Episode 39 | Soldiers of the Cross

In this powerful episode, I sit down with leadership from Soldiers of the Cross, a men’s motorcycle ministry committed to searching for the one—the lost, the broken, and the forgotten.

Joining me are:
• Ben Hardister, President of the Modesto, California founding chapter
• Nick Dowdy, Vice President of the Modesto chapter
• Rod Garcia, President of the Idaho chapter

Soldiers of the Cross serves wherever God opens the door—inside prisons, on the streets, on mission trips, and in communities where help is needed most. Their mission is simple but heavy: show up, serve, and bring the Gospel to men who feel beyond reach.

We dive into powerful “God stories” from across the country and around the world—moments of redemption, divine timing, and lives changed through obedience. Ben also shares his experience spending years as a volunteer chaplain working with death row inmates at San Quentin State Prison, offering a perspective few ever hear.

This conversation touches on faith, purpose, suffering, redemption, brotherhood, and what it means to walk boldly in your calling—no matter where you’re starting from. No matter your walk of life, there is something in this episode that will hit home.

🔗 Learn more about Soldiers of the Cross:
👉 https://sotc.faith

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:24

Oh yeah, there's no rules on this one. Yeah, no, it's full of. Yeah, you may not want to say that. Well, if you watch the last president podcast, you'd understand why.

SPEAKER_06 0:33

The whole thing about soldiers of the cross is there's no hierarchy. So the only thing the president does is spends more time and more money than anybody. He slides right in with 180, 190 other guys, and he immediately he's the same as the guy that's been there 15 years. There is a usually organized religion, you get in, then you have to like prove yourself, and then you have to like do some stupid thing, like you know, wash the nursery sheets or whatever for you to show you're faithful and you kind of work your way up, right? Yeah. Souls of the cross is hey we're out to save souls. We got the the anointing of John the Baptist, and it's time to rock and roll. So you show up. If you join, that's what you want to do. So we put your right, we we uh let's go. You you don't there's no hierarchy, and that's one of the great things. That's why you know on a Thursday night in the middle of the week, we got 100-150 guys coming out for dinner in Bible study. Organized religion don't even have midweek service anymore because guys are gonna come out to it. That's because guys don't want to come out, sit down, and get hammered for an hour and a half. We flip the switch. You come out, you fellowship for an hour and a half. You talk about what the Lord's doing in your life, and then we give you some revelation from the Word of God for 15 minutes, and then you go home. It's a complete flip. The best church in the world, you know, come on. You show up and you say, Hey Bob, how are you doing? He goes, Oh, yeah, you doing, man, good, fine. Maybe you have a cup of coffee now. They all they all have uh uh bakeries and stuff. Then you go in, they tell you when to sit down, when to stand up, they tell you when stand back up, sit back down, say this to your neighbor, say that to the guy behind you. Everybody say this. Then they pass the tray around once or twice, sometimes three times, if it's the pastor's anniversary or whatever. And by the finally, when they finally get done, then the guy comes out and hammers you for 45 minutes or an hour about something that he read in some book. We don't do that, it's all fellowship because when you have an army, men have to lock arms and encourage one another so that when we're out fighting, you know that man's next to you. You've been to boot camp with him or whatever you might want to call that Bible study. You build strength through being together. And so, guys that want that, not too many did. Yeah, most of the guys are perfectly comfortable sitting in the back row, and you know what their sacrifice to God is going to church. That's their sacrifice, casual Christian. I call them carnal Christians. They there's great sacrifices going to church, and the leaders will all tell them that what they're doing, oh, it's oh Joe. Oh man, look at you know, this Jim Smith, oh he's a when the church doors are open, he's here. You know, they that's their sacrifice. Those guys come and hang around with us and they say, wait a minute, man, these guys are putting their time, their money, their hearts, their souls, their prayer, they're moving, they're going into prisons and all across the country, they're going to prisons in foreign countries, they're building orphanages and daycare centers and women's shelters. I mean, these guys are rocking and rolling. So here's the problem. If you show up and you're happy just going to church, there's gonna be a giant light shined on you at our group, and they're gonna say, What who's that guy? You can't hang around with us and not get involved. And if you want to get involved, man, there's we got almost 200 guys on a weekly basis. They'll get involved with you. But the Lord will show you what he wants you to do just through circumstances. You know, and I think I think a lot of times, man, people don't understand that that sometimes God wants to know what you want to do. Yeah, do you ever see all these people that say, Oh, I don't know if God wants me to do that, or I don't know if God, what color underwear he wants me to buy, or whatever? You know, what do you want to do? That's that's the question. Read your Bible, man, you can figure it out. God never told David to fight Goliath. Not one time. Not once did he tell him to fight Goliath. He was delivering some bread and cheese to his brothers, doing what he was supposed to do. And he got there and he looked around and he said, Man, so this ain't right. It's not right. Some big mouth coming down here challenging the armies of a living God, it's not right. So then he thought, not God telling him. And people say, Oh, that's not true. They only say that if they haven't read their Bible. And then if you do read it, what's he do? I think he asked like three times. What's a what's a guy get for killing that giant? And then the word got around to the king. Read it. It says, and Saul heard there was some kid in the camp talking about killing a giant. Bring him over here. Yeah. Well, how come Saul wanted to do that? Because nobody was talking about the giant. Because if they talked about the giant, someone might say, Well, why don't you do something about it? It's like the elephant in the room that nobody wanted to talk about. Well, David showed what he wanted to do, but he asked around first to see what he was gonna get. Does that sound like something God telling him? No, he took a good look at it and said, I think I'll do this. Soldiers of the Cross is no different.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

That's a great intro.

SPEAKER_06 6:08

It really, it's no different. We take a look around and we see something that's not right, we say, Why don't we fix that? We last year I think we spent over$400,000. A pastor, a buddy of mine's got a church of$8,000. He says, You know, Ben, I don't understand you. Why are you so opposed to asking people to help you for money? You never ask for money, you never take an offering. I said, Dude, I've got partners that are worth a hundred million dollars, and every single one of them is going to hell because they equate church with a money scam, and I don't want to be a part of that. He said, Well, but you you said you spent 400 grand last year? I said, We spent almost a million the year before, going to Asia and India, Africa, Mexico. He said, Well, I don't understand how you're able to do that. So I said, Well, let me ask you a question, dude. Why would I ask someone else to give me their money to do what God told me to do? I'm a real estate developer, he's a contractor, he's a plumber, he's an electrician, he's a truck driver. Why don't we just ask God to bless us and our and our people and we'll take our own money and we'll just go do it? Why do we got to sit around and wait for someone else to give us their money? We got our own money, we don't need your money. And because of that, we never asked for offerings. Ever, under any circumstance. We had a guy who wanted to use our property, I won't mention his name. I don't know what his gig is. Most of them are after money, and that's all right, that's between them and God, not me. I just know that's not what we do. He said, Hey man, you guys had a tent revival. I said, Yeah, we have one every year. We had Francis Chan one year, we had Dog the Bounty Hunter another year, we had the machine gun preacher, Sam Childers another year. We've had like five or six of these tent revivals, and there's anywhere from 500 to you know 2,000 people. We parked 600 cars on our lot, we got five acres. He goes, Yeah, well, we do tent revivals up and down the freeway. I said, Yeah, yeah, I heard you guys like trying to save the whole world. He goes, Well, what's that supposed to mean? He was kind of insulted by it. And I said, Hey man, I'm just teasing you because soldiers of the cross, we just want to save one man. I'll go to the other side of the freaking world to spend every dime I have to see one man saved because his soul is priceless. Do we go get more than that? Yeah, all the time. But that's not what we're after. If your threshold is to meet, is to reach one man, if that's your threshold, you could do anything. You can go anywhere and do anything because you don't have to have some big hoopla. I'm just looking for one guy. Well, where do we get that? Easy. We're just following Jesus, man. Jesus went one guy up in the hills in a graveyard running around naked, breaking chains. One guy across the whole ocean with all the dis one guy. He he knew the city was gonna kick him out of there. He knew those business people were gonna say, hey, dude, you're killing our pigs. Get out of here. He knew there was only gonna be one man, yet he went. You know that chick that approached him at the well? Think about that for a minute. He's the most important person who ever lived or who ever will live. And all 12 guys are gonna leave him at the well alone and go in town for supplies and just leave them standing there? That's what they're gonna do. There's no way that they do that unless he specifically instructed them to. I'm not important at all. I'm with four or five of my buddies come over here to Idaho. If we were gonna say, hey man, let's go over to the park for lunch. Uh, why don't you guys go get supplies? They wouldn't all leave me there by myself. Two of them would say, Yeah, hey, let's go down and load up the truck and we'll stay here with you, Ben. Well, this is Jesus, the most important guy there ever was, but he was there alone. What's that tell you? That tells you he specifically told everyone to leave. And when they said, No, no, Jesus says four or five of us will go and the other eight or nine will stay. No, I want you all to go. Oh, how come? Because he knew that there was this Samaritan chick who was a nasty woman who had been married five times and was living in sin. Now, according to society, she was a nasty woman. Not according to Jesus. He knew that if she showed up at that well and saw four or five Jews standing around there, people they weren't even, these Samaritans weren't even supposed to talk to, she would have been intimidated. She would have waited off in the bushes or trees until they left before she came to get her water. Jesus knew that. That's why he said, No, no, no. I want all of you guys to go and I'll be fine. I'm gonna stay here by myself. I got to spend some time with my father. Whatever it was he said, we don't know, but you guys all leave me alone. He did it on purpose so that woman wouldn't be intimidated. And sure enough, she shows up. I'm not supposed to talk to the Jews, but yeah, it's just this one rabbi. He looks pretty harmless, and she walks up. And you know the story, man. He told her everything about she said this and she said that, and she said she had to go get her husband. And Jesus said, Hey man, not only is the man you're living with not your husband, but you've had five other men that you were married to. And of course, she said, Oh, I think you're a prophet. I mean, I won't get into the story, but the point of why I'm bringing it up is one woman he planned his whole day, knowing that she would not come forward if he a group of guys were there. He cared about that one woman. He cared about that one naked dude breaking chains up at the graveyard. He was with the whole entire crowd of people that said, Hey, Zach Kia is up in that tree. Come on down here, dude. I'm gonna have dinner with you tonight. Time after time after time, the guy that he healed, the one guy where he spit in the dirt and put mud on his eye. And remember that guy got healed, and the Pharisees and all the priests were saying, Man, there's something something uh crazy going on here. How'd you get healed? He told them like eight times Jesus did it, Jesus did it. Finally, they got so ticked off at him that he threw him out on the street. The Bible says they threw him out and he was alone. Well, what's the next verse? The next verse says, and Jesus went and found him. One guy. So, you know, without going on and on and on, the point is, why would we want to do anything more? Are you ready for this now? Are you ready for this, dude? Why would we want to do anything more if we had our own money? See, when you have your own dough and you're partner up with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, you go when he says go. You do what he says to do. And finding one guy is something you can perfectly do. But when you're trying to get everybody else's money and you're trying to use all their hard work and their dough to fulfill your dream, you can't do it. You can't do it just for one guy because you gotta have a whole group to pay for it. We don't need a whole group. So anyway, this guy says, Yeah, well, we want to use your land, man. You're right in the middle of town, and 2,000 man tent, park 500 to 1,000 cars. How much you guys want? Because we want to have a revival meeting, we're gonna save the state. Man, you're gonna save this whole state. Yeah, and then the country, the whole country, yeah, and then the world that's hold on, man. That's gonna take a lot of money. Well, come on, we'll give it to you. Free. We'll supply the drinks, we'll do the security, we'll put it the tenant, we got our own tenant, we'll do the whole thing for you. Free, come on now, we can't wait to see you. Hallelujah, because we had to pay this much and that much over here and over there. I said, Come on, man. I said, But hey, there's only one thing. What's that, man? He's so happy. What's that? I said, Well, you know you can't ask for money. What? I said, Yeah, man, if it's a soldiers of the cross deal, you walk on your own faith with your own dime and you do what God tells you to do. It's faith and action. Jesus said, Wherever your heart is, there also shall your treasure be. So take some of that treasure, pull it out, and go out and do what he tells you to do, and don't have a ministry where you have to ask someone else to give you their money. So, yeah, you could come, it's all free. But you can't pass around no tray. Oh, well, how would we pay for it? Not my problem, dude. It's your ministry, not mine. But if you're gonna use our stuff, anyway, I was really surprised I never heard from him again.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

Ben Hardister, everybody. Yeah, right. All right, we'll uh we'll get into the intros now because Ben Hardister, you're the president of SOTC out of Modesto. How long have you guys been in as a as a group?

SPEAKER_05 15:55

2009, I think, is when it was uh the Modesto chapter was formed.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Okay, so 15, 16 years. And you were a part of that as well, right, Rod? Yeah, yeah. So what was your you were you the vice president back then?

