Welcome to Truth Talk Live. All right, let's talk the truth. A daily program powered by the Truth Network. This is kind of a great thing and I'll tell you why. Where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. The wild and crazy world of social media. It has exploded. Parents, what do you tell your youngsters if they have a smartphone?
Are smartphones producing dumb children? What about that? I have in the studio a real live TikTok star. I mean, this guy's bonafide.
200,000 plus followers. He went to the Holy Land and everything changed, and he's gonna tell me why every one of our kids should be off social media, no one should ever look at it again, throw away the phones. Michael Pettit, did I characterize that properly? Not at all, Steve. What? Not at all.
No, no, no. Social media is, in my view, one of the greatest gospel opportunities in the history of mankind. But what about all the bad stuff? All the pornography, kids getting stuck in these games, kids getting body shamed and all that stuff.
How could you say this? My encouragement to the church is that social media is the most powerful medium of influence perhaps we've ever had in human history. And my view is that the church needs to step up. Christians need to step up into this arena. Yes, there's a lot of garbage, but there's also a lot of garbage books out there.
There's a lot of garbage music. That doesn't mean we stop. It means we wade into it with the power of Christ. Okay, we're going head on. We're not just wading into this.
We're diving into it today. He's agreed to come on and to face the fire of this fiery host. I'm Stu Everson. This is Truth Talk Live.
I'm so glad all of you are here today joining us. Michael Pettit, we want to hear your story. We want to hear your experience with TikTok, your adventure in the Holy Land. You come out fresh out of Bible college.
You go to the Holy Land and everything changed in your life. Now you're actually talking and consulting with people on how to do it as opposed to maybe you should be behind the pulpit saying, get rid of those phones, get rid of those accounts, cancel them right away. We're going to try to introduce some Sandy in this, and we want to take your phone calls.
I want to hear your horror stories. I want to hear if you agree that we should get rid of this stuff, call in and tell me why. Or if you think it's a good outlet for the gospel, like Michael says, toll free 866-34-TRUTH.
866-348-7884. It's a free call. We want to hear from you. We want to hear your thoughts on this. We love involving our listeners.
This is a two-way conversation here every day on this program. Michael is our guest, Michael Pettit. Now tell us about a little bit about your journey, like how you suddenly went from a Christian college and folks are like saying, I thought Christians colleges were trying to like discourage media use and media abuse.
Suddenly you're on TikTok and let's not even talk about all the communist China connections to TikTok and how they're spying on us. Michael Pettit, did you lose your mind? But tell everyone what happened to you. Give us your story. Yeah, absolutely, Stu. Well, on your point about communist China, I just have to say it is part of Christ's redemptive work in the world that he can take something from anyone no matter what the intent is and redeem it for his glory.
Amen. So in my perspective, God gave me a voice in Jerusalem. Yes, I went to Bible college. I attended Bob Jones University.
I graduated with a history degree. Then I went on and got my masters at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Islam in the Middle East. And I got to spend so much of my time in Jerusalem. And that's the real asset that people do not have when they're over there.
You go over there and you can spend five, ten thousand dollars on a trip, but you're only there for two weeks. God gave me five years in the prime of my youth in the holy city. I got to absorb the history, the full colorized version of of the text. I got to read the Psalms on Mount Zion.
I got to wake up in the morning and watch the sunrise and reflect over the life of the apostles, the life of the patriarchs and what that means for the world today. And so in my last year in Jerusalem, I felt a very strong conviction that more people needed to have access to the holy city. The biggest problem that you run into in Jerusalem is that the people who are there are usually only there because they have the money or they have the time.
Well, not everyone has the money, not everyone has the time, and some people don't even have the health to get on a plane and make the trip over. And I wanted to make Jerusalem accessible to the world. My motto was during that time, Jerusalem for all.
You think about someone's grandmother. If she's in a wheelchair and she's living in Sacramento or Atlanta, Georgia, can she get on a plane and go to the empty tomb of Jesus? No. I took you there twice a day and it was my privilege and honor to do it. Well, let me interject now. We just celebrated Resurrection Sunday.
You've been there for, you were there five years. Is the tomb still empty? You better believe it, Stu. You better believe it. I was just checking on that. Okay, very good. No, in fact, last year, Resurrection Sunday, I gave a tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is the historic Christian site of the resurrection spot of our Lord.
And you have to double check me on this, but I believe that live stream on TikTok had anywhere between 130,000 and 150,000 real-time viewers. Oh my. I did a little bit of the history, Stu, but you know what the most powerful part was? The most powerful part was getting to read those Gospel accounts right outside the empty tomb and getting to see the thousands and thousands of comments of people saying, Praise the Lord. He is risen.
