EP: 400 Hell, the 80s, and the Family of God with Kirk Cameron

And all of a sudden they say, oh my gosh, you have a baby inside of there with a heartbeat. And she's like, what are you, some sort of sicko? Are you some sort of cruel doctor? I just passed my child in the toilet in my bathroom at home. I had a miscarriage. And they're like, well, apparently you were pregnant with twins. You passed one of them. The other one is still there and it's fine. She was like, oh, my gosh. So the story gets even better. She gives birth to this child, which is my niece, Reese. And when Reese was four years old, she was in her bedroom one night and she asked her mom, my sister, mommy, did I have a sister? And my sister goes, what did you say? Mommy, did I ever have a sister? And she's like, why do you ask me, Reese? She goes, because there's a little girl that comes to me in my dreams at night. And she wants to play dolls with me. And she tells me that she's my sister. And my sister was just like, what is going on? The history of our Earth is so different from what we can imagine. The Smithsonian, if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere, was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right. Because if one person is right, it busts the paradigm. It all goes back to the fallen church. And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop that's just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Hermon event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. All right. Welcome back to Blurry Creatures. We're excited. Obviously, we built an 80s basement many moons ago. We have an 80s stuff here. And Kirk Cameron's in the house. And before this show gets started, I've got to say, I mean, it was such an era for us. I was born in 1980. And I was talking to my best friend, and he was saying that he cried the day the Seavers moved out of the house. And for so many people, that family. I cried. I bet. I mean, I can't imagine producing the show, obviously, being a part of it. But for so many kids in the 80s, it was like the best representation of the family that we had. And such a monumental decade. We immortalized it here. But thank you for coming to Blurry Creatures and coming into our basement. I just feel like I have traveled in time back to where I belong. right next to a blockbuster sign back here. All of these games. This is my world. I mean, I remember all of this, and I want to go back there. I killed it on The Legend of Zelda. I mean, I turned Donkey Kong over three times. I used to sneak into Chuck E. Cheese and sneak the tickets from the little kid at the skee-ball machine so that I could go get my spaghetti and my pizza. This is my world. Thank you. I love it. Yeah, I mean, it's been fun. I mean, we needed to brand the show some way, so we started talking about Bigfoot, of all things, and then it led into a lot of stuff in the Bible. And here we are. Wait, Bigfoot let you into the Bible, or the Bible let you into Bigfoot? It started in Bigfoot land, the show did. But the reason I started thinking this could actually be a show before we launched was that, like, a lot of theologians were coming on Bigfoot podcasts, of all things, talking about the Nephilim, the giants, the hybrids, how crazy it was in the Old Testament. The church is kind of like, oh, we don't really want to talk about that. It's a little too weird. So I'm like, let's talk about it. Let's blend those things. Let's go there. Yeah. Yeah. And it kind of took a life. By the way, is this real water or blurry water that's only meant for Nephilim? I don't know what blurry water would be. It's not from the 80s. You can actually try. it probably still yeah from the 80s you've had quite a month or or so haven't you it has been a great month yeah um let's see you didn't ask him his thoughts on bigfoot though oh we didn't we'll start there that's that we start with everyone yeah we could talk we could talk about theology and church and bigfoot uh kind of where you started i mean for me yeah uh i would have thought that just church people were weird because you guys believe in some invisible creature well I was an atheist as a kid. I didn't grow up going to church. And so to me, church people were weird. You were the guys that believed in invisible creatures who lived behind the clouds like angels. And you believe in a God who's keeping track, kind of like a cosmic Santa Claus, who's keeping track of the naughty and the nice, and you get rewards or punishments. And so it wasn't until I was about 18 years old that I had heard a faithful presentation of the gospel. and looking back now i see of course that the spirit of god really like opened my heart and gave me faith and many of my curious questions growing pains right in the middle of the that that was a right about when this picture was taken really yeah this is a tv guide cover of deceivers And yeah, that's right about 17 years old when I went to church. Not because I was interested in God. I wasn't. I just thought, why would anybody believe in a God? I mean, that's like believing in the tooth fairy. But these are adults. And they had a book. And it was a book about God. And the cute girl that I wanted to go on a date with insisted I go to church with her first and meet her dad. Smart move. Now I'm so grateful. I didn't stay with the girl, but I stayed with the God. that I heard about at that church service. I didn't know him at the time, but it was Chuck Swindoll, who was the pastor. I left with lots of questions, and I started reading books by Josh McDowell, like More Than a Carpenter, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, and things like this, and became persuaded by the evidence and the questions of my own mind and heart that the Bible was true and that it takes more faith to remain in my atheism than it does to believe in an intelligent designer and a moral author of human virtue. And so I kind of started going down that road, and that was 40 years ago. And man, I'm so glad that I did. I'm really grateful. Yeah. A lot of kids grew up in the church, too, and they had a different experience where they were kind of sort of born into church, with their whole lives and then they have a lot of questions when they get out of high school into college yeah and i think that for me i kind of had a little bit of a existential crisis i would say in my 30s of just a lot of these things that you're talking about i remember rob bell kind of blew up a lot of people's faith because he started talking about hell and then the deconstructionist kind of like ran on ran with that and um but for blurry creatures we started this show with uh talking about Bigfoot. And then it really went into a lot of the paranormal stuff in the Bible, the things that we would consider, you know, that don't really fit into church on Sunday. And it just kind of blew up. And so we asked everyone, what are your thoughts on Bigfoot? We've got to ask you. I saw him this morning. All right. Well, then you're a believer. Dude, don't mock me. Don't judge. He's a Franklin. Don't have an evil heart of unbelief. His mechanic saw him. Right here. I have a Franklin. My mechanic said he saw him in 96. Unlike you, I have a picture. There we go. Unlike you. You were prepared. I have a picture. I totally am prepared. Hold on. Took this myself with my phone. There he is. There he is. Look. Zoom in. Zoom in. He lives. He lives. You know these statues aren't cheap. See? You have to mock me and say that. Someone's very invested in their belief in Bigfoot. We get a lot of blurry photos sent to us. Do you get blurry photos? Oh, man. That one's crystal clear. We got that one. Yes. that's what you're afraid of. If you have a choice between Sasquatch in the middle of the night in the woods or that guy, pick Sasquatch. Because this is frightening. We made a couple memes out of you over the years too and we appreciate you wanting to still come into our basement. Apparently some people think I'm threatening. We put you in some blurry shirts and then repurposed some photos. Probably that actually, maybe that photo. I think it was that. Well, the progressive left thinks I'm pretty threatening with me going to public libraries to read children's books about faith, hope, and love. Yeah. Rather than putting on a dress and joining the drag queens to talk about gender fluid theory or something like that. So I'm threatening that way. And then the church apparently has deemed me to be a threat because I had a father-son conversation with my youngest son about the nature of hell. And if we question long-held church traditions on something like this, now remember, it wasn't questioning the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It wasn't questioning the authority of Scripture. It wasn't questioning the gospel itself. It was questioning a secondary, or some would say a tertiary issue, of how does it actually unfold for the wicked? Are they tormented eternally in a place called hell? or are they executed? The Bible seems to indicate that the wages of sin is death. Is capital punishment what is full, final, and forever? And just asking that question really sparked a lot of heat. I mean, I want to ask you, did you expect the blowback or the virality of that discussion when you guys had it? I think I should have expected it, but I just wasn't watching for it when I stepped into it. Now that New Year hype is over and routines are real, you need to trust what you're taking every day. The supplement industry is unregulated and full of corner cutting, so finding a brand that doesn't hide what's inside is critical. Momentus does things the right way. They supply us directly with these supplements. We take them ourselves. The other day, I was feeling a little bit off, took some vitamin D, took a little extra bump to keep the blurry bus rolling, whether it's protein, creatine, omega-3s. You feel the difference in the quality, and we felt it firsthand ourselves. 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That's why you have to trust what's in the supplement. and they do a lot of third-party testing and transparency to give you the confidence what you're putting your body is actually what it says on the bottle and in this low trust world who can you trust momentous is who you can trust right now momentous is offering our listeners up to 35 off your first order with promo code blurry head to live momentous.com use promo code blurry for up to 35 off your first order that's live momentous.com promo code blurry again uh on my show, the Kirk Cameron show, my son James is my co-host. And on Wednesdays, we have these dangerous conversations. So he asks me anything he wants. And I say, I'll be honest with you. So sometimes it's about relationships with girls. Sometimes it's about AI and Elon Musk or whatever. And this time it was, Dad, what happens to somebody if they die and they go to hell? We came out of a discussion about Jesus talking about there being degrees of punishment. So is the heat hotter for Hitler, let's say, than it is for the sweet little old lady who just rejected the gospel? And as we went down the historical road, we discovered that early church fathers, all the way through the Reformation and even modern scholars today, have a lively debate over which view is more biblical and sound and comports with the mercy and justice of God. C.S. Lewis had an interesting take, and you can see a movie like The Lord of the Rings, and there's this idea of the Smeagol becoming Gollum, where he becomes less and less of the person that he was in the beginning, and as he pursues his own lust for power in the ring, that he becomes skinny, emaciated, and a twisted goblin-like creature who hides in the caves. He used the Lord of the Rings reference. Right? Yeah, it gives me a hard time. I was like a bingo card, like Nate's got to work in Lord of the Rings in almost every episode. People are fascinated with these topics, and they can be great objections to faith if we're not willing to engage young people in these difficult questions. So on our show, just to give you a little back story, we've talked about this in different ways. There's so much complication when it comes to Tartarus, Sheol, Abraham's bosom, Paradise. We've talked to a lot of people who have near-death experiences. so you can get as weird as you want here about this topic. And we kind of get a little bit of that flack on the other end of people who are in this space, mainly because we take Genesis 6 literally, that humans and angels came together and created these abominations in the Old Testament. Which is also very, all of the early church fathers, to your point, had this point of view, this angelic incursion. And it wasn't until Justin Africanus and some other, including Augustine, started to say well i don't know maybe yeah maybe it's the line of seth and so then it's too weird we get a lot of flack from sort of like the pockets of christianity that are into this stuff but we're not weird enough or we're too weird you know yeah one or the other and we're trying to kind of we you know we bring on some of the bigger we just had nt right on the show of all of all people talking about some of these things so it it's that's that's a that's a great cool guest to have on the show like the preeminent new testament authority never thought like somebody like that talking about bigfoot would never lead to but it's also controversial of course he comes it's always and it's i think your point's interesting and i think this is what i've been banging the drum about too is that like we we can talk about a lot of things in christendom that aren't like the gospel's primary right but the church loves to fight about the tertiary things whether it be predestination eschatology like pick your pick your poison if you don't believe in a certain way there's almost like a cult-like following or backlash to you having a different take about something that actually isn't salivate, doesn't involve your salvation. In fact, it's just a piece of scripture that has been debated