No Sanity Required
No Sanity Required is a weekly podcast hosted by Brody Holloway and Snowbird Outfitters. Each week, we engage culture and personal stories with a Gospel-driven perspective. Our mission is to equip the Church to pierce the darkness with the light of Christ by sharing the vision, ideas, and passions God has used to carry us through 26 years of student ministry. Find more content at swoutfitters.com.
No Sanity Required
Rudolf, Beethoven, and The Chainsaw Man
In this episode, Brody dives into the chilling story of Eric Robert Rudolf, the notorious fugitive who spent five years hiding in the small town of Andrews, NC, after committing multiple bombings. Brody recounts his own experiences with the manhunt and explores Rudolf's twisted belief that he was carrying out God’s will. The conversation shifts to the deeper spiritual implications, as Brody and JB reflect on the importance of authentic Christian representation, addressing how poor examples of faith can challenge others' belief while emphasizing the power of living out Christ’s love. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion on faith, hypocrisy, and personal responsibility.
Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith.
Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.
Got JB with me today. Hey everyone, so I'm excited to get into this podcast. I will tell you the title right now Rudolph Mozart and the Chainsaw man. Welcome to no Sanity Required.
Speaker 3:Welcome to no Sanity Required From the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. A podcast about the Bible, culture and stories from around the globe.
Speaker 1:All right. So where this is coming from is I want to talk about Eric Robert Rudolph. So when people heard me in that intro, they probably thought I meant Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Speaker 1:When people heard me in that intro they probably thought I meant Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, so Eric Robert Rudolph, who was at the end of the last century coming into this century. I don't think he made it to the number one on FBI's most wanted list. I think he made it to number two. I think there was an international terrorist, maybe that was number one, but he was on the top ten for a long time, which is a big deal. That means the federal government sees you as a top 10 criminal. Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he was from right here yeah. In the Andrews area and we'll get into the back story as I know it and as I have studied it. I've gone down a rabbit hole with this guy's story because I lived through the manhunt and I thought it'd be fun to just tell the story yes um, then we'll get into the mozart and chainsaw man thing that's separate from rudolph already already told jb what I'm thinking with that. Um, but there's going to be a spiritual application, I think, a really important one.
Speaker 5:I would agree yeah.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about Rudolph. So, eric Robert Rudolph, you can go do your own Wikipedia work and figure out who this guy is and what he did. But Eric Robert Rudolph is currently serving a life sentence. But eric robert rudolph is currently serving a life sentence. The prison he's in is in is in, I think, colorado, and it's like it's a prison for uh terrorists. You ever hear of a guy called the unabomber?
Speaker 5:yeah, I actually get him and rudolph confused, okay, I think a lot of people do yeah, so I think that so that guy's dead now he, he died, the shoe bomber.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think his name was Ted Kaczynski. Theodore Kaczynski, I think he died. He was in this same prison. Have you ever heard of the shoe bomber? No, I don't think so. So after 9-11, that's when everything got really crazy. When you travel, you've only ever known travel where-.
Speaker 5:With TSA.
Speaker 1:Yes, all that stuff so before 9-11 wasn't like that, yeah, and like I used to carry pocket knife. You carry pocket knife on a plane if it was under three inches or something like that, um, but anyway, uh, the unit I mean the shoe bomber was this guy that sometime after 9-11 he was on a flight and he had made a bomb that was in like out of the sole of his shoe or something On a plane. And he got onto a plane.
Speaker 5:However, I don't remember the details.
Speaker 1:You have to look it up. But, he gets on a plane and then all these people tackle him.
Speaker 1:Once he's on the plane starts threatening to blow it up and then they all jump. The guy was an idiot, he was not a very good criminal, so they hold him down, you know, and take his shoe away. But he went to prison as a terrorist. So he's serving alongside of Rudolph in his prison in Colorado. But I read a book about the Rudolph thing. So part of Rudolph's plea deal they were going to go for the death penalty and part of his plea deal was to get him. He didn't want to. He wanted to get life in prison. So he pled out. But part of that plea deal was he can't write books, it can't be movies, he can't get royalties. So this lady who was a journalist got permission to write letters back and forth with him and then she wrote a book and it's called lone wolf. So he got kidnapped or kidnapped. He got captured, apprehended in 2003. She wrote the book, I think, in 07 okay and I read it a couple times.
Speaker 1:I don't think there's an audible version, I think it's just, uh, and it's out of print, but you can still find it. I looked it up when we were talking about this version. I think it's just and it's out of print, but you can still find it. I looked it up when we were talking about this, the other day.
Speaker 1:It's pretty fascinating. She's super liberal, progressive and that comes through kind of some anti-Christian slant which is going to play into what we're getting into today, because Rudolph professes to be a Christian representing the will of God, you know. But if you can look past that, she tells the story and it's pretty fascinating and you get a really good, accurate out of his mouth out of his pen as he wrote letters to her of what his five years on the run looks like.
Speaker 1:So you made the comment earlier. Before we tell kind of tell the story who Eric Rudolph is, if our listeners haven't already Googled it, and they're currently as they're listening, to this on. Wikipedia, yeah. Um, so he was on the run for five years here in these mountains. Yeah. And you had said you thought it was a few months.
Speaker 5:I thought it was just like a month stakeout of trying to find him. I didn't know, it was five years.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. Did you have you ever seen documentary or like the netflix series?
Speaker 5:on eric rudolph so I had.
Speaker 1:There were people a few years ago this had been fairly recent there was a netflix series and I don't remember if it's called manhunter or manhunt, but it told it was. It was like a almost like a docudrama and it was the rudolph case. Um, so let me, let me, let me tell folks and tell you, just to be clear on what I know for sure, he was charged with and found guilty of. I think he was found guilty of all these things. The main thing he's in prison for, the main two things, what ultimately got him caught and tried was he bombed an abortion clinic in Birmingham, alabama, okay.
Speaker 1:And in that bombing an off-duty police officer who was pulling security because he's abortion clinics. You've got Christian anti-abortion groups, pro-life yes, pro-life groups, who will often stand outside of abortion clinics. Sometimes they'll sort of picket, which I don't think is maybe the best approach, but that's neither here nor there, and sometimes they'll stand out there and offer counseling services. They'll try to, they'll just try to speak to women that are going in, but then you've got these sort of militant yelling, screaming pictures of bloody aborted babies you know stuff like that, people that stand out in Asheville like the square in Asheville.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 5:With like crazy sayings on their posters.
Speaker 1:And then like the posters with pictures of a baby that's been aborted and it's like chopped up arms and legs and stuff like that, which, again, I don't I ain't judging nobody. It's brutal.
Speaker 1:You know, I think if we're talking about during the Nazi Holocaust, if someone stood on a street corner in Asheville because because, uh, hitler was exterminating Jews in concentration camps and had pictures of those Jews, we have those in our textbooks at school. So I you know this is not a debate about that but there's probably good ways to go about it and less effective ways to go about it. But a lot of these abortion clinics have off-duty police officers that most police departments. You can go make money as an officer. The department allows you to make money working a ball game, a concert in your uniform, whatever. So I don't know if that guy was uniformed, I don't know what his situation was, but he was off-duty police officer. Again, I haven't done the research to remember the names of these people. I'm not trying to be dishonoring to them, but you can go do research on what his name was. It was a nurse that was killed.
Speaker 1:What Rudolph did is he set a bomb and blew this abortion clinic up, and prior to that that was in 1998. That was in January, I believe, of 98. January, february, I believe it was January. That's when he came onto my radar. But prior to that he had in 1996, 1996. Did you ever the richard jewel case at the olympic?
Speaker 1:I've like heard like snippets of like he bombed the olympics in atlanta, but I don't really know any details okay, so what that was there was a in centennial park because that was, I think that was the centennial olympics was the 100-year Olympics and you, being from Atlanta, you probably grew up hearing bits and pieces of that whole thing, because that was a big deal. Having the Olympics in Atlanta in 98 was a huge deal. And so there was like a concert venue at the Olympics and he set a bomb. What he would do is he would make these bombs, he would put them in a backpack and it would be a homemade bomb. That would do is he'd make these bombs, you put them in a backpack and it would be a homemade bomb. That would be pretty destructive and when it would blow up it would have like a lot of metal shard nails, 16 penny nails or whatever, something like that like it would be bunches of fragments of metal. So when it would blow, up?
