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0:28

with at Shane Hawaii on

0:31

Instagram. Take it easy guys. My

0:36

name is Eddie and I

0:39

was in a call. Planet

0:42

Earth about to be recycled.

0:44

Your only chance to survive

0:48

or evacuate is

0:50

to leave with us. It

0:52

started as an effort by a charismatic creature

0:54

to build a new society but it ended of

0:56

course with the tragic deaths of more than 900

0:58

people. Please, for

1:00

God's sake, let's get on with it. We've

1:03

lived as no other people have lived and loved. We've

1:06

had as much of this world as you're going to get. Let's

1:09

just be done with it. Let's be done with the agony of

1:11

it. This is a revolutionary suicide.

1:14

This is not a self-destructive suicide. So

1:16

they'll pay for this. They brought this

1:18

upon us. You're

1:23

an occult. I love you and I want

1:25

you out of it and with Christ. But

1:28

you're, you're, you're. All

1:34

right. Welcome back, ladies

1:36

and gentlemen, occultish. My name is Jeremiah

1:38

Roberts, one of the co-hosts here. I'm

1:40

kind of flying solo today. Not

1:42

exactly. This is sort of a camaraderie. You've

1:45

got a couple of people here. I've got

1:47

myself, Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co-hosts here. I'm

1:50

back with Will Spencer. You've been on the podcast before. Good

1:52

to have you back. Thanks, Jerry. And

1:54

also we are here with Carl Takereb.

1:57

Did I say it right? Both of them. Close

2:00

enough. Awesome. We're

2:02

here with Audrey. Thanks for joining us.

2:06

And also we're here with Robert. Really,

2:08

how you doing my friend? Oh, I'm

2:10

doing fantastic. I really

2:12

appreciate you having us on. I honor

2:15

your program. Awesome. Awesome. So we're gonna

2:17

be talking today about Burning Man. So

2:19

this is just gonna be somewhat of

2:21

an organic conversation. There's a lot of

2:23

layers to this. So I'm gonna just

2:25

introduce everyone to kind of add some

2:27

foundation. So we'll just tell everyone in

2:30

case this is the first time ever hearing you've been

2:32

on the podcast before, just tell them

2:34

just a little bit about your background in relation

2:36

to Burning Man. Sure. So I was

2:39

introduced to the world of we'll call it

2:41

New Age spirituality around the year 2000. The

2:44

first time I was living in San Francisco Bay Area at the

2:46

time. The first time I went to Burning Man was in 2003.

2:48

I continued participating

2:50

in other various New Age practices, meditations, therapies, stuff

2:52

like that. I went back to Burning Man again

2:55

in 2013 and then in 2015 I went

2:58

the third and final time I was introduced

3:00

to an underground Christian ministry group there and

3:02

five years later I was baptized into the

3:04

faith. Wow. Alright. And Carl, if

3:06

you could just introduce yourself, tell them about, I've got

3:09

your book in front of here, Game of Gods. Just

3:11

tell them about yourself, maybe just a little bit about

3:13

the book and then what's and

3:15

then just talk about what your experience with

3:17

being on the ground of Burning Man just

3:19

real quickly. Yeah, sure. So I've been

3:21

engaged in trying to

3:24

understand researching, writing and lecturing

3:26

on worldview issues and

3:28

social transformation since really

3:31

the mid-1990s and I've been doing this

3:33

full-time since 1997 helping other Christian

3:37

ministries and authors engage

3:39

in trying to understand the cultural

3:41

shift that's taking place. So that

3:43

includes the political as I've

3:46

engaged a lot within the realm

3:48

of global governance, UN events, world

3:50

Federalist events, then the

3:53

interfaith side because there has to be a

3:55

religious component to the idea of oneness and

3:57

of course oneness is the dominant worldview which

4:00

says that ultimately man, God and nature all

4:02

share the same essence. And of course, as

4:04

you know, the biblical view

4:06

is tourism, which I am very thankful

4:08

to Dr. Peter Jones for introducing that

4:10

concept and making it a fantastic

4:13

model to work with. And

4:16

then I engaged in doing some of

4:18

the early Christian research into transhumanism. I

4:20

wasn't the first guy, but I was

4:22

definitely one of the first few on

4:25

the block with that, attending transhumanist events

4:27

and even speaking at one of

4:29

the events with the Mormon Transhumanist Association

4:32

as a Christian critic, diving

4:35

into paganism, Wiccan witchcraft events

4:37

as a Christian researcher. And

4:40

then boy, this would have been sometime

4:42

probably 2008, realizing there

4:45

has to be a cultural component to

4:47

oneness. And I knew

4:49

about Burning Man since about the year 2000, though

4:52

it was one of those items you just put

4:54

in the back pocket, didn't really think much about.

4:56

And then as I started

4:58

to engage with trying to understand

5:00

the cultural component, the artistic aesthetic

5:02

components of oneness, I

5:05

had a re-look at Burning Man. So

5:07

I attended Audrey and her

5:09

husband Brian and myself went to our first

5:11

regional in 2017. And

5:15

we did social surveys at that

5:17

regional, then attended Burning Man in Nevada in

5:19

1718-19, did

5:23

the virtual burns in 20 and 21. I think in

5:25

20, I spent 65 hours in the VR headset, 22,

5:30

pardon me, 21, back at it again. And then

5:32

I missed 2022, went back again, this time

5:37

into the mud and the dust or the dust in the mud,

5:39

whichever way you want to look at it. So all

5:42

of that said, is

5:44

encapsulated more or less in

5:46

the book as we explore

5:48

basically what the crossroads of

5:51

cultural transformation looks like from a

5:53

political, religious, technological

5:56

and a social artistic

5:58

component. Awesome. And, Audrey,

6:00

Carl introduced you just a little bit

6:03

already. But just tell everyone, just

6:05

tell our audience about yourself and

6:07

what brought you to Burning Man,

6:10

what's your interest in attending, and

6:12

how did you, maybe talk too just a little

6:14

bit about how you got connected with Carl and

6:16

like why do you, what's drawn you to go

6:18

out there and kind of be boots on the

6:20

ground and in the lion's den, per se, when

6:22

it comes to Burning Man?

6:26

Well, I'm a fellow researcher. I believe in

6:28

boots on the ground. I've

6:31

been doing this for about 10, just

6:35

over 10 years, just on

6:37

a personal interest. I see

6:39

all the dots in the

6:42

world as far as government, world economic

6:44

forum, it leads into

6:46

psychedelics. The natural progression

6:48

was Burning Man. Carl did introduce me

6:50

to Burning Man. He kept saying, you

6:52

know, I'm going to Burning Man. Are

6:54

you guys coming? And my

6:56

husband and I, Brian, we took

6:58

the challenge and we went. We actually

7:01

went. So in 2017, we went to

7:03

our regional burn. Regionals are

7:05

designed as an offshoot of Burning Man, but

7:07

also as a preparing ground to go to

7:10

the Big Burn. So we all went to

7:12

the first little

7:14

burn, then the next year, I guess

7:18

in 2019, ended up going to the Big Burn.

7:20

And I audit worldviews

7:22

and cultures. And so this is

7:24

a natural progression. And I've

7:27

been to Parliament of the World

7:29

Religions with Carl. We've been to

7:31

crazy places like Area 51. We've

7:34

done many things together, just

7:36

watching online sessions.

7:39

And yeah, so. And

7:42

so can I may I interject? Absolutely. Just

7:44

half a moment here. So

7:46

this week, as

7:48

we were just just before we begin

7:51

recording, we were racing back from Winnipeg,

7:53

where Audrey Kane and sat through a

7:55

20-hour series of lectures that I was

7:57

giving to Miller College of the Bible.

8:00

on secular pagan trends. And

8:03

so if it wasn't for the fact that she

8:05

was coming this week to take the course along

8:07

with the rest of the student body, she

8:10

wouldn't be here. So I would really kind

8:12

of slope for the fact that she's able

8:14

to participate in our conversation. And

8:16

this is your first time in Manitoba, Canada? No.

8:20

No, oh, you've been here before? I've been here before. Oh, there

8:22

we go. Oh. Mm. Awesome.

8:25

Glad you could be aboard. And last

8:27

person on this fun little crazy train

8:29

over the next two hours, Robert

8:32

Worley. Good to have you on.

8:34

Tell them just a little about yourself and how'd

8:36

you get connected with Carl? What's it cost for

8:38

you to be interested in

8:41

being boots on the ground on Burning Man?

8:43

You've been there for a while. Tell us about that. Well,

8:47

basically, I gotta tell you that 1977, I

8:51

was a thug and not a

8:54

very decent person. And

8:59

so Christians started witnessing

9:01

to me and platted

9:03

my back at three in the morning. I cried

9:05

out to God to save me under

9:08

conditional surrender. And I only knew

9:10

one Bible verse, John 3 16. And

9:13

I went out on the street the very next

9:15

day with that one verse, knowing

9:18

nothing else, right?

9:20

Except God saved me. And

9:22

I had family members over Jehovah's

9:25

Witnesses and they challenged me and

9:27

I started studying about that and

9:30

ended up bringing me into ministry.

9:32

So I've always been

9:34

one that is

9:36

compelled to

9:39

share my faith. And

9:41

so, as I got married,

9:47

I was living in Cedarville, California.

9:50

And I was told that there

9:52

were some crazy things happening out on

9:54

the Nevada desert 90 miles from us.

9:56

And so I got some of the

9:59

people. in my home fellowship and

10:01

we drove out and

10:05

it was like Mad Max during the days of

10:07

1996. And

10:10

my wife and I were hooked. I

10:12

mean, these people, I got to tell

10:15

you, is that with all the

10:17

different ministries I do, this is

10:19

the vit is my favorite because you have

10:21

up to 70 to 80,000 people

10:24

who are out there and half

10:26

of them are really on a

10:28

journey. And I've

10:31

always had people that would

10:33

talk with me out there. So

10:36

it's very important for me when somebody

10:38

will sit down and talk for an

10:40

hour or more with you and

10:43

that you could learn about them, they learn

10:45

about you and then I can present the

10:48

gospel. And

10:50

so my son and I, we

10:53

went out with basically a ragtag team,

10:55

just a few people. Then it ended

10:57

up my son and I would go

10:59

out there on our own

11:01

and witness to people in like

11:03

Gerlach, Nevada and we'd

11:06

stop and help people. What a part

11:08

of our ministry is to stop with

11:10

people broken down the side of the

11:12

road and see how we can help

11:14

them. I've actually had burners stay at

11:16

my house because their vehicle broke down.

11:18

And then in

11:20

about 2017, I was actually on

11:25

a Facebook page and I

11:27

had mentioned about witness hit

11:29

burning man. And one of the

11:31

things that we get doing this is

11:33

that we get condemned for it. Why

11:36

are you going out to that place? I've

11:38

heard people say they don't

11:41

deserve the gospel, you know, their deviance

11:43

and so forth. Carl

11:47

saw my post and got a hold

11:49

of me and then we

11:51

decided to beat at Burning Man in

11:54

2017. And I'm going

11:56

to tell you something. It took

11:58

me maybe five minutes to realize. this

12:00

was my perfect partner. And

12:03

from 2017 on,

12:05

Carl came back the next year with

12:07

the name Tampa the Unknown God, referencing

12:11

actually Act 17 with

12:13

Paul. And

12:15

it took off from there. And

12:17

so it's still been a very

12:19

small ministry, but

12:21

I would rather have the

12:24

three people, which would be Audrey,

12:26

Brian and Carl there

12:30

with me than a lot of people that

12:32

are only half hearted with it. And

12:35

so I ended up

12:37

in going out two

12:39

years ago with my wife because the

12:42

Canadians couldn't get over the border because

12:44

of COVID. Right. And my wife got

12:46

there and everything went wrong. The

12:49

wind was terrible. Our bike

12:51

tires blew up in the

12:53

heat. I accidentally overinflated them.

12:56

So we only stayed, you know, less

12:58

than two days. And

13:00

I realized because of I'm almost

13:02

70. And because of health,

13:05

that I am going to work

13:07

the outside of Burning Man, which

13:09

is much needed with my partner

13:12

that's in his 70s, Steve Hicks

13:14

and his wife Annette. And

13:17

so why am I mentioning

13:19

this is that there is

13:21

ministry on the inside of Burning Man and

13:23

there is ministry on the outside of Burning

13:26

Man. And it's the one time

13:28

that a Christian can go out and

13:31

actually engage with

13:33

people who are willing

13:35

to listen. Yeah,

13:38

that's no, that's awesome. And so this

13:40

is, so this last

13:42

year, this past year, I think Burning

13:45

Man got a specific amount of attention, mainly

13:47

because of what happened towards the end. There

13:50

was a downpour and people got more

13:52

stranded there and it was all over

13:54

the news people were talking about it.

