197 - EPHRAIM MATTOS | Protecting Families In Conflict Zones

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0:30 - Thank you.

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3:49 - Ephraimatos, welcome to Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.

3:53 - Well, thanks for having me on, man.

3:54 I really appreciate it.

3:54 - Yeah, absolutely, man.

3:55 We have been listening to your interviews

3:57 and going over the stuff that you've put out there

3:58 for a while now.

3:59 It really started when Shelby the stoic,

4:01 those of you that know my foxhole,

4:02 you know Shelby the stoic,

4:03 he actually shared an interview that you did

4:05 with Andy Stumpf.

4:06 And what I find interesting about some of those interviews

4:08 is some of them seem a little bit hard to get through,

4:10 right, because you're talking about combat,

4:11 you're talking about personal stuff.

4:12 And even if it's another seal, it's kind of difficult.

4:14 So I guess a great place for us to start today

4:17 is do you even like doing interviews like that

4:19 where you're, you know, to a certain degree,

4:21 bearing your soul, but also talking about

4:23 some very, very personal things to you?

4:24 - Well, I mean, I do enjoy, you know,

4:26 going and having a good conversation, you know?

4:29 But, you know, for me, the hardest part for me

4:33 is just kind of talking about, you know,

4:36 combat stuff, which is, in my opinion,

4:37 is a very personal thing.

4:39 It's like, it's not something that you want to ever come

4:43 across like you're trying to brag about what you did

4:45 in your past or, you know, try to, I don't know,

4:48 seek recognition for it.

4:50 That's something that I, so it feels a little bit counter-intuitive.

4:53 However, because I run a, you know, a nonprofit organization,

4:57 you know, I do enjoy the opportunity

4:59 to be able to tell stories and, you know,

5:02 that allows us to, you know, be able to raise support

5:05 to continue, you know, helping other people overseas.

5:07 So it's, it's bittersweet, but, you know,

5:09 I definitely enjoy, I definitely do enjoy the process.

5:12 - Well, hey, even if you didn't enjoy the process,

5:14 we were going to keep you here anyway.

5:16 So we were going to keep asking you our questions

5:17 and we're going to get into it today.

5:18 And guys, we're going to go into a lot of different subjects,

5:20 but I really want to kick off with something

5:22 that was in your book, City of Death.

5:23 And we'll be coming into and out of your book

5:25 and kind of going through some quotes

5:26 throughout the podcast episode today.

5:28 But I want to really start off with

5:30 how you started the entire book.

5:31 And that was with a quote from Edmund Burke.

5:34 And I heard this quote before and I've seen it before,

5:36 but it was just such an appropriate start to your book

5:39 because of the contents of the rest of the book.

5:40 But here's the quote, "The only thing necessary

5:43 "for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

5:47 So why is that quote so important to you,

5:49 so important that you would start your book off with it?

5:51 - That quote is so important to me

5:54 because it talks about actually taking action.

5:56 We, I mean, how many times do we sit around

5:58 and discuss the evil in the world,

6:01 the bad things that are happening?

6:03 And then nobody actually goes and does anything about it.

6:06 - Right, right.

6:07 - So the most important part of that

6:09 is the fact that it's about taking action.

6:11 But the other part of that quote that's so important

6:13 is it really hits a nerve on the reality of the world.

6:18 And the reality of the world is things tend toward decay,

6:20 things tend toward entropy.

6:22 And the entire idea is that evil

6:25 and bad people doing bad things,

6:27 they are going to do this stuff.

6:29 It is just human nature, it is just natural law.

6:33 Bad people are going to do bad things regardless,

6:35 even if we lived in the utopian society

6:38 and everything was great, humans are still human.

6:40 So entropy is still gonna happen.

6:41 People are gonna continue to try to inflict their will on others.

6:46 And what that talks about,

6:49 what that statement really means is that

6:51 there is that state of decay.

6:53 There's that state of tragedy and horror and evil

6:57 that happens.

6:58 And the only thing that has to happen for it to win

7:00 is for you just to sit back and watch.

7:02 That's all that has to happen.

7:03 All that has to happen is just for people to sit around

7:05 and talk about it, observe it,

7:07 but then all you have to do is nothing.

7:09 So it's very easy.

7:10 It's very easy to make excuses.

7:11 It's very easy to say, I'm gonna sit on my hands.

7:14 I'm not gonna stand up for any of this

7:16 because of this reason or another, I'm too scared.

7:19 I've got too many other responsibilities

7:21 or it's somebody else to deal with it.

7:23 And that's all that evil needs.

7:25 That's all that evil needs is for us to sit on our hands

7:27 and not take action.

7:29 And so I tried to live my life by no means

7:34 am I a perfect person and I am so flawed in so many ways.

7:37 But one thing I try to do to make up for my failures

7:41 and make up for my flaws is to take action.

7:44 It is to not do nothing because the evil is out there.

7:49 The people out there are people who need help

7:52 and we're gonna do something about it.

7:54 We're not gonna sit on our hands.

7:56 - When I love that you're imploring people to action

7:58 because here at Undaunted Life we equipment

8:00 to push back darkness and we also equipped them

8:03 to cultivate spiritual, mental and physical resilience

8:05 on a daily basis.

8:06 But a lot of that just has to do with action.

8:08 A lot of guys, I guess the easiest example

8:10 to lowest hanging fruit is somebody

8:12 has wanting to get in shape.

8:14 You don't need to just read blogs on how to get in shape.

8:16 You don't need to just buy the gear.

8:18 At some point you've got to move more and eat less.

8:21 Like if you wanna be in shape,

8:22 if that's like the type of person that you want to be,

8:24 that's the philosophy that you have to carry.

8:26 And I think that kind of goes in nicely

8:27 to where I feel like you had a very early turning point

8:30 in your life and you talk about this in your book

8:32 in your book, you detail a rather life-altering interaction

8:36 that you had with your 10th grade history teacher.

8:39 He asked the classroom, did God allow 9/11 to happen?

8:43 And the ensuing interaction that you had

8:47 with the students and with the teacher

8:48 kind of led to your overall philosophy

8:50 about how you view the world.

8:52 So kind of take us through that story

8:53 and the impact that it had on you.

8:55 - Yeah, so I was raised in a independent,

8:58 fundamental Baptist home and the church

9:01 and the independent fundamental Baptist church

9:04 was our life.

9:05 And I wanna be very clear upfront.

9:07 Like I have nothing but respect for these people.

9:10 They had a great childhood.

9:13 So I don't wanna, anything I say going forward to,

9:16 I don't want it to come across as disrespect to them

9:19 because yeah, they're still my friends

9:20 and they're good people and they're well-intentioned.

9:22 However, one of the flaws I saw in the ideology,

9:25 and I think this is true with a lot

9:27 of different religious ideologies was they would say stuff

9:30 like, oh well, what is God's will?

9:32 God is doing anything.

9:33 God has a plan, all these other things, right?

9:36 And I think there's definitely some truth to a lot of that.

9:39 However, I saw that people would just become passive

9:44 in their life and in the world,

9:48 I just saw that happening in the world around me

9:50 in the world of politics and everything

9:51 because people were saying, oh, it's just God's plan.

9:54 And oh, that's what God wanted to happen.

9:56 And in reality, in my mind, I was like,

9:57 I don't know if that's accurate or not.

10:01 So the interaction, so that's the lead up

10:03 to this interaction that I had.

10:05 The interaction I had with the history teacher,

10:08 who was also one of the leaders of our church

10:12 and everything, he had this really interesting question

10:16 and he said, why did God allow 9/11 to happen, right?

10:19 Because it's God's will, why did God want this to happen?

10:22 And so of course I responded, as I was supposed to,

10:24 I said, well, 'cause God had a plan

10:26 and there's some sort of greater good

10:28 that's going to come from that

10:30 and that was God's intention all along.

10:32 And he said, okay, well, what about all the,

10:35 what about all the babies that were killed?

10:36 What about all the children that died?

10:38 And I thought in my young man's brain,

10:42 I thought, well, that was God's plan.

10:45 Again, there's a greater purpose.

10:47 His ways are above our ways, like these little catchphrases.

10:50 And our history teacher stopped and he said,

10:53 what about this?

10:54 He's like, what if God didn't do 9/11?

10:57 What if God had nothing to do with it?

10:58 What if it broke God's heart?

11:00 And what if it was actually terrorists who did 9/11

11:04 and God didn't want it to happen?

11:05 But we as humans have free will

11:08 and we can choose to make good decisions or bad decisions.

11:12 Now, I know that sounds very simple,

11:13 but at the time that was just, it blew my mind.

11:16 I was like, wait a minute, like, you know, like what?

11:20 And then, so that thought really started like,

11:24 you know, moving around in my brain

11:26 and I couldn't stop thinking about it.

11:28 And then I thought about, you know,

11:29 for example, our founding fathers who allowed them,

11:31 you know, not all of them, but a large portion

11:33 of them were Christians, for example.

11:35 And I'm like, the founding fathers, they took action.

11:38 They actually fought to rise up and fight, you know,

11:42 fight off King George's army.

11:44 And so the people that I'm with,

11:49 this ideology that I'm around right now,

11:52 these people would not stand up and fight.

11:53 They would say, well, you know, God chooses who the king is,

11:56 God chooses, and it would just be sort of passive.

11:58 And I'm going, and I'm like, no, that's not true.

12:00 So anyway, this interaction totally changed

12:03 my thought process.

12:04 And it became the idea that if you want something

12:07 to happen, if you want to pray, if you believe

12:11 that that helps, you know, that's great, go for it.

12:13 However, you need to get up off your knees

12:16 and then also go do the work.

12:17 Because God's not gonna move the bullet out of the way.

12:20 He's not going to, if you're just sitting on your knees,

12:23 he's not gonna move the obstacles out of your life.

12:26 Like, no, you have to go and figure out a way to do that.

12:30 He gave you a brain, he gave you reason.

12:32 He gave you logic, he gave the ability to read.

12:35 So you need to take advantage of that

12:37 and go figure out how to solve different problems,

12:40 whatever that problem might be in your life,

12:41 whether it's financially, relationship, you know.

12:44 And of course, if you can go to the Bible

12:45 and you can find a specific answer in the Bible, great.

12:47 But 99% of our problems are not fixed

12:51 or are not directly mentioned, you know, in the Bible.

12:55 So yeah, that was kind of the interaction that I had,

12:58 which really was a turning point in my life

13:02 and my young life and really set me off

13:04 on the course that I'm on now.

13:05 - One also sets you up for a life of thinking

13:08 and a life of philosophizing beyond

13:09 just kind of the basic points that are being presented.

13:11 And that's one thing that I feel like Christians do

13:13 and that's one thing I try to fight against

13:15 with this podcast is a lot of Christians

13:16 don't really think past the initial argument,

13:18 kind of that first layer.

13:19 You definitely want to get through that next layer.

13:21 And as you were talking, it kind of reminded me

13:23 of something from the book of Nehemiah.

13:25 I'm actually studying Nehemiah right now

13:26 because I'm doing some work for a project.

13:29 I'm going to be talking about Nehemiah,

13:30 but Nehemiah wasn't a guy that just prayed.

13:33 I mean, this is a guy that went back

13:34 and helped rebuild the walls of Jerusalem,

13:37 but he didn't just pray.

13:38 He didn't just lament over the Jews

13:40 and what was going on in Jerusalem at the time.

13:42 This guy acted, he risked his life.

13:44 He went to his boss, King Artaxerxes.

13:46 He risked his life asking permission for a leave of absence

13:49 as the cup bearer of the king

13:51 and was able to kind of go back

13:53 and take care of business back in Jerusalem.

13:55 But it was because he was a man that took action

13:58 and this is an important thing that he needed to do.

14:00 And I really think that this is important for you

14:02 because your life tended to change as a 10th grader,

14:05 but then you decided that you were going to do something bigger

14:07 and that you were going to join the military

14:08 and that you were going to become a seal.

14:10 And it's kind of funny because every time

14:11 we have a Navy Seal on this podcast,

14:14 the question that they're always expecting is,

14:16 "Hey, it was buds hard.

14:17 Did you have to do a lot of push-ups?

14:19 You know, were you tired?

14:21 Was it a hard physical thing?"

14:23 Obviously at this point, we know that it was hard physically

14:25 and mentally for you to get through buds.

14:27 But what I want to know and what I ask everybody

14:28 that has joined the military is one,

14:31 why even joined the United States military?

14:33 But then for you specifically, why become a Navy Seal?

14:37 - So I'll answer the first part there.

14:40 So why join the military?

14:41 So my father, he had been in the Air Force Reserves.

14:44 He was a flight engineer on C-130 Hercules.

14:47 So in 2003, he got deployed to Iraq.

14:51 So he was a reservist, but he got activated and sent over.

14:54 And so during a few years,

14:57 some of the formative years of my life,

14:59 he was gone, he was gone a lot.

15:01 But because of that, I was very attuned

15:04 to what was going on in the world.

15:06 I was aware of the military.

15:08 Of course, I was able to ask him a lot of questions.

15:10 So I think that's kind of where the idea came from.

15:13 However, the other part to that is,

15:15 man, it was in my blood.

15:17 The idea of fighting to protect other people,

15:20 the idea to stand up for what is right,

15:23 the idea to protect my country.

15:25 Yeah, man, that was just, that was in my blood

15:27 and it's still to me from a young age.

15:29 And specifically when I looked at joining the military,

15:33 my thought was, okay, well, I want to,

15:36 I want to do the most difficult thing that,

15:39 that can be, I want to join the most challenging thing for me.

15:43 And I know there's different debates

15:44 on who's training's harder and whatever.

15:46 For me, I looked at the Seal of Training and I thought,

15:48 well, I can barely do the doggy paddle in a pool.

15:51 So that's the most challenging for me.

15:53 And for somebody else, it might be something different.

15:56 But for me, it was like, okay, it was like,

15:57 that seems the most challenging for me.

15:59 And I don't want to go join another elite unit.

16:04 If in the back of my head, I'm going,

16:05 I'm just running away from Seal of Training, for example.

16:08 So I was like, I'm just going to go for it.

16:10 I'm going to go do that.

16:11 And, you know, a few push-ups later.

16:15 Yeah, I was a Seal.

16:16 - So it's interesting.

16:17 You talk somewhat dismissively about becoming a Navy Seal

16:20 and about kind of getting into the Navy Seals.

16:22 And even in your book, you talk about how you shouldn't

16:25 really be compared to some of the other Navy Seals

16:27 that people know in terms of your career,

16:28 like the Jocko Willings or the Adam Browns

16:30 or the Chris Kiles or the Lieutenant Michael Murphy.

16:32 Like, you know, those types of things are like,

16:34 no, I don't want to be compared to those guys.

16:35 And I'm not thinking that you're being dismissive

16:38 of becoming a Seal because you don't think it's a hard thing

16:40 or an important thing to get your Triton.

16:42 I certainly wouldn't put those words in your mouth.

16:44 But the reality was, is you weren't a Seal for very long.

16:48 I mean, some people think that, you know,

16:49 automatically if you're going to get into the Navy Seals

16:52 that it's going to be like, all right,

16:53 you're going to do your 20 years

16:54 and then move on with your life.

16:55 But you had a very short tenure.

16:57 So why did you spend such a short time in the Navy Seals?

17:00 - So one of the reasons why I kind of,

17:02 I try to kind of make light of my service

17:05 is a couple of things.

17:06 It's like one, exactly like I didn't do nearly as much

17:10 as a lot of these other guys.

17:11 Like I wasn't on the Bin Laden raid.

17:13 I didn't help rescue Captain Phillips, you know.

17:15 I didn't do any of that stuff.

17:17 You know, we did, you know, one deployment in Afghanistan,

17:20 one actual combat deployment in Afghanistan.

17:22 So that's one reason.

17:24 But the other thing too is,

17:26 I don't want to fall into the trap

17:30 of trying to talk about my military service

17:33 and trying to, you know, I don't know,

17:35 sort of build my sort of resting on your laurels, if you will.

17:37 It's like, yes, I went and I did that and I'm proud of it.

17:41 And it was an honor to be a part of such a great group of guys,

17:44 such as a great unit.

17:45 However, you know, and I'm grateful for that,

17:48 that gave me the skills to do what I do now

17:50 and to move forward with my life.

17:51 But I just don't want to, you know,

17:52 I guess like, yeah, just rest on your laurels.

17:55 It's like, well, congratulations,

17:57 that was six years ago, what do you do now?

17:59 And so the reason I didn't do, you know, a full 20 years.

18:03 So when I joined the Navy,

18:05 I was certainly intent on, you know, I, yeah,

18:09 let's do it, let's do 20, let's see how this goes.

18:11 Let's see what other units and stuff I can get into.

18:15 However, during the time that I got into the Navy,

18:20 that was right at the end of the wars.

