This Way Network: Michael Gavlak & Joel Fieri

Whoopi Goldberg:
Political rhetoric is loud and ugly these days, as you know, Senator Tom Dashel is trying to bring civil discourse back by having Democratic and Republican politicians debate each other in a new series that’ll stream on Fox Nation. Bernie Sanders and Lindsay Graham are up first. Do you think this will help people see a different way to have these conversations? Or are we enough?

Joy Behar:
First of all, Bernie Sanders will wipe the floor with Lindsay Grahams. Okay? Have you ever listened to Lindsay? Oh, you know, Lindsay is one of these people like Kelly Ann and maybe Mark Meadows now. And Pence, you lie down with dogs. You wake up with fleas. Did they really think that this psychopath, this sociopath that was in the white house for four years would not turn on all of them like that? Lindsay is the next victim of this. He doesn’t know if he loves them. He doesn’t love him. Before, didn’t he say something? I don’t have the quote here. Some Lindsay quote that the country will be destroyed if he’s the president. Yes. And now he, kissing his boots. Please.

Alyssa Farah Griffin:
I will say I love this concept and to my friends at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute who are hosting this, the public should see real debate between prominent politicians. Not just when there’s a presidential race happening. There’s a lot of questions I’m sure Bernie Sanders is going to ask Lindsay Graham, that we’d all love to hear the answers to. And there’s some I’d like to hear from Bernie Sanders. And I think this is a really important format. We reduce things to like cable news segments with politicians and you don’t get to hear their real positions on this.

Sara Haines:
Cause they ambush the segment with their point. But even though journalists do a pretty good job pushing back section to section, what you want sometimes is someone to push back on those ideas, opposing we’ve lost the civility. I think it’s actually really cool. There’s a transparency to it. There’s a civility to it. This was done. In addition to that organization, the bipartisan policy center, they all came together saying, we need to see politicians speaking like this again. Cause we don’t get it unless it’s a presidential election year.

Joy Behar:
Except that this particular duo is like Barack Obama, debating Tammy Larin.

Sunny Hostin:
Exactly.

Joy Behar:
If you don’t know who she is, look her up.

Sunny Hostin:
I mean.

Alyssa Farah Griffin:
Yeah, the choice was kind of odd.

Sunny Hostin:
Let it play out. It’s just not a fair fight there. That’s not a mean.

Joy Behar:
Don’t.

Whoopi Goldberg:
But it’s not supposed to be a fight. It’s supposed to be a discussion. Right? So that’s what.

Sunny Hostin:
Maybe I used the wrong term, but it’s just not a, it’s not an equitable brain power thing.

Whoopi Goldberg:
Well, we’ll see. We’ll find out.

Sara Haines:
Let’s show that to the American people. That’s kind of what’s important about it. That’s powerful too. Let people undo themselves with their own lack of ideas or we also only ever see some parties nail the other and it’s anti them rather than let me tell you what I’ll do for you. So let’s just see that contrast layout.

Whoopi Goldberg:
Let’s watch this show. We do this every day. So I’m glad. I love Tom Dash. So I’m glad he’s doing.

Michael:
Sorry. Sorry, Joel, to subject you to it.

Joel:
You do owe me apology. A few. You can start.

Michael:
My flesh is.

Joel:
You want to wake up with Whoopi Goldberg?

Michael:
My flesh is crawling. My flesh is crawling too. So it’s like, Ugh, why? Why am I be, why do I let my team subject me to this abuse?

Joel:
I don’t know.