for millennia and still is debated. And the idea of annihilationism versus eternal torment is something that, as you said, the church fathers have wrestled with since the beginning because the scripture is a little ambiguous. Like the flames are eternal. It doesn't say anything about, you know, if Christ offers us eternal life, then what's the opposite of eternal life? Eternal destiny will go with that. But then, like, you kick the hornet's nest, and maybe you knew somewhat what it was going to be. But why do you just resonate it so loudly, I think, with a lot of Christians that you talked about annihilationism versus, like, eternal? Why do you think that was like kicking a hornet's nest? Why do you think that? Well, what I learned is that there are some people who believe that if you question the traditional view of hell, which is eternal conscious torment, they equate that description of hell with scripture itself. And that that is an expression of the character of God. And so if you're questioning the method of God's punishing the wicked, you're questioning the character of the judge. And so therefore, they're going to say you're attacking the character of God. and you can't do that, that would make you a heretic or something else almost as bad. Others are concerned about talking about that subject because, honestly, they don't know enough about it and they want to say, well, it's not a salvation issue, so don't bring that up. Let's just not divide over it. I don't want to get into an argument or fight with somebody. But I think that long-held church tradition is important. That's why we have creeds. That's why we have the Westminster Confession of Faith. We don't want to just be freewheeling with biblical doctrine and be making stuff up, or we could pull another Rob Bell, we could pull something else, and you begin to unravel the gospel itself. So we want the Nicene Creed. We want the Apostles' Creed. However, it's interesting that those two ancient creeds do not discuss the nature of the punishment of the wicked, other than it's eternal. But both of these views we discussed agree that the punishment is eternal. And it's just a difference of, is it a punishment that is eternal, or is it a punishing that is eternal? Is it an experience of punishing forever or is it a punishment that is full, final, and forever? It never changes. Yeah. Yeah. So I think there's different reasons why. But what I think is really important for us to remember is that while the subject of hell may not be a primary issue for Christians who believe the gospel, and we're not going there. So we're really not that concerned about it. It is a primary issue for some of our neighbors who see it as the main obstacle to embracing the God of the Bible. How could I love a God who's going to torment somebody forever for just not believing the gospel? And they don't know how to get around that. And so if you don't know how to answer that, or are you going to just tell them, well, maybe the Bible doesn't really say that, or whatever your workaround is, I think that's not loving your neighbor and it's not helping them. We've got to be able to say, let's open up the word, let's understand, let's understand there's a rigorous debate that's been going on for 2,000 years. And so that view may be correct, and here's why I think it fits with the character of God, but it may not be correct. And here's another view that has also been held by good and godly men. Yeah. We've interviewed people who've been there, like who basically had near-death experiences and said they've been there for 15, 20 minutes or a couple hours. And then we've interviewed John Burke, who talks about like people who've had the opposite experience, gone to heaven, you know. And we've kind of been all over the map. We haven't talked about hell specifically, but it seems like every other guest has thoughts on it. And a lot of our people who bring on our show think that hell is for the devil and his angels. The rebellious angels in Genesis 6 and some of the other ones, that that is really what it's for. Or what it was built for. Yeah. It wasn't intended for humans, but it's going to be the – now it is a place for the wicked. So we have – Which is a view, I mean – And it's interesting. Can I jump in? Yeah, I do. I'm on the format of your show. You're here. All right, good. please sorry if i interrupt my wife and it's it lands different this is your time okay this is your time down here thanks bro we all have beards so we can do this yeah just like the goonies so it is interesting when we talk about hell and i want to say what which hell are you talking about are you talking about gehenna are you talking about hades yeah are you talking about sheol or are you talking about like a fire right yeah or tartarus as as you mentioned because there's all these different hebrew and greek words and over the years we've sort of just collapsed them all into one english word hell but then we find out that the death and hell is thrown into the lake of fire so is hell thrown into hell how does hell consume and destroy hell or is anything consumed at all or is it preserved alive forever for it to be constantly destroyed but never destroyed right so it really starts to squeezing our brain like in a vice to try to understand these things I even heard Eric Metaxas, a friend who wrote some pretty great books, like a biography of Bonhoeffer and Letters to the Church recently. And his comment was, well, you know, when it says eternal fire, he says that word eternity, ionios, if I'm pronouncing my Greek correctly. He said meaning eternal is really something different than a really, really long time. because eternity exists outside of time. So it's not a really, really long time. It's outside of time where God is. And so we can't even imagine what that is. Now, there's a healthy debate that says Eric's mistaken in that understanding based on the Greek and how it's used in other passages that it does refer to something temporal that would be everlasting and it would be ages and ages and ages of time and endure forever. but certainly these are fascinating topics stuff we shouldn't divide over yeah but things that need to be talked about yeah so that we can reach the lost when they have questions i think maybe the question probably hasn't been talked about much is when we did our near-death experience episodes it seemed like the people who were doing the research were having bigger questions about god what do you think the point of life is to go from the beginning and then talk about the end i I think sometimes we don't talk about why we're here. It's just we always focus on the end. Do you have your fire insurance? We got to get out of here. This place is about to burn up. You don't want to go to hell, and you don't want to stay here. So that's kind of like escapism is sort of a big sort of theme in the church. But why do you think we're here? What do you think this is all about? Oh, man. I'm just a 1980s sitcom kid. Yeah. What's your thought? I mean, you know. Yeah. I go to the scriptures. The only place I know to go find that out. You know, Marty McFly had to get into the DeLorean. Yeah, he did. To get to the future. That's right. But the future is here now. That's right. Especially when it comes to finding a doctor. Who do I ask, Luke? Well, ZocDoc is what you can ask today. It's a free app and website that helps you find and book high quality in-network doctors so you can find someone that you love. We're talking about booking in-network appointments with more than 150,000 providers across all 50 states. So dermatology, you want to take care of that rash? Yeah. Dentistry, primary care, eye care, or more than 200-plus specialties are offered on ZocDoc, and you can search by specialty symptom and build a care team that's right for you. Want to see your doctor in person? Like the old days? Absolutely. Prefer a video visit, Nate? Yeah. You can do that from your phone. That's right. No phone calls, no ancient waiting lines, and no decoding the insurance ruins, Luke. You're trying to figure this out. ZocDoc's got you taken care of. You know, Nate, you used that to find, you know, a dentist real quick. We had that tooth problem right around the corner from your house. It was a network, and you got taken care of right away. What was your impression of ZocDoc? Easy to use? Easy to use. You get to see real-time availability and book right away instead of calling offices. You did that. You got your tooth taken care of. We won't talk about that rash. You're sharing the blurry secrets of the rash, but we're working on that. If you are out there looking for a doc and you don't know what to do, hit up ZocDoc. Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to ZocDoc.com slash blurry to find and instantly book a doctor you love today. That's ZocDoc.com slash blurry. Z-O-C-D-O-C.com slash blurry. Thanks, ZocDoc, for sponsoring this message. I think that we're here not just to get to heaven. I think that we're here, according to scriptures, because God is writing a story. And it's the story of redemptive history. Yeah. And he is putting on display the beauty and the majesty and the power and authority and dominion of his son, Jesus Christ. And we get to be a part of it. Yeah. We're some, I believe, somewhere in the middle of that story. and the author has written the greatest story ever and we get to play one role in some middle chapter and this is all heading somewhere glorious and I'm so excited to be here at this very moment. Not just because I was born in the 1980s, not just because I'm on Blurry Creatures with you guys, but because there is a king who is seated on his throne and in the spiritual realm, according to Ephesians, I have been seated together with him in the heavenly places and he is ruling and reigning over the nations right now. And that I'm just a guy, but I get to participate in his rule and judgment of nations and of angels. Yeah, yeah. And I think, oh my gosh, no demon, no angel has got anything on you or on me because we rule and judge together with the lord of the universe yeah and i just think wow what what a privilege to partner with christ in the advance of what is true and beautiful and good and the seeking and the saving of the lost i don't know how the rest of the story uh goes in my chapter but however it goes i trust the author well a big part of knowing where you're going is where you come from and i think that you know we ask a lot of those bigger questions like you've said you know hell is kind of condensed into one word in the english language but if you pull back and you explore some of these even angels or demons right there's there's classes of those and there's different types of those and like have we found and there's different types of everything sasquatch when you name it it's like it just gets a little bit more complex so you're willing to have this conversation and the church sort of doesn't want to have this conversation and they sort of say they probably don't even consume the content and just throw the arrows before they even know what you're saying. Where are you now? And, like, have you sort of – are you still talking about it in the sense of, I don't know what I fully think about it? About Sasquatch or about hell? Hell. Well done. Well done, Kirk. You're still thinking about Sasquatch. I'm reading the room. I know where I am. You'll have thoughts maybe in a couple episodes if you dive back into the old catalog. So where am I withheld? Yeah. After a two and a half hour round table, which, by the way, yesterday my son and I did kind of a walk back through the conversation because many people were like, that was powerful, but I'm having trouble processing. It was just four scholars using really big words and debating this stuff. I left humbled. I left with the realization that I don't know as much about either side of this debate as I thought I did. Yeah. I left with such admiration for these guys to be able to disagree so sharply and yet demonstrate brotherly love and respect. There was an intellectual hospitality among four intellectual heavyweights that was impressive to the point where I'm hoping people will watch that debate and go, look at how they disagree. I want to be able to disagree with people like that because, you know what, they're not trying to win a debate at the expense of a friend. or an opportunity for a relationship. They want to win the person over, not only with their words, but with the way that they treat them. And I love that. And the two views for those listening are annihilationism, right? Or conditional immortality, to be even a little bit more specific. And then the traditional view is just eternal conscious torment, right? Eternal conscious torment or eternal conscious punishment is kind of the preferred phrase now, and there's reasons for that. Yeah. I mean, and then there's like in the Rob Bell camp, there's the whole like universalism. Universalism, this idea that hell is ultimately no one's going to be suffering this fate that love is going to win and everyone who has rejected is going to come to reconciliation with God. There's a purgatorial view of the afterlife that you also find where your sins are purged over time. And so there's all these interesting takes. And there's Bible verses that can support these ideas. And so that's why the debate rages on, right? That's right. That's right. There are enough notes in the Bible to play any song. Right. Yeah. So we have to be careful and not cherry pick. And that's what I loved about Hellgate. Yeah. That's what I called the debate. Hellgate, right? It's a scandalous topic. Like Watergate, Russiangate. It's Hellgate. And we didn't want to mute any verses. We wanted to ask all the tough questions and we wanted to be fair. And that's one of the things I loved about these guys. They'd say, you know what, if you're going to take that verse, I would say that that clearly leans in your favor, not mine. He's I would be foolish to suggest otherwise. It appears on the face of it