18:22 So while there still are like, I guess we call them

18:25 low intensity conflicts around the world

18:27 and seals do occasionally, don't get me wrong,

18:29 they are still actively out there hunting bad guys.

18:32 It's not as much as it was, let's say back in 2006, 2010, right?

18:37 And so for me, it's like, I saw pretty quickly

18:40 that the chances of being deployed

18:45 and actually getting to do actual real world operations

18:48 and helping people, those, the statistical chances

18:51 of that happening were just kind of,

18:53 we're continuing to degrade as each day went on.

18:55 It was like, okay, we just pulled out of here,

18:57 the rules of engagement over here just got pulled.

19:00 And again, keep in mind, all my friends, all my buddies,

19:02 they're all stationed all out over the world.

19:03 So, you know, we get back to San Diego

19:05 and we're talking about all this.

19:07 So I just, I kind of just saw the signs and I was like,

19:09 well, you know, I think I could do more if I get out.

19:13 But then the other part too was I saw

19:15 that there were these conflicts all over the world

19:17 that the US rightfully so is not necessarily

19:20 directly involved in.

19:21 But I thought, okay, myself and a couple other guys,

19:24 we could really help those people.

19:26 You know, I think of the movie, Tears of the Sun,

19:29 which I mentioned during the Andy Stump interview

19:31 and he was like, how dare you.

19:33 But I seriously, I love that movie.

19:34 And what's ironic too is if you watch the beginning

19:36 of that movie, the quote from Edmund Burke is there

19:39 at the beginning of the, at the beginning of the movie.

19:40 So that's what I saw myself doing.

19:42 I was like, I want to be with a small group of guys

19:44 going in and protecting villages from rape and murder

19:47 and genocide and all kinds of other atrocities.

19:49 That's what I want to do.

19:51 And the US military, again, rightfully so,

19:54 is not involved everywhere.

19:56 And so by getting out,

19:58 I shed the support of the US government.

20:03 But I now have freedom of maneuver to go help

20:05 whoever it is that I want.

20:07 So that was, that for me was a big reason.

20:09 I'm like, you want to know what?

20:10 I just need to go do this.

20:11 I need to pull the trigger on this.

20:12 Again, the only thing necessary

20:14 for them to be able is for good men to do nothing.

20:15 All I have to do is sit here, stay in the military,

20:18 get a really good paycheck, get really great benefits,

20:22 live in San Diego and go surfing.

20:24 You know, that's all I have to do.

20:26 And which sounds pretty good.

20:27 And I'm serving my country.

20:28 But then I know in the back of my head,

20:31 there's a village that's going to burn

20:32 on the other side of the world that only I can help.

20:36 And so I can't save all the villages.

20:38 I can save that one.

20:39 And so that's what I decided to go save the one village

20:42 if I can.

20:43 - Sure.

20:44 And certainly I don't think anybody would be confusing

20:46 what you're saying with, you know, you being critical

20:48 of anyone that is staying in

20:49 and doing their 20 years as a seal.

20:51 Like obviously that's not something that you would be doing.

20:53 But it does seem like seals just do become seals

20:57 so that at some point they can become a best-selling author.

21:00 Yeah, I mean, you know what I mean?

21:01 Because we've even had those guys on the show.

21:02 I mean, we've had, you know, Jack Carr and Dan Crenshaw.

21:05 And we're going to have some other Navy seals on

21:06 that they've got their books

21:07 and they got all their stuff squared away.

21:09 But there is something that's interesting

21:11 that does come from that though.

21:12 And that is kind of the history of kind of the spec ops world

21:16 in terms of being a quiet professional.

21:18 Not really talking about your missions,

21:20 not really talking about how hard your training was,

21:22 but just going out there and doing what you need to do.

21:24 And I'm of the opinion that, you know,

21:25 the public should be able to learn

21:27 from the things that you've done.

21:28 And if there is a way that you can share the stuff

21:31 that you've learned with the world without giving up

21:33 any of our, you know, trade craft or any of our secrets

21:35 about kind of how the United States does warfare

21:37 or how the seals do warfare or the green brace

21:39 or whatever the situation is there.

21:41 Like, that's fine.

21:41 Like that's good.

21:42 I think it's good to kind of share those things.

21:44 But you mentioned being a seal,

21:47 but you mentioned it almost like it's at the end

21:49 of who you are as a person.

21:50 You're like, hey, I'm Ephraimato.

21:52 It's like, I run, you know, a stronghold

21:54 and I do these different things.

21:55 Oh, also I was a Navy seal.

21:57 Is that kind of the way that you would prefer for that to be?

22:00 - That's, yeah.

22:01 What you said is exactly my thought process.

22:04 And that's kind of what I was talking about, you know,

22:06 a few minutes ago, when you were asking about, you know,

22:08 do enjoy doing the podcast and stuff.

22:09 So for me, yes, I do enjoy the conversation.

22:12 But again, for me, it's like, I don't want to,

22:16 yes, I did write a book and all these things,

22:18 but it's like, I don't want that to come across

22:20 like I'm trying to, you know, sell the trident in a way

22:23 or something like that.

22:24 So my thought process is, I think it's similar to yours.

22:28 When it comes to guys, you know,

22:29 seals writing books or special forces, guys writing books.

22:33 And there's tons of books out there.

22:34 Like if you go to Barnes and Noble,

22:36 there's just as many green beret books

22:37 as there are seal books.

22:38 I know everybody gives the seals a hard time,

22:40 but it's like everybody's writing books.

22:42 And I think that as long as the book is obviously,

22:47 of course, not giving away, you know, secrets

22:49 of like how stuff works, and as long as it's not just

22:54 a book to say, hey, look at my cool war stories,

22:56 give me money.

22:57 But if there's a story to tell, like, you know,

22:59 a lone survivor, man, what a story.

23:02 People need to hear that story,

23:03 especially in today's society who are the young men

23:07 looking up to, the Hulk who runs around and smashes things,

23:09 you know, Captain America who's like basically bulletproof

23:12 and can fly or whatever, you know.

23:13 That's not a real hero.

23:15 That's not somebody to really try to emulate.

23:17 So I would much rather that, yeah, hey, go read about,

23:20 go read lone survivor, go read about these heroes

23:23 who fought and died defending each other

23:25 on the far corners of the earth.

23:27 And I think that these stories are important,

23:29 in my opinion, to be told.

23:31 But again, it just, there are people who can occasionally

23:35 go over the line, and it's just,

23:37 let me tell you every operation that I was on.

23:40 And so that's another thing too.

23:41 If you're just telling war stories

23:43 and you're just talking about operations,

23:46 there's no net benefit to the community,

23:51 or to the society as a whole.

23:53 And so in that case, I think it's slightly inappropriate.

23:56 But also too, I'm such an imperfect human being,

23:58 I'm not gonna judge somebody else for their motives,

24:01 or for whatever it is that they're doing,

24:03 I'm just gonna try to do the best that I can for myself.

24:06 And I'm gonna try to do the right thing,

24:09 the best that I see how to do it, yeah, if that makes sense.

24:12 - Yeah, absolutely.

24:13 And I think this is a great segue

24:14 to kind of get into the stuff that you were doing,

24:16 and then this was the stuff that you did

24:17 after you were in ABCL,

24:18 and this is starting stronghold rescue and relief.

24:20 So stronghold is a humanitarian organization,

24:23 and it protects and cares for families in conflict zones.

24:26 And so you all do that with small teams

24:29 of really highly skilled former spec ops members.

24:32 You kind of have these missions

24:33 where you're gonna go in and you're using your skill sets

24:36 to really help these areas.

24:37 And you're really there to administer emergency aid, right?

24:40 And that's kind of the main thing, but when necessary,

24:43 you will work with local authorities

24:45 to kind of perform some of those high risk,

24:46 life-saving rescue operations.

24:48 I mean, I guess the best way to think about this

24:50 is to not think about what you saw with, you know,

24:54 John Rambo and the stuff that he was doing,

24:56 like that is not what you guys are doing.

24:58 You are basically there to aid and to support,

25:00 and you are currently operating in several countries,

25:02 and you have previously operated in other countries,

25:04 and I'll actually let you get into that

25:06 'cause I know there's some sensitivity

25:07 and some of the operations zones that you're in now

25:09 that you don't wanna give away in any secrets

25:11 or put anyone in any danger.

25:13 But this was what you did from being a CEO,

25:15 but it wasn't really a straight line from being a CEO

25:18 to starting stronghold rescue and relief.

25:20 So where did that idea come from?

25:22 And then how's it going so far?

25:25 - Yeah, so when I was, I was still in the military,

25:28 I was on my second deployment,

25:29 and I was deployed in Southeast Asia.

25:31 And as a seal, before you do a six month deployment,

25:36 which is sort of the standard deployment length,

25:38 sometimes it's a little longer,

25:39 sometimes it might be slightly shorter,

25:40 but the standard length is about six months.

25:42 Before you do that six month deployment,

25:44 you have to do an 18 month workup specifically

25:47 with your platoon before they'll send you out

25:51 to do the six month deployment.

25:52 Once that six month deployment is up,

25:53 you go back to the States,

25:55 and you restart that 18 month workup with a new platoon,

25:58 or you kind of reorganize a little bit.

26:00 So after a year and a half of work,

26:03 and several months overseas in Southeast Asia,

26:06 I found myself and the rest of us,

26:08 we were very frustrated because, you know,

26:10 ISIS was still heavily involved in Iraq.

26:13 It was still 2016.

26:14 There was lots of bad stuff happening.

26:16 And we found ourselves in Southeast Asia

26:18 going around to different Southeast Asian countries.

26:20 Our allies and just kind of building relationships

26:23 with them and working with them and training with them.

26:25 So, you know, we're down in South Korea,

26:27 you know, working with the South Korean seals

26:29 and we're, you know, climbing on board ships

26:31 in the middle of the night

26:32 and jumping out of helicopters and stuff, which is cool.

26:34 But that's not what I signed up to do.

26:36 I signed up to do that, you know, for real.

26:38 So during that deployment,

26:41 I just, I was also very aware of different conflicts

26:44 that were going on in the world.

26:45 One specifically was about the ongoing genocide

26:49 and war that's going on in Burma.

26:50 And because we're so close to Burma,

26:52 because we're in Southeast Asia,

26:54 it was like, man, we're just a couple of hour flight away.

26:56 And at times we're like, we're a 45 minute helicopter

26:58 right away from villages

27:00 where people are under direct threat from rape and murder

27:04 and all these, and human trafficking

27:06 and all kinds of stuff that these people are facing.

27:08 And it's like, we're here, let's go, let's go do that, right?

27:12 So during that deployment in 2016,

27:15 I had the idea, I thought, you wanna know what?

27:18 Like, what if I can get out,

27:20 start some kind of organization

27:21 that will, to where I can hire, you know,

27:25 spec ops guys to go and do missions like this.

27:28 Like, those people need help.

27:29 We're not trying to win the war form.

27:31 Like you said, there's stipulations on how we do what we do.

27:34 We keep it very organized, very, very professional

27:37 and show a lot of restraint and stuff like that.

27:41 But I was like, well, I can, like, what if,

27:43 and then at the, at the time, I had the idea,

27:46 but I had no idea how to do that.

27:48 I was like, I had no cons,

27:49 I couldn't tell you the difference between an LLC

27:51 or an S corp or, you know, like, I had no,

27:53 or a nonprofit organization.

27:55 I had no idea about any of that stuff.

27:56 It was just an idea.

27:58 And it stuck with me and I was like,

27:59 I'm gonna get out and I'm gonna do that

28:00 'cause I was getting out of the military

28:01 like six months later in 2017.

28:04 So I was like, I am going to start some kind of organization

28:07 and I don't know what that looks like on paper,

28:10 but we're gonna do this.

28:11 I'm gonna, I'm gonna figure out a way, right?

28:13 So when I, when I got out of the military,

28:18 well, obviously we'll dive more into this too.

28:20 I ended up going to Iraq to work with a humanitarian organization

28:23 that was working over there,

28:25 helping basically protecting care for people

28:27 who were dealing, having to deal with ISIS.

28:30 And so during that time, I kind of learned

28:33 how stuff worked, what, how the, all the different, you know,

28:36 legal entities work, how all that stuff works.

28:39 And I also learned a lot of like, what not to do.

28:41 But I started seeing like, okay, like this can be done.

28:46 And then about a year later after I got hit,

28:50 I was, I was, I found myself in Burma,

28:52 working with people in Burma.

28:54 And then I knew, I was like, okay, this is what I need to do.

28:56 I need to start an organization officially.

28:59 This is how, and now I know kind of how to do it kind of,

29:02 you know, I know like, I know 20% of just how to get started.

29:06 And yeah, I just kind of pulled the trigger back in 2018.

29:09 And today we're doing fantastic.

29:13 We actually are gonna be 10-exing our,

29:16 the work that we're doing now.

29:18 Six months or now we'll be 10-exing everything that we're doing,

29:20 because we just got a nice influx of funding,

29:24 which is amazing.

29:26 - Nice, yeah, that's awesome.

29:28 No, I think that that's really important

29:29 to understand from our perspective,

29:31 because you say you're 10-exing,

29:32 and I want you to kind of explain what that means

29:34 for stronghold, because, you know, from our perspective,

29:36 we certainly want you to tell us how that we can,

29:38 how we can help support what you're doing on the ground

29:41 and the grounds wherever you are operating.

29:43 But, you know, when you open things up for donation,

29:45 there's always kind of that critical eye where it's like,

29:47 what are you using these funds for, right?

29:49 Like, are you just kind of sitting around,

29:51 like having pizza parties, drinking whiskey,

29:52 like that kind of thing, even for us,

29:54 like we just opened a donation page

29:55 and I don't want people thinking

29:56 that that's what we're doing.

29:57 But when somebody gives a dollar to what you're doing

30:00 or gives a million dollars to what you're doing,

30:01 where does that money go and how is that spent?

30:04 - Sure, so if people go to our website too,

30:06 they can see kind of just a very basic rundown

30:09 of the key areas where our stuff goes.

30:11 So the first thing is we believe

30:13 in having strong, good personnel.

30:16 So part of your support would go to basically

30:21 bringing in special ops guys to go to conflict zones

30:24 and do humanitarian missions

30:26 and also do some security advising.

30:28 Now, the reason that you need to pay these guys, of course,

30:33 is because, so for example, somebody with my background,

30:38 if I was to go overseas and do a security contract,

30:40 I would be paid probably, just to do security,

30:43 I'd be paid probably a thousand dollars a day.

30:45 That would be like a going rate in a conflict zone.

30:47 If you actually wanted me to advise

30:49 and go into actual direct sort of frontline areas

30:53 to assist or advise the guys that were there,

30:57 you're looking at 1500 to $2,000 a day.

31:00 So, which of course, we would never, ever pay our guys.

31:03 That's ridiculous, but so the point is,

31:07 it's like you have professionals,

31:08 if you wanna have professionals going and truly helping,

31:11 you need to make sure that they can take care

31:12 of their families, that they can dedicate themselves

31:14 to this, one of the things that we really steer away from

31:17 is volunteers, like I get, probably a dozen messages

31:22 every 48 hours, just guys wanting to volunteer

31:24 and I, and I, we can't respond to all of them

31:27 'cause it's just so many.

31:28 And it's like, we can't take volunteers

31:29 because that's not gonna be a consistent way to help others.

31:34 So these people are depending on you.

31:36 You show up, you take a bunch, okay, let's say you go to,

31:38 I don't know, Uganda, you go to Uganda,

31:40 you stay for two weeks, you take a whole bunch of pictures,

31:42 you bring in a truckload of food,

31:44 you take a whole bunch of pictures, yeah, and then you leave.

31:46 Well, great, but now the people are still hurting

31:49 and that food that you all just dropped off,

31:54 there's a pretty good chance some rebel group

31:55 is gonna come in and just take it all and feed their army

31:57 with it.

31:58 - Right, of course.

31:58 - All the time.

31:59 So anyway, so the first thing we do

32:00 is we believe in investing in our personnel

32:03 to get the right people to do the right job.

32:05 The second thing is, of course, humanitarian relief.

32:08 So that's food, medicine, that's any kind of situation

32:12 with specific stuff.

32:13 So that's your standard humanitarian stuff.

32:14 We could dig a well, we could put in one project we did

32:19 which built some pipes from a small stream

32:23 and directed it down to a village

32:24 so that way the village could have, you know, air quotes,

32:27 running water, anything like that.

32:30 Emergency aid, so you got refugees, whatever.

32:34 That's what all of that stuff goes for.

32:37 And then the third thing that we do,

32:39 which I think makes us very, very unique

32:42 and is I think probably the most important part of what we do

32:45 is I call it charity with dignity.

