Matthew Lucio, “Christian Conspiracies & Frauds”

So, let me just start with a little, uh, personal biography. Uh, when I became a 7th Day Adventist as a teenager, I, I grew up in Ohio and I was taught the traditional interpretation of the prophecies, like I'm sure many of you were as well. And I still remember that, that heady feeling of being alive, of being in the know, of being aware. You know, I knew what was going on in the world and most people I knew were asleep. I guess that made me woke. Is that the original woke Adventists? I don't know.

But, uh, I, you know, they told me to be suspicious of everything, right? Like be suspicious of music, be suspicious of movies, be suspicious of whatever. I remember one time, uh, one of the early sermons I preached in, uh, in rural Michigan was on the dangers of rock music and dancing. And I remember the, the only person who publicly identified himself as a Democrat in that church came up to me afterwards and said, "You know, look around at these people. They're older. I don't think rock music and dancing is, is really your message to this audience." But I wasn't really thinking about an audience. I was thinking about a sermon I had watched or listened to and books I had read. And that just filled me that these are big threats, you know, rock music and dancing and things like that, jewelry. And so my job was to go transfer a warning about those threats everywhere that I was. It doesn't matter whether the audience was suited for that message or not.

Uh, a lot of the books I read as a, as a young Adventist purported to see through Satan's deception, subtle as they may be. And it really felt like my group of Adventists were the only ones really using their brains, you know, whereas those, those nondescript liberals were just floating around in the world unthinking and uncaring. Uh, you know, we were the ones listening to the lyrics of the music. We were the ones, uh, not that we went to go see a lot of these movies, but, you know, we were the ones kind of looking for themes and and things like that.

Um, and [gasps] then I, when I was doing the Adventist history podcast, um, I, I got to this little slice of Christian American history, uh, concerning these, these great moral panics or this satanic panic that stretched from the 60s into the 80s. And I came across several stories, and I'll share a few snippets of them with you, of of how Adventists became enthralled to conmen who disguised themselves or who, who weaponized apocalyptic messages in order to deceive people. And, and, and as I realized how this included Adventists, we got taken in by this as well. It reminded me of how certain I was when I first became an Adventist. How woke I felt. How, uh, aware. How, how I, I thought I was a critical thinker. And yet people who thought just like me when I was younger were taken in by these, these conmen. And, you know, the, it, it highlighted for me this contrast between being so certain and yet so easy to deceive, between being so suspicious of the world and alert and yet so gullible. And that, that contrast really stuck out to me as I was going through this period of, of, uh, American Christian history.

You know, like what passed for critical thinking in those early days as an Adventist, it, it turns out wasn't very critical. There was a blind spot there. And I'm seeing it with some of these stories of people who got taken in by, uh, John Todd, Alberto Rivera, and, and Mike Warkey. So, I'm going to share a little bit about these three men and, and I'm not going to go all into this because, of course, you can Wikipedia them and, and, uh, all sorts of things, but hopefully in a discussion, we can explore a little bit about why it is. And I'm hoping we don't just run to an answer of like, oh, it's the Adventist apocalyptic, you know, it makes us gullible. And I, I think the answer is probably something more nuanced in there, but we'll, we'll get to that at the end.

Anyways, little, uh, little, I guess, cultural background of this period. Some of these things are going to look familiar to you. We're not going to rehash them all. Um, but, you know, Ouija boards, uh, Anton LaVey, um, something not pictured here is the elimination of race-based immigration quotas. It allowed more immigrants from Asia, uh, bringing with them some, uh, religious ideas that, uh, you know, Buddhism and things like that that really, uh, challenged the, the established Christian order here in the US. Um, the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper album with, with Aleister Crowley there, uh, pictured on the cover of it. You know, all of these things deeply upsetting to Christians who were used to a certain order, you know, the Billy Graham era that had begun in the 40s and 50s. And, and, you know, why is all of this happening, right? Crime is going up, drug use is going up, we have the, the sexual revolution, we have the LGBT movement, all that sort of stuff. And all of this is happening at the, at the same time, right? So there's a lot of Christians, as you can imagine, who are asking themselves, what is going on with our world? What's happening? What's behind all of this?

We had Hal Lindsey. We all know about The Late Great Planet Earth, written in, published in 1970. Uh, but two years later, he switched from his eschatology here to Satan Is Alive and Well on Planet Earth, which is more about spiritual warfare. And so Hal is using the popularity garnered from his first book to make a point that this drug use and interest in the occult and spiritualism and Hollywood and New Age and crime on the rise, all of this is related to this spiritual war that's going on behind the scenes. And as you can imagine, this explanation appeals to Adventists. And this is, uh, a version of our Great Controversy theme of sorts. And so this is something we can understand. And so you start seeing Adventists, of course, talking in these days about, uh, how Satan is behind all these things. So we're less interested in trying to understand why drug use is up or why crime is up or whatever. And we have an answer. Why study it? Why try to understand it? We know the answer. It's spiritual warfare. Satan is behind the scenes and that's why these things are happening. And so, uh, this is this moral panic, this satanic panic that's, that's taking place among, uh, Christians during this, this era. And this is kind of the background here to understand these three individuals that we're going to talk about.

So, let's deal with Mike first. Here's a clipping from the Union, what is now Union Adventist University student newspaper announcing that he is coming to visit Omaha. And it mentions there that he travels over 120,000 miles a year. And he's a, seen as a comedian. And now Mike was more than a comedian. His, he, he really rose to fame because of this book he wrote called The Satan Seller, right here, where he claimed to have been a former high priest of Satan. He said he led a coven of like 1,500 people or something like that. And he was a part of the larger Illuminati network. He had joined the Marines. He went to Vietnam. He, he turned to Jesus after a heroin overdose. You know, all of these things that, that Christians are concerned about. Rosemary's Baby really did, uh, bring up the, the spectre of Satanism. And, and here's a guy saying, "I came out of that and I'm going to tell you the truth about what happens in Satanism." And one of the things he said was that Satanists liked to organize parties for high schoolers and college students and then when they catch innocent Christians on the fringes of this party, they come and offer them drugs or sex or something and try to get them, get them deeper into, into what's going on there. So, they don't always, they're not always the, the host of the party, but they'll, they'll organize it. Maybe they go up to somebody and say, "Hey, why don't you throw a party? You know, I'll, I'll, I'll bring the booze or whatever it may be." And so, they're, they're behind these parties. And this is something that really, uh, affected some Christian parents because we have to keep in mind in, in 1969, 1970, about half of the US population was, was under 25, right? So we have a distinct youth culture having formed around music and civil rights and Vietnam and patriotism and drugs and politics and sex, like all of these sort of things. There's a, there's a generation gap. And so it seems like that generation gap was being exploited because Satan is targeting your kids that you understand, uh, that you increasingly don't understand and can't relate to. Satan is targeting them.

Now, Mike sold about 3 million or so copies of The Satan Seller in the first couple of decades, which is, I, I think pretty good for the subject matter. Um, he's, he's still around. I actually wrote him and he didn't respond to my email. So, he also doesn't list this book anymore on his website. Um, so while I haven't found a whole lot of Adventist commentary really diving into Mike's writings and his claims, uh, we do have a number of mentions like from that, uh, student newspaper at Union where Adventists show that they're aware of and, and clearly have listened to some of his tapes because another Adventist student, um, argues that we shouldn't be celebrating Halloween and cites Mike as saying, "See, Halloween is, um, is, is a ploy by the Satanists to get you to worship the devil and all that sort of stuff." And so Adventists were citing that. So clearly they were listening to his tapes. Maybe they read this book. Uh, but so far, I haven't found a high level of engagement critiquing his writings like we're going to see with the, with the other two.

Um, anyway, so it's no surprise, by the way, just incidentally, I don't want to get, don't go down this road, but it's no surprise that that Roger Morneau emerges in, in these years claiming to have emerged from a satanic cult and spending the rest of his life warning Adventists about what Satan is up to. Right? And Morneau's Adventist spin on this was the claim that by keeping the Sabbath, and I'll, I'll quote him here, it makes it impossible for the spirits to deceive you. And so the Sabbath becomes something of a, of a, of a spiritual protection, right? You got to be at church on Sabbath. You got to make sure you're not at a restaurant because this is the thing that's protecting you from all this Satanism that's all around you in, in the world. And so this is, this is some heady stuff.

Uh, Mike was interviewed at, maybe at the peak of his popularity in the 80s, mid-80s, on, uh, ABC's 20/20. He was, he was in the episode on satanic groups and satanic crimes going on in America. And so he was interviewed as a kind of expert on these things. Now, eventually, someone decided to investigate whether all these things he said were true because there was growing concern that the dates and names and places that he mentions weren't adding up. And so there was an expose written by Cornerstone magazine in 1992, um, that said, "A generation of Christians learned its basic concepts of Satanism and the occult from Mike Warnke's testimony in The Satan Seller. We believe The Satan Seller has been responsible more than any other single volume in the Christian market for promoting the current nationwide Satanism scare." So, Cornerstone is giving credit to Warnke as being the, the force that, that articulated these fears and, and really kind of turned it into a, a scare or a panic.

