Consider the Evidence - Dan Buttafuoco

00:00 - Speaker 1 My name is Dan Buttafuoco, I'm a Christian, I'm a trial lawyer, I'm married for 46 years, I've got three lovely daughters they're all grown and I have seven grandchildren. And this is my story. 00:14 - Speaker 2 Welcome to Faithly Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys through their ministry work and everyday life. Join us as we delve into their challenges, moments of encouragement and answered prayers. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. Learn more at faithlyco. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired as we unveil the heart of faith through stories from the front lines of ministry. On the Faithly Stories Podcast. 00:56 - Speaker 3 Thank you so much, dan, for joining me today. It is such an honor to have this conversation with you, and there's so much I want to ask you about, from your experience as a trial attorney, to your family, to your faith, to the Historical Bible Society. But before we talk about any of that, I'd love to start from the beginning of your journey. How did your faith journey begin? 01:16 - Speaker 1 Well, my earliest words that I remember are hymns and prayers, my earliest memories in in life. I grew up in a very religious italian pentecostal family and god was everywhere, at all times present. In everything we did, everything we said, there was in a moment that you know we were somehow involved with god. Um, the good thing is that, even though I sort of grew up a little bit in a like a legal, legalistic kind of uh faith, um, there was a lot of love. So that was balanced out. You know, they say, uh, something like uh, you know, correction without love breeds resentment, right? Or correction without relationship breeds resentment. 02:00 I always had a really great loving parents In fact they're still alive. I always had really great loving parents in fact they're still alive and they encouraged me to get education, because I was the only one, the first one in my family, to get any real education. I have now three degrees, so that was a big deal. My father is a brilliant man you know just pure, you know brain power, and his whole family is actually really smart. And my mother's side is the practical sort of wisdom, street smart type and I like to think I got the best of both worlds. 02:36 - Speaker 3 Your relationship with the Lord is very personal, right, and we all know that sometimes it doesn't start out so personal. Sometimes it's your family's faith and it's a great foundation. I was really struck in your book by the way that you described Jesus. You said he was amazing, you said he was all-powerful, but you also said he was funny. It's a very personal relationship with the Lord, so I'm wondering is there a moment, is there a time that made your faith really personal? 03:01 - Speaker 1 Well, there were a lot of moments like that in my life. You know where god really spoke to me in very clear ways. Um, you know, when I was 17, in particular, I had a a major experience with god, you know, which came at a good time, because I was on the wrong road, on the wrong path. You know, started to feel a little bit full of myself and you know, skipping grades and getting scholarships to school. And you know, I got accepted to West Point where a lot of really interesting things were happening. You know, the world was starting to open up for me. 03:35 And you know it's sort of easy to get arrogant. You get, you know, sort of overconfident. I believe in confidence, but arrogance and pride are very dangerous because the Bible says God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Now, as far as Jesus and God being funny, I think God ticks the box to the max in every subject. Right, he's the most beautiful, he's the most funny, he's the most intelligent, he's the most wise, he's the most interesting. I mean you just keep going. I mean we're going to spend eternity getting to know God and we're still not going to get to know him. We won't even put a dent in it. You know he's that vast and that interesting and that big. So anything that you find interesting, beautiful, wonderful can sort of be wrapped up in the idea of God, properly understood. 04:24 - Speaker 3 Okay, so you were a teenager and the world was starting to open up to you. How did you choose to go into the law? How did that happen? 04:30 - Speaker 1 Well, it was interesting because I remember sitting around with a group of people who were my peers, some a little older, and we were all mightily affected by this church that we were in at the time, which was undergoing a revival. A lot of interesting things were happening in the early 70s with the charismatic renewal and we saw some amazing miracles. We saw healings, we started to see God manifest in a lot of ways. Lives changed very big and we were sitting around discussing what our futures would like. And there's maybe 10 or 12 guys that I was friendly with, very big, and we were sitting around discussing, you know, what our futures would like, and these maybe 10 or 12 guys that I was friendly with and we went around. You know what do you want to be? One by one, they will pass it, pass it, pass it, pass it, pass it, pass it. Came around to me. I said lawyer, and they looked at me like I had two heads and I said I don't know why, but I feel like god wants me to be a lawyer and I'm not sure why I came to that or how I came to that conclusion. I'm not sure if it was because I knew I wanted to make money, being real honest about it, being transparent. 