32:48 And everything that we do, we are focused on the longterm,

32:51 first of all, but we do that by training up the locals,

32:56 creating teams of locals who are supported by us,

32:59 but it's locals helping locals.

33:00 We give them the skill sets.

33:02 So for example, in 2020, COVID hit.

33:06 So travel restrictions were down, right?

33:09 Well, and so the different places overseas,

33:13 well, bad people are still doing bad things,

33:15 but now we can't get to them as easily to help them.

33:18 Well, it wasn't an issue for us

33:19 because we already had team leaders of local tribes,

33:23 people from the local tribes who were already running

33:27 the humanitarian operations on their own.

33:29 And we were supporting them, checking in with them,

33:31 advising and, you know, growing the missions.

33:34 So we call it charity with dignity

33:36 and it's all about building skill sets

33:37 within the communities and not having the savior complex

33:41 where it's like, here we are, the great Western saviors,

33:44 we're here we are to, you know, do everything for you.

33:46 It's like, hey, we're gonna hit, we love you,

33:48 we care for you, we're gonna help you,

33:49 we're gonna train you, we're gonna support you.

33:51 But when a villager who just lost their home

33:55 and their tribe has been decimated

33:57 and thousands of people have been killed

33:59 or pushed from their homes

34:00 and they're, you know, all kinds of horrible things

34:02 are happening.

34:03 And then all of a sudden, now you have some guy

34:04 from America giving them food.

34:07 They're still humans too,

34:08 and they still feel the indignity of that.

34:10 However, if you have somebody from their own tribe

34:15 giving them food, now it's, now it's communities

34:18 helping communities.

34:19 And yes, we're there to back them up,

34:20 but we really wanna put the a friendly face,

34:25 not a friendly face, but a familiar face with that aid,

34:29 if that makes sense.

34:30 So it's all about building up the locals

34:32 to stand on their own.

34:34 - Right, and I think that's an important thing obviously,

34:36 'cause it's kind of like when a parent is helping a kid

34:38 too much, they're not really allowing the kid

34:40 to make mistakes and learn some of those things.

34:42 But for you, for a man of action,

34:44 for somebody with the training that you have,

34:46 like it had to have driven you nuts

34:48 to not just hop in into those situations

34:51 and just act immediately and just take over those situations

34:54 just because you are a man of action

34:56 and you wanna get these things done

34:57 and you really, really care about what you're doing.

34:59 So was that hard for you to operate in a way

35:02 where you kind of had to be a little bit hands off?

35:04 - Well, no, that's definitely a very important part

35:07 of making sure that we have the right people

35:09 that we're bringing from the West to help overseas.

35:13 For me, I really, really, it's a,

35:16 my personality is I will absolutely step in there

35:19 and help if needed, but I'm kind of a teacher by nature.

35:22 So I enjoy, I personally find great joy

35:26 in teaching somebody to do something,

35:28 seeing them do it on their own,

35:29 and then waving goodby as they go and do great things.

35:32 I personally find great joy in that.

35:34 However, not everybody does.

35:35 So yes, I am a man of action, but for me, the action is,

35:38 hey, I'm already in this village.

35:40 I'm already on the other side of the world.

35:42 I'm here, this is the war going on 200 yards that way.

35:47 So I'm already there, so I am in the action, air quotes,

35:52 but I really enjoy the opportunity

35:54 to see these guys be able to do their own thing

35:59 and be able to do things on their own

36:00 and then being back in the States

36:02 and then getting a report, hey, we just did this mission

36:04 and this mission and this mission.

36:05 And it's like, oh, my word, it's like,

36:07 you can bring you to tears.

36:07 You're just like, I'm so proud of you guys.

36:08 That's so cool.

36:09 Yeah, talk about it.

36:12 But we also be very careful with the personnel

36:14 that we bring in.

36:15 So I always say, I'm not looking for,

36:18 I'm not looking for the best man.

36:20 I'm looking for the right man.

36:21 Like you can be Delta IV, Seal Team Six, CIA, SOG,

36:24 you know, whatever.

36:25 If you don't have the right, like humanitarian mindset,

36:28 it's like, ah, like, eh, then it really good work.

36:30 So yeah, we have to be very careful about that

36:34 'cause guys will be well-intentioned

36:35 but then they're just like, ah, they wanna go deal

36:37 with the problem and you're like, nope,

36:38 you gotta teach these people to deal with the problem.

36:41 - So there's probably a little bit

36:43 of a misreception here for me

36:45 because whenever I look at people

36:46 that are doing humanitarian work,

36:48 I'm always looking at them like,

36:50 well, it's kinda hard for me to know exactly what they're doing

36:53 because some people have humanitarian in their name

36:55 and then whenever you look at the stuff

36:56 that they're actually doing on a day-in-day op-assist,

36:58 it doesn't actually sound that humanitarian.

37:00 And then there's people that are doing stuff

37:02 that's not even remotely related

37:04 and it's just a little bit hard for me to know exactly

37:06 what y'all are doing when you're on the ground.

37:08 So what are some of the misperceptions

37:09 about what y'all do on the ground?

37:11 - Sure, so I think one of the biggest misperceptions

37:13 is, you know, people think that we're all, you know,

37:17 just in the action, right?

37:18 'Cause like, we're gonna talk through some stories

37:21 during this podcast and we're gonna tell some war stories.

37:23 We're gonna talk about some shootouts.

37:24 We're gonna talk about some pretty crazy stuff.

37:27 And the reason that we're gonna talk about that

37:29 is because there's drama, there's an exciting event

37:32 that people want to hear about.

37:34 However, what people need to understand

37:35 is that while that might take up 80% of the conversation,

37:39 that's probably 1% of what we actually do.

37:43 The other 99% is the training

37:46 and the bringing in the humanitarian aid

37:48 and the organizing and dealing with these other problems.

37:51 And then when things go south, which they do,

37:54 very often we handle business

37:57 and then we go back to just, you know,

37:59 doing the humanitarian thing.

38:00 So that's one of the big perceptions,

38:02 at least specifically with us.

38:03 But I also think too, there's a lot of misperception

38:10 with like how charity organizations should work

38:14 and how they should operate

38:15 and we can get into some of that stuff a little bit later.

38:18 But I think that, yeah, I think that's just the biggest point

38:23 is I don't want people to think

38:24 that we're like some mercenary army running around.

38:27 You know, the jungles being rambled

38:29 'cause that's like not the case at all.

38:31 But the perception is there

38:32 because we talk about those stories

38:34 'cause those are, you know,

38:35 the sort of the dramatic points of the story.

38:39 - Yeah, absolutely.

38:40 And so I think this is probably a good time

38:42 to rip off the Band-Aid on the whole charity thing

38:43 because I know for you specifically that you have,

38:47 and we won't talk about any organizations by name

38:49 unless you bring them up

38:50 'cause then I'm absolved of all issues.

38:51 But if you've seen things

38:53 with other humanitarian organizations at,

38:55 we can just say it nicely, have more than rubbed you

38:57 the wrong way because for me,

38:59 for people like me that just sit here, state side,

39:02 I just assume all these humanitarian organizations

39:04 are operating with the utmost integrity

39:06 and that everybody is doing things well

39:08 and that the money is being well spent

39:09 even though I'm a little bit wary

39:11 of giving money to those organizations

39:13 when I don't know exactly what the dollars are being spent on.

39:15 But you've seen some things that really, really concerned you

39:18 with how humanitarian organizations

39:20 were operating overseas.

39:21 And I just want you to kind of explain that to us.

39:23 And again, we're not here to throw any organizations

39:25 under the bus.

39:26 We just wanna have a better idea

39:28 as to kind of what things look like

39:29 because a lot of these organizations

39:30 have humanitarian in their name.

39:32 - Right, right.

39:32 - And so it's just like you're thinking,

39:33 oh, these guys are gonna be operating

39:35 with the utmost integrity in all situations

39:37 and unfortunately, that's just,

39:38 I don't wanna say that that's never the case,

39:40 but it's not always the case.

39:41 And I don't know if we can put a percentage on it,

39:43 but for you, what are some of the things

39:44 that you see on the ground

39:45 with some of these other organizations?

39:48 - Sure, so I guess I have, I literally have,

39:52 I was just pulling up my phone here.

39:53 I've got just probably 20 or 30 different

39:56 specific instances of just crazy,

39:59 just bizarre stuff that's happened.

40:01 But instead of like mentioning specific stuff,

40:04 maybe I'll give an example or two,

40:06 some of the principles that people,

40:09 I wanna like people to understand,

40:10 like when they look at a charity organization

40:12 or humanitarian organization,

40:14 they, there are some red flags and some stuff

40:16 that people should be aware of,

40:17 of how things actually work.

40:20 And just some red flags,

40:21 we can kind of spot an organization

40:23 that might not be doing anything illegal.

40:25 And they might have,

40:26 they might not even be doing things immoral,

40:29 but they're probably being very, very inefficient

40:31 and not using your support.

40:33 So the single biggest one is what I call

40:37 the cult of personality.

40:39 And it's when you have this organization like, okay,

40:42 unless there's like a very, very famous person

40:46 who everybody would already know,

40:48 unless they were already of this famous person

40:51 and they put their name as the name of the foundation,

40:54 huge red flag.

40:55 Because the people will use organizations

41:00 to kind of puff themselves up

41:02 and to try to make themselves,

41:03 I don't know, like feed their pride.

41:06 It's the weirdest thing.

41:07 It's so weird because it's like you're literally,

41:09 in a way like you're standing on the,

41:12 you're standing on the shoulders of small children

41:14 to make yourself look cool.

41:15 Cause like you're some sort of hero and it's like, no dude,

41:17 it should be the other way around.

41:18 So, so for example, it's not a problem

41:22 if it's like, okay, like the Tim Tebow Foundation, right?

41:24 So recognizable name, everybody knows who he is.

41:27 That's fine because it's like, yeah,

41:28 like that his name can draw people

41:31 to help fight human trafficking like they do, which is awesome.

41:34 So in that case, it's not a cult of personality,

41:38 but there's other organizations.

41:39 Again, I'm not going to mention specific stuff,

41:41 but just really, really, really be aware of that.

41:44 The next thing is like, I guess short-sighted

41:47 or inflated projects where people go, okay,

41:51 there's a bunch of refugees, they go in,

41:53 they bring in 10,000 water bottles, which is great.

41:55 You know, that's a great thing to do.

41:56 There's, so they hand out 10,000 individual water bottles

42:00 to refugees and then, and their report, they say,

42:02 we helped 10,000 people in a war zone and blah, blah.

42:06 And it's like, yes, that's true.

42:08 And then you did a good thing.

42:09 However, your supporters are going like, wait, you know,

42:13 like they think that you helped 10,000 people like,

42:15 no, you handed out 10,000 water bottles.

42:17 So there's something like that.

42:19 One of the other things is mismanagement of staff.

42:21 If all of your staff are, like,

42:23 if you are not bringing in professional people

42:26 to help run your operations,

42:28 and it's all strictly just volunteers,

42:30 while volunteering is a great thing,

42:33 and I encourage people to do that if they get the opportunity,

42:38 what can happen is if you were actually running

42:40 the organization all by volunteers,

42:42 things are not going to be run properly

42:44 because you have unqualified individuals

42:46 who are there for short amounts of time

42:47 who are taking care of the backend stuff.

42:50 And so, like, things are not going to go

42:53 the way that they should be.

42:55 And the other one we kind of mentioned

42:56 was just to save your complex,

42:58 where if you come in and you say, this is what we do,

43:02 and we're going to come in and we're going to do that for you,

43:05 without actually talking to the people and saying,

43:07 hey, what do you need?

43:08 Here's our resources, how can we best help you?

43:11 So a crazy example might be like,

43:15 okay, if you dig wells, right?

43:17 That's an awesome thing to do,

43:18 and you want to know what,

43:19 there are tons of places where people need wells.

43:21 Well, if you go to Burma, for example,

43:23 and you're like, we're going to dig wells for you,

43:25 because that's what we do, and we're here to save the day.

43:27 Like, the people in Burma, they're like, yeah,

43:29 we don't need wells, like what are you talking about?

43:31 There's water everywhere.

43:32 We're like, we're constantly dealing with it.

43:34 So that's just something to kind of be aware of.

43:37 The other thing is, another one is volunteerism,

43:40 and that has to do with, this to me is one

43:44 of the most egregious things.

43:45 So what'll happen is you'll have a volunteer

43:47 will spend two, three, four, $5,000 to go to some foreign place,

43:52 and they're basically just there having an adventure.

43:56 Let's just be real.

43:56 That's what they're doing.

43:57 They're just there to have an adventure,

43:58 they're volunteering, they're doing good work,

44:01 and they're not, but they don't actually

44:03 have any specific skill set.

44:04 They're there just to take pictures

44:05 and put it on Instagram, and then go back

44:07 and tell their church and say, hey, look what I did,

44:09 and give me more money to go back and do it again.

44:12 What you're doing is like, you're literally just sending

44:13 somebody over there to basically have fun.

44:17 Now, I'm not saying that's the case with like,

44:19 if you're a doctor, or you have an actual specific

44:21 skill set or a nurse or something like that,

44:23 you're actually having a real thing,

44:24 or you're a teacher, and you're like,

44:25 hey, I'm gonna go teach English, or whatever.

44:30 That's a great thing, but if it's just

44:32 people going on adventures, you just really be aware of that

44:35 because they're wasting thousands and thousands of dollars

44:38 and man hours, and not only did they spend their own money

44:42 to get there, which they could have used to actually helping

44:43 the people, now you have to feed that person.

44:46 You have to provide transportation for them.

44:48 They need a place to sleep.

44:49 There's security implications.

44:51 There's group size implications.

44:53 So there's all kinds of stuff.

44:55 So just having a body there oftentimes is not the best thing.

44:59 And then my last little point, and I'll get off my high horse,

45:04 but just one of the last things I just want people

45:08 to kind of be aware of is, I don't know how to phrase this,

45:12 well, but basically trying to mix secular causes

45:16 with religious ideology.

45:18 So I know incredible organizations that are run by people

45:22 of faith, and they're awesome, and they're great organizations.

45:25 However, what can happen is, if you have, for example,

45:30 okay, let's just say you have an organization

45:31 that digs wells or something, right?

45:32 You can have great Christian folks, great religious folks

45:35 who run that organization and do a great job.

45:37 However, there is sometimes the danger of,

45:41 if you have people who are trying to promote specifically

45:45 a religious cause, excuse me, under secular pretenses,

45:49 what can happen is instead of working logically

45:53 or working with the people, there's a chance,

45:56 and I unfortunately have seen this a lot of times

45:59 where it's, well, this is God's will.

46:00 This is what God wants us to do.

46:01 And they're just so wrapped around the idea of God wants us

46:05 to put a well in this village or this or that,

46:07 or the other thing, or God spoke to me.

46:08 And it's like, maybe he did, maybe he didn't,

46:11 but that's not the best place to put the well, you know,

46:14 or they'll only bring in other people

46:17 from their religion to help work with the organization.

46:19 So that one's, again, more of like a sensitive topic

46:23 'cause I don't wanna insult anybody or anything like that.

46:26 But just another thing to be aware of.

46:29 Yeah, so anyway, those are some of the principles

46:32 that are really at play that you really kinda gotta figure out

46:36 when you're looking at an organization.

46:37 - Yeah, absolutely.

46:38 And just to tell you man, after a couple hundred episodes

46:40 of this podcast, I just gotta tell you,

46:42 I've offended enough people.

46:43 You're probably not gonna say anything

46:44 that's gonna offend these people.

46:45 If I haven't already done it, so don't worry about that.

46:47 But guys, we will make sure in the show notes here

46:49 that we've got a link to the Stronghold Rescue

46:52 and Relief website, we wanna make sure

46:53 that you can go to the donation page

46:55 and you can check that out for yourself,

46:56 hit the donation button, and you can kinda see

46:58 there's like a little t-shirt deal that you guys have,

46:59 but also you provide a way for people to stay in touch

47:02 with the things that you're doing with the organization.

47:04 You allow them to put in their email address

47:06 and they'll get quarterly updates

47:07 as to some of the things that they're doing,

47:08 some of the things that you're doing with their money.

47:09 All that's all squared away.

47:11 But I do wanna go ahead and transition

47:12 into the next part of the podcast

47:14 where we talk about how you left the Navy SEALs,

47:18 but you didn't leave the fight.

47:20 So you actually re-entered the fight,

47:22 but this time it was against ISIS and it was in Mosul.

47:25 And so there is a long backstory.

47:27 There's a lot of things that we could go into,

47:30 a lot of tendrils that come off of that story,

47:31 but guys, you're gonna have to go read the book

47:33 if you wanna get a lot more of that detail.

