Alright, we are back with another season of Framing the World Live.
I'm your host, Paul Whitmer, and today we are going to be talking with Chris Pinto.
Now for those of you who don't know who he is, he is a documentary filmmaker and founder
of Adullam Films, a Christian film ministry dedicated to defending the gospel of Jesus
Christ through film and video production.
He's also the host of the Noise of Thunder podcast.
As an artist, Chris studied at the School of Drama at the University of North Carolina
School of Arts, where he pursued an education in acting, writing, and directing.
Upon becoming a born-again Christian while living in New York, he dedicated his talents
to the cause of Jesus Christ and the defense of the gospel.
His documentaries have been broadcast on Christian television around the world with
millions of views on the internet and are used by churches and Bible study groups
for teachings on the history of the Bible.
His most recent documentary is in 2020, released The True Christian History of America, which
was filmed on locations in the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, and Geneva, Switzerland,
along with a series of locations in the United States.
Other documentaries include The Secret Mysteries of America's Beginnings, Riddle and Stone,
Eyes of the Phoenix, and a bunch of others here listed on the screen.
He's been doing it since 2004.
He has definitely been around the block a few times.
I am a big fan of his work, and so I just wanted to have him on the program as our
first guest here on the new season of Framing the World Live.
His name is Chris Pinto, and very exciting, very exciting to talk with him.
You know, I've been watching his movies for years.
And in fact, you know, he has been very instrumental in kind of opening my eyes on the founding
of America and America's, you know, forefathers and stuff like that.
So I am a big fan of his work, and you can check out his movies on FramingTheWorld.com.
I have a bunch of them for sale.
Of course, The Secret Mysteries of America's Beginnings.
If you guys haven't seen this series, which is a three-part series, then you guys got
to check these out.
They are very eye-opening and amazing works, and they just get better and better every
time you watch them.
They are powerful films, and he also released, like we talked about, a film in 2020 that
I wanted to talk to him briefly about is The True Christian History of America.
All these films are so educational.
They're not films that you just watch and it's like, oh, I know all this stuff.
I mean, he really dives deep into these topics, and you learn a lot from these films.
So if you haven't seen them, make sure you check them out.
Again, you can get them by going to FramingTheWorld.com, where we have four of them now on the store
that you can order.
And of course, his new film, The True Christian History of America, which I had the pleasure
to watch a few days ago, and I thought was a fantastic film.
So guys, make sure to support our channel by going to FramingTheWorld.com and getting
a copy of these films.
So anyways, I wanted to talk with Chris about being a filmmaker since I make films as well.
So I love talking to other filmmakers to pick their brain and see how their process
is.
So this is not necessarily just going to be a live stream about all the facts of everything
that's happening, but it's also going to get into how his methods of filmmaking is.
So Chris, thank you so much for joining the program here today.
How are you doing today, sir?
I'm doing well.
It's good to be here, Paul.
Thanks for inviting me.
Well, I'm sure there's a lot of people who are listening right now who haven't heard
of you before.
Can you start by telling us a little bit more about yourself?
Well, like you said, I went and I studied when I was younger.
When I was in high school and college, I wanted to be an actor originally and really wanted
to act on stage.
I probably did like 30 or 40 stage plays through high school, college, and then independent
theater.
We did like underground gorilla type theater.
I did theater in New York, off, off, off Broadway, several plays there and stage
readings like out in Los Angeles and things like that.
But that was my original pursuit.
And then I got into independent filmmaking, but all of this before I became a born again
believer in Christ.
And so I had very, very worldly ambitions.
There's no question about it.
I want to be like, you know, some Hollywood style independent filmmaker and become rich
and famous in Hollywood, that kind of thing.
And it took years of trial and going through all of the trials of life for God to really
break everything down in me so that when I was living in New York, after I had experienced
just one disappointment after another, after another, I was sitting in my apartment one
day and I got a phone call from my best friend from high school, whose name was Rick.
And he would become the best man at my wedding years later.
But Rick called me up one day and he said, Chris, I hate to tell you, but our friend
Keith George died.
We had a mutual friend, somebody that we worked with, that we graduated high school with,
that we knew very, very well.
His name was Keith and Keith George.
And he died very suddenly.
And that really cut me to the heart, as it were, because Keith was my age and he was
a very young guy.
And I was 30 years old at the time.
He was 30 and he died without warning.
He had been working.
He worked as a contract painter and he'd been working in a hotel, painting the room with
his brother-in-law and said he wasn't feeling well, went and he laid down.
And a few minutes later, he just passed.
And it was some condition that they were not fully aware of that he had.
I think something to do with his kidneys from what I heard, but he died very quickly.
And that hit me.
It really changed my perspective.
I realized that everything that I was pursuing could all come to an end in a moment.
And it was like the Lord was bringing into my life at that time, all of these different
stories about people who were dying very quickly.
Just the guy that I was a roommate with there in New York.
I remember him telling me a story about somebody who was a young guy who was on his way
to Princeton, had this great future that was laid out for himself.
And he was 18 or 19 years old walking down the street, suddenly collapsed and had some
brain aneurysm or something, something that nobody could predict.
And he died very quickly.
Then I remember being with a friend and we were sitting out having dinner at a bar
in one of the restaurants there in New York.
And we started talking to a woman who was 50 years old.
She was older, obviously, but she said she had just lost the love of her life.
Man, she'd been married to.
She'd been looking for the love of her life for years.
She found him and he died very quickly without warning.
So they were talking one night.
He goes, lays down in the bed in the back.
Suddenly she hears a groan and he's gone.
And so the fragility of life, how fragile our lives are in this world,
all of that brought the fear of the Lord upon me.
And I had had friends in my life before that who were Christians,
who were convicted Christians, who studied the Bible.
