Matthew Monfore was recently banned from an Indian reservation for proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ and calling people to turn from idols. This committed missionary is an example of boldness. In part one of our interview, we look at the Sun Dance, Sweat Lodge and Peace Pipe (which doubles as a war pipe). This is a fascinating visit into the foreign mission field within America.

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Welcome to Roman's Road, the podcast of me, Eddie Roman.

This is where we talk about evangelism and apologetics and all kinds of Christian stuff.

It was about six years ago when Living Water sent me on a little video production mission to South Dakota and got to spend a lot of time on an Indian reservation, the Lakota tribe.

And the end result was a video we produced that you can find on Living Water's YouTube channel.

It's called Life in Prison, Hope in Christ.

I'll put the link in the show notes, but featured in that video is my friend Matthew Monfor, and I have him in the studio today with us.

How are you doing, Matthew?

Great.

Always good to be with Eddie and the team and share a lot of laughs, enjoying the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost, as Ray has said in his.

Old sermon, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, they are among the team.

I would hope so because we're Christians.

So this is not a Living Water thing today.

Today I just wanted to interview Matthew.

He's had a pretty interesting last few years and so in listening to him yesterday, as we were all hanging out, I just wanted to get some recording of this whole thing.

And so I'm going to do two podcasts.

The first one, I just wanted to get into Matthew's experience and just kind of talk about him and what he does and what's been happening for the last few years.

And then the second episode, we are going to do a deeper dive into the American Indian, not Native American, and we'll explain that in a minute, but the American Indian experience, particularly how to witness to an American Indian, how to understand where they're coming from.

Lots to talk about here.

So to start off with Matthew, why don't you go and introduce yourself and tell us your the name of your ministry and just a little introduction.

Absolutely, Eddie, and so much appreciate you.

I genuinely, without flattery, consider you the best of the best and the team at Living Waters the best in the world at getting the true gospel out, law and gospel.

And so thank you so much for your dedication, time, effort, sacrifice to do all that.

Well, I'm flattered, even though that wasn't supposed to be flattering.

No, it's 100% true.

And so God is the God of truth and currency in the kingdom of God is truth.

So just a little bit about myself.

So I grew up going to different churches, grew up Lutheran, grew up going to a Baptist youth group, Pentecostal Bible studies with my family.

Everyone considered me a brother, a believer.

I never really questioned that.

It wasn't until I was in high school that I came to understand what sin really was, that God is love.

And we emphasize that in our culture, but we forget that God's love is not lawless and his love requires loss.

So I understood that, you know, looking with lust was adultery in my heart.

So being in high school, I was very popular to watch pornography.

Watch pornography was probably my primary pet sin.

That and lying.

And was leading a Bible study and all these things.

And so I was born again.

And in reading a book about Matthew, chapter seven, everyone says, lord, Lord, et cetera.

And that just because I acknowledged that Jesus had lived and died and rose again, didn't mean that I had embraced that with true faith.

So that happened in high school.

After that, became acquainted with Ray Comfort and the school of biblical evangelism.

And.

And I thank God that that got into my hands because it set me on a biblical trajectory early on, but then battling through the modern culture in Christianity, seeing that what is so clear in the law and gospel method is very oftentimes neglected or moved to the back of the scene, which I think has done great harm to Christianity in America and the world went to Bible school.

Now, real quick, when you say law and gospel method, you're basically talking about using the Ten Commandments to show someone that they need a savior.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yes.

Not that the law could ever merit anything for us.

And I think that that's a very sophomoric or ignorant understanding that when people preach the law or preach repentance, that they're acting like it's a work to earn salvation.

Because that's completely different topic than atonement, atonement being the covering, the removal of sin, that Christ's death, burial, and resurrection.

And so obviously anything compared to that.

And nowhere in Scripture does it teach that any work that we could do could do what Christ did in his perfect sinlessness and his perfect substitution for the law's demands on our lives.

Amen.

Carry on.

Yeah, so with the way of the Master and obviously being associated with that.

And so having been converted genuinely for the last 13 years, people probably meet you early on and say, well, that'll wear off or you'll grow out of that understanding.

