True Knowledge of Self

Dwayne Lemon Testimony Continues

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Lance Wilbur (Host), Dwayne Lemon

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Series Code: TKS

Program Code: TKS000002


00:30 Hello, my name is Lance Wilbur.
00:32 And I'm Dwayne Lemon.
00:33 And we like to welcome you to another episode of TKS,
00:36 a True Knowledge of Self,
00:38 where we get to know ourselves from a biblical perspective.
00:42 For those of you who are just tuning in,
00:44 we've been going over a story.
00:46 The story is Dwayne Lemon's.
00:49 And we discussed the fact that we're involved in a war.
00:53 We talked about this war in the Book of Revelation chapter 12
00:56 and we saw that it began in heaven.
00:58 And we saw that it-- Now has come to the earth.
01:02 And the war, the battle is waged
01:04 over the control of humanity's minds.
01:08 And we talked about the fact that the Bible in verse 11
01:12 of Chapter 12 gives us insight into how humanity can overcome
01:16 and gain a victory in this warfare.
01:18 And it shows that they overcame them by the blood of the Lamb,
01:22 which we will be talking about in future episodes,
01:24 and by the word of their testimony.
01:28 So we're talking about Dwayne Lemon's testimony,
01:30 we're talking about his story.
01:32 We saw how he was reared in the heart
01:34 of New York City in Hollis, Queens.
01:37 We talked about his upbringing
01:38 and coming from a virtual obscurity,
01:41 and getting involved heavily into the hip hop scene,
01:44 into the dance aspect of hip hop.
01:47 And eventually, he got his break
01:49 and eventually, he found himself
01:51 entrenched in the industry.
01:52 And this is where we left off,
01:53 and we were gonna be picking up from that point.
01:55 And so I'd like to now ask you some questions again
01:59 and kind of, if you could just bring us up to speed
02:02 and help us understand in brief.
02:04 You came from a regular family if you will
02:08 and find yourself now fully entrenched
02:11 in the hip hop industry as a dancer, choreographer.
02:15 Again, just show us where we are now.
02:17 Yeah, I mean, when you think about
02:19 how many individuals try to make it in entertainment,
02:23 whether it be through singing or poetry,
02:25 rhyming, dancing or whatever, acting,
02:28 you get literally millions of people
02:30 throughout North America alone, let alone throughout the world,
02:34 who are trying to make it to the top.
02:35 So imagine, you got this young black child
02:39 growing up in Hollis, Queens, New York
02:41 listening to hip hop like anybody else,
02:42 going to those clubs, going to the parties.
02:45 But now here it is that I was able to
02:47 actually work with the people
02:49 that one day I used to watch on television,
02:50 I was entertained by them.
02:52 Now I'm on television and I'm entertaining people.
02:55 It felt like I arrived, that's the best way
02:58 that I can explain it.
02:59 I'm making more money than I could have ever imagined.
03:02 I'm also on television,
03:03 I have people adoring me and admiring me
03:06 and I can get any girlfriend I want or anything.
03:07 So I mean, I had my own choices now.
03:09 A lot of people wanted to be my friend
03:11 and to hang out with me.
03:12 So at this stage in my life, I felt practically like
03:16 what some would call even a god on earth
03:17 because you know when you think of God
03:19 you think of one who gets adoration,
03:22 someone who gets worship,
03:23 someone who people are willing to sacrifice
03:25 so that they can pay homage to this person
03:28 and receive His blessings.
03:29 This is how people were treating me.
03:31 And this is how people are treated
03:33 in the entertainment industry.
03:34 They're treated as gods, they treated as individuals
03:36 that are superior to natural humanity.
03:39 So now I'm in that mix.
03:41 So you can imagine my head is full of self.
03:43 At this point, I'm thinking I am all that and then some.
03:45 I'm thinking I've arrived.
03:47 So this is something you were looking for
03:48 as a young man, in high school even.
03:51 Getting it at a local level and then now going up
03:54 to an international level, you're on tours now.
03:56 So who-- who were some of the people
03:58 that you're working with at this point?
03:59 Well, at that point again,
04:01 I was working with people like Queen Latifah.