Michael:
Well, it’s good to see you, but I’m going to have to say I agree. I agree with everything. No, not everything. There are actually a few things that I agree with. Like for Lindsay Graham to debate Bernie Sanders is going to, it’s like going to mix things up, right? It’s like, there are people that voted for Trump that voted for Sanders, right? There are people that voted for Bernie Sanders, which these women don’t understand what they’re saying. They’re just saying words trying to make people laugh or, you know, they don’t really understand what’s going on. And so they just open their mouths and there are Proverbs that say, don’t do that. Don’t just open your mouth and say foolish things. But there are people that love Bernie Sanders that love Donald Trump, right? Or that were disillusioned with Bernie Sanders went to Donald Trump. And so if you have Lindsay Graham who, there’s a whole bunch of Republicans that hate that guy. Right? So you’re going to be uniting a bunch of people, not on the left side. Right. You’re going to hear some kind of weird arguments about different things. Who knows? Tell me.

Joel:
I don’t know how many are, is anybody even going to watch that? I mean, America is not on the edge of his seat waiting to hear Bernie Sanders and Lindsay Graham debate. I mean, no. Now, I would watch.

Michael:
That’s not a hot, big ticket.

Joel:
No, I would watch orange man versus sleepy man. Yes. I would watch that, but I don’t think I’d break a date or anything to watch those two.

Michael:
So I wanted to go in a different direction. Actually, I want to go in a thousand different directions, but one thing that I wanted, I was thinking about earlier today. I was thinking of this episode coming up. I knew you were going to be my guest. I was going to get to see you again. I want to talk a little bit about church history, a little bit about church history.

Joel:
Did you just call me old? What do you think? I know all about church history?

Michael:
I had a thought about that. Right? So being old, right? We have this, how many? What’s the, what’s the average life span, 70 something, 80, you know, high seventies I think is the average lifespan. So you think, and we don’t know hello American in Exile. We think, but we don’t know that we’re going to die. Right. We think, but we’re not. We say there’s death in taxes. Right. There’s death in taxes. But I’m like, well actually there’s a lot of people that don’t pay their taxes. Right. And then death, Paul says not all will fall asleep. Right. So, okay. Maybe we’re of the generation that doesn’t die and will never die. But that being said, we likely are, or could be, who knows, but we’re going to live forever. And so those old people that lorded over us, they’re only 80 years old. They’re only 90 years old. Wait till you’re a hundred million years old. Right. 80 and 90. Right. So I’m not calling you old. I’m calling you young. Very, very young. How’s that? That was a long way to get out of that one, right?

Joel:
Yeah.

Michael:
So church history, I mean early, early church history, like right after the Ascension of Jesus, let’s say. But well, after Acts. Let’s say after Acts, because Peter. We live like we’re book ending this. We’re going to go back to the beginning of Christianity and then where we are today and today Christians have this idea. There’s the Catholic church and Protestant church. Right. Really like in my Christian experience, you just kind of think there’s two there’s Protestantism and then there’s Catholicism. And nobody really even knows where that came from and what both sides believe, et cetera. And so the one fact I wanted to talk about is Peter. Catholics claim that’s the first Pope, which means that would be the beginning. So the Catholic church is the only true church.

Joel:
Well catholic means universal. Right? So.

Michael:
But how many people know that? Right?

Joel:
Well, yeah, you’re right.

Michael:
Catholic lowercase C, right. We are the catholic church, lowercase C but then the people don’t differentiate that word from the Vatican, you know, Vatican city is that? It’s a country, right?

Joel:
Yeah. I don’t even know that most people would associate with that. It’s just.

Michael:
The Pope.

Joel:
The stone church that, or yeah, the down the street or whatever.

Michael:
So what happened? I mean, are you familiar? There’s Orthodox churches. Like there’s the Greek Orthodox church. There’s the Armenian Orthodox church. There’s the Assyrian Orthodox church. So what does that mean? Do you know what Orthodox church means? People think that’s part of Catholicism. Some people.

Joel:
Don’t say that to an Orthodox person.

Michael:
Exactly.

Joel:
Yeah. So yeah, no, I once did a podcast on. I used to podcast. I used to do something called the Great Cloud of Witnesses, which was the story of a martyr at the end of my podcast. And one of them was a story of a Christian in Egypt that was a leader that was a Christian and was standing against extremists and Muslim extremists. And they just drove by and shot him to death. But he was a Coptic Christian, which is a whole nother. And they have their own Pope.

