Aaron Budjen, with Living God Ministries, established his radio program for the purpose of evangelism and discipleship in the knowledge of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. The radio ministry began on October 30, 2006. Aaron was studying to be a Jewish Rabbi when he discovered Jesus as the Messiah. He has a PHD in computer science and has done advanced scientific work for the Office of Naval Research and DARPA, as well as repairing circuit boards for computers for Apple and the space industries. He also was a professor at the University of Colorado. His skills as a
00:00:00 Introduction to the Special with Aaron Budgen
And welcome to this client special with one of our ministry partners, Aaron Budgen with Living God Ministries. I am Rachel Mainz, and while I am so honored to have my friend Aaron Budgen in studio, we met probably, what, five years ago?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, and so I came to a church service. I heard about you from listening to AM670 KLTT before I was operations manager here. And what you have to say and how you… teach the bible is really life-changing so i’m just going to get right to it right here aaron and then we’re going to get into all the things that you do i mean your credentials and your skill set is just amazing but what is the gospel let’s start there
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I describe the gospel as two parts. There’s the bad news, and then there’s the good news. Most people are familiar with the good news, but it’s kind of hard to appreciate it without starting with the bad news. And so I usually begin by describing the condition of humanity as being not just sinful, but also spiritually dead. And while I’ve encountered a lot of people who will recognize the idea of being spiritually dead when I speak of it, that’s usually about as far as it goes with them. They just recognize it. Oh, yeah, there’s some truth to that, but whatever. And yet I emphasize that a lot because it’s my belief that Jesus died for our sins so he could restore the spirit of life, the Holy Spirit. that was lost in Adam, and that that is salvation. So while most people will say that salvation is getting your sins forgiven, I’ll say that salvation is possible because we’ve had our sins forgiven. And so that separates me from a lot of people, but I’ll be very direct about that and that, yes, this is going to make me a little bit different than most folks. But the most important follow-up to that is the idea of forgiveness being complete and why it is necessary for forgiveness to be complete and for the sin issue between us and God to be completely resolved. Because if it isn’t resolved, then he can’t restore the Holy Spirit without it leaving again. And so that’s where I come up with the definition of eternal life, that the life that we have now with the Holy Spirit of God dwelling within us is eternal because there is no sin that will cause that to depart forever. I think the reason why it’s not so well received, or not received as well as I would like, you know, I do contribute to the lives of a lot of people. If you go to Living God Ministries’ website, there’s a recent testimonials page, and that’s the place to go to read and see the effectiveness of the work that I’ve been able to do. That’ll tell you, you can read through it, and a person can get a feel, they can get a sense for the effectiveness of the work that I’ve been able to do. But the significant difference between the work that I’ve done and what other people are doing is kind of placed there in the topic of forgiveness. People are mainly concerned about the consequences related to that. Well, then how are we going to live if we’re not going to be living to try and eliminate all the sin in our lives? What is the Christian life going to be? Because for the most part, that’s what the Christian life is for people, is they’re trying to just simply get all the sin out of their life. And so I follow it up with an emphasis on the inheritance that we have received in Christ. And that separates me from a lot of others as well, that I’ll tend to focus a lot on what we have been given and so that we can live our lives with what we have. And that’s something that I have found is really difficult to get people to really move into. Within the grace movement, which I kind of fit in the category of, What happens if a person doesn’t really go into the inheritance, they end up defaulting to living by the law anyway. And so that also keeps me kind of separated from a lot of other people as well. But I’ve done well. You know, I’ve done well. I’ve been able to contribute to the lives of a lot of people, and I do feel at peace with it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. Well, for me, it was really just connecting the dots and going back to what I understood simply as a child. And I can see when I understood and was living out that growing up, it sustained me to do things not because I was under law or the do’s and the don’ts, but just because I loved God. But then, you know, my journey through Christianity, hearing different messages and kind of getting maybe mixed messages, but I didn’t understand that. You say a lot in your programs. The problem is all the other things you believe. So it can, you know, I went through a time of kind of confusion with my faith up till now because of those other things I was believing that I didn’t necessarily know were going against the foundation of my faith, where it was healthy and progressing. And I was getting to know the Lord kind of got sidetracked So another thing you say that I want you to hit on is wandering in the desert. So spiritually speaking, when we’re not believing and understanding the pureness of the gospel and grace, then we can kind of believe other things that. In the analogy of wandering in the desert in our faith, we’re not really growing. We’re just kind of going in circles. That’s how I felt in my Christianity in my adulthood as I’ve now discovered, OK, it’s because I’ve been believing other things that are contradictory.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, it’s called wandering around in the wilderness.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, okay. Wandering around in the wilderness.