04:02 I was working with you know, hip hop group
04:06 that was called A Tribe Called Quest,
04:08 which was a led out a rapper named Q-Tip.
04:10 I think he's still pretty much out there today.
04:12 You have individual like Busta Rhymes,
04:14 you have individuals like the Wu-Tang Clan
04:16 with Method Man and all these folks.
04:18 Then you have people in more of the R'n'B scene.
04:20 Again, this was like Brandy, Keith Sweat,
04:24 working with people like Silk or Boyz II Men.
04:27 This was the era that I was in.
04:28 So it was working with people like that
04:31 that made me up to this "celebrity status"
04:34 as far as a dancer was concerned.
04:35 I was amazed at how much dancers
04:38 receive so much adoration.
04:40 And again, because I moved from being just a dancer,
04:43 performer to now a choreographer,
04:46 so now I'm not only performing the steps,
04:48 but I'm creating the steps.
04:49 So there's a major notoriety that comes with that
04:52 to the point that now, not only the common people
04:55 that you meet on a day to day basis in the world,
04:58 they were adoring you,
04:59 but even people very much in the industry
05:01 because now they're looking at you
05:02 as an innovative person, a creator...
05:04 So now artists are looking to you
05:07 because you can make them look better.
05:08 Exactly, exactly.
05:09 So now I became an asset to them.
05:11 So how much, for example, from a regular,
05:13 you know, base level dancer to a choreographer,
05:17 what's the money difference?
05:19 Oh, base level dancer can do a music video
05:21 maybe make anywhere from $200 to $300.
05:25 If you are fortunate, you can probably make about
05:27 $500 or $600 depending on the artist many a times
05:30 'cause some artist have bigger budgets.
05:31 And again, this is numbers from that time.
05:33 Yeah, numbers from that time.
05:35 So you're talking again around early '90s.
05:37 These were the kind of dollar figures
05:39 that was real to a dancer.
05:41 Sometimes you got less than $100 too.
05:43 But when you do choreography,
05:45 I mean I could get paid $5,000 just to choreograph one song.
05:50 And then if you write a contract
05:51 where you're gonna choreograph 12 deals,
05:53 then you just take 5,000 times 12.
05:55 So the money was drastically different.
05:58 So once I got a taste of that world,
06:00 that was the world I didn't want to leave.
06:01 I said, "Oh, no, I'm gonna stay here."
06:03 Because performing was the easy part,
06:04 choreography took much more brain work.
06:06 It took a lot more thinking and crafting.
06:08 And therefore, it challenged me and I wanted that challenge.
06:11 So I accepted that part so here's where I am now.
06:14 Now I'm making a good amount of money,
06:16 I'm traveling, I'm on television,
06:18 I'm making the name for myself.
06:20 And now I also wanted to help people too.
06:22 So I'm doing all that I can
06:23 to just try to get my name out there
06:25 and to be as absolutely popular as possible.
06:28 Right, so you're also mentioning
06:29 that there was a void that even you know growing up,
06:33 childhood, teenage years, there was a void.
06:36 You tried to fill it with different things.
06:38 Now you have material wealth.
06:39 You can pretty much do whatever you want,
06:40 go wherever you want around traveling globally now.
06:44 Yeah. And the void still exists.
06:47 What is it or what are some of the things that explore or--
06:51 You know, sounded the alarm or the red flags
06:55 that showed you that the industry did not have
06:58 what it took to fill a void?
07:00 It was the quiet moments.
07:02 That's why you'll find in the world generally,
07:05 and especially, in the hip hop and R'n'B culture and industry,
07:08 there's always activity.
07:10 You're always doing something,
07:11 you got to keep yourself engaged,
07:12 you got to keep yourself moving on to the next project,
07:14 next program, next place or what have you.
07:17 Because if you have too many of those quiet moments,
07:19 when you study the Bible you'll remember
07:21 that God doesn't always speak through the major tempests
07:23 or whirlwinds that take place
07:25 but it's all still quiet moments
07:26 where the voice of God speaks
07:28 most forcibly to the conscience.