SPEAKER_05 16:08

Uh originally I uh was the president, I was the founder. Okay. So it was just me and two other guys that initially started it up in 2009, and then uh I was part of Ben's Bible study that used to do at his house, and that's how I met him. And uh, you know, he the way he just talked is normal for him, he's like that all the time. Um, he's always got something, you know, some revelation. Looking, you know, you look at the Bible in a different way when you hang around Ben. You know, you can read scriptures. I've read the Bible like three or four times and never really understood it the way he explains it. So um I spent a lot of time with him. He's been a spiritual mentor for me. And uh I honestly, and I told him this before, he knows it's not gonna be a surprise to him, but I honestly think I probably would have never made it if I hadn't met Ben. You know, I just uh I was a little disappointed with with uh so I I'll go a little bit into my background, not too deep, but I was raised in the Christian family. My father was a pastor, um, very strict um church background. It was about uh performance. A lot of stuff, you know, uh women had to wear their hair a certain way, couldn't wear pants. Um you know, there's just a lot of a lot, you know, you weren't allowed to go to baseball games because they serve alcohol there. You can't go to the bowling alley because they serve alcohol there. A lot of restrictions. But strip clubs. Strip clubs that they don't it depends what's tough was enough, but uh so I won't tell you how I know that. But uh a lot of it was uh performance-based. So when I got old enough to choose on my own, I realized from what I was taught that I was never gonna make it to heaven. I just I couldn't I couldn't perform well enough. So I just went and did my own thing. And it took me uh I was I was 40 years old, I think. And uh found myself in a situation where I was in the hospital, it was the middle of the night. Actually, it was nine o'clock, ten o'clock, or whatever. The kick the family out. I'm in there by myself. I'm having to spend the night because they're gonna run some tests for on me in the morning. And I'm laying there, and the nurse comes in and says, I'm gonna give you a sleeping pill. And I said, I don't need I don't need a sleeping pill. She's like, Well, you're not gonna sleep well here anyway. And I said, Well, I'm not gonna go sleep. And she's like, Well, why not? And I said, Well, I'm afraid I'm gonna die. And she's like, No, you're in the hospital, I'm not gonna let you die. I'm like, if you look up this address on uh, you know, go to the coroner's website, look at this address, probably more deaths here than anywhere else in the city. So I don't know, I don't trust your your your theory of uh you're not gonna die here, I'm just gonna stay awake all night. And she goes, whatever, okay. And she walks out of the room and I started laying, I was, I was getting, I was tired, and I wanted to fall asleep, but I was scared too. And I and I was sitting there and I started thinking, I'm like, man, if I died right now, the way I'm living and the things I'm doing, I'm I'm just gonna go to hell. You know, it's just the way it is. I believe that 100%. And I started thinking, I'm like, Lord, uh you know, I was raised in a Christian family, married into a Christian family, my wife's a Christian, um went to a Christian school, and I'm gonna go to hell. You know, I I'm scared. I you know, I don't want to I don't want to die and go to hell. You've given me all these opportunities, I did nothing with it. And I I ask you to please forgive me. I'm sorry the way I've lived. And I never made a promise that I would, you know, if you got me through this, I I ref I don't believe in that. I think that's a bad way to live. Making deals. Making deals is a bad idea, in my opinion. But I laid there and I s and I just kind of started praying, and I'm like, Lord, I'm sorry for the way I live. And a lot of things that I had done in my life kind of started coming to mind, you know, and I was repenting for those things. And I wasn't sure, honestly, if if that was gonna help or not. I didn't know if I was making a difference or if it was too late. I didn't know. And literally I'm flipping through the channel, you know, in the hospital bed, they got a little tiny speaker, it's about that big, you can barely hear out of it. And uh I was trying to, and there's a little button on the armrest to change the channels. I was trying to get find something to watch, and it was either uh you know somebody trying to sell me something or it was preachers. No matter where I flipped it, it was preachers. And I was like, Oh god, are you trying to tell me something? And I I was saying that prayer and I was praying, and I and tears started coming down my eyes. I'm like, I don't want to do this. I hope no one walks in, they're gonna think I'm a coward, you know? Why am I crying, sissy? And I was laying there and and I felt the atmosphere in the room changed. It was literally like Jesus walked into the room himself, the whole atmosphere changed. I suddenly felt this flood of love and all that, you know, on my on my whole body and my mind, and I suddenly felt rest and at peace. And I even you know, to the point where if I do die, I feel good. I'm good. I'm good with it. If that's the way it's gonna turn out, that's I'm good with it. And uh the next thing I know it's morning, so I fell asleep peacefully, you know, without any and when I woke up in the morning, I knew something was different. Just I feel different. I don't feel the same, I don't I don't feel like a different thing. I don't feel like the same person anymore. And anyway, I ended up being fine. They gave me some medication and got me back on my feet. I was fine after that. And uh I had an old King James Version Bible and I was trying to read that, and you know, it was it was hard for me to read. You know, every every word has a T H at the end of it, and I was like, Cometh unto thine, and it was hard for me to read. So my wife. Went and bought me a new international, I think a virgin Bible. And uh she was already going to Ben's house for Bible studies, and she kept inviting me, and I'm like, nah. She said, Oh, they live on this in this beautiful house on the golf course, she would love it. And you should hear when this guy speaks, it's just amazing. People that live on golf courses, not my kind of people. I don't really want to go out there, but thanks for the invite. And so I started trying to find I tried, I wanted to be in the presence of the Holy Spirit. So I just kept going from church to church to church. Every time a door was open, I would be at church. So I was going to church Monday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, just trying to find different churches and stuff. I finally ended up breaking and I go to this Bible study. I meet Ben. I'm like, he's not at all what I thought he was gonna be. He's a cool dude, you know. Yeah, he saw takes me on the garage, shows me his Harleys and his Porsche and all this cool stuff, you know, it's stuff that I was into. And uh I started attending his Bible study pretty regularly, and my life really began to change. Like who I was was completely different. People at work didn't, they're like, Who are you, dude? I don't even know who you are anymore. And uh and I just you know, I got into the word a little bit differently than I previously had been. And even like I said, I'd been to Christian school and all this. I'd memorized scripture and you know, I just didn't know what they meant. And so um that's how I met Ben. And then um we started going, we had a couple of events that we went on, and Ben would show up on his Harley, and um eventually just started I invited him to come to our group meetings and stuff and Bible study. Then I invited him to into the Soldiers of the Cross to be the chaplain. And uh one thing he had told me years before was I'd never been part of any kind of club or anything like that, and not my thing. So I kind of kept that in the back of my mind. Like, I don't want to invite him, but I want him to be here. You know, I gotta see how that I'll just let the Lord do his thing. And the more he came and the more he spoke, I'm like, man, Ben, you're you're way smarter than me. You're way more well connected than me. You've got better vision than I got. I want you to lead this thing, man. Can you please? And so he got he we made him the president, and I was the vice president. And then in 2017, after I retired from my job, I moved up here to Idaho, and and that's how eventually Soldiers of the Cross ended up in Idaho. So right on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

Wanna give yourself a little intro?

SPEAKER_00 24:32

My name's Nick Dowdy. Um I was born and raised in Modesto, California, and grew up in a Christian household and grew up in a church. My grandfather was a pastor on my mom's side, and actually started Modesto Christian school and neighborhood church, and on my dad's side, they were heavily involved in ministry and and music and and uh in involved in one of the big churches at Calvary Temple in Modesto. And so I was born and raised in that environment where all of the Christian holidays were about Jesus, and grandma and grandpa were praying for all of us, and that was that was our environment. Um I had an older brother, I was the youngest of three, and me and my brother just always grew up fighting and fighting each other, and that to me was just normal. That was I didn't know any different, and that was just how we were allowed to be, and and somehow I think that that cultivated somewhat of a rebellion or a rebellious spirit in maybe both of us, and I think that is possibly what led to early on trying to get our hands on cigarettes and some beers, and and also growing up, um my dad was a contractor, so I grew up on the job site, so we were always with the guys, and and that was prevalent on the job sites. Um my grandfather, which I was very close to on my mom's side, passed away when I was a sophomore in high school, and that was a pretty tough thing for me because that was somebody in my life that he always worked with his hands and he was always taking me out to the the school or to the preschool or to the church, and we were always just working on projects, and he was always taking the time to explain, hey, this is what we're doing, this is how we're doing it. And I always I would always go, Well, how are we gonna pay for it, grandpa? And he always said, There's barrels of money in the garage. That was always his answer for anything related to finances. There's barrels of money in the garage. And granddad, I looked. There, there's no barrels in there, you know, and uh so that was my early-on experience with my grandfather, and he passed away as as I was a sophomore in high school, and that was uh a tough thing. And then um my senior year, my mom ended up passing away, and that was something that happened my first day of baseball practice, my senior year of high school. I come home and I'm it's just me and my mom and my dad at home, and she's asking me how my day was. And I'm thinking, well, uh, first day of baseball my senior year. I don't have a lot of homework. I look outside, I've got a 66 Mustang that I've been working on sitting in the driveway. I look at my mom, mom, today was really good. An hour and a half later, I'm doing CPR on her. Jesus, save my mom. Save my mom. Dad, we gotta pray for mom. And she died. And somewhere in me started questioning my faith, who I was, maybe some of the stuff that I was doing, drinking beers with my brother. Uh, maybe somehow I didn't have a good line of communication with Jesus. Because how could I be more sincere in my prayer at that time to him and him not answer me? I mean, you're not gonna tell me that that was a part of the plan, right? So as a 17-year-old dealing with that, and then we lost our house, my dad lost his business, and it was just kind of one thing after another. And and I was fortunate enough to be able to go down to Vanguard University and be able to play some baseball down there and go to school, and and my wife and I were able to get married and graduate from there in 2001. And as you're processing through all of that stuff, through the hurts, and dad getting remarried and a new family, and then as you're going back home to Modesto, things are just different. The family's not the same as what you grew up in. The church isn't the same, everything's different. And to go back in 2001 and to sit in my grandfather's church up in the balcony and have a guest speaker come in, which was Ben, and start talking about going down to Mexico in such a way and frame it in such a way to where you could you could really, really feel like I'm gonna miss out on something special if I don't grab on to what this guy's involved in. Man, I've gotta just find out. And for me, looking back on it, it was the Holy Spirit convicting me. I had to wait around. I'm standing around on the outside lobby waiting for every single person to go through and talk to Ben. And finally, it's just Ben and the head pastor of the church, and he looks over at me and he goes, Can I help you? You know, I'm 22 years old at the time, and I walk over to him, Mr. Hardister, I'm not the business guy you're looking for, but I've got a few hundred bucks I'd like to give you to take down to those kids. That Saturday, I was flying down to Mexico, and that was the beginning of a relationship and meeting one other man on this planet that had the same understanding of who God was that my grandfather did, to where he's going, now there's barrels of money in the garage. And to this day, to sit here and have him reiterate, now we don't have to ask for money. We're going directly to the source. And throughout my life, the ups and downs that I've gone through, um just life, right? All of the uh, all of the things that we navigate through in family and kids, and it's not all pretty. It I didn't do a very good job because I let I let certain things in that I shouldn't have because of my own pride, my own issues, and things that I had to learn to let go and and actually get an understanding of Jesus, you were there when my mom passed away. That wasn't a mistake. That wasn't because I didn't pray right or I didn't believe that you could do it or not do it. That was her time. That had to happen in order for you to position me and my family to where it needs to be to maybe, maybe what if, and I've had this conversation with my brother and my sister, what if mom doesn't die and we're complete a-holes, and I'm spending eternity in hell? What if that break in my path, as uncomfortable as it was? What if that doesn't happen? What if that changes everything for the my eternal destiny for me and my kids and our legacy? I don't know. But would I take that if you're asking me now for my kids to see where my kids are at, trying to become pastors, trying to become leaders, trying to fully sell out and push the kingdom in at a higher level than I ever thought would be possible? And to see that happen at such a young age and see that trajectory and look at that and go, well, I would absolutely take that trade again. And hopefully I can use part of my story and be able to frame things in a little bit clearer light in such a way that Ben does, because he's able to pull stories from the Bible and make them applicable to today, to where you can grab onto it and go, wait a second, maybe I'm looking at this thing just a little bit wrong. What if I just step out and trust Jesus with my finances, with my kids? What if I actually try to apply seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you? What does that mean? What does that look like for me? Because as you're plowing through life, just going, man, I'm trying to pour concrete and all this BS and kids and running around. How do I seek the kingdom first? And what does that work how does that even work? And then you got a guy like Ben that says, Hey man, come on, let's go. I'll show you. And so that is ultimately when I first met Ben. And then throughout the years, we've got stories over and over, mainly when I'm calling him up, hey, I'm I'm in trouble. And he's going, Yeah, no kidding. Of course you are, because you're an idiot. You don't listen to what I'm telling you to do. And it's like, yeah, well, you know, you can you come over? And to be able to have somebody that you can count on that will relentlessly change the conversation, whatever it is, any environment, wherever you're at, you know that if you're talking with Ben, you're going to be talking about Jesus. That's the only thing that is important. And so when you get around that and you see it and you actually apply it, and then you get the results of that, and you have tangible proof to where then you can show your kids and have those conversations. Hey, look, we did this, we stood, we stepped out, we trusted the Lord for this, we've been praying about it. Now look at the results. Look, he showed up. Here it is, here's proof. And then that provides actual real encouragement and a real testimony that's happening today, not something that happened 30 years ago or somebody else's story. And so that's a big part of what Soldiers of the Cross is and what we're able to bring to the table. And that's why it takes an hour and a half. And to be honest with you, an hour and a half sometimes isn't near enough because guys get so fired up and they're so encouraged in what the Lord's doing in their lives. You just go into our clubhouse on a Thursday night and it's just a roar. It's like, man, what is going on in here? And you go to conversation, a conversation to man after man in that room, and everybody's going, It's working. I'm going through this, or I'm somebody, somebody tragically just died, but I know where they're at. Thank God he allowed me to be a part of their lives before they died and could have possibly spent all of eternity in hell. Thank God I was a part of this ministry and got the understanding and the revelation that it's on me to be able to use my voice to encourage somebody to actually take a hard look at who Jesus is and what that means for all of eternity. Don't just run past that and to have that conversation in such a way that it actually actually gets them to the point to where they have to say, no, you you know what, Nick, I don't want your Jesus. Fine, fair enough. Thank you. I'm glad, I'm glad we just got to that point because now I'm free. I'm off the hook. I'm glad you understand and you're making that call. So you can go ahead and go straight to the man when you die and tell him that exact same thing. Say it to him. But I laid it out, I did what I was supposed to do, and now it's on you. And so I think as we get further down the road and we all get better and we we encourage each other, hey, just have the conversation with guys because it's just something that a lot of people don't even want to think about. Why do I have to think about eternity, man? I'm 47. We got time. Yeah, well, maybe, maybe. But anyways, that's my story and how I met Ben. I've been with SOT since 2018, I believe. And then I've been the um vice president now for about a year. And love it. I just love being able to serve with these guys and be involved in what we're doing and be just a supporting role to Ben and to Dan and Kelly and some of these guys to where we look at it. Man, if we can provide a little bit more longevity for some of these guys and just glean a little bit from them while they're still around, while they're still willing to participate and drag us around and say, come on, guys, let's go do it again. And until we can get to that point to keep pushing on the vision that they have, it's really exciting.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. That's amazing. You guys all have good stories. Um Rod told me that you were a death row, you used to work in San Quentin, the chaplain for death row.