SPEAKER 01 :
Sin, confession, repentance. Sin, confession, forgiveness, repentance. Sin, confession, forgiveness, repentance. And that becomes the cycle of the Christian life.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. Yes. So let’s talk about your credentials because, you know, we’ve been friends for a while and then… I just was like, wow, so I didn’t know that you had a Ph.D. in computer science, which is incredible. But you also are a Tai Chi master, I believe, and so many other things that you do. I don’t know how you have the time to do all that, but you have a lot of different skill sets. And all these skill sets have played a role in your ability to now teach the gospel today.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, I don’t normally talk too much about myself because I’m more interested in people knowing the Lord than me, but I’ll make an exception, I suppose, in this case. Yes, I have a Ph.D. in computer science, everything but the dissertation. I just couldn’t finish that up because the ministry took over. I used to teach at the University of Colorado. I did that for eight years, the upper level courses. I was the gatekeeper for the bachelor’s degree program. Nobody got through it without getting through me. And I also did work for the Office of Naval Research and DARPA, where I did advanced scientific work. I’m mainly a scientific programmer, a complex problem solver, where I worked on missile guidance systems and tracking systems and and different new ways in order to solve problems, you know, such as issues related to boat harbors and all kinds of stuff like that. And I really enjoy writing software, and I also have a background in electronics. I used to repair circuit boards for Apple computers in spacecraft industries. But before that, I was in a banking cartel. I started out in executive protection, and then they trained me as a negotiator. So I was working as a negotiator for an international banking cartel out of Austria and Liechtenstein for a while. And when… They wanted me to become a member. I said, well, I can’t do that. I’m not going to dedicate my life to this. And that’s when I went back into computer science. But the reason why I was able to get into that was because of my military experience before that. And, yeah, I was uniquely trained by a Shaolin grandmaster, Shaolin grandmaster, Sin Quan Tei. who is the one who has passed on Shaolin Kung Fu from Lei Chang Ming, who was able to flee to Indonesia. And he fled to Indonesia from China because in the 1950s, the Chinese… The communist government took power, and so they sent assassins to kill off all the Shaolin grandmasters. And he was the only one who survived. So I’m the third generation from there. Wow, incredible. And I’m mainly focused on Tai Chi. And, well, I’m going to have to go back into Kung Fu because now I’m old, and I’m going to break down if I don’t get a little bit more exercise in my life. So that’s kind of going backwards, you know, going backwards a little bit. One more step which does make me kind of unique is that the way that I grew up is kind of different from most people. My parents always viewed me as being defective and unlovable. And so my whole life has had that element within it. But the Lord’s been able to use that to give me the freedom to be able to speak those things that I really believe are true without the concern of how other people are going to view me or how they’re going to see me or what they think of me. It just doesn’t have much relevance because I’m kind of used to that anyway. But I’ve still found a place.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, I mean, he’s using you amazingly. Also, I want to interject that you were studying to be a rabbi before coming to know Jesus as Messiah. So your ability to understand and communicate the scriptures is outstanding. Go through that process of the rabbi journey, then realizing, wow, Jesus is the Messiah. Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
