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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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This is Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
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I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
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Let's get into it.
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All right, guys, we got a special guest on the podcast today.
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His name is Gabe Wrench.
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He is the co-founder of the Fight Laugh Feast Network,
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and you may know him as one of the co-hosts of the show
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Cross-Politik.
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But today on this show, we talk a lot about what
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happened to him in September of 2020,
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because he was arrested for singing
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Psalms and hymns outside of City Hall in Moscow, Idaho.
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And he and other members of his church
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did this in protest of the unconstitutional COVID
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mask mandates that were happening at that time.
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So we go in the way back machine to when all that was going down.
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Because again, guys, we shouldn't just forget what happened in 2020.
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But we don't just talk about that.
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We talk about, really, how Christians
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can be pushing back against darkness that is happening
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in their governments.
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We talk about masculinity inside the church.
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We talk about what churches should
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be doing to focus on masculinity.
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We talk about basically the ways that entrepreneurs
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and business people and educators,
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the way that they can almost build out their own ecosystems
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to have a place to fight from.
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Because a lot of conservatives are in the fight now.
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But maybe they don't have a home base,
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and they certainly don't have a place where
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they can volley their own attacks.
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So we weaved in and out of a lot of really great topics today.
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But I really, really enjoyed myself.
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So without further ado, let's get into it.
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Gabe Rinsch, welcome to "The Dons of Life" a man's podcast.
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Hey, thank you for having me, Kyle.
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I'm so excited to have you here.
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It's cool because a lot of the stuff that you do
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is a lot of stuff that we do here on "The Dons of Life."
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So covering faith, culture, and politics.
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But we'll get into all that.
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We need to kind of start basically.
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We need a soft place to land.
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So you're a Christian, and that's a big deal,
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I would assume, for you and your background.
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But kind of take us through, because that's off air.
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I kind of gave you my 30,000 foot view story
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of how I became a Christian.
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So for you, how did you become a follower of Christ?
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And then we'll just kind of build from there.
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Yeah, that's great.
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I grew up in Texas, and it sounds like talking
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to you offline before we came on the show,
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that similar situation.
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In Texas, everyone's a Christian.
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It's that Southern Christian culture,
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that Southern Christianity, which comes with a blessing.
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But at the same time, there's this cultural Christianity
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that can really make you look warm.
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And so that's kind of where my Christianity was kind of baking
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in that lukewarm cake.
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And God was kind.
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I grew up in a Christian family.
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I've always known Jesus.
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I never had a wild conversion story.
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But one of the things that was really helpful in my walk
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with the Lord is my dad got a job.
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He worked at Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas,
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and then got a job at Hyundai semiconductors
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in Eugene, Oregon in '97.
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And so I moved with the family up to Oregon.
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And so I went from Texas, where everyone's a Christian,
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to Oregon, where no one's a Christian.
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Eugene, Oregon, is known for its atheism, basically,
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or its lack of Christianity, that whole high-five corridor,
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all the way up to Portland, Seattle, and everything.
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And so that was kind of the--
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God really used Oregon to kind of wake up my faith.
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And I remember in '97, that was the first time
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I really started reading the Bible and praying,
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like I wanted a deeper relationship with God,
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and I wanted to know more about him.
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Because I was challenged in my faith.
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I was surrounded by more of a godless culture
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than a Christian culture.
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And God really used that in my life
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to kind of wake up my faith and everything.
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So God's been kind, not a perfect child at all.
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Definitely have a lot of repentance in my life.
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But I never went through a big backsliding moment in my life,
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so.
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OK, so denominationally, where would you
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say that you've landed now for everybody?
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And then I have questions from there.
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But don't worry, it's not going to be a big theological debate
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today.
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No, but I'll take the theological debate.
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I know, I know.
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I grew up-- so I was born in--
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my dad was-- by the time he had kids,
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he was basically reform, Presbyterian, John Calvin,
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Theonomic, Rush Doonie, Bondson kind of influences
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in his life.
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Now him and my mom were--
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I mean, my mom grew up Catholic, my dad grew up Baptist.
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But it was, again, that kind of Baptist Christianity,
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where it's more cultural than heartfelt.
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And my dad became a Christian when I think he's like 21,
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22, something like that led my mom to the Lord.
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It was really easy for my mom to go from Catholicism
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to the gospel, because of all the guilt that kind of was
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bound up in Catholicism.
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And when she heard, oh, we were saved by grace,
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it was really easy for my mom.
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And dad became a Christian, 21, 22.
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And so that's kind of the--
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and then through that, he started tutoring.
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He was living in California.
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He found Greg Bondson there, Rush Doonie there.
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And he worked at a good Christian bookstore, where
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he was able to get ahold of actually some really good
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Christian books.
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And that really had a big influence on his life.
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And so I basically grew up in a kind of reform, Presbyterian
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household, Westminster Confession, that kind of stuff.
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OK, so let's talk a little bit more about that,
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because, again, like I told you off here,
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I didn't grow up in church.
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And so I started going to 1st Baptist West in law in Oklahoma,
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because it was like the closest church to us.
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It's where my friends went.
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It's where the cute girls went.
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But as I've gotten older, and with Twitter being a thing,
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these interdenominational fights, which we've always had.
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So that's not like a new thing, because Twitter's a thing.
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But I feel like it causes a lot of non-Christians to be like,
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look, they can't even get their own house in order.
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But specifically, with Catholicism and Protestantism,
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and perhaps you could even bring Orthodox in here,
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there are people that I listen to and respect and like for the most
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part, like John MacArthur, who say, yeah, all Catholics are going to hell.
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And I'm just like, you know, that just kind of takes my breath away,
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because it's a tough pill to swallow.
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But I guess talk to me a little bit about that,
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because a lot of your reform, Presbyterian types,
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like those are the guys that are throwing their IPAs at people
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as they're waxing their mustaches.
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And they can be really aggressive with everything.
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But tell me a little bit about that, because I like it to a degree,
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because I like fighting, but then to another degree,
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it's like, are we really getting anywhere?
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Yeah, I think several issues are brought up in that question.
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One of the reasons-- so I host a show called crosspolitik.com,
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Jesus's Lord over politics.
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And our tagline is fight, laugh, feast.
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And we really like that tagline, because we think it kind of embodies
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where the church needs to be at.
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We need to fight well together.
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We need to feast well together, and we need to laugh together.
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The joy of the Lord is our strength, feasting.
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God prepares a table in the presence of our enemies
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and fighting.
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We need to iron sharpens iron.
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And that fighting not only needs to happen with the darkness out there,
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but that fighting also needs to happen within the church.
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We need to sharpen each other's iron, and we need to grow.
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One of the things that had happened over the last--
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so I'm 43 years old, 44 years old.
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And I never really experienced kind of a good fight and debate
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within the church very well.
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Not that discussions were happening or debates were happening.
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But man, kind of the really robust disagreement conversations.
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Why do you baptize your babies?
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Why do you believe in believers' baptism?
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Are you post-mill, pre-mill?
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Those debates needed to happen, I think, in a more robust way.
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And so that's how the church grows.
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That's how we become unified, even if we don't even necessarily
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come to agreement on some of the post-mill, pre-mill kind of thing.
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But at least friendly fences make good neighbors.
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And to be able to talk about those issues well,
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and then be able to buy each other a beer afterwards,
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is really important.
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The-- I mean, that's a lost art within the church,
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and we really need to grow in that area.
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And I think, especially as men, we
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need to learn to fight well together.
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We need to learn to buy each other beers after the fight.
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We need to learn to spar with each other.
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And that-- I'd say some of the biggest
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helps in my walk with the Lord were those kind of challenges.
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And even now, I'm fully convinced on certain theological
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issues, like in the Presbyterian world,
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we baptized babies.
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I'm fully convinced that that's the way to go.
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But even when I get into debates with my Baptist brothers
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on it, it's really helpful to me.
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It helps me better defend what I believe the Bible teaches.
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It challenges me.
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If a Baptist brother brings up a good point,
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I need to think through it.
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I don't just disregard his good point.
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So even the fight internally is really good.
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Now related to the Catholicism question,
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I think-- so Baptists don't really
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have a view of the visible church.
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Presbyterians have this theological distinction
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between the invisible church and the visible church.
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And so we, in that category of visible church,
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we would include the Roman Catholics.
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And so we'd say, as part of the visible church,
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the Roman Catholics are Christians.
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And so we're kind of using that as a noun,
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as a kind of big sea Christian universal church kind of thing.