And I just was talking with someone this morning that throughout the years, the litmus test for healthy believers and healthy churches that I've seen from my own experience has been that they have held to that understanding of Scripture, which is just biblical.

It's all over Scripture.

Once you see it that way, you're not going to unsee it so went to non denominational Bible school and became a member of church and have gone through lots of turmoil and heartbreak over the years with seeing things inside churches and things like that that just fall apart.

Probably won't get too much into that.

Then serving as an associate missionary and then part time and then full time as missionary and then founded Jesus as King Mission.

Calling it that because the Bible is very clear that God is the king over all the earth.

And in Psalm 96 that we're declare among the nations that he is to be feared above all gods and the Lord reigns.

Jesus is King Mission.

So that's the name of your mission work?

Yes, yes.

And so associate missions with being in the Midwest, growing up alongside with the culture of American Indian religion and culture.

And so I believe I can say this fairly, that I've become the main voice that's apologetically defending or offensively promoting Christianity as opposed to Native American Indian religion.

Well, let me just cut in there and say that I agree with that simply because I have never heard any kind of apologetics towards Indians.

We all kind of have an idea that Indians believe like New Age things, but in reality the New age has come out of so much of the American Indians original beliefs and so much of the people who are in the New Age who go on these journeys to go to some kind of experience at, you know, what's called a sweat lodge or different spiritual events hosted on Indian reservations.

The American New Agers are basically late to the game because the Indians have been doing it for a long time.

And so I remember being out on the Indian reservation with you and just thinking, man, there is so much spirituality going on here and it's just so much a part of the culture and who they are that it's.

And yeah, I didn't understand hardly any of it.

And it's because in America we got books, thousands of books on Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, how to witness to all these different groups.

I've never seen anything on how to do apologetics toward, you know, to, to someone who holds the beliefs of the, the average Indian.

And so, and, and obviously I'm talking about American Indian, not person from India because we got tons of apologetics books on Hinduism as well.

This is a subject that rarely if ever is spoken about.

Yeah, thank you for that.

And let's just go ahead and say, why are we using the term American Indian?

So the face of the American Indian movement was Russell Means.

He is the most popular American Indian in the last hundred years, certainly the last 70 years.

So he was a spokesman for the Indian of America, basically.

Spokesman, Yep.

As an activist group.

He was an actor in Last of the Mohicans, very well known activism up to the United nations, et cetera.

He actually preferred American Indian.

If you look into the etymology of the word Indian and the word native, Native comes from a Latin word that just means born, basically.

And so he even admitted that if you are born in America, in the United States of America or anywhere in the Americas, all the way to South America, you are a Native American.

So you're a Native American, Eddie?

I'm a Native American.

Thank you.

Yep.

And then there's a debate of the etymology, which etymology is the study of words and how they've developed over years.

There's a debate over what that word means.

Is it referring to the Indus Valley, is it referring to Columbus when he's talking about the people that he encountered and he said that they were in God, in Dios, which is Spanish, or is it referring to India, which comes from the Hindus river, which means water?

In essence, the word native actually has been used for female slave at one point in history.

So I much rather have a reference to water than a female slave at one point.

It's really a new thing, the term Native American being used in the last 50 years.

And some people take umbrage in the American Indian community because that classified the Hawaiians, Alaskans, people on the continental United States, all of them in just one group, when there had been a distinction between Hawaiians, Alaskan Native and the Indians.

It's so interesting because you just talked about the difference between two phrases, one being American Indian and the other being Native American.

And this is something that myself, as just a typical California guy, has never even thought of before.

And that just kind of reveals the issue that there is so much about the Indian issue that your average American has never thought about, has never been confronted with, and to be honest, doesn't really care about.

It's not something that's on our minds at all.

And so I could see how that in and of itself fuels some animosity from the Indian community against all these people they're living around who really just act as if they just don't care about them at all, because in reality, they don't.

We, we've been taught a certain narrative of these people and they've been taught a certain narrative about us.

And so, so I.

So just even in thinking through that for, you know, the five seconds, I've thought I've given it.

It just, you know, this is, this is a problem.