13:56

But yeah, just take us into just

13:58

a lot that might. I want

14:00

people's minds because that's a recent event. Just whoever

14:04

wants to start, just kind of take us

14:06

into what was it like this past year?

14:08

I want to give our audience just some

14:10

understanding of what it practically looks like to

14:12

be in on the ground specifically this

14:14

past year. Well,

14:20

Audrey and I and her husband

14:22

Brian were, we experienced it ourselves.

14:25

So the first part actually

14:28

was really interesting as we drove in

14:31

on Sunday when the gate opened to

14:33

the public and there was

14:35

no lineup. And I was

14:37

used to spending hours in the lineup.

14:40

Bob and I, when we went in in 2018, I

14:43

think we spent what, nine or

14:45

10 hours on lineup just to

14:47

get in. And then this time

14:49

we all just drove right in

14:51

and never stopped until we hit

14:53

gate. We were in shock. Like

14:55

what's going on? And

14:57

so we were at the gate going, what's happening?

14:59

And nobody really seemed to know. And then we

15:01

found out later it was climate

15:03

activists blocking the road South of Gerlach

15:06

and that itself made the news. So it

15:09

became a newsworthy event right from the

15:11

get go. And Sunday, by

15:13

Sunday evening, we were at the temple

15:15

at midnight when the first

15:17

big squalls hit and that was the dust storms.

15:20

And of course, that will as

15:22

you well have experienced out in the

15:24

playa. We got nailed

15:26

with dust storm after dust

15:28

storm. Until Monday. And then

15:30

Tuesday, it was cooling and Wednesday cooled

15:32

down by Thursday afternoon. The clouds were

15:35

starting to roll in. It was one

15:37

of those burns where it was like,

15:39

all right, where's my sweatshirt? Because I

15:41

don't normally wear a shirt at all

15:43

because it's a hot, hot environment. And

15:46

now everything is cooled right down by

15:48

Friday afternoon. We're at a workshop at

15:51

Campsoft Landing around the eight o'clock

15:54

zone. And we're camped

15:56

in the five and K zone. riding

16:00

our bicycles back because it's beginning to rain

16:02

and we get halfway across the Playa. And

16:05

the mud is caking on our tires

16:08

and we end up going to, you know,

16:11

got to our camp and of course then

16:13

the rain really begins and it's mud. It's

16:15

mud now for the next number of days. I

16:19

didn't realize how much of a

16:21

media, how much media attention was

16:24

on this until I emerged from the Playa

16:26

and my phone finally got some good cell

16:28

service and then it lit right up with

16:30

everybody asking, did you get Ebola? Did

16:34

you have typhoid? Cannibalism?

16:37

Bombarding blood? Where's FEMA? Where's

16:39

FEMA? The National Guard is

16:41

also unreal and I'm like,

16:44

what are you talking about? We

16:46

were wet and people were

16:48

idiots and tried to drive out in the muck

16:51

and got stuck. But for the

16:53

vast majority of the rest of us, all of

16:55

a sudden became kind of chill. Yeah, Friday those

16:57

people kind of freaking out going, you

17:00

know, what's this going to look like? But

17:02

by Monday it was dried up enough that

17:04

everybody's driving around and not a big deal.

17:07

But of course it's media so it's got

17:09

to blow it under proportion, right? And

17:12

those, you know, Friday, Saturday,

17:14

Sunday, they all of a

17:16

sudden became a much more

17:18

chill, relaxed atmosphere and

17:20

you just had a lot of mud on

17:23

your boots and your porta-potties got really full

17:25

and your porta-pottie floors got layered with mud

17:27

and there was

17:30

ruts everywhere. So

17:33

the normal burn happens, right? We all

17:35

know what that's about. But

17:37

during the time when the mud came

17:39

and it like the rain and the

17:41

mud and we knew that was just

17:43

going to be the norm now for the rest of the

17:45

burn, the burners adapted.

17:48

They were making their own sculptures

17:50

out of mud. They were having their

17:52

own mud parties. They were chastising

17:55

those that were trying to leave early.

18:00

the lines on each side you guys are... Oh

18:04

yeah, yeah we actually had one, our streets we

18:06

ended up having a choke point because somebody had

18:08

tried to get out, got the SUV

18:10

stuck, created a crowd and

18:13

the crowd was booing vehicles trying to

18:15

get through and chastising

18:18

and it became like this own

18:20

little mini carnival of uh it

18:22

was like a good old my

18:24

fault. It was fun yeah, now our

18:26

cars obviously couldn't go out onto the playa

18:28

so they were stuck in camp as well

18:30

so it just turned into their own little

18:33

dance parties, little block parties, you

18:36

know burners are self-reliant to

18:38

make their own fun yeah. And then if they had

18:40

the food in the water they needed, we

18:43

prepared for that right? We're supposed to be. Yeah uh

18:46

Robert do you care to give any insight what

18:49

it was like this past year with all

18:51

the rain and everything? It was

18:53

awesome, I was on the outside with

18:56

my partner Steve Hicks and

18:58

we got to actually witness to what

19:00

they call the

19:03

Black Rock Rangers, they're kind

19:05

of like people supposed to

19:07

help you and semi-security and

19:10

like they're off duty in Gerlach, Nevada

19:12

so we got to witness to all

19:14

of them, it was my first time

19:16

ever witnessing to Black Rock Rangers and

19:19

a lot of people had come

19:21

out that had been stuck and there

19:23

was a place that they

19:26

put together that serves pizza and Gerlach

19:28

and so we were able to

19:31

be in the line with people and

19:33

talking and we have a little penny

19:35

that Ray Comfort had produced years

19:38

ago that had the 10 commandments

19:40

stamped on the penny. Yeah I

19:42

remember those. Yeah so that's been

19:44

the main thing I like to

19:46

give out as a gift because

19:48

it's a gifting community and

19:51

we receive their

19:53

gifts and we

19:56

want to be very respectful and

19:59

they receive. of our gifts, and the penny

20:02

had been one thing that they take home

20:04

with them, and they're not going

20:06

to throw away, right? And

20:09

they'll always remember us sharing with

20:11

them. So we

20:14

kept hearing about FEMA

20:17

and protesting,

20:21

environmentalists protesting and getting arrested,

20:23

and we talked to law

20:25

enforcement and what

20:28

was going on. And

20:30

so the difference between my,

20:34

you know, Steve and I, is that

20:36

we got to go home every night and then drive

20:38

back out the next morning. And

20:41

the three on the inside, or more

20:43

actually, Kedari Cry was out

20:45

there, and they

20:48

had to rough it out and tough it out. But

20:52

we heard all the rumors, you

20:54

know, with the bolly and spitting

20:56

up of blood and cannibalism and

20:58

the National Guard, and

21:01

we didn't see anything bad. So

21:04

yeah. Yeah. What's up

21:07

everybody? It's

21:09

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21:11

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21:13

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21:15

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21:17

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21:21

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21:25

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21:27

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21:30

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21:32

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21:34

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21:36

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21:39

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21:45

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21:47

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21:50

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21:52

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21:54

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22:06

a great day, guys. Well, I feel like I

22:08

kind of see you like reminiscing maybe a little

22:10

bit. What questions would you have for them? Yeah,

22:13

I mean, I guess I was pretty sure when

22:15

I saw the news that Ebola wasn't happening, I

22:17

was pretty sure that cannibalism wasn't happening. But

22:19

I think one of the things that struck me of

22:22

the social media reports that were coming out was

22:24

Aubrey Marcus posted an Instagram reel

22:27

where he said something like, it is my prayer

22:29

that our higher natures prevail. And

22:32

in New Age speak, what that sounded to

22:34

me, now I wasn't there on the ground,

22:36

it was a slow pan of the

22:39

festival grounds and everything was just nuked.

22:41

Like this is Friday, Saturday at Burning

22:43

Man, Saturday, Sunday, the high

22:45

point of the entire festival leading up to

22:47

what would usually be the burn. And it

22:50

looks just a little bit like a desolate

22:52

wasteland of people. Other social media

22:54

accounts said that it felt as if time had

22:56

stopped. Some of the burners were posting this. And

22:59

when Aubrey Marcus posted that he's praying for

23:01

people's higher natures to prevail, in New Age

23:03

speak, what that means is things sound pretty

23:05

dire, or at least he's seen quite a

23:08

bit of conflict. That was my interpretation of

23:10

that. So I just

23:12

was left wondering, there are

23:14

major camps out there like the Mayan Warrior,

23:17

Robot Heart, these giant multimillion

23:19

dollar sound camp cars, giant

23:21

discos, DJ setups, hundreds

23:24

of millions of dollars worth of electronics

23:27

and EL wire, and it's not

23:29

designed for rain. It's not

23:31

designed for mud. So I just kind

23:33

of wonder, did you experience people's RVs,

23:36

their cars, their electronics, their camps getting

23:38

nuked by giant mud balls that turn

23:41

into dust as soon as they dry?

23:43

I gotta believe that what we're not hearing about is

23:46

multimillions of dollars of property damage

23:48

from what looks to me

23:51

like God nuking the festival in

23:53

their hubris, thinking we're untouchable, fest

23:55

partying here in the desert, and

23:58

not aware that they're standing. depending on a dry

24:00

lake bed that once it gets wet, it's not friendly

24:02

to festival goers anymore. So did you

24:04

experience any of that? Well

24:08

on Monday when they did finally

24:10

burn the man, it was still

24:12

surrounded by all the art cars. Everybody was out

24:15

there. The lasers were still going. The

24:17

lights were still happening. And

24:20

yeah, you know when we were walking around

24:22

on Saturday and Sunday, you would see people

24:25

having everything talked up to try to keep the

24:27

rain off. And no doubt,

24:29

there would be people scrambling to try to keep

24:31

their equipment from getting soaked. And

24:35

there probably were equipment

24:38

and vehicles that were damaged by

24:40

the rain because it was a lot of rain

24:42

over a fairly short period of time. The

24:46

attitude on the ground was kind of interesting because

24:48

Saturday morning, I was up at 6.30 in

24:50

the morning. I went for a long walk.

24:52

I walked way past the temple out in

24:54

the deep Playa with big heavy

24:56

boots. And I probably spent

24:59

four to five hours just walking and just

25:01

talking to people. And

25:03

there was a sense of dejection. And

25:06

I had a conversation with one lady not

25:09

far from the temple who was like, I just had

25:12

to get out of camp because everybody's got this downer

25:14

attitude. And so we ended

25:16

up just laughing and having a

25:18

good conversation. And she said

25:20

she walked, as she was walking out of the

25:23

city, somebody had put signs up, janitorial

25:25

signs, caution, wet floor. And

25:28

how it kind of made her day because it's a whimsy

25:30

culture. It's full of play. Yeah.

25:33

But some of the dull drums kind of disappeared

25:35

already by Saturday evening and

25:37

even into Sunday. I

25:39

mean, I walked, I continued to walk the

25:42

entire Playa. I

25:44

had contacts. So again, we were in the five

25:46

o'clock zone. I had contacts in the eight o'clock

25:48

and the nine o'clock zone that I was walking

25:50

across to visit. And

25:54

a lot of it depends on your own perspective,

25:56

on your own attitude. Are

25:58

you going to just, are you going to? smile to your neighbors.

26:01

Are you going to ask them how they're

26:03

doing? Yeah, there was people with long faces and there

26:05

was a lot of people who were like, okay, we're just

26:07

going to suck it up and deal with it as

26:09

it comes. But I have no doubt, especially

26:12

on Friday and it's a Saturday, that

26:15

there's a lot of folks, a lot of

26:17

people who are like, oh my goodness, what

26:19

are we going to do? And honestly, if

26:22

it continues for what, maybe two more days of rain?

26:25

Yeah, it would have been really bad. Then it

26:27

would have been a disaster.

26:29

It was like this close to being

26:31

a real disaster. It had continued to

26:33

rain for 48 more hours. One

26:36

of the things that

26:38

really hit home, well, not hit home,

26:40

but when you're packing up to go

26:42

to Burning Man, it's this big, long,

26:44

year-long event because you literally have to

26:47

be self-reliant. In fact, that's one of

26:49

the principles is radical self-reliance or self-reliance

26:52

and communal effort. And when the rain

26:54

was happening, there was people going around

26:56

walking from camp to camp just

26:59

asking, do you need

27:01

water? Do you need food? Are you okay?

27:03

And for the most part, everyone was fine.

27:05

And if anybody needed anything, all they had

27:07

to do was just ask and somebody would

27:10

provide. I mean, of

27:13

all emergency situations, I think

27:15

burners were the best prepared. They

27:19

should be because I mean, you can't

27:21

buy anything there. You need to bring

27:23

literally everything in, like

27:26

everything. Yeah. And

27:28

real correct, if I could break

27:31

in on that, is

27:34

that we make

27:36

those stumbling blocks into stepping stones.

