The Sattler College Podcast
This is the Sattler College Podcast, where President Johnson dives into topics of Relational Discipleship and Academic Excellence with the staff and faculty of Sattler College and beyond.
The Sattler College Podcast
Faith, Media, and Mission Balancing the Call
In this episode, Daniel Willis shares his inspiring journey from a tumultuous past to a faith-driven life as a videographer and editor spreading the gospel. Join us as we delve into transformative journeys of faith, exploring the intersections of personal testimony, early Christian teachings, and the pursuit of authentic discipleship. Through an engaging conversation, we uncover the challenges and triumphs of living out the Sermon on the Mount in today's world, offering insights and inspiration for those seeking to deepen their walk with Christ.
Learn more about Sattler College.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Sound Faith - website and YouTube channel that Daniel maintains
- The Historic Faith - website with teachings about the early Christian faith
Timestamps:
0:00 – Discovering Faith and Mission Work
8:33 – Seeking Truth Amid Denominational Differences
17:12 – Exploring Early Christian Beliefs
26:36 – Navigating Truth in Denominational Differences
41:25 – Navigating Responsible Media Consumption
53:24 – Reflective Questions on Faith and Service
All right, it's December 9th 2024. This is take three actually.
Daniel Willis:Oh, don't say that.
Zack Johnson:No, I made a joke that we filmed earlier, or we recorded an hour long and then it didn't get recorded. So we're going to re-record. Yes, I'm here with Daniel Willis. Daniel, welcome to Boston. Hey, thanks, it's weird to say that twice, so I'm. I'll just start off by asking what is your current work and where can we, where can we find some of the work that you do?
Daniel Willis:just to frame sort of who you are and what you're doing currently yeah, I am a videographer and video editor and I edit for different YouTube channels, Including Sadler's. Including Sadler that's important, I'm just kidding. I used to do it for the followers the way they wanted it in-house, just because there's people that wanted to do it. But for Strength to Strength Sound Faith, Sound Faith, Music, Hope for Wonder in Amish, All Nations, Bible Translators and a bunch of other YouTube channels on and off, like Kingdom Fellowship Weekends once a year. There's certain things that are just a few times a year, but it was my passion because it helped. Things like that. Videos that I've seen online brought me to a more obedient faith Following Christ, following the Sermon on the Mount and having a brotherhood and not being a Lone Ranger. It was something that's become very passionate to me and so, thankfully, God gave me the ability to make it a job where I can feed my family by editing for these different faithful churches.
Zack Johnson:Yeah. So I'm really excited to have you here, because here we always record some things and they get sent off from the internet and I know that you're doing a lot of it on the other end. But I'd love to launch with the typical what's your condensed story? I know you could probably talk for a long time about your story. Some bits of your testimony, some of your passions will probably come out through that. Can you condense that?
Daniel Willis:into a? Yeah, growing up I wasn't in a normal christian family. My dad was an alcoholic, my brothers were into drugs and selling drugs. I got a felony when I was 13, started fight clubs, sent people to hospital, destroyed all kinds of properties did, did all kinds of bad things, including meant literally planning to kill someone, and didn't do it, thankfully. And Christ got a hold of me through my football coach, invited me to go to a Starlight Crusade, a Baptist preaching event where they have all this entertainment for children and these bands. And then there's this hellfire and brimstone sermon and I had just got a felony and knew that something was wrong and the pastor, it felt like, was describing me and all the sins and these things that I could be free from. And I honestly do believe that after that baptism, god was working with me and guiding me.
Daniel Willis:I wasn't perfect. I couldn't read. I didn't go to church afterwards. I didn't have a Bible. I wasn't capable of reading. I didn't read very well at all, I should say my reading comprehension was very low.
Daniel Willis:I was a bully. Then, after I became a Christian, I knew that I was supposed to abstain from sexual relations and not do drugs and I realized my bullying was not christ-like, and so I started bullying the bullies. And what, what did you call it last? Oh, vigilante, vigilante, yeah, what I did. And when it wasn't good it seemed good.
Daniel Willis:Until when I turned 16 and started going to church I realized a lot of the things that I thought were godly weren't godly, and my life changed a lot at that point. But they realized I had struggled reading and they gave me an NLT and I told them I was struggling reading that. Then one of my elders gave me the Bible on CD or somehow I got a hold of it I'm pretty sure that's how it was and then I just listened to it and listened to it and read and listened to it and it just became like my passion. It was like everything I want to do is consume the bible.
Daniel Willis:I carried it around, uh, high school and I think everybody thought I was extremely weird because I went from this you know, jock, beating up people, to always talking about jesus and giving people hugs and telling them that we actually have to live for Christ. Then went to Johnson University, met my wife, was called into missions work and I had a triple major missions, bible and TESOL or ESL major. And then me and my wife. We got that because we were planning to go to China and I needed to know about missions and what not to do mostly.
Zack Johnson:And then did you yeah, when you started, did you know you wanted to go to China? Not?