SPEAKER_06 39:21

Well, I didn't actually work there. I was a volunteer. Okay. And um a buddy of mine was the chaplain there. And I went in every week for almost 13 years, and I spent the majority of my time on Death Row and C section, Carson section. But we started a ministry called Prison Bible Studies PBS. And my goal back then in the 80s was to get guys Bibles and lead them to the Lord. And I had a television show, closed cable inside the prison uh for an hour each each day. I mean each week we'd go in there. But uh we ended up with several hundred men, and Earl Smith and I were, he was the chaplain, kind of built it up together from just two or three guys to you know a couple hundred. But it was uh something I did till about uh early nineties, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 40:28

So you gotta see quite a few different stories in there. What do you think men regretted most towards the end of their life?

SPEAKER_06 40:36

You know, the problem is, especially if you're not just talking to some guys at a restaurant or bar or something when it's stuff that's recorded. Inmates lie. Guards lie.

SPEAKER_03 40:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 40:50

So you go in there, some dork off the street trying to do what God wants you to do, and then you hear a story, sometimes it could be so far from the truth, it's not even funny. So when you repeat it as knowledge that's been given to you, as truth, and someone says, Well, wait a minute, that's not what happened. So it's like I was I was uh asked to go on TV uh back in the old days, the Jim Baker 700 Club and uh in South Carolina, I think it was, and uh TBN in LA. They they all wanted me to tell stories on Death Row, what was going on up there, and I didn't really want to go because I just it looked to me like I would the old that I was making myself famous by these stories that with these people that I knew on that were famous killers, and it was at the expense of the guy telling me the story. I always thought it wasn't being very loyal to the guy that I talked to, so I never accepted it. But I'm always cautious in retelling some of the stories because they're sort of what I told, and maybe what I see, and sometimes maybe it's not accurate. You know, we just came back from a prison in the south. We had uh how many guys? What, Kelly? 60 65, 65 guys, and what we do is we go inside a prison and set up a bike show. The guys in the joint that are gonna get saved at the chapel, they're gonna get saved anyway. I mean it sounds crash, but it's not. They're gonna get saved in the chapel, they're gonna get saved in a drug recovery program, AA, they're gonna get out, they're gonna go to a silver home, they're gonna go to a church, whatever. They're gonna get saved. They're marked. And that doesn't mean that we don't bring those guys to the Lord and witness to them. We do. But my main shot, my goal, my my target is the guy that I know in the joint that he's not gonna come out down to the chapel and hear his testimony if you came back from the dead twice. He's going to hell. He knows he's going to hell if he even believes in hell. He doesn't care about anything you have to say. Nobody can reach that guy. There's plenty of ministries that will reach the mainline guys, and I get that, and I praise God for them. But how are you gonna reach the guy that won't come to the chapel? Well, I know a way you can reach him. Bring in 50 Harleys, bring in a million dollars worth of chrome and steel and set it out on the yard and then barbecue 3,000 hot dogs and hamburgers and chips and drinks and have a real afternoon type of uh a picnic for guys like they used to have on the street while they're in the joint. That guy will come out of the cell then, and that's the guy I want to get. I want to put my hands on that guy. I want to say, listen, man, you know, it's not too late. I want to talk to that, I want to do something. We want to do something that other people can't do. It always blows my mind, man, when I see somebody building a new church right across the street from a church. It's like, what the heck? What are you doing, man? You got a burden for this part of the town, go in and join. Them. What are you doing? We want to do something. We want to make sure that we're filling a gap that nobody's filling. And so I was in the full gospel business, man, and we had a we had one of the largest chapters in Northern California from a little tiny town of Sonoma. I mean, it's three 4,000 people. We had like 70 guys going to a prayer breakfast at 5:30 in the morning at Denny's. It's unheard of. Just like now. We got a hundred and 150 guys going out for a dinner Bible study on a Thursday night every week. It's unheard of. Well, it was that way then too. And I started this group with two guys. We built it up to 100 something. And I was at a prayer breakfast and I was late. I used to have a prefab home company that had some people coming in from Germany that were doing a big development overseas, and I was late for this meeting. The Bible study went long. Well, we didn't call it a Bible study, it was a prayer, a prayer meeting. And the prayer was like, you know, 10 minutes, 45 minutes was just guys talking, having breakfast together at 5:30 in the morning. So anyway, I was driving maybe a little bit too fast through town and uh going just shortcut through a neighborhood, and there was a guy out there jogging, and uh he flipped me off as I drove by. And you know, everything starts in your mind, man. All this problems you have with women, it starts in your mind when you think about what I might want to do with that spinner here. That's as soon as you start going down that road, you're you're done. So you have to make sure that you keep a steel wall against the things, especially your weaknesses, that you don't you don't go past that curtain because once you pull it back, man, there's sometimes it's not too easy to stop. Anyway, the guy flipped me off, and my my first thought was I was just watching myself knock his freaking teeth out. I don't like being flipped out, flipped off. And uh I used to be like a Dalmatian Christian, you know. You know what that is? No, that's a Christian still got some spots on him, right? So I might still be a little bit of a Dalmatian Christian. But anyway, I stopped, backed my truck up, and jumped out. And I said, You gotta, I was going to a meeting, man. I had a suit on. So you got a problem with that finger? So residential neighborhood, you blankety blanking. Without even thinking, he had these weights on his hands that you run with to make yourself strong, I guess. And he hit me with those things in the chest and pushed me back up against my truck. Well, I took this guy apart from top to bottom. And when I was done, pretty much ruined my nice clean suit. My shirt was full of blood. He's laying in the street, and I turned around and looked, and there's my whole prayer group. They thought there was an accident because there was blood all over the place and trucking sideways, and and I was a little bit angry. I might have said some things to them I shouldn't have. Anyway, we had elections for that group the following week, and they voted my white ASS out. They said, this guy's a maniac, we don't need him for our president, and they should have. I what I did was completely wrong. I I just, you know, I didn't have that steel curtain up. I opened it up just for a second, and that's what happened, so they voted me out. Well, about two weeks later, I was in my cabin and I had a fire going. I was by myself, and I wasn't married, and uh I was reading a story about the Good Samaritan, and the Holy Spirit spoke to me. And here's here's the thing about soldiers of the cross, for anybody who might be listening, this might be really help you. We have a thing in our group that if you say God spoke to you, don't you tell me that unless you got proof. You tell me that God told you he wanted you to go to Boise to buy a truck, and next time I see you, I want to see the freaking truck. And if you say, Oh, well, no, actually, what he wanted me to do is buy a guy a cheeseburger in Nampa. God does not need your help to fulfill his word, period. So God did not speak to you to buy the truck because you didn't go and you ain't got no truck. You have to have it that way, man, because if you got 200 people running around with everybody hearing about God all the time, hearing from God all the time about everything, you got a mess. So, what it does is it just cautions people not to go out and start saying all the stuff that they believe God said when he didn't, right? So I just uh it's self-explanatory. So when I say that I I felt like the Holy Spirit was speaking to me, that God spoke to me, I I've got a hundred situations like that over 30 years, and I would never say anything to anyone that I can't prove. And the only reason why is because what good does it do if you can't prove that why should anybody believe you?

SPEAKER_03 49:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 49:23

Anyway, that's just a little side note. If you're in a group with some guys and people are talking about God, that's cool. He does. He wants he wants to tell you every single morning that he loves you, that he has a plan for you, and that he's got your back and not to worry and to trust him if you'll just listen. Of course he does. But when you've got people that are going out on a limb saying they hear all these things with no proof, it just makes for a mess. So having said that, I felt like the Lord spoke to me and said, Who's the man in the Good Samaritan story? Who's the man in the ditch? Guy left for dead. So I read it, reread it, read it a couple times, and it doesn't say. Doesn't say if he was a businessman, doesn't say if he was on the wrong side of town looking for a hooker. It doesn't say, it just says he was left for dead. And then the Holy Spirit spoke to me again and said, Well, who do you think he's like? I said, Lord, it it doesn't say. Your word doesn't say so I sat there for a little bit in front of the fire. It was late. I usually go to bed at nine o'clock. I think it was like 11 or 12. And I was just going over my mind, looking at it, looking at it, looking at it. And you know, this was many, many years ago. And since then, I mean that's how I read the Bible. I see I see different things. And the Lord says, Well, what about this or what about that? And it kind of opens things up, right? Finally, I said, Lord, I I I don't know, man. I I don't know. He said, He's like a prisoner. He said, Everything taken from him, and he's been left for dead. And I said, Yeah, I guess I could see that. I mean, I've been in jail like everybody for fighting and whatnot. It's county jail, but I've never been to the big house. But I can understand you get everything taken from you. Yeah, I I get that. So then just a few moments later, he said, Who do you want to be like? The priest? The temple worker or the Samaritan? And then it's like somebody stabbed me in the gut. I rolled around and suddenly the realization hit me that I was no different than that temple worker. I just crossed the street and pay no attention to any of it. And man, I'll tell you, really, it it it affected me. I I sat there in my living room, just kind of tore me up, and I said, God, I'd I'd do anything. I I'd do anything you want me to do. And keep in mind, I'm still a little bit busted up about this whole group that I started. I was so stupid to beat this guy up in front of the whole prayer group. So I'm I'm if he's gonna let me do anything, I'll I'm ready. Let me know. He said, and all he said to me was so you shall. So I went to bed. Five hours later, five in the morning, I get a phone call. And usually I get up at four or five, but this particular night I had this whole ordeal with the Holy Spirit. I probably didn't even go to sleep till one in the morning, so I was still a little tired. And I picked up the phone and they said it's been horizontal. I said, Yeah, what can I do for you? He said, My name's Ed Faulkner. He said, uh, I'm with so-and-so at San Quentin Prison, and we're desperately need a man who'd be willing to come into the prison and share Christ, and someone gave me your number and said that you only live 30 minutes from San Quentin and that you might consider it. Well, that's remember I told you if if it's the Lord, you'll have proof. When you have proof, you can move. When you don't have proof, it's like, ah, is that really God? It's a little bit harder. So that's why it's really beneficial if the Lord will show you something and to accept it as that and then move. So I said, All right, I went down and met the guy. It was really funny. I said, Yeah, I want to go. I said, Where are you at? And he goes, Well, uh uh, I'm in Vacaville. I said, You know where the buttercup bakery is in Napa? I was in Sonoma at the time. I said, I'll meet you there in a half hour. He goes, Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He goes, hang on a second. He goes, uh, how about uh we meet at like seven o'clock? And I said, Okay, I'll be there at seven o'clock. Thanks a lot, Ed and hung the phone up. And well, I didn't realize he must have thought I was a complete weirdo. Nobody wants to go to prison. He's used to people saying, Yeah, yeah, no, I really can't help you. And had I not beat that guy up, I would have said, no, I'm the president of this group and I've got a couple hundred men in this town, and that's my ministry. And and God bless you, I'll send you 500 bucks to help you out, but you know, no, no, I can't do that. There's no way I would have did it. So you can infer by that that it was God's will that I beat the living crap out of that guy. That's not true. What it was is the Bible coming to life, man. The Bible where God says all things work together for the good of them who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. So even that horrible thing that I gave that guy that had it coming, the Lord still used it for his glory, and got, and that's what got me into the prison. So I go through this jive orientation thing, and this idiot chaplain, not my buddy Earl, there's another guy like three days worth of like seminars to be a volunteer. It worked really well because he had two volunteers for the whole prison of five, six thousand men. So I'm I finally go in there, I get my clearance. I'm with two guys that are 80 years old and they're pushing a cart full of cards. And they go to each cell. Well, would you like a greeting card? Mother's Day, you know, whatever, happy birthday, you know, and the guys half the time we just say no, and no thanks. Have you prayed? Have you prayed the center's prayer? No, no, thanks. All day long. 500 men. So when we got back to the chapel, one guy says, How many salvations did you get today, Bob? Bob goes, 17, Jim, or whatever his name was. He goes, Oh, you rascal, you big big. He goes, I only had 13. Well, how about you, young Ben? I said, Yeah, man, I yeah, no, I didn't get anything. You'll get into it, you'll get into it. So I'm walking out of the prison like four in the afternoon, and I've been there all day. And I thought, well, this is a joke. I ain't never coming back here. I know God spoke to me, but this ain't it. This ain't the place. So I'm walking out, and this guy's walking in. We're about the same age in our late 20s. He says, Hey, dude, was that you just came out of the garden chapel? I said, Yeah. He goes, Oh, so you're here volunteering? I said, Yeah, yeah. He goes, Oh man, praise God. He goes, Good, it's good to see a young guy here. Because there were ancient old men, right? He goes, Well, you're gonna come in every week. Well, I see you next week. I said, Hey man, preacher, I'm not gonna BS you. I ain't never coming back to this crap hole. Wait a minute, wait a minute. What do you what do you mean? He said, I said, I get it. I'm not gonna play your game. He goes, What? I said, I know the deal. I tell you I'm not gonna come in here. You ask me why, and then I tell you, and then you tell me what a dumb S-H-I-T I am, and then you explain why I don't know what I'm talking about. I get it. You got your deal, you're a preacher, this is your thing. I'm just telling you, I ain't never coming back here. He said, Well, can I just ask you one thing before you leave? Because we were both standing there in front of this like airlock thing where the security is with locks on both sides as you make your way in and out of the prison. Can I just ask you one thing before you leave? I said, sure, because well, what would you do if you were in charge? I said, Well, I gotta tell you, man, I can't help 500 men. That's how many people we talk to today. But each one of those tiers has like 40 guys on it. You give me like a half a tier with 20 guys, and you let me come in here every week and talk to 20 guys where I can get to know who they are and know what their family is and and become friends with them and be able to share Christ with them from a different perspective of just saying, Have you prayed the sinner's prayer to a stranger? I said, I can make a difference if I did something like that. He said, Well, okay, I got a question for you. Another question. What about the other 4,980 guys? There's 5,000 men here. I said, Preacher, you give me a half a tier and I'll bring 300 men in here and we'll rock this place. And he looked at me and he said, Come on back next week, because I got 20 guys that ain't going nowhere. I said, Right on, okay, I'll be back. So I came back the next week. We sat and talked for a little bit. Took me over to Carson section, which was real different than the Badger section that I was at. Badger section had guys everywhere playing cards and peanut or whatever, walking around. The cell doors are all open. This place had another completely like airlock system going in that was empty, every cell was locked. It was a way different bag. He walks me up to the top, fifth tier. Guard opens up the lock door from the stairway onto the tier, and then there's a second lock in the middle. So you've got one half of this of the tier 20-something guys, a lock, and then another half on the other side, plus a lock from the stairway in. And then you look over, and there's a there's a uh a catwalk with a with a gunner on the catwalk facing the cells. So I'm thinking to myself, man, this place is way secure. So he gets in, and I look around to talk to him, and they he slams the door shut behind me. And he goes, I'll come back and get you for lunch. And down the staircase he goes, I'd never been in a prison other than with these old men pushing a cart around in my life. So I walked over and started talking to some guy, and he told me about his kids he's never gonna see again, and you know how much he regrets a mistake and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, Well, man, you know, someday when you get back together, and he lunged at the board. He goes, What kind of a black new black thing is that to say to a guy? I said, Hey man, I'm just trying to encourage you. He encouraged me. He goes, Well, I'm gonna go see my kid in a box. I said, Nah, if you're careful, you'll be all right. I still didn't know where I was. He goes, You don't even know where you are, you idiot. I said, What are you talking about? He goes, You're on death row, man. And then all of a sudden, the word the word that the Lord told me two weeks earlier just slapped me across the face. These prisoners, the man that the Samaritan helped in the ditch that was was left for dead. And he said, So the men in prison were left for dead, and the Holy Spirit was completely accurate because the men on death row were left for dead. And I spent uh 13 years there.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:29

