#233 Nathan Apffel - Inside the Dark World of Megachurches and Corrupt Pastors

30:43I'm going to set the show aside for now.

30:49I don't think anybody can take money, especially over a career, from this system and not get eaten by it. And those aren't my words. Those are men and women that have spent their entire life in ministry or at a church and having discussions for years with them. They're like, no one gets away from it. What do you mean by that? Nobody gets away from what? From getting eaten by the machine. So this is very similar to politics. It runs You come in with great intentions and then you're corrupted Yes, and here's why Or I'll give you my thought I'm a young pastor Or Sean's a young man ready to spread the gospel He's been indoctrinated I'll use your word into the system He's been to seminary He wants to quote unquote save souls And so what's the first thing he's going to do?

31:39He's going to look for a job He's going to get that job and as soon as he starts preaching He's going to tell about Christ and how Christ does save you how Christ is the person you should mirror. You know, I want to die in me so Christ lives through me. Like those are all good things. But then guess what? Hey, Sean, your business, this institution, the corporation might cost, let's go small, a hundred grand a month to keep this thing operational. Okay, well, where are we going to get that money? Well, you're going to look through scriptures and go, okay, well, right now in culture, we've landed on the Levitical tithe.

32:14And so we go, man, this tithe is where we're going to get our money. We want 10 % or we need 10%. And then you're going to keep preaching. And okay, Sean, I need you to preach one message on tithing every eight weeks. I just learned this tithing today. I had no idea that this was a thing. So what is tithing? Let's get in. I want to give this model if you don't mind. Okay, sorry. So one out of eight weeks, you're going to do a sermon on giving, we'll call it. Generous giving and tithing. Whether that be the pastors either preach on tithing or generous giving. Those are the two ways you can ask people for money.

32:48And so one out of eight weeks, your message is on tithing. Well, shoot, Sean, our church is growing. Now our budget's 200 grand. We have about 350 people that show up every Sunday. We've got a little day school. So we've got to start asking for more money. Okay, we're going to preach two out of eight weeks. Well, shoot, Nathan's church down the street just got a better soundstage than us. And he's going to start pulling congregants. So in the show, we call this religious economic theory. So Nathan's church is going to pull your congregants away because they are literal consumers. And so you're going to need the same soundstage I have.

33:26Okay, well, that's going to cost us an extra$150 ,000. So we're going to request money above and beyond. So now on the third Sunday of that eight-week block, we're going to give a sermon. But then the last five minutes, we're going to present why we need this new soundstage. And so your whole presentation of the gospel slowly tilts to protect the institution and the revenues it needs to survive. And no matter what, this is my conclusion, every pastor that plays in that game dies to the game. And that's why pastors rightly say pastoring is the hardest job in the world. We all leave demoralized, and you do.

34:04but it's not your fault necessarily but you've been eaten by a machine that we've built on top of Christ. I see what you're saying. Back to the original question. Are you in, I'm not attacking you. Yeah. I just wanna know how you think. I think Paul, you should have a job outside of your ministry. Okay, but what if somebody wants to devote all of their time to this, every bit of it? And there is overhead. I mean, you know, and I'm not, I don't think it's necessary. I don't think it's a bad thing either. You know what I mean? When these churches grow and they want to expand an online presence, well, then they got to get people to know audio, video.

34:52They got people to, you know, to set that up. They have to have people that operate that equipment. They have to, you know, I think it's a good thing you go into some of these places and they have coffee and donuts, bagels and shit like that. Is it? I don't think it's a bad thing. I mean, I think it's a good thing that people congregate together, you know, in the name. And, you know, and I think people want to be comfortable when they worship. You know, they want air conditioning. They want bathrooms. They want, you know, I have toddlers. Very challenging to take toddlers to church and actually pay attention, you know.

35:31And so the place that we were going to had little, you know, daycare thing. Put them in there. Then we see active shooters. I mean, the Catholic Church just got shot up yesterday. You know, all those little kids were fucking killed. Now you need security because we have a big, a massive people that are together, and that's what active shooters look at. They want to take the most amount of people out as possible in the shortest amount of time to get the biggest headline. So now you have a security element that you have to hire. And more and more people are demanding that. And people want their kids to go to a Christian school or a Catholic school.

36:11You know what I mean? And so then you've got to hire teachers and all that stuff. And so I'm curious. I mean, do you think these things are bad? Hey Chicago, class it up with Crocs You know back to school is coming in fast So why wait to find your new Fave footwear Step into a local Crocs store And step into your new look Try it, style it, make it yours Because the right pair doesn't just show up It shows off First day fits, handled Walk out ready for whatever's next Visit your nearest Croc store today.

37:16taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy see terms all of them i think they run antithetical to the message of christ christ said to pick up your cross and follow me and make disciples of men he did not say to build buildings and i'm not saying that's necessarily bad but everything you just described is just men building things. And so let's go down a rabbit hole here for a second about ministry, when you look at biblical ministry. Today, if I want to get in the ministry, I'm going to go get a job at a church. My ministry is my daughter.

38:03My ministry is to raise her under Christ-centered principles, and I will never abdicate that to anyone else. Because I don't know what they're teaching her. I don't know if that's even biblically sound. And so when you look at the institution, it's not necessarily bad, but Christ never told us to build any of it. You and I, I firmly believe, I believe Christ is in this room. I believe you and I are connecting as brothers in Christ. That is the church. We are meant to uplift our ministry, which is our children, your wife, your husband, that core community, that tight bond. And if that fractaled out through the U.S., the U.S.

38:56would transform overnight. But instead, we say, you need to come to this building to hear someone else teach you about the Bible. Dude, you got a 400-year-old Bible sitting there. We've missed the mark. We've abdicated responsibility to others to teach us, and so we just keep coming back to the system. I always say, man, my favorite thing as a kid was to watch the Christmas pageant at my church. You want to know why? Because my dad was the literal freaking flying angel, And I'm like, man, there's my dad. But what have we built? I don't want to be sitting in that same type of auditorium, watching the same Christmas pageant when I'm 80, and be like, God is good.

39:42I want to be doing dangerous things for Christ. And that is what he's called us to do. And when you dilute Christ's message down, he actually didn't talk about much outside of loving one another healing one another preaching the gospel and making disciples everything else is just traditions of men in christ we this has happened in the past the temple was exactly what we see today you go to this building to worship now granted it was a legalistic structure whereas we say our churches aren't legalistic anymore, but it was a legal structure and they were making money in the temple square, exchanging money.

40:28And Christ went in and he said, you've turned my father's house into a robber's den. That building was strictly for worship. And instead we made money on it. We turned it into a capitalistic endeavor. And I can't read the gospels and lay that story over modern day church and see any correlation. in regards to like what needs to change. I'm sorry, we've mirrored it. It's the exact, we've repeated history over and over. And you as a military man and probably a historian, history repeats itself over and over because we don't learn. So we're literally mirroring what's happened in the past. And so it's when you read the gospels, and this is what I'll tell everybody, when everybody goes, okay, what should I do, Nathan?

41:15Well, you should read the Bible. over, I think it's only 13 % of Christians have ever even read the book. You know? I haven't read it all. Well, it sounds like you're trying. You're going to get through it though, right? And that's the thing is once you read it, so there's a great study done. There's a mega church in Chicago, one of the first in the US, 30 ,000 seats. Bam, massive, huge show. Every pastor goes, I want to be that. And so this is in 98. They're expanding rapidly. thousands of people are pouring in every Sunday. Tens of thousands are pouring in every Sunday. In leadership, I'm going to tip my hat to them.

41:51They go, hey, we're not really deepening our congregants' faith. People are coming. They stay for six months. They leave. It's a conveyor belt. And the reason why we keep our numbers is because a new person just puts their butt in that seat, and it's just this conveyor belt. How do we retain our congregants and deepen their faith? So they hired Stanford and development economists at Stanford to come in and do a long-term study. And we have dev economists that worked on the show. These guys are brilliant, these guys and gals. So they do this long-term study. Their study comes back with two ways that you can deepen your faith of your congregants.

42:31One, reading your Bible at home alone. Two, sitting in prayer alone. That's it. So what are the buildings? What are the sound stages? What are the childcare? What are the coffee and donuts? What are the escalators? What is that 20 acre parking lot just to get people in? It's things we've built on top of Christ. Stanford came back and said, these are the two things. We've asked everybody. And so when Christ says it's written on your heart, Sean, it is. I firmly believe his gospel is written on every human's heart. And that book is the guide. And then prayer is how you connect. And other than that, everything is just freaking smoke and mirrors.

43:23You know? Yeah, I mean, I'm just, I mean, I think about, you know, I mean, everybody has to make a living. And, you know, somebody that's new to this and, I mean, you know, I don't understand. There's probably 10 % of the Bible I understand and 90 % I don't understand. You know, and so I need to, you know, I need to look for somebody that can educate me. With that being said, I look for multiple, you know, I want all aspects. I don't want just, you know, I don't want just Todd or you or a priest, you know, to teach me about it i look i look at it from i want to hear all the aspects all the different angles i want to understand it you know and so that that is what draws me to you know what drew me to go to a church yeah you're wrestling with your faith right yeah but the bible says wrestle with your faith and so you know what i mean but you know i i i personally think that those that they should be compensated you know because they have to make a living and if they want to dedicate their life to educating people on the way christ was how he lived well how we're supposed to live all of that you know good stuff and if they want to dive in then i think that it's it's i mean i think that it is my responsibility you know to make sure that person has a living that can take care of their family and all you know all of these things it's my personal you know feeling and and and i don't know maybe i'm guilty of this i've you know it's nuanced with this show yeah for example you know this show right now this interview between me and you i'm feeding my curiosity i want to know i know there is a lot of corruption i just learned you know a couple days ago that you know the norm seems to be 10 of the funds go to charity or back to the people or to the poor or whatever and 90 % of it goes in their pockets.

45:28I think that is a fucking travesty that that's happening. But so where I'm going is maybe I'm a part of this. I have a lot of mentors that I brought on the show. I still explore Catholicism a little bit, and I've had several priests on, Father Dan, Father Gadbury. they've been instrumental in guiding me. And my good friend Lee Strobel wrote The Case for Christ. I mean, him, John Burke wrote Imagine Heaven. I mean, I love these guys. And I think when I talk to them, I think that I know they have a huge heart. But they wrote the book. I mean, there's Lee's last latest book up there. that's the first copy I'm signing it you know but I mean he's making money off of the books yeah I'm making money feeding my own curiosity I'm gonna make money from this show you know what I mean through advertising and you know monetization and all of that kind of stuff and so you know I I don't I'm curious what your thoughts are you know when I when I bring on Father Dan father gadbury um dr dan schneider lee strobel john burke tim tebow you know i mean i've learned a lot of stuff from these guys you know in this room and i monetize those episodes and that's how i make a living and that's how i provide for my team that produces this entire thing and And so, I mean, am I fucked up?

47:09No, money is not a bad thing in and of itself. So let me go back because you asked me a personal question. I do not think pastors should be paid. When you look at the purest form of the gospels from Paul, and then you look at the Didache, which is an early apostolic writing from about 50 to 70 AD is where they pin the print. like they are very concerned these early apostolic fathers with how people are literally they say trafficking christ and so i think in the purest form i i love the gospel i will this morning on our uber ride to the gym my business partner and i like we just had a great conversation with the uber driver out of nowhere he was listening to our conversation and he ended up giving us a book He had them in his trunk.

47:58And that is church where these intimate connections happen, where you raise your level of faith together. That is my personal opinion. In the religion business, we do not say this should happen. We don't say pastors shouldn't make money. We look at the system. We look at the architecture. I sit with theologians from all over the world, Oxford, Harvard, you name it, and all of them make money off their faith. And so I'm not necessarily saying you shouldn't make money off of that. That's not what I'm saying. But money is such a corrupting factor in a lot of things. And so that's why in the beginning you have to separate what is the biblical church and what have we built.

48:44What we've built is not necessarily a bad thing, but it has to be regulated. And in the show, in the religion business, we show massive loopholes in the system that are created because of the legal architecture. And now the system is so corrupted that Phil Hackney, who oversaw the nonprofit sector at the IRS for five years, said the whole thing is about the buckle. And David E. Taylor got busted by the FBI yesterday. Is this the guy in Dallas? He's in Houston. Houston. Yeah. What happened then? What's up? I'll let you finish. Oh, yeah. I'm just saying the whole system is corrupting, and it's because of the religious economic theory.

