BraveMen S3E78: Johnnie Moore - Standing Against Christian Genocide

On February the 15th, 2015, a five-minute video was published showing the beheading of coptic captives, Christian men on a beach along the Southern Mediterranean coast in Libya. I'll never forget the photo that was pulled from that video of those 21 men in orange jumpsuits, and then behind them were men that had masks on dressed in black. And they were about to cut their heads off. We memorialize and celebrate the lives of those men today, February the 15th, and we will do so every February the 15th from now on. Those men, the reason they were killed, here's the caption that went along with that video. It said, the people of the cross, followers of the hostile Egyptian church, they were coptic men. In fact, 21 lost their lives, but 20 of them had been captured. And then there was some other people who were captured by this group of its ISIL, Islamic state followers. There was a group, Islamic state jihadists that did this called al-Sham. And what they did was they had captured a number of people there in Libya after Qaddafi died a couple years earlier, the place devolved into all sorts of different militant groups. And these had captured a lot of the workers. And then they started going through the workers, finding out who's a Christian, who's not a Christian. And if you were Islamic, they would pull you out and set you on your way. And they found these men. Now what had happened while these men were in these cells together, these little houses that they were housed in these, squalid conditions. They began to share their faith with those around them. There was a man from Ghana who gave his life to Christ. Out of the 21 who were killed, one was Ghanaese. You'll see that 20 were coptic Egyptian Christians. But that one man who had accepted Christ in the prison cell, in those squalid conditions with those other men, when he heard this message, he gave his life to Jesus Christ. And when they said, we're going to kill the Christians, he said, and he'd been a follower of Christ for one week. And he said, well, then that means me also. And he joined those men in number 21. With me is Chris Shields. And today you're about to meet a man who speaks up for religious freedom, for the persecuted church around the world. He's an executive of a major corporation that he founded and runs. He speaks in the largest pulpits across the United States. His name is Johnny Moore. With me is our producer, Chris Shields and Chris. You've met Johnny on a number of occasions. He speaks up for men like these 21. He does. He speaks up for the persecuted church. And they're being killed by the hundreds every single month. In this particular episode today on Brave Men, we're going to talk about the G. Hodg. The next G. Hodg. And talk about Nigeria in particular for people who are being killed, but it's happening all over the world. He's an amazing young man. And this is going to enlarge your heart. But I, this man, Chris, every time I think about these young men, and they set them, they line them up on the beach. And the photos are there. You can look it up. They're the Coptic 21. And you look them up and you see that photo of them. The video that was put out. And we talk about this with Johnny. We'll talk about it in the follow up notes. But it's an amazing thing. These are men who are standing up. And so we're so blessed today to have a man who's speaking up for this. And you've been with them. You've seen them in different situations, locations, Washington DCs, a spokesman for the faith. Yeah. And I love it, too, because he's a man of prayer. You know, and for you to know how to properly stand up for something like this, you have to be a man of prayer. You have to be a man that is willing to stand in the gap with your heavenly Father and say, God, what would you do? What would you say? They're persecuting the wrong ones. But what would you do? Why still minister love, even when I'm being attacked for believing in the one and true only God, you know, and that's why I love Reverend Johnny Moore, because he's a man that doesn't just talk it. He walks it. Yeah. He does. And he's been in a lot of these dangerous places. So we're going to work together in the dangerous nations campaign that we're doing at Krishmins. And now we can go to cmn.men and see this because if we can reach young men in their streets before they come to our streets, I mean, that's one aspect of it. The other thing is is that we can begin to diffuse these things, say the lies of people. That's why we talk about it. Krishmins network. We are cmn. We rescue men. Yes. And that changes everything. Yes, it does. But Johnny Moore, man, this guy's a stud. Yes, he is. Yeah. And he's just a real deal. He is a real deal. And I love the humility he walks in too, but I mean, when you're a man of prayer, you can't walk in anything but humility. You know, it's just it's just an overflow. So when he comes off the stage, speaking to Rick Warren's church in the places that he speaks at, they don't just put a cape on him. No, they don't do that. No, Johnny has left the building, at least I've never seen it. Oh, you've never seen it. Okay. Maybe it happens. Yeah. I don't think so. I hope not. I don't think so. Yeah. Let me meet a man here today on Brave Men who is going to enlarge your heart and today as we memorialize the Gothic 21, that's something I will never forget the images of. And I pray you as you listen to this, you'll catch the spirit of it. Join us in the work. Be more involved. I believe this is going to invigorate your life today as you hear Johnny Moore on Brave Men. It's Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole, wisdom and courage for the journey. I'm talking with Johnny Moore, Johnny Moore's founder and CEO of the Cairo's company and president of the Congress of Christian leaders. But Johnny, what you are is you're a radical Christian who basically relentlessly goes after religious freedom for people who can't fight for themselves. And the book I just read is called The Christian Genocide in Africa. It's called the next She-Hud. How bad is it? It's worse than anybody realizes and I spend about 20% of my life working on religious freedom and helping persecuted Christians. I knew what was happening in Nigeria more than most, but when I got on the ground and I met the victims, I came away even me saying, this was so much worse than I had had any clear whatsoever. I mean, this may be the worst situation in the world and it's not just a human rights crisis. The Church of Jesus Christ is in the center of the bull's eye and not only are they being mowed down by bad guys, they're also standing up for their faith, like we rarely see in Christian history. I mean, walking in Nigeria with the Christians particularly in the North is like walking through the book of Acts. Yeah. What I've seen and what I've read and what you put in this book is called The Next She-Hud. And I'll get into some of the background and talk to Johnny Moore, Founder and CEO of the Cairo's Company and you work