When my military service was coming to an end, I figured, you know, I need to get into something else. This is just not going to work. I need to become a better person. I need to become someone different. I need to be respectable. And so I thought, you know, I think I’ll do that. I went back to the synagogue because that’s what I was familiar with. I grew up in Orthodox Judaism, and so I was familiar with that, and that was just the place to go. And then I thought, now this isn’t good enough. I’m going to have to really… really do it, you know, and I’m going to have to really become a rabbi and then people will like me kind of thing. And it didn’t take long before I had to answer the question of, well, if the Messiah showed up, how would I know him? How would I know who he really is? And so I went to the scriptures related to the Messiah, and I found that Jesus was the only one who could possibly qualify for being that person. And especially because of the prophecies that are dated, that time has passed, and there cannot be anyone else in the future. It’s just not going to work. And so I kept that kind of private for a while, but eventually I had to confess to the synagogue that I believe that Jesus is the Messiah. And I said, well, we just can’t have a rabbi who’s a Jew for Jesus. So that was when I got out, you know, I got out of that, and they still tried to recruit me after a few years still, you know, because I was a pretty good prospect. I put a lot of time into studying biblical Hebrew. I have formal education in biblical Hebrew, and I was doing really well. And I was studying the historical writings of the rabbis, which has enabled me to see especially the ministry of Jesus In a way that very few people are able to see, because I know what people were thinking. I know what they believed and the intention that Jesus had and a lot of the things that he did. So I was able to make a lot of contributions in that regard because of that. But yeah, when I left, I had to find a new way of life, and so that was how I ended up doing electronics and working for a banking cartel and traveling around the world and stuff.
SPEAKER 02 :
Wow. You know, when I listen to your podcast, and I do recommend our listeners go to livinggodministries.net and go to the radio archives, I often think you’re in an interesting position being a Jew, but a Jew who believes in the Messiah. So you have that where you can be ostracized by your fellow Jews. But then also now… understanding grace and complete forgiveness in a sense too now do you feel sometimes ostracized by your fellow christians because the christians the majority maybe where we don’t understand so much the narrative and the historical history and sometimes we can be taught and teach maybe the bible in a way that wasn’t intended
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, on the Jewish side, I’m viewed as being worse than a traitor, and I just lie to people for money. That’s how I’m viewed in that part of the world. So, of course, I don’t have any relationships from the past because of that. Within the Christian world, it’s been a challenge. You know, I could tell you a story of somebody who recently came over for dinner who is a top executive in a certain radio network. And he emphasized that I’m just not in the same league as other ministries are. And he evaluated that by my donation base, you know, that I don’t have as many donors as so-and-so, and I don’t. I don’t ask for money properly and that kind of thing. He really communicated to me that I’m just not in the same league as everyone else. And, of course, I didn’t say this, but I’ll say that my response that I was thinking of was, well, I don’t think I’m really even in the same sport either.
SPEAKER 02 :
Like, I’m not even playing the game.