Now, the article contained about 170 footnotes. The authors claim to have interviewed around a hundred of Mike's former associates, childhood friends, acquaintances in college, things like that. And, uh, invariably, all of those people contradicted what, what Mike had said about his younger life. I mean, he, he claimed he was in deep in drugs and these other things and, and, you know, his, his friends from that era would be like, "He was a nerd. We just hung out and had fun. I never saw any of this." And all that kind of stuff. Uh, around the same time this article came out, the IRS began investigating his, uh, his nonprofit and, uh, removing his tax exemption status. And when reached for comment about this expose and what the IRS was doing, he told Christianity Today that, "We're being attacked by Satan." Right? That's, that's your go-to response when things start hitting the fan is, um, is to, is to say that this is all a satanic ploy. That's your get out of jail free card. Um, Mike credited this expose as turning what were 3, 4, 5,000 people showing up to his events to about 90 to 100. And he, he started to get in real trouble. And when it got bad enough, he actually apologized, which, uh, it still didn't do a whole lot to, to stem the tide against him. The, the, the people who, uh, wrote this article followed it up with another article which they fleshed out into a book called Selling Satan, an obvious play on, on Mike's book, The Satan Seller.

We're going to go on to Alberto Rivera here, a little more familiar to Adventists and, uh, someone mentioned, uh, well, Conrad Vine earlier, Walter Vice is somebody who, who still quotes or has quoted Alberto Rivera in the past and I think those videos are still up. He's a little bit more integrated in the, in the Adventist consciousness than, uh, than Mike does to this day. I think Alberto's evidence, uh, or his influence, rather, has, uh, reached the furthest somehow. Anyhow, uh, Alberto claimed that he had been trained as a priest at a Jesuit seminary in the 1950s and 60s and, uh, Kevin Burton's done an excellent presentation on Rivera before, so I'm not going to say a whole lot more. Uh, Kevin wrote about it, I think, in Spectrum. But, uh, there on the right, you see Jack Chick, who is the, the fundamentalist illustrator. He featured Alberto Rivera's claims in a comic book that claimed that, uh, the Jesuits had infiltrated the Adventist church. You can see a snippet here where Adventists are, uh, there in the B, the B-group. It feels like this is like the World Cup, uh, group stage. I don't know. I, I've got money on Adventists versus Nazarines or Church of Christ. We'll see how that goes. It's definitely not a group of death. Uh, but anyways, so, uh, that led a self-proclaimed Adventist evangelist named Mike Clute to interview Rivera because, hey, if, if Jesuits had infiltrated the Adventist church here and were trying to destroy it from within, surely Rivera must know the names of the people of the Jesuits who are on the inside. And so he interviewed Rivera, got him on tape apparently confirming that the problems in the Adventist church in the early 1980s were, were caused by Jesuits. So we got, we got proof and he even named them, which honestly didn't take a lot of imagination, at least for the first two names on this list, which were Desmond Ford, Walter Ray, and then curveball, Samuel Baca. Um, those are the only ones he could apparently name, which, of course, these are very visible, very well-known Adventists at this time. So it didn't take a lot to, to point a finger at them.

In 1981, Christianity Today thoroughly exposed Rivera to the, to the degree that Cornerstone did to Mike Warnke. They found that he had children, that he, when he was supposed to be a celibate priest, forged his ordination document. It was really like a form letter that through some way he got somebody to sign, um, as proof that he was ordained, um, when it didn't really mean that at all. Uh, he didn't have the degrees he claimed to have, etc., etc., etc. Uh, Kevin Burton found evidence to suggest that Rivera was actually complicit in the death of his child. Um, this was not a good person. In other words, this was not a good person. A few months after Christianity Today's expose, we had this article come out in Liberty by Betty Gibson and she echoed a lot of these same critiques that are coming from Christianity Today with the implication that Adventists should steer clear of Alberto Rivera as well. And it's crazy to still see Rivera being quoted in videos decades after he was, he was, uh, taken out by Christianity Today and, and repeated here in Liberty magazine.

Um, the, the challenge, of course, is, is with these kinds of things as well. One Adventist probably echoed what others were, were thinking undoubtedly when saying that, "Liberty's attempt to discredit Alberto Rivera was just a part of a scheme to rehabilitate the Catholic Church and to, and to whitewash their history." Right? Um, but to his credit, Clifford Goldstein actually, uh, basically told those who believed in a Jesuit infiltration to put up or shut up, right? Produce evidence that the Jesuits were in the church or stop, stop mentioning it, stop repeating it, which definitely worked.

Now, there may be some viewers in this presentation who think that this is just an attempt to discredit good Adventists and to, and to rehabilitate the Catholic Church. Who knows? Um, but anyways, we had a, a great piece, um, that, that, uh, O.R. Rendel did for you guys for having us today in 2017 called "The Social Cost of Conspiracy Theories," which I highly recommend because, uh, he, he recounts some of the, the damage that can happen when people grab a hold of these stories and, and begin a campaign of suspicion and slander against fellow believers. Uh, that took place in College. The, the issues that Southern Adventist University in the early 1980s were not entirely due to Alberto Rivera and, and people who believed these things, but it definitely intensified it and, and, and brought a lot of pain to that community as well.

And that leads us to John Todd. Uh, again, claims to have been a former witch, uh, Satanist who devoted his life to exposing what evil powers in the world were trying to do. Uh, we don't know a whole lot about his life. He claimed that he was in the Navy when, when he murdered his commanding officer, which, it's a really serious thing to claim to have done. He said he was arrested in Germany. He was put in jail and that's when the Illuminati showed up to bail him and, and said, "You belong to us now. And we'll make this all go away." And they apparently got rid of whatever paper records existed. How convenient. Uh, for his crime and, and, and now he was in their, their employee. So, uh, John Todd, of course, like everybody else, came out of this life and, uh, claimed that those loyal to witchcraft, as he put it, included US senators, congressmen, a couple of generals, you know, all this kind of stuff. He really received the Jack Chick treatment, giving him some publicity, just like Alberto Rivera did, which he leveraged into going from church to church to talking about the Illuminati and the institutions they control. He was much more imaginative than the other two. So, you know, I give him, I give him props for that. You know, he says that the Illuminati control the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, Chase Bank, Bank of America, the Federal Reserve, all of it's part of the Illuminati. So, please, if you're watching this, divest yourself of any connection to those institutions immediately.

Uh, one of my favorite claims that he made was that, uh, Philip Rothschild ordered one of his mistresses, a woman by the name of Ayn Rand, to write the book Atlas Shrugged as a coded blueprint for how the Illuminati planned to take over the world in 1980. Now, the good news, friends, is that if you've read Atlas Shrugged, you know that we have nothing to worry about [laughter] as far as a blueprint to take over the world. Um, yeah.

Um, now, there were Adventists, of course, who supported John Todd enthusiastically and, uh, we have this recollection here from, uh, a La Sierra professor who recalls, he says, "I just remember my dad coming home from a church event at which one or more of Todd's tapes was played and describing in great detail and with a straight face Todd's account of an Illuminati Rothschild hierarchy culminating in Satan." Now, the the curious thing here is that Shartier's dad had an MD and an MBA, I believe, you know, he wasn't uneducated in any traditional sense, and yet he found what John Todd was saying to be credible, to be believable. Another Adventist said that John Todd's sermon sounded just like the things Ellen White wrote in Messages to Young People, which is not an endorsement to me [laughter] of all the Ellen White, uh, books of her writings that you could, uh, pick out.

Uh, we had some pushback from some Adventists as well. There was, um, an Adventist, uh, used what they called a, a PSE, a psychological stress evaluator, which was supposed to be able to analyze audio recordings and to tell if somebody's lying. Police departments were experimenting with them. They weren't admissible in court, you know, at that time, the conclusions that they reached were admissible in court, but, uh, nevertheless, they were having a moment where people were using them and, and, uh, and so they were used on, on John Todd's tapes to see if, if he was telling the truth. And so the Adventist Review reported that, "Based on the PSE evaluation, I have to conclude that Mr. Todd is not trustworthy and his claims about witchcraft and the Illuminati should not be taken seriously." Now, you can imagine the, the, the pro-John Todd response to that was predictable, and that is, "The PSE was a tool of the devil. We can't believe in, in its results because it's contradicting what I believe to be true."

Some prominent ministers defended John Todd, arguing that the fruits of his ministry, even if he wasn't perfect. I don't, I don't know of any Adventists who bought every word John Todd said. There was usually some degree of like, he's rough around the edges and, and, uh, other Christians said the same thing about him. He's rough around the edges. He had, uh, drug use. He was new to this Christianity thing. We got to give him some grace if he says some crazy things from time to time. Um, but, uh, some pastors were defending him based on the fact that kids who listened to his tapes were sufficiently scared that they were giving up rock music or giving up this or that and, and, and so isn't the fruit of his ministry ultimately good?