Speaker 1:yeah, it would just shred people that were in proximity, so he sits this bag in this one area where they're doing a concert. It's like a, an outdoor venue, just apparently during the olympics. There's a, there's a lot of nightlife and a lot of extracurricular stuff. It's. It's. It's a real fair and festival kind of atmosphere.
Speaker 1:So and there's a famous um, there's a really uh famous person. Now he's he's dead now. His name is richard jewel. He was a security guard who saw this suspicious package, gets this backpack, gets set down by this bench, yeah, and he tries to report it. But he's a security guard, he's not a. He's not a like sworn police officer, so nobody takes him serious. He ends up becoming the suspect of that. There's this huge investigation. They basically ruined that guy's life because they said you did it yeah we know you did it just real bad police work.
Speaker 1:So he was eventually cleared and he was really the hero of the day because he was trying to get people out of there. He's like there's a, there's a bomb and there's a bag here and we got to get so.
Speaker 5:Anyway, eric rudolph had done that but didn't get caught, but did get caught at that time yeah, all the attention went to this security guard.
Speaker 1:So rudolph was pretty slick the way he would set stuff up. He had he had been living pretty much truly off the grid and so anyway, uh, he had he would go do bomb something and he would be like untraceable because he didn't have. He didn't have a bank account, jeffy, he'd never had a bank account that's crazy he did everything under the table. A lot of his money that he made came from growing and selling pot like weed. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, trivial fact of the week, this area is like really good pot growing climate. Right. That's why there's now a weed farm on the Cherokee. Reservation. The Cherokee Nation made it legal and I got one of Tuck's buddies that he graduated with is. Uh is working on the weed farm. Oh yeah, oh yeah. The reservation so they're just legally.
Speaker 1:There's a pot farm over there, you know, 30 miles from here, and they're just growing weed. Um, but you can. Apparently it's. This is like the right climate for growing weed. So what he would do is he's living pretty much quote unquote off the grid. He doesn't really have like a cyber footprint. Also, remember this is the 90s.
Speaker 1:The internet's brand new. I mean, at that time the internet was what was called dial-up internet, so it wasn't high speed To get on the internet. You would take your computer and plug it into a phone jack. It was all done through phone lines. So when you want to go look something up and you type in your favorite, you type in the ESPN website. It's like this long, slow process to load the first page. Dang.
Speaker 1:And you can see it slowly, the screen slowly coming in. It would take a while. You know when you're trying to get on a on a website and the little wheel spinning or whatever it was like that, but it would make this noise in the background. So it's dialing, it's trying to dial and then pull the images in. So then internet websites were very slow. There was no video. Yeah, it was like looking at a newspaper or a magazine. So the first page would come up, would be very few links. You click on a link and it would do the same thing to get to that page.
Speaker 1:So browsing the internet, people didn't just surf the internet. You had to have some time, you had to sit down in front of a computer because you didn't have a personal device yeah, yeah. So this is in that time period, so he had no cyber footprint. There was no social media at that time. Dude was living off the grid and he was living on cash money that he was making from growing pot. Yeah.
Speaker 1:He would. He would the majority of his pot he would sell in Nashville. He had, he had a D, he had deal, a dealer network in Nashville where he had gotten tied in and he would grow it. Okay, get this. He would grow pot in the power lines here. No way. Yeah, so you know how, when you look through the mountains, there's different gaps, you can see through the power line gap. There's enough sun that hits those power lines, enough elevation and nobody's looking there. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Nobody's looking there for pot plants. So he's growing pot in the power lines here in Cherokee County and in this end of Macon County, which is the top of the Nantahala area, like if you're going towards Franklin and he's growing pot and then he's taking his pot and he's harvesting, prepping it and then selling it, primarily in Nashville, because he had a network he was tied into but he was sort of anonymous, so he's selling it. It's all cash money. He's bankrolling wads of cash and then putting it, you know like vacuum sealing it and storing his cash.
Speaker 5:So he was like, I guess you would say, based out of this area.
Speaker 1:Yes, he was from here, he was based out of this area, so he had grown up. I think he moved here in like eighth grade. So this is where the rabbit hole gets crazy. There was a network in the 90s of militia people. Now a militia is an armed anti-government group. For today's purposes you can define militias different ways. There are terrorist militias. There are legal government militias, like the Second Amendment of the Constitution in the Bill of Rights says that the people of the United States are a well-regulated militia. That was written to keep citizens free from government tyranny and oppression. So the government knows hey, our citizenship, our citizenry is armed and they will fight. And that goes back to the American War for Independence. So that's a militia. That's different than an anti-government militia in the 1990s that's based out of the Southern Appalachians. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we were talking the other day you watched some of the Waco stuff. So Waco and I told you, I told you and laylee, I know you and hackett about an event called, uh, ruby ridge, randy weaver, ruby ridge. So there were several events that happened in the 90s that ramped up militia activity because there was this real suspicious mindset of the government's trying to take over our personal private lives and so we got prepared against that. Well, there was a group of people out in Montana called the free men and they were this anti-government off the grid you could kind of get off the grid in the early nineties because there was no internet, um, and so there was a sale of those people here and I've been on one of their compounds. It's now a housing development, but in the late nineties I was in one of those compounds like, and you might think, why were you in the? Militia compound.
Speaker 1:There was a piece of, a guy had died that owned a large piece of land and they were chunking it up and selling it off and so that that sale of that militia had died off. I'm I don't remember what they were called, but it was fairly close to camp and we were looking at purchasing a piece of that land. So we're looking at that land and there were these underground bunkers, food that 30 year food cans stored.
Speaker 1:It was pretty wild ammunition, um. So anyway, rudolph was kind of tied into some of those groups. What was happening is people were moving here in the 90s from from bigger cities and so his family moved to the area to get away from you city, the city where they felt like the government had overreach. Yeah. Mountain. People are a little bit more out outside of that, so they moved here. He went to public school. His ninth grade year he went to Nana Hala school. You know where that's at. Yes.
Speaker 1:So my sister-in-law, tammy, is. She works at Nana Hala school. She's one of the administrators up there. And then mine and Little's nephew. Her brother, stephen, is married to Tammy. Tammy's kids went to school and graduated from Nantahala. But for context, nantahala is a school that we're still very connected to because they just installed a pinwheel program up there. So Little's going to be on here next month. We're going to do a pinwheel post installed a pinwheel program up there. Little's going to be on here next month. We're going to do a pinwheel post school year pinwheel episode where we explain and talk about what pinwheel tutoring is and local ministry episodes. Anyway, nantahala School has pinwheel but they graduate anywhere from two to six people as an average graduating class. Nantahala School is K through 12 in one building and it's about 50 to 60 students. It's a public school.
Speaker 5:I think one time I I kept seeing signs for it, you know, like near the put in and stuff. So one day I was like I'm just going to go see what it looks like, and I think I drove past it three times before. I was like wait, that's it, that's the school. That's the school. Yeah, that's crazy. It's teeny, tiny. It's tiny, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's so great because most of the middle school and high school students there come to Snowbird every summer, because they all go to the same church. Most of them go to Briartown Church. Shout out, bo Phillips, he's the pastor there and he brings a group of them every year. So awesome community. I love that. If it wasn't for sports, I would have wanted Tuck to go there. Kilby, laila it's the best school, the best community. I love those people. It's like in some ways stepping back in time. Life is just simpler and slower. There's good people, there's mountain people, and so Rudolph was living in that community with his family, but they were quote unquote off the grid and he was homeschooled, and that homeschooling was nowhere near as prominent and prolific then as it is now. Right.
Speaker 1:But his freshman year he went to school. Up there there's a guy named Kenny who was a deputy with Macon County prominent and prolific then as it is now Right but his freshman year he went to school. Up there there's a guy named Kenny who was a deputy with Macon County that ended up on part of the task force that was tracking him. Kenny was the only guy that would have been friends with Rudolph.