Wow, these guys have access to Bibles and stuff up there.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:34

Yeah, we uh we bought everybody leather Bibles. I don't know, even I don't even know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars we spent back in the 80s and 90s buying Bibles. And once the ministry started to grow, it's the same thing, man. It's the same old freaking thing. Follow the money. And I know the preachers and people that are in churches, and I love them all, man. I do. I love church, I love pastors, I got tons of friends, but it's man, it's just about following the money, it just sucks everything into this nasty drain, and it's the bottom of everything, and it's just filthy, man. I've watched it for 40 years, it's just freaking filthy, dirty. It's all about money. That's why if we can get away from that, which is what we do, we can do God's work. The problem is most guys that look at that go, well, wait a minute, I get it, but how are you gonna do anything without money? Well, you don't have to be without money. It's not a problem. Let me ask you a question. If we were going to buy some land on the freeway and put up a billboard to advertise for Elon Musk, would we be asking people for money? If Elon told us to go do it to advertise SpaceX, go find some land in Napa, put up a billboard, and I want you to build a big a big hall where people can come in and learn about our rockets. Okay, Elon, when you want, why don't you do it now? Would you say, well, no, we can't do that when you don't have any money. And then when you went to look, would you be trying to get a good deal? Would you be trying to get someone to donate something for you so you can make it possible? You wouldn't be doing none of that stuff if you were working for Elon. So why don't people at least give that much respect to God? They don't. They don't. They say, well, you know, we gotta have people help us, we've got to do this. That's not how we are. So when I was in the in San Quentin, when you did a Bible study and signed up, you got a free leather Bible with your name engraved in gold. And it was terribly expensive. It was 19 bucks back then in the 80s. The same Bible today is$80. The deal was that you had to finish a Bible study before you got the Bible. So you'd have your own Bible or a paper Bible, whatever. But when you finished a Bible study, you got your own leather Bible with your name engraved in gold. Well, I had to write my own Bible studies, man, because you couldn't find one simple enough that they could graduate. I said, you got to get a passing grade of 70%. So we'd give them like a 20-question deal, and they would only have to get like, you know, 14 right or whatever it was. I don't remember. So I wrote my own Bible studies. We'd ask questions like the question would be uh multiple choice. What was Jesus' mother's name? Mary, Martha, Maggie or June? Which one? A, B, C, or D. And oh, it was Mary. So they put Mary and so I wrote all my own Bible studies. And people from the outside would look at the Bible studies and say, Well, you look at a retard prison or what? So you don't understand, man. Most of these guys can't read. So it wasn't just death row, we did it for the whole prison. We had an administrator that I was paying$2,000 a month back in 82, 83, a lot of money to track every inmate so that wherever they went, their Bible studies would be corrected and sent to them with a personal volunteer. Well, I was buying leather Bibles and spending, I don't even know how I was doing it. I really don't, man. I was doing a couple real estate deals on the side. I I don't know. But we were spending like 50, 100,000 bucks a year on Bibles. So this uh board I had, I had 12 guys, all business people, good guys that love Jesus. But see, they were just there for advice. And the reason that's important is I always want to be able to tell a board member what to bite off when I want to. I never want to have to do anything, some board member tells. Me to do. So I appointed these guys to a board, but they didn't have any power. Well, here we are. It's about money again, dude. Guess what they said? We think it's a poor stewardship of God's resources to spend that kind of money on leather Bibles for president mates. First off, it ain't your money because you guys are all too cheap. And maybe give me a couple hundred dollars once in a while. I was paying for all the Bibles, but see, when it comes to money, it doesn't matter. People just see money, even if it's not theirs, and they get real weird. You have any doubt for that? Talk to somebody that inherited a bunch of money and ask them what happened to his life. Talk to a guy that gets a big raise and his company's successful and ask him what happened to his life. Talk to a guy that won a lottery. It doesn't matter. People see money even if it ain't theirs and they get all crazy because they want to touch it. So these guys said, We as a board are gonna recommend that we we we found a place and then they show me this Bible, this freaking paper Bible for like a buck fifteen. And we could get these by the case for 90 cents, something like that, 80 cents. I said, okay, I don't really understand. Did you guys see the? I'm trying to use nice language because you got to remember I'm a Down Mission Christian. So they said, no, we as a board, that's our recommendation. I said, all right. From here on out, from here on out, man, we're gonna buy them Bibles. This Bible right here, and I held it up. From this point forward, we've got to buy 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, whatever how many of these Bibles, from here on out, we buy that Bible. But there's a policy that goes along with it. No one of these hundreds of men that come in and out of this prison, no one is ever gonna be allowed to tell an inmate that they love him because that's a lie. What are you talking about? I said, it's a lie. Would you give this freaking 80 cent Bible to your best friend if he got saved? Would you give this Bible to your brother, your sister, your cousin who just found the Lord? Would you give them this Bible? Or would you give them one of these? And I held up my leather Bible. And they said, Well, that's not the same. I said, See how you are? It's not the same because this is just for a dirty inmate. This is all he deserves, right? No, I'll buy these Bibles from here on out, but if I hear one person telling an inmate that they love them, I'll kick them out of this whole organization and they'll never be invited back again. Because if you tell someone you love them and you give them this crap, you're a liar, and I won't be part of a lie. So, what's it gonna be? Well, they looked at me like I was crazy. You know, a couple of them quit, which I don't really care. So we went on that way for a while, and things were cool for maybe, you know, another year or two, and then it's another emergency board meeting. What's the problem now? Well, we want to show you something. I want to show you what your leather Bible program has resulted in. Oh my god, okay. Well, look, yeah. So we go in and we sit down and pull out the sheet of paper. Look at this right here. What am I looking at? Well, Robert R. Smith, donor section completed his Bible study, got his Bible engraved in gold. Twenty-three dollars, whatever. Robert R. Smith, that's his Bible. Look, Robert T. Smith. Look, Robert M. Smith. Smith's a common name, yeah. All right, what? It's the same person, it's the same person, and they're mailing these Bibles home. They're stealing our Bibles. Keep in mind that they're not paying for it, but they just see the money. And they're all in this freaking panic. And I said, And I said, hey man, did you see the billboard in Marin County by the Civic Center when you're coming in where it said a 1-800 number call for a free Bible? They got numbers out there spending thousands of dollars trying to get people to ask for a Bible, and we got people stealing ours. What's the problem? And then again, they just because of money. It's the same everywhere, man. To the day you they put you in the grave, it'll be the same. Did you ever see those little bands that those people walk around with this WWJ D? They come out of the church, WWJ D, and they got their uniform on, which is the tight jeans, the suede boots, and the pointy hair and the WWJ D. What would Jesus do? Jesus would be about love. Yeah, that's true. But Jesus is also about being flipping some tables over and whipping the crap out of some people. How about that? He only did that once, you know. Wasn't like he did it nine times. So why'd he put that story in there? Think about it. He's the son of a living God that controls the book. That doesn't have to be in there because it makes him look bad, doesn't it? To the church, to a lot of people, it makes him look bad because he's not lovey dovey. He flipped the tables over and whipped a bunch of people. Well, he just had a moment of uh, you know, where he wasn't real clear. Whatever their excuse is, if Jesus didn't want it in the book, it wouldn't be in the book. So why is it in the book? The one time. Man, I'm trying to tell you what he was doing 2,000 years ago was to tell us in 2025, dude, it's about the money. And it's the only thing that got me hot and revved up, and it should be the only thing that gets you hot and revved up. Pay no attention to the money. I own the cattle on a thousand hills. Kick it in the backside and get to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:23

Why do they say that the love of money is evil or the money is evil? It's the love of money, but a lot of people get that misconstrued.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:31

It's the love of money is the root of all evil. It's where it starts. But money's not evil, it's the love of money. I could take a hundred grand and build an orphanage, or I could build an outrageous whorehouse with 50 bedrooms. What's the difference? Well, one, I got a bunch of hookers in there doing stuff they shouldn't do. The other one, I'm helping kids that are hungry. It's not the money's fault, it's a guy with the money in his hand. Wherever your heart is, their ocean shall your treasure be. I didn't make that up. I didn't say that. I didn't like miscommunicate or misinterpret something. That's what it says. So people tell me about their faith all the time. We hear it, man, all the time. Oh, yeah, I believe this and I believe that, and I believe this, and I want to join Souls of the Cross. Hey, you know, I don't have to worry about insulting you. Pastor does. He has to be nice. I don't. I said, Why don't you give me your checkbook? Shut your mouth, and in five minutes I'll tell you about your walk with God. Jesus said, Where your heart is, there also shall your treasure be. So let's take a look. Let's see, I got a mortgage payment here to Bank of America. That's pretty important words. You got a roof over your head. I see. Oh, wait a minute. I see uh what's this? Wells Fargo Automotive Financing. Well, I see it's pretty important what you drive. Oh, I got a whole bunch of stuff in here. Shells and guns and blinds. Apparently, you like to hunt. But then I got this little thing right here. Get$150 to this church over here just once in a while. And you're gonna tell me that what's important to you is the work of the Lord, you're a freaking liar, and that's okay, but go lie to someone else. Where your heart is, there also shall your treasure be. And if your checkbook doesn't, if the dial doesn't turn up to show that serving the Lord and saving the lost and spreading the kingdom and bringing light into darkness and telling people that about the love of Christ, that has to show up in that book. And if it doesn't show up, you're self-deluded. You're saying things that ain't true. And for the most part, people that do that, they're not bad people, they're not nasty people. They don't mean to be stupid and two-faced, they just are and don't know it.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:04

There's a any any do the leather Bibles ever come back? Have you ever heard any stories later, 30 years later, about what happened with your Bible or anything?