07:30 So it is in those quiet moments when you have downtime.
07:33 maybe you're traveling somewhere
07:35 and you don't have a headset on where you're banging
07:37 some music through your ears,
07:38 it's those quiet moments that now you start to listen.
07:42 And you start hearing things,
07:43 you start thinking about things,
07:45 you start picturing life.
07:46 And before you know it,
07:48 you start coming face to face with yourself.
07:49 And to be honest that's why most of those people
07:52 at that level and even in everyday life,
07:54 people keep themselves busy.
07:56 That's the point. To avoid that quiet time when--
07:59 To avoid the time when you're by yourself.
08:02 And God, as we understand it now.
08:06 God speaks to the heart. That's right.
08:07 It really challenges you
08:08 and challenges what you believe,
08:10 challenges your course in life.
08:12 Exactly, so therefore, that's what this phraseology
08:14 comes from "quiet your conscience."
08:16 Where they teach you to quiet your conscience
08:18 and the way you quite your conscience
08:19 is that you have to drown it out
08:21 by doing something else, either filling your conscience
08:23 with something else or doing some type of activity,
08:26 anything that will take your mind off of that thing
08:29 that by the grace of God would lead one to God.
08:32 So it was during the quiet times
08:33 that I started to see.
08:35 You know, I'm making money, I'm on television.
08:37 I'll tell you the truth,
08:38 there were times that I was on tour.
08:40 And I saw a light, I saw a light
08:42 and my eyes were open.
08:44 Because a lot of people think once you get on tour
08:47 and you starting to perform,
08:49 you're gonna just see the limelight,
08:51 you're gonna see all of this magnificent stuff,
08:53 you're gonna see the Bling-bling.
08:54 Yeah. Everything.
08:56 But what happens is as you starting to see things that
08:58 if you have a conscience, it bothers you.
09:00 I remember one rapper,
09:01 he had four women waiting outside of his hotel room,
09:07 just so that they could be used by him
09:09 as a piece of meat for sexual pleasure
09:12 to congratulate him
09:13 for making it another year for his birthday.
09:15 In other words, they were for women
09:16 waiting outside of his hotel room
09:18 just so that they could bid him happy birthday
09:20 by giving their bodies to him.
09:22 And I remember 'cause I open my hotel room
09:24 I see these ladies there
09:25 and I'm like, "What are they doing there?"
09:27 And then I found out the next day
09:28 why I was disgusted by that.
09:30 I mean, I was not like, oh, that was cool,
09:31 I wish that was the last thing on my mind.
09:33 In my mind, I said that is disgusting.
09:35 I can't believe a woman would degrade herself like that.
09:38 And therefore, I found that it was the after parties
09:42 and things of that nature, believe it or not,
09:44 even though I would perform and I would look like
09:46 I was very much into what I was doing,
09:48 when the performance was over
09:50 and the after party would take place,
09:52 nine times out of ten,
09:54 I wouldn't go to the after parties.
09:55 I became disgusted with the very people
09:57 that I was working for.
09:58 Now what we talked about this void
10:01 and we talked about the other elements
10:03 of the culture of hip hop culture,
10:06 for example, what we've been focusing on
10:07 for the most part is the "having fun" element.
10:10 Yeah, yeah. You know.
10:11 And that's pretty much the most exploited element,
10:14 where it's just about having fun
10:15 and there's nothing else.
10:17 You know, anything goes
10:18 and there's really no checks and balances.
10:20 But there is another side,
10:23 you know, there is the knowledge,
10:25 the wisdom, what they call the "over standing."
10:27 So there is the other elements where you're actually supposed
10:30 to be seeking knowledge, and discipline, and growing,
10:34 and developing righteousness, truth, all those things.
10:37 So we're behind the scenes now as you're,
10:40 you know, escalating in your career,
10:42 were there some of those elements
10:43 that you are getting exposed to?
10:45 What were some of the things happening on that side?
10:47 Definitely.
10:48 Because of the fact again, coming from the East Coast,
10:51 one of the major hip hop artists
10:53 in the East Coast was KRS-One.
10:55 KRS-One, K-R-S O-N-E for one.