27:38

And so at my home in

27:41

Cedarville, 90 miles away, I have

27:43

a high-powered washer. And

27:45

so what I did was they were

27:47

coming out and I was working in

27:50

Cedarville side, is that I would

27:52

say, oh, would you like your car washed?

27:54

And I would bring him

27:56

in to behind my house with my

27:58

washer while I'm pleading. their car, I

28:00

could share with them. And

28:03

so what

28:06

some called the disaster, we had

28:08

to look at that as an

28:10

opportunity. To

28:13

help take care of the people who were in need.

28:16

Yes. And then like I said, we

28:19

had stopped beside the road to help

28:21

people. And one

28:23

person, they were there for an hour

28:25

and a half. And they,

28:28

at the end of it, it

28:30

was unbelievable to them that somebody would

28:32

do what they did for

28:34

them. And plus they listened to

28:36

the word of

28:39

God, the gospel, and

28:42

stories of when we were out witnessing

28:44

and so forth. And they took our

28:46

phone numbers. And not only that, but

28:49

a couple that were going into Burning Man,

28:51

I give my phone number out. When they

28:53

got out, their car broke down. They called

28:55

me. I got a tow truck to go

28:57

out to get them back

29:00

to a place that could be fixed. Offered

29:02

them a place

29:04

to stay. And they

29:09

were from like Seattle and

29:12

so forth. And then another

29:14

odd thing that happened was

29:17

that some people stopped

29:19

by my house. I was away out

29:21

with Carl, Audrey, and Brian were still

29:23

packing. And

29:26

they were newlyweds. And the

29:28

man was from Iran. And

29:30

Brian was a contractor in

29:32

Iran. And I ended up

29:34

giving him a copy of Carl's book.

29:36

And he was able to, I said,

29:38

oh, this is the author, right? And

29:41

so Brian got

29:44

to share with him. And,

29:47

you know, so we were all a

29:49

team at that point, my wife, Audrey,

29:53

and everybody. So the opportunities are

29:55

vast out there. Sorry,

30:00

Will. I was just going to

30:02

say, when the mud came and the rains

30:04

came, a lot of people

30:06

were stuck. The imagery is right. There's a lot of

30:08

people who were stuck. There were three,

30:11

four hundred vehicles that were probably trying

30:13

to get out. Saturday night, we

30:15

went out to gate to watch the mayhem as

30:17

people were sliding and getting stuck. Sunday

30:19

morning, I was at the gate hanging

30:22

on a tow rope

30:24

with a line of girls and guys, and we

30:26

were pulling out trucks and campers by hand with

30:28

the tow rope. So

30:32

it was crazy. It was definitely not a

30:35

dusty burn except for the beginning

30:37

of the week. One

30:39

of the opportunities that actually

30:42

came about because of the rain was,

30:44

and we heard this a lot, was

30:46

we actually now get to meet our neighbors. Because

30:50

at the moment, you're never in

30:52

your, you're never home.

30:54

You're out on the playa. You're

30:56

experiencing the arch. You're interacting, that

30:58

kind of thing, but you're not

31:00

meeting your neighbors so much. So

31:03

we ended up spending a lot of time

31:05

just speaking with our neighbors and

31:08

having great conversations. And that opens

31:10

up a ton of opportunities because

31:12

when we go there, we don't

31:14

hide that we're a Christian. And

31:16

so because you're in

31:19

a place where inclusion

31:21

is another one of the principles,

31:24

if you can listen to

31:27

them, they're willing to listen to you. So

31:30

relational evangelism

31:32

is what I call it. And

31:34

I just wanted to highlight that because I

31:37

can still remember being, I

31:39

was never, I never identified as a burner,

31:41

but certainly I went to Burning Man a number of

31:44

times. And I remember

31:46

that mindset. And what I really

31:48

appreciate hearing from the three of

31:51

you is that there's a difference

31:53

of language, I think, between Christians

31:55

and new age people where the

32:00

the language of the New Ages expressed in action.

32:02

And it seems to me that you guys have really

32:05

learned that, like you know how to communicate with the

32:07

people there because you can't just bring a Bible and

32:09

start banging on it and expect anyone's gonna listen there.

32:12

So speaking the language of action on tow

32:14

ropes and power washers and stuff like that,

32:16

like that just lands in my heart as

32:18

probably something that's a very powerful witness and

32:21

ministry to people there. So on behalf of lost and

32:24

searching people like I once was, thank you. And

32:27

you know, we did have opportunities to

32:29

show the gospel. We did have opportunities

32:31

to have conversations. The

32:34

one that was kind of the mind-blower at

32:36

the very end of the event was we

32:39

were watching at midnight when Babel, the

32:41

art piece Babel, the chapel to Babel burned. And

32:44

it was midnight. We

32:46

were all tired. Brian was especially tired, but

32:49

Brian's got this kind of magnetism. Everybody comes

32:51

and talks to Brian for some reason, which

32:53

is really pretty cool. And

32:55

some chick is kind of poking at him

32:57

going, Hey, let's talk, let's talk, let's have

32:59

a conversation. Brian wasn't interested. His eyes were

33:01

kind of closed. Like let's burn the thing

33:03

and go to bed. And

33:06

they ended up in

33:08

this conversation about just very light

33:10

stuff, travel, where you've been. And

33:13

Brian's been all over the world. And

33:15

she talks about how she's on a journey. And

33:18

at some point, Brian pulls out

33:20

a cross because Brian does blacksmithing.

33:22

Oh, Bob's gonna grab his cross.

33:24

Awesome. Yep. Love

33:26

it. This is the cross I'd like to

33:29

get. Brian makes

33:31

these and talking to

33:33

the people, he hands of

33:35

that. And it's like the petty, they

33:37

will never forget it because

33:39

you were kind,

33:42

which is a fiduciary word

33:44

that you're looking for out

33:46

for them as they

33:48

know it. It's not Bible thumping,

33:50

but by the time they get done, they

33:53

do know the gospel. Yeah.

33:56

And so this lady and Brian have

33:58

this conversation. the end

34:00

of it just to kind of bring it to a

34:03

quick close, Brian gives her this

34:05

cross and simply

34:07

says, trust Jesus. And

34:10

she breaks and

34:12

she grabs Brian's arm and the

34:14

tears are streaming down her face.

34:17

And she locks eyes with Brian. 20,

34:21

30 seconds. 20, 30 seconds. A

34:23

long time when you're not saying anything.

34:25

And then she turns and she looks

34:27

at Audrey and does the same thing,

34:29

locks eyes and the tears are streaming.

34:32

And she grabs my arm and I hold

34:34

her shoulder and the tears are just pouring.

34:37

No words are said. Nothing. We

34:39

have no idea what's going on in her

34:41

mind. And either her boyfriend

34:43

or her husband, whoever was behind her, I

34:45

think there's a little prompt and the

34:48

two of them got up and left. And the

34:50

three of us are all looking at each other going, what

34:53

just happened? We

34:56

have no clue what that girl's context is. But

34:59

we know that she was on a journey and

35:02

Brian said the thing that she needed to

35:05

hear and give the

35:07

gift to her and saying, trust Jesus.

35:09

So you can have those short

35:11

impactful points of contact. One

35:14

evening I was on a four story art structure

35:17

and I'm running into a Jewish

35:20

man from Mexico city. We

35:22

ended up having a 45 minute conversation. First of

35:24

all, about the art we're seeing and about just

35:27

the crazy stuff we're watching. And

35:29

then from there, transition into what do you do? And then

35:31

of course the transitions into what camp do you go to?

35:34

And that's where the name of the camp comes in, camp of the

35:36

unknown God. You say I'm from the camp

35:39

of the unknown God. Well, what's that about? And

35:41

then trying to build a bridge between his

35:43

Jewish perspective and my Christian context.

35:46

Well, we jumped into a Psalm 51 and

35:49

I had just a few weeks

35:51

before had done an expositional message

35:53

on Psalm 51. And

35:55

we had a basically a

35:57

huge conversation, wonderful conversation. about

36:00

Psalm 51, David

36:02

sin, the fact

36:04

he had a trust in God

36:07

Yahweh alone. And we

36:09

just had this awesome, incredible time

36:11

in conversation deep. He was, you

36:15

know, he was participating at a very deep level.

36:17

By the time it's all done, of course, it's

36:19

burning man, it's a hugging economy. We're hugging, we're

36:21

hugging and, you know, he

36:23

always walks out into the desert and I walk

36:25

the other direction of the desert. We have no

36:27

clue. I mean, we're planting seeds. We want to

36:29

see a harvest, but we're not, it's the Holy

36:31

Spirit that does the work of the harvest. We're

36:35

just planting seeds and then trying

36:37

to garden those seeds where you have

36:39

that opportunity. Yeah. If I could just

36:41

interject and also just to kind of

36:44

piggyback off of that, there was a

36:46

post that was made when you guys were on the ground

36:48

at Burning Man, because there was times where you didn't

36:50

have cell phone reception. So I think there's times where

36:53

there'd be posts. I was actually just

36:55

reposting some of the stuff on our platform just to

36:57

kind of see how people were, how

36:59

people were surviving with what we're saying, because

37:01

I noticed that social media, as we

37:03

know, is a gift, but it also can be a

37:05

curse. I mean, it is a

37:08

platform so many times where just artificial

37:10

communication, there's so many times you communicate

37:12

in such a way you never say

37:14

someone say face to face. Sometimes it's

37:16

all like inconsequential to act that way

37:19

many times. And there's sometimes there's a

37:21

warranted straight edge and a place for

37:23

that. But you had made a post

37:26

and I'm just sort of, I pulled it up

37:28

here and the very beginning you were kind of

37:30

debunking some of the conspiracy theories that had come

37:32

out. But we did make a

37:34

note that a lot of on top

37:36

of the conspiracy theories, there was a

37:38

lot of sort of criticism, but a

37:40

lot of harshness coming from a lot

37:42

of Christians. And there was a

37:44

response that just said, where is your

37:47

compassion for people? We're all condemned already.

37:49

Quoting John 3 17, if

37:51

Jesus loves everyone and weeps for souls, why

37:53

aren't we ambassadors of Christ? And

37:56

basically you're imploring. And I again,

37:58

maybe you can. was

38:00

you who wrote that Audrey? Yeah,

38:02

I wrote that. I'll

38:04

point to you as I figure you the person

38:06

but yeah expand upon that because you kind of

38:08

implore that we need to sort of

38:10

drop the chip off of our

38:13

shoulders and I kind of get that. I mean

38:15

I come from a background of purity culture and

38:17

in that there's sort of this a lot of

38:19

sort of shunning of anyone who kind of looked

38:22

like the world and even in Christian circles. So

38:24

what prompted you to write that? Help us

38:26

understand the heart behind that and how that

38:28

relates to actually reaching out to

38:31

those people at Burning Man. I

38:35

think we have to remember first and foremost

38:37

that we're all people that

38:39

we're no better than anybody else. That

38:42

we all come from different world views and

38:45

because I audit world views and cultures you

38:48

immerse yourself in many different

38:50

world views and cultures and you get to

38:52

learn to know them as

38:55

people and you start to have

38:57

compassion for them. I

38:59

think a lot of times you know

39:02

Christians think they put themselves on

39:04

their own pedestals for the world to judge and

39:06

I think we got to stop doing that because

39:08

we're no better. And you

39:11

know when I started dealing with the

39:13

burn community and the spiritual community and

39:15

stuff they're searching. They're searching

39:18

just as much as we are.

39:22

You know the only difference is we have a

39:24

hope that you

39:26

know they don't have but

39:30

Jesus himself said they're condemned already so

39:32

who are we to go around and

39:34

continue condemning and who are we anyways.

39:37

You know that's not our job. Our job

39:40

is to go out and have compassion and grace, love

39:42

people, be disciples,

39:45

spread the gospel and

39:48

you're not going to do that with

39:50

the chip on your shoulder and

39:52

not showing grace and having

39:54

a judgmental attitude and being

39:57

offended. You know a lot of people are

39:59

going to be offended. A lot of

40:01

negativity and criticism we got was,

40:03

well, there's orgy tents there. Well,

40:06

so what? You send your

40:08

kids to university, don't you? What do you think

40:10

happens there? Are you gonna

40:12

pull your kids out of university now? They're

40:15

not gonna come and sit beside you in a church

40:17

pew where you can

40:19

now turn to them and start preaching the

40:21

gospel. You need to go out and

40:24

you need to see them as people. And

40:26

love them. And when

40:29

you do this and you do this with

40:32

the right intentionality, there

40:34

is always opportunity, always opportunities.

40:36

God always puts an opportunity

40:38

in front of you to

40:40

plant a seed, to

40:42

water the seed. And

40:45

if the topic doesn't come up,

40:47

then it doesn't come up. But

40:49

you don't go out there banging

40:52

Bibles over people's heads, especially

40:56

in those types of environments, and especially

40:58

when you're on their territory. Right.