Now, Christianity Today, of course, uh, started sniffing on John Todd's trail as well, and things particularly got rough when, uh, John Todd visited an 850-member Grace Brethren Church in Pennsylvania. He preached his usual message that the Illuminati is coming for you. He urged people to get guns. That's a particular claim Adventists never really bought into. They, they, whatever else they may have agreed with with John Todd, the idea of everyone grabbing, well, they said it was an M15 that he told them to get, was something that didn't resonate with Adventists back then. Um, but he, he preached this message at Grace Brethren Church. And what, what really bothered the pastor there, what, what put him over the edge in terms of supporting John Todd, was that a member came up to the pastor afterwards and said, "Pastor, we will not allow them to torture our families. We have decided that we will kill our children before that happens." And to his credit, that pastor saw that as a gigantic red flag, saying, "Is this the fruit of his ministry?" And anyways, it highlights how people can experience some of these people differently. So, you have some Adventist pastors saying, "Hey, he's the fruits of his ministry is ultimately good because some of our people are giving up rock music and whatever." And that's, that's a positive thing. Then you have the pastor of this, this Grace Brethren church in Pennsylvania saying the fruits of his ministry are very different. They're dangerous. And that's something Adventist Today was in line with when they wrote it is an embarrassment to have to write about the John Todd phenomenon. Considerable evidence suggests Todd to be a sick man who must be helped before someone is shot to death. He was really stoking people up. The Illuminati are coming. You need to buy guns. Good Christians are going to resist the Illuminati by force of arms. This is very different than what Adventists were saying about the last days where, yes, there's going to be persecution, but we were never telling people to to fight whoever was coming to persecute you, to to fight to the death or anything like that. And, um, while Adventists were, were largely ignoring the, the, the violent side of John Todd, they were looking past that. Uh, other Christians were, were not doing that. They were, they were seeing what he was saying and, and taking it for, for face value. Some Adventists even supported him at this late hour. After all, right? King David wasn't perfect either. We've heard that before. Um, but in 1979, the editor of, of Liberty, spoke at Andrews University working to, to dismantle John Todd's theories a little more forcefully. And there was an article in the Review as well. While, while Robert Nixon here doesn't explicitly come out and say, "Stop listening to John Todd," he, he nevertheless pulled people away from listening to him and told them to go back and read the Bible and Ellen White instead.

Um, but the, the, the obvious, stubborn, frustrating, impossible question is, why did so many Adventists applaud the theories of a man who habitually lied about his past, seduced teenage girls, misappropriated funds, uh, did drugs, and all these sort of things? I mean, today we might elect him president, but in the past, you know, when these things were not the norm, why did so many people want to listen to him? Why? Why? Why were we intrigued by this person? And, you know, what? One, one of the reasons has to be because he proposed an apocalyptic scenario that was much like our own. And, and while we, I say we in a general sense, not we as in, "I believe John Todd," but, but we Adventists thought that was close enough, I guess. And, um, we wanted to believe apparently what he said was true because I, I wonder for Adventists where we, we have all these ideas about Sunday laws and the last days and, and health and all these sorts of things. And when somebody comes along seemingly independently and confirms what we believe, it, it, it makes us feel better. It makes us feel like we're not so much out on a limb. Uh, we're not crazy. Maybe if other people are, are feeling the same way. Um, but over and over and over again, you find comments like, "John Todd helps us understand what the devil is doing. We want to be in the know. We want to see behind the curtain."

[clears throat] Now, what I want to draw your attention to here at the end is something Walter Utt wrote. He was, uh, his professor at PUC at the time and he writes to Christianity Today. I, I think this is a fantastic statement that I've been reflecting on for, for years now. I've, I've appreciated it. He says, "I share your dismay that so many Christian people are vulnerable to this kind of sensationalism. I shouldn't wonder if some might become quite upset with you for trying to take away from them a scenario of doom to which they have become attached. But do not far too many members of the flock want or need to be kept frightened? And a certain number of shepherds find it useful to keep them this way or that way." Now, he's writing to Christianity Today and when he says, "I shouldn't wonder if some people might be upset for trying to take away, discredit John Todd and later on Alberto Rivera, you know, Mike Warnke, people are going to be bothered if you take that away from them." Well, where is Walter Utt getting that idea from? He's, he's an Adventist. He's seen this maybe in some in his own life as, as some of these people have been discredited. He's seen how Adventists have reacted to this undoubtedly. And so when he's, he's sharing this, uh, expectation with Christianity Today, he's saying, in, in essence, people become really attached to these guys, to the theories, to the feeling that the end is almost here. Here's, here's proof. Here's a whistleblower coming out and saying, and, and keep in mind, all three of these guys were going around at the same time. I mean, it just felt like, what are the odds that three people are making this all up, you know, and there was, there was other characters, too, at this time. It just felt like the, the fact that all three of them were out here at the same time is itself a kind of validation of what they're saying. It's, it just seems so unlikely that all three of these people were, were making it up. But that, that bit at the end of the statement here, that there are members of the church who want to be kept frightened. Why? We can talk about it. Is it because it helps them feel alive? Because it gives them meaning? They, they, they just enjoy that chemical rush of, "I'm important. We're at the end." It gives me a, it helps me feel like my faith is validated. And then that other part, "a certain number of shepherds or pastors find it useful to keep these members afraid." Uh, really packs something in this statement and undoubtedly there's more here he could have, he could have elaborated on. Um, but fascinating, fascinating, uh, take on this.

So, why do some of us find our scenario of doom so precious that we resent those who are trying to tell us the truth? Why are people who are most concerned about deception sometimes also among the easiest to deceive? These are questions that emerge from these stories. Uh, yeah, you can say there's some confirmation bias here. I alluded to that earlier. Uh, early church father said that, uh, error sometimes seems more true than the truth itself. Uh, to be sure.

Um, but, you know, a few things I think to, to keep in mind here, just really briefly, to beware of the, the frames we inherited. Jared Stacy came out of a fundamentalist background. He said when he was growing up in this fundamentalist context, if a preacher made a passing comment about the rise of one world government, it was taken as biblical truth. Coming to Jesus was synonymous with distrust in government, suspicion over new technologies like barcodes or payment systems, and anxieties over persecution of Christians. Sounds very Adventist, right? And, and Jared Stacy is saying, I, I grew up in this environment. That church that he was a part of didn't create this, this culture, this, this, uh, interpretive frame. It inherited it from some other, you know, wider culture, just as Adventist churches did too. I experienced much the same thing as I'm sure many of you have as well when you were growing up. And, and, and so we have to be mindful of this, this bias, like when we're first discipled in the church, like where are these expectations? Where's this idea that coming to Jesus was synonymous with distrust in government? Where is that coming from? We need to be able to critique these frames that we inherit.

Stacy goes on to talk about Ron Wyatt, who was an amateur archaeologist, 7th Day Adventist. And, uh, Stacy says he was, by his credentials, not an archaeologist, but a nurse anesthetist. But in the circles I grew up in, lack of credentials from so-called secular sources was a credit to his claims. I think we all are just, we get this, right? We nod our heads with this. Being a self-appointed expert who told the story of being ostracized from various academic guilds was a credential in and of itself, and still is, right? And still is. And these are things that we just got to, we got to be aware of this bias that when, when certain preachers come up and say, uh, "I, my claim to fame here is I didn't go to Harvard or, you know, whatever," as if that's a, that's a credential, that's a, that's that kind of lends credibility to their message. Um, you know, we have to be willing to, to critique these frames that we've inherited.

Um, and I also wonder if our, to the extent that our apocalyptic nature of Adventism plays a role. Um, I think Mike Warnke wasn't as apocalyptic. I mean, he's not setting a date for the Illuminati doing this, that, or the other, to my knowledge, but, uh, Alberto Rivera and, and John Todd definitely were. They were appealing to Adventism and, and evangelical Christianity, these apocalyptic sides. And I would hypothesize that, uh, the, the Christians who followed these guys tended to be more Christians who were interested in, in apocalyptic topics. I think Adventist apocalyptic is a double-edged sword. It definitely opens us up to more creative possibilities about our world, especially in its critique of power and suffering. But that apocalyptic imagination also opens up the fantasies, right? And we have to be aware of the, the pro and the con of the apocalyptic nature of Adventism. And I wonder if part of the, the challenge here is that, um, the, the, we can get too narrow in our apocalyptic expectations. Like we're looking for one particular set of circumstances to happen. Um, and, and that kind of blinds us to other things that may be happening in our world that, that are just as relevant or more relevant.

So, I, when I was a teenager, I used to play a lot of paintball. I don't know if people still play paintball like, uh, like they used to. We used to go, go in our backyard. We had a few acres after work and, uh, we would, we would go play paintball. And I remember I learned very early on in paintball that, uh, the, the worst, the hardest part of paintball, the, the most agonizing part of paintball is not getting hit with the paintball. It's, it's, uh, like one team goes out and hides and, and then my team had to go back out and look for them. And that's the most agonizing part is every twig that breaks, every squirrel going through the trees, you're like, "Is that, is that somebody? Is that somebody?" And it's the, the, the anxiety that that induces as you're, as you're looking for people who are, are waiting for you, hiding. They want to hit you with this 68 caliber, uh, gel ball that will bruise you or can bruise you. Nobody wants to be shot. And so you're, you're kind of hyper careful as you go back there. And, and every possible noise is something that could indicate a threat. And, and so I wonder, is this, you know, if we live this way as Christians, um, I guess you can only, you can only keep your attention on, on, on so many things before it gets exhausting. It gets exhausting and at some point, you just narrow your focus and, uh, and that's when the, the team that's waiting for you can really get you because you can't keep yourself open to every stimulus forever. At some point, it gets tiring, uh, creeping along through the forest looking for every twig that breaks. Uh, at some point, you just, you start narrowing your focus and that's when they can, they can sneak around you. That was a real, uh, if you didn't play paintball, that may slip right past you. Uh, I, I just wonder if because we're looking at such a, many Adventists are looking at such a narrow set of events to happen that, uh, that they're ignoring, it leaves them open to Satan deceiving them because, you know, other things can happen that we're not looking for.

Let's see here. Also, yeah, just a real quick one. Truthiness is not truth. Stephen Colbert came up with truthiness. It's a fantastic word. Best word a comedian ever came up with. And, you know, just something that sounds true, so we treat it as, as true. And, yeah, uh, let me just close with a couple of things here and an Ellen White quote here and then, then a Bible verse and I'll, we can talk.