47:35 But if you could, just go ahead and give us

47:37 kind of the spark notes version of kind of how all that happened,

47:41 because at the time that you were kind of going over

47:44 to Mosul and doing those different things

47:46 and kind of starting the fight against ISIS,

47:48 technically, at least on paper,

47:50 you were still a member of the United States military, right?

47:53 So it's kind of an issue.

47:54 So kind of tell us about how all that went down

47:56 and how you ended up over there.

47:57 - Sure, so it's definitely a crazy thing.

48:01 And before I tell the story, I wanna like don't do this.

48:04 So if there's any of the military is listening to this,

48:06 I'm like, listen, things worked out okay for me,

48:10 but it was not, in hindsight, it was not the,

48:13 I did not make the wisest decisions.

48:15 I was just fueled by passion to go and help,

48:19 and that's great, but yeah,

48:21 I'm not encouraging anybody to do this.

48:23 All right, so what happened was my time in the service

48:26 was ending in April of 2017.

48:29 That was when my, it was called the EAOS end of service.

48:33 And when you get out of the military,

48:37 you have, you usually have saved up leave

48:40 'cause the military gives you a month of leave per year,

48:43 but you don't actually get to take it,

48:44 which is funny.

48:45 - Right, of course.

48:46 - I had like two months of saved up leave.

48:48 And so what I did was I basically,

48:50 what they'll allow you to do is basically get out

48:52 of the military a couple of months early.

48:56 You can just basically take all that leave

48:58 right at the end and, you know.

48:59 So I opted to do that.

49:01 So I was still technically on leave in the US military

49:04 and I got a flight flew to Iraq

49:07 to meet up with another group of volunteers

49:11 with several different organizations

49:12 and stuff working there.

49:14 Yeah, so I met up with another group of folks

49:17 and I was still technically in the military.

49:19 And yeah, we drove out to the outskirts of Mosul,

49:24 Mosul, West Mosul at that point

49:26 was still completely controlled by ISIS.

49:29 It was probably the deadliest couple of square miles

49:32 on the planet at the moment at that time in 2017.

49:35 And so we were in the outskirts around the area,

49:38 just helping all the displaced people.

49:40 We were working directly with an Iraqi army armored unit.

49:44 So they had lots of tanks and Humvees and things like that.

49:48 So we were kind of staying outside of the city

49:50 'cause as any basic tactician can tell you,

49:53 you don't want to start sending tanks

49:54 and stuff into small choke points and cities

49:57 'cause they'll get annihilated.

49:59 So probably my first three or four weeks there,

50:05 we were just kind of out in the countryside

50:07 doing medical clinics and giving humanitarian aid.

50:11 And then we actually ended up getting involved

50:14 in one actual direct on the ground assault

50:17 into a small village that was held by ISIS.

50:21 And during that fight, our role was just to act

50:25 as basically combat medics for the Iraqi army

50:29 and for any civilians, of course, that are injured.

50:32 And so we ended up crossing a minefield

50:36 and it was just this insane shootout with ISIS,

50:38 suicide bombers and all kinds of crazy stuff going on.

50:41 And that was the day before,

50:44 this fight I got to do was the day before

50:46 I was technically out of the military.

50:48 So yeah, so it was just kind of bizarre,

50:51 like technically I was still active duty military,

50:54 but in all reality, it's like, yeah, they didn't,

50:56 I was long gone, they didn't care about me at that point.

50:59 - Well, I'm sure they cared about you a little bit,

51:01 but I am glad that you put that caveat out there

51:03 that's like, hey guys, don't do this, right?

51:05 This is not your seven step program

51:07 to a successful military career.

51:08 So guys, military listening to this podcast, don't do that.

51:11 (laughing)

51:12 And guys, I know there are a lot of active duty

51:14 and retired military that listen to this.

51:15 We do appreciate you guys.

51:17 But I do want to go ahead and transition into a quote

51:19 from your book because this is a quote that is

51:22 from April the 7th of 2017.

51:25 And it's an important thing because I think it gives us

51:27 a little bit of your mindset at the time.

51:28 So I'll go and go to the book here, quote.

51:30 Despite the precarious situation, I couldn't stop smiling.

51:33 This would be my first battle against ISIS,

51:35 but more importantly, I was eager to get back into combat.

51:38 It had been two and a half years since I'd fired

51:40 a weapon in battle.

51:41 Of course, never during those two years of anticipation

51:44 did I imagine the circumstances that I'd find myself in

51:46 and armed civilian and an ambulance on the Nineveh Plains

51:50 with an Iraqi soldier, a Karen Gorilla,

51:53 and a former green beret about to join

51:55 an Iraqi armored brigades, a daytime frontal assault

51:59 on ISIS.

52:00 This is actually happening, unquote.

52:02 So Ephraim, I just got to tell you,

52:04 I'm not sure you're aware of this,

52:06 but that's not a normal mindset.

52:08 (laughing)

52:09 That is not something like a guy like me

52:11 and even some of the toughest dudes that I'm around

52:12 that I know, like this isn't kind of that normal mindset.

52:15 Like even just kind of reading the circumstances

52:17 of what you were inserting yourself into

52:19 would be enough to kind of give people

52:21 at least a little bit of a pause, right?

52:23 That's just not a normal way that people are operating.

52:25 And I think it goes even just beyond just a, you know,

52:28 warrior wiring or something like that.

52:29 So, but to normal people like me

52:31 and to a lot of the guys listening to this,

52:33 go in and explain, elucidate that a little further

52:36 what that mindset is like.

52:37 - Sure, so I think, you know, yeah,

52:40 I have this big smile on my face and I was super excited.

52:43 Well, what it really comes down to is I am,

52:46 I guess I just am wired that way.

52:47 Like that's what I want you, I want to, you know,

52:50 go into those dangerous situations

52:52 to protecting care for people.

52:54 So that's one.

52:55 But I think on the deeper level,

52:57 it was like, my life has purpose now.

52:59 I'm doing something that matters.

53:01 Like there's something that, you know,

53:03 that the active duty military guys

53:04 that they can all relate to,

53:05 there's something about being involved in something

53:09 that really, truly matters.

53:11 And when you wake up that day and you grab your rifle

53:14 and you go outside the wire

53:15 or you're doing whatever it is that you're doing,

53:17 you're hopping in the, you're popping in your helicopter

53:19 or the cockpit of your fighter jet, whatever,

53:22 you know that what you are doing that day,

53:25 truly, truly matters.

53:27 And nothing else that specific day really matters.

53:31 Of course, family and God and faith

53:32 and all that stuff does matter, don't get me wrong.

53:34 I'm just, but I'm just saying like you,

53:36 what you're doing truly matters.

53:38 And the decisions that you make that day

53:42 will affect somebody else's life.

53:44 You have the opportunity to save a life.

53:46 You have the opportunity to end a bad life

53:48 or somebody who's, you know, hurting others.

53:50 And you have the opportunity to liberate a village.

53:53 You have the, like so,

53:54 so those kinds of things are also kind of going

53:59 in the back of your mind on a more subconscious level.

54:02 But yeah, I think that's probably more my mindset

54:04 was I was like, yep, this is it.

54:05 This is what I, this is what I do.

54:07 Like this is, this is my trade.

54:09 It's also, think about it too.

54:11 It's like if you're a football player, for example, right?

54:13 Who wants to get hit by like some 250 pound,

54:16 you know, six foot four dude running at like 12 miles an hour?

54:19 Like I just get laid out on the ground.

54:21 Who wants that?

54:22 I don't, but there's some, there's some guy,

54:25 there's lots of guys who are like, man,

54:26 put me in coach, I want to get in there.

54:28 I want to get in there.

54:29 I don't care if this could happen.

54:30 I don't care.

54:31 I want to get in the game because they love the game.

54:33 And that's kind of, that's kind of how I was feeling.

54:36 I was like, this is what I do.

54:37 This is, I love this.

54:40 And this is where I'm supposed to be more importantly.

54:42 And of course, you're scared.

54:43 I mean, we, that, that day specifically,

54:46 yeah, we crossed a minefield,

54:48 the humvee I was standing right next to blew up.

54:50 A few seconds after I walked away from it,

54:52 a tank blew up.

54:53 We're, you know, chasing ISIS guys down into tunnels

54:57 and there's land mines in the tunnels and we, you know,

55:00 throwing grenades underground in ISIS tunnels

55:02 and you could see where they had peed right before the

55:04 fight had started and like, oh, kinds of craziness.

55:06 So you're terrified, of course,

55:08 but you're also where you're supposed to be.

55:10 And you just, I feel like humans, like when we, when we,

55:13 when we align our passions and what we care about,

55:17 and we align that with a purpose to do good in the world,

55:20 whether that's in business or whatever,

55:22 like we wake up in the morning and we just know, like,

55:24 man, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

55:26 There's nowhere else I would rather be.

55:28 - Right.

55:29 And I know there's a lot of guys

55:29 listening to this podcast that can relate to that.

55:31 I mean, regardless of what you're in,

55:32 whether you're in sales or you're a defense attorney

55:34 or an accountant or something like that.

55:36 I mean, there are a lot of situations that you would look

55:38 at somebody else and it's like, man, how,

55:40 how can that defense attorney be so cool and calm

55:42 in that situation?

55:43 And that's just, it's because they're wired to do that.

55:45 Like they're good at that.

55:46 Like that's exactly what they were meant to do.

55:48 And they are just acting that out in the real world.

55:51 But I think that really goes nicely into kind of

55:53 this next big story that I want to talk about.

55:56 It's kind of a crazy story.

55:57 It's a very sticky story for me.

55:58 Even after I finished the book,

56:00 it's something that I kept thinking about.

56:01 So I'm going to go ahead and read that here.

56:02 So here's a quote,

56:03 "A middle-aged man lay on the ground groaning.

56:06 He had been shot multiple times in the legs.

56:08 Next to him lay a little girl,

56:09 maybe nine or 10 years old in a bright yellow dress.

56:12 She had undoubtedly picked her favorite

56:14 and prettiest dress for today

56:15 because today was supposed to be a special day.

56:18 Today, after three years of living under Isis' rule,

56:20 she and her father were supposed to finally be free.

56:23 But instead of freedom, she had been shot in the head

56:25 by an Isis sniper.

56:26 Her yellow dress was stained with blood

56:28 as she lay unconscious but alive

56:30 in a twisted heap in the dirt.

56:31 Skye slowly and Silverhorn were already working

56:34 on the man and his daughter.

56:36 There was nothing I could do to help.

56:37 So I knelt down beside the little girl,

56:39 fixed her dress to cover her legs.

56:41 I tried to hold back tears, but it wasn't working.

56:44 I took the little girl's limp hand in my hand

56:46 as tears began to run like rivers down my face.

56:49 Who could do such a thing to an innocent little girl?

56:53 This was my first time I'd ever broken down

56:55 and lost my composure in a combat zone.

56:59 I mean, that's tough.

57:00 That is a really, really tough one for you.

57:02 And I think this was only like a few days

57:04 or maybe even just a few weeks after that first one

57:07 where your mindset was like, I can't wait to go.

57:09 Like this is going to be awesome.

57:10 Like let's go ahead and get into the fight.

57:12 But it's a tough situation.

57:15 I want to kind of get into or at least give you some space

57:18 to kind of give us a sense of what your mindset was

57:20 at that time because again, it's going to be hard for us

57:23 really to understand and kind of our modern Western

57:25 American context out here in the suburbs,

57:27 that type of a thing.

57:27 But I also want to kind of know how things ended up

57:30 for the people that were talked about in this story.

57:33 But again, let's go ahead and get into a little bit more

57:35 of what the mindset was for you as all this

57:37 is going down in the aftermath.

57:38 - Sure.

57:39 So the story that we just mentioned before,

57:43 the smile on my face, we're going in,

57:45 that was April 7th, 2017.

57:47 The story that you just mentioned was May 4th, 2017.

57:50 And this little girl in this bright yellow dress,

57:54 she had been shot in the head as you mentioned

57:55 and her father had been shot multiple times.

57:58 The other guys on the team, some of the guys

58:00 that you mentioned Skye, Silverhorn,

58:03 these are the slowly and silverhorn there are guys

58:05 from the Corinne tribe in Burma.

58:07 They and a few other guys had been involved

58:10 in actually going into under fire rescue

58:14 this little girl and her dad.

58:16 I was not personally there, I was about 100 yards back,

58:19 doing some other stuff, actually had to coordinate

58:20 to get them rescued 'cause their Humvee got so shot up.

58:23 Also during that same mission to get this little girl out,

58:26 our interpreter, Shaheen, had been shot in the stomach

58:28 and he died a couple of days later.

58:30 And we had an Iraqi driver named Muhammad

58:32 who actually converted to Christianity.

58:35 It was just like the nicest guy I'll ever meet in your life.

58:39 He had been shot six times to get a Humvee

58:43 'cause after the first Humvee had been shot,

58:44 he had been shot six times getting a Humvee

58:46 to get the other guys and that little girl out of there.

58:50 And during this firefight, which I was, again,

58:54 I was back a little bit coordinating with the Iraqi army

58:56 to send down tanks and BMPs to protect them

59:03 when we got that little girl and the dad back,

59:06 our ambulance had already left,

59:08 our armored ambulance had already left

59:10 to go drop off other wounded people.

59:12 I think it was actually Muhammad and Shaheen

59:14 and they were on their way returning.

59:15 So the base, we pulled them out of the Humvee,

59:18 just kind of laid them on the ground and the grass

59:22 and the medics, the real medics,

59:23 were sitting there working on the father and the little girl.

59:26 And so yeah, as you said, like I know that evil exists.

59:32 I know and I knew that and I understand

59:34 that stuff could happen.

59:35 However, just where I was at mentally,

59:40 I wasn't mentally prepared to see that that day.

59:45 And that was on me, that was my mistake, that was my fault.

59:50 I did not, I was almost lured into a sense of complacency,

59:55 maybe by the previous couple of weeks

59:58 where nothing super, super crazy had happened.

1:00:01 And so you wake up one morning,

1:00:05 that battle, the May 4th battle,

1:00:08 was the Iraqi army, the entire 9th armored division,

1:00:11 was assaulting West Mosul across this open plane.

1:00:15 It was actually, it was like a almost D-day style,

1:00:18 just 50 or 60 tanks just firing all at once,

1:00:21 charging straight into the enemy lines.

1:00:24 And it was like, for me, it was like,

1:00:26 oh, this is actually kind of cool,

1:00:29 just the historical relevance of it.

1:00:30 But anyway, so you're confronted with it,

1:00:32 it's all fun and games until it's like,

1:00:35 wow, you're like, look at this little girl

1:00:37 who's just been shot in the hen, she's probably gonna die.

1:00:40 And so for me, it's like, I was so overcome with emotion

1:00:43 that yeah, I just was, I just kind of held her hand

1:00:46 and I just kind of wept, I didn't know what else to do,

1:00:48 I fixed her dress and I just kind of held her hand

1:00:50 'cause I was a real med expert dealing with her.

1:00:52 Now, the crazy thing is, so that little girl, she lived.

1:00:57 She lived, she lost an eye. - That's nuts, that's nuts.

1:01:00 - She magically, thank God she lived, her father lived.

1:01:04 And some of the guys who were actually involved

1:01:06 in that mission, I think like a year or so later,

1:01:08 were actually back in Northern Iraq

1:01:09 and actually met up with them and took selfies with them.

1:01:12 And she's this lively, from what I hear,

1:01:15 she's just this lively, funny girl who likes to,

1:01:19 she's just super energetic and loves doing selfies

1:01:21 and whatever.

1:01:22 So, but yeah, I mean, had those guys not been there,

1:01:26 had the group of us not been there,

1:01:28 she would have bled out in the street and her father too.

1:01:32 - Yeah, that is just such a crazy story.

1:01:33 And it's really hard to relate to something like that,

1:01:36 but our mutual friend Holly McKay,

1:01:37 we talked about that a lot in her book,

1:01:39 "Only Cry for the Living."

1:01:40 I mean, just the unimaginable horror

1:01:42 that she details in that book

1:01:44 and you detail some of it in your book as well.

1:01:46 It's just crazy and it does kind of make you question

1:01:48 God's place in the universe.

1:01:49 And we'll certainly get maybe into a little bit more

1:01:51 theory discussions like that a little bit later.

1:01:53 But I do wanna get into, 'cause I kind of forgot

1:01:55 that that was on May the 4th.

1:01:56 And so I do wanna get into another entry from that day

1:01:59 because I couldn't stop smiling, quote,

1:02:02 that was from April 7th and less than a month later.

1:02:06 Okay, so we're talking about May 4th.

1:02:08 I wanna go ahead and get into this quote here.

1:02:09 And so we're gonna go ahead and go back

1:02:11 to a quote from May 4th again.