Daniel Willis:necessarily so. A lot of the people from these background churches maybe think of my story as a very evangelical kind of thing. When I was 13, actually after I got the felony I was sitting at a church after doing community service at that church, and I knew sitting there that I wasn't supposed to just be someone sitting there, that I was actually supposed to. I'd just been baptized and I was supposed to do something else. Like my imagination was to be a preacher and but I didn't want to, but like I just had this like feeling I'm supposed to be preaching and and so I fought that feeling for a long time. And then at Johnson Bible College, what the church of Christ that I went to. Before I went to Johnson Bible College, one of the sermons on Noah was making yourself available to God, and he taught us like when you hear missionaries preach or anything like that, make yourself available, like ask God if it's what he wants you to do or not. So I got to college and we had chapel every day and during Wednesdays we'd have missionaries and one of the missionaries was from China and I was actually working full time to pay for the college and I was doing homework and I shouldn't have been in chapel, but I was trying to get homework done that was due. And then, after his message, I said, god, is this what you want me to do? Where am I go? Kind of a habitual thing. And then I got chills all over my body and I was like god, I don't want an answer from chills and I just want to know is this what you want me to do, where you want me to go? And they increased and then asked again. And then I had no idea what china was like. All I knew was everybody was kung fu artists and great at ping pong and really short and starving, um, and none of that is really true, but the. And then I started crying and I was like, okay, I'll go. And then, literally after that, he literally answered my prayer and let me know, I'm supposed to go to china. And so I switched my major from preaching to missions. And then then I realized you have to when you go to china. You have to. When you go to China, you have to get a visa and you can't just go. And so then I had to figure out how to get in there. So I changed my major, added a major. Anyway, then we get to China. Is there anything you want to interject? Okay, and we the.
Daniel Willis:There's a lot that happened before the first church plant. But we had a church plant that I did with a Baptist pastor because nobody. All the other missionaries were kind excited to see someone else that wanted to try to do that. So I started working with him and as we were planning this church and reaching out and finding people and bringing people to Christ, I realized half of his sermons literally were sending me to hell.
Daniel Willis:He would say something in a sermon like if you believe this way, you're going to hell. If you believe baptism does anything to save you or wash away your sins, you're going to hell. He would say something in a sermon like if you believe this way, you're going to hell. If you believe baptism does anything to save you or wash away your sins, you're going to hell. If you believe you can please the lord you know he equated it to works, righteousness, as if you're trying to work which I didn't believe you can earn your salvation. But I believed we can, lord, and uh anyway, and he would say any that those things made me really start to to question my faith, especially whenever he would. He had a different opinion on modesty and women's roles in the church and the headship or order, and as I studied those things I realized I was wrong about a lot of the things he preached on he was right, but I still thought he was wrong about a lot of the other things.
Daniel Willis:And as I dug into these matters I realized there's so much more I didn't know. And we were going to an international church at the same time and I was getting confronted by Calvinists and Pentecostals and all kinds of different missionaries, so I was the only missionary that had this like church of Christ kind of mindset, and actually none of the. We all got along but none of us really saw eye to eye at the same time, and so it made me I'd had an that in my Christian life. That much until this point. And so it made me really dig in and try to figure out what the truth was. And we started a second church plant. We moved out of the city and further out of the city where we didn't know missionaries were living, and we tried to start one there. And then I realized I was really afraid to teach at this moment because everything that I had learned I don't know how much of it was the truth, because I was discovering all kinds of things that I was doing wrong and that I taught that was wrong. I decided we're going to read all the way through each.
Daniel Willis:There's a teacher that said the best way to read all the scriptures is, when you start a book, start read it from start to finish. And so we started. We found Chinese people willing to do that, and we started doing that on Thursdays, and there I would ask questions like what does this mean about God? What does it mean to a man and, if it's true, what are we supposed to do with it? And their answers were just so simple and pure and they would see things that were obviously written there, but because of the perspective that was given to me, I didn't see it. And things like uh, no matter what and all things, don't complain or argue. And I took it so serious that that really, I had always been in churches where people complain and argue and you were telling you were telling me earlier, this was like people interacting with the scriptures for the first time.
Daniel Willis:Yeah, a lot of them, yeah, yeah, like, yeah, there's a few ladies that were uh, uh, they were had gone to the three self church, which is a government church, but they couldn't read and the three self church doesn't. I'm not going to get into that, that's. It's just not a good thing. Most, most of the time. Every once in a while you find one that's decent, but they rotate the leaders and half of them are communist party officials and don't believe in Christ at all and they're teaching, you know, for their their make, helping trying to make Christians like uphold to the communist parties. You know thoughts or whatever, but they couldn't read and they we. Sometimes we just read out loud. But then we realized, on the longer books, like Matthew, mark and Luke and some of the Old Testament books, it was easier to just play the audio and all of us follow along and it just became so real to them. After Matthew was the first one, they all wanted to stick around and read Luke and it was like one o'clock in the morning and I was like, yeah, I got to go home, my wife's at home and I got work tomorrow and um, but they were so excited to hear the word of God. And through that, when we got to Corinthians, all the ladies asked me about the head covering and I first brushed it off and just said, oh, it's the prostitutes or it's a long hair. And then I got home and I was like, how could it be? Both Like if it's the long hair, then it wouldn't have been the prostitutes. And my mind was just made up because it was. It is the long hair and because of the prostitutes in Corinth. And then I started searching it and my wife ends up asking me about it and I didn't bring it up to her and she had been reading because we were at that. She knew what we were going to be reading that night and she wasn't there. And then eventually I said you just need to read it and, you know, make up your mind on it.