Ellen White here was talking about, in this context, she's talking about the, the [clears throat] fanaticism in their, in the, among the, uh, post-disappointment Adventists and the need, as she put it, to combat this fanaticism. She said, "We tried in every possible way to rid the church of this evil. We declared in the name of the Lord God of Israel that God does not work through his children in a way that brings the truth into disrepute and that unnecessarily creates deep-seated prejudice and bitter opposition." And I would think that if Ellen were alive today, she would want us to apply this to, to John Todd and Rivera and, and Warnke as well. Uh, that these people who are so, these Adventists who believe them are so concerned about being tricked by the devil and, you know, and it's just so ironic that in neutering your, your witness, as it were, in neutering your own credibility as somebody who's read the Bible and I, I want to tell you about the truth in the Bible, that we can believe things that so easily that end up, uh, destroying our own, our own witness.

So, uh, and to those folks, I have this text for them. "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." And you read that and you may think, what does that have to do with these guys and conspiracies and all this sort of stuff? And I think the message of this text is that every blessing God has in heaven has already been given to us in Jesus Christ. There is no secret knowledge that Jesus has not imparted to us. We, we know everything we need to know. We've been given everything we need to be given. And so I, I hope that that would, the, the reality of this, the realization of this would maybe quell our desire to, to read into headlines and, and, and follow people like this as if they're going to add something that God did not already give us in Christ. And so, thank you guys for your attention. We'll, uh, open the floor.

>> All right. Thank you so much, Matthew. We already have several people in line, but for those who may not be sure, if you want to join the conversation, the reaction or react tab usually somewhere at the bottom. If you click on that, you'll see an option that says raise hand. So, you can also join the conversation. But Lauren, you were very early in raising your hand. Please go ahead and get us started.

>> Yeah. Well, I, I raised my hand quickly because I always want to slip in here a little bit of an advertisement for next week while all of you are here and all of you are listening. Um, it, it probably, I'm going to ask Brian to go ahead and tell it, tell us a little bit about this. This probably is going to be

>> about

>> not entirely disconnected from, uh, from what we're talking about this week. So, go ahead, Brian.

>> Yeah, thanks, Lauren. Yeah, I, I didn't, uh, uh, think about that connection till I was just listening today because Adventists have, um, well, especially throughout the 60s and 70s, uh, after the space program and so on, became very fascinated with extraterrestrials. And one of the theories that kind of came out during the 60s and 70s, well, about more into the 80s even, was that, um, God's second coming would be faked by extraterrestrials or at least Satan as an extraterrestrial would do that sort of thing. Coming as an alien, you know, invasion and that would be God's second coming, sort of to fake us out. So, there's a little bit of conspiracy side to that, but I'm not going to dwell just on that. I want to look at the history of the next week of the Adventist Church's, um, ideas around, uh, people on other planets and so on and so forth because some of you may be aware that Ellen White had talked a little bit about people on other worlds in her visions, at least in one major vision. So, so anyway, so that's what I'll be doing next week is talking about, uh, Adventist history of, uh, extraterrestrials and, uh, what we know from science about it too, because, you know, scientists have also been very fascinated by extraterrestrials and, uh, the possible existence of such beings. So, and the question of why haven't we seen any yet? So, anyway, Lauren, that's, uh, that's kind of in a nutshell what I'll be, what I'll be covering. So.

>> Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure you guys were tuned into this because this is interesting to me. Um, back to the topic. Matthew, thanks for letting me slip on an advertisement. Um, back to the topic. Uh, Carmen and I have a, a very personal and very intense, uh, well, intense, memorable, uh, story about this. Uh, I started my internship in a little church in Bottineau, North Dakota, which is on the Saskatchewan border. And, uh, I just had just come, we had just gotten married just the week before and come from Walla Walla College. And here I was suddenly a pastor. And, uh, after the very first service, I think it was the first week, it could have been the second, but it was right at the beginning. [clears throat] A group of people said, "Pastor, you have to come." And I, it was the first time I was told pastor, which was kind of jarring since I was just a college kid. Um, pastor, you have to come. We're having a whole gathering in the basement today. We're going to be listening to the tapes of this guy named John Todd. You've just got to hear him. It's the most astonishing thing you've ever heard. I don't know how we got out of it. I guess we made some excuse that we had someplace we had to go. Although it was in Bottineau, North Dakota, we didn't have any place to go. Um, so, uh, that that was our, our first experience of John Todd. Later on, it just kept, it was more and more people who were talking about him. Now, I'm going to, I'm going to make a statement that is precisely what you said we shouldn't say, but I think it's really true because I've thought about this so much. I was raised on conspiracies. I was raised on conspiracies of, of, uh, Sunday laws. I mean, I was raised driving down the street and saying, and my mom saying that those Catholic people live there. You better be careful when the time of trouble comes. You don't want to have anything to do with them. I mean, this, this was this was not subtle. This was not nuanced, Matthew. This was intense and intentional. Uh, when I, I've told this story several times, but it still shocks me every time I tell it. When, uh, John Kennedy was elected, the people in my little church were in tears at first Sabbath. And when he died, people were saying, "Praise the Lord. He's held back the winds of strife."

>> Oh, goodness.

>> I mean, you just, you know, the mind boggles. This is how people thought back then. And, uh, it, it just, it still just blows my mind. And yes, I do think I'd like to know more. You know, I'd like to talk to a psychologist, maybe like Andreas or somebody who can talk to us about that conspiratorial mindset and how it grows in people and becomes so central that you, you have to have it. My analysis, Matthew, is that it is that the more time goes on and we've been, we, we have this pummeled with this urgency, urgency, urgency, Jesus is going to come before the next camp meeting. And the more time goes on in that mode, the more people are going to be searching for these kinds of answers. But by the way, I, I have a one more question for you. Maybe you don't know the, the answer to this, but you do know that John Todd died in, in a mental hospital.

>> Uh, yeah.

>> Uh, did he ever have a chance to speak to Adventist groups? Did anybody invite these guys to come in to actual Adventist events and speak to them?

>> Uh, not that I'm aware of. John Todd definitely, I, I really would highly doubt it in the case of John Todd, even though Adventists seemed to be more interested in him, uh, at the time, simply because he, he went into, uh, Wicah, I think in 1978 for a little while before coming back to Christianity. Then of course, he was, uh, I, he was arrested, I want to say '85, somewhere around there, for, uh, rape, for rape where, yeah, he spent the rest of his life, except for a couple years, in a mental facility after being released. So, I, it just doesn't seem like there was that big of a window for Adventists to, you know, we're not exactly the first to grab people, invite them over. Uh, so I don't think so with him. I don't, I don't think so with Rivera, and, and Mike, maybe, maybe he did comedy or music or something, and I don't know.

>> I know Bob Larson.

Who is also another damn guy. He, he was invited at least to Losier and maybe some other places too.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's all. Thank you. This is great.

Yeah. Mhm.

All right. Thank you so much, Lauren. Uh, Bjorn, you are next in line to join the conversation.

Cool. Thank you, Cherion. Thank you very much, Matthew. Great presentation. I, I was wondering what, what your thoughts were on on trends and how to sort of combat them. Like, do, do you feel that uh, conspiracies and and, you know, thinking along these lines, these sort of alarmist end times kind of thing, is it on the rise as an abotism? Uh, and, you know, whether or not it's on the rise, what's the best way to kind of combat it? Because it, it seems like you, you have, you have a group of people that fervently believes it. Then, then there is a group of people that just dismisses it as as total nonsense. Um, but those two groups don't really communicate. They're not listening to each other. So, what, what's, uh, have you seen effective ways to kind of large-scale take the air out of this kind of thing? Uh, and if so, what are those, what are those, uh, approaches?

Oh, good. Uh, first question is easier, right? Of course, it's on the rise because it's on the rise in American society as a whole right now. So, I can't speak of Adventism outside the US, but, uh, certainly in the US, right? Like, there's ever since co, we've, we've just had an increased willing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've had that shift.

Um, and to the point as you put it, where it doesn't feel like we're really talking to each other anymore. There's, uh, kind of been this, this othering, uh, in American culture, uh, where we're, we're not neighbors, we're enemies, right? Um, and, uh, redpilled and bluepilled. Uh, but,

Yeah.

As for how to combat it, I mean, this is, this is the million-dollar question right now. Uh, it would really help, I think, if we, if we had a means of of dealing with it. I, I do suspect with Adventism in as a whole. I, it, it seems like we have this, um, two things at work here. One is the further we get from when we originally expected Jesus to come. Like, the, the longer we wait, the, the greater the stress on Adventism because how, you know, is this the same church in 500 years as it is today? You know, like, how, how long can you credibly keep talking about the return of Jesus as soon, right?

It's getting more and more embarrassing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think that puts pressure and so I think that that pressure sometimes translates into, uh, maybe some wishful thinking when a headline goes one way or the other, like, it has to be a sign of something. It has to be a sign of something, like, like people are going to continue to look for, uh, reasons to to continue to believe that it's going to be soon. Uh, not everybody, but some people are going to go that way. Um, so I think the, the, the stress of the weight is is one factor and I think the other is I don't know that we've ever really interpreted Daniel and Revelation in a broad enough way to make sense of our reality. And so anything that doesn't kind of fit into our window through which we see the world, uh, must be explained somehow. It has to be brought in, right? So, it just package it all together. All of it is is got to fit this scenario, whether it's Sunday laws or or whatever else, like somehow it's got to fit in. We're not really dealing with the world in its complexity. We're, we're kind of packaging it. Uh, and so maybe by developing, uh, our apocalyptic window to be broader, we may be able to take in more of the world as it is without, without kind of distilling it into the story that we, that we like, the only story that we tell. Um, maybe we can find a broader story to tell that will help us to interact with the world, uh, better.