05:36 I grew up poor, even though my parents were wonderful. I grew up with a housing project. We never had money. One of the reasons why education was prioritized was it was seen to be as a way out for me, my brother and my sister, and we all did very, very well. So that was probably part of it, and later on God dealt with me about my love of money, as it were. But I wanted to be successful. I wanted to make a difference. 06:07 - Speaker 3 Well, so I think I know the answer to this already, Dan, but do you see God in your day-to-day as a lawyer? How does he show up? 06:15 - Speaker 1 All the time God shows up in the most powerful way in terms of helping people. And I'll give you the short sort of summary version of it is that God told me to focus less on being a hot shot trial lawyer looking to make money and get big verdicts, and to focus more on helping people. And he says, basically reminded me, which I sort of knew, but reminded me that law, medicine, any profession really is ultimately, in final analysis, of ministry. It's a ministry to help people and to solve a problem, and that anyone who's ever been successful in history. It wasn't really trying to be rich, necessarily. That may have been a sub goal, but their main goal was to solve a problem. 07:01 And the examples that came to mind Thomas Edison was looking to create an artificial light source. He was looking to be a problem. And the examples that came to mind Thomas Edison was looking to create an artificial light source. He was looking to be a millionaire. Maybe he was underneath, but ultimately he was trying to invent a light bulb. Eli Whitney was trying to invent the cotton gin to get cotton production. 07:19 You know, Steve Jobs was trying to make a portable handheld computer, the iPhone. All of these people were ambitious, but they were ambitious in terms of trying to make a portable handheld computer, the iPhone. All of these people were ambitious, but they were ambitious in terms of trying to solve a problem. The money follows, it doesn't lead. So God sort of explained this to me. I knew in my spirit that I had the cart before the horse, that I was trying to do stuff for me instead of trying to do stuff for the clients. And when I changed that it's over 25 years ago my practice, my success rate, my happiness, my wealth just exploded, you know, because all of a sudden it became about what I would say doing the right thing. Well, that's an umbrella phrase, but doing the right thing in whatever you're doing, is always the best way to do it. 08:03 - Speaker 3 So, Dan, you do the right thing I try. 08:07 And the Lord has. He taught you that lesson to do the right thing and to put that first. But you don't just do the right thing, dan. What I've noticed is that you do the right thing and you make sure people know that it's in Jesus' name, right Like on your website, and not every lawyer or professional puts their faith out there. But I mean, you're very clear about your faith and I would imagine in the conversations we have um, there's not a sentence you utter without the lord um, without you know, the kingdom being a part of your thought process, and I would just imagine that with your clients that it's the same thing, um. Has that always been how you presented yourself to the world? 08:44 - Speaker 1 when I was a very early in my career as a young lawyer, had the secretary, who was a Catholic girl, named was Dolores. I remember she was a chain smoker this is when you could smoke in buildings and a good, very good power legal and we had a great relationship. I went to her wedding and, uh, her cubicle was upstairs in what was my boss who later became my partner's office in Muneola, and I was downstairs. I my, I started in a one room office in the basement without a window and I like. So I asked me to bring them down there and this is gonna answer your question. Um, she would talk to me after the client slept by office office because she had a window by her cubicle and she could see them in the parking lot and she would sit to me. What exactly goes on in your office? I said what are you talking about, dolores? She says I see people jumping up and down in the parking lot shouting and praising God or whatever they're doing. I don't even know what they're doing. She goes, smiles on their face. 09:45 - Speaker 3 She goes what are you giving them down there? I'd love to hear about your degrees, in particular your degree in theology, which I think you got a little bit later in life. I'm just curious, what drove you to do that? 09:54 - Speaker 1 Well, my first degree is in psychology, which I got in an experimental program in Hofstra University called New College, which was great, I mean wonderful training Classes were very small 15, 20 people, 10 people in some cases. And then I went directly direct pipeline Hofstra Law School