Daniel Willis:And we, because we had already gone on this journey and started changing everything to the almost the most literal version of what scripture is, the most simple understanding of it. And she came out of the room one day, a few days later, with a beanie on her head and I never seen her wear it in this house, and so it's like. I was like, is this it? And she was like, yeah, it, let's do this. We discussed it like maybe in the future, if we found out we're wrong, you know she'll stop wearing head coverings. And then we started to try to figure out at that point were we some weird cult, like we don't know anybody in the world who wears head coverings? Never heard of it except in college when they were telling us why. It was only for that time back then. And then we couldn't find people who were non-resistant. Well, anyway, that was later when we found that there were other people online.
Daniel Willis:We found Followers of the Way and Kingdom Fellowship Weekend weekend, and there's two sermons that were hugely impactful. One was the well, first of all I saw I kept showing, pausing it every time someone in the crowd was wearing a head cover and I was like casey, look, and like uh. Then there's a sermon. Casey was at work and is give me children or die. I think is the name, and I don't even remember what he said at this point, but I know that it affected me where I, when my wife, got home from work, I was like you need to not be working, you spending spending time with the children and raising your children, and so then we had to kind of adjust our life to one less income. And uh, but it was so. It was 10 times more blessings and I mean it was, it's just what we needed.
Daniel Willis:And then the other one was the just war debate, like the second, we heard Dean and David, especially Dean Taylor when he talked about did Jesus really mean everything he said? And can you follow Christ without following Christ? Right, and those things just rang so true. And then the whole argument of the just war debate made me instantly connect a bunch of dots and realize that we are supposed to be non-resistant, we are supposed to love our enemies, even if it means dying and being killed by our enemies, instead of fighting and killing back. And it just was a really foreign thing that made all the scriptures start to make sense. And I mean not just that, but it was.
Daniel Willis:There was so many weird things that I still didn't understand, because how can it be Jesus's teachings and you teachings and fight and whatever? We were chased out of China, basically. And when we got to the States, we moved up to Pennsylvania. We called to follow Matthew Miliani. He said check out KFW and see what it's all about. And so we went to KFW and eventually joined Chambersburg Christian Fellowship. That's kind of how we got here well, yeah, again, I always it's.
Zack Johnson:I feel like we could go in 90 different directions, but I'll just we'll trace the ones that we've talked about a little bit more. So we were talking a little bit about the number of denominations out there. I mentioned that if you do a quick search, it's either 30, 40, 50,000 different denominations for our children, for college students, along. Hey, how do you, how do you discern what is truth when there are so many competing, competing truths, and I think, I think, in a certain point, that there will always be certain differences that exist there. Okay, but how do you think about, like a base, how do you test some of these denominations and pursue truth or what's been helpful to you in your life? I kind of we already chatted about it a little bit before, but yeah, so it.
Daniel Willis:it was a huge question of mine that that question is what came up when I was surrounded by these missionaries who all believe something different, and and I'm sitting there thinking how can one of these has to be true, or none of them? But they can't all be true because they're all conflicting with each other. And so I actually didn't have a ton of peace about it, even when we were on the journey, just following what we can simply see in the scriptures, because what if we were wrong? And so, when moving to Chambersburg, I didn't really know about this thing that we now call the historic faith, and it's the faith in Jude that was once delivered to all the saints, and it was a complete faith that we're supposed to contend earnestly for. And it was a complete faith that we're supposed to contend earnestly for. And if it was handed to the saints, who are these saints?
Daniel Willis:And whenever I discovered not discovered, like I was out hunting for them, but whenever someone mentioned people mentioned the early Christians and reading that all these early Christians came to the same conclusions of whenever you follow it, simply, you are non-resistant.
Daniel Willis:You do die for your enemies instead of fight. You'd rather be stolen from, to give instead of receive. I mean every single doctrine that is hard to swallow that most denominations would just twist to make it more comfortable for themselves or even make it the opposite. They actually believe, just, literally and simply, and it is crazy to me that they got so many followers with how, from the outside looking in, it is a high cost compared to there is no cost almost in the save me gospel. It's in the of I accept Christ so that I can be forgiven and then nothing changes. It's like there's cost. And anyway, the early church is what gave me peace about it, because it was these, the apostles handing this down to the saints and they all understood the sermon mount for today and as a literal teaching. They all understood the gospel message as simply obeying basically everything in there without twisting it and the, the head covering, and I mean you name a hard teaching.
