Summary
➡ This text is about a man named Cameron who comes from a family of preachers and was heavily involved in gospel music. He grew up hunting and fishing, but started questioning his lifestyle and faith. He met a filmmaker and they created a documentary that asks if there’s a spiritual way to kill an animal, and how Jesus would do it. The text also discusses whether Jesus was a vegan, and the evidence for and against this idea.
➡ The speaker discusses the idea of “conspiracy” as a unifying concept, which can be used for both good and bad. He mentions a film that challenges traditional interpretations of Jesus’ words, using evidence from an Oxford professor. The speaker also addresses his conservative background and values, and discusses the issue of animal agriculture, suggesting it’s a topic that should concern everyone, regardless of political beliefs. He emphasizes that the film doesn’t dictate how to think, but presents information and asks questions, encouraging viewers to form their own opinions.
➡ The text discusses the interpretation of biblical stories, particularly the miracle of Jesus feeding masses with loaves and fish. The author questions the accuracy of these stories, pointing out inconsistencies in different accounts and suggesting that Jesus may have only mentioned loaves, not fish. He also discusses the influence of early church fathers on the formation of Christian doctrine and hints at a possible conspiracy related to the vegan movement. The author ends by questioning why Netflix would censor certain content.
➡ The text discusses the interpretation of biblical stories, focusing on the symbolism of fish and the number 153. It mentions early church fathers like Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria who analyzed these stories. The text also explores the Greek words for fish and their symbolic meanings. It then delves into the connection between the number 153 and Pythagoras, a philosopher who lived 500 years before Jesus and had a significant influence on the Essenes, a Jewish sect. The text suggests that the number 153 and the symbol of the fish might have deeper meanings related to Pythagorean philosophy and the Essenes’ beliefs.
➡ This text discusses the parallels between the stories of Pythagoras and Jesus, focusing on the number 153 and their interactions with fishermen. It also explores the idea of Jesus and his followers, the Nazarenes, possibly abstaining from eating meat, suggesting that this could be a cover-up. The text questions why certain things aren’t explicitly stated in the Bible and discusses the role of Paul and James in early Christianity. It ends by mentioning a documentary and a controversy with Netflix over censorship.
➡ This text discusses a film that explores the ethical question of whether there is a spiritual way to kill an animal. The filmmakers, one a former gospel musician and the other a seasoned documentarian, delve into the historical and religious aspects of this issue. They also address misconceptions about the film’s funding and their personal journeys, including the musician’s transition to veganism. The film aims to challenge viewers’ perspectives on animal consumption and its ethical implications.
➡ A megachurch pastor named Diego created a health program called the Daniel Plan, based on biblical teachings. The plan, inspired by the story of Daniel from the Bible, encourages a diet of vegetables and water, aiming to improve physical health and spiritual connection to God. Diego started this plan when he noticed he and his congregation were overweight, believing that they couldn’t do God’s work if they weren’t healthy. The Daniel Plan, which Diego and his family followed, led him to question the ethical and spiritual implications of eating animals, as per the teachings of the Bible.
➡ The creators of a documentary about animal ethics and religion had a disagreement with Netflix, who originally signed the film. They felt Netflix’s edit of the film was too soft and didn’t cover the important points they wanted to highlight. After a tough period, they decided to take back their film and crowdfunded on Kickstarter to release it themselves. Now, they plan to release the film in theaters and stream it online, aiming to make it as widely available as possible.
➡ A group of nearly 4000 people supported the creation of an independent documentary through crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo and Kickstarter. The film was then distributed by Trafalgar Releasing, a company that specializes in event cinema, where a movie is shown in theaters for one or two nights only. The film will be shown worldwide on March 20 in English-speaking countries, with an encore in the US on March 24. The creators hope that the film’s success will lead to more showings and a wider audience.
➡ The text talks about a film premiere happening in Los Angeles and across the country on March 20 and 24. The film, bought back from Netflix, uncovers a big conspiracy and involves a private investigator. Joaquin Phoenix, a known animal rights advocate, supports the film. The text also discusses the meaning of the term “Christ spiracy,” which combines the words “Christ” (meaning messiah or anointed one) and “spiracy” (referring to breath, respiration, inspiration, spirituality).
Transcript
What’s the COVID up? What are we looking at here? And I know that’s a loaded question but really let me start you out here Nino. Let me start you out here Nino. Because I think people might be thrown off by some of what is presented here. Let me just say this first. I’m a super fan of what Cameron has done in his movie here. And it goes back.
I’ve talked about it even with your audience where Christ got actually visibly pissed off and made a whip and then overturned all the money changers tables at the temple. And this is in the last week of Christ’s life before the crucifixion. So there was high drama that was taking place. And it’s one of those things where people have not really fully understood this. But Cameron, his grandfather and mom both do ministry stuff.
He grew up in a believing household and he had some questions. And this movie is the culmination of kind of a world tour that he’s done to kind of find himself, find some answers to some questions that he had that probably a lot of us do. But it’s going to take you places that I don’t think any other church group or christian operation has done well in many hundreds of years.
This Christ spirit, he will cause you to have to think about some questions that he raises and rethink your perspective and faith. And it’s going to be a hard one for a hard pill for a lot of people to swallow and the short circuit to skip right straight to the point. The question is was Christ a vegan and were some of the apostles? And of course come into that same category over time.
So Cameron’s come up with some very straight answers. That’s the meat and potatoes of this is if Christ was vegan. That’s really what this conspiracy is. Well, but let me add this too before I get people turning this off. Look, with the audience that we have, I always try to give you the details behind why I’m saying what I’m saying. What is the information that I’m basing what I’m saying on and try to walk you through.
It’s a longer conversation most of the time than other folks will have with your guests. I will say this, so I’m not vegan and know have had to think very hard. What Cameron’s done is something that I’ve had to get nuts here in Vegas. I’ve had to really do some stretching as I look through what Cameron’s put together. Part of the reason this is relevant, whether you want to go this route or not, is because a lot of the questions that he raises go even to world events.
Right now we have the red heifer story that’s in here, and Cameron’s one of the people that’s actually interviewed the people that raised the red heifer coming out of Texas, knows the people in Israel that have some of these secreted away there. And there’s a question whether or not some of the Hamas people who started this attack on Israel last October stated that this issue about the restarting of the sacrifices on the Temple Mount was what caused that was the thing that initiated that.
So this subject is something that we as a group, all of the people that you and I talk with Nino within this community, need to slow down and at least look at and consider. And the movie that Cameron has put together, you will not have wasted 1 second going to it. And I’m just going to ask as a courtesy that I think everybody in our audience, if you want to understand world events somewhat and at least get stretched in your way of thinking, this is a worthwhile thing to do.
Cameron put real blood, sweat and tears into this. In fact, this was originally supposed to be a Netflix movie, and they wanted to tone it down, edit stuff out. And Cameron, the people that put it together decided that that just couldn’t work. They had to go out and crowdfund to buy back the rights from Netflix. And I’m not throwing stones at Netflix. They do a lot of great stuff.
They had the insight to do it in the first place, and they had a thing in the contract that allowed know, if they didn’t see it the same way at the end when it was done, to buy it out. Netflix made a buck and like that. So they get credit for even considering broaching this subject. This is going to be in theaters when? In March 20, in days, Nino.
And it’s there twice. And the reason I want to slow down for a second here is because it’s not just going to be in theaters for weeks and weeks. You got two days that are scheduled right now. If enough people come and see it they’ll play it longer and they’ll extend the date. But it’s in 650 theaters right now worldwide. So you got to go online and find out what the theaters are that are closest to where your people are at.
But I’m just telling you, I wasn’t that excited about it. We had a mutual friend over a year ago that asked me to meet with Cameron, and I did. And it was a unexpectedly refreshing and enjoyable meeting. Cameron, you’re one of the, I enjoy people where I have to think and they give me material where I actually have to sift through it. The stuff that we talked about, your presentations and your working through, how you came to your conclusions, including the material, you did as good as anybody could have and I think took me places that I would not otherwise have gone.
If it had been anybody else but you, we wouldn’t have had those conversations. And so I just want to give a big hat tip to you, Cameron, for all the work that you’ve done and within our audience. Nino, I’m just asking everybody, take a deep breath. It’ll be worth your time. You’ll actually enjoy this and for other reasons. Even if you aren’t going to go become a vegan, the concerns we have about our food supply and some of the issues that you raise here in what you’re doing, Cameron, every person in this audience needs to be aware of because we are all affected by some of these issues very directly.
It’s not going. So with that in mind, I mean, I want to kind of hand it over to you. I want to take a minute and make sure that people really slow down. No knee jerk reaction. I know how I looked at it and it was a very worthwhile endeavor. I enjoyed it. And you raised some important issues that we as a group need to understand, including for world political situation, especially out of the Mideast.
And like Cameron, that kind of hit it for you. Yeah, that’s great. I mean, you went straight for the jugular with the vegan, but it’s actually something more. Let me just add this, okay. Within the church community, including, by the way, Jews and Muslims, there is serious questions about what we are getting in the scriptures. People ask me all the time, are we missing books in the Bible? Has stuff been altered? Some of the work that I look forward to doing with you, Cameron, later this year, maybe in Europe and over in Israel, goes to some of that material which has been either altered or hidden.