Speaker 5:That's crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so he was kind of. It was this cat and mouse game. They had been high school friends. But the story be told that Rudolph. But the story be told that Rudolph, his freshman year of high school, the only year he went to public school, he would leave school on Friday and show back up to school on Monday. Having not gone home, he would walk into the mountains on Friday and he would just stay in the mountains all weekend. He was just, he was a woodsman, he just loved being in the woods, being off the grid.
Speaker 1:And so then Rudolph did a stint in the army, but that didn't go well. I don't remember the nature of his discharge, but I feel like he in the book it was talked about that he he was discharged from the army because of insubordination, because he had such chauvinistic and white supremacist views he would not salute or yield to a woman officer or a black or minority officer. That was that. That's probably open for debate, but I remember that was talked about in the book, but that was from the author's side, not from rudolph himself. But it fits the profile of kind of what he was into as as a, as a white supremacist. So anyway, he was living in these mountains after he'd gotten out of the army, kind of off the grid, and he just decides he's on a mission from God. Now this is where it gets convoluted. So he's on a mission from God to eradicate the world of certain things, one being abortionists. Eradicate the world of certain things, one being abortionists, but another being certain racial minorities, jews, et cetera. So the Olympic Park bombing was an effort and an attempt to humiliate the United States.
Speaker 1:So most people, like Rudolph, are part of what's called the accelerationist movement. Accelerationists believe the the perfect society would be a society of just white people. Okay, what they want to do is they want to accelerate the downfall of society. So, like they'll vote for liberal, leftist, progressive candidates, they'll promote those candidates because they believe they're in total opposition to those candidates ideology. But their belief is these candidates will try to disarm the populace. They'll create, you know, movements like blm, defund the police, and that's going to cause societal collapse. So let's accelerate that, because the faster we can make that happen, the faster we can then reestablish and take over a society the way we want it. So thus, accelerate the downfall. It's crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 1:If you ever meet one of these people and I met, I've met a few in person, um, and I'll tell you about one of them Um, if you ever meet him, you kind of sit there and go. Oh my gosh. Are there hidden cameras. Is this a joke? They really believe this. So Rudolph was like into let's cause the collapse of society. So the Olympic Park bombing was to humiliate the US on the international stage and there's more layers to it than that.
Speaker 5:Do you know if anyone died?
Speaker 1:in the olympics. Yes, there was a. There was a, a lady who, an african-american lady and, I believe, her daughter, but yeah, there was. I think. I think there were two people that died again. Um, listeners can look that up, the folks that maybe look that up right quick while we're talking, okay, so what? We got. This is victims of the 96 bombing.
Speaker 5:Two people died a 44 year old woman, um, who was killed from the shrapnel from the explosion, and then a cameraman, a 40 year old cameraman that was covering the event. Okay, both he died from a heart attack. Oh wow, probably from the moment. Just the stress of it all, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, and I think that guy Richard Jewell really did save some lives, maybe, if I remember, yeah, got people to move. But okay, so the statement is let's humiliate the US, yada yada yada, but nobody has a clue who did it, like they have no leads in somewhere in that time frame. Uh, he bombed. He did something at a gay nightclub in atlanta and I think it was a bombing I think so so there was that and then um, a lot of neo-nazi views.
Speaker 1:You know the Nazis were. They wanted to exterminate homosexuals. And then in Forsyth I don't remember if it was Forsyth, georgia or Forsyth County which is coming coming Georgia there was an abortion clinic attack, but I don't think anybody died in that that he got tagged with I think as well. So he was just and he was spacing these attacks out. You know he would do one or two a year, something like that, but he had this plan, this manifesto. All these guys, they always have a manifesto. For sure.
Speaker 1:He's going to accelerate his attacks. So what happens is in January of 98, he bombs this abortion clinic in Birmingham. And this is crazy. But there's a student, a UAB student, who when the explosion happens, it happens in the morning, I think, before the clinic's open. I think they're like he did it before it was open. This guy, he sees or hears the explosion and he's looking out the window. This is where they start to get things wrong in the docudrama. They've got to dramatize stuff, right. But the guy looks out and he sees the explosion, hears it, sees it, whatever. But everyone's aware, man, something huge just happened, this bomb went off. And he sees everybody going to the explosion, first responders, everybody's going that way and the crowd's just sort of chaotic. And he sees a guy quickly leaving the area, yeah, walking, hoodie, backpack, and he's leaving the area. And so this guy sort of fixates. He's like everybody's going in one direction, this dude's going, going away. So this college dude, college guy, follows this dude.
Speaker 5:Dang.
Speaker 1:And he sees him at some point, either from his window because he's in a like a, say he's three, four, five stories up, or whatever he's up in this building. Either he sees him from that vantage point or when he starts following him. He sees him go behind a dumpster and he comes out in different clothes. So he changes. So he had stashed a change of clothes, comes out, this guy follows him and the dude goes and gets in a truck that's parked at a mcdonald's a block or two away, a couple blocks away. So he runs into mcdonald's, writes down the tag number smart calls the police.
Speaker 1:It's a North Carolina tag. It comes back to Eric Robert Rudolph or whatever. If it comes back to him, I think it comes back to him. He was living at this time on Caney Creek. Okay, you know, if you go through Murphy, you go out the other side of Murphy, like you can go to Blairsville, like if y'all can go to Chick-fil-A or something, you can go to Blairsville. You go out the other side of Murphy. There's a road called Caney Creek Road that goes back to the left. He was living out there in a trailer and so it comes back to Caney Creek, which is from that end of the county to Birmingham. You can be there in less than four hours. It's not a long drive. So he drives back.
Speaker 1:It's January and I remember this, it was snowy and he goes to his trailer. This is crazy. This is where the story gets crazy. This is where the Netflix series completely botched it. They blew it completely wrong. So our this is where the story gets crazy. This is where the Netflix series completely botched it. They blew it completely wrong. So our sheriff at the time, who's dead now, his name was Jack Thompson. Jack Thompson was an older guy. He was like in his 70s, maybe 60s or 70s. So Rudolph goes to his trailer. Jack Thompson gets a call from the FBI. Hey, there's a guy, he's a person of interest in this bombing. We want to come question him. So Jack Thompson and a deputy go to the trailer on Caney Creek and they stake out.
Speaker 1:Rudolph, wow, it's snowing. Yeah, it's cold. They're hunkered down and Jack Thompson says hey, we can just apprehend him. We just take him, we'll haul him in and then just hang on to him until y'all get here. These special agents, or this team, is coming out of Atlanta. They're like no, no, no, do not engage with him, he's armed and dangerous. Yeah, blah, blah, we're the professionals. I'm going to tell you something I got some good friends in the FBI. I really do. Vic Carpenter, who's a pastor. He's with the hostage rescue team. He's a, he's a bivocational pastor. You talk about a cool church.
Speaker 1:Your pastor is on, is part of the hostage rescue team, the only tier one unit in in domestic law enforcement in America, and he's your pastor. That's cool and I think they're elders, you know, at that church. So Clay Hicks is one of their elders. Yeah yeah, so Allison's dad, clay's retired Clay was FBI. He worked in gangs. He's a fascinating dude to talk to. He is very cool and he's a great storyteller.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm going to have him on here. Yes, I would be clay, you listen to nsr, you're coming on nsr. Another guy, mark alexander, who's from that church. Mark and kim alexander, they, they're, they're real faithful, swole folks. Um, mark uh retired from the fbi last year. He was, uh, counter terrorism. So I have good friends in the fbi. Um, at that time I had a friend named jim named I won't say his last name, friend named Jim, because I think he's still involved, but he was from West North Carolina. I graduated with his brother. We were best friends. He got relocated here to work the case, all those dudes I just named, very squared away. But there's some knuckleheads and particularly the best way to catch Rudolph would have been to use the local network Because he was on their radar and it could have ended that day. I really think. Crazy to think about.
Speaker 1:Yep, like Jack Thompson and this deputy are watching Rudolph. Yeah.