and stuff here in North America. You help ministries, you help nonprofits, you help political people, all sorts of people, communicate their message. That's really what you are, a specialist with that. But man, you're also a relentless fighter for religious freedom. And what I saw in this book was stuff on the ground. It wasn't, you know, who was it? Was it Stalin? Instead, if I kill 60 million people, it's just a number. But if the story comes out about one, it becomes a crisis, human rights crisis. Tell me some of the stories that you encountered there in Nigeria. Well, you know, it's interesting that this book I co-authored with a rabbi, a friend of mine, in Los Angeles. So, you know, I'm an evangelical Christian, he's an Orthodox rabbi. But he came to me from one of the leading human rights organizations in the world, because the Simon Weezenthal Center, they hunt down Nazis. They found that after the fame Nazi hunter, Simon Weezenthal, he lost 89 members of his family in the Holocaust. The rest of his life finding the perpetrators and making sure they had justice. And rabbi Cooper came to me and he said, we have to go to Nigeria. So here was an Orthodox Jewish rabbi coming to me in evangelical Christian, saying, you need to do more about the Christians in the crosshairs in Nigeria. And in rabbi Cooper, and I mean, we come from totally different generations, you know, totally different religious communities, totally different life experiences. And yet, one of the lessons that he's taught me is the best thing you can do when people are in need is you can go sit down and hear their stories. And so this is what we did. You know, we went, we spent several days listening to victim after victim after victim. You know, one time we were supposed to meet with a representative of a village that had been attacked by Islamist in the middle of the night. They came in, they burned down the houses, they killed women and children, they just burned churches. And we walked into the meeting room and it wasn't the representative of the village that came to meet with us. It was like the village, dozens and dozens of people who had traveled down the same dangerous roads just for the opportunity to tell their story to a listening ear. And then we made a promise to those victims that we would go tell their stories to other people around the world. And that's what the next jihad is, it is pulling back the veil on one of the worst situations around the world. It's doing it by explaining what is happening, how it ended up so bad, by telling the stories of those most affected by it and hopefully making some suggestions that changed the trajectory of it. Yeah. So now, when you talk about, you know, use the G word, in fact, you mentioned that even political people in Europe are now saying the same thing. Genocide is a big work. This is not just a couple of people randomly getting shot in churches or like the tragic thing that happened in Charleston, where Dylan Roof went in and shot some people. This is systemic. It is, it's different bands of militants, all with, basically all with Muslim backgrounds, all right? Militants. Yeah. It's, it's important, it's important to say though that there are also Muslims who are standing up for the Christians. Like, you know, we tell the story of an 86-year-old Imam who hid the Christians from his village inside of his mosque. Oh, tell that story. Yeah. It's in your book. It's in your book. The next jihad has a fantastic story. Yeah. Well, it's important that we know these stories too, because these terrorists, they are determined to kill every Christian, you know, in the, especially in the Northeast of Nigeria and in some of the neighboring countries. But they also are determined to kill every Muslim that stands in their way. And there are plenty of Muslims that have stood in their way. And in this case, you know, there was this 86-year-old Imam, he received an award by Secretary Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State, you know, in the Trump administration during a global gathering of religious leaders. And he received that award because when the terrorists came into his village, you know, he heard their Islamists cries and he went, he gathered the Christians together. He literally hid the Christians in the mosque. And so this 86-year-old Muslim leader said, if you're going to get to the Christians in my village, you're going to have to come through me, a Muslim Imam, an 86-year-old Muslim Imam to get to them. And what's interesting is that the mosque that he hid them in was on the lands that had been owned by Christians a generation ago, and they just being a good neighbor. Even Christians who believe Jesus is the way the truth in the life, you know, and no man comes to the Father but by him, these Christians were good neighbors. And so they sold the land, they gave the land to the Imam. And so he only has his mosque because Christians had treated him with kindness. And here he is as an old man, you know, frail as everyone at that age, you know, no doubt it is, but he was not going to let those people get killed, you know, on his watch. And so, you know, I believe in religious freedom. Like if you don't believe in religious freedom at all, unless you believe in religious freedom for all, and the tragedy about Nigeria, however, is that you have a country that is a democracy, you know, technically a secular democracy, and yet some of the worst violations of religious freedom are happening in that country, 200 million people, largest, most populated country in Africa, the 10th largest oil reserves in the world, one step above the United States, we're like the 11th largest oil reserve in the world, and yet all of this is happening. And then here's the thing, like when we were all watching ISIS kill Christians in Iraq and Syria in the northeast of Nigeria, Boko Haram terrorist killed more Christians in Northeast Nigeria in 2015 than ISIS did in Iraq and Syria at their height. It's just nobody was paying attention to it. And so, so Rabbi Cooper and I went there, met with the victims, and now we're telling the whole world through the book and through conversations like the one that we're having, and hopefully other people will tell the stories that they read in the book to say, enough is enough. And as Christians, it's especially important because the Bible says that if one member of the body of Christ suffers, we all suffer. These are our brothers and sisters in Christ. The book, you put a saying in here, or the rabbi did, the Jewish saying which says in remembrance lies the roots of redemption and forgetfulness, the roots of destruction. So what you've done here is tie this thing that's happening, let's say in Northeast Nigeria, which feels a world away. What you've essentially tied it to America, to the United States, to Europe, to other nations, that if we don't respond as Christians, it's coming to our shores. Well, and the thing is, this evil comes in different forms and on different scales. The same evil that is massacring Christians in Northeast Nigeria is the