, a $2
(30:22):
million house on the water inFort Washington.
When the market crashed, brian,business stopped.
I went from making over amillion dollars a year to making
in 2009, I grossed $12,000.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Oh, whoa, what business were you doing?
Speaker 1 (30:48):
that was Real estate.
I was a real estate broker.
I went from basically making 1%of my income from the couple of
years prior and so my housewent into foreclosure and at
(31:09):
that point I began to just dowhat I could, you know, to stay
afloat.
I began to pray, go to churchon a regular basis.
I was doing that anyway, youknow, paying returning tithes
and all of that.
And one day we got theforeclosure notice and we had
(31:29):
gotten, I think up to that point, six foreclosure notices, but
this was the one that was kindof.
They wanted us to come to court.
And so that week my mom one ofmy mom's friends from church,
(31:50):
unbeknownst to me, came to myhouse and said we need to anoint
your house.
Okay, we anointed the house andwe went over the whole three
acres and I began to anoint thehouse during the process of
stopping the foreclosure.
So a couple of months went byand we finally would have our
(32:13):
day in court.
But that week my wife and Istarted fasting.
We fasted for the whole weekand that week we started fasting
and I would normally anoint myhouse on Thursday and as we were
fasting that week, we weregoing to go to court.
On Friday I went out to anointmy house and I heard I was
(32:36):
impressed by the Holy Spirit toanoint, to walk around my house
seven times.
This is my Jericho wall and youknow, you wonder, man, am I
hearing this?
Is this the Holy Spirit talkingto me or I'm just hearing this?
But I was obedient.
I anointed him out and walkedaround my house seven times
(32:59):
anointing it and prayed.
So the very next day we had togo to court, my wife and I.
My wife took off she's ateacher and we went to court in
French Orleans County.
And when we got to the court,Brian, we were on time, but my
attorney was late and Linda'sattorney was late.
(33:22):
So my wife and I went in and wetalked to the judge, who
actually was a retired judge,and he was very candid with us.
He said that you know, wereally don't have any authority
to do anything.
The bank is within their rightto foreclose.
The bank is within their rightto foreclose.
(33:44):
And he said but this will atleast give you a chance to voice
your opposition.
And basically we're doing thisbecause there's been such a
backlog and such a groundswellof people losing their homes in
this county that we had to dosomething and in my immediate
neighborhood, of the 38properties in my neighborhood,
(34:09):
Bryan 24 had gone to foreclosure.
Wow, Okay.
So we were going to be,probably.
We thought we'd be one in thatsame group.
So we the attorney, my attorneywe stepped out for a while and,
you know, my wife and I, ourattorney Brian, came in and we
(34:32):
went into the judge's chamber.
And then, while we were goingto judge's chambers, the bank's
attorney came in.
She was young and she wascompletely green.
We were her first case.
Oh no, she had not even had achance to unpack her bag from
(34:54):
arriving at the train station.
So none of this bode well forus.
So we all sit down in thejudge's chamber and we, you know
, exchange hellos and all ofthat, and the judge calls the
senior attorney for the bank onthe phone, on the, on the on the
(35:18):
phone, and puts her on thespeaker.
And so we again exchangedpleasantries and you know we
prepared for the worst, my wifeand I, an attorney, we looked at
each other, we prepared for theworst.
And so the attorney comes onand she's very pleasant on the
speaker because she's a seniorattorney and she's somewhere in
the Midwest, I'm not sureexactly where she was at that
(35:39):
point.
So she says listen, Mr Arnold.
She said you all have abeautiful house.
Okay, so I thought she wassetting us up for the fall.
Brian, you know, yeah, you allhave a beautiful home.
And she says and we don't wantto take your home, Okay.
And I'm like, okay, right, Idon't want you to take it either
(36:03):
, In my mind's eye, because Iused to work for the banks.
Brian, okay, I'm saying right.
And so she says Ms Arnold, howmuch do you think your home is
worth?
Now, I had been an appraiser,and I was an appraiser at that
time, so I had a very good sense.
But I also knew the market wascompletely upside down and so I
(36:28):
didn't want to venture or guess,because I couldn't pay for it
either way if it was, because Iwasn't making the money.
And so I asked if Brian and Icould step out for a minute.
So Brian and I stepped out.
Uh, who was my attorney?
My wife stayed in the, uh, inthe in the room and Brian said
Brian, what should we say man?
Should we say a million dollars, 1.2, because it sure ain't
(36:49):
worth the 2.3?
He said.
He said um, he said man.
He said yeah, say maybe, say1.2, a million, Maybe we can
work with a million.
So we went back into, we wentback in Brian and I looked at
Brian and he looked at me and Isaid we believe the house is
(37:12):
worth about a million dollarsand she immediately said, no,
it's worth about a milliondollars.
And she immediately said no,it's not worth a million dollars
.
And I thought, okay, this is it, we've lost this, we've lost.
She said I think your home isworth about 315 000.
(37:34):
What?
315 000 line?
I literally listen to what I'msaying.
I literally fell back in thechair.
$315,000 line I literally listento what I'm saying.
I literally fell back in thechair.
Of course you did.
I closed my eyes and I saidlook at God.
So we went from owing $2.3million to $315,000.
(37:55):
Then she asked me and I was ifyou ever been in shock.
You know what shock is.
I was literally in shock.
And she said to me she said isyour interest rate okay?
I couldn't say nothing, man.
I couldn't even say nothing.
(38:16):
All I could say was yes.
So we walked away.
She said well, we'll get youthe paperwork showing the
$315,000.
And the only stipulation youhave to do is make that payment
for the next 12 months, isn't?
Speaker 2 (38:36):
that amazing Well, 315,.
You're like $1,500.
I don't even think it was$1,500,.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Honestly, to be honest, oh my gosh.
And so she said and truth toher word.
We got the paperwork withinabout two weeks, we signed it
and we made the payment For 12months.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Did it go back?
Did you only go?
Speaker 1 (39:03):
315 from now on Only 315?
No, it never goes back.
No, no, 315, brother, that wasit.
So that was a major step for mein trusting God.
Oh my, gosh.
Because, god, because man, I'mgoing to tell you I talked to
the.
I had in the.
In my run up to that time I hadhired six different teams of
(39:26):
attorneys and none of them hadever heard of anything like that
.
No, still haven't, stillhaven't, Still haven't, still
haven't.
So, yeah, we're still in ourhome and God has truly blessed
us.
So trust then became, I guessis the centerpiece for me of any
(39:47):
relationship, and before we canhave a relationship with
anybody we've got to have thattrust relationship with God, I
think.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
Oh, so neat.
One of the things that I wouldlove to kind of unpack with you.
When I think about becoming theperson that God would have you
be in order to do what he putyou on this planet to do, and
when I'm thinking about yourbooks and the things that you're
(40:15):
writing and his story, thinkabout three things that I think
give us fulfillment that God hasallowed us to do.
And the first thing is whenwe're learning something or
we're creating something.
I think we learn to create andspend our time there.
And then the next thing wouldbe, like love and relationships
(40:38):
that you know allow us toconnect with others that you're
writing, do those three things,or how you see those three
things appear in his story forus.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
A good point, paul tells us, the Bible tells us it
is better to give than toreceive, and that for most human
beings is a very difficultthing to do because the way we
are built and learning, but Godpractices that.