1:02:13 "I'm sitting there, sporadic bursts of muffled gunfire

1:02:16 "and the occasional explosion still echoing

1:02:18 "from somewhere in the distance.

1:02:20 "I realized I'd lost any and all illusions

1:02:22 "about the adventure of war.

1:02:24 "The initial flurry of action had passed.

1:02:26 "The adrenaline was gone, and all that was left

1:02:28 "was a harsh, bloody, and exhausting reality.

1:02:30 "Until today, war had been nothing to me,

1:02:32 "but an object of excitement.

1:02:34 "Sure, there had been fear and danger,

1:02:36 "but I had always been on the side that won

1:02:38 "without taking any serious hits.

1:02:40 "War had been a chance to prove my manliness and courage.

1:02:43 "It was a game to be played.

1:02:45 "But today, while I helped to wrap a bandage

1:02:47 "that held a soldier's guts in,

1:02:49 "the illusion of that game began to fade.

1:02:51 "While I wept and held an unconscious little girl's limp hand,

1:02:54 "that illusion was erased forever.

1:02:57 "War was real, and truly,

1:02:59 "it could only be described as hell.

1:03:02 "And, I mean, Ephraim, this is after you were a Navy SEAL.

1:03:06 "That's when you're riding this.

1:03:07 "You had already seen war,

1:03:09 "but at this point, it just seems like

1:03:10 "the excitement is really gone for you.

1:03:13 "I mean, like, the excitement is now

1:03:14 "just completely gone from the situation.

1:03:17 "And now, all you seem to be racked with

1:03:19 "is not excitement and angst.

1:03:22 "You seem to just be racked with concern

1:03:24 "for these people that you're now trying to deliver aid to.

1:03:27 "And again, this is so hard for us to imagine here,

1:03:30 "state side, and especially for those of us

1:03:31 "I've never seen actual warfare or any of these atrocities.

1:03:34 "But for you on the ground,

1:03:35 "like, this was just what you were living

1:03:37 "in your everyday scenario.

1:03:38 "And there was no escape.

1:03:40 "And you're almost realizing that there is no escape

1:03:42 "at this point.

1:03:42 "So, I don't want to read into anything that's not there.

1:03:45 "Am I reading this situation clearly

1:03:47 "from your perspective in terms of how you saw it?"

1:03:49 - You absolutely are.

1:03:51 So, during 2014, ironically, while ISIS was taking over

1:03:55 North and Iraq, I was in Afghanistan.

1:03:57 And so, during that time, during the few months

1:04:02 I was in Afghanistan, it was summer fighting season.

1:04:04 And we got into a lot of really gnarly gunfights.

1:04:07 We really did.

1:04:09 The most serious injury that happened, though,

1:04:11 on our side was our sister platoon or our brother platoon,

1:04:16 one of the EOD guys got shot in the hand.

1:04:19 And he was fine, he walked out of there,

1:04:21 he was more annoyed than anything.

1:04:23 And he's back to doing his job now, great guy.

1:04:26 But that was the, when we went into battle,

1:04:31 it was, you're with 20 other seals.

1:04:35 And we've got aircraft stacked from 5,000 feet

1:04:40 up to 25,000 feet, just A-10s, AC-130 gunships,

1:04:44 drones, everything.

1:04:45 And if we run out of those,

1:04:46 if those guys run out of ammunition, we can call them more.

1:04:49 - Right.

1:04:49 - And so, it was, honestly, like my time in Afghanistan,

1:04:53 it was fun, it was so cool.

1:04:56 It was like we won every single fight, it was great.

1:05:00 So, being, but we were also fighting asymmetrical warfare.

1:05:05 We were this clearly superior dominant unit

1:05:11 going against guys who are just inferior in training

1:05:18 and tactics and everything, still hard fighters,

1:05:20 but totally different animal.

1:05:22 So, when I was in Iraq, the battle for Mosul specifically

1:05:27 was the deadliest urban battle

1:05:31 that the world has seen since World War II.

1:05:34 And, you know, later on, you know, the day that I got hit,

1:05:38 that was the day after the deadliest day

1:05:40 of that deadliest battle.

1:05:41 And the fighting that happened there

1:05:45 was a World War II proportions, nowhere else,

1:05:48 nowhere else in the world, where 50 tanks lining up,

1:05:52 firing volleys of fire simultaneously,

1:05:54 while helicopters are flying over, bombing stuff,

1:05:57 and you're not even sure if you're actually gonna win the fight

1:06:00 because ISIS was dug in everywhere.

1:06:02 Every road, every room, every inch, every house,

1:06:05 everything was covered by machine guns,

1:06:08 pre-sided mortars, land mines, suicide bombers, you name it.

1:06:12 So, it was this horribly bloody violent thing

1:06:16 where, you know, it was a different situation

1:06:19 'cause when you got up in the morning,

1:06:20 you weren't thinking like,

1:06:21 "Oh, I wonder if we're gonna get into a gunfight today."

1:06:24 What you were thinking was, who's gonna die?

1:06:25 That's because you know someone's gonna die.

1:06:27 It's 100%, like, so 100% someone's gonna die today

1:06:30 from our side, from the Iraqi soldiers

1:06:32 that we're working with.

1:06:33 Somebody's going to die, 100%.

1:06:35 Who's it gonna be?

1:06:36 Who's gonna get the leg blown off?

1:06:36 Who's gonna be blinded?

1:06:37 Who's, you know, and then also me,

1:06:39 even though I was not a medic in the military,

1:06:41 I was, my job was to basically act as a medic

1:06:44 because I'd had, you know, pretty good medical training

1:06:46 during my time in the military.

1:06:48 So, that was another aspect of it too.

1:06:51 So, it was this savage, brutal,

1:06:53 it was an entirely different kind of war

1:06:55 that I did not understand

1:06:58 because I had not actually experienced it.

1:07:00 And during the fighting as well,

1:07:03 kind of acting as a medic,

1:07:05 was something that I did not like doing.

1:07:08 I absolutely hated it.

1:07:10 It's not my, while I have compassion,

1:07:15 while I care, while I want to save people's lives,

1:07:18 I'm not the guy that should be the medic.

1:07:19 Like, yes, I will do the job, don't get me wrong,

1:07:21 and I'll do my best, but it tore me up.

1:07:25 It really tore me up in ways that it didn't affect other guys.

1:07:29 Other guys were not as affected by it as it affected me.

1:07:31 And there was just nothing I could do about it,

1:07:33 it's just the way I'm wired.

1:07:34 So, yeah, by, yeah, you're wrapping

1:07:39 and you're putting some guys guts back into his body.

1:07:42 You're holding a little girl's hand.

1:07:44 There was tons of other people who were wounded

1:07:46 and we lost two of the guys from our team,

1:07:48 several other guys on our team that same day,

1:07:51 when the, you mentioned the name Sky.

1:07:55 My buddy Sky, he got a bullet right through his pocket.

1:07:58 He was fine, shattered his iPhone,

1:08:00 which was in his case while I was standing right next to him.

1:08:02 Another guy got a bullet through his gun.

1:08:04 Another guy had three bullets go through his backpack.

1:08:06 This is all in the same morning.

1:08:08 Another guy got hit in the face with shrapnel

1:08:10 from bullets hitting the Humby

1:08:12 and little metal shards flying around everywhere.

1:08:15 So, it was an entirely different experience

1:08:18 than just being in Afghanistan with a seal platoon,

1:08:21 with all the assets that America can provide

1:08:24 and just dominating your enemy.

1:08:27 - Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

1:08:28 And that is kind of what you've talked about a lot where,

1:08:31 yeah, I was gonna ask the question,

1:08:32 but you basically answered it there,

1:08:33 which is what is the difference between going to war

1:08:35 as a seal versus not as a seal?

1:08:37 And that goes well beyond just, you know,

1:08:39 the high speed gear that you had as a seal

1:08:41 versus, you know, the busted up AK-47

1:08:43 with the iron sights that you had to use

1:08:45 in the fight against ISIS.

1:08:46 But, you know, it's just kind of a different situation.

1:08:48 But I do like how you flippantly

1:08:50 and just kind of like, as an aside mentioned,

1:08:52 getting hit just then.

1:08:54 Guys, what he means is he got shot.

1:08:55 I mean, like you were shot by ISIS

1:08:58 and it's, it was kind of a crazy scenario.

1:09:00 And I don't really wanna give away any details

1:09:02 that you're not comfortable with

1:09:03 because you're the one that got shot, I didn't.

1:09:05 But, you know, I, it wasn't lost on me

1:09:07 that a lot of people go to war.

1:09:08 Seals included and they don't lose anything physically, right?

1:09:12 You know, they haven't been hit, they haven't been shot,

1:09:14 they haven't been hit with shrapnel,

1:09:15 like they haven't been blown up,

1:09:16 like none of those things happen.

1:09:17 But here you are, you'd already made it through the seals

1:09:20 and you had kind of gone into that next phase of life.

1:09:23 But here you are and you got shot

1:09:25 because you were, you know, fighting against ISIS

1:09:27 and really the scenario where you got shot was just crazy.

1:09:30 It was a crazy rescue scenario, which, you know,

1:09:32 if you wanna get into the details, feel free.

1:09:34 But guys, we do actually have a video

1:09:36 of this kind of daring rescue that you were a part of

1:09:38 where you were kind of hiding behind a tank,

1:09:40 but just take us through the mindset

1:09:42 of what it was like being over there in the capacity

1:09:44 that you were, but then to actually get shot by the enemy.

1:09:48 - So the particular mission that you're mentioning,

1:09:51 that happened June 2nd, 2017.

1:09:56 So it's about almost, I think it was almost exactly 30 days

1:09:58 since we had entered Mosul.

1:10:01 So the day before, which was June 1st, 2017,

1:10:04 was the deadliest day of the deadliest battle,

1:10:06 of the deadliest urban battle,

1:10:07 the world of the scenes since World War II.

1:10:08 And on June 1st, the day before,

1:10:10 ISIS had massacred more than 200 just Iraqi civilians,

1:10:16 unarmed Iraqi civilians who were trying to run away

1:10:18 from ISIS territory to get to the safety of the Iraqi army.

1:10:23 ISIS was keeping civilians with them

1:10:26 as they had to continue to lose ground.

1:10:30 And so more and more and more civilians were being packed

1:10:33 into a smaller and smaller area within the city

1:10:36 of Mosul itself in a place called the Old City.

1:10:39 It's where the mosque is where Al-Baghdadi proclaimed

1:10:44 the existence of the caliphate

1:10:45 and all that stuff before ISIS blew it up.

1:10:47 So you have all these civilians,

1:10:49 but the ISIS is doing that intentionally

1:10:52 so that way American and Iraqi forces

1:10:55 can't have the freedom to just bombard them, right?

1:11:00 'Cause if they didn't have the civilians there,

1:11:01 well, great, we're gonna send in,

1:11:03 we're gonna do a 72-hour bombardment,

1:11:06 blow up every single building

1:11:08 and then send in troops to clean up whoever's left, right?

1:11:10 So ISIS knows that so they keep all the civilians there

1:11:14 because for all the hate that the US military gets

1:11:17 and that even like the Iraqi army at that time

1:11:19 for all the hate that they get, it's like they go,

1:11:21 they literally risked their lives

1:11:23 and I saw tons of Iraqi soldiers die

1:11:27 because they didn't wanna use large explosives

1:11:29 'cause that might kill the civilians in these buildings.

1:11:31 So guys died to save these people

1:11:34 to prevent them from death.

1:11:35 So people need to understand that about the US military

1:11:39 and like they go through extraordinary lengths to save life.

1:11:42 So with that being said, a group of 200 plus,

1:11:47 more than 200 people tried to flee ISIS

1:11:50 all at the same time, they just ran for it.

1:11:52 Well, they were crossing this large like four

1:11:55 or five lane highway which had been completely

1:11:57 rumbled and destroyed so it looks just like a big flat field

1:12:01 of concrete chunks and ISIS killed over 200 of them,

1:12:06 slaughtered them, men, women, kids.

1:12:09 There was an old man slumped over in a wheelchair.

1:12:12 There was babies, pregnant women, you name it, everybody.

1:12:18 It slaughtered everybody.

1:12:21 And so the morning of June 2nd we found this massacre,

1:12:24 we saw what had happened, the aftermath of it.

1:12:27 Well, about 50, maybe 50 or 25 yards away

1:12:31 from ISIS headquarters at the time,

1:12:33 which was a hospital ironically,

1:12:35 an old like four or five story hospital

1:12:37 where ISIS was headquartered and they had like probably

1:12:40 a hundred civilians or more being held hostage in there.

1:12:44 About 25 yards away where there was a pile

1:12:46 of 20 or 30 bodies of people who had been murdered

1:12:50 and in the bodies there were several survivors

1:12:54 and one of the survivors was just this little girl.

1:12:57 She was hiding under, we believe was her mother,

1:12:59 she was hiding under her mother's hijab,

1:13:01 hiding under her clothing, but still completely alive

1:13:07 and appeared to be unharmed.

1:13:09 So she'd been out there for pretty much 24 hours

1:13:13 at that point when we found that she was there.

1:13:15 But again, it's right in front of ISIS headquarters.

1:13:17 So we put together a rescue mission with the Iraqi army

1:13:21 and the Iraqi army, long story short,

1:13:25 they agreed to give us a tank, they agreed to send one tank.

1:13:29 It was an American built tank,

1:13:31 but it was manned by Iraqi army soldiers,

1:13:33 so it belonged to the Iraqi army.

1:13:35 And our team leader actually called the US military,

1:13:38 had them put a drone overhead.

1:13:41 And then the US military agreed to actually use

1:13:44 an artillery unit to put up a smokescreen for us

1:13:47 so we could go in and get these people out.

1:13:50 And so we went in on the ground into ISIS territory,

1:13:54 literally behind enemy lines.

1:13:56 It doesn't get any worse than that really.

1:13:59 We drove straight into ISIS territory behind this tank

1:14:03 while this artillery is coming in

1:14:04 and providing a smokescreen.

1:14:06 And of course, ISIS, they're halfway blinded

1:14:08 and they're also kind of taking cover.

1:14:09 They're not really sure what's going on.

1:14:11 They think there's a ground assault happening.

1:14:13 So they're firing blindly, almost blindly,

1:14:16 through all this smoke.

1:14:17 And we're out there in the open,

1:14:20 bullets are landing everywhere.

1:14:22 Mortars are blown up 'cause ISIS had pre-sided

1:14:25 these positions with mortars.

1:14:26 So they're dropping mortars everywhere.

1:14:28 Machine guns coming in from the front, from the side.

1:14:31 I don't know if they were firing RPGs or not.

1:14:33 It was too loud to tell, just too much gunfire.

1:14:35 And also the engine of the tank was so hot

1:14:38 that it was like burning the small hairs

1:14:40 off the back of our hands and faces and stuff.

1:14:42 And but we had to stay close to the tank,

1:14:44 he was either that or die.

1:14:45 So we got up to where this pile of bodies was

1:14:50 and the main gun from the tank is firing.

1:14:53 And again, we're not even wearing ear protection

1:14:55 at this point.

1:14:56 So the gun goes off, all you hear is ringing.

1:15:00 There's gunfire coming in.

1:15:02 It's just chaos, there's bodies everywhere.

1:15:04 And myself and Skye, we laid down a base

1:15:09 of covering fire for Dave, the team leader.

1:15:13 He ran out and grabbed the little girl

1:15:16 and brought her back.

1:15:16 That video of that happening has been probably seen

1:15:20 100 million or 250 million times all over the world.

1:15:24 Incredibly heroic thing that Dave did

1:15:26 going and getting the girl and brought her back.

1:15:29 And then what we did was we had to go and get,

1:15:34 there were two men who were also in that pile of bodies.

1:15:37 We brought them back behind the tank.

1:15:39 The problem with one of the wounded men

1:15:42 was that he had been wounded like under his armpit

1:15:44 and he was still losing fresh blood.

1:15:47 So his arm was like, I don't know, almost detached.

1:15:50 It was pretty messed up.

1:15:51 And so picking him up and putting him on my back

1:15:54 was not an option.

1:15:55 And so we found like a piece of sheet metal

1:16:00 or something on the ground threw him on it

1:16:02 and tried to drag him out of there.

1:16:03 So the tank started backing up.

1:16:07 So keep in mind the tank is being manned by the Iraqi army.

1:16:11 So we can't communicate with it.

1:16:13 We can't tell it to stop nothing.

1:16:14 And it's just coming.

1:16:16 So you better keep up.

1:16:17 Well, as we were pulling this guy back,

1:16:20 he fell off of this metal sheet

1:16:24 that we had found in the road,

1:16:25 which probably had been used the day before

1:16:27 by somebody carrying out their family member or something.

1:16:30 And he fell right in the direction.