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Now that doesn't mean Roman Catholics
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are dealing with some serious idolatry within their practice
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and believe in faith and works in a confused way.
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In the same way, Israel had idolatry in their midst.
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And they were still considered God's people.
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So we don't just regard a section of the church
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because they got some major issues.
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We don't call them non-Christian.
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I call them Christians.
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And Lord willing someday, there'll
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be ecumenical counsel in the church that will really
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deal with the Roman Catholic idolatry and problems.
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But I don't self-excommunicate.
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The church excommunicates.
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I don't self-excommunicate people who
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call themselves Christians.
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The church should do that.
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And so I think that there's a big distinction there
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in how Baptists view the Roman Catholics
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because what they say is there's only the invisible church.
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Only those who are truly saved are part of the church.
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Whereas Presbyterians say, well, we're
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part of the covenant people of God unless we've
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been excommunicated out of the church.
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And so that's how we'd handle Presbyterians, Baptists, Catholics,
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that kind of thing.
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They're all part of the people of God if that makes sense,
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unless they've been excommunicated.
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No, I set you up poorly with a question
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that had about 17 different directions you could go.
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But you weaved right through it.
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Congratulations.
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But for me, growing up, or not growing up, growing up nothing,
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going to a Baptist church, then going
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to a huge non-denominational church for over 10 years.
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And now I'm at a Bible church that
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was small when I got there.
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That's expanded.
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And I'm sitting under expository preaching every week.
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It's not as exciting.
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But it's like, OK, well, I'm at a healthy church, which
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is a lot better than what most people can say.
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But I guess, which earlier, you kind of
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gave a subtle commercial for doing jiu-jitsu,
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because men don't know how to spar, because we don't spar.
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And so men that have never been punched in the face,
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men that have never been tried to be choked by a friend,
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and then slap up, and they can laugh about it later,
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we carry that aggression into our conversations with friends.
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And when we get too fired up, and then we
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don't have a place for that outlet, for that energy.
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But I guess the sparring is there are certain people
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gave that they will create a salvific issue out
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of something that is not salvific.
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So your stance on older versus young Earth, that is a no.
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We can't move past go until we figure this one thing out.
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Or whether or not we baptize babies,
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or whether or not we do this, or whether or not
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we do that, whether or not baptism is even essential.
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My wife grew up small-town church or Christ.
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If you are not baptized, you cannot go to heaven.
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It's a different-- if you go to a worship
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service that has an instrument, that's sacrilegious in a way.
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And so talk to me a little bit about healthy sparring,
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because I feel like a lot of people
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they get really fired up and they can't draw the line on,
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hey, this is not a salvation issue.
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In heaven, we're going to clink our glasses together
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and say, oh, Gabe was right.
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Or, oh, Kyle was right.
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We don't need to fight like it's a life or death issue now.
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Yeah, well, I mean, Proverbs has a number
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versus talking about this.
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But the one that's probably most known is iron, sharpens iron.
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And when brothers come together to disagree,
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to debate, to fight, one of the goals of that
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is to sharpen each other in their ability to defend scripture
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and their ability to grow in good and sound doctrine.
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I mean, Paul told Titus, like, you
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know, you need to be growing in sound doctrine.
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You need to be teaching sound doctrine.
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You need to get-- and one of the ways to do that
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is sparring with each other.
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We've grown up in such this kind of effeminate church
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culture where what happens is, is if you disagree in the church
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or disagree with the elders or have
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a disagreement with your community or whatever,
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you're considered divisive.
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And I can't tell you how many people have told me, well,
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I brought up something in my church
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and their response, the leadership's response,
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was I was being divisive.
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And of course, all this can be done in such a way
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where you actually could be being divisive.
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Paul addresses that also in his epistles.
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But just for the mere fact of debating,
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the mere fact of disagreeing, we should not
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be immediately defaulting to some sort of divisive category
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for this person.
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It's really healthy for the church
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to constantly be challenging each other
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on growing in the Lord.
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That's what good brotherhood does.
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You are not loving your brother if you are not challenging him.
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You are not loving your brother if you guys are not
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trying to actively grow in the Lord.
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You are not loving your brother if you're just
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being kind of a passive friend.
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That's just not what friendship should look
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like according to the scripture.
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So we should be striving for a healthy environment
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of where open debate is acceptable and good and healthy.
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And that bleeds down into the family, too.
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I mean, I talk with my kids all the time
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about difficult issues.
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And my kids ask me questions.
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I was talking about the sovereignty of God
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to my children two nights ago, I think it was.
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And that's a tough topic, especially for the younger kids,
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where they're trying to reconcile, OK, how's God sovereign
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and how does sin happen in this world?
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How does sovereign God let that happen?
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Well, we had great discussions, and my daughters
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asked me a lot of questions, and that kind of healthy
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conversation and communication and debate
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within the churches.
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This has been such a big fault in our last 40 years.
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The Baptist haven't debated, refused to debate the Presbyterians.
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The Presbyterians refused to debate the Baptist.
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The evangelicals refused to have conversations
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with the Baptist, whatever Presbyterians, whatever
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reform Baptists, non-reform Baptists.
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All those conversations need to be happening in our church.
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And I think the church would be much healthier
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if we were fostering that kind of culture in the church.
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One gave you mentioned iron sharpening iron,
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what people neglect to realize, if they've never actually
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sharpened something before, is when the iron hits the iron,
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sparks fly, sometimes fires are created.
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It's loud.
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It's disruptive.
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It's not like two bottles of lotion hitting one another.
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It's a rough experience.
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But you hit on something there that I
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wanted to talk about a little bit later,
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but we'll go ahead and hit it now.
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Just the state of manhood or masculinity inside the church.
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I have a lot of theories as to why that is.
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I think the Industrial Revolution had a lot to do with it,
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because these men that were in the churches and in the homes
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were now also underground and working these long crazy hours
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to support their families.
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The World Wars took all the virals, strong young men away
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to some foreign battlefield for years.
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And some of them never even came back.
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And if they did come back, they were shell-shocked.
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And basically, these feminine pastors
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were in front of these congregations filled of women
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and children in the elderly.
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And the songs started to become more effeminate.
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The sermons became more about how you could believe in yourself.
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And let's talk about lamb Jesus instead of lion, of Judah, Jesus.
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But what is your overall take on the state of masculinity
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within the greater capital C church?
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And then specifically, how can we on a micro level?
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And I know it's taking me a while to set this up.
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But I get asked about men's ministry all the time, Gabe.
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And finally, I just started telling these people
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from churches that reach out to me.
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Don't try to start a men's ministry.
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And they're like, wait, that's like opposite of what you say to do.
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No, no.
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I said, start with making your church man friendly.
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From the sermon content to the key that the songs are saying in.
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Because if your church is a blinking neon sign saying,
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you're not welcome here, then men will go somewhere else
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and do something else on Sunday morning.
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So they won't catechize their children.
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They won't do any of these types of things.
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So I know I set up a lot there.
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But take that question wherever you want to go with it.
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Yeah, maybe let's go back 200 years or 150, 200 years.
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I think the church and the leadership of the church
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are supposed to exemplify what it means to be a man,
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and what it means to be a leader in the church.
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I mean, God explicitly delegated men to be the leaders in the church,
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to be the pastor, to be the elders, and to be the deacons in the church.
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But I got a number of questions.
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I'd love to go back in time to the 1860s.
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And one of the questions I want answered--
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I don't have a good answer for it-- is where
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was the church's teaching on the Civil War?
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Where was the prophetic voice from pastors about slavery?
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Where was the prophetic voice about some of the cultural sins of the time?
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Were pastors teaching on how to go to war?
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How to not to go to war?
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How to deal with slavery, biblically?
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How not to-- I can't find much teaching on it.
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I can find a little bit from, let's say, R.L. Dabney maybe addressed a little bit,
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but he had some issues there, too.
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There's just-- no one really sticks out in my mind
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about what was the pastor's prophetic voice then.
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So I think kind of the effeminization of the church
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started a long time ago.
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And I think part related to this is the church has never really talked
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and defined masculinity well and femininity well.
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And so there's actually some definitional teaching
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that needs to happen here.
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When we talk about effeminization, we talk about--
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the word effeminate is talking about men using women's traits
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in their dealings and their characteristics in their life.
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Women's traits are great for femininity, for women.
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Men kind of borrowing women's traits, femininity--
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femininity is counter to God's created order
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and who God has created men to be.
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And so what has happened over time is we've--
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so let me just-- so much here, but let me define masculinity.
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My pastor's got a great definition of this.