(41:25):
It's been a beautiful thing forme, and so, in the process of
writing my books and doing thosethings, to see people connect
with what I've written and thatin turn connects them to me and
(41:48):
to God.
That's a beautiful thingbecause my experience has not
been isolated.
Many of us in this country havesought things that are not
fulfilling, and having done that, having experienced that, I can
tell people you can make allthe money in the world and you
(42:10):
can still be unhappy, you canstill be disconnected, because
that was the case with me.
I was spending so much timetrying to make money to live the
American dream until Iunderstood how unfulfilling it
was, and so being able to writeand to help people to seek God
(42:35):
is the highest thing that anyone of us can do.
It's the highest thing that anyof us can do, and so that's
been just a blessing to me tobring people out of the darkness
into the light and share ourexperience of truth.
Because if you look at what'sgoing on in the country right
(42:56):
now, man, they're trying to turnback the clock, not to 1950.
They're trying to turn back theclock back to the antebellum,
south bro.
You know what I'm saying.
I mean, if you reallyunderstand history, you look at
Thomas Jefferson and the thingsthat he believed and said and
the things that he did, whatthis country was founded upon.
(43:19):
Our journey to freedom beginswith truth.
We've got to unpack all ofthose lies and let people know
no, this is what really happened.
And we've got to do that in away that people, especially we,
can relate.
You know, with Thomas Jefferson, we'd like to say Sally Hemings
was his mistress.
(43:41):
That's what the culture says.
Sally Hemings was not hismistress, mistress, man, he
raped her.
He was 14 years old, he was 44.
Okay, so once you begin tounderstand that we have to take
back, we have to take back thenarrative, we have to create the
true narrative, we have todisseminate truth, it will make
(44:03):
a lot of difference in our lives.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
I try to reconcile myself with this often lately is
when I think about lack, fear.
You know those words that Ithink are the precipice for a
lot of the things that arehappening, and I think of a God
(44:35):
that I serve, that's a God ofabundance and opportunity and
plentifulness.
I see so in our culture, in ourcommunity's eyes, that they're
so fearful, like you said, aboutturning back the clock and
going back to.
I agree, I mean, I think thatthis is what they're trying to
do.
I don't know if it's possiblefor them to do it, because we've
been educated.
There's a whole lot of thingsthat are way different than it
(44:57):
was back when you pulled us outof Africa and the things that
are going on, but it just seemslike we spend so much time in
fear.
How do we not have this spiritof fear and lack?
And you know, because I thinkthat's where they're getting to
right, because the whole DEIthing is about.
(45:18):
Well, if we give you the jobs,then we don't have it.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Right right.
And I honestly, brian, thinkthat's only a part of it, though
, okay, I think that we alsohave to recognize that we are
fighting an enemy yes, okay, andthat enemy the Bible says in
Ephesians 6, verses, I think, 10through 18,.
We're not fighting againstflesh and blood, and so we have
(45:45):
to understand there's also agreater conflict that we are
part of, and actually, once webegin to understand that aspect
of it too, we can understandthat we have to really be on
God's side.
Now, on a very practical sense,europeans have always
(46:06):
understood that by subjugatingothers, they can essentially
live the life that they havedesired, and Trump has pretty
much said this.
They can essentially live thelife that they have desired, and
Trump has pretty much said this.
Okay, if you look at what hewrote, what is it?
(46:28):
The five men that were arrestedwhen he was in New York for
raping a woman the Central ParkFive we talked about in the
Central Park Five.
A woman to get the Central ParkFive we talked about in the
Central Park Five.
And so we have to understandthat this country was founded by
a select group of men and theymaintained white supremacy for
themselves.
Women could not vote, blackscould not vote.
(46:52):
Native Americans could not vote.
In fact, only the landed gentrycould vote.
So we've got to understand thatthis has all been predicated on
greed and avarice, and sothey've tried to keep the
(47:13):
benefits that God has given usall for themselves, and to a
large degree, they've done itvery successfully, and so we
need to understand that.
And in fact, while we're on thistopic, every time that blacks
have created an environmentwhere we thrive, they destroy it
(47:36):
.
You look at Tulsa, you look atWilmington, you look at Rosewood
, okay, and so there is no wayto placate white supremacy?
No, no, you can't, you can't,it just doesn't happen.
So I think, again, we have tounderstand what God says, and
(48:01):
that's what I talk about in mybook, what God says about all of
this, and he talks about it inDaniel and Revelation, and
that's why I've titled my bookmy story, my second book, my
Story, his Glory, decodingDaniel, revelation and America's
Destiny, because we are part ofAmerica.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
And what so?
What is that destiny thatyou're writing about that is
going to you believe, is?
Speaker 1 (48:29):
happening.
Well, based on ourinterpretation of Revelation,
god is going to intervene,because only in that way will we
receive justice, and it's notjust going to be a justice for
black people, it's going to be ajustice for all people.
If you look at the Civil Warduring Lincoln's time something
(48:50):
that Abraham Lincoln, thepresident, said in his second
inaugural address he talkedabout the cause of the war being
slavery, and he talked aboutGod's judgment for both the
North and the South.
The reason that the war waslasting so long and was so
bloody was because God wasenacting judgment upon this
(49:14):
country, and in my book, Iexplain what that judgment looks
like.
Now, if you look at Revelation14, it talks about three angels,
and those three angelsannounced that one God is coming
and that we are to leave, inthe spiritual sense, babylon,
(49:40):
and I elaborate on that in thebook that I've written.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Oh, that's cool.
You know what?
This has been a goodconversation.
I got so many things that aredriving through my mind and I'm
thinking as African-American men.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
And you can always have me on Brian again, don't
worry.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
We are going to have another conversation, I promise
you that who are trying tothrive and trying to get along
and trying to have what Americahas promised and we feel that
(50:27):
we've come short or we're notenough or that the cards are
stacked against us.
What do you tell those youngmen today that are saying I
don't want to live anywhere else, but I just don't know how?
Speaker 1 (50:42):
to make it Right.
That's a very good question andit's a very practical question,
and what I have learned from myexperience I have to go by my
testimony is that one you haveto be very careful about your
associations and about your ownweaknesses, and you have to be
(51:09):
able to define those.
You have to be able to listento people, because a lot of
times we are very subjectivewhen it comes to ourselves.
We want to do what we want todo when we want to do it, but in
my case, I had a wife who wasvery practical, and so learning
(51:36):
to listen to her also made mepractical, if that makes sense.
She was worried about how thebills got paid and I had to
worry about them because she wasworried about them, and so I
began to just focus on where Iwas spending my time.
I began to just focus on whereI was spending my time, how I
(51:58):
was utilizing my time.
I'd like to tell folks anexperience I had years ago.
You know, time is valuable andI chose to use my time to become
independent.
I chose real estate, and one ofthe first things that happened
to me was I became a real estateappraiser.
(52:20):
I wasn't making much money, andbut I went out on my own.
I got a terrific story aboutthat too, and so, in order to to
utilize and to do appraisal, Ihad to give up watching football
on Sunday Very practical for me, because Sunday was the day in
(52:43):
which I would write up myappraisal reports.