that that's that's a point on the board for you guys. However, when we come over here, there's all these points over here. And so that why I switched my view so my hope is that I can have more conversations like this You guys want to talk about Bigfoot I want to talk about the nature of hell. You don't want to talk about Bigfoot? Well, no. Not today. Not today. I mean, we started there. We sprinkle it in from time to time. But we actually talk more about angels and the... The spiritual realm. The spiritual realm. The unseen realm. And there's a lot of UFO stuff happening now. And people are like, is that? There's some new documentaries coming out. The Age of Disclosure, I think, is it called. And Spielberg's got a, Bruckheimer's got something coming out. I saw some trailers that looked very interesting. There's also very, very controversial, divisive in Christian spaces. Because it's... In what spaces? In Christian spaces, especially. Christians? They label, yeah. Christians are divisive? Ah, yeah. Shocker, right? Yeah. How many denominations do we have now? I mean, I'm a Protestant. I'm all for, you know, for a schism. But, you know, we fractured so much that we just seemed to start a new denomination over, you know, what flavor of Doritos we want to eat. Yeah. So let's go back to the beginning. So humans were immortal in the beginning, in the garden. Is that something that all Christians believe in? No. Okay. No, I don't think you can make it. They eat from the tree of life, then they stay immortal, right? well and what do we lose in the fall to like for death to enter yeah so yeah again you're not talking to a scholar you're talking to hey you're talking to mike siever no we're talking i am talking but i love i think i think one of the foundational questions we have to ask if we want to understand this idea of hell being an eternal punishment for the for the wicked is were you taught that the human being has an eternal soul as part of the standard equipment. Like, you don't need the luxury model. You have a soul that is going to live eternally somewhere, either in heaven or in hell, because that's the part of you that lives forever. I've heard... Uh-oh. Hey, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. There was a picture right there. We lost young Kirk. And I would say that, and so did all four scholars on both sides of the debate, they acknowledged that that is alien to the Bible. This idea that human beings are naturally immortal. In fact, the Bible says that God alone is immortal. And that he grants immortality as a gift to those who receive the gospel. life and immortality has been brought to light by Christ and that the wages of sin is death but the gift of the gift of God is eternal life so this idea of eternal living forever is really not something that's inherent to the human soul and when we read in Genesis that they had access to the tree of life and then they were exiled from the garden of Eden and God said this is so that they will no longer take hold of the tree of life and live forever. Yeah. Yeah. Death enters the world, right? Yeah. And be permanently altered and there's no way to redeem a creature. So, again, we have to be careful once we start following our intuition or logic or philosophy about these things because we can get into trouble. The thought then would be that perhaps God does not want humanity to be able to live forever in a fallen state. Yeah. Well, he says that too. He ends up shortening the lifespans. He goes, not live more than 120 years. It's not because of the amount of wickedness. So we see it sort of cascade down the ages. I think that's a really interesting point. I think sometimes we have these presuppositions that we carry. Yeah, I did. Yeah. We can't find a basis for in Scripture. It's sort of just, it's like cultural, if you will, Christian cultural. Yeah, or pagan cultural, which is the case within the early church, I learned, that the one who really popularized the traditional view of hell was St. Augustine. In around the 4th century, I believe that it is. So that's 500 years into the church. But earlier than that, you have church fathers who believe that there was a condition for immortality. And the condition was believing the gospel. That's how you get eternal life. And this idea that the soul was just eternal was actually an idea from Plato and Greek philosophy. And because Augustine was classically trained, he had lots of Greek education and understood the soul that way, and that was the lens through which he read the scriptures, I believe. And today, I think we import some of that stuff without even realizing it. I know that I did. Maybe some would say, no, we're starting with the scriptures, not with presuppositions, But that's why I had the debate. Now, we spend a lot of time questioning narratives, figuring out where things come from. But if you ever want to trace where your great meat comes from, Luke. Good ranchers. Our friends at Good Ranchers are the ones that are doing that. For over 250 years, ranchers have worked tirelessly to feed America. Yeah. Through droughts, wars, recessions, pandemics, changing markets, et cetera. And Good Ranchers is carrying on that legacy. 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I know that supporting Good Ranchers supports American ranchers and farmers here, and I tell all my friends, including you. We don't like mystery meat here. Support a company that's committed to honoring America and America's past, present, and future. Visit GoodRanchers.com today. When you subscribe, you'll save up to $500 a year. Plus, if you use code BLURRY, you'll get an additional $25 off your first order. That's code BLURRY for extra $25 off your first order. On top of the $500, you'll save every year just for subscribing. GoodRanchers.com. American meat delivered. Do you think angels have a different, are they immortal? Do they have to eat from a tree of life, too? What do you think about how that works? I don't think I've got that figured out. I don't really know. I don't remember angels eating from the tree of life. I'm just wondering because it's like I think like Luke said, you know, and there's these verses that say you'll die like men as well. So there's punishment for them. And I think that kind of works into the hell conversation of the angels and Satan because Satan is an angel, right? He's going to be destroyed. I mean, most Christians would believe that there's a final battle between. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. He came to crush the serpent's head. And I believe that that's an objective certainty. And I think that we are subjectively experiencing the ramifications of that now. So at the crucifixion and the resurrection, Satan lost. Yeah. I'm just wondering if the hell, sort of our thoughts of hell could be kind of some of these verses in the Bible. they relegated to Satan and we kind of say, well, humans go there. Yeah, and that was one of the debates around the round table. It was like, well, we do see that the devil and his angels, was it the beast and the false prophet, the devil and his angels, I'd have to look it up. It's in Revelation 14 and 20, that they were the ones that were consigned to the lake of fire where their torment is everlasting, but doesn't specifically say that the same fate is there for people. and then of course those who say that devil the hell was not made for people but for the devil and his angels that so there's a separation there between the punishment of people and the punishment of the devil and his angels um but you could also say well but it's the same location and so why wouldn't the result be the same for both yeah and the debate rages on right yeah and we all have kids and we all have friends and so people that aren't like kids ask hard questions about these they do they ask the best questions yeah yeah there's a show about that isn't it and you kind You alluded to the fact that it's hard to explain this to somebody who doesn't have any faith or doesn't necessarily understand the story very well. How do you respond to those questions is a big deal for a lot of people. Yeah, and I think we do ourselves a disservice if we shut down kids' questions. We live in a day and age where questions are welcomed on the Internet, and Siri will answer all of your questions. Sure. And if we don't answer questions as leaders within the church, if we don't answer questions as parents and grandparents, somebody else will give our kids the wrong answers. And so we've got to educate ourselves. And if we're not sure the answers to a question, we've got to open the word of God if it's something having to do with with demons or angels or heaven or hell or God and talk to people who have studied these things. Yeah. So that's what I want to do is I want to stay curious. I want to be a good student, and I want to be faithful to speak the truth in love, even if I catch hell for it. Kirk, I want to ask you what this is, because I think people forget they have this idea, especially in this postmodern thing. There's like this – people want Jesus, but they don't want hell associated with it. And I think they'll forget that Jesus spoke the most about hell in Scripture, right? It was he talked about it the most of anyone in Scripture. He talked about Gehenna and hell and these places. It's like, why do you think folks, maybe it's our non-believing neighbors you talked about, or even some of our Christian friends have such a hard time justifying the goodness of God with the realities of hell? Yeah. When Christ himself spoke about it more than anyone, right? Right, right. But I think that there's perhaps a philosophical disconnect saying, well, but God is love. He's a God of love and kindness and forgiveness, and this is gentle Jesus, meek and mild. He's also the one that said, don't fear man who can kill your body and then do no more, but fear God who can destroy both your body and soul in hell. I tell you, fear him. So we've got to help people understand that God is just and he is merciful and that justice and that mercy came together at the cross. If I don't understand that I've committed a crime, it's not going to make any sense to me if you go tell me that you just paid my bail. Or you're like, bro, you probably got the wrong guy. What do you mean you paid my bail? I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't break the law. But if you show me the video footage from the security cam like, oh my gosh, I did. I can't believe it. I'm not aware. Then I'm going to appreciate the sacrifice that you made to pay my bail or my fine and I'm going to be grateful. And I think with unbelievers they're often hearing about the love of God the mercy of God, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross how he paid for your sins and they're like, I'm a good person I'm a really good person I didn't really do anything that bad there's a lot of church people who are total hypocrites that are worse than me and so I don't think I need that and then the gospel doesn't make sense to them and that's why I appreciate guys like Ray Comfort, my friend and others who faithfully teach about sin, about judgment and about hell. Yeah. Because when you understand the seriousness of the crime and the direness of the punishment, then you can begin to appreciate the value of the cure, the gospel. Yeah. And we've noticed that just talking about these things has given people who've been in church a lot of their, most of their life will email us, like, I've been in church my whole life and I finally understand some of these things and I'm reading more than ever and I'm coming back to my faith. Yeah. It's interesting, and I think there's two parts here. From my understanding on the outside, you're trying to get Christians to have meaningful conversations without being so divisive, and also to be able to present these things to our unsaved friends and children in a way that doesn't cause them to walk away from their faith forever. Yeah, that's exactly right. And if it's okay, I'd like to mention my friends over at Brave Books. We've done a couple ads with them, too, as well. Children, one of the things that I have loved about working with Brave Books is that this is a doctor who had a successful eye doctor business who saw what his kids were reading in school at the library, freaked out, and he said, I'm going to write children's books. And so we began partnering together about books that teach kids to love God, that teach kindness, that teach about identity from God's perspective in this identity crisis that our children are having. Boys think they're girls. Girls think they're boys and everything else about the sacredness of life. And when we go into the public square and begin to move the needle with kids in public libraries, the ghosts and goblins and demons and werewolves all start to shriek because you're disrupting their mojo. They want to indoctrinate the kids. And the Purple Hair Platoon wants to dominate with their theology and orthodoxy. And they don't want you to rock the boat. And Brave Books has just continued to do that. So three years ago, I was locked out of public libraries. Yeah. Last year, I was invited to the Library of Congress by the Trump administration to read these books of virtue because they understand, the cabinet understands, that without Christian virtues, our ship is sunk. Yeah. because the whole experiment of freedom the land of the free only works when you have a love for god and a love for your neighbor and you're going to do the right thing without the gestapo coming down on you yeah and so that i really appreciate them so thank you we spoke to uh dr frank turk this week as well he's written for for brave he was talking a lot of lines of the same thing yeah we got to play the long game with the kids and and that's why i'm glad frank turk and other brave books, authors, are getting involved because that's what the left does. They play the long game. It's not just elect a guy to be president or send your kids to Awana or... No, play the 50-year game. Play the 100-year game. That's what China's doing. 