Those are not really helpful in terms of like, here's three steps and problem solved.

But, yeah, no, I, I like the, uh, I like the exploratory, uh, yeah, a new way to widen our perspective somehow. Thanks.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Bjorn. Uh, Paris, uh, you are next to join our conversation. Please go ahead.

Thank you and thank you, Matt, for a stimulating presentation. [gasps] And I do think there's some validity to what you suggest about the apocalyptic mindset and worldview that Adventists have. But I'm wondering if there isn't a more basic cause for the proliferation of conspiracy theories and frauds. For example, when you're brought up as a, a person of faith to believe in a talking snake in the Garden of Eden, or a jackass that has a conversation with an angel, or, or genetic engineering by waving leaves and, and, and limbs in front of mating sheep. When you are brought up to believe all of these things to be factual, aren't you predisposed to be so gullible and vulnerable to conspiracy theories and frauds like this?

Uh, I don't think so, to be perfectly frank with you. I, I mean, I think we, you know, we, there's people who believe that there's life in the universe, right? That's something that's going to be talked about by Brian. Uh, but, but if you, [clears throat] believe that there's life on another planet, it doesn't necessarily predispose you, for instance, to believe that John Todd is telling the truth. You know what I mean? Uh, we all believe incredible things. And the essence of Christianity is the belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus. And, and, uh, you know, by its, you know, resurrection is an insane thing to believe in. We, none of us have, uh, ever likely seen a resurrection, right? To, to believe that this actually happened. But I don't think that necessarily makes you more likely to believe something else. Uh, because I, I think all of us believe something that's incredible or improbable or whatever.

So, if, if you don't believe in rationality as the primary principle of your thinking, um, you have a, a faith perspective on things, then you are more likely to believe the irrational, are you not?

Uh, perhaps, but I, I think, I think everybody is has some kind of faith thinking. Um, you know, my, have a family member who just went in to do an educational intensive and, um, you know, asked for vibes to be sent her way, believing that that would help her. Um, not a, not a Christian, not a believer, but, you know, truly believe that that would help her. I, anyways, I don't think any of us are purely rational beings. I, I think we're, we're a complex, uh, organism. But, yeah, we should endeavor to, to practice critical thinking, right? I mean, that would have, that would have helped, I think, in this case. But, yeah.

All right. Thank you so much, Harris. Uh, George, you are next in line. Please go ahead and join the conversation.

Thank you for another brilliant presentation. Uh, look, I want to make a brief statement and then add a question to it. Uh, for many years I've been thinking, what, what is it that so many Adventists are so naive that they accept certain doctrine, certain theories, let's say, and preachings, no? And then I started looking into it from more of a psychological aspect. And the fact is, because I'm a psychologist. And, um, fact is that a vulnerable, weak personality is an open door for the charlatans. Charlatans are very skilled people. And when they, [clears throat] they are able to convince others that they have been experiencing things in the past and they came out of it.

Yeah.

Or they can have those, oh, had a vision about something there. And they find these weak, vulnerable, uh, immature, I would say, personalities. That's their opportunity to, to collect, okay?

And those people that I describe as weak personality, they're not bad people. They are good people, most of the time. But they are, their brain is wired in a way that is almost difficult to, to change. That's who they are. So, and you just said something about critical thinking. Very important thing. Adventism does not support, does not encourage critical thinking at all. Actually, Adventism does the opposite. You see, no asking questions, just believe. You need more faith. These type of things. So, I think that the psychological, uh, and I could explain for a long time about this, of course, not here now. Um, it's, it's a problem right there that, uh, congregations find when people like this, you know, become majority, start accepting these these heresies and this, uh, fake, uh, uh, preachers. Now, this is my point of view. I wonder now if you, in your experience, which is large and probably larger than mine, from the pulpit and all that, uh, if you have detected any other factors that could answer the question, why are so many people naive? For example, they vote for MAGA, then MAGA destroys their lives, they vote again, destroys more of their lives, and they would vote again. How come? [laughter] So, you tell me if you found any other components to this. Thank you for your presentation. I really appreciate it.

Thanks, George. Uh, look, I live in Illinois, so it's not our fault. Um, [laughter] um, but, uh, I'm not going to get into MAGA, but I, I will say I, presumably every, every religious group has some degree of people who, who are maybe not practicing critical thinking as you describe this personality type and stuff, not just Adventists, but, uh, I do wonder if there's something to what you, to, to what you say. Um, I personally, I'm not going to go so far as to say Adventists don't, don't, uh, encourage or practice critical thinking. I think we do, but it's, it's very selective. Like, we want people to read the Bible about the Sabbath. We have no problem going through all the texts and quoting commentaries and so forth if it suits us about the Sabbath. Um, but it's true, we don't encourage people in other directions, in most other directions, to, to really interact critically with things. Um, we don't really publish critical articles so much in our, in our flagship journal. Um, and, uh, you know, I, I think that's, we're, we're, we're, well, let's put it this way, on a different subject, like, uh, Ellen White and plagiarism. Um, we have since 1919, right? Several instances. Uh, we have the Kerna letter in the '40s. Uh, basically Kerna and Andreas and Emma Andreas and having an exchange where Kern says, "Yeah, we absolutely need to, to have a conference discussing Ellen White and plagiarism," but just, it seems lacked the political will to try and make that happen or didn't have the authority to make that happen. And so from 1919 onwards, we have this, we have leaders acknowledging from time to time, yeah, we know this is a problem. We need to look into it. We know this is a problem. We need to look into it. And then what happens? We have Ron Numbers, Walter Ray, etc. And, and sincere, well-meaning Adventists are blindsided and many of them lose their faith because the, the church whose leaders knew better for, you know, 50, 60 years said nothing to kind of, uh, prepare them to have this conversation, right? And so, I, I, I think we do ourselves a disservice, um, when we, we don't emphasize a careful and, and, uh, uh, a good methodological approach to studying the Bible. We're preparing our members for, for being blindsided by this, that, or the other. You know, they, they, you know, I don't know, they discover Bart Ehrman at some point and lose their faith because we never sought to engage with the issues that Bart raises. And so, it just, whenever they come across it, it seems to hit them out of nowhere, or, you know, somebody like Bart, you get the idea. Uh, so, I, I do think we have an ethical responsibility as a church to, uh, create a culture that encourages critical thinking, that encourages a good use of, of, of sources. You know, where do we go? How do we, let's interact with ideas that are out there and so forth. I think it's the best thing we can do for our members, as well as telling them to keep the faith and rah and all that stuff.

Um, for sure.

Okay. So, I think we bear some responsibility. I, I guess that's what I'm saying. You know, we bear some responsibility as a collective.

Thank you.

All right. Thanks, George, for that question. Um, Alex, you know, you seem to have dropped out of the queue. Uh, you've raised your hand again. Please go ahead and join the conversation.

Well, thank you. I really appreciate, Matthew, your presentation. A lot of food for thought. Something to add. You are operating in English-speaking sphere. Within Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, there are also their own fraudsters and conspiracy theorists and conmen too. And quite often they repeat the English versions. And you see the same stories surface under different names in a Russian-speaking world. Uh, I'm not mentioning any names here on purpose, but I could give you a whole list of names. One of those became conference president and then became a union officer. I would not go beyond that. And that is really sad because it would be good if there's some kind of, I don't know, catalog of these ideas to say, hey, that's what this guy said 20, 30 years ago, you know, because it's being repeated and troubling. And what I've heard in this conversation, it isn't a rise among independent ministries, the suggestion that the second coming would be faked by alien, uh, appearance through AI. This is the new thing out there. And what I'm experiencing from my context, pastoring a multicultural church, number of new ideas coming from the Caribbean. It's almost like what we've been through here in the '90s in North America is being revived and brought up with a new flavor coming from the Caribbean. Some of these ideas. And so this conversation is very urgent. It should be forefront for our church that we do not fall for these grifters and fraudsters over and over again.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, good point. I, I, I am optimistic that as, uh, you know, with, um, with [snorts] the internet, with AI, and, uh, I guess as, as things that are being said are being written on Reddit and, uh, posted on Facebook and Instagram and things like that today. Um, as those who study Adventist history professionally, or just as an interest or a hobby like me, um, I think it's going to be easier to be aware of how stories travel across cultures. Now, when you talk about something somebody said 40 years ago or something, and it wasn't recorded, it's not on the internet, you know, that, that's unfortunately going to still be hard to tie together. You know, a story that comes from English into Russian into whatever, or to Spanish. Uh, but I, I do think at some point, I would expect it's going to be easier to just, I don't know, have AI say, "Here's something, uh, somebody said," and then it's going to say, "Oh, there's a video in Spanish on YouTube repeating this. There's something in Russian on, on Telegram." Well, I can't search Telegram, but you get the idea. Um, and so it's going to be able to, to kind of tie these things across languages. So, I'm, I'm hoping in the future that that technology will make this easier to identify how these stories mutate and transfer across cultures. And the more, of course, a people interested in Adventist history collaborate. You know, you publish on blogs. I heard this when I was young. I mean, Arthur Patrick's blog was super valuable as an eyewitness to many of the things that took place in the South Pacific, uh, in the '70s and '80s. Uh, so write stuff down, please, if you remember something.

