0:00 95% of our churches right now are under that 501c3. They're in covenant with bail. Recently, I've gotten a few comments, questions, and emails asking why churches and ministries have to be a part of the 501c3 non-profit ministry system. They said that because of how the government's set up, it's legally organized to make you under the beast system, and that government entities attract church ministries and churches to organize themselves under a government-leashed, IRS-controlled, spiritually compromised organization. So I want to go over that today. I've done a lot of research on this in the last couple of days, and I want to show you what I found, because it's truly shocking. Because what I'm going to show you really was a surprise to me, and the secrets that most people don't tell you about non-profit ministries. Like, for instance, did you know you can look up your favorite ministry personalities' salary through their non-profit Google search? It's remarkable. You can find out so much, and I'm going to show you exactly how to do that in this video. But before I do that, I want to show you why this video truly exists in the first place. It's because of an email I got. It says, I recently watched a YouTube video from a YouTuber that I respect, and it has caused me so much confusion that once I heard that the 501c3 was evil, I haven't been back to church because I found out my church was a 501c3 too. And that is a real person that has isolated themselves.
1:28 And so, what does a 501c3 have to do with church? What is a 501c3, for that matter? Well, it's a business entity. In other words, you can create a business, they give you like a social security number for the business, and that represents what you pay taxes to. Because you don't want to pay taxes individually for them, you're doing it for business. And then you can take that number and send it to the IRS and say, hey, we're going to do something good for society, we don't want to profit off of it, we're just doing something good. Can we not pay taxes on this? And they say, yeah, that's a good idea. They're going to do something good for society. Can we not pay taxes on this? And they say, yeah, that's a good idea. And then you can take that number and send it to the IRS and say, hey, we're going to do something good for society. Can we not pay taxes on this? And they say, yeah, absolutely, you can do that. Then your donors don't lose money by transferring the money to your business every year as a donation. And they can write it off. If they owe taxes to the government, they can say, hey, we did a good thing, we gave money to someone that was doing good, so we don't owe you guys money anymore. But the caveat is, the business, the nonprofit that claims to be doing stuff good with the money, has to document what happens with it. it publicly unless they're a church entity and they have to obey some rules found in the IRS tax revenue code. So I'm going to show you what a lot of people don't show when they talk about this. I'm going to show you the actual tax revenue code right now. The 501c3 designation comes from the section 501 subsection c paragraph 3. It's a reference of the internal revenue code. Here's the actual language that describes what the 501c3 organization cannot do and I want you to pay close attention to how narrow this is. No subsequent part of the activities which is carrying on propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation and which does not participate in or intervene in including the publishing or distributing of statements any political campaign on behalf of or opposed to any candidate of public office. That's it. That's the whole restriction. Two things. You can't spend the majority of your resources lobbying for a specific legislation and you cannot endorse or oppose a specific political candidate. So let me tell you what is not in the law. There is nothing that mentions sin.
3:45 There's nothing that mentions sermons. There is nothing that mentions prophecy, the beast system, the sabbath, the mark of the beast, false religion, spiritualism, UFOs, anything that has anything to do with what we talk about on this channel. None of it. And anything that your church pastor should be talking about, none of it. Because none of it is restricted. And here's something that I think is even more important that most don't understand about this whole thing. And I'll come back to this in a moment because I think it changes everything about the conversation. A 501c3 is not a contract. I'll say it again. It's not a contract. And what that means for you and your church is something most people have never considered. Churches in the United States don't even have to apply to become a non-profit. They are automatically tax-exempt under federal law. This is explicitly stated in U.S. Code Section 508c1a which reads, subsection a shall not apply to churches, their integrated auxiliaries, and conventions to associations of church. What that means in plain English is that Congress is an automatic exemption for churches directly into the tax code. A church does not need its approval, the IRS. It does not need a determination letter from them. It simply is exempt by default. Which means even if the paperwork was a contract, since there is no initial paperwork, there cannot be a contract between your pastor and the government. So when you hear someone say that churches register for or sign up under a 501c3 status, like it's some kind of covenant with the government, it's already misleading you. Most churches never apply for anything. They are exempt because the law says they are. Period. Now I want to get a little personal with you. I chose to get a formal determination letter for Orion Media Ministry. And in just a moment, I'm going to tell you exactly why. And I think it's going to make sense to you in a way that nobody has ever explained before.