SPEAKER_06 1:15:14

Well, about three months ago, we were at a prison in California called Mule Creek, and there was uh about 70 of us up there, filled the yard with bikes, towed in our soldiers of the cross barbecue, cooking lunch for all the inmates. We were on the upper yard, so it wasn't the whole prison, it was only like 1,500 guys. And uh about one o'clock, one of our guys came over and he said, Hey, I got a guy here that wants to meet you. And I looked over at him and I said, How are you doing? He said, You remember me? I said, No. He said, I was watching, I was in the hole, and in the hole they had a little tiny 13-inch TV up in the corner, and there was a podcast every Thursday. And I started laughing. I said, I said, dude, in the 80s, there's no such thing as a podcast. There was a close, you know, closed cables, but it was in the prison. You had to have like a Betamax tape. He goes, Well, I was watching you in the corner, and I accepted Christ in 1983, and uh got on my knees in my cell and accepted the Lord, and you guys gave me a Bible, and he had the Bible. This was just three months ago, and this was back in 1983, I think. He goes, I thought maybe you'd be long dead. I never never heard for anything more about you. I said, Well, we don't advertise, man. We're just not getting people safe, going from prison to prison, country to country, just getting it done. He goes, Man, well, I really, really appreciate what you did for me. You changed my life. And he had the Bible. So I said, Well, what are you doing here? He goes, Well, he goes, I got into a little problem after I got paroled down in LA. And I took a couple jobs and and I got caught in the second one, and now I'm gonna be here till Jesus comes, I guess. So, what kind of job did you take? He goes, Well, I used to kill people. And I took two jobs to get the money that I needed, and uh I got caught in the second one, and now I'm here to stay. I said, Cool, well, uh nice, nice talking to you. Other than that, I don't know how many thousand Bibles were out on the street. I I never had a occasion to see too many.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:42

For that guy, is it when is it too late for someone to be saved? It's never too late.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:50

It's never too late.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:52

You can't out sin.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:54

No. There was a guy in Death Row. I guess he's a good example. He wanted me to talk about the prison, so I'll bring up a couple stories about prisoners. But you know, as we go on in life, we end up with hundreds and hundreds and sometimes thousands of different stories. I I don't I don't care too much about what God did 20, 30, 40 years ago. I I'm I'm looking at what he did yesterday morning, what he did this morning. I mean, he you should be moving, man, all the time. And in a lot of churches that I have friends that are pastors, I go to their church, and it's funny you talk to people and they all all always want to tell you about what they did back in 92. Or they'll tell you about some trip they went on in 87, you know. No, wait, what'd you do this morning, man? What'd you do last week? Come on, man. So, you know, having said that, uh, and to answer your question about is if it's is it if it's ever too late. There was a guy he since since executed him. I think uh I think they executed him in the the mid mid to late nineties. His name was uh uh Bill Bonan. And his nickn he was labeled by the news media as the the freeway killer. And the reason why they called him that is because he would pick up boys on the freeway hitchhiking, and then he would dismember them and throw their body parts out on the freeway. They convicted him of ten murders, and after he was locked up, they convicted him for another of another four. In my discussions with him, he killed way more people than that, but that's just what he was convicted for 14 boys. And when he first drove up on the row, I went down to talk to him and tell him who I was and see if he wanted to do a Bible study. And he said, Hey, Brother Ben, I I heard all kinds of great things. You come in here, man, you got no agenda. You don't use us to raise. Here we go back to it again, man. You don't use us to raise money. You don't go around and say, Oh, look at all these men that we've talked to for Christ. Won't you help me help them? You don't have any of that kind of crap going on. And and because of that, a lot of guys respect you. Well, don't you understand that today in the business world a lot of guys still respect us for the same reason? Because we tell them about Jesus with no agenda, with no angle, with no hook. Just to tell them that Jesus loves them and we're not about using our platform to make money. Well, it was the same kind of a deal. He said, I hear you buy Bibles for the guys, and I was uh one of Robert Harris's religious advisors when they executed him, and he was the last guy to die in the gas chamber. So he flew his family out, put them up in a hotel, and did everything that we could do to kind of help them uh through the whole process of watching your loved one gag on a gas chamber. And uh anyway, he said, I I heard about all the stuff that you do, man, and it's really, really great. But and I'd really like to be your friend. He was a truck driver. But you gotta promise me that you'll never mention the name of Jesus. And I said, Well, hey man, I come up here to help guys, and uh if that's your thing, yeah, I I won't bring Jesus up. What can I do for you, man? He said, I, you know, we just had a small conversation and I and I left and went on to the next cell. So over the course of about a year, probably, I talked to him a little bit here and there, but never uh never had much of a rapport with him. And one day I was out coming to the prison. And again, this is a God thing, right? I just I I loved it. I love it when people talk about God and they got proof. You know I do. I love that. And so I'm walk- I used to park a half mile away from the prison, way down on the lower yacht, uh lower lot, and I would walk all the way up so that I had a chance to pray. Because I didn't know what I'm doing. Well, I don't know what I'm doing now. So I just kind of flying it by wing. I mean, we're I'm I'm an aerobatic pilot. I'm I'm a I have a twin-engine, instrument-rated commercial pilot's license, and I used to fly airplanes at the Reno Air Races. So not much I can't do with an airplane or a woman. Oh, I mean, that's strike that back, that last part. Anyway, there's not much. That was a joke. I can't much I can't do with an airplane, right? So to us, soldiers of the cross, it's like flying inverted, man, upside down with the canopy open, 300 knots, with your hair on fire, and there's a brick wall, and you're headed right at it. But pulling the throttle back ain't an option because that's only uh that's the only thing that a wuss would do. The throttle's cobbed, it's all the way open, and the wall's coming up fast. So there's one or two things that's gonna happen. Either the wall's gonna move or we're gonna hit it. But pulling the throttle back, nah, that's not an option. That's our ministry. So with that in mind, this I'm in San Quentin prison. This guy doesn't want to talk about Jesus. That's okay. He respects me because of what we do, but just don't talk about Jesus. So a year later, I'm walking into the prison. I'm back to my original story now. I got kind of lost there. So I'm walking in. That all that talk about the wall and the fire got me going.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:47

So I'm walking into the prison.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:49

Remind me not to fly with him.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:51

Yeah, and I'm praying. God, you know, what do you have for me to do today? I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm waiting to hear his voice, and out of the corner of my eye, I seen the bay. And it was like a freaking mirror. Flat, not a ripple. Well, me and my buddy Danny, we we fish for Sturgeon right outside the prison. It's the best spot in the whole bay, about a quarter mile from San Quentin. And while I'm praying, trying to, you know, find God's will, all of a sudden I'm thinking, man, I wish I was out there fishing this morning because it's so nice. And then I caught myself. God, really super sorry about that. But you know, I just seen that water. And the Lord say, You take care of my things, I'll take care of yours. You don't worry about that fishing thing. And Danny and Pete, and some of the guys you that we fish with, they'll all tell you, I caught 10 times more fish than they ever dreamed of, and I'm a 50 times worse fisherman than them. So, but that's another story. And I said, Okay, Lord, I'm back on track. Uh the the the bay's out of my mind. What do you want me to do? He goes, Today's Bill Bonin's Day.

unknown 1:24:58

Ha!

SPEAKER_06 1:24:59

Bill Bonin's Day. Right on. All right, okay. You don't want me talking about Jesus, but hey, I'll blow the whole relationship. I'll bring it up and we'll rock. So I get into prison. Hey, Brother Ben, Brother Ben. I walk by everybody straight to Bonin's cell. Let's go, Bill. Hey, how are you doing, Ben? I said, hey, today we got to talk about Jesus, man. He goes, Oh man, I knew this day was coming. I said, Yeah, I honored your wishes. Now you're gonna have to honor mine. Today we talk about Jesus. He goes, All right, brother Ben, pull up a chair, which in prison means sit down in the concrete. He said, I grew up in church as a little boy. He said, I I knew the right things to do and the wrong things to do. I came from I came from a background of I I knew. I wasn't like I was on drugs or something. I knew what I was doing. He said, I started watching, started getting involved in pornography. He said it started with Playboy and all that kind of stuff, you know. And then it got deeper. And pretty soon it was hustler, and then pretty soon it got even deeper. And then at the very end it got into child pornography. And then the Lord told me, stop, or there'll be no coming back from this. And I knew that if I didn't stop, it was gonna take me over. And I thought about it for maybe an hour, and then I just let myself go. And what happened was eventually I got to where I had to act out that child pornography by killing young boys. Now I'm gonna tell you something, Brother Ben. I know where hell is, and I know that's where I belong. And I give you my word, there's only one thing that I'm looking forward to. That's for hell to enlarge itself and to take me in because it's where I belong, is in hell, and that's where I'm going. Because of the things I did. I said, Well, Bill, did you ever hear about the prodigal son? Come on, man. He goes, Oh no, I know that story, but it don't apply to me. I'm way past that. Way past that. I said, dude, I opened up my Bible, went to the story, and I said, You see here where it says that the son was eating out of the pig trough the pig's food. You see that? I read it to him, he said, Yeah? I said, the pig trough is filled with all kinds of different sin, and nothing is excluded from the trough. Pornography, murder, lying. Every sin you can possibly ever commit is. In that trough. You're not excluded. Your sins in the trough, right along with all the rest of it. Let him put a ring on your finger and sandals on your feet, a robe on your back. He stands, he stands at the tear every morning looking, saying, Bill, Bill, man, this guy started shaking like a leaf, rolled off of his bed, got on his knees. I don't even know what was going on. I even hate to say it because anybody listening would say that guy's full of crap. I seen things in that cell that weren't there. I seen lights that weren't there. I seen stuff that was incredible to me. I can say it because I'm not out to get anything from anybody. I'm just telling you what happened. He accepted Christ, became born again, and he was one of the guys that was leading the Bible study on death row. What they did on death row was they would put a Bible verse on a string and they would pull it back and forth all the way down the cell, and guys would add stuff to it. Now, when they executed him, all he said was, I've made my peace. He didn't give any great speech about Christ, about what he did, or that he was sorry. He just said I made my peace, and they injected his ass behind, and that was the end of him. But when you say, Can you go too far? My question to you would be, well, the Holy Spirit came down and took a man who murdered and dismembered probably 25 or 30 little boys along the freeway for five or ten years and saved him. Have you gone too far? Well, maybe you might want to explain to me what you did that's worse than that. Because I know the Lord redeemed a man who did that. So let's talk about that. What do you suppose would be worse than that? I think that's probably the worst of the worst. And most people today that are out there thinking, have I gone too far? Could the Lord still forgive me? My my question to them would be, have you done worse than Bill? Because it was enough for Bill. Amen. So there's the answer to your question, used in a prison.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:20

Yeah, I had a hard time with that one. I worked in a prison for 10 years, and I was just I was always told that anybody could be anybody could be saved, you know, and then I'd work in like the sex offender units, and I'm just thinking of like all the nasty stuff that these people have done, and then to think that like that their sin is just as equal as the person that steals was a hard concept for me to understand. And uh so just just that's why I was just curious on the color.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:04

If sin has degrees, then obviously there must be some way that if I don't, if I'm not too egregious, if I don't sin too bad, maybe I can still maybe I can go I can earn my way to heaven. See the whole idea of sin having degrees is completely opposite of what the Bible teaches, that it's a free gift of grace.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:24

Yeah, that also helped me figure out too when I started going to church of like forgiveness for others, because I was abused a lot as a kid, like for seven years straight, like really bad. So I always had this hate in my heart for my stepmom. And then to think that like that sin's just as the same as all the stuff that I've done, and I would like Jesus to forgive me. So if I can't, if I want to be forgiven, why would I forgive somebody? Or why, you know, if I expect to be forgiven, I should also be able to forgive someone else.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:50

It's right there in the book, and it's okay to struggle with it. We struggle with a lot of stuff. I can't figure out why I'm so pretty. I see people, you know, I see ugly people ugly guys, and I feel so sorry for them.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:03

But I think that that's just I think that's society, right? Just because every different law that you break has a different consequence and different ways that we look at those things. And so then that also bleeds over into the church a lot of times because guys will take a look at what we're doing and they'll go, Well, those guys they have to do that stuff because of their past. You know, I a lot of guys in church will go, Man, I I was never like that. I never did any of those things that you guys have done.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:42

And me and God are, you know, I don't have to do the things that you do because you you've hurt God so bad in the ministry world, you've got to make up for it. But see, I I've never been divorced, I never beat anybody up, I never cheated on my old lady, I've never, you know, not paid my tax. I have not lived that life. So I appreciate and you know can understand that what you're doing, because you know, yeah, but that's you. Look at the things that you've done.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:10