Michael:
Right.

Joel:
I’m like, I didn’t know that. Right. But I just did a little research and found out that the Coptics have a different Pope. I didn’t know that.

Michael:
There’ve been, even in the Catholic, that would consider Catholic, there’s two popes. Right? Right.

Joel:
Well, yeah. Roman Empire versus Eastern, something like that.

Michael:
Right. And there’s two places where the papacy is or was, I don’t know if it’s still that way today. And then you have an Archbishop in the Armenian Apostolic church. Right. You have the patriarch, there’s one guy. That’s the head of that church. It’s its own religion. It’s its own denomination, but it’s a, like, there’s a Catholic church has a Pope, but then there’s these other. And so, but the Armenians in particular, obviously if you look behind me, it’s the word Armenian is always on this screen when I’m here. Armenian right there. I have been researching history. This is where Christianity was born, behind me. Literally the city where the term was coined is right at my thumb around here. Right. The Philippi and Colossae and Laodicea and Thessalonica, right.

Michael:
Are all right here behind me. And so what happened, you know, there’s the Armenians lay claim to being the first Christian nation. So what happened, Peter? The Catholics over east of, or west of this, right? If you go west of this map, you’re going into Europe, you’re going into Italy. Eventually you’re going that way. But over here, going eastward, that way toward that end of the map is where Armenian, not Peter, like Peter went wherever, but Thaddeus and Bartholomew, two other disciples went over there. Thaddeus and Bartholomew. So Catholicism traces where Peter went. Maybe Peter went this way and then Thaddeus and Bartholomew went up this way. They didn’t go together. They went separately and evangelized. Evangelized. So Christianity was born right here and spread over this way. And to this day, like there’s Armenian artifacts. The oldest Christian cathedral is in Armenia. How many people know that the first Christian, not the oldest, but the first. And it’s still there. Right? That’s the mind boggling thing for me. I’m a Christian and Christianity was born at some point in the past. That should be, I should care about that. I should know about that. What’s going on in that part of the world today? There that was the topic I wanted to talk about. But you were talking about, so you used to have a show called what is it? Cloud of Witnesses?

Joel:
The Great Cloud of Wi. Well, yeah, at the end of the show, I used to have a podcast called The Big Picture, which I would talk about some issue, something going on. And then at the end I would do The Great Cloud of Witnesses and it was basically a story of a martyr. I have a couple books that tell a story, brief stories of Christian martyrs throughout the time. And so I took Hebrews 11 and 12, you know, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses.” And then before that, it talked about all the different, how the apostles and all the great people of faith that we know about were persecuted and counted it all joy for suffering. And they didn’t realize it yet. They wouldn’t have reached yet. They didn’t know. They hadn’t yet taken a hold of the glory, but they, and even thousands of millions that we don’t know about. People who were sawed in half and thrown to lions or whatever it was.

Joel:
And this is therefore, since we are surrounded and it said the world was not worthy of them. And therefore, since we are surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses, you know, so I called it that. And it was just a little five minute story on some martyr, a story of a martyr that was of whom we were not worthy. And at the end, I nominated them to The Great Cloud of Witnesses.

Michael:
Ooh, I like it.

Joel:
It was fun. Yeah. It was a nice, it would vary, you know, some modern day stories like this minister in Egypt at the time and some older ones going all the way back to, there were a few Roman Coliseum stories. Christians thrown to lions or gladiators or whatever. So, yeah. So.

Michael:
Is one of those books Fox’s Book of Martyr? You said you have some books.

Joel:
No. One was called, oh God. Yeah. You put me on the spot again.