10:58 Knowledge Reigns Supreme over nearly everybody.
11:00 So he, you know, KRS was really heavy into knowledge.
11:03 So any time you listen to KRS-One,
11:05 he's gonna start dropping a lot of knowledge.
11:07 Then of course, there was the Brand Nubians,
11:09 you know, you listen to Brand Nubians,
11:11 Grand Puba and all these guys.
11:13 And you know, again, they're dropping knowledge,
11:15 the PRT, the Poor Righteous Teachers.
11:17 All of these different groups, you know were coming out
11:19 and they were bringing in a different aspect.
11:22 Even though they believed in having fun,
11:24 they also believed in knowledge and education and science.
11:26 It wasn't made prominent.
11:28 Yeah, it wasn't made prominent
11:29 by any stretch of the imagination.
11:31 But nevertheless, it was something intriguing
11:33 to people who were seeking knowledge
11:35 or open to knowledge.
11:36 So I did get exposed to that.
11:38 And I think that maybe that paved a way
11:40 to some degree of ultimately where I am even today
11:43 because it got me interested in reading.
11:46 It got me interested in searching myself
11:48 and starting to really think about well what is my role
11:50 because remember, the foundation
11:52 of hip hop culture is knowledge of self.
11:54 You know, when you understand who you are,
11:57 when you understand, in their case,
11:58 that you are a God, you know, on earth and so on
12:02 that it gives a level of understanding
12:05 or as they call it over standing
12:06 which supposedly puts me
12:08 at a certain state in my existence,
12:10 where I can start manifesting things
12:12 that are above and beyond the common man.
12:14 So I did get exposed to that
12:16 as well along with the "fun side".
12:18 The fun side was dominant. No question about it.
12:21 But then I started to see some things
12:23 that really began to turn me off.
12:25 I would go to certain parties or clubs
12:28 that a lot of our artists were holding.
12:30 And there will be everything from gunshots.
12:32 There would be parties where there was fighting.
12:34 There would be women that would get raped.
12:36 There were times where I was promised money
12:38 and I wasn't paid.
12:39 There were all sorts of things,
12:40 there were times I would go on tour
12:42 and I remember one time working with one artist
12:44 and they asked me to grab the bags to carry it on to,
12:48 you know, the bus,
12:50 which is what the job of a roadie was.
12:52 They called them the roadies.
12:53 And I said, "Well, I'm not a roadie, I'm a dancer.
12:55 So the roadie can handle that."
12:57 And I was told, you know what,
12:59 "You better do it or else if you don't.
13:01 You're gonna have to find your way back home."
13:02 And were you told that nicely?
13:04 I was not told that not even halfway nicely.
13:06 So you know, I got exposed to that.
13:09 And this was the stuff that people don't see.
13:11 They don't see, I saw a man get a gun shot
13:13 right in his eye and die instantly.
13:15 That I can't erase that picture from my head.
13:16 I've seen individual get bludgeoned to death
13:19 by even corrupt police officers,
13:21 who would take these guys and bring them.
13:23 I saw one police, several police officers
13:25 bring one man into a bathroom.
13:27 And the door is this way
13:28 and they're supposed to go outside
13:30 to the police car.
13:31 But instead they bring the man to the bathroom
13:33 and you hear this man screaming for dear life.
13:36 As they begin to beat him and bludgeon him to death,
13:40 where his face was covered with blood and swollen.
13:43 These are the pictures that I saw that I said,
13:45 "Wow, you know, this is not what I thought."
13:48 Right, so there is an element to the street life
13:52 and to that culture and that environment
13:56 that nobody can deny is negative.
13:58 No doubt.
14:00 And there's people, they find themselves
14:01 "trapped" in it if you will or they have no other choice
14:03 and no other alternative.
14:05 But it sometimes left unsaid.
14:08 In other words, there is individuals like you mentioned,
14:10 they're certain artist who make it prominent
14:12 and highlight the problems, highlight the challenges
14:15 of that kind of life style.
14:17 But many of them, I can't say all
14:19 but many of them don't provide
14:21 a practical and viable solution.
14:24 So and I'd like to speak to the audience for a moment.