Yeah. I mean, we heard it this morning in the airport talking to a guy that sat across, he came over and sat across from us and started engaging with us. And so obviously, we're gonna have the conversation and it's gonna be about Jesus because he's saying, Hey, what do you guys what's up with the best? I gotta ask. And ultimately it goes right down to that because when you present the gospel in such a way to where uh you you're understanding what Jesus did, either he is at the right hand of the Father or He isn't, what do you say? Is he or isn't he? Well, if you're saying that he isn't, okay, good luck with that. Fair enough. We we say opposite, and here's a few reasons that you may want to think about when you go down the road. But then when they just resist that and say, No, no, I'm a good person, I stop. I he said it this morning, I pull over when I see cars on the side of the road. Great, glad you do that. Don't stop doing that, yeah. But when you stand before the father and he says, What did you do with my son Jesus? You might want to have a little better answer.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:26

Yeah, or a lot of people just say, like, I believe in God, I'm a good person, I'll be fine, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:31

Yeah, and we are constantly trying to get guys to press in on that conversation. Don't don't be so easy to just not engage them at that level. Yeah, okay, you believe in God. What about Jesus? Because everybody's okay with talking about God or talking about the Muslim religion or talking about Buddha, all of that's okay. Talking about spirituality and the trees and and the universe, all of that, the crystals, that's okay. Those are okay conversations. Jesus, however, everybody gets real uncomfortable really quick. And so we're trying to settle into that uncomfortability and just saying, you know what, Lord, if you'll allow me to be a part of your process and maybe help somebody gain some of the understanding that you've given me, that you've shown us with proof over the years because we've been allowed to walk with some of these guys, and they think they think people with those kind of attitudes, they think that uh people on death row are paying for their sin.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:39

They need to die. Before I went to death uh row at San Quentin, I was 100% solid behind the death penalty. And you know, if you asked me to go and pull the trigger myself, I would. Sure, I'll do it. I I was I had no problem with any of it until I got down there. And I really didn't want to say anything against it because it's kind of a political stance of the left that I abhor. The people who support the death penalty by 90% are are conservative uh uh church going people, and I did not want to be on that side. I I wanted to stay where I was on the conservative side. And uh when I got there, I that was a problem I had. How am I what am I gonna deal with these thoughts I have about this penalty? And I had a pastor, buddy of mine, really hammer me about talking against the death penalty, and that this is what these people deserve. It's the Bible, they knew what they did, and it's it's reparation for the family, and went on and on and on and on. So I said, you know, I won't use his name because you might he's kind of a famous guy. I don't want to make uh make him look bad. I said, you know, how do you think it's gonna go in heaven? When you get to heaven, you think God is gonna say, Hey, Joe, come over here. Yeah, Lord, what is it? Man, Joe, I just gotta thank you. I really, I just want to personally thank you for supporting the death penalty the way you did with such vigor, you know, with such conviction. Because, you know, they just executed this man was a rapist. And Ben Hardester was gonna be there at his cell in two weeks and lead him to me. And oh, oh Joe. Man, we don't need people like that in heaven. Thank you. Thank you, thank you for your support to make sure that guy was executed and sent straight to hell because we don't need people like that up here, Joe. Good job. I just wanted to thank you personally. He's just looking at me, not saying nothing. I said, Or, or do you think the Lord's gonna say, Hey, can I talk to you for a minute? Do you realize the first time that inmate was raped when he was three years old, I was standing in the room next to him? Do you realize when his mother gave him up and left him sitting on a box in front of a 7-Eleven store when he was seven with no mother or father? That I was standing right there with him when he was crying? Do you know I was there then? Do you know that when he was drunk through the streets and his life was ruined and he was addicted to drugs? Do you know I was there the whole time saying, I'm here for you, I'm here for you. And did you know that in just another two weeks, Ben was gonna be at his cell and say, brother, I got the answer for you. Jesus was there when you were born. He saw all the things you went through, and he's here now, brother. And you know what? You don't have to go to hell, he's died for you. Do you know what after everything I did for you? Couldn't you just let a little bit of that for him? You have no idea what he went through, but I knew I knew I was there every step of the way. Oh, oh man, why did you have to do that? Now, if those are the two scenarios, which one do you think's accurate? Which one's accurate? It's either one or the other, and that changed my life on how I looked at things. I didn't become some left-wing nut, but suddenly I was able to deal with the fact of what these people had done and that Jesus still loved them. Suddenly I was able to see that. And it allowed me to stay there for almost 13 years and do the things that I did with an open heart. Otherwise, I'd have been a hypocrite the whole time, figuring that these people deserved to die because I would never saw the truth of it. The truth of it is almost every single one of those guys were abused. There's a few that weren't, but not as not enough, not enough to talk about. The overwhelming majority were all abused and raped and kicked around. They never had a chance. Well, who do you think was there the whole time? A little kid doesn't know any difference when he's being raped when he's five years old. Come on. Jesus was there, and now he sees the end of the road of what the devil's done to him, and he just wants them to breathe long enough so that I can get there to reach him. And you're fighting me because you want to kill him and you say you love Jesus. What is what is that? Well, this pastor, very famous pastor, he just walked away because it didn't meet his narrative. He knew if he if he was to preach or say what I was saying, he'd lose a whole bunch of his members. So he just kind of pretended like it didn't happen. You know, there was an inmate who was in prison and and on death row, and he didn't ever do anything but bark. Never, hey brother Ben, hey, how you never he all he did was bark. I'd say, hey, Michael, how's it going? I'd say, what kind of dog are you, man? He wouldn't answer, whoop, woof, woop, woof, woof, he just bark. Well, that, I mean, that went on for at least three years, four years, and I I got to where I didn't even stop. I just walked by it, so when I walked by, he would just look and go, woof. Never never heard him say a word. Had a long, long gray beard, big long fingernails stained with nicotine. Back in those days, you could smoke in the prison. People don't understand. Back in the 80s and even 90s, you know, you couldn't get a match in prison. The guard would have to give you a match for a cigarette. So they took toilet paper and they rolled it up in these little, these little tiny string like things, and then they would put them in a circle, and then this guard would light it, and it would just smolder and smoke all day. So when they wanted to light a cigarette, they would just grab that tweeted up toilet paper and light their cigarette with it. Well, every year they're freaking sell at it. So it was a smoky, filthy, stinky mess, man. It was a horrible place. So, same thing, same thing. I'm back out walking up to the prison, and I'm praying. What am I gonna do today, man? I don't even know. I got bills up the kazoo, interest rates like, you know, 15%, nobody's building. I'm a real estate developer, and it's just a hard time. And I'm trying to get my wrap my brain around what God wants me to do in this crap hole that I hate. And he said today's Michael's the Barker?

unknown 1:43:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:21

Well, how am I supposed to reach him? He just parks. It's his day. All right. It's cool because nobody knows my conversation. Nobody knows what I'm gonna. Nobody ever knows if I'm gonna be successful or if I'm gonna fail because it's just between me and the Lord. And the way I look at it, if I'm doing what he wants me to do, I ain't failing no matter what happens. Okay, I'm gonna take the barker on. So I get up there and walk down, everybody wants to talk. You can't talk to everybody. There's too many people. That's why I say I always ask God, because you're gonna spend quality time with certain guys. You can't talk to everybody. The devil will always send a deflection to try to keep you from where you're designed to be. It always happens. And Christians that aren't very smart don't understand what deflection is, it takes you off the target of where you're supposed to be. So while you're talking to some guy that's rejecting Christ, trying to convince him that they need Jesus, this guy over here is looking for Jesus and can't find him, and you never reach him because on the way to him, the devil will send these two guys that will never accept Christ. So you have to discern who it is that God wants you to talk to because there's there's multiple deflections out there to keep you from reaching that man who's hungry for Christ. And if you're not using wisdom, you'll sit there on the couch and you'll argue with some guy for an hour and a half about why he should accept Christ. And he's never going to because he's on his way to hell. He wants to go to hell, he thinks he can save himself, and he's a waste of time. I mean while this guy's over here, his family's breaking apart, doesn't know what to do, he's desperately seeking for God, and you never find him. You have to use wisdom and understanding. It doesn't mean you're going to be right all the time, but you've got to at least try. So I learned that a long time ago. So I always ask, What do you want me to do today? And then just came that my this guy, Michael, the barker. So I went straight to his cell and said, Hey, Michael, how you doing, man? I said, Man, I said, Hey, you know, it's been a couple years now, you've been barking. He started and he's barking the whole time I'm talking. After about a minute, I stopped and I thought, well, I I I'm trying, I tried, and I'm about ready to walk away. And without even thinking about it, I turned back to the cell, and I he was sitting on the bed sideways, looking up at his little TV, and I was at the at the at the the the uh door to a cell to the left, and I said, Hey Michael, my friends tell me I'm a pretty good storyteller. You want to hear a story? Dude jumps up, turns his TV off, comes to the end of the bed. Back in those days, didn't have screens on the bars that were you could actually put your hands through the bars. And he goes, Yeah, tell me a story. And it blew me away because I'd never heard his voice in years. He looked like he was probably 60. And he was a young man, like 20s, 30s. His voice, he was a young man. And I it shocked me for a second. And I said, Well, I said, you know, once I was a little boy, and his mother was a prostitute, and when the Johns would come in to the hotel room, she would put him in a closet. And this hotel room didn't have no windows, it just had sheets where the windows used to be. And she'd put him in the closet, and when she was done with the John, she'd take him back out of the closet. Well, she had a John coming up, so she took him over and said, No, Michael, be quiet. Don't make any noise. And she opened the closet to put him in there. The problem was the closet was so full of garbage and cans and junk and rotten food that she couldn't get the door closed. Because when she opened the door, it all came out and she put him in there, she couldn't close the door. So she took and put him behind a dresser in the corner of this room and said, Be quiet, honey. He was only five or six years old. So she put him on top of a pile of dirty laundry. Then John came in, did his business, and when he was done, he reached into his coat to pull out the money to pay his mother. But instead of paying his mother, he pulled out a knife and he cut her throat from ear to ear. And she landed on the floor in front of the dresser with blood pouring out onto the wood, the old beat-up wooden clank floor. And the little boy was so scared that his body started to shake and it started hitting up against the back of the dresser. His mother was laying there on the floor dying or dead. He grabbed the dresser and he pulled it forward and it fell forward, and the mirror broke on the floor on top of his mother's body, and the little boy was just standing there in his underwear shaking on top of a pile of dirty laundry. And the man grabbed him, threw him on the bed, sodomized him, and then did the same thing to him that he did to his mother. Cut him from ear to ear and left him on top of his mother's body and left. Well, if anything happened, the little boy didn't die. And to this day, the little boy has a nightmare every night. And he's still heartbroken because it is in his own mind, he still has the mind of that little boy thinking that he should have been able to do something to save his mom. Then he just stood back there and did nothing, and it haunts him every single day. He jumps up off the bed and starts screaming. Who told you that? Who told you that? No one knows that. Then he reached up and he ripped his shirt down and he had a scar all the way down his neck, all the way from ear to ear. And then he started crying and he just slumped down to the floor and he's void. Trailed away and he said, Who told you that? So I reached my hand through the bar and put it on his head. Long gray hair. And I said, Michael Jesus told me that. He told me to tell you that he was there then. And he's still here now. And he didn't want those things to happen, but sin entered the world. And because of it, these things happened. Bad things that he never wanted to happen to you. And he's here now for you. He's always been waiting for you, Michael. And he got up, and this is the part I don't really care. I'll just tell you what happened. You don't have to believe it, it don't make no difference. He got up and he went to the back of the cell of the toilet. And then the whole back of the cell on the hat was like split on his nose. It went right straight down his nose. Somebody maybe that could believe the story, maybe it'll make a difference in their life. It came right down the exact middle of his nose. And on the left hand side was a piercing white light, brighter than any white you can imagine. Brighter than the sun. It wasn't orange, it was white. And on the right hand side was complete darkness, black, like you looking right into hell. It was like looking down a thousand feet into a pit. And he was gone. Half the cell was light, the other half was darkest dark you ever saw. And it didn't make any sense because light can't exist next to dark. If there's light there, then the whole cell's light. If it's dark there, then the whole cell's dark. But it wasn't. It was light, like it was almost painted, except it wasn't. It was real, it was glowing, it was vibrating. On the left was a white light, and on the right was darkness, and he was gone. And I started to say something, to call out his name, and the Holy Spirit said, Stay silent. And my heart was just breaking inside because I I had a vision of what this kid had gone through. I no longer saw him as a rapist that killed girls. I no longer saw him that way. I saw him as a little boy that was raped in his life that was ruined. I I I I know that I didn't see him like that no more. And so I I wanted to call out his name. And the Lord said, Stay silent. So I did for just a minute. I don't think much more. And then on the dark side, the black side, I start I saw a little red glow, and it was glowing and vibrating like a little red glow. And I was looking at it, and I was looking at the light, and then all of a sudden, the dark went like this. And now the whole entire back of the cell was black, and that with the little tiny red thing glowing, and then all of a sudden, the light, the normal light came back to the cell, and that red thing that glowing was the was the ember from the toilet paper, and he was lighting a cigarette, and that little glow all of a sudden was just was in his hand, and his whole body was there, and it was all dark, but it wasn't black like it was before, it was just dark, but I could see his body. He sat down, he reached up and turned his TV on, and without looking at me, because I was standing at the door, he took a puff of his cigarette and he said, Brother Ben, you're one spooky dude. And I walked away, and he died a short time later, and he never did accept Christ. So you've got two examples of two men in the extremes of life. One who figured he couldn't be saved, and when he found out he could, he couldn't run fast enough to the to the arms of Jesus. Another one who knew Jesus was there and it was there to embrace him and erase his heartbreak and pain, who ran the other way away from Jesus. And that's the choice that we all make. We all make it, maybe not to that extreme, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Jesus stands at the door and knocks. He said, I stand at the door and knock. And if any man will open that door, I will come in. And that afternoon in San Quentin Prison on Death Row, he was knocking on that man's heart, and he would not open the door. Because the man, the the door to a man's heart only has a handle on the inside. There's not a two-handled door. You have to open that door. Jesus can't. He stands at the door and knocks, but there's no knob on the outside, man. It's a one-knobbed door, and all you have to do is turn it and open it. And he'll come in.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:30

Wow. It's a powerful story. You've seen some cool stuff. Been able to affect a lot of people's lives. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_05 1:55:42

Now you know why I like to hang out with him. Yeah. He's got a book, by the way. And maybe you can a couple of them, right? Yeah, there's uh one that's uh 52-week uh devotional. Um that's uh a scripture, and then there'll be some commentary from Ben. He also has some YouTube videos that go along with that. Um and then there's the uh book with a lot of stories in it that are similar to that, and it's called uh Faith Without Honor and Dogs That Don't Hunt That Can't That Can't Hunt.