41:02

Yeah, there was an aspect, I think, of being wise

41:05

as serpents, gentle as doves, and also

41:07

just being very mindful. Like

41:10

the Apostle Paul, when he talks in

41:12

the book of Colossians, which I love

41:14

that whole book, because Colossae, in my

41:16

opinion, just knowing the historical background behind

41:18

it, it was like a 24-7 burning

41:20

man on steroids, thinking about the first

41:22

century. It's not like all

41:25

of a sudden, everyone in the first century

41:27

had it all together. This whole idea of

41:29

this paganism, this is only very recent configuration.

41:31

This is just the resurgence of the ancient

41:33

world. But Robert, I wanted to just get

41:35

your thoughts on something, because I know one

41:38

of the concerns and objections that Christian would

41:40

have in being on the ground of burning

41:42

man, is that if you just look

41:44

up the hashtag burning man, you start scrolling through,

41:47

you see people very promiscuously dressed,

41:50

wearing littles sometimes, if anything. So

41:52

a lot of times you're dealing with, I'll

41:54

just say it, partially nude people, or

41:56

maybe, I don't know if they're fully

41:59

nude, and there's... Right, fully

42:01

needed people. So that's something that would be

42:03

out of a lot of people's comfort zones.

42:05

So Robert, you're kind of talking about the

42:07

protocols. You're very wary of that. How do

42:09

you kind of deal with that? Help people

42:12

understand if they have that objection with sort

42:15

of being in the lion's den and

42:17

dealing with that sort of situation? How do you navigate

42:20

that? Or you guys can all chime in too. Well,

42:23

yeah, I'd actually thank

42:25

you for asking that question. In

42:28

Romans 10, how will they hear without

42:30

a preacher? Right. And

42:33

I, you

42:36

mentioned, I think you mentioned Colossians,

42:38

but one of my favorite verses

42:40

is Colossians 1 13,

42:43

for he rescued us from

42:45

the domain of darkness. That

42:48

word rescue is a passive

42:50

verb, erist, passive. And

42:53

it's we're receiving the action. God,

42:55

Jesus says that I chose you,

42:57

you didn't choose me. This is

42:59

so he rescued us

43:02

from the dominion of darkness, and

43:05

he transferred us in the kingdom

43:07

of his beloved son. And that's,

43:09

again, a passive verb where she

43:12

transferred us. And

43:14

you have to, you

43:16

know, the one thing of the church today, I

43:19

think we don't take every thought captive. You

43:21

know, the Romans chapter seven

43:24

battle, I think you just like, I'm

43:27

in that it seems all the time. And

43:29

then of course, the answer is Romans eight,

43:32

you know, things I should do, I don't

43:34

things I don't do I should. But

43:38

the first thing is that have

43:41

the right heart for being out

43:44

there. We are

43:46

all brothers, the whole world are

43:50

all brothers at Adam, I was

43:52

interviewed by the University of Germany,

43:55

Berlin back in like 2018. And

43:57

they kept wanting me to say

44:00

that since I was a Christian that there were, that

44:03

this was evil and bad, basically to

44:05

make me look probably like a

44:08

goofball or something. And

44:10

I turned it on him, right?

44:12

Why are you here? I said, well, because

44:14

these are my brothers and Adam, and I

44:16

want them to be my brothers in Christ.

44:20

And I think that that's what Carl

44:23

and Audrey and Brian and

44:25

I have, and others who are part

44:28

of this ministry believe that they are

44:30

our brothers and Adam, we have to

44:32

go out. Now, one of the first

44:34

people that went out with me to

44:39

Burning Man in 1996, I

44:41

called him up a few years ago, I said, would

44:43

you come out to Burning Man with

44:46

us? And he says, Bob, I

44:49

have a problem with lust. I

44:52

don't belong out there. And I

44:54

said, thank you, brother, for telling me

44:56

that. See, I don't want anybody to

45:00

go out there that has a

45:03

problem with something like lust.

45:06

That's why we got to have every

45:09

thought captive here. But

45:12

the thing is, is for me, right,

45:15

I go out there, and

45:18

I used to party with bikers. I

45:20

used to party. I was a rock

45:22

musician in Los Angeles area, right? There's

45:26

nothing that they do that I

45:29

didn't do myself. But

45:31

Christian still came to me and

45:33

preached the gospel. And I'll finish

45:35

it up with a quick little

45:38

story here. It's a quick story.

45:40

I was camping on the

45:42

outside of Burning Man back in

45:44

about 2017 or 18, excuse me, 1998,

45:46

around there. And

45:54

Burning Man was wanting me out of the

45:56

area. They were so upset that I had

45:58

a camp three miles away. They

46:01

sent people to a timothy, me

46:03

and my group, they came and

46:05

they threat, they called the police

46:07

and said that I was selling

46:09

water, which by Plioname, which is

46:11

the name they give you, was

46:13

Waterman. And I

46:16

take ice water and give it to people.

46:19

And so the police came out and

46:21

they realized that they had been duped, but

46:23

one of the cops was a Christian and

46:25

says, how could you as a Christian go

46:28

and talk to

46:30

these disgusting people? They're

46:33

disgusting, right? And I

46:35

said, officer, you go back to your church

46:37

in Reno, he was a Washoe

46:39

County Sheriff, and you dot

46:41

your I's and you cross your T and you

46:44

play church. But for me and my

46:46

household and my group, we're going to

46:49

go out in all the world and

46:51

preach the gospel as Paul did in

46:53

Acts 17. And the

46:55

only difference between them people in

46:58

Acts 17 is these people might

47:00

be naked and painted purple. It's

47:02

very seldom, you know,

47:04

you don't really see it's not wall to

47:06

wall naked people. Right. But

47:09

what I'm saying to this, if

47:12

we have the answer for cancer,

47:15

we should go out to all

47:17

the world to cure people.

47:19

But as Christians, we seem to

47:22

say we have our thing and

47:24

we look good. I

47:27

like to witness to one percent of bikers,

47:29

I'm going to mention any clubs, neo-Nazis

47:33

and Burning Man people. And believe me,

47:36

as far as sin goes,

47:40

I did as much, if not worse than

47:42

what those burners did. But Christians

47:44

laid down their life to me

47:46

to share the gospel of Christ, which

47:49

is saving me. And

47:51

God transferred me the kingdom of darkness.

47:53

My eyes were open to the kingdom

47:55

of light. These people are the kingdom

47:57

of darkness and they're really

47:59

nowhere. than our

48:02

neighbors. A lot of them are our

48:04

neighbors. Go ahead, D'Lal.

48:06

Oh yeah, I just thank you for that, by the

48:08

way. I relate to that very much, having been a

48:11

burner and going to Burning Man and

48:13

having seen many similar things. If I

48:15

could, I'd like to, I've had to

48:17

do a lot of reconciling and sort

48:19

of harmonizing these two different halves of

48:21

my life, let's say, to try

48:23

and understand how can I communicate what's going on

48:25

in this Burning Man, New Age world to Christians

48:27

so that they understand. Because I

48:30

also saw some of the harshness and the

48:32

schadenfreude of the taking pleasure and other people's

48:34

pain, and I didn't like that and

48:36

I felt it was kind of

48:38

sad. And so the way that I tend to

48:40

think about it is, as Audrey, like you, I

48:42

also audit world cultures. I've been to 30 countries

48:45

around the world. I took the

48:47

whole oneness thing pretty seriously and I've been

48:49

to places like India and went to the

48:51

Kummela Hindu Festival, as we talked about, and

48:53

participated in ayahuasca and

48:55

Buddhist meditation retreat. So I walked that

48:57

road. And the way that I kind of,

48:59

and I've been to many of the New Age enclaves

49:01

like Bali and Goa and Byron Bay

49:04

and Sedona, so I've explored through this

49:06

land. And the way that I

49:08

think about it is a little bit like

49:10

Burning Man is the Shangri-La of the New

49:13

Age city. Shangri-La is a mythical Buddhist city, I

49:15

think, where it appears for only a limited time

49:17

during the year and then it disappears. And that's

49:20

kind of what Burning Man is. It's on earth,

49:22

so to speak, for a week and then it

49:24

disappears for the rest of the year. And so

49:26

that way it's kind of like the crossroads of

49:28

all these different New Age ideas. Now,

49:30

as part of that New Age world,

49:32

that sort of breakaway world, there are

49:35

the dogmatic proponents of false religion. There

49:37

is a false religion that is being

49:39

promoted, which we can have

49:42

a long conversation about. And there are those,

49:44

we'll say, archons of that world. There are

49:46

the leaders. There are the advocates for that

49:48

world. But the vast majority of people who

49:50

participate in this world, and again, I've been

49:52

there on the ground myself, were

49:55

like me searching for the truth. I

49:57

didn't grow up in a Christian context. I grew up in...

50:00

Jewish home. Nothing could have been further

50:02

from my initial experience than Christianity. And

50:05

so I just searched for long enough until

50:07

I found it or it found me, however

50:09

you choose to look at it. So there

50:11

are so many people out there that are

50:13

genuinely searching. Like the girl

50:15

who received the cross from, I think, your friend Brian,

50:18

she was searching. And I think, Carl, you mentioned

50:20

that many people out there are searching, and that's

50:22

very true. And I think it's really important for

50:25

Christians to learn to separate when looking at this

50:27

world, because now we can see into it because

50:29

of social media, to learn to separate in their

50:31

own minds, if nothing else, who are the dogmatic

50:34

proponents of that false religion? Who are the Pharisees

50:36

of that world? And who are the people who

50:38

are just caught up to it, caught up in

50:40

it, who haven't been exposed to the gospel? And

50:43

it can be almost impossible to tell from

50:45

the surface, but to recognize that when speaking

50:48

into that world, you're speaking to both of

50:50

those people. And it's better, I find, to

50:53

come with an attitude of love and

50:56

openness and sharing an invitation,

50:58

even if some of the dogmatic proponents may receive

51:00

some of that, to reach out to the ones

51:03

who are lost and looking for an answer and

51:05

to come at them with an attitude of, the

51:07

truth is this way, if you just have the

51:09

courage to walk in this direction and to offer

51:11

that invitation rather than offering scorn and harshness. Yeah.

51:15

Can I build on that? Well, please. In 2019, our camp, we had

51:18

a lady that

51:20

was with us, her

51:25

name is Jen, wonderful lady. And

51:28

she was at a camp

51:30

that was dealing on psychedelics,

51:32

because, well, let me just back

51:34

up just briefly. I'm

51:37

running three hats whenever I'm going to bring

51:40

that number one, I'm coming as

51:42

a researcher on worldview

51:44

issues. And so I'm trying to understand

51:46

the culture itself. This year,

51:48

we did surveys, worldview surveys

51:51

at the man and in different parts of the

51:53

city. And then secondly, the

51:55

research also is looking at, okay, what are

51:57

the trends that are being discussed that go

51:59

beyond? non burning that that

52:01

have that broader geopolitical, technical,

52:04

cultural, even economic impact, because

52:06

this is in many respects, a place where

52:09

the world comes together to have those conversations.

52:12

And then the other side of that, of

52:14

course, being what we have just been discussing,

52:16

which is that Christian outreach. So

52:19

Jen was at a workshop on discussing

52:21

the thrust of

52:23

global psychedelics. And she ended

52:25

up sitting beside I'm not going to mention the gentleman's

52:27

name, he's well known and the New

52:29

Age field he is, as you

52:31

just described, one of those

52:33

leaders, one of those. Yes,

52:38

one of those figureheads, private or

52:40

false religion. That's right.

52:42

A disciple of Ram Dass, very,

52:45

very well known, very well respected. And Jen

52:49

ends up having a conversation with him. And it was

52:51

just a brief conversation. I believe the

52:53

name of our camp came up. Jen

52:56

said what she said about our camp, he

52:59

responded by saying something to the effect of

53:01

Oh, the cosmic Christ. And Jen

53:03

said, you need that's the empty Christ.

53:05

And he stopped as if a bomb

53:08

had dropped. And they end up

53:10

having a conversation. He

53:12

said, please come back with your friend and

53:14

referring to myself because she had mentioned my book to them.

53:17

We returned back to his camp on

53:19

Saturday, and had the

53:21

most amazing, deep and hard

53:23

but good two hour conversation.

53:26

And he was willing to not just listen to

53:28

us, but then to wrestle with what

53:30

we were just discussing from

53:32

a Christian point of view, with

53:34

a scriptural component. And

53:36

it had him engaging in a conversation where

53:39

we were able to

53:42

present the gospel and he didn't, you

53:44

know, push us away. He embraced us.

