(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

We're live on both the Bend the Baptist YouTube channel and the Steadfast Baptist YouTube channel for this special edition of the Sword of the Spirit podcast, a live stream tonight. We'll be talking about what I'm calling the Manufactured Race War, and it starts in 60 seconds. Alright, it's June 8th, 2020, and I apologize because we're definitely really late going on the air. I advertised 8 o'clock central. It's 8.50. I was having some major internet problems to start things off. I was on the phone with customer service and all of that fun stuff. It's always great when the internet decides to stop working right before you're scheduled to go on the air, but that's life. Sometimes it throws things at you that you don't expect, but thankfully I was able to get that fixed. And so we're on the air now, and I'm here with two guests. First of all, Pastor Jonathan Shelley from Steadfast Baptist Church right here in Fort Worth, Texas. And Pastor Shelley, because of the fact that we went on the air late, I do have to start off by saying, hey, sorry about that, but thanks for sticking around. I appreciate your patience. How you doing? It makes perfect sense since it's 2020, you know, just got to go with the flow, and I'm excited to be here for the podcast and to have the discussion we're going to have this evening. So thank you. No problem. Brother Marcel Lugo is also with us here from Revival Baptist Church. Marcel, what's up? Nothing much, man. Like he said, it's 2020, you never know what the next day holds. So I'm just glad to be here with you guys and to fellowship. So thanks for having me. Yeah. You definitely don't know what the next thing holds. In 2020, we had coronavirus. Now we have what I'm calling a manufactured race war. People are taking to the streets, even still today, going around, smashing private property, assaulting people, innocent people, all in the name of what they're calling racism, police brutality rooted in racism, courtesy of the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer. You guys all know the story by now. But that was the catalyst for civil unrest all over the country, although the event occurred in Minneapolis, Minnesota, all over the nation. They started rioting. They started, quote, protesting. They were throwing bricks through glass. Private property was destroyed. Private businesses got damaged severely. Even black business owners were hurt by this, were hurt by the rioting, which you would think would be counterintuitive, but I guess we're thinking too much. I want to start off the first topic of the night, though, by talking about the media's obsession with racism and how that actually foments racial division. The title of this is the manufactured race war. The reason why I added that word manufactured is because I believe this entire thing is being fomented by the corporate media, which is brainwashing people into going out and torching buildings and assaulting people and acting like a violent mob. So in contention and strife because of this obsession that they have with race and this obsession that they have with their divide and conquer strategy, trying to make it appear as if all white people are part of a class called oppressor, while all minorities are part of a class called oppressed. And so as a result, there's this giant chasm between the oppressed and the oppressor, and it's making people go crazy. Let's start off with Pastor Shelley. Do you agree that the media has a huge role to play in all this, and what are your thoughts on this obsession that the media has? They're addicted, especially the left, with turning everything into a civil rights issue and obsessing over race. Well, I definitely agree with the premise of the show being manufactured. And I think when it comes to situations that we see unfolding and there's riots and there's protests and there's a lot of just civil unrest in our nation, that it's a multifaceted problem that there's not just necessarily one catalyst to all of this per se. I think there's a lot that's going on. I think the one central most important factor is probably the media for the simple point that riots did not start until the media made a big deal about this death of George Floyd. And so obviously they're the signal caller, obviously the one establishing everything. And from their dialogue box, they're going to keep stoking it and pushing forth their agenda, whether it's legitimate or not, they're definitely causing the controversy. And in fact, a lot of liberal media stations aren't even hiding the fact. They just pretty much openly say, I agree with the protests and people need to be pushing back and people need to be fighting. And so they're not even subtly doing any more. They're just literally just calling for an all out riot and protests and all kinds of things, very little, if any, apologetic for the fact that people's businesses are being destroyed. You know, I've heard liberal media media analysts say stuff like, well, property can be restored, but lives can't. And, you know, just all kinds of crazy rhetoric to try and justify the civil unrest and just the craziness that's going on in the country worldwide. It's even worldwide. I mean, we're talking about the US, but I mean, look at Australia. I've seen several European countries. They're all protesting George Floyd's death. I mean, Canada, like the insanity of of this to me is just to show that people are really just manipulated by the media very easily. And, you know, it's obviously dire times. You know, the Bible warns in the last days of the Shabbat times and the Bible warns that people are easily manipulated by the devil. And so, you know, the devil's the father of lies. And I think a close second to the news media. What do you think about this, Marcel? So they were saying that the media, they just love to propagate racism because they know it hits home, especially like you said earlier with the press and the oppressor, because obviously when you learn the school, like, you know, black people will always know they've been enslaved for the entire life. So when the media shows a black person getting killed by a white person, it is ironic where you're always seeing a white cop killing a black person is never you never see the other way around. You never see like a black cop kill a white person. So it's just kind of just a way to kind of just outrage the whole world. And I think it's just a way to kind of, you know, you could say maybe promote martial law because obviously you create all this chaos going on in the streets and in America that, you know, you're going to have to find a way to stop it all. And obviously the people actually killing each other and, you know, they're putting bricks all over the place and just randomly appear in different areas. Then they're going to have to try to do something to stop it. Well, obviously the police force is not going to be enough to stop this. So, you know, they're going to have to bring a military. So the media promoting all this stuff is just a way for them to get more publicity and more people to tune into the to the news station to kind of see what's going on and to promote them. So it's all a big circle, I think. Well, the Bible says in Isaiah, chapter fifty nine. And verse seven, their feet run to evil, they make haste to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, wasting and destruction are in their paths, the way of peace they know not and there is no judgment in their goings. They made them crooked paths who sort of vergoeth therein shall not know peace. It says, therefore is judgment far from us, neither does justice overtake us. We wait for light, but behold obscurity for brightness. But we walk in darkness. And you know what? There are people out there right now whose feet are running to evil and they're using this. They're exploiting this situation to go out. And like I said earlier, to destroy private property, to throw bricks through glass windows. And people say, especially on the left, oh, well, they're all peaceful. No one's doing that. That's just a lie. All of them are all 100 percent peaceful protesters just standing there harmlessly holding signs. Well, that was proven wrong and can be proven wrong by anyone who just decides to grab a camera and go outside for themselves and film what's going on. I'm not saying 100 percent of them are violent, but Brother Paul Wittenberger went out with a camera himself, boots on the ground with a couple of friends and recorded what was going on in Phoenix, Arizona last week. And guess what? They weren't just standing there with signs. They were yelling, they were cussing, they were screaming. They were nasty. They were destroying signs, breaking glass. And it didn't it was not something that anyone who is normal should want to take apart. I mean, you want to be part of it's just media manipulation. And what it told me, the fact that these riots popped up, not just in Minneapolis, but also all over the entire nation and all over the world is just how brainwashed most people are. It's just how indoctrinated most people are by the fake news, these disgusting pieces of trash on television, like Don Lemon, who says that every white person has a virus of racism that hasn't yet manifested and sometimes does manifest itself. What kind of a sick person do you have to be? Van Jones is who said that. So sorry, I got the wrong person there. But Van Jones on CNN, Brother, Pastor Shelley, what do you think about that? Well, that sounds pretty racist to just say that every single white person is just an evil person, a wicked person. You know, I feel like I know a lot of white people that could care less about or could not care less about skin color or any of those things. And in fact, just recently I went to get ice cream for my wife and I went to just some Coldstone and literally it's just all races of all people and they're all happy and they're all talking and it's all normal. I mean, like to say that there's just this constant racism. I mean, I've never seen a slave and I've never been a slave. I've never owned any slaves. And I would venture to believe most everybody in America could say the same, that they've never even seen this. You know, it's just kind of like a straw man argument that a lot of people want to put out there and always attached to a pretty wicked history. I'm not going to exonerate the slavery of the past in America. That was wicked. It was wrong. But at the end of the day, this current situation we find ourselves in has to be either the most brilliant coincidence ever for the liberals or it has to be orchestrated because I don't believe that if we had not had several months of COVID sanctions and ordinances and stay at home orders and trapping everybody inside and then forcing everyone to wear a mask and trying to convince them to wear a mask. I do not believe we would have the rights that we see today. I believe that that's a convenient outlet that they have now where you have all these people angry and frustrated and off work. And it's convenient when everybody wear a mask and I can't idea people. I mean, to me, if you're a burglar, you know, the best news you could possibly get is every single person has to wear a mask. I mean, you know, talk about just like a perfect ideal situation for burglars these days. And, you know, obviously certain cities, they're withdrawing police from these areas and they're like, well, we want to protect the police officers. And it's just like, well, what's the point of even having police if they're not going to combat violence and rioters and all these different problems that we see? I mean, even Minneapolis recently said they're going to defund the police department. I don't know how that's going to work out. Well, you know, in fact, the thing that's pretty much just not going to be fixed anytime soon is I guarantee people are not lining up to join the police force right now. I mean, to be a police officer is got to