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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 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!