53:46

He wanted to find out he, Jen

53:48

had shook his world by saying, you're

53:51

worshiping, in essence,

53:53

the Antichrist, when he said

53:55

about the cosmic Christ. And so

53:57

all of a sudden, there was a door that was open. And

54:00

again, you have no idea, we don't

54:02

know. And yet I've also been in

54:05

this year was a prime example. I was a

54:07

playa alchemist, listening to a

54:09

speaker, I had prior conversations

54:11

and engagements with him in

54:13

the virtual burns. And

54:15

I'm like, Oh, no, they'll meet this guy. And

54:18

I'm listening to him as he's giving a presentation.

54:21

And as I'm listening, there's a check

54:23

in my spirit. And

54:26

there's a solid check. And I'm like, No,

54:28

I can't. I've

54:30

got to walk away from this one for some reason. I

54:33

don't know the reason. And I don't need to know the

54:35

reason. And

54:37

when that was done, I'm on my bicycle and

54:39

actually I'm running across the playa to where Brian

54:43

and Audrey already were at a progressive

54:46

Christian camp, having a conversation,

54:49

a workshop on psychedelics and Jesus. And

54:53

that opportunity for Brian and Audrey had conversations

54:55

with another set of Canadian burners

54:57

who last week finally reached back out to

54:59

you guys and said, we need

55:01

again. Hello. Real

55:06

quick, Carl, was that the camp that we

55:08

can't say the name of it because it's

55:10

disgusting? Yes. I

55:14

always want to push the miraculous

55:16

if it happens out there. They

55:19

talked to this camp and

55:21

they're basically pushing the psychedelic

55:24

Jesus. They're

55:27

basically apostates from some major

55:29

churches. And when

55:32

they got done, Carl

55:36

gets done with them. There's

55:39

a guy parked outside of

55:41

my house looking at a map

55:43

and I go up and

55:46

I said, Hey, were you a burning man? Yes,

55:48

I was. I was with the camp of Dutta

55:51

Dutta. And I said, well, I was the camp

55:53

of the new and God. And

55:55

I watched your car. You saw would you?

55:58

So he pulls up behind me. And

56:00

we talked and I asked them to

56:02

contact me if possible, and maybe

56:05

we could get a Zoom call. It

56:07

actually discussed the difference between

56:09

what they believed and

56:12

what I would call the Christian

56:15

faith. And so what are

56:17

the chances of 60 or 70,000 people out

56:19

there? And

56:21

we talked to the same person on different

56:23

days, 90 miles away.

56:25

Right? That

56:28

happens. Carl, I

56:30

just wanted to say real quick, thank

56:32

you so much for distinguishing between the

56:34

average searchers, the prophets of

56:36

the false religion who have never heard the

56:38

truth of the gospel, and

56:40

they're being exposed to it for the

56:43

first time, because the cosmic Christ or

56:45

the universal Christ is a popular term

56:47

out there. Christ consciousness

56:49

is another term, very popular

56:51

one. So a lot of those people have never

56:53

actually heard the true gospel of Christ. And

56:56

also, and I think this is probably hard for

56:58

a lot of people to believe, there are actual

57:00

black magicians out there. There are actual people

57:02

that have heard and consciously rejected the gospel,

57:04

probably not many of them, that

57:07

are serving forces of darkness in very

57:09

subtle ways. And that's the part

57:11

that I try to highlight to a lot of Christians

57:14

who I have met, who take a more naive

57:16

approach to Burning Man, like, oh, we're just out

57:18

there having a good time. It's like, you have

57:20

to be careful, because there actually is conscious spiritual

57:22

darkness out there. I

57:25

don't want to say that out of 80,000 people, it's a

57:27

significant percentage of them, but they are there, and

57:29

they are willing and able to take advantage of

57:31

people's naivete. And so all of

57:33

this is mixed up together in the festival. And

57:35

so I just salute you for being

57:38

able to make those distinctions and to be able

57:40

to navigate, all of you to be able

57:42

to navigate through all of that in such a high integrity way.

57:45

What kind of

57:47

thing does that mean? He's

58:00

hit the nail on the head. Will has hit the nail

58:02

on the head, right? And we've

58:05

experienced that, but Carl had, I

58:07

believe, a very special time out

58:09

there with the disciple, Jack Parsons. I'd love to

58:11

hear that. Yes, please, floor's yours. Well,

58:14

no, it was interesting, because that was 2018. We

58:18

had six people in our camp. And

58:22

for the most part, those who are with

58:24

our team, that

58:27

year we had three or four of us

58:29

who had a very solid understanding of esoteric

58:32

philosophy, including myself.

58:34

And so the people

58:36

camped across the street from us were the

58:38

disciples of Jack Parsons. Yeah, absolutely. In

58:41

fact, I'm not gonna go into it,

58:43

but the connection with Parsons was like

58:45

tight. No,

58:49

not super close. Like, oh,

58:52

yeah, tight. Yeah. And

58:55

all week long we had conversations. We

58:57

were in their RV. We

58:59

shared food with each other. We

59:02

had conversations and conversations and conversations.

59:04

And what blew them away was

59:06

here's two, three,

59:08

four Christian guys who could

59:11

speak literally at his level and

59:13

have a conversation at his level and

59:16

didn't hide the fact we were Christians. And

59:19

we were able to have those conversations

59:21

comparing and contrasting. Who

59:23

knows where that goes? I don't know. But.

59:27

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting too. Those things

59:30

happen. That happens. Yeah, I mean, it's just interesting

59:32

when you mention these people who are high level and

59:34

these are people modern, but

59:36

when you look at Acts 17, it

59:38

talks about Paul was interacting with

59:41

the top-notch philosophers of the

59:43

day. I mean, if you look at even

59:45

like today, like the Joe Rogan experience is

59:47

kind of like the digital areopagus of

59:50

the world where all the philosophers come

59:52

together and they kind of share their

59:54

ideas. And like in the same

59:57

way, I want to get your thoughts on this

59:59

too, maybe. backtracking for a second is

1:00:01

that you're talking about there's a time where There's

1:00:05

someone you just felt like wasn't appropriate to engage like

1:00:07

a movement of the spirit You

1:00:09

know Walter Martin He mentioned

1:00:11

one of my our old interviews with Craig Nelson

1:00:13

his Walter Martin's former producer when he was the

1:00:15

Bible answerman He said that Walter

1:00:17

Wally said that you need to sort of

1:00:19

the Colts are the mission full of everyone

1:00:21

should pursue but you need to be very

1:00:23

selective and just Really understand

1:00:25

what's at stake when you minister the occult because

1:00:28

it's a lot more of a heavier spiritual battle

1:00:31

I've noticed this when I

1:00:33

go there like I thinking of Matthew

1:00:35

10 and this is where

1:00:39

Jesus says in verse 18 and says you

1:00:41

will Be brought before governors

1:00:43

and kings on my account as a testimony

1:00:45

to them unto the Gentiles But

1:00:48

when they hand you over do not worry how

1:00:50

or what you are to say But

1:00:52

what you are but what you are to say will be

1:00:54

given to you in that hour But it's not you who

1:00:56

is speaking but it is the spirit of your father who

1:00:58

is speaking in you I noticed

1:01:01

myself was specifically when it comes

1:01:03

to engaging in the new age there's

1:01:05

this immediate like I

1:01:07

know like Sauron like ring of Sauron

1:01:09

pole to act in the flesh and

1:01:12

I there's been times where I've acted in

1:01:14

almost like anger like Moses hitting the rock

1:01:17

in anger and when I've

1:01:19

caught myself doing that I had to stop and

1:01:21

like repent and Realize the only

1:01:23

time and I've had other experiences where you

1:01:25

event where you're evangelizing and it's like you're

1:01:27

completely Operating in the

1:01:30

spirit almost to the extent where it feels like

1:01:32

an out-of-body experience where you're just there You love

1:01:34

that person and you're like, I don't care if

1:01:37

I die right now Like I'm going to love

1:01:39

this person be up but beyond compromising and truth

1:01:42

And so I do think there's something when with

1:01:44

reaching the new age that you have to operate

1:01:47

within that sphere Is that

1:01:49

kind of what you're talking about or what's your method? Oh,

1:01:51

do you kind of what's your methodology when you speak

1:01:53

with people there at burning man given

1:01:56

what's talked about Matthew 10? I

1:02:00

talk to them, how do I say

1:02:03

this? I will treat

1:02:05

them the same, whoever they

1:02:07

are. If I know that the

1:02:09

person is a disciple of Ram Dass, or

1:02:12

I spent two hours having a

1:02:15

conversation with European Union liaison officers

1:02:17

to the US federal government, which

1:02:20

I did in 2019, or

1:02:24

the person works behind the

1:02:26

counter at McDonald's in wherever,

1:02:30

somewhere in nowhere Kansas, or

1:02:32

nowhere Manitoba, where I'm from,

1:02:35

what do you do? I will speak with them. And

1:02:38

I will have that conversation. So my

1:02:41

perspective maybe is a little bit different because

1:02:43

I have, in terms of the

1:02:45

political side of the research I've engaged in, I

1:02:47

have attended and been

1:02:49

involved, participated as an undecredited

1:02:52

participant in UN events, global

1:02:55

governance conferences, in terms of high

1:02:57

ranking individuals. I've

1:03:00

rubbed shoulders with some pretty important

1:03:03

people. I've been involved

1:03:05

in some pretty important spaces in terms of how the

1:03:07

world will look at it. And

1:03:10

the bottom line is, and I know some of

1:03:12

these people personally, I've had very personal interactions, they're

1:03:16

still people. That

1:03:18

is what they are. And this is why I really

1:03:20

appreciate when I went to Burning Man with Bob in

1:03:22

2017, Bob

1:03:24

taught me something that was really important. I

1:03:27

watched him as he was hugging a man and

1:03:29

he looked him in the eyes and said,

1:03:31

and Bob's already alluded to this, Bob says,

1:03:33

you are my brother in Adam, but

1:03:36

I want you to be my brother in Christ. Bottom

1:03:39

line, doesn't matter who you are, you

1:03:42

are my brother in Adam. You

1:03:44

are my sister in Eve. That

1:03:46

is who you are. One

1:03:49

week before Burning Man, I was at the Parliament of World

1:03:51

Religions in Chicago, high ranking people, like

1:03:54

really high ranking people. Yeah. I

1:03:57

had attended to observe the cosmic

1:03:59

man. And

1:04:01

I was off on the corner watching the

1:04:03

whole thing unfold. And

1:04:05

at one point in the ceremony,

1:04:07

the moderator said, walk

1:04:10

around and look

1:04:12

each other in the eyes

1:04:14

and recognize the divinity within.

1:04:17

And so I had three women come to me. And that's

1:04:20

fine. Ladies first. You gentlemen.

1:04:22

Ladies first. And they're

1:04:24

like, they look at me and they go,

1:04:26

I see the divinity in you. And

1:04:30

so I put my hand on their shoulder and I said

1:04:32

to them, I will tell you something different. I

1:04:36

see this humanity in you and

1:04:38

that you are a daughter of Eve. And

1:04:42

all three of them were just, it

1:04:45

just shocked. One of them

1:04:47

literally shook and she just

1:04:49

kind of muttered, thank you. And

1:04:53

I had a conversation later on with one of the

1:04:55

ladies and we talked about what

1:04:57

happened. And I just said

1:04:59

to her, do not place this burden of divinity

1:05:01

on my shoulders, because that is

1:05:04

not what I am. When I

1:05:06

have this idea of

1:05:08

divinity that's placed upon my shoulders,

1:05:11

what a burden to carry. You

1:05:13

know, it's interesting. I observed the

1:05:15

language, especially of some of the

1:05:18

geopolitics of climate change, because

1:05:20

that's a big part of the conversation in terms

1:05:22

of global governance issues. And we're always working to

1:05:24

save the planet, save the planet, save Mother Earth,

1:05:27

COP 28 is right around the corner. It's going to be happening

1:05:29

in a few weeks in Dubai.

1:05:32

All of us saving the planet, saving the planet. Hold

1:05:34

on. Who made you Messiah? Why

1:05:38

are we engaging in literally an alternative

1:05:40

salvation message? And there's

1:05:42

a reason why Gen Z, I believe, is one

1:05:44

of the most anxious generations, because

1:05:47

they have been bombarded with

1:05:50

this message that the

1:05:52

salvation of the planet is on your

1:05:54

shoulders. And now all of

1:05:56

a sudden you're telling me I'm divine? My

1:05:58

goodness, I don't even want to get it. up in the morning

1:06:00

most mornings, you know, I look in the

1:06:02

mirror and I'm like, who is a school?

1:06:05

Because I know who I am. If

1:06:08

I come on, I'm close. I have a

1:06:10

hard time just being a human being sometimes.

1:06:12

Yeah, yeah. But we place this

1:06:14

upon ourselves. That's been part of

1:06:19

that new age, then by the way, the

1:06:21

new age intersects again, then also with politics,

1:06:23

and it becomes a form of spiritual politics.

1:06:25

And this all ends up becoming religious, because

1:06:28

it is making an alternative salvation claim.