1:16:32 He fell right in the line of tread.

1:16:36 So the tank was about to run him over.

1:16:37 And again, we can't tell it to stop.

1:16:39 It's like three feet away.

1:16:40 So I grabbed him, rolled him out of the way.

1:16:44 Bullets are again, bullets are coming in like crazy now.

1:16:46 ISIS kind of sees what's up.

1:16:48 They've kind of redoubled their efforts to kill us

1:16:51 because they now see the tank backing up.

1:16:54 So they think that they've repelled some kind of attack

1:16:57 is probably what's going on in their head.

1:16:58 So they're like, yeah, let's finish these guys off.

1:17:01 So this man, I moved him out of the way of the tank.

1:17:04 The tank tread missed him by literally, I mean,

1:17:07 four or five inches.

1:17:09 And I looked down at the guy

1:17:11 and I just said, I'm sorry, I couldn't get him.

1:17:14 There was no way, he was about to be in front of the tank.

1:17:17 If the tank fired its main gun, that would knock me out,

1:17:19 possibly kill me.

1:17:20 And then also, there was just too much incoming fire.

1:17:22 There was no way to get this guy.

1:17:24 It just was not humanly possible.

1:17:26 And I'm certainly not Superman.

1:17:28 So I had to look at this guy.

1:17:29 We made eye contact.

1:17:30 And I just said, I'm sorry.

1:17:31 And I shook my head.

1:17:33 I stood, I got back behind the tank

1:17:36 kind of in the general protection

1:17:38 of what I thought was general protection of the tank.

1:17:41 And immediately got shot from the side.

1:17:43 The bullet hit my calf.

1:17:45 It went right through.

1:17:47 Very, very minor wound.

1:17:49 It didn't hit my any arteries.

1:17:51 It didn't hit any bones or anything like that.

1:17:54 But when I got hit, of course, I didn't know that.

1:17:56 So I fell down behind the tank.

1:17:58 And I was kind of, in that moment, I was a little bit stunned.

1:18:02 Like, oh my word, it just got shot.

1:18:05 What the heck, man?

1:18:06 And so I'm looking at my leg.

1:18:08 Well, the other guys in the team,

1:18:09 they start screaming at me.

1:18:10 And one of the guys, he starts hitting me.

1:18:11 He's like, get up, dude.

1:18:13 So I turn around and I look.

1:18:14 And the tank's about to run me over.

1:18:15 It's literally three feet away.

1:18:17 I could have put out my hand and touched the tread of this tank.

1:18:22 And so I had no choice but just to get up and keep going.

1:18:25 So I got up.

1:18:26 Luckily, my leg held just fine.

1:18:28 And put a tourniquet on while--

1:18:32 this is, again, why some of the stories are kind of personal.

1:18:35 Because it's like, I'm literally tripping

1:18:37 over the bodies of dead children as I'm bleeding

1:18:41 from two holes in my leg, trying to throw on a tourniquet.

1:18:44 Ice's gun fires coming in.

1:18:45 I just had to tell this guy that I can't save him.

1:18:48 So I basically just condemned this man to death.

1:18:51 And yeah, we have 50 or 60 ISIS fighters trying to kill us.

1:18:56 And so, yeah, we continued moving back toward Iraqi army lines.

1:19:02 And we basically got to a point where

1:19:05 there was like 100 yards of open ground

1:19:08 that we would have to cover.

1:19:11 It's difficult to explain without seeing it.

1:19:12 But basically, the tank was not in a position

1:19:14 to where it could turn and protect us as we

1:19:17 cross this open area.

1:19:20 I started getting really lightheaded.

1:19:22 Obviously, I was bleeding.

1:19:23 I saw that I had two bright red oxygenated blood pumping

1:19:28 from both holes in my leg.

1:19:30 So at that point, I wasn't sure if it had hit a vein or not.

1:19:34 And then I also started feeling lightheaded.

1:19:35 So I'm like, OK, there's a fairly decent chance

1:19:37 I'm going to lose consciousness from blood loss.

1:19:41 And I can't risk that.

1:19:42 So what we started screaming at the soldiers,

1:19:44 the Iraqi soldiers who were across this sort of 100-yard open

1:19:47 area, maybe it's 50 yards.

1:19:50 And we start screaming at them to send us a Humvee.

1:19:53 Just send an armored Humvee out.

1:19:54 It'll take you two seconds.

1:19:56 We could throw everybody in there.

1:19:57 And we can cross this open ground.

1:19:58 Because now ISIS sees us.

1:19:59 The smoke has all but dissipated.

1:20:02 And we're still taking heavy fire.

1:20:03 So we cannot move across the open.

1:20:04 We will 100% die if we move across in the open.

1:20:08 So the Iraqi army was not getting the message.

1:20:11 And so at that point, I was like, well,

1:20:14 I'm the only one here who's really expendable.

1:20:16 So because the other guys were dealing with the other two

1:20:18 patients, and I'm already useless because I'm hit.

1:20:22 So I was just like, I'm going to move across the street.

1:20:24 I'm going to do this.

1:20:24 So I just told the other guys, I'm like, I'm going.

1:20:27 And so then I hobbled across the street as fast as I could.

1:20:30 Kind of basically it was like skipping.

1:20:33 Immediately, ISIS opened fire.

1:20:35 My buddy Sky, he mentioned that he could see the bullets

1:20:38 landing just right behind my feet.

1:20:40 As I was running, he could see the bullets impacting.

1:20:44 And they're flying past my face and everything.

1:20:47 But made it across the open.

1:20:48 And I started screaming at the Iraqis to send a Humvee.

1:20:51 They got the message.

1:20:53 And ironically, the guy who actually drove the Humvee

1:20:57 was a French journalist by the name of Bernard.

1:21:01 He was the one who hopped in a Humvee.

1:21:03 He had kind of embedded with our group a few days prior,

1:21:08 maybe a week prior.

1:21:09 And we had to teach him how to drive a Humvee just in case.

1:21:12 He's like, hey, can you guys just show me how to use this?

1:21:14 Because Humvees are weird.

1:21:15 So he's like, can you show me how to drive this Humvee?

1:21:17 So we had taught him how to drive a Humvee just in case.

1:21:20 And I remember we had cracked a joke.

1:21:21 And we were like, Bernard, if you have to drive a Humvee,

1:21:24 it's because things have gone really, really bad.

1:21:27 Ironically, and what I personally think

1:21:29 is probably one of the best acts of heroism

1:21:31 that I've seen, he jumps in a Humvee,

1:21:34 an unarmed French journalist who's just

1:21:36 there to observe and report.

1:21:37 He hops in a Humvee after seeing me get shot,

1:21:40 seeing this massacre.

1:21:41 He drives out into the middle of gunfire,

1:21:44 gets the rest of the team, drives them back across the street

1:21:47 to safety.

1:21:49 And that, to me, was probably one of the most heroic things

1:21:53 I've seen because he didn't have to do that.

1:21:55 It wasn't like, as a soldier, it's like, yeah, you don't have to,

1:21:59 but yeah, you have to, like you are expected to get in that Humvee

1:22:02 and go out there.

1:22:03 He's just, he didn't have to do that.

1:22:05 And he did that, which to me was just really incredible.

1:22:09 So I was taken to a bombed out mosque

1:22:11 where that they were using as an aid station.

1:22:15 The Iraqi Army was using as a sort of frontline aid station.

1:22:19 And yeah, I had Iraqi Army medics working on my leg,

1:22:24 making sure that it was fine.

1:22:25 It was minor wound, all things considered.

1:22:28 And then they brought in the little girl.

1:22:30 She had survived.

1:22:31 And she was just covered in blood.

1:22:33 And from not her blood, other people's blood,

1:22:36 it was just sort of in shock.

1:22:38 And she was pretty unresponsive.

1:22:41 She was just kind of like, kind of dazed.

1:22:43 But then when they gave her food and water,

1:22:45 she just came to life and was just chugging the water

1:22:48 and eating the food.

1:22:49 She was starving.

1:22:51 So they cleaned her up, got her a dress.

1:22:52 I don't even know where they found a dress.

1:22:54 They found a little girl's dress somewhere.

1:22:56 And cleaned her up.

1:22:58 And then she, the wife of our team leader, her name is Karen,

1:23:03 she was there as well.

1:23:06 And so this little girl just curled up in Karen's arms

1:23:09 and just fell asleep.

1:23:10 And it was like, during that time,

1:23:13 I'm seeing all this, I just put my hat over my face.

1:23:17 And I just started weeping because it was like, holy cow, man.

1:23:22 We just saved this little girl.

1:23:24 And what horrible things has she seen?

1:23:29 And she doesn't even really understand what just happened.

1:23:33 And then we were also able to save the other man who--

1:23:38 yeah, he's alive and well as well, as is the little girl.

1:23:42 I mean, it's a crazy story, but also just

1:23:45 an absolutely crazy ending.

1:23:46 I just can't believe that that's even a true story.

1:23:48 So I really appreciate you going into that amount of detail.

1:23:51 And man, I just got to be honest.

1:23:52 Whenever I read the accounts, not only of the story

1:23:55 that you just wrote, but also any of the accounts

1:23:57 in the rest of your book or what Holly McKay has written,

1:24:00 when I hear about the atrocities,

1:24:03 I feel this tremendous bubbling up of hatred inside of me.

1:24:08 And I mean, if I was giving a speech or something like that,

1:24:11 I'd probably say something fancy like, no, it's righteous

1:24:13 anger or righteous indignation.

1:24:15 But no, it is hatred.

1:24:16 It is hatred for evil.

1:24:17 It's hatred for sin and all those different things.

1:24:19 And which makes this quote that I'm

1:24:21 going to read from the end of your book.

1:24:23 So crazy.

1:24:23 I just want to go ahead and read this quote.

1:24:25 And then I'll kind of set up the question from there.

1:24:27 So here we go.

1:24:27 How does a disciplined and noble soldier come home

1:24:30 and suddenly fall prey to drugs or alcohol?

1:24:32 How does a brave and honorable soldier come home

1:24:34 and suddenly begin hurting those around him?

1:24:37 How does a soldier who fought and survived so many battles

1:24:39 come home and suddenly decide to kill himself?

1:24:42 It's not because he was afraid of getting shot at.

1:24:44 It's not because he misses the guys on his team too much.

1:24:47 It's not because he's bored and misses the action.

1:24:49 It is because something happened over there

1:24:51 that he cannot make peace with.

1:24:53 It's nothing more than a consuming hatred for either himself

1:24:56 or someone else.

1:24:57 This hatred and anger and bitterness

1:24:59 are what drive men crazy when they come home.

1:25:01 And the only way I've found to heal these wounds

1:25:04 is to give up the hatred.

1:25:05 When I was in Iraq, I spoke with David Yubang

1:25:08 about vengeance and hatred.

1:25:09 He told me a story about how he had once watched a family

1:25:12 with several small children get blown up by an IED.

1:25:14 He said the only thing that helped him overcome that hatred

1:25:17 and thirst for revenge was the Bible verse that says,

1:25:19 dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves,

1:25:22 but rather give place unto wrath for it is written,

1:25:24 vengeance is mine.

1:25:26 I will repay, say it to the Lord, Romans 12, 19.

1:25:29 That verse was saying that humans are not capable

1:25:32 of harboring a spirit of revenge within themselves.

1:25:35 That hatred destroys us.

1:25:36 It destroys soldiers coming home from war

1:25:39 and it destroys communities, countries and entire races

1:25:41 who cannot let go of it.

1:25:43 I held onto this principle, David shared with me.

1:25:45 It took me some time to adjust my way of thinking,

1:25:48 but one day I decided that when I went into battle,

1:25:50 I would fill my heart with love for those who stood behind me

1:25:53 and not with hatred for those who stood against me.

1:25:56 I wasn't going to bring that hatred home with me.

1:25:58 I learned how to forgive ISIS for the terrible things they did,

1:26:01 not for their sake, but for mine.

1:26:04 So I just got to be honest,

1:26:07 even speaking from a Christian worldview

1:26:10 and Ephraim, you're talking to a lot of Christians right now

1:26:13 and everything that we know about grace

1:26:14 and everything that we know about forgiveness.

1:26:16 That's hard, that's really, really hard to get to that place.

1:26:21 When you read in these books

1:26:23 and you hear these stories about how ISIS was cooking babies

1:26:27 on hot pieces of like scrap metal, cooking them to death,

1:26:31 the torture that they put women through

1:26:33 before they murdered them.

1:26:35 Like it's just these unbelievably heinous things.

1:26:38 And to hear you say that, you just had to give up

1:26:40 your hatred for them, help me understand

1:26:43 how you could get to a place mentally

1:26:45 where you could say something like that.

1:26:47 - Sure, yeah, so it's a difficult concept

1:26:52 to, I guess, try to explain.

1:26:54 But I guess two thoughts.

1:26:58 The first thought is if you,

1:27:03 and again, this is going to be hard for people to accept,

1:27:06 but it's just reality.

1:27:08 If you had been born,

1:27:11 if you or I had been born in the same village

1:27:14 under the same teacher in some backwoods,

1:27:18 backwards Iraqi village or some village in the Middle East

1:27:22 where they teach hatred for the West

1:27:23 and hatred for everything

1:27:24 and that God wants you to blow people up

1:27:28 and that it's okay to murder tons of civilians

1:27:32 if they're apostates because they're leaving the caliphate,

1:27:35 which means that they deserve death.

1:27:36 They're actually worse than the Christians and the Jews.

1:27:38 They must be destroyed, right?

1:27:39 So if you're taught this kind of ideology

1:27:42 and you're taught that it's okay to do whatever bad thing

1:27:44 that you wanna do,

1:27:46 as long as it's not too like a fellow Muslim in good standing,

1:27:49 then there's a very good chance that you or I

1:27:52 would do these things.

1:27:53 And I know that's a hard pill to swallow

1:27:55 because one of the things that we do when we look

1:27:57 at our enemies is we go, what do we do?

1:27:59 We call them savages, we call them dogs,

1:28:00 we call them animals, we call them whatever.

1:28:03 And so we dehumanize them, well, what are we doing?

1:28:05 We're separating ourselves from them.

1:28:06 We're going, I don't have that evil in me

1:28:09 that you haven't you.

1:28:10 And there's this, I'm better than you aspect,

1:28:15 which again, yeah, if you're not cooking babies on stovetops,

1:28:20 then yes, you are better than that person.

1:28:21 So that's just the first thought is just,

1:28:24 if you were them, you'd probably do exactly what they did.

1:28:26 And again, that's a hard pill to swallow

1:28:28 'cause everybody's like, no, I would never do anything bad.

1:28:30 That's the biggest piece, I guess, to try to understand.

1:28:40 And as far as forgiving them,

1:28:42 forgiveness is completely different than justice.

1:28:46 Forgiveness just means like, I'm not gonna harbor hatred

1:28:50 towards you, you're a moron, you're a clown.

1:28:53 Look at you, like you're an evil scumbag, right?

1:28:56 Like I almost pity you, like how, like think about how evil

1:28:59 and moral and depraved and the mental angst

1:29:02 that you would have to have to be someone like be, you know,

1:29:04 be like ISIS, right?

1:29:05 Think about just how morally and just miserably depraved

1:29:09 you would have to be, right?

1:29:10 I'm not saying that they deserve sympathy.

1:29:12 What I'm saying though, is we should look at them

1:29:14 and we should look on them in pity.

1:29:16 And with forgiveness, that's for you, that's not for them.

1:29:21 Forgiveness doesn't mean not holding them accountable.

1:29:26 Justice is holding them accountable.

1:29:28 So don't get me wrong.

1:29:29 When I say that I've learned to forgive ISIS people

1:29:32 for what I've personally seen them do

1:29:34 and what they've personally done to me,

1:29:35 what they've personally done to my friends,

1:29:38 I'm not saying that they shouldn't be held accountable

1:29:40 for their actions because don't get me wrong.

1:29:42 I think that they should be hunted down

1:29:44 and their throats should be slit in the middle of their bed

1:29:48 if we can get guys in there.

1:29:49 Like we need to hunt these guys down, zero mercy,

1:29:51 kill them all.

1:29:52 I don't think we should take ISIS guys prisoner.

1:29:54 I think we should put them all to death.

1:29:55 They should all be killed.

1:29:56 They should, every single one of them should be slaughtered.

1:29:59 Now that doesn't mean torture them.

1:30:01 It just means put them to death because they're so far gone

1:30:04 and what they did was evil.

1:30:05 But understand that they are also our humans

1:30:09 and that the same evil that's in them

1:30:11 has the potential to be in us

1:30:13 if we don't make the right decisions.

1:30:15 If we don't stand up for the right ideology,

1:30:18 'cause I guarantee you there was ISIS guys who were going,

1:30:21 yeah, that's actually not what the Quran says.