and I graduated law in 81 with a Juris Doctorate degree. When I got my master's degree, I did it part-time, weekends, at night. I got that in 2008,. Right, so that's basically 17 years ago. And I did that as a result of that major trial, trial and tribulation episode in my life where God had to deal with me. He said, talking about God moments. You know, we all slip up. That's the beauty of the Christian faith. Right, you get to slip up, you may suffer the consequences, but God doesn't disown you. So I was going through a difficult time in my life and as part of that process of me getting my act together and getting re-centered, I decided to go take some courses in apologetics, in Christian apologetics, with my wife's idea. My wife comes up with the greatest ideas and then I go oh, that's a good one. So I signed up, I took one course, took a second course, took a third course and they kept offering more and more courses. I was so into it. The professors were my age. I said, no, I'm going to get the degree. And so that's what happened. 11:23 And what I found out was that I really loved Christian apologetics, which is the art and science of Christian persuasion. It's been defined as that. It's also biblical. It talks in the New Testament about being able to get an answer for what you believe. And from a trial lawyer's point of view, it's all about defending the faith, making arguments for the truthfulness of the Bible, of the gospel God, talking about a theodicy, defending God's goodness in light of the problem of evil. 11:54 And I was shocked and literally astonished to find out that we have amazing material, what lawyers call arguments for the truthfulness of the faith. Like we, it's not a blind leap in the dark. Like we have a, it's like a lot, it's more like a mosaic. The, the Christian faith, is like a mosaic. It's like you get little pieces of evidence and you painstakingly put them together. That's why the Bible says you know, seek the Lord while he may be found, Taste and see that the Lord is good. 12:23 Like. It's incumbent upon us to do the work of putting together all of these little bit clues that God gives us, and when you do, what you get is a picture of Jesus Christ. You don't have to have all the pictures, all the pieces, to get the full picture, Just like a jigsaw puzzle. When it's half assembled you sort of know what the picture is, and you just keep adding more and more pieces and more and more pieces and the picture gets more and more complete. And I discovered that when I got my degree in apologetics, and it was just amazing. So then I decided I would like to write a book. 12:58 - Speaker 3 Yeah, I want to ask you about your book, Dan, which I had the pleasure of reading recently. I love historical anecdotes. I learned through your books that the early versions of the Bible were illegal. I didn't know that and it's just really, it just paints. You paint such a beautiful tapestry of the history of the Bible and you lay out the evidence. How long did it take you to research all of that and put it all together? 13:24 - Speaker 1 Well, it sort of was part of my master's training putting that all together. So I just kept notes and I kept collecting different materials and then I just had to weave it all together into, like you said, a tapestry. One of the things that happened during this period of time is my daughter was going to college and she actually went to the same college I went to. One of the professors said Krista, you're 10. Damn, but if you go and turns out I was in his class, which is really interesting. I mean, my daughter is 25 years younger than me. We were married young, we had kids young, 25 years younger than me. We were married young, we had kids young, and so she was getting the same basic education that I had in college. 14:11 But there was one professor in particular which I know a lot of people can relate to this that was very hostile to our faith. Well, I had been in the middle of studying for my apologetics degree and these arguments were all fresh and new and at my fingertips and my daughter would come back to me and she was puzzled what is about this dad? What are this guy's like? Attacking the right class? He's ridiculing the faith. Turns out he was a fallen away, jesuit. 14:38 You know, people who have an ax to grind are really motivated, right? I don't know what his personal experience was, but the long and the short of it was, we answered every one of his objections with papers, with articles, with our own writings, with me helping her. At the end of the semester, he gave her an A-plus in the class and told her I saw it. He wrote on the paper he goes. You made me question some of my own atheism. So the point being that when you know what to say and you know what arguments to raise and I use arguments and again, the legal sense of putting forth material and proofs of why we believe what we believe we really rocked this guy back on his heels and he wasn't so sure all of a sudden in his own worldview, and so the book came as a natural outgrowth to that. 15:27 - Speaker 3 That is such a great story. You know, one of the things that I've learned about the Lord in my life is that he wastes nothing and that even things that don't really seem connected in your history he brings together for the good of those who love him. I think about my career in Wall Street. It may seem very different from building faith technology, but I use everything that I learned and I think about your three degrees psychology law, theology and how all that comes together so beautifully to be an apologetic for the Lord. It's really cool, as you laid out the evidence. Yes, is there one piece of evidence that you find the most compelling? 