All right. Thank you so much, Alex. Uh, Matthew, I've been trying to formulate my own question. Um, and I'm, I'm not sure if I found the question yet, but there's something you said that struck me, um, about the members of the church who want to stay frightened because, >> I particularly growing up in the Caribbean, I have several friends. Um, and, you know, persons who, that is definitely my interpretation of how they react to, to everything. Um, where anything sensational and the end times and all of those things seem to really appeal to them much more than the hope, much more than this cycle of work and rest that we, that should be such a beautiful thing for us. Um, you know, taking care of your bodies, living a healthy life here, and, you know, being a good citizen of earth. Um, they're so much more interested, you know, in that sort of a thing. And I remember at the start of co, when services went online or Bible study that we used to do, uh, for, for the home church that I was a part of, we were looking at all of these things. We were looking at the fruit of the spirit and all of these things. And somebody actually came to us and like, "Oh, but you have such a captive audience, you need to be doing Daniel and Revelation." [laughter] And, >> I don't know if you've found in your experience as a, as a pastor, a way to kind of help persons to kind of recognize the, the advent hope versus this kind of end time conspiracy and, you know, kind of dialing in to all of those things. I don't know if you found a way to be able to do that with your congregations and, you know, anything that we could, you could share with us.

Yeah. Um, it's, it's difficult. The, sometimes when I've tried to preach on on Revelation or Daniel or whatever, and I, I try to take it in a different direction, I, it, it meets some resistance because, uh, it's not a part of the story. And so what I realized was, I need to figure out how to take what I think is a more faithful reading of Revelation, for instance, and, and make it into a story because I think that's what folks are looking for. They're not sitting there saying, "I hope I get good ex of Jesus today." And, and the story, uh, because Adventism is a, is a, a high tension faith. I mean, to, to be an Adventist requires being in greater tension with the world around you than many other faiths. We, I should say that this way, many Adventists are looking, they, they need to be constantly justified in making that choice because it's costly to be an Adventist. I could be, I could be watching the World Cup right now if I, uh, you know, if instead of, uh, reading Ellen White on Sabbath afternoon or whatever, I could be going to a concert, whatever it is. Uh, so I need, I need reassurance that this is indeed the correct path. And, uh, and so I, I think if the response to that is, well, here's better ex of Jesus, I, I think it's going to be really hard to, to, to change anyone. I, I think because the, how they interpret Revelation is in service of a larger story that makes me feel good about being an Adventist in this, in this, and it's difficult to be an Adventist in this world. So, you know, I, I think maybe a better understanding of why people are invested in these stories and, uh, and, and to tell a better story, not just give facts, but tell a better story. Uh, I don't have a silver bullet for this one. If I did, man, I'd be getting the New York Times bestseller and all sorts of things, but, uh, that's, that's where I was at in, in pastoral ministry before I moved up to the conference office. And now I, I just stare at a wall all day. I'm just kidding. If, if my boss is watching, I'm just kidding. I, [laughter]

All right.

All right. Yeah, but I like that. I like that. Tell a better story. Yeah, I really like that. Thanks so much for that, Matthew. Uh, Robert Johnston, you are next to nine. Please go ahead and join the conversation.

Thing. Um, I attended Andrew University from '77 to '81 as a chemistry, uh, major. Shout out to Charles Hording that's on the line here. Um, but, uh, uh, I worked as a student worker in W US for, I think it was just a summer or relatively short time, but they had a, a business going there that involved, uh, reproducing cassette tapes. And so if you wanted, you know, X number of cassette tapes made, you'd give them your master and we'd run off on, you know, bulk repry production machines, a bunch of cassette tapes, and we would obviously have to check them for quality. And, uh, so we'd often have a tape playing in the, in the background as we worked. And, uh, during this period, you're talking about, uh, W US was in the business of reproducing cassette tapes of John Todd speaking and circulating them, uh, in the Adventist church, not as an official endorsement of the university or W US or anything like that, but, you know, people were asking for these tapes to be reproduced in mass, and they were involved in doing that. And I, as a student worker, got to participate in that process. Uh, so it was interesting, uh, you mentioned Auggie Rendeland's pre, uh, paper that was published in Adventist Today, in which he has a count, the visit to Andrews University and PMC in particular by Roland Hegstead, at the time editor of Liberty magazine, in which he, >> he talked about conspiracy theories, including John Todd. And so it was quite interesting to me because I had been reproducing these tapes, and then he came to campus and talked about it. I do remember one of the things, [laughter] he said, um, that kind of stuck with me, and I'm paraphrasing, probably, but he, he made the comment that, uh, when something is, uh, is, is just crazy enough to not be believable, that's when people will believe it. And, uh, I, I had that experience in a very personal way. Uh, and I'm a member of a small church in Texas. And, uh, decades ago, nothing to do with the current pastoral staff, but decades ago, we had a pre-looney pastor assigned to us. And, uh, we sometimes got the drags as a small church. Uh, and he was on a kind of a power trip and wanted to make sure that he had people that he could manipulate in charge of the elders positions and so forth. And at the time, I was elder, and he wanted to displace me. So he started spreading all kinds of untruths about me in the church, uh, and me and my wife. He told people that we had been friends with for years, that I, I beat my wife and she was going to be leaving me, etc. Very unbelievable stories, but unbelievable enough that people in the church started to look at us very skeptically. Uh, and it took months for that to all dissipate as it finally unraveled and eventually he left. Uh, I say that, uh, because I'd be curious to know what the psychology of that is. George might want to pop in and comment again, but why is it that what Hegstead said is true? Why is it that, uh, what I experienced is true? If it's, if it's crazy enough, people go for it. And, uh, I have to think it probably has something to do with the lizard brain and, and the pattern recognition that goes in there when we're looking for danger. Uh, uh, and, uh, we see patterns and then, uh, those patterns we see across multiple avenues and we, we jump on them. But anyway, wanted to share that history with you.

Yeah. No, I appreciate that. So, basically, what you're saying is you're a material supporter of, uh, of John Todd's tapes getting out there.

That's right.

And to the question about not whether he ever spoke in Adventist church, I wish I could remember the details, but I could swear that there was at least one of those tapes where he was speaking like at a camp meeting or something like that, or some church.

Um,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, what's crazy is how many tapes were were floating around in the '70s and '80s and so on, and how few of them ever survived. You know, I, I've looked, there's some John Todd recordings on YouTube, but I mean, compared to the number of tapes that were undoubtedly in circulation, I, I think we have very little of, of, uh, of what he had said, which is too bad because for somebody engaging with history, I mean, you're, you're bereft of a huge source, you know, like little anecdotes, things come out in those tapes, stories about where I was last week and all this kind of stuff that don't necessarily get preserved in articles about him. Um, so, yeah,

Keepers of any of that stuff, but check your W.

Yeah, right. That's it. That's it. We're gonna, I feel like we're just not having fun starting conspiracies, you know? Like, why let everyone else have the fun? Let's, let's create our own. Uh, W is is, uh, hiding John Todd's original tapes and, Yeah. Anyways. All right. No, good question about, I don't, I, you know, I guess that's a George question or somebody else wants to take on the psychology aspect of it, but, you know, I, I don't know if anyone would be here for Christian as, as Christians if, if the message of Jesus was that he, uh, was born, lived, and then tripped and skinned his knee and it healed. You know what I mean? That's not, that's not going to change the world. It has to be a big story. It has to be resurrection to, to get generations of people through millennia to, to believe it, right? We're not, we're not in it because something small happened. Uh, that, that's my lay attempt at that one.

All right. Thank you so much for for sharing. Um, Robert, uh, Brian, you've been so patient. Please go ahead and join the conversation.

Well, Lauren already gave me a short spot there, but anyway, uh, I wanted to go back in history myself because I was a, U, in high school in the '70s and went to an Adventist school. And at the time, um, and some of you who lived at that period probably will remember this also, there was a lot of talk about, you know, the, the Sunday law and what was going to happen, that we'd be put in prison if we didn't do this, and, you know, we'd have to run to the mountains. And so this was running through my mind and many of my classmates at the time. And I remember that I got somehow as I got a hold of one of John Todd's tapes and I listened to that and all of the stuff about the Illuminati. And boy, my friends and I talked about this. And so it, it really was very engaging, I think, to a teenage mind. Um, and I don't know about all the adults. And then also a few years later, actually, just shortly after that period of time, I ran across Mike Warkey. Uh, by that time, he was not emphasizing his history as a, a witch or whatever as much. He was just more of a comedian, Christian comedian. And he had very funny stories, very engaging. And I think that's part of it, too, is that these people, >> they were showmen. Um, everyone, I mean, the ones that you list, I mean, they, they, they knew how to engage an audience. >> I mean, we're talking the P.T. Barnum kind of thing here. And so I don't know that even it took necessarily a great deal of already being prepared for it, but just being an Adventist probably made you a little bit willing to start listening because they were good, engaging speakers. And so, um, but I, I just, you know, it just brings back all those memories of this. And I think that, um, it, it amazes me that we still have a few people still trotting this stuff out because, you know, Walter Vice still brings out stuff about the Illuminati. >> And, and I, you know, >> that's what kind of fascinates me even more is how do people get stuck there and never get past it because there's so much was exposed about these people that was pretty clear that they were not who they said they were. >> And, and the stories they were telling were clearly cooked.

Yeah.