Speaker 1:From across the road in the bushes. They're looking, they can see him moving around in the trailer. We can take him right now. Don't do it, he's dangerous. Okay, so they said we got a team in bounds. So Jack Thompson, if I remember right and now go fact check me on this stuff, but I'm doing all this from memory. I haven't studied on this in probably five or six years, maybe more. But Jack Thompson and his deputy go to the house. They're freezing, they maybe more, but Jack Thompson and his deputy go to the house, they're freezing. They're like we're going to the house, he's there, he's home, go get him. They go home. Well, somewhere it leaks.
Speaker 1:And so what Rudolph would do is he would keep news radio on and it comes across. The scanner, not the scanner, not the police scanner. He would run a police scanner. You know what that is. Yeah, he would run a police scanner. You know what that is. Yeah, he would run a police scanner and he would run news 24-7. And he's monitoring. So he's in his trailer, he's preparing a meal, he's cooking supper and he hears Eric Robert Rudolph of such and such, such, such Murphy, north Carolina is wanted for questioning as a person of interest.
Speaker 1:He's not quote unquote, he's not a suspect. Well, he hears that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So here's what he does Leaves everything as is, goes out. Gets in his truck okay, he figures I got an hour or two head start Right. Drives from Caney Creek to Walmart in Murphy. Goes into Walmart, buys a bunch of supplies he was already sort of prepped for a getaway. He knew this day would come, I think Buys some supplies. He's got a little truck with a camper shell on the back. Puts all his stuff in there it's like tarps, cold weather stuff Just gets some food supplies. Goes through the Burger King in Murphy they found the receipt in the truck that's so that even buys two like big whopper meals.
Speaker 1:He's gonna like just load up on food before he goes on the run. It's middle of winter right okay, check this out.
Speaker 1:He drives to the head of fires creek. I talked about fires creek in the sermon sunday night. You got to drive out towards hayesville and then you go up into fires creek. Fires creek is a Creek is a, I think it's a. It's like a 19,000 acre recreation area of national forest, so it's real thick, it's real steep. He goes up in there and he's got a spot picked where he's going to hide out for the first part of this. So he unloads the stuff he bought at Walmart. This is all after dark now. He then drives his truck back to Caney Creek which would be, let's call it, 25 miles, but it's curvy miles Drives it over to Caney Creek, drives it into the woods, brushes it in and hides it there, knowing it'll get found because the concentrated search is going to be over there. It's right there, yeah.
Speaker 1:Then in the middle of the night walks the 20 something miles on the paved road on 64 highway just walking down. How many times you see somebody walking down the road at night around here you don't think anything about it yeah, true so he's just walking with a backpack and some food in it to get him back to fires creek.
Speaker 1:he walks to fires creek and so he's just walking along the road and cars are passing and as it gets later into the night he started, I believe, when cars would be coming. He would just step off into the woods and then he would step back into the road and so he walked to Fires Creek. Well, it takes them like a week or two. They find his truck and then all the search is right there.
Speaker 1:Yup, and it's not just Cherokee County now it's the FBI it's the GBI, because we're a border county. Yeah, we're right on the Georgia line. It's the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, fbi, atf was there. I'll call it the back of firearms. All these agencies, these three-letter agencies show up. I think that that first push there was like two to three 300 agents that just start searching. North Carolina Highway Patrol, everybody's searching. He's up in Fires Creek roasting marshmallows, which I don't think.
Speaker 1:He's building fires but he's hiding. If you ever go up in the mountains here 365, the mountain laurel's thick, so the leaves fall off all the trees, but mountain laurel doesn't ever, it just stays thick so you can get under mountain laurel. Thick, so the leaves fall off all the trees, but mountain laurel doesn't ever, it just stays thick. So you can get under mountain laurel and they're not going to see you from an airplane. And so he hides in the mountain laurel, creates a little campsite. He's got big bins buried that he stored food in and that's when he starts hiding.
Speaker 1:that that's in like January, february. So there's like a one-month super concentrated search and then they say he's left the area, he's got help, he's tied into the Freeman. We know he's got ties to some militia groups or whatever. So they think he's left the area. In July he shows up. He basically comes out of hiding and there's some connection with some people that then it's like okay, he's still in the area. And that's when he's in the he's come. So from fires creek you can come over the mountain into the nantahala community okay the way these mountains are laying.
Speaker 1:Like you come out of fires creek, you can come to a place called county corners. That drops you in on nantahala Lake, where we do our canoeing on the Chogie boat ramp.
Speaker 1:So you can come in on that side. But if you drove it on the road back this way it'd take you over an hour to drive around. But you just go right up and over the mountain. So he goes over into Nantahala Lake area and he's taking food out of some of those summer homes. Breaking in, he's getting food, so that kind of puts him back on his trail and that's when he uses cayenne pepper to throw off the bloodhounds. Pretty slick. Yeah.
Speaker 1:He throws the dogs off In the Netflix thing. The day that he goes on the run from his trailer the way they portray that the FBI comes in hot to his trailer. He sees him jumps in his truck and takes off and there's a car chase that ends up in the mountains. He gets out, runs into the mountains, they put the dogs on him, he kills the dogs and then escapes it's just complete garbage.
Speaker 1:Hollywood is full of idiots. It's a wonderful story. Just tell it, you don't have to make up a mess. They've watched too many Marvel movies, so, anyway, that's where they put the bloodhounds on him. So they're not attack dogs, they're bloodhounds, they're trail dogs, and he uses cayenne pepper to throw them off. Pretty slick.
Speaker 5:That is crazy.
Speaker 1:And then he uses some other tactics that I don't remember, some techniques and tactics to confuse the dogs and he gets away back in the mountains. But so from long story, really long story, cut into one episode here. He then spends the next five years hiding in these mountains and they can't find him. That's crazy. There was a famous bumper sticker. Muggs has one on the door of his shop. It says Eric Rudolph, 1998 hide and seek champion. That's so funny so I'm in.
Speaker 1:So opening day of deer season 1998 at this point he's seven or eight months in I take a couple local boys hunting. They're like 12, 13 year old guys and we go in that morning actually I hunted by myself that morning and then they're going to get dropped off. One of them's dad's going to drop them off and I'm going to hunt with them that evening. So I walk out to the truck. I'm 45 minutes in from my truck. I walk out of the truck to meet up with these boys. I get these boys. We're walking in and we came across a tactical team that hid from us.
Speaker 1:They had on like canvas they. They went and just disappeared and I could see them. Yeah, they just kind of went into the woods. I don't think they were very good woodsman. A lot of the, a lot of the agents were not skilled woodsman. They were. They were out of the atlanta field office, the miami field office, the oklahoma city field office and so their city guys that then little worked at the shoe store in town at the time, gibson Shoes, and they would come in there 10 or 12 agents and all buy new boots on a Department of Treasury American. Express card.
Speaker 1:Because they didn't have boots. But I remember walking with those boys and all of a sudden there's these agents and I was like all right boys, there's a bunch of federal agents up here. So we stopped and talked to them and you got to know them. Like two nights a week we would play pickup basketball at the high school and all those agents and they would come. Yeah, these guys would be off duty. A lot of them were in their 20s. Yeah 20s and 30s, so we played hoops.
Speaker 5:That's so funny. So in this area during that time was there a lot of suspicion? Were people on edge?
Speaker 1:What was that like, yeah, most people were suspicious toward the government okay, gotcha, most people were somewhat indifferent to Rudolph.
Speaker 1:this was my one person's experience. The what I felt like was that most people just thought the government was was the guys did not represent the government well, because a lot of them like I remember one time where a dude found a hornet's nest, didn't know what it was and pulled it off the limb and ended up in the ER because he got stung a thousand times or whatever so a lot of these guys, they didn't represent their departments well, like the Georgia, the GBI guys, the North Carolina Highway Patrol guys that were like the woods units. They were good. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They were the guys that knew what they were doing. But most people were just kind of like we just want to get on with our lives. But okay, andrews is a town of 1,000 people. There were 300 agents. Yeah, like, if you went to imagine this, you know how we train our staff and we say when you go to the mexican restaurant in town and your table with 15, 20 people, be quiet, be respectful. If y'all all go to one restaurant, it's going to overwhelm the restaurant and the other patrons. Just be mindful. 300 agents.