This is for you as a missionary going into these communities.

I'm sure that they do not greet you with a whole lot of warmth and respect right off the bat.

So let's get into that.

Tell us about what was it that made you go from Christian guy to looking over and saying, you know what, there's this whole group of people that don't really know about Christ and I kind of want to reach out to them.

So how did that happen?

Yeah, so I got saved in high school and.

And right about that time, there was an American Indian person that I went to high school with.

Now you lived near an Indian reservation, right?

Yep, yep.

Nine of them in South Dakota, all associated with the Dakota or Lakota tribes.

Those are just difference in dialect, you know, Dakota using the D, Lakota using the L.

And then Lakota are broken up into seven sub tribes.

Basically just a bunch of families that have a common language over many, many years.

And so, yeah, growing up.

So in high school, went to school with American Indians.

Basketball was my thing.

When I was 13, I won a national free throw competition.

There's this kid, American Indians love basketball.

That's their favorite sport.

And you know, he didn't have a lot of money, don't even know where his parents was.

And so I kind of took him in and helped him out.

He was suicidal and he basically wrote me or told me that if I hadn't come into his life, he would have killed himself.

From what I understand the reservation we were on, suicide and depression and molestation and basically it seemed like every bad thing that happens in this world, the rates of those things happening on the reservation were just extremely high.

Yeah, I know there's been reports or claims, maybe even some articles out there still that it was the highest in the nation.

Also the poorest county counties, like a few of them, like in the top 10 poorest counties in the nation.

I mean, it's basically the devil's haunt.

And I don't say that lightly, but I think we're going to go into more in depth of why that is.

But so, yeah, so going to high school with American Indians, playing them in sports, first church I was a part of had there'd be people that do short term missions to their Indian reservations.

Our patron actor or celebrity for South Dakota is Kevin Costner because he did dances with Foles.

Everyone knows that movie, Academy Award winners, et cetera.

If you're gonna watch that movie, watch it on Vidangel or Clearplay because it's rated R.

Kids, if anybody's young listening to it or even just guard your eyes.

Right.

That movie actually isn't loved and well received by the Indians who live there because it has a lot of stereotypes.

Is that right?

That's what would be said by them.

They also, whoever was teaching the language used the feminine.

There's.

It's like a Greek or Latin language.

Like there's feminine and male words or how you address people.

And so they actually are talking like women throughout that Women's.

If a woman were speaking.

So they laugh at it is what's said.

I haven't done an in depth stuff that's generally accepted what they believe about it.

My friend actually who was one of my mentors, still a good friend, man, I highly look up to just a common man that worked as a lineman, electrical lineman and he would go and take these short term mission trips to a nearby reservation.

And he was actually the guy I mentioned Dancing with Wolves.

He was the guy that taught the Indians how to shoot bow and arrow for the movie.

And so he would go on these mission trips where we'd go and set up a tent and give free bow and arrow lessons.

So he's teaching the Indians still how to shoot.

And so we would also use Ray Comfort's material, share the gospel.

Okay, so you're young, there's people in your church going on short term trips.

And yeah, and so the argument was always, you know, people, everyone wants to be a missionary around the world.

You know, it's really, at least it can be in the Christian circle, like really romantic views of that.

Like, oh, they're missionary to Africa or they're a missionary to China.

And people, you'd always hear, you know, under sometimes under people's breath, like, well, why don't you just go right next door?

You know.

Right.

So we have 570, around 570 federally recognized tribes in America.

And it is, it's very, very desolate.

Only 10% is.

The statistic is only 10% are professing Christian.

And I just want to.

This is really important for context as we have this conversation.

So if you could have rings or circles within another.

So at the very center you have a circle and that's like a Christian, that's a born again believing Christian, someone that is genuine Christian.

And then outside of that is, I'll just lump all the other denominations in there.

Christendom.

And then very outside of that is Americanism, of course at the very center is going to be the most Christlike.

And then as you get further and Further out from that, you're going to still be impacted by Christianity.

That inner circle is still going to impact the other denominations for truth and then the country as a whole.

And that's really important in American Indian missions because everything gets lumped together.