Michael:
Sorry. I’ve heard of this one, Fox’s Book of Martyrs, but there’s books that are accurate histories of Christians who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Joel:
Yeah. One was called, I think, Last Full Measure. And the other was called, I’m not sure. Ask me now next week or next time. I might know. I might remember to look it up.

Michael:
That’s exactly what I’m talking about, learning the history of what’s been going on. Like when you look at a book like that, I don’t know why that isn’t preached from the pulpit in every church all the time.

Joel:
Because I mean, who wants to go to church? And you know, you want to catch the show, you want to see the smoke machine and you want to get your high and then go. You don’t want to have some guy up there [inaudible 00:14:36] you out.

Michael:
You go to sing and be happy. But here’s the thing, like these are triumphal stories, right? A lot of them are like this person, they always have a follow up after this person laid down their life, this entire tribe converted to Christianity. Right? That’s what these stories are for. These are like people laying it down because their life, it doesn’t matter. Right. They’re like, I’m going to live forever. These people need to see the truth. And, and inevitably, their blood is the seeds or the seeds that plant just incredible things that God does in that part of the world. Right. So, I mean, one of, one of the more current ones, what was his name? His widow wrote a book about purity, Passion and Purity. I think Elisabeth Edwards, John Edwards?

Joel:
No. Yeah.

Michael:
Something like that.

Joel:
One of the martyrs of the South America or?

Michael:
Yeah, yeah. Down somewhere in South America. I forget his name, but he went and that tribe converted.

Joel:
Elliot. John Elliot, Elisabeth Elliot.

Michael:
Elliot, Elliot. That’s Elisabeth Elliot. Right? Right. Not Edward. Sorry.

Joel:
If that isn’t. That story has been forgotten. I grew up with that story.

Michael:
Right.

Joel:
At church. And I have not heard that story in church forever. I mean, the whole world knew about that story.

Michael:
You’re giving me an idea and this might already exist out there. And if you’re watching this, maybe you can go research it. There are YouTube videos or channels that do lists, I guess. Lists of ex-girlfriends that went wrong or celebrities that went wrong. Right. There’s lists of.

Joel:
They haven’t called me. I wonder why.

Michael:
Well, what they do is they go through news articles and they just write a two paragraph summary of the story and they just tell the events and they get a voiceover guy and they have imagery, et cetera, whatever’s available. And it’s just really quickly, easily produced. And I’ve been thinking about that, doing that. Cause we have a network here new, and I don’t want to dump a new show on the team. Cause we have so many shows on this channel. But before I share the idea that I have, because we’re kind of dancing around it. I want to tell everyone, if you want to get our newsletter, we’re putting together the first newsletter on this network, This Way Network. We’re putting together a newsletter. It’s going to have sections. It’s going to have me talking about Jesus in some instances or some lyrics, but it’s going to have other people from the network writing articles that are on their heart and mind and it’ll be a regular newsletter. So go to This Way Network. Thiswaynetwork.com and just enter email address to get on the news on the email list. All right. So here’s the idea I have there. I just thought of that in the middle of a story I was telling. Let’s bait people. Make them stick around and put a commercial in. Spontaneously right? Programming?

Michael:
So I want to do that style of video, a new show. I’m not saying do this right now team, but it’s on my mind. Do a show about miracles that happen. Like J.P. Moreland. He’s a professor at Talbot, very influential. One of the most influential thinkers alive today. And he just wrote a book called, oh, I have it right here. Let’s do a plug for J.P. A Simple Guide to Experience Miracles. This is not light reading, right? This is not just, oh, and then this happened and oh, and then that happened. This is an explanation. A way to test if a thing is a miracle, right? He’s like, he’s a philosopher. He’s like, well, this is a scientific proof, right? In the first couple chapters are explaining what that scientific proof is.