16:06 - Speaker 1 You know it's interesting. I just wrote an article about this on Quora. We can get it to Quora at some point. I do a lot of writing on Quora to answer questions. Quora is a platform which I really encourage people to go on and be heard, especially if you're a believer. You'll learn and you can also contribute. 16:23 There's a lot of misunderstanding out there about God, about religion. People have been hurt by religious people and Quora allows everyone to speak. One of the questions that came up was about evidence for Jesus and for God in the Bible and the fact of the matter is there is no slam-dunk, single piece of evidence for the faith and there are key pieces of evidence and, of course, one of the key pieces is the Bible. I believe, and I think it's supported by the evidence, that the Bible it was written by eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus Christ and that those eyewitnesses have written the Gospels and in the case of Luke, they were interviewed and recorded for all of posterity so that we have an accurate idea of who Jesus was, what he believed, what he taught, what he did. And also about the resurrection. As scientifically implausible as that is, there's a lot of evidence for the resurrection. 17:20 The idea of eyewitness testimony is very compelling, and it's very compelling because we use it in court all the time. There is almost no case that does not involve eyewitness testimony in some way. You actually even need eyewitness testimony to authenticate a video. You can't even put the video into evidence without somebody saying, yeah, I was there, that's a fair and accurate representation of what happened. Or you know that camera was affixed to this corner, at this spot and, you know, had this in view at this time and this place. You have to always have eyewitness evidence, even if you have a video or a photograph, and so eyewitness testimony is powerful. 18:03 But what makes it more powerful, what makes it really compelling, is the fact that these men were cross-examined to death for their testimony. And if you've never been in court and if you've never tried a case, you will not possibly appreciate the power of cross-examination. You know the founding fathers gave us cross-examination. Cross-examination is so important to our system of justice. It's the right to confront witnesses and to test their stories, and just by questioning them, just by questioning them in a hostile way, without any threat of torture, you'd be surprised how effective cross-examination is. Questioning them on the penalty of torture is even more compelling. I mean, these guys could have stopped the torture at any time by recanting their stories, and they all went to death proclaiming they'd seen the risen Christ. Nobody would do that if it wasn't true. 19:00 Disciples were there. They saw Jesus, they handled Jesus. They experienced Jesus not one time, but for three years. They were at the crucifixion. They saw Jesus, they handled Jesus. They experienced Jesus Not one time, but for three years. They were at the crucifixion. They saw him resurrected. They talked with him for 40 days, and all of that is very compelling. Now, of course, people don't believe it because they say well, people don't rise from the dead. But that's what's called an a priori bias. You're dismissing it, saying it didn't happen because it can happen. Well, let's look at the testimony, let's look at the evidence, and the evidence is actually quite compelling. So yes, eyewitness, testimony is huge. A big part of what I do is defending the Bible. I started the Historical Bible Society for that reason to defend and analyze the Scriptures and to explain where we got them, how we got them, and that's all a big part of what I do. 19:51 - Speaker 3 Well, so I want to talk about the Bible, because for you, it's not just evidence. You seem to have a love of the Bible that goes even deeper than that. Talk about how you started collecting the Bibles. How did it begin, how did it evolve, how did it turn into the historical Bible society? 