So it could be like on the outside of what would be called just an American could be a person who was raised and they have good morals that are based on Christianity and they went to a school that was based on Christianity, but they themselves really have no thoughts about Christ.

That's on one end, but they're, you know, they could be considered a good person by society.

And then all the way in the middle, you got someone who is a absolute bow the knee to Christ, everyday follower of the scriptures kind of thing.

And so it's a big, wide variety.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's so important in understanding this whole debate because we can, you know, we'll get into sharing the gospel with American Indians.

But with that comes this understanding largely in the American Indian community, that America is bad, Christianity is bad, Europeans being associated with America and white people are bad.

And I think there's apologetics and arguments that can be made against all of that.

But if we were to narrow it down to the simplest thing and getting down to the gospel, just differentiating, this is Christianity, which is for the whole world.

John 3:16, God.

So the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

This gospel message is for the whole world, irregardless of skin color or ethnic background.

If you don't want to get into the weeds, so to speak, of all these other arguments and excuses that are made for really just harboring your own sin, let's just get down to that.

But so yeah, just to finish off how I get involved and actually just I wanted to give my money.

I was working at a job at Bible school and after Bible school, so I started giving to a couple ministries and then I started, you know, being more and more involved in associated people associated with different ministries and organizations and, you know, then eventually served as an, like an intern missionary and then full time.

So.

And so you get started in mission work to the Lakota tribe, which is about 30 minutes away from your home.

You're there for a while and that's where our paths cross.

And I come along, I make this video against your will.

It turned out being more about you than it was about actually it was about your work.

It wasn't necessarily about you.

So that happens.

And Then in the years, in this, you know, six years about man, it's been six years, six years following that, you start just being very involved in calling people to Christ.

And along with that, as is going to happen in any situation where you're reaching out to a person with an opposing view, you.

You're pointing out some bad things about the things they believe in.

So if I go to a Mormon, I'm going to tell them that it's not okay to believe in multiple gods.

It's not okay to believe that you're going to become a God someday.

And so that's within the context of reaching out to Mormons.

In your context, you have different things that you're going to confront, and as a result of those things, people don't like you.

As simple as that.

You know, give us just one.

One example.

We'll get into this in the next episode.

What's one example of a belief that is strongly held onto in this community that is clearly unbiblical?

Thank you for the softball question.

Yes.

So being in the Midwest, the Dakota are very prominent.

They're actually probably.

All these things culminated in the Midwest and what people in history would refer to as westward expansion.

And some people would talk, use the words colonialism or manifest destiny, et cetera.

So I'm using these words now, but I've had to get an education that I wasn't given and have it done private in public school.

I wasn't given.

But so very prominent on the American Indian reservation is the Sundance that's known, I think, worldwide.

I mean, you'll meet.

It seems like people coming from Europe or that are interested in this.

So this is one of those things I mentioned earlier that would be kind of a thing that's well known within New Age circles or definitely in California yoga classes, where people are like, man, there's this thing going on over in South Dakota.

I want to do a vacation and go check this thing out and cleanse myself or become whatever it is that I do in my New Age life.

And so the Sun Dance, very prominent thing, right?

Absolutely.

What is the Sundance?

The Sundance has been one of their oldest ceremonies.

And basically they will have a pole and they will tie themselves to it with a rope of some kind, and then an eagle claw that's put through their.

Pierced through their skin, and it used to Be that they would like hang from it, like they suspend from it, and to make a blood offering, sacrifice to the sun.

And the sun is called tukashila.

Tukashila is a term meaning grandfather.

It's also that root word tunka is used of a rock because rocks are the, you know, they're the oldest thing that they can think of that has existed.

So God must be really old.

And it's also a term grand Tukashila has been used at the President of the United States just to kind of give you an idea of historically how they have viewed America as a whole.

You know, Christianity that gets associated with that as a whole.

And now when you say the sun, you're talking about the glowing ball of fire in the sky, that sun.

Glowing ball of fire in the sky.

Okay, and that's pretty.

So this is.

And that's pretty well accepted amongst a lot of tribes, if not all of them, is that, you know, the sun is what's going to give us heat, it's going to give us warmth, it's going to allow things to grow.