And I think there’s some amazing and very serious discussions that have to be had concerning some of that, and there’s a cross reference. I look at the numbers behind things, including the hidden Bible codes, things like that. So there’s other ways of looking at it than just what it says in what’s written precisely. And I want to bring some of that to it. But as far as a subject matter that’s critical that we need to understand with the events in the, uh, think of the drama that happened when Christ overturned the money changers tables right before the know date and as people were preparing for it.
And then think about these events happening in the Mideast right before they claim that they’re getting ready to begin the sacrifices again on the Temple Mount and the reverberations out into the world. Your work here is here for a reason at exactly this time, and I want people to slow down and look at it from other directions. Whether you intend to change your diet or not, you’re going to find things that have overtones into what’s happening in the world right now.
And that’s why I think there’s a hand of God behind you doing this work exactly as you did. And you asked honest questions and sought out answers, places I would never have even thought to go. I think your whole journey here is a hand of God thing. So big hat tip to you, Cameron. Thank you. All right, Cameron, let’s get started. Juan, I appreciate the introduction, man. Thank you.
Yes, of course, Cameron. All right, so you come from a family of preachers. Do I have that? Yeah, yeah. My grandfather was a music minister. He’s founded many churches. He was a part of the Jesus movement. I don’t know if you saw or heard in the rumblings with the same spheres as like the chosen and sound of freedom. There was a film that came out last year called Jesus Revolution about all the hippies in the 70s that came to Christ.
My grandfather was heavily, heavily involved in that movement in the south, in the southern baptist kind of sector of that. And he founded as a part of founding a really important church at that time. And then from there, my mom, she was a music minister, worship leader all my whole life growing up. And so therefore I followed that same path when I started taking my faith really seriously.
When you can kind of comprehend it at a certain level. At 1718 years old, I committed my life to gospel music in particular and was a professional gospel musician for most of my 20s until some of these questions started burning and some of the things started again coming into my life that I would have never planned to come into my life. It was something that, know I do appreciate what Juan says and that it feels as if there’s some divine orchestration or some things that have just happened that I couldn’t avoid.
I had to ask these questions. I had to go down this path, and it’s led me to this point. And just, too, because he went straight into the vegan thing, which I appreciate just getting that out on the table. We’ll talk about that more. It definitely is, too, before even getting to that conversation. Like you said, it’s about the historical event of Palm Sunday, which we’re coming up on.
So the timing is impeccable. Again, not planned. It’s just the way that this all happened. We happened to get the ability to distribute this in theaters. We’ve been struggling trying to figure out how to get this out, because it truly has been something that. Let’s just say there’s been some suppression. There’s been some forces that have been trying to not. Let’s talk about that first. You say suppression.
So I heard this was originally supposed to appear on Netflix, correct? Yeah, and exactly. So I don’t know if your screen is live right now. I think it is. But you see, it says from the co creator of Cowspiracy. That’s not me. That’s my co director of this film, Kip Anderson. He created cowspiracy. What the health and sea spiracy. They’re all films that are licensed. Well, the first two are licensed on Netflix.
Sea spiracy was a Netflix original. All of them look at animal agriculture from various facets. Now, just so everyone is aware, because I know you probably have a lot of truth errs and people that listen to your podcast, I’m one of those meat eaters. A lot of meat eaters. I’m one of them, and a lot of those, too. And now, trust me, I’m in the same boat. I’m a truth er through and through in every way.
I go deep on the conspiracies. It’s Christ. Spiracy, for goodness sake, is the name of the film. But basically, I come from a background. Not only was my family, music ministers, and deeply involved with the church, I was a hunter. I grew up going to a christian youth hunting club. I was a deep sea fisherman. Every year, multiple times a year, 40 miles offshore, catching grouper, snapper, the whole thing.
I worked at a barbecue restaurant. That was one of my first jobs because my stepdad at the time was a owner of a barbecue restaurant. So I cut barbecue, my teenage years and everything. So I’m the least likely person to stumble into this. But just so everybody is aware, I had nothing to do with conspiracy nor what the health. I met Kip when he was at a screening for, um.
And he was just about to release what the, uh, on Netflix. Cause he got Netflix licensed. It. That was when I met him. And the only reason that we met again, it was a synchronicity. I was at an event in LA that I was to. At the time I was transitioning out of being a gospel musician and realizing that these burning questions were going to take me down a different path.
I was thinking about writing a book on said, let me ask you about these burning questions, because I think we all have burning questions, especially when it comes to something so polarizing as Christianity or Jesus Christ. I have questions. Everyone has questions. What burning questions does this documentary answer? I mean, obviously, I guess a big one is, was Jesus vegan or not? I guess that’s the main. Correct.
Well, it. I would say we never say that, nor do we ask that question. This is a film about asking questions primarily. We don’t preach, we don’t say a position on this film. We raise questions and we really want the audience and the viewers to decide and process. Like Juan said, he had a chance to process the material on his own. And ever since he saw it, he had a great reaction.
But then our conversation after, it’s just like, it just goes deeper and deeper. So the central question of the film and what drove me, and we can talk about how I got to this question, because that’s a whole story in and of itself. But the central question is, is there an ethical or more so spiritual way to kill an animal? And more bluntly, if so, how would Jesus kill an.
That’s a hard mean. I’ll tell you what. I’m an animal lover, right? So I battle that duality all the time. But I would imagine praying over the animal, the sustenance, whatever, I would imagine that’s the way he would go about it. Jesus. But when you really deliver this question to me, that puts me on the spot. I’m not going to lie because I can’t imagine Jesus killing anything.
Okay? So that being said, I’m going to have to jump on board with him being a vegan, as much as I just don’t want to admit. Right? And that’s the thing, again, I’d love to talk about the backstory, getting to that question and have some time for that. I’m coming from me, I’m a recovering alcoholic. Jesus drank wine, so he endorses. Right? We can get into all that.
We can get into all that. There’s a lot of research that’s been done to compare and contrast all these different passages. Going straight to the Hebrew and the Greek is a big part of this whole journey and really getting to the original translation and understanding, was there anything lost in that? And also going back into some of the less told stories from the Bible itself as well as the historical documents that support it.
So, yeah, we’ll get into all that. But no, it’s a profound. So here’s something that always burns in my mind. People always, you know, did Jesus ever Cuss or did he ever lose his temper? And I say, I always come back with, I believe he did because when he threw out the money changers, he was very angry. And I don’t think he was saying, please leave, please get out of here.
I think he was saying, woe unto you, which back then I would imagine was like, cussing. I’m pretty sure he was screaming at them. He was knocking over tables using a whip. So that tells me the guy could lose his temper. Second, did he drink? Well, he turned water into wine. So there’s some things that I battle with all the time in my mind. Now you’re raising the question, and I’m imagining you’re asking the question, was he vegan? Do we have proof that he was vegan, or are we just assuming he was vegan because he was more of a pacifist? I don’t understand why we would jump on board of him being a vegan.
Well, I can cut straight to the chase on this one if we’re going to go straight for that and go ahead and be the devil’s advocate, so to speak, and say the first thing that anyone will say and the first thing that I said, because, like I told you my background when I came into this and I had to face myself with this question, the first reaction is, of course, he ate meat.
I was taught he ate the Passover lamb because he was jewish by descent, and also that he ate fish. I mean, there’s all these stories of him multiplying the fish and feeding the fish and catching the fish and growing up. That was part of the reason why I loved fishing so much, is it kind of had this connection to me, I think, with that feeling of being a disciple or something because they were fishermen, a lot of them.
That was my first reaction. And there are scriptures that lay out these particular incidences, but we can just start there. Let’s just start there because there’s a whole lot of. Because he fed masses of people with fish and loaves of bread, not vegetables. Right? So let’s start with that. Now, normally having this conversation and kind of how I expected we were going to do this is I was going to break down a whole context of the history of all this, all the way back into the Old Testament.
Because what a lot of people. Let me say this up front. What a lot of people are going to say, and what I said for a really long time is, oh, man, you can cherry pick the Bible to make it say whatever you want to say, right? If you got an agenda, if you’ve got something that you want to push, you can cherry pick the Bible and make it say whatever.
Well, that was what I said for years, until the information kept coming, kept coming, kept coming to the point it was so overwhelming that the antithesis to the arguments being presented in this film or the questions being presented in this film, to argue against them, you more so have to cherry pick verses. And even still, those verses can be put into question through XYZ means. I’ve never seen anything like it.
It’s its own da Vinci code type of situation that I found myself in and many others. I’m not the only one. I’m just the humble person who started asking this question. But it’s led me to all these people, Oxford theologians, biblical archaeologists, translators of. The guy who leaked the had multiple. He’s a good friend of mine. He lives down the road from me. And who else? Oxford professors of biblical hermeneutics, Hebrew hermeneutics, meaning the true meaning, getting into the root meanings of these words that are in the scriptures.
And so let’s start with the fish thing, because it’s a fun one, the multiplication of the fish and loaves. And it’s a real popular topic right now, especially because of the chosen. Everybody’s watching the chosen series, which is a great series, by the way. I fully support anyone getting the message of Christ, because everyone would do better hearing that message. Right. But they emphasize a lot the lows and the fishes, because the chosen is an independent thing, like we are.