1:30:23 So probably we shouldn't be like cooking babies

1:30:27 'cause I don't see that in the Quran anywhere, right?

1:30:29 But they didn't stand up and say anything.

1:30:31 Again, this goes back to the beginning of our conversation.

1:30:33 The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil

1:30:34 is for good men to do nothing.

1:30:36 So the concept of forgiving them,

1:30:40 it's almost in my mind, it's like,

1:30:43 I just look at them as fools.

1:30:44 I look at them as utter fools

1:30:47 who all need to be put to death,

1:30:48 but I'm not gonna be like consumed with like hatred

1:30:52 because of who they are and what they did.

1:30:54 I hate their ideology for sure,

1:30:58 and I will do everything I can to stop it,

1:31:00 but I'm not gonna lay in bed at night

1:31:03 and be like, look what those ISIS guys did.

1:31:05 I just wanna go find them all and kill them,

1:31:07 which I do, don't get me wrong,

1:31:09 but I'm not gonna let it consume me.

1:31:11 I hope that made sense.

1:31:12 - No, it absolutely makes sense.

1:31:14 And mainly it made sense because it's the mature point of view.

1:31:17 It is the absolutely hover outside of your situation,

1:31:20 look down on it and just make a call that is mature

1:31:23 and not really driven by emotions.

1:31:25 And that's the thing, whenever most of us,

1:31:27 and I would say for me included and for most of the guys

1:31:29 listening to this, how many times have emotions

1:31:31 got you in just ridiculous amounts of trouble?

1:31:33 Like you made some really, really bad decisions

1:31:35 and these military units, they aren't,

1:31:38 they're not avoiding that all the time either.

1:31:42 We've heard about these different units

1:31:44 or different groups that have gone in to war

1:31:46 and gone in on essentially these revenge missions,

1:31:48 and it just didn't really work out for them.

1:31:50 And I mean that in the worst way possible

1:31:52 where maybe they even got more of their guys killed

1:31:54 because they were just acting out of emotion.

1:31:56 And so we definitely don't want people to act in that way.

1:31:58 And so it's good that you kind of pointed out

1:32:00 the way that you did, so so reminded.

1:32:02 But really kind of to bring all this together,

1:32:04 when I look at everything that I read in your book

1:32:07 and everything that you've said today

1:32:08 and everything that you've said in other interviews,

1:32:10 I think it comes down to your personal faith

1:32:12 and your personal worldview.

1:32:14 So as you've already mentioned before,

1:32:15 you grew up in a devout Baptist family more specifically

1:32:18 an independent fundamentalist Baptist family.

1:32:20 And obviously that shaped you,

1:32:21 but then you had your experiences as a seal,

1:32:23 your experiences doing other things

1:32:25 that with your humanitarian work

1:32:26 and all the things that you've seen,

1:32:28 that's got to have an impact on how you view the world,

1:32:31 how you view a God of any kind, a deity of any kind,

1:32:35 those types of deals.

1:32:36 So I just want to give you some space to kind of explain

1:32:39 how all of those things have affected

1:32:41 where you're at right now and what you believe.

1:32:43 Because again, this isn't a are you religious

1:32:45 or not type of question,

1:32:46 because I don't consider myself to be religious.

1:32:48 I'm a disciple of Jesus.

1:32:49 That's not being religious.

1:32:50 That's not acting virtuous on Sunday.

1:32:52 So people that think that you're a good person.

1:32:54 But for you, for Ephraim Matos,

1:32:56 where have you fallen on the issue of a deity

1:33:00 or something like that in terms of the things

1:33:02 that you've seen?

1:33:03 - Sure, so to be perfectly honest,

1:33:07 I still, my answer with specifically the Triune God

1:33:12 and all that, it's like, I don't know.

1:33:15 I don't know kind of some of the details

1:33:19 of I guess like what is the absolute, absolute truth.

1:33:23 And in my own way, I'm still kind of working through

1:33:26 some of the, maybe some of the specific details.

1:33:29 However, overall in general,

1:33:32 I absolutely believe there's a God.

1:33:33 I believe there's a loving God who through one force

1:33:37 or another, created the world,

1:33:39 put it into the ordered yet decaying form that it is.

1:33:44 And I think that we have free will.

1:33:51 I think that the problems that we see on earth

1:33:56 are not God's fault.

1:33:57 And I don't think it's fair for humans

1:34:01 to both get angry at God for things that have happened.

1:34:06 'Cause this was also something that I had to deal with,

1:34:08 even just as early as last year,

1:34:10 I went through a really, really dark period last year

1:34:12 where I was kind of dealing with a back injury.

1:34:15 So I couldn't travel, but also because of COVID

1:34:17 was going on, so I also couldn't travel.

1:34:19 And so there was, I was kind of forced to stop

1:34:21 and stay in one place for a couple of months,

1:34:23 which I haven't done in years.

1:34:25 And one of the things I really had to work through was,

1:34:28 I was like, the evil, terrible, horrible things

1:34:32 that I've seen, I still kind of had to refresh

1:34:36 my own thoughts and beliefs toward what I've seen.

1:34:39 How do you reconcile it?

1:34:40 How do you reconcile the stuff that I've seen

1:34:43 and believe that there's still a good and loving God?

1:34:45 But again, it goes back to that conversation

1:34:47 I had back and 10th grade.

1:34:48 And it's that God created the world.

1:34:51 He governs it through natural law.

1:34:53 The laws of nature are the laws of God.

1:34:55 The laws of God are the laws of nature.

1:34:56 They're one and the same.

1:34:58 Science is God's law.

1:35:00 That's how the world works.

1:35:01 And if we as humans do not follow natural law,

1:35:05 we will have to suffer the consequences, right?

1:35:07 So if we don't follow natural law,

1:35:08 I think as a Christian would refer to that as sin.

1:35:11 And we're gonna have to suffer the consequences

1:35:14 of our poor decisions.

1:35:16 And when I look at the evil that I've seen,

1:35:21 that's not God's fault.

1:35:23 He's just as upset again as he's more upset than anybody

1:35:27 because of, he's like, no, this isn't what I intended.

1:35:31 And at the end of the day,

1:35:35 I think he's sitting up there.

1:35:38 And again, I don't think that there's like a God

1:35:40 like on a throne somewhere.

1:35:41 - Sure, that's just not right.

1:35:42 - That's just not a personal belief.

1:35:43 But I think God is in everything.

1:35:45 And I think that it's sitting there going like, all right,

1:35:49 those bad guys have the capability

1:35:52 to do horrible, evil, awful things.

1:35:55 Well, what about all these people here?

1:35:57 They have the ability to do incredibly wonderful,

1:36:02 kind, love-filled, heroic things.

1:36:05 And again, this goes back to the quote,

1:36:09 the only thing necessary for those bad things

1:36:11 to continue happening is for these good people over here

1:36:14 to just kind of do nothing.

1:36:15 So in the end, I don't know exactly what God wants.

1:36:19 I don't know exactly what form God takes.

1:36:21 I don't, I don't, I don't know.

1:36:24 And, but I do know we need to do the best that we can.

1:36:29 We need to do the most good that we can.

1:36:31 We need to do the most heroic, good things

1:36:36 that we possibly can to counteract the evil

1:36:40 that's in the world.

1:36:41 And that all, and that takes different forms.

1:36:42 You know, people, you know,

1:36:43 I'll go on a podcast or people hear my story

1:36:45 and then it's, I want to do what you do.

1:36:47 And it's like, well, I'm uniquely suited

1:36:50 to just do what it is that I do.

1:36:52 You might be an accountant, right?

1:36:54 And that's a wonderful thing.

1:36:55 Well, you can be an accountant

1:36:57 who is helping different organizations

1:36:59 or who is helping to, you know,

1:37:01 maybe work with a lawyer to expose corruption over here

1:37:04 or whatever it might be.

1:37:05 There's so many different ways

1:37:07 that you can use your talents, your interests,

1:37:09 your abilities, and people talk about God's will.

1:37:13 What does God's will for my life?

1:37:15 And I get frustrated when, you know,

1:37:17 like I'll have, I'll have teenagers a lot of times.

1:37:19 Hey, man, I'm not sure what God's will is for me.

1:37:20 Should I join the military or not?

1:37:22 And my response is like, are you like,

1:37:24 just like dying to join the military?

1:37:25 Like, 'cause you want to help people?

1:37:27 And they're like, yeah,

1:37:28 but maybe I should go to Bible college or something.

1:37:29 And I'm like, no,

1:37:30 but I don't really want to go to Bible college.

1:37:32 It's like, no, dude, go join the military.

1:37:35 Do God wants you to do what you love to do?

1:37:38 Not what brings you temporary pleasure,

1:37:40 but what brings you true joy and peace.

1:37:42 That's what God wants you to do.

1:37:43 So go do that, find a way to do that,

1:37:46 to serve others, to serve your family, to serve your community.

1:37:49 And in that way, we can all, in our own way,

1:37:53 counteract the evil that is ISIS.

1:37:56 'Cause again, when you look at ISIS,

1:37:58 we talk about them, yeah,

1:37:59 burning people alive and killing babies

1:38:01 and all the horrific things they did to their sex slaves

1:38:03 and stuff like that.

1:38:04 That wasn't all the ISIS guys though.

1:38:06 That was probably a relatively small percentage

1:38:08 of the ISIS guys.

1:38:09 You want to know who else was involved with ISIS though?

1:38:11 They have their own accountants.

1:38:13 They have their own cooks.

1:38:14 They have their own leaders and all this other stuff.

1:38:17 The forces of darkness,

1:38:19 they don't just have their frontline guys.

1:38:21 They've got all the support in the background

1:38:22 that makes it all possible.

1:38:24 And the forces of good.

1:38:25 Yes, we have the frontline seals and green berets

1:38:28 and humanitarians going into these places,

1:38:30 but we need all the other people involved too.

1:38:32 We're absolutely nothing.

1:38:33 It's like when we're in the seal themes,

1:38:34 it's like we can't do anything

1:38:35 if our non-seals support people aren't helping us.

1:38:39 So I think if you want to call it the Lord's Army,

1:38:42 if you want to call it just the forces of good,

1:38:45 whatever it is, find your spot.

1:38:47 Be a part of the anti-ISIS.

1:38:50 Be a part of the forces of good that are doing something.

1:38:52 And that's kind of how I feel about it.

1:38:55 - Yeah, I appreciate you going into that

1:38:56 and giving that kind of detail.

1:38:57 And it gets into gifting, doesn't it?

1:38:58 Because for me personally, I'm not naturally empathetic.

1:39:02 So for me to be something like a counselor

1:39:05 or a social worker or something like that,

1:39:06 it's something that I feel like I could do,

1:39:08 but that it would probably be soul crushing for me.

1:39:10 And the same could be said for someone

1:39:12 that maybe doesn't have kind of that internal fortitude

1:39:15 or courage or constitution to where the military

1:39:17 would probably be a bad fit for someone like that

1:39:20 or the police or something like that.

1:39:21 It just wouldn't be a great fit for those people.

1:39:23 But I also think it comes down to God's perfect will

1:39:27 for your life versus his realized will for your life.

1:39:31 I mean, 'cause just think about the example,

1:39:32 if you talk about the kid who's,

1:39:34 should I go into the military or should I go to Bible college?

1:39:37 God's will can be done regardless of the decision

1:39:39 that's made.

1:39:40 He can use your decisions for his good and for greater good.

1:39:45 So if you zigged when you should have zagged,

1:39:48 it may not be his perfect will for you,

1:39:50 but it will be his realized will.

1:39:51 He would still be able to get his will done on this earth.

1:39:54 But I think that kind of, you know,

1:39:55 makes me want to go over into a different area

1:39:57 where it talks about, for me personally,

1:40:01 there are a lot of people around me that believe in God,

1:40:04 but it's the Jesus part that maybe trips them up

1:40:07 a little bit, right?

1:40:08 Maybe they don't believe it

1:40:09 or fully understand it or something like this,

1:40:11 but so like for you, and you think about this

1:40:13 as you extrapolate it out to a larger worldview,

1:40:16 let's say you're watching these people, right?

1:40:17 You have ISIS in your crosshairs,

1:40:19 you have an ISIS fighter in your crosshairs

1:40:20 and you're terrible AK-47 that you're just like,

1:40:23 you with your iron sights pointed at them or whatever.

1:40:26 And let's say you miss, you take the shot and you miss.

1:40:30 If you miss and you have a materialist point of view,

1:40:35 there's no ultimate justice in that situation.

1:40:38 Because a strict materialist, we're just stardust, right?

1:40:41 We're stardust bumping into other stardusts.

1:40:43 None of this, you know, makes any sense.

1:40:45 None of this even matters.

1:40:47 And so all the judgment and justice has to occur here

1:40:51 on this planet because there will be no ultimate

1:40:53 or cosmic justice.

1:40:55 But then for me, it makes me think of the gospel.

1:40:58 It makes me think that in order for any of us to become clean,

1:41:02 in order for any of us to become just and righteous,

1:41:07 we require the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

1:41:10 We require it.

1:41:11 It is an essential key in order for us to be sanctified

1:41:14 in order for us to be righteous,

1:41:16 in order for there to be true judgment.

1:41:18 And so specifically, just to press you a little bit more

1:41:21 on this topic, I wanna know specifically

1:41:23 what your thoughts are on Jesus.

1:41:25 'Cause this is a historical person that we have a record

1:41:28 of, a tremendous amount of record of,

1:41:30 that has been historically proven that these records

1:41:32 were kept accurate and passed down accurately,

1:41:35 but for you and your personal faith rather,

1:41:38 who is Jesus to you?

1:41:40 - So this is actually, that's a really great question.

1:41:42 Just a couple of days ago, I was actually talking

1:41:44 with my aunt and we were having this very,

1:41:46 very same similar conversation.

1:41:48 My take on Jesus, and again, this is just my own human view.

1:41:54 So was Jesus God incarnate?

1:42:02 My honest opinion is I don't know, but I really, really hope so.

1:42:07 Like I really, really do, and ultimately none of us

1:42:10 can truly know that till we get to eternity.

1:42:14 But when it comes down to specifically salvation

1:42:17 for individuals, or salvation for mankind,

1:42:19 or redemption in the eyes of God

1:42:21 for horrible people who've done horrible things,

1:42:23 I think the most important thing,

1:42:27 Jesus said incredible things his entire life.

1:42:31 And I think one of the most important things

1:42:33 that he ever said was father forgive them

1:42:35 for they know not what they do.

1:42:37 Think about all the evil, terrible things

1:42:41 that Isis did to, for example, to other people.

1:42:44 But think about how evil and awful and terrible,

1:42:49 literally punching God himself in the face would be,

1:42:52 stabbing God in the face with a spear,

1:42:58 pounding nails into the hands of God himself.

1:43:01 Think about how, is there a more horrible, awful thing

1:43:07 than that?

1:43:08 And part of what I think Jesus was saying at the end there,

1:43:13 he said father forgive them for they know not what they do.

1:43:16 He said forgive them, well, why?

1:43:17 Why?

1:43:18 'Cause they just don't know what they're doing.

1:43:20 These are Roman soldiers who are just doing their job,

1:43:23 and they don't understand the implications

1:43:25 of what they're doing.

1:43:26 And I think that that message,

1:43:29 I think it's an important thing that's recorded

1:43:30 in scripture because when you look at all of humanity,

1:43:34 you have to look at these evil Isis fighters

1:43:38 and you have to go father forgive them

1:43:41 for they know not what they do.

1:43:43 These Isis fighters who are strapping bombs to themselves

1:43:46 and blowing themselves up in many ways

1:43:50 are showing much greater courage than you or I ever will.

1:43:53 They truly are willing to go die for their God,

1:43:56 that they believe in.

1:43:57 And again, it's twisted and it's wrong.

1:44:00 And it's the, they know not what they do.

1:44:02 Father forgive them.

1:44:03 And so I think that redemption in the eyes of God

1:44:07 for someone who is an Isis person,

1:44:10 you know, don't forget God loves them too.

1:44:13 God, before he formed them into the womb,

1:44:15 God knew that person too.

1:44:17 He wanted the best for that person's life too.

1:44:19 And in the end, Jesus said forgive them

1:44:25 because they don't know what they're doing.

1:44:26 And I think that that sums up all of human existence.

1:44:29 It's people who are running around trying to do the right thing,

1:44:32 people who are running around trying to follow God

1:44:37 and they're being misled and they're being lied to.

1:44:39 And this is why ideology is so important and truth

1:44:42 and open and free discussions.

1:44:44 And obviously we're our nation's dealing

1:44:46 with major issues with that right now in our world.

1:44:49 But at the end of the day,

1:44:51 Jesus said forgive them

1:44:54 because they don't know what they're doing.