You can't live without the sun.

And so Romans 1, particularly the latter half of that, detailing that this is what happens when generations of generations are ignorant to the one true God as they start to worship creation.

And you know, God gave specific commands to Israel, but he is king over all the earth.

And Scripture is very clear that if we are to accept his commandments, it does bring eternal life, but also brings blessing on this earth from generation to generation and a cursing to those that rejected it.

So, and we could go into all about migration and things like that.

Answers in Genesis, just as I'm thinking about that, did a.

They have like a new video article or a guy that's working with them that's done a whole DNA analysis bearing out the.

What some would consider a theory, but basically how American Indians migrated over the land bridge and the Bering Sea from Russia and down to Canada and et cetera.

And so they did that DNA, which has always been the accepted view of ethnographers.

People are studying the ethnic groups.

And one of the ways that they do that is this interesting tidbit is language.

So there's similar words that are used between people in Siberia and American Indians.

And so they just say, well, this language group.

So.

So they'll group languages and say, well, this is similar to Asians.

And then they'll also do body parts, cheekbones, physiology, or campsites where they would look at pottery or tools.

Being primarily a Stone Age people that they could say, well, about this time they moved here and then they moved here and they just worked their way south.

But that's an interesting.

Just to talk about the spread of their religions or their views.

So the Sun Dance is prominent, but the two that are pretty much universally accepted amongst tribes would be the sweat lodge, which is basically wood poles and animal skins or branches.

And you go inside there and you sweat and you call in the spirits.

And the other one is commonly referred to as the peace pipe, but it's also was used for war, which is really ironic, you know, here being called the war pipe, but that's also pretty universally accepted.

So the Sundance, the sweat lodge and the peace pipe, these are three things that are prominent in pretty much every Indian community in some way.

The Sundance primarily in the Midwest.

But the.

But the pipe and the sweat lodge are pretty much universal throughout the tribes.

Okay.

And those are three things that are basically ceremonies that are totally anti Christian in some sense.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And so just to bring those things up or to answer questions about them as a Christian who's proclaiming the gospel, there's going to be some conflict there.

People are not going to like that.

And you're going to be going against their.

Not only their religious beliefs, but their worldview, their heritage, their family, the thing that their grandpa taught them how to do when they were a little kid.

And all these things that are very, very tightly held.

And in a lot of ways, the difference between witnessing to an Indian or an American Indian and witnessing to a California surfer would be a California surfer.

It's very common in our culture for people just to switch religions maybe every six months, you know, and it's like whatever happens to be trendy, I can, you know, as a Californian, you can be a Catholic one day, and then the next day you're a Muslim, and then the next day you're a born again Christian.

And then soon after that you're a Hindu, all while looking exactly the same and eating the same food and hanging out with the same people.

And that's kind of almost.

That would be socially accepted, but you go into these other communities and it's very different.

It would be in the American Indian society to change your religious belief, to renounce your faith would be a lot more likening to a Muslim in Saudi Arabia saying, I don't want to be a Muslim anymore.

I'm going to be a Christian now.

It's a very different thing that we as Americans are not used to.

We don't understand that kind of issue.

And so, yeah, the animosity directed at you, Matthew, is a lot different than the animosity directed at me on the Oceanside Pier when I'm trying to convince a guy who used to go to church and doesn't go to church anymore that and he needs to bow his knee to Christ.

It's a whole different world.

And so you've faced a lot of anger directed towards you.

Talk about that.

And I know this isn't something that you glory in or anything like that, but I think it's extremely interesting, if anything, to give us more context on what it's like to be a missionary within a reservation.

I think the Muslim illustration is perfect, not just for the sake of illustration, but in actual fact.

The main education activist group in America now is called NDN Collective.

Ndn.

So NDN is supposed to be short for Indian NDN Collective.

I get it.

I know these are like popular words to just throw out there these days.

Oh, communism, politics, conservative, like all this stuff.

But NDN Collective is 100% Marxist.

It's the number one education group in America.

Collective.

That's a Marxist term.

It's a communist term going back to Karl Marx.