1:06:30

And one of the takeaways, I had

1:06:32

this year with Burning Man riding my

1:06:35

bicycle across the Playa, and it just

1:06:37

blew me away. It hit me so

1:06:39

hard was, this is the blending

1:06:42

of secularism and

1:06:45

mythology all in one container.

1:06:48

And you don't see it really anywhere else

1:06:50

at that level. And then both then.

1:06:53

Yeah. Can I mention something

1:06:55

here? Jeremiah, you a

1:06:58

couple of weeks ago, or a while back,

1:07:01

you know, we're Facebook friends, you probably look

1:07:03

up some of my posts, all this guy's

1:07:05

up. Fundamentalist,

1:07:08

a fundamentalist type of guy, and whatever,

1:07:11

but my kind of guy. Yeah,

1:07:13

what really connected me

1:07:15

with you a few weeks ago,

1:07:17

if you mentioned the issue about

1:07:19

those who believe that like, spiritual

1:07:22

gifts, or the gifts had ceased,

1:07:24

or some type of comment like

1:07:26

that. And I had been wrestling

1:07:28

with friends of mine that believe

1:07:30

that Satan's bound. Right, right.

1:07:33

And, and I would, I

1:07:35

got so excited when you made that

1:07:37

comment, because you get it. And

1:07:40

what will is bringing

1:07:42

now is that we are in

1:07:46

enemy territory, even in

1:07:48

Hebrews 11,

1:07:50

that we knew we know we're aliens,

1:07:52

right, we're looking forward to that great

1:07:55

city, heavenly city,

1:07:57

but we are going in. into

1:08:01

an area that

1:08:04

is concentrated with a

1:08:06

lot of type of evil

1:08:09

belief systems. And

1:08:12

I think as Christians of

1:08:15

light, we shouldn't hide that. And

1:08:18

that Will is really right

1:08:20

on this, that we have to be careful,

1:08:24

but we have to be

1:08:26

spiritually ready for this. And

1:08:29

also, why am I bringing up the

1:08:31

supernatural here again? Is that Carl in

1:08:33

2018, 2017 is driving from Canada. He

1:08:41

gets in a wreck in the middle of the night and

1:08:47

wipes his car out. He hit a deer,

1:08:50

kills the gear, right? And

1:08:52

so his plan name is Deer

1:08:54

Killer, mine's Waterman. And

1:08:58

you always get people that will say,

1:09:00

oh, would you talk to my daughter?

1:09:02

She's there, not knowing the vastness of

1:09:04

this, right? So this

1:09:06

lady hears about it, gets

1:09:09

a hold of her daughter, and her daughter

1:09:12

boyfriend is in the tech world.

1:09:15

I mean, big time tech

1:09:17

world. And so they

1:09:19

felt bad for Carl, and they invited

1:09:22

Carl and I to go to dinner

1:09:24

one night with a tech camp. These

1:09:26

are the moguls from Silicon Valley. And

1:09:29

there we were, two Christians

1:09:32

in the middle of the movers

1:09:34

and shakers at Silicon Valley. And

1:09:37

their thing was serving us

1:09:39

like, you know, dinner and drinks and

1:09:42

stuff like that. And I

1:09:44

got to sit with the wives and

1:09:46

girlfriends of these people and

1:09:48

actually talked to them about

1:09:51

marriage, right? And

1:09:54

devotion in that marriage. And I

1:09:56

sat by the security guy for

1:09:58

the Dalai Lama, right? A

1:10:02

guy like me ends

1:10:05

up being in the middle of that camp

1:10:08

and Carl be in the middle of

1:10:10

the camp that we can have influence.

1:10:13

Again, how would they hear unless there's

1:10:15

a preacher? So

1:10:17

I just wanted to throw that

1:10:19

in. I'm very grateful, Jeremiah, for

1:10:21

your comment because I realized you

1:10:24

did know

1:10:31

that we live in a

1:10:33

supernatural world. Yeah.

1:10:37

No, thank you. Thank you very much. No, thank you.

1:10:39

I've been on trips to the Middle East,

1:10:42

like on a mission trip, where I've seen someone's

1:10:48

life. I saw someone's life transformed

1:10:50

who was hostile to the gospel. And like

1:10:52

mid-trip, he came to everyone

1:10:55

in tears saying that he saw Jesus in a

1:10:57

dream and wanted to be baptized. And that was

1:11:00

like something that was a huge

1:11:02

game changer for me to see that, which is

1:11:04

incredible. And I think it's just interesting because I

1:11:06

do think – we'll talk too

1:11:09

about worldview, neo-paganism. Carl, you might know a

1:11:11

thing or two about that. But

1:11:14

I do think that a lot of

1:11:16

what typically has been reserved for like

1:11:18

missionaries in third world countries in regards

1:11:20

to supernatural experience, I think the way

1:11:23

the world is headed, that's

1:11:25

going to be just something that's going to be normalized. And

1:11:28

we have to have sort of an apologetic and

1:11:31

polemic for that as Christians. So

1:11:33

yeah, definitely thank you for that. I

1:11:36

wanted to – Audrey, if you could, is

1:11:40

give your – I'd like to get your perspective too. I

1:11:43

mean a woman's perspective going being on the ground

1:11:46

and burning man. Are

1:11:48

there certain ways that you can

1:11:50

communicate different than like Carl Robert

1:11:52

would be able to with you being on the ground,

1:11:54

like you – like just giving a woman's perspective being

1:11:56

on the ground and how you can relate

1:11:59

to people there? We'd love to hear about that. I think

1:12:03

overall women are

1:12:05

more intuitive, more emotional. We

1:12:07

can gauge our environments. We're

1:12:09

very sensitive. I think

1:12:12

that is very effective out

1:12:14

there. Burning Man

1:12:16

is, you know, yes, the

1:12:18

party's there. Absolutely fun and games.

1:12:21

Absolutely. But it's also a place

1:12:23

of grief, sorrow, pain.

1:12:26

I think, you

1:12:28

know, no offense to the men here, but

1:12:31

I think a woman can pick up on

1:12:33

that more, even if it's a man projecting

1:12:36

grief. I think a woman can

1:12:39

comfort in a different way. Do

1:12:45

that experience at Center Camp with

1:12:47

the ladies? Yeah, there was,

1:12:50

in 2019, there was this lady

1:12:52

on stage, a handicapped

1:12:55

lady, and she had

1:12:57

just a horrendous life story. So

1:12:59

she told her story, and she

1:13:01

was talking about how she tried all these different

1:13:03

religions, including Christianity,

1:13:06

and she had settled on Buddhism.

1:13:09

And I was

1:13:11

like, I'm in tears. Her life

1:13:13

story was, oh my goodness, I can't even go

1:13:16

into it. I was in tears. And

1:13:18

so afterwards, I went up to her, and

1:13:21

I was just talking to her a little bit, and

1:13:23

I asked if I could pray for her. And

1:13:26

she had disdain for Christians, and

1:13:29

you could tell. And she said,

1:13:31

yeah, okay. So I did pray

1:13:33

for her. She let me pray for her. And then

1:13:36

she just kind of looked down and just said

1:13:38

thank you, and then went on her way. And

1:13:42

I saw her again this year, so

1:13:44

four years later, whatever. I saw her again this

1:13:47

year, and I wanted

1:13:49

to go back up to her, but I

1:13:51

got interrupted. It didn't happen. But I

1:13:53

saw her, and my heart went

1:13:55

out for her, and I was

1:13:57

praying for her. you

1:14:00

know, silently just praying for her, that kind

1:14:02

of thing. But I think we pick up

1:14:04

on nuances like that, that I'll

1:14:06

pick on you, Carl, that you wouldn't pick up on.

1:14:09

You know, you'd hear her story

1:14:11

and you know, you'd be like, whoa, you

1:14:13

know, whereas, whereas a woman can pick

1:14:16

up and relate and

1:14:18

sympathize. There was, you know, but

1:14:21

also being a woman out there, there's situations

1:14:23

where like we were driving in the

1:14:25

deep playa and we

1:14:27

came across this one lady who was

1:14:29

off her bike, leaning against the pole

1:14:32

and had her head down. Well, you don't know if

1:14:34

she, is she in distress? Does she need help? That

1:14:37

kind of thing. So I was able

1:14:39

to go up to her as a woman and just

1:14:41

ask if she was okay, where it might've been awkward

1:14:43

for Carl to go up or it

1:14:45

might not have been appropriate. You

1:14:47

know, that kind of thing. Right.

1:14:49

Jimin in 2018, no 2019,

1:14:54

recognized the situation where

1:14:57

this one burner

1:14:59

was asking for a ride home and she

1:15:02

couldn't find one. And this,

1:15:05

this male approached her and said, well, I can give you

1:15:07

a ride home. And

1:15:10

most people would just think, oh great, she's

1:15:12

got a ride home. But Jen picked up

1:15:14

on that. It was not legit

1:15:16

and was able to rescue her

1:15:19

and get her out of that situation. Yeah. Because that was,

1:15:21

that would have been a sight. Yeah, it would have been. Jen

1:15:25

has the background to understand some of that.

1:15:27

So that was really great. Um,

1:15:31

yeah, you're absolutely right. There's a lot of times with us

1:15:34

guys who just were more like those

1:15:36

in a China shop, emotional sometimes,

1:15:39

until you walk into the temple and then even

1:15:42

there's like, oh my goodness, the pain, sorrow.

1:15:45

Thank you for, thank you for mentioning that because

1:15:47

one of the things that doesn't often get talked

1:15:49

about with Burning Man is the temple, which burns

1:15:52

typically on Sunday nights and even most burners don't

1:15:54

stay for the temple burn. And

1:15:56

the temple burn is a, is a good

1:15:58

companion in the. to the

1:16:01

more celebratory approach of Saturday night where Sunday

1:16:03

night the temple burn is actually very somber

1:16:05

and very serious and very grave as people

1:16:07

are truly grieving and it's sort of a,

1:16:10

it's a moving portrayal of the things

1:16:12

that people carry that aren't necessarily so

1:16:14

obvious in this environment of celebration and

1:16:16

hedonism. Like there is actually a significant

1:16:19

amount of grief and loss that's contained

1:16:21

at the festival that never really gets

1:16:23

covered because even burners don't go to that

1:16:25

event. Yeah,

1:16:28

no, we go to the temple a lot.

1:16:32

We try to be there when it opens or

1:16:34

near to its opening and then

1:16:36

it's probably a daily occurrence throughout the

1:16:38

temple. Just

1:16:40

interacting and even documenting what's

1:16:43

taking place while

1:16:46

people are pouring out to their hearts and

1:16:48

I mean my goodness, it's,

1:16:50

we're at that age already. Bob's been there.

1:16:53

I've been there where

1:16:55

we've lost friends, family, people we

1:16:57

know dearly. We understand

1:16:59

the sting of grief and

1:17:03

so yeah, you walk in and it's there

1:17:05

and you can empathize with it. Yeah.

1:17:08

And I understand why they have temple guardians set

1:17:10

up because people lose it. It's

1:17:12

a 24 hour funeral in

1:17:14

essence for this sort of eight

1:17:16

to nine days. Yeah,

1:17:20

one thing I'd like to kind of point

1:17:22

out because maybe some of the audience don't

1:17:24

know about the temple and

1:17:26

understand what's happening there, but it's

1:17:28

time when people go and they'll

1:17:30

put notes on the walls or

1:17:34

you know, wedding dresses or whatever. psychologist

1:18:00

or psychiatrist had told her

1:18:02

to go there and put

1:18:04

her burdens on that temple.

1:18:07

And she had lost her 16 year

1:18:09

old son. And there were people that

1:18:12

had been saying, let it go, let

1:18:14

it go. And there you got a

1:18:16

Christian sitting right next to her, put

1:18:18

her arm around her, and was able

1:18:20

to console her. And so

1:18:23

about I just asked to make this when

1:18:27

the burning of the man is happening, it's

1:18:29

a big party. And

1:18:32

it's festive. But the burning of

1:18:34

that temple is solid. It's

1:18:37

about half, I would say like

1:18:39

maybe out of 70,000, maybe it's half, maybe it's

1:18:43

35,000. But it's hurting people. Where

1:18:45

else should we be, but in

1:18:49

the middle of people that are hurting,

1:18:52

right? As Christians, let's get a heart.

1:18:55

Again, how will they hear unless there's

1:18:57

a preacher? And that's why

1:18:59

we need women out there also. And,

1:19:02

and just to kind of top that statement

1:19:04

off, there's a kind

1:19:07

of a big rape culture out there.

1:19:09

So we always got to be

1:19:12

careful as far

1:19:14

as our women and

1:19:16

also I stopped the situation

1:19:18

that happened out there back

1:19:22

in 2018 with a young

1:19:24

couple. And

1:19:28

so again, we're

1:19:30

Christians, we step, we're

1:19:33

the ones with the gospel, we're the

1:19:35

ones the light. We

1:19:37

should be out there

1:19:39

in the world and

1:19:42

sharing the gospel and be an

1:19:44

active. Right. I

1:19:46

remember correctly, Bob, that was

1:19:48

Ali. Ali

1:19:51

was such a wonderful asset in 2018.