20:07 - Speaker 1 Well, the Bible, I hope, has always been a part of my life. As I said earlier, my first words were probably Scripture. The bottom line is in the Bible is not, first of all, not one book, it's a library of sorts. We're in a library, right? The Bible is a collection of, you know, 66 different writings written by 40 different authors over 1500 years, so it's the collected wisdom of an entire civilization. It's basically foundational to all of Western civilization. So that alone gives it monumental importance. And then when you start to think about the fact that the Bible is the best seller, year after year, that societies and governments have been built on it, and then you start to crack it open and you realize who wrote it and the things they said, which are mind-blowing, and you realize that they work and that they're great ideas for wisdom and for successful living. And then you start to realize like, wow, this has got a supernatural quality to it. This is not something that you know just came up people, just smart people came up with on their own. When you read the Bible and you put it to work, when you test. That's why the Bible says God is always saying test it, test and see, try it, see if it works. When you test the Bible, it always works, and so that's why I got involved with the Historical Bible Society, because I love the Bible and then part of me loves history, and part of loving history being in this place. 21:32 I love antiques, I love museums. So if you combine antiques and Bible, what do you get? You get antique Bibles. I was at the Waldorf Astoria this is many years ago and at that time I don't know if it's still there, but in the Waldorf Astoria they had a rare bookstore in the lobby. It didn't look much different than this. There was a library and every book was hundreds of years old and I was fascinated by that. So I bought an old Bible. I paid way too much, it was a rip-off, but I brought it home and I had this 1601 Bible. And then I started to realize you could get these things at auction much cheaper. 22:10 And you know, I started to collect Bibles and I got a first edition King James which is fascinating. It weighs probably 25 pounds, it's massive, it's beautiful, it's a glorious book, it's just incredible. And I used to have it on my table in the house you know one of the sideboards and people would come in and what is this? And we'd get into these discussions and I realized right away that this is something. It's an artifact. 22:38 First of all, it's super important. There's very few of them complete in the world and it would start a discussion about God, about the Bible. So then I started to get intentional about collecting various Bibles and what I found out is that the English Bible was at one point considered illegal. The church didn't like the English Bible, and so I started to collect all those early pre-King James, very early English Bibles by Tyndale, by Coverdale Erasmus was a major figure in the Greek New Testament and I started to sort of fill in the blanks of the collection and then eventually just realized it was too expensive to keep doing it and donated it all to my own charity called the Historical Bible Society, and it became a public charity at that point. 23:26 - Speaker 3 Is our collection complete or are you still collecting? 23:28 - Speaker 1 I still collect. Uh, you know it's very hard now, being that I'm competing with billionaires and the museum of the bible who are basically buying up everything and driving up the prices. But, uh, it's pretty complete for what we do and you, you've seen the collection. 23:44 - Speaker 3 I was very moved by the collection. There's something about seeing the words and seeing and knowing. They were written hundreds and hundreds of years ago and it's the same words, the same gospel. It's very stirring. 23:58 - Speaker 1 Well, one of the books that we have, the New Testament in Greek, is so important that we were contacted by a major Bible society in Germany. They wanted to digitize it. In the spring they come into my office and they're gonna digitize this thing and put it online. It's a really important translation because for one or two words that's how analyzed and sifted the New Testament is One or two words. This particular manuscript is a thousand years old is important to shed the meaning on one or two words? 24:27 This particular manuscript is a thousand years old is important to shed the meaning on one or two words. And that's telling because it shows you how much scholarship, uh, has gone into the the bible, preserving it, reclaiming it. There are about 40 lines of the new testament that are in dispute, uh, and I tell you what it's the most thoroughly analyzed, sifted, critiqued, criticized, affirmed, debated book in the entire world. Nothing comes close. Probably more brain power has gone into analyzing the Bible than any other topic in the history of the world, and it's fascinating Just for that reason. It's the only book ever been on the moon the. 25:08 - Speaker 3 Bible. I didn't know that. Yeah, that's a great fact. 25:11 - Speaker 1 There's so many things about the Bible that just defy explanation. Going back to your Bible collection and the society. 25:18 - Speaker 3 So you travel to churches and schools and other organizations and you bring your Bible collection. Tell us what that experience is like, because you're not just bringing the Bibles, you're bringing you, and you're bringing your passion, your love and your zeal for the Word. 25:33 - Speaker 1 I have essentially two ministries. One ministry well, I look at everything as a ministry. My family's a ministry, you know this is a ministry. Core is a ministry, but my two basic ministries are, in terms of categories, my law practice. I run that like a ministry because you're ministering to the clients. They have a need and we are bringing a solution. Like yesterday I had a woman in my office. A pastor needs spine surgery. I had to arrange that. We had to work out paying for it. She was a dead accident. There's a lawsuit going. We're going to change her whole life. It's going to take two, three years, but we're going to change her whole life. That's one ministry. 