49:23We're pitting churches against each other, vying for consumers with no external accountability, and it just creates the Wild West, and anything goes in the name of Jesus. and Dan Bramer, who's one of the smartest men I've ever sat with, philosopher and theologian, he goes, no one believes something that's stupid, Nathan. And so Kenneth Copeland, who his boys waved their guns and their fake badges at me, he believes what he's doing and he believes he is spreading the gospel. Joel Osteen believes it. Ed Young, who had me arrested and roughed up, believes it. My brother-in-law, who's dying, believes it.

50:02And so I don't blame any of these guys And the system, yes We live in a capitalist society where things cost money But we have to be able to separate the church from the building The true church, the ecclesia And say this needs to be regulated And right now it's unregulated In the name of separation of church and state What happened in Houston? Because this was yesterday? Yesterday, yeah Yeah, so there's an apostle named David E. Taylor, loud, outgoing guy. You know, he says that if you talk negatively against him, God's going to kill you. You know, he's that type of preacher. And he prays off the most vulnerable.

50:44He's raised 50 million bucks in about the last decade. And because there's no accountability, he can do what he wants. His home in Tampa, Florida, his parsonage. So this is a home paid for by donors,$8.3 million, 28 ,000 square feet was rated by the FBI. He has about$28 million in real estate. So he's taking money from the most vulnerable who Christ is there to protect, technically, and he's inuring himself and just building his portfolio. He owns a Bentley Rolls Royce all in the name of Jesus He's got people working for free at call centers till 4 a.m. And if they don't hit their donation quota that they have to raise They have to get on their knees and beg him for forgiveness Are you serious?

51:35Yeah, all in the name of Jesus Beg him for forgiveness? Because he's anointed, Sean And so the system, like I said, when you take the business and the true church and blend it it's a disease because Christ's message is antithetical to legal systems. He was a counter-culturalist. And here's what I love because we're seeing this, we call it the death rattle in the show. We're seeing this happening in Washington right now. Church and state are colliding. So if Christ really wanted to transform the world through politics, he would have marched straight to Caesar and be like, I demand a meeting with Caesar.

52:16He could care less about Caesar. He said, I don't care about your politics and your games. You guys deal with that. I have to deal with the heart. And so we have the ecclesia here who's dealing, this is to deal with the heart. And then we have the business. The business is not inherently bad, but you have to call it a business. And right now, no one calls it a business because it's been infected and we call this the church. I'm going to church. You don't go to church. You, Sean, are the church. Are the church. And then whatever that is, as it morphs and changes throughout the decades in history, sure, that's a place where we can meet and enjoy the donuts and coffee and listen to cool music.

52:57And that's not inherently bad, but that is a business and oftentimes a multi-million dollar business that's run with zero accountability. So you got to call a spade is paid you know do you have a percentage of is this all churches or is this is there so specific ones to stick out to you is there is there a happy medium all of them play by the same rule book and when you have a rule book with no accountability and all the power silos at the top, just like every pastor will be eaten by the system, every institution, every business will be eaten by that system. And that's why reform has to happen within the business itself.

53:49And so we're begging people to actually deepen their faith and deepen their giving while bringing reform to the machine that we've built. and this isn't inherently bad but it's corrupted and dark it's the it's the darkest business entity you can start in the u.s we've talked with ex-mafiosos who spent decades in prison and they say nathan i wouldn't join the mafia today i'd start a church because it's the most dark place you can it's the darkest place you can play wow yeah why did this guy's 28 000 square foot home in tampa get raided by the fbi um enough people, so this is where you can finally, this is the little sliver of hope is if enough people complain to the IRS or the FBI, they will open an investigation.

54:38And our good friends, our PIs that worked on the religion business at the Trinity Foundation out of Dallas, they'd in 2018 put together a massive packet and sent it to the IRS and said, hey, you guys have to look at this scammer. Like he's just ripping people off. And this is the problem is it took six years, six and a half years for the IRS and then the FBI to finally go, this is a total POS, like he needs to go. But there's people who have disappeared going to his church. Missing person reports. And we see this across the US too. These apostles will find vulnerable people, will tell them to move across the country and come work for them.

55:20And eventually they disappear into trafficking rings.

55:26I mean, do you have proof that that is the... We've got missing persons reports and you just never find them again. Their cars will be in parking lots. I get that. I get that. What I'm asking is, do you have proof that it was the church that did it? I mean, we're talking about vulnerable people. Those are people that are in poverty, many of them addicted to drugs. You know what that leads to? That leads to do me the sexual favors and I'll give you drugs. Then it turns into, I'm your pimp. I'll give you drugs. I mean, that could be totally outside the church. I mean, there's a lot of things that happen to the most vulnerable because of the situations that they're in.

56:09That doesn't necessarily mean that the pastor sold them into trafficking, unless you have proof. Do you have proof? I don't have proof of that. Well, I'd have to talk to our PIs, but those are firsthand accounts. But I'll tell you right now, there's a church in Arizona that literally has a tunnel that goes from the church under the border to Mexico. What? What church is that? I'm not going to say. But that's how corrupt some of these institutions are. Why don't you want to say? Because that's for another story. We're developing that story right now. but there is um you can use the name of god to do horrific things and that doesn't mean the god that god christ is corrupt it means man is leveraging his name to do awful things and we can look through history on that one you know and then let me rephrase that too man can also use the name of christ to do amazing things but right now that the architecture of the system is so dark that it just creates a...

57:14So there's a book called The Wisdom of Psychopaths, and it talks about psychopathic tendencies. And it's a character type. It's a clinical diagnosis, and you can either end up in jail for mass murder or you can be the CEO of some billion-dollar hedge fund. There's just a mental type that they classify as psychopaths. One of the top five jobs for psychopaths today is clergy to become a pastor. Are you serious? Because it's unlimited authority or potentially unlimited authority. It's power. It's dominion over people. And that's the character type of a psychopath is attracted to jobs like that. It's a great book.

57:53It's written by a doctor who studied psychopaths for his whole career. All right, let's dive in. Let's dive in. Yeah. Where do we start? Let's go with some examples. Okay. How about this couple in Nashville? They're a TV show. I don't know much about it because I don't watch this stuff. I really don't watch anything. But you know what I'm talking about? Trump just pardoned these people that went to prison for, I believe it was tax evasion. Yeah. I can't talk to, I don't know much about that story. Again, these stories are rampant across the U.S. They're everywhere. And so let's take, for example, a gentleman named Ed Young.

58:38in Dallas. This is the guy that almost had you arrested. This is the guy that had me arrested. Had you arrested. Everybody's always like, how do you pick your targets, Nathan? Like, who do you go after? And I'm like, I don't. Like, I am, I have asked God, you open the door, I'm going to walk through it. So I was in Dallas visiting my dad and I wanted to go to church. I've gone to church every Sunday all over the US. I just visit churches and I walk into this, what is a satellite campus? So it means this pastor has multiple buildings all over Dallas, His main campus is in Grapevine, but I go to one just outside Frisco, and I show up.

59:16Nice little building, probably seats 500, and pull into the parking lot. There's cameras all over the parking lot. You know, all his banners are all over there, his branding. I walk in. I do my standard thing, grab a donut, cup of coffee, sit in the pews, sing some songs. This one, they don't even have a pastor preaching. They just lower the screen, and I watch the pastor preach from his other main campus. And so I'm like, that's kind of impersonal, but whatever. And I get up, walk out, go to my car, and I start the rental car, and it just doesn't turn over. And I'm like, what the heck? And so it's kind of chugging, and it almost sounds like blowing bubbles in water.

59:55And I'm like, I think someone cut the catalytic converter out of the rental car. So I look underneath, and boom, the catalytic converter's gone. And so I snap a picture, and I'm like, dang. So I just go back inside, and I'm like, hey, someone cut the catalytic converter out of my car. In your parking lot, there's cameras all over the place. Could I just get the feed? So if my insurance wants to see what happened, I can just send it to them. And they give me a card with their website and they go, go to our website. There's an informational sheet that you can fill out and we'll contact you through that.

1:00:21I'm like, cool. So I sent him a message. Hey, my catalytic converter got cut out, you know, this date, this location. Is there any way you can just get me the feed for my insurance? Crickets. And I'm like, okay, a month passes, two month pass. And I'm like, this is weird. Send him another message. Crickets. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. A year passes and now we're in the, I wasn't even filming the show at this point. And now we're in like the thick of it. And I'm like, I'm gonna send him another message. Send him another message. Crickets. Eventually the message board just completely disappears off the website.

1:00:51So there's no way to contact this church anymore. And so about a year ago, I'm traveling with my camera operator and I'm like, let's just see if we can get a phone number and call them to see if we wanna give them money if they'll answer us. And so sure enough, I find an accounting number. So I call the number and I say, hey, my name's Nathan. I don't lie to anybody. And I say, I've been to your church a couple of times. I live out of state. How can I give you money? Within 24 hours, boom, I get a call back. Nathan, let me tell you how to give stock, how to give land, how to give jewelry, how to give cash.

1:01:25Like they are ready to take your money, but they're not ready to help. And so this is when I'm like, okay, I'm gonna start doing research on this guy. And so I call our PIs and I'm like, hey, what do you have on Ed Young and fellowship? And they said, the only way you can find any real legal material is through lawsuits. And so there's a big differentiator in the nonprofit sector that everybody has to realize. A secular nonprofit files what's called a 990 with the IRS. This form is an informational sheet that you are legally held to account to. So if you lie on this form, you're going to get busted.

1:02:02So if, Sean, you have a nonprofit and I donate to you and I feel like something shady is going on and the IRS comes out and audits you and realizes that you lied on your 990, they can hold you accountable. So it's strictly an accountability form that says, hey, here's how Sean's nonprofit is using the money. Churches do not have to file that form. Really? So there is no legal document that any church is held to account to. So what that means is financials are whatever leadership wants it to be. And so right there, there's a massive breakdown in accountability. So I call the church, or no, I'm sorry, I call my PIs, and my PIs are like, okay, the only document we have is from 2005, I believe, and it's because someone sued, the church got sued, and so they did discovery.

1:02:49So they have what's called a housing allowance list. And so this is really unique to churches in the U.S. pastors can take a tax-free housing stipend if they want. And so the language in the IRS code is something along the lines of your tax-free housing allowance has to be within means. So it's a gray definition, which means if you've got good lawyers, well, Sean, you're a celebrity. You should live like Oprah. You should be able to live in a$40 million home or a 28 ,000-foot home in Tampa or whatever. And so you can offset your tax burden in a major way if you take more payment via housing allowance and not via salary, if that makes sense.

1:03:31So this housing allowance document showed that this pastor was taking$240 ,000 a year in a housing allowance on top of his salary. And so there was my breadcrumb. I say, okay, this is 20 years ago. I wonder what housing allowance is today. And you can't find that out. And so my APIs do some digging. They say he's got about 15 million in real estate, personal real estate now, buried in LLC structures. But he's got a beachfront house in Florida. He's got a$6.5 million home in Dallas. So his mortgage is about 200 grand a month, not 240 ,000 a year. So I just estimate and I say, okay. He's got to be getting a couple million a year in a housing allowance.

1:04:17So I call his lawyer, who's the general counsel of the church. And ironically, he's the CFO of the church. So not only is their lawyer the CFO, but then he gets ordained. So Ed Young ordains his lawyer. Why would Ed Young need to ordain a lawyer? Because anybody who gets to take a housing allowance has to be an ordained minister of that church. So now I'm thinking, well, maybe his lawyer takes a housing allowance too. And so I call the lawyer and I'm like, hey, here's the data I have, and it's all on the show. And I'm like, I'm in town. I'd love to hear from you because we just want to know the housing allowances.

1:04:59Oh, and this is the kicker. I've been donating to his church the whole time. And so as a donor and as someone who attends your church while I'm in Dallas, I want to know where my money's going. And if you're taking exuberant housing allowances that no one knows. And so sure enough, the lawyer never calls me back. So I decided to go to church on Sunday and I let him know. I'm like, we're coming on Sunday. And so I show up and I don't show up with cameras all over the place. I just have a pair of glasses that record. And so I walk into the church. They had me pegged before I even made it through the front door.