Speaker 1:And at that time we had money out bond burger basket, which at the time was called reeds reeds burgers. Um, we had a restaurant called the garden restaurant and that was really it. Um, and so if you would go to a restaurant there'd be you could not go eat that there weren't between 20 and 40 agents in there. You know, it was like crazy, go to ingles. They were just everywhere. So, um, you know where the walgreens is. It just just shut down.
Speaker 1:Right across from walgreens is the housing project, the government housing project. Behind that they built a command center. They were landing helicopters. They had two helicopters here. They had. They had planes. They were flying all night with infrared looking for him. So they had a command center over there. It was fenced in, they had a big like command post and uh, and those agents were based out of there. A lot of agents long-term rented cabins and houses and they just moved in here. So people kind of learned to live with it with some, a lot of people mountain people are suspicious anyway. Right, so you had mixed sentiment about Rudolph. The problem was Rudolph was a weird dude so he hadn't built strong local relationships. So he was from here but not from here. He was based out of here but he didn't have strong relationships in the area.
Speaker 1:The guy I told you that I met, he was a plumber who had moved to the area from somewhere in Florida. Most of them had come from Florida and most of them weren't from Florida, they were from all over the country. They had moved to Florida and then they ended up here. So this guy, the first cabin we built, freedom Cabin. We hand-dug all the foundational stuff, little and I dug the footings for that cabin and then we ran the plumbing. But we had to get a plumbing inspection. So this guy, we met him and he and he said, yeah, man, I'll help y'all. So we did the work and he came in, inspected the work and pulled the permits because you had to get a permit for that and I got to know him. He had bought Rudolph's old house. So Rudolph had a house up here. He bought it, moved into that when Rudolph went more off the grid, but he had bought it because he was in that network.
Speaker 4:Oh, okay, I see, so he had a lot of those same views, just less extreme.
Speaker 1:So, getting to know a guy like that, you found out pretty quick they're pretty radical in their thinking. This dude was making a living, he was a plumber and he was doing installs and houses that were going up on the lake stuff. But he was in the area for six or seven years and I don't know where he went. But there was the other thing that I think stands out to me that maybe people might not think about is there were so many news crews that came here. I'm sure yeah.
Speaker 1:So, like you know where the main entrance to camp is. So at that time when he went on the run in 98, all we had was two Outfitters tents. We were building Freedom Cabin and the old Army surplus tent was down there. That's going to. You know we talk about in the book. We got a picture of it in the book.
Speaker 1:Shout out NSR book yes, coming was down there. That's good you know we talk about in the book. We got a picture of it in the book. Shout out nsr book yes, coming out this year. So we have a. We found a picture of the army tent, um, so it was like a mess tent where we would serve meals. So that tent was set up. Well, it looks like something you'd see at a militia compound. It's an old korean war era army tent and then we've got these two outfitters tents. So one of the militia quote unquote compounds was just up Snyder Creek from us. So everyone thought we were tied in. These news crews thought we were tied in.
Speaker 1:So from the entrance to camp along McClellan Creek Road, above the old bathhouse, there were satellite trucks for news organizations from all over Europe CNN, fox, abc, nbc, cbs, msnbc, all of them. They had their trucks lined all the way up McClellan Creek Road, that's crazy.
Speaker 5:It was crazy Trying to like interview you guys.
Speaker 1:So I got interviewed three times. I got interviewed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the New York Times and CBS.
Speaker 1:That's crazy, and then we had a group of students that were staying. We had gotten Freedom Cabin dried in. A group of students from First Baptist Hendersonville, north Carolina, was there. The boys were in the two outfitter tents, the girls were in the cabin and Little and I were sleeping on the porch of the girls' cabin. We were just camping out. We had a couple of cots, one on each side of the porch. I think she was sleeping inside the cabin with the girls. I was sleeping on the porch because the parents were a little freaked out and so the local NBC affiliate out of Greenville, south Carolina, came and interviewed all those. They asked could they interview some of the kids?
Speaker 1:The youth pastor was like, yeah, they took some footage of our worship service. Quote unquote worship service. It was 25 kids and we're doing a little Bible study thing. There was a lot of media presence. They were. I mean, the media was like all over this thing and um, it was. It was definitely a crazy experience. I remember going bear hunting with the Curtis boys and uh uh news crew from a european country.
Speaker 1:I don't remember where maybe a german crew wanted there that people started working all these different angles on what southern appalachian life is like. So they went out on this hunt and I remember, um, I think I think we killed a hog. I don't think we killed a bear like the hog and we're bringing that thing out of the woods. The crew's following and they're interviewing I remember them interviewing steve curtis and uh, it's crazy it's crazy.
Speaker 1:Um. So yeah, I got interviewed a few times. Rudolph had a brother who was crazy and this is the craziest thing you'll ever hear in this story in in defiance of the government, he did a home video where he turned the camera on, sat down in front of a big chop, saw, put his hand in it and sawed his hand off. No. Then freaks out, picks his hand up, calls 911 or drives to the ER or whatever. They surgically reattach it. The whole family's crazy, yeah what.
Speaker 1:So then his mom, rudolph's mom, I watched her give a press, a thing with the press. You know what the gazebo is by the post office. Yes, louis Free was the director of the FBI. Louis Free was doing a press conference at the gazebo. Rudolph's mom went right over by where a state employees credit union is across from the police department and she drew a bunch of attention and a bunch of the news crews went over there and she gave her own little press conference.
Speaker 5:And.
Speaker 1:I stood and listened to that. I was standing behind the camera man.
Speaker 5:That's crazy she was crazy.
Speaker 1:I mean she was a lunatic, so wrap it up, but uh, but we're almost an hour into this thing. We're 45 minutes into this, I know that's crazy.
Speaker 5:Well, did it stay like for all those five years? Was it that hectic, or did it kind of die down?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it died down. So it was hectic the first month, like February, march of 98. Then they thought he left the area when he resurfaced in july. That's when they flew back in here and that's when the news crew showed up at camp and because that was that 98 summer, we had a few groups come through that summer and then that fall is when the bear hunting trip, the bear hunt that day when the crew went. So that would have been fall of 98. So from like summer of 98, it was about a year of intense presence, law enforcement presence, and then then they they said, okay, he's left the area. Well, what he tells in the book is what he was doing is in the summer when the vegetation and foliage is real thick. He was living on web Creek, which is, if you you go, if you go out of north campus and you turn on the four lane like you can go to murphy, you turn like you can go the airport way. Web creek's the first turn to the right up at the head of web creek.
Speaker 1:He was up in those woods because it's so thick he could stay up there. He was staying up there. I'll tell you one little, really funny personal story where I had a brush with Rudolph. No way.
Speaker 1:Um, in in indirectly. So I was working on Mondays. We're trying to get camp started. So I was trying to. I was having to work, I wasn't making a living with snowbird, so I I was shooing horses, hanging drywall, did it me and little, put a couple roofs on houses, just make money. So we would like, like I remember we we roofed a house, for it was a four-day job and it paid us enough money to live for six weeks or whatever. And then we work every day at camp for six weeks cutting trees down, digging footers for cabins, whatever.
Speaker 1:Well, on mondays I got a job working. It's now called dockckery Tire Shop down there by the movie theater. Back then it was called Hodge Auto Parts. It was a Napa affiliate and they did oil changes, brakes, tires, front end alignments. So I got a job working there.
Speaker 1:Well, I ran the oil change bay. I just changed oil all day long, did oil changes and tire rotations, and I just worked there changes and tire rotations, and I just worked there on Mondays. So Mondays I worked down there because one of their guys, mondays, was his day off and we had this old trash bin, trash barrel thing that we would throw all of the trash in in the oil change bay and I remember coming in on a Monday morning and Phillip who lives down the road from me on Robinson Road, phillip Hodge. He was fired up because somebody had stolen our trash can which sat right outside the oil change bay. Rudolph tells in the story in the book in one of his letters he's living on webb creek. He needed a way to transport um grain that he was getting out of the feed bins out past the airport yeah.