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It's the glad assumption of sacrifice and responsibility.
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That's masculinity.
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You're gladly taking on the willingness
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to be responsible for the things that God has called you
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to be responsible for, and you're willing to sacrifice
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for the things that God has called you to be responsible for.
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So for example, I mean, that definition is very broad,
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but it kind of flows out into examples
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like I'm the husband of my family, I'm the husband of my wife,
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I'm the father of my family, I'm the responsible for the state
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and spiritual condition of my family.
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And I need to be responsible for that all the way down
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to being able to willing to sacrifice my life for my family.
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So in the same way of CEO is CEO of a company,
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he needs to be responsible for being CEO.
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If he's president or governor of your state,
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he needs to be responsible for the condition of a state.
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And it's kind of-- it's like that covenant representative
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responsibility, if that makes sense.
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So a woman is not the head of her family, Ephesians 5.
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The man is the head of the family.
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And so there's all sorts of masculine responsibility
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that flows down from that.
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And so the church hasn't really defined masculinity.
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And if you ask the church, or if you ask someone in your church,
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OK, what's a good definition of masculinity?
20:23
You might talk about, you know, brute strength or sacrifice
20:27
or servant leadership, stuff like that.
20:29
But it's like, it's like one of the central aspects
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of masculinity, according to the Bible,
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according what God has described to men,
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is actually responsibility.
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To be masculine is to take responsibility for everything
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that God has put under your authority.
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And so the church hasn't defined these things very well.
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So what's happened over, you know, 150 years,
20:46
is we've actually created churches that are tailoring
20:54
their worship to women, to a more feminine kind
20:57
of style of worship.
20:59
And so you're going to lose men through that whole process.
21:03
So how we've-- so the masculine-- the leadership
21:05
is not masculine in the church.
21:07
The leadership wants to talk about your heart
21:09
and your feelings, which is more geared towards women.
21:11
The worship services geared more towards women.
21:14
So we've created this culture of where in the church,
21:20
it's been built around kind of the more effeminate side
21:24
of catering to the culture.
21:26
And that's what, I think, created--
21:28
it's had disastrous effects.
21:29
Instead of the church coming in and declaring God's word
21:34
in its unadulterated truth and structuring worship,
21:38
according to God's word, instead of turning the lights off,
21:40
instead of bringing in smoke machines and all this stuff,
21:45
we actually need to be declaring God's word in a way
21:47
that's actually very masculine, very truthful, very--
21:50
and then from that flows out the rest of kind of the culture
21:53
of how things should be structured and built around it.
21:55
So there's more-- there's other directions we go,
21:58
but I'll stop right there.
22:00
Well, certainly there's more directions where you can go.
22:02
But the overall reality is that masculinity
22:06
is not taught in the church.
22:08
Headship is not taught in the church.
22:10
Most men are more than willing in modernity
22:12
to acquiesce to the dictates of their wife and to take--
22:16
I just today, like I was at the barber.
22:18
And he was kind of talking about how
22:20
he kind of parented his young child.
22:23
He got stern with his young child and his wife
22:25
in front of the child was like, hey, why would you do that?
22:28
That's kind of scary.
22:28
That's kind of angry.
22:29
And I said, look, your wife cannot parent you
22:31
like that in front of your children.
22:33
Because what a lot of men will do is they'll deal with that,
22:36
maybe a couple of dozen times.
22:37
And then finally, they'll be like, you know what, screw it.
22:39
You can be their parent.
22:41
Like, you can be the solo parent.
22:42
I'll be over here getting ready for my next fancy football
22:44
draft.
22:45
I'll be over here watching porn and jerking off.
22:47
I'll be over here getting ready to go to the driving range.
22:49
And that's the big difference for a lot of men
22:51
is they just throw their hands up and say, fine,
22:53
the culture doesn't want me fine.
22:55
I'll disengage from culture.
22:56
The family doesn't want me fine.
22:57
I'll disengage.
22:58
The church doesn't want me fine.
22:59
I'll disengage.
23:00
But I think the downstream consequence of that gave
23:03
is we see a complete lack of boldness
23:05
in the face of the predations of a dark and satanic worldview
23:10
that comes from the pride agenda, the LGBTQ pride thing,
23:15
everything that comes downstream of critical theory,
23:17
whether that's critical legal studies,
23:19
critical race theory, things, and that sort.
23:21
And then back in 2020, whenever you
23:23
had the predations of a totalitarianesque government
23:27
trying to force things down on a populace
23:29
and make them do it based on literally nothing, which
23:32
is probably a good way for us to go to September 23rd of 2020.
23:37
And we'll talk about your arrest--
23:39
with so spoiler alert, guys, Gabe got arrested.
23:41
But we'll talk about your arrest in the aftermath here
23:43
in a bit.
23:44
But go ahead and take us back to the way back machine.
23:47
Give us an idea of what was happening
23:50
on the ground in Moscow, Idaho, before this incident
23:54
on September the 23rd of 2020.
23:57
Yeah, I mean, I don't think anybody should forget
24:00
what happened in 2020.
24:01
The government shut down your churches.
24:04
Well, pot shops were open.
24:05
The government shut down your churches.
24:07
Well, strip clubs were open.
24:10
And when COVID happened, I was living in Moscow, Idaho.
24:14
I remember March 2020, our mayor--
24:18
so I'm in Idaho, which is--
24:21
I'm in Moscow, Idaho, excuse me, which
24:22
is a blue dot in a red sea.
24:24
State of Idaho is overwhelmingly conservative
24:26
during the Republican.
24:27
But my town, it's a college town, about 20,000 people.
24:29
And it's run by a literal cult, basically.
24:32
I mean, that's not a pejorative.
24:35
I think it's actually pretty accurately describing
24:37
what's going on here.
24:38
Our mayor, I think, is like March 20th or March 25th,
24:43
something like that.
24:44
In 2020, shut down the businesses in downtown
24:47
and use the threat of the force of the police
24:49
to keep everything shut down.
24:51
Without-- there was no cases of COVID in town at all.
24:56
So even before there was one case of COVID,
24:58
our mayor freaked out and shut down downtown.
25:01
While literally that same next couple weeks,
25:04
he would go out and play golf five miles outside of town
25:07
and drink beer with his buddies, where the edict didn't apply,
25:11
just in sanity.
25:12
And so I actually inadvertently--
25:16
March 11th, I signed up to run for county commissioner
25:19
because our county had raised taxes four years in a row.
25:23
I tried for six months to try to find someone
25:25
to run for county commissioner in no one would.
25:27
So I was just like, all right, I'll run.
25:29
And so that was before the shutdown.
25:30
That was before COVID was really a thing that was in March,
25:33
early March.
25:34
And then when our mayor shut everything down,
25:37
all of a sudden I became the anti-shutdown candidate.
25:40
And then so I was at odds with our city,
25:45
even though I was a county candidate.
25:46
I was at odds with our city.
25:48
From the jump, I let open up business rallies.
25:50
I kind of became this political figure
25:53
against the shutdown.
25:54
And then in addition to all this, our church,
25:57
the way we protest in our town is when the city does something,
26:01
when our liberal cult does something crazy.
26:03
We just go sing songs and spiritual songs and hymns
26:07
and downtown for 20 minutes and then we leave.
26:10
We aren't bringing Molotov cocktails to the protest.
26:12
We aren't staying there for three hours for the protest.
26:15
We just make a point.
26:16
We go sing songs for 20 minutes and leave.
26:18
Well, the shutdown went through various phases.
26:22
The governor was involved in our shutdown also in Idaho.
26:25
And July 2nd, our city council passed this resolution
26:29
where if you were standing outside,
26:31
you had to wear a mask if you couldn't stand six feet apart
26:33
from each other.
26:34
Just a outdoor, crazy emergency health resolution
26:39
where you either had to wear a mask or stand six feet apart.
26:42
And so the police would walk with clipboards up in downtown,
26:44
making sure everyone was staying at six feet apart
26:45
or wearing a mask.
26:47
And my community didn't really do participate in that.
26:50
And we'd go sing songs and protest the mandate,
26:54
not stand six feet apart, not wear a mask in downtown.
26:57
The city council kept renewing this resolution.
27:00
Every 30 days they'd renew it.
27:02
On March 23rd, this gets us to March 23rd,
27:04
so they've been doing that all summer.
27:06
March 23rd, actually 21st, the city council renewed
27:10
that health emergency order to January 5th.
27:13
So they got passed the 30 day thing.
27:15
They said, let's just bring this order out four months.