This is funded by tens of millions of dollars.

In fact, this isn't just like, you know, some like, you know, conspiracy, the deep state, like they're, you know, globalists are controlling the world and this guy's got a lot of money, he must be evil.

These are being funded by tens of millions of dollars by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, by Bill Gates, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, the Bush foundation, by tens and tens of millions of dollars to promote anti Christian, directly anti Christian and then broadly anti American rhetoric.

So this is the successor to a group in the 60s and 70s which actually got its first protest here in California in San Francisco Bay on Alcatraz island, called the American Indian Movement.

I mentioned Marlon Brando.

Hollywood got behind them.

This group became the face of American Indians in our country.

And that would be Russell Means, Dennis Banks, et cetera.

And I actually went and read Russell Means book.

It's like a 500 page book called Where White Men Fear to Tread.

Plus lots of other studying to understand where they're coming from in large.

So yes, imagine if from the time that you're five years old being taught that there is no devil, but the white man's the devil, being told that Christians, and I'm going to use this term synonymously, Christians, white people, Americans, because.

That'S how they see it.

That's how they see it.

Stole your land, killed their people, cut their hair, took their language.

And so you want nothing to do with Christianity.

In fact, they hold the moral high ground because they're still here.

And that shows their resilience to your evil Christian system.

And they can agree with the Ten Commandments because they'll say, well, our culture has always taught that, and it was perfect before the white man and Christians and missionaries showed up.

So helping them, the law and gospel is good.

The Holy Spirit will use that.

Hitting the conscience and bringing them to Christ is very important, and God can use that and does use that.

However, I have found often that there is a lot of confusion because of being taught, once again, from the age that you're a toddler in your mind that this is an evil system.

And it's also.

It's just plain hard to witness to someone where in the back of their mind they're just looking at you, going, what's this devil trying to really do?

To me?

You know, that just.

That mistrust is already there.

Yeah.

So that's what's going on in their mind.

And then as a culture, as a whole, when you're talking about the community, like, if you become.

If you convert from a Muslim to Christianity, I mean, they'll kill you in a lot of Muslim countries, countries that follow Sharia.

So anyway, there's the American Indian Movement.

You have the NDN Collective.

And this is the teaching that's been pushed for the last 50 or 70 years.

Now, I'm just gonna mention some books because we're short in time and I don't have time to unpack all of this.

But there was a book, and it's actually a friend of mine, John Trimbach.

His dad was the FBI special agent in charge in regards to this movement and some murders that took place in the 70s.

And this is all stationed right in South Dakota.

This is the headquarters of these movements.

And it's called American Indian Mafia by John and Joe Trimbach.

If you want an understanding of the this movement and this ideology, read that book.

If you want to understand how they think, read Russell Means, Where White Men Fear to Tread.

If you want to understand an overview of their religion.

Raymond Damalli, he was the director and the founder of the American Indian Institute at the University of Indiana.

He's considered the expert on American Indian religions, and he consulted with the American Indians themselves or edited past books which include American Indian testimony.

So it's not just a white man that wrote all this stuff.

He's using American Indians sources.

So he's got a book on American Indian religion and he's got a book on another book called Lakota Beliefs.

So read those, you get an understanding of that.

And so all that to say this issue goes back a really long time and you just happen to step into it as a result of you stepping into this arena where you as a white skinned looking person, just automatically fall into that category of enemy in their eyes, attempting to preach the gospel to them.

It hasn't been easy.

What has happened to you as a result of going in there.

What kind of persecution have you faced in doing this?

Yes, so we saw people personally respond positively to Christ, to the message of forsaking idols and false idols and gods and come to Christ.

We're gonna not allow you to come on the reservation, which is illegal.

They have a constitution that's pretty much just like the American Constitution they follow under that law.

And it's written, it's basically a Christian document, the way that it acknowledges God, freedom of religion, freedom of press, et cetera.

But when you say they said you couldn't come, are you talking about government officials?

The Ogallala Sioux Council, tribal council?

So, okay, so they come to you and they say, they wrote me a.

Letter, kick you out of here.

Yeah, they said, we're going to not allow you to come back.