1:19:53

And I believe that she

1:19:55

was the one who was at the temple putting

1:19:57

her arm around her. Yes. Again, I

1:19:59

wasn't. know that, like

1:20:01

you said, Audrey, that women's intuitive

1:20:04

sense of when's the

1:20:06

appropriate time to come alongside, I probably

1:20:09

would have flubbed it up, but that

1:20:11

was awesome. One of

1:20:13

the things I really enjoy, that I am

1:20:15

enjoying about this conversation with the four of

1:20:17

you is sometimes coming into the world

1:20:19

of Christianity after being in the new

1:20:21

age for 20 years, I feel a little bit like

1:20:23

a stranger in a strange land, like a crazy man

1:20:25

pointing like, hey guys, there's a thing going on out

1:20:27

there, you should really know about it, and well, I

1:20:29

don't know what you're talking about. You

1:20:31

know, it would be a little bit like if

1:20:34

Frodo went running back to the Shire and was

1:20:36

like, there are orcs and black riders and the

1:20:38

people in the Shire, but like, what are you

1:20:40

talking about? But these things are very, very real,

1:20:43

and to hear your understanding of them and

1:20:45

your compassionate reflection of them and crawling, I

1:20:47

want to tell you that you were talking

1:20:50

about this new global secular religion, you're

1:20:52

absolutely 100% dead on. And

1:20:55

I have had to release

1:20:57

so much of my own grief from

1:20:59

being a participant in that false religion

1:21:02

and begin pulling those shards out of

1:21:04

myself and realizing how deep it really

1:21:06

gets into people to believing

1:21:08

these things and seeing the world in such a

1:21:10

way like, oh, we are God, we are the

1:21:12

Messiah, we are responsible for everything, it is on

1:21:14

us, it is all on me, and

1:21:17

just how debilitating that

1:21:19

can be. And also, Robert, you

1:21:21

said about the grief out there at the temple.

1:21:24

The people out there, they don't even know

1:21:26

how to properly grieve in many ways because

1:21:28

the ideology is telling them that they're God,

1:21:30

they're going to, the person who passed away

1:21:32

is going to not exist anymore, or they're

1:21:34

going to go back to oneness, or they're

1:21:36

going to be reborn, like they're confused in

1:21:38

how to properly grieve and how to properly

1:21:40

understand death and dying and the purpose of

1:21:42

life. And the gospel

1:21:45

can offer so much hope to those people,

1:21:47

and you're absolutely correct, that's where Christians need

1:21:49

to be giving that message, to

1:21:51

be giving that message of something so much

1:21:53

better than what death and the secular New

1:21:55

Age world kind of promises. Yeah,

1:21:58

I think there's absolutely almost like Noah,

1:22:00

excuse me, Jonah attitude out

1:22:02

there and Burning Man's

1:22:05

Arninova, right? Yeah, right.

1:22:07

Yeah. Amen. Good

1:22:10

analogy. Yeah. Yeah.

1:22:13

So, the question in regards to maybe a transition over,

1:22:15

I think you might have been talking just a little

1:22:17

bit about some of the worldly implications regarding

1:22:20

Burning Man, one is the

1:22:23

late Francis Schaeffer, one of my favorite theologians.

1:22:26

In one of his books, The Christian Manifesto,

1:22:28

and also one of his talks, he mentioned

1:22:30

that it is more politically oriented,

1:22:32

but he just talked about how Christians

1:22:35

were looking at his time. This is in

1:22:37

the 80s, almost speaking prophetically, given what's going

1:22:39

on today. But he said, Christians

1:22:41

in the mountains would look at issues separately from

1:22:44

each other, whether it's abortion,

1:22:46

euthanasia, you know, all these

1:22:48

different morality issues, like

1:22:50

they're all separate from each other, where

1:22:52

in reality, they're all microcosms of a

1:22:55

larger picture which is an issue of

1:22:57

worldview. And he gave the example of

1:22:59

theism versus secular humanism. I'm

1:23:02

of the opinion that Burning

1:23:05

Man is a microcosm of

1:23:08

something much larger, specifically

1:23:10

worldview. Now while

1:23:12

we may, some of us, we may have

1:23:15

different views, you know, eschologically, and that could

1:23:17

be another conversation, I do believe... Right. Yeah,

1:23:20

I know. But there is, I think that this

1:23:22

is indicative, Burning Man is indicative of the age

1:23:24

that we are headed into, per

1:23:27

se. What is Carl

1:23:30

and Robert, any of you can give you a

1:23:32

perspective over here from all of you, what does

1:23:35

Burning Man say about the culture now and what

1:23:37

does it say about where we are headed and

1:23:39

what do we need to prepare for? I'll

1:23:44

start. That's okay. Yeah. So

1:23:47

the subtitle of my book is, The

1:23:50

Temple of Man in the Age of

1:23:52

Re-Enchantment. Yes. Okay.

1:23:56

I had that subtitle before I went to

1:23:58

Burning Man in 2008. 2017,

1:24:01

because I was working on the book at the time. And

1:24:04

I chose it

1:24:06

because Burning Man at that

1:24:08

in 2017, was the epitome of reenchantment,

1:24:10

the man was placed in his own

1:24:12

pagoda, he's placed in his own temple

1:24:14

that year, it became kind of

1:24:17

a controversy within the burn community. And

1:24:20

so literally, it was the temple of man. But

1:24:23

what is reenchantment? And

1:24:25

so I we just came back from

1:24:27

this course I taught. And one of the

1:24:29

slides that my students have to have

1:24:31

to memorize for the quiz, testing

1:24:34

quizzes right in, in a college, is

1:24:37

the breakdown of Western

1:24:39

intellectual thought and the Western

1:24:41

mood. So we moved from the

1:24:44

age of Christendom, which

1:24:46

ends roughly around the 1700s. And

1:24:50

from Christendom, we move into modernity. And

1:24:52

of course, modernity gives us materialism, the

1:24:54

natural world, the height of human reason,

1:24:56

man is the measure of all things,

1:24:59

we end up with Marxism, socialism, we

1:25:02

see then, of course, the horror shows

1:25:04

of the industrial slaughter of World War

1:25:06

One, World War Two, we get Auschwitz,

1:25:08

we get Pol Pot, we

1:25:10

get man playing

1:25:13

God against man, never

1:25:15

being able to create, only

1:25:17

being able to destroy. And

1:25:19

then as the 1960s unfold, we

1:25:21

have Vietnam. And of course, that

1:25:24

is a first of all, French war. And

1:25:26

we see the breakdown of French civilization

1:25:28

or the French sense of culture and

1:25:31

the French sense of purpose as they

1:25:33

lose it at Dien bien tout. America

1:25:36

enters the scene. And

1:25:38

now you have a generation of

1:25:40

men going to war

1:25:43

whose grandfather thought World War One, father

1:25:45

thought World War Two uncle was in

1:25:47

Korea. Now either they're going to Vietnam

1:25:50

or the brothers going to Vietnam. And

1:25:52

you have a complete implosion in

1:25:54

terms of where authority comes from,

1:25:57

what is trustworthy is a pushback.

1:26:00

back against normative culture. There's

1:26:02

a pushback not only against

1:26:04

Christendom, but it's also a

1:26:06

pushback against hard materialism, because

1:26:09

materialism had stripped the soul of

1:26:11

meaning. So now we

1:26:14

enter the age of postmodernism,

1:26:16

but all postmodernism ultimately does,

1:26:19

is gives us questions but no answers. So

1:26:22

the very seed that will fill

1:26:24

that vacuum, that will flourish

1:26:26

and create a new sense of

1:26:28

mythos for the world, is

1:26:31

birthed at the same time that postmodernism becomes

1:26:33

a reality in the heart and soul of

1:26:35

Western culture. And that is something that a

1:26:37

lot of Christians don't know about. I didn't

1:26:40

coin the phrase, others have reenchantment.

1:26:42

So what is reenchantment? It

1:26:44

is looking for meaning and purpose within

1:26:47

the larger collective. And first,

1:26:49

the New Age movement has this sense of,

1:26:52

and it helped me well

1:26:54

if I'm off on this, but it

1:26:56

is a sense of the self is

1:26:58

looking to become divine. It is that

1:27:00

higher sense of self. It is the

1:27:02

marriage of the human potential movement with

1:27:05

Eastern spirituality. And it is actually a

1:27:07

thinly spread smorgasbord of spiritual experiences to

1:27:10

help you realize your own divinity.

1:27:12

And it becomes really a selfist

1:27:14

orientation. Whereas reenchantment takes it

1:27:16

a step further and says, no, it's not

1:27:18

the self. It

1:27:20

is the self within the we. And

1:27:23

so it is all divine, it is

1:27:25

all enchanted. And we find our purpose

1:27:27

and sense of meaning now in the

1:27:30

earth. We find it in the

1:27:32

collective. And now we look

1:27:34

for meaning and purpose in the voice of

1:27:36

the masses, because we are all being reenchanted.

1:27:38

We're living in the Romans one world. And

1:27:41

that's what Burning Man is, it

1:27:43

is that sense of reenchantment. In

1:27:45

fact, in 2017, I was

1:27:47

at center camp when Reverend Billy gave

1:27:50

his famous Sunday sermon. And

1:27:52

he's first of all talked about and he's

1:27:54

a well known personality within the burn community.

1:27:56

Just as up in the clerical caller and

1:27:58

he's Reverend. And so

1:28:01

he was preaching to the choir, he's preaching

1:28:03

to Senator Camp that we

1:28:05

had fired that patriarchal God who claims to

1:28:07

know everything. But materialism isn't

1:28:10

the end result either. We

1:28:12

have to find something new. And so we

1:28:14

turn to each other, we turn to ourselves, and

1:28:16

we turn to the earth. Say

1:28:19

a big Earthaloo-ya! And everybody's

1:28:21

like, Earthaloo-ya! And I'm like, that's

1:28:24

re-enchantment. We find

1:28:26

a sense of purpose and meaning in this

1:28:28

larger experience, and it is

1:28:30

typically grounded in, let's look at the Romans

1:28:32

1 perspective, the worship of the creationist or

1:28:35

the creator. Mm-hmm. Wow. Nutshell.

1:28:37

You just had my course. Yeah. No,

1:28:39

that's great. I need to sign up

1:28:41

for that. You have to talk about

1:28:43

it afterwards. Me too. Yeah. I

1:28:45

can add some things to that, but go ahead. I'm here to be... Let me...

1:28:48

I want to be the apprentice there. Audrey,

1:28:50

do you have any additional thoughts that

1:28:52

you want to expound on that? For

1:28:54

you said, you've dealt with understanding different

1:28:56

worldviews' perspectives. What does Burning Man tell

1:28:58

about today's culture, the world

1:29:00

as a whole, and where do you think

1:29:02

we're just headed culturally? Burning

1:29:06

Man is a container of all

1:29:10

worldviews, all cultural...

1:29:13

It's the smartest part of everything.

1:29:15

So you have everything from psychedelics,

1:29:17

you have world economic change

1:29:20

agents, you have the grandchildren

1:29:22

of the elites,

1:29:26

that are there saying that we

1:29:28

have all our grandparents' money, now what can we

1:29:30

do with it? They

1:29:33

talk about everything from gender

1:29:35

2030 to psychedelics, like

1:29:39

I keep saying, AI. This

1:29:42

year was heavily about AI, but

1:29:44

workshops were cancelled so we couldn't

1:29:47

attend. It's

1:29:50

a container of all of those kinds

1:29:52

of things. So if people are thinking

1:29:54

that, oh, let's go to Burning Man

1:29:56

again for the party, well, no, this

1:29:58

is Silicon Valley, Google conference.

1:30:02

It's a conference. It is full

1:30:04

of workshops of with

1:30:07

the change agents with the gurus

1:30:09

with the elites with the, you

1:30:12

know, head of the other

1:30:14

Rick Doblin little Paul's them.

1:30:16

You know, all of those people so burning

1:30:20

man, you go to burning man and

1:30:22

you learn and you can take that

1:30:24

back now and you can say, look,

1:30:26

here's what's coming. So because we went

1:30:28

is Jesus and psychedelics. So watch

1:30:31

for psychedelics now being pushed in your church.

1:30:33

But I believe though that. If

1:30:38

you're going to engage the

1:30:40

culture, learn the culture,

1:30:43

learn it. Don't watch YouTube videos.

1:30:46

Go and learn the culture. So you

1:30:48

don't have to go to burning man to learn culture.