No, it's, you bring up an interesting point, Brian. I mean, you know, when, when, when Pippen went down, all his books got pulled.

Mhm.

Right. All his books got pulled. But some of these people, even when they go down, their ideas survive. Like, so maybe, maybe somebody like Vice isn't going to explicitly give Rivera credit anymore, but the ideas remain, right?

And, and, and, and now they're not being attributed. You know, like one time the JWs came by my house and they gave me this book about Jesus, you know, in his not being God, and, you know, and I looked at this thing and it made all these claims and, of course, there's no sources. And so, like, it becomes really difficult to track down where are these ideas coming from. And, and I, and I feel like this, this is the same case now, like now that it's no longer acceptable to give attribution to some of these people who have discredited themselves, Uh, the ideas remain, but now it's difficult to track down the origins of them, or it will be increasingly difficult. Right.

It's weird how sometimes the person goes down and their ideas go with them, and sometimes they go down and it's almost like, well, they were an imperfect messenger, but the ideas were good.

Yeah. Yeah. But I'm not even sure Pippin's have gone away. I mean, that I still occasionally crop up some of that too. But nevertheless, one last point I wanted to make because somebody had asked about the psychology of this, and I'm thinking, you know, I think humans are wired this way to some degree. >> Because I know atheists that have to somehow have a story too. And one of the big questions is, where did our universe come from? Now, if you're a Christian, God created the universe. But if you're not, you have to somehow explain it. And there's the Big Bang, of course, but, but the Big Bang doesn't really answer the question, you see, because where did the Big Bang come from? And so, >> atheists will tell the story about the multiverse, which is which is based on nothing other than speculation. Pure speculation.

I saw it in a Marvel documentary. It does exist.

Well, yeah, exactly. See, so, so there you go. And, and I think Star Trek's the other one because we're going to talk about aliens next week. I mean, I think Star Trek gives people the wrong impression that somehow it's so easy to, [clears throat and snorts] travel the universe and, or at least the galaxy, right? >> And so, you know, of course there's aliens out there and we're all going to meet them someday. So, I, I think, you know, atheist or Christian, we all have these places in our brain that we have to make some sense of the universe. And whatever place we are, we're going to accept some kind of fantasy, um, that simply is not based on reality, cuz we don't have a place to go. We, we have some unanswered questions, we don't, don't know what to do with them. And I think people like Todd come in, oh, here's an answer to your unanswered questions. Why is, why is all this stuff happening around you that you don't understand? Well, because the Illuminati are, you know, >> manipulating it. So, yeah. So, anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. Exactly it. Exactly.

All right. Thank you so much, Brian. Really appreciate that. Uh, Melody and Ron, it is now time for you to join the conversation. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Thanks, Matthew, for a great presentation. We really enjoyed it. I think we got some of those kind of tapes when we were first Adventists. They were talking about the Illuminati, but I believe it was Adventists that had created these tapes.

Okay.

But anyway, Ron and I have a couple of questions about the current conspiracy theories and if Adventists are being drawn into them. And one, which will be the second one that I would like you to respond to, is the New Apostolic Reformation.

Okay.

And the other one is, and we've heard this from both Ron's brother and a fellow Seventh Day Adventist, something about, uh, the sacrifice of the red heifer.

Yeah.

And the rebuilding of the third temple in Jerusalem as a way to prepare for Christ's return. And, [clears throat]

Don't know if you've ever heard of those.

But,

Uh, I mean, I, I remember reading coming across the New Apostolic Reformation in an article or something, but I've never really looked into it. As for the, the temple, I, I was in Israel one time and, maybe as some of you have, I visited the Temple Institute. And this is a group that's trying to, they're ready for to rebuild the temple. They have, I remember being totally creeped out walking into this room and then behind a curtain, lit up, was the Ark of the Covenant, and you could only see it like through a sliver in the, in the curtain. And I remember being totally freaked out by that because like, I shouldn't be looking through there and seeing it. Even though obviously we're modern people. We're not, we're not living in the days of Moses. But nevertheless, it was so ingrained in me that like, this is, don't touch it, you know, don't, uh, only the high priest should be going back there. And I'm like, here I am looking through the curtain and I can see. Anyways, this group is totally ready now. They claim they're ready for an earthquake or something to destroy the mosque on the Temple Mount. And, uh, and when that happens, they're going to rush in there and, and rebuild the temple. Um, which they say earthquake, and I instantly thought, are you guys going to cause this earthquake, or, uh, hoping the Israeli military does? Um, but, anyways, yeah. Yeah, they're all ready for this. And periodically, you do hear something about a red heifer, uh, they're looking for, and that's that's going to be the sign, right? I guess that it's time to go. But I don't know that Adventists so much are are believing in, uh, in the, in the third temple per se. At least that one's new to me.

Okay.

Uh, I think that's definitely an evangelical Christian thing because they're, they're having their eyes on Israel more than, more than Adventists, I think, pay attention to Israel. And that was like, what we wondered too, is how many, this person with the third temple theory is very much into Judaism, the study of Judaism, and, uh, a very strong supporter of Israel. And I don't know how many Adventists actually support Israel, uh, not to, not to different, but should be differentiated between Netanyahu, >> you know? So, anyway, that was our question. So, thanks.

Yeah. No, no, that's, that's good. Yeah, we don't, we don't necessarily buy into all the theories, >> but, yeah,

That's good.

All right. Thank you so much, Melody. Uh, Ed, it is time for you to join the conversation. Please go ahead and share with us.

Hi, thank you, Matthew, for a stimulating presentation. Um, it really hits home with Adventists, doesn't it? Um, this is a, I want to propose a possible antidote for Adventist vulnerability to >> conspiracy stuff. Um, and that would be a basic shift in focus for Adventism.

[snorts]

Uh, we're basically future-focused as a church, as a people. We easily ignore the implications of what it meant when Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is among you.

Mhm.

Uh, our kingdom is out there in the future somewhere. Uh, we step over the idea of the kingdom of heaven is among you to go to a prophetic future. We go right past that. Um, and we jump to the three angels' message, which is future-focused. Matter of fact, if you read some, some commentary in our publications, you would think we are the three angels. Mhm.

Um, if you read the One Voice 27, I don't know how many of you are familiar with that, but One Voice 27 is a big initiative by the General Conference. They've allocated $26 million to this. Um, and, uh, the big thing, one of the big things in preparing for One Voice 27 is a worldwide evangelistic thing, using electronic media and so forth, is studying Daniel and Revelation again. Well, we know that's mostly about, when you get to the end of those, it's about the future. Um, if we were engaged in the last section of Matthew 25, we might be less vulnerable in the judgment scene where, uh, Jesus says, um, inherit the kingdom. I was hungry and you gave me food. You gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothes. I was sick and you took care of me, etc., etc. That is all the kingdom of heaven is among you now stuff.

Yeah.

Um, so I wonder if we were focused on the here and now instead of the bit of an unknown future out there somewhere, which may or may not turn exactly out exactly as we think, if we would be less focused, uh, on the speculation about things, if we would be more busy doing the work of the kingdom. Um, so I, I ponder on that. I know it's unlikely to happen because a future focus is baked into Adventism from the beginning.

Uh, but, uh, I'm wondering how you see that. Is our future focus really a driver?

Yeah. I mean, look, I, I credit the Adventist interest in, in the apocalypticism for our interest in the Sabbath, our interest in religious liberty, our interest in all of these things, right? And so, I, I do think, I do think a, a healthy apocalyptic-minded Adventism should be keeping the here and now and the, and the world to come in a healthy tension. You know, we have Adventist Community Services, we have ADRA, we have, we have things that are focused on this world. Could we do more? Of course. Uh, but I think, I don't think the apocalyptic viewpoint, um, I don't think we should have let it drag us entirely into the future. Like, I, I do think we need to maintain that balance. Uh, and I, I think that it's a, it's a question that's difficult to resolve because, uh, I see you wearing an Advent Health shirt. I, I spoke to some Advent Health people earlier this week and talking about the Chicago Medical Mission, [snorts] and, uh, Ellen White was at some point, she, she kind of saw both sides of this issue, which was, why are we donating so many resources to helping the, the unhoused, uh, the addicts, and, uh, so forth in Chicago, uh, if we focus more on gospel proclamation, then hopefully we can prevent people from becoming alcoholics or, you know, abandoning their families. That was another problem that the Adventists were trying to address, or prostitution, another problem in Chicago. So, it's kind of like, do you deal with this problem upstream? We convert them, we, we, [clears throat] pour ourselves into their lives, and then they don't go down these roads. You can do that, but you're still going to have suffering human beings on this planet. So, then you're going to want to do something for them. And we don't have the resources to do both equally well. Anyways, and she's, she's going through this, you know, at different times in her writing, she's emphasizing one side of that or the other. Do we get into the kind of preventative side, or do we treat the world as it is, not as we wish it would be? Uh, and I think we're always going to have to deal with that tension. Uh, and that's why I think we need to be fully planted, feet planted in this world as it is here and now. But, but with the realization that the only reason why we're here is because of these expectations, because of this hope of, of what's to come. And so, anyways, I just, I, I just want to see us kind of fully present in the here and now and fully present in the, the not yet. Uh, and I think that's Adventism's intersection. Well, but all you have to do is follow the money.

Where are we?

Yeah.

Where are we putting the most money?

Where, where do we invest? And except for ADRA and Adventist Healthcare, we don't invest much in the kingdom that is among you now. Uh, so, yeah, I don't think we achieve.