27:19
And so my pastors were like, well, let's go protest.
27:22
Let's go sing songs.
27:23
And this time let's go to city hall parking lot on Wednesday.
27:26
So two days Monday, the resolution was passed.
27:29
And then on Wednesday, we went to city hall parking lot
27:33
to protest and sing songs.
27:35
And when we got there, this is like 5 p.m.
27:37
after everyone's kind of done with work,
27:39
we got there at 5 p.m. on September 23rd.
27:42
And the city mayor and the city supervisor
27:47
had paid city staff to clear the parking lot
27:50
and to spray paint circles six feet apart
27:53
so they could objectively say, oh,
27:55
they weren't social distancing.
27:57
Setting us up and all that stuff.
27:58
I remember walking up in the parking lot.
28:00
There's about a couple hundred of us
28:01
walking into the parking lot to sing.
28:03
And looking at all these polka dots,
28:05
it looked like some polka dot game
28:06
was happening or something.
28:08
That's what it looked like to me.
28:08
And I realized, I was like, oh, those circles are for us
28:11
to stand on so they could be objectively six feet apart.
28:14
And the cops are lined up against the city hall parking lot.
28:18
Like we're going to run city hall
28:20
or throw Molotov cocktails at city hall.
28:23
It was just insanity.
28:24
So we started singing songs and they came up to,
28:29
the cops immediately approached my mom
28:31
because they had to approach a woman first
28:33
because they're cowards.
28:34
And they asked, are you with this man?
28:37
And my mom said, this is my son.
28:39
And so you know how COVID works?
28:42
Like family doesn't pass COVID.
28:44
And so we were legal for some reason.
28:47
I don't know, I still don't know why that was the case
28:49
but we were legal.
28:50
Me and my mom stand next to each other.
28:52
And then I put my arm around my buddy Tyler
28:54
and I said, this is my friend Tyler.
28:56
And officer, Chris Sal, the officer that arrested me,
29:00
he said, give me your license.
29:01
I said, no, I'm exercising my first of memory rights
29:04
which is an oath you swore.
29:05
You swore to defend my first of memory rights
29:08
against the mayor.
29:10
And he asked for my license again.
29:12
And I said, officer, you know you're wrong.
29:13
You swore an oath to defend me.
29:15
He asked my license again.
29:16
I said, I'm not giving it.
29:17
And then one more time, I think it was four times
29:19
he asked for my license.
29:19
And of course he went talk to me.
29:21
You know, he logically couldn't process his oath
29:25
and what the mayor wanted him to do.
29:27
And so he arrested me, he had to take my him book away.
29:31
Like I remember, like that was the most eerie moment.
29:35
Like when he was taking my him book out of my hands
29:38
to handcuff me.
29:39
So I got handcuffed and then I went to jail that night.
29:44
I was there for about three or four hours.
29:45
And one other couple was arrested along with me,
29:47
Rachel and Sean Bonet.
29:49
And so we got out three or four hours later
29:53
and my producer or show and a host with me.
29:57
He said, we got to go live right now.
29:59
And so I walked to the studio.
30:00
As soon as I got out of jail that night,
30:01
I walked to the studio and we did a show live about my arrest
30:05
and what happened, that show went everywhere.
30:07
President Trump ended up retweeting my arrest.
30:09
I mean, it just blew up all over media.
30:11
And it was shocking.
30:13
I mean, like you Google, Google my name and the arrest
30:15
and you'll watch the video and you'll see all these people
30:17
singing, raising their hands, worshiping.
30:20
And we embodied the first amendment there.
30:22
It was really interesting because we're singing
30:24
and worshiping.
30:25
We're petitioning our government, which
30:27
is in the first amendment, right?
30:28
We're gathering and assembling, which is--
30:30
so the whole first amendment, we are exercising.
30:32
And the cops and the city violated
30:34
our first amendment rights and the name
30:36
of their emergency health orders.
30:39
I won the criminal complaint against me.
30:41
And then just this week, I signed the final negotiation.
30:44
We won a three year lawsuit against the city
30:46
for violating our first amendment rights.
30:48
And it's been a national story on and off for the last three
30:52
years, and it's also setting a lot of precedent, I think,
30:55
for how cities are not allowed to take your way
30:58
to first amendment rights during COVID.
31:00
So it's actually a really important case,
31:01
I think nationally, for what's going on and everything.
31:03
So that's kind of the gist of the story.
31:05
But I was a-- I served as a deacon in my church.
31:08
I was a political figure.
31:10
And then, of course, in my city, and then, of course,
31:13
my work on cross-polic, just--
31:16
so I felt like as a deacon, as a man of my family,
31:20
and as a political leader, I needed
31:22
to be standing up for my city and taking responsibility
31:26
for the lanes that God had given me in those moments.
31:29
And it had a very huge impact on the city.
31:33
The city never forced their health emergency order
31:35
again from that point on, even though it's still
31:38
live till January 5th.
31:40
And it had a huge impact.
31:41
I think, you know, John MacArthur and his church
31:44
were fantastic during the pandemic.
31:46
They waffled a little bit at the beginning.
31:50
But then they repented, which is a very masculine thing
31:53
to be doing, taking responsibility of your own sin.
31:55
And John MacArthur-- and so I think what happened with me
31:58
and John MacArthur had a huge impact
31:59
on some of the kind of national stances of what
32:04
was going on during COVID in 2020.
32:06
I appreciate you getting into all that detail.
32:08
I do want to actually camp out a little bit more
32:11
on the legal side of things, the legal fight,
32:14
because I did see the recent headlines about how
32:17
it had been settled and the numbers had been thrown out
32:19
there and, you know, whatever.
32:20
But talk to me a little bit more about that.
32:22
And I guess let's take it from almost like a playbook
32:24
perspective, because a lot of people
32:26
don't have a show with a wide audience.
32:28
A lot of people don't have political aspirations.
32:30
You've got people that are just trying to get to and from work
32:32
without dying, trying to keep it to where their family can live
32:35
indoors and eat food.
32:37
And so I'm going to fight like this comes to them.
32:41
When it seems like the government is pressing on them
32:43
individually, or when it seems like their job is pressing
32:46
on them, like, hey, you have to put your pronouns
32:48
in your email bio, like those types of things.
32:51
Most people are like, well, who am I?
32:52
I'm not Ben Shapiro.
32:54
I'm not Dennis Baker.
32:54
I can't push back on this.
32:56
So get a little bit more into legal fight,
32:58
because you didn't have to sue.
33:00
It made sense that you did.
33:01
But you didn't even have to go through all that.
33:03
You could have just thrown up your hands and been like,
33:05
well, they let me out.
33:06
So I guess all as well.
33:07
- Yeah, part of it was, you know, how Paul appealed
33:12
to his government options.
33:15
You know, I appealed to Caesar for my case.
33:19
In the same way, I think the citizens,
33:21
we have, you know, legal remedies, legal appeal process.
33:25
That's biblical and that's allowable.
33:26
And I think Christians should do that.
33:29
Especially when a city violates the Constitution,
33:33
I think you need to do the best you can
33:35
to appeal through the process, to bring the city
33:38
to at least admit its fault.
33:41
And of course, you would love to see repentance.
33:43
I think it's very important.
33:44
A lot of Christians were taught to be,
33:49
you know, the 11th commandment, were taught to be nice.
33:52
And that's being nice is not what we're called to.
33:56
We're called to love and love is not always nice.
34:00
Love is truthful.
34:01
Now love is kind also, but love is not nice
34:04
in this American, you know, bland sense.
34:08
And so we're called to love.
34:10
And I think one of the ways we're called to love
34:11
is we're supposed to challenge when people are wrong,
34:13
we're supposed to call people out on the floor
34:15
when they're wrong.
34:16
And so that was my, when I run my criminal complaint
34:18
against me, I turned around and sued.
34:21
But before I sued, I didn't want to sue my cops.
34:25
I wanted to sue the city.
34:27
The cops were submitting to the city and they shouldn't have.
34:31
They disobeyed and violated their oath.
34:33
But I didn't want to sue the cops,
34:35
but they ended up, I ended up including them in my lawsuit
34:37
because I met with our chief of police
34:39
and my resting officer after my criminal complaint,
34:43
after I won my criminal complaint.
34:44
And my resting officer said, you know,
34:46
if I had to do this all over again,
34:49
I would do it the same way.
34:50
That's what my resting officer said.
34:52
I remember walking out of that meeting with him
34:56
and calling my wife and saying, hey, babe,
34:59
we, I think I need to sue my police force
35:02
because they weren't being challenged.