Speaker 1:So he came down, went behind the napa auto parts store at the end of business 19, took a trash barrel, cleaned it out in the valley river. It was that trash barrel. That's crazy. And then he hauled it up Webb Creek and what he did was he would take feed sacks. He would go to those feed bins when he had enough to fill. That can so check this out. There was a used car lot right where you know that Cherokee County Cycles out here on the 4 lane.
Speaker 1:Yes, across from North Campus. Yes, there was a used car lot there. He goes to that car lot. He would break in. The office was like a little single wide trailer and they kept 10 or 12 used vehicles. He would break in, get keys to a pickup truck they would do this at one in the morning put a dealer tag on it. Out of the office, drove up Webb Creek, took that trash barrel he had taken from Napa, filled it up you know whatever that he was going to fill it with feed, put all the feed sacks full of grain that he had taken out of the bin. Drove that up to the head of Fires Creek preparing his winter camp because he would go into Fires Creek during the winter. Offloaded that barrel, buried it. It, put all that feed in it, sealed the top of it, drove that truck back, parked the truck, hung the keys up, put the thing back and then went up web creek before daylight that's kind of genius, crazy kind of genius one of those trips.
Speaker 1:So he had taken uh, a a shirt and tie I mean a shirt and khakis, not a type like a dress shirt and khakis, he had a nice suit of clothing and he had, uh, some glasses and he would put on. He put on those, khakis, that shirt, those glasses. Steal. That truck drove to walmart because it was a 24-hour walmart yeah go into walmart buy a few supplies. Nobody be the wiser. That's crazy.
Speaker 1:And one night, when he was going to walmart, that truck ran out of gas and so he is about, uh, outside of walmart, a cherokee county deputy gives him a ride to walmart.
Speaker 5:That's crazy. So how did he eventually get caught?
Speaker 1:So the way he eventually got caught. So back to your question about how long did it stay? Crazy about a year. I think he stayed on that pattern Webb Creek and Fires Creek, which are either side of this valley. Webb Creek is down just above the valley here, fires Creek is just across the Valley, river Mountains there, so he would go there in the winter. He'd be here in the summer and then he started to go as it tapered off. They closed the command center here and they started using the one, the National Guard Armory, which is near the casino in Murphy. The casino wasn't there then, right, so he moved his main summer camp to Indian land, to tribe land where the casino now is, because nobody goes on tribe land.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like nobody goes on tribe land, they kind of control their own stuff, and so he had a vantage point where he could. They shifted the headquarters to the national guard armory and so he was watching them and it was down to just a skeleton crew of guys just chasing leads. So hey, somebody said they think they saw something suspicious at this house up in anahala so he was kind of monitoring what they were doing.
Speaker 1:So after about a year he was able to kind of just live in the woods here yeah and then he moved so close to town because he, I think he realized I can live pretty close to town. There's so many people you see out walking at night, these you know, folks in the drug, drug world or homeless people. And the way he got caught was he had started dumpster diving for food. He quit living off of people's gardens and feed bins and and uh, because there was such a smaller law enforcement presence, he had a camp like an encampment. There's pictures of it online you can see we had a little tarp stretch and he was living under some laurels above ingles and murphy up on that mountain yeah that ridge and he had gone down to.
Speaker 1:Uh, there's a save aa-lot in the shopping center where CrossFit Murphy and Advanced Auto Parts is. He'd gone. He was in the dumpster behind that save-a-lot and a young new first-year police officer pulled around, saw him and, just on a suspicion, took him in.
Speaker 5:That's crazy.
Speaker 1:You could keep, I think the way the law read. Then he could bring him in on suspicion of nothing for 24 hours or something. He doesn't know who he is. This guy gets to be the hero but has no idea who he's picked up. It was luck of the draw.
Speaker 5:That's crazy and a guy.
Speaker 1:A friend of mine named Turtle his nickname's Turtle he was a detective at the time sees him in there and he says that's Eric Rudolph. So Turtle walks in, sits down across from him and says all right, man, gigs up, I know who you are. And he had been given an alias. He had told that when that young officer picked him up, he gave him a fake name. He said I'm just passing through. And I think he even had a fake ID.
Speaker 1:He's like I'm just passing through and I'm just looking for some food and there had been some complaints at that shopping center that people had been stealing, and I don't think it was him. But anyway, just randomly a guy catches him. So Turtle says know who you are? You're Aircraft Rudolph. And that's how he's busted.
Speaker 5:That is crazy, yeah, crazy story. I remember my first summer Obviously this is a rumor, but somebody where Super Coop is North Campus is if you've been here you know it's like right next to a bunch of storage units. Cal Styles owns a bunch of like the storage units and somebody told me they were like yeah, eric Rudolph bought a storage unit from Cal and was living out of it and Cal had no idea, and so for a long time I don't even remember who told me that. So for a long time I don't even remember who told me that, but for a long time I was like no way like Cal Stiles sold him a storage unit, but yeah well, what's really funny about that rumor is Cal did not own those.
Speaker 5:Then yeah, well, that's what I like thought. But in my head I was like, well, maybe he owned different storage units. He did.
Speaker 1:He did own storage units. So that story is that that Eric Rudolph's true. Eric rented a unit from Cal and Janet, but that was before he was wanted. Yeah, and so yeah. So Cal tells a story. It's it's, cal's a great storyteller, and so he tells a story about you know. They come to Cal and they say, hey, we need to go in. So Cal has to deal with the federal law enforcement who they're going to go basically commandeer this unit and pretty fascinating. But that's what it was. But those units were down towards Marble.
Speaker 5:Okay gotcha.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Cal, yeah, he had rented. You know, people just rent those things out and I don't think they found anything there. But yeah, it's fun to hear Cal tell that story. I bet yeah Pretty crazy. Yeah, there's also just so many funny things that happened during that time period because you just learned to live with these guys being around. Yeah, I bet. So there's a spiritual application in all this.
Speaker 5:The reason we just spent an hour of y'all's time, I know, talking about a bomb.
Speaker 1:A bomb guy, a manhunt? We were talking. You had to learn to play the recorder.
Speaker 5:Yes, yeah, in like fourth and fifth grade it was called recorder karate and we would get little belts and the best one was obviously the black belt. But you'd get little ropes that would hang off the edge of your recorder. No. I think I still have it somewhere, probably at home, you've got to find your recorder, I will. I'll have to find a picture of it.
Speaker 1:Did you learn to play Hot Cross Buns?
Speaker 4:Yes, yep, that's the first one, of course. Yeah, everybody can play that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what started all this was we were talking about when I was in fourth or fifth grade. You had to learn to play the recorder, and I never could learn to play it. And at the end of it we had to play some Beethoven song. And at the end of it, at the end of school year, all the fifth graders from Haywood County, north Carolina, went to Asheville Civic Center it was actually the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium to watch the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra play some Beethoven thing and we had to play our recorders for one of the one frame or whatever.
Speaker 1:Whatever you call it, one song. And I remember we just blowing on our recorders, being obnoxious.
Speaker 5:As loud as you could. As loud as you could, Wah, wah wah yeah, and that turned into.