14:26 For those of you who have absolutely no idea
14:28 what we're talking about
14:30 and some of these terms that we're using,
14:33 we're gonna be dealing with these subjects moving forward
14:36 and we're gonna go in detail
14:38 and deal with some of the things
14:39 that we're talking about and really explain
14:41 and kind of break it down
14:42 and kind of peel the curtain back.
14:45 So that we can see if these things are indeed
14:48 as viable as they're promoted to be
14:51 or is there something better,
14:53 is there a better choice, is there a better way.
14:55 So again, we understand those dynamics,
14:59 at least now I hope so.
15:01 Now as you've seen these things and you're having,
15:04 you're making these moral judgments
15:05 and you're saying this is wrong.
15:07 This can't be and how is it now affecting you, how is it--
15:11 Is it changing your perspective,
15:13 is it changing your attitude towards their industry?
15:15 It's funny, I'm starting to gradually
15:19 "See the Light" because you know,
15:21 again, I came into entertainment with an attitude
15:24 that this is gonna be the best thing in the world.
15:26 And granted, there is money.
15:27 There is no question about that,
15:29 there is lots of sex
15:30 there is no question about that.
15:31 All of the pleasures of this world
15:34 are definitely in the industry.
15:36 And they are there because it's an entrapment.
15:37 It's something put together by the enemy himself,
15:39 you know what I'm saying, God already spoke about this
15:41 in the book of 2 Timothy 3: 1-4.
15:45 God talks about it.
15:46 He talks about "in the last days,
15:47 perilous times shall come.
15:49 There is gonna be people
15:50 who are lovers of their own selves,"
15:52 you know, and all of these different things
15:54 but then in verse 5 He says, "having a form of godliness
15:56 but denying the power thereof."
15:58 So even when I would see these pleasure lovers
16:01 and there is lots of pleasure to be fulfilled in there,
16:04 at the end of the day,
16:06 it still left the heart void, it didn't fulfill.
16:09 So I started to go through that.
16:11 So there were those quite moments,
16:12 going to bed at night.
16:13 That's why some people, they smoke weed
16:15 until they can't smoke it anymore.
16:16 Anything that takes the mind into another world
16:19 instead of facing the real world.
16:20 Like fantasy. Having, yeah, you know fantasy.
16:22 So here it is, I'm kind of turned off.
16:26 A Making money is my job and I'm treating like a job
16:28 but I'm really not enjoy myself
16:30 because I've been exposed to enough now
16:32 that I said you know what,
16:33 this culture is presenting something that is not true.
16:36 It is not very real, it appears real,
16:39 people call it real but it's not.
16:41 That's why, that's why you know, God gave us
16:42 the inspiration for this because the foundation again,
16:45 of hip-hop and R'n'B culture is knowledge of self
16:49 but God's word gives us a true knowledge of self
16:52 and a true knowledge of self
16:53 is where you're gonna end up finding that peace
16:55 and we're gonna build on that.
16:56 But I was looking for something better than what they had.
17:01 A friend of mine TJ, his name was,
17:04 his stage name was Psycho and TJ was an amazing dancer
17:09 but what happened was, we went on tour with Latifah,
17:12 and then we came back for a break.
17:14 We're supposed to go back on tour.
17:16 Well, TJ calls me up
17:17 and I knew that he was a church going guy
17:19 so he calls me up and he says, "Hey man,
17:20 listen I can't go back on tour."
17:22 I said, "Why not?"
17:24 He said, "Because Christ and the world cannot mix."
17:27 Now when he said that to me that sound like a Greek.
17:30 I was like, what are you talking about
17:31 Christ and the world, I don't even understand that
17:33 but he said, "Dwayne, you're gonna
17:34 understand sooner or later
17:36 that if you're gonna give your life to Jesus,
17:37 you got to be with Him
17:39 and if you're gonna be in the world,
17:40 then be in world but you can't ride the fence.
17:42 And to me, it didn't make sense at all
17:44 but it was the seed that was planted.