They’re trying to keep this thing free and get the message out to the world, and they’re very independent, and we’re friendly with those guys. We actually had meetings with them when we figured out that we were going to have to buy this back from Netflix. And there was a lot of conversations about. And we even submitted to their guild this film, but we decided to go a different route.
But ultimately, everyone says the multiplication of the fish and loaves. Well, let me raise this. So it says in the scripture as we know it that Jesus and the disciples came across a bunch of their hungry followers. One instance is 5000. Another instance is 4000. Some say, was it two separate events? Some say it might have been one event told differently. But regardless of that fact, this event happened.
It’s a miracle. And they only have five loaves and two fishes and they multiply. And another instance says seven, but seven loaves. But we’ll stick with the five loaves and two. And they multiply it out and feed everyone with these two. And that’s the miracle. Well, in the Gospel of Matthew 16, verse nine, Jesus is recounting this story to his disciples because they’re doubting him. They come into a moment of doubting and questioning the position of what they’re doing, and Jesus starts rattling off, don’t you remember this? Don’t you remember this? And he says, don’t you remember when I multiplied the loaves? Full stop.
So he doesn’t say fish. No, fish. Now that’s Jesus’s own retelling. That’s from the words of Christ himself. In the scripture, the gospel of Matthew 16 nine. In other parts of the Bible it says loaves and fish. Right? So that’s from Jesus’s words, though. Jesus’s own words. And that’s in hindsight, that’s him talking about it in hindsight. What happened? Now go to John, chapter six, verse five before it happens, when he realizes that there’s all these people and they’re all freaking out.
What are we going to do? How are we going to feed these people? Jesus says, hey, go fetch some loaves. No mention of fish. But in the Bible mentions fish. So then you’re going to have to say, people are going to ask you, well, obviously, are you saying that the Bible’s wrong in certain areas, you can pick and choose what you want to listen to kind of type of thing? Well, what I’ll say to that, absolutely, yes.
What I’ll say is I like to pick and choose to specifically listen to Jesus as much as possible. So these are his literal words, which then all I’m saying is that raises the question about this. Now, when I came across this particular part of this whole grand, again, we’re about to talk about something in a minute. That’s a way bigger context than just veganism. Okay, but because we’re starting with this topic, we’ll go ahead and dive into it.
But there’s a bigger contextual thing happening here that has to do with world events and everything, like what Juan’s saying, but to hone in on this. So when I got to this, me as a fisherman, forget it. Jesus ate fish. But then I start looking and I start talking. I say, well, wait a minute. He’s talking about it and he’s not mentioning the fish, but like you’re saying.
But it does. Yeah, yeah. So I start getting into those accounts and I start looking through the different material that’s available. Well, the scriptures themselves, when they account for this, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, they account for these stories. And let’s start with the sole fact of they did have fish. The disciples did bring fish. Let’s say that’s the truth because that’s what the scripture says, and I’m fine to accept that fact.
If you notice in the scripture, Jesus blesses the bread, but he doesn’t bless the fish. He doesn’t bless it. So that raises the question, interesting. Well, why would Jesus only breast the bread and not bless the fish? Okay, put that in my back pocket. Now let’s keep looking. The early church fathers, if you’re familiar, I don’t know. Many people may be familiar. There are this list of. It’s kind of like this list of the first scholars who had the material of the Hebrew and greek texts of the Bible in the first century after Jesus’death that were forming the first kind of consensus of what this story was about and their writings and then some of them in particular, joining up with the Roman Catholic Church and everything to canonize the Bible.
The Council of Nicaea and other councils, they utilize these church fathers kind of commentary to help create what we know of as the doctrine of Christianity. Now, most of these church fathers would be considered know because we have the Eastern Orthodox Church that broke away from the Roman Catholic Church to maintain that thread. You’ve got people like Jerome, Hieronemus, Eusebius, Ireneus, Epiphanius. These are all these early church fathers in multiple accounts of the early church fathers, when they’re doing commentary on these stories and they have the hebrew text sitting right in front of them and the greek text sitting right in front of them, they aren’t recounting these fish stories.
They aren’t recounting that there’s fish. They’re saying there’s bread in multiple different instances, which has to raise a lot of questions. You feel like this is the big conspiracy? Well, it’s a part of it. It’s a part of it, and it’s not right now with what we’re watching with the vegan movement. And I kind of feel like that’s a conspiracy within itself. And I have my reasons to believe that, especially when they would.
And we can talk about that. Yeah. Because, I mean, they want to grow everything in a petri dish now. And I’m going to try to keep this YouTube friendly. End the meat industry, basically, is what I’m seeing, what they’re gearing up for. This seems like it’s on board with the vegan movement. I don’t understand what Netflix would cut out. I don’t understand what Netflix would censor. I mean, listen, I don’t watch any, really, documentaries on very far and few between.
I watch a documentary on Netflix or watch anything on Netflix. And I like to watch sometimes because I like to watch the propaganda. Right. I like to watch what they’re feeding everybody. But I’m having a hard time here with what would they edit out? What would they take out of Netflix? So can you get into that? Because that’s, to me. Would they possibly take out of. Yeah. Yeah.
And let’s table that fish story. Maybe come back because there’s more to your, I know your listeners are going to be like, what the. This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Or that doesn’t add up. So we can come back to, uh. And I’m with you all who are thinking that, because again, I thought the same thing for you. Let’s go ahead and finish it, and then we’ll go into the Netflix thing, because that, to me, I’m like, okay, this is an obvious vegan, pro vegan documentary.
I don’t understand what issues they’d have with. Right, right. Okay. So just, I’ll wrap it up real quick. And if we feel we need to touch on it later, too, we can. And obviously, we can always follow up conversations if people start hitting your comments like crazy. What about this? What about this? We can always do follow ups. We can do whatever. But essentially, to name some of those early church fathers that I was talking about that had the original material, we’ve got Augustine, Ireneus, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodore of Heraclia.
These are some of the biggest names in the early church who were assessing and making commentary on this material to standardize it. Right. And they’re mentioning these stories and they’re mentioning the bread, but they’re not mentioning the fish. So it raises the question, was it just not there? We don’t know. We can’t say yes or no, but it raises a lot of questions. Right. Then we go into the words in Greek, translated as fish in our english language.
Because the New Testament was written in Greek. Right. And it was spoken. That’s something that needs to be understood, is that Jesus spoke Aramaic, probably the earliest texts we know for certain what they call the gospel of the Ebionites or the gospel of the Nazarenes, or the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. There was an original gospel of Matthew that was written, most likely in Hebrew or Aramaic, but it’s been lost to history.
But we do have fragments of it that are preserved in these early church fathers writings that were giving commentary about it, but it’s been lost in the book burning. And they burned a library of not Alexandria, but there was another big library that housed the last known document of this. And they say it’s burned. It still might be out there. And that’s some of what Juan was talking about.
We want to hunt down some of these texts if we can, and we have some plans to do so. But regardless, what I’m saying is Hebrew and Greek are the original languages that these scriptures that we know and love were written in. So we got to go to that. Now, the words for fish in Greek, in the New Testament, there’s three words, ichthus, prosphagion, and upsyrion. Three different words that are translated as fish.
Ichthus straight up means fish in Greek. But the interesting thing about that word, just to note, is it’s heavily symbolic. The Greeks use that word as an acronym because an acronym is, every letter in the word represents another word, right? In that word. It represents, in Greek, translated to English, Jesus Christ, God’s son, savior. Okay? And they used it all the time as symbolism all over. Ichthus. Ichthus.
And they even created the ichthus fish. You might see it all. Know Texas, where you’re at, and everywhere around the country, that people who are Christian will put the fish symbol sticker on their car. And sometimes it has that word. Yep. Sometimes it has that word ichthus in it. Well, interestingly, which we get into the film, we can get into more in the gospel of John, when Jesus comes across the disciples, and it’s another proof of his existence in the resurrected body, et cetera.
They’re trying to catch fish. They can’t catch any. And then they see him, and they cast the net, and more fish come up. They finally catch fish, right? And it says in the scripture, specifically that they catch 153 fish. It has the number there. This has puzzled scholars for millennia. They’re like, what is that number? Why that number? Is there something more to it? Because there’s all of these connections with that number, and it becomes very symbolic in a certain sense.
Why do they. Because this is nothing new. Hebrew. Every letter in Hebrew is numerological. They have gematria, as we know. Like, everything is about numbers. What is that, like nine? Okay, well, yeah, when you get into the actual numerology, adding them and the gematria of it, for sure, there’s realms we can go with that. But where we specifically go with this story in this film is that 500 years before Jesus walked the earth, there was a guy named Pythagoras Pitagoras.
You might know him from the pythagorean theorem. A squared plus B squared is equal C squared. We all had to learn it when we were kids. Yeah. So Pythagoras was a philosopher, mathematician, et cetera, et cetera. He studied in Alexandria. He was imprisoned in Alexandria, where the world’s greatest library was. 500 years before Jesus. He was an outlaw himself in many, many ways. He was. Ran out of his town every single time.
We don’t know what happened to him because he got ran out of town. But his followers, they continued his kind of message of understanding numbers, of understanding ethical and philosophical debates. They heavily rolled with all the different philosophers. But there’s documentation from Josephus, the jewish historian, who is one of the primary sources for the historical record of Jesus’s existence. So most Christians will know him if they are trying to debate Jesus’existence.