be just the most intimidating position right now because you're pretty much damned if you do and damned if you don't. I mean, you're going up there and putting your life at risk on a daily basis, on a continual basis. And if you just do anything kind of wrong, you're going to be crucified. And, you know, I've seen black a black woman just like there's some video, she's just like punching some white police officer in the face repeatedly. And he just does nothing because, you know, if he even touched her, of course, there would be all kinds of stories and, you know, reports. So it took a black police officer to then arrest the lady and take her out of the picture. And so, you know, obviously this is just extremely manufactured. And I have a lot of statistics that I kind of pulled up, so maybe I can share here in a minute. I'd like to get Marcel's thoughts, too. But, you know, I think it's provably manufactured. Yeah, I definitely feel the same way, because like one of the coincidence that we had this COVID and then we were on lockdown and then we had a curfew, then a whole thing with the riots happening around curfew again. But I'm glad to because I used to want to be a cop when I was younger. I used to always say, like, I want to get older, I want to be a cop. And then I was talking to my wife not too long ago and I'm like, I'm glad I didn't become a cop because this has been the worst time ever to become a cop, especially like your Bible believe in Christian and you even think about preaching the Bible, they're going to crucify you, you're going to get fired. And then just with everything going on right now, I heard those like this cop that like a lieutenant, he got shot and killed in Minneapolis or something like that. So right now people just want to kill him. And I don't know what they're going to do. They try to take the police force off because it's definitely going to be anarchy out there. I definitely want to get to those statistics you talked about there, Pastor Shelley. I did have a question, though, or a statement rather that I wanted to make, which is that there are very real problems in the inner cities, in black communities in America. And when we go soul winning, we see that the hip hop culture, the drugs, the crime. Now, true actual racists would look at those problems and say, well, black people are just biologically predisposed to act in those abhorrent ways. I don't believe that. I reject that wholeheartedly. I believe that the reason why these communities have problems is because of the lack of the nuclear family unit, the lack of godly values. Pastor Shelley, you preached a sermon recently about black churches and how they're not helping to alleviate the problem whatsoever. And there is a problem. I'm not going to deny that there is an issue in some of these black communities, not just with the lack of a nuclear family unit. And I believe the statistic, I don't have this one pulled up, but I think it's up to 37 percent of their families are they they don't have a two parent household. And then also the abortion, they're strategically placing Planned Parenthood abortion clinics in their neighborhoods. Black babies are being systematically eliminated in their communities. So don't sit there and tell me that you care about black lives when you're silent about Planned Parenthood, when you're silent about the hip hop culture that socially engineers them to want to go out and be criminals, when you're silent about the lack of traditional family values that leads them to go seek that family atmosphere in gangs, which then leads them to getting into things that they shouldn't be getting into and eventually interacting with police officers more than the average white person would. Again, not because of the fact that they're biologically predisposed to do so, but because the environment has been set for them to end up in prison, to end up getting into crime and drugs and things of that nature. And we need more people to point these things out. Instead, it's just this mindless, systematic racism or institutional racism or white people are all bad. And we need to bring in more political correctness and safe spaces and moderate people's language. Like we're in 1984, George Orwell come to life. And I'm sick of it because it's stupid. It's garbage. It's a divide and conquer strategy. It's Marxism. Just say, oh, racist, screaming racism at the top of your lungs isn't going to solve anything. If you actually cared, then you would acknowledge what the real problems are and you would acknowledge what the solution is, which we'll get to in a minute. But the problems, the legitimate issues, the legitimate problems in the black community, Pastor Shelley, what do you think of that? Well, you know, I think it's always good to start with the Bible and, you know, the Bible says train up a child and the way you should go. And when he is old, he will not depart from it. And I believe that that's a two edged sword. Obviously, that's a promise that we would take from a positive perspective of saying, hey, if I train my children correctly and I train them right and I treat, you know, I train them in the ways of the Lord, you know, that's going to stick with them. But I believe that both sides of that equation are true. I also believe if you teach somebody a lot of bad things, a lot of evil things and you influence them at a very young age, that can also stick with them for a lifetime. And the Bible also says a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. So, you know, the Bible is telling us that children need to be watched. Children need to be disciplined. You know, the Bible talks about he that spared the rod hated the sun. And, you know, from statistics, you can clearly see that from a black house perspective, I believe most recently, 80 percent of children that are born African-American are born to unwed parents. So I apologize. Yeah, sure. You're fine. Basically, about 80 percent of all children that are African-American or black are born out of wedlock. So there's the point. I was way off. Wow. I was way off. That's crazy. And so, you know, already they're set up to not have two parents. They're already not set up to have married parents. And, you know, without parents, you're not going to get instruction. The Bible says foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. So, you know, I don't believe that children, no matter what their skin color is, if they're not born with, you know, parents that are constantly disciplining them, they're going to have a lot of foolishness that is acted out on. And, you know, I see it as a culture problem. You know, and one way to really look at this to see how skin color has really no impact is compare people who are black in America with people who are black in Jamaica or in the Bahamas specifically. And I guarantee you're going to see a lot different scenarios, a lot different statistics. And really, it's because of a culture issue from my perspective. You know, I see when I went to visit Jamaica, a lot of people waking up early working hard. And yeah, of course, they have problems, too. And they have people that are on drugs and, you know, they have the same issues. But you see black people succeeding over there and you see black people, you know, destroying themselves over there, too. And, you know, I would say that, you know, from a biblical perspective, it's clear that skin color has no impact on anything whatsoever. There is no race defined in the Bible. The Bible says we're all made of one blood. And so I really attribute to culture, you know, I mentioned, first of all, the family's an issue. A sermon I preached recently was about black churches. I think that's a major issue. And I think it's a culture thing. And, you know, I have nothing against a church that's filled with 100% black people or 100% Asian or 100% Hispanic, like that doesn't matter. But if the reason why you're choosing your church is because of skin color, it's not based on doctrine, it's not based on salvation, it's not based on the Bible, then that's going to cause problems. And I see there's a lot of churches which are even labeled by Wikipedia as black churches. And if you look up what they teach, what they believe, they pretty much admit that they really focus on civil rights issues. And societal issues. And they lift up people like Dr. Luther King, Jr., who did not believe the Bible. You know, there's many records out there describing how he lived a very adulterous and double life. And he himself did not care about spiritual matters. He only cared about social and cultural change. Whereas the Bible focuses on spiritual matters. And I think if you took a group of young black children and you taught them the Bible, and you're teaching them about spiritual matters, and God's word, that they're going to be very successful in life. You know, the Bible says in Psalms, chapter number one, blesses the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor sit in the seat of the scornful, you know, exactly about his delight being in the law of the Lord, and he meditate there during night. And you know, that is leafs not going to wither, that whatsoever you do shall prosper. I mean, the Bible makes it clear when you study God's word, you are going to be prosperous, you are going to be successful, maybe not from a world perspective, but you will from a spiritual perspective. And you know, our church in Fort Worth, Step Fast Baptist Church has to be a pretty diverse church, in my opinion. I would venture to believe there's hardly any churches with as much diversity from the size of our church. I mean, we have about 120 people maybe on a Sunday morning. And I mean, we have people from Korea, we have people from Thailand, we have people from Canada, we have people from Jamaica, we have every single skin color, we have different kinds of languages, we have tons of Hispanic people that go to our church, we have tons of white people. I mean, we have virtually a smorgasbord of all different types of nationalities, tongues, backgrounds, languages, and really, that's what's represented in the Bible in heaven. People of all nations and tongues and, you know, so with the black culture that is existing with their black churches, their black families, you know, I also mentioned in my sermon how black people are more proportionately affected by gangs and are going into gangs. Also, you see the liberal media trying to make everything about black people being a victim. And I've seen that from every angle. The government says black people are a victim. The media says that black people are a victim. Black churches say that black people are a victim. And when you just tell everybody that you're a victim and everything bad's happening to you because of your skin color, it's going to affect you. And, you know, it's easy to probably want to believe that. I believe because of people being slothful and lazy, it just adds that even more. And then people get into the welfare state. And it's just they're just kind of beat down with lies. And nobody can really overcome lies. If you're told you're going to fail, and you're not going to be successful, and nobody cares about you, and everyone hates you, it's going to be easy to believe that. And that's the farthest thing from the truth because Jesus Christ loves you no matter red, yellow, black, and white. And, you know, you can go to a church where people love you despite your skin color. Who cares about that? I don't whatsoever. It means nothing to me. And I do not judge people based on their skin color for any reason. It's not biblical. It doesn't make sense. Racism is, in my opinion, not even really exist in the United States on a wide scale push. I think that most people are not racist in this country, evidenced by the fact that a black man was elected president with a popular vote. How can you say that the majority of Americans are racist if Barack Obama got the popular vote? I mean, that pretty much just flies in the face of that