5:52 And I'll explain every argument. Remember when I said the 501c3 wasn't a contract? Let's unpack that a little bit. Because this is the part of the conversation that I think will completely reframe how you think about all this. A contract is a legally binding agreement between two parties. If you break it, there are penalties, right? So lawsuits, fines, damages, all kinds of stuff. The 501c3 determination is a recognition. It is the government saying, based on what you told us about what you want to do, you qualify for a tax exemption nonprofit. That's it. There's no clause that says, you know, in exchange for this exemption, you agree that you will never speak against morality or sin or things like that. That language just doesn't exist. Now, what actually happens if a 501c3 organization violates the Johnson Amendment, the candidate endorsement rule is this. The IRS can revoke its tax exemption status. That's the consequence. They can take away your tax, your exemption, and then there's no criminal penalties or actions. You don't go to jail for this for the church that endorses a political candidate. There's no jail time. The danger is that you have to begin paying taxes again. Not you personally. You always have to pay taxes if you're a person, but the organization does. There's no fines levied against the ministry or minister. The IRS just basically says, hey, you no longer qualify for this, so we're going to rescind it. We're taking it back.
7:26 Here's what makes this even more remarkable. In all of U.S. history, entire U.S. history, think about this for a second. In the entire U.S. history, the IRS has only formally revoked a 501c3 status from one church for violating the Johnson Amendment. One, the Branch Ministries case in 1992 after they ran a full-page newspaper ad opposing a presidential candidate. One case. However, there is something. That ties this to the beast's power that you should know and be concerned about, which we'll talk about in just a moment, so hang in there. But now, first, I want to open our Bibles, because this is where our foundation is. The verse being used in these arguments is Mark 12, 17. Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. And the argument is that filing paperwork with the government means that you're rendering something to Caesar that belongs to God. But look at the context. The Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus with a politically charged question about Roman taxation. Jesus' answer was not a theological statement about non-profit registration. It was making a point about where the ultimate allegiance lies. And he was doing it in a way that completely defuses their trap. Filing a tax form is not rendering your soul to Caesar. It's following the instructions of Romans 13, 1, where Paul writes, Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but God.
8:56 God. The powers that be are ordained by God. Paul wrote that under Nero, the emperor that would eventually have him executed. And he still said, submit to the government authority. Titus 3.1 says, put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey the magistrates, to be ready to every good work. And 1 Peter 2.13 says, submit yourself to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king, as a supreme, or to our governors. Now, that doesn't mean do everything your leaders say to you to do if it goes against what God tells you to do. We are all to honor God the way he says to do things, even unto death, especially if our government tells us to do something that God says we shouldn't. However, we also don't want to look like we're starting a rebellion on earth because that's exactly kind of what Satan did and had us do. We don't want to do that. We don't want to do that. We don't want to do that. We don't want to do that. We don't want to do that. We don't want to do that. We don't want to do that. That would give us the mind of Satan. So registering a ministry properly and operating with legal accountability is not compromise. It's integrity. It is what it looks like to be above approach in the eyes of the world. And being above approach matters because people are watching how we conduct ourselves as Christians. So here's the flip. While deciding the route I would take to start this ministry, I had more than one friend come to me and tell me, I'm going to do this. I'm going to start a 508 church instead to reduce paperwork, to keep the government rules away that 501s are required to abide by. Although this is, I'm not looking to really start my own church. I decided to look into it anyway because that was appealing. So this is nothing against those people that came to me at all. I just want to provide the reasons why I decided not to go that route. And maybe if someone is starting or has started a ministry in that route, they might reconsider. In order to go that route, I'm going to have to start a 508 church. I'm going to have to start a 508 church. I'm going to have to start a 508 church. I'm going to have to start a 508 church. If you claim that you are a 508 church, you have to qualify for 14 identifiers announced by the IRS in 1978 and affirmed by the federal court in the American Guidance Foundation versus the United States in 1980. But I'll spare you the list of 14 and I'll just focus on the four that carry the most legal weight. Number one, you have to have a congregation. YouTube certainly has a community and maybe even a congregation, but that doesn't mean you have to have a congregation.
11:23 The exact argument was already tested in court in 2010. In the Foundation of Human Understanding versus the United States, the organization operated in an internet ministry and live call-in show where listeners could actively speak with pastors in real time during broadcasts. The court ruled that the online service and the chat service did not provide, quote, individual congregants with the opportunity to interact and associate with each other in worship. Number two, you need ordained ministers. Now, there are places you can get an ordination from. A Jehovah's Witness was denied ministerial exemption in United States versus Hedsted in 1965, despite claiming full-time ministry from a mail order ordination operation like the Universal Life Church. Actually, I've applied to that just to see if you can get it.