Speaker 1:You know you could take a stradivarius, which I looked up, stradivarius violins. I know we're switching gears here, but hang with us. We're calling this episode rudolph beethoven or mozart beethoven, the chainsaw man, yep, and you can ruin beethoven's music by butchering it. You can take a million dollar Stradivarius violin and you can play it. If I take that violin and I play it, it's going to sound awful. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That doesn't change the quality of what Stradivarius built Right or what Beethoven wrote and composed. I'm just a poor reflection or representative of it. Rudolph's whole thing was I'm on a mission from God and a lot of people have done a lot of damage in the name of Jesus and for us as Christians. We need to keep in mind that we represent Christ. I don't answer for the hypocrisy of others, for the hypocrisy of others, and I don't take ownership over the crusades or the televangelist that's having affairs with multiple women or the youth pastor that abuses I don't. Those aren't my people. Jesus is my people. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you're my people and the Snowbird family's my people, and we're gonna hold each other accountable. But in the world's eyes I'm not gonna shrink back from professing faith in Jesus just because there have been people that have represented what I believe is our true faith poorly or wrongly. Right. And I mean I'm sure you've had friends or family members or people that said no, christianity is fully hypocrites. I'm not going to be a Christian. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, the hypocrites don't define who we are, and we're all hypocritical to a degree, right. Everybody's some degree a hypocrite. We're defined by Christ. Yeah. I told the chainsaw story that I bought a chainsaw when we were first starting camp and there's a guy down on Blairsville Highway that does chainsaw carvings. I was like I want to see if I can carve one of those grizzly bears.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what I made. I would love to see it now. It did not look like a bear. It did not look like anything human, anything in the animal kingdom. It looked somewhat like an alien. But that doesn't change. Just because I did a butcher job, a hack job, doesn't change what that chainsaw is capable of or what a real artist can do, or what a real bear looks like Saul's capable of, or what a real artist can do or what a real buyer looks like Poor representations of Christianity have done more to harm the cause of Christ.
Speaker 1:But what we can do is represent Christ in the best way that we can represent Christ.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I think it might have been an episode a while ago when you were covering maybe some pastors or leaders who had fallen and you said something that really stuck with me.
Speaker 5:That was like if we put our faith in those people, whether that's the best pastor, the biggest pastor, whatever and they fall like which they will, hopefully not drastically, but you know, we're human, we're gonna fall um, you're just putting your faith in that person and not in Christ. Like you're, you're following this person as your savior and not Christ as your savior. Um, and I feel like I will often catch myself doing stuff like just looking up to people or like really respecting people's word, which is not a bad thing but then just putting too much weight or too much like faith into that person. And then when maybe they say something that I don't agree with or like maybe do fall or whatever, then I'm like almost like heartbroken over it. When it's really like man, these people are great tools for ministry potentially, or like um can say great things, but they're not your savior you know that's right, and like same thing, savior, you know that's right.
Speaker 5:And like same thing with you know, to me. I hear this story of Eric Rudolph and I'm like man, that's crazy that he said that God told him to do this. But I don't think really twice about it. I'm like what a shame, that's crazy. But people who don't have a relationship and a solid, you know, theological foundation, that will really mess them up of like how can a you know, a loving god do this, or you know so definitely crazy to think about yeah, and it gives us, you know, it makes us even more aware of the opportunity we have to maybe be the first authentic christ follower that somebody has ever seen right.
Speaker 1:And even I think in last week's episode I think I mentioned Paul saying imitate me as I imitate Christ Right. There is a place to learn from older believers or people that are further along in the to look up to spiritual leaders, but only in as much as they imitate Christ Right. And you know, paul says we are the fragrance of Christ and there's an opportunity for us to show that to others. And it's a good reminder. Crazy story that we have fun with, hopefully, but I don't know. I hope that was entertaining for people, but I did. When that Netflix thing came out, so many people would come to camp say hey. I'm watching this Netflix thing.
Speaker 1:What do you think about it? And I hadn't seen it. Finally, after about six months, I watched one episode and I was like this is so good, this is crap.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So Wes Huff was the one that made me think of the violin. He was on a podcast with this guy named Patrick David something. And he said what do you say? You know people say, well, Christianity is responsible for the Crusades, for the witch trials, you know the inquisitions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he said and he's the one that said look, you can take a cello, can be a really nice cello, a really nicely written or composed piece of music, and you put somebody on that that butchers it. You don't go, man, that's a really crappy cello, you go. That person doesn't know how to play that cello. So, recognize, like we need to know what the authentic teachings and sayings of Jesus were. What does his word teach?
Speaker 1:Right, what the authentic teachings and sayings of Jesus were what does his word teach, right, particularly in the epistles that are written to New Testament believers? This is kind of the guide for our lives, and then say that's, that's what we're striving towards, and then give each other grace. And though some people are idiots and they're false Christians, they're, they're saying they are. Yeah. But then others, like people, can make mistakes.
Speaker 5:Like you said, they're saying they are, but then others, like people, can make mistakes, like you said. Yeah, they really are, and especially for people who are just living in the world and for the world, I think sometimes they're almost looking for an Eric Rudolph or someone who's fallen or use God as an example to do something horrible, to kind of write off Christianity, you know, and not really give it a chance and not really connect, like you were saying, with like authentic believers and faithful, fruitful believers.
Speaker 1:I think that's a good point. I think that's a very good point. People that want to find some reason to not believe. There's enough examples like that. I think it's a really important point, which also is a point of that's where we go. Okay, I don't have to give an answer for Eric Rudolph or for the pastor. That's hypocritical. I don't have to give an answer for those guys. I give an answer for myself. And if people are going to reject Christianity, reject who Jesus is, and they're going to use those extreme cases as their reasoning, I can't reason with that Right?
Speaker 5:Well, I also think there's a few stories of when maybe these people come in contact and start to build a relationship with, like I was saying, like fruitful, faithful believers. You can't deny that either. Like Rosaria Butterfield, she has a book called the gospel comes at the house key and she was a very radical leftist, um, lesbian professor at some maybe university of Pennsylvania, I'm not really sure, um, and she had neighbors that were faithful believers and they would always invite her over and she kept like denying, thought they were stupid, whatever kind of like what we're saying, just kind of put a blanket statement all over all christianity and you know. And then, um, she eventually went over there and she was gonna write, I think, like a lesson outline on like combating christianity and she was going to use her neighbors as an example. That's how it started.
Speaker 5:So she, so she, basically in the book she's saying like they were my like research subjects, without even knowing. But I was just going to go over there and kind of like pick them apart, pick their religion apart. So she went over there and then it started a whole relationship. Um, she started going over there for dinners, like weekly, and then now she's very faithful believer. Um, what?
Speaker 5:cool people I know crazy and even um, this is not like as full circle I would say, but I have a family member who has walked away from the faith and at a time was living in a homosexual relationship and so obviously I was very hard for my family but we were very obviously open, like we wanted them both to feel loved by our family. It's not like we were like we're done, we're cutting you off, like, um, obviously the circumstance was like a little bit different, but, um, I think the partner that my family member was seeing also had similar stereotypes of Christianity, blanket statements, and I remember the first time we met um her name is Jackie. The first time we met Jackie, she was very hostile towards my family. And I remember the first time we met um her name is Jackie. The first time we met Jackie, she was very hostile towards my family.
Speaker 5:Cause I think she had just written off Christianity as a whole, um, but I think it's just, you can't deny it.
Speaker 5:You can't deny that my family is like loving and kind and welcoming and like we took Jackie on vacation with our family and like obviously not condoning um what they were doing, but, um, I think it was now. Since then, jackie has, um, walked away even more and is now completely transitioned into a man and everything like that. But I mean, for the time being that she was in our life, it was hard, like the circumstances was hard, why she was in our life. But I remember my parents saying like well, like we still just need to be like a constant light and like just let our lives be a reflection of Christ. And I think maybe my sister and my parents maybe had a few like more intentional conversations with Jackie, like about scripture and stuff, um, but I do think like like my mom would send her like Valentine's day cards or Easter cards with like a $15 Duncan gift card and just stuff like that, just being kind, and I think that I pray that that the Lord use that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and just even if it's getting a bad taste of Christianity out of her mouth, you know well, there's going to be a point in Jackie's life where there's going to be this existential moment.
Speaker 1:Everybody goes through it, and what I mean by that is there's a moment, or a season of moments where you're going. Why do I exist? What is the real meaning of all this? What am I pursuing? Am I finding what I'm looking for? You know that you two, you two song. I still haven't found what I'm looking for. When I was preparing for the ecclesiastes message uh, week two, chapter two I looked up the lyrics of that song.
Speaker 1:It just kept coming to my head yeah because he's basically, it's this, it's what we're describing. It's this yearning cry, for I've done everything that I can possibly do to find what is going to satisfy me and I have not found what I'm looking for. It's like there's something beyond me Jackie's going to have. That's an existential moment. Why do I exist? What's the reason, what's the purpose? And in that moment, what I pray is that that Dunkin' gift card. In that moment, what? I pray. Is that that?