ideology. And there's plenty of other political offices held by black people. So it's just really a fabricated, manufactured lie. And I think the most racist people are probably the Democrats trying to use and abuse black people and manipulate them into voting for them when they don't care at all. Joe Biden doesn't know about being black and nor does he care about black people. Neither does any, you know, Hillary or any of these other people. If they really cared about them, they would stop lying to them constantly. Well, he said vote for him or you're not even black. Idiot. Marcelo, you can jump right in if you want. Yeah, just to add to that, you know, growing up, you know, in the ghettos, in the ghetto neighborhood, I think the biggest enemy for the black culture, the black community is the hip hop music. Because of the fact that, like Pastor Shelley was stating, you know, the Bible says to train up a child the way he should go and when he's always not the part. So when you have 80 percent of, you know, black people and not even just black people, anybody you had, when you have somebody that's raised, that's not raised with their dad in the home, you know, then they're looking to someone else to kind of raise them up. They're looking to someone else to kind of give them answers, to show them the way. And people, we we always look to other people to, you know, to to follow, you know, just kind of in our nature to find to find somebody to follow. So, you know, when the nuclear home is destroyed and they don't have a father to look to, then they're going to go to the streets. And, you know, just me growing up, you know, when I was younger, you know, I will hang out with a lot of my friends outside. So, you know, most of us that I can say none of us had, you know, a father there and no one, none of us had a dad there. So pretty much, you know, our dad or our father or parents, you know, is going to be the hip hop music, you know, and whatever they're saying is what you're pretty much going to follow. So a lot of people just look into that. And, you know, at the end of the day, they're following those ideologies and they were following those way, you know, those ways of living. And, you know, you just, you know, sleeping around and do whatever you want and find a different people. And, you know, you're bending your kids. But at the end of the day, it's just a cycle, generational cycle, a curse that you're never going to break. So what it's doing is destroying the nuclear home and destroying the way the household should actually be, you know, because at the end of the day, you know, they're like saying, you know, they just, they just implanted in their mind that they're never going to be nothing, but, you know, they actually want to really do something with themselves. They can, but the problem is they don't really know how to, you know, they don't really have nobody to give them direction, you know, and I feel like I was just lucky and I was blessed to have certain people in my life to kind of guide me in the right direction. But just, you know, me playing sports in high school and I look a lot of my friends, you know, none of them had dad, all the dads was in jail. So they never really had nobody to really look to, to kind of give them the direction in life. And like I was saying, like, you know, music is something that is a very powerful tool, instrument that people love to do. And if you just fill your mind with the wrong music, then this is going to lead you in a bad direction. So the Bible says, you know, cease my son to hear the instruction that calls us to err from the words of knowledge. So the Bible tells us that we need a cease from hearing the words that calls us to err. So hip hop music is just teaching everything that's bad and is wrong. And this, maybe though it sounds good to the flesh, really the instruction that I've given you is going to destroy your life. You know, but you know, we see those people as, you know, they're living the best life and they're full of money. They're full of, you know, they have clothes and they're living a good life, but really, you know, nobody actually makes it to that. You know what I mean? Those are just a few people that actually make it, but really everybody else ended up in jail, they're dead. And sometimes people just don't see that. And the Bible says it's better to hear the rebuke of the wise than for a man to hear the song of fools. So it's better to hear somebody just correct you and let you know, Hey, look, you're going on the wrong path. You need to get this right. Then, then to hear the song of fools. So I think that's the worst part because in the hip, in the black communities, in the culture, you know, the main thing is drugs and it's music. And it just, you know, I've been a day of like, I understand why people say, you know, black people are always being targeted because, you know, just like as a Christian or whenever we knock on somebody's door and we talk to them, they say, Hey, you know, you're a Pentecostal Jehovah's Witness. We read into everything. We didn't even know about that person just by what they said. So a cop, you know, when he's going through a certain neighborhood and, or he sees a car that has, you know, 20, 23 inch rims, he's already preconceived like, yeah, this guy, the drug dealer, the guy has 10. So he already making this preconceived ideas, you know, about that person. So, you know, black lives really matter. Number one, they obviously, the men, it comes down to the men. They need, they need to just, you know, buck up. They need to just take responsibility for their family, for their kids. And they need to, you know, just find a woman and to have, you know, get married and find a wife and then raise up the child and lead them in the right direction. Because if not, they're just going to keep doing the same thing. You know, they're going to end up in jail. Then their kids are going to grow up without a dad. And their kids are going to end up, you know, into gangs and their kids can end up doing the same exact thing that their father was doing. And then their kids are not going to have a father there. So we're going to be the same cycle. So in order to break that curse, you know, a man would just have to just, you know, take heat onto the words of the Lord. The Bible said the law, the law of the Lord is perfect. Converting the soul and the Testament of the Lord is sure. Make it wise and simple. So God's testimony is sure it's going to work, but you just have to, you know, follow with the Bible's teaching you and, and, and take instructions to those. And, you know, people just don't know how to do it because you're not going to learn that in the world. You're going to have to go to, you know, a church that's going to teach you the Bible, you know, and they're going to teach you how to live your life the best way as possible. And then you also have to follow those ways in order to be able to see some results as some success. Hey, I think that's really interesting. I wanted to get your feedback, Marcel. We can kind of dialogue for a second, but you know, I agree with you on the hip hop culture is pretty negative, but you kind of mixed that in with the nuclear family. Do you see, I mean, it seems like if you had a strong mom and father that were kind of just keeping you from that hip hop culture, you know, ultimately that would still, you know, that'd be adequate, right? I mean, do you think if you, if you have your parents basically telling you, you're not allowed to listen to that, or you have to stay away from that. I mean, ultimately the nuclear family almost seems to be the most important aspect. I don't know. What are your thoughts there? Yeah, I think, I think absolutely the nuclear family, the having a father and a mother, they're going to make all the difference because even if they do listen to hip hop, you know, if you just have a father and a mother that that's giving you rules and they're saying, Hey, you need to come in at this certain time. Hey, you can't go out. You're not going to be hanging out this time. Cause you know, just looking back at the friends that I had, you know, even though they hung out with us, you could tell they were more well behaved because they had a mom and a dad there. They weren't so, they weren't so out there to just do anything. You know, they wasn't trying to go steal and do anything crazy, even though they were part of our circle, you know, they have more rules. So just having a parent there, you can see the difference with them. And just looking back now, you can see most of them have graduated, just having a mom and a dad at the house. So I think the nuclear family would be the most important aspect of even overcoming the same generational curses. What about, you know, this is something that I haven't necessarily, you know, preached on or anything, but just something I've thought about. And it's kind of like on the lines of like black role models. And, you know, from just my perspective, I feel like, you know, if we're going to talk about genetic disposition, you know, they want to act like skin color has some kind of an impact. And I don't believe that. But I do think that there is some differences between black and white people. And from my perspective, it seems like it's all positive for black people, because they always seem to be like a little bit taller, a little bit bigger, a little bit stronger, a little bit more athletic, even in some cases, maybe even more talented. I would think that if you look at the athletics, you look at football, or you look at a lot of basketball, you look a lot of sports, I would say it's immediately obvious that there's more black people than proportionate to demographics, even for taps and music. And so, you know, I wonder if those talents are unfortunately, maybe even causing a problem, too, because when you are successful in football, or basketball, or the music or those type of things, and those things are carnal things, that it just kind of makes it easier to ignore, perhaps education or spiritual matters or other things, and maybe not emphasize those as much. And I wonder what your thoughts are as far as like role models, because it's hard to find just good, you know, godly black men role models these days. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's the biggest problem. So like I said, like, if you don't have a nuclear home, then you're growing up in the streets, and then your role models are the football players, your role models are the basketball players, your role models are, you know, the, you know, the rappers. So if you don't have, and at the end of the day, like, we all look up to somebody, we all want to be like somebody, we all, as men, want to be great. So in the black culture, or just any culture, you know, you look towards somebody that's going to kind of, that you want to kind of give your life towards. So in the black communities, it's more towards, you know, the backbone player. So, unfortunately, no, usually no black person, and I'm not saying because there are, but you know, some black people, they don't want to be a lawyer, they don't want to be a doctor, they don't want to be, you know, studying for eight years, they rather just go use their talents to get a quick scholarship, and maybe do two, three years in college and try to go to the pro, they make it rich, get rich as fast as possible. So I think that's, that's pretty much what they're trying to do, just get rich quick. But I mean, do you agree? I mean, it seems like to me that black people are just at least from a physical perspective, or more just in general, gifted than every other race, in my opinion, I mean, you know, it just seems to be obvious. Yeah, they're freak of nature, like just playing sports with them. They're just super talented, super fast, super gifted. You know, it's kind of like, what in the world? Like, and they just born like that. They don't really have to work hard. And it's like funny, because the people that I play sports with, they could easily all went to NFL, but the problem was, they just never apply themselves, or they could have went to NBA, but the Denver just apply themselves. And the people that I've had play sports with that are in NFL, they probably there wasn't as athletic. But they worked very, very hard. And that's why they're here today. Yeah, well, I mean, there is that expression, white men can't jump. So you know, it's probably pretty true for yourself. I'm good. I can. Well, I want to ask one more question. So like, I find it fascinating that, you know, you did kind of fit the stereotypical, you know, I'm growing up in a tougher life situation. I'm in the black community and all those things. But it seems like, at least for now, I mean, you're, you know, married, you have children, you're plugged in a church, you have a job. I mean, you're, you know, you're putting forth yourself as a really good example. And even there's other people in your church that are young black men that are successful, have families and living a lovely life. But for you, specifically, Brother Marcel, I want to know, like, what do you think helped you kind of get maybe out of going down a down, like a bad path that you've seen a lot of other people do put in your situation versus where you find yourself now? Like, what's, how did that happen exactly? For me, personally, I, I, I believe the way it really happened was just looking at the example that I had in my life, and you've seen them seeing the path that they went down, and knowing that if I make the same decisions that I'm going to end up in the same direction that they have ended up in. So, for instance, like my father, you know, he was, obviously, he him and my mom, he got deported. And obviously, he was, you know, committing sin that he was supposed to be committing. And, you know, he's married my mom, so he ended up getting deported. And I had I wasn't, I wasn't able to be raised with my father. So, you know, when I was younger, and I started to learn the Bible, and I started to grow, you know, I just had to come to realization, like, if I keep making the same mistakes that my father's making, and my friends and family, they're making, I'm going to end up in the same position. But what I said to myself exactly was, you know, I want to break the generational curse. And the only way I'm going to do it is by taking the right steps. And I knew that if I change my actions, that I could change my reaction. So I knew I could change the cycle. Because I don't I don't want my kids to end up having the same struggle that I have to end up with. I don't want my kids and the born on the same road that I went down, you know, and I know it'll be a lot easier for them to walk the Christian walk, if I could be able to train them up from young, you know, so number one, ultimately, just because of God, you know, in his word and just taking heat on to his word. I think the Bible says, and let me see if I can find it real fast. It says in James said, but also look at the perfect law of liberty and continue therein, he being not forgetful here, but I do have the work goodness, I'll be blessed indeed. So that was something that stuck out to me. And I was just, you know, wanting to just look into God's word. And I just said, You know, God, I'm going to try to do what you say. And I'm going to just see where you leave me. And, you know, looking back now, see the fruit of it with my kids. So the main step is just to for me personally, just to look at your look at your surroundings, see successful people in your life, even if they're not Christians, you know, any successful person, what is and what did they what did they do to be successful, you know, and you have to imitate that. And then you have to look at unsuccessful people in your life and see what they've done and the path they went down, and don't do what they've done in order to not go down that same path. So for me, I decided to just, you know, make a change and just try to, you know, make a difference for my kids future. Well, I think that's great. I, you know, I was hoping there might have been another catalyst that we could try to employ for other people. But really, I mean, it sounds like just applying God's Word. And, you know, letting the law of God that's written in your heart kind of just guide you. I made me think of a proverb in the Bible says in Proverbs 14, verse 12, there's a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. And so it seems like just based on your own testimony, just considering, you know, the destruction that a lot of people are going down of a bad path kind of motivated you to hearken to God's Word. And, you know, it's powerful. So I think that's great. Well, if there's a... That's the biggest thing. I just want to say real quick, if there's a lack of a good influence, this is the result. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, African Americans accounted for 52.5% of all homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008. Now, leftists, if you were to repeat this statistic to them, would just blindly call you a racist and smear you with their social justice warrior buzzwords. But the reason this occurs and the reason why I'm even repeating this and showing this statistic to you guys here on the podcast is not because of a racist agenda, quote unquote. It's because this is proof that when you have a culture that glorifies murder, that glorifies crime, stealing, etc., then it should come as no surprise that these young black youths who don't have families that they can lean on for guidance and counsel end up getting mixed up with the wrong people. And these are the statistics that come out consequently. Marcel, you were going to say something? Sorry, I didn't mean to make you lose it. Yeah, I have some other statistics if you want to go down the statistic row for a second. Yeah, let's look at some numbers because we could repeat some talking points over and over again. But the numbers, I think, add a layer to this that will really help people understand what we're trying to articulate. So Pastor Shelley, if you want, there it is. There's the shared screen. I'm gonna go ahead and put the ball in your court here. You can run with it. Looks like you have plenty of really interesting information there for the people to take a look at. Well, and I think something that is obviously on the mind of a lot of people right now is just police in general. Their so-called racist agenda. And so I'd kind of just try to look at the statistics that are actually out there just to see how true or untrue that may or may not be. Here's some statistics, basically from 2017 to 2020, of the number of people shot to death by police specifically. And it even categorizes it by race. And as you can see, the way this chart's laid out is a little difficult to maybe initially see all the data. But essentially, white people are the most targeted when it comes to total deaths. Now, obviously, white people are more proportionately have a higher statistic as far as the United States. But if you look at the most recent year, 2020, there's been 172 white people that have been shot by police, and there's been 88. Now, of course, most of these numbers are not just like a fault of the police officer. It's the fact that there was a shootout or there was something that caused it to escalate to where police just had to open their firearms. Some justified, some not. But it just total. And if you look at another chart, because obviously, we want to consider the percentage of the population. There's this chart that's going out and I've seen other people kind of quote this. It says black Americans are 2.5 times more likely than whites to be killed by police. So they're using this as evidence that racism exists and that police officers are just targeting black Americans and they're just trying to kill blacks over whites. And I've even heard liberals push forth this idea that Derek Chauvin, the police officer that killed George Floyd, so to speak, or through manslaughter or second degree, however you want to look at that, essentially that he just wanted to kill black people that day or something or he just wanted to go get him one or something. Well, they try to use this statistic. So I went ahead and looked at some more information to see. Let's consider some other information to see if 2.5 times more likely for them to be shot by police could be justified, not just by racism. Well, I looked at the homicide rates in the United States by race as well. And if you look at the percentage of people that are going to die because of a homicide, you see that black people are disproportionately going to die by result of homicide. Now, this is not just from cops. This is from all situations. And in fact, they're 20% of the homicides are at least is showing here deaths per thousand, saying 20 out of 100,000 in 2015. And then in 2016, 22 out of 100,000. Whereas from whites, they show anywhere from about 4.5 to five point or this is Hispanics. I'm sorry. Let's see. It has the white listed here. I believe it was 2.2. Yeah, right here. Sorry. 2.6 to 2.9. Now, if you compare that to the 20 or the 22, it's eight times more likely that someone that is black will just die from homicide in general. I looked at another statistic. And this also is not just 2015, it is before. You also see the exact same statistics. So it's been pretty consistent that black people die at about a rate of 20 per 100,000 for the last 20 years, basically. And that white people have been kind of down here around two, three, 4%. Now, I looked at the FBI statistics and this is the number of arrests by race. And I looked at it per, you know, murder arrests per race and blacks were 5,025 in the year 2017 and 4,188 in the whites. Now, if you actually calculate the statistics there, that means that black people were over four times more likely to be arrested for a murder, you know, whatever the case is. So to say that two and a half times more likely to get shot by cops, well, they're being arrested, you know, four times more like. They're four times more likely to be arrested for murder specifically, which is a violent crime. Usually police officers might have their gun pulled whenever they're arresting someone for murder. Also, if you look at this statistic, this is expanded list. This is not the arrest, but this is rather the offender. So if you look at the actual offenders, convicted felons for homicide, and it shows it's kind of a weird matrix, but it shows white people as far as the victim. And then it shows the offender and it kind of has this interesting matrix here. But if you take the total number of basically offenders against white people, it's pretty much mostly white people killing white people. And then you look at the offender is black people killing black people. So, you know, it seems like people are racist against their own kind of anything based on those statistics. But if you take the totals again, and I calculate it's about 3.8 times more likely that a black person would be the offender when it comes to homicide than a white person. So if you say that there's four times more likely to be arrested, they're 3.8 times more likely to be convicted of homicide, then this chart now all of a sudden that says that they're 2.5 times more likely to be killed by the police officers actually seems a little bit low. I mean, you would assume if police officers are going out and arresting anybody for murder charges or things related to that, that that would be directly proportional to the number of times they ended up having to shoot the suspect or whatever. And so, you know, I actually believe, you know, I'm probably going to get flack over this, but I believe that cops are probably less likely to shoot a black person than a white person, given the exact same circumstances, because there's all this angst, and there's all this pressure that they believe there's a supposed racism, where I think police