same evil that's incurring a million Muslims and concentration camps in China. It's the same evil that inspired, as you mentioned a few moments ago, Dylan Wolff, Dylan, I've been right. I try to refuse to say the name of these people, and so sometimes I don't even remember the name, but Dylan, that white supremacist, which is a different type of terrorist, mowing down those people in the church, it's the same evil. And one of the responsibilities of followers of God, of Christians, like you and I, is that we stand in the gap between that evil and between what the evil wants to do to innocent people that are made in the image of God, and the fact of the matter is, if it's happening somewhere else in the world, it still affects us because we don't want to live in this type of world. And I mentioned Simon Wiesenthal, Simon Wiesenthal, when he was liberated from a concentration camp by American soldiers, he and his wife had lost 89 members of their family. Simon Wiesenthal was an architect. He could have made a fortune potentially in rebuilding Europe in the aftermath of the Holocaust, because the whole world, after World War II, was a tempting to invest and rebuild a decimated continent. And yet Simon Wiesenthal chose to spend the rest of his life pursuing the perpetrators of Nazi war crimes. And one day they asked him why he did it. And he said, because the Nazis nearly destroyed justice altogether, they not only killed millions of people, but they nearly killed justice. And this is why those who hold up the truth, as those who believe in the dignity of every single human being, we have to hold the line of justice all around the world. And one of the best ways we can do it is make sure that perpetrators of injustice aren't allowed to do it in the shadows. We shine our lights in those dark places. We meet with the victims, we tell the stories, and then hopefully something changes. You mentioned a couple of notes about Wiesenthal. You mentioned his quote about chasing down the train as his mom was taken away to say goodbye to her and had haunted him the rest of his life, because she never knew that he chased the train. And so he said out of that, he said, this is not about vengeance, it's about justice. And where I land on that is that out of law, when we push away the cross, when we push away grace as a nation, you put yourself strictly under law, law always demands justice. But that justice produces vengeance and produces anger and rage. Grace produces justice, but that justice is based on those that we love. So God's justice in the Bible was always about health. His justice was never about vengeance. And he said, my vengeance is mine. You do, I'm going to bring love and you're going to love people and we're going to love these people into the kingdom. So my justice is going to bring health to people. So what you're doing is trying to bring health to the body of Christ because if we don't take care of somebody else, who's a follower of Christ, part of the body, we're unhealthy. Well, and the fact is, a lot of these Christians that are in harm's way, they're dying testifying to their faith. I mean, they're dying because of their faith, they're testifying to it. And we celebrate a willingness to not only live for our faith, but the courage to even die if you have to. And yet on the same token, the New Testament tells us and the Old Testament that we're to fight against these injustices. So we need to do two things at the same time. Number one, we need to celebrate and tell the stories of those who've paid the ultimate price for their beliefs. But number two, we need to work every day so that there are fewer martyrs around the world. This is also our responsibility. It is our responsibility, and we are our brother's keeper. We absolutely are, and this is the famous story in the Old Testament. And the answer is, yes, we are. It is our responsibility, and it's not just our responsibility to have a good job and take care of our family, make sure there's a roof over the head of our children. We have an additional responsibility as people of faith. We're to be salt and we're to be light. This is part of what we are, but it's also not enough to just talk about it. We have to take action, and we have to just do something, even if it's wrong, just do something. And the first something that we can do is we can tell the stories of those who are effective. We can write our politicians, whatever their political party is, whoever represents you. We can hold to account those who are returning a blind eye to these things. We can give to organizations that are supporting those in need around the world. But whatever we do, we need to do it with the same passion that we hope someone would be doing it for us if we were on the receiving side of the injustice. There you go. You mentioned it on page 107 in your book, and the book is the next G-Hod. It's available everywhere, Reverend Johnny Moore, two O's, two N's, one H, rabbi Abraham Cooper, and you said in page 107 what you wrote in here, put in your ethics of the fathers. It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but you are not free to desist from it. And basically what you said is in this, I think it's in this particular chapter, I've marked this whole book up. And in here you said, hey, now you know, now you can't not know, because now you know. So we're compelled to action. Now as followers of Christ, now I know, I can't not know, I can't not act. I can't do, you know, love your neighbors to self-leviticus, right? This is what we're supposed to do, is what you're talking about. And here's the thing, like in the case of Nigeria, which we write about a lot, this is also a country with the largest Christian population on the continent of Africa, every church, denomination of anyone that's listening to us talk, they have a church in Nigeria. It's an English-speaking country by the way. Right. Like why are our churches in the United States coupling up with churches in Nigeria, saying like, you mess with them, you mess with us, like if you have a need, it's our need. Now, that wonderful phrase you mentioned a few minutes ago from a Jewish ethical text, quote, ethics of our fathers, I think it's an important phrase, because sometimes, you said it, it's not up to us to complete the task, but neither are we free to just this from it. I think sometimes we feel paralyzed, because these problems are so big, how are you going to fix a genocide in Africa or how are you going to fix the persecution of Christians and China or North Korea or in certain countries in the Middle East? It's just too big for me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. I think the most important thing is to find that poem about footprints in the sands, right. And you know, and the point is that it is up to us to finish the job, but we also can't say that we don't have a responsibility to do something. Even if it's just save one life or tell one story and as evangelicals, sometimes I think we are so dedicated as we should be to reaching the world in our generation, to just