As much as I love football andthe Washington football team
they were called the WashingtonRedskins at the time I needed to
take that time to write upthose reports, and once I did,
(53:04):
it became a habit, and so mytime.
I began to utilize my time in amuch, much more efficient and
effective way.
So I found something that Ienjoyed doing.
I began to spend more timedoing it, and that began to
bring me in the kind of moneythat I needed to do, and from
(53:26):
that I began to invest in realestate using the skill sets that
I had developed, andsubsequently that has been a
blessing for me.
So I think those are thepractical steps.
I had to learn first how to dowhat I was doing, and I had to
(53:49):
take the time to learn it,become efficient at it and then
stick with it.
And I see one of the thingsthat I see, brian, that really
hurts people is they try to dofive different things at one
time.
You can't do it man, you can't.
You can't, you can't.
I know people that want to be anotary public.
They want to do a title, theywant to do insurance, and I talk
(54:14):
to people all the time doingdifferent things.
I'm like you got to focus, man.
You got to focus on one thing,so none of it's going to make
money for you, and that's whathappens most of the time.
So they don't utilize theirtime properly.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah, wow.
One last question, and then I'mgoing to have you just kind of
tell people how to get a hold ofyou.
But when I think about theBlack family and I think you
(54:46):
know, as I'm doing stuff andresearching, 50% of Black women
that are over the age of 40 havenever been married, and of that
50% of Black women that areover 40 that have never even
married, 75% of them have atleast one child.
How do we bring back the familyand the importance of it?
Speaker 1 (55:05):
Again, man, I think we have to first recognize that
we are fighting an invisibleenemy and that the things that
we see in our world have beendesigned to be the way they are.
You look at, I read a goodarticle.
There was a point where you hadthe men essentially working,
(55:31):
one family, one income wasallowable.
It's not allowed.
You can't make a living mananymore for one income and so
you're driven for women to workoutside of the home, and that's
a larger part of where theeconomy is.
And so these things we arelooking at things that on a we
(55:58):
can't fix things on the macrolevel, just on the micro level,
if that makes sense.
You know there are forces inour society that are really
pulling us apart.
You know what I'm saying?
And again, those are the imagesthat we see, the myths that are
created.
We look at the basketballplayers or the football players,
(56:21):
and we see them making thesegreat checks and all of that,
but we never look at the factthat, even though they are
making those great checks, mostof them end up broke.
The fact that, even though theyare making those great checks,
most of them end up broke.
(56:41):
But yet the people who arewriting the checks.
They pass their wealth downfrom generation to generation.
So there is a dissonance, adisconnect with that.
We've got to learn.
We've got to learn how thissociety works, and again, that's
(57:02):
breaking down the myths andfinding what is true, and that
way we can build from that.
But it all, but again, it allstarts, and the only way you can
do that is your relationshipwith God.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
Amen.
Well, man, thank you for beingpart of this show today.
Thank you for being vulnerable.
You're telling your story.
I think it can impact so manypeople.
How do people get a hold of youor get to your books?
Speaker 1 (57:29):
These are my books.
This is my first one, my storyHis Glory, and this is the
newest one, my story His Glory,and this is the newest one.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
Okay, all right, gotcha.
Speaker 1 (57:40):
And they can go to my website, which is
wwwhisglorypublishingcom.
Hisglorypublishingcom.
You can sign up for my freehandouts and, of course, you can
also purchase the books there.
(58:01):
They'll take you to Amazon.
You can purchase them there,and I will be looking forward to
responding to all of the callsand emails that I get and
continue to tell my story toGod's glory, his glory.
Speaker 2 (58:18):
All right.
So the book, His Story, myGlory.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
My Story, His Glory.
My Story, His Glory.
What was I thinking?
My Story.
Speaker 2 (58:29):
His Glory is the name of the book, and I look forward
to getting that book.
I can't wait to read it.
Please go to the website, Checkout whatever it is, If there
are any.
You know people who are like.
This was important to you thatyou got something out of our
conversation today.
Please go ahead and subscribe.
(58:49):
There's many more to it.
Share this episode withsomebody that you know that it
can impact, that it can help.
It's been a privilege, Nate, tohave you on the podcast today.
I can't wait.
We are not done, so we aregoing to have another
conversation.
Great, Look forward to it,Because there's just so much to
(59:12):
unpack that I can't wait to havethe conversation about.
I want to find out how you wentinto business for yourself and
all those wonderful things thatare part of your story and his
story.
Amen.
Speaker 1 (59:19):
Thank you, brian, thank you, thank you, glad you
had me on.
Speaker 2 (59:27):
We love you, if you allow us to, and we will look
forward to talking to you on thenext podcast.
Have a wonderful, just amazingday.
Speaker 1 (59:35):
Thank you.
Thank you, great to be here.
Great to be here.
Coming back into it, I had to learn that there's a
difference between God andChristianity where it's
practiced in this country.
Understanding that differenceis what helped me to reconcile,
both with God and with myself,the dissonance I experienced.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Okay, welcome to another edition of the Journey
to Freedom Podcast.
I'm Dr B, I'm your host.
That is the excitement today.
One, because when you think oflast names, there can only be so
many last names in the worldthat are the best last name ever
.
So my last name has to beArnold, and so does my guest,
(00:51):
and so maybe we'll get to talkabout where that came from at
some point in our conversation.
But you know, I was born herein Denver, Colorado.
He was born out in Mobile.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Alabama, alabama South.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
He was born out in Mobile, alabama, south, and so
three weeks ago I went to, Itook a, I did a what do you call
it?
A civil rights victory tour?
I took 18 black men and westarted out in Birmingham.
And we learned all aboutBirmingham and you know we were
at the 16th Street Church and wewent on a tour and then we had
(01:25):
a lady named Janice Kelty whowas part of the children
marchers that were part of thattime and she got to talk about
her experience there and then wewent to as soon as we finished
that night and the tour, we dida whole bunch of stuff about
story with our group there andthen we went over to Selma and
then we went over to the bridgein Selma.
Then we went over to Selma, wewent to the AME church there and
(01:46):
we walked from the bridge tothe church to kind of get a feel
for what that looks like.
And then the next day, onSunday, we decided to drive down
to the Equal Justice Museum inMontgomery and then so I don't
know if you've been to that oneyet, but if you ever get the
opportunity to that one yet, butif you ever get the opportunity
(02:06):
, oh, my lord, I've been to the.
You know the african americanhistory museum in dc, uh, which
is phenomenal, and you kind ofstart at the top and work your
way down, uh.
But there's just somethingdifferent about the.
You know brian stevenson andhis lynching focus the
african-american slave trade andsegregation and mass
incarceration and whoo, allthose, all the things that you
(02:28):
just kind of get yourself angry.
But you know you're supposed tobe there, you know that you
need to find out who theshoulders of the Giants that
were standing on, and so it was.
It was awesome so we didn'tmake it down to Mobile.
You know, someday, you know, Ithink I may make it down there.
I don't know.
I've only been to Alabama twice.
Both were these tours.
I felt like maybe you can testthis Nate is.
(02:51):
I felt like I was back in 1970.
It's like, oh my God.
I talked to a waiter there thatwas serving us and we were just
talking about how tough it isand how many people don't come
to the restaurant and that kindof stuff.
I asked him how much he wasmaking an hour.