100%. Economically. And that's what the Marxists are doing socially is you've got to infiltrate all the different things. like education and economics and science and philosophy and the church and the family. That's why we're experiencing the attack on all fronts, even to the children. Because, as Hitler said, I don't care about adults that disagree with me. In 20 years, you guys are going to be gone. I've got your kids in my schools. And in 40 years, this is the only world they'll have ever known. We've got to play the long game. And the kids are assaulted by so much more than we were in the 80s. Yeah. We had to pick up a book to figure out what was coming on TV. I mean, yeah. There's only 10 channels, maybe. Let's talk about the world, though, in light of this hell conversation. Why do you think even nonbelievers have such a visceral reaction? People who don't believe in God will draw a line in the sand at hell when they don't even have a faith framework for it, right? It's a visceral thing. It's the unforgivable belief. It's like, what do you think is going on there? Is this a spiritual thing? Is this because even written in all of us is this idea that there's consequences for our actions or results? I think so. I think C.S. Lewis points that out. There's sort of an unwritten code of conduct that is inscribed in our heart and we know it. This intuition about justice and morality and rightness and the oughtness of things. You ought not to steal my wallet and kill me. You shouldn't do that. That's bad. That's evil. And so even when someone pretends that there's no God, the scriptures say that the law of God is written inside of them, in the form of their conscience, and they can see the things that demonstrate clearly that there is a powerful, eternal God all around them. I think it's why criminals have a really hard time finding policemen. well it's not because they can't it's because they don't want to right i mean they're going to be held to account and so it's really easy to just sort of um say as an atheist well god doesn't i can't find him where's the evidence i can't find him and hell that's just and and they hope that hell is just such a wicked doctrine that it indicts god as a moral monster and therefore they can write him off. But deep within their heart, and I speak as a former atheist, there's no basis for treating people. Well, if you want to say that good is objectively better than evil, you have to believe in God. You can say it produces better results. You can say I like it better or whatever. But if you want to say that there is a good and bad and there is a right and wrong you you've got to borrow from a christian worldview and if there is a good god and he ought to punish evil sinners like people like hitler and uh jeffrey epstein and other people you've got to believe in the justice of god and and according to the scriptures god's revelation he has just punishment for the wicked and it's called hell do you think this is a like an overt agenda of the darkness is to sort of erase or to push the idea of hell, the doctrine of hell, as much as it is to remove the idea that there is an accuser, there's an enemy of our soul. Do you think this is part of the agenda? If you talk about spiritual warfare, is to even infiltrating the church is to remove the idea that there is a hell, that there is a consequence, that there is because that's really the Rob Bell thing in and of itself is saying like, eh, everyone gets there. You don't really have to. And Jesus is like, well, I am the way. I'm the narrow gate. I am the way, the truth, and the love. The only one gets to the Father except through me is a much different message than, well, everybody goes. No big deal. Everybody gets forgiven. It's a loving God. But I think that's a very dangerous doctrine when you hold it up to the scripture. There's no way. What do you think of that? Well, I mean, having wrestled with it since I was young, it is sort of this generation of it feels like a lot of people haven't been told no and they're they're rebelling against any kind of authoritarian yeah consequence but um i do think that they have they have some good arguments like god's going to save everyone every knee shall bow every tongue shall confess what does that what does that mean you know but ultimately i think when you get deeper into the the woods like we have is way more complex and to just there are no easy answers we found it just gets a little bit more difficult but i don't know i i definitely believe like from the people we've interviewed and the experiences they've had that there are consequences and i was told no a lot as a kid so i don't have a problem with it but i can tell a lot of people do in our culture i think that's a lot of what the left panders to do whatever you want you know there's no there's no rule i think there's also this weird like moral superiority even to christian christianity to the bible that people would take and deconstruct we talk about deconstructionists a lot like our friends people that we know they've deconstructed wouldn't the the statements of this that like my jesus would never do this would never would never sanction genocide in the holy land would never send someone to hell like a loving god wouldn't do that and so i can't put my faith in that and they kind of reconstruct this out of deconstructing they lose their faith completely or they reconstruct some sort of faith that like honestly says that i'm more moral and just than god because i i can see the default in what god has done which is a if you think about it is a really wild thing to do but it's it's supported by you know by some crazy like i think some really demonic thinking because people want to throw out the justice of god we're talking about already in favor of the love of god But God is, the dual natures of God is he's all loving and he is all just. But we don't want to talk about this part of it. We just want, we want them. Because that enables us to do whatever we want. There are no, there are no guardrails. There's no, there's no pick up your cross daily. There's no die to yourself, right? It's kind of just do what you want to do and make yourself happy. I mean, I was probably 35 when I realized the church struggled with different atonement theories over the, over the church history. I didn't know that. I just thought penal substitutionary atonement was the only Christian gospel that God sends his son to satisfy his own wrath. There's not these other ideas of Christus Victor and some of these other atonement theories of what's going on. I would say now, if someone asks me, what is this all about? I'd say, God has a family, and he wants you to be a part of it. He made it possible through his son to get back into the family. And I don't think I really understood until doing the show just how important Jesus is in the family. And it's challenged some of my ideas of the Trinity. And it's really a father-son relationship beyond. And that is really the gift. The gift is to go back into the family. And I think that I was confused a lot as a Christian kid of what is this? What are we really being invited to? I want to tell you a quick story about the Seabour family that you said many people wanted to be a part of. Yes. I met a young man through the Make-A-Wish Foundation who had a heart defect. And he didn't have a family like the Seavers, but he always wanted to be one of the Seaver brothers. And his wish was to come and meet Ben, my little brother, on the show. Here he is right here. And it was like he wanted to be Ben or meet Ben. And so he came down and we met. And we're still friends today. He's like 40 years old now. He got a pig valve in his heart. And now he's a cardiologist, believe it or not. And I also, I met a guy who was from China and he got talking with me and told me that there were millions of people in China that got to watch Growing Pains. And to them, they couldn't believe it because the whole fabric of the Chinese culture had been destroyed by the Chinese Communist Party. It wasn't like traditional Chinese culture anymore. It was now allegiance to the state is the only thing that matters. and he said people would turn one another in and there's so many people and not enough food and so many pressures that there was no allegiance there was no loyalty even among family members in many cases and that the only way you could get more food would be to turn your own brother in or to turn your parent in he's like this is how we grew up and it's just allegiance to the state is everything and this is why we're so blessed to live in a place like the United States of America it's not perfect and we need to get back to our ideals but there's still so much good here and and he said your family on growing pains it was like heaven on earth to us we couldn't believe that people loved each other like that and they had those kinds of relationships and so to us to come to america was just a dream come true and it was almost unbelievable that's such a cool like that's awesome i think it's hard you know to be a part of just pop culture and just going through the celebrity machine and coming out the other side, but not seeing the lasting effects of just what you were doing was very valuable and important to people. Because, you know, when people think you're a celebrity, they treat you different. Your life's a little bit crazy. You can't have normal friendships. It's hard. It's difficult. You don't trust people. But to see the lasting effects of what you did, I think that's just a really cool thing. I think it's important. Sometimes, you know, people treat me bad when they don't like me. oh, I saw you're the guy, the Christian guy. And I saw, like, you're an idiot. And then there's other times it really works in my favor. Like this morning, I went for a hike up in the hills out near Eagleville. I actually got there really early with my son-in-law. We went for a hike. The park wasn't open yet. And so we just parked on the side of the road and just jumped the fence. And we went for a hike. By the time I came back, the rangers were there with their walkie-talkies. And he's like, what are you doing? And I was like, you know, guilty. I'm sorry. you know like i'm from california i thought maybe that would get me off the hook right like i don't know it's the land of fruits and nuts i don't know what i'm doing right and and i said no it's me it's kirk cameron he's like kirk cameron from growing pains i'm like yeah i said i'm so sorry what did i do and he's like well you can't do that this is you know this is private and i was like okay i'm so sorry and he let me off the hook so it's really great sometimes the face just it works in my favor. Well, I mean, and back to the family thing, I think that's an important part of what we found here on this show is that like when you're not a part of the family, where do you go? You know, we're kind of caught between heaven and hell, kind of in the middle. We're experiencing a little bit of both. And it seems like we are on this test of are we going to be loyal sons and daughters in heaven, you know? And I think that's a big part of what this is, you know? It seems to be when you interview people who've gone to one or the other you know they've had a near-death experience they go to hell for a while they come back and they're totally different or they've gone to heaven they come back they're totally different and you interview them and it's like man what do you have that i don't because you seem to have this life you seem to have this understanding that the rest of us don't well so scripture says the vapor i think there's like i think what times we forget that we get caught up in what we do every day and our jobs and our menial lives and we forget That like this life, the Bible says this is a vapor. It's quick. And there's a terminus to all. And I think that's the conversation there. It's like, what happens when we die, right? Like what happens when you die when you don't believe? You don't accept the free gift that Christ offers. And yeah, that's a hard thing. People don't want to talk about it. Because I think people don't, most people don't really want to talk about death. They don't want to face their own death. Yeah. You know, either. Because it's easier to kind of push that here and be like, I'll deal with it when I get there. But it comes fast, you know, it's. Man. Yeah. How old are you? 43. i'll be 44 45 45 most of my whole life i i was always the young guy in the room yeah and and now i'm the old guy in the room yeah i'm a grandfather oh congratulations children grandpa kirk with my wife yeah six kids one wife and one granddaughter and um you're right it it does but i'm beginning to shift my view i love life i don't want to miss out on one second of life i really don't want to die. But like Jesus said, he who believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live. And he who believes in me shall never die. And I want to get to that place where I really am able to say, you know, if I just dropped over right now, I'm good to go. I'm not there yet. I don't say that to sort of evoke a reaction in somebody. I'm just being honest that I love my wife, my children. I I look forward every night, I say only eight hours till coffee in the morning. I get excited about every sunrise and every sunset. And I want to get more and more disinterested in hanging on to this life, which is so cool, and more and more excited about moving in to the next one. Because that's how it should be. It's what I believe. And yet, I guess it's just because this is all I know, that it's hard to let go of such things. But I think that's where God and his genius begins to wean us off of this world as we age. And as our, I got to wear glasses. I can't, everything's a little blurry for me now if I don't wear these things. But you know what? My sight is going to be better than 2020 in heaven as I see the face of Jesus. And it's going to be awesome. So I'm trying to