officers are delaying, you know, taking action, they're afraid to take action. And a lot of cases, because they're going to get crucified. Most police officers now have a body cam that's, you know, basically tracking them, all their, everything that they're doing. And, you know, if I were a police officer, which I'm not, but if I was a police officer, as a white police officer, I would be more timid to arrest a black person, I'd be more intimidated to try and shoot them for fear of, you know, getting caught by the media and them trying to spin it or make it look like a bad situation. And, you know, frankly speaking, like I mentioned earlier, I think that black people in general are just stronger, more athletic, more physically intimidating. So it would probably escalate to a more lethal type situation in most cases, too. So, you know, you have to factor that in, of the fact that if someone's twice my size and, you know, going to throw me around like a rag doll, I'm more likely to pull out a weapon or try to, you know, use maybe excessive force just because, you know, I'd be intimidated or whatever the situation is. And so I think there's a lot of factors that go into these statistics and to just wholesale believe that the cops out there are just hunting down black men because they're black, I believe is a narrative that's just completely dismantled when you look at the statistics that are out there. Now, do I believe that there's white police officers that are racist? Absolutely. Do I believe that there's black officers that are racist? Yes. I believe there's lots of racists probably, you know, in all categories throughout this country. But I do not believe that it's wide scale. I do believe because of what Marcel said, you know, the culture issue and the hip hop lifestyle and, you know, a lot of these neighborhoods where there's not really a father figure and there's these certain gangs that police officers may, you know, judge a young black man, you know, more than they would a young white man. So I believe that that definitely exists. And I believe that that probably is the example. But, you know, it's going to be based on statistics, experiences and things that they've seen. If I've arrested proportionately more black people than white people, that's going to cause me to have a prejudice against black people. I think that that should just be a natural occurrence, whether that's right or wrong. That's just reality. If I just happen to see every single person I'm arresting as redheaded, it's going to probably cause me to think like redheads have like a problem or something, you know, I don't know what's going on. Or if you're arresting more people in a particular neighborhood or to particular zip code or a precinct or, you know, any of those factors are going to affect people's decisions. They're going to affect their thoughts. And, you know, obviously there's a lot of problems here. I don't think that there's just a one fits all answer. But what frustrates me is the media and, you know, these Black Lives Matter protests and these other things, they don't provide any solutions. They don't really stick to any facts. And, you know, it's frustrating to try to reason with the unreasonable. And really, we just need to go out and preach the gospel because that's the only thing that's going to save these people. But I'd like to get some commentary from you guys on what you think about the statistics I showed, if you agree or disagree. Let me just jump in real quick, then we'll go to Marcel, because I actually want to substantiate the point you made. This is something I looked up. It's a peer-reviewed article, study rather, Officer Characteristics and Racial Disparities in Fatal Officer Involved Shootings. And this was specifically looking at bias. Is it true that police officers are biased against Black people? Are they biased against Black people in the sense that they're more likely to shoot them simply because they're Black and the police officer in question is racist? Well, they looked at this, and I'm not going to go through the entire thing for sake of time, but right here, significance, it says there's a widespread concern about racial disparities and fatal officer-involved shootings, that these disparities reflect discrimination by white officers. And it says right here, we find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and white officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-white officers. Instead, race-specific crime strongly predicts civilian race. This is another area of the same study that came to the same conclusion. It says we do not find evidence for anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity in police use of force across all shootings, and if anything, found anti-white disparities when controlling for race-specific crime. Now, CNN and MSNBC have been beating into the minds of most of the population over the last decade-plus, probably longer than that, that police officers are unfairly targeting the African American community because they are racist. Now, I do believe racism does exist amongst the law enforcement community anecdotally, but obviously once you measure the data, as this study did, and some of the statistics that were cited there from Pastor Shelley, it seems like the raw numbers and the data don't match up with the narrative being promulgated by the fake news media. That's because what they engage in is something called narrative-driven news, where first they come up with a narrative that they think will help advance their divide-and-conquer agenda, and then they promote that irregardless of what the facts actually state. And I think we demonstrated that even with some of the just the small examples of statistics and data that we showed you on this podcast. Marcel, let's get your commentary on this. We crunched some numbers, now what's your opinion? Feel free to agree or disagree. No, I mean that that was really good of the statistics because it showed that cops were two and a half times more likely to kill a black person, but really if you see the black on black crime, it just blows it out of the water. I mean, they're killing each other left and right like there's no tomorrow, but there's a big problem with when the cop kills a white person. So that's why I think the whole protest is stupid because at the end of the day, you know, if you're still tired of a white person killing a black person, why don't all black people stand up together, you know, and just make sure you're not killing each other first. You know, the Bible talks about if a kingdom be divided, you know, how can it stand, you know, how are you going to go and fight somebody, but you're divided. So that's why, you know, they have no leg to stand on because at the end of the day, they're all killing each other. And like you stated earlier with the with abortion, the 80 percent likely to be, you know, born out of wedlock and they have no father. There's so much stuff that they need to work on first before, you know, they're worried about somebody else. But it's the fake news media that's kind of just trying to do divide and conquer because they keep showing and showing and showing the same exact thing that the white person killing the black person. Naturally, you're going to see that. But you know what? I'm tired of these white people. But, you know, me growing up, you know, I went to public school and stuff like that. You know, school was filled with whites, blacks, everybody. Nobody ever looks at nobody because of the color that everybody's hanging out. You know, church would go to everybody's hanging out. There's no big division because of it. But the division comes because of the media. Now, obviously, I do understand that there's going to be racism no matter what. So this protest is never going to stop racism. You can't change somebody's heart, you know. But obviously the heart is desperately wicked. So if somebody has a racism problem, if they don't like a black person or white person because of their skin color, then that's a heart issue there, you know, because you're both my skin, you're both Pastor Shelley's skin, Brother Ben's skin, you know, we all have bones, you know. It's going to be the same thing, like you said earlier, we're all made of one blood. So the statistics, if you really just look at the statistics, you're going to see that it's not, you know, white people killing black people. That is the main problem that they're having is the problem. The main problem they're having is the black people killing the black people. You know, at the end of the day, you know, my wife's half black and my in-laws are all black. So obviously, you know, I've been through all that stuff. So that's the main problem. At the end of the day, you know, they want to stand strong. Like Pastor Shelley said, you know, what they need to do is, number one, go to a good independent fundamental Baptist church, learn how to preach the gospel and get people saved from hell, because everybody's so focused on a choral fight that it doesn't even matter when people are actually going to hell. And that's the real fight that we need to be fighting. That's the real thing we need to be focused on. The saint has everybody just deceived and distracted and just fighting a fight that has no point in life. Well, it just frustrates me because I just feel like black people are really being targeted by a lot of wicked agendas and they're just being lied to from all affronts. And it's just frustrating to see them hurting. And, you know, I think there is a problem. Like, I'm not going to say that there isn't a problem or that they aren't being disparaged against or there isn't issues. But I think it really just stems from lies. I think, you know, if they're educated, if people cared about them to teach them the Word of God, to try and love them with truth and the knowledge of God that, you know, you really could see change for black people. And I think the biggest race is going to the media and the Democrats who are just using these people and just trying to lie and trying to enslave them with lies, basically, for their agenda. And it makes me sick. It makes me really frustrated. You know, I love going out soul hunting and talking to black people because you pretty much never run into anybody that's an atheist. I find that to be a white problem. And they pretty much all love the King James Bible, which, you know, the King James Bible is the Word of God without air in English. And, you know, you rarely find black people that don't like the King James Bible. And so they got a lot of good things going for them. You know, they just they need to have someone come and love them and teach them the truth. And, you know, throw the TV out the window and, you know, get a King James Bible, start reading that thing. Yeah, I mean, they're definitely targeted. Obviously, Satan, he's the one that's behind it. We don't know why, you know, the world is trying to target them because at the end of the day, we're all one flesh. But, you know, I don't agree with the protest, but I understand why so many people are protesting and they're trying to do it because of the fact that they're trying to be involved in something in life. If you're not working towards something, if you're not involved in anything, you really feel like you're just wasting your life. Like before I started soul winning and serving the Lord, like I really had no direction in my life. Like I didn't know what I want to do. But now that I'm serving God, like I have a direction. I know where I want to go, what I want to do. You know, I have milestones. So for black people, like they believe that this is the next milestone in the black history where they feel like they're going to bring equality to the black people and they're not going to be, you know, killed so much by the white people. They're not going to be oppressed and they're going to, it's going to be equality. It's going to be fair game. Even though right now I feel like