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Alex McFarland: The Left Driving Woke Culture & Disney Doubling Down · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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  Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
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  defending biblical Christianity.
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  No topic, off limits.
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  And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
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  Hey, friends, thank you so much for tuning in for praying for us, for sharing the podcast.
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  God bless you.
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  Another treat today, we get to catch up with the Alex McFarland and see what's happening
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  in his neck of the woods in North Carolina and his travels across the country and elsewhere.
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  And we're going to talk about Disney, the left, woke culture, how the left is doubling
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  down and not really taking heed to the new, the new seemingly a culture shift, maybe
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  to the right, maybe a little bit toward conservatism after the last four years of the Biden
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  administration.
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  But we'll get to that.
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  Let's bring in our brother, Alex McFarland, and so good to see you again, thanks for your
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  time today.
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  Well, thank you, David.
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  I have such respect for what you're doing.
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  Not only you're just a gifted communicator, but the fact that you're doing the biblical
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  world view and the current events from the lens of Scripture, I'm always honored to speak
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  with you.
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  Exactly.
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  You nailed it.
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  The website, of course, friends, Alex, mickfarland.com.
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  I want to talk to you first, Alex, about conversations that matter.
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  And this sounds wonderful.
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  It says, I love the warning though on the website, attendees come away thinking for themselves
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  using truth as the basis for their beliefs.
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  Alex McFarland Ministries cannot be held responsible for substantial improvements in reasoning
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  and decision making.
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  I like that disclaimer.
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  Tell us about it.
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  Well, I appreciate that.
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  It's funny.
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  I've got the brochure right here of conversations that matter.
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  You know, for 11 years, I was a youth pastor.
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  And I began to, in my hometown of Greensboro, in North Carolina, I would book the local
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  Coliseum, and I brought in speakers that I just felt like people needed to hear.
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  And, David, over the years, we've booked everybody you've ever heard of, like Chuck
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  Holson, James Dobson, Ravi Zacharias, Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, you know, all these
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  great thinkers.
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  And this summer though, we're doing this particular speaker series.
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  Now, I'm on the road.
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  I'm in a pulpit somewhere every Sunday morning.
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  And then we've got seven summer youth camps across the country.
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  But in Mertle Beach, South Carolina, now Mertle Beach is the number one resort city in
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  America.
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  17.2 million people a year from all 50 states come to what they call the Grand Strand,
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  Mertle Beach.
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  And there are a lot of theaters here.
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  Mertle Beach has kind of a music industry, almost like Branson, Missouri.
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  So, we've rented a couple of great theaters a week ago.
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  We brought in Dinesh, D'Souza, Greg Political, Florence, thinker.
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  June 15th, we have Gary Chapman.
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  He famously wrote a book called The Five Love Languages.
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  And then we're bringing in Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA and Lauren Green of Fox
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  News.
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  But if I can give that website, it's just Alex McFarlane.com slash conversations.
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  Because here's what we're trying to do, David.
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  We want to raise the intellectual quotient of the Christian community in America.
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  And the Dinesh event that we just had, I've known Dinesh about 17 years.
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  He's a great friend, just brilliant speaker.
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  We had people come from Indiana.
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  I mean, I have the nation away.
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  Great people come from about 15 states to see and hear Dinesh, D'Souza.
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  It was really great.
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  And at all of our events, we have an open Q&A.
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  We let the speakers speak.
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  We do open Q&A.
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  Gary Chapman case in point.
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  We call him America's relationship doctor.
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  And he has said to me that in 50 years of counseling, he has never met a marriage, a couple
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  whose marriage couldn't be saved if they would be intentional about knowing your partner's
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  love language and speaking to that.
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  And yes, folks, if you come to hear Gary Chapman on June 15th, he's going to speak.
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  I'm going to share just a brief gospel presentation.
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  But there's open Q&A.
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  And so I want to encourage people to please pray about these speakers.