like solving the problem and to doing it on a God-sized scale, that sometimes we can forget that it is just enough to affect one person's life. In fact, that's my story. You know, I was, you can track everything in my life to a few small acts of a few compassionate people. Like one day there was this guy, after my parents had gone through a tragic, traumatic divorce, my mom walks to the mailbox in our in Florence, South Carolina. There's a scholarship in the mail for her to attend a Bible Institute in Lynchburg, Virginia at Liberty University. The day they cut our power off at our house because we couldn't pay the bill, we piled in a U-Haul and went to Lynchburg, Virginia so my mom could go to a Bible Institute because someone had sent a scholarship in the mail. And that's how we ended up at Liberty University. There was a guy in a quite famous Christian who heard about my family, who decided to scholarship my sister and I to go to a private school in Lynchburg that was attached to Liberty University, that like single act of compassion. You know, a fluent guy, I'm not sure he was even thinking about what he was doing, but he heard about a young kid, you know, who wanted to go to this Christian school and couldn't afford to go to the Christian school. He paid a scholarship, probably not enough money he even thought about it. He just paid it because somebody told him the need. I can track everything in my life to that single gift from that single person. Like it wasn't up to him to save the world, but he didn't leave me behind and I'm getting to saving some of the world, you know, now myself and I'll get very little of it done, but hopefully I'll influence someone else and this is the domino effect. That's it, that's it. Hey, it's the guy effect. It's everything affects everything, you know, and the body and the Bible says that we're all connected. Hey, you know, let me go through some of that background because that's fascinating. So now you've got a single mom, your mom, and where'd your dad end up? I ended up, you know, with a great relationship with both of my parents. So my dad was in South Carolina, stayed in South Carolina, he's there till today. And when I started preaching sermons, you know, he would drive because I couldn't drive when I started preaching. He would drive me all around the country. And it's interesting, you know, the phrase, in the book of Genesis, what the enemy meant for evil, God used for good. Yes, Joseph. At a time when my parents couldn't talk to each other as a kid because of the trauma of their divorce. Yeah. I had a relationship with both of them. So I could talk to my mom that I talked to my dad and I was negotiating and it's like 14 years old, you know, doing this back and forth. You know, and now I see in my adult life, you know, a lot of what I do is I talk to people on different sides of issues and try to find common ground and try to bring unity and try to solve problems that people can't talk to each other. I can normally talk to them and I can bring them together. You know, and so even in that traumatic situation, you know, God took a bad situation and he turned it into good. And that's what he does. He specializes, you know, in this. Well, let me track this forward. So now, you know, that gift that that man did and you're in this school, you end up in Lynchburg as somebody wrote a letter. Your dad has driven you around. So you've got that sort of, if you will, giftedness that's happening in you and your natural giftedness, you end up at Liberty University and almost immediately a man who I greatly admire, a Jerry Falwell senior kind of grabs a hold of you and says, hey, help me with some things. And you end up working, not only not only attending, but working here, is that correct? Yeah, I mean, I became the campus pastor when I was like 19 years old. I was there for 13 years. When I left, I was a senior vice president of the school, but it's interesting. One of those tiny little churches, okay? Like 20 people in a Sunday morning, somebody in one of those churches sent a cassette tape of my sermon to Jerry Falwell. I mean, at Thomas Robert's church, he listened to the cassette tape, because I mean, here's the guy he was talking to presidents and prime ministers, you know, very, you know, in history books before he died. And he's in time. The man who was always busy. I was around, I never saw him not busy. And yet, can you imagine him like getting this cassette tape, listening to this kid in his church, pre-ceremony on a cassette tape, and I come home from school one day, he left a voice message on my, we had an old answering machine, in our basement apartment, and he was encouraging me, this 15-year-old, 14-year-old kid, I don't remember how old I was, you know, because he had listened to it. And, but this is how he was. He'd find a young leader, and he would invest in that young leader. And, you know, and I happen to be fortunate to be one of those. And, you know, it changed my life. But imagine, like, imagine if my mom wouldn't have taken that leap of faith to Lynchburg. Imagine if my father would have said, look, I'm just too busy this weekend, I'll take you to a church next week. And imagine if that person wouldn't have sent that tape. Imagine that person wouldn't have paid that scholarship. You know, you can see the hand of God, but working alongside of the hand of God and human history is always the hand of men that he guides to take specific actions at specific times. You know, and we never know, we never know what might have happened, and we just taken that little step of obedience. Hey, this is Chris. I want to take a moment right in the middle of this great conversation to let you know the Brave Men podcast is a production of the Christian Men's Network worldwide and the Global Fatherhood Initiative. Christian Men's Network has helped pastors and leaders disciple men for over 40 years. You can find all the resources for mentoring and fatherhood at cmn.men. That's the Christian Men's Network at cmn.men. There's a fresh new study every week called Power of Potential that just started. Monday Night Men is a new resource for men and pastors. As a pastor, you can follow up the 30-minute study with a digital meetup with your men for prayer, discussion, and teaching. Some churches are using the videos as part of a group meetup. This 13-week study is on YouTube and Facebook. Get your books and material at cmn.men. That's the Christian Men's Network at cmn.men. It will help us continue to reach the lives of many men around the world if you would like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, and subscribe to this podcast and share it. That's the Christian Men's Network in Paul, Louis Cole. Now, let's get back to this powerful interview between Paul and Reverend Johnny Moore. I'm telling you, it's as simple as I was, we were in a restaurant here a few, I guess a couple months ago. And the person helping us a waitress seemed a little troubled. Stop, hey, what's up, what's going on? Single mom got a couple of issues. Can we pray with you? Yes. I