35:04
They weren't learning.
35:05
They still thought what they did was right.
35:07
And so the three year lawsuit was a pain.
35:10
Thomas Moore Society took care of me.
35:13
They backed me into all this whole process.
35:16
So there's a lot of help there.
35:18
But I think, so there's, I think I forget what,
35:23
which book and which chapter in first Kings.
35:28
I think it's in first Kings or second Kings
35:30
where I think it's actually in second Kings.
35:32
First, in the first Kings, I think is where it is.
35:35
The prophet hands the king a stick and says,
35:38
strike the ground and this is how God will,
35:41
you know, how God will defeat your enemies.
35:44
Strike the ground and so the king struck the ground
35:46
three times and then the prophet takes the stick back.
35:49
I think and he says, you fool,
35:51
you only struck the ground three times.
35:52
You need to strike the ground.
35:53
You should have struck the ground as many times as it took
35:56
and God would deliver to you from all your enemies.
35:59
And I think that's part of what Christians have,
36:02
a part of our problem is we do strategic blunders
36:05
where we don't know the art of pursuing.
36:09
When we get a victory, we don't know how to pursue
36:12
to the full extent of the victory.
36:14
And so that was kind of one of the principles
36:15
that was driving me here is like, okay, we got a victory.
36:18
I won my criminal complaint.
36:20
My arrest went national.
36:22
My arrest kind of embarrassed my city and what they did.
36:25
But I need to pursue this further with the city.
36:29
I need to strike the ground harder
36:30
because I need to pursue victory further.
36:32
And so that's why I did a three year lawsuit
36:34
against my city, federal lawsuit against my city
36:36
is to pursue kind of that punitive side
36:40
of how my city needed to learn.
36:42
I mean, I don't think I'll ever get a apology from my city,
36:45
but I did get a lawsuit victory.
36:48
And I think that's very important
36:49
that Christians need to pursue, not just get one victory,
36:53
but we need to pursue until we think justice is,
36:56
is meet it out as best as possible in this civil realm.
37:00
- So let's talk a little bit more about that.
37:02
I think part of it, and I've talked about this a lot
37:04
in my show, is just conservatives in general
37:06
actually fighting back.
37:08
Because what I feel like for a long time is conservatives
37:10
or you can say conservative Christians,
37:12
evangelical Christians, it's like, we're gonna be nice.
37:14
Okay, the 11th commandment, as you said,
37:16
we're gonna be as nice as possible.
37:18
And we're just gonna let people step on us.
37:20
And I've told people before, like there's no biblical mandate
37:23
to be a doormat, like whatsoever, right?
37:25
Like you can defend yourself, you can defend your family.
37:28
It's kind of like being taught that you don't punch back
37:31
until you've been punched.
37:32
Like that's a good way to get knocked out,
37:34
because like if you get hit on the button,
37:35
you're gonna be sitting there on the ground,
37:37
because, ah, well, they entered my space
37:38
and they had that look in their eye,
37:40
but my mom taught me that I'm not supposed
37:42
to throw the first punch.
37:43
But I feel like conservatives now are throwing the first punch.
37:47
You have conservatives that are going above and beyond,
37:50
like you can talk about a map wash with a daily wire
37:52
with what is a woman with going to the state houses
37:55
and doing those types of things.
37:56
And I feel like it's a good roadmap for Christians
38:00
to be like, look, you can push back against darkness
38:03
and not be a jerk, like that is possible.
38:06
But what we're seeing right now is like,
38:08
look, we get Roe v. Wade overturned.
38:10
And it's like, you know, for every decade,
38:12
leading up to a Roe v. Wade, the '70s, '80s, '90s
38:15
and early 2000s, it was, you know, stop killing babies.
38:18
And then we overturned Roe and now pro-lifers are like,
38:20
ah, it's a little complicated.
38:22
You know, the pro-life issue is a little complicated.
38:24
It's like, but I think you said it right, pursuing victory.
38:28
We don't know how to do that,
38:29
but I feel like we're getting better.
38:30
Do you agree?
38:31
- Yeah, I would say I think there is a revival happening
38:35
in the church and pockets of our country.
38:40
And I think that part of that revival is in understanding
38:46
kind of how God created male and female,
38:49
how God created men to be masculine and women,
38:52
to be feminine, how God created us and our roles.
38:55
And so I think part of the victory is there.
38:59
And it's, I mean, I've been, like I said earlier,
39:04
I've been alive for 44 years.
39:09
And the church has never engaged our political sphere
39:14
very well, but I think there's some awakening happening.
39:18
You saw MacArthur and how they did it.
39:20
You saw, you know, what happened to us and our community.
39:23
I think there's a real important vision
39:26
that needs to be taught here.
39:28
You know, for 40 years, the church said,
39:31
keep your faith in your house,
39:32
keep your faith in your church.
39:34
Don't apply faith to politics,
39:36
keep a separation between faith and, you know,
39:38
politics, church and state, all this stuff.
39:40
And all that did for us was teach us
39:44
not to love our brother out in the street,
39:46
not to love our neighbor out in the world.
39:48
And so, you know, brush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck
39:53
became our political pastors over the last 40 years
39:55
because your pastor would not take the name,
39:57
not take the word of the Lord and declare it into politics,
40:00
would not take the word of the Lord and declare it
40:03
outside of the pews of the church.
40:06
And so we had this very impotent Christianity
40:09
and how to handle our faith in the world.
40:12
And so I think you're seeing a revival
40:15
in a Reformation revival in pockets of the church.
40:18
And I think this is one of the key areas
40:19
where we need to see Reformation revival
40:21
is that the Bible not only applies to me and my heart,
40:24
to me and my family, to me and my church,
40:26
but the Bible applies to the whole world.
40:27
If we believe Jesus is King,
40:29
if we believe Jesus is truly King here and now,
40:31
then I believe Jesus is King over Biden.
40:35
I believe Jesus is King over Putin.
40:37
I believe Jesus is King of this whole world.
40:39
And every knee should bow and every tongue should confess.
40:41
And I should not separate my faith from politics,
40:43
my faith from culture,
40:44
my faith from what is going on in the world today.
40:47
- Okay, Gabe, let's actually, let's go deeper on that
40:50
because a lot of pastors are worried
40:53
about being political from the pulpit.
40:55
And not because they're afraid
40:56
that they're gonna violate some federal statute
40:58
that'll make them lose their tax-exempt status.
41:00
And so, and again, I've already said, I like my church.
41:03
I think my church is healthy.
41:05
But last year before the midterms, our pastor,
41:09
who Dr. Mark Hitchcock,
41:12
taught at Dallas Theological Seminary very well,
41:14
I liked him well-respected,
41:16
but I am gonna be critical of him and I happen.
41:18
Before the midterms, he said, make sure you vote on Tuesday
41:22
and make sure you vote biblical values.
41:25
And that was it, that's all I said.
41:27
And I remember sitting there like, wait,
41:30
did he just move right on and get on into his sermon?
41:32
Because dummies in the pews are gonna hear
41:35
vote political values and they're gonna think to themselves,
41:38
oh, I know what that means, love your neighbor.
41:40
And if my neighbor just happens to want her body
41:43
to be her body and to make the decisions for her body,
41:45
that makes sense.
41:47
And so pastors, and I've talked to another pastor
41:49
who I won't name who had a local election in his area
41:53
that went to the side of some of that is wildly anti-church,
41:57
wildly anti-God and is going to legislate in that way.
42:01
And he leads a church and the size of his church
42:05
could have swayed this election in this local area.
42:08
And so pastors right now are kind of wrestling with,
42:12
okay, how much do I use the pulpit for that?
42:14
Because I've heard arguments before like, look Kyle,
42:17
Sunday morning, that pulpit is not for politics.
42:20
That's what you're saying is a Sunday night issue.
42:23
That's a Wednesday night issue.
42:24
But when human flourishing and human life,
42:27
image bearers of God immago day, when that is at stake,
42:31
what exactly are we talking about where we're like,
42:33
oh, we don't want to talk about it on Sunday
42:35
because people might get offended, you know what I mean?
42:38
- Yeah, it's because we've been taught a disconnected
42:42
and inconsistent Christianity.
42:45
It is inescapable that politics is religious in itself.
42:50
Politics, it's inescapable that laws are religious.
42:57
All laws are reflective of some sort of religious belief,
43:01
whether it's secularism, Christianity, whatever.
43:05
Laws are just the external, as Vantilles say,
43:07
laws are just kind of the external application of religion.