I said Mike, can you tell mehow much you make an hour to
(03:11):
work here at this restaurant?
He said, and he was in his 30s,so it wasn't like he was a
young kid doing it.
He said he makes $2.15 an hour.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I said it's $2.55.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
It's $25.
He goes yes, I know, this iswhat they pay us $2.
Then I make tips, but the tipsaren't a lot because there's not
a lot of customers coming inhere.
I'm thinking to myself that'slike $90 for a 40-hour week.
That is just oh my gosh.
(03:42):
Then you think in a a monththat's less than $400 a month.
I know it costs the greatest in25 cents in Alabama.
Wow, how are you doing that, ohmy gosh.
And so you know I startedthinking about.
You know, hey, what is thejourney to freedom all about and
how do we help people?
And you know, last year I wasable to interview over 105 Black
successful men.
(04:02):
You know, last year I was ableto interview over 105 black
successful men.
You know, this year we're about45.
I'm going to get to another 100.
And hopefully over the next 10years we'll get to 1,000.
And just figure out what it isthat we need to do to change our
circumstances in some way.
What's so neat is when I thinkabout successfully including the
people that I get to talk to,the different things that
(04:23):
they've done, and opportunityhas been the key.
Everybody that has beensuccessful has found some way to
take advantage of opportunitiesthat have been given to them
and I think of so many peoplelike this gentleman that's in
Birmingham and what are hisopportunities, what are the
opportunities that he has andwhere he's at.
And so I thank you for being on, nate, I thank you for spending
(04:46):
the time with us.
I know, for those of youwatching, I've asked Nate to
tell his story and then we'regoing to talk a little chop it
up later with the, you know,with our pillars and his book
and all the wonderful thingsthat he's doing to maintain this
successfulness.
But I really just want to kindof start out with your story and
who you are.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Well, it's a pleasure to be here and I am so
delighted just to have you on.
I'd like to just open up with aword of prayer, though, if
that's okay, absolutely, and totell my journey.
My father, our father and ourGod.
We just thank you, lord, forthis opportunity.
I thank you for Dr B Lord forhis vision.
(05:26):
I thank you that we are able toconnect right now.
Pray that you will be in themidst of us and that all those
who hear this will benefit andwe ourselves will grow together.
Lord, god, grow closer to you.
We thank you, we praise you InJesus' name.
Amen, amen.
I think I love your process, thequestions you give me, and the
(05:50):
reason I do is because it fitsright into my story.
The name of my book is a seriesand it's my story, his glory,
and I chronicle my experiencesfrom Mobile, from my birth,
(06:12):
mobile, alabama, in late 1950.
To my transportation here to mymatriculation into the
metropolitan DC area.
I just start where my bookstarts, my first book.
And I was brought up in areligious family.
Our background was Baptist,southern Baptist.
(06:35):
My mother was the daughter of a.
She was a PK preacher's kid,and so we grew up.
I grew up in a segregated SouthBrian.
I grew up in the heart and youjust mentioned it because you
(06:56):
talked about your tour throughAlabama.
I grew up in the heart of asegregated South and in the
midst of the civil rightsmovement.
So it was very real to me ofthe civil rights movement.
So it was very real to me.
My religious experience wasvery real because of my
immediate family.
But then, because of theenvironment that I was in in
Alabama, I thought we were thecenter of the universe.
(07:19):
As a child, I was only like sixor seven years old.
A child, I was only like six orseven years old.
But one incident reallychanneled my life's direction
and that was August day in 1963.
I was at home watchingtelevision I was not quite seven
(07:42):
years old and Governor GeorgeWallace many of you may not know
who he was, but he was thegovernor of Alabama and he had
been inaugurated earlier thatyear and his motto was
segregation now, segregationtomorrow, segregation forever.
And in August of 1963, he stoodin the doorway of Alabama State
(08:17):
University and refused to allowtwo people that looked like me
and Wallace was a man ofauthority.
I didn't understand quite whythe situation.
Then, immediately from that, acommercial came on a commercial
(08:37):
break and that commercial breakshowed a white woman with long
flowing hair, twirling it fromside to side.
And as a six-year-old I lookedat that and I saw the
juxtaposition of American beauty, what America considered as
beautiful, and I looked at whatthe disdain they had for people
(09:00):
that looked like me.
And so, brian, I asked God asimple seven-word question why
did you make me a Negro?
Why did you make me a Negro?
And God has answered thatquestion for me, as I have
(09:21):
written these books.
And so conflicted, as I was notunderstanding and not really
able to articulate what I wasfeeling, because I had an
unsavory mix of emotions I feltanger, I was shamed, I was
intimidated, I was terrorizedand a whole bunch of other stuff
(09:44):
.
I was intimidated, I wasterrorized and a whole bunch of
other stuff.
And only a month later it'sfunny that you mentioned a month
later we had the 16th BaptistStreet bombing, wow.
And so the terror that I felt,the trauma that I felt, just
continued to grow and thequestions that I felt.
And so my life became a journeyto help me understand, to help
(10:13):
me understand exactly what wasgoing on.
Can you hear me?
I can hear you.
Great, I'm sorry.
So you're good.
So to help me understand whatwas going on in America and why
it was going on, and so I beganto study to figure out.
(10:37):
I began to I actually went andmajored in psychology later in
school but my whole life beganto revolve around the conflict
that I saw in America and tofind resolution to it, and so
that's how I got started withwriting.
My very first book was calledGenocide Files, and it was a
(11:02):
fictional novel talking aboutthe problem that we were having
in this country and what Iconsidered at that time a
resolution to the abuse I sawhappening to Black men, to
African American men.
You still there.
(11:24):
Yeah, I'm still here.
I don't know if you had aquestion or oh, no, I was just
listening, right, right.
So I wrote a book in 1997 afterI watched the Rodney King's
beating and his subsequentexoneration of the police
(11:49):
officer that had done that, andI wondered what would it take to
stop police brutality in theAfrican American community.
And so I wrote this book calledthe Genocide Files.
And the Genocide Files was afictional novel and it talked
(12:11):
about a group, a secret groupthat was called Triangle.
Now, this was a fictional group, but it was black men and women
on the continent of NorthAmerica, south America and
Africa, and they came togetherfor the sole purpose of turning
(12:31):
over the system of whitesupremacy in the country and in
the world.
And the group was calledTriangle, and so my fictional
hero was Matthew Peterson andAwanake Briscoe, and they were
members.
(12:51):
They didn't know each other,but they became members of this
group.
And so that was my first, and inorder for me to do that book, I
had to read, I guess, over 40,close to 45 books on African
history, kemet history, kemetichistory, american history that
(13:12):
we are never taught in ourschools, in our American schools
, and I developed basically thepremise of how it could be done,
and the book received a lot ofaccolades.
In fact I actually had someonethat wanted to buy the rights to
(13:33):
make a movie.
It was also banned in thefederal prison system because of
the content, but it also usedthe teeth in certain
universities on the West Coast,and so it was a book that kind
of introduced me in a unique wayto the African-American
(13:57):
struggle in this country.
Along the way I met someauthors that had been involved
in the struggle as well AnthonyBrowder, dr Ivan Van Sertema,
who had written several similarworks on pre-colonial Africans
(14:19):
in the Western hemisphere.