1:05:33There was two security guards out front. Todd, the head of security, literally passes me as I'm walking through the door in the show. You see him touch his earpiece. I walk into their store and I buy Ed's book. I want to buy a sweatshirt that he's made. This is his design. And I want to get a coffee at his coffee shop. Before I'm even making it to the register, a gentleman comes up and says, you can't buy this stuff. We need to go outside. And so I walk outside. And again, there's no cameras with me. I'm wearing a wire and I have my glasses because I assume something like this would happen. And they go, you need to leave.

1:06:07And I said, why? And I said, I came to church. I wanted to buy your goods, your business. I want to buy your goods. I give to you. And they go, that doesn't matter, Nathan. And I said, what doesn't matter? The fact that I give to you? Like you should care about my giving and want to make sure you're stewarding it properly. And so I said, I'll leave. Who can I talk to in accounting? Because I just have some questions about housing allowances and salaries. They would give me no information, but they said, we will have you criminally trespassed if you don't leave. And so I said, okay, so if I leave, you're not going to criminally trespass me.

1:06:38And they said, no. So I go on my way, but I had signs in the car because I figured, hey, they're going to kick me out. They're not going to want to talk. So we leave, we kind of regroup, we wait for the second service to end. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to go stand in the parking lot because they won't give me any information. And my sign, all it says is, what is Ed Young's housing allowance today? And then Ed Young, what is your salary? That's it. these two little signs. So I walk onto the parking lot before I even make it two thirds of the way to the parking lot. And all I'm doing is standing out front.

1:07:10I'm surrounded by probably 15 armed guards. And these guys are, I'm not military, but these guys are rookie. Everybody's wearing different outfits. You know, you can tell their badges or their security. Some of it's bought from Amazon. Some are armed, some are not. They all have colored lapels. So I figured the lapel means you're either armed or you're not. And they immediately bring a sheriff up and they're like, we're going to arrest Nathan for criminal trespassing. And I'm like, all I want is who can I talk with in accounting? And the cop doesn't, the sheriff doesn't arrest me. One of his private security grabs me, takes my phone and my property, hands it to another private security, like tore tendons in my arm.

1:07:49So I have to have surgery on my elbow, rips me around. And they immediately say, get him off the property. And I'm like, why? This looks bad. And literally there's 20 armed security guards surrounding this 165 pound dude with two signs. And so I get arrested. I'm sitting there on the curb. Well, I'm not arrested. I'm detained at this point, but not by the actual PD. And it's in the show. I give this awesome, I just talking to him. And I'm like, look it you guys believe you're doing the work of christ and i'm like i can't hate you for that like you think you're doing good just like i think i'm doing good so we're on the opposite side of the same coin um but i'm like look at this no one knows his housing allowance he has a massive property in florida that no one knows about the congregation doesn't know about it they've paid for that um he has bulletproof range rovers that he just he jets away from church and we saw this he jumped curbs to get away because he knew that i was near the property and I'm like here's a dude driving away in bulletproof Range Rovers literally we create he created this world in his own fan in his own head and all I wanted to know was your housing allowance that donors are paying and so that's what I mean is the machine eats you I firmly believe when Ed was young he got into this thinking he wanted to save souls he wanted to present Christ to people and now he's got 20 armed securities around me in his security office we got word from some of his security officers that there's a photo of me, a 12 by 12 inch picture of me in their security office.

1:09:21And my code name was Hot Dog. And so I'm like, I can't, I wish I could have gotten their walkie channel because it's like Hot Dog is officially on the premises. And I'm like, all I'm here is because Ed wouldn't talk to me. The general counsel, who's also the CFO won't talk to me. And so I'm just here for one simple question. What is your housing allowance that all these donors pay for. And to this day, unless they sue me for making the show, no one will know his housing allowance. And so that's the problem with the machine at this point is you get gobbled up and he runs a something called C3 Global, which is a church planting network.

1:09:59And his lawyer is also working with that. And so you start these, what's called auxiliaries, conventions, or associations. You start these side businesses as churches, and that's also in the same darkness that a church is in. So what's happened is as business leaders, and there's this big entrepreneurial spirit now in the Christian church. I'm an entrepreneur and a pastor. Well, no, you're just a really smart businessman who's a Christian, but you're leveraging your faith and you're starting a church or an auxiliary to the church to play in the darkest space possible. And a great example of that is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons.

1:10:40So in 98, they had a couple billion sitting. And so they're like, hey, we want to start an investment arm. So they start an investment arm called Enzyme Peak Advisors. It's a couple billion. They shove it in the market. And because there's these additional terms in the IRS code, and again, this is lobbying the government. So this is why they run very parallel lanes, the government and religion. The LDS church petitioned the IRS to add the term auxiliary in front of church in the 60s. And it was men's clubs back in the day. So men would meet up, smoke cigars, hang out, talk. And they're like, this is technically church.

1:11:21And so the IRS added this term auxiliary to their definition. Well, there's no definition, black and white definition of what an auxiliary is. So if there's no definition, anything can be an auxiliary. So the LDS church registers their investment fund as an auxiliary, which means that auxiliary is technically a church. It gets the same benefits that the church gets. Flash forward 27 years, there were$300 billion, and it's all for-profit ventures registered as churches. Wow,$300 billion. 300 billion in market assets. The LDS church will hit a trillion in market assets in the next decade, all under the guise of a religious institution.

1:12:06And the crazy part is not$1 of that, now it's a hedge fund because they're hedging, that not a single dollar of that fund has ever gone to humanitarian purposes or even the church. So if you're a shrewd businessman, you start a church and you can do whatever you want. And so you wonder why, oh man, Christianity is getting a bad rap right now, it's because, oh, there's these pastors, sexually abusing kids. No, it's because the whole system is broken, the legal system. So that's what needs to be reformed. Yeah. I mean, we see this all the time. I mean, pastors with runways behind their house, four private jets.

1:12:49I mean, I know it's insane. Well, the private jet can be registered as a house of worship in Texas, so you don't pay tax on the jets huh it can be registered as what is a house of worship because you pray on it so a private jet a 20 million dollar jet can be taxed is tax-free because it's a house of worship is that an auxiliary as well well it's just an asset of the church but it's it's a house of worship it's part of it's your building basically the irs sees it as your building so with these loopholes you could basically purchase just about any any vehicle any plane any piece of real estate yeah any building and a lot of times like so the lds church is now the second largest private landowner in the u.s 2.3 million acres wow tax-free all under the guise of religion and freedom of freedom of religion and none of this goes to They have farms.

1:13:50And this is where the LDS church is very interesting. And we can get, like, I really want to dissect the LDS church with you. They have farms. And so they say, hey, we're building our storehouse. So this is Old Testament Torah. So we're going to have goods and supplies in the storehouse, sufficient in God's storehouse. So they're quoting Malachi. And if you've tithed to us, if you've given your full tithe, you're going to get to enjoy the benefits of our storehouse if there's a natural disaster or if Jesus comes. So they're building their conglomerate, demanding you give 10 % of your gross revenue to them, and then you'll be able to benefit from us if something happens.

1:14:32And here's the kicker. If you don't give your full tithe, you don't get to benefit. How do they know? Oh, they look at your bank statement. They turn in their bank stands? Every year at the LDS church, you have to go in, and I can't remember what it's called, but it's a meeting with your bishop, and you have to discuss your finances. And he says, have you been a full tithe payer? And if you haven't, it's literally you're docked. And if you're not a full tithe payer, you don't get your temple recommend. And if you don't have your temple recommend, you don't get to get to heaven with your family.

1:15:07so we've built these institutions and i'm going to give the benefit of the doubt here with good intentions and they've become the middleman of god's resources and here's here's a question christ told to give to two things do you know what those two things are in the bible render to caesar the things that are caesar's so pay your taxes and then give to god the things that are god's Churches don't pay taxes. And then they've, so this is Christ talking to you, Sean. Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and give to God the things that are God's. Well, the church has moved right in the middle of you giving your resources to God and said, we'll disperse these for you.

1:15:49Christ never told you to give it to an institution. He never, this is the big one too. He never told you to give it to the house of God. He never told you to give it to the temple because you are the temple.

1:16:02He told us to pay taxes? Yeah. A little disappointed in that. Yeah. Well, because he said, I don't care about Caesar. Caesar's going to come and go. Taxes are going to go up and down. Don't care about worldly things. He's literally saying, just pay. Whatever he asks, you pay. Don't stress it. But so this is an interesting conversation about, so why was tax exemption created in the first place? So in 1913, the government is looking at all these businesses out in the U.S. and they say, man, there's about 12 ,000 organizations, 12 ,000 businesses building what we call social capital. So they're in their local communities because there's no TV, there's no internet, you know, and there's no planes yet.

1:16:46So your world is what's really around you within your 40-mile range, really. And so there's these 12 ,000 organizations building social capital. And the idea of this is, hey, even if Nathan doesn't have kids, I want the park down the street to be nice and safe for other people's kids. So raising social capital, local social capital, means I'm helping my local community and driving what development economists call human flourishing. So what businesses in our community are raising the level of human flourishing? And that's what they defined as the nonprofits. So they said there's these unique businesses that are strictly there to benefit the community.

1:17:25They're not after capital profits. They're really here for the benefit of the community. So we're going to do this special carve-out, and this is 1913, and we're going to call it a nonprofit sector. 12 ,000 organizations, and this includes churches, got that exemption in 1913. Today, there's 1.9 million nonprofits. So it's an explosion in the sector and it's tied to technology. So every time a tech boom happens, the nonprofit sector explodes because people see it as a way to offload money because the regulations are archaic. But so there's about 12 ,000 organizations. This includes religious exemptions.

1:18:03Flash forward a couple decades and the IRS has to, in effect, now define a church because churches are now saying, hey, we're a nonprofit. were building local social capital, which they were, and some are, right? So it's, we're helping the homeless. We're, you know, housing the unhoused. We're helping foster care. Single mothers were really the backbone of our community, which churches, which these institutions, because remember the church is just the people, but the building itself was really for the community. They do community meals together. They were there for the community. So the IRS, in effect had to define a church so they could grant tax exemption.

1:18:42So this always blows people away. The IRS used one organization as the model to shove every religion into. And that one organization was the Salvation Army. So they looked at the Salvation Army. They said the Salvation Army is doing good things. Let's go in. And they created 14 points and said, this is what the Salvation Army does, so this is what church is. What are those points? Every church, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, you name it, is tucked into that same 14 points. And it is, you need a house of worship, so you need a physical location. You need basically a board of elders, someone to steer it.

1:19:25You need a creed or a form of worship. You need childcare, so you can raise the next generation. So when you look at churches today, they're based solely off these 14 points. So when you say it's not bad, it's not bad, but that's not church. It's literally just replicas of the Salvation Army. And then you apply a level of entrepreneurialism on top of that, and man, the sky's the limit, if that makes sense. And so now today, there's 400 ,000 churches in the U.S. So if you lump Starbucks, McDonald's, Taco Bell, Burger King, basically every fast food franchise into one pile, there's still more churches than all those locations combined.

1:20:09Wow. And so people have just seen this 14-point checklist. There's two things. One, it's a way to abuse the system. And then two, which I really want to talk about, it's taking the potency out of religion. because it's put you in a box. And so I had someone from the CIA call me a few months ago. And they were like, hey, Nathan, what do you know about the 14-point checklist? And all I know is what the head of the IRS, the nonprofit sector told me. And so I'm like, here's the history of it. And they go, okay, good, but it wasn't IRS that created that.

1:20:56Who was it? The CIA. And I said, why would they do that? And they go, well, this individual is a Christian. They go, Christianity is dangerous, yes. And I said, yes. And they go, Islam is dangerous, yes. And I said, yes. And so they go, why not put everything into a box that you can control? So the carrot that the government uses to get religion into that box is tax exemption. So you sell your soul for 30 % to play by these 14 rules. and you don't even have to abide by all the rules, just a handful of them. So here's what's funny. You know what else is a church? The hell's angels. What? Yeah, they're registered as a church.

1:21:41So this box, knowingly or unknowingly, took the potency of religion away because Christianity is extremely dangerous. Look what it did to Rome. Within 200 years, Rome was done. Constantine became a Christian. Constantine's like, hey, I'd rather hang out with these guys So they control them through these 14 points It's basically you have to play by these rules if you want tax exemption And so that's why every church today in America looks the same Identical, whether that be Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism They all have the same building, the same group, the same creed Everything's the same because they play by the same rules So you've put every faith into this box and now the box can just be tucked on the shelf.