SPEAKER_06 1:56:18

And why'd you name it that because most people in most churches are like uh pampered poodles, they're like pampered poodles. Put them in a duck mine and say, Go get it, boy. Poodle will sit there looking and go, What? Yeah, right? Hunting dogs jumping around, he got him by the collar when the duck hits the ground. I said, Get him, boy, away he goes, right? Most people in organized religion have been pampered their whole life. They don't know how to bring anybody to God. They're dogs that can't hunt.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:56:53

I had a pastor one time. Do you remember that guy? I think he's still alive. He wrote that book, Driving Around Looking for Your Life. Purpose-driven life. Purpose-driven life. Uh Rick Warren, he wrote this great book. He sold like 58 million copies or whatever. Nice, great guy. He's at this uh uh event in Monterey that I got invited to to be a speaker. My place as a speaker is normally look what God can do with an idiot. That's that's my thing. Look what God would do with someone with no tools. That's my thing. Because these other guys that know the Bible, they're theologicans or whatever they call them, and they know about the Greek and all that, you know, they're great guys. But then what they do is they'll bring someone like me out there and say, and oh, by the way, if you have no tools, look at that, right? So it was one of those kind of deals. Uh the driving around looking for your life book guy, he's a speaker, and then I was a speaker. So it was for business people. It was for like uh someone said at this meeting that there was a collective uh company net worth of like one and a half trillion dollars. I mean, these are all like multi-hundred billionaires. It's in Monterey, San Jose, dot com, all that stuff. So a lot of people with big money, Christian people, and most of these guys with big money, they put a Bible in their waiting room, and that's their ministry. Their ministry is look how cool I am and look how rich I am. And I'm telling you that I'm a Christian, so everybody's gonna want to be like me. That's my ministry. They don't actually go out on the field and do anything, not all of them, but most of them don't, right? So having said that, I'm sitting at the table having lunch with this guy, and there's like five pastors. Dude, I am never in anybody's world under any configuration ever invited to sit at that table. They're all got like TV shows and limousines and jets and big houses and sell a million books. And I'm just just I'm just this this guy, this carpenter real estate guy. I got no place at this table at all, ever. But I was invited to sit at the table because I was one of the speakers. And this guy that was driving around looking for his life, he kind of liked me and he invited me to have lunch with him. I said, sure, I could be one of the guys. So I'm outside this big table, and um he asked me how I got the name for the book, so that's why I'm telling you this story. It's not just random, right? So I'm sitting at the table and Danny's there with me, he's over there. And uh he flew down there with the little six-passenger plane, and he and I flew down together. And well, Danny's a fisherman, and and to this day, I'm telling you, he he just loathes the fact that he could never catch a bigger sturgeon than me. It's he has nightmares, but he's always fishing, and he always carries a fishing line in his pocket with a hook. He always does. So while these guys are talking about the great things of God, because these are like top-notch world-famous theologicans. So Danny's over there, and I'm I'm trying to like listen to some of this stuff. I'm like, bored Stiff, I just want to get out of here, right? And and all of a sudden, Danny goes, got one. And they all went, and he's over there with a he's got a coke can and he's spinning the coke can, and everybody looks and they go, God, they said, Excuse me. Right in the middle of his like the the dissertation of what he was giving to everybody, the words of wisdom from the world famous author. And Danny goes, got one. They all said, What's what's he talking about? I said, Don't pay no attention, he's just fishing. He said, Fishing? I said, He's always fishing, no matter where we go. Well, we're at the Monterey Plaza Hotel, the deck goes out over the ocean. So we're sitting next to the rail and probably about four feet of water. Danny put a shrimp from a salad on there and then lowered it down to the water, and he was jigging for rock cod. And he got one. So he then you turn the can, which is your fishing reel, and so all the guys get it from the table and they go over there and he's turning the can and he pulls up out of the water. It's a red snapper and it's jerking it all around like this. And they're going, You caught that fish on a can, and he goes, Yeah. So he's just rolling it up like this. He gets it up to the top, and they're all looking at it, taking pictures of it. Take the fish, throw it back in, and everybody sits back down. They're all trying to gather themselves now because you know they were they were getting words of from the oracle, right? So this one guy, this one preacher guy, he says, from some big church somewhere, he says, Rick, can I call you Rick Pastor? As soon as you said that, I wanted to slap him in the face. What give me a bring pink underwear, probably. He said, Can I call you Rick? Well, sure, brother. Can I ask you a question? Well, absolutely. And I know, see, Rick's way nicer than me. He has to put up with that stuff all the time. I can imagine. I can't speak for him, but he was super polite to me. I would have told the guy, hey, get a grip, man. What do you want? But Rick, Rick, he's he's he's a nice guy. So he says, I can ask you a question. Rick goes, sure, brother. He goes, When you get to heaven, what would you like to hear from the Lord? What would you like God to say to you? I mean, for me, what I wouldn't give just to know that he would say, Well done, thy faithful servant. And Rick was trying, I I'm pretty sure he was trying not to roll his eyes. And he said something like, you know, I can't quote him, but something like, Yeah, that would be really wonderful to hear. That would be fantastic. And they all went, Oh, yeah, praise God, praise God, oh, praise God. So this one idiot looks over at me. I'm out of this conversation. I'm watching Danny Fish. I'm a speaker at this meeting, is the only reason why I'm at this table with theologicans. Ben, can I ask you the same question? I thought, oh come on, man, come on. It wasn't like he he just talked like a normal voice with me. It wasn't like he was an angel talking when he's talking to me. And he said, So, Ben, what would you like to hear from the Lord? And I said, Oh man, I just if there's any way I could choose, if I could pick what I know exactly what I want him to say. He goes, What would that be, Ben? I said, I hope that when I get to heaven, Jesus says, Hey, as I come through the gate, hey, hey, there's a dog that could hunt. I send that boy out, tell him that someone needs salvation, he'll go find that and bring it back to the blind. There's a there's a dog that could hunt. I said that I could get no greater allocate from my master than to hear that. And they looked at me like I had 19 heads and four eyeballs. And I said, you know what, fellas, I gotta get going. I said, Danny, get your rod, which was just cocaine. And we walked away. Wasn't that true, Danny?

unknown 2:04:26

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:27

That's awesome. Well, the book's available on Amazon. Uh it's called Faith Without Honor and Dogs That Can't Hunt. Ben Hardister is the author, it's H-A-R-D-I-S-T-E-R, um,$12.99 on Amazon. And I would suggest that you uh grab the other book, too, the 52-week devotional. Um it's funny because uh when I first started hanging out with Ben, he would tell these stories. I'm like, I don't know about that story. That's so that's kind of far-fetched. And then I would go somewhere with him, and uh the guy sitting across the table having lunch from us was the guy that was there, and he would tell the story exactly the way he'd been told it. So I'm like, okay. Backs it up pretty good. Yeah, it backs it up pretty good. And so I told I used to tell him, I said, you need to write a book. And he said, uh, yeah, I'm gonna do that one day. I'm working on one. He goes, but I had kind of have to tone it down because some of my stories sound so ridiculous that people aren't gonna believe them.

SPEAKER_06 2:05:28

Well, this guy, this guy's coming to me at the SOTC, our missions director is an assembly of God pastor, used to do all the video work for Jimmy Swagger from Louisiana. Great guy, Jonathan Malille. He's joined our club now and he's a foreign mission director for our club. Well, I told a couple of guys some stories about some stuff we did in Venezuela, which is on the news lately. And when they talked to Jonathan, they came back and told me, and they said, Hey, Jonathan was telling that story. He was the guy that was with you in Venezuela. I said, Yeah. I thought you were B BSing us. He used the whole word, though I wouldn't use it. I said, Well, why would I BS you about that? He goes, I don't know, it just didn't seem like it could be real. I said, but but what would be the benefit? Why would I do that? Well, he told the same story, so it really happened, huh? And it was like, you know, we were we were in Venezuela, we built uh uh a place called Impacto de Dios with a guy named David Wagner and A. G. Pastor, and we started out with 70 men on the river. It's one of the stories of my book. This is what I'm gonna tell you is not my book because nobody won't believe it. Nobody will believe it. I can tell it here because there ain't nobody around, and who cares if they believe it or not? I don't care. I'm just telling you the story. We were told not to go to this town called La Vega. Well, Jonathan was a pastor in Middletown, and what he did is he would do a five-minute highlight reel for every football player. Didn't matter if you're if you were a center or an end, a quarterback, he'd get he'd do a highlight reel for every player. And then he would give it the highlight reel, a witness to them. So I said, hey, we've gone from 70 guys to like 700, now there's 4,000. I mean, we're we're gonna largest drug treatment clinic in freaking South America. I I gotta we gotta go over there and take a video so that when when the missionary goes to these churches, he has something to show people. You're an expert. You did all the Jimmy Swaggard stuff for 10 years. Come with me and I'll buy you a new commercial camera. It was like 10,000 bucks. Yeah, okay, I'll do it. So we get there. I said, we gotta go to La Vega, man. La Vega's like nothing but whorehouses and bars and criminals and guns. It's beautiful from an evil standpoint of view, but it's beautiful from my standpoint of view because it's a mission field and a half, man. Plus, it shows the world what we're doing. So the missionary said, No, you can't go there. I said, What do you mean you can't go there? Flew all the way over to this crap whole country, and I can't go to no, I no, I'm not gonna let the driver take you there, and that's that's off. That that's off. So I thought, all right, so the missionary were there for one more day, and we got to leave. We're there for four days. The missionary had to go with some other missionaries to do missionary stuff, and I went to the driver. I said, give me the keys to that van. He goes, Oh, if you need something, I'll go get it for you. I said, No, no, no, we're gonna take the van for a little ride. He goes, Well, I'll go with you. So he gets out there, and when we left, I said, Okay, now I want to go to the Vega. He goes, No, no, take me back. I said, We'll take you back. We're going to the Vega. He goes, I'll get very angry. He goes, I'll I'll lose my job. I said, just don't tell anybody then. He goes, Well, if I go back and the van's gone, they're gonna know that you're gone and they're gonna find out. I said, then just come with us. You can stay in the van. Oh, he's really upset, really upset. So we go to the Vega, we get there, he locks all the doors. He goes, Please, please don't do this. He tried everything he could to get us not good there. Well, La Vega, man, the streets are so steep that if it rains, you can't take a car because it won't it'll spin out, even four-wheel drive. It's like this horrible place. It has streetlights, but you know what they are? On the corner of every block are a pile of burning tires. That's their streetlight. This is a beautiful place, man, to find sinners. These this is the spot. So we get out, or me and Jonathan are going up, and almost like within the first 20 minutes, band comes screaming down the hill. Guys jump out, everybody's got a gun. But that's not unusual for La Vega because everybody in the Vega's got a gun, and they all put them right here in the front. They don't do like you see on TV, like the Joe Q FBI undercover behind your belt in the back, or none of that crap. They're just all stuffed in front of their pants where everybody can see it. And here they come. They all got guns. And there's one guy yelling, La Chinga, this and la chinga that. I don't know what that means, but I think it's bad in Spanish. So normally all you say is, hey, missionario, hey, Jesus Cristo, you know, Dios, Dios, and a little, a few little Christian buzzwords, and they'll kind of leave you alone, right? Well, I was look, you know, I was doing every every kind of Christian word I could think, and they were they they weren't they wanted us in the van. And so Jonathan says, you know, they're pointing at the van. Jonathan says, hey, uh, I think they want the camera. Maybe I just give them the camera. I said, dude, they want more than a camera. Don't don't give in and give them the camera. If they know they can get something, they're not gonna stop with the camera. He goes, yeah, but they want us to get in that van. I said, don't do that either. So the guy with the big mouth in the middle doing all the talking, and all the other, you know, six, seven guys, he got a gun in his pants with a white handle. I don't know if it was plastic or if it was real ivory. Venezuela, probably plastic. And it's just sitting right inside of his pants. Well, I used to box a little bit here and there, and I got a really fast left hand. I always have had from the time I was a kid. I could hit you twice before you can blink if I can get close enough to you. Right hand's not so fast, a little stronger, but that left hand's fast, and I and I know what I can do with it. So my plan is I'm gonna snatch that gun out of that guy's pants and just start shooting. So my only concern is if that gun's got shells. If I pull that gun out and it's got no bullets and the other guy's got bullets, then we're both dead. So I got to go on the premise that this guy's got to have some bullets in that gun. I couldn't see what the caliber was, but it looked like a 38, maybe a 45. So I looked at Jonathan and I said, Don't move. He said, What are you gonna do? I said, Don't move. Because I didn't want him to get shot. Well, every time I tried to move to get an angle on that gun, this guy would move, like in a boxing ring. And I couldn't get the right angle to snatch that handle. Well, all what I just told you that took a minute, took place in like three or four seconds in my mind. And then I realized it was only a question of maybe another few seconds. He was gonna pull the gun out, and then that was gonna be the end of it. So I thought I gotta move now, so I'm just gonna go with my right hand. I did not want to snatch out this way with the handle that way, and then have him grab my hand, and everybody gets shot. But if I can get the right angle, I can pull it out. So I'm just about ready to snatch that thing with my right hand. Just go for it, horse it back and go to town, right? And a guy steps between me and Jonathan. Big guy. Normally I'm a little jumpy anyway. Because you know, if you get hit in the head blindsided by a two by four a few times when you're growing up, you never leaves you. Wife used to wake me up with a broomstick. You know, she wouldn't want to get close enough if she had to wake up. It just never leaves you. So when someone touches me, I I'm all on right now. But when he touched me, I I went to move to jump, especially in this like pressurized cooker that I was in. When he touched me, he paralyzed me. My arm just went my whole body, a whole left side of my body, and my right, my I just paralyzed me. And it was almost like I could, I'm not sure, but it was like I could almost hear a sound, like a and I was I was literally paralyzed. And I looked at him like this. And he walks between me and the guy. He looks at me, and I can't move my head or anything. I'm just like and he speaks, but when he speaks, his lips don't move. Audible voice, but his lips didn't move. Now I don't know what's up with that, it's just what happened. And all he said was, Don't be afraid, everything's gonna be alright. And then he walked right over to here, and then he went, and all I can tell you is when you see somebody disappear, it ain't like they disappeared, man. It's like they weren't there to begin with. You like imagine that they were there, not that they were there and disappeared, you imagine that they were even there, but I got like paralyzed. I knew he was there, and when he disappeared, all of a sudden I started getting feeling back, you know. When you sleep on your arm, I start getting the feeling back in my hand and my leg. And and I looked at Jonathan, and Jonathan yelled, Did you see that? Of course, he didn't have his camera on. Do you see that? And I said, Yeah, man. He goes, What is going on? I looked this way, that way, and then I look at the guys, and they're all backing up, and they're looking past my head. They're looking up, and I turned around to see what was behind me because they were like this, looking, and there was nothing behind me, and I turned back around, they backed up about maybe eight, nine steps, and then they all at the same time turned around, took them up running, jumped in this van, burned gravel, and just took them up down the side street. Jonathan said, Let's get out of here. I said, Are you kidding me? We got a diplomatic community, dude. Let's rock and rubble. So we spent like half an hour going in. He was a preacher, so I didn't want him to get a bad rep. So I had the hooker sit him on my lap, and he would take a picture of him. I kept him pure, but you know, they had bubbles of whiskey and hookers, and then we were just making the best pictures we can get. So look at how evil this place is, right? So we're going back to the to the house, and the driver, he's battling, he's been here parading, I've been paranorming. He said, No, but I've been rabbing. Oh my God, Jesus saved them. And he was just horrified. So on the way back, Jonathan goes, Why did you tell me not to move? I said, Because, man, I didn't want you to get shot. He goes, What do you mean? I said, I was gonna snatch that guy's that guy with the big mouth that was doing all the talking. I was gonna snatch that white handle gun and just start shooting, man. Get us out of there. We ain't going there, man. He goes, What? He goes, that was a bad plan. I said, that's the only thing I could come up with, man, on the spur of the moment. He goes, and he's a preacher. You know, the preachers talk different. And so he's sitting there and he's like looking at his, you know, looking at his camera on the seat and he's looking out the window, and we're on our way through the jungle back up to this house in Venezuela. And he goes, you know, something just done to me. I said, What? Do you realize that that plan was so bad that Jesus had to send an angel to save us? So a couple of the guys in the club know about the story. Of course, I never put it in the book because they didn't know what he believed it. Who cares? Yeah. And so when Jonathan gets there and he's talking, he's they were talking about different things for the Lord, and he says, Yeah, this is one time I was with Ben, and he starts telling the whole story, and they came over and they said, That really happened. I said, So I'm walking around the whole time. You guys think I'm like a BSser or what?