Josephus is the guy you lean on because he’s written about him and he’s a historian. He has no bone to pick in the whole thing. So Josephus, the same guy that proves Jesus’s existence, also said that the Pythagoreans, from 500 years before the remnants of their movement started hanging with the Essenes, which is a sect of Judaism out near Kumran by the Dead Sea. At the time of Christ, there were Pharisees who Jesus was always calling out, or they were challenging him, and he was facing up to them.
The Sadducees and the Essenes, these are all mentioned in scripture. The Essenes are the ones that are responsible for the Dead Sea scrolls, which were found in 1947. Yeah, they’re kind of the more monastic sect that said, hey, everything that’s going on in the city, they’re corrupt. They’re like the truth errs of their time, in a way. They’re like, hey, we see all this corruption, we’re getting out of here.
We’re going off know. So that’s kind of the essence of the Essenes. Well, the Pythagoreans came and found camps with the Essenes, Josephus says, and they intermingled and shared their doctrines, and they came to share their knowledge with each other. All right, well, why this is all important is because that number 153 is an extremely sacred number to Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. Why? Because, ironically, it’s one half of the ratio dimensions of the Vesica Pisces, which is another word, a latin word for the ichthus, the fish.
It’s a symbol made from two conjoining circles. You know, a Venn diagram, when you got two circles and you got the space in the middle, right? That design is a Vesica Pisces. And if you can imagine, no matter what size it is, from point to point, draw a line, and then from the widest point of the bulge on the curves, draw a line. You’ve got a dimension there.
What is that height to that width? Right. Well, that width, it’s 265 to 153. Interesting. Okay. That’s the dimension. Now, the number 153 on a multiplication table makes a perfect kind of pyramid design. And the numbers go out in a certain way that’s also sacred. And Pythagoras was all obsessed with geometry and everything as well. So there’s a lot of gematria in the Bible. Oh, big time, big time.
But what’s interesting here, and some of it’s Hellenistic, we don’t know, was that the original tension of the people who wrote the scripture, or a lot of these scriptures were written, we know 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, some up to 100 years, 100 AD. So way after Jesus’s death, when they’re getting all intermingled with all the hellenistic stuff. So why I raise this is because Pythagoras himself has a famous story told about him, and again, 500 years before Jesus, that he was walking along the shore and he saw some fishermen, right? And he sees the fishermen.
Now, here’s the important note about Pythagoras, is Pythagoras believed that an ethical concern for all of God’s creatures. And he believed that the way we almost like a karma kind of thing, but he didn’t call it karma. That you inflict something on these beings, it’s coming back around to you. He encouraged all of his pupils that study his mathematics and everything, that the only way they could study with him is they had to drop all that.
They had to drop products. And he used to say he could hear. It was like he could hear the voices of his long lost friends and dogs and all of these things. So he had this kind of. What I was going to say is this particular story about Pythagoras. He’s walking along the shore, right? And he sees these fishermen who have caught all these fish, and he strikes up a deal with them.
He says, hey, if I can just with my eyes, guess how many fish are in your net? And I get it right to the exact number, you have to throw them back. And so they’re like fishermen. We love a good bet or whatever, right? And he wages it, and he guesses the number, and they have to throw them back. Now, it doesn’t state the number in the text.
Maybe at one point it used to. I’ll just say that, but it doesn’t. Now, in the records that we have state the number, but what do we know? The fish and Pythagoras’s sacred number is 153. Right? Now you’ve got a very similar story in the story of Christ coming across his fishermen disciples. They catch all these fish. Now, it doesn’t say anything about him striking up a deal or anything, but it does say he performed a miracle.
And in its own way, pythagoras’mathematical genius or whatever, to be able to guess that number is its own kind of miracle, not to the level of what Christ and actually bending reality, right? But perceived to them, some simple fishermen, it would have been like a miracle to them that he guessed that, right. But regardless, we’ve got these kind of overtones that are similar. And guess what else we have in Jesus’story? He tells the disciples to drop their nets.
Well, he doesn’t tell them that, but they drop their nets and they follow him. They leave. Their fishing industry says, it says that in the scripture. So you’ve got these parallels tied by that number and tied by the fact that the Pythagoreans were hanging out with the Essenes. And how are the Essenes important to Christ? John the Baptist mingled and got his whole ministry started from the Essene Kumaran division of the Red Sea and the Jordan, where he was baptizing everyone and who baptized.
Why wouldn’t it say in the know? Why wouldn’t he just stress in the Bible? Why do we have to look for clues and go this way and that way, do this maze? Why wouldn’t it just say in the Bible, you shall not eat meat from, like, why would he just say it? You know what I mean? Just make it simple for all of us that we don’t have to go through this.
This crazy hunt to figure it know. Am I wrong? I mean, I’m just saying, why wouldn’t he just state the obvious and say, don’t eat meat, brother? That’s the question that haunts me all the time. And that’s the reason why. That’s why I’m still on the trail. But I’ll say this, there’s a lot that Christ didn’t say. That’s implied. People always. But I mean, if it was so important, it seems to me that he would just say it.
But maybe it’s something that he’s like, look, if you want to eat fish, eat fish. I don’t. Maybe he doesn’t. But maybe it’s not such a mortal, it’s not such a big sin if you do. Yeah, and I want to clear that up. We’re not talking about it being a sin here. And I want everyone who’s a believer. I follow Christ myself. I aim every day to be Christ like.
I wear WWJD bracelets to remind myself, what would Jesus do? That’s kind of how I got into this. What would Jesus do? But what I will say is that, though it doesn’t explicitly say it, like I said, there’s this whole idea that Christ is the king of the Jews. That’s part of the political reason why he may have been crucified. Right. There’s the concept of him as the Messiah, this and that.
But what we got to realize, and everybody knows this, and any theologian will tell you this in the scripture, that’s always what people are saying about him. And then he says, well, what do you say? I am. He always flips it a lot of times, doesn’t implicitly say certain things. Now, on the regard of sin, I want to clear that up, that this isn’t an issue of sin or salvation or redemption or anything like that.
I don’t want anybody to think that this is an issue of justice and an issue of understanding where our world is at right now and some of the current events, like Juan said, and why this is important to that. So I don’t want to get lost too much in the moral framework of the dogma of Christianity and what’s a sin and what’s not a sin. It’s more about this justice issue, the food system, where we’re at, what’s actually happening that people aren’t aware of, that we can talk about.
But just to wrap up that piece, know, why wouldn’t he just say it? Well, we know, again, we could talk about this for hours, but we know that St. Paul and all of the letters to Galatians, colossians, the letters to the different towns where the gospel is spreading multiple times, this aspect of, well, wait a minute. People are questioning, should we eat meat? But Paul says, the weak man eats only vegetables.
Concerned for eating meat, he says, eat any meat in the marketplace. Eat any flesh. It’s actually the word flesh in Greek. Eat any flesh in the marketplace. Without raising conscience like, Paul’s trying to clear this up, right? Well, what Paul’s actually doing, Paul’s a very complex character, and a lot of people demonize him who don’t fully understand him. I relate a lot to not something I think we all do, because we’re all complex.
We’re all trying to figure out life and do our best. And Paul, these early jewish Christians, for a long time before he converted to them. And in fact, as you’ll see in the film and as we can discuss further, he was on a manhunt and had big disagreements with James, the just, the leader of the Nazarenes, who was actually jesus’half brother James. James Jesus’half brother. Well, what’s interesting about James, every historical document that we have of James states within the first paragraph that he never ate flesh.
And he’s deeply connected to historical record shows that he’s deeply connected to the early movement of the Ebionites. Again, which is the Ebionite gospel, the Hebrew gospel of Matthew, that is preserved by these early church fathers. That’s his people. He was the leader of the Ebionites. Now, what is the Ebionites? Why have we never heard that word? Well, ask yourself, why have you never heard that word? It’s been definitely, definitely a suppressed word and people group for a really long time.
We can get into all that, too. But the word Ebion in Hebrew is the poor. The poor ones. Blessed are the poor. Right? Blessed are the poor are the meek. So this was a word given to the Nazarenes and the people that were following James, the just, the leader of the movement, after Christ was crucified. And they were saying, oh, that’s just the poor people. That’s the poor people over know, and so they took that on.
People would slander it, but they just took it on. Okay, we’re the poor ones. We’re the Ebionites. Right. Well, Paul was tracking these people down. There’s record, historical record in the. Yeah, yeah. Paul was. If you really want to look at it that way. Yeah. He was herodian. He was a herodian descent king. Herod was the roman official over Judea at that time. He built the temple that Jesus went in and turned the tables over.
And I really want to transition to that soon because that’s the big cover up, is what really happened at the temple. I do want to leave something for the. Yeah, we’re talking about a lot of stuff here. I want to talk about the main issues here, which let’s go back to, because there’s a lot in this documentary. I want to play the preview of it. I want to play the trailer.
And I really want to get back to this Netflix thing because we said we were going to circle back to it. Let’s get back to that Netflix scene. Because that kind of blows my mind, because this, to me, you’re saying the biggest conspiracy here is Jesus is a vegan. Right. What would they cut out? I don’t understand. What did they censor? Why are you trying to buy it back from Netflix? Yeah.