mean, you don't know what that little moment did for somebody. I remember years ago sitting on an airplane, sharing my faith, it just natural conversation with a woman sitting in this next to me. And the ripple effect, I can go back now 20 years later and see the ripple effect that's happened out of her life to thousands of other people's lives. You never know the person you're encouraging, what that's going to do. And so when we ride a letter to our converse person, and you have in the next to you, you've got a whole series of things. And we're going to put these in the show notes. I'm into this stuff, Johnny. This is, and it's a really a blessing talking to you. And here's the thing, you did Liberty University and you helped grow it. You were there when it just, if you will, in the parlance that we would say, it just blew up, God just kissed it. And took the dream and vision, Pastor Falwell had, he was, that was 2007 when he left. I knew his son, Jonathan, who's now the pastor there, and knew some of the other people there, some amazing people he came through, but that thing has had huge impact around the world. So you're part of that, and then you go from there to your bio says, MGM, media, partner, something, oh, United Artists, Media Group. What you really did is you began working closely with Mark Burnett and his wife Roma Downey. Is that correct? Yeah, and so how did I meet Mark Burnett and Roma Downey? And their company was called One Three Media, and it was acquired by MGM, and became the United Artists Media Group. Right. I met them because I had a passion for persecuted Christians, and I traveled to the Middle East to help the persecuted Christians. I was invited to a meeting. Mark and Roma happened to be at the meeting because they cared about the issue as well. It was in Jordan, in a man, Jordan. And I was just, you know, I had part of my mission has always been to help persecuted people. So that took me to the Middle East. I happened to meet them there. You know, I invited into the Liberty University, they spoke at Liberty to a crowd of 10,000 students about, you know, they were producing and still are producing content, you know, based upon the Bible, the Bible mini series in the Son of God movie, and the A.D. and the series. Thanks. And, you know, that began a friendship, and eventually they asked me if I would come and move to Hollywood and help them for a period of time, which I was... If people don't know who they are, Mark's from England, Roma's Irish background, but they, he's produced for your survivor, the series of survivor series, the voice, shark tank. And then there was that little show that made somebody famous called The Apprentice. It helped them and become president, right? Fascinating stuff. And you ended up working with them for quite a number of years and silver to the screen. And it's interesting. I mean, when I worked for Mark, you know, he had, I think, 13 or 14 series on network TV and it was, you know, five nights a week. It was the number one show. But we always, you know, a joke around the office was the only person to meet beat Mark Burnett in ratings was Roma Downey, his wife, with such by an angel. That's right. That's right. Yeah, isn't that something? So the Lord takes this young guy, 14... Now, how did you end up starting to preach at 14, 15? Where'd that come from? I just knew I was called to do it. I didn't want to do it. But I had a responsibility to do it. And my grandfather was a mountain, as I said, a mountain preacher in Georgia and North Carolina. I'd used to go stay at his house. It was a parsinage. It was a, sometimes a single wide mobile home. Sometimes a double wide mobile home next to the little tiny church. And we had a habit where he would like write out sermons for me and they put a stool behind the pulpit and I'd go play preacher in the church next door when I was like nine, 10 years old, you know? And one thing led to another and today. I mean, I'm a tent maker. I own a business which I created to give me time to work on the helping persecuted Christians and the ministry part of my life. But like the Apostle Paul made tents along the road, that's what I feel called to do. So I'm sort of part business person, part religious leader. And I think there's a path like that for a lot of other people too. And I think sometimes people get passionate about, particularly men that later on in their life sort of find their faith, they say they straighten up their lives, they get serious about faith. And sometimes they think, well, they need to leave that and go into full-time ministry. That's definitely the call for some people. But for a lot of people, it isn't the call. The call is to like be a good Christian where you are in the vocation that you're in. Be a life of the world there. You know, God needs both, both. And in my case, you know, I moved out of the full-time pastor path and I moved into the tent maker path. And yet I still preach those sermons. I think that's, here's a deal. I think that's the church of the future. I think that's the pastor of the future. I have five close friends who are all, we call them minister panours. They're business guys who are great at it, who pastor churches, some of multi-campus churches. And they love it and they do it. See, all businesses is ministry and all ministry is serving. So it comes out of that same thing. If you're only qualified to lead to the degree you're willing to serve. So all ministry business, if you're gonna be successful the business you serve others, right? So it all comes out of that sense of serving. I think, Johnny, I think the, in fact, I told some of my friends, I've got a close friend who pastors down in Corpus Christi. He's got four of the top craft coffee shops in Texas. In fact, he says they were, I, he said number one coffee in Texas. That's okay. I'll go with you on that. And everything in Texas is the number one, right? So, so the thing is is that, and he pastors this cranked up church that actually has bigger attendance now with the hybrid COVID thing going on than he had pre-COVID. And it's the power of Holy Spirit people being healed. You know, lies being changed. I've got friends like that across the US. I think what you're talking about, because you've got the business called the Kyros Company. And you guys help ministries amplify what they do and help nonprofits and, uh, politicals, you work with all sorts of people. CEOs, four to five hundred. And businesses on the coast that have a hard time understanding the rest of the country. And I, I, we're living in a really unusual time. A lot of people think the divide in America is about Republicans and Democrats. I don't think it's about Republicans and Democrats. I think it's about sort of elite institutions and everyone that fills left out. And one of the things that we do as a business, you know, is we help, we help corporations and, you know, and other, other sectors of the economy better understand their consumer in the center of, of, of, of the country. So, yeah, we, we are communications consultancy and