And I had, you know, had conversations with them.
And I always thought to myself, well, you know, one day, yeah,
I'd like to go get a study Bible and maybe read it and learn about this.
I had been raised Catholic.
So I had that kind of an upbringing.
But then that day when I got the phone call
and found out that my friend had died, I said, you know what?
That's it.
I'm going to go down to a bookstore and I'm going to get me a Bible
and I'm going to start reading it.
And I'm not going to wait.
I'm not going to live my life for all of these dreams that I'd been pursuing.
I want to seek the Lord.
And so that's what I did.
And in time, the Lord brought me to salvation and I became a born again believer.
And that totally turned my life around.
And so I very quickly abandoned all the Hollywood ambitions
and everything that I thought I had wanted and realized, you know,
that that's all vanity, that that doesn't matter.
You die suddenly and you go stand before the Lord
and you've got to give an account for your life before God.
Only that which you've done for the Lord's sake is going to matter.
That's all that's going to matter.
We have to give an account to our creator.
And so at that point, I just began pursuing a walk of faith as a Christian.
Initially, I believed that God, that I was, I was supposed to just give up
all of my artistic dreams and ambitions and things like that.
And, and just, you know, walk the earth like the apostle Paul and preach the gospel.
That was my original thinking.
And then it was as if the Lord said, well, wait a minute there.
I've given you certain talents, certain abilities,
and I've given you those talents for a reason,
but you need to put them to work for the Lord's sake.
And so within a short time, I had a, there was another brother there in New York that I knew,
and he had a little independent film company and hired me because I'd written a lot of screenplays.
So I knew, I knew about screen play writing.
I'd written probably, I don't know, 10 or so screenplays and written stage plays as well.
And so he hired me to write a screenplay for his little production,
little Christian production company.
And so that's what I did.
That was my first opportunity as a Christian film, you know,
person was writing that screenplay, but that was,
it set me on a path to seeking out, okay, what else does the Lord want me to do?
I ended up moving out to Los Angeles and things went from there and eventually started
our company, Adalem Films, and began producing work that I believe the Lord wanted me to do.
So that's why we say that, you know, we took the name Adalem from the cave of Adalem
because that was the cave where David fled to when he was being persecuted by King Saul.
And there it says the outcasts of Israel gathered around him and he became their leader.
I've always believed that was a beautiful picture of the Lord Jesus Christ who gathers
the outcasts and, you know, as an artist living in America,
you often feel like an outcast if you're a Christian artist.
And so we believe that was a beautiful picture of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so then David and his men, they go forth and they fight against the enemies of Israel.
So we see our mission, our work, as fighting the good fight of faith
through our work in film and video.
So that's what we do.
And then with the radio program, Noise of Thunder Radio, we cover,
it's because, as you noted, there's so much research that we put into our documentaries,
which typically are two to three hours long.
They're very long, but there's a lot of information.
And the reason that we've done that is because we have people
who talk about watching the work over and over again multiple times,
and they'll show it in Bible study groups and in churches and so on.
Our first film was called Megiddo, the March to Armageddon,
Bible Prophecy in the New World Order.
And it covers Bible history world events.
And I remember we finished that film, we released it,
and it had been out for just under a year.
And I got a letter from a pastor, I'll never forget it,
got a letter from a pastor in, I think he was in Vermont, if I remember.
And he said he had shown the film more than 80 times.
To his Bible study groups, and used it to teach prophecy and the Bible and so on.
And for me, as a young Christian filmmaker, thinking that I had produced something
that was now being used to teach the saints, to teach believers in Christ
in a Bible study setting, that was just a great honor.
And so I've always been motivated by that, and we try to put everything that we can
into our films and make a maximum effort for the Lord and honor Him by the work that we do.
That's our ambition.
Right.
And I think it really shows in your films.
And this series, the Secret Mysteries of America's Beginnings,
that trilogy, it's amazing how well it holds up even, what, 15 years later, 16 years later.
Still holds up amazing.
So I think when you make movies that matter, it definitely is different than just making
some Hollywood film that is going to be forgot in a few years.
So talk to a little bit about how this has impacted,
your films have impacted people around the country.
Well, I think, you know, I was invited to do some interviews with another ministry back in the fall,
because they called me up and they said, they were talking about this,
the Secret Mysteries series, the one that you're focusing on.
And they said that so much of the information we talk about there,
because we're talking about what I call the esoteric underbelly of America's history.
And on the one hand, we believe that America did have a Christian founding
and that America was begun back in the early colonies as a Christian country.
But there were always these other groups there.
There were the Secret Societies, the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians,
eventually the Skull and Bones guys, and probably a whole variety of other groups
that had a different view of America.
And, you know, we talk about in part one, Secret Mysteries, part one, Sir Francis Bacon
and his vision, his belief that America was literally the new Atlantis,
meaning what they believed.
They actually believed there were the esoterics, as I would call them,
people like Bacon, Dr. John Dee, and others believed that when America was discovered,
the New World, that they had literally found the location of ancient Atlantis,
that the society that you read about in Plato's writings and, you know,
Atlantis was destroyed by a great deluge, you know, the great flood.
And, of course, we believe that Plato's account of the destruction of Atlantis
is really one of the many flood stories that are out there in the world,
talking about how the old world was destroyed by a great flood.
And so Bacon believed, and Dr. John Dee, Dee is a very interesting character,
as we point out, a lot of people don't realize Dr. John Dee was the inspiration
for Ian Fleming's character of James Bond, Agent 007,
who's getting a lot of attention in the media right now
because they're rewriting the James Bond books
to make them more politically correct, which is kind of humorous,
but nevertheless, the real Agent 007 was Dr. John Dee,
and he was a spy, he was part of the intelligence network
during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I,
and when he would write correspondence to the queen,
because what happened was when Elizabeth becomes queen,
she was the Protestant queen,
and so the pope wanted her to be assassinated,
wanted her to be killed,
and then you had the Jesuits with their counter-reformation,
and the Jesuits are known for their methods of assassination.