Michael:
And then giving examples of miracles. I’m like, we should do that. We should. And he’s like, there’s too many for me. This is the first book. But there he’s like, there have been 300 and something million documented miracles, right. He’s 300 and something million. And that’s just like you said, some we don’t even know about. I’d say most miracles happening, we don’t know anything about. We don’t know anything about because God and man God and the individual, God doing miracles all over the planet forever. Right. So do a series about that. But then you mention martyrs. I’m like we can do a separate one that’s specifically martyrs, on this network. So do one about miracles, just call it Miracles and then do one called Martyrs. Right? Miracles and Martyrs, a pair of shows that would go together. There, I just pitched an idea that’s been on my mind and you contributed to it because you, so how often was your show? What was the show?

Joel:
Oh, I think it was about once a week. Yeah, I did one about that.

Michael:
When you say you did a show, where was it broadcast? How was it distributed?

Joel:
Oh, it was just, it was one of the early podcasts on our network, early audio podcast. You could still find it. You go to.

Michael:
On Christian Podcast Central?

Joel:
Yeah.

Michael:
All right. So while.

Joel:
It’s called the.

Michael:
While we’re pitching things, go to Christian Podcast Central everybody, because Joel has a lot of stuff there, right? This Way Network and Christian Podcast Central.

Joel:
Yeah. More than me. I mean we have a lot of Christian podcast networks are just one or two guys that want, or a church or whatever, that want just their messages out. We have dozens and dozens and dozens of podcasters.

Michael:
So you have the.com, right? Christianpodcastcentral.com where people can find all that stuff and video and audio or just audio links or teachings and stuff you can read, basically transcripts of a lot of the stuff. I mean, it’s really, really good. You got a good cross section of stuff. And then you also have a YouTube channel called Christian Podcast Central. Do you have that?

Joel:
Christian Podcast Central. Yep.

Michael:
And then I think we’re in the process of getting some of that content here on our network as well. So we’re merging or we’re partnering in doing that stuff and I’m grateful because that’s what Christianity’s about.

Joel:
Yes, so am I. We really appreciate you guys picking that up.

Michael:
We’re all wanting the same thing. So it’s not competition. It’s like, I’d rather have, I was thinking about this the other day, because this is a YouTube channel. This is multiple YouTube channels, but we’re also on other platforms. You’re watching this on there’s several YouTube channels and multiple platforms where this is being watched. And you think about people that have one channel that’s huge and that’s their livelihood. There are people out there that just have one channel, they get a hundred thousand or a million views anytime they post something and they make a lot of money off that and that’s their livelihood. But when that happens, you are partnered with YouTube. Basically it’s a 45-55 split, but they are using you and they have the power to remove you. Like what’s?

Joel:
They haven’t done that with us. That’s for sure.

Michael:
Right? Well they make 45% off of the advertising they put on your content and then they’re like, ah, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to these other guys that are making us so much money that obey us. Right. That obey us. So would you rather have one channel that’s huge with all this money coming in, but be at somebody else’s beck and call or have a whole bunch of small little networks and channels and people working the system, this thing that people don’t notice, but it’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger and maybe one of those channels gets deleted, but the thing keeps growing and growing and this other little channel might get deleted, but it keeps growing and growing as we’re all networked together. So, we’re a part of a movement that can’t be stopped.

Michael:
That’s all I’m saying.

Joel:
Okay, glad be part of it then. Yeah.

Michael:
Well, it is this thing that we, this holy thing, you know, and I’m not talking about the device, I’m talking about my Bible.

Joel:
Okay. Thanks for clearing that up, because the way it is now.

Michael:
This but my Bible app, right? It’s the word of God that’s true, that it’s accessible to all of us everywhere. Right? This just happened to be my reading from today, Leviticus 8, but this thing’s been on the move. That’s why I’m circling back and talking about church history. We are a part of something that’s on the move and people have a lot of different interpretations of what’s coming, of what that means to be a Christian, when the kingdom of God will come. No, well, it’s here. It’s already here. Right? And Jesus, here’s a controversial subject matter. I’m going to bring up here at the end.