All in real time. So you saw it, you were there for Easter. For Easter.
Several years. You were there for Christmas in Bethlehem. What was that like? What was Bethlehem like? I gotta hear about this. Bethlehem's quite interesting.
I was never there during Christmas. The problem that you run into in the Holy Land is that oftentimes people who live there try to capitalize on it. Right. And so there's a lot of sales.
There's a lot of products being pushed, and people are really, really crowded, and so it can kind of take the magic, so to speak, away from the actual experience. Plus they're putting churches and shrines over every place of the holy nasal drip or place of the Holy Sepulcher. They've got a church there, I guess, right? Well, part of that was preservation, right? We have to go back in time and look at the history. For many, many centuries, if you didn't build a church over it, you were actually opening yourself up to attack, and for people to come in and completely destroy. In fact, that's what happened with the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The Caliphate, a little bit before the First Crusade, came in and destroyed the empty tomb of Jesus and put it all the way back down to the foundation stone.
And without the Crusaders, you would not have that church that memorializes the resurrection today. So to connect that rich Holy Land experience with TikTok and this evil of social media. Well, with social media, Stu, again, I think it's a mixed blessing.
Like any medium, whether it's a phone or it's music or it's television or it's books, all things can be used for evil. And I think we've seen enough of that on social media. It's my conviction, like I said at the beginning, that the church, that believers, should stand up and engage in this new arena.
I know you'll have to double-check me on the statistics, but the average person spends between two and three hours of their day, every day, on social media, and the younger demographics spend a lot more time. What is the church going to do to reach the next generation? Because in a church, you've got them there in a pew for an hour. But the devil might be in their pocket every hour, the remainder of the week. And once you get on there, it's hard to get off. That's right. So you're saying, that's the argument, that they're already there, so bring the gospel there. That's right.
But then I do want to speak to the weaker brother. I do want to speak to the challenges, the addiction, even for screenagers my age who are just rolling and rolling and rolling through there. All of a sudden, I'm watching this Chuck Norris video, and the next thing I know, I'm sort of like, there's this amazing King Kong Godzilla scene. And then next thing you know, there's Larry Bird, the legend himself, Larry Legend, dropping an NBA 3, scoring 60 points on the Hawks. I can't watch that enough.
And then I look at my clock, and I've just spent an hour and a half just on TikTok because my daughter sent me a crazy drive-through window TikTok video. You know, it's like, I mean, there is something, there's a dopamine issue, there's an addiction part to that. We want to look at the downside of that too. But you're not using that to say, get rid of it all.
You're trying to say, redeem it. Yeah, on addiction, Stu, it's all about discernment and discipline. If you have discipline in your life, you're not going to allow the time that God has given you to be wasted. But that doesn't mean you can't clue into what's happening in culture. Social media changes every day.
These algorithms are so fine-tuned to your interests that they're going to feed you endless content of what you may like. And so it's up to the individual to exercise the discipline and the discernment to choose what they watch and for how long. And what about parents?
What role do parents play? We'll talk about that when we come back. We're going to take a quick break. This is Truth Talk Live.
I'm Stu Everson. I'm already getting heat from my comment, is the tomb still empty? I'm just asking the guy who was there. I know it's empty, but it's nice if the dude here laid eyes on the prize, it was there himself in Jerusalem, right?
All those years, pretty powerful. How did that get you hooked on, well, how did that get you involved with TikTok, and suddenly now you're a TikTok star, and now you've come back to America, you're consulting ministries to help them use social media for the advance of the gospel. Folks, is TikTok, are all the social media evil? Should we flush it down the toilet, get rid of the devices?
Or is there a way to redeem these things? 866-34-TRUTH. I want to hear from you. I'm Stu Everson. This is Truth Talk Live.
Hang on. Social media, a lot of pastors are upset, a lot of people are scrolling while the pastor's preaching, and they're not taking notes on their phone, they're watching TikTok, or they're watching YouTube, or they're on Instagram. What about you, parents?
Should we just throw out the baby with the bathwater? Or do you agree with my guest today, who is the protagonist who believes that TikTok and all these things are good, because you can redeem them and reach kids that are already going to be on there with the good news of Jesus Christ? Now, that's what he's done. He's done it through these Holy Land tours.