It's said that they had tried some 25 different times
to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.
So what happened was people like Bacon and John Dee and others and Walsingham,
they formed the beginning of what would become Her Majesty's Secret Service.
They formed basically a secret society there in England
for the purpose of sending out spies and informants
to find out where these Jesuit assassins were or might be
to stop them from killing the queen,
and they were actually very, very successful.
But John Dee, Dr. John Dee, whenever he would write a letter to the queen,
he would sign it with a zero, a zero, and then a long number seven,
and that's where the whole idea of Agent 007 came from, interestingly.
But Ian Fleming's original idea for James Bond was very different,
and then it developed into this much more modern,
kind of smooth character that most people are familiar with.
Whereas, so Dee and Bacon were both believed to be Rosicrucians,
and Rosicrucianism, understanding Rosicrucianism, in my opinion,
is critical to understanding things like the New Age movement,
because there's a book written by a Baconian author
that we interview in the film,
and the book is called Sir Francis Bacon, Herald of the New Age.
And Bacon was the first grandmaster of Freemasonry in England,
when Freemasonry was being revived,
and then he became the chief of the Rosicrucians after John Dee,
Dr. John Dee, passed away.
Dr. John Dee was not only, he's a very influential figure,
he not only inspired James Bond,
he inspired Gandalf, the old wizard in Lord of the Rings,
Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter books,
Dr. Faustus in the, you know, the, whatever dramatizations you have of Faust
making the deal with the devil and this kind of thing.
All of that was because John Dee was, he was a mathematician and an astrologer,
and he was involved in summoning spirits and things like that,
and communicating with them for the first time.
For greater knowledge, and that's what Rosicrucianism does.
The Rosicrucians seek the spirit world to summon these spirits
so that they will give them knowledge.
One of the meanings of the word demon, a demon or diamon,
is a knowing one, one who knows.
And so the Rosicrucians would summon these spirits to gain knowledge,
mathematical, scientific knowledge about things
so that they could conduct scientific experiments and so on.
And the word science literally means knowledge.
And so in their usage, they're seeking these spirits
to give them knowledge about things.
Well, somewhere along the way, they had become convinced
that America, the new world, was the site of ancient Atlantis
and was destined to basically resurrect Atlantis of old.
Now, the short explanation for people who are not familiar with these things
would be that the new Atlantis and the new world order
are basically the same thing.
They're essentially the same thing.
And now the great reset, I mean, the great reset
is the latest name that they give to the new world order.
But it's this whole concept that Atlantis
would become an international empire that governed the ancient world.
And so that's what globalism is.
Globalism is trying to resurrect the principles and the ideas of lost Atlantis.
And there are those who believe and argue.
And I'll be the first to admit, the history is tough to prove beyond a certain point.
So when I talk about these things, I always try to let people know
I'm not necessarily trying to prove that these things are true.
I'm just trying to show you that this is what they believe, their beliefs,
not necessarily what we would believe as Christians.
But their belief is that all of these pagan gods and goddesses
were worshiped in the antediluvian world, in the pre-flood world.
And so that is why we're seeing this ecumenical movement
where they're trying to bring in all the pagan gods and blend them into one.
In fact, Albert Pike, who designed Scottish Rite Freemasonry,
and we go over this in the film series.
But Pike, at one point in his book, Morals and Dogma,
talks about the ancient Egyptian god Ammon.
And Ammon was this ram-headed or goat-headed god.
And Pike says that the secret of Ammon was that
Ammon was the spirit or the soul of the gods,
and that all the other gods were various representations of him.
And so what happened was, as the Greeks and the Romans
and the other people are interacting with the Egyptians,
they believe the Egyptians had the most ancient, sophisticated wisdom.
You know, that ancient Egypt went back centuries and centuries.
So they highly regarded the Egyptians.
And so when they learned about Ammon, they said,
well, Ammon must be the soul of Zeus.
And so they developed Zeus-Ammon.
And if you look up Zeus-Ammon online,
what they did is they took the strong-bearded image of Zeus,
the god Zeus, and then they put these ram horns on his head.
The ram horns symbolize the Egyptian god Ammon.
So it's like blending together, Zeus and Ammon.
That's where they get Zeus-Ammon.
And they had Baal-Ammon.
They had Jupiter-Ammon.
Alexander the Great believed that he was,
in fact, you just pulled it up there,
that coin that shows Alexander's profile.
That silver one right there.
That silver coin signifies that Alexander the Great was the son,
not just the son of Zeus, but the son of Zeus-Ammon.
That's why he's got the horn coming out of his head.
That's the symbolism.
This became, ultimately, this is why the church,
when Christianity forms and the apostle Paul is warning the early church,
I tell you that the sacrifice which the Gentiles sacrificed,
they sacrificed to demons and not to God.
He says, I would not that you have fellowship with demons.
Okay?
This is why the early church recognized that this blending together
of all the gods into one was really a satanic religion.
And I believe that we can make the argument,
if we had more time,
we show it to you partly in the film series,
but that this whole idea of Satan being this bearded guy
with horns coming out of his head,
that is a reference to this blending together
of all the pagan gods into one.
But it's based on building blocks of argumentation.
Okay?
And you learn that partly through Albert Pike
and then partly through going through
and studying ancient coins.
You'll find some ancient coins,
we show one of them in the film,
where you have a pentagram, a five-pointed star,
with a dot in the center.