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  And then the other thing, David, we'll have 1,200 teenagers in 7 youth camps all summer
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  long, Montana and upstate New Jersey and the Hudson River Valley, Richmond, Virginia.
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  And so the website for our biblical worldview summer camp is equipretreat.org.
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  Please pray about that.
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  And as we've done for 25 years, we never, ever, never turn a child away.
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  We get that wants to come to camp, they'll come.
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  And so last year, we had over 168 kids pray to accept Christ.
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  Most of our kids have come two and three summers that they love.
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  And when we go, fun camp stuff, zip lines, hiking, roasting marshmallows over the fire.
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  But we talk about God's word and we talk about what it means to be a disciple.
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  Powerful, excellent, excellent.
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  You're doing so many great things, Alex.
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  And I want to get to journalism in a minute.
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  But I saw your program maybe more than once.
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  I maybe you replayed on NRB with Lauren Green.
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  Great conversation.
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  It went by way too fast.
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  It's only a half hour, right?
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  It went by way too fast with her.
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  So she's in the media.
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  There we go.
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  And she's going to be back for conversations that matter on the speaker series September 14.
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  I want to give you an opportunity, just to share just a little bit of what you asked me to pray about
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  before we got on the podcast here.
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  Because I think that's really important what you're doing.
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  I started writing and blogging because of the lack of truth in the media and the public square in journalism.
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  I wrote a whole chapter years ago on what happened with the media did to Sarah Palin
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  when she was on the VP ticket with John McCain and think 2008 for that election.
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  And it was horrific.
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  What the state of journalism today.
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  So you're looking at a building possibly that you need to prayer about.
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  And you want to start a journal Christian journalism school.
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  I tell us more about that and just not shell it for us.
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  Well, God bless you.
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  Yes, our ministry we've existed for 25 years.
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  Largely, Alex McFarland ministries and truth for new generation.
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  We started out doing conferences and events.
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  And we are in the process of, I mean, like literally, even as we speak,
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  making an offer on a building in Murdle Beach, South Carolina,
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  the former first press,
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  the material in church is up for sale.
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  And there was an entity that was going to make it into a bar.
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  And every time I would drive past it, I'd just pray, Lord, please,
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  could we have this facility?
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  Because we've been looking at property for about a year now,
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  a place to start a Christian college.
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  Now, there are a lot of Christian colleges.
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  But my background in worldview and apologetics.
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  And then for 10 years, I have top political science at the college level.
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  I'm adjunct at several universities.
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  But the real dream, David, is to start an overtly Christian school of journalism.
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  And some of our core values, obviously the gospel and the biblical worldview.
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  But we love America.
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  And one of the things that I teach about is American exceptionalism.
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  We are not globalists.
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  We are not Marxists.
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  We're not woke.
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  And I've been told by some colleagues that to start an overtly Christian constitutionalist,
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  moral truth, a biblical worldview school of journalism,
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  would be just an impossible task.
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  And humanly it would be, but I just would ask people to pray for us
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  as we are working to acquire a gloriously beautiful facility.
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  Yeah, for us to operate our ministry and start our college.
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  But David, I'm a believer in sacred space
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  that I would rather this church be torn down than to become a bar.
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  And so anyway, our ministry's in the midst of some exciting things,
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  some pretty big steps of faith and I value wars and everyone's prayers.
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  Yep, so friends, pray about that.
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  Pray for God to intervene there.
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  And it's impossible with man, right?
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  That they said they'll never sell.
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  And now you said a couple of weeks ago, they said, hey, it's up for sale, you saw.
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  So you never know what God is going to do, but you know what he can do, the impossible.
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  So friends, pray for that.
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  There is a need, if there wasn't a need, if this is something that you were doing
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  that was extravagant or something in ministry, no, it's not.
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  It's not about entertainment, this is about really getting back to the truth
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  and truth and journalism, such a need in America.
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  And our viewers have seen us do programs on media research center
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  and what the left is doing and just how they own that institution in America.
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  It's just tragic, but there is new media now.