I met Dr Francis Welsing and wason a podium.
So it was a very interesting,very beneficial experience for
me to learn these things.
I was not necessarily, I wasnot practicing Christianity at
(14:42):
that time, and so I was doingthese things apart from the
church, but then later Iactually came back to the church
, to the Seventh-day Adventistchurch, and became an active
elder in the church, and it wasthere that I picked up my
(15:06):
writing tradition again, andthat's where I began to write
the books that I'm writing now,the series, my Story.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Wow, that's cool.
All right, so you're doing mystory, His Glory, and I guess,
from switching over, I mean,were you angry.
I'm trying to think aboutidentity now and the identity
that you had.
You write a book, like you knowwhat's it called?
The Genocide.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
The Genocide Files.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
right, like you know, the genocide files right, how
do you write that book and notbe angry with all the research
you're doing and all the things,and how does that not affect
your spirit and everything else,because you're really looking
deep into how people have beenmistreated, right?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Oh, yes, definitely.
Well, the initial reaction I hadwas, of course, that I had been
lied to.
Ok, and that's very offensivefor me for a person to lie to me
and then to do it repeatedly.
So the learning, the learningthat I was going through, made
(16:20):
me turn away from reallyAmerican culture, and from
Christian culture as well,because a lot of the dissonance
that I had was because of theway Christianity responded to
how African Americans weretreated in this country, and so
(16:41):
it was a natural it's kind oflike a natural step for me to
throw out the baby with thebathwater, so to speak, and so
trying to reconcile what I hadlearned as a child about a
loving God a loving God thatwould tolerate such mistreatment
of people that he made for mewas something I could not digest
(17:10):
, and Christianity was also apart of that situation, and so I
had to, and that's one of thethings that drove me away from
the Christian faith, and so,coming back into it, I had to
learn that there's a differencebetween God and Christianity,
(17:33):
the way it's practiced in thiscountry, and understanding that
difference is what helped me toreconcile, both with God and
with myself, the dissonance Iexperienced and to put in proper
context, america as a country.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Wow, wow, as I think through what that means in your
identity, and so maybe kind oftalk to me a little bit.
Let's even go backwards beforethat, because I kind of want to
know how you became the personthat would write this book.
So you were born in the South,he's up.
(18:17):
When you were nine years old,right, and you said your
grandfather was a.
Baptist minister so he's in thethick of things.
Was he in Mobile as well?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yes, we all grew up.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
How did you grow up?
Because he's in the thick of.
Hey, we are fighting for everyinch of space, that rights that
we can possibly get, and you'rein the middle of this and you're
watching this.
How does being around yourfamily and everything shape the
identity that you need to writethis?
Speaker 1 (18:53):
book Right.
Well, my grandfather, by thistime, was an invalid.
He had had diabetes and so hisleg was cut off and he was aging
.
But there was a lot of angerand distrust and actually fear
in the South.
A lot of people like we talkedabout the bombing, the 63
(19:17):
bombing, the racial brutality,the dogs and the police officers
, the racial brutality, the dogsand the police officers.
That created a lot of fear.
It was basically Americanterrorism?
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Of course it was.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
And so we grew up, and one of the reasons why I
think my mom actually left theSouth was to seek more
opportunity, to seek a moreamenable place to let her
children grow up, and because,you know, alabama is, to this
day, still Alabama, as youmentioned, the red state and not
(19:53):
much has changed.
Honestly, man, in Alabama and,for that matter, the South, we
see that with the election ofDonald Trump, the issue of
racism has never really beendealt with in this country.
The issue of white supremacyhas never been dealt with by the
(20:19):
majority population here.
It it's affectedAfrican-Americans, black people,
adversely as well, because wedon't really understand the
dynamics of it ourselves.
We look at it as something onthe surface, but it's not.
It's not Brian, it isentrenched, it is part of our
(20:40):
culture, it is a scaffoldingthat holds up Western culture,
it is in everything that we do,it is in our school books, it is
in our DNA, so to speak,because we have to understand
(21:06):
these things in order to freeourselves from them, and we
understand.
We need to understand also howGod looks at these things and
what his plans are, because wecan't do anything without him.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
So when I think about , like one of the pillars that
we talk about for black men,being able to move forward and
to know where we came from, sothen we can move forward, uh, is
is an issue of trust, and Ithink we struggle with trusting
ourselves many times.
I think we struggle withtrusting each other.
(21:37):
I think we trust we have atrouble trusting our not our
moms, but the other women thatare part of our life, and we
have an issue trusting whitesociety or beyond us.
How did you reconcile beingable after writing this book, or
why the process of being ableto trust, because you said this
(22:02):
was even before yourrelationship with Christianity
in a big way, how were you ableto trust others, or did you not
trust anybody and they had toprove themselves before you
could?
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I looked at your five pillars and I'm gonna kind of
use those to answer thatquestion.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
All right, I love it.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
You asked about the pillars and I had my own pillar.
Okay, okay, and I think itreally begins with this one, and
that is truth.
Okay, christ told us that hewants to be worshipped.
God wants to be worshipped inspirit and in truth.
(22:45):
Ok, and we cannot do anything,or anything that we will do
Apart from truth Will lead usdown the wrong path.
So first we have to discoverwhat truth is.
I'm not talking about my truthor your truth, that's not truth,
(23:07):
okay, no, there's only onetruth, and so we need to
understand what that truth is,what God has shown us.
The narrow path, the narrow way,because if you look at what
happened in this country, inAmerica and, for that matter,
the world, they took us from ourland, they took us from our
(23:33):
homes, they stripped us of ournames, of our identity, so we
really don't even know who weare as a culture, as a people,
so we don't know our culturalheritage, and subsequently we
are sort of like bouncing backand forth.
One of the things that I talkabout in my book is that while
(23:55):
we've been on these shores, wehave been colored, we have been
Negroes, we have beenAfrican-Americans, we have been
Black, we we have been AfricanAmericans, we have been Black.
We are still searching for ouridentity, you know.
And so, unless we reallyunderstand truth, who we are in
(24:16):
God's eyes, we'll always haveissues with trust.
We'll always have issues withtrust.
We'll always have issues withreconciliation with this country
, because we are still unpackingthe lies that they have been
throwing at us, and the majorityof African-Americans and for
Americans that matter, brianbelieve in myths.
(24:40):
We believe in things likemanifest, destinyest Destiny,
the Lost Cause of the South, andthese things are inculcated
into our very history books, andpart of what I have had to do
is to understand where the mythsend and where the truth begins.
(25:05):
And once you can reconcile that, you can begin to reconcile
every other thing in your life.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
So at what point were you able to start reconciling
that?
Were you able to, you know, say, hey, I understand the truth.
And now that I understand thetruth, I can now begin to not
only heal myself but be able tofeed into others.
Because when I think aboutbeing in purpose, I don't think
(25:34):
you can be in purpose withoutserving others.
Right, and you're an example ofdoing that as an elder in the
church, when for you were youwere, you had enough peace to be
able to now begin to say Iunderstand truth now.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
I understand these are myths.
Now I can begin the healingprocess.
That's a great question, brian,and it actually started when I
began to trust God.
That was the foundation for me,because I had turned my back on
Christianity as a falsereligion.
I had exposed myself to otherreligions New Age stuff,
(26:18):
meditation, yoga.