1:22:28And whatever politician is in power, they can just take the box off and do whatever they want with it. And Christianity, true Christianity, like we talked about earlier, is dangerous because you are not lorded over by Trump or Biden or the US. Like Christ is my Lord and what he says I should do, I do. And that is dangerous to institutions. And I use the analogy of the early church as an organism. and so organisms are organic and they move through systems humans like to build boxes that's what we're good at you know we build buildings we build systems we we build things because it's safe in things the 14 point checklist is safe i can go to this church for the rest of my life seeing the same song let's get the same donut maybe i'll change it up different flavor every other sunday or something you know but same cup of coffee i'll watch my kids be raised by these by these instructors that I don't know because, hey, it abdicates my role as a father to train my daughter up in Christ-centered values.

1:23:28But I'm safe there. And hey, man, you know what? I'm going to give you a percentage of my money because you're right, Sean, this does cost money. And you know what? Hey, I'm going to sponsor that distended belly from Uganda, that poor little kid over there, and I'm going to give him 20 bucks a month. I don't know if the money ever gets to him. And that's what we explore in the show. That money usually doesn't get to the kid. It doesn't. No, but I'm going to give my 20 bucks and pin it on that wall and be like, ah, you know, Ramsey's, I got Ramsey's for the month. And then that money gets torn down, put into a bucket, set aside.

1:23:59Oh, here's another wave of kids. And all because we live in this very safe box. And the Christianity in that book is so dangerous. And that organism can move that, that, that ecclesia, that body. If it's nimble, it moves through systems. And that's why Christ said, give to Caesar. I don't care because my gospel is going to move through this institution and wash through it. And that's why Christianity literally just dominated the world in those early couple hundred years. Because the message was so pure and organic, nothing could stop it. And you see that in the Ayatollah too, right? Religion can be weaponized and religion is dangerous, whether that be for good or ill.

1:24:43And so, yeah, Christianity, we've lost our bite. and we have lost our, we have lost the thing, being the thing, which is Jesus. And instead we say, we'll sing about them, you know? Man, let's take a quick break. When we come back, I'd like to get into more specific examples of how the money's being used, who specifically, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And then I want to talk about the positives because there's a lot of potential positives. I want to talk about the positives too. So, cool. All right. Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink?

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1:26:34All right, Nathan. We're back from the break. So I want to get into some big stats, overall stats on how much money is going out, how much they're saving, how much they're giving, whatever statistics you want to share. And then I want to go through specific examples of who you've seen inside the corruption through all your research. So we'll start with the big stats. Let's do that. So the religion business looks at the nonprofit sector as a whole. Right. And like I said, we go down to the legal architecture. We talked about some history there. About$1.5 trillion a year is given by individual donors to nonprofits.

1:27:18$1.5 trillion? Trillion with a T. That's just individual donors. Individual donors. This does not include government grants. So this is far bigger than the U.S. military. And it's kind of a black box. No one knows where that money goes. So it proves one thing in particular, Americans are really generous people. So this is$1.5 trillion. These are people inside the congregation, people that are going to the church that are just donating every week. The nonprofit sector as a whole. So let's dial it down. So Christians, global Christians, give about a trillion dollars a year to their churches. $600 billion comes from America.

1:27:59So about$600 billion is given every year to Christian churches. About$500 billion is given every year to nonprofits via American Christians. So you're looking at about$1.1 trillion in American giving, and then add another$400 billion on top of that to global Christianity. Because I'm interested in people—like in the religion business, we look at the nonprofit sector, and then a lot of people go, Nathan, why are you attacking or just looking at Christianity? And I say, well, I'm looking at Christianity because I hold my faith to the highest standard. I don't care about Islam. I don't care about Buddhism.

1:28:35I care about my faith. So a trillion dollars a year is given by Christians to Christian institutions. Another 500 billion is given by Americans to nonprofits here in the U.S. So it's a massive pile of money. So where does that money go? About 44 cents of every dollar that you give to a church goes straight to salaries. today. 44 cents. 44 cents of every dollar just goes straight to salaries. 25 cents goes to just buildings. And then only six cents of every dollar ever even leaves the institutional walls to go to the causes that Christ told us to support. The needy, the sick, the hungry, the thirsty.

1:29:20Wow, so it's not even 10%. It's 6%. Not even, yeah, 6%. 6 % of all donations. Let's just, what were the numbers on Christianity? again that are just going to the church a trillion like one trillion dollars globally globally 600 billion nationally and only six percent of that goes to charity well it's untraceable so this is this is voluntary data given so remember there's no 990s that churches file so you don't know what they give so six percent is kind of like the best potential outcome because they're giving you that information or they're giving these statisticians this information And so that's not 6 % creating impact down the value chain.

1:30:03So that's not$0.06 of every dollar helping that orphan in Africa or that cripple in Honduras. No, no, no. That's just$0.06 making it outside the walls. And usually what's happening now, because one thing I want to touch on is these terms auxiliaries, like we talked about with the LDS church, then you also have convention and association. And so a lot of times now it's just a church passing off that 6 % to another business that they own. So we don't even know if it leaves. Are you serious? Yeah. What would these, these businesses could be anything if it's an auxiliary. Yeah. So basically what we're seeing now is in the last 25 years, churches have become businesses.

1:30:45You know, smart entrepreneurs, and I tip my hat to them, are starting to take over churches. And they're seeing the opportunity to literally build conglomerates. So like let's say Chris, my business partner, has a nonprofit, a secular nonprofit that files a 990. It works in the mental health space, and he and I are good buddies. I run Nathan's Church. It's massive. and I say, hey, Chris, why don't we bring your secular nonprofit under the fold of Nathan's church? And that church, that business now, your business is a church and you no longer have to file 990s. And the excuse is, oh, man, that frees us up from paperwork and from the government, from Big Brother looking down on us.

1:31:27But what it also does is turn that organization completely dark. And so churches now are starting to acquire businesses and bringing them under their fold. And then just because those businesses are wrapped into my church, they all become churches themselves. And so now I can give Sixth Sense to Chris's church and say, look at all the, or his business, which is now a church and say, look at all the good work we're doing. And so I can also take a salary from Chris's business now and no one ever knows about it. And so that's what we're seeing in organizations like ARC and these church planting organizations is their whole strategy is to teach you how to grow your business, how to grow your church.

1:32:07You're not here to save your souls. Yeah, of course we're here to save souls, Sean. But their tagline is launch large. We want you to launch big, which means you need a soundstage, you need the big flashy lights, you need people in your seats. So we're going to teach you how to do that. And then, hey, you can also start starting these other businesses. I mean, these are so... I mean, my mind goes to, I don't know why, but it goes to, I mean, a lot of these guys have private jets. A lot of them have more than one private jet. You know, and I don't even know who we're talking about it, but, you know, there's the one guy that's got the - Kenneth Copeland is a great example.

1:32:42Runway behind his house, four jets. Yep. I mean, so is that, you know, how it works with these guys, you know, and I'm not, just business in general is you buy a private jet, a yacht. you charter it out you use it when you need it obviously one person doesn't need four private jets you know what i mean so is that what they're doing they're they're launching a a jet rental business that was all so they're already tax-free from buying the jet right correct then then they rent the jets out to their corporations or whatever i don't i don't see much um well again Could that be an example? Could be.

1:33:23And I know I've heard a couple people do that. That's their excuse for the private jet is, hey, we're actually going to make money with it. But I see that as an excuse. There's this thing that we profile on the show called long-term ministry, or I'm sorry, long-distance ministry. And a pastor will find an excuse and open a church 1 ,000 miles, 2 ,000 miles, 3 ,000 miles away from his main church. And then he goes, I need a jet because I have to go preach the gospel. And again, it goes back to that biblical premise of what is a church. You're here to make disciples of men and run your ministry, which is your family.

1:34:01Everything else is just man building layers on top of Christ's message. Christ didn't say you need to fly, like this guy needs a private jet to fly over there. Instead, the Bible says to build and exhort Christians, raise up Christians like you, Sean, and this is the kicker, the whole point of a shepherd, of a pastor, because pastor translates to shepherd, is to raise up his flock and then send them out. So if the biblical form of church is I am here to, if you came to my church, whatever that be, a home church, a mega church, my entire biblical goal is to steward you in the faith and grow Sean to where Sean goes, I'm ready to leave.

1:34:46I'm going to go start my own. That's the point of the church. But man, what a bad business practice because you are my money. So no, I'm not going to send you out. I need you here, Sean. I need you here building this, this machine that we built, this business. It needs you. But God didn't tell you to build a building. He told you to build the body. And so those private jets are all excuses over here in the business side. And they'll point to the Bible and find a random obscure verse to justify it. And boom, that jet is justified. They'll try to raise 20 million bucks or whatever. But all of that, again, I'm going to go back to this Christ said it in multiple gospels.

1:35:26He goes, you've taken traditions of men. So he said this in the temple, you've taken traditions of men and you've called it doctrine. And what he's saying is your culture, as he's standing there in the temple 2000 years ago, your culture is not doctrine it is not the word of god this is just culture but you're calling it doctrine and we're doing it again this business over here is church no that's just culture this is doctrine the true body of believers is doctrine that is culture um and planes are thrown into that housing allowances are thrown into that lump everything all the loopholes that we profile are nothing but culture man what keep going i want to hear more examples actually So I have a question.

1:36:10Yeah. You know, maybe you're familiar with this, maybe you're not, but I've always heard that Christmas, that the birth of Christ was actually in October, in early October. Have you heard this? I've heard of that, yeah. And that the church made it December 25th and brought up Santa Claus and all this other stuff to bring more people in for the money. Is there any truth behind that? I don't. That's not my wheelhouse. One of our good mentors, very wise man, he goes, Nathan, there's this so what pile. And he goes, you have to pick your lane, and then everything else is so what. And that to me, I would assume Christ's birth was not December 25th.

1:36:52And so it's like, eh, that's a so what. We want to celebrate his birth just like we want to celebrate his resurrection. I get that. So, eh, so what. Like at the date to me, I don't have the time or the energy to research that. I have heard that, but I can't speak to it as a - Okay. I mean, there's some stuff with Easter too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Easter bunnies. You know about this? Yeah. Let's do it. Educate me. Well, I don't know much about it, but I've heard. So what have you heard? Man, I don't even know how to organize it into something that I can articulate, but it has to do with the symbolism of the Easter bunny and all of this stuff.

1:37:32Oh, I haven't heard. I just think the Easter bunny is, again, it's all about money, right? It's like the fact that churches, I went to a church where they had a helicopter fly over and rain Easter eggs down on the kids. I'm like, where in the Bible can you point to that this is even remotely Christian? My guess is it goes probably back to some pagan holiday because most things have to do with pagan holidays. But yeah, I don't know much about if Easter and what the bunny symbolizes. No cut. Yeah. We'll get into that another time. Another time. Let me do some research. Give me a little time and I'll come back with all that heat.

1:38:10All right. So more examples. Yeah. What's going on? Another big loophole is it's called the Nurement. So this is a legal term that the IRS puts forward and it's no part of, and this is what gives you 501c3 status. So I'm going to, by memory, repeat the definition of enurement, and then I'm going to throw examples out and I want to know if this is enurement or not. No part of the net earnings of a 501c3 may go to benefit any of the founders, founders, family, shareholders, or stakeholders. That is enurement. That is illegal. So no part of the net earnings of a 501c3 may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder, founder, the founder's family, anybody in leadership basically.

1:39:02So you can take a salary, but you cannot use the net earnings to benefit yourself. Is a private plane inurement? No. Is it what? Inurement. Inurement, meaning? So to inure yourself means you're using the net earnings of that 501c3 to benefit yourself, not the mission of the charity. So is a private plane inurement? I think there are examples where it could be. Okay. I'm sure that the majority of it is not. Okay. Is a yacht? No. Okay. It's not inurement? No, that would be for personal purposes. Okay, so it is inurement. So inuring is if you inure yourself with the money I give you, that means you are inurement.

1:39:58You're using it for personal gain. You're using it for personal gain. So private yachts would be inurement. How about you and your buddies start a conference and you all meet up and you just kind of go on a ski trip for a week. and then you check the box that, hey, we met for three hours to talk about something for the week. Yeah, that would. Inurement, right? And the reason why I'm going down this waterfall is how about, hey, Sean, you're a good looking dude who's on camera a lot. Thank you. You're welcome. You need a clothing allowance. I'm going to pay you or you're going to take a$50 ,000 year clothing allowance.