Zack Johnson:they, you know yeah, and I think I think earlier we there's this whenever you talk about the early church, I think you have to be really there's some amazing things, and then there's some like warnings, yeah, to put in. And I think when, if people first start reading xyz author, usually you read something that's like, well, that is coming out of left field. We were talking. I'd love to do you have any examples that come to your mind on hey, when is when is the early church useful, and are you, are you still allowed to read them, even though some of their writings might seem pretty pretty far out?
Daniel Willis:I don't know what your thoughts are on that yeah, there's actually a lot of things that will make a modern day christian cringe. There's a lot of things that are hard to swallow, that are actually important things. But then there's things that are like Clement of Alexandria. When he talks about food and sauces Like when I read it I was like I love ketchup and mustard and mayonnaise and ranch and he's like saying run away and don't, don't. He's like talking about the sauces like they're evil.
Daniel Willis:But then if you keep reading, he eventually saying that's because people are chasing these things all around the world, looking for all the perfect ingredients and spending all their time and money to make this one sauce that they basically worship. And it wasn't like just going to your local store and grabbing a sauce and for your whatever. And then the other thing was like hot showers. I remember reading he was saying we shouldn't get hot showers and I was thinking like what's the problem? But in the context back then and they didn't have water heaters you just plug in the wall and 20 minutes later you have a hot shower. It's they would spend half a day or quarter of the day boiling water with a servant, normally so that they can be comforted for a little bit of time and I'm not saying that it was completely uh, but he wouldn't have been dogmatic and all the early. It wasn't like all the early Christians saw these exact.
Daniel Willis:If if all of the early Christians would have been talking about these things, then maybe it would have merit, you know, but it wasn't.
Daniel Willis:It's like a one, this one guy, and a very godly guy at that, who I would say is very credible. But pointing out something that he probably witnessed, some of his church, the people in his church, spending too much money and for something that you know wasn't exactly needed, or chasing sauces around the world. But some things that are also hard to swallow that are very important is they would have read the Septuagint, for example, and nowadays, not long ago I was lifelong friends basically won't talk to us because we read the septuagint, no other reason, and it went from luther saying it was edifying but not scripture. And then a bunch of people, including jesus and others, who quote it in our scriptures and the early christians reading it and following it and quoting it, quoting from it through most of history until pretty recently and now friends are like that opened my eyes that, okay, the septuagint isn't some evil thing. And actually just recently. Somehow people have been convinced that we shouldn't read the septuagint.
Zack Johnson:It's wrong and the septuagint is just a greek translation of the hebrew text, plus some, plus a few other things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I met your family this morning and one of your sons name is ignatius, and I'm not the. I'm not the expert on the early christian writers, but they've obviously meant a lot to you enough that you would name your sons after them. But if you're trying to like get started on hey, how do I even poke around these resources? Do you have any recommendations on a good place to start for anybody that's kind of interested and yeah, um.
Daniel Willis:Well, first of all, the early Christians are absolutely not scripture. They are fallible men who are really, really intelligent and who really you could tell that they spend their life consuming the scripture. It seems like they have so much memorized and just quote left and right without references, and it's just they put a lot of us, or maybe most of us, to shame. But they're absolutely fallible, and not that they have all these things that we can't listen to, but they're not the scriptures. But there's a few places. One I really enjoyed John Kersostom. He resonates with me. I don't know if he does with others. He's a little bit past the first 300 years of uh, christianity, but he seems to be in line with it. But also there's we have a historic faith online resources that you could also go and see what the early christians said about lots of different topics that would kind of introduce you into um to get your feet wet to see what they believed.
Zack Johnson:And you're even saying that most of the most quoted passages come from matthew 5 to 7 in the sermon on the mount. That was like there. Yeah, there's a lot of attention to that.
Daniel Willis:If you don't know if we should be following the sermon mount today and you read, if you go get the book called uh, early Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount by Elliot Nash. It doesn't have his own words. I do think he translated he made it more modern English, but that was it and it goes from the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount Matthew 5 through 7, and just goes like if it's a Beatitudes, he just puts all the quotes about the beatitudes and what they believed about it and it's a really thick book and it seems definitely, in my opinion, that has to be the thing they wrote about most right, and it obviously was. And they call it the law, like the, the new law that we're supposed to be following.
Daniel Willis:And you know we have a, a new, a king, the new moses,
Zack Johnson:Yeah, and the new moses, yeah, yeah, and I think I think just that I'm not really sure I've spoken to a lot of people about this idea of developing just this almost like an insatiable hunger for truth that you're willing to engage with new things kind of continuously, and I don't know if you have any thoughts on, like, how do you develop that kind of hunger for truth that's still open to new, new things? Because you know, I'm trying to say where all of us have changed over time in our testimonies. So how do we disciple and raise people where they're becoming convinced of truth but in a certain way, still open to have new information come in as they encounter new stuff to shape their beliefs? Is there any set like the right guardrails around that, or is it just going to be a sort of a lifelong pursuit?