I looked at my friends who werein Islam and all of that.
So I had explored otherreligions, and one thing that I
noticed about all of thosedifferent things that I was
studying they all had anantipathy toward the Bible and
(26:40):
toward Christianity.
So that kind of picked myinterest.
I remember reading a book calledMeta-Nature.
It was a book on ancientEgyptian mysticism, and some of
the things that it said harkenedme back to my younger days of
understanding the Bible.
(27:01):
And so, as I began to do moreresearch and I began to pray,
things in my life began, and mywife, by the way, and my mother
were both praying for me, soprayer does work All right, and
so things began to occur in mylife.
I was a successful businessmanin real estate, making quite a
(27:22):
bit of money, and then the greatrecession hit and everything
dried up in real estate 2008.
And so that forced me to beginto evaluate where I was in life
At that point.
I took another.
(27:43):
I had a very similar experience.
I had gone to church with mywife I hadn't planned on it and
that same day I was supposed tobe going to a Metta Nature
meeting and they were going tohave what was called a reading.
And so I went to church thatday and that was also, as I
(28:07):
recall, it was a day in thesummer and I remember the
minister asking if anyone wantedto give their life to God, and
I said you know what?
This is?
A bunch of foolishness.
Really, this is what I'm saying.
I'm there with my wife and I'm,like you know, I done been
(28:28):
through this, I done beenthrough this, I went through
this.
And then he said so at any rate,the whole congregation stood up
.
So I stood up and then he saidnow, if anybody wants to, you
know, come up front and givetheir life to Christ.
And I started praying.
I said I asked God.
I said God started talking toGod and I said if you really
(28:54):
want me to do this, you're goingto have to.
Let me know in no uncertainterms, let me know in no
uncertain terms.
And, brian, right at thatinstant somebody pushed me on.
They didn't tap me on the arm,they hit me on the arm, okay.
(29:15):
I opened my eyes and I lookedaround and there was nobody
there.
Nobody there, oh my gosh,nobody there.
And so I went down and I gaveand I stood up and, man, there
was so many people cryingbecause they knew my wife and my
mother both went to that churchand they knew that I was not
(29:37):
thinking about church.
You know what I'm saying.
They would rarely see me andthat was my turning back.
And so, as I began to walk thewalk of faith, god began to
reveal things to me that justshored up my faith.
Things began to happen to methat were just miracles, just
(30:02):
miracles, and that was a largepart of my growth.
So for me, it was trust.
One of the greatest things oftrust building was my house that
I live in now.
We had built this house in.
I bought the land in 2004,built my dream home, a $2
(30:22):
million house on the water inFort Washington.
When the market crashed, brian,business stopped.
I went from making over amillion dollars a year to making
in 2009, I grossed $12,000.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Oh, whoa, what business were you doing?
Speaker 1 (30:48):
that was Real estate.
I was a real estate broker.
I went from basically making 1%of my income from the couple of
years prior and so my housewent into foreclosure and at
(31:09):
that point I began to just dowhat I could, you know, to stay
afloat.
I began to pray, go to churchon a regular basis.
I was doing that anyway, youknow, paying returning tithes
and all of that.
And one day we got theforeclosure notice and we had
(31:29):
gotten, I think up to that point, six foreclosure notices, but
this was the one that was kindof.
They wanted us to come to court.
And so that week my mom one ofmy mom's friends from church,
(31:50):
unbeknownst to me, came to myhouse and said we need to anoint
your house.
Okay, we anointed the house andwe went over the whole three
acres and I began to anoint thehouse during the process of
stopping the foreclosure.
So a couple of months went byand we finally would have our
(32:13):
day in court.
But that week my wife and Istarted fasting.
We fasted for the whole weekand that week we started fasting
and I would normally anoint myhouse on Thursday and as we were
fasting that week, we weregoing to go to court.
On Friday I went out to anointmy house and I heard I was
(32:36):
impressed by the Holy Spirit toanoint, to walk around my house
seven times.
This is my Jericho wall and youknow, you wonder, man, am I
hearing this?
Is this the Holy Spirit talkingto me or I'm just hearing this?
But I was obedient.
I anointed him out and walkedaround my house seven times
(32:59):
anointing it and prayed.
So the very next day we had togo to court, my wife and I.
My wife took off she's ateacher and we went to court in
French Orleans County.
And when we got to the court,Brian, we were on time, but my
attorney was late and Linda'sattorney was late.
(33:22):
So my wife and I went in and wetalked to the judge, who
actually was a retired judge,and he was very candid with us.
He said that you know, wereally don't have any authority
to do anything.
The bank is within their rightto foreclose.
The bank is within their rightto foreclose.
(33:44):
And he said but this will atleast give you a chance to voice
your opposition.
And basically we're doing thisbecause there's been such a
backlog and such a groundswellof people losing their homes in
this county that we had to dosomething and in my immediate
neighborhood, of the 38properties in my neighborhood,
(34:09):
Bryan 24 had gone to foreclosure.
Wow, Okay.
So we were going to be,probably.
We thought we'd be one in thatsame group.
So we the attorney, my attorneywe stepped out for a while and,
you know, my wife and I, ourattorney Brian, came in and we
(34:32):
went into the judge's chamber.
And then, while we were goingto judge's chambers, the bank's
attorney came in.
She was young and she wascompletely green.
We were her first case.
Oh no, she had not even had achance to unpack her bag from
(34:54):
arriving at the train station.
So none of this bode well forus.
So we all sit down in thejudge's chamber and we, you know
, exchange hellos and all ofthat, and the judge calls the
senior attorney for the bank onthe phone, on the, on the on the
(35:18):
phone, and puts her on thespeaker.
And so we again exchangedpleasantries and you know we
prepared for the worst, my wifeand I, an attorney, we looked at
each other, we prepared for theworst.
And so the attorney comes onand she's very pleasant on the
speaker because she's a seniorattorney and she's somewhere in
the Midwest, I'm not sureexactly where she was at that
(35:39):
point.
So she says listen, Mr Arnold.
She said you all have abeautiful house.
Okay, so I thought she wassetting us up for the fall.
Brian, you know, yeah, you allhave a beautiful home.
And she says and we don't wantto take your home, Okay.
And I'm like, okay, right, Idon't want you to take it either
(36:03):
, In my mind's eye, because Iused to work for the banks.
Brian, okay, I'm saying right.
And so she says Ms Arnold, howmuch do you think your home is
worth?
Now, I had been an appraiser,and I was an appraiser at that
time, so I had a very good sense.
But I also knew the market wascompletely upside down and so I
(36:28):
didn't want to venture or guess,because I couldn't pay for it
either way if it was, because Iwasn't making the money.
And so I asked if Brian and Icould step out for a minute.
So Brian and I stepped out.
Uh, who was my attorney?
My wife stayed in the, uh, inthe in the room and Brian said
Brian, what should we say man?
Should we say a million dollars, 1.2, because it sure ain't
(36:49):
worth the 2.3?
He said.
He said um, he said man.
He said yeah, say maybe, say1.2, a million, Maybe we can
work with a million.
So we went back into, we wentback in Brian and I looked at
Brian and he looked at me and Isaid we believe the house is
(37:12):
worth about a million dollarsand she immediately said, no,
it's worth about a milliondollars.