The dot symbolizes the sun,
because it is the path that Venus takes around the sun.
And we explain this in the film.
That's where, or that's part of where
the pentagram comes from,
is them studying the rotation of the stars
and the planets and so on.
And Venus around the sun takes an eight-year journey
and its journey forms a pentagram over a period of eight years.
Well, the ancient study of the stars continually.
And so that's why when you find that pentagram
with a circle in the center,
the circle is the sun and the five points
represent the path that Venus takes.
And so then they would have a coin
and on one side of the coin,
they would have Zeus-Aman,
the bearded guy with the horns
coming out of his head.
And then on the other side,
they would have that five-pointed star.
And if you take that today
and you take the image of the bearded goat with horns
and you put a star on it,
you have the goat of Mendes.
This is where all of this symbolism comes from,
because they're taking it from Eliphas Levi
back in the 19th century.
And Eliphas Levi was one of the most well-studied occultists
and really Luciferians.
And everybody quotes Levi,
whether you're talking about Albert Pike
or you're talking about Manly P. Hall
or Madame H.P. Blavatsky,
they all quote Eliphas Levi sooner or later,
because he was the guy who did the detailed research
into the ancient mystery beliefs
and then developed,
he's the guy who developed the Baphomet,
the image of the goat-headed god.
Right now, the Church of Satan,
the Temple of Satan,
they're getting ready to have this big festival.
CBN just has a story on this.
They're having a big festival in Massachusetts
that is sold out,
and this Temple of Satan is going to be celebrating the devil
tragically right here in our country, unfortunately.
But if you study the image that they've come up with
for the statue of Satan
with this goat-headed figure sitting there,
they've taken that image from the Baphomet
designed by Eliphas Leiber.
So that's why all of these things,
these things, yes, they're from the ancient world,
they're from ancient history,
but they still matter today
because there are people who know about these things,
people who are involved in the occult.
And sadly, many of those people
are also involved in the government of our country today.
And the reason I think this is important
is because when we read the Bible
and we read the Old Testament,
and we read about what happened in ancient Israel,
when the people of Israel would go out into the groves,
the scriptures says at one point,
and the children of Israel did secretly those things
that were not right in the sight of God.
They formed secret groups
that would go out in the woods, in the groves,
and the grove, whenever you see the word grove
in the Old Testament,
sometimes it means the Asherah pole,
which was a tree that was carved
into the image of a god or a goddess,
and sometimes it literally means a grove of trees.
It just depends on which passage.
But, and really kind of signifies both.
When we see the Bohemian Grove in Northern California,
there's no question that they've named it the Bohemian Grove
after this whole concept of having leaders
who are outwardly professing to be Christians,
because that's what was happening.
The leaders of ancient Israel
were outwardly professing to worship the Lord,
but then they would go off in their secret groups,
off in the woods somewhere,
and they would worship these pagan idols
and take part in all of these pagan occult rituals.
And then the corruption would increase over time
so that it became fully manifest,
so when you get to the administration
of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel,
they openly worship Baal.
They were open devil worshipers.
Baal is the first part of the word Baal Zebub.
It's another word for Satan,
another name for Satan.
And I believe that's what's happening in our country today.
That's why I was invited out.
These guys at another ministry,
they said, what you were talking about in this series
is happening more and more today.
And what we're seeing, I believe,
is the leaders of our country
are more and more abandoning any pretense, any cloak.
It's as though the wolves that wore sheep's clothing
are just getting rid of the sheep's clothing more and more,
and they're just showing themselves to be what they are,
wolves and worshipers of the powers of evil.
Right.
That's why I think it matters.
Yeah.
Well, I think a lot of Christians
don't really understand Freemasonry
and how dangerous it is.
An old church I used to go to,
one of the deacons,
I was, you know, walking, shaking hands with him,
and he had a Freemason ring on.
And I was like, oh, I was super confused.
I was like, oh, are you a Freemason?
And he said, yeah.
And I'm like, how are you like,
because it was a Baptist church,
so it didn't make sense to me.
And then he said, oh, in Freemasonry,
you can be any religion.
So we can be Baptists,
but you know, that's not really what it is.
And that's why I love your films
and how it really gets into a lot of the details
that I think people don't really know.
Well, the funny that you mentioned that,
not really funny,
but it's interesting that you mentioned that, Paul,
because part of how I believe the Lord led me,
because when I was a new believer,
a new born again believer,
first couple of years,
I had absolutely no interest in studying paganism,
the occult.
If somebody mentioned Freemasonry
or something like that to me,
I wanted nothing really to do with it.
I wanted to learn the Bible
and I wanted to read stories
about great Christian men and women throughout history.
That's what I was into the first couple of years
that I was a believer.
And then what happened was I was attending a church
when I moved out to California.
And just like you described,
one day we were at a gathering
and then the church was an old fashioned church
that at one point seems to have believed
traditional Christianity,
traditional Bible-based Christianity,
because they had little phrases like
no book but the Bible,
no faith but Christianity,
things like that,
that were old expressions that they had.
But they had had a division in the church at some point
before I got there
and they used to talk about it
and it set their church down a different path.
And when I was there,
I noticed that they were,
because I was very involved in the church there,
I used to write little stage productions
for like special occasions,
Christmas or Pentecost and Easter and stuff like that.
And we would do dramatizations
and I would do the writing and the directing
and sometimes be an actor, that kind of thing.
But I was very involved with the elders
and the leadership.
I would go to the weekly Bible study.
So I was very, very involved in the church there.
But I noted when I was sitting in the Bible studies
with the elders
that they had a very skeptical view of the Bible.
They, today I know it,
back then I honestly didn't know what was going on
because I was a young believer,
but today I would basically tell you
they were into higher criticism.