43:11
That's all laws are.
43:12
So the church has been stinted and taught a stinted gospel
43:17
and a stinted view of scriptures
43:21
that tells you to keep the Bible out of politics,
43:25
that keep the Bible out of this world
43:28
and that has just been so disastrous.
43:31
Now, you don't want the pulpit to be partisan.
43:39
But you absolutely want the pulpit to speak into politics.
43:43
- Well, if I may, just let me help in there.
43:46
If you do that, you kind of have to be
43:48
because you can't, in the modern democratic party,
43:51
that thinks that their party platform is that
43:54
you can kill babies for any reason at any point
43:56
at the pregnancy and be paid for by taxpayer dollars,
43:59
that is unfortunately a partisan issue.
44:01
There is no middle ground.
44:02
- Yeah, no, and I'm using the word partisan.
44:06
- Like not like a Republican church.
44:07
Like, hey, we're the Republican church
44:09
or something like that.
44:09
- That's correct.
44:10
So I absolutely believe my pastor has endorsed people
44:14
from the pulpit.
44:15
He said, this guy's righteous, this guy's faithful,
44:19
you should vote for him, this person over here
44:21
believes in baby killing.
44:23
So I have no problem with that.
44:25
I would want to avoid maybe some partisan disputes
44:28
from the pulpit, but absolutely the pastor should declare
44:33
from the pulpit God's truth in this moment
44:36
in our culture.
44:38
And sometimes that might mean endorsing a candidate.
44:41
But I think that's few and far between right now.
44:46
I can see that becoming more and more of a thing
44:48
as we move forward possibly.
44:49
But the point is that the church,
44:54
the pastor is declaring the word of God.
44:57
His job is to herald the word of God.
44:58
His job is not to try to make the word of God palatable.
45:03
He should just be declaring it in all its raw glory
45:06
to his church, to his culture, to his community,
45:09
to the political situation that we find ourselves in.
45:12
And either that, either he teaches his church
45:16
how to apply the Bible to politics
45:17
or the world's gonna teach them.
45:20
- Right. - Like it's in a scapable.
45:22
The sheep are learning from somewhere.
45:24
- Absolutely.
45:24
The kids will be catechized somehow and somewhere
45:26
and it's not gonna be by people that you would prefer.
45:28
But let's take that even deeper.
45:31
So we talked a little bit earlier, Gabe,
45:32
about how Christians are trying to be nice,
45:35
we're trying to be accommodating.
45:36
But the problem is, I feel like Christians
45:38
are being accommodating on issues that don't have a middle.
45:41
And so let's use the most extreme examples.
45:44
Trans ideology and abortion.
45:46
There is no middle ground on abortion.
45:48
There is no moderate position on abortion
45:50
because it's either your pro-life
45:52
for the entire time of the pregnancy
45:55
or your pro-abortion.
45:56
That there is no middle ground saying that,
45:58
well, I don't want abortions past 12 weeks.
46:00
Okay, but you're still pro-abortion, okay?
46:02
So there's no middle ground there.
46:03
And also the transing of the kids specifically.
46:06
Transgendered ideology for anybody,
46:07
but specifically with children.
46:09
For a seven year old girl to say that they're a boy
46:11
and you say, no, there is no middle ground on that.
46:13
We're not going to raise her as a society.
46:15
I'm not gonna acquiesce to her parents' requests
46:17
on her pronouns.
46:18
But the church is like,
46:20
now how many Christians do you know
46:22
that will not only use the chosen name of somebody
46:25
which I'm fine with?
46:26
If I know you as Nick and now you're calling yourself Nancy,
46:30
fine, I'll call you Nancy,
46:31
but I'm not gonna use she/her pronouns for a man
46:33
that I know to be a man.
46:35
But so many Christians are like,
46:36
you know what, I don't wanna needlessly offend anybody.
46:39
And so I'll just use their pronouns
46:41
because I can't, how can I share the gospel with them
46:43
if I don't even use their pronouns?
46:45
It's like, oh my gosh, do you hear yourself?
46:47
But talk to me a little bit more about that
46:49
because some people think like,
46:50
oh, you're just looking for a fight.
46:52
You're just trying to be a jerk.
46:53
But it's like, no, we're either going to believe
46:55
in capital T truth or we're not.
46:58
We're either gonna believe the truth of the gospel
47:00
and the dictates of God therein or we don't.
47:03
There is no middle ground here.
47:05
- Christians have bought into the secular myth
47:08
that there is neutrality,
47:10
that there is a neutral playground that we can all meet at.
47:14
And because they've bought into that secular myth
47:17
of neutrality, the whole attempt at secularist,
47:22
secularism at liberals to push some sort of neutral ground
47:27
is so they can eventually win that neutral,
47:30
so they can eventually run the play of gaining all the power.
47:35
- Right.
47:37
- And so what that secular, what it does to Christians
47:39
is we've bought into this myth of neutrality
47:41
and we think, oh, everyone can just get along
47:43
in the public square.
47:44
We can all have our God in the public square.
47:46
But all that is doing is it's buying time for the liberals,
47:50
it's buying time for the new God to come into the system
47:52
and take over and take power and control.
47:54
And so that's what's happened is we believed
47:56
in this myth of neutrality and we believed in this,
47:59
doubt shall be nice and we believed in the,
48:01
we need to separate the church from state,
48:03
faith from politics, all that stuff.
48:05
And all that did was allow for the secularists
48:08
to run their play, the godless ideology to come in
48:11
and declare their own God over the system.
48:14
So there's every country, every political movement,
48:19
every society has a God.
48:24
Whether that God is the God of the Bible
48:26
or that God is the God of secularism,
48:27
it doesn't matter, there is, it's inescapable
48:30
that there will be a religious God over the state,
48:33
a religious God over the country,
48:34
a religious God over whatever movement is there.
48:37
And so why would I not want to declare the lordship
48:41
of Christ over our country?
48:42
If I think God's law is the best law
48:45
for a thriving society, why would I not wanna declare
48:48
that into our culture?
48:49
Why would I not want the gospel,
48:52
which I believe is the best for everybody?
48:56
Why would I not want that to be the prevailing ideology
49:00
of our country instead of secularism, which believes,
49:03
you know, this Christians have allowed prayer
49:06
to get pushed out of public school,
49:08
there's a great quote from R.L. Dabney back in the 1870s
49:12
where he said, "The public school system is going
49:16
"to push out catechisms, prayer,
49:18
"and the Bible out of public schools.
49:21
"There'll be a day where you don't have prayer,
49:23
"bible, and catechisms in public schools."
49:26
And we think, you know, our first initial response is
49:29
there was catechisms, Christian catechism being taught
49:32
in the public schools.
49:34
That's incredible.
49:35
I remember when see you at the poll was a thing,
49:38
when going to pray at the poll,
49:39
because prayer had been pushed so far out
49:41
of the public schools, and it's because we believed
49:46
in this, like myth of neutrality,
49:47
and then over time secularists pushed catechisms out,
49:50
pushed Bible out, pushed prayer out of our public schools,
49:53
and Christians are still participating thinking like,
49:55
"Oh, we still have a place in this world."
49:58
It's like, no, we don't, because we believed in neutrality,
50:02
and we got suckered into it.
50:04
How come our country currently right now
50:06
is made up of about 40 million evangelicals?
50:09
You know, 40, 50 million evangelicals,
50:13
you know, different definitions at different levels,
50:15
but at least some sort of confessing evangelical
50:17
make up 40 million of our country?
50:19
How come the LGBT crowd, which might at best
50:24
make up five to eight million people in our society?
50:28
How come the LGBT crowd is getting all their laws passed?
50:31
Getting all their presidents voted in,
50:33
getting all their secularists agenda pushed
50:37
through our society?
50:38
It's because Christians have been so suckered
50:41
into the soft Christianity we've been pushed
50:44
into the corners, and the 10 million are chasing the 40 million.
50:48
When Israel went to the Promised Land,
50:51
Moses warned Israelites saying,
50:55
"If you obey God," this is in chapter 28, 29,
50:58
several times he says this,
51:00
"If you obey God, your thousand will chase their 10,000,
51:04
"your small numbers will chase their big numbers,
51:07
"and if you disobey God, their small numbers
51:11
"will chase your big numbers."
51:13
And that's where we're at right now.
51:14
The small agnostic, atheist, godless ideologies,
51:20
the godless worldview, the godless people
51:22
who are pushing all this trans morality on our society,
51:27
they're chasing the 40 million.