Really quick, let me clear up. And I’m not going to divert on this. I just want to clear it up. The term vegan is a 20th century concoction. That’s a new term. Nobody used that term before that. It was vegetarian for a long time. And for a long time, vegetarian meant kind of what vegan means. Now. Before that, ironically, it was pythagorean who I talked about pythagoras because of the way they live.
They just literally, anyone who kind of abstained from an animal product, they would kind of call them way back Pythagoreans. They just assumed that’s who they were. So I would like to get a little more refined in that statement. This is a cover up about Jesus being vegan, more so. This is a cover up about an ethical position that not only Jesus held, but the Nazarenes, the movement that he was a part of, which is another big cover up in the film.
And who the Nazarenes were and why. We don’t really know who they were and why we think the term Nazarene just means someone from Nazareth, which it doesn’t. Who they really were and how this ethical position was, more. So call it what label you want to call it. They just held thou shalt not kill, the first commandment. Because you mentioned why this ever stated in the Bible. Yeah, I mean, I was just going to bring that up.
Why isn’t it in the commandments? But thou shalt not kill pretty much can apply to everything. Right. It can apply to everything. Thou shalt not kill. And people that are listening to this and be like, oh, he doesn’t realize it’s thou in Hebrew. I do realize, more accurately, which everyone thinks is a term for taking the life of a human unnecessarily. Not in a self defense situation or whatever, but premeditated taking life of human.
But that’s not what it necessarily meant in the old days. And we can get into that, too, because it’s a big mistranslation of what really happened in the temple that day. But there is a long standing movement called the Nazarenes that we can talk about, and there’s an ethical position that’s in protest to what’s happening in the temple. King Herod’s temple. The Roman built, Roman manufactured, roman financed temple in Judea.
And he and this movement had a major protest on what was going on in there that has been completely diverted. Mistranslation, misunderstood by myself and many, many others for millennia. And the revelation of it that this film is revealing is going to change the way we think about a lot of things besides just what we eat. It’s also current events, like Juan said. So just wanted to clear that up with the V word, because I know it can be triggering for, um, now to the Netflix piece.
Yeah. So, essentially, to give you. To round off that backstory I was giving you, the previous films were licensed to Netflix, conspiracy and what the health by my co director. And then the most recent film, C Spiracy, was a Netflix original piece of content. Now, I wasn’t involved with know when I met Kip, my co director, it was at a conspiracy screening after he had already produced what the health, and it was about to come out.
But I went to a screening in a Q A. And that is actually in the film, which you’ll see in this teaser if you want to show it here in a minute. Yeah, let me show it really fast. Let’s get people to watch it for just for a second. Sounds good. Is there a spiritual way to kill an animal? I’ll put it this way. How would Jesus kill an animal? Everyone in the western world’s entire life is affected by the church.
We’re talking about some of the most powerful, profitable industries on the planet. It’s a conspiracy of silence. Nobody talks about it. Nobody shows it. It’s a mafia. Is there any danger of making a film like this? You just wait and see. They will stop at nothing to keep this truth from getting out. Yeah. So that was the scene. There. A representative of this moment. Kip and I, we met at this screening, and this question became the central focus of our conversation.
Is there a spiritual way to kill an animal? Or, how would Jesus kill an animal? And the reason why we had that conversation is because Kip is a filmmaker that has a longstanding history of talking about this specific topic. I have a history of being a gospel musician, barbecue loving, fishing, hunting gospel musician. That. Again, we can talk my backstory later, but I came up into this question because of a series of events in my own personal life that led me to this.
And when I had this burning question and tried to talk about it with my peers in the church, it was uncomfortable. There was some kind of divertive thing where people didn’t, is there a spiritual way to kill an animal? I can’t answer that. Yeah, they couldn’t. People say, oh, it’s the kosher way, or it’s this or it’s that. But when you say, okay, well, literally, so then Jesus slit the animal of a lamb.
You can see Jesus doing that. And then a regular. That question of itself. But then even just discussing the topic, the angles of it, I found myself in a situation where trying to get to the bottom of this led me to have some uncomfortable conversations, to the point where I kind of had to back away from my career for a little while. Not my faith or anything, but I had to back away from the forward facing entity that is megachurches and all these other kind of things that I was involved with and really dive into this.
And at that time is when I met Kip. And again, it wasn’t on purpose. I was working an event in Los Angeles because I was having to get OD jobs at the time because I wasn’t playing music and making money. So I was working for these different companies that were selling healthy chocolates and this and that, doing demos and everything. So I’m at this event supporting my friend who has a chocolate company, and they just so happened to be doing a screening of conspiracy.
And I was like, oh, that’s that guy that does films on the ethical or the environmental animal stuff, and maybe he’ll be able to have this conversation. So I went and tried to have the conversation with it. Boom, he was open to it. The further we talked, we ran up to his time where he was going to miss his flight out of LA. And I said, I’ll take you to the airport.
In the airport. On the way to the airport, he’s like, dude, we need to make a movie on this. This is big stuff, what we’re talking about here, because a lot of what’s in the film and a lot of the research I had done up that point, like I said, I was going to write a book if I could. That was going to be my first format. But then he’s like, no, this needs to be a movie.
And I’m like, I agree. So we kind of hit it off that day. It took a whole year before we started filming because he was wrapping up so much with what he was doing. But I just want to clear that up because I know straight up, you’ll see it in your comments, people are going to say, oh, this is cowspiracy. What, the health conspiracy? This is Netflix propaganda.
Netflix paid them. This is a Klaus Schwab thing. Whatever it is they’re going to say, I can tell you from personal experience. First of all, like I said, I’m a gospel musician. When I moved out of that setup to go deep into this, I had to move into my van. And I lived out of my van for seven years. By a river, actually, by the Pacific. Fishing in the river.
No fishing. I got into surfing, catching waves instead of fish. Same feeling. But no, I moved into my van, and that was the only way I could afford to make this. So, no zero cloud schwab money, I can guarantee you that probably would have been nice at the time. And then Kip, let me tell you, he does not have a fund. Like, we were struggling the entire time.
That’s why it took seven years to get to this point from when we met. We met in 2016. It took you seven years to make this? We met in 2016, Kip and I, and here we are now trying to get it out. It took a long time, took a lot of research, but also the fun side of things. Like I said, Netflix, we can talk about all. Let me ask you this.
While you were making this, obviously, how long have you been a vegan during this whole. Did you stop eating meat prior making this documentary? During or, I mean, were you vegan the whole time of making this documentary? Yeah. So you’ll see in the film. It’ll tell my backstory, but it’s very condensed because it’s a 90 minutes film. So we move through it. This film is fast, it moves, it’s rapid, it’s high paced, it’s action packed.
We have a car chase scene in it. All these things to just let you know, even if you don’t agree with it, it’s entertaining, I can tell you that. Chasing him in the car chase. We can talk about meat eaters. No, we’re chasing the muslim mafia in India. Wow. Sword wielding weapon wielding Muslim mafia. This would be a good moment to talk about my backstory, because it does tie into this moment of kip.
Also clearing up the. This is propaganda, and it’s paid by this or whatever. So you can get a little more understanding of my backstory and what you just asked. So, essentially, what happened in my life is that, like I said, I was the biggest meat eater, full on christian gospel musician. And then about a decade ago, it’s been around for a long time, but it got really popular.
There was a trend called the Daniel Fast, made popular through a book by Rick Warren, purpose driven life. He’s a pastor in San Diego. Megachurch pastor. Yeah. He wrote purpose driven life, but he had a program called the Daniel Plan, which is a scripture based health program because he was real overweight, and he realized a lot of his church congregation was real overweight and was, you know, we can’t let ourselves slip.
We’re all focused on the body and salvation, the soul and salvation. We’re letting our bodies slip. We can’t do God’s work if we can’t move and stuff. So he built this biblical based kind of health and wellness program called the DAniel Plan, which I started to implement in my own life at that time, at about 17 years old, my family started doing it as well. There’s a big spiritual component about drawing closer to God, and there’s also a diet based component now.
So to give you the Backstory on that one, in the scripture, in the book of Daniel, in the first chapter or the first book. Yeah. Daniel is a slave in Babylon. He’s a hebrew, but he’s a slave in Babylon. Captured. And the way that they used to deal with that is when people were real Smart, the Hebrews that were really smart, they would put them in a special arEa, and they would get them to study more, and they would teach them all their babylonian Ways, and they would try to get them smart, and they would feed them real well, and they would treat them real well, because that just helps the kingdom.
Right. It’s a smart method, honestly. But they were still slaves. Just the smart ones. So. So in his time there, he and his brothers, when they were feeding them all this food, the choice foods of the king, and it says in the King James version, the flesh and the wine, which, again, we’ll talk about the wine and alcohol part later, because I know you brought that up, but they refused that part.
They said, hey, we don’t want to eat this. We only want pulses, is the word in the scripture, which means a seed bearing plant. He says, just give us pulses and water. That’s all we want. And then the guy in the king’s court that’s overseeing him and his brothers is like, oh, my goodness. We can’t have you do that. And essentially, he’s saying no, because he, by the king, if these guys are unhealthy or unfit.
So he’s like, I can’t have you do that. You got to do this. And then he says, well, do this. Just give us ten days. Give us ten days. And at the 10th day, test us against everyone in the kingdom on every aptitude test you want to give us and see how we fare and if we fare better, let us stick with this. So after ten days, they test healthier, stronger, and wiser, the scripture says, than all the other men in the kingdom.