shift my perspective. It's incredible when you actually interview all those people that have been there and had a split second. Do you think all of them have really been there? Are some of these guys just BSing you guys? We talked to John Burke, which I think is – he's got a real interesting story. He's maybe one of the leading experts on NDEs. He's compiled more than like 1,500 stories. Yeah. And what he does is more like a scientist is he kind of breaks them down and like Venn diagrams them, right? He's saying, so if 65% of people have this experience and 45% have this, and you start saying, well, we can say maybe with some degree of certainty that this is a real experience. And people ask him that. And so he tells a few stories of like a woman that left her body, went to heaven and came back and no one believed her. And she's like, well, look at the top. There a red sticker on the upside of that fan You can see from here It on the top side of that fan here in this hospital room And then orderly came in and was like okay let look got up and there a little red sticker on that story from lee strobel he yeah well lee and john are close yeah so we so you have to see his book yeah that's one thing all right i got a story this lee put this in his book it's in one of the miracles in his book about the supernatural check this out this freaked me out because i'm generally skeptical about this kind of stuff you know i mean i didn't say yeah i just you could just tell by looking at me um but my sister i hope i get this you're gonna have a sasquatch i hope i get the story right i think it's gonna happen this morning don't you believe me you don't you doubt her you had a real one see you doubt still so my sister was pregnant and she realized that she was going to lose her child and she uh called my mom and said mom i'm miscarrying this this this is is not going to result in a birth. And she said, it's going to be okay, sweetheart. She says, I'm going to the doctor's office and they're going to take care of everything. And she said, before they let you have any kind of a DNC, which is when they sort of just make sure that everything is voided and everything is fine, make sure they give you an ultrasound first. And she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, mom, I'm fine, fine, fine. She's like, no, no, no, promise me you'll do that. And she said, okay, I'll promise you. So she goes there. They go to give her a DNC. she says i need to have an ultrasound first like yeah yeah we'll do that while we're doing it inside the thing she says no i need to have this first then we do and so they said okay and they're doing the ultrasound and all of a sudden they say oh my gosh you have a baby inside of there with a heartbeat and she's like what are you some sort of sicko are you some sort of cruel doctor I just passed my child in the toilet in my bathroom at home. I had a miscarriage. And they're like, well, apparently you were pregnant with twins. You passed one of them. The other one is still there. And it's fine. She was like, oh, my gosh. So the story gets even better. She gives birth to this child, which is my niece, Reese. And when Reese was four years old, she was in her bedroom one night and she asked her mom, my sister, Mommy, did I have a sister? And my sister goes, what did you say? Mommy, did I ever have a sister? And she's like, why do you ask me, Reese? She goes, because there's a little girl that comes to me in my dreams at night and she wants to play dolls with me. And she tells me that she's my sister. And my sister was just like, what is going on? Yeah. Right? And so crazy story like that. And Lee Strobel put that in his book just about supernatural, just about things. I don't know how to explain that. But I think, wow, did God give my niece a little window into a sister in heaven? What did God tell your mom, too? I mean. I don't know. I mean, because she was adamant. And that's such a, those are the kinds of stories that, they're super cool stories. A lot of people, that's when people get emotional on the show. A lot of tears come out on the show and moments like that. When it just kind of hits home and you kind of realize, and when I was doing research for your show, just to come back to the family thing, I think when I was thinking about it all, I'm like, I don't think it's really about hell as much as I don't think that most people believe that God loves them. I really think that's the biggest problem. They don't think God loves them. So they can latch on to, well, then he's going to give it to those people. And I'm still working my way to God. I'm going to get in. I'm going to get on this good side. You know what I'm saying? I think that's a big problem because of our view of family, depending on our father. What is our view of a good dad? And I think the story is miraculous, too, in light of our conversation about hell. It just reinforces that God is so kind. The dual nature of God, right? I mean, the miracles is God intervening in reality, above natural, supernatural. And he's having this intervention out of his kindness. He doesn't have to do that, do any of that, because God is love and is just. But I've been living in this crazy season where I'm just constantly impressed by how kind God is. Like, he just doesn't, it's his nature to be kind. And it manifests for a lot of people. A lot of people will listen and be like, well, I didn't get the miracle. So how is God kind? God didn't do that. He didn't do that for me. He didn't answer the prayers the way I needed him to. He took my love going too early with cancer. Whatever it is, right? Yeah, and that's understandable why they're just, they're confused or they're heartbroken. Yeah. Or they feel disillusioned because that's not what they were told that God would do. Yeah. And all the more reason why hell doesn't make sense for some people is that if God is a God of love, how could he create a place called hell? And that's why I think my son asked me the question. He wants to understand it too. How old is he? 22. Yeah, 22 years old. The story that is wrapped into this is that God humbled himself and was born as a human into a manger. So he provided, instead of all of us getting what we deserve as being sons of Adam, And we get a chance because God humbled himself into a man. I think the church has gotten away from preaching the truth about the holiness of God and the depravity of human beings. And we want to get into this sort of like, let's give God a PR makeover and just make him more about love. I agree with you. Many people may not think that God loves them because they're not worthy. And they're not. But God loves unworthy people. That's what grace is all about. we're made in his image but we've turned away in rebellion when they've accepted him they still don't they struggle they struggle with believing that god could love them still like it's like am i actually saved am i actually in the family i don't know yeah you know did i lose my face somewhere i said some some things to my wife earlier before i left and i i've done some horrible things in my life we don't really believe that we're saved i guess or love we're back in the family go ahead because i i think that grace truly is amazing yeah why why would God continue to love us when I continue to rebel against him? And the reason he does is because Christ died on the cross. And if we are found in Christ, everything changes. And that's the family you talked about. When we're in Christ and now we're with him and he's our father and God loves us. Maybe I don't want to put the words in your mouth. Yeah, I was going somewhere. I forgot. Isn't it that we've lost the reverence for the holiness and the fear of God? Yes, I think we've lost an understanding of the holiness of God, and we've lost an understanding of the depravity of sin. A lot of people like to talk about the demonic realm, and they love to talk about spiritual warfare. And I think that's a super fascinating topic. I'd love to do a deep dive roundtable about that, too. What I don't like when people do is when people use demons as a patsy to take responsibility off themselves for the fact that they're just an unfaithful, disloyal husband. For example, somebody says, he just can't stop looking at pornography and it's really hurting his marriage. This is proof positive that the devil is attacking him and that the devil is sort of making him do this because he's obviously doing such important things for the kingdom that he's become a target for the devil and his angels. rather than saying, no, bro, you're just being unfaithful to your wife. Like you lost your man card. You need to go into the upper room, go into the secret prayer closet, and you need to do business with the father and get that back and not just blame this on spiritual warfare. I think that the human heart is, like the Bible says, deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. I don't think demons have anything on human beings with regard to how wicked and evil we can be. And so how should a God of love and mercy and grace who has offered his son deal with people who in their pride want to continue to reject that offer of pardon and mercy and grace and welcoming back into the family? And again, that's where we kind of come back around to hell. you know i think that we've kind of had to have some of those discussions because everything can be a demon but it's not nothing is a demon it's not everything is a demon so it's a it's a nuance and you have to kind of talk about i think both can be true i think some people there are like obviously there are different spirits with different names they seem to have a personality and they seem to kind of attract towards so i think if you attract a thing it can sort of pour gasoline on the fire but ultimately i think yeah you have personal responsibility it doesn't absolve view yeah no because you but i find that i find that people say like i've got i you know i've got a there's a spirit of alcoholism out there that's coming after me um and then i want to say well wait a minute or are you a drunk right i mean there's a spirit of pornography out there that's coming after me or am i say or he's like wait no you're you're people i think people want to be absolved of agency and responsibility when when and that's i agree that's an easy one there's there's a part we play. But sometimes, you know, there are traumas associated when people obviously, people get sexually abused, and they become abusers. And so, what is that? And you talk about the ancient gods and what they were doing, and certain types of sexual abuse and rituals. I mean, there is spiritual laws in that realm, and they know how to break them. I mean, obviously, the news that just broke this week, with all the darkness of all the people running the world. But see, I think, you know, I think that all of the evil that is in the world today, including what's going on with the three million pages coming out of the Epstein files and what's going on with Hitler or anything else, can be explained without even getting into demons and spiritual laws of ancient gods. I mean, maybe, but I think we can explain it coming out of the human heart. Jesus talked about the wickedness of the heart and all that is stored up in the heart of murder and rape and adultery and lying and stealing and all of that when he becomes an exorcist though what do you do with those stories when who becomes an exorcist Jesus when he's casting demons yes yes absolutely and the demons he threw into the pigs and they go off the cliff yes but I'm saying today I find people really fascinated with spiritual warfare and almost using it conveniently to absolve themselves of some of the responsibility and to explain away the wickedness of human beings' hearts. And I keep coming back as a Christian to the resounding chorus in Scripture that says, Jesus Christ has defeated the powers of darkness and he has brought them to an open shame, publicly humiliating the forces of evil and wickedness, crushing the serpent's head. He said, all authority, both in heaven and on earth, has been given to me. And I think if all authority has been given to Jesus Christ, both in heaven and on earth, what is their remainder for Satan and his demons? I think zero. All was given to him, and of the increase of his government and of his peace, there shall be no end. So I look at all of that as the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings seated with him in the heavenly places. And I go, I don't spend time worrying about skinwalkers or creepy, crawly, shadowy figures. Maybe. Blurry creatures. I don't know. Blurry. but I'm like kryptonite to them because he who is in me is greater than he who is in the world and as far as I'm concerned I'm on the winning side and I've got the armor of God on and I think Satan was delivered the death blow at the cross and the resurrection and he's slinking off to the lake of fire and I'm excited to continue to advance the kingdom with joy and with power. That's my mindset every day when I wake up. And for you, I imagine this. You take a ton of heat, right? You've been in for a long time. I'm like a fine wine, baby. I just keep getting better with age. I think a long time. I think for us, though, a lot of people come to our shows because they've experienced something they can't explain. They saw a UFO hover over their house. They've had a Bigfoot encounter. They lived in a haunted house. They prayed over the house. Nothing happened. You know what I'm saying? They had a struggle that they couldn't just – it didn't just like – It didn't just leave. Yes. And they didn't know what to do. And then they try to talk to people, and they get a little bit of like, just have some faith. Yeah. And it's like – That's going to do it. So it's like there's the other side of that coin. Try burning some sage leaves and get a shaman to come around and like – Not that, Kirk. So that's kind of where the – Not that part. Not that part. That's where our listeners find us, I think. Because it's