The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 44 – Cristian Ionescu

Episode 44: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Dr. Jeff interviews Pastor Cristian Ionescu, a Romanian pastor from Chicago who was charged with disorderly conduct and mob action for holding church services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pastor Ionescu discusses the charges, which he describes as intimidation, and draws extensive parallels between the government’s actions in the U.S. and his experiences growing up under communism in Romania.

He argues that America is being converted to socialism through the infiltration of its cultural institutions, rather than being conquered militarily. He details how his church resisted the mandates, the intimidation tactics used by city officials, and their eventual legal victory with the help of Liberty Council. Pastor Ionescu concludes with a warning, especially to the younger generation, about the dangers of socialism and the erosion of religious and personal freedoms.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:02):
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show. Available on Apple, Google, Spotify, Edifi, Liftable, and wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell your friends if you’re enjoying the show and share it with them. This is the show where I interview major thought leaders from many fields of influence to show how worldview changes everything.

My guest on the show today is Pastor Cristian Ionescu. He’s a Romanian pastor from Chicago who was charged with disorderly conduct and mob action simply for holding a church service during the pandemic. We’re going to hear his perspective on what happened in their church, how they responded. And most important of all, we’re going to hear about Pastor Ionescu’s growing up in Romania and some of the things he saw happen there that are now happening here. It’s a very sobering podcast and I want to welcome you to this episode. Pastor Cristian Ionescu, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show.

Cristian Ionescu (01:07):
Thank you for having me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:09):
I first heard about you when the media reported that you had been arrested for disorderly conduct and mob action by holding a church service in Chicago.

Cristian Ionescu (01:23):
Actually, it was not an arrest. It was a threat. It was trying to intimidate us and charging us for holding services six weeks after the mandate to stay home.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:41):
Now, those charges were all dropped, I assume, at some point, but it’s still demonstrated that there are current day threats to religious liberty. So I’m really grateful for your taking time to be on the show today, and we have a lot to talk about.

Cristian Ionescu (02:00):
Yes. This is a crucial time in American history, and I dare say world history. And we cannot be complacent. We cannot believe that we are still chasing the American dream. I think we are fighting for the very soul of this country.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:20):
Wow. And you’re saying that as someone who grew up in Romania, which you left because of the oppressive communist policies that came into place in the latter part of the 20th century. But a lot of us in America aren’t really aware of what Eastern Europe experienced under communism. And I’m wondering if you can just tell us a little of your story.

Cristian Ionescu (02:49):
As I grew up in Romania, obviously I was born during the communist regime in 1963. The communist regime had been imposed upon Romania right after the Second World War. And there are some interesting things about how socialism and ultimately communism will come to a country. It has two ways. One is conquest and second is conversion.

Romania was a small country. We had always been right in the middle of the happenings. The big migrations from the far east went through Romania. We were right in between three big empires, the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian, and the Ottoman Empire. And Romanians always had to play their hand very carefully on the world stage because they were small fish and easy to swallow. So what happened is when Russia, the Soviet Union, started to gain and ultimately win in the Second World War, they went through Romania towards Germany and Romania was conquered.

(04:27):
And the communist regime from Bolshevik, Russia was imposed forcefully on Romania. Romania didn’t have a socialist bone in the country. I mean, it was as capitalistic as you can be. So it was impossible to convert Romania in such a short time to communism. As a matter of fact, that generation never thought communism would work in Romania. They had a monarchy. The monarchy was beloved by the people. They had traditional parties, pluralism.

The system worked except for short periods of time in the Second World War when we had military dictatorship. But overall, the only way to get communism, socialism and communism to Romania was through conquest. Now, it’s very hard to do it in America. You have to cross oceans. And America’s not easy to be conquered. So what they used in America is conversion. For the last 60, 70 years, they worked at it diligently, persistently.

(05:48):
They started infiltrating and taking over the education system, the entertainment system, the culture. Some of the churches and the spiritual leaders in this country, they took over minorities, victimizing parts of the society, pitting each other against each other. And in the end, that’s called class warfare in Marxism. And in the end, look at what we have here. It was through conversion.

Dr. Jeff Myers (06:26):
Pastor Ionescu, this is really a compelling point that you’re making and a frightening one that America not being able to be conquered by socialism and communism has been converted to it. And I want people to understand what that really means. What happened in your experience in Romania? Because you had a vibrant economy, you had a vibrant culture, religious culture, a vibrant culture overall. What effect did communism have on that nation?

Cristian Ionescu (07:08):
I’ve already said that they’re pitting segments of society against each other. They went to such lengths that they were pitting people against each other, even family members against each other through intimidation. And when people get to a survival mode, they’re going to make big compromises.