Daniel Willis:Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think that wherever, whatever dominate denomination you're a part of, you're going to be on guard and try to keep other things out, and it those, the people from that denomination, would probably uh, keep not want their followers to be opened up new things. The problem is is there are the 44 or whatever thousand denominations, and the question is is how do we know what's true? I don't have peace with just how do I say this. So when you have a whole denomination based on someone who was from the 1800s or the 1500s and it never was anything before that, we should know our history, right? Um, and I'm not answering your question very well no I think um, I do have.
Zack Johnson:I did have a reason to go through what I said but I think I think part of the it's more of me just making a comment with a question is that somehow we want to. There's a. There's a quote that by a guy named belthasar belthasar hubmeyer I actually brought him up earlier that truth is unkillable, and that should be really refreshing for christians is like you can discover this truth. It kind of ties with what you're saying. However, we can, it's. It's really hard to know when we've arrived versus when we need to keep looking.
Daniel Willis:I have actually something really good, two things about that. So have you seen that? There's a short that I saw one time and it was some soccer chant and they'd put the words on the screen of what it it sounded like and one of them was like that is embarrassing. Have you heard that? See, I know what you're talking about and it goes, goes through, and it's like whatever they put on the screen. You heard that and and so I feel like a lot of the I um, the, a lot of the denominations that we're in. We're given a lens and then we read, we're given what it's supposed to mean and then we read something that could literally be saying the opposite, but we're reading what we think it's supposed to mean because it was put on the screen. We're hearing these. That is embarrassing when it's some other language, some other chant, and somehow we're programmed into seeing these things. And another example is not long ago and.
Daniel Willis:I walked outside after filming something and me and my son walked straight to our car and there's this Hispanic man just digging in our car and he grabs something out and puts it in his pocket and I was like I'd really appreciate it If whatever you took out of there you'd give to me. And he's like looking so guilty at me and he's like like just looked and I'm like I'd really appreciate it. I said it again and then he kind of walked by me and I was like I don't know what to do and I so I was open the door to get in the car and he like pushed the door and I'm like what is going on here? And then chantelle, who's stuck here, she, she was there and she goes hey, dan, is that your car over there? And it was. And so I parked is right in front of our church building. I parked there yesterday for six hours, the day before for six hours. That same spot, the same make, model color.
Daniel Willis:If you had asked me moments before, 1 million percent, that dude is digging in my car, it's your stuff Taking my stuff. I was like the thing is we can be 100 percent convinced of something being true and we can be 100 percent wrong. And so you have all these denominations pre-programmed us to see something, a certain way, and we all think we're right. Right and somewhere there is a truth and we have to be open. This is what I was trying to get to is you were saying, well, how can we be excited to go, look at these new things?
Daniel Willis:And a lot of denominations would tell you, put guards up, don't look at anything else. But we should be truth seekers and we should try to find out the source, the primary sources, where it all started, and be able to admit when we're wrong, like, okay, what if I would have just kept getting in that dude's car and saying it was my car? It's like that was my car over there. So I to finish the story, by the way, I apologize sincerely met a guy. He didn't know spanish, I mean, he didn't know english. That's why I look so guilty, because this burly guy walks up to him and is like saying something and right behind him, like, like, like, looking, intruding in his space because it was his car. But I thought it was my car, so I thought I was in my space. You know somebody?
Zack Johnson:just happened.
Daniel Willis:To watch the interaction from afar, yeah, and so I'm like the and my son also thought it was our car and even looking in it and even when I opened the back door I opened the back door to get in it had car seats, look just like our car, everything. It was dark, it was at night, but it, like Chantel said that I thought it was my car and then not to say that his friend came up and he's like, oh, is that your car? It's the same year and he spoke English and I was like I am so sorry and I gave him both big hugs and they're really good about it and happy, and I mean I wasn't angry, angrily, saying anything, but it was scary to that guy probably, and that's why I looked guilty. It was because he was like what is this guy saying? He's on my grill and and he's trying to open my car door, so it looked like he was guilty from stealing something. But it was just.
Daniel Willis:But that's how we can be deceived. We can really think something's true and it'd be a lie, and so if you really want to know if it's the truth, we have to keep working hard to find the truth. Satan wants to. Satan's biggest weapon, his best weapon, it's the lie that lies, the greatest lie is the lie that lies closest to the truth. So he takes the truth and he twists it just enough. And if he can get someone who thinks they're a believer and thinks they're right with God to believe, uh and. But he's yet he's the enemy of god, he's on satan's side, but he he's never going going to try to get right with god because he thinks he's right with god, right. And so satan wants all of us. Satan, I think, would rather have a bunch of people I'm not sure which one's worse knowing you're the enemy god and choosing to be the enemy God, or because then, if you choose, you know you're the enemy If you have a choice to change and be on the right side. But if you think you're on the right side but you're on the wrong side, you don't even know you need to switch teams, and so Satan wants.