I want to develop that a little bit more, but I want to hand across the studio table to you, Michael. Our friends at VineTastic or vinetastic.com are sponsoring this segment of Truth Talk Live. The folks at Mighty Muscadine and Le Bleu Ultra Pure Bottled Water have developed and blessed us all with this wonderful new gift of vinetastic.com, which is a drink that a lot of diabetics are getting interested in. There's 137 million plus diabetics or prediabetics in our country.
That's like half the population, practically. But this drink has no sugar, no carbs, no calories, and no artificial sweeteners. Now, Michael, you're the health freak in your family, right? You're kind of the health guy.
That's right. You've been on Weight Loss Crusades, and you try to take care of your body. Well, you are drinking—and I just read the label to you—over 300 parts per million of antioxidant polyphenols in every bottle of VineTastic. The Muscadine grape, they've researched it scientifically. This is a research-driven, healthy beverage, and we're grateful for them for being underwriting partners here.
VineTastic.com, promo code TRUTH, it's all there at their website. But thank you, VineTastic, and hey, your body's the temple, right? So I'm going to take a drink right now. Maybe this will get me through the show, because I'm having to deal with this guy, telling everyone to get on TikTok and all that stuff. These Communist Chinese have got you brainwashed. Are you a secret agent of Communist China in here? Have you infiltrated the Truth Network Studios? He is Michael Pettit, and he has a huge TikTok following that just kind of happened overnight. Did you ever think you'd have 235,000 followers on your channel?
No, Stu, you know, to be really just honest with you, I think it's important if you have a message on your heart that you focus on the value of the message and the conviction of the power of God in your chest, and you let him take care of the rest. I never thought for a second that an audience would grow as large as it did. In fact, I remember when I did my first live tour, I looked at the data analytics after, and there were 10,000 people, and I just thought to myself, my goodness, there are 10,000 souls all over the world who got to experience the Holy Land in real time. And I never thought I'd be given the privilege and the honor of being able to take them around, and not just show them the history, but also show them the redemptive power of Jesus Christ that reverberated from that center across the world.
And so you went over there, and you had your phone, and you're doing these Holy City tours of Jerusalem, and you've kind of become quite an expert on that, and so people just started following you. Like, what was the secret sauce? What caused everyone to be so interested in this? Well, like I said before, Stu, I think a lot of it was the lack of access.
There's just not that much information on it. And I think another thing, too, is the unique background. A live tour is a lot more exciting and immediate than just a YouTube video, for example, that you can go back and reference. It was happening in real time, so if you wanted to be part of the action, all you had to do was open up your phone, and I took you there.
Another big part of it, too, was that it was very clean. A lot of history, a lot of fun. I would engage with comments in real time. I'd take you to the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall. I would do a historical overview of the Dome of the Rock, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and then I would take you to it. You're talking about the Ark of the Covenant in this video right here.
Yes, that was for another project, yes. Unbelievable. I'm looking at your TikTok right now. It's hard to listen to you now and listen to you on TikTok, but you've got all these little messages. I love Jerusalem.
Listen. I love everything about it. I love its people. I love its history. I love its geographic layout. I love the food.
I love everything about it. Who gets to look at these types of walls, 500 years old? Where else can you easily understand the stories of the Bible and of Jesus Christ, the steps that he was exchanged for Barabbas from 2,000 years ago? Wow. That's captivating.
We almost put the whole show on hold to listen to your TikTok. Stu, it's captivating because it's true. Apart from love, truth is the most powerful thing in the world. We're on the Truth Network, are we not? Yes, but if someone says get rid of TikTok, get rid of social media, dump it all because it's addicting because kids are getting stuck and people are getting trapped in porn and gambling and they're seeing things they shouldn't be seeing and they're posting things. And then there's all this human trafficking and the social media, you know, there's some evil.
When you hear that right there, suddenly you're like, well, maybe there's something redemptive there. Now, if you think that all this social media stuff is evil and you have a horror story, you want to share something, a perspective, we want you to call us today on Truth Talk Live. I'm Stu Everson.
It's a live show. You're welcome to call in toll-free 866-348-7884, 866-34-TRUTH. Maybe you have used Instagram like I did Sunday morning to post a Bible verse in a pretty skyline picture to challenge people that a day on your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. Psalm 84-10, which I posted Sunday on my LinkedIn, on my Facebook fan page, and on my Instagram as a redemptive way.
So I want to hear from listeners too. Toll-free 866-344-TRUTH. Michael Pettit, you just came in here guns-a-blazin' saying that this is a positive thing and we need to utilize it for the kingdom. Tell us more about that, especially in light of the challenges, the churches that have been split, and the families that have been destroyed by social media.