like Christians willing to talk about this stuff. I've had an experience. Most of the church doesn't want to talk about it. Most of the church adopts more theological. I've got a creepy story. Maybe you guys can figure this out. Let's go. You can diagnose this for me. Let's go. So my son, the one we talked about, was in Montana. He watches your show, by the way. He told me to tell you this story. He's in Montana, and he's driving in his... What's your son's name? James. He's driving... Shout out to James. Let's go. Let's go, baby. James Cameron. James Cameron. The director was named after him. Hey, he made some good moves. He's driving in his truck in Montana out to Fort Smith, and it's the Crow Reservation. I've been there three times. And he's driving out there to the lodge of this resort that he was going to go to, do some fishing. And he says he's driving to this area where there's no houses. It's about 11 o'clock at night, and there's kind of these burned out cornfields around. And out of nowhere, he sees these children. these children start running across the street into the tall brush and then they were like they were gone and i was like i don't know it's like children of the corn all over again yeah is is i have children or little people he's like he's like i don't know well this is it so this is like okay what is that is that is that kirk we talked pre-roll and i was gonna tell you what i heard because i've been saying shout out to the refuge i mean this is like you know brian carpenter and his organization which is out there at Fort Smith, Montana. Amazing experience when I've been and I know you've been as well and your son. I've been out there a few times and the guys that live out there talk about surrounding the Crow Reservation are a lot of ranches, a lot of old cowboys and stuff. Inevitably the guys that work the ranch, the fishing guides that take care of you and out, they do all the things, they end up in town and they say that the old crusty cowboys out there that are still running the ranches talk about the Duendes. And they swear about them. These are not like, I would say, individuals that are bent or prone to anything that isn't. They're fantastical, right? These are like dudes that ride horses and deal with cattle. And they said they're out there. They have seen and they have encountered what they call Duende, which are these little people, which could be like children-sized people. I mean, this is what they tell you. They swear that they're out there, and they're like, you've got to be careful, because these things are there. The little people. That's the first thing I think about when you talk about James' story. What do they do? Where do they come? They just sort of appear, they run across the street, and they disappear again? People that have seen him say it. It's bizarre. It's crazy. It's like the other end of giants. It's like these little people that are full grown. Okay, so they're like the anti-nephilim. Yeah, kind of. Or maybe they're related. Who knows? Maybe they're the ones that want to drive the lifted trucks, because they're the small ones. But this is, yeah, that's what the people in that space say. And then also, I mean, we've had enough people tell us about strange things that happen on reservations. For whatever reason, there's thin places or things that occur on... Well, territorial spirits, we talk a lot about that on, you know, when Paul's talking about principalities, powers, thrones, dominions. He's talking about, you know, this is like kingdom language. This is like areas, you know, principalities. And it's all, it's a complex system, you know. And so I think we still kind of run into that residue of that. So maybe it was that. I don't know. I mean, it's odd that you have a group of children running into the brush at like 11 o'clock at night. I mean, in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of nowhere. That's weird. It sounds like a horror movie I don't want to watch. We took 40 people to Peru. I did that a couple of times when I was about 15 years old. Yeah. You know, like when I was like upstate New York. But, you know, out in the middle of a Crow Reservation. I haven't done that. So that's harder for you to put in your folder and figure out what that is. Well, yeah, I wasn't there. I didn't see that. And I've never had any experiences like you're talking about, where I left my body, went some other place or thought I did, and then came back and told people about it or seeing Sasquatch, except for this morning. Except for this morning. No, I haven't. Well, Kirk, I mean, it seems your battle's like another place, though. I mean, you're in the public square. I mean, you're saying you're going to libraries and trying to read books. Yeah. I mean, it's more practical. You've taken hits for decades. I mean, what keeps – what motivates you to keep going and not – I mean, this is another one. Hellgate, as you talk about it, all of a sudden everyone wants to burn you, pun intended, for wanting to have a discussion about the realities of hell. And what keeps you going and wanting to keep doing this stuff? Because you keep catching arrows and flack from everybody, including people inside the church. Well, it's encouraging to hear you say that. I don't always have up days. Sometimes I've got down days where I'm discouraged. and I love reading stories of history's heroes. I have a very good friend who left this world. He's now in heaven. His name is Dr. Marshall Foster and he's a historian. And he lived here in Middle Tennessee and he just told me story after story after story of the great comebacks that God would make during dark times. The Great Awakenings and the spiritual revivals that have taken place in cultures throughout history have always happened when a certain set of conditions converge. And it usually, look at the First Great Awakening, look at the Second Great Awakening, look at revivals throughout history. You find that it's during times of moral decline, spiritual apathy, economic collapse, and moral corruption. Those things come together like the perfect storm, and revival breaks out. I think it's because, as we read in the scriptures in the Old Testament, the people of God are going, what have we done? What have we done? And then they start to repent in dust and ashes. Like, everything's collapsing and falling apart. Now we're slaves again. We're back in the prisons, eating prison food again. We've forgotten God. And it's awful. and so when I look at the news and I see drag queens and the rainbow mafia indoctrinating children and I see political corruption in Washington or in our state I see economic challenges and inflation going through the roof and I see the borders and criminals coming over and I see rumors of wars happening in the Middle East I go we're about to have a revival y'all If the Lord chooses, maybe it's going to get worse before it gets better, but I know that the kingdom is expanding. I know that Jesus is winning, not losing. And I know that the kingdom is growing, not shrinking. And I get to be a part of the story. Yeah. Right? It's like Friday was awful. Yeah. But Sunday was coming. And I know that's the story. And so I just want to be found faithful wherever I am. And I try to have a long-term view, not just a short-term view, and be grateful for everything. Yeah. The good stuff and the bad stuff is actually good stuff in disguise. Yeah. Well, it's cool how God redeems the places we were and the places we – and he uses us in those spots. Yeah. Like, obviously, I just had this weird fascination with Bigfoot stories. never thought that i'd be sitting here with you talking about this and and you and as well as like but he turned this thing this fascination into like our our job yeah and we get to talk to people about these things and and you got to build a cool set like this i mean i'm i'm i'm really impressed you guys that's like a turkey part of the pizza hut menu i just realized has kirk cameron as the lunch special that's right i your head was blocking it so i couldn't i couldn't see it but Yeah, we've got Skinwalker here for 1989. Tell me this was your old pal. Michael J. Fox, you guys used to hang out? We used to hang out a little bit. Tell us the stories. I won't say that we were great friends, but we had the same cameraman that filmed his show that filmed my show. And they would go back and forth, and we would sort of mock each other and trash talk each other through the cameramen. And we had contests, like who could do the most amount of 360s in a scene. And I think we got up to like eight or nine in a scene. If you go back and watch all the episodes, you would find me doing 360s in a scene. It was to compete with Michael J. Fox. And then I did a Back to the Future trilogy behind the scenes where I got to go into the DeLorean and tell you all the secrets of how they made the shows. Oh, that's awesome. I think my favorite Michael J. Fox story was one day he knew that I was such a big fan of his that he came to the set of Growing Pains and he got me out of school. You had to go to school even when you were working on a show. Wow. And we were in the back a lot of Warner Brothers. He picked me up in his convertible Ferrari, and we drove around the Warner Brothers lot. And I just remember he was driving. I was in the passenger seat, and we'd pull up to a light, and we looked over, and there was like these cute girls in a car next to us. And they looked over, and they saw it was Michael J. Fox from Family Ties and Mike Seaver from Growing Pains. And they're like, ah! And then he's just like, he peels out and goes out on the street. I was like, this is it. This is like, I've lived. This is the coolest. That's crazy. I mean, it's such a nostalgic era. And I think there was something about that decade, too, that it was like the last time. There were no cell phones. It felt like. No cell phones, that's right. Technology and humans were sort of on par. Toward the end of growing things. I think too. Yeah. Yeah. I had a car phone that was attached to my car like that one, and it was bolted to the center console, and then you pull it off with the big cord. Yeah. We appreciate you telling these stories, too, because I'm sure you get a little tired of talking about it. You know, these are stories that I don't think I've really told. I haven't told a story about my sister. That's amazing. And, you know, the miscarriage. And, you know, the stuff about Michael J. Fox, nobody asks me about that stuff. Yeah. Nobody asks me about Bigfoot either, but I don't have any Bigfoot stories. Do you stay in contact with any of the people? And your best friend. From Growing Pains, do you guys stay in contact at all? You know, I stay in contact with my little brother, Ben. Yeah. A little bit with my sister, Tracy Gold, but Jeremy Miller, who played Ben, we've remained pals. He's a great cook, by the way. He's a great husband and a great father. And Alan Thicke, of course, passed away. And Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't return my calls. I don't know. I guess he just got to be so big. Everyone forgot he was in there. There were so many people on Growing Pains back in the day. It probably says in here, but like Brad Pitt was on Growing Pains. you had Hilary Swank and you had Leonardo DiCaprio and you had Heather Graham and you had all kinds of people even some of the old school actors from Gilligan's Island were on Growing Pains it was awesome we got to meet all these really great people Thurston Hall III is my favorite character from Gilligan's Island Jane Powell she's one of the real old timers who was like danced with Fred Astaire and stuff and she came out and played our grandma That's awesome. It was awesome. Was Hollywood different back then? I think so. Okay. I think so. I mean, you know, with the Epstein thing coming out, and there was a documentary that talked about, it was like behind the shadows or in the shadows or something. Yeah, I know I'm talking about. Yeah. But they talked about like the parties for kids and all of this awful stuff. I believe all of that is true, that it was going on, the pizza game, all the crazy stuff was happening. But I was, for whatever reason, I was never confronted with it. And I think God protects a lot of people from it. Yeah, and I don't want to say that God doesn't protect other children and he does protect. I don't know how it all works, but I do know that there was lots of opportunities to go to a lot of those parties. and because of my family, I just sort of had some intuition and spidey senses that said, I don't like the vibe here at this place. And then on top of that, when I was 17 years old, I got saved by the Spirit of God. And I wanted to do the right thing even when my parents weren't watching. And so I wanted to be right in terms of the way I treated a girl. I wanted to do right because I knew that God saw everything. And so a lot of that stuff I was saved from because of a belief in God. And how old were you when the show ended? I was 21. Okay. I was 21. And I got married when I was 20. Yeah. So we were married on the show. We were boyfriend and girlfriend on the show, Mike and Kate. That's so wild, dude. We fall in love behind the scenes and then we get married. Yeah, how does that work? How does your faith play into a TV show? How do you feel about, like... I was getting blowback for that, too. When I first became a Christian, I was a little uncomfortable about it myself. I mean, like, I was an atheist my whole life, and so I'm already feeling awkward. Like, I'm one of the guys, I think, I'm one of the crazy people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I've joined them now. Yeah. And so when my lifestyle changed, and I wasn't dropping F-bombs every fourth word, and I wasn't doing some of the same things that I did with my friends at parties or whatever, people were sort of like, hmm, what's going on with him? And he's going to church now, and he believes in God now. And I think what really happened was when I started pushing back on