Daniel Willis:Satan has helped these denominations become what they are and um, be disobedient and say you can't please the lord and so like. If you have any thought that the bible actually might mean what it says and jesus might actually want us to do what he's saying, it's our responsibility to seek first the kingdom and dig these things out and try to figure out this, these matters, and see what was handed down. One One is that the Bible says that the faith was once for all delivered to the saints that we're supposed to be earnestly contending for. What is it that we're supposed to contend for? It wasn't what our parents handed down to us. It was what the apostles handed down to the next generation. What was handed to our parents has a what's the probability of. If there's 44 000 denominations, I bet some of them are in line with god and walk them with a word, but like, what's our chances of being in the right one? And I think it's really important to communicate.
Zack Johnson:If people didn't catch it that, I think that they'll that the book of life has people's names written across wide swaths of these 100. There's not. I I think sometimes we're in danger of this, like there's only one way and everybody else is off of it.
Daniel Willis:But I'll turn on a few things that yeah, and I and I said that last time, so this is take two of the the podcast. That's right, and the last time I did say I believe there's faithful devoutout Christians and all these different denominations. But one of the things that I've discovered is that there are there are churches that don't have divorce and remarriage. There are churches that aren't don't have people on on drugs and aren't looking at pornography or if, if there are some that happen, they're fighting against it tooth and nail Right and they're making big decisions to stay off media or to minimize it and to not scroll and things that pull us. What was that quote last time? You said about the evil, the road from evil or something.
Zack Johnson:The highway of the the upright is to flee from evil. It's a proverb, yeah, yeah.
Daniel Willis:There's there the highway of the. The upright is to flee from evil. It's a proverb. Yeah, yeah, there's, there's churches that are doing that and there's people doing that, and then there's, and anyway, yes, I do believe that, but I wouldn't want to be a part of something that the chances of my children going off into the world or getting divorced is 50 50 chance. That's right.
Zack Johnson:I would rather be with a brotherhood that you know strives to obey christ and everything yeah, I was just a couple of things you said made me think about it's. These aren't my thoughts, but when I, we, we have all our students take a statistics course here and yeah, and I actually think it's really interesting, there's a guy that comes and gives a, gives a guest lecture. His name's byron byron smucker and he's a. He has a phd in statistics. He's really really really sharp and he comes and talks about statistics and faith and it's it's actually shocking.
Zack Johnson:A lot of people haven't heard faith talked about in statistical terms. Yeah, where. And he just he, he basically lays out the thesis that like, hey, there's a difference between confidence and certainty and statistics is not about certainty, it's about confidence. Yeah, I think I think allowing that to enter into your faith is actually really freeing for a lot of people. Yeah, because I think a lot of people have been raised to think that, hey, if you're not certain, then that's a problem. Like you're not allowed to have any doubts, but very few things in life are. Can we operate in certainties, and as soon as you do, I think that's that's a problem.
Zack Johnson:So I always after this lecture, we always make some jokes that if you ever hear anybody say I'm 100% certain that X, y or Z. You hear politicians say it, you hear different people. I always say just write them off. You can't be on so many things. But it's actually engaging with your confidence. It's actually engaging with your confidence where I think the early church. The more you read of them, your confidence levels towards what the scriptures mean I think start to change more towards the literal and less away from the contextual sort of cultural arguments. The X, y, z is just for us. And then you mentioned John Constostum as like a really good place to start and people.
Daniel Willis:Where can you find? So my the easiest, and there are free things out there, but they're not normally all compiled and searchable. I mean, if you're very tech savvy you can search them. But the kindle versions there's two or three that are like a dollar, dollar 99, I don't know the exact cost now but they'll have the whole, uh, pre and post nicene sets together and you can uh, they're just really it's a little hard because there's a lot of, there are a lot of writings that actually are spurious writings in them and they'll normally say they're spurious. So you can't just read everything in it. You have to pay attention to what the beginning says, because it could just be some writing that was written thousands of years later under Ignatius, and it might not be his writing at all, not thousands of years, but way later. So you have to pay attention to the beginnings. But yeah, the kindle, um and kindle is the the easiest way to get your feet wet yeah, that's great and it's pretty cheap too.
Zack Johnson:So anyone curious? So the other thing I thought it would be really interesting to talk about is just like content and media. So content creation, digital media and how you think about guiding our interaction with that. I always I make some a lot of jokes and that, on the one hand, I get up behind the pulper on stage and warn people about the effects of media consumption and and then, on the other end, there seems to be this incredible opportunity with the internet creating sermons, creating content and letting it spread and getting to the right people, and I actually think this is probably going to be really something we should constantly be thinking about. But how do you think about sort of the balance between caution and then the versus opportunity with the power of the internet, creating videos, um, social media, the whole ecosystem and youtube?