17:48 It was like Isaiah 55:1, where the Bible says,
17:50 "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth,
17:53 it will not return unto me void,
17:55 but it shall accomplish that which I please,
17:57 in that thing whereto I sent it."
17:59 It was accomplishing
18:00 what God wanted to do in my mind
18:02 but at the beginning of it, I couldn't understand it.
18:05 So therefore, it was through him
18:07 making to stand for Jesus and trying of course,
18:09 to get me to follow Jesus,
18:11 that was like no, no, no I'm not,
18:12 I'm not really interested in that right now,
18:13 I want to make money,
18:15 I want to get big, I want to this--
18:16 It planted a seed.
18:17 But it definitely planted to seed, no question.
18:19 So it was through that
18:20 that something major happened in my life
18:23 which actually calls to paradigm shift.
18:25 And I believe this paradigm shift
18:26 is the same paradigm shift
18:28 that a lot of people have gone through,
18:30 unfortunately, some may need to go through.
18:31 I don't want people to go through this
18:33 but sometimes we need things to wake us up.
18:35 My nephew Charlie, who was just about
18:39 a year or two younger than me through my sister Laverne,
18:42 he really wanted to make money like his uncle,
18:44 he is Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York.
18:45 They are not making a lot of money.
18:47 Brownsville was code name Murderville.
18:48 So he is in the area that's really, really bad
18:52 and he decided to sell drugs.
18:54 And the night he sold drugs, was the night he was killed.
18:58 And he gunned down by people
18:59 who professed to be his friends.
19:01 And when I went to his funeral,
19:04 and I'm looking at this closed cascade
19:06 because his head was so wounded badly
19:07 that they couldn't even have an open cascade.
19:09 And I'm looking at this cascade and nephew is in there
19:12 and as I'm looking at this cascade, I'm mad
19:14 because I'm like if you want the money
19:16 I would have gave you money,
19:17 you know, a lot of things going through my mind.
19:19 But when that cascade started to go down into the ground,
19:23 and I felt like for the first time
19:25 he's been pulled out of my life,
19:26 it was at that moment that I started to cry
19:29 and I really felt like he's gone.
19:31 You know, and then I went to the limousine,
19:34 and when I went into the limousine,
19:36 this is the first time, it was like the all the voices
19:39 in the limousine were drowned out.
19:41 And I heard a voice as clear as day
19:44 and that voice were saying,
19:46 "Will you accept me now, will you accept me now?"
19:50 And it was from hearing that voice that
19:52 even though I'm completely ignorant of the Bible,
19:55 I remember the few little stories
19:56 that I've heard about how God can speak to someone,
19:58 and in my mind I knew.
20:00 I said, this is got to be God talking to me.
20:02 So therefore, I said, in that limousine,
20:05 "Yes Lord, I will accept you in my life."
20:08 And it was from that point
20:09 that I began this journey now of trying to understand
20:12 what does it mean to be a Christian.
20:13 Right, so you start going to church,
20:16 you're hooking up with your boy, TJ?
20:18 Yeah, I mean, I called TJ up I said,
20:19 all right talk to me what do I got to do
20:21 and he said, well you need to go to church.
20:22 All right. And I said, all right.
20:24 And he was going to the Pentecostal Church
20:25 so I went there with him.
20:26 So he started attending church
20:28 and you know, taking that path, still in the industry?
20:31 Yep.
20:32 So how did you make the transition?
20:34 How did-- did that continue to escalate
20:36 the more the depravity of the industry,
20:38 what was the final straw there?
20:40 The more depravity of the industry
20:42 is constant climb higher and higher,
20:45 okay, so definitely you see the more depravity, big time.
20:48 It just get worse and worse and worse.
20:50 But as I started to read the Bible
20:53 a little bit more and everything,
20:55 you know, things started opening up to me.
20:56 Now I got to be honest with you, man,
20:58 I went to the Pentecostal Church.
21:00 Now when I see a bunch of people
21:01 that are running around and speaking in languages
21:04 that I know I don't understand.
21:06 And I'm trying to figure out
21:07 why are they doing this, what's going on here
21:09 and it doesn't make sense to me.
21:11 So as a result of that I left, I got turned off.