And not only that, Daniel goes on to interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, that the jesters and back then, they used to rule their kingdom by their dreams and stuff, and they would have interpreters and all these magi that would do that. So these Magi couldn’t interpret this one particular dream. And Daniel steps in, and, you know, the God I serve says, it’s this. This is what it means. And the king’s blown away.
Nebuchadnezzar. And he puts him as, like, his right hand man, right? Is that the dream of gold, the iron, the steel, or the have the nations is falling or something like nations, the nations, which is very relevant today as well. Correct. There’s a whole story. We can talk about that. But anyhow, Daniel, then, you know, he’s in the good side of the king for a while. And as we all know, at a certain point, he falls on the bad side because he’s worshiping God, and he’s not supposed to do that.
And then they throw him to the lions. Then the lions don’t eat him. They put him in the fiery furnace. The furnace doesn’t burn him up. So when I was a kid, the lions didn’t eat him because he was a vegan. Hey, the lions were getting ready to go vegan, too. Hey, in the book of Isaiah, in the prophetic kingdom of heaven that’s coming, what it says is the wolf will lay with the lamb, the child will lay with the serpent and harm each other.
But before digressing into all of that, Daniel was my superhero. Growing up, all the kids got marvel these days and all that. But for me, my family raised me in the scriptures, and Daniel was one of my superheroes. Oh, my God. This guy stood up to lions and freaking so. And the way I learned about him is, at the time, there was a program called Veggie Tales. You might have heard of it.
A lot of Christians will know about it that are watching. And it was a CGI computer graphics animated series on Bible stories. And the characters of the Bible stories were vegetables. They were portrayed as vegetables. So, like, it was a tomato and a cucumber. And they’re the different characters. One of them is Daniel, and one of them is Shadrak and Mishak and the whole thing. So that was how I learned about the Daniel story.
Well, funny enough, when I come around as a 17 year old and I start doing this Daniel plan because I’m kind of into it. I’m in the megachurch thing, and I’m trying to take God more seriously in my life, I’m like, well, wait a minute. I’m supposed to only eat vegetable? And like I said, I was kind of pissed. I was like, how am I going to do this? And I’m like, do I really have to do this part of it? And so I start looking into it, and sure enough, it says it right in there in scripture that he only ate vegetables.
And I’m like, well, how did I miss that part? I go out and I find my veggie tails tape, and I put it on zero mention on the veggie tales tape of the diet, part zero. And the irony. It’s called veggie tales. It’s a story of biblical characters, of vegetables. It’s right there, and they leave out the part where you only eat vegetables. So that was kind of interesting.
So I’m like, well, is there anything else in the Bible? Like, I wanted to find the proof? Like, does anywhere else in the Bible say anything about this kind of thing? Because I’m not convinced. And then, sure enough, the first thing I find, boom. Genesis 129. In the garden of Eden, the prescribed diet is vegetables. It’s anything bearing seed. So Adam and Eve are prescribed from the get go.
That’s a commandment, basically, yeah. It says everything. That all the herbs and fruits wielding seed will be yours for food. It never said anything about animals. Not in Genesis 129. Not in the garden of Eden, no. Now it comes in later, and we can talk about that. We’ll talk about that. But I’m just saying that’s the ideal. And then the same thing is, like I always knew and I was always drawn to since a kid, the whole prophetic vision of Isaiah and the end times.
Everybody’s concerned. I’m sure there’s a lot of your viewers about end times prophecy and all this. Well, the main guy for know, we got Ezekiel, we’ve got Daniel, we’ve got all these people that talk about that. But Isaiah says the wolf will lay with the land. It’s this peaceable vision that’s very similar to the Garden of Eden, but more developed with human intervention alongside God. And it’s the same type of situation where there’s this plant based diet, and I’m like, oh, my.
Know, if you look in the Old Testament, and mainly, really, it’s big in the Old Testament, it’s the sacrifice or the ritual of sacrificing animals. That’s like the big thing in the Old Testament. So how did Jesus fare with that? I mean, I know he was against the Pharisees. I know he spoke out against these things. And even today, with certain groups and elites, I’m sure it’s still a big thing.
So let’s talk about that for a second. Yeah, well, really quick, before I do that, because I know you wanted to hit the Netflix thing, and what you just brought up right there is a deep rabbit hole that’s the one that Juan’s going to be most interested in and maybe want to chime in on. But do we want to table that right there and come back to it and do the Netflix first, or do you want to do the Netflix? I’ve been that out of you.
Let’s do the Netflix. So to get to that point, let me just say I was doing the Daniel fast. That’s what raised the questions. What’s the deal with this? What does the scripture have to say about this? Which then led me into this whole spiritual and ethical conundrum that led to, well, what did Jesus have to say about this? There we have it. Is there a spiritual way? What would Jesus do when it comes to killing an animal? If he’s going to eat an animal, an animal has to be know, what did he have to say about it? Right? And then that’s what opened the rabbit hole for me.
Now, by the time I get to Kip Anderson, the co director of conspiracy, and what the health, as you saw in the preview there. But like I told you, I was working this event, I have this conversation with him. We kick off and we say, we’re going to make a film about this. We then started filming in 2017 in Israel. We traveled the world, Rome, went to the Vatican, interviewed at the Vatican.
We went to Nepal, India, to other sacred sites where animal sacrifice is still happening. Today in mass scale, we went to Paraguay for particular reasons, down there with what’s going on in the Chaco forests, with the indigenous, which relates to this whole story. We don’t have to go in that rabbit hole, but just all over the world, we’ve been studying this, right? And then we put together this cut of the film, this thesis of the film, right? And we bring it back to Netflix.
Now, mind you, like I said, when Netflix signed conspiracy as a Netflix original, they also signed this film, which was originally entitled something else. It was originally entitled another film that was, again, this follow up film to conspiracy with the health sea spiracy, and then this film tackling particularly the ethical side of how we treat animals, but with this religious spiritual lens, because whether you’re christian or not, whether you’re jewish or not, or any religion or not, all of our moral and ethical frameworks are gleaned from the society that we live in, which ultimately has an underpinning of the dominant religious ideology of that culture.
So you can’t get around it. Even someone who’s listening that might be an atheist like you, have ethical frameworks that were influenced, if you’re in the west, that were influenced by the judeo christian values, right? So that’s what this film was intended to look at, right? But what we found is through know, kind of bent on the Christian, judeo christian side and the research and where it led us, this story went a whole other direction and went real deep and real crazy.
And so we started putting that into the film, some of this material. You started putting the ritual stuff into the film. And that’s where Netflix was like, we started putting some of that into the film and the material, as Juan mentioned, that’s really interesting, particularly around the Nazarenes and this movement, these kind of things, and we got some communication back from them that was like, hey, guys, this isn’t what we really signed up for.
Wow. Yeah. They even took our footage. Well, when I say took, I want to be very clear. Legally, we were required and asked to grant them our footage to do their own edit. They were going to do their own edit, and they played it back for us. And we just weren’t pleased. We weren’t excited about the direction of where it was going. It was way softer, in our opinion.
It was just a softer direction, wasn’t getting to the gritty of some of the key points, the history making points we feel that needed to be in the film. And so we just had this hard conversation where we’re like, hey, so it’s on the shelf right now at Netflix. So it was on the shelf for a couple of years, and we had to figure out what to mean.
I’ll tell you straight up, as a grown man, I had my own cry about it. It was a tough, tough part of my life. I was living out of a van. I was like, you wanted on Netflix. You obviously wanted to be seen by a huge audience. I wanted to be butchered. Yeah, I didn’t want to be butchered. And, you know, coming out of. Just so everyone knows, I spent six, seven years as a career gospel musician.
And I didn’t come straight into that with any particular, straight out of the gate success. Like, it took me a long time, six years, seven years to build my career as a gospel musician to the point of right when I got signed by Sony Records with the band that I was in, and started actually making it a career that made any money at all, that was when I had to pull back and start doing this.
So I gave up that to pursue this. But then it was like, I kind of thought it was this grace of God thing that, boom, right when I start pursuing this, I meet, boom, Kip. Boom. We get this Netflix contract. Oh, thank goodness. I can at least like. Or I can at least make sure that this film is going to be seen by everyone. And we had to rip that band aid off because it was like, I can’t.
Do you what the deal was? Or is that too personal? What do you mean in particular? Like, the deal? What kind of deal did you sign with Netflix? How did that work? Well, it was an exclusive deal as a Netflix original, meaning that the only place the film was going to be accessible would be on Netflix as a Netflix original. And I can’t get into the specifics. They gave us a particular amount of production funding to go out and help.
It wasn’t a lot, but it was what we needed. And then they were going to give us the rest on the back know, and then that was it. That’s all they give. Netflix doesn’t give royalties at all or anything like that. Which they don’t. No. So that’s the thing. That’s what people need to get real with this. When they say, oh, Klaus Schwab, and this is the WF funding all this, and they want to propagandize you.
I’m in agreement with these big institutions and what they’re feeding know and how they’re manipulating. But what I’ll say about these particular films in this instance, just to clear it up on behalf of Kip, too, because I know him now, and I see how he lives his life. Conspiracy. What the hell? These were licensed after they were made. They were not funded by Netflix. These films were not funded by Netflix.