And then so I just kept, there's American Indians off the reservation too, witnessing to them, and had written a publication.

And the publication drew a line on the sand based on 1st Kings 18, that if Yahweh is God, serve Him.

If Baal is God, then serve him.

And to really delineate in the minds of whoever is going to be converted or become a convert to Christianity that they knew what they were submitting to and what they were leaving and forsaking the cost of following Christ.

And so just drew a line in the sand.

I knew it was going to be costly.

I also put a, a disclaimer on there.

This is not about race, it's about truth.

You know, this, this might make you mad, but please be kind.

So I put all the disclaimers I could on it, but also drew a line in the sand.

And I quoted their.

Their medicine men, you know, showing the contradictions or their leaders showing the contradictions that they were teaching, and then line that up with Scripture.

And so, yeah, I ended up getting banned from the American Indian reservation, the Oglassio tribe.

And just so, you know, like, you're like, oh, man, that's really rough.

But it's.

It's a thing.

Like, getting banned.

Getting banned is a thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So myself, our governor, Governor Kristi Noem.

She was banned from more tribes than I was.

But I do stand by her in this.

She was banned for basically making a riot bill because it made world news that we had the Dakota Access pipeline, and there was 40,000 or so people congregating in South Dakota, North Dakota, to oppose this oil pipeline, which wasn't on their land.

And they left, like, tens of thousands of tons of trash, which I could go into the irony of loving Mother Earth, but so they banned her for that.

And then they tried to ban the FBI in, like, the 70s because the FBI was investigating some murders that had taken place.

So just so people know, like, I.

Mean, you're not the only one that's been banned.

I'm not the only one that's been banned.

And depending on who's listening, you'll be like, well, that's a badge of honor.

But I have been in circles where I feel like it's like, wow, you must have been too extreme, or something like that.

I mean, go read Spurgeon's sermons about smashing idolatry.

I mean, and he's talking about Catholicism and Roman Catholicism and that.

And just, you know, they would take all the fancy relics that they would have, and they would, you know, treat them as common things.

In his sermon on abolishing idols, I know that people can be overzealous.

I know that people can.

My conscience was clear in doing this because I knew that it needed to be done, and it hadn't been done for 100 years because they did have a strong tradition of many American Indians becoming Christian and pastors and vibrant theology.

So I wrote that sermon, and it made, like, world news.

NPR picked it up.

I had, like, the official state news for the United States of America.

I think it's, like, called Voice of America.

Call me.

I had native news on, like, the major, like, people that cover American Indian news.

Like calling me for interviews and things like that.

So I would just say, well, Jesus says he's the way, the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father but through him.

I'll just note this on npr.

The liberal professor of missions at Wheaton College actually went on NPR and denounced me and just basically like, you shouldn't say that about other people's gods.

So got death threats, lots and lots of death threats.

You know, would have people write.

My inbox was flooded with just the horrible messages, things like that, property threats, just harassed all over the place.

These are from people living on the Engine Reservation or people who heard, yeah, the, or all of the above.

American Indians living on the reservation, off the reservation, white people that are, you know, just people that hate Christianity.

So I've heard pretty much every horrible thing you can ever say about Christians.

We had a liberal judge, the same jurisdiction that came after my family called us homophobic, extreme, bigoted, which I don't even really talk about homosexuality a lot.

I know there's some bad stereotypes out there.

Like that's just not my thing.

It's sin, you know, you can find freedom in Christ.

So basically you spoke up against the false teachings of this, this religion.

You got banned from the Indian reservation and a whole lot of people hate you now.

You know, it's funny, the whole banning thing.

If I was a criminal, I would ban the FBI from coming into my house.

You know, such a weird thing.

But yeah, so you've, you've, you've faced a lot of hardship.

I guess for legal reasons we can't get into a.

Because you still have a case that's in progress.

But all that to say it hasn't been easy.

What has been your source of perseverance and just being able to press on through man.

How many years now, four years or so of this?

Just kind of non stop not wanting to look in your inbox because you know there's going to be something bad there.

How is it you've managed to get through this and just continue to press on with the same basic message of preaching the gospel of eternal life through faith in Jesus?