26:12 The other ministry I have is generally the apologetics ministry, which falls basically with the historical Bible society. The idea of the historical Bible society is to do exactly what I've been saying, which is to explain to people where you got the Bible and why you believe the Bible is the Word of God. I'll often go into churches that are on fire for God. They love God, they've got great outreach and a great ministry and I'll get up there with an invitation from the pastor, the leadership, and I'll say how many people believe the Bible is the Word of God. I'll get 100% of the hands up and I'll say how many people believe the bible is the word of god. I'll get 100 hands up and people and they'll say how many people know why we believe that, and I'll get crickets or maybe two hands or three hands and I said, okay, we got some work to do here, because if we don't know why we believe something, we won't believe it after a while or we can discard that if there's a challenge to it. 27:04 That's what's been happening to the young people. When they go to college, they grow up in the youth group. They're say, quote unquote saved followers of Jesus Christ, try to live a good life. All of a sudden they go to college and this they get presented with drugs and parties and sex and all this fun looking stuff, and then they're not sure if the Bible's true. And then when they get challenged by their professors, yeah, why should I believe this? It's just restricting me. You know, and we've all been there, come on, we know what this is about, right, and it's very easy to just discard this because you don't know why you believe it. 27:37 So what I'd like people to do? I'd like people to know why they believe what they believe and then be able for a plumber to explain to a plumber why he believes. On the job. For a cop to explain to another cop who I kind of represent a lot of cops why he believes on the job. For a housewife to explain to her neighbor why they believe the Bible's the word of God. 27:57 And if every Christian could get into the why, which a hundred years ago wasn't even an issue they all know. You've got to be able to explain to the people in your congregation why we believe these things. If you want it to take, if you want to raise up a generation of people who are really going to change the world, that has to get down deep into their soul. They got to know that what they believe is the truth, not because they want to believe. It's not my truth, it's the objective truth. And the only way we can hold onto that is objective truth is if we know why we believe it and what those reasons are for why we believe it's the objective truth. That's what grounds people in a time of storm, and so that's what the Historic Bible Society does. 28:36 I'll go into schools. I'm actually going to a school in March and talking to high school kids. I'll go into a church, I'll go pretty much anywhere and explain to people how we got the Bible, why we believe it's true, where it came from, what it consists of, and that's what I love to do. It's the why that is so cool. 28:57 - Speaker 3 I love that Thank I love to do. It's the why that is so cool. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. I think if someone were to just listen to our conversation over the last 15, 20 minutes and hear you talking about the Bible, I think it would be easy for them to think that's where your God lives, isn't the Bible. But having talked to you several times now again, I know that's not true. Your God is a living God that lives within you and that is everywhere. So can you talk a little bit about that? Talk about your living God, how he speaks to you. 29:26 - Speaker 1 Well, the Bible is basically revelation. There are many ways that we can know God and God. We can't know all of God, because to know all of God would be to be God. Right, and you can't know all of God. That's sort of the mystery of god, right, and we're going to spend eternity getting to know god more and more intimately. Right, and that's going to be fun and that's going to be cool, because god's most interesting, beautiful, fabulous person that you can imagine. You can't even imagine anything greater or more interesting than God. 29:58 The Bible is that aspect of God that he has chosen to reveal of himself to humanity, which has been recorded by people who have had what I call closely countless of the third kind. Now you're a little bit young, but you remember that movie, sure Close and countless of the third kind. You know those are the people who had face to face encounters with. In that case, you know aliens, right, but there are people who have had close encounters of the third kind with God. Sometimes we have close encounters of the third kind with God and those are those special moments where you know God is really speaking to you. 30:30 God speaks to His creation in a lot of ways. He speaks through the beauty and wonder of creation. He speaks through art. He speaks through literature. He speaks through friends. He speaks through art. He speaks through literature. He speaks through friends. He speaks through family. He speaks through the inner witness. He speaks through your conscience. He speaks through the Bible. As I said, he speaks audibly. At times he's spoken in the Bible through animals. He speaks through circumstances and it's sort of cool how we met right, because that was one of those moments where I felt the prompting of God to go over to you right. 