They were funded Cal spiracy. Again, I won’t give you the exact budget, but it was like, people, when they hear the budget of that film, their jaws drop. Kip saved up a bunch of money from working years and years and years to fund that himself. And then he made that. And that’s why you go watch the film. The production quality is. It’s. You can tell, but it’s an amazing film.
The story and what it moved me. That’s just like the avenue to let the films be seen. You’re doing all the work and funding it yourself. Exactly. And so people need to understand that those first two films were licensed, and again, it’s just enough to survive. And then you don’t have enough to fund future films. So then you have to go beg and ask people like, hey, do you believe in this idea? Please.
And then we came up on conspiracy, which Netflix did supply funding for that film and did supply funding for this film as well when it was entitled the other name before we had the disagreement. Again, it was just enough to get by, and then we didn’t get the second half of that because we backed out of the deal and said, we got to keep this film. True. So I want people to understand that any documentary filmmaker will tell you this, that’s had a film on a platform like this.
They don’t pay royalties. They give you a one time fee, and they’re the juggernaut. They get to pull the shots. They get to tell you how much it’s. It’s not. It’s not much. It’s not a good business. And so that’s a whole other piece of this. We’re going to try to really make it easier. And you see Angel Studios doing know, that’s why angel studios is doing what they’re doing.
It’s not fair what they’re doing. They did the whole pay it forward thing with sound. Exactly. Which was genius. Let me ask you this. So now this movie is going to be in theaters. How many theaters did you guys lock down? How many theaters is it going to be in? Yes. So, basically, once we got our rights back, like Juan said, we did a whole crowdfunding on Kickstarter.
We were trying to figure out for years how we were going to do this, but we were able to do a crowdfunding for Kickstarter. And a bunch of people came together to make that happen. And then we got our rights to be able to release the film, handle all the legal that we needed to handle on that time so we could just go a different route of distribution.
Our original plan was just to go straight to digital and stream it everywhere. Our goal is for everyone to see this film, to have the film free as many places as possible. Same thing as Angel Studios, what they’re doing with the. So this is Kickstarter that I’m on right here? Yeah, this is the Kickstarter. So they can donate here. Well, that’s the indiegogo. No, that’s all closed. We closed that out.
That’s the Indiegogo and then the Kickstarter. But, yeah, you see there, almost 4000 people came together to support us. Wow. But essentially we got our rights. And then through the stir of all this, we were able to start a conversation with this theatrical distribution company called Trafalgar Releasing. Now, if you’re familiar again, just to reference them, because I think what they’re doing is crushing it. There’s a whole new wave of how we can make these independent documentaries that tell the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth as much as possible.
Not only sustainable, but reach the most amount of people. And the chosen and angel studios, they’re doing that profoundly by releasing these films in theaters through what’s called Event cinema. Event cinema is where basically a company, the one that I believe the chosen and Angel Studios and Sound of freedom used is here in the. Oh, what’s it called? I forget the name of it. But there’s a company that basically they put the film out in cinemas just for one night only or maybe two nights only.
That’s it. And they see how it does and if it does really well, then it can extend into a full run. Right. But there’s all these stipulations you have to have. You have to prove that you have the audience to be able to support it and all of these things. But you can put it in theaters and if it does really well, then you’re able to keep it in theaters.
And so there was a particular company that does it here in the States and then there’s a particular company that does it internationally called Trafalgar releasing. And that’s who we got in contact with. And they do a lot of concert, one night event only, like live concerts with YouTube and this and that. But they have films that they do and they said, hey, we’ll help you with this.
We think there is something here, but you got to prove yourself sort of thing, right? So we’re putting the film in theaters through this method, one night only, worldwide, March 20. We’re in every english speaking nation. So us, UK, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia. I think there’s even one playing here in El Paso. Yeah, it’s in El Paso, oh, 650 plus theaters. This all over the US, that’s where our.
It goes to more theaters, correct? That’s how it works. Right? And here in the US, too, it’s March 20. But in the US, the other territories, UK and all that, it’s just that date. But in the US, we have an encore on March 24, which is Palm Sunday, which is the big day of the temple cleanse of Christ, that we talk about this cover up in the film and what actually happened that day.
So it’s very significant. And I know Juan and many of the listeners are all about dates and times and the cycles of the seasons and what’s happening. And this was not planned by us. This is just how the cards fell when we got this distribution. We weren’t ready. What you’re going to see in the film is a raw version of this film because we lost all that funding and we just had to figure out what to do.
And so they said, hey, we can help you put this film out. But there was a gap again. It’s like the parting of the Red Sea with Moses because of the SAG after know. That whole thing happened with all the actors and everyone that said they were fusing the whole AI thing, and they put themselves on strike. That happened last fall. That caused all of these movies in the last number of months to get delayed.
And there’s a golden window of opportunity that’s happened until now. Just the Oscars that went off, and now movies are going to start coming out again. But there’s a window of opportunity right now where the cinemas are pretty dead. So they were like, hey, we got to get this film out now while there’s a window. March movie that I even know is in theater, and I was Dune, right? And that’s the first of a wave of them.
And so basically, this company that we’re working with, this distributor, they said, hey, we got to get this out now. March 20 is our date. Like, we can’t go any later than that because of this whole scenario of this flood, of all these films that got delayed that are going to come out. And guess what? Again, it’s these divine alignment timing things. It just so happens to be March 20 and 24th, Palm Sunday.
This significant day that we go into in the film. So it’s all over the US. It’s our biggest market. There’s every city, no matter what city you’re in, if you go on christpiracy. com and click get tickets, there’s a search field where you can put your city in, and it’ll show you all theaters near you that are playing this. I’ll put that down in the link below. So it’s christspiracy.
com. Buy a ticket there, whatever theater is closest to them, and hopefully this takes off and you’ll get more and more and more theaters. Correct? Exactly. More and more theaters, more and more showtimes, more and more ability for people to hear the truth. We don’t want this thing to just come and go before we get to digital. We want to make the biggest splash we can. And we are going to go to digital eventually, but it’s going to be a whole different experience, digital.
When you’re in that room with everybody and we got it in full 5. 1 surround sound, it’s like, again, the communal experience of being with people, having an experience of something like this being revealed. It’s a whole different thing than just sitting in your home. Is there a goal? Nino, let me jump in here for a second. This is a movie that I think you want to see on the big screen when you see it at home in the computer and stuff like that.
Yeah. Okay. I enjoyed the fact that I got to see it on a large screen and with people that understood some of the material. I think there is, you said a communal experience or something. There’s a neighborhood you’re in, and I think the audience reaction to watch how people see this and then the processing in their minds of what they’re seeing, there’s a certain enjoyment level, even a beauty to that, because you can see other people having the AHA moment the same as you’re having.
And there’s an agreement somehow that happens there. I don’t think that anybody that goes to the movie, I have to be careful what I’d say, but I’d almost say, look, I’ll pay ticket if he didn’t like it, but I won’t. But the reality is, I don’t think there’s going to be very many people that go see this movie that won’t feel that they were done a service by Cameron and the people who went to this incredible effort.
You got to remember, living in the van might sound great, right up until about the third or fourth year, right? And this is a labor of love. In fact, when you look at those 4000 people that helped Cameron buy back the rights from Netflix, that was people who feel very strongly about this issue, who wanted it to be heard in a specific way. And I had several friends that went in, we all went in, took care of this.
I’m very grateful for all those people because this subject matter, there is a ministry level to this. And whatever you decide, as far as just the food you eat side of this, there are other layers to this. This is so many different layers. And I’ll just tell you, Nino, I think this audience is going to want Cameron back. Many times because of the overlap into world events and this larger social conversations that are going on, this isn’t going away.
And it’s a moment that’s building. And I think we all will down the road, be appreciative of the work that Cameron and the others have done to bring us this, to at least give us the alternative, swimming upstream against the current. And I will say this, Cameron, I’m sure you would say it too. What you would have produced in 2017 or 18 would have no relationship to what you actually are at now.
It took that many years of sifting and working and thinking and researching to end up with the quality of the product you have now. I was personally very taken aback by just what a quality job you did. Everybody needs to go see this and go online, buy a ticket now because some of those theaters are going to fill up in. Some of they can go here to buy the ticket.
Yeah. No, go to christspiracy. com real quick. Nino on the screen share here. I think that’ll be helpful. That’s the Kickstarter or the Indiegogo, I’m sorry. Which is another crowdfund platform we carried over after the Kickstarter closed. We carried over into Indiegogo, but they’re both closed out. Christphere. Yeah, there you go. Boom. So that’s where you want to go. And boom. It’s right there in El Paso. But it’s all over the country.
And there’s your two dates, March 20 and 24th. Many of the major cities of America, too. It’s like I’m in Los Angeles right now because funny enough, we have our red carpet premiere tonight. We’re doing a little red carpet just to bring some friends together. Yeah. So that’s happening tonight. But here in LA, there’s so many screens, it’s all over the place. Well, let me get this up, man.
I want to get this up tonight. I mean, we don’t have. It’s March 14. We want everyone out there. March 20, correct. March 20, March 20 and March 24, correct? Yes. And I want to say, too, I think it’s worth saying for your audience again, they’re going to have so many questions. Their wheels are going to be spinning on this. I know with some of the conversation we’ve already had, but just for what it’s worth, again, we bought this back from Netflix.