Speaker 1:Dunkin' gift card. You know, all of a sudden it's like wait, there's something about those people that I've never seen in someone else, that I've definitely not seen in my community, yeah, and the authenticity of that you know Christians we have nothing to hide. The.
Speaker 1:Mormons have a lot to hide. You go back and you read the writings of Brigham Young Racist, like, believed that African Americans were subhuman. That's something I'd want to hide, right? We don't have to hide what Jesus taught. We don't have to hide what Paul or Peter preached Right, we have nothing to be ashamed of. That's why Paul could say I'm not ashamed of the gospel, I'm not ashamed of it. I don't have to hide Eric Rudolph. He doesn't represent me or Christianity. I don't have to hide the hypocrite in my family or the pastor who's prominent and fell into sexual sin. Who's prominent and fell into sexual sin. I don't have to hide. I want to shine the light on who Jesus is and what he's done, and I want to be the light of who Jesus is and what he's done, so that when I meet the Jackies of this world, there's something authentic and different.
Speaker 1:And I remember Little and I befriended and got to know a gal and she was a lesbian. Her name was, say, s, e, a, h or Y, and she was a bike mechanic, mountain bike mechanic at a local bike shop and at the time I would go in there and I got to know her and and I'm a guy that typically when I meet someone in that community I think they assume I'm going to be a knuckle-dragging, right-wing flag-waving, gun-toting, whatever, and I get it. I mean that's exactly how I present myself when someone sees me. But I don't think I am that at myself. You know, like when someone sees me but I don't think I am that and um, so I just tried to be her friend, little, I tried to be her friend and we became friends with say yeah, and, but I never I knew she was a lesbian.
Speaker 1:Um, she dressed like a boy, carried herself like a boy. We knew she was a girl. This is before the trans movement was as big. This was a little over 10 years ago, it's probably 15 years ago, and I remember seeing say and her partner, this girl, at, uh, a place that we like to eat in bryson city, and they they'd ordered a pizza and a pitcher of beer, whatever they're over there and so spoke to her when we came in. I always go out of my way to speak to her, spoke to her and uh, or they came in. We were already sitting down. They came in when we left. I picked up their tab, didn't tell them yeah it just paid for their food.
Speaker 1:Now a lot of people would say would criticize me. A lot of people in that are in conservative christianity. I have some good friends I'm thinking of a pastor friend right now that would say man, A lot of people that are in conservative Christianity. I have some good friends I'm thinking of a pastor friend right now that would say man, that's out of line, you shouldn't have done that, which is fine.
Speaker 1:You got to wrestle with that yourself, but say it was my friend and we're trying to show her the love of Jesus. And so we did that. And the next time I saw her she was just like over the top, thankful, and I'd like to say that eventually she became a believer. I don't know what happened. She transitioned and moved away and I don't know what happened. But I think if we would just look for opportunities, Right. There's discernment, like you said, where we don't condone something. Right.
Speaker 1:Cause it is sin, it is wrong, it is. I'm not going to condone someone's decisions to live in drug addiction or a same sex relationship or whatever, but I want to show them love.
Speaker 5:Right and it's even like you know the saying, like love the center, hate the sin, or like trying to, like you say, like find that balance of like loving the sinner and supporting the sinner, but killing that sin and not supporting that sin, and you know, which is even in my life, like even believers life like just still finding that balance of, you know, serving the sinners well, like Christ did, but not supporting that, that sin.
Speaker 5:And yeah, I also think for me me it was kind of convicting because just how we're saying, oh, sometimes people will throw a blanket over Christians or believers, I think, at least for me I can say I do the same or I used to do the same before I think Jackie was in our life like people who maybe obviously are in a homosexual relationship or just live that way. I think I would throw a blanket over them of being like, well, immediately they're going to be hostile towards me because I'm a believer, or immediately they're going to have a problem with me, or they're going to this, that and the other. And I think a part of that stemmed because my, my sister is the one who's like walked away. Um, a part of that I think I was bitter because I was like you took her away from, like my family.
Speaker 5:And you know, but that's been super, just a growing process and still currently in that process. But just spending time with Jackie Jackie is a human being and she still has feelings and a heart and emotions and like a soul, and so even that of like, okay, we were able to be friends, like you're saying, be friends and communicate and joke around and talk about different videos that are funny, that we thought, or the way that we dress, that we like, whatever, like we're still able to have those connections and believe completely separate things, and so I don't have to throw that blanket on her or those people who believe certain things of oh, they're immediately going to be hostile towards me, regardless if they are or not. Like, like you're saying, you can still be a friend and like love and serve them. So I think that was, I think, a good learning experience for me and just convicting in general, but how old were you during that?
Speaker 5:So it's honestly been kind of a long process, but I think I was a senior in high school, freshman in college, when my sister and Jackie were together Pretty recent yeah, you're 22 now.
Speaker 5:Yes, yes, sir, and so now fast forward. My sister and Jackie are not together. So now fast forward. My sister and Jackie are not together and Jackie, like I said, has proceeded to transition and get surgery and testosterone and so I don't really know where she's at. But yeah, I think it definitely was growing and, like I said, still definitely working through a lot of those like feelings and processes and stuff. And sometimes it's harder when it's, you know, close to home and you know versus just like someone that you're not as closely tied to.
Speaker 1:But you are you. You only have one responsibility. I guess you could, if you're going to narrow it down to we always have a responsibility to share the gospel right To to, to proclaim it, to speak it, to articulate it down to. We always have a responsibility to share the gospel right To to, to proclaim it, to speak it, to articulate it. But outside of the responsibility of declaring, proclaiming and speaking the gospel is, I just have a responsibility to other people, to to, to live as Christ would have me to live right.
Speaker 1:To be a reflection and an example of who jesus is, and that's that's. This is very if you're still with us after almost an hour and a half hour and 15 minutes. Whatever, this is very important if you will simply let christ live through you, have the mind of Christ, speak the words of Christ, be the hands and feet of Christ, love like Christ, live like Jesus would have you to live. That's your responsibility, and how people respond to that is between really it's between them and the Lord. But my opportunity I think sometimes Christians get so derailed where we actually look more like Rudolph. Maybe we're not bombing a clinic, but we're plastering anti-abortion stuff all over our social media, or we're plastering anti-LGBTQ. I don't know how productive that is for a Christian, you know. I just don't know how productive it is when maybe a more productive thing would be to befriend someone that needs Jesus. Just do the best I can to be a good friend to them and look for that opportunity to share. Christ.
Speaker 1:Because there's that moment where you're going to say let me tell you why I live my life the way I live my life. I need to share this with you and then, sharing it, paul will word this by saying this is multiple times in scripture live a manner of life that is worthy of the calling. So it's not just say what you need to say, it's live what and how. You need to live A manner of life. That's a life pattern, my the way I live my life out, the way I walk it out day to day.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, it's fun, jb yep, very interesting rudolph beethoven and the chainsaw man and I thought about adding the marlboro man, because I remember when I was about 19, I bought me a cowboy hat.
Speaker 1:I was going to be the.
Speaker 5:Marlboro man and a cowboy hat does not make you the Marlboro man Right All right, it's fun. Yep, Thanks for tuning in y'all.
Speaker 1:Yep and one other thing Respond oh, yes, it's coming up. Yes, we still got a little bit of space. It's filling up fast. It always fills up late, all of our adult conferences, but I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 5:Me too. We've had a few creative meetings about it. I'm getting excited.
Speaker 1:All the games, and the breakouts and everything like that. And I'm excited because NSR's very own JB will be doing the Wednesday Girl Talk this summer, yes so excited. Very excited about that Me too.
Speaker 5:I've been praying a lot about that. It's definitely been on my mind a lot.
Speaker 1:Let's before summer. We'll do a little preview on kind of where you feel like Laura's taking you with that. For sure I'll be fine, cool Yep. All right, y'all have a good week.
Speaker 3:Thanks for listening to no Sanity Required. Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating. It really helps. Visit us at SWOutfitterscom to see all of our programming and resources, and we'll see you next week on no Sanity Required.