Well, I don't know if I can address that. I definitely think there's a lot of evil to it, just like there is with any communication medium. I just think the opportunity is undeniable. When I started, I found out that there was only 25,000 accounts on TikTok that had over 5,000 followers. And by the nature of the algorithm, you can reach tens of millions of people overnight by just posting one video. And it dawned on me that 25,000 people were influencing over a billion people every single day, and it occurred to me, this is the greatest gospel opportunity in the history of mankind, and everyone can participate in it. And what I was surprised by, Stu, was how few people were actually willing to give themselves a voice and participate. Wow.
Michael Pettit's our guest. His journey on social media, redeeming social media, I guess is your passion in what you're doing now. We'll tackle when we come back how you came to know Christ as your Savior. I guess it was you were young, you kind of grew up in the faith, didn't you? My father was an itinerant minister, and so I grew up in the church, I grew up around the gospel all the time, but it really wasn't until I was very young that I realized my own sinfulness and that I needed the power of Christ in my life to redeem me from sin. So I made a profession of faith when I was very, very young. I was actually baptized several years later for the first time in the Jordan River by my father. Oh my. And what I found, as most people who grew up in the church, is that there are many stages to how Christ works out his salvation in your life.
Seasons of doubt, seasons of temptation, seasons where you're not always seeking him, but he's stayed with me the entire way. Wow. What would you say that the biggest mistake you've made when it comes to social media, like what would you say, what would you warn people of, what would you caution people of? I know I'm setting you up as this great, you know, mouthpiece for and supporter of TikTok and whatnot, but what are concerns as people listening that you want to say, hey, watch out for?
Well, it's important to differentiate. I'm a supporter of the opportunity that these platforms have for the gospel and for speaking truth, but I think in terms of your own individual consumption of media, exercising wisdom, discipline, and discernment, these are platforms which are engineered to keep you hooked all day long. And if we have the power of the Holy Spirit in our chest, we are not to succumb to this type of distraction, but we should use it to influence the next generation and proclaim the truth from the hilltops and in our pockets. Well, I was watching a powerful scene in Lord of the Rings, you know, where Gandalf is doing something and suddenly a little, a reel, and suddenly a little message popped up, do you want to see more reels like this?
And I just said yes, and they said, okay, we're going to make sure you see more reels. And then I thought, oh, no, I should have said that because now when I really need to be, you know, doing something to support my wife or communicate with the children, I might be watching, you know, the battle, you know, Theoden's attack, you know, on, you know, the orcs at Gondor, helping to save Gondor, you know, responding to the call. So how do you balance all that? Well, like I said before, I just think you need to exercise wisdom and discernment. Maybe for some people that means putting a timer on how much they're able to use social media. Maybe for kids it means not giving them access until their brains are more developed.
You should wait till there should be an age. Wisdom, discernment, and discipline. Okay, we're going to get into more of that. We are also going to talk about what does it look like for a man in the ministry to go on TikTok and to get this big following.
How is he using it now for the glory of God? And we'll also take your calls here on Truth Talk Live. I'm Stu Everson. Don't touch that dial, but do subscribe to our Truth Network podcast channel. You can hear this whole interview and share it with your friends and family after the show's over. Later on tonight it'll be posted. More coming up.
Hang on. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and more. Twitter, which is now called X. These are the social media of the day. I'm Stu Everson, your host today of Truth Talk Live. We're looking at all of these, and we're looking at them through the lens and through the eyes of a younger man than me, who suddenly found himself just a few years out of Bible college TikTok famous.
There's a lot you just said earlier, didn't you, Michael Pettit? You said there's very few accounts that have over 25,000 more followers. 25,000 more followers on TikTok, is that right?
When I started, this was in 2022. Only 25,000 accounts on TikTok had over 5,000 followers, but there were over a billion users on the platform, which meant that 25,000 people were influencing over a billion a day. So how many people are on TikTok total, and how many people somehow access it or watch it or view it or consume it?
I'd have to double-check the numbers, but I think the number is between 1.5, 1.8 billion people. And it's people all over the world, but don't they filter some of our stuff out, like in China, like they don't watch, like they keep it, don't they have a way to block some of the Christian stuff in China, or does it all go out there? Actually, TikTok is banned in China.
There's a different app in China that is like TikTok, but it's completely separate. It's showing kids getting merit awards and really safe stuff, while over here we're showing people falling off buildings and beating people up and thug life and all that. That's the price of freedom, Stu. Yeah. But you went on there, and instead of doing that evil bad stuff, you went on there to redeem it.