we do PR and we work with a lot of, of, of nonprofits and evangelicals and, and, and, uh, and religious clients. But we also work with those who're trying to understand what they don't understand, you know, about, about the rest of America. And in some cases, the world. Yeah, and you work with some of the people that we would know all over, uh, all over television and media and, and on, on our apps and all that stuff. I do remember a story is years ago, a friend of mine, uh, Ted Bear, was, uh, consulting with, uh, some movie companies. And it was based on that. It was a number of years ago. A movie came out called the last temptation of Christ. And he sat down with the producers of that movie and, and they said, why is, why are so many people, the church, why is the evangelical church is killing us? And Ted looked at him, sitting around the table, he goes, well, because most of your Christians actually believe that Jesus was the son of God. And he said, they'll never forget three or four of the producers and owners of this company or CEOs, looking at him going, really? Kidding. We had no idea. So I, you know, so for what you do, man, it's, it's so needed. I, I've got to tell you, man, this, uh, the next G-Hod in what you're doing with persecuted Christians is one of the most important things I can see, uh, in our culture. For us as a body of Christ, be aware of it. And there's a lot of different ways of helping. There are, there's food programs, the world vision stuff, compassion, all the things that are going on are extremely important. But man, we cannot, this, what you're sharing right now has not been amplified across the nation. And here's the thing, you cannot be a faithful Christian. Unless you're either being persecuted yourself, you're helping those who are. Yeah. All you have to do is flip two pages in the New Testament. And all, every other page, you're discovering someone who's, their faith is costing them something or Paul's raising money for those who's faith that's costing them something or Paul's, you know, prison again, or whatever, this is part of the, part of the experience. And we, we're living in a time in history where the church is growing at a pace, unrival, except for at the very beginning. And we're also living in a time in history where there are more persecuted Christians than in the previous six centuries combined. Wow. So, so this is the world that we're living in. And so if you're a pastor at a church or in your family or you teach Sunday school or whatever, just, you know, everyday Christian, this needs to be part of your life, you know, and one of the reasons why I wrote this book and why I've written my previous books on the subject is because I'm hoping that people will decide to care about these issues again. And they'll probably discover as I have that as much as I'm trying to help people by doing it, that I, you know, I don't do it for this reason, but I end up being helped far more myself than I am able to help others. Well, capacity, everybody talks about capacity. The capacity is only the result of stretching and stretching is when we take things like this and just absolutely enlarge ourselves and go, I'm going to get stretched on this thing. I've got to hear this stuff. Talking about Reverend Johnny Moritz, J-O-H-N-N-I-E, if you're looking at this up on Amazon or wherever to get the books, M-W-L-O-R-E, Johnny Moritz and Rabbi Abraham Cooper wrote this book the next G-Hod with you, Johnny. And I want to close our time together and thank you for being so generous with your time, but I want to close this time together. I want to talk about the 21. I've never been, I've never been so captivated by a photo in my life and I was of those men in the orange jumpsuits where we could see their faces and the men behind them with their faces covered and they were about to give their lives for the gospel of Jesus Christ. And you talk about it, you talk about it here, you talk about it, I know you're working on other projects that talk about the 21. But tell me about that. In fact, it was the 20 and then they added one. Tell me about that. I want to just kind of finish with that, Johnny. Yeah, I mean, the few years ago, when ISIS was at its height, the world was in denial. I was raising early alarms about what was happening to the Christians in Iraq and Syria. And I was, people thought I was speaking in hyperbole and exaggerating all of these things. And then all of us saw that terrible image of 21 Egyptians, one Ghanaian, I believe, all lined up on a beach in a video that was entitled an Arabic a message written in blood to the nation of the cross. And in the video, you could actually see before their lives were ended many of these Egyptian Christians praying, you know, at the very end of their life. In the Coptic Church, which is the Orthodox community, but also an evangelistic community and a church that, when they have their annual New Year's service, it is dedicated to the centuries of martyrs in the Coptic Church. And they turned that image into an icon. They made saints out of these 21. But this is perhaps the image of the Christianity that we're seeing in our world today, because we have giants of the faith that aren't famous. They're from tiny little villages and far off corners of the world. And the difference between them and between a lot of us is they're willing to die for a faith that we're barely willing to live for. And I think we need to ask ourselves, like, what's different about these two Christianity's? Because it's the same book, it's the same Jesus. It's all the same. The difference is what it means to them versus what it means to us. And I remember once traveling through a European airport on my way to Asia. And I walked into an art gallery. And I was just in a hurry. And so I looked at all the paintings in this art gallery and I left the whole thing in like 10 minutes. And as I was leaving, I noticed that there was this woman who was staring at the same painting from when I walked into when I left. And in 10 minutes, I looked at all the paintings. And in 10 minutes, she was still staring at like one portion of one painting, right? And I remember thinking to myself, what does that woman know about that painting that I don't know? Why is she so infatuated with that corner of that painting? And I think one of the reasons why we need to tell the stories of the persecuted church. We need to memorialize the 21 cops that were killed by ISIS. We need to know what's happening in Nigeria and in China and in Iran and in places all around the world is because there's something of our Christianity that we're missing. We have a form of godliness with no power. And I happen to think the secret to finding it isn't getting connected again to those whose faith cost them something. So that's why I've written again and again their stories. And I hope that people listening to us will be just changed a little bit by their stories. As I know, their stories have inspired us. Yeah, these men, the cop, it wasn't in Nigeria, but it was the same because you're talking