And she immediately said no,it's not worth a million dollars
.
And I thought, okay, this is it, we've lost this, we've lost.
She said I think your home isworth about 315 000.
(37:34):
What?
315 000 line?
I literally listen to what I'msaying.
I literally fell back in thechair.
$315,000 line I literally listento what I'm saying.
I literally fell back in thechair.
Of course you did.
I closed my eyes and I saidlook at God.
So we went from owing $2.3million to $315,000.
(37:55):
Then she asked me and I was ifyou ever been in shock.
You know what shock is.
I was literally in shock.
And she said to me she said isyour interest rate okay?
I couldn't say nothing, man.
I couldn't even say nothing.
(38:16):
All I could say was yes.
So we walked away.
She said well, we'll get youthe paperwork showing the
$315,000.
And the only stipulation youhave to do is make that payment
for the next 12 months, isn't?
Speaker 2 (38:36):
that amazing Well, 315,.
You're like $1,500.
I don't even think it was$1,500,.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Honestly, to be honest, oh my gosh.
And so she said and truth toher word.
We got the paperwork withinabout two weeks, we signed it
and we made the payment For 12months.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Did it go back?
Did you only go?
Speaker 1 (39:03):
315 from now on Only 315?
No, it never goes back.
No, no, 315, brother, that wasit.
So that was a major step for mein trusting God.
Oh my, gosh.
Because, god, because man, I'mgoing to tell you I talked to
the.
I had in the.
In my run up to that time I hadhired six different teams of
(39:26):
attorneys and none of them hadever heard of anything like that
.
No, still haven't, stillhaven't, Still haven't, still
haven't.
So, yeah, we're still in ourhome and God has truly blessed
us.
So trust then became, I guessis the centerpiece for me of any
(39:47):
relationship, and before we canhave a relationship with
anybody we've got to have thattrust relationship with God, I
think.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
Oh, so neat.
One of the things that I wouldlove to kind of unpack with you.
When I think about becoming theperson that God would have you
be in order to do what he putyou on this planet to do, and
when I'm thinking about yourbooks and the things that you're
(40:15):
writing and his story, thinkabout three things that I think
give us fulfillment that God hasallowed us to do.
And the first thing is whenwe're learning something or
we're creating something.
I think we learn to create andspend our time there.
And then the next thing wouldbe, like love and relationships
(40:38):
that you know allow us toconnect with others that you're
writing, do those three things,or how you see those three
things appear in his story forus.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
A good point, paul tells us, the Bible tells us it
is better to give than toreceive, and that for most human
beings is a very difficultthing to do because the way we
are built and learning, but Godpractices that.
(41:25):
It's been a beautiful thing forme, and so, in the process of
writing my books and doing thosethings, to see people connect
with what I've written and thatin turn connects them to me and
(41:48):
to God.
That's a beautiful thingbecause my experience has not
been isolated.
Many of us in this country havesought things that are not
fulfilling, and having done that, having experienced that, I can
tell people you can make allthe money in the world and you
(42:10):
can still be unhappy, you canstill be disconnected, because
that was the case with me.
I was spending so much timetrying to make money to live the
American dream until Iunderstood how unfulfilling it
was, and so being able to writeand to help people to seek God
(42:35):
is the highest thing that anyone of us can do.
It's the highest thing that anyof us can do, and so that's
been just a blessing to me tobring people out of the darkness
into the light and share ourexperience of truth.
Because if you look at what'sgoing on in the country right
(42:56):
now, man, they're trying to turnback the clock, not to 1950.
They're trying to turn back theclock back to the antebellum,
south bro.
You know what I'm saying.
I mean, if you reallyunderstand history, you look at
Thomas Jefferson and the thingsthat he believed and said and
the things that he did, whatthis country was founded upon.
(43:19):
Our journey to freedom beginswith truth.
We've got to unpack all ofthose lies and let people know
no, this is what really happened.
And we've got to do that in away that people, especially we,
can relate.
You know, with Thomas Jefferson, we'd like to say Sally Hemings
was his mistress.
(43:41):
That's what the culture says.
Sally Hemings was not hismistress, mistress, man, he
raped her.
He was 14 years old, he was 44.
Okay, so once you begin tounderstand that we have to take
back, we have to take back thenarrative, we have to create the
true narrative, we have todisseminate truth, it will make
(44:03):
a lot of difference in our lives.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
I try to reconcile myself with this often lately is
when I think about lack, fear.
You know those words that Ithink are the precipice for a
lot of the things that arehappening, and I think of a God
(44:35):
that I serve, that's a God ofabundance and opportunity and
plentifulness.
I see so in our culture, in ourcommunity's eyes, that they're
so fearful, like you said, aboutturning back the clock and
going back to.
I agree, I mean, I think thatthis is what they're trying to
do.
I don't know if it's possiblefor them to do it, because we've
been educated.
There's a whole lot of thingsthat are way different than it
(44:57):
was back when you pulled us outof Africa and the things that
are going on, but it just seemslike we spend so much time in
fear.
How do we not have this spiritof fear and lack?
And you know, because I thinkthat's where they're getting to
right, because the whole DEIthing is about.
(45:18):
Well, if we give you the jobs,then we don't have it.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Right right.
And I honestly, brian, thinkthat's only a part of it, though
, okay, I think that we alsohave to recognize that we are
fighting an enemy yes, okay, andthat enemy the Bible says in
Ephesians 6, verses, I think, 10through 18,.
We're not fighting againstflesh and blood, and so we have
(45:45):
to understand there's also agreater conflict that we are
part of, and actually, once webegin to understand that aspect
of it too, we can understandthat we have to really be on
God's side.
Now, on a very practical sense,europeans have always
(46:06):
understood that by subjugatingothers, they can essentially
live the life that they havedesired, and Trump has pretty
much said this.
They can essentially live thelife that they have desired, and
Trump has pretty much said this.
Okay, if you look at what hewrote, what is it?
(46:28):
The five men that were arrestedwhen he was in New York for
raping a woman the Central ParkFive we talked about in the
Central Park Five.
A woman to get the Central ParkFive we talked about in the
Central Park Five.
And so we have to understandthat this country was founded by
a select group of men and theymaintained white supremacy for
themselves.
Women could not vote, blackscould not vote.
(46:52):
Native Americans could not vote.
In fact, only the landed gentrycould vote.
So we've got to understand thatthis has all been predicated on
greed and avarice, and sothey've tried to keep the
(47:13):
benefits that God has given usall for themselves, and to a
large degree, they've done itvery successfully, and so we
need to understand that.
And in fact, while we're on thistopic, every time that blacks
have created an environmentwhere we thrive, they destroy it
(47:36):
.
You look at Tulsa, you look atWilmington, you look at Rosewood
, okay, and so there is no wayto placate white supremacy?
No, no, you can't, you can't,it just doesn't happen.
So I think, again, we have tounderstand what God says, and
(48:01):
that's what I talk about in mybook, what God says about all of
this, and he talks about it inDaniel and Revelation, and
that's why I've titled my bookmy story, my second book, my
Story, his Glory, decodingDaniel, revelation and America's
Destiny, because we are part ofAmerica.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
And what so?
What is that destiny thatyou're writing about that is
going to you believe, is?