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  So that's a good thing and we need Christians to get involved.
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  So Alex, one of the reasons, oh, go ahead.
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  Hey, forgive me.
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  I got to tell you a story.
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  One of my first introductions to Spin, do you remember the movie?
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  And I suppose this was 20 years ago now, but the movie, the Mel Gibson movie,
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  the Passion of the Christ.
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  Of course.
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  Yes.
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  Yeah.
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  Well, I was doing some work for a ministry and I actually was invited to a private screening
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  of that with Mel Gibson and I went to Florida with a few other ministers
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  and we saw a rough cut and I was just moved to tears.
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  How just moving that that film was.
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  So I told our board in Greensboro, North Carolina, when the movie releases,
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  I want to rent a theater and show this.
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  Well, long story short, we ended up, we rented two theaters for two screenings
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  and we invited the local rabbi and the Jewish community.
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  So we had the privilege of showing the Passion of the Christ film to a theater full of precious
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  Jewish people in Greensboro, North Carolina.
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  Now there had been stories about that movie was going to incite violence against Jews
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  and anti-Semitism, which it didn't do.
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  At any rate, that was kind of the narrative.
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  Now before the film, I had a really great meeting with Jewish leaders and the local rabbi.
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  And so the night we showed the film, we did a Q&A myself and the rabbi and it was just
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  as amicable, it was everybody came away, we were moved by the film and frankly it was
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  a great gospel witness to hundreds of people.
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  Well, anyway, the newspaper was there to interview the rabbi and myself.
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  And it was just as warm and collegial and the rabbi said, you know, Revernment Farland
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  has shown so much love and this is good, this is interfaith dialogue, right?
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  The next morning on the front page of the Greensboro News and Record, guess what it said?
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  You could cut the tension with a knife, passions ran high, what would it be?
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  Would it be the screening of a film or would violence erupt, one just didn't know?
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  And I called, I said, hey, I don't know what event they were at, but you and I had a great,
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  you and I in 500 moviegoers had a great night last night.
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  He goes, he goes, hey, basically, he said, Alex, the more you interact with media,
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  this is just how it is kid. And I remember thinking what you read about in the newspaper
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  the morning after was 1000% not the event we had had the night before.
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  David, I think that's how I first began to get the vision that we need more truth tellers
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  in the media. Oh, I've got a story too. I don't remember if I even told this.
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  Years ago, when was this? It was something that the marriage amendment in California,
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  I think, was the big debate. And John Stewart's producer called me and wanted me to be on his show
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  because my first book came out. And they knew I was a right-winger, right? They knew I was a
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  truth proclaimer and defender. And they wanted, they just wanted to make fun of Christians,
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  basically. I said, will there be the entire segment shown live, uncut, unedited? They said,
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  no, we can't do that. And I said, well, I'm sorry, I'm not going to agree to that. You're just going
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  to make fun of Christians. And they did. I saw who went on there. Who was it? Matt? Was it Matt
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  Slick? Is that his name? Oh, yeah, I know Matt. Yeah. He's an apologetic blogger. Yep. Yep.
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  He was the one that they got because a couple of us said no, but he went on there and sure
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  enough, he answered in a truthfully in a Christian way, lovingly, but they just put him down, made him look
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  like it just was so poorly done. I was just so disappointed that they did the segment anyway,
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  but you're right. This is what the left wants to do. This is what the media is doing now. They're
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  stirring up, making Christians look like the bad guys, Christian, nationalists in America,
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  Trump bad, Republicans bad, Christian conservatives, but I'm preaching to the choir. We're with
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  Alex McFarland. We've got to take a brief pause. We'll be right back on World View Matters.
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  Hey, friends, right now our Judeo Christian online academy freedom project is enrolling students
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  Visit freedomforschool.com. That's freedom FOR school.com to say 15% use the code David 15.
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  That's David one five to say 15% on all courses at freedom project academy. So now Alex McFarland,
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  let's talk about Disney. Let's talk about how this what they do continually time after time.