They were into biblical skepticism,
which is higher critical thought
where you're questioning whether or not
Moses actually wrote the book of Genesis
and you're questioning whether or not Peter
wrote the epistles that bear his name, et cetera.
They were into all of that.
And so they would embrace parts of the Bible
that they liked,
but they would not embrace the Bible
as the whole council of God.
And they would sort of pick and choose their way
through the Bible.
And I found it very, very peculiar
and I would get into debates
and sometimes even heated debates.
Of course, I tried to be very careful about that,
but I was very troubled
because I had from the beginning of my faith believed
the Bible is the word of God.
It is the inspired and errant word of God.
I mean, I became a born again believer
reading the Bible every day
and interacting with Christians who believe the same.
So it was very troubling for me.
And then one day I was at a gathering
where we were singing a hymn
and I was standing next to a guy
who was an elder there at the church.
He was an older guy,
looked like he was in about his 80s.
And we're all holding hands and swinging hands
and singing the song.
And at one point we're singing some song, some hymn
and I reach up like this,
I'm holding his hand like this.
I looked over and just like you described,
he had a big Mason ring on his hand,
big old square and compass.
And I looked at it and I saw it and I was shocked.
It was like a,
because I'd had friends who were talking about Masonry,
but I would just kind of wave it off, honestly.
And then I saw this big Mason ring.
And so I went home, I wrote him a letter.
I found his address in the church directory,
wrote him a letter, got a copy,
went and bought a copy of the Jeremiah films video
on free Masonry where they're refuting Masonry
and whatnot and put a package together,
put it in the mail.
I'm thinking I need to warn him
because he doesn't know about Masonry, right?
This is what I was thinking.
And I put his name and address,
so I send it to him and I did it privately.
I didn't want to have a big scene
at the church or something.
I was just trying to be a good brother
and I sent him this video and he gets it.
The next Sunday I'm sitting in church
and he walks over to me and he walked with a cane.
So he walks with a cane over to me
and he says,
Chris, I got your package in the mail.
He says, I didn't watch the video you sent.
And he said, Chris,
I've been going to this church for 44 years.
I've been a Mason for 42 years.
He said, I don't change much,
but I thank you for your letter.
And then he turned and walked away.
That was it.
Then, then wasn't over.
Then a short time later,
after the service was over,
one of the elders, another guy there,
walks over and he slaps me on the leg
and he says, hey,
I want to talk to you when the service over.
And I said, okay.
So this is a different guy.
And then the different guy who's a little bit younger,
very, very aggressive guy named Bruce.
Nice guy, but very offended
that I had spoken out against Freemason.
Very upset.
Then I find out he's a 32nd degree Mason.
And I can't emphasize enough,
these were generally nice people.
They were nice people,
but there was a collection of Masons there
in that congregation and their views.
I mean, the second guy I talked to
was talking to me about things like reincarnation
and defending other belief systems.
Okay.
And that church was moving down this path
of ecumenism and embracing what today
I can recognize and communicate
new age doctrines,
new age ecumenical ideology.
So that my very last service there,
when I was sitting there with my wife,
who was then my fiance,
and we sat there and they announced
that they were going to have
an interfaith prayer gathering,
which they'd never done before.
They were going to meet with Muslims
and Orthodox Jews and so-called Christians.
And they're all going to have
a big prayer meeting to pray.
And this is going to be good
for the community, et cetera.
And I said, okay, and I told my wife,
because they made this announcement
and they were supposed to have communion afterwards.
And I said to Meg, who was my fiance then,
I said, honey, we're not going to stay for communion.
We have to get up.
We have to get out of here.
I'm not going to take communion here anymore
because of what they're doing.
And they were moving in this direction.
I was at that church for maybe about two years
and they had been moving in that direction,
but they'd never gone full on into it.
And when they went full on into it
and embraced this apostasy,
that's when we left.
And I wrote a long letter to the pastor
and sent it to him.
So I've seen how, because Freemasonry,
higher criticism and ecumenism,
all of it works together.
It all works together.
These secret groups are involved in many churches.
And it's not so much that they're part of some club.
They are bringing their philosophy,
their doctrines into the churches
and they want the churches to be conformed
to their beliefs.
That is the danger of what they're doing.
So they can say that, well,
Freemasons can believe whatever they want,
but they're trying to transform Christianity
into something else.
And they want to transform it
into this paganized belief system.
And it's why I think,
I've constantly tried to relate this to the scripture
because sometimes people think
you're getting involved in conspiracy theories
and this kind of thing.
I cannot emphasize enough
the scriptural warnings that we have about this.
When we read Ezekiel chapter 22,
in fact, that's one of our foundation scriptures
for the work that we do.
Ezekiel 22, where God says,
her priests have violated my laws
and have profaned my holy things.
They put no difference between the holy and the profane.
Neither do they show difference
between the unclean and the clean.
And I am profaned among them.
And what was happening,
because if you go back to Ezekiel chapter eight,
God takes Ezekiel to the temple there in Jerusalem
and shows him a secret door
and he digs down and there's his door
and he opens up a secret door.
And there he sees all the elders of Israel,
the ancient men, worshiping the pagan gods
and goddesses of the old world
inside the temple of the Lord.
So yes, supposedly it's supposed to be God's temple,
but they've gathered all these pagan idols
into the temple of the Lord.
And that's what is meant by
they show no difference between the unclean and the clean.
They're blending together paganism
with the worship of the Lord.
And they're not maintaining that separation.
I think it's so important for us as believers in Christ
to recognize that the word holy,
God says, be you holy, even as I am holy,
the word holy means separate.
That we are to be separated unto the Lord
and we are not to profane the faith
once we're all delivered under the saints
by saying that somehow or other equal to Islam
or these other pagan religions.