1:40:35Is that inuring yourself? Yes. Okay. so these are the slippery slopes that in phil hackney at the irs he says it too he goes it's really hard for us to be able to define what a newman is because technically i would say you have a more sane approach to a newman than most pastors but hey i'm a pastor very successful i think i need a private jet and on paper i'm going to prove why i'm going to fly to the church this is my favorite one i'm going to fly to the church i just built in the caymans it cost me 30 grand The fuel in my jet's gonna cost me 50 to get there You know, so I outspent the whole build on this church In this third world country just with fuel alone, but I need that plane to get there You know what?

1:41:20A lot of people sean are looking at me on stage. I need to look good. So that 50 grand is valid Hey, you know what that yacht that's where I witnessed other pastors. I take them fishing. We go deep sea fishing man sean You're gonna really meet God out on that water. I promise you. And you're going to land a marlin at the same time. And that's how they justify it. And so our argument is most of the way these big pastors in particular are using money is in Yermit. They're building their brand on top of the generosity of donors. And those donors are giving to expand the mission of that church or that nonprofit, but I am building my brand off the back of it, if that makes sense.

1:42:06So it's like a good book sales. This is my favorite one. And most of these pastors use ghostwriters, and I've talked to lots of the ghostwriters. Most of the pastors use ghostwriters, so they don't even write the book really. They'll read it and scan through it and make a couple notes, but they slap their name on it. They put a title on it. And man, Sean, it'd be awesome if I was on that New York Times bestsellers list. Well, good news. I have a mega church. And so we're going to buy 20 ,000 copies of the book right when it comes out. So I use donor dollars. I use tithe money to buy my books. And it immediately puts me on the New York Times bestsellers list.

1:42:42It's going to sit in the basement of the church for a while, but don't worry, we'll give it away as free gifts to new people that come. So I have officially inured myself because now the church is buying my books. I'm on the bestsellers list. I get to launch my brand and no one's the wiser. And all these little scams are happening in the background. And so Kenneth Copeland is a prime example of a neumann. Kenneth Copeland is the guy, you've seen the video before where the female news anchor corners him on the runway and she walks up to him and she's asking him about the private jets and he gets in her face and he goes like this.

1:43:17Have you seen that one? Is this the guy that he looks like a demon? Yeah. And he says, I can't fly. I have to fly private because I can't have demons in the tube with me. So he's calling people demons. That's Kenneth Copeland. And so we had a great showdown on his property. It's in the series. And so - What happened? So he has a 19 ,000 square foot parsonage. What's a parsonage? A parsonage is a house owned by the church. So it's bought and paid for by donor dollars and tithe givers, and the pastor can live there. The purpose of this is, hey, back in the day, clergy would live on site, right? That door would be open 24 hours a day for someone to come in, get prayer, you know, in the Catholic world, you know, repent.

1:44:05And so that pastor would need to be on site all the time. And so they would build what's called a parsonage right next to the church. So the pastor could live in this very modest house that's usually attached physically to the church. Well, over decades and just through precedent, that parsonage has been pulled off. And so the church will pay for the parsonage of the pastor. So the parsonage is owned by the church, but the pastor can live in it. There's no stipulation on how big that parsonage can be, how extravagant it can be. So Kenneth Copeland has a 19 ,000 square foot parsonage on the lake on his church property.

1:44:46his church property so this is the story about kenneth kenneth what most people don't know was a struggling musician back in the day he let he became a pilot and started flying oral roberts around oral roberts is like og evangelist he's like the first one of the first old school big boys in the in the space similar to frank off billy graham um and so the story goes that Kenneth Copeland was flying over Texas and saw this runway next to this lake. And God gave him this vision that he was gonna buy this whole parcel and turn it into a church. And turn it into what he calls the revival capital of the world.

1:45:24So I'll flash forward, he creates this marketing pitch, starts his church. And back in the day, in the 60s and 70s, mailers were super popular. And so you'd mail, you'd get a mailing list, you'd mail 50 ,000 envelopes out and say, hey, Sean, give me 10 bucks. This is Nathan. This is Pastor Nathan. I need 10 bucks to help you spread this message. We have his mailer from the 70s, and he promised to build six things. He said, and in this pitch, God gave me the vision to buy this runway. I'm going to build a radio station, a TV network, ministry facilities, Kingdom Park, which was an extravagant park for his churchgoers and his tithe payers, an elderly community.

1:46:09So once you retire, you'll be able to retire on the church property. And in your rooms, they would pipe in Kenneth Copeland's TV network so you could watch Kenneth Copeland preach the gospel 24-7 a day. And then elderly home and then a hotel for guests to come and enjoy the lake. So he sent that pitch out, raised tens of millions of dollars, he ever only built three. I had to make sure it was three. Three of the things he promised to build. One was the radio station. Two was the TV network. Three was the ministry facilities. He never built the three things that people would donate money for. I would want to use the park.

1:46:50I would want to use the hotel. Maybe one day I'd want to retire in that facility. He never built anyone, any of them. In the for-profit world, that would be called fraud. he would be in jail. In the religious world, we call it faith, Nathan. You got to have faith. Wow. So in the interim, he buys 1 ,600 acres on this lake in Texas. He builds the ministry facilities. He builds the radio and TV networks. And then a gentleman, a builder, a developer was like, hey, this bottom part of your 1 ,600 acres is prime for development. so he peels off 400 of the 1600 acres and sells it to a developer so there is a housing development there today it's not for the elderly though and he made money off that deal it just went back to his church in the meantime an oil i can't remember the gentleman's name he put he drills oil started going to the church and he's like hey you own the mineral rights of this land let's start pumping oil so they've been pumping oil for decades and no one knows how many tens of millions of dollars have been made off the oil because it's all this guy's all of it all of it it's all called a church and so flash forward now he's an older guy so the oil business falls under the church the church owns the oil business yeah so he has his private two private runways he's got his ministry facilities he peeled off 400 acres to a for-profit development he's got his oil platforms and at the very bottom of the lake or the property near the lake he started building this 19 000 square foot parsonage and now he lives in it no one's ever been there before so no one knows what it looks like pastors have but like no pub nobody like you and i have ever been there so that 19 000 square foot parsonage um word is from a an informant that basically copeland has epsteined tons of pastors so there was an electrician back in the day that wired cameras and audio recording devices into every guest room in that 19 ,000 square foot parsonage.

1:48:56And so if you have pastors so afraid of their rivals. So they're blackmailing. He's blackmailing. Yeah. Got to get dirt on people. How did you come across this information? Through our PIs. Yeah. Every single guest room in a. The guest rooms in a parsonage owned by the church is wiretapped, video and audio, to basically archive dirt on people staying with you. Has anybody received the footage? No. Because no one can ever get to the house. Man. Wow. Wow. Things aren't as it seems. It appears that way. So I had the thought that, hey, I want to see the parsonage. So I start giving money to his church and I'm like, the church owns that house.

1:49:46No one's seen it. So I want to see it. So a YouTuber named Tommy G and I, I started going to his church and we're like, okay, I get a schematic, a big printout of his property because it's huge. I track the roads. We get a visual on it. And there's one open gate from rain runoff that couldn't close. And it went from a parking lot to this dirt road. And so I could see it on the map and I'm like, that's our inn. We're just going to steer down this open gate and see where it leads us. And we're going to try to get to the house. So this is in the show. We go to service. Ironically, all these pastors know me.

1:50:22So as soon as I sit down, there's three security guards around me, like with their earpieces. And I sit through part of the service. I get up and leave. And Tommy walks out. And we meet at the cars. And we just start driving. So we get on this dirt road. We go over this open fence. And boom, we're 50 yards from his runway, but there's a gate closed. And I'm like, shoot, I got nowhere to go, man. We pull up to the gate, it just opens. And I'm like, well, this is God. So we're doing this. So we get onto the runway. So now it's something out of, what's that? You know, it's something out of an action movie.

1:50:57We got two cars flying down a runway now. And I'm like, okay, we're going to make a hard right here. And this is all in the show. And there's another gate. And boom, that gate opens too. And so now we're like three quarters the way to his house. No one's been down here before. No one's ever seen footage of this. And I'm a big bow hunter. and so as i'm driving through this property it's all high fenced so it's 10 to 12 foot fences i start seeing bucks everywhere deer and i'm like this is his own hunting ground and sure enough we pull up to his house and there's one final gate and he has this massive deer stand and i'm like this pastor has his own high fenced hunting ground on his property on the church property that no one gets to use but they pay for.

1:51:40So we pull up to the fence and there's a keypad. So I'm like, we're not getting through this one. And now I'm 200 yards from the house so we can see it. So we put drones in the air. We're having fun. No one's ever been here. And so there's no security. And so I call the front desk of the church because I'm like, well, we're kind of stuck here now. So I call the front desk and I can't remember the guy's name, Abraham. This nice guy named Abraham answers. And he's like, this is Abraham. How are you doing, Nathan? And I said, whoa, how do you know this is Nathan? And he goes, we have your number.

1:52:14You've been giving to us. And so they're just a refined call center. And I'm like, okay, awesome. He's like, what would you like to do? Would you like to give money or would you like prayer? And I'm like, well, I got a random request. Like we're sitting at the gate of Kenneth's house. Like I'd love to meet the pastor. And he's like, you're what? and I'm like I'm at the gate like we're down here we made it through two gates we were on the one and I tell him the whole story and he goes please hold and he just puts me on hold and there's some hymn music in the background we sit there for 30 minutes and I'm like no one believes that we actually made it here so let's just head back to the runway so we drive back to the runway and we just wait I'm like if we just sit on the runway someone's gonna see us so we just sit on this open runway and sure enough within five minutes boom two private security guards come or cars come driving by, parked next to us.

1:53:02They're professionals. After Ed Young's experience, I know private security and I know professional security and then just straight cowboys. These guys are professionals. They come up and they're like, what are you doing? I'm like, hey, we just have a couple of questions about the parsonage. We tried to get there, but we couldn't get there. We're having a cordial conversation and out of nowhere, we just hear this F-150 comes screeching up on us. And this dude jumps out and he looks like John Ritter from the movies. So he comes like flying up to all, he almost hits us, a couple of feet from us.

1:53:35And he gets out and he tears his glasses off and he opens his jacket and he walks up to us. He's like, you out of here now. And he flashes this badge and he pulls his shirt open and he's got his like a little pistol, like nine or something sitting there in his pants. And luckily Tommy G has been through this enough. And he goes, let me see that badge. And the guy goes, no, get out of here now. And he goes, no, no, I just, I want to see your badge. And this guy grabs both of us, so assault, and starts shoving us to the cars. And right then the professional security is like, whoa. So they grab John Ritter and they throw him against his truck and they're like, get out of here.

1:54:11And it turns into this funky altercation. Come to find out he is kind of this private security, like main security guy. And again, I'm respectful. And so cops show up. There's kind of a standoff. And we're like, hey, we just have questions about the financials. No one's willing to talk. You know, that parsonage is paid for by the congregants. No one's ever been here. No one's ever seen it. Like at least someone should be able to look at it. And the cops are like, hey, can you guys please leave? And the private security is like, can you guys just leave? And we're respectful. We're like, okay, but we'd love to talk to someone.

1:54:44So flash forward a couple of days, we find out that cowboy security is Canada's private security and they fire him. That guy has traveled around the U.S. to churches. He gets hired and fired over and over again. It's just his MO. But so another major loophole is these parsonages. You could do whatever you want. David Taylor, who was just arrested by the FBI yesterday, 26 or 28 ,000 square foot home in Tampa, Florida. That's just one. He has about 28 million in real estate. And so just with the loopholes, you can do whatever you want. And again, you're asking for money, whether that be through tithing or generosity from vulnerable people who are there, you know, to be prayed on and loved on.

1:55:32And these guys just build empires in the name of Jesus. Man. Do you think they're preaching anything that is, I mean, what do you think about their teachings? Cannabis is garbage. like like i mean like when i was there it was after trump got shot in the air um and he had a photo of trump up behind him on the big screen and he literally said god gave trump as our savior you know and then he believes that the crime so this is a great story so in 2007 um or might have been 2008, Congress was looking at some really bad players. So our boys in Texas, the Trinity Foundation had made a big enough stink.