12:19 Anybody can get an ordination from Universal Life Church. They accept anybody, which doesn't mean they follow anything. But the IRS claims that places like this are an illegal tax protester movement. An ordination that requires nothing, believes nothing, and is available to atheists and agnostics alike is not meaningful ministerial credentials under any standard court ruling. Number three, doctrine. 508 Church needs to have a written belief system and discipline. Number three, doctrine. 508 Church needs to have a written belief system and discipline. This was really surprising to me. In a private letter ruling, the IRS actually denied church status to an organization that had doctrinal statement but could not show evidence of that code of discipline. No procedure, no counseling, no removal of members. And the IRS simply just asked, what actually happens when someone in your community violates your doctrine? If the answer is nothing, or nothing can be done because your congregation is actually online, then that's not a code of doctrine and discipline. It's in any legal sense. And finally, it needs to have a place of worship. Now, the IRS describes a place of worship as a physical place where members can gather, and that might be your home. You might be in a home church.
13:43 But in a private letter ruling, the IRS denied church status to a small organization, home church, that held weekly home Bible studies and worshiped. Specifically because, and I'm quoting the IRS on this, the small number of people cannot be described as a body of believers who assemble regularly in order to worship. The pastor also held no formal training and no ordination and did not follow a prescribed course of study. And the organization had no ecclesiastical government, no code of doctrine, no literature, no instruction for children. Oh yeah, that's another thing. One of the 14, you'd have to have a Sunday school or Sabbath school or whatever they call it. A school for children while the adults are in church. So as an online ministry that I was starting with no formal physical membership, no code of discipline, no children's services, and no possibility for 10 other reasons, means the only path forward for ministry to help its donors with a tax exemption is through a 501c nonprofit status. And I didn't want to change churches anyway. This was just something I looked into because someone told me, hey, you can't do that. You can't do that. You can't do that. You can't do that. You can do this. And then they won't be able to say you can't do X, Y, and Z as a 508. And I want to say something here that's not an accusation, but it's a legitimate question for anybody that should be thinking about this. If a ministry is teaching that a 501c3 status is a spiritual compromise, but they themselves are receiving donations and operating as a nonprofit under the same underlying tax law, just without paperwork and oversight, then that is worth considering. The same book, the same chapter, the same tax code. In fact, under this tax code, any personal use of taxes that is not ministry related still has to pay taxes, personal taxes. Not doing so is called tax evasion, which is very common to go to prison for, such as cases of Kent Hovind, Jen Baker, Peter Popoff, Tony Alamo. The IRS doesn't care about what you call ministry. They prosecute any entity that has a 501c3 status. And that's what I'm talking about. Failure to report. And I'll leave it there. But let's take it back for a moment, because I want to speak directly to the person or anyone in the position of the viewer who sent me the message that I read at the beginning of this video. You did not stop going to church because of a tax form. You stopped going because someone told you that there's a place where you worship that had been compromised. And that message landed on top of an already painful experience with people in your church.
16:23 Not showing up for you. And I understand why that combination would shake someone. But hear me carefully. The enemy's most effective strategy is not loud, dramatic temptation. It's quite isolation. It's getting you alone, away from the community, away from accountability, away from other believers that can pray for you and walk with you. Proverbs 18.1 says, Through the desire of a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermedieth with the Lord. With all wisdom. In other words, when we isolate ourselves, we become vulnerable to every idea that we come across because there's no one around to help us test it. If your church is not preaching the full gospel, if the Sabbath is ignored, if prophecy is never addressed, if sin is never called sin, then yeah, prayerfully seek a more faithful congregation. But make a decision based on that. That outcome from the pulpit. Test it by Isaiah 8.20. To the law and the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it's because there is no light in them. And that is the standard, not a tax form. Now, I'll be completely honest with you. I'm going to be completely transparent.
17:44 Orion Media Ministries holds a 501c3 determination letter, effective November 14, 2025. I chose that. It did it because I believe in accountability. I believe I want everyone who supports this ministry to be able to verify that it's legitimate, above board, and operating with integrity. And here's the secret I promised at the beginning of this video. The one that most people, including the people making these arguments against the 501c3, never seem to mention. Every legitimate nonprofit operating in this country is required to file a document called the Form 990 with the IRS. And that form is public record. Anyone can look it up. Right now, when you go, you can Google, type in 990 and the name of your favorite ministry, Amazing Facts, It Is Written, 3ABN, Lightbearers, any of them, and you will see exactly how they spend their donations. You can see what percentages go into their actual mission, what goes into their operational costs, and yes, how much the ministry leaders are paying themselves. I did the research on this recently after learning about the conduct of an organization that I considered intentional and unlawful. And what I found surprised me, not always in a bad way, but it opened my eyes to just how much information is available to any donor who wants to look. In fact, I thought it would be a good exercise just to do that, just together real quick, because it'd be neat to show you exactly what I found in my research going over this stuff.