That I think is one of the greatest dangers
that we are facing in the modern church
is this ecumenical compromise and apostasy.
Right.
Well, I know we're almost out of time here.
I wanted to talk to you about your new film
or newer film.
I guess it's been out for a couple of years now,
but it's new to me.
The True Christian History of America.
Tell us just a quick,
what it's about and why it's important.
Well, what I wanted to do
when we did the Secret Mysteries series,
I mean the focus of that series
was supposed to be about the history
of these secret groups and whatnot.
So that's why 99% of the material
is covering that information.
But one of the things
that I was careful to include in the films
is that yes, America did have a Christian beginning
going back to the colonies
and that the first people who came here
were dedicated, God-fearing, Bible-believing Christians.
And I wanted to make sure that in my lifetime
as the Lord allowed, I could communicate that fact
and to expound upon that, to expand upon it
and really cover it in greater detail
in a full-length documentary.
Because while I was studying the esoteric history,
I was also coming across a lot of information
about the rich Christian heritage of our nation
and that yes, there have been God-fearing men and women
in this country from the beginning.
I mean, one of the most beautiful moments
that we have in our history is Jamestown
when they land at the beach in Jamestown
and the first thing they wanna do is to set up a cross,
they're on the beach at Jamestown
and then pray that God would enable America
and England together to be evangelists to the world.
That from this land, the gospel would go forth
and the teaching of the word of God.
The Mayflower Compact, they declared,
they wanted the advancement of the Christian religion.
That's why they came to the New World.
In Massachusetts Bay, the Puritans declared,
they came here to preach the gospel
and to establish a bulwark against the kingdom
of Antichrist, against the anti-Christian powers.
So they were very, very dedicated
and single-minded to the cause of Christ
and the advancement of Christianity in this country.
There's no question about that.
The reason I think it's important,
what we do in that film
and we go to different parts of the world
as you noted earlier, we go over to England,
we go to the Czech Republic,
we go to Geneva, Switzerland
and we show how the Christian heritage of America
really begins back in Europe and in England.
And we go all the way back,
we show King Alfred the Great,
we talk about Magna Carta,
we talk about the Great Reformation
and how when the early settlers came here,
they believed that when the New World was discovered
that what was happening was that God was preparing
a haven for persecuted believers in Europe
because with the Reformation came the Counter-Reformation.
And that's what led to the wars that were happening
and the persecutions and people being,
like the 30 Years War and so on
and all of this mayhem going on.
And so if you read Thomas Paine's Common Sense,
he talks about that,
that the generally held belief
was that God had revealed this New World
wilderness as a haven for persecuted Christians.
And so that's why so many settlers
came here at the beginning
and to pursue Bible-believing Christianity
according to their own conscience before God.
So I felt it was very, very important to show
that our true Christian history
doesn't begin with the American Revolution.
I feel like a lot of modern Christian teachers,
if they defend America's Christian heritage,
they're starting with Washington and Jefferson and so on,
which creates all kinds of problems
because the American Revolution was based on ideas
that go back to the English Civil War,
but most people don't understand that.
They don't understand the influence
of the Puritans and the reformers.
And that's what we try to show
in true Christian history,
to show that there was a,
you know, that the pursuit of liberty under God
was a journey that began hundreds of years
prior to the American Revolution.
And that the ideas contained
in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution,
and the Bill of Rights
don't really come from deism and the Enlightenment.
They come from Magna Carta
and the English Bill of Rights primarily.
But those are decidedly Christian documents.
And so what we try to do is to explain from the history,
and we interview a lot of people,
as you know, if you saw the film,
we interview Dr. Peter Hammond,
who's a great missionary from South Africa.
He's very knowledgeable in all this.
Matt Truella, Pastor Matt Truella,
who's a friend of mine,
who wrote the book,
The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates, great book.
And he gives a great testimony in the film.
And we go to different museums,
we interview curators, college professors,
and we interviewed the late, great Dr. Herb Titus,
Herbert Titus, who was a Harvard-trained lawyer
and a constitutional expert.
He passed away shortly after our film was released.
But he was a great man of God, I think,
and very, very knowledgeable.
But he gives an amazing testimony in the film.
And I think every Christian should see it,
especially if you're an American.
But I wanted people to understand,
you know, people say,
people have asked me the question,
they've said,
well, Chris, it sounds like your true Christian history
is a contradiction from what you said in these other films.
And I said, no, I say, no, not really.
Why?
And I said, well, if I asked you,
asking the question,
was America founded as a Christian nation?
That would be like arguing,
was ancient Israel founded as a godly nation?
Was ancient Israel founded as a godly nation?
Now, anybody who knows the history of Israel
and the Bible,
immediately you have to go,
well, if we're talking about Moses and Joshua and so on,
that's one side of the history of Israel.
But then if you're talking about the people
who turned aside and worshiped the golden calf,
the people who were in rebellion against God,
the people who eventually worshiped Baal and Molech
and so on and these pagan gods,
that's a different matter.
So just like the history of Israel,
where it's godly heritage is concerned,
certainly there were many great godly men and women
who were saints in the Old Testament,
but it's not an easy question to answer.
There's a lot of different details going on
and there are times when Israel was faithful to God,
times when they rebelled against God.
I believe American history is very similar
and the Lord gives us the parable in the New Testament
of the wheat and the tares
and the wheat are the children of God
and the tares are the children of the wicked one
and the Lord foretold that both the wheat
and the tares will grow together
all the way until the end.
And so of course, that's what we find in American history.
We find tares, yes, they're there, no doubt,
but there's also wheat
and we cannot forsake the heritage of the wheat
in our country, in my opinion.
That's the reason I made the film
True Christian History of America.