black people have just as much opportunity as anybody else. You know, anybody can do anything in America. You know, if you want to be the president, you could try to be a president. You want to be a lawyer, doctor, an athlete, whatever you want to do, you can do it. But this right here is just a way for every black person to be involved in something. What do you guys think about that? Oh, I think that's great. Oh, excellent point. Excellent point. The thing is it's human nature to want to be a part of a movement, to be fighting for something and for them it's a carnal fight. The Bible says we wrestle not against flesh and blood though because they're not saved and they don't know about the things of God. They're going and they're fighting for their flesh. They're going and fighting for quote black causes and a lot of the time they're being deceived by the very people. If I could just take a page out of Pastor Shelley's textbook, he's already kicked the Democrat dog on this podcast a few times and that's a dog that I will have no issues kicking myself over and over and over again because it never gets old. But these people are getting beguiled, a lot of them, by the same politicians who prostitute themselves to wicked New World Order shadow government. But they're getting beguiled by these same politicians, these same crooked and corrupt politicians who pretend to love them and instead of actually doing something for their communities, like for example promoting godliness and the family, they give them more welfare checks and they give them more Planned Parenthood and abortion and they give them more George Soros run Black Lives Matter which promotes a bunch of faggotry. That's the total opposite of what these communities need and like I said earlier, don't sit there like a hypocrite and put a black square on your social media account and virtue signal all your trendy liberal friends and pretend like you care about black lives. If you're not addressing any of the issues that we've talked about on this podcast, you are nothing more than a fake. You're someone who's just trying to be seen of men when you sit there on your social media, you put the trendy black screen on Facebook and Instagram so people think that you're so virtuous and kind and non-racist when in reality you're sitting on your rear end and accomplishing nothing for these people. Makes me sick. You know what? Check this out right here. Marriage reduces poverty for whites, blacks, and Hispanics. From heritage.org. I believe it's the Heritage Foundation in fact who put this out. But if you really cared about black people, if you really cared about black communities, why aren't you out there at an independent fundamental baptist church going out and soul winning and getting them saved and compelling them to come to church so they can learn what the Bible says about serving the Lord Jesus Christ and what the Bible says about marriage and the family and living a fulfilling life and earning rewards in heaven and getting their life on track and being hard working and providing for their families. I get riled up about this because I'm sick of these phony little effeminate keyboard warriors who think that they're making a difference by whining and complaining about political correctness. They're doing nothing and promoting democratic party policies that are actually hurting and exacerbating the problems that black communities are faced with. I don't know what to say, but I'm in after that. I mean, that was pretty intense, but go ahead, Marcel. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, at the end of the day, you know, unfortunately they're deceived. They don't, they don't know what's the truth. They don't know what's going on. So, you know, the only ones that are truly fighting for black lives are the independent fundamental baptist churches that are going soul winning and not only black lives, but white lives, Asian lives, Hispanic lives. You know, we want all lives. The Bible said that Jesus Christ came out to call the righteous to repentance, but the sinners. And that's what we're trying to do. And we're trying to just save as many souls as we can because, you know, we're trying to partake in that spiritual fight. You know, we're not trying to take part of that carnal fight. So, you know, we're the ones that really care about your lives, you know, and we're going out soul winning and try to do what we can to make that difference. Yeah, I think more now than ever, we need some, you know, young black men to be a great role model. I mean, you know, I think that if we could get more young black men to basically show the way and say, you know what, if you follow God's commandments and you, you know, serve him and you try to live a clean life, you can succeed and you can prosper and you can be blessed and you don't have to have the same fate as a lot of different people. And, you know, I just hope that, you know, young black men will be encouraged by the truth and that they'll, you know, kind of follow the same path you did, brother Marcel, by saying, you know, I don't want to end up like that instead of just always blaming someone else, you know, like, let's take George Floyd specifically, George Floyd. And I'm going to pull up the, uh, another screenshot real quick, but, um, you know, obviously I don't agree with the way in which he was, uh, lost his life. I think it should have been done differently, but this is a new hero of black people and your hero, George Floyd was arrested in 2007. I believe that was the date of the offense, at least. And he was, uh, judged here, according to Harris County in 2009. And they found him guilty of first degree felony where he did a home invasion. Uh, it says aggravated robbery with deadly weapon, essentially putting a loaded weapon up to a pregnant lady's belly while they robbed her. And, you know, obviously George Floyd is also on drugs. He, when he was arrested and lost his life, he was using counterfeit money and he was even, uh, resisting arrest at the time. And, you know, obviously if you put yourself in bad situations, bad things can happen that does not justify Derek Chauvin, you know, a Chauvin or whatever, you know, putting his knee on that guy's neck, police brutality exists, and it needs to be dealt with. But at the end of the day, in this case, you know, it's not that George Floyd was just, you know, walking down the street, reading the King James Bible and white police officers just started surrounding him and just harassing him and calling them, you know, bad names and then just kill them. I mean, this guy's, you know, has a long rap sheet. He's not a hero by any stretch of the imagination. He's not a good person. He didn't live a clean life. He wasn't, uh, minding his own business. He was doing things that were wrong. And you know what is the judgment of God on his life, uh, for him to end up the way he did. And I'm not justifying what Derek Chauvin did, but at the end of the day, you know, if you live a sinful and wicked life, God will, you know, punish you. God will judge you severely. And I believe that he was punished by God. And, you know, black people should be saying, you know what, it's not right how he died, but you know, he shouldn't have been making those decisions. And if you make those decisions, you could turn out like him instead of blaming the police officer and blaming all these other people. You know, at the end of the day, if I put myself in a dangerous situation, uh, I ought not just blame everybody else. I ought to take personal responsibility and say, you know what? I shouldn't put myself in that situation. You know, I shouldn't go and hang out with those people. I shouldn't, you know, stand in the middle of a highway and hope that cars don't hit me. You know, you're just asking for trouble to blame a car for hitting you when you stand in the middle of the highway, you know, that's just nonsense. And if you're going to, uh, resist arrest against police officers, and you're going to, you know, be on drugs and you're going to be a violent criminal, you know, you're just basically begging for something bad to happen. In my opinion, that does not mean that police should not be restrained from using excessive force. I think that Derek Chauvin should be held severely accountable for his actions. But, you know, if you poke the bear, he's going to bite you. And, you know, that's why you're not, if a cop comes up to you, I mean, cops are dangerous. Okay. I'm not going to advocate, you know, that the cops are all good guys, because frankly speaking, when I'm around a police officer, I try to be on my best behavior just because I don't want anything bad to happen to me either. You know, I'm not going to sit here and just reach my pocket real quick or, you know, just start kind of pushing around and, you know, reaching for their gun or something, you know, they don't care that I'm white. They'll shoot me just as fast as the next guy, you know? And if I'm a big, big guy resisting arrest, you know, it's very likely they might hurt people. Uh, you know, our, our, my sending pastor, pastor Steven Anderson, uh, he refused to ask a question at a checkpoint in Arizona and they literally broke his window and shot him with tasers and then pulled them out of his car and then was shoving his face in the glass on the ground. You know, it's obvious police brutality, you know, he wasn't, he didn't have a weapon. He was not violent, you know, and he's white, you know, they, they seemed to beat up on him just as good as a lot of other people. Um, so, you know, from my perspective, people need to stop blaming everyone else and taking personal responsibility. And, you know, even when someone's 90% at fault and you're 10%, you still need to take ownership for your 10% or whatever, you know, you can contribute to. Hey man, yeah, I agree with that. Let me, let me ask you this, pastor Shelley. Now, obviously it's wrong, obviously to, to commit robbery or to sell drugs and stuff like that. But I think a big problem is let's say these people do commit a crime and then they up in jail, they get a felony. Now let's say this person repents, he wants to change his life. What do you think about the judicial system where once they get one felony, they can no longer get any governmental job. They can't get any job or like, they can't get a good paying job where they can actually make a good, decent living for themselves. And they're kind of just stuck. So like, like people I've known, you know, they've done wrong and they want to get their lives right, but they can't get a good job to pay for their family. So they got to continue selling drugs and do things like that. So, you know, what do you think about the justice system? You thinking that it's fair that they can't get a job after that or what? Well, I'm not going to sit here and exonerate the US legal system or the judicial system because it's not based on God's laws. However, you know, I think that that sword slices two ways because some people are arrested as a child predator and a child pervert and they get nine months in jail and, you know, they should be executed. There's some people that are out on parole and they are murderers. According to the Bible, they should be executed. There's people that get out for rape. They should be executed. So if you're asking me, do I, should I feel bad for these people? You know, honestly, no. Now, I think there is some people that may have been convicted of a felony. Like, let's say, I think it's a felony to own an automatic rifle, which is actually a second amendment right. So you could go to jail, get a felony for owning. You didn't even do anything with it. You just owned it. You know, you just bought it or whatever you found it or you made it or got on the black market or whatever. But if you're in possession of an automatic weapon, you could be charged with a felony charge, depending on what state and, you know, circumstances perhaps. But, you know, that person now basically