Yeah, absolutely.

So prayer in the scriptures.

I wasn't planning on getting like getting emotional.

I usually don't, especially early on.

When we come to Christ, we just want to serve him well and faithfully.

And you go throughout the Old Testament and it's God's eternal word, it's there forever.

This king did well in the eyes of the Lord.

This king you know, Josiah, right.

And he got rid of all the idols on the high places and there was a revival and they brought back the scripture in the Word.

Or there was this king and you know, he served God well in this area, but the high places they still served.

And referring to the high place in the Old Testament be like idolatry sacrifices, maybe even human sacrifice to these false gods was going on in Israel.

I think the hardest thing is holding onto that vision.

And then the New Testament, the apostles that served him faithfully, testimonies of Christians throughout history that are communist Romania and they were beaten to death.

But at the end, knowing that honoring the Lord, that he who honors me, him will I honor and bringing honor to his name.

And if you remember that.

Have you ever heard the sermon 10 shekels in a shirt.

Yeah.

Paris Reed head.

Yep.

And just real quick, for those who don't know, he started off in missions over in Africa and it was very man centered, you know.

And then his view of evangelism and missions became very God centered.

And so it's all about worthy is the lamb that was slain and prayer.

So my prayer guns, some of these are common.

But 2 Corinthians 12, my grace is sufficient for thee, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

Therefore I rather boast in my weaknesses that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

So you get to the point, just as illustration, mixing my metaphors here, that the Israelites, when they come to the Red Sea, it's like God could have destroyed Pharaoh and the Egyptians in one plague.

Just boom, they're done.

He took 10 and all the way until they're going to die.

So they think, and then God finally delivers them up to the very like they had to imagine the emotional, you know, things they have to go through, but they were weak.

You have no other hope, no other resources.

I'm laying it all on the line for you, God, just do what you have to do.

So 2 Corinthians 12 prayer gun number one.

Number two, be anxious for nothing but everything by prayer and supplication.

God will, right, give you the peace that passes all understanding.

So he's going to give me grace, he's going to give me peace.

Third prayer gun James 1, he'll give wisdom liberally to all that ask.

So I'm promised wisdom, I'm promised peace, I'm promised grace and power.

And then number four, which this is probably number one, if you were to see like a log of my brain, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to Forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And I'm not talking like I'm committing like grievous sin or anything, but it's just like we're progressively being sanctified and asking God daily like, oh, cleanse me, Lord, tell me to do better.

Usually it has to come down to my mouth.

And I don't mean like egregious sins with my mouth, but just, you know, was I kind here?

Did I tell the whole truth?

Did I try to conceal something?

So those four things, prayer and the scripture, that's all we got.

Man, I love, I love your answer because it's very simple.

The issue is simple as well.

In the Bible, when people speak out against sin, whether it be a personal sin or the sin of an entire nation, there's going to be pushback.

And so that's a very easy to understand thing.

That's what's happening to you.

And yet your answer is simple as well.

It really just comes down to trust in God and do what's right.

And so Matthew, I just want to say I appreciate you standing for Christ and just simply doing what is right.

It's super encouraging to me and I'm sure to the people listening to this as well.

And we are out of time.

And so what I do want to say is make sure you get on The Living Waters YouTube channel.

Under playlists you can go to the life changing stories.

Check out the video Life in Prison, Hope in Christ.

This is where you can see Matthew and what he was doing on the reservation before he got banned.

Life in Prison.

Part of the video, he goes into a jail, which was super interesting.

So funny if I want to go into a jail or a prison or any kind of thing like that here in America, there's going to be months of paperwork and trying to figure out how to get in.

And I got to know somebody and there's all this bureaucratic red tape for the one on the Indian reservation.

We basically showed up that day and Matthew asked, can we come in and film?

And they said, sure.

It's a very different world and I loved it.

But yeah, make sure you check out that video.

Life in Prison, Hope in Christ.

Like I said, I'll put a link in the show notes.

And now what we're going to do is we are going to end this one.

And stay tuned because next we will be talking the apologetics and the beliefs of the American Indian.

We'll see you then.

Thank you.

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