And your ministry, or you did Holy Land tours. To recap that for everyone that just joined us, then we'll take a phone call. If you have a question, maybe you think social media should be thrown out. Get rid of it, Stu, don't talk about it, don't have it on, don't open up an account. Our toll-free number nationwide, if you want to weigh in on this, we love our callers and our listeners, is 866-34-TRUTH.
866-348-7884. We're going to go to the phone lines first. Give us a recap. So you ended up on TikTok how? I started a TikTok account primarily to talk about the history of Jerusalem, my education, but it turned into something that I couldn't really believe. I gave live tours of the Western Wall, or the Wailing Wall. I also went over the history of the Dome of the Rock and the Alaksa Mosque, over a beautiful outlook.
And then I took you to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and walked you through the history of the Church and gave a Gospel presentation at the end. And I averaged between 30,000 and 50,000 real-time viewers per livestream, and I did one in the morning and one in the evening. So we were reaching at least a quarter of a million people a week or more.
It was just phenomenal. And then about halfway through, I opened up a prayer service, Stu, and this was probably the greatest privilege of all, where if you had a prayer or something that was on your heart or a burden or disease or something, you could write in, and I would respond to you in a personal email saying that I prayed for you. I received over 4,000 emails from around the world from people asking for prayer. And as something as powerful as that, I made sure to pray for every single one of them. And I think the incredible thing, Stu, is that many of those prayers were answered in a way that I frankly had never experienced before. That is something.
His name is Michael Pettit, and he is one of the first ever TikTok stars that has been on our show on Truth Talk Live, and we're kind of trying to come at it from a devil's advocate. I don't think I'm doing too well at that, because I think I'm getting my plate handed to me here by this guy, this special guest today. But what are the downsides? What are the negatives? Maybe someone out there has a horror story. Maybe you had to cancel your account because you didn't have the discernment. You didn't have the discipline.
Maybe your kids really, you know, parenting or your child rearing went amuck with all this social media stuff, this infiltration. If you want to weigh in, it's 866-34-TRUTH. We're going to go to Mike right now, listening to us on 106.5 FM in Dayton, Ohio. Mike, you're on Truth Talk Live. Welcome, sir. Well, welcome.
Thank you for taking my call. You know, I follow you on Instagram and Facebook, Stu, and you know that. I'm one of your followers that encourages. I'm on top of your list, and it's not easy, because when I go to Facebook, I see a lot of different things that I shouldn't see, things from friends and things from, you know, different outlets.
And I quickly get rid of those. But then again, I enjoy watching Wednesday in the Word with you guys, Dr. Carson's website. It's definitely, like he said, it's a discipline. But it's like going anywhere. If you're driving through Las Vegas, you've got to decide, am I going to look at this? Am I going to look at that? If you're watching television, you know, there's channels. There's even a commercial you're watching. Do you think you're watching a family-friendly thing?
There's a commercial that comes on that's going to get your kids in a ditch. Mike, what do you say to Michael's talking here? What do you say to Mike here, Michael? Hey, Mike.
Yep. From one Mike to the next, I'd say this, is that no one is a victim of the content that they choose to consume. And as Christians, we have the ability to proactively decide not just what we watch, but also what we create. And as hard and as difficult and daunting as that can be, because we all have news feeds that are running 24-7, that choice is still ours. I think what makes it tough is accessibility, because literally you're just a wrong swipe away, or a wrong click away from something you should not be seeing, and the devil knows what all of our weaknesses are. And so he knows that you're a huge Western fan, and you know you're supposed to be getting ready for church, and then all of a sudden this little picture of Hoss fighting someone and Bonanza comes on, and you've got to see the end of it.
And so it's like he knows, and that's just a trivial way of saying, there's other things that are far worse than that, you know, and so he knows what buttons to push. And Mike, thanks for calling in, and man, thanks for following us on our Truth Channels. We encourage everyone to download our podcast, our Truth Network podcast channel.
We have a Truth Network Facebook page, and I'm on Instagram, and I'm also on LinkedIn and Facebook, and we have a YouTube channel too, so we're trying to record. We may record a little bit after this, Michael, just as a little kind of takeaway for everyone to post up. So God bless you, Mike. Thanks for calling in.
You're welcome. I love your threes. Yeah, I hit those three shots! I love your threes.