Daniel Willis:I know, yeah, there's there's a lot of different ways to take that conversation yeah it, technology isn't in itself evil, but we can use it for good or for evil, or we cannot use it, and it's okay. There's plenty of godly Amish that aren't going to touch it. And and there's times in our lives where you know we need to step away from it completely or, you know, focus on something else and we, if we can't handle it, or if we can't control ourselves, or if we're always looking for the next dopamine hit and we've found, find ourselves addicted to something. But it is the way that Christ has used these tools from different things, like the followers of the way and kingdom fellowship weekend, that made me realize there's communities of these people living out the simple teachings of the Bible the Bible is in their most literal interpretation, and that I wasn't alone.
Daniel Willis:I think that my opinion we wouldn't have continued. We might have, but I don't think we would have continued if we didn't have a community of people that also believe the same thing. We'd just be these lone rangers and feel like we're ostracizing ourselves for no reason. Why not just join the faith only we can't please the Lord, the faith only. You know, like that we can't please the lord. And um, why wear the head covering. And why does any of this matter? You know, I think that knowing that there was, uh, probably millions of people doing this, if not more, I don't even know um it like with these videos that are on YouTube, I have a feeling it saved our lives, um that God could have used something else. So I have a passion to put it online and to try to bring other people out of the worldly churches and out of disobedience, and and to trying to live worthy of the gospel of Christ. But I do think that's the exact words we should use as a balance.
Daniel Willis:If we find we can't control ourselves, it's better to cut off the hand. Radical amputation, yeah. But if we like in this ministry, we need to be uh. When we go online, we need to make sure we're not just endlessly scrolling. Have a purpose. I mean, you can look up stuff that's like, uh, the new tech or things that aren't necessarily godly, and but know what you're going to look for. Don't just waste time for dopamine hits. And. And have accountability partners. Have the apps on your phone that tell people, have open discussion with discipleship groups, yeah.
Zack Johnson:I think a weekly conversation with people you trust is a huge You're joking the question that our groups, my church, uses, and then something similar seems have you looked at anything foolish or moral and pornographic? Yeah, in the last week, like I think it's that important that we need to review it that often with each other.
Daniel Willis:But anyway, one of our I won't be able to say this, but I'm going to say it One of our things that we say is we say would you watch it with Debra Bursa, that's the white, the godly woman in your church? No, we watch it. It actually changed after that too. Would you watch it with other brothers in the church? Because we found that not, there are foolish things that aren't ungodly and yes, god, there's funny things of you know. And are we wasting time? Some of those questions like what, what's the reason and behind it, um, but like, would we share it with our brothers and sisters? If not, then we probably shouldn't be digging into any of that mine.
Zack Johnson:So I know this is this is funny for me, but what I've even found is, even when you have peer level brothers, that sometimes you kind of give each other passes because you know it's like you're all struggling with the same thing. So you start to give passes. I always in my context if I, if I'm like, would I watch this in front of somebody that is viewing me as like a leader in some capacity? Yeah, and even my kids like, or your grandma, or something like that, but I think that's like a really interesting perspective.
Zack Johnson:Like, if there's some new to the faith, would you want them to catch you watching this thing when you're trying to disciple them into the ways of Christ? And so basically, I just want to hear your thoughts.
Daniel Willis:you think it's probably worth people paying attention to creating good content, leveraging what we can leverage I absolutely think that if the gospel of the kingdom is going to get out to everybody that, yeah, we can do it, we can go knock on doors. Like you know, the job of a witness did a really good job and you're still doing a good job. You're going to be an elder. You got to knock on 150 doors, but so we put out uh, they had. I was looking into the statistics I don't remember what they were of how many people actually become a Jehovah Witness. They knock on a ton of doors to get one convert. And we last month and it was mostly because of shorts, but we had like around 50,000, there's a few days that it was 50,000 views in one month 28 days that's how youtube splits it up for the sound fave channel and like the percentages of the convert are really low. But it's like knocking on their doors, like we're knocking on their doors and really easily, like we have the ability to infiltrate their homes and like we can choose to not use it. But I feel like it's irresponsible that we have the ability to go into and it was like all these countries, like the netherlands though there's a list of all these countries, of people watching it. I'm thinking you know how hard it would have been to go to those countries. And then we're getting people like saying that their lives have been changed and people moving in because they watched YouTube. And to me it's not anything on YouTube. Yeah, to me it's totally worth it. But we have to be responsible. We're not condoning just watching anything that's on YouTube or any.
Daniel Willis:And Facebook is one thing that I do want to warn about. Absolutely I don't think you should watch video content on Facebook. I really think their algorithm has they don't care. If you don't want to watch something Like on YouTube, you can say not interested and you report it as sexual. And I make it a habit to report anything, anything that's like the world wouldn't think what the things I report is sexual Like. Most everybody would think that's ridiculous. That I'm saying think what the things I report is sexual like most everybody would think that's ridiculous. And I'm saying that's sexual but it's obviously sexually appealing.
Daniel Willis:You hit not interested, report and then not interested, and then with a in a very short time you don't get these recommendations or whatever you call them. You don't get things in your feed that are bad I mean I'm not saying everything, but not sexually stimulating at all, and every once in a while you might get something, but you just get in the habit of reporting it and saying not interested. If the if in the future that's not the case, I think I would possibly get off the platform altogether and try to figure out some other way. But facebook, you can say not interested and or whatever it is, you can report it, but it doesn't matter, they just keep feeding it and so it's like you don't, don't get on. In my opinion it's. I don't think the algorithm itself is evil, but whoever made it doesn't care about right morals or what people want to not see right. Is that a way to say that?