1:56:19And so Congress was starting to look at prosperity gospel preachers and the worst players, led by Senator Grassley. And Benny Hinn, if you know who Benny Hinn is, megachurch pastor, he's the guy that whips you with his coat and you fall backwards. Benny Hinn spent$5 million fighting this inquiry at the time. So these guys are hemorrhaging money to stop the government from looking at their businesses. The stock market crashes, the real estate market crashes, the whole crash of 08 happens. Kenneth Copeland will say that that was a gift from God, a miracle from God to get the government off their back.

1:56:59God crashed the economy in 2008, so the government would stop looking at them. So that's the type of crap these guys preach from the pulpit. And then his son-in-law, while we were there, was up on stage, and it's in the show. And he goes, in difficult times, we prosper, and we are getting very prosperous. And he goes, the purpose of prosperity is distribution. And in the show, you see this, he literally says it and just starts laughing when he says distribution. And he catches himself and he's like, distribution, because it's like, you're not distributing anything. You know, you say you are, and they'll say on their website, they say, hey, we give 10 % away.

1:57:43We asked for 10%, we give 10 % away. But no one knows because there's no 990 filed. So it's whatever that leadership of that organization wants to say you have to take it as faith. Wow. And so Kenneth Copeland committed fraud. He wanted to build those six things. He promised investors he would build those six things. He only ever built three. And it was the three he could benefit from. That is straight up fraud in the for-profit world. And yet he's on TV to this day preaching, you know, whatever gospel he's preaching. You know, human beings are really good at justifying why they're doing things.

1:58:22You see so many people, they trick their own mind into justifying why they're doing what they're doing. Do you think these people actually believe that they're doing good or? 100%. You do? I do. I think the majority of them, I think they have to, right? Dan Bramer on the show says no one believes something they think is stupid. Well, see, I mean, I don't know. I kind of disagree with you on this because if they really, truly believed that they were doing good, then what would be able to – I mean, just out there on the break, you told me not one of these people have debated you, have given you any evidence of good that they're doing.

1:59:06They haven't even spoken to you, correct? Except the one guy who – Who didn't speak to me. But yeah. He spoke to you for like five minutes and said they'll do it later. Yeah, I'll point to the books, the Bible. I'll point to those scriptures. The blind lead the blind. And I always use the analogy, we'll talk about tithing. I'd love to talk about tithing in a little bit. But someone who has tithed their whole life, so given 10 % to their institution, and I think about the LDS church a lot because they really do take advantage of the system, is people don't want to see their lifelong actions as, silly almost, if that makes sense.

1:59:49Like I put my hard-earned money into this machine and like - Just flipped the whole world upside down. We were talking about that at the beginning. And so everything is backwards. And so I do believe most of the, I believe Ed Young in particular firmly believes he is in the right. I believe his lawyer, Dennis Brewer Jr. firmly believes he is right. And the ironic part about the lawyer, Dennis Brewer Jr., who is the CFO and the general counsel for Fellowship Church, his dad was also a lawyer for Kenneth Copeland. And so you have pastors passing down their knowledge to their kids that take over their business.

2:00:28And then at the other side of the spectrum, you have lawyers who protect these guys and pastors passing down knowledge on how to beat the system as well to their kids who become lawyers. So it's, I don't even know the analogy to, but it's just corruption passing, you know, corrupt passing down corruption. It's generational. Yeah. I mean, if you think that they, I mean, if you think that they actually believe that they're doing good, then why wouldn't they talk to you? Why wouldn't they give you the information that you need to clear their congregation, their name, their church? Because now is the time.

2:01:05I firmly believe God is working and now is the time for reform. and this is where it was 16 years of research and speaking and listening to the most brilliant minds in the world, God is, I believe, using me to bring the most brilliant minds in the world together to present the argument. It's not me on the religion business presenting this argument. I'm presenting it to you now because I'm regurgitating what I've heard with these genius minds, but these minds have never been brought together. And so to debate tithing would mean they're gonna lose. they've been presenting and misunderstanding the scriptures on that for 200 years.

2:01:46About 200 years now, pastors have been preaching tithing. They didn't preach tithing before. So that's what's so fascinating is their whole theology, which is just the study of the scriptures, is off. And so if you really look at it, I'm going to tear you to shreds. You're not going to be able to handle a discussion with me on tithing. And then what happens? As soon as your congregation sees you questioning or they can question your ask for money, it's a house of cards. Once you flick that one, the whole thing collapses. And so that's why no one will debate me on it. They'll sit and they'll fly around with their private jets and make fun of me and make funny memes of me with devil horns and call me Timu Judas, which I think is pretty funny.

2:02:29That's kind of my online name now is Timu Judas, but it's because they can't debate me biblically. And so they might have good intentions, but we always say good intentions pave the way to hell. And these guys, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt, have great intentions, and they are rapidly paving the church to hell. Just out there every Sunday. And I would call it a false gospel. Who says good intentions are the gateway to hell? We say it in the show. It's a very popular term, but we've used it in the show. It's in our trailer. That's been one of our mantras. Humans will human. Slow is fast and good intentions pave the way to hell is our mantras.

2:03:16Can you give any examples of good intentions as the gateway to hell? Yeah. Man, I want to say, I'm going to use a church. Man, I want to save souls. I want to present Christ. Christ has saved me. He is the way, the truth, and the life. No one gets to the Father, Yahweh, except through Him. And I want to tell people about that. I had a radical transformation. So I'm going to go to seminary. That's a good intention to go to seminary. Most seminaries today teach you how to build the business. So that's the first good intention of mine that's paving my way, that's laying out this road. And remember that MS-13 member, you got 10 bad decisions until you murder someone.

2:03:58And that's me being grumpy on the freeway. Someone cuts me off. I flash my brights. That's issue two. I tell them to pull over because I want to yell at them. That's issue three. He's armed and I'm armed. We both get out of the car, right? All these poor decisions can lead a decent upstanding person to kill someone. and then boom, he pulls a gun, I pull a gun, someone dies. And so you look at these good intentions. So I go to seminary. Now I know how to start a church. The banks, my seminary is actually aligned with a local bank. So they're going to give me a loan. I'm going to take that debt on because I think I want to preach the gospel.

2:04:35So there's another good intention to move. But now I have debt I got to pay down and I don't even have a congregation yet. And so can you see the angle to where hell is me being frustrated with my work, me cheating on my wife. You look at the field of church leadership and it's just rot with adultery, theft, fraud, abuse. And it's because all these good intentions in this system have led me to hell. And so unless I use Christ as my beacon and I'm walking towards him and I'm studying those scriptures and in prayer, I'm going to end up in hell. I will end up in hell, whether it be I become a pastor or work in filmmaking.

2:05:18Without good intentions, I mean, what do we have? Oh, this is a big one. You have Christ. It's not you, Sean. As a Christian, it's not you. It's not me. Pastors always say, Nathan, I'm doing my best. And I say, I hate that term. Christ didn't say, do your best. he said you will fail but every day you will get up die to yourself pick up your cross and follow me to the point where all i where all when i look in the mirror i don't see nathan anymore i see christ because i see the fruits of the spirit love joy peace patience kindness goodness gentleness self-control faithfulness like that is what i want to look in the mirror and see and i will never get up and be like, dang, I did my best.

2:06:02My brother and I, who's a brilliant scholar, like brilliant biblical scholar, he and I wrestle with that all the time because he's like, I never want to hear myself say I did my best. I failed, but God's through grace is going to give me another attempt at this. And so good intentions, I don't care about good intentions. You know, it's like I care about emulating Christ because my daughter, who's seven, who's the show, I'm sitting in this chair because of her. And I don't ever want her to be like, my dad did his best. I want her to be like, my dad was a broken man who every day tried to emulate Christ.

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2:08:19It's nothing else. So everything over here, the business, the machines, the good intentions, I don't, I don't care. God didn't say, or Christ didn't say, Nathan, go out with good intentions. he said sin no more and he gave very clear directives and he knew we would fail and that's what grace and forgiveness is for but i don't go out saying man see this is the slippery slope um i was raised in the christian church i say i i can confidently say i did not know christ and i wrestled with this idea that he is the way the truth and the life until my early 30s until until my daughter came into the world.

2:08:56Because I had faith in my faith. So you're right. I had so many good intentions to be like Jesus. I would go to church. I'd sing. I'd put my hands up. I'd put money in the bin. I'd volunteer. I'd go to camps. I was a train wreck. In my 20s, I did drugs. Like I just couldn't get my life together. I had no order in my life. And it was all good intentioned. And I heard a lot of people along the way. Because man, I love Jesus. I'm a Christ follower and yada, yada, yada. But no, I had good intentions. I wanted to be like Jesus, but I had no spine. I had no moral backbone because all my leaders around me didn't have a spine and a backbone because I was looking at them to say, this is what I should emulate.

2:09:37And who are they? They're sexually abusing their adopted kids. They're committing adultery. They're divorcing their wives. And I'm like, this is junk. All these guys have good intentions too. so it's when you finally experience christ and see christ that you say that is my that is my focal point and nothing else and then good intentions don't matter and it's like i'm gonna i'm gonna live i'm gonna try my damnedest to live up to to him and i will fail every day but when i die to myself christ shines through me and paul says it best you know he goes died out of myself so Christ literally comes through me.

2:10:15It's not I who live, but Christ and me. And as a Christian and a Christ follower, that is the only thing we look at. Everything else is just smoke and mirrors in a trillion dollars. Before we move into tithing, which I kind of wanted to save this at the end, we will revisit it. But I mean, what would you like to see happen out of all this? I mean, is it transparency? that you want to see is or is it what is it i mean yes so because you're making money off these off the docuseries correct we're losing a lot we're losing money but so i'll tell you right now transparency is step one and that is just shining a light into the business center saying transparency needs to be brought in that's all i could care less than my business partner i we always say we could care less if your pastor makes 20 million bucks a year or if he makes or if she makes a hundred thousand bucks a year.

2:11:13The only thing we care about is that you know, because you will make the right decision. They can make an educated decision. And so in the Reformation, 1517, Martin Luther, do you know much about the Reformation? No. Okay. So the Vatican was at its peak. They were fighting wars. They were building the Basilica. Have you been to the Vatican? Yeah. Incredible. Right? So they're hemorrhaging money. the the the roman catholic church is almost broke they start selling indulgences which has no no real even tie to the scriptures because they have to raise more money they've they've they've got a stranglehold on the bible and so they're the ones that read the scriptures and martin luther and a few others are like this is ridiculous this book needs to be out for everybody to be able to read um you know they translated into german and a few other languages and boom the reformation happens because now that Bible, that massive Bible, you can read at your house.

2:12:11You don't need the Vatican anymore to do that. And so you have the Protestant Reformation, but what had happened is all power had siloed at the top of the Vatican. So it was a monarchy. There was a few select people at the very top controlling the literature, controlling what people do, asking for money, and you had to give the money up the value chain to this top leadership. Martin Luther writes in one of his books, he goes, I see them in Rome now sitting around drinking their fine Italian wines, laughing at all the stupid beer drinking Germans that have paid for it all. And so you have this select few that are controlling all the resources and demanding for salvation that you give to this institution.

2:12:54So what happens is the Reformation happens and that whole system gets flipped on its head. Now the Bible is in your hands. You can read the Bible. you don't have to give to an institution because we've burned most of them down or broken all the stained glass. No one wants to go anymore. And now this is the birth of marketing in the church too. So what does the Vatican do? Well, we have good art. So they bring in all these amazing artists and painters and they build the basilica. So boom, marketing the church has officially begun. And so the Protestant Reformation happens. Everybody's faith is their own.

2:13:25Again, because it's you doing the work. It's me having to read. It's me having to be in this body, the small ecclesia and talk about it and church went organic again so that organism starts moving through it moves to the u.s now the organism is moving across the u.s because america's you know being founded and discovered all the pilgrims are pushing over they've got that bible literally that bible came across with pilgrims and they're reading around campfires to each other and boom what happens america gets established cities get built churches start building buildings again so it's no longer just around campfires and people moving.