19:21 If you go to, well, I made a spreadsheet of all the ministries that I know of, and select maybe 3ABN, or Three Angels Broadcasting Network, and then we'll go to Google, type in 990, Three Angels Broadcasting Network, and search. That's all you have to do. Then scroll down until you see this website. It's not a government website, but it seems to archive everything. It's called ProPublica. Click on this one. It's got everything in there. And once you're in here, search your own in here. You got to get the name right or put the EIN in correctly. And then you can scroll down here, and it shows you 2024, 2023, 2022. But if you really want to get to the details and know more than just their amount, the money they made per year, you click on View Filing right here. Scroll down and view filing. And this is where it gets really interesting. It shows you how many employees they have, total number of individual employees they have the year is 152. And it shows you salaries. This is how much they paid out in salaries for those employees per year, prior year and current year. And it shows you also their total expenses. They have $14,000 in expenses. And with their income being about that, they broke even. This is where it gets fascinating though, because you can actually scroll down and find out a lot more about the company and what they do. Scroll past all these yes or no questions until you get to about...
20:51 I don't know, down to page 10, when it starts looking like a bunch of lines. You can see right here, it shows you all the board members. They have to record this because this is the part of being transparent about where your income goes and how you're using it personally. It shows Danny Shelton, Yvonne Shelton, Bruce, Paul, everyone on the board, how much they get paid and what their salaries are. Even some of the, you know, presidents, vice presidents, things like that. Very interesting. And you know, you can do this for any non-profit ministry because you want to know as a donor where your money is going. Granted, they have to have filed taxes and it has to take some time to get into the system. So that's if they've ever established ministry, you can see from years and years back how they've been doing and things like that. So it's really helpful if you are someone who's... If you're someone who's a donor and you want to find out, is this going to someone's pocket or is this going to, you know, going to actually helping people out, producing material, producing shows, whatever. You can really dig deep into their finances and understand that your money and know for sure that your money is going for a good cause. That is the real reason to become a 501c3 non-profit. Not to submit to government leashes because there is none, but so that the widow who gives $15 a month, to help us save souls through our book ministry, is able to know exactly where those dollars went.
22:29 Orion Media has used none of its donations for personal income since becoming a non-profit. And I want that to be clear. We are legally permitted to compensate our ministry leaders with board approval, but I know who's giving to this ministry and I know people that are sacrificing to support this cause and I'm not going to take money home. That is why I keep my day job as a realtor. I'm not going to take money home. I'm not going to take money home. That is why I structure this ministry with a board that provides oversight over me and not just the other way around. Accountability flows both directions and I want that. The structure gives us freedom to preach everything I believe and I do. Every single thing. And I want to make you that commitment now. If anything ever tries to change that, if you, if a day ever comes that I have to choose between keeping my tax status or telling you the truth, I will sacrifice the non-profit status without hesitation. Because here's what I've seen with my own eyes. I have watched ministry leaders lose significant amounts of money and rather than humble themselves before God and turn around, they persecute their own staff over minor infractions to protect their paychecks. I watched God how he responds to that too. It's quite interesting. I watched the consequences unfold and it's, it's quite dramatic. And it was a lesson I will never forget. Not about a 501c3 status, but about what happens when a leader starts choosing money over people that God places in their care.
24:04 Revelation 13 warns us plainly that the day is coming when the government power will be used to enforce worship and lead people astray. That is a real warning and people should take it seriously. But choosing to be financially transparent, so donors can verify how their gifts are used, that is not connecting yourself to the peace system. That is stewardship. That is integrity. Those are two very different things and we need to be careful not to confuse them. Test everything by the word and that includes everything I say. Let's pray. Father, I ask for clarity for everyone watching, for those who are confused, being, bring them peace. For those who are isolated, bring community. For those who are fighting battles right now all alone, you know who they are. Remind them that you see them. Help us to hold fast to what is true and to not be moved by fear or by claims that cannot be proven by your word. In Jesus name, amen. I'm Bradley and God bless you. I'll see you in the next one.
25:18 Amen.