51:33
And it's because we've neglected God, we've denied God,
51:36
we've gotten idolatry all caught up in our churches,
51:40
and the small godless people in our society
51:44
are chasing the 40 million right now.
51:47
And we need to, that should cause us to want to repent
51:50
of some serious sins that are in our ranks.
51:52
- I think you're absolutely right,
51:54
and I was reminded of something that I was,
51:56
someone else reminded me of,
51:57
but Penn Gillette of Penn and Teller
51:59
has a very famous quote where he was basically talking about,
52:02
"If you're a Christian evangelical
52:03
"and you actually believe this stuff,
52:04
"you actually believe a Middle Eastern Jewish carpenter,
52:07
"you know, died and rose again and all that,
52:09
"it is hateful for you not to tell people about that."
52:11
So he's like, "I can at least respect an evangelical
52:14
"that has the balls to share the gospel with me
52:16
"versus somebody else who just has no appetite for it."
52:20
But I think that also speaks to the creation
52:24
of different ecosystems where not only you can exist,
52:26
but also you can push back from,
52:28
that you have a fortress from which you can push back from.
52:30
And for you guys, you created the Fight Left East Network,
52:33
cross politic, the show is part of that.
52:36
Now, what some people will say is,
52:37
"Oh yeah, well, you're just gonna create your own network
52:39
"because you couldn't hack it on the others."
52:41
But then other people realize, well, okay,
52:44
if I'm gonna get shut down for my opinions in certain areas,
52:47
then why in the world would I build a house in there?
52:49
So like for instance, I'm not depending on Patreon or YouTube
52:52
because I can say, yeah, girls can't become boys,
52:55
and all of a sudden YouTube gives me three strikes in 90 days,
52:58
there goes my YouTube channel, Patreon,
53:00
just turns me off entirely and won't give me access
53:02
to my emails, that didn't happen to me
53:04
because I could see the writing on the wall
53:05
before that ever happened.
53:07
But talk to me a little bit about Christians like you
53:09
that are entrepreneurial, that are business people like you
53:11
and your team over there with Fight Left East
53:13
and with cross-politik in creating these areas where,
53:17
hey, we're not only just gonna have some place to live
53:19
but we can actually, we can shoot some arrows from here
53:23
as well to get some stuff done.
53:25
- Yeah, so I started cross-politik
53:26
with Pastor Toby and Chocolate Knocks in 2016
53:30
and we did it because for the last,
53:32
like I've said, the last 40 years of my lifetime,
53:35
the church had not done a good job teaching
53:38
and discipling its people on how to apply the Bible to politics.
53:41
And kind of, and that was in 2016 when it was only podcast,
53:45
podcast, we weren't really on YouTube yet,
53:48
a year later, I think we got on YouTube and so forth.
53:52
And then over time, we started realizing one of,
53:55
I think the key principles that particularly men
53:58
need to understand is that they need to build their life
54:01
in such a way where they're anti-fragile
54:03
and it's hard for the powers that be to take them down.
54:06
And that includes, that principle,
54:09
the anti-fragility includes, I think,
54:12
even dealing with sin in your own life.
54:14
When you're living in sin,
54:16
when you're caught up in sin, you're fragile,
54:18
you're susceptible, guilt can get you,
54:20
the world can get you, you can be brought down.
54:23
So be anti-fragile in your own life first.
54:26
Confess your sin, get rid of your sin,
54:28
give it over to Jesus, confess any sin you need to,
54:30
to your wife, to your family, to your friends, whatever.
54:32
Like get rid of those levers that can ruin your life.
54:36
And then in the same way, you need to be anti-fragile
54:38
on how you build your businesses,
54:40
how you build your career, how you build your church,
54:44
your community and so forth.
54:46
And so that's, I think, a big principle of cost politic.
54:49
And that's why we started building
54:50
what we call the Fight Lab Feast Network.
54:52
It's a podcast network that we're turning
54:54
into a TV network over time.
54:57
And it needs to be anti-fragile.
55:00
So we aren't dependent, and we're on YouTube,
55:02
but like this last year,
55:03
we've probably been suspended every other month
55:05
from YouTube or had a show deleted from YouTube
55:08
this last year.
55:09
So we've been basically being canceled by YouTube
55:11
or censored by YouTube since 2020, since COVID.
55:15
And so social media is kind of a difficult path.
55:18
And so we've got to build our own platform.
55:20
But what better way to be anti-fragile
55:22
than building your own platform?
55:24
We also are on drug TV, on NRB,
55:28
we're on Xfinity, on TLN.
55:30
So we have some other pockets,
55:31
but we could get kicked off there too.
55:33
So build your own platforms,
55:35
and to be as anti-fragile as possible,
55:37
kind of take control of what you are able to
55:40
as much as possible.
55:41
And so that's the idea behind the Fight Left East network.
55:43
And our goal is over time to create
55:45
Christ-centered content for the whole family.
55:47
So we don't want to just be cross-pollited
55:49
kind of a talking political show.
55:51
We also want to create Christ-centered content
55:53
for the whole family because Christian church,
55:58
all ties into what we've been talking about in discipleship
56:01
has not done well in discipling its people over time.
56:05
In fact, the church, usually,
56:09
disciples, you go to your church on Sunday
56:11
and then Monday through Saturday you're out in the world.
56:14
You're sending your kids to public school.
56:16
There's no discipl, Christian discipleship there.
56:18
You're engaging in a way that just only discipleship you get
56:23
is maybe on Sunday and it's not even that good
56:25
of discipleship.
56:26
So networks are actually, I think, a very strategic play.
56:29
I think Christian education is a very strategic play.
56:32
You need to be having your kids in Christian schools
56:33
or homeschooled and I think networks are part
56:37
of that kind of similar play.
56:39
If you're building a community,
56:40
one of the things you need to have is a Christian school
56:42
or homeschool co-op program in your community
56:44
because that's how you disciple your children Monday
56:47
through Friday or Saturday throughout the week.
56:49
Okay, not just Sunday and I think part of this
56:53
kind of a similar play is a network.
56:56
Christ-centered content for the whole family.
56:57
We want to be in people's houses from 7 a.m.
57:01
to 10 o'clock at night, from cartoons to sitcoms
57:04
to hunting shows to cooking shows to nightly news every night.
57:08
We want to be that your Thursday night family entertainment
57:11
because what happens is Christians are pretty good
57:13
at let's say funding like a Kirk Cameron movie
57:15
or something like that and we'll put in $3 million
57:18
to fund a movie and then Sony gets all the profits
57:21
and then that movie might last for six months
57:24
or maybe 18 months, might have a very stented impact
57:27
but a network is constantly in people's houses
57:30
every week creating relevant content
57:33
that's to that week, nightly news that's to that day
57:36
and discipling people over the next 40 years.
57:40
There's a reason why Fox, you know,
57:41
Tucker Carlson was getting 5 million views a night
57:43
before he left but that was because Fox,
57:46
I mean, Tucker was a talent there for sure
57:47
but Fox had been working on building that audience
57:49
for 40 years and Tucker came in,
57:52
of course he draws some, drew some more people in
57:54
to in that audience but I think the long-term play
57:57
of what a network could do for a discipleship
58:00
is so powerful and so important.
58:03
And so that's kind of our, it's a big goal.
58:05
I mean, it's probably a $15 million fundraising round goal.
58:11
I mean, I want to have journalists in every state.
58:14
I want to have a whole network of Christ-centered content.
58:17
I want to have cooking shows where we're actually working
58:19
on a cooking show and a TV show called ThisAmerica.tv
58:23
you can go to ThisAmerica.tv to find out more about it
58:26
basically it's a Mike Rowe dirty jobs meets Christian economy
58:30
kind of show on the, on the micro figure in that,
58:32
in that show.
58:33
And so I think there's a lot there that needs to happen.
58:37
And I think networking and network concept and media
58:40
through that avenue is really important.
58:42
We're coming in, sorry, I know I've been talking here
58:44
but we're coming into a situation where I think
58:46
this is a very even more strategic play
58:48
and the timing is right.
58:49
Fox, CNN, all these legacy media networks
58:54
are losing people's trust at massive scales.
58:58
Parker got kicked off Fox basically for telling the truth.
59:02
And, but also they are coming into a situation
59:06
where they're not getting the next generation.
59:08
Right now Fox's audience is probably average age of 15 older.
59:11
I was on Laura Ingraham.
59:13
I was on Fox and Friends with Pete Eggzeth.
59:16
I know that audience.
59:17
And so they are not getting the younger generation to tune in.