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  Again, they don't learn their lesson. I don't think they want to even though we heard money talks,
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  but they've lost a lot of money on going woke and they're they're not exactly going broke, but
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  let's go back to a movie that they put out. They redid snow white. Why? I don't know. They have
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  their reasons, but they had to make it woke. So share a little bit about this and talk about how
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  big of a problem this is, not just with Disney, but just the entertainment industry.
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  Yeah. Well, do you know, David, when I worked for Focus on the Family for James Dobson, I wrote
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  for Plugged in magazine that we would do movie and media reviews to try to help parents make
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  healthy God honoring entertainment choices for their families. And David, time and time again,
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  what we would call family fair did well at the box office, movies that were wholesome and
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  positive and moral. And maybe they were or weren't overtly Christian like facing the giants and
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  fireproof and things like that. There were movies that were overtly explicitly Christian and they
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  always do very well, but just movies that are wholesome and positive and they don't have profanity and
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  they don't have gratuitous scenes. They did well. In other words, family fair cells.
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  Yes. So you would think that the Disney's and the entertainment machines would understand this.
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  And the reasons, no white, it's kind of old news and I'm glad it is, but Disney probably lost
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  well, well north of $200 million on that film. And in fact, you know, one thing,
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  because Disney was, they were, they were mining their back catalog and making live action
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  renditions of what were once cherished cartoons. Classics. Yeah. Yeah, classes. And there were
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  several that were kind of, we were told on deck, but with the the monumental financial bomb that
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  was the woke snow white in March 21st of 25, the live action remakes are now scrapped. And I think
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  that that would be good. But periodically, let me just say this, what a lot of people don't realize
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  about snow white. That was the original authors were Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, GRIM and Grimm's
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  fairy tales. What a lot of people don't realize is that coming out of, you know, post-reformation
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  Germany, the Grimm brothers were overt Christians. And that in Grimm's fairy tales, they were trying
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  to set forth biblical principles. The, okay, the snow white, what were the dwarves in the Disney
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  cartoon were originally snow whites, seven guardian angels. And the long-awaited prince charming
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  was a messianic figure. And so I think it's worth noting that. So even overtly Christian stories
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  lose their gospel edge in the hands of Hollywood filmmakers. But you know, here's the thing,
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  worldview is present in art. And what brings we try to get parents and certainly kids to do as
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  well is to have discernment. You know, that when we look at life through the lens of scripture,
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  we understand that yes, there's very much a narrative or a worldview in art, literature,
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  music, film, television. There's definitely a worldview that even informs education.
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  There's worldview that informs how history is taught, how economics even is taught. And,
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  you know, David, when I was a youth pastor, it's funny. I completely tribute the tribute
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  this to the Holy Spirit. It would be years before I met great people like Chuck Colson and great
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  people like Lee Strobel and Norm Geisler and Summit Ministries, Jeff Myers and David Noble.
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  But this is 30 years ago. I'm going to show my age. I would teach the youth of what I call the
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  eight engines that drive the culture. And this is in the late 80s, man. And I said, okay,
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  there's the home, the church, the classroom, the media, the marketplace, the judiciary, the arts,
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  the sciences. Okay, home and family, we know what that is. Then there's church and ministry.
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  And then there's media and journalism. And then there's the marketplace and the business world.
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  And there's law, politics, the judiciary, the arts, the sciences. And I would tell my kids,
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  I still did. I would say, look, no matter where you go, maybe you're going to go into business,
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  but let the Bible inform your business and your ethics. Maybe you're going to go into education.
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  Maybe you're going to go into law or government. Maybe you're going to go into medicine, whatever.
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  But no matter the realm of culture, let your biblical worldview shape your life, your priorities.
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  And later on, I've learned sometimes people talk about the mountains of influence. But
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  here's the point folks, the engines that drive the culture. Somebody's worldview is going to
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  be in the driver's seat. Yeah, it could be activism, secularism, Marxism,
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  weakness, progressivism, or what has made our nation great for two plus centuries, a biblical
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  Judeo Christian worldview. That's what we're doing still. That's right. That's right. We need more
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  that. Boy, do we ever? So I want to go back two years ago, light year and strange world came out.