We are trying to keep this story true. Along the way, we were spied fight. We had to hire a private investigator who does FOIA, Freedom of Information act investigations, what to find and prove that there were people following this. This is a huge conspiracy. We had apartments ran. So again, I don’t want to take the thunder from the film, but you’ll see the level right here. Exposing unforgiving truths.
Joaquin Phoenix. Exactly. So Joaquin is a big animal rights advocate. You’ll notice if you watch his acceptance speech for the Joker, he brings it up pretty blatantly there. Joaquin, two or three years ago now, when he won the Joker, both at the golden globes and at the Oscars, I was living here in LA. I was living out of my van in LA. I traveled around, but this is where movies are made.
Kip moved down here at that time and a lot of the connections are here. So we positioned ourselves here. Long story short, Joaquin and his family have been through a whole journey, but she’s a big lover of Christ and he particularly was a big animal lover his whole life. And there’s a whole backstory with all of that. And when he won the Joker and the Golden Globes, he actually, instead of going to do some of the after party stuff and all that Hollywood stuff, he actually would go support these activists outside of this pig slaughterhouse in LA that was doing some really inhumane practices.
And so you can look it up in the news and stuff, but he’s liking his attire and everything and just shot over there. It’s all dirty and everything, but he shot over there to support them. And I just so happened to catch him when I was there at one of those right after that. I believe it was the week after the Oscars or something like that. And we got to talking about this topic and he was very open to it.
And funny enough, he played Jesus years ago in a rendition. Most people missed it, but it was guy Jesus to the Joker from the Joker and know basically the caesarean ruler in Gladiator, the movie Gladiator. He won like, best villain for that. But anyways, he played Jesus in this rendition of focused on Mary. But I talked to him about this topic and he was deeply interested and moved.
And he knew of the other films. He was actually honorary executive producer of one of the previous films. And just so you know, too, again, people always say, oh, it’s Joaquin Phoenix or Leonardo DiCaprio because Leonardo DiCaprio was the honorary executive producer of um. But all that means people are like, oh, Leonardo DiCaprio produced this. He funded it. It does not mean that. What happens is when these films were put out into the world and the buz started to spread, these people hear about it and there’s no funds exchanged.
There’s nothing. It’s just someone who allows for their name to be put on it. It’s like getting a quote from someone at the beginning of a know if that’s all that it is. Same thing here. So essentially Joaquin saw the, he really, really enjoyed it. He thought that it was really powerful and know gave us a full quote. Actually, this is just a piece of it, but he’s supportive of the film and that we’re doing it well.
It looks like I’m going to be going to Cinemarko seal of a samal pretty soon. I’m going to go ahead and cut the podcast here. I want to get this up tonight. I got to get this up, but I got to send it to editing. That takes 2 hours. This was big. So you have me really taking a step back and thinking about this because I’m a big meat eater and I can’t answer that question.
Is there a spiritual way to kill an animal? I can’t answer that honestly. How much more time do we have left? Because I know we tabled that one piece of the conversation, but we could always save it for another one if you want. Let’s. Okay, you know what, Cameron? Let me just say this. I think that we’re going to have to come back and do several bites at the Apple here.
Nino, you can tell when I said that there’s a lot of layers to this and Cameron is really a pro at it. Your audience is going to want to hear from Cameron again and again and other audiences in this community. And in fact, I would encourage all the hosts that are all friends of yours and mine, Nino, that they need to have Cameron in there in the months and years to come.
Cameron’s going to become a very important person, a go to person on a lot of different areas of subject matter. He’s got some stuff that he’s working on right now that build on what’s coming with this movie release. And I think some of the stuff that’s coming is going to be even more compelling. This lays a foundation for a whole bunch of important conversations we have to have and with all the challenges, just like what happened with Sound of freedom both internally and externally within the production of that.
And it got shelled when Disney bought the studios that had it and then it had to be sorted out. I wasn’t happy with how it ended up getting released, but that’s a different story. The people involved, that was their business. But here, these challenges in both movies. Case made it even better when it was finally released and the public got a chance to see it. You have a better product right now, Cameron, because you had to go through all of these different phases and you’re going to be around.
I think you’ll look back fondly having got the time to just be in the van by the beach. As difficult as those times were, because you’re going to be a person that’s in demand and on the move, on the roll on these subjects. And I think your casual lifestyle is going to go to the curb as it has over the last many months because of the people that will be reaching out and needing to hear your perspective on these things.
I will be, and I’m just so thankful. Nina, you did a super job. I love this audience. And big hat tip to you. You guys are all my heroes. I got to think about what I’m going to name this one thing I do. Christ spirit. People need to know where to find it. Get it right to the header in the search section. Christ spiracy is a very challenging name in and of itself.
It catches your attention. And I do want to address that because people, I can even close out with a couple of things that I just want your audience to hear. Is Christ spiracy. The way we came to that name. Because I mentioned when we first started this, it was named something else. But the reason why we landed on people, a lot of people hear that name. We’re getting comments left and right.
People immediately assuming that it’s like blasphemous or sacrilegious, or we’re trying to say Jesus didn’t exist, or it’s anti Christian. It’s not at all. It’s the complete opposite. This is a very pro Christ film. The reason why we named it that is obviously just because of the previous films. Cal spiracy, sea spiracy. It was an obvious, oh, Christ spiracy. It was really not much more than that. When we first thought of it, but then we were like, oh, wow, that is powerful.
That stops you in your tracks. But just so people know, we go all deep into etymology in this film, which is the study of words and the deep root meanings. And therefore, I took the time and said, well, what does Christ spiracy actually mean? What’s the etymological root of that? And funny enough, Christ, it means messiah or anointed one. That’s a greek thing. But then spiracy, most people don’t know.
For all the conspiracy theorists listening to this, the word conspiracy, what it really means etymologically is con. The prefix is with or together. Spiracy is spire. It’s a latin term which means breath or respiration, inspiration, spirituality. Right. It’s the breath. So conspiracy just means to breathe together. It’s like a unifying thing. So you can conspire for bad, which is what most people are trying to uncover these days.
But the people of the world who are trying to make the world into a better place can conspire for good. It can be used both ways. So in a way, Christ spirit just means the breath of Christ, which is really what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to talk about the words. That’s the particular thing. There were words that Jesus spoke in the temple on Palm Sunday that have been translated one way for millennia.
But that’s not what he said. He said something else, and we proved it with an Oxford hermeneutic professor in real time to where she even had an aha moment and had never seen this before. And that’s the big crux of the film that hinges on the bigger narrative and the world events and where we are right now. And then the last thing that I want to say, too, just for all of your listeners, is, I’m sure your listeners are predominantly, probably conservative Christians and everybody.
Yeah, these type of videos do the biggest. Yeah. I assume that if any one of these people has made it this long to hear this part, I’m sure there’s going to be the people that are going to be like, who’s this liberal whack job guy that’s pushing this extreme liberal agenda and this and that? Yada, yada, yada. That is not me. I was raised with conservative values in the south.
I’m from Augusta, Georgia, the deep south, where the Southern Baptist convention was founded. I still hold those values true. I’m a little more apolitical myself these days because it all gets pretty murky, as I think a lot of us feel. But my values lie on the conservative spectrum. And to me, I just want to say this issue with, if we just stayed alone, like Juan said, with our food system and the humans involved, if we just talk about that, we’re talking about a massive humanitarian cris and issue here involved with this.
And if you’re someone who does have conservative values, this is something that you need to be asking yourself, because out of these values, let’s just start with small government and taxation. Right? In the agriculture industry, 64% of public funding goes to animal agriculture, whereas 0. 4% goes to plant agriculture. And why is that? Why is that? Because it’s so expensive and unsustainable to do it the way that these people are doing it in these big industrial systems, 99% of all animal products are factory farmed.
And I think most of your viewers, even if they are meat eaters, would agree that they’d rather not have that 99% of the world’s animal products are factory farmed. I think if anybody saw how a slaughterhouse is ran, I think they would stop eating meat. I only see glimpses of it and it squeezes me out. I get sick. Oh, it’s rough. It’s rough. Yeah. Let’s stop right here.
This is good. Trust me. Yeah. All I wanted to say is for the people out there who have conservative values and who are curious or wondering or nervous about this being some other agenda from the other side of the aisle or whatever, I’m telling you, this is a piece of information and a question, a thought path that you need to be considering because it does align with all your values.
Liberty, justice, nuclear family, all the pieces, pro life, just for other as far as you want to go with it, it aligns. So that’s the questions that I had to ask myself, too, coming from that worldview. You got it. Thank you so much, Juan. Thank you so much. He doesn’t tell you the way you’re supposed to think. This movie gives you information and he asks honest questions and lets the listener have to do the mental gymnastics.
Don’t feel like you’re going to get preached to or throttled that you just got to be this way. I thought the way you approached it, Cameron, this was hard subject for me to have any interest in and I was very pleasantly surprised at the way you did it. I’m looking forward to getting feedback from the folks that go see it. Nino. I know everybody’s going to be well served.
Thank you so much, Cameron, for taking on a subject matter that I know the audience probably was rolling their eyes when they began. There are probably some of them still rolling their eyes. Go see the movie. I think you’ll feel well served that you did. All right, guys, thank you. Bye. .
See more of David Nino Rodriguez on their Public Channel and the MPN David Nino Rodriguez channel.
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