some of the scripts that the writers would write, and it was Mike was behaving in a way, and I was feeling in my conscience like, I don't feel great about this. And I'm like, hey, look, don't bring your religious views onto the show. and I was like I'm not I'm just thinking about the mom out there whose 14 year old girl thinks I'm all that and I'm going to be following your script which says that Mike is in bed with this other teenage girl like I don't think aren't we a family show people trust us we're ABC you know Tuesday night and I think that came across it just landed differently with the producers. Yeah. It was like, who's the 17-year-old kid who's trying to take the moral high ground? You get the script. Yeah. And then how much time before you shoot that episode? Yeah, we would get a script delivered to us. Now, remember, we didn't have email. Right. So we had a physical script delivered by a courier every single night. Yeah. Delivered to your front door. And I'd wake up in the morning and we'd read it together and then we'd put it on its feet, as they say. We would block it out like you would on a stage play because we filmed our show in front of a live audience. And we were all holding our scripts. We had three days to practice. And every night they would change the script based on what jokes were working and what jokes were not working. Sometimes they changed the entire script. And by the fourth day, you really only had this script for one day. And you had to film it in front of a live audience the next day. So it was a live audience. It was a live audience. Do you ever pull lines from two versions that go accidentally? Yeah. It gets difficult. It gets difficult because you've got a new script every single week. I remember the old joke. How do you have that memory to be able to remember all those lines? And I'm like, well, but it's only short-term memory. So my long hard drive memory is not all that great but my short RAM is awesome Yeah Because I got to take a script I got to get it all in there I got to blurt it out kind of like you do on a test in school You learn something, and then you forget it after the test on Friday. That's how I had to learn scripts every single week. Did you know that you were going to be the focal point of the show? Because I remember being a kid, and you were the big driver. I mean, it was kind of mostly about you. So it was very uncomfortable because I was like, I didn't know what it was like to be famous. I was 14 when I started. And the star of the show is Alan Thicke. He hosted a show in Canada called Thicke of the Night. I mean, he was the star of the show. And the rest of us were here to support the guy here at the middle at the top, Alan. And as the show progressed, it just kind of became about this family and these kids And the character that they wrote fit me perfectly. And all of a sudden, I was the hormone with feet, the wisecracking teenager who'd sneak out the window and get in trouble that every other teenage kid wanted to be. And all of a sudden, you just kind of gravitate to what seems to be working. It's crazy how much it burns a holy man. I still remember you and Richard Stabon behind the bushes at the bus stop. I still remember that scene. Yeah. I still can't believe that they called him. Well, his name was Boner on the show. Yes. But the fact that they explained why his name is Boner by doing a flashback to when he was five years old and he said his name was Richard. That's what I couldn't believe. You could have left it. The fact that you already got that in there, I don't understand. The producers actually said. It's so funny. I asked them this. going on exactly right i was like what was what's the deal and they're like the standards and practices guy from the network uh i actually remember his name i won't even say his name he would be the guy that would come and say hey guys you can't say that or hey guys that joke crosses the line yeah right he's there every week and he's always the guy who's like the stick in the mud that you know everybody knows what his job is right it's like take away all the fun yeah and uh and sure enough he said something he's like what's what's what's what's what's what's with the name. Yeah. And they're like, what do you mean? And so, of course, they play with a straight face. They're like, say it. Say it. What? What is his name? Right. And finally, he's like, well, and they're like, we don't know what you're talking about. Like, that's like, his last name is Stabon. Yeah. And so, we're, that's what he did. He's a nickname. He's a nickname. He's a nickname. He's a nickname. He's a nickname. He's a nickname. He's a nickname. He's a nickname. He's a nickname. He's a nickname. Hey, teenagers, nicknames. Stabon, Bone, Boney, Boner. Like, I mean, the kid just made it up. And they literally just played it off like they had no idea what he was talking about. So he felt embarrassed, and he just dropped it. Right? Like, he's got the weird mind. That's how you get through it. That's like, what about Bob? But then they did the episode years later where they flash back to how he got his name, and the little kid rides up on his bike, and he goes, hey, what's your name? He's like, I'm Mike Seaver. And he's like, well, what's your name? And he's like, well, that's interesting. He's like, I got a bunch of names. My name's Richard, but my friends call me Dickie. And then all of a sudden, it just turned into, I was like, you guys, you're not going to get away with this. This is fantastic. But they never did. I love it. These are the questions we all had when we were growing up watching the show and going through it. It's amazing. So at 17, the show's still at the height of, it's the peak, and you have the space change, and the writers and you were kind of going. Yeah, we had a little conflict, a little friction. Yeah. But that was good for me. Do you know why that was good for me at 17 years old? Because it prepared me for a greater conflict later. Like right now, when I am being slammed for something I said on the Pierce Morgan show about homosexuality or about abortion, or going to libraries and the American Library Association is calling me out and drag queens are furious. And I think it was those early moments where I was learning what opposition felt like to a Christian worldview and learning to develop some thicker skin and be able to respond with grace. I wasn't good at it in the beginning. You know, I was probably really clunky with my objections, and they got mad at me, maybe for good reason, because of the way I objected. But I'm really glad that the Lord has kind of seasoned me and sharpened me and developed me over the years. Did the show feel like it was, obviously you said Alan, you and Alan, were you guys talking a lot behind the scenes? We were close. The whole family was tight. I mean, you just look at us. It's like, there's a family. That's a tight family. and we really were. It was incredible. Not just on screen, but off screen. We were genuinely friends. I mean, we would celebrate one another's birthdays. We'd go to birthday parties for all of us. We'd go to Halloween parties. And it was really like a family because we spent more time with one another as the Seaver family than we did individually with our own real families. Because it was, you know, you guys spend a lot of time together. Yeah. But we were spending every day of the week, nine to five together. Yeah. And sometimes on weekends. Well, it felt real. I mean, I think everyone in the crowd and watching at home felt that. That you guys were actually like each other. We actually liked each other. Yeah. Yeah. And that was something that was so different about the 80s in television. It felt real in a way. You knew it wasn't, but there was something about when you wanted it to be real. It's like professional wrestling. You know it's not. You just want it to be so real. I cried a lot during your show. I cried Wonder Years. Oh, yeah. Did you hang out with those guys at all? Braveheart. I cried in Braveheart for sure. Oh, it was not TV. Yeah. Okay, yeah, well. Well, Wonder Years was a little bit later, and it was not exactly near us, so not so much. But I just loved the 1980s. That was also the decade where my sister was on her show, Full House. Yeah, I know. You were on there, too. That's weird, too, right? I was on one episode of Full House. I think she was on one episode of Growing Pains. Growing Pains was a much better show than Full House. But it was fun to be on another show and totally unique to have a family where two kids are in 1980s sitcoms. Family sitcoms. At the same time. About family sitcoms. How did that happen? I had no idea. How did it happen for you? Did you go to an audition? I never wanted to be an actor as a kid. That never even crossed my mind. My dad is a math and physical education teacher for middle school. My mom was at home making macrame flower potholders. And I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be like Ben Carson. I want to be a surgeon. And do you remember that Invisible Man plastic toy that we wanted for Christmas? It was like a big kind of like two foot long human being made of plastic. and you painted the veins blue and the arteries red and all the organs were in there. We got one right here. It was called The Invisible Man. No, just kidding. Bro, you need to have it on the show. We need to get one. You've got to get The Invisible Man. Get him over here. We've got Operation, which is... Well, Operation's great, too. It's close. But I wanted to be a doctor, and my mom had a really good friend whose son was Adam Rich, and he played the little kid on Eight Is Enough. Wow. With Dick Van Patten, I believe, was the dad on that show. And she would always say to my mom, take your kids into this agent, see if they can, you know, if she'll take them and they'll do a commercial. So she did. I started working and I kept working. All of a sudden, I'm on Growing Pains and all of my doctor plans went out the window. I graduated high school, didn't go to college because I already had a career. Then I got married and now I'm on Blurry Creatures. I mean, the whole thing just happened like this. So still an upward trajectory, I hope. Yeah, exactly. Still at the height of your career over here. Yeah, I mean, I think that looking back, there were so many of those shows. Obviously, like a little bit later, Family Matters and Who's the Boss. Yeah, yeah. TGI Friday. That was so great. That was the jam. It was. When you look back on it. You know my favorite show back in the day that was a little kid? It was Star Trek with William Shatner. Oh, yeah. In fact. My dad's a Trekkie. I used to watch it. Tell me if you believe me. My dad was such a Trekkie, he named me after Captain Kirk. No. James Tiberius Kirk. True. True. True. That's amazing. Now, there was an urban legend that my sister was going to be named Spock. But that's not true. Yeah. She didn't get over here. She's watching this. You know, I'll tell you another quick story. I was at an ABC press junket one time promoting Growing Pains, and a bunch of other stars were promoting their shows. And William Shatner was at the press conference. I was losing my mind that I was going to meet Captain Kirk and I wanted to tell him the story. Like I'm your namesake. And he was busy doing something. It might have been LA Law or something like that. And I kind of just hung out behind the camera just waiting for him to finish. And I finally went and I was like, Mr. Shatner, Mr. Shatner, my name is Kirk Cameron. I'm sorry to bother you. You probably never heard of a show called Growing Pains but I just wanted you to know that my real name is Kirk and I was named after you, Captain Kirk. and I just I thought he'd give me a hug or high five or say that was awesome and he just sort of looked at me and was sort of just like that's nice kid and just kind of like I felt just kind of shooed off get out of here kid you're bothering me I'm on camera he probably overacted that a little bit he had no idea that my little heart was crushed what's it like being a childhood star I remember my I was in the band for a while and one of our last big tours with the Hanson Brothers of all And this is when they're in their 30s, like mid-30s. And I was like, how big were you when you were? The drummer was 12 when they had their massive hit. What's that like being a kid and like off set, you're walking around and you're just, everyone knows. What's that like? I don't have an alternate teenage life to compare mine to. So it was my normal to have people ask me for my autograph and take pictures. but it was weird because I had acne at 15 years old. I didn't want people looking at me. I mean, they had to put makeup all over my face and I felt like a girl, right? And they're taking pictures of me and putting me on posters in Tiger Beat magazine and I was like, oh, I just wanted to hide. Your posters were all over my sister's walls. Yeah, I'm sorry, bro. Here I am, I've been following you your whole life. It was incredible. What was your favorite episode? My favorite episode of Growing Pains. There were many, but I do remember one that was cool. It was a Just Say No to Drugs episode. Yeah. And Boner had somehow gotten tangled up with the wrong people, and there was cocaine at the party. Oh, man. This is an older one, huh? Yes, this is an older one. And for the first time, we broke the fourth wall. and in the middle of the show, everybody just stopped and I went over and I looked right into the camera. But you don't do that on the show. That's like rule number one. You can't don't look at the camera. That's like Cindy Brady and the Brady Bunch. Remember when they were in the game show and she looks at the camera and she's like frozen when she sees the red light like she panics. And I look into the camera and I'm like, if anybody ever offers you drugs, you can say no. because if they tell you you're not cool, they're wrong. And I'm not just saying this. That was the episode. Just remember, we were changing the