SPEAKER 01 :
Because I just don’t measure success by that. I measure success by how many changed lives are there. That’s what I measure. Right. And I’m very pleased with that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. Yeah, and I’ve often thought, too, sometimes we can turn, and just as my own personal life as well, I’ve kind of processed, sometimes we can turn the gospel into a business. And that’s a sad reality of being in the United States, too, and we are very entrepreneurially, and it’s just like, oh, what can I do to get this out? And then we kind of maybe get off course, and it’s all about a business model versus really the true heart of the Lord to freely give the truth.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes, I have built businesses. I know how businesses run, and I have a few right now that I run. But Living God Ministries was specifically architected in a way that it could not turn into a business.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
And it’s been very successful with that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right, yeah. Yeah, thank you for doing that, and thank you for your heart. I appreciate that. I think that the Lord… has been a sweet Lord to you and that you are close to him and that you and him together are doing this work. And even in his ministry, people look to him as if he wasn’t doing things correctly. And he is the Christ here on earth. So I think likewise, when we are doing what he called us to do, it’s just the nature of other people looking at us and not understanding.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
So, Aaron, talking about the ministry and your unique calling in the message of the gospel, what do you feel like in Christianity? How can we as listeners, and I’m talking about myself here, when I talk to my friends, my family who are Christians, help to clarify the message of the gospel? And if they’re maybe struggling with the confusion like I was in about different things that are contradicting the foundation, how would you encourage us to talk to our friends and family about that?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, you can communicate with others what you know really well. You know, to testify of what we know is what’s really meaningful. In order to grow in that a little bit more, I think it’s really helpful to ask some other questions after getting a good understanding of the gospel definition and a few things about what it implies. In that regard, I would encourage people to really ask the question, two questions. The first one is, what does God want? And then the second question is, what is he doing? Because when you ask those two questions, you’ll start to see that he’s actually an active participant in our lives. And when you start to understand what it means for him to be an active participant in our lives, then you can show other people that he’s not just this impersonal thing that’s controlling everything in the universe and is invoking destiny and providence, but that he’s actually participating in our lives. And when people can consider a God who’s participating, or in the scriptures it’s called living, a living God, then they can start to consider other things a lot easier, right?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, absolutely. And one thing pulling on your history as understanding Hebrew and the study of going into being a rabbi now knowing Jesus as Messiah is you can pull out the nuances that maybe some of us just wouldn’t understand through the language. And you have the one time you told me you had some scrolls as well. Is that correct? You have some scrolls, ancient scrolls?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, the Shrine of the Book Museum in Jerusalem released to me a copy that was the copy that was found at the Dead Sea Scroll Isaiah. I have a full copy of that. They sent it to me digitally, and so I’ve been able to do computer analysis and digital analysis because of my skills with computer science. And it’s allowed me to extrapolate on some areas that have been smudged out or are missing and be able to read letters a little bit better. The guy’s handwriting wasn’t so good. Well, I shouldn’t complain. I guess mine is not really much better than his. But, yeah, I’ve translated half of it so far. Wow. And I would like to produce a journal of my findings at some point, maybe another five or ten years or something. I’ll pursue that.
SPEAKER 02 :
One thing I alluded to earlier was your ability to, well, first of all, simplify, but also pull the whole scriptures together in a way that you can understand. So I’ll start with… the fall, Adam and Eve, when they chose the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. You talk about that a lot. And it wasn’t until I listened to your program that I could really understand, oh, okay, so the knowledge of the tree of good and evil, I shall know good and evil, and therefore I can be as God if I understand. And you pull that out to show us that that is the lie. Can you expound upon that? Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes, that’s a touchy one. That’s the satanic lie. That was the original lie of the devil that caused the fall of humanity to begin with. That if you only know what is good and evil, then you can be like God. And unfortunately, that has been probably the most popular message in the Christian world ever since the founding of the church. That if you will… know what is good and evil and do what is right and don’t do what is wrong, then you can be, well, we don’t want to say be like God because that would be too obvious. We’ll say, well, we can be like Jesus or we can be a good Christian instead of understanding that there is an important place to the knowledge of good and evil. But this is not the covenant that we are to live by. There’s another covenant that has gone into effect since then. And that is a covenant based on the inheritance that we have, not based on our obedience. It’s based on what he has done for us, not what we do for him. And that’s a challenge, you know, but it’s an important challenge. And often people will abandon the Christian faith because they realize that there’s just no end to that and there’s no success in that. And they feel further away from God than when they first got saved. And I’m very fortunate that on the stations that I’m able to broadcast on, I’m able to catch a lot of those people who were just about ready to just throw in the towel entirely. And they tell me this, and that’s how I know. And then they can move forward. They can move forward in their faith and growing to know the Lord.