Zack Johnson:yeah, that makes sense well, and I just I think that I think I agree with you and I I do agree with you. That's why I I Is that a way? I say that in my own humble failings on thinking, I'm stronger than I am with not being allured by things that are foolish, immoral and pornographic. There's a constant allure out there and I think there's power there, but technology untethered from morals produces terrible consequences and we just have to be careful with that.
Daniel Willis:What, what is a foolish?
Zack Johnson:Well, you tell me no, I mean, I think foolish.
Daniel Willis:So I watch videos. Editing videos, right yeah, how to like make something in the background look like it's in the foreground and this guy I forget his name there's all this like almost magic tricks with editing.
Zack Johnson:Like I still can't figure out how he does it, but it's half the time funny or foolish and like I think, I think, if you're using content for a skill you're trying to acquire, it would be hard for me to put that in the foolish category, but I think, like just a lot.
Daniel Willis:It's always been a thing that it's fun to put out there, because I don't know it feels like.
Zack Johnson:It feels like there's a lot of comedy out there that's very prevalent, that runs it, I think. I think it makes you kind of feel good and you laugh, but there I think a lot of comedy can be foolish. There's like there's the course joking message that I think a to political banter, that yeah, just because I think it it's interesting and intriguing, I put some of that stuff in the foolish category. Um, yeah, endless, endless shows about shows, about movie shows and consumer digest stuff. I think a lot of us could end up watching reviews on a product we're looking for for like three hours. Yeah, you know. Yeah, but I think each of us has to really identify that a lot of that for ourselves. But I think there are pretty black and white foolish things to stay away from.
Daniel Willis:Yeah, yeah, that's what. Like it's just hard. The word is from yeah. Yeah, that's what, like it's just hard. The word is seems broad to me, like there's something can be like my brothers in christ will do something, maybe foolish, but I don't think it was wrong. Like, and I don't mean in a single way no, no that really go. That was funny and we we talk.
Zack Johnson:We talk about this verse, about when we're that Paul says cast off the sin and the weight, and I think even Paul identifies things that are sinful and then things that are just weights, and I think that I think there is a category of things that maybe not might be in the sinful category, but they're not don't have worth.
Zack Johnson:You can, yeah, you can, fill in the the blank like doing x made me a better person, like and I think those are the category of weights that they're not prohibited, so to speak, but it would. We would be better people at the end of our lives if we learn how to have a like.
Daniel Willis:Oh, that's a good way to talk about it, I don't know. It's just whenever it's next to pornographic, it's like, okay, well, you know, swatching the boy stick his tongue to the ice pole was foolish, but it wasn't in that category over there. Are they right next to each other in this question, because we have the same question, so yeah, yeah, I'm not gonna.
Zack Johnson:I could try to get into my own like theory of what's foolish for myself, but but I but I think. I think at the end of the day, the Holy Spirit gives us a conscience. And if, if people have an instinct to confess that you watch something foolish, that's where I'm always like I think you should jump on that and be like if you're going to confess it, then don't like, try not to do it again, right, it and don't like, try not to do it again.
Daniel Willis:right, well, I only confess, yeah, a lot of the things, because there there's so many things that in all day life, not just on videos, but you go anywhere and hang out for a minute, yeah, something will be foolish in front of you and it's like but it wasn't like I want to surrender anything- yeah, I think it's like for me if anyway. That's why they changed the thing to would you watch it with certain female? It's hilarious.
Zack Johnson:That makes sense Um, that's a good. It's actually a good way to think about it. Think about the person you value most and then make frame that as your reflective question. Yeah, is there? I know we went all over the place, I'm sorry. No, no, this is great. This is great. Is there? Is there anything else you want to cover?
Daniel Willis:we're kind of approaching the hour here and it's always helpful to sort of wrap it up you know I'm really thankful for the things that you're working on and your service here and, uh, I don't don't have a whole lot extra. I've probably said stuff, another one that we could have said, but yeah, and our first recording and your work again. Sound faith is sort of uh, yeah, that's how we're used the historic faith are kind of like the biggest things we do. And then all nations, bible translators, and strength, of strength.
Zack Johnson:If you haven't seen them, they're great and so sound faith is a youtube channel, just you can find it on youtube, and the historic faith is a website yep, with a, I can't remember if there's a youtube no, there is a youtube channel, but it's not as I heard.
Daniel Willis:Yeah, you have to go on the website to find the content. The website and then there's the strength of strength books is a really good one, with a lot of really edifying books, um, and scroll publishing and, yeah, some some good things out there and saddler podcast great.
Zack Johnson:Well, hopefully the satellite probably gets gets better over time. But hey, daniel, thanks for thanks for being here with us, and God bless you.