SPEAKER_05 2:17:55

Yeah. So Dan over there's got a couple of confirmations too for me that are in the book. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:01

Yeah. I've been reading this book this year about um Stanford Mac Like Men. It's been cool learning like what a biblical man should look like and how society's version of a man or even church, like he says in there, he's like church's version for the last 20 years, like you gotta check your testicles out the door to step into the church. Is like that's not what like the biblical version of a man should look like. What is like a biblical man look like in today's age?

SPEAKER_06 2:18:28

Um I think someone that does what God tells them to do, regardless of what he thinks other people may think about what that is. You know? Um, you stand up for Christ. You know what a stand-up guy is? Anyone who's been ever involved in prison and crime and doing things that are wrong. A stand-up guy is someone who do ten years in the joint rather than give the cops a name. Cops says, if you just give us a name and tell us who it is that did this, you can go home. A rat will say, Yeah, well, it was you know Frank Jones. And he gets to go home. Stand up guy says, I ain't got no name for you, and he does ten years in the joint. Even though he could have went home because he didn't really do anything. They just wanted a name. Jesus said, If you stand up for me in front of men, I will stand up for you in front of my father. And it's interesting that they uses the word stand up for him. Because Jesus didn't do anything wrong, and all he had to do was rat you and me out. He didn't cheat on his wife. He wasn't even married. He didn't betray his friends. He didn't tell a lie. He didn't go out and take someone's life. He didn't go out and maneuver to for someone's harm. He didn't do anything wrong. He lived a perfect life. He could have looked and said, Hey, you guys were the ones who did what you did. I didn't do it. You know, you're on your own. I I I don't I don't know. You you you did it. You did the crime, you do the time. I he could've trying to say is he could have ratted us out at any time and walked away from the whole cross thing. And he didn't. He did the time. He hung on the tree, he let him stab him and spit on him and call them names and mock him. He did that time. When he did nothing wrong, we were the ones that did it wrong. That's what a stand-up guy does. He won't rat somebody out. Well, what does a biblical man look like? He's a man that won't rat Jesus out. He'll stand up for Jesus because Jesus won't rat him out. My life is everything it is because of what he's done for me, and I'm willing to fight and call and do anything that I need to do to bring glory to his kingdom. Jesus said this the kingdom of force suffers violence, and violent men take it by force. Well, what does that mean? That means that there's some men that say, No, Jesus gives me a green light, I'm done, I'm gone, I'm doing it. I ain't gonna debate it. What does a Christian man look like? Someone who won't rat out Jesus. That makes any sense to you?

SPEAKER_02 2:21:30

Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. We've been talking about like standing firm in the faith and in our Bible study that we go to, and it's just interesting how you have to just be so aware of it everywhere, even like kids' books nowadays or kids' TV shows and everything, they're like trying to put different agendas on them, and we have to be like standing firm in that to like shut those off from our kids and and like teach them the way that that life should be, because otherwise society's agendas are getting pushed on them, and that's not the Christ's way.

SPEAKER_06 2:21:58

Yeah, I get it. It's been uh I mean, there's probably a thousand definitions to what a Christian man should be.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:06

I think a lot of people think that you need to be soft.

SPEAKER_06 2:22:10

You know what I told my wife the other day? She don't listen to no podcast, so I'm safe.

SPEAKER_05 2:22:16

That's what she will.

SPEAKER_06 2:22:18

She she was talking about, she said, Why does everything with you have to denote the to break itself down to the common denominator of violence? I was born a violent man in violent surroundings, and maybe that's what I'll die. I don't really care. I said, What are you asking me? But it's your stories, they all your life. I said, There's stories about my life, I can't make it up. She goes, I just don't know whether if the Lord wouldn't want you to temper that. I mean, I he uses you, but she's she's in a quandary. She's a good woman who grew up in church, and in her experience, God don't use people like me. No way. So I explained to her, I tried to, that the Holy Spirit is in different ways to different people. The Bible says different things to him than to me, but the truth is the same, right? Her Holy Spirit shows up in the morning during her prayer time, puts an arm around her, tells her that he loves her, and that she has tears of gratefulness and thankfulness for what he's done for her family, and as she cries out to God for the blessing of her grandchildren and her prayer group, the different women who are struggling, and as she cries and weeps and and goes to the throne of heaven, her Holy Spirit embraces her and loves her and wipes the tears from her face. My Holy Spirit comes in sideways on a Harley, skids up, and kicks the door, and it says, Let's go, boys. Same Holy Spirit, just a different function of the same spirit. Doesn't make one good, it doesn't make one bad. It's just the way it is. They say, What would Jesus do? Like I said the other minute ago. Well, I don't know, he did some whipping and flipping the tables over, but at the same time, he was the same Jesus that showed compassion. Remember what he told the disciples? He goes, I feel bad for these people, man. They're all hungry and they need something to eat. That whole miracle thing that happened out there in that field for the 5,000 people happened because Jesus had compassion for them. That's a little bit different than flipping the tables over and whacking guys with a whip. Same God, same spirit, same person. There's two different functions of that same spirit. People don't like to say that because they want everything to be the way they like it. That's not what I'm saying. Soldiers of the Cross is the way that I like it because I'm the freaking president. If you don't like it, I'll kick you out.

SPEAKER_05 2:24:58

Speaking of that, we got a meeting to get prepared for. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 2:25:01

All right.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:02

Well, let's just close it out. Where's uh the best place for people to follow you guys at for soldiers of the cross? Either Idaho, California, or SOTC.faith.

SPEAKER_06 2:25:11

That's our website.

SPEAKER_00 2:25:12

Before we completely close it out, um, I think it would be appropriate just because Ben got all the way there. Why don't we lead these listeners into the the prayer of salvation? So if there is anybody out listening that and they want to just pray along with us, they can do that. And uh because I know a lot of times that gets confusing what exactly that looks like and how exactly you do that.

SPEAKER_06 2:25:46

Yeah. Well, there's some people that say the sinner's prayer doesn't work because you know you have to like uh go to church and you gotta figure out what your repentance looks like and you have to repent. And they're yeah, you're supposed to repent of your sins. I'm not saying that you're not, but some people say that praying the sinner's prayer is not necessarily a good thing because then people think they're going to heaven when they're not. I think that's all BS. Paul was very clear in Romans 10, 9, and 8. You can read your Bible, and if you want to argue about what we're gonna do, you argue with Jesus. It says that salvation was having faith in the heart and confessing with the mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord. That's what salvation is. And to someone that says, Well, you got to do A, B, C, D, and E, well, what about the guy on the cross next to Jesus that just said, Remember me? I know I'm a sinner and you're not, you're God, and I'm not, and remember me. He said, You'll see me in heaven this day, paradise. So that's the preface for what we're gonna do. And we do it at all of our meetings for Bible. We never have a Bible study without having an invitation for someone to join Christ. The Bible says it you'll answer for every single thing you say and do. All that means is that God has an outrageous video system. Well, do you think that mankind's the only one that's got CDs? I mean, come on. He's got an outrageous video system. If AI can carry one million bits of information for everybody on the planet per second, what do you think God could do? So there's a library in heaven, it's called the Lamb's Book of Life. And when you get there and they pull out a tape and they've got a tape of you confessing Christ, then you go to heaven. It's that simple. If they go in there and there's no tape, maybe you meant to do it one day, but you never got around to it. Maybe you thought you could live good enough that you didn't need it, whatever the case may be. It's a courtroom. And Jesus is there, and the and God is there. And Jesus will either be your defender or he'll be your prosecutor, one or the other. There's no neutral ground. So here's what we're gonna do. If you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, you'll be saved. There's a tape playing here in this podcast building, and there's a tape playing in your car. There's a tape playing if you're sitting out in the park listening to your phone, whatever it may be. There's a tape playing in your life. So here's what we're gonna do. If you want to go to heaven, this is what you say, and we'll all say it together. Dear Jesus, I'm a sinner.

SPEAKER_02 2:28:26

I'm a sinner.

SPEAKER_06 2:28:28

You're not. You're not. You're the son of God. You're the son of God. Who died so that I could go to heaven. So that I could go to heaven. I ask you to forgive me to forgive me of my sin. I repent of my sin. I repent of my sin. I open the door from the inside out to my heart.

SPEAKER_02 2:28:48

I opened the door from the inside out to my heart.

SPEAKER_06 2:28:51

And ask you to come in.

SPEAKER_05 2:28:52

And ask you to come in.

SPEAKER_06 2:28:54

To be my Lord and Savior.

SPEAKER_01 2:28:55

Be my Lord and Savior.

SPEAKER_06 2:28:57

Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 2:29:00

It's prophet time because that thing just shut off. So must overheated or something.

SPEAKER_06 2:29:05

All right. Right on. Okay, we'll see you at the meeting tonight.

SPEAKER_01 2:29:09

Yeah, absolutely.