Look at the pandemic. We don’t have to look very far. Oh, I understand their fears and I understand the virus is real for so many people, but the way they started to control the whole system and each individual person falling under the control of the system is frightening. We already know that this pandemic is made worse than it is.

(08:11):
The intimidation of the population, the scare tactics. Look, our church had services from May 10th last year, and we went through COVID like everybody else. Some of our people were infected as everybody, pretty much most of the people were and affected by it in a personal way, but it was not worse than a seasonal flu flare. We had worse in the past years during winter when a lot of older people got sick.

So I think that the hysteria around this was at least exploited, more sinisterly, fabricated to switch people into a survival mode. And when people are in that situation, they’re going to make compromises. And the first compromise that was required, interestingly, is personal freedom. And it was the same in Romania. Now, in Romania, they had famine after the war and it was normal. Usually you have a famine and shortage of supplies after a war.

(09:35):
They blackmailed them that they would lose their jobs if they didn’t cooperate. And they will exterminate and eliminate people that resisted. And the threats that we had upon us convinced us that it’s not beneath these people to use the same tactics that were used in Europe to conquer some of the country. But of course, this is after decades of converting the society through schools, through education, and they infiltrated the weak points and emotional points of the society, especially culture and entertainment.

Dr. Jeff Myers (10:24):
Can you talk about where you see that happening in America? Because your point about survival is extremely important. If people feel like, “I’m going to lose my job if I don’t comply. I’m going to lose my livelihood. I may lose my life if I don’t comply.” Then they’re not able to think about their freedom or anything else. They’re just trying to make it from day to day. But talk about those aspects of culture in a little more detail that you’re seeing where we’re actually under threat in this country.

Cristian Ionescu (10:55):
Socialism is chameleonizing as it entered each society. It identifies the strong points and the weak points. Interestingly, in America, they are using and abusing one of the strongest points in our society, individualism. Now, they portrayed individualism as being greedy, selfish, and nothing is further from the truth. American individualism is American exceptionalism because it motivates people to succeed, to create, to do great things. Individualism is at the core of American progress.

They turn this individualism against the citizens of this country because when they intimidated them, you’re going to lose your job if you do not cooperate. It is very personal. It is a threat that applies individually to one’s livelihood, family, source of income, and people tend to look at their own situation. They don’t understand from a societal standpoint, from the broader view of, “Hey, what are these people doing to all of us?” And it’s harder to unite.

(12:29):
See, if we would have all the people that are against these mandates, unite, stand up, and even if you don’t see anything wrong, let’s say with a vaccine or something else, just don’t take it because you don’t want to be part of this system, cooperating with this system, which we already know has very bad intentions for this country. But people are individualistic right now in a sense that they want to preserve their own livelihood, their own situation, they want to protect their families. And this is how these people use that individualism, which created exceptionalism against itself.

Dr. Jeff Myers (13:16):
Got it. Got it. So it’s a divide and conquer. Yeah. So yes, I see that. And I see that right now with vaccine mandates that have recently been announced. It’s going to hopefully create some issues in the courts about this, but entirely aside from whether someone has taken the vaccine, this is an extremely demanding, oppressive way to go about trying to get people to take the vaccine. I mean, they could have chosen persuasion, they could have chosen dialogue, instead choosing mandates that could cause people to lose their jobs if they don’t comply.

Cristian Ionescu (14:03):
But this is the way they react to the fact that they don’t have a leg to stand on. They don’t have science on their side, they don’t have precedent on their side. I mean, for a vaccine to be administered en masse to the population, you have to have at least 10, 12 to 15 years of testing. And as I’ve researched even the CDC’s guidelines, the first five, six years, you don’t even use it tested on humans.

So they’re going against everything that they preached for a hundred years in science, as far as vaccines are concerned. So they cannot explain it scientifically. The only way they can do it is through political propaganda. I talked to a doctor friend of mine, and I said, “What do you know about this COVID?” And he said, “Your guess is as good as mine.” And I said, “You’re kidding me. You must be informed.”

(15:03):
“You are trained in epidemiology and you must receive information every week from these people.” He said, “No, I don’t receive any science. I receive political propaganda and intimidation.” Wow. So when you have to deal with such people that you can trust, friends, people that are very well educated in this field, and they say this off the record because they are threatened to lose their jobs. This is pitiful.

I went to California recently to a church and after I spoke about the danger of Marxism and communism, at the end, a pair of a couple of very, very well-to-do people came to me and they said, “Our son who is in a very high position in a university hospital has just resigned because he cannot stand the intimidation and the propaganda, and he is forced to do that to his friends and his peers, and he cannot stand it anymore.” So this is what’s going on.

Dr. Jeff Myers (16:20):
If the core attack is to take advantage of individualism and divide people further so that they can’t come together, how do you address that?