about the genocide across Africa, it was in Northern Africa. And they were captured by the Islamic State. And there were 20 of them that captured some other men, some workers, and one of them was a Ghanaian who they led into faith as far. And he decided, I mean, I don't know, maybe a two week old follower of Christ, who said, if these men are gonna die for their faith, with what they've given me, I'll be with them. Not gonna give them up. And that man did that. And they had the opportunity to repeat a militant's car, walk away, but they didn't, and they prayed. And February 15th, every year, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, there's a, there's a, basically a memorial, a memorialization and celebration of their lives. Yeah. And I was so struck by this, and what you've written in an ex-G-Hive, I'm like, you know, I can't do what I do without being part of this also. So we're behind you 100% Johnny, and thank you for what you do. And paying the price, I mean, this is, I've been to Nigeria, I've been to 82 countries. These are people to go, oh, great, get to go to these places. These are not easy trips, you know. You're not, you know, always standing in the nicest places. It's kind of rough, and frankly, you've been in some places where you don't know what may happen. So we pray for you as you go to these places, and your family, how many children do you have? Three. Three kids. And so pray for that. And thank God for a grandpa, you know. That's an amazing thing to write out sermons and put a little money rolled up on a stool. You know, if only you think those sermons, like I have preached at one time to more people than maybe he preached to in his whole life. Exactly. And yet in some ways, you know, it's like his mantle that he gave to me, you know, that I'm carrying on all because, you know, he just believed in me, you know. He believed in you. And thank God for grandpa's. And I think that's the work of grandparents. My friend's Robert and Karen Berger in Lima, Peru, just wrote a book about the power of a boilows, you know, the power of grandparents. And so for any of us listening, anybody listening who is a part of the team right now as a grandparent, Dale Brotter, who's our chairman, he told his son and his dad was 50 when he was born. So his father, Nathaniel, was not around for most of his children's life. So he asked his children, he just basically asked them, trained them as they grew up, get married young and have kids right away because I want to be around as their grandfather. And you know what? I'm trying to talk to him the other day. I think he's on their 8th or maybe 9th grandchild. Already at a young age. So, you know, that's the importance of grandparents. And I asked him the strength of his father being 50. He says, well, my dad was old enough. He knew exactly how to raise me. He said, but I was jealous in the King James version of that. I was jealous for that for my children to have that. He said, so I'm going to be able to pour into my grandchildren. I feel the same way about my grandkids and you will someday about yours. But thank you, Johnny. And Abraham Cooper, Rabbi Cooper. And it's a fascinating book because, you know, you can sense both of you in it. And then you do a really interesting interview of him at the back of it, which I thought was great. And it's a very unique thing I hadn't seen that before by a lot of different people who write together because as you wrote it, you could feel the influence of both backgrounds. And he must be, he must be in his mid 70s by now. And you're in your late 30s, is that right? Somewhere around there. That's right. Early 40s, late 30s. And so it's fascinating. When you talk about different backgrounds, all these different things, it really came together. It's called the next G-Hod. Stopped the Christian genocide in Africa. And Johnny Moore, M-D-L-O-R-E. And when you dial in his stuff, just grab some of the other things too and give them the people, because people need to hear this. We're behind you, Johnny Moore. Thank you for what you do. I just want to pray right now that the Lord would bless you and everything your hands touch would prosper. Every place you put your feet would be holy ground. And the God would keep you deep in the grip of his favor and grace as you do your work. Pray that you prosper in everything you do, bro. Thanks for that. I'm Johnny, it's great to see you again. Thank you, that's it. Thanks for everything. I love Proverbs 22-6 that says, train up a child in a way that he should go and as an old days, he will not depart from it. Because we see this perfectly demonstrated and illustrated in Johnny Moore's life. Yeah, I'm okay. You know, the fact that his grandpa put him on a chair and wrote a sermon with him, I mean, how many grandpas have that as their testimony with their grandchild? Yeah, that's legacy, that's true legacy. And as he said, you know, here's this grandfather that had 20 people in the church and different mountain little churches. You know, you think of, you know, dude, I'll tell you, man, we get so caught up in what success is supposed to look like. Yes. I bet the guy's Instagram wasn't very good. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I bet he didn't have that good of Facebook stuff or whatever. Because I didn't, you know, I bet though that his Bible was all marked up. Oh, 100%. Right? And he raised up a young man. And then he's talking about his dad driving him around. Even after they had had this really, whatever happened in the divorce of his parents. But, you know, he says his dad drove him around to help him so he could speak of youth groups. Dude, this is, you know, when you talk about a train up a child in a way, this should go. Yeah. You know, or Chris, that means train up a child in a way that should go. Yeah. You know, or Chris, that means train up a child in the bent of their lives. So when you see in there. Yes. You know, Paul said you have 10,000 instructors, but not many fathers. Yeah. And that means you've got an instructor tells you what he knows, but a father gives you who he is. Yes. So good. And the role of a father is to reach inside the heart of a young man, pull out his future and show it to him. Yes. So that's the bent of his life. Yes. And that's what, that's what happened in Johnny Moore's life. And now we see the result. This guy is, is got stuff happening in the capitals of nations around the world. Yes. Where he's bringing up, showing him photos, going, OK, see these 28 people that got killed. See these 80 people that got killed. The story of that Muslim cleric that stopped the 280, it's the 280, I think, that people that he sheltered from the Fulani militants. Yeah. These are just stories. It's like this is the gritty stuff, man. Yeah. And for a man like Johnny Moore to be raised up like that, thank God for the dad, mom, grandparents that were there. Yeah. But that's the result of legacy right there. Yeah. And we have the opportunity to be inspired from two angles. Yeah. As people that are fathering kids. Yeah. But also people that are young. Yeah. But Johnny Moore, Reverend Johnny Moore, is under the age of 40. Yeah. Yeah. For a couple more months, yeah. But still, he is. Yeah, he is. So we can look at him. I've done a lot of these things in his mid-30s. And that's what I'm saying. We can look at his life and say, do we want to live for the moment? Or do we want to live for the legacy? Come on, man. You know, and too many people in my generation is living their lives for moments. Yeah. When he was your age, when he was your, sorry, that was a great thought. Did I ruin your thought? It's OK. I'll pray you. I'll pray you still have it. But at your age, he was campus pastor for Liberty University. Wow. Jerry Falwell, senior, grabbed ahold of him, began to mentor him when he was 18, 19 years old. Yeah. See? So he's had these men in his life. Yeah. And they saw everything. Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. So we can take this moment and say, what kind of father am I going to be? Yeah. Or what kind of person as a young person? Am I going to wait until I'm 60, 70, 80, 50? Whatever, to do something great? Yeah. Or am I going to allow myself to be set apart now for a greater cause? Well, here you are in your mid-20s, Chris. And you're already mentoring younger men. Yes. Right? So I think that's what it's about in your single. Yes. And so it's why we put your photo up often. Right? So we put the photo up on the show notes. Chris is single. You know anybody. Yeah. God's perfect timing. God's perfect timing. God's perfect timing. Yeah. Well, you know, God's timing is he's always on time, but he misses some great opportunities to be early. So. But hey, Johnny, more dangerous nations campaigns. Thank you. We're cranking out with Christmas network right now. And Johnny's going to help us with introducing us to some people in Nigeria. Yes. And we'll go in there with the same training with Dunham Vietnam. We're doing any Ron. We're doing in Thailand, other nations. Yes. And I'm excited about, I think Nigeria is going to be in our second iteration of that, as we kind of fine tune as the task force with Doug Stringer with Walt Landers and Rob Carman, who are heading up that task force, working diligently on translations. We got the Farsi translation that's done, I think, this week. Yeah. That's exciting. I'm fired up about that. And we just, as we're, you know, speaking about dangerous nations, we just always want to remember our logo, our motto, our theme is we believe not one man is beyond the reach of God's grace. And that is what fires us and inspires us to go to these great nations that we're going to see turned around to live in the identity of what God called him to me. And that you change the life of a man, but then you change the life of a nation. That's why right now we're in, look kind of a little, well, we're in the office part of the studios. Yes. And we've got workers in the studios right now. They've just finished blowing a bunch of insulation and soundproofing. We got things coming in later this week. Next week, we'll be back in there. I think by the end of February 1st of March, sometimes we'll actually be able to do some live YouTube podcast stuff. Yes. It's kind of cool. And it won't be Zoom, it'll be, you know, with the microphones and all that stuff. And don't we have some friends coming in to do those? Yeah. Well, Ron Loose is going to come by. You know, we've had some other guys already come through, but yeah, we've got Ron some other guys will come through. Yeah. And I'm excited about that. Steve Weatherford. Yeah. New York Giants. 100 ball champion. Yeah. The world's most. Yeah. If you saw him now, you wouldn't think he was a putter. The fittest putter in the world. Well, he was, he was voted the NFL's fittest man or something. Wow. Hey, but speaking of speed of strength. Yeah. Champions. Johnny Moore. Thank you, Johnny Moore, for being with us. We're an amazing young man. This guy stirs me up. And then talking about the Coptic 21. Yes. That we memorialize the story that he told about how when the parents of the Coptic 21 would show the videos. They wouldn't just go, oh, my son died. They would say, look, that's my son. Look how brave he is. Yes. Look how strong he is. Look how he stood for his faith. Amen. Dude, I can't talk about it without getting torn up every time. Yes. So, you know, for me and for Christian men's network, we're going to take these young men as heroes of the faith. Keep them in front of us. Yes. And say, for you, bro, we're going to keep this going. Yes. We're not backing off. You gave your life. These guys are in their 20s. A couple of late teens. Some other guys were in their 30s. But all they had to do was recite a little act bar prayer. Yeah. And it would have been gone. Yes. But they said, no, no, no. We're standing up for Jesus Christ. Yes. Because when you have an encounter with Jesus, there's nothing that can turn you away. Yeah. When you really know Him. Come on, man. There's nothing that can change your heart because it's your first love. Yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Johnny Moore. Thank you for bringing these things to our attention. Thank you for keeping them in front of us. Yes. Thank you for being an advocate for those people in the margins. Thank you, Johnny Moore, for everything you do. He's got a great business. Yes. You know, Ky Ross does the marketing and all those sorts of things. He used to be the head of Mark Burnett's organization. Has done a number of things with famous people. But he's a humble man who's just about his father's business. Amen. I love the guy, man. Yes. I'm looking forward to hanging out with him. And don't forget to subscribe. Oh, yeah. Don't forget to share because you know you were inspired by this show. Right. So make sure that you share your inspiration. You are inspired to inspire. So make sure you reach out right now, hit that share button, send it to that group of men that is your circle that you know needs to be set ablaze for the rest of this year. Yeah. We know who you are. Yes. Is that right? Yes. We can track them. Yes. We can find it. We can find you. Send our friend Chuck Norris to your house. Yeah. And we need to get Chuck on. We do. So he's been a great friend. Chuck Norris has been a great friend. He said that maximized manhood was how he learned how to be a man when he had Dr. Cole mentored him. Amazing. I used to love that TV show. Dude. Walker, Texas Ranger. Come on. That was my TV show. We're not from Kelly. And you're from Kelly. And so, hey, thank you Johnny Moore. Thanks for being with us today on Brave Men. Go out and get something done. God bless you, bro. Hope. Oh, yeah, yeah. Forget the one thing. Don't stop. Don't play the music yet. Nope, nope, nope. And remember this. Hope is alive. Hope has a name. Hope's name is Jesus. You just wanted that part. Yes. You just didn't get that part. I just like saying Jesus. Amen. You just experienced Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Christian men's network. Connect with Paul at cmd.man. Or write to him at Paul at cmd.man.