No, I don't, I don't know that we do either. Um, but, you know, what stops any Adventist church from doing some kind of community service? I mean, there's nothing in our, in our structure or, or whatever that prevents churches from caring about their communities, you know, get some clothes together and give them out. Get some food together and give them out.

Yeah. And some churches do that, but they're most churches are part of the culture.

Thank you very much.

No, no, I mean, fair point. Fair point.

All right. Thank you so much, Ed. Really appreciate that. Uh, Carsten, you are next to join the conversation. Please go ahead and unmute.

First of all, thank you for a really refreshing presentation, free from all the slogans and traditional verbiage that follows along. Um, I'd like to ask you, I have a slightly different angle on why I think that we're so vulnerable to conspiracy theories.

[clears throat]

And when I look at the Adventist church from my history, growing up in a pure Adventist environment all the way through grade school, high school in Battle Creek, Andrews University, also at W US before you were there, Robert. Um, it was first when I got jobs in the so-called real world outside the church. And I've been working in the outside evil world for my entire career that I had my eyes opened for the bubble that I had grown up in. And the Adventist success, I believe, has been based on creating a very strong identity inside a very carefully defined bubble. And the main components of that bubble is that we are God's chosen people. And if you understand the three angels' messages, those who have the faith of Jesus and the spirit of prophecy and whatever that is, the Adventist church that is, once you get into it, that is identified by our unique interpretation of Revelation. There. We build an entire system of schools, of institutions, and we try to keep people in the bubble. We try to keep the message very, very simple. If you have a balanced message, being in the world and also looking toward the future, that confuses the people. People want to be belong to something that is unique. Adventism is unique. Adventism is has a strong identity. The Old Testament identifies the Jews as God's people, God's people. Our interpretation of Revelation identifies the SDA church as the people of God that he has chosen with a very specific for these last days.

Yeah.

And that has been preached very strongly by especially the previous leaders of the Adventist church. And it may have been toned down just a wee bit with the current leadership, but the formula works. The church is growing by leaps and bounds, and they're not going to mess with it. And we can ask, what can we do to make people less vulnerable to conspiracy theories? I think that is some of the collateral damage that comes with living in the bubble. And doing something about it is something that we have to live with. What's your reaction to that?

You?

No, I, I think that's, uh, I, I think, yeah, we're always going to have it. I agree with that. Um, just as, uh, I think the, the evangelicals, if they persist in, in the, you were in the '70s and '80s with Hal Lindsey and all that, it was quite, I don't know that these three individuals penetrated the Catholics, for instance, as much as, uh, they did the evangelical and Adventist Protestantism, but, yeah, I do think I do think we're going to have to deal with this. But I'd like to see us exert ourselves to, to minimizing it and to inoculating people as best we can.

But we're a minority.

Yep. The majority of Adventists, if you look at it worldwide, what appeals to them is the uniqueness, the uniqueness of our mission, of our selection. And also the second strong thing that we mentioned also is hope, especially in developing countries. They can see with their own eyes that becoming an Adventist has material, educational, and lifestyle benefits associated with it. So, it's a very easy decision to get on a railway to prosperity. And I think it's these very simple mechanisms that work. And we're sitting here at a little flock of howling wolves on the sidelines wanting to change things. And fundamentally, we are probably viewed as people who would destruct the identity of the church. The, the church is currently moving.

in the direction. If you look at the change of university leadership and uh the way the boards are structured and the way that professors are coerced in one way or another to teach all the 28 fundamental beliefs as part as the starting point of whatever subject that they're teaching. We are trying to seal the bubble to undo influences from the outside and removing the universities from being universities and turning them back into Adventist missionary colleges. And that is a formula that has worked so far. And they feel that the university system has been detrimental to that because we allow our students to think different thoughts that are not kosher according to the traditional Adventist view.

Am I being too harsh?

No, it's your it's your thoughts. You're you you can express them however you wish. I I'm I'm with you on a uh definitely on the first part of that. I I I think what we're looking for is what does it mean to be an Adventist in in the 2020s? I I think we're we're it feels to me like we're kind of a drift in an identity crisis because none of the traditional ways of of understanding what an avenist is is is uh let's just say it's explanatory power I think is is losing its grip. Um and and so maybe what you perceive with the universities is an attempt to kind of hold on tighter to to that. Um yeah. Yeah. No, food for thought. Food for thought.

Uh I I do think that if we are practicing our apocalyptic views, well I I look at it as when I'm trying to warn people about John Todd and Rivera and these things, I'm not trying to take from them their apocalypticism out of Adventism. I I think of it as I mean it's in service of an Adventist identity, not not to the detriment of it. I I'm trying to save them from uh from uh taking it in absurd and and kind of letting their apocalypticism mutate in ways that I think God never intended. Um especially if you go back to that verse I quoted saying like everything we've we have everything we need in in Christ Jesus. Everything that we need to understand about the end has been given to us. We don't need to follow John Todd and Rivera and all these different little branches that they go out. So to me, I'm just I look at as I'm calling them back to just just stick to what has already been revealed to us in in Christ Jesus. We don't need to follow these guys down this road. To me, it's it's following these guys is not a natural byproduct of our apocalyptic bent. It's a it's a deviation from it. It's a mutation of it in an unhealthy way. And I I want to pull them back from that. At least that's how I see it.

Well, I agree 100% with you. That's what I would like to see also. But I'm just trying from a pragmatic standpoint to say that that makes the concrete things of persecution and end times events and the urgency of a second coming.

It easily dilutes that message.

And then makes it harder for us to sell the uniqueness of Adventism. And we have to reinvent ourselves in some way that we rebrand ourselves and we reinvent ourselves with a new image that is not as narcissistic and self-centered.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

I agree. I agree. And that's why I shared that Ellen White quote earlier about how believing these things, it it neuters ourselves. And when you actually have positive, hopeful, biblical things to say, no one's going to believe you because you went off into this tangent uh and ruined your credibility with people.

I Yeah, 100%.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Carson, for that. Really appreciate your your thoughts and your question. Uh Bob Johnson, please go ahead.

This is the other Robert Johnston.

Yes. Not in Texas.

Telling me to lower my hand. um follow the money. Uh the business of movements and media is to grab eyeballs as many as possible. And it has been studied and demonstrated empirically that uh fear and anger attracts much more attention and much more intense attention than the contrary. Um we have uh small groups at our church here at Pioneer Memorial Church. And u see if you if you advertise a revelation seminar and a Matthew seminar, which one do you think people will sign up for?

Yeah.

U people are moved by fear and anger. They are not moved by happy things, strangely enough. At least not in the intense way that uh we would like.

Yeah. No, I mean that's very true, you know, but I guess to to that I would I would go back to these avenists listening to these tapes back then and just say, is is what we have in Revelation not strange enough for you? You know, we got to is it like a gateway drug? Do you got to go into crazier and crazier things in order to in order to I guess get a meaning fix? You know that it's it's going back to that text I read like why why is what you have in Christ not enough? Why do you need more?

But yeah, good point.

All right.

Thank you so much. We're almost finished here. Uh Cherry, let I'm not I'm just want to remind you of our upcoming schedule. Uh next week we have Brian Ness on uh he's going to be uh telling us about the Fermy paradox and how it applies to Christians. Um week after that, we've got Michael Scoffield, who's always been a a favorite of ours, too. uh always has something interesting. Usually it's kind of history related and I I suspect it's going to be that way again. On the 8th of August, we have a teacher who doesn't get to teach for us very often, but we really enjoy her when she does, Lindsay Abston paper painter. And the last time I chatted with her, I'm not sure what she's decided on. The last time I chatted with her, uh, she was thinking of talking about, uh, the problems that are introduced into into families, into people's lives with the the whole purity culture movement, which is pretty interesting.

[clears throat]

On the 15th, Bjorn is going to be giving us Borne Carlman is going to be giving his PNG trip, his new guinea trip, telling us about it. I think he's invited Alex to Alexander Carpenter to join him on that if I recall correctly. But Alex has been doing the program elsewhere, but Gor is going to do it do it for us. And then um on the 22nd, I have an African-American historian and theologian. Some of you may know him. He was new to me. He teaches at the University of maybe Redlands. Uh Conroy Reynolds. And Conroy is going to be telling us about this is just straight church history and very interesting church history. The slave Bible. There's actually a version of the Bible published that would remove anything that would make slaves think that they could be free. And this was a really interesting little bit of history. Um had Jody Washburn from Wala College coming in the fifth. still trying to fill the 29th and I'm I'm working been working hard on that. I don't know why that that weekend has been so hard for me to fill, but we'll get it fixed.

Thank you, Matthew. This was very this was excellent. Really excellent. And and I I appreciate your nuance and what some of us uh just I think probably tend to oversimplify and you you've nuanced it more more than I would have. Um,

[laughter]

well, I mean, given my history with growing up in the heyday of of conspiracy theories, I mean, I I'm amazed that I managed

[clears throat]

to avoid most of them. Um,

well, thank you for having me and and I think the subtitles for this presentation should have been why Lauren's the way that he is.

[laughter]

Exactly. What? Some somebody might say, "What you mean is why he's a little nuts."

[laughter]

Exactly. Yeah, I get it. Uh especially about especially about crazy apocalyptic theories. My my patience is about this long. Uh you know, you you said, "Isn't the stuff we have enough?" I wouldn't say it's too much. I would be pro I would probably be happy if we could just say Jesus loves me this I know so the Bible tells me so and uh leave it at that but that's just me. Hey, thanks so much everybody.