Well, you're very kind. Sometimes it's one take, sometimes it takes a few more to get them out of there, but God is good, and I play basketball as we should with anything, and I play basketball just as my friend Michael here, our guest today, in the same way that he went to the Holy Land to glorify God, right? And to bring people to Christ with TikTok. So you used the Holy Land, you used the Temple Mount, you used the Wailing Wall as a way, it's all a shtick, it's all a door to open to the Gospel, correct? Well, it was a central beam of light that extends from the work of Christ and the work of God through the people of Israel, through Moses and Abraham and everyone else, that is meant for us today in the most powerful way. I had a close friend that said that the space between heaven and earth is just a little bit, or the veil between heaven and earth is just a little bit thinner in Jerusalem, and I wanted people to see the glory of God by the glory of that mighty arena in which he brought his revealed will into this world. The way I think of Jerusalem, Stu, is that it is the Yankee Stadium of the soul.
It is the divine arena of God interacting in history with man to reveal his glorious purpose. Well, I want to talk to you more about that experience. I want to open the phone lines up if anyone else wants to call.
866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884 is our toll-free number nationwide. It's an all social media hour. Are we exposing something that we should get rid of? TikTok, for example, is front and center.
So many people complain about it being Chinese propaganda or the Chinese spying on us, capturing our data. What about Instagram? What about LinkedIn? Which is more of a business platform. What about Facebook?
What about Twitter X? What is your poison? There I said it.
And is it poison, or is it something that could be used to redeem souls and to bring people to Jesus? That's what you have found, Michael Pettit. You've used it in a redemptive way. How in the world does someone amass over 200,000 followers on TikTok? Take us through that.
Well, like with most social media, it really depends on your proposition of value. And no one up until that point had done really much content on TikTok or many other platforms from Jerusalem in the way that it was done when I was there because it was a conflagration of the education, the history. It was a clean show. It was a gospel presentation. It was rah-rah Americana over the entire surface. It was action-packed stew. And I interacted with your comments in real time. People felt like they were there. I can't tell you how many people wrote in and said, man, I've been there before, but, man, I felt like I was right in the action. That was the heart and soul of it.
How does that happen? Well, you have to provide something that people find interesting, that they desire, and that they want to make part of their life. See, the thing I always tell people about social media is that your proposition of value, in this case it was Jerusalem, gets people interested, but they only stay if they feel a personal connection with the person. And what I tried to do with every single follower the best I could, and I know 235,000 people is a whole lot, but I did my absolute best, was to treat them like they were the only person in the room. If they had a concern or if they had a care, they are a soul. They matter, and they're part of this story. And I think that was a big part of the reason that people stuck around. So you created a compelling video.
So you're saying that someone out there listening who's really good in the kitchen, really good cooking, who's a believer, who wants to reach souls, they could somehow aggregate a big following by doing that, with some cool camera work, and then using that as a way into the Gospel. I mean, whatever it is, you know, all things all men, talk about that. It doesn't matter if you're a surfer or a lumberjack.
It doesn't matter if you work on Wall Street. We all have a story. Every single person has an individual point of view, a unique family, a unique background, something interesting about them that they can express. And this was the powerful work that God did in my life in Jerusalem, Stu, is that he gave me a voice in his holy city.
And part of my passion, being back in the United States, is that I get to give other people a voice. What was it like having to be rushed out with this whole Gaza, just absolute tragedy, and all these hostages, and people being slaughtered in the streets? What was it like? You were there when that was going on, weren't you? I was laying on my couch early in the morning, October 7th, when I heard the sirens go off.
And at first, I thought it might have been like a national holiday. I didn't expect an attack. And then all of a sudden, we started to hear explosions. And for the first two weeks of that conflict, my wife and I, we lived in an apartment about a 10-minute walk away from the old city of Jerusalem, really managed what is a transition from peacetime to wartime. And it's nothing like you could ever experience before. And did you sense a lot of danger yourself, your personal self, or your wife, and yourself in that moment?
Yes and no. For one thing, I saw the Iron Dome in real action, in real time. And so you get to see explosions, you get to hear it all, and the sirens kind of get under your skin.
They make you a little paranoid. We did not feel unsafe. Jerusalem is incredibly safe. Tel Aviv actually got a lot more rockets fired at them than at Jerusalem.
So that was a big key of it. But of course, Jerusalem is a very mixed city. You have a lot of folks from the West Bank coming over. You have a lot of Israelis there. And you're never quite sure if someone has a bad idea that they might target you.
In fact, I remember very clearly when Joe Biden came out in support of Israel full-fledged and sent that aircraft carrier over, maybe someone would want to make an example of an American in the streets. And you had to think about that. And there you were. What happened, and how all of a sudden does he have 235,000-plus people following him on TikTok? The evils and the goods.
Is there a way to redeem these social media? More when we come back. And wrapping up right here on Truth Talk Live.