2:14:01Now we got buildings, we got overhead. Flash forward to today, we've just built mini Vatican's all over again. There's not one Vatican though, there's 400 ,000 now. Does that make sense? 400 ,000? So there's 400 ,000 churches in the US. And so where I'm going with this is the Protestant Reformation tore down a monarchy, but look at every church in the US today. It's all monarchies, all the powers at the top. There's a select few that control the money and they say everybody give out of faith and we'll do because we are anointed what god says we should do with your money so this is just the protestant reformation 2.0 and it's now because enough people are frustrated and sick of it that the religion business is is the first i think of many um stories to come out where it's gonna it's gonna reform the church and reformations are not fun.

2:14:54And so now it's, so to your point in the beginning, with your gentleman's question on Patreon was, are you here just to point out a problem or bring a solution? We are here to point out the problem, but then bring a solution. So hopefully the Reformation can be sped up a little bit, if that makes sense. Yeah. Let's get into tithing. We'll get into how we fix this at the end tithing so churches need money the businesses need money to run to your point their salaries insurances operational cost overhead you name it so there's two ways to get that money one is through tithing which is an old testament biblical term and then two is through just generous giving give what give out of love you know it's more christ-centered so um tithing in the early founding of America, churches didn't tithe.

2:15:46Nowhere in the history or literature does any pastor ever require tithes. When we read through sermons and whatnot, it wasn't until the Civil War when America was really broke that we start seeing tithing come back up. And it's because churches were poor. And so churches, pastors went back through the Bible and they went to the Old Testament and the story of Moses coming off Mount Sinai. He brings what's called the Mosaic laws off the mountain, which is the Ten Commandments and the set of laws to rule Israel. And this is a really big point. At this moment in history, politics and religion were combined.

2:16:25They were not separate. In America, they're separate. Back then, they were not separate. Within those Mosaic laws, there's three tithes. And a tithe literally translates to a tenth. So when you hear someone say a tithe, it means one-tenth. That is, it just means a tenth. So there was three tithes. There was the festival tithe, the Levitical tithe, and then the charity tithe. The charity tithe was taken every third year. So technically, you're supposed to be giving 23.3 % of what you have to the temple, not 10%. if you point to the Mosaic Covenants, if you're a pastor that says, I preach tithing, which is the Kenneth Copelands of the world, the Russell Johnsons of the world, most prosperity pastors point to tithing.

2:17:18So from the very baseline, their argument is flawed because they just picked one of the three. And the one they picked is the Levitical tithe because they've positioned themselves as the Levites who took care of the temple. and so here's the kicker you have the jewish temple where you brought your tithes you'd slit your animals throats the levites never took a salary they owned nothing and are you a hunter okay we're going to get into some nerdy stuff about hunting and slaughtering animals real quick so the levites sole purpose was to upkeep the temple and bring your tithes and offerings to God and offer them to God.

2:17:58You could not do it. And so a couple of rules. Levites could not own any land and they took no money. So these current pastors are positioning themselves as the Levitical priest. So right there, they're flawed. If you want to mirror the Old Testament, you can't take a salary, you can't own land. And then, yeah, you could, I guess, ask for a tithe, but you have to ask for all three. So the tithe, this tithe in particular, is I would offer my goat, my lamb, my sheep, my cow whatever I'm bringing to the altar the Levites would slit its throat, process it and then God asked for one thing the fat of the animal as the story goes so God says burn the fat to me as I like it it's a sweet smelling aroma and then they'd put the rest of the animal in a pot and basically boil it down the Levite, this is where the Levite would benefit from the tithe they would take one back quarter of the animal I can't remember if it's the left or right because they have to feed their family.

2:18:57So they would take a quarter of your tithe and then guess who got the rest of the tithe back? You did, and you fed your family with it. But the whole point was to bring this animal, bleed it out, burn the fat to God. You as the Levite would get one of the quarters and I would take the rest back and eat it. So that is the point of the tithe. It's saying I'm bringing this as an offering to you, but here's the kicker. you only ever had to tithe if you were jewish and you owned land in israel if you were a sojourner or a gentile you did not tithe interesting so the tithe rules of the old testament mosaic law jewish landowner and then what came off the land so the story goes since israel since the the biblical story is israel was a gift the land was a gift to the jews by god god required something off of that and that was agriculture and livestock off the land itself.

2:19:57So when you read the Old Testament, or when Jesus talks about tithing of mint and dill, it's what's coming off your property. It has nothing to do with money. So that pastor is positioning himself as the Levite, which the Levites are gone. So you're not a Levitical priest. And then he's positioning his church, his modern day institution as the temple. Guess what? Christ said God and Jesus, he said, we don't dwell in temples. No building holds God. You are the temple now, Sean. So our very Christ that all these churches preach say, we are the temple, the building is not the temple. But to fund it, we say, the building is the temple and I am the Levitical priest.

2:20:42So it's all botched. And so this is why - This is why it's so important to get all these different perspectives. because what I've noticed through my journey is that people will cherry pick, you know, parts of scripture to fulfill their own, you know, desires and dreams and stuff like that. Well, don't get me wrong. Like, this is what I encourage everybody to do. The first time the Bible really came at me and it came alive was when I read it as a history book. I was not here. I'm like, God, just let me read it as a story. And as soon as I did that, it came alive because then these wars meant something these prophets being martyred meant something you know like then it wasn't i wasn't trying to cherry pick anything out of it so you move to the new testament christ gives very specific details on how to give and like i said if you're a christ follower everything follows with you your resources your time your talent everything you have and so christ told you to be very generous and he said in matthew 25 31 one, help the hungry, help the thirsty, help the naked, help the prisoner, help the sojourner, and then he was obsessed with helping the orphans and the widows.

2:21:54So if that is Christ's main focus, help the needy, help the helpless. I look at the institutional church today when I said only six cents of every dollar even leaves the walls. We're not doing that job, not even remotely close to it. Sure, there's going to be fraud and abuse. You can never get that out of a system, but our system should at least somewhat mirror our quote unquote savior and it's antithetical to it.

2:22:23All with good intentions, by the way. That's the kicker is all of this was built with good intentions. Man.

2:22:35What are we missing? Before we move into how do we, what do you like to see and how do we, what is the good news? You said you had good news at the beginning. I have great news. Christians and American Christians in particular are the most generous people in the world. We give, and this is my every Christ follower out there. You are trying to emulate your Savior, and you can see that in your giving. Like, hats off to you. But that doesn't mean we just give and let it go. and some of the worst offenders right now that are being exposed and many are in prison always say, hey, Sean, your money is not yours, it's God's.

2:23:20So give me 10 % and we're gonna do what we feel we need to do with it and leave it up to God. I would argue Christ would disagree with that entirely because Christ says, Sean, pick up your cross and follow me. And what he is saying there, I think there's an expectation baked in that you will be the light of the world. You will spread my gospel. And what that means is I will make sure the limited resources I have create impact for his cause. So I will actually demand accountability with my money that I give and demand stewardship of that money because it's a limited resource. I'm just not going to give it away and let you do whatever you want with it.

2:24:03Like no, Christ told me to make disciples of men To heal the sick I am here to do that To feed the hungry To clothe the naked You know, to visit the prisoner and the sojourner And help the sojourner Like that is what we're here to do So hey, if I give five bucks I want to make sure that five bucks goes towards the cause And sure, you're leading the organization You deserve a salary You deserve your kids to be paid Without a doubt But that doesn't mean you inure yourself off of it Right? Steward the money well And the way we do that is by bringing accountability into that system, into those churches, into those auxiliaries, into those conventions, into those associations.

2:24:41Or we're just going to have trillion-dollar hedge funds everywhere with every church eventually, and then the church becomes the state again, which has happened in the past as well. Paula White. I want to get to Paula White before we— Paula White is the faith advisor to our current sitting president, Trump. we were given uh by an individual her bylaws so remember in the beginning i was talking about we have to separate the business from the true church paula white is a corporation it is a business and businesses have bylaws her bylaws are stamped confidential on every single page um in her bylaws it says she can never be fired in her bylaws it says she can never be removed until death when she dies or resigns the business gets passed off to her son there is no vote on who takes it over they have a board of directors the board of directors can make decisions she can fire any board of director at any time if she doesn't like the vote of the board of directors she can veto it she has full carte blanche reign of that organization so she can say she's a corporation with bylaws and a board of directors but it's just it's all smoke and mirrors she is literally a monarchy and then the kicker is in those bylaws it says you will find jesus through your pastor president paula white so it says sean if you go to paula white's church you can't get to jesus you have to come through me so again she's positioned herself as the middleman and then she's out there schlepping thousand dollars you know on tv and saying you're going to get a blessing like it's it's this issue goes all the way to the white house and then this is the woman who's giving our sitting president advice on christ her entire system is antithetical to the very christ that she says she worships you have to practice what you preach and that's the problem is people today in the lay christian are looking at the pulpit and even paula white might have some decent message but then you look at the organization and it's antithetical it's running in contradiction to the very message from the pulpit it's hey don't ask for accountability don't ask for um transparency hey you know he sexually abused some kids, it's a moral failure.

2:27:22Robert Morris in Dallas, oh, he raped a 12-year-old, it's a moral failure. It's not criminal. He was doing his best. He had good intentions. That's what we chalk it up to. And so as lay Christians are looking at this right now and looking at the institutional church going, everything's running antithetical to Jesus. What's coming from the pulpit is nice with good intentions, but there's this collision right now and it's a trillion dollar collision running straight into jesus and that's where we're at and so the religion business is right at that epicenter man

2:27:58yeah it'd be great if we get some transparency that's that's all we're asking for with the religion business we don't think that's all you'd need yeah you know to correct maybe not even maybe correct is the wrong word but you people need the transparency to make make the decisions on who they're going to follow where they're going to go and people are smart this is the thing so remember there's 400 000 mini vaticans that are that are all just monarchies all the powers at the top you just need to flip it power it's democracy power needs to go back to the people people need to say hey i need to know where my money is going and then they, once they are educated, will make the right decisions.

2:28:36And so we have a list of questions on our website that once you watch the show, you can download and set up a meeting with your pastors. They're very juvenile questions, but most people just don't know how to articulate it because no one knows and has ever looked inside the machine. So it's a dozen questions or so. And hey, just take it in and be like, hey, pastor, I'd like to know this and this. Know the questions? It's really simple. We've talked about it. It's like, what's the top two to five people's salary? Like, congregants should know that. Does our pastor take a housing allowance? And if so, how much?

2:29:08Do you take a car allowance? Do you take a housing allowance? Who's the board of directors? Because churches don't have an obligation to say who their board of directors are. And so most of the time, it's just family and friends and big donors. And so you're literally just, it's so sad, but a lot of these organizations are, leveraging the very vulnerable populations that we were told to protect and nurture. And so, again, it's just simple questions like that. It's what, this is my kicker, it's what every secular nonprofit has to declare on their 990. Every publicly traded company has all this information out in public.

2:29:48If you're an investor, you know every salary. You know, you see P &Ls. We're not asking for anything else than any other business. So that's why you have to separate the ecclesia from the building and the business and say, it's a business. Run it like a business. And this is our saying is transparency demands accountability. Accountability demands reform and reform demands impact. And so we're just bringing the transparency piece in. And then we know and we have faith that Christians will bring the accountability because of it. And the rest is up to God and it'll happen. So transparency, you nailed it.

2:30:24Just turn that light on. And the rats and cockroaches are going to scurry. And then John 3 talks about this. Christ came into the world to be the light, but men love the darkness rather than the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. And so you just turn that light on and people, and then it says, and those who come to the life are looking for the light, are looking for Christ. And there's great pastors out there who have hit us up on social media who have called us. We've said on hundreds of calls where they are coming to the light. They're like, we get it, dude. This is a broken system.

2:30:55Let's be a part of a solution. And then you also have the rats and the cockroaches scurrying. And so reform begins today. Have you seen any churches start to implement transparency since you've been doing this? You know, the show is only we soft launched a few weeks ago. So it's already having a shock in the system. and a lot of them are saying, okay, what do we do? That's - What do we do? Yeah. I'm like, well, you just be transparent. Yeah. And so - Open the books up. Yeah, open the books up. That's what you do. All you do is you open the books up and your congregants will know. And so we are seeing pastors - So they do - Sorry to cut you off.

2:31:43I don't know, you're good. Yeah, I was - They do know what's right and wrong. This is, I mean, this is, what do we do about this Epstein stuff? release the fucking files yes release them yes just like you said you were going to yeah you know be transparent yeah that's what everybody wants we just want to know where the money's going yeah that's it yeah and then everybody can make their own decision on if they want to stay here or not we're not 100 it's not rocket science right but they won't do it because they know what's wrong. They will though, if the money moves. And so that's our goal. A brilliant man who helped the LDS church grow to 300 billion, one of their main investors, he blew the whistle in 2019 on it.