Speaker 1 (48:29):
happening.
Well, based on ourinterpretation of Revelation,
god is going to intervene,because only in that way will we
receive justice, and it's notjust going to be a justice for
black people, it's going to be ajustice for all people.
If you look at the Civil Warduring Lincoln's time something
(48:50):
that Abraham Lincoln, thepresident, said in his second
inaugural address he talkedabout the cause of the war being
slavery, and he talked aboutGod's judgment for both the
North and the South.
The reason that the war waslasting so long and was so
bloody was because God wasenacting judgment upon this
(49:14):
country, and in my book, Iexplain what that judgment looks
like.
Now, if you look at Revelation14, it talks about three angels,
and those three angelsannounced that one God is coming
and that we are to leave, inthe spiritual sense, babylon,
(49:40):
and I elaborate on that in thebook that I've written.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Oh, that's cool.
You know what?
This has been a goodconversation.
I got so many things that aredriving through my mind and I'm
thinking as African-American men.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
And you can always have me on Brian again, don't
worry.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
We are going to have another conversation, I promise
you that who are trying tothrive and trying to get along
and trying to have what Americahas promised and we feel that
(50:27):
we've come short or we're notenough or that the cards are
stacked against us.
What do you tell those youngmen today that are saying I
don't want to live anywhere else, but I just don't know how?
Speaker 1 (50:42):
to make it Right.
That's a very good question andit's a very practical question,
and what I have learned from myexperience I have to go by my
testimony is that one you haveto be very careful about your
associations and about your ownweaknesses, and you have to be
(51:09):
able to define those.
You have to be able to listento people, because a lot of
times we are very subjectivewhen it comes to ourselves.
We want to do what we want todo when we want to do it, but in
my case, I had a wife who wasvery practical, and so learning
(51:36):
to listen to her also made mepractical, if that makes sense.
She was worried about how thebills got paid and I had to
worry about them because she wasworried about them, and so I
began to just focus on where Iwas spending my time.
I began to just focus on whereI was spending my time, how I
(51:58):
was utilizing my time.
I'd like to tell folks anexperience I had years ago.
You know, time is valuable andI chose to use my time to become
independent.
I chose real estate, and one ofthe first things that happened
to me was I became a real estateappraiser.
(52:20):
I wasn't making much money, andbut I went out on my own.
I got a terrific story aboutthat too, and so, in order to to
utilize and to do appraisal, Ihad to give up watching football
on Sunday Very practical for me, because Sunday was the day in
(52:43):
which I would write up myappraisal reports.
As much as I love football andthe Washington football team
they were called the WashingtonRedskins at the time I needed to
take that time to write upthose reports, and once I did,
(53:04):
it became a habit, and so mytime.
I began to utilize my time in amuch, much more efficient and
effective way.
So I found something that Ienjoyed doing.
I began to spend more timedoing it, and that began to
bring me in the kind of moneythat I needed to do, and from
(53:26):
that I began to invest in realestate using the skill sets that
I had developed, andsubsequently that has been a
blessing for me.
So I think those are thepractical steps.
I had to learn first how to dowhat I was doing, and I had to
(53:49):
take the time to learn it,become efficient at it and then
stick with it.
And I see one of the thingsthat I see, brian, that really
hurts people is they try to dofive different things at one
time.
You can't do it man, you can't.
You can't, you can't.
I know people that want to be anotary public.
They want to do a title, theywant to do insurance, and I talk
(54:14):
to people all the time doingdifferent things.
I'm like you got to focus, man.
You got to focus on one thing,so none of it's going to make
money for you, and that's whathappens most of the time.
So they don't utilize theirtime properly.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah, wow.
One last question, and then I'mgoing to have you just kind of
tell people how to get a hold ofyou.
But when I think about theBlack family and I think you
(54:46):
know, as I'm doing stuff andresearching, 50% of Black women
that are over the age of 40 havenever been married, and of that
50% of Black women that areover 40 that have never even
married, 75% of them have atleast one child.
How do we bring back the familyand the importance of it?
Speaker 1 (55:05):
Again, man, I think we have to first recognize that
we are fighting an invisibleenemy and that the things that
we see in our world have beendesigned to be the way they are.
You look at, I read a goodarticle.
There was a point where you hadthe men essentially working,
(55:31):
one family, one income wasallowable.
It's not allowed.
You can't make a living mananymore for one income and so
you're driven for women to workoutside of the home, and that's
a larger part of where theeconomy is.
And so these things we arelooking at things that on a we
(55:58):
can't fix things on the macrolevel, just on the micro level,
if that makes sense.
You know there are forces inour society that are really
pulling us apart.
You know what I'm saying?
And again, those are the imagesthat we see, the myths that are
created.
We look at the basketballplayers or the football players,
(56:21):
and we see them making thesegreat checks and all of that,
but we never look at the factthat, even though they are
making those great checks, mostof them end up broke.
The fact that, even though theyare making those great checks,
most of them end up broke.
(56:41):
But yet the people who arewriting the checks.
They pass their wealth downfrom generation to generation.
So there is a dissonance, adisconnect with that.
We've got to learn.
We've got to learn how thissociety works, and again, that's
(57:02):
breaking down the myths andfinding what is true, and that
way we can build from that.
But it all, but again, it allstarts, and the only way you can
do that is your relationshipwith God.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
Amen.
Well, man, thank you for beingpart of this show today.
Thank you for being vulnerable.
You're telling your story.
I think it can impact so manypeople.
How do people get a hold of youor get to your books?
Speaker 1 (57:29):
These are my books.
This is my first one, my storyHis Glory, and this is the
newest one, my story His Glory,and this is the newest one.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
Okay, all right, gotcha.
Speaker 1 (57:40):
And they can go to my website, which is
wwwhisglorypublishingcom.
Hisglorypublishingcom.
You can sign up for my freehandouts and, of course, you can
also purchase the books there.
(58:01):
They'll take you to Amazon.
You can purchase them there,and I will be looking forward to
responding to all of the callsand emails that I get and
continue to tell my story toGod's glory, his glory.
Speaker 2 (58:18):
All right.
So the book, His Story, myGlory.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
My Story, His Glory.
My Story, His Glory.
What was I thinking?
My Story.
Speaker 2 (58:29):
His Glory is the name of the book, and I look forward
to getting that book.
I can't wait to read it.
Please go to the website, Checkout whatever it is, If there
are any.
You know people who are like.
This was important to you thatyou got something out of our
conversation today.
Please go ahead and subscribe.
(58:49):
There's many more to it.
Share this episode withsomebody that you know that it
can impact, that it can help.
It's been a privilege, Nate, tohave you on the podcast today.
I can't wait.
We are not done, so we aregoing to have another
conversation.
Great, Look forward to it,Because there's just so much to
(59:12):
unpack that I can't wait to havethe conversation about.
I want to find out how you wentinto business for yourself and
all those wonderful things thatare part of your story and his
story.
Amen.
Speaker 1 (59:19):
Thank you, brian, thank you, thank you, glad you
had me on.
Speaker 2 (59:27):
We love you, if you allow us to, and we will look
forward to talking to you on thenext podcast.
Have a wonderful, just amazingday.
Speaker 1 (59:35):
Thank you.
Thank you, great to be here.
Great to be here.
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