21:15 I'm gonna be honest with you because I started feeling
21:16 like these people are faking it,
21:18 I didn't even think it was genuine.
21:19 So therefore, I left that church
21:21 and I went to the Catholic Church.
21:23 And then I'm trying to go ahead and see what's happening there.
21:26 You know, it was communion
21:27 and I took a little of the grape juice,
21:29 so I thought, but it was alcohol
21:31 and I was familiar with alcohol because that's my old world.
21:33 But nevertheless, I'm like, a church that serves alcohol,
21:35 you know, so things weren't making sense.
21:38 Slowly but surely,
21:40 I'm getting exposed to Christianity
21:41 on a deeper level than I've ever been before.
21:44 But at the same time,
21:45 I'm getting turned off with Christianity now,
21:46 because I'm like this, this doesn't make any sense.
21:49 And in hip hop, because of the building
21:53 of the knowledge of self principles,
21:55 my brother was part of a group called Nuwaubians
21:58 And the Nuwaubians that you know,
22:00 we'll probably build on that in another episode
22:02 but, you know, they basically
22:04 like the Five Percenters the O Five Percenters
22:06 and what they would instill in my mind is that Christians
22:10 are people who just don't really understand
22:12 what they believe, the Bible is a white man's book.
22:14 You know, they would just go down the list
22:16 of all these reasons why I should not be a Christian?
22:18 Yeah.
22:19 Going to these churches seem the confusion
22:21 and all these other things reinforced
22:24 what I was hearing from hip-hop.
22:26 You know, from that exposure that I had.
22:28 So I got to a point
22:30 that I was like look I'm really getting turned off with this,
22:32 I'm turned off with hip-hop, but quite honestly,
22:34 I was even more turned off
22:36 with the pictures of Christianity
22:37 that I was seeing.
22:39 Hip hop to me was more genuine.
22:41 They're like look, this is who we are
22:42 and this is what we are about.
22:44 And their lifestyles were consistent.
22:45 Well, Christians were people who were going around like,
22:48 hey, this is what we believe but it was total hypocrisy.
22:52 But I knew that there had to be something right
22:54 about the Bible, they had to be
22:56 something right about Christianity.
22:58 But I think I was getting some foul pictures.
22:59 Right, so you've been exposed,
23:01 you're chasing knowledge of self--
23:03 Yeah.
23:04 And you think it's here, it's not there.
23:06 You try something else, you try something else
23:08 and you find yourself now becoming grounded
23:11 in the Nuwaubian way, you know, in that whole circle.
23:16 And crossing paths with all the, you know,
23:18 the black moors and the Five Percenters
23:21 and the NOI and all these people
23:22 now sharing some of the same circles.
23:25 Yep.
23:26 What is your-- Were you challenged
23:28 with the industry, I know that you turned something down,
23:31 you know, towards the end.
23:33 Well, basically what happened was this.
23:35 In my quest for really trying to understand myself,
23:39 God and His will for my life, I found myself at a point
23:42 where I was confused in the hip hop culture and Nuwaupu.
23:45 I was also confused as it related to Christianity
23:48 of what I was exposed to.
23:49 So I found myself on the Friday night giving God an ultimatum
23:52 and telling Him if you don't let me know who you are,
23:55 by tomorrow I'm just gonna totally give up on Christianity
23:58 and I'm just gonna go ahead and join with the Nuwaubians
24:00 because it made more sense.
24:02 It was from that that the following day,
24:04 a friend of mine found a flier, laying on the street,
24:06 she brings it to my house and she shows me
24:09 all these topics that are on the flier
24:11 that were exactly the questions that I had issues about.
24:13 Like, what were some of them?
24:14 Oh man, well first of all,
24:16 where is my existence as a black man
24:18 because they instill this in to me
24:20 in the part of hip-hop culture that I was exposed to.
24:22 Angels are white, patriarchs are white,
24:25 prophets are white, Jesus is white,
24:26 everybody is white.
24:28 The only black man was the Simon of the Cyrenes
24:30 who carry Jesus' cross and you know,
24:32 and when they build that package up right,
24:34 it does kind of create and indignation in you like,
24:37 "What's going on, where am I, where are my people,
24:38 what's my identification?"