2:32:31And that's how that whole system even got exposed because churches don't have to be transparent, but he blew the whistle with 60 minutes. He goes, Nathan, And I don't know if you realize what you guys are doing, but he goes, the smartest minds in the world see everything as rivers. So rivers of capital, rivers of humans, rivers of resource, rivers of, you know, rare earth minerals. And he goes, you're tackling a trillion dollar river. And he's like, you're at the river right now. And he goes, smart people don't damn the river off, which means we're not just going to point out a problem. He goes, smart people divert rivers.

2:33:12And he goes, so where do you wanna divert the river? And all I said was to accountable organizations because there's good people, good pastors, good nonprofits, great nonprofits out there doing amazing work. I wanna divert that trillion to them. And he goes, cool, go do it. So that's all we're doing and that's what Broken Shepherds is. It's an app that just diverts money. It shows the accountable organizations and the shady ones side by side. and you see it and then you get to figure out based on educating the donor, you decide where you give your money. That's it. It's not rocket science. What kind of blowback are you getting?

2:33:53We've had a lot of hate, you know. I can imagine. Yeah. You just flipped. How many people go to church? You talk about that? A hundred something million go to church in the US. A hundred something million people. You just flipped our entire world upside down. Yeah. the majority of, I think there's 2.3 billion Christians. Their entire life. Yeah. Just got flipped upside down because of that. But we're not, like, that's the thing. The Bible hasn't changed. You know, the Bible always has this concept of a refiner's fire. You know, refining is not easy. It's painful, but it burns off impurities. And so we always say, hey, burn it down.

2:34:32And what's left standing is of God. and what isn't left standing ain't a god that's of man and then out of the death of what dies beautiful things will resurrect like that's why christ is such a fast his life his death his resurrection everything is so fascinating when you start mapping it out over life a great example is gateway gateway is a church outside dallas massive mega church um and the lead pastor was robert Morris, come to find out he raped a 12-year-old. And so they let him go. And instead of saying, hey, this whole system is rotted, like this man built this organization, everything about it is tied to him, what should happen is you should let this business die and let all those brilliant Christians sitting in those pews with good intentions, with a love for Christ, with families go out into their community and beautiful things will resurrect.

2:35:32But instead, what is the board of directors doing? We're a$50 million a year organization. We got to hold onto this. They're still good here. And it's like, nah, dude, that's like, let it die. And beautiful things will resurrect out of that. New churches, new home churches, new mega churches, new whatever, but beautiful things will resurrect. And I am so confident that in a decade, the religious landscape in America will look radically different, and it will be ran with accountability and transparency, and the church will be the light of the world. Because guess what? We have a trillion dollars a year to literally solve the top 30 global social issues.

2:36:10The top 20, here's how crazy, let's get into some fun stuff. The top 20 global social issues can be solved for around 35 billion a year. That's ending deaths from malaria, tuberculosis, just really low-hanging fruits that that aren't sexy. And this is why governments don't solve them. And so just if we brought accountability into the system and stopped some of the theft that goes on internally, the Christian church could solve the top 20 global social issues and it would affect no one's bottom line. And so what I mean by that is 92 billion with a B every year is stolen by church staff from their coffers.

2:36:4992 billion. 92 billion? Almost 10%. Just bring accountability in and like, let's say we drop that number to 50 billion, the Christian church could solve the top 20 global social issues just with that savings. So you could still have your megachurches and planes and all that. We're not even changing the system. Now think if we actually reformed the system and 20 cents of every dollar started going to impact, the Christian church could radically transform the world, be the light of the world tomorrow, still have your buildings, still have your private planes. You just need to bring accountability and transparency into it.

2:37:22So when I hear a pastor say, it's because we don't have enough money, I'm like, you are full of crap. You have no accountability and transparency. That's the problem. And so bring that into the system and the church could be the light of the world tomorrow, man. And that's what's so exciting is Christians are the most generous people in the world because we try to emulate our savior but then leadership and wolves the bible talks a lot about wolves you know devouring widows houses and so that's what we're doing the institution is literally doing everything the prophets of the old testament preached against and spoke of and everything christ spoke of that he was against turning my father's house into money and devouring widows houses so back to back to the original question i mean is the i we've talked about some of the blowback you know offline on breaks before we started the interview i mean where is the majority of the blowback coming from is it from pastors people's worlds that were flipped upside down and they realize oh shit yeah i've been wrong this entire time yeah sorry i had a head injury so it's hard for me to remember what i've said here and outside but there's like two splits of the world, you have your congregant, and if they watch it, they are so supportive.

2:38:39I was at a, I'll call it a religious institution a couple Sundays ago, and this woman came up, and she's like, are you the religion business? And I'm like, yeah. And she just hugged me. And then she just walked off. And that's the response we're getting from the average Christian who wants to read that Bible and deepen their faith. The only blowback we're getting is from people who make their living off the institution. What is the blowback? We've had security teams call us and say that there's, you know, bad things are going to happen to us. And one person in particular paid a hundred grand to dig up dirt.

2:39:18And then this security detail said, put a hit out. Put a hit out? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's not very Christian-like. No. No. How are you handling it? Security. And I firmly believe...

2:39:39Do you worry about your family? No. I firmly believe God's got me. We take precautions. We're not out there just doing whatever we want. But I think I'm on the right side with my creator on this one. And the world needs, and one thing we present in episode seven is men have, we have abdicated our role as Christian leaders. We don't teach our children the Bible anymore. We let other people do it. And men, male pastors in particular, have chased fame in the stage, in the celebrity, in the spotlight. And it's women that have stepped up. And I've seen this around the world and you see this in the show.

2:40:23So quiet, humble women have stepped up to be the hands and feet of God and Jesus. And it's time for men to step back up. And I look at the founding of America and those founding fathers, we talk about politics and religion kind of mirroring courses. Those founding fathers died for the cause. They put their life on the line. Those individuals in DC are literally supposed to be public servants. That is what church leadership needs to become again. We need to be servants because Christ said, you are a servant. He goes, I came to serve you. I washed your feet. Do this to others. And instead, we like to stand on stages and collect money and build buildings and create institutions, which again, aren't inherently bad, but it's to ourselves.

2:41:11We're building that to ourselves. Yeah. And so I firmly believe that with this reformation, this next generation of young leaders is going to come in with a servant's heart and the church will radically reform and generosity will not drop because everybody's like are you afraid that people are going to stop giving and i'm like no man if if i was like help if like i love i'm i single mothers here's a great example christian churches love to promote pro-life we're marching to dc we're going to stand on those steps we're going to sing songs because we are pro-life and i've sat down with pastors and i've asked this okay, what do you guys do for your single mothers in your town?

2:41:55What do you mean, Nathan? Well, you're so pro-life. What do you do? Well, we go to DC. Well, I don't care about DC. What do you do for the local single mothers in your town? And one in particular, they had spent$2 million on a new childcare facility at their church. And they were so proud to show it to me. And I'm like, this is awesome. It's like Disneyland, basically. And I said, okay, well, you use this every Sunday, right? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, why don't you open it for single mothers in your neighborhood that are struggling? They can't pay for a nanny or a babysitter, but they need to get to work.

2:42:33Why don't you say, hey, one of our programs is going to be single mothers if you're so pro-life. And their response was literally, well, it would ruin the facility. And I'm like, That is the point of the facility, but you want it squeaky clean. And there's an organization that's very close to Trump, a nonprofit called Samaritan's Purse, which we expose in the show, or we explore in the show. Billy Graham's son, Franklin Graham, runs it now. And man, they do good work with refugees in Europe, but again, you put a dollar in the top of the Samaritan's Purse machine and a penny falls out the bottom.

2:43:11and I love it whenever I see, I don't love it, it breaks my heart, whenever I see all their natural disaster programs, every truck that pulls out of their spot is so perfect. It doesn't have a single scratch. When you see them drop in medical aid, that's never been used before. And I'm like, you're stockpiling resources. And in the last three years, they've doubled their assets. And I'm like, yeah, you do some good work, but you're just building a kingdom just like the LDS churches and saying, man, look at the good work we're doing as you have 2 billion sitting. It's like God never told us to store up on earth.

2:43:51He actually said, get rid of it. Let me have faith in me. The daily bread has been lost from the institution. And I was going to bring up a hunting analogy. God wants the fat, right, of the animal on the altars in the Old Testament. And he said, it's a sweet smelling aroma. And as a hunter, when you break down an animal and you look at the fat stores, this animal took a full six months to put this on, and it's going to burn up over winter. And that animal hopes to survive that winter to put it on again, right? So is there a correlation between God demanding the fat of the animal and God saying, hey, Sean, I need you to put your faith in me.

2:44:36I've got you for tomorrow. Give me your fat. Give it away. And I've got you. And if you're doing the right thing, I've always got you. And then you look at the religious institutions and they are fat as hell. LDS is 300 billion, going to hit a trillion. Samaritan's Purse just hit 2 billion. Kenneth Copeland, 750 million. Daystar, 750 million cash they've made off of buying out struggling individuals with life insurance policies, all in the name of Jesus. Man.

2:45:13How do you think we'll get to transparency? By people demanding or laws? People demanding. So that's where the show has to be seen because it at least educates. And our goal is to educate. And I firmly believe Christians, once they know the problem and they can articulate it, they will take it into their own hands. Do you think you'll do another docuseries once churches start opening up their books, becoming transparent? Do you think you'll do a series on, here's some good ones? The show shows good ones. It does. So that's what we show. Episode three is called Saints and Sinners. We show the good ones and the bad ones.

2:45:53Yeah. We show an awesome homeless program in Rockford, Illinois called the Rockford Rescue Mission. We show awesome operations overseas. Like we show the good ones. And that was the goal. I bring no judgment. I do say Kenneth committed fraud because that is fraud. But I don't say this guy did it maliciously. I say I give him good, like he probably had good intentions. but my goal in the show is to put up Kenneth Copeland alongside his sister Rosemary who dedicated her life to child fighters in Uganda, you know, who were taken off the streets and from homes by Joseph Coney. Like I got to sit with her and ironically, you know, and then that's the goal is just to put them side by side and you make the decision.

2:46:39Who's more Christ-like, you know, and that's what I wanted to show. So at the end of the show, at the end of the series, you almost feel sick to your stomach because you're like, I should be like Sister Rosemary and Pastor Wilfred and all these amazing individuals that if I'm a Christ follower, these individuals pick up their cross. And again, it's dangerous and you risk it and you can't have fat. But the church, the institution, those buildings are fat now. We've become fat. And so we need to offer that fat up and say, okay, God, you asked for faith. And Christ asked for faith too. Just pick it up and pick up your cross and follow me, Sean.

2:47:15get it where it needs to go yep man what are we missing

2:47:24Christ the church is missing Christ as the head of the church and this is a big one I can't believe I'd never realized this until a call last week this guy named Chris he's like Nathan you know there's only one church right and I've been working on this for 16 years and I'm like wait what he's like there's only one church Christ church it's the body of Christ it's the people there's no other church so when you say I'm going to go to a ridgeline church that's not a church that's a brand when I say I'm going to go to fellowship that's a brand it's not a church there's only one church and we've built all these brands and businesses on top of that church and that's why we have 44 ,000 denominations today 44 ,000 denominations of Christianity because we all have to be different my church has to be different than you Sean because if we're the same what does that mean?

2:48:22we got nothing to argue about bro we're going to emulate our savior so there's one church that's what I would encourage everybody to do there's one church it's the body of Christ you are an active breathing part of that organism read the bible cover to cover live in it breathe it and pray, like meditate by yourself. I think that's a great message. I mean, that is, of all the stuff I've learned through the Bible study of my house, that is probably the one thing that stuck out the most was when Todd said, you know, the church isn't a brick and mortar building. It is the living body of believers.

2:49:04And that's all that matters. but and who who is if you can educate your children on that and i can educate mine in one generation the world will look radically different and so my only ministry is my child because if i can teach her what i what took me 41 years to learn this place is in good hands man you know well nathan i love what you're doing and it's dangerous kicking a lot of rocks over here but I wish you the best luck I thank you for coming and I'd love to see what's coming next yeah thank you brother cheers

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