world right there. And maybe we did for somebody's world. When Mike Seaver was able to say, I don't do drugs and you don't need to eat. You paved the way for Jim Halpert, who always broke the fourth wall in the office. Yeah, in the office. This is your brain on drugs, the commercials. I mean, that was a big, you had milk cartons with missing kids. you know you had these anti-drug commercials yeah and you guys were dropping truth on regular i just don't feel like tv does that anymore yeah and no now now we're like we're trying to get kids on drugs yeah you know we're trying to give them every drug in the world and we diagnose them with all kinds of stuff and give them a 75 vaccines and everything else now yeah destroying them um I love we've hit every red flag on YouTube. We got them all. Everyone. One of my other favorite episodes, of course, was when I met my wife, Chelsea. Yeah. And she played Mike's girlfriend on the show. And, you know, the cool story with that, too, is when she showed up on the set that day, I was very surprised. Not that Mike had a girlfriend because he had several on the show. But I had met this one, this actress before. In fact, I met her on my sister Candace Cameron's show, Full House. and she was there visiting somebody else on the show. I think it was John Stamos. And I had visited my sister and my mom was like, do you know that really pretty brunette girl that was on the show today? I was like, yeah, of course. I know exactly who you're talking about. She's gorgeous. And she said, well, she said, you know, she is even more beautiful on the inside as a person than she is on the outside because she's been here for a week. and I hope one day you marry someone just like her. Well, then like a year later, she comes on to Growing Pains. I meet her. We become boyfriend and girlfriend on the show and then fall in love off camera and get married. We've been married for 35 years now and we have six children and we live here in Tennessee. So that counts as one of my all-time favorite episodes. How does that work? How does that work? Was it like mutual at first or was it more on your end? She was crazy about me. I'm sure it was love at first. For her, yeah. Well, she could be like, you're acting right now. You're not actually into me. She was so far out of my league, bro, that I was like, I was just lucky if she would just even glance at me. And actually, I set the hook. I really did. I did something special to set the hook, and then she couldn't resist. You want to know what it was? Yeah, of course. so there was this there was this there was this scene where in the script uh mike and this girl kate were fellow actors in an acting class and they were doing a scene i think it was our town and in the scene the actors are have a relationship and they're leaving and the guy kisses the girl before he gets on the train and never sees her again you know don't worry virginia i'm i'm coming back we'll see each other again and he leans and he gives her this great big kiss and i'm reading this on monday morning in the script going oh my gosh i've got to wait a minute i've got to kiss her yeah oh no i'm gonna kill these writers i can't you can actually be nervous i was so nervous i was so nervous i bet and and so for four days we had rehearsals and whenever we got to that part in the scene, I would, as I looked at my script, say, and then, like if you're Chelsea, I'd say, and then Mike kisses Kate, and then he moves to, you know, the train car. And then I just moved to the train car. And so I was sort of demonstrating that here's how we on the set of Growing Pains do these things. We don't actually practice this type of stuff in real life. And I was just getting out of it. I didn't want to do it. And the whole week I was fearing Friday when it was game time. And so I was practicing on my kissing techniques at home. It feels like an 80s movie. Right. This was like Ferris Bueller's Day Off or something like that. And it's embarrassing to admit this now. I've probably read it in the face. But it came to that day. and the cameramen that I talked about earlier who also worked with Michael J. Fox they were mocking me like Kirk you can't get out of it today bro we're going to have it on camera everyone's going to know that you can't kiss worth a dang and I was like so it got ready the audience is in everybody's there and I said I got to somehow break the ice and make a joke out of this so I said hold on I ran backstage I started rummaging through the first aid kit in the prop department and I found some ambusol That's the Novocaine numbing for a tooth ache. And I put it on my lips like Vaseline. And I come out and I figure I know exactly how this is going to work. We do the scene. I lean in. I plant one on her like a good one to make sure that it's stuck. And I pulled back and I could see her. She's like paralyzed. And she's like, she's not talking. She's not saying her lines. and she's like licking this off of her own lips because she's like, what is this gooey stuff? And she was just like frozen. And I said, I'm sorry, cut. I should have warned you. This is the result I have on women when I kiss them. It's paralyzed. Oh, my. Oh, my. I set the hook. That was the moment that she detected my charm. Yeah. And she couldn't resist. Did you go back to the writers then as you were going back and forth? Dude, I was just, I was scrambling for anything. Did you go back and ask for more kissing scenes from the writers? Of course. We've got to build this in now. Of course. You know, guys, we have to go with what works. Yeah, this worked well. So you're into her. When is she into you? Well, you know, I confessed my feelings. I think it was probably a month later we went to a Michael W. Smith concert together. We shared an ice cream mud pie at the Red Robin. So ladies. And these were the beginnings of our courtship. That's got to be weird being then on screen, going back. Well, it's even weird if you're married, then you get to play boyfriend and girlfriend. Yeah, and then we got to do a show after Growing Pains. where we played boyfriend and girlfriend. And that was really cool, too. So we've actually got to do movies together. That's awesome. When I was in Left Behind, she played the Antichrist's girlfriend. So we got to do all kinds of stuff together. That's its own episode. Like you chose poorly. We'll bring you back for round two. I guess one of the couple of my last questions. You record one episode a week? For Growing Pains? Yeah. Yeah. One episode a week. You practice all week, and then you record live. In front of a studio audience, yeah. So that was a cool thing to be able to get tickets and go see the show. A lot of shows were live, but not all of them, right? Not all of them. But live audience was special for the actors because you get the feedback from the audience. That's why people love Broadway plays so much. They just think real actors are stage actors. There's feedback that you – it's fuel in your tank. Yeah, people laugh. It's real laughter. Right, and if there's no laughter, you know you bombed. It's the worst. So that motivates you to go fix it. And what's it like with you and your sister? Obviously, you're both – We fight like cats and dogs. Even now? No, I'm kidding. But back then, I mean, you were both kind of competing. You were both on TV shows. What was your relationship like? Like normal brother and sister. I don't think we ever saw each other as competing. Yeah. My show was clearly better than her show. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously. Do you see any Full House stuff here? No. Exactly. We had a Kirk Cameron poster. We had a Kirk Cameron poster here. It'll make it back. Oh, man. I have three younger sisters. Candice is the baby. Okay. And so the four of us, we were like brothers and sisters. I just had this strange job. And then Candice, years later, she started Full House. And so that kind of introduced a very different dynamic into our family. But at the end of the day, we were at home, you know, eating tacos and lasagna and burritos, just like we always did, going to the beach on Sundays and living in California and just being a family. besides meeting Captain Kirk what was your moment I know this is a cool moment for us what was your cool moment as being on the other side and meeting somebody else that you know just like one of those experiences that you got there it was when I met Henry Winkler from Happy Days I met the Fonz the Fonz yeah I mean I remember looking in the mirror and he's just going to brush his hair and he's like no he didn't have to brush his hair oh yeah right and then he could just With his leather jacket and his jeans, he'd get off his motorcycle and he'd walk into Big Al's deli and he'd just hit the jukebox. A slow dance would play and like Pinky Tuscadero or some other pretty girl would just come right over and just be right there on the ready for a slow dance. Well, I met him one time at a charity function and it was for like burn victims. and I was there because I was on the show and he was on an ABC show or he was. And I met him and all of a sudden, it just started to dawn on me that he wasn't the Fonz because he was so much shorter than I thought the Fonz was. He's wearing boots. He's up on a motorcycle and they kind of film things. John Wayne was like a little guy. Yeah. But you think he's bigger than life. But when I went up to talk to him, he not only didn't have the leather jacket and the jeans and the boots and the persona that goes with it, he was dressed in like a suit and tie, and he had the most quiet, gentle demeanor of anyone. He said, hi, I'm Henry Winkler. It's a pleasure to meet you. Like, so sincere, so soft, so gentle. It's like he was looking into my soul. Where are you, Fonz? Yeah, like, you're in there. Come on, bro! That's funny. And I just wanted him to say, like, Remember when he never could admit that he was wrong? Yeah. He could never say wrong. I love that. I love that. Yeah. That was it. Meeting Captain Kirk, meeting the Fonz, and meeting my wife. And what was the best feedback story from that era? I know you shared a few stories of a fan that told you something special that you'll never forget about your time and growing pains. Because it just changed. It was so impactful for a lot of people. I think kind of like I was saying earlier, I had a good family growing up. My mom and dad, they struggled. They separated. Fortunately, they got back together. But there were a lot of kids who longed to have an intact family and a foundation that they could trust. And for a lot of people, they found that vicariously by watching television shows that had families like the Seavers. or when I was a little kid, I used to love watching Little House on the Prairie or watching The Waltons. It's just like, man, I want Grandma and Grandpa to live upstairs in the back room and say, night, John boy. You know, night, Kirk. There's something so special about family and I think that's why God starts his story with a man and a woman becoming one flesh and having children and filling the earth. And, you know, he didn't start with a civil government. He didn't start with a church. He starts with a family. Yeah. I think that's what it's all about. So what's next for you? I mean, after setting the Internet on fire, pun intended, talking about hell. I don't know, but I've got to find a reason to build a set like this. Yeah. I just need to do an 80s trivia show, I think. That would be great. That would be awesome. And, you know, get all these things. You're welcome to use ours. Can I? Yeah. Thank you. How many times? You could. Come on in. I know. And also, like, my other question would be, like, I forgot to ask you this at the beginning, and then we talked about hell at the beginning, but when you had this two-and-a-half-hour roundtable, I think my last question for you would be, did that discussion with all those, like, big intellectual folks, did that change anything you thought about any of it, or are you pretty, where did you land with all of that? Yeah. Hot seat. Yeah, I know. This one got me in trouble last time. It was fun while we were talking about the different views. Yeah, 100%. And cut. This is where you get to look at the camera and tell them exactly what you want to say. And then my son's like, all right, Dad, out with it. So where do you lean? Stay out of hell. That's right. Sin is serious. Hell is real. Jesus is the cure. That's right. That's where I landed with regard to the views of hell. I mean, I can tell you that I continue to be humbled and powerfully persuaded by the conditional immortality view. I think it beautifully fits the scriptures and it answers some questions that I think deserve to be answered. Now, I could be wrong. Of course, I could be wrong. But at the end of the day, I don't want to stand before God and because of my lack of studying this earnestly, misrepresent his character to anybody. I want to get this right, and so I'm earnestly looking to do that. For anybody who's not familiar with these things, maybe you're not interested. And to a degree, I'm not either, because whatever hell is, it's really terrifying and awful to the point where Jesus said, if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out, cut your hand and your foot off. It's better to enter heaven without a hand or a foot or an eye than it is to have both your hands and feet and your eyes and go to hell. And yet at the same time, I'm curious. I'm interested. And I continue to find that perspective to be really compelling. Love it. Well, this has been a wonderful ride back to the 80s in so many ways. Thanks for talking about Mike Seaver and how much he means to a lot of us 80s kids who listened to the show growing up. I know my pal Christian Bruins would give you a big hug right now if he was here. I don't think we left too much behind either. No, we didn't. No, we got it all. A joke you've never heard, probably. No, never heard it. Thanks for doing that. Yeah, man. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.