I wanted to make at least one film
where we focus on our Christian heritage
and show how it unfolded through the centuries.
Right, I think you did a really, really good job
at explaining that.
One of the things about your films
is that they are very high quality productions.
You travel all over.
How do you go about,
and this will probably be one of the last questions,
how do you go about raising money for your films
and getting the support to financially be able
to do all these very expensive trips?
Well, the financial side,
you know, my wife and I financed our first documentary
just by working.
And then once that happened,
and then by the time we made our second one,
we started generating more and more income
from the films themselves.
And so at this point,
we use the revenue that God blesses us with
from our productions to finance the next production.
There have been times when we've partnered
with other ministers and ministries
where we've combined resources.
It just depends on which film and what series and whatnot.
But right now, we're working on two new projects
and we generate the revenue for those ourselves
from our own resources and whatnot.
And of course, we have people who support our work,
people who will sometimes donate and things like that.
We're very thankful for them.
But generally, we do it just by working as hard as we can
and generating the revenue
and kind of having the films pay for themselves,
if that makes any sense.
Yeah, totally.
I mean, people don't realize how hard it is
to make a film as well.
How long does it take you usually to make a film?
And I know it depends every film, it varies.
But do you usually make one a year
or what's your usual?
Oh, yeah, I'd love to.
That would be great.
I was able to make one a year.
I had a partner on Secret Mysteries Part 1, 2, and 3.
And so he did a lot of the...
David Bay, who was the executive producer on that.
And I was the writer, director, and the producer.
And so because David handled distribution and administrative
and all that kind of stuff,
I was able to just focus on production
and not have to worry about anything else.
So we were able to make one film every 12 to 15 months or so,
I remember correctly.
So just over a year for Secret Mysteries 1, then 2, then 3, like that.
But that's not always easy to do
because you've got to handle your website,
you've got to handle all these different things.
And also the research takes a lot of time.
That's the thing.
Figuring out exactly what you're going to communicate
and what the most pertinent details are.
And then going after those interviews.
On True Christian History,
I spent about five years working on that film in total
in terms of gathering the information,
going to different locations, filming.
But see what happens is you end up working
on several projects at the same time.
Right now I'm working on three projects.
We have one that we're hoping to finish
by spring, early summer.
That's going to be our next documentary coming up
called American Jesuits,
a history of Jesuitism in the United States,
which is, I think, going to be a very, very important film.
But then we've got another one on the Rees Committee
from the 1950s that we're working on.
We did filming for that through the summer.
And then a third one, which is part four
in our History of the Bible series
that we're also working on.
So yeah, we typically run multiple projects at a time
and then work on them as we're able
and then we'll get one done,
then go to the next one, et cetera.
But so it varies how long it's going to take
each project to be completed.
Right.
And I don't think a lot of people realize
how hard it is to make a film.
I mean, people just see the footage that you have.
They don't realize like the time
that went into shooting all that.
And really the shoot is a very small percentage
of the filmmaking.
Getting the interviews is the fun part.
The grueling part is the months and months
and months of editing and pre-production.
And you have to come up with the questions
for the interviews.
You have to watch a lot of their past interviews
and really understand who you're talking to.
And then you have to book the interviews,
which is very time consuming,
trying to find their contact information.
And yeah, I just don't,
people don't realize everything that goes into a film
and all the scenes that get cut from the film.
You work so hard on getting a film
and then you end up cutting 20, 30 minutes
of scenes that you worked months on.
And they don't realize that the scenes
that are in there actually took so much longer to do.
But anyways, you've done a great job on your films.
I appreciate all your hard work.
Any final thoughts?
Well, what does Solomon say?
Fear God and keep his commands
for that is the whole duty of man.
That's ultimately our goal.
I mean, you're right.
It takes a lot of work.
I would say to any other Christian filmmaker out there
who's pursuing a project,
I would say seek the Lord, trust the Lord
and move forward with the work you're doing
one day at a time.
That's what I learned to do years ago.
Because if you think too much
about what all you're gonna need
for this and that and the other,
I mean, it can be overwhelming.
So what I usually do is I just come back
to trusting God one day at a time.
As Jesus says,
the evil of the day is sufficient.
Fear not for tomorrow.
Tomorrow will be careful for the things of itself.
So that's how I approach the projects
that we work on and produce and so on.
Just one day at a time and keep pressing forward.
If I believe the Lord wants something done,
then I keep pressing forward
until I find a way to get it accomplished.
And I just think about Joshua
going into the promised land.
God says, have not I commanded you?
And when the Lord says that
if the Lord has commissioned something,
what's the old saying?
Where He guides, He provides.
If God has commanded you to do something,
then He is gonna provide
what is necessary for you to accomplish it.
That's gonna be there.
All those elements are gonna come together
sooner or later.
So that's what I would say
to Christian filmmakers out there
who are pursuing work for the Lord,
to seek the Lord and take it one day at a time.
Now, do you give yourself deadlines
like say, do you set like a time period
when to have the film done
and how strict are you to those timelines?
Well, generally no,
we're not able to do that.
We've had several projects
where we had no choice
because of other considerations.
If you're working with partners
or one time we were producing a work
that was to be released on Sky Angel
and so we had to meet a deadline for that.
If you're doing things like that,
then yeah, you've got to pay attention to deadlines
when you're doing independent gorilla style filmmaking
which is all independent filmmakers kind of are.
You set deadlines or at least I do.
You meet them as best as you can
but then what happens is
you end up being things happen,
things get in the way,
things delay like COVID.
We had hoped to have a project finished last year
but then COVID just came in
and derailed the ability to travel
and to accomplish certain things
and so things happen.
So we set deadlines simply
to keep things moving forward
and to try and meet them
but if we can't,
then we make the adjustments that are necessary
and just keep pressing forward.