24:40 So when this man had a study
24:42 on the role of the African American in the Bible,
24:45 I said, wow, I never heard that before.
24:48 He had the study that night called
24:49 The African American and the Pig,
24:50 I said, "Wait a minute,
24:52 Christians talk about not eating pork?"
24:53 I know that from the Islamic influence
24:55 but not from Christians.
24:56 So sure enough, man, I had to go, so I went.
24:58 It 15 minutes from my house, went down,
25:01 heard it and it was the most explosive thing
25:04 I ever heard in my life.
25:05 I mean, everything was biblical, everything.
25:08 And from that I said,
25:10 "Who are you people? What are you teaching?"
25:12 And they began to do Bible's studies with me,
25:14 they began to walk me through the word of God.
25:16 And it got me to a point that I made a decision
25:18 to go all the way with Jesus
25:19 and to follow Him and to keep His word
25:22 and by His grace live His words.
25:24 All right, so you came to the truth
25:27 as you understood it at that time.
25:29 And you've been walking that path ever since.
25:31 Now what was the final challenge
25:34 that the industry threw at you, to try to trap you in their--
25:38 and where you have to make a decision
25:40 for or against the truth?
25:42 Well, what happened was as I began to study the Bible,
25:44 I began to learn about the importance of God's people
25:47 keeping His commandments.
25:48 And keeping His commandments, it meant all not some.
25:51 So therefore, when I look at James Chapter 2
25:53 and it says, that if I break one,
25:55 I'm guilty of breaking all, I said, all right,
25:56 well, obviously I want to honor God
25:58 and keep all of His commandments,
25:59 which of course, includes the fourth Commandment,
26:01 which includes the seventh day Sabbath.
26:03 So when I began to understand that
26:05 I started telling everybody in the industry
26:06 I said, look I can't work on Sabbaths.
26:08 And they said, Saturday's are our biggest days.
26:11 Friday nights and Saturdays,
26:12 that's our biggest selling days, bigger tickets.
26:14 So it got to a point that in the beginning,
26:17 because of the money pull,
26:19 yeah, I found myself selling out on the Lord.
26:21 And I began to do my own thing but then overtime,
26:24 the conviction started to dwell so heavily
26:27 that I've remembered one time I was with Heavy D,
26:29 we went on tour and I was dancing anyhow
26:31 even though I knew it was wrong,
26:33 and I was dancing on the Sabbath, you know.
26:35 And as I began to understand that
26:37 it got to a point in my experience
26:38 that God spoke to my heart and He says,
26:40 "Son if you continue doing this,
26:43 you'll never come back to me."
26:45 It was kind of like God was saying
26:46 and I love the words that God used,
26:48 it wasn't, if you keep doing this I'll cut you off.
26:50 God says, "If you keep doing this,
26:51 you won't come back to me."
26:53 Because you get entrenched in it.
26:55 I had to make a decision beyond my feelings and therefore,
26:59 I went and I called them up and I said that's it.
27:02 And it was over with the entertainment industry.
27:03 It got to a point that I realized
27:05 that the entertainment industry and God's commandments
27:07 are variants one with another.
27:09 And any Christian, any person who claims to love Jesus
27:12 and wants to follow God's word,
27:14 Jesus' word says, here is the proof,
27:16 "If you love me, keep My commandments."
27:19 John 14:15.
27:20 So it got to a point that I had to realize
27:22 if I love God, I need to do what He says,
27:24 even though it's not what my heart wants.
27:28 That's an absolutely amazing story.
27:30 And you're able to overcome
27:31 and you moved from that life style
27:33 into a life style with Christ.
27:36 Unfortunately, we're out of time
27:38 and we're gonna continue, we're gonna talk about,
27:39 a little bit about my story, my testimony.
27:42 So we want to encourage you to come back again,
27:45 visit us again, invite a friend
27:47 and we want to remind you again in Proverbs 2:6, it says,
27:52 "The Lord giveth wisdom and out of His mouth
27:56 comes knowledge and understanding."


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Revised 2016-02-04