Hang on. Oh, I bet you wish we were recording the break because Michael Pettit was filling me up with all kinds of incredible Holy Land stories and narratives and going up to Galilee and hanging out there. He was there for five years. I mean, imagine, Michael Pettit, you graduate from Bob Jones University, and suddenly you're whisked away as a single man all the way to the Holy Land. And then take us from there for those who just joined us.
I'm Stu Everson. This is Truth Talk Live. We're supposed to be bashing and attacking and having done with all these evil social medias, but he's trying to tell us that there are redemptive things that are a part of that, those platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and all these. So we're going to kind of get back to that, but tell us what would take a late teenager, early 20-something single from Bible college to the Holy Land. Stu, it was the desire to understand the full depth and diversity of the Word of God. We're taught in the Old Testament all these stories of great kings, of battles, of the struggle between light and darkness, between good and evil, tragedy. The book of Job, the kings, Moses, Abraham, and so on. And I wanted to be in their shoes. I wanted to wake up in the morning, make myself a cup of coffee, and look over the hills of Judea and read those passages.
And I got to do that day after day. So when I open my Bible, I don't just see the words. I see the pictures because God allowed me to be there. Wow.
So you saw it firsthand, and then suddenly one day, what was it that, what switch was flipped in you to cause you to take up your smartphone and share this with the world via TikTok? Well, if you've spent any amount of time in Jerusalem, you learn pretty quickly that the tourists who come through there are the ones who have the money, they have the time, and they have the health. And truthfully, Stu, there's just too many people who could benefit from being in Jerusalem who just didn't have those three things. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to create a platform through which people could go to Jerusalem every single day with zero cost. It didn't matter if they were in a wheelchair. It didn't matter if they didn't have the money.
It didn't matter if they didn't have the time. I put Jerusalem on your phone day after day with a gospel presentation and a lot of great, fun history. So it was really my conviction that Jerusalem is for the world.
It is the heritage of all nations. So you just hit the wall one day and said, I'm going to share with everybody. That's right. And you opened a TikTok account, and then just take us through the genesis of this thing, and then kind of what was your first post and all that. And I might play one here in a second again on the air. Well, you have to figure it out.
It's like my dad told me my whole life, son, you got to figure it out. And so I tried a bunch of different types of content, but the first one that went viral was actually of a sign in Jaffa Gate, and it had Arabic, Hebrew, and English. And you can actually see multiple signs, and you can tell who was in power by how the languages are set from top to bottom. So when the British were in control, English was at the top. Then it was Arabic, and then it was Hebrew.
And then when the Israelis took over, Hebrew was at the top, then Arabic, and then English at the bottom. That one I think ended up getting about 850,000 views. That was about three weeks into it. How long was the video?
15, 20 seconds. That's all? That's all it was. Oh, my soul. You got to get right to the point.
So there is a little thing called short attention spans, right, and then people keep scrolling and all that. But when it comes to your redemptive content and then through your prayer ministry, tell us about some of the fruit. For all those parents that are skeptical and all those people, like I kind of opened the show a little bit as a devil's advocate.
What are you doing? What are you thinking doing TikTok when it's got so many bad things to it and so many awful videos and people getting stuck in this and that, yet tell us what God did. Tell us some miracle stories from it.
Absolutely. Well, just before I get into that, Stu, I just want to say that if we're only focused on the negative, where is our faith and the power of truth to overcome the works of darkness? If we're only focused on the ways that things hurt us and hold us back, what victory do we have in Christ? We are not called to be afraid.
We are called to have the fear of God in us which is boldness and fire by what Christ has done. And so in the prayer ministry, and it was incredibly challenging, Stu, just on a spiritual level, but I knew it was the right thing. I had people write in and tell me my husband was just diagnosed with a disease and I would pray for them, Stu, and they would write me back the next week and they would say my husband was cured and I've never experienced that in my life, not once.
Or someone was struggling with drug addiction or someone was struggling with some financial matter. And I can tell you this, Stu, the amount of prayers that were answered was astounding but I think what's more important is that there was someone out there who cared enough to take their petitions to the throne of God and that there was someone out there who cared enough to do that. Wow, I'm looking at your videos right now. Pretty amazing. What was the most profound moment for you in the Holy Land?
You spent five years there. You amassed a massive amount of TikTok followers. How many views total have you had on TikTok?
The account has reached over 100 million people. Okay, what would you say one of the most profound moments take us there into your life there, a moment that was just an absolute God moment for you? Well, I had a God moment every single morning, before every live, so one in the morning and then one in the evening. I would sit down and I would open the Bible and I would pray and I would say, God, this is your city.