Michael:
There’s a school of thought of in theological school of thought that says that Jesus’ birth was the beginning of the new creation or was the moment new creation began. And just like sin started at a point and had took time to spread. But that birth of the new creation, the whole, the city of God, the new Jerusalem, I’m talking about the new creation, the city of God, right? That the first brick. The cornerstone of it’s already here. This is, we are the city of God. Christians all across the planet are that city. We’re different bricks in this city of God, not something in the future where it comes down in a physical literal sense. It’s like the shape of it is symbolic as it’s described. Right? So there’s a school of thought that teaches that, and if that’s the case, it’s very good news. But even if that’s not the case, there’s Jesus coming back at the end to fix everything. Right. That’s another point of view. There’s a pessimistic and an optimistic side of Christianity. It’s either. What do you think of? I’m going keep babbling until you cut me off.

Joel:
Well, I had never heard, I don’t think I’d ever heard that.

Michael:
Right. And do you know who N.T. Wright is?

Joel:
Oh yeah.

Michael:
So I think he’s kind in that camp and like R.C. Sproul. I mean, there’s a lot of different details to it, but I think some of them are in that camp.

Joel:
You say R.C. Sproul was part of it?

Michael:
Well, well I’m talking about, I guess it’s, I’m forgetting the actual name because there’s different theological points of view. I know preterism is one thing, but there’s also post-millennialism or amillennialism, post-millennialism all those different. I went to Bible college and I learned the names, but I don’t know all of them.

Joel:
I have a friend who’s a preterist. That’s an interesting thing. They think all the prophecy in Daniel happened right after.

Michael:
I’m kind of in that camp, I’m kind of in that camp, but there’s different versions of preterism, as well. So.

Joel:
Yeah.

Michael:
And then we don’t have time to really go into that now, but I’m just enjoying life. What’s going on in your church world right now, Joel?

Joel:
In my church world. Okay. We’re still part of a smaller church that we found during all the lockdowns and the shutdowns. We found a church that was actually open. We found a couple different ones. The church we were going to just closed down. They said, “We’re going to be closed down. We’re going to be the last ones to open. Watch us online, just do church from home.” And we thought, nah. That lasted about a month. And we were like, this is not church. So we found a couple churches in the area here that were open, San Diego area, North county, San Diego. And then a couple of my wife’s friends really wanted us to come to their small little Baptist church. And we did and we’ve stayed there. We’ve kind of stuck there. They won’t leave us alone. They won’t let us go. It was a very friendly church. Very, very interested in having us there and happy we’re there. And they keep feeding us. I think someone told them, “If you feed Joel, he’ll never go away.” So they just keep, he just keeps shoving food at us.

Michael:
I mean, that’s literally true.

Joel:
Look, there’s burgers over there and there’s brownies over there. We can’t go.

Michael:
That’s as church as church gets, like break bread, right? Break bread, fellowship, eat, and hang out and have fun and love Jesus.

Joel:
Yeah. They preach the word there and they’re standing against a lot of the wokism that seems to be. You know, we’re in California and it’s just pretty much invading everything.

Michael:
As you were saying, as you were talking about that, cause I’m way glad I asked you that question, because it’s like there are people that watch this that are watching this right now that never stopped going to church and physically right. There are places in our country and in the world that didn’t shut down or there like certain states, like it was never mandatory to shut your church down. But then there are those like the church I, we went online immediately. Part, well, we don’t have our own building, when we’re in a senior center. Right. And those are the most susceptible blah, blah, blah. Right.

Joel:
Sure. Yeah.

Michael:
So, and it’s one of those like how can you argue with that? But we don’t have a place to meet. And there were other places that still met and this is in California too. So you were only down for a month then physically you didn’t go to church for a month.

Joel:
We were out of church and then we just with three or four churches.

Michael:
All right. We got to go. Love you. See you later, Joel. We got to have a meeting.