30:58 - Speaker 3 You know was one of those moments where I felt the prompting of God to go over to you, right you know we were at the movement day. 31:02 - Speaker 1 Yeah, we were at a day and he was, you know, you sort of stood out, you were standing, I was sitting in the front table, I was scheduled to speak and I think it was Adam Durso who was a mutual friend of ours. Well, I mean, sam said you should go talk to that young lady over there. 31:19 Thank, you for saying young, young lady yes yes, Very young, Very well-preserved, and so, anyway, I saw you in the corner and he said, yeah, she's got this thing called Faithly and there used to be Goldman Sachs people which, by the way, I think is amazing because you were right, you could take all of that and none of that is lost. It really is true that's another truth that God wastes nothing, right, Whether it's a bad experience or a good experience or even one in between. So I saw you there and something compelled me to go over and talk to you. So I went over to you and, for those listening and watching right away, I asked you almost immediately you know where you live, Like the second question in. You said Manhattan. 32:05 I said, Jerry, your father's heart ministries, and you practically burst into tears and it turns out that you had a major God experience at Father's Heart Ministries, without getting too personal. And it turns out that my cousins are the founders of that ministry, Marion and Carol, and I support them, and we took a selfie, if you remember, and we sent it to my cousin and she responded oh my God, I can't believe that you're with Alicia. Alicia's great. She's a big part of who we are and that was sort of strange. That was one of those God moments. Some people don't see spirituality in that, but anybody who's attuned to God knows that that's one reason why we're here. In fact, we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that moment. Right, so another breadcrumb, if you will. 32:55 - Speaker 3 Oh, thank you, I appreciate it. I've been so blessed by this conversation. I know many others will too, and I just I love the way that when the Lord speaks, you just listen, you just listen. You're like, yeah, sure. 33:06 - Speaker 1 Sure, I don't always. If I always listen, I'd be Jesus, I'd be perfect. You know, that's sort of the challenge of the Christian right To listen to when he's talking to you. And you know Jesus said my sheep know my voice. I have to ascertain the voice of God in my spirit. If I don't know that by now, then how much of a Christian could I really be? And so we see that that part of being a Christian is to be sensitive to the leading of the spirit and to hear that voice and to follow God. 33:37 And yet so many people think that being a Christian is following a list of do's and don'ts or adhering to a creed or going to a church and performing a ceremony. None of that makes you a Christian. None of that makes you a Christian. Right, I think of a Bible study. I gave one this morning on Zoom to a bunch of Catholic guys. They are astonished to realize what's in the Bible. They've been in church their whole lives. They are only now becoming Christians, if that makes any sense, and the transformation is remarkable, frankly. 34:10 - Speaker 3 Also you said you know you're no liar. You don't always listen to God, but you've listened to him on some pretty big things. 34:16 - Speaker 1 I try to eat the big stuff. 34:17 - Speaker 3 Yeah. 34:23 - Speaker 1 Well, so you told me recently about how the Lord told you to appreciate pastors. Well, pastors are an interesting thing because they, you know they have a lot of responsibility. You know, bible says they're the guardians of your soul and people are not easy. You know, I have my band of 12, 14 guys. Uh, just, even then there's always conflict. You know, people are people, and to be a pastor and to to uh, be responsible for people's souls and I even see this in my practice I give advice which I know is solid and my clients are their own worst enemies. They don't take my advice and then they expect to get a good result Doesn't work that way. 34:58 Uh, and it's the same way with the pastor. The pastor is trying his best to help people and a lot of times, especially in this culture, they sort of go their own way. He's kind of got to reel them back in and they get resentful and they kick back and they let it out. As a result, pastors are discouraged and unappreciated and in some cases, many cases quitting the ministry, some cases suicidal. We've seen that, pastors taking on their own lives, you know becoming depressed and you know sort of discouraged over the state of their plots and their ministries and they're on the attack constantly. Right the end if they do and the end if they don't right. 