This live is not mine. Showing Jerusalem is my privilege. Help me to steward that without any vainglory with full and fiery humility. Let your truth go forward in the brightness of infinite light and the infinite love of Christ and take all of it.
Just keep me in your presence and he would bless. Wow. The Ark of the Covenant, where is it? The Mount of Olives, Church of the Ascension, the top 10 women in the Bible. There you are with the tomb of Jesus. I mean, look at that. Take a look at this section. This is what's part of the Coptic Church's only claim to the Church.
The reason? It's part of the original bedrock. This is the tomb of Jesus, the holiest site in all of Christianity right behind me. But take a look at this section. This is what's part of the Coptic Church's... Wow. So you go through these things, and then do you ever get people that say, hey, this is crazy, this is nuts, they disagree with you, they kind of take you on?
I mean, how does that work? You're always going to have people who stand against you. And my personal philosophy, Stu, is that if you have people standing against you and you're standing for what's right, then you're on the right path. And I can tell you this. There was spiritual attack the entire time. I would tell you this. I would have no problem with my phone, with data or with anything.
The minute I would go live, I would have problems with connection, I would have problems with audio, like you've never seen before. And then as well, even spiritually, people would come on and they would say terrible things about worshiping darkness, about inviting people to darkness. I mean, it's right there, this divine arena between light and darkness, and you got to see that on full display. Wow. And so you saw that, and then what was it like walking in the footsteps of Jesus? What was it like taking people there that maybe could never travel to the Holy Land?
People that don't even have a passport, but they could catch you on TikTok? Walking in the footsteps of Jesus is the realization that he bore all of the weight, that everything that you're experiencing, whether that be anxiety or depression, whether that be joy and happiness, whether it be even temptation, Christ experienced all of that. But we are physical bodies. We are real people.
We are flesh and blood. And he worked in a real place, not just in a... He didn't work just in an idea. He worked in a land. He worked with people.
He worked with water and stone. And we are physical creatures. And so you got to embody the footsteps of Jesus. So you came back to America from the Holy Land. You were there during the whole Gaza chaos and tragedy and evil stuff that happened, still hostages. They're praying.
We're praying we'll get back to their families and a lot of bloodshed. Looking back, what was the biggest takeaway or the biggest, I guess, change in your life from all of that? It was empowerment. God gave me a voice.
Very few people get the opportunity that I had to have the kind of growth and development to develop your voice. And so that's part of what I'm doing here is that I walked away from Jerusalem, not with just a vision of what happened in the past, but what can happen in the future. I'm back in the United States after five years in the prime of my youth, having lived in the land of Jesus, really with a vision for the country because we have big problems to address. We have terrible demonic forces that are trying to tear down families, tear down institutions, and destroy lives. And I think it's high time that we wake up and we fight. Michael Pettit has been on this all hour. You've been a gracious guest talking about the upside, the downside, the challenges of TikTok, of all these social media. While we've been talking, sadly, someone's looking at something completely inappropriate that's been bad for their thought life. While we've been talking, someone's watched violence or someone's gotten caught up in a wrong relationship or something like that through social media. But while we've been talking, someone has prayed to receive Jesus Christ. Someone is listening to us talk on the Truth app, and they're listening right now on an app on their smartphone, which just got smarter whenever you download the Truth app. That's what happens.
And they've been encouraged about what Jesus Christ has done for them. Michael Pettit, going back to some of the things you said earlier about discernment and about your challenge to people to redeem the media, but also, if they don't have the restraint, stay away. If you're a covering alcoholic, don't go to the bar. Talk about that real quick as we get out of here. Absolutely. If you are a consumer of media only, you need to exercise discernment and discipline and wisdom for your habits. You are not a victim of distraction. You are willful. You willfully choose to be distracted. And if you're at a stage in your life where you can't handle it, then you need to set up boundaries for your life and get it back on track. You need to get your act together. Okay, wow. Some straight talk. And how can people find you, your ministry?
I say this with deep hesitation. How can they find you on TikTok? Just type in my name, Michael Pettit, on TikTok. Two Ts. Two Ts, P-E-T-T-I-T. And your pops was on last week talking about family values and the gambling that's trying to ransack South Carolina. He's standing in the gap for that. Yeah, keep an eye on him.
He's got a great vision for South Carolina. That's great. Well, appreciate you and appreciate his preaching. Appreciate your preaching from the pulpit in Jerusalem. Michael Pettit, all our long, thanks for sharing your testament with us in Buyer Beware. And look, go to the Word of God on all this and use everything to spread God's Word to a lost world.