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  Now, this is again, Disney, but I remember this because I wrote an article on it and they lost
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  over three hundred million dollars that year. And you talk about this year with snow white over
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  200 million. Maybe they're stock. What was that? That Disney may lose estimated 295 million on this
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  particular stuff. I mean, that's big work. Yeah, you know, so that says even back then it was
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  300 million with these two. So it shows there's an ideology that maybe trumps money, which is really
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  interesting. The demonic ideology that they can't, it's got a grip on the entertainment industry.
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  Knowing they lost public support and over a quarter of a billion dollars on just those two
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  animated films. Right after that two years ago, you know what Disney did? They doubled down.
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  They said, you know what we're going to do? We're going to host After Dark Pride nights. What do
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  they call it? Pride After Dark? After there it is. That's the one coming up this summer. Now,
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  we're not putting that up friends to promote it. We're just saying Disney is not just putting it in
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  their films. They're putting LGBTQ plus characters. They're putting woke garbage in where the classics
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  used to be. They're changing things. But at their theme parks, they're going pride. They're going rainbow.
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  Now, this is Disney line after dark. They might argue, but they've also had days where
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  anyway, stuff that children shouldn't be at the park and being a part of. But Alex, they're doubling
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  down. They're not learning. So I don't think they want to learn. What are your thoughts on that?
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  Well, I think that our nation, the very future of our country hangs in the balance because
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  of these ungodly, destructive ideologies that are being driven. And by the way, let me just say
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  regarding LGBTQ trans. I say this not only as a minister and a Bible believer, but I say this
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  as having done in my grant program, a master's in developmental psych. No one is born gay.
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  No one is born trans. Same sex attraction and gender dysphoria. Both of these, same sex ideation
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  and gender confusion, both of these are responses to trauma. So what is so sad economics aside
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  that these woke companies, whether it be Disney or whomever, that are promoting destructive
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  orientations. I mean, those that are that identify as trans and those that get into the gay lifestyle
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  are much, much more likely than the rest of the general population to suffer depression,
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  suicide attempts, substance abuse on purpose. So people are born male and female,
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  and there is an objective moral code on which our constitution rests. And so, Disney in promoting
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  Pride week, Pride after dark, LGBTQ trans, they're destroying people's lives and weakening the
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  fabric of the country itself. Yeah. Fact check true on all of what you just said there. That is
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  absolutely true. And by the way, you mentioned Summit Ministries earlier, Love Summit. We've had
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  Jeff Myers on the podcast. I want to mention an article that they put out a couple months ago on
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  this. It's called Win or Lose the Culture War. So friends can go look that up at summit.org,
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  Win or Lose the Culture War. Alex in the last minute, minute and a half, just share your heart to
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  encourage our audience because especially with young families raising children, they find this
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  so difficult because of what they are bombarded with today. Go ahead.
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  Wow. Well, let me encourage people to obviously, life's number one assignment is to have a
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  relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus is as close by as a prayer. But then maximize
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  on your family. Men stay true to your wives. Young people get married, stay married, have children.
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  You'll be happy. You'll be much, much more likely to be economically prosperous. Family is the
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  future really. And so, David, if we have a nation of Christian families, America is going to be
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  in good care. Yes. And then live that out in culture, outside of church walls, Monday through
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  Saturday and be the salt and light we're called to be, don't back down friends. And we just
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  appreciate your ministry and your time, Alex. Thanks again. Good to connect with your brother and
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  God bless your endeavor. And hopefully people will be praying for that possibility of that Christian
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  school. Thanks. Bless you, my friend. Thanks for having me. You're most welcome. All right, guys,
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  continue to share the podcast. It's growing. Praise God. Thanks to you. God bless you. And as always,
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  keep speaking the truth about things that matter.