59:20
The younger generation is tuning in on social media,
59:24
tuning in on, you know, apps and all that stuff.
59:27
So we're in a situation where I think our network
59:29
can really take off given kind of the state of things.
59:33
This can be about a 20 year fight, 20 years of hard work,
59:37
but I think we're in a fantastic moment
59:39
for kind of building this kind of infrastructure
59:41
that's not beholden to the powers that be.
59:44
We, me and you, we could not be doing what we're doing
59:48
right now, you know, 15 years ago, 20 years ago.
59:52
All the gatekeepers were the networks
59:55
and the cable television pipeline and all that stuff.
59:59
For us to be able to spin up our own podcast
1:00:01
and our shows and grow to the extent
1:00:03
that we've been able to has been a massive blessing from God.
1:00:06
It's like Gutenberg.
1:00:07
You remember when the Gutenberg press happened,
1:00:10
it made it impossible for the Catholic church
1:00:12
to quash distributing Bibles
1:00:14
in the common language to its people.
1:00:17
Well, that's what kind of what podcasting is like.
1:00:20
That's kind of like what media 2.0 is like.
1:00:21
Or it's making it possible.
1:00:22
The gatekeepers can't hold everything down.
1:00:25
And that's why Joe Rogan gets the following that he gets.
1:00:28
That's why Tucker is able to be like,
1:00:29
hey, box, the gatekeeper cancels me?
1:00:32
Fine, I'll go do my own thing.
1:00:34
So I think we're in very exciting times for the gospel
1:00:36
to go out and the way that the gatekeepers
1:00:38
can't even control all their trying very hard to right now.
1:00:41
- Yeah, there are a lot of gatekeepers,
1:00:43
but the gospel can't be held down in, you know,
1:00:46
God can move mountains and we gotta bring a shovel
1:00:47
and it's guys like you and organizations like the ones
1:00:50
that you're a part of that is helping to build that
1:00:54
for the next generation.
1:00:55
'Cause it's not just about building it for us.
1:00:57
It's building it for someone else to build upon.
1:00:59
I talk about this all the time.
1:01:00
Think about your favorite theologian
1:01:02
or your favorite researcher or favorite philosopher.
1:01:04
They may have spent 40 years trying to figure out something
1:01:07
and then they figure it out and then they write about it.
1:01:09
And then you can get 40 years worth of work
1:01:12
and a weekend's worth of reading
1:01:14
and then build on top of that person.
1:01:16
That's why we're doing things like with cross-politik
1:01:19
with Undaunted Life of Man's podcast
1:01:20
to be able to create these things
1:01:22
to where there is something to build on for the future.
1:01:24
But Gabe, we're out of time, unfortunately.
1:01:26
I'm so glad that we were able to talk
1:01:27
and weave into and out of a whole bunch of other
1:01:29
different subject matters.
1:01:30
But that's all for me.
1:01:31
Is there anything else you wanna get off your chest?
1:01:33
- Yeah, yeah, I'll just say one more thing.
1:01:35
If your audience isn't interested,
1:01:36
we got our Fight Lab Feast Conference in Kentucky in October.
1:01:40
You can go to FightLabFeast.com to find out more.
1:01:43
And it's a Christ-centered, family-oriented conference.
1:01:46
We're actually taking it to the Ark Encounter this year.
1:01:48
The Ark Encounter is an amazing place.
1:01:51
Ken Ham raised about $100 million
1:01:54
to basically build this life-size replica of the Ark.
1:01:57
And we're using their event center.
1:01:58
We're kind of taking over the campus
1:02:00
and 12, a couple thousand people at the conference.
1:02:03
Lord willing, we already have more sign-ups
1:02:05
than we've ever had at our conferences.
1:02:07
And I mean, our conferences,
1:02:08
they start off their family-oriented.
1:02:10
The topic this year is the politics of six-day creation.
1:02:13
We start off with beer and worship, beer and Psalms,
1:02:17
what we call it, and jumpy castle for the kids
1:02:20
and punch for the kids.
1:02:21
That's how we kick off our conference.
1:02:22
Just big fellowship time of beer or doves,
1:02:26
punch for the kids, jumpy castle and singing praises to God.
1:02:30
That's how the conference kicks off.
1:02:31
We also have a pre-business conference this year.
1:02:34
At the conference, we have the CEO of Gibson Go.
1:02:36
That's gonna be there.
1:02:37
The CEO of Maddox, David Baughson's gonna be teaching
1:02:41
at the pre-business conference,
1:02:43
called Businessmakers Conference.
1:02:45
And then the calendar of the schedule's structured
1:02:49
so you can go visit the ark.
1:02:50
The ark is like this life-size replica, and it's amazing.
1:02:53
It's a historical, spiritual, scientific experience.
1:02:58
We're pulling our kids out of school to come with us
1:03:01
this year at the conference
1:03:01
because I want them to experience it.
1:03:03
You know, the historical truth of the ark,
1:03:05
the scientific ramifications of worldwide flood,
1:03:08
and the gospel presentation is amazing in the ark
1:03:10
because you have salvation and damnation
1:03:12
in that biblical narrative.
1:03:14
It's fantastic.
1:03:14
So I would encourage as much of your audience
1:03:16
to get out there, it's a family orientated conference,
1:03:20
and it's just great content, great speakers.
1:03:22
And being at the ark encounter this year,
1:03:24
there's an outdoor park, there's a petting zoo for the kids.
1:03:26
There's all sorts of stuff.
1:03:27
It's a really cool family experience this year.
1:03:29
- Guys, that link will be in the show notes.
1:03:31
And, you know, beer's okay, but can we do whiskey
1:03:33
and worship?
1:03:34
Is that an option?
1:03:35
Do we have to be on the menu?
1:03:36
- I would love to.
1:03:38
Part of the problem is we build in,
1:03:40
we don't make anybody pay for the alcohol that night,
1:03:43
and the hors d'oeuvres and the food and the punch.
1:03:44
So it's a very expensive four-hour event
1:03:48
to kick off the conference, but it's worth it.
1:03:50
We build it into the price of the ticket,
1:03:53
and we take the hit on it because we really want families
1:03:56
to come together and worship together and fellowship together
1:03:59
and do it around, you know, fun with food and beer.
1:04:03
I mean, like, who doesn't want to have fun, you know,
1:04:06
in that environment?
1:04:07
- Just throw this out there to you.
1:04:08
You'll be in Kentucky.
1:04:10
You're gonna be near-ish to the Bourbon Road.
1:04:12
I'm sure there's a few people up and down the Bourbon Road
1:04:14
that wouldn't mind donating a couple of cases
1:04:16
to make sure whiskey and worship could go down.
1:04:18
I'm just saying Gabe, I'm just saying, but Gabe Wrench,
1:04:21
thank you for coming on "A Daunte of Life" on man's podcast.
1:04:23
- Thank you for having me, Kyle.
1:04:25
- There you go, guys.
1:04:26
Hope you enjoyed my time with Gabe Wrench,
1:04:27
but before we let you go,
1:04:28
we are gonna do a quick resilience boost.
1:04:30
Add on Daunte of Life,
1:04:31
our mission is equipping men to push back darkness
1:04:33
with content that forges, spiritual, mental,
1:04:35
and physical resilience.
1:04:36
So I've got three links for you today.
1:04:37
I've got a link to Gabe's website.
1:04:39
I got a link to the Fight Laugh Feast Network
1:04:41
where you can get also the information there
1:04:43
for the thing that they have coming up the conference
1:04:44
later on this year in Kentucky,
1:04:46
and also a link to the cross-politics show.
1:04:49
Thank you, guys, for listening to this episode.
1:04:51
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe,
1:04:52
rate and leave us a positive five-star review.
1:04:54
If you want to come speak live at your event
1:04:56
or on your podcast, you shoot me an email
1:04:58
to info@andaunte.life.
1:05:00
That's I-N-F-O @andaunte.life.
1:05:02
Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook
1:05:04
and check out our website for everything else,
1:05:05
including how to donate to keep more content
1:05:07
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1:05:08
Just go to www.andaunte.life.
1:05:11
Also, we want to thank the band Holy Name
1:05:13
for allowing us to use their music for our content.
1:05:15
The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua,
1:05:18
which is off their self-titled debut album
1:05:20
on Face Down Records.
1:05:21
The links are in the description.
1:05:23
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:05:25
Remember, keep pushing back, Dartmouth,
1:05:28
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
1:05:31
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:05:34
(upbeat music)
1:05:38
(upbeat music)