having their life, you know, severely altered. No, I don't think that that's necessarily equitable. But that, I think it's a false paradigm to say, well, because I can't get a high paying job, I now have to sell drugs. You know, that's kind of like a bad parallel or a bad analogy. The Bible says, you know, let us do evil that good may come, God forbid. And, you know, if all I can do is get a mediocre job, then I just do that and humbly serve the Lord. Because the Bible says he's never seen the righteous forsaken, nor is seed begging bread. You actually see a lot of people in really bad circumstances come out of that. In the Bible, Joseph was thrown in prison, and he didn't even do anything wrong. It didn't seem like he was going to get out, but God ended up taking him out and blessing him. And, you know, I've heard, you know, this is anecdotal, but I've heard of people that actually have a little bit of a soft spot or compassion for people that do want to change their life, and they do want to get things right, and they're willing to hire felons. There are certain programs, there are some employers that will help them and will do good. And, you know, even with a mediocre job, you can still have a home, you can still, I believe, feed your family. And, you know, perhaps you have to take care of some, some government, you know, subsidies or take care of some of their, you know, take advantage of some of their programs. But if you're plugged into a church, you know, really, the initial wherefore program was the church, you know, you're plugged in church, you're serving God, you're working hard, you're doing that, which is right. You know, if you fall on hard times, you could have your church help you, and your church could bless you and take care of you. So, you know, I don't, I don't think that drugs is ever the answer. I think that that's an excuse. And I think that's something that they definitely say all the time, like, Oh, I can't get a job now because I got my parole or this and this and that. So they try to find the easy way out instead of obviously, you know, working a job to make an honest living and just, you know, let God be their source of income. Now, that guy was George Floyd, that invade was like home invasion, you said it was or what was that? It was an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. It was, essentially, according to the story, somebody knocked on the door pretending to be like a cable person or a serviceman, and the young woman cracked the door, and they basically forced entry, they pushed the door in on her. George Floyd is the one that did that held a gun to this pregnant lady's belly, and basically just held her at gunpoint while four other, I think it was like three or four other men came and just stole, you know, goods and different things from her house. But he then eventually was arrested and found guilty of that crime. Yes, technically speaking, you should have been dead a long time ago in my book. I mean, well, look, let me play devil's. I'm gonna play devil's advocate here for a moment, because you could look at that situation and you could say he did his time, that was, I think it was in 2009, he correct me if I'm wrong, Pastor Shelley, but it was a while ago, he did his time, he got out, and I believe there was a video he put out where he was saying that he's changed his life, although he really hasn't changed too much since he was on meth when they arrested him, so he still had a drug issue, but he wasn't using counterfeit money. Yeah, but he wasn't a violent criminal, so you could say, I guess he reformed in that way, and you could make the argument that he did his time, it's over, he's a free man now, he's not in prison, you know, he paid the punishment for what he did there in 2009 with the home invasion, and therefore didn't deserve to be put to death by that police officer, which I understand you were not by any means exonerating the police brutality that took place. No, no, I'm saying back in 2009 when that happened. Well, I don't think that anybody, I mean, I've never heard of anybody, I'm sure there's some loser out there, but nobody agrees that, or nobody believes that Derek Chauvin should have just danced on this guy's neck with his knee and killed him, you know, but at the end of the day, what I was trying to say is that when you live a wicked life, God could punish you, take your life for any reason, and he obviously already showed to be someone who is not, you know, just an upstanding citizen. Now, I do believe, you know, the Bible does teach that if you're caught stealing in the daytime, that you're not supposed to be killed for that, and the Bible also teaches that if you're caught stealing, that you're just supposed to pay money back. It depends on the exact item in which it's stolen, and if it's recoverable, if that's two, four, five times, but if you are caught stealing and you pay back that fine, it's supposed to be forgiven for God. So, you know, I don't really agree with the rap sheet mentality of not letting people to live down their sins or not living down their problems and accusations, but, you know, felony is such a broad term, you know, when it comes, it could be encapsulating a lot of different scenarios, right? So if Derek Chauvin, I'm not so Derek Chauvin, if George Floyd did his time, which obviously our judicial system is a little bit different, but let's say he did his time, he should not be held accountable from a humanistic perspective after that. He should be exonerated. He should be able to live that down. Now, he does have to account for his current problems, his current crimes, his current sins, and, you know, he should have been arrested. He should have been dealt with. But again, if you've been, you know, you and me are pretty much average sized white guys. If you're arresting a large black man, I mean, because George Floyd was very tall, very strong. Okay. And he's on drugs. He's been doing something, you know, he's already been caught in a crime and he's resisting arrest. You know, there's going to be a propensity for you to kind of maybe over exaggerate. I don't believe he was. Was he resisting arrest, though? I don't think he was. Well, there is video footage of the white officer trying to put him into the police vehicle and you can just tell he's not doing it. Like, you can tell he's just kind of like he's just like catching himself on the side. He won't go down. And so that's why eventually they throw him on the ground. Okay. And then, you know, obviously at that point, he goes overboard and tries to pin him down in a very uncomfortable way. And, you know, again, I'm not trying to make any excuses here. I get what you're saying. I mean, a lot of people that have been arrested will just say anything to try and get a second chance. Like, they'll just say, oh, I can't breathe or I can't feel my arm. We move. And then as soon as you kind of like let up, then they'll fight you again. And, you know, so sometimes police officers, you know, it's it's kind of a fight or flight mentality. And so, you know, if you got a if you got a large person pinned down already, you know, there might be a reason to want to try and keep them pinned down or. And again, I'm playing devil's advocate here, too, because I'm not trying to justify what I mean. I mean, again, if you're in if you're in a glorified wrestling match with somebody who outsizes you and could physically hurt you very badly, then that does open up the door for you potentially as the smaller man to use over the top force in that situation, which obviously is what happened to this police officer. But I also think the technique of knee on the neck is so inhumane and shouldn't be used by the police regardless. And I don't see any reason why that should have occurred to begin with. Yeah, there should be better technique. It seemed like there was another police officer there that could have possibly been assisting instead of just kind of standing there and watching what was happening. And, you know, but again, obviously in any if you're wrestling with another person and someone's videotaping it and taking snippets out, you can you can probably make it look bad at certain segments. Well, let me just make this quick point here. And this is sort of taking steering the vehicle in a different direction here, kind of jerk in the wheel of the car for a sec, but they're broadcasting George Floyd's funeral all over television. And you had brought up his previous encounters with the law. And I think it is important to mention this particular point. Yes, we don't believe what happened to him was justified. He shouldn't have died. The police officer who was guilty of that did engage in a very clear case of police brutality. I think we've made that abundantly clear on this podcast. No one is going to be confused about our stance on the death of George Floyd. But at the same time, I'm sick of this person being and look, I'm going to get heat for this, but frankly, I don't even care. And, you know, you guys can disagree if you want. But I'm sick of this guy being lifted up as like a messiah right now. You know, I worship the Lord Jesus Christ. He died for me on the cross to save me from my sins, not George Floyd. And, you know, he he was buried and rose again. George Floyd died and I don't think he was saved. He went to hell. So, look, my point is this. I'm tired of this guy basically being worshipped all over the media as this wonderful, holy, righteous person when he was far from it. Should he have been killed by the police officer? No, but that doesn't mean that we then discount who he really was. And it doesn't mean that we now lift him up as this martyr that we're all obligated to get down on our knees. Literally, that's what white people are doing, getting down on their knees, these medally enslaved SJWs getting on their knees and basically trying to pay reparations to blacks because they believe they're complicit in George Floyd's death as if he has become this messiah figure, as if he's become this weird sort of false god almost that people are practically worshipping. Count me out of that. Well, the Bible does say the wicked walk on every side when the vilest men are exalted. And, man, that just kind of seems to run through this last few weeks. So, yeah, and people get upset at that. Again, it's not justifying what he did, but I'm not going to worship. Every time you look online on YouTube, you search the news. It's like, hey, look, footage of his funeral and look at all his family members and look at all these people talking about how great he is. People who've never met the guy are out holding signs about how amazing he was. It's getting to the point where I'm just like, enough is enough already. With the worship of a meth head, I'm tired of it. Sorry, but it's just, you know, people are going to be really pissed off that I said that. What do you think, brother Marcel? What are your thoughts here? No, I mean, I agree 100%. I mean, this guy obviously has a clear rap sheet. I mean, I didn't even know that fact that he did a home invasion and put a gun to a stomach. It just makes my stomach turn. It's just disgusting. It's horrible. I mean, if I was there as a husband, I don't know. Anyway, this is the person that they're glorifying. Yeah, kill him on the spot. But, and it's any man, not just him, to any person that breaks into your house and is trying to assault your pregnant wife with anybody else. Like, how can you do something like that? And that's the person that they're glorifying. Kind of reminds me of Hollywood. You know, Hollywood always glorified the most wicked person. So I'm not surprised by it because that's what the world does. They glorify the wicked people, but the righteous people, they want to, you know, trample them on the foot. All right, Pastor Shelley, are there any other topics you wanted to introduce before I wrap it up? I feel like we've triggered enough people, probably. But, you know, I mean, and obviously, you