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, absolutely. And for those like myself who started out with just the simplicity of, you know, knowing the Lord and I wasn’t under any law of any sort. I knew that. But then as I tried to grow my faith and being exposed to different teachings and stuff, then we get all confused. So those people can go to you and get kind of, you know, get clear again on the simplicity of our faith. And it’s just all about relationship with the Lord. And he’s like you say, an active participant in our lives. One of the things I want to highlight, too, regarding faith, and I love how you communicate this. You’re a great communicator. When we are afraid that God’s mad at us, you know, after we have received salvation, we have a relationship with him, and then we receive these teachings that are making us think that we aren’t completely forgiven. then we feel condemned, and then it causes us to draw away from him, when in reality we need him to be able to live the Christian life. So it’s kind of like a dichotomy here of a lot of teaching saying, Hey, if you live by the law, you’re going to be closer to the Lord. He’s going to be happy with you. But the actual opposite effect is happening if we’re living under that, because then we’re pulling away from him because we don’t feel like he loves us. And if we don’t feel like he loves us, then we’re going to go, like you say, to the world to receive what we what we’re wanting. We’re wanting love and we want to be accepted. So can you expound upon that?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, the first thing I want to make sure people understand is that I don’t think that God lives in denial of reality. I’ll be very open with the fact that the Lord and I talk about my sin often. You know, it’s not a situation where he just doesn’t consider its existence. I don’t feel that way at all. But the big issue is that we need to address the reasons why we sin, right? not just deal with the sin itself, but why? And it tends to come down to the fact that we’re looking for a sense of love and acceptance, meaning or purpose. It usually filters down into one of those four categories. And so what people do is they, of course, would like to turn to God to meet their needs for love and acceptance and meaning and purpose. But if they’re being condemned, because of their failure to obey or their failure to observe because of the sin in their life, then they’re not going to be accepted by God. They’re not going to be loved by Him. And so what are they going to do? This is a real struggle for people in ministry, a big struggle. What are you going to do if you don’t think that God… loves you, then you still have a need to be loved. You’ve got no alternative but to go into the world and pursue sin. That’s the only alternative. And sometimes those who are the most aggressive about condemning people are often trying to do that, to condemn themselves, and they fall into this trap easily. So it’s not dealing with the issue. If we will rest in the love and the acceptance of God, It makes it possible for us to be able to say no to those temptations when we’re actually confronted with them. Right. And so that’s something that I’ve really emphasized a lot in the programs that I recorded.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, yeah. And once again, listeners, just go to livinggodministries.net and click on the radio archives. And Aaron has subjects broken down, forgiveness, different topics and stuff that you can click on. They’re just excellent. One thing I want to highlight too, Aaron, is discipleship. Uh, so oftentimes people think discipleship is, you know, following, following the commandments or, you know, following the Bible. But you have a perspective that discipleship, correct me if I’m wrong, is relationship with the Lord. And then he works in your heart. He fulfills your need. So as you understand the complete forgiveness and as you understand the complete rest, then we’re able to be properly discipled. Am I understanding that correctly?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, that’s when you can move forward. Otherwise, you’ll end up being stuck wandering around the wilderness. Right. You can be discipled, and you’ll be discipled by the Lord. I was discipled by the Lord, and that’s also one of the reasons why I’ve been able to easily talk more about him than about me. But it really is by him. I can testify of things. I can tell people about the Lord. But if they’re going to really know him, they’re going to have to turn to him personally. And this is where it starts. It starts with understanding that the sin issue is resolved. It starts with the inheritance. And it starts with you asking him questions, and every once in a while he answers them. It could just be when you’re driving down the road or having a meal by yourself or whatever it may be. There’s going to be lots of opportunities for the Lord to speak with you. and allow him the freedom to decide what are you going to be discipled in next. And I’ve done very well with that. A lot of people, they say, well, I’m not growing in this, and I’m not growing in that. So where are you growing? Well, that’s because it’s probably where the Lord wants you to grow.
SPEAKER 02 :
And thanks for tuning in for the client special with Aaron Budgen with Living God Ministries. Living God Ministries airs Monday through Friday at 9.30 a.m. on AM 670 KLTT and also Monday through Friday at 5 p.m. We’ll be airing part two with Aaron Budgen soon, so stay tuned.