35:39 I've seen people fight with pastors because over a waffle iron, or on the or the, the color of the carpet, and divide over how to have communion, whether it should be Italian bread or it should be matzo, like who cares, right, you know. And people get hung up. They major in the minors and sadly some pastors also do that. But really you gotta look at the big picture. And so pastors have to try to get every person that's under their responsibility to be able to look inside and see christ. And that's not an easy job, you know, and it's getting harder and harder. 100 years ago the pastor was the smartest guy in the room, the most respected guy in the room, and uh, nowadays that they're not respected at all, not even by their own flock. And so I've been really reaching out to pastors to try to encourage them and to try to strengthen them, to try to unite them right Also without uniting as Christians. 36:34 - Speaker 3 So one of the ways you would try to do this is by bringing them together. Right, You've put on a pastor's appreciation for a couple of years now, right? Tell me a little bit about that. 36:44 - Speaker 1 I want to say God woke me up in the middle of the night and said you've got to have a Christmas party for pastors. And originally I thought it was going to be about my law firm, because I do get a lot of business from pastors. Okay, so pastors have been very good to me. I woke up in the middle of the night. I was going to have a party for pastors and then, as we started to get into it, we started to pray about it. We said we're not going to make this about the office. We're going to make this all about them. We're going to just the office will be a sponsor. They'll know I'm who I am what I do. The pastors know me. They're all my friends. 37:15 It's not going to be about glorifying the office. We're not going to talk about all our wonderful successes and the great verges we got and the great results and the cases we won. We're going to talk about what they do and how important they are and how that we're with them, that we're behind them, that we're supporting them, that we appreciate them for what they're doing. And they have problems just like everybody else. You know they had kids they got content with and you know family members that you know give them a hard time. So we really sort of got behind these pastors. Two of my daughters are married to pastors' kids, and so we just decided to bless the pastors, and you've seen the event. It's pretty cool right. 37:52 - Speaker 3 I saw. I've been to a number of pastors' events because of what I'm trying to do faithfully and it was the first one I went to right where I saw them get blessed in a very practical, very loving way. You have Pastor Eric and I there give a talk, which was awesome. You gave a talk. You gave him a $10,000 gift. That's what I'm talking about. He even wrote a $10,000 check To give it to a pastor who had a special project this church. I think that't never seen that happen at a pastor's gathering before. You gave away ancient texts to pastors that you were honoring. I really was blown away. Do you have a chance to do it again? 38:27 - Speaker 1 Yeah, as God allows us, we're going to do it every year, god willing. It's really been also an exercise in humility because we're deferring to the pastors, we're letting them have their day and everything, as you know, was top shelf. We had an Orica Castle. We had, you know, a venue was off the charts, right. We had first-rate band music, we had a classical pianist to greet them, we had butler service, we had the whole nine yards. It was a spectacular event, top shelf speakers. You know I said a. We had Butler service, we had the whole nine yards. It was a spectacular event. Top shelf speakers. You know I, I I said a few words, but I'm not the main event at all. My son-in-law was the emcee, he didn't even speak that much. It was pastor focused, pastor driven, pastor blessed, you know, blessed the pastors and basically elevate what they're doing. And and also to try to. You know, the theme this year was unity, one Lord, one faith, one hope. 39:22 - Speaker 3 That's such an important message. I was in the room. They felt loved, they felt celebrated, they felt blessed. I don't think any of them will miss the Abba's share. 39:32 - Speaker 1 They were loved and they are loved Amen. 39:35 - Speaker 3 I feel like we've just scratched the surface of your story, dan, but I think we need to leave it there for today. I have a feeling there are more conversations coming, a lot more than we need to talk about, but thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today, sharing your experience and your wisdom. I really appreciate it. 39:50 - Speaker 1 Amen, we had to do it. I want to be a blessing, try to help other people, and this is just another way to do it. 39:56 - Speaker 2 Thank you, sir. 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