know, I'm not allowed to speak on this issue because I'm not black. But, you know, even having Brother Marcel on here, he's probably, you know, going to get flack for that. He's not black enough or he, you know, is brainwashed or something too. And, you know, basically, if you just disagree with dialogue, you're just a bad person. And, you know, the only people that ever bow in the Bible, you know, to another man, like to a Christian, they, in the book of Revelation, the only time I can even think of this is someone bowing to a Christian is he immediately picks him back up and he's like, hey, I'm your fellow brother and, you know, worship God. And I have to admit, like I saw this little snippet of Steven Crowder. And he said, the only person I bow before is Jesus. And he said, if you bow, you're a coward. I like that. And, you know, I agree with that sentiment. I mean, who are you supposed to bow to? You know, I like Mordecai. He didn't bow to Haman, that wicked Haman. And, you know, this bowing is sickening. It's gross. Our country is just literally just disgusting right now. And there's there's just there's like no good options right now. As far as like a carnal perspective, it just seems like total chaos and anarchy. And I feel like the devil has America where he wants it. I mean, it just seems like we're not that far from a Sodom and Gomorrah where the wicked are allowed to just go out and do whatever they want. And I mean, if they defund police and the cities of America, you know, it's going to be an all out just anarchy brawl. I mean, you better have a gun. The Bible did say in the last days of the perilous times. And then if they take out the officers of the court, which, you know, some people say police aren't biblical. And, you know, let me say this. Obviously, if we live in the time of the Bible with the judges, you know, it seemed like everybody was kind of responsible. But ultimately, they also had a different law system. They had different laws and a different criminal system. Based on our current criminal system, you know, I don't see how you can enforce the law without police officers. And Jesus Christ even said in Matthew, when he was preaching, he talked about, you know, agreeing with your adversary quickly, walls are in the way with them, unless he delivered to the judge and they delivered to the officer. And then the officer cast you into prison. Well, you know, how can he talk about officers throwing you into prison? Why wouldn't Jesus be like he delivered to the judge and police are un-biblical, by the way. But if he throws you in, like, obviously, the powers that be are ordained of God. So, you know, and really, if you study the New Testament, the Roman soldiers are pretty much identical to police officers. And, you know, they really don't care about anything religious. They just kind of are the mindless goons that just do whatever. And Jesus Christ just left them alone. You know, he didn't necessarily agree with them from an ideology perspective. But, you know, obviously, God's allowing these things to exist. And how can you have any kind of order if you have no one to enforce the law? And if the citizens won't do it, you know, at some point, you got to have an officer. Who's the officer? Who's going to be the person that casts someone into prison? Or who's going to be the person to execute God's wrath or God's judgment? And when you don't live in the judge's system, then I believe that the government that you do live under is ordained of God. So you need to submit to that. And I honestly, I do believe that police officers are a little out of control sometimes, and they do a lot of bad things. But I try to be respectful. And, you know, frankly, they have a really hard job. You know, I would not want to be a police officer. I think it's got to be a really difficult position to be put in right now. And they have to enforce a lot of really bad policies. And, you know, I think that they're just being crucified right now. And it's not fair because they're American citizens, too. They're black, white, Asian, Hispanic, just like all the rest of us. Why do we have to just, I mean, we talk about racism so much. What about, you know, police or something? You know, we're just we're all offended at one particular occupation when, in fact, they're probably keeping our society together. The Bible says that rulers are not a terror to good works. And, you know, I'm sure there's been some innocent people held off to jail, but the vast majority of encounters with police officers are due to criminal activity. You know, I don't see a lot of innocent Bible-even Christians just being hauled off to the to the pokey, you know, for serving God. And it can happen and it will happen and there's going to be persecution. But, you know, I just I kind of feel like we're in complete disarray and that we shouldn't just sit here and crucify cops with the rest of the liberal agenda. Yeah, I definitely don't crucify all cops. I mean, when I was in Pop Warner, when I was real young, you know, this white cop and, you know, a bunch of black kids and, you know, we were like in eighth grade and he took us, you know, to football games. He took us to NFL games. I mean, he he's done so much for us. He made his life down for us. So I definitely don't believe all cops are racist. And, you know, I definitely think cops should should be here. I mean, if somebody breaks in your house or something's going wrong, the first person calling is the police. You know what I mean? So if they were to get rid of the cops, you know, the Bible does say to sell your garment by a sword to get a sword. Well, our case would be a gun. So we'll definitely have to have a couple of guns to make sure we're safe. That's right. All right. Well, Pastor Shelley, anything you wanted to plug before we go ahead and close this out here? Thanks for coming on and doing this live stream. I know that we've talked about this a little at church and obviously you preached the sermon. So it's been on our minds. There's a lot going on here in 2020. And who knows, maybe the next time we do a live stream, the murder hornets will come back or there'll be North Korea fires a nuclear weapon or there'll be America declares war on Iran. Who knows? Yeah, I think the sky's the limit on that one. But yeah, I just plug, you know, Brother Marcel, if you're a young black man out there, you know, look to Brother Marcel as an example. That's right. You know, he's plugged into his church. He goes there three times a week. He's a soul winner. He's preached a lot of sermons recently. I bet if you just type in YouTube, you know, Brother Marcel Baptist preaching or something or, you know, Revival Baptist Church or Steadfast Baptist Church with Brother Marcel and Tag, you'll probably find some sermons of his. And, you know, he's a real zealous young man for the Lord. He has a great family. And, you know, we got to lift up some of these good examples. Also, you know, Brother Theo, who's there at Jacksonville, he's a great example for young black men, someone who, you know, has a good job and raised a good family. I mean, his kids are some of the best kids I've ever been around. Very polite, very well behaved. And, you know, I don't hate black people. I love black people. And, you know, if you really, you know, want to get triggered, go listen to my black church's sermon. But, you know, do you hate me because I tell you the truth? You know, at the end of the day, truth is if someone tells you the truth, they love you. Someone that lies to you is someone that hates you. Amen. Marcel, you got put over there. Yeah, there's plenty of good examples out there of all races. And at the end of the day, you know, you just need to find a man of God and just follow him as he follows Christ and get behind a good pastor that has a deal for the Lord and wants to do great work for God. You know, buy out into his vision and try to get behind him, support him and just do what you can to serve the Lord. And, you know, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what race you are. You can do great things for God. It is up to you to decide to want to take that step. Take that step of faith where you want to serve God and just and don't just serve God halfheartedly. You know, just decide to be all in or all out, you know? So, you know, I decided to be all in, you know, Brother Theo decided to be all in. Brother Owen decided to be all in. And you can see the results in not only us, but, you know, everybody we associate ourselves with. So, you know, the fruit is there. So, if you just come to a like-minded church, you know, that Baptist church, a revival Baptist church in Jacksonville, you know, you're going to see the fruit of somebody who's trying to serve the Lord. That's right. Good podcast tonight, gentlemen. Appreciate you coming on. You got a perspective from a white guy. I guess, what do you have? Are you half black, Marcel? I don't even know what your race is. You look black. Yeah, I'm Hispanic. I'm full Hispanic. Okay, you look black. So, it's the same thing. And then... I grew up in the ghetto. So, I guess I'm one of them, they always say. Yeah, you know, then the Arab. So, we have Pastor Shelley has the most privilege points out of all of us. So, there you go, Pastor. You win. I do feel privileged. So, I have a great wife and a great family and a great church I get to go to. All right. And I'm saved. So, there you go. Well, let's close it out. Thanks for tuning in everybody in the chat room. We apologize for going on late, but that was because of technical difficulties on my end. I want to end with this just real quick message to those of you out there. Please do not get sucked in to this race war agenda. The title of the podcast tonight was The Manufactured Race War. It is being manufactured for sure by the fake corporate controlled mainstream media. They want you to be obsessed with skin color. They want you to be obsessed with racial issues. They want you to think that white people are trying to hold everyone down, that they're the oppressors and that you need to go out there, grab a sign and protest and riot and take a stand for this issue, this carnal warfare. But the Bible says that we've been called into a spiritual warfare. It says that we wrestle not against flesh and blood. And don't fall into this victimhood mentality as well. You know, if you're especially if you're a Christian, because the Bible says for whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world. And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, it says, but thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. If you're saved, then you've gotten the victory and it's through Christ. And you have no excuses here, okay? There is no reason for you whatsoever to be parroting these left-wing George Soros, Black Lives Matter, fake news, talking points about how you're a victim and bathing yourself in that loser mentality. If you believe the Bible, if you're a Christian today, stay away from all that garbage. And if you're not a Christian, get saved. Type in the Bible Way to Heaven on YouTube, get saved, get plugged in to a Bible-believing Baptist church. And you'll find that that right there is the true cure for racism. What everyone's talking about right now in the secular media, how can we combat racism? How could we fight this battle? Well, you know what? If you really want the cure for racism, what little of it is even left, then get saved, get involved, get plugged into a local church, go soul-winning and fight the spiritual battle because unlike the protests and the riots and the obsession with this George Floyd situation and all the rest of it, the only battle that really matters is that which is spiritual. I'll be back in next Monday, 8 o'clock Central, 9 p.m. Eastern. Until then, God bless you all. For Pastor Shelley, Brother Marcel Lugo, this is Benjamin Naim signing off. I'll talk to you guys again after a while. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.