Right.
Yeah, it's challenging to make a film.
I like to talk to other people.
I'd love to be able to say,
yeah, we had these crackers back then.
Boy, we don't miss a deadline.
Well, I always said deadlines
but they're always unrealistic it seems like.
Even though I think there's...
I give myself like an extra month here,
extra month here.
It's like somehow I still don't meet the deadlines
but it does...
Here's the thing, Paul.
Nobody understands how difficult editing is
until they have to do it.
Right.
Nobody understands 15 seconds on a timeline.
Right.
You know, when we're talking to people
who don't know filmmaking,
they're like, oh, you just have to come up
with 15 seconds.
You're like, what?
You know what it takes to...
You know what I mean?
To fill in 15 seconds or a minute
or five minutes on a timeline in editing,
if you're going to do professional style editing,
that's a lot of work.
That's a lot of work to get that done.
You know what I mean?
Right.
And especially when your films
are like three hours long like yours.
Yes.
And when they are that long,
that's a lot of work.
Yeah, yeah.
Do you get a lot of criticism
because they're a little longer than most films?
Oh, certainly.
All the time.
But our audience, we know our audience,
our audience who are Christians,
they actually prefer the longer video
because they're going to watch it at home.
You know what I mean?
They're going to sit there and watch it
and pause it and stop and come back to it
maybe the next day.
So that's kind of who we're making the films for.
I remember when we did New Atlantis
and New Atlantis actually won
a best documentary feature
at the New York International Film Festival.
We used to take our films
and we've done it a few times.
We generally don't pursue it.
The only reason we pursued film festivals
was to try and get some attention
to inspire people to watch
the work that we were doing.
But we won an award
at New York International Film Festival
and then we sent it to the Tahoe Reno Festival.
And the woman who was one of the judges
at the Tahoe Film Festival
which is actually a great festival,
really big deal festival.
And she called me up
and she said,
I can't believe I just watched a three-hour documentary.
And I said, I started laughing.
I said, well, I said,
I assume you're talking about our film.
That's great.
And she said, my partner came in
and I told him, I said,
I just watched a three-hour documentary.
He said, well, I'm not watching a three-hour documentary.
Because these film festivals,
they want things that are like 30 minutes
or an hour total.
Our film was like this anomaly.
They were like,
we never would take a three-hour documentary
but they liked it so well,
they chose to include it.
And they were actually very,
very nice to us out there.
Very nice people.
Well, I'm surprised they usually
those film festivals have time
requirements.
I'm surprised they even let you enter them.
Exactly.
We were surprised too.
But she said,
I never thought I would have said yes
to a three-hour documentary,
but she thought the subject matter
and the way we did it and so on
was so interesting
that she thought it was compelling.
Right.
Well, I always set my time at 90 minutes,
but then I never ever hit that,
it seems like.
I figure as long as you're not
going back over stuff
and repeating yourself a bunch
and as long as it's engaging,
it doesn't really matter
how long it is.
Right.
I mean, I've got a friend out in California,
Pastor Joe Schimmel,
he's got his documentary,
They Sold Their Souls for Rock and Roll,
that is 10 hours long.
10 hours.
Huge, massive project.
And so,
so I have friends
that are even worse than I am.
But yeah,
when I was,
I met with Bob Ulrich
at Prophecy Watchers
back in the fall
and when I saw him,
he said,
Are you still making
the longest documentary on Christian?
Oh, that is funny.
Well, hey,
thank you so much
for taking time out of your schedule
to come on the show.
I appreciate you
and I can't wait to see your next film
and to talk to you again.
I appreciate your time.
Well, praise the Lord.
Thank you, Paul,
and God bless.
God bless.
All right,
well, that wraps up
our first episode
of Framing the World Live.
As you can see,
I have a new setup here.
It's wild,
all the stuff I got going on.
So I'm happy with how
this first show came out,
but we still have
some kinks to work out
before we can
really start
taking phone calls and stuff.
Hopefully, I'm going to get it set up
by the second show here,
but I just want to get back
in the swing of doing these shows
and trying to get going
as I finish up the editing
for our new film Temple.
So that's going to be a while
I'm editing
and you know,
while I'm editing,
I need to support my family.
So I wanted to keep doing the show
and keep you guys informed
about these different products
that we have at framingtheworld.com.
We have a lot of different products
on the store,
and so I think a great,
I thought a great way to do that
would be to have some guests on
to kind of talk about
the different products
we have in the store,
like, you know,
the trilogy by Christian Pinto
that we have
on framingtheworld.com.
And so I wanted to play a trailer
of this series.
I think I'm just going to play the trailer
for this first episode here.
Our first volume,
it's called
Secret Mysteries of America's Beginnings
Volume 1 The New Atlantis.
So I want to play this trailer
so you guys have some idea
of what this film is about.
I hope you go over to
framingtheworld.com
and get a copy of this,
but that will pretty much wrap up the show.
I'm going to play the trailer.
And then we'll end the show here today.
Thank you guys so much for your support.
I really hope you stick around
for the next episode.
We're going to try to put
a couple out a week.
Maybe just do one a week,
but we're going to at least try
to do one a week from now on.
So I want to pump out,
you know,
pump out some new content
here on Rock Fin.
So I appreciate you guys' support
and I hope you have a blessed day.
God bless, guys.
Hope you enjoy this trailer.
As America marches forward,
spreading democracy throughout the globe,
is she merely promoting freedom
or fulfilling an ancient plan?
Is she following a course
planned for centuries
by men who believe she is chosen
for a secret destiny?
To understand the present
and possibly the future,
we look into the past
as we unfold the secret mysteries
of America's beginnings.
Can America be the new Atlantis?
Thanks for watching!