1:44:55 We are incredibly corruptible dark beings at times

1:45:00 who have the potential to do evil.

1:45:07 And we have to make the choice to do the right thing.

1:45:10 But I think that God has way more mercy for evil people

1:45:15 than we could possibly understand.

1:45:17 And that's why I believe it.

1:45:19 - Yeah, that's certainly true.

1:45:20 And to be honest with you, I had other questions

1:45:23 that I was going to go into here,

1:45:24 but I think that we're kind of coming to a good ending point.

1:45:27 But I do have some things that I want to kind of encourage you with.

1:45:31 I'm glad that you have friends and family

1:45:33 that you can discuss this with.

1:45:34 You mentioned talking about it with a family member,

1:45:36 but I want to tell you a quick story

1:45:38 because I think this might be applicable for you.

1:45:39 So years ago, there was a buddy of mine.

1:45:42 He and I worked together.

1:45:43 And for whatever reason, this guy,

1:45:45 every bad person that he knew growing up

1:45:47 claimed to be a Christian, like all of them.

1:45:49 Like his girlfriend's dad was like this horrible racist guy,

1:45:54 but he was also a deacon at the church.

1:45:56 And it was like, of course,

1:45:57 of course that guy was a deacon at the church.

1:45:58 So he had never talked to somebody

1:46:00 that was like a responsible, good person.

1:46:03 That was also a Christian.

1:46:04 And so, but he kind of had some questions

1:46:06 about the Christian worldview.

1:46:07 So he and I got together.

1:46:08 We decided to get together

1:46:09 and that we were going to do lunches

1:46:10 and that we were going to discuss it.

1:46:11 So we obviously did lunch at Chick-fil-A, right?

1:46:13 You know, Chick-fil-A has been annoying too.

1:46:15 But we were meeting about once every week or two weeks

1:46:18 and we were going over the book,

1:46:19 The Reason for God by Tim Keller.

1:46:22 And it's seven arguments about, you know,

1:46:25 for him being a pastor in New York City.

1:46:27 Here are the seven arguments

1:46:28 that he would always get from people

1:46:29 as to why God couldn't exist.

1:46:30 And then the last seven chapters of the book

1:46:32 are the seven arguments for why it is reasonable

1:46:34 to believe in God.

1:46:36 And so he and I go through this book

1:46:37 and we're going through all the questions.

1:46:39 But then we get to the end.

1:46:40 And I kind of ask him, hey, buddy, you know,

1:46:42 where are you at on all this?

1:46:43 Like what are you thinking?

1:46:43 And he goes, man, I'm so thankful

1:46:45 that you took the time with me to answer my questions

1:46:48 and go through a book like this

1:46:49 and, you know, go through my concerns and things like that.

1:46:51 And I really appreciate that

1:46:52 because I feel like I finally know a Christian

1:46:54 that that's actually a good person at the same time.

1:46:57 But now I feel like I need to do the exact same thing

1:47:00 with a Muslim and with a Hindu and with a Sikh

1:47:04 and all these different people.

1:47:05 And I told him, I was like, hey, buddy,

1:47:06 from a practical standpoint, from a pragmatic standpoint,

1:47:09 I completely see your point of view and I agree with it.

1:47:12 However, I'm gonna try to actually save you

1:47:15 a little bit of time.

1:47:17 You need to reckon with the fact

1:47:19 or, you know, work reckon with the idea

1:47:21 that either Jesus died on a cross

1:47:24 and was resurrected the third day, or he didn't.

1:47:27 Everything else hinges on that.

1:47:32 So yeah, you can do all these different deep dives

1:47:34 and studies of all these different things,

1:47:36 but if that is true,

1:47:38 then you really do need to orient your life

1:47:41 around that fact.

1:47:42 And that would be my encouragement to you, Ephraim.

1:47:45 Am I encouragement to anybody listening to this?

1:47:47 That's maybe on the fence.

1:47:48 You need to figure out whether or not

1:47:50 you believe the resurrection actually happened.

1:47:52 There's a lot of literature.

1:47:54 There are a lot of books.

1:47:55 There are a lot of things out there

1:47:56 that talk about the resurrection

1:47:58 and what happened in the first century, you know,

1:48:00 2,000 years ago in the Middle East.

1:48:03 And so the thing that's very, very poignant

1:48:06 in terms of how this point can be made is, you know,

1:48:09 we talked about materialists just a second ago.

1:48:11 If we are all just materialists, right?

1:48:14 So if you're a materialist and I'm not necessarily saying

1:48:16 that you are, but if you think that we're just,

1:48:19 just our material and you're right,

1:48:22 then guess what?

1:48:24 You can look at a guy like me and think,

1:48:25 man, dude, you've wasted so much time,

1:48:28 so much money going to church and being around Christians

1:48:30 and giving the ties and offerings.

1:48:32 You've wasted so much time.

1:48:33 And that would be the only thing I will have lost.

1:48:36 Is that time that I can't get back

1:48:37 and that money that I can't get back?

1:48:39 But to the materialist or to the person

1:48:41 that isn't a follower of Christ,

1:48:42 I would say to you that what you have on the line,

1:48:45 if you're wrong, is everything.

1:48:47 It's eternity.

1:48:48 And so you have to make sure that you have the right answer.

1:48:53 And from my worldview, the right answer is noble.

1:48:57 So I just wanted to give that word to you.

1:48:59 I hope you appreciate that.

1:49:00 - Yeah, and I think one of the ways

1:49:04 that I kind of look at the world too,

1:49:06 and this is a kind of a funny analogy,

1:49:08 is us humans trying to sit around and understand God

1:49:12 and trying to, on a purely objective materialist level,

1:49:16 trying to understand God, is like two cats,

1:49:20 two house cats, trying to sit around

1:49:23 and have a conversation about wifi, right?

1:49:26 I know it sounds completely ridiculous.

1:49:28 And it is, because it's like there is no way

1:49:31 that these cats can understand the concept of wifi.

1:49:34 And so we as humans are trying to understand

1:49:36 the spiritual realm, trying to understand

1:49:39 the fourth dimension, we're trying to understand what,

1:49:41 okay, what are these UFOs?

1:49:43 Like what are their demons?

1:49:45 Are their angels?

1:49:45 Was Jesus raised from the dead?

1:49:47 Was all these different things?

1:49:49 And it's one of those things where it's like,

1:49:51 man, like maybe, you know, I have no idea,

1:49:54 because it's, but it's also,

1:49:56 it's like we are the cats trying to figure out wifi.

1:49:59 They just, they don't have the language

1:50:01 to truly capture it, or the cognitive ability to do it.

1:50:06 Not that humans are, you know, just dumb animals.

1:50:08 But yeah, I totally see where we are coming from,

1:50:12 because if there's no foundation,

1:50:14 if there's no, you know, Christ rising from the dead,

1:50:18 well, then he was just a man and a good man

1:50:20 who said really, really great things.

1:50:22 But then, yeah, that can affect the outcome of the faith

1:50:26 and of course the Christian faith and many other things.

1:50:29 And yeah, so I mean, my answer to that personally is again,

1:50:33 I know it's a cop out answer, but it's like, I don't know.

1:50:36 And I hope it's real.

1:50:37 I really do.

1:50:38 I really hope that Jesus was God.

1:50:41 I really hope that he was raised from the dead,

1:50:44 because man, like what incredible hope that gives humanity,

1:50:47 what incredible hope and good that that does.

1:50:50 But I would also say too, for people who, you know,

1:50:55 maybe don't believe or whatever,

1:50:57 while you may not have the same sort of Christian beliefs

1:51:03 or something like that, you can still,

1:51:07 live a, I don't know, you could still live a very good life.

1:51:12 You can still go out and help other people.

1:51:15 Like one of the guys who was out there in Iraq

1:51:18 who was helping us, one of the guys on the team

1:51:20 who's an atheist, he's like, no, I don't believe in God.

1:51:21 God doesn't exist.

1:51:23 And it was like, he was still this incredibly brave person

1:51:28 who was very, you know, very emotional, very,

1:51:32 like emotional in like empathy.

1:51:35 Like he really cared about the people and all that.

1:51:37 So I guess what I want to say is like if people don't believe

1:51:42 in, you know, maybe Christianity or something like that,

1:51:45 I know that, okay, so growing up, we had a lot of kids

1:51:49 who were like, yeah, I just completely disagree

1:51:51 with Christianity and it's like, I think it's dumb, whatever.

1:51:53 And then they just run off and they use that as an excuse

1:51:56 to go live horrible lives, you know what I mean?

1:51:58 So it's like, you can still maybe be questioning these things.

1:52:01 You can still be trying to learn more about them

1:52:03 and you can still be a good person.

1:52:05 That doesn't mean that you're bad.

1:52:07 It doesn't mean that you're weak or something like that.

1:52:09 It just means that you're thoughtful

1:52:10 and you're trying to understand.

1:52:13 You're trying to understand these difficult concepts.

1:52:15 - Yeah, absolutely.

1:52:15 And I mean, it is a ridiculous example

1:52:17 because it's a ridiculous example.

1:52:19 I mean, but I mean at the end of the day, it's true.

1:52:22 It is true.

1:52:23 But this is the question that I would oppose

1:52:25 to your atheist friend in Iraq.

1:52:26 It would have been, you know, why are you doing what you're doing?

1:52:30 - Right. - Why?

1:52:31 And he would probably say, because it's the right thing to do,

1:52:34 to which point I would respond and say,

1:52:36 okay, so what are you basing your understanding

1:52:39 of good off of?

1:52:41 I mean, 'cause at the end of the day,

1:52:43 the ISIS guy thinks he's doing good.

1:52:45 - Absolutely, yeah.

1:52:46 - The ISIS guy that's cooking babies

1:52:48 and slitting women's throats

1:52:49 and chopping the heads off of children,

1:52:51 like they think they're doing well.

1:52:53 And what's implicit in that question is there is a moral law

1:52:56 somewhere that exists outside of ourself.

1:52:58 And it's not something that we figured out, you know,

1:53:00 in France in the 1700s.

1:53:02 Like that's not where enlightenment actually happened.

1:53:05 You call it that, but that doesn't mean

1:53:06 that we realize we shouldn't be doing those things.

1:53:09 It exists outside of us.

1:53:10 It's something that we can't control

1:53:12 and it's something that we can't define in a way

1:53:14 that is, that even makes sense in terms of the cosmos.

1:53:17 But this really brings up for me as well,

1:53:19 what C.S. Lewis talked about, you know,

1:53:21 it's kind of known as the trilimma.

1:53:22 But Jesus couldn't have just been a good moral teacher.

1:53:25 Like that was not possible.

1:53:27 He didn't give us that option.

1:53:28 He was either a lunatic, a liar, or he's Lord.

1:53:32 I mean, that's it.

1:53:33 That those are our only options.

1:53:35 But you know, before we go off and in go into another hour

1:53:38 of this, because I can have every tangent on the planet,

1:53:41 I just wanted to thank you again

1:53:42 for spending some time on this podcast,

1:53:44 but also just for what you've done

1:53:45 and what you can continue to do.

1:53:46 I mean, the humanitarian thing can be thankless,

1:53:49 but we really are trying to equip men

1:53:51 to push back darkness.

1:53:52 But you're one of those men that is on the ground

1:53:54 actually pushing back darkness in all these crazy places.

1:53:57 But before we let you go, is there anything else

1:53:59 that you want to get off your chest?

1:54:01 No, I just want to say, you know, thank you for having me on.

1:54:04 I don't take this opportunity lightly to talk to you

1:54:08 and talk to your listeners.

1:54:09 It truly is an honor to be able to, you know,

1:54:13 use technology to do these and have these conversations.

1:54:16 And yeah, and I also just want to encourage people to,

1:54:19 you know, if you want to go check out our organization,

1:54:22 Stronghold Rescue, I think you said

1:54:24 you're going to put the link in the show notes.

1:54:25 But also, I want to say this too.

1:54:26 Like if you are already tithing at your church

1:54:30 and you're already giving it a charity

1:54:31 or maybe there's another organization

1:54:33 that you were thinking about giving to,

1:54:34 you know what, like don't give to us.

1:54:35 That's fine, like we're doing okay.

1:54:37 But I would just encourage people to, you know,

1:54:40 get involved in some way, shape or form.

1:54:42 There's a lot of people today are suffering

1:54:45 from a lack of meaning and a lot of that has to do with

1:54:48 not getting yourself involved in a cause.

1:54:50 So whether that's at your local church,

1:54:52 whether that's your local homeless shelter,

1:54:53 whatever it might be, I just encourage people

1:54:55 to find something that they can do.

1:54:58 And yeah, go be a part of it because it'll make your life

1:55:00 a much better, a much better place in the world,

1:55:03 a much better place as well.

1:55:04 - That's a great word to end on, Ephraimatos.

1:55:06 Thanks for coming on Daunted Life, a man's podcast.

1:55:10 - Awesome, thanks brother.

1:55:11 - There you go guys.

1:55:12 I hope you enjoyed my time with Ephraimatos.

1:55:14 I know that it was just a unique opportunity for me.

1:55:17 And I really enjoyed being able to get into that

1:55:19 amount of detail because sometimes you just don't have

1:55:20 enough time with these people.

1:55:22 You're trying to smoosh as many stories and questions

1:55:25 in about 30 or 45 minutes.

1:55:26 And guys, I didn't even talk about five or six

1:55:28 of the things that I wanted to talk about,

1:55:30 just because it's just how the interview went.

1:55:32 And I really like when interviews,

1:55:33 like I kind of plan it out, but then it goes its own way.

1:55:35 So I like when it kind of gets a mind of its own

1:55:37 and goes that direction.

1:55:38 So I really enjoyed that.

1:55:39 But before we let you guys go,

1:55:40 we are gonna do a quick resilience boost at on Daunted Life.

1:55:43 Our mission is equipping men to push back darkness.

1:55:46 And specifically we do that by providing you content

1:55:48 like this podcast that helps you forge spiritual,

1:55:51 mental and physical resilience.

1:55:52 So the notes I got for you today,

1:55:54 the links I got for you.

1:55:55 We've got the link to the stronghold rescue

1:55:56 and relief website.

1:55:57 So if you want to become a donator,

1:55:59 you want to support them, you can go to their website,

1:56:01 do that and also check out some of the stuff

1:56:02 that they're doing.

1:56:03 I also got a link to the book that I quoted

1:56:04 from several times in this interview.

1:56:06 It's called City of Death,

1:56:07 Humanitarian Warriors in the Battle of Mosul.

1:56:10 And then I've got a couple of YouTube videos.

1:56:11 Well, one's YouTube, one's Vimeo.

1:56:13 One is of basically, it's this crazy situation

1:56:16 where they're clearing a house where ISIS was

1:56:18 and it's actually a helmet camera video

1:56:20 that Ephraim was wearing as they were kind of doing this.

1:56:22 It's nuts. And then we've also got the Mosul rescue.

1:56:24 So the one where we were talking about where he got shot,

1:56:27 but also where Dave, the other guy that was in his group

1:56:29 ran and kind of saved that girl

1:56:31 whenever he was putting down suppress a fire.

1:56:32 That's the one that went viral, you know,

1:56:34 a couple of years ago.

1:56:35 I've got that in there for you as well.

1:56:36 All right guys, thanks so much for listening to this.

1:56:38 We really do appreciate it.

1:56:39 Whether you're listening to this,

1:56:40 wherever you're listening to this rather,

1:56:42 please subscribe, rate and review.

1:56:43 If you want me to come speak live at your event

1:56:45 or on your podcast, make sure you just email me

1:56:47 at info@undonton.life.

1:56:50 That's just I-N-F-O @undonton.life.

1:56:53 Follow us on Instagram and TikTok

1:56:54 and like us on Facebook.

1:56:56 You can check out our website for everything else,

1:56:57 including how to donate to keep more content

1:56:59 like this coming.

1:57:00 Just go to www.undonton.life.

1:57:03 And again, we want to thank the band,

1:57:04 August Burns Red for allowing us to use their music

1:57:06 for our content.

1:57:07 The Inter-Apto track on this podcast

1:57:09 is their new recording of the song "Cutting the Ties,"

1:57:11 which is author 10th anniversary

1:57:13 re-recording of the album "Leveler."

1:57:14 The links to all of this are in the description.

1:57:17 I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.

1:57:19 Remember, keep pushing back darkness,

1:57:22 keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience,

1:57:25 keep seeking the lion of Judah.

1:57:28 ♪ I know I'm dying ♪

1:57:31 ♪ There's a heart inside ♪

1:57:33 ♪ I know you want ♪

1:57:35 ♪ It's a side ♪

1:57:37 ♪ It's a place that ♪

1:57:39 ♪ It's a place to ♪

1:57:42 ♪ You will be revived ♪

1:57:49 (dramatic music)