1:30:52

What's going on in your own town? What's

1:30:54

going on in your own neighborhood? Go to the

1:30:57

meeting. Start listening. Start learning

1:31:00

because you're going to start picking up on

1:31:02

all the spiritual stuff that's

1:31:04

coming in all the earth. Worship

1:31:07

that's coming in. Learn

1:31:10

from the culture when you learn that as well. You

1:31:12

learn their lingo start to

1:31:14

learn their language, their double speed, what

1:31:16

they're really saying. And you're going

1:31:19

to start to see how all

1:31:21

the dots in the world connect and

1:31:23

all the dots in the world. You could go to

1:31:25

burning man and see

1:31:27

all the dots in one container. That's

1:31:31

what we do as boots on the ground

1:31:34

researchers. Don't just watch a YouTube video and

1:31:36

think you're just going to burning man and going

1:31:38

to be effective. You got to. It's

1:31:40

emotional. It's mental. It's

1:31:44

spiritual. You got

1:31:46

to know your line in the sand. Go

1:31:48

and learn. Go and learn the culture. Learn

1:31:50

their lingo. But also see them as human

1:31:53

beings. Yeah. Even one

1:31:55

thing I want to comment as well too and I

1:31:57

definitely would reciprocate that and man I'd love to hear

1:31:59

that. I'd love to just sometimes join. I'd love to join

1:32:01

you guys sometime on the ground. That would be an honor

1:32:03

to do that. And I think that would just be eye-opening

1:32:05

because I think even sometimes for me that you're

1:32:08

doing podcast content and even

1:32:10

like I said, even like

1:32:12

putting stuff together. But

1:32:16

there's such a difference between actually all of

1:32:18

a sudden than having a divine appointment. Like

1:32:20

I remember it was somebody to

1:32:22

be able to talk with them about the gospel. Like I

1:32:24

remember we'd done a couple episodes

1:32:27

on Jehovah's Witnesses and that

1:32:29

I feel like all the tales in comparison at one

1:32:32

time doing a Lyft ride where I had a Jehovah's

1:32:34

Witness in the back of my car. Immediately as soon

1:32:36

as I realized it, I had that itch I had

1:32:38

to scratch and I said, so did

1:32:40

you know about like the New World Translation and you

1:32:42

hear about how it actually talks about how Jesus is

1:32:44

Jehovah? Like I had to just break the ice. I

1:32:46

just couldn't resist. You got that itch. But yeah, I

1:32:49

really reciprocate all of that. Robert,

1:32:52

I want to get your perspective too. You've been

1:32:54

on the ground since 1996. I looked earlier to

1:32:56

see like what took place. I'm

1:33:00

like, oh, Bill Clinton won re-election against Bob

1:33:02

Dole. So I'm like, wow, that has been

1:33:04

a long, long time. I'm old enough to

1:33:06

remember that as a kid. But like

1:33:09

we've – I think the culture has

1:33:11

really shifted towards a neo-pagan culture and

1:33:13

you've probably seen Burning Man evolve a

1:33:15

lot since the early days that

1:33:17

when you were there in 1996. You

1:33:20

think about versus now versus 2023.

1:33:23

Like what changes have you seen and what

1:33:25

do you think Burning Man has reflected as

1:33:27

a culture progressively since you've started back there

1:33:30

in the mid-90s versus now? Well,

1:33:34

what a question to ask. I'm

1:33:37

glad you asked that. In

1:33:41

1996, I first went out there in

1:33:43

97 where I first time I went

1:33:45

inside Burning Man. And

1:33:47

it was Mad Max. I mean,

1:33:50

it was crazy. The first year

1:33:52

I was – 1996,

1:33:56

I think it was three

1:33:58

or four people died. It ran

1:34:00

over by cars and there were

1:34:02

no rules and a little

1:34:05

background on it. I,

1:34:07

I'm a telecommunications, uh,

1:34:09

person for a large

1:34:12

power company now, now retired.

1:34:15

So I had taken care of

1:34:17

a radio site very close to

1:34:19

birdie man. And the

1:34:21

law enforcement in 1996 would not even

1:34:23

come in the area of birdie man

1:34:26

because there was no communications. So

1:34:30

what I did, uh, was

1:34:32

that I volunteered to put, uh, community,

1:34:37

uh, law enforcement communication in our

1:34:39

site. And finally they could

1:34:41

come in. Uh, now they've

1:34:43

grown and they got communications equipment now,

1:34:47

but let's look at this

1:34:49

in two different ways. When

1:34:51

I went out, I had the

1:34:53

Bureau of Land Management would

1:34:56

actually come out and talk to me, they got

1:34:58

my phone number and they'd call me at home

1:35:00

and they'd say, Bob, we

1:35:02

would like to put you under

1:35:04

our insurance because what you're doing

1:35:06

out there, supplying water and helping

1:35:08

these people out. We really

1:35:10

support that. Right. And

1:35:13

I said, I go out there

1:35:15

and I do this because I'm doing missionary

1:35:17

work and I don't think you want to

1:35:19

hit your wagon to me. Right.

1:35:22

And they said, okay, we

1:35:25

will still do it. But I didn't

1:35:27

want to do that. And

1:35:29

so they would come out and talk

1:35:31

to me about how bad burning man

1:35:33

was the Bureau

1:35:35

of Land, but that federal agency

1:35:37

and then law enforcement, when they

1:35:40

got their communications equipment, they would

1:35:42

come and condemn me for being

1:35:44

out there or talk to me

1:35:46

and they were against it. Well,

1:35:49

the shift in the culture has been.

1:35:55

2017, we watched an actual

1:35:58

somebody in the Bureau of Land Management. actually

1:36:02

gave a talk about learning

1:36:05

what you can from Burning Man and

1:36:07

taking it back home and teaching others.

1:36:10

All of a sudden law enforcement

1:36:13

has got a positive view. There's been

1:36:15

this shift in our

1:36:17

society. And

1:36:19

I got to tell you, I'm looking around the last couple of

1:36:22

years and I'm thinking, it's

1:36:24

insanity. Do I really live in a

1:36:26

world where evil is good and good

1:36:28

is evil? Right?

1:36:30

So I see the society

1:36:33

shifting for acceptance, kind of

1:36:35

a post-modern

1:36:37

acceptance of it.

1:36:41

Probably, I think what Carl

1:36:43

says, you know,

1:36:45

the re-enchantment time is arrived.

1:36:47

Right? But let me give

1:36:49

you an example and

1:36:51

it's kind of like an

1:36:55

excellent thing

1:36:57

that Audrey

1:37:00

just said that I can launch off

1:37:02

on. And that is this. I was

1:37:05

in the psychedelic movement back in

1:37:08

the 70s. So I'm

1:37:10

very familiar with psychedelics. Now, I haven't

1:37:12

done ayahuasca or anything like that. We

1:37:14

can talk about that. Yeah,

1:37:17

yeah. But I think that you would know more

1:37:19

about that than me. But so,

1:37:21

I may

1:37:23

be a Christian, I may have gained a lot

1:37:25

of weight, got old and ugly, this type of

1:37:28

stuff. But in my head, I still

1:37:30

think like that. Right? Except

1:37:33

I have a new creation, a

1:37:35

new nature. Right? So

1:37:38

I have the blessing

1:37:42

of being able to communicate

1:37:44

with that community. Right? And

1:37:47

so, in 2017, Carl

1:37:49

and I first meet and we

1:37:51

go to a class on psychedelics

1:37:54

and medicine in the medical community.

1:37:57

They had doctors and nurses.

1:38:00

and psychiatrists and psychologists and

1:38:03

all kinds of professional people

1:38:06

talking about utilizing psychedelics or

1:38:09

PTSD, post-traumatic

1:38:13

stress, right? And

1:38:15

how they want to get it legalized. It was

1:38:18

basically, now I find out it was

1:38:21

going into its first stage of acceptance.

1:38:25

And we're

1:38:28

sitting there, yes, yes, yes, they want to

1:38:30

do this. And at the end of

1:38:32

it, are there any

1:38:34

questions? And a man raised his

1:38:36

hand and

1:38:38

he said, what about the entities that

1:38:42

show up? Carl and

1:38:44

I look at each other like, what?

1:38:47

Wow. Right? And I

1:38:49

thought they were going to shut him down. And

1:38:52

here you have professional people saying,

1:38:54

well, that is a problem. And

1:38:57

that's why we want to

1:38:59

have it controlled in

1:39:01

the medical sphere.

1:39:04

We want to be able

1:39:07

to utilize professionals to

1:39:11

administer these psychedelics,

1:39:13

right? And

1:39:15

so I thought, then

1:39:17

other people started talking about these entities

1:39:20

that showed up. That's why Jeremiah,

1:39:22

I get really excited about

1:39:25

that spiritual worldview you have

1:39:27

is because that's a reality. And

1:39:33

so I go back home and my

1:39:35

wife and I are starting to dig

1:39:37

up things on psychedelics on YouTube.

1:39:39

We find out about machine elves,

1:39:42

these elves that show up in

1:39:45

your ayahuasca or

1:39:48

your psychedelic trip. And they

1:39:50

could be some really bad situations

1:39:53

or they dance and probably will

1:39:55

know more about that. Now I

1:39:57

would. But

1:40:00

Why is this important? What I'm saying

1:40:02

is that we have to know the

1:40:04

times that we're in. I

1:40:06

watch the Babylonian B. They're

1:40:09

interviewing Elon Musk,

1:40:11

right? And I'm

1:40:13

saying this Elon Musk, I know he's

1:40:16

kind of like a globalist, but

1:40:18

he doesn't fit the

1:40:21

same as some of these other

1:40:23

globalists, right? And

1:40:25

so he said, they

1:40:28

asked him, what do you

1:40:30

believe about God? And he says,

1:40:32

I believe in the God of

1:40:34

Espinoza. So I go

1:40:36

and I listen to some videos and

1:40:38

learn about Espinoza. And I go, wow,

1:40:41

that's Elon Musk. He's

1:40:43

doing good things, because

1:40:46

he believes that in doing good

1:40:48

things, right? And

1:40:50

so it really

1:40:53

hit me is that we have to know

1:40:56

where society's going, what

1:40:59

do they believe, and

1:41:01

actually be like Christian profilers,

1:41:03

like they have, I've worked

1:41:05

actually with an FBI profiler

1:41:08

on some scenarios.

1:41:11

And I learned a lot. So

1:41:14

I guess what I'm saying is shows like yours

1:41:18

should be waking people

1:41:20

up to start number one,

1:41:23

taking every thought

1:41:25

captive, where they're

1:41:27

at, and number two, looking out at

1:41:29

the world, and knowing

1:41:31

the time that we're in, and

1:41:34

being able to react to it. And

1:41:36

that's what the little

1:41:39

summary kind

1:41:41

of launched off of what

1:41:43

Audrey said. Yeah. So

1:41:45

I said, I sent a tweet the other day

1:41:47

where I said, and I completely agree, sir, I

1:41:49

sent a tweet, I said something like I wandered

1:41:51

to the new age for 20 years. Until

1:41:54

I found someone who could give me

1:41:56

a proper Christian apologetic. I wondered

1:41:59

what would have happened if I had run into

1:42:01

that person sooner or those people sooner. And

1:42:03

one of the, and of course, a lot of people, you

1:42:07

know, said, well, it's all in God's providence and all that.

1:42:09

And like, yes, okay, point taken. However, I think

1:42:11

that, Jeremiah, I think you bring up a

1:42:13

really good point. Like there is mission work,

1:42:16

mission field work to be done here. And

1:42:18

I think the really important point that I

1:42:20

think Carl and Audrey have highlighted

1:42:23

is that that mission field, you don't have

1:42:25

to go to it. That mission field is

1:42:27

coming to you. It's coming into

1:42:29

your showed up in

1:42:31

the Enneagram. You're going to start seeing it

1:42:33

with Jesus and psychedelics. You're going to start

1:42:35

seeing it with talks about

1:42:38

environmental stewardship. Like this worldview

1:42:40

is coming to a

1:42:42

screen near you. And I think

1:42:45

Christians really need to be prepared

1:42:47

for that, because

1:42:49

the mask of secular humanism

1:42:51

is absolutely slipping. And behind

1:42:53

the mask of secular humanism

1:42:55

is this pagan worldview. In

1:42:58

fact, Terrence McKenna, one of the early

1:43:00

leading lights, let's say of the psychedelic movement,

1:43:02

he wrote a book called The Archaic Revival.

1:43:04

And this was written in the 1990s.

1:43:07

And so when I got introduced to New Age spirituality in

1:43:09

2000, 2001, that was the

1:43:12

book that everyone was reading at the time

1:43:14

was The Archaic Revival. And it came to

1:43:16

me, in fact, when I was on the

1:43:18

podcast talking about Aubrey Marcus and Burning Man

1:43:20

the first time, that was the name of

1:43:22

the book that I couldn't think of. So

1:43:24

The Archaic Revival is actually the re-enchantment is

1:43:26