Cristian Ionescu (16:33):
Well, first and foremost, you need to educate people. I think we need groups of initiatives, of initiatives in every city, in every state, creating events where they would call people and educate them, have doctors tell the truth, because there are some doctors that are willing to tell the truth. Have people like me coming from an experience like this and tell the truth.

I’m involved with the movement right now, Freedom Initiative in Illinois. They’re creating almost every month, one or two events where they call hundreds of people and just talk about these things, talk about, engage your friends, engage your coworkers, engage your neighbors. This is not a time to be weak and this is not a time to be afraid because if we are going to be afraid now, we’re going to be even more afraid later and it’s not going to solve itself. I’ve seen the way communists work and yes, they use some persuasion to convince some people to get on their side.

(17:48):
I’ve seen how they can blackmail some people and intimidate some people, but in the end, for them, it is a war of life and death. They will even exterminate their opposition. And I really, really hope, because I’ve seen it in Romania and in communist countries, it has been documented. I really hope we don’t get to that in America, but it is one of the steps on gaining total control. And let’s not forget what this is for them. It is gaining total control. They’ve used this pandemic.

As I’ve said, a more sinister interpretation of things is that they fabricated it, but let’s just say that they exploited it. For what? To destroy the very good course, economic course, societal course of the country in the last administration and destroy that administration. Secondly, to test the population, to see how much they can get away with it. And don’t forget, thirdly, destroy parallel forms of authority, which communists always hate, always hate.

(19:00):
We’re talking about private education, we’re talking about churches, we’re talking about families. These parallel forms of authority, they hate small business. They don’t have a problem with big operations because they’re easy to control, easy to infiltrate, and easy to manipulate, but what is a small business? Millions and millions of kings in their own domains and it’s hard to control. So they hate small business, they hate private education, they hate churches, and this is what they’re after and they hate families because parents are a rather parallel form of authority, which stand in a way of total control.

Dr. Jeff Myers (19:51):
And that was actually a campaign issue in a recent statewide election in Virginia, whose children are they? And it became very clear that some of the people running for office believed that the children belonged to the government or that the children belong to the schools and not to the parents.

Cristian Ionescu (20:10):
If I may address that, we see in Europe, in Western Europe, some countries more advanced in socialism than we are, and we envy them and we say, “Oh, if we could be like Norway, like the Scandinavian countries and like this and or that country.” People forget that, for example, in Norway, the state has an institution called Barnet Vernet who can confiscate the children from the family just because of the way they’re educated in a moral setting, conservative setting.

It happened in Germany recently, a family, seven children taken away from the family, just because they’re conservative in the way they educate their people, their children. So whose children are they? Not only they confiscate our children for eight hours a day, even more, and indoctrinate them in immoral and socialist ways, but if we progress down this path, they can confiscate your children. They have no problem with doing that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (21:23):
Pastor Ionescu, I’d love for you to tell us the story of how you saw this happen in your own church during COVID.What actually took place and how did you respond? How did you stand up? And what was the reaction of the people who are in your congregation?

Cristian Ionescu (21:41):
I don’t remember this, but my wife tells me, and my children tell me that while I was watching the news and Governor Pritzker saying that the recovery and for us to get out of this situation with isolation mandates and ordinances would take at least a year, maybe more. I stood up and I just said probably 10, 15 times, and I don’t have a recollection of this. I must have been in a zone.

I said, “This cannot be. This cannot be. This cannot be.” I don’t even know why. I don’t remember that. Probably I was absorbed by that situation, but my wife and my children tell me that this is what I did. I said, “The church cannot survive.” And there are some pastors that were converted to this kind of thinking. Oh, the church can survive, not having physical gathering. And I said, “No, it doesn’t even exist if it doesn’t have physical gathering.”

(22:54):
“It will not survive. It doesn’t exist.” And the only problem that I had at that time was I was afraid that it’s going to get legally challenging for our church with a lot of expenditures, but then Liberty Council jumped in and offered us representation and they did a marvelous, marvelous job. So then I said, “We are going to reopen the church on the 10th of May,” because in the beginning we didn’t know what we were dealing with. And I thought, let’s see, let’s wait and see.

One of the things that I really did not like, let me just use these words, I don’t like about these people. They pretend they love and they care about our people more than we do. And this is a travesty. No, they don’t. We love our people. These people are parents, our children, our brothers, sisters, friends. Of course, we care about them, but it’s not just material.

(24:06):
It is spiritual too. We care about their souls too. So we need to mitigate that. And at some point when everything was open, as far as the markets were concerned, hardware stores, even some restaurants were ready to open, but we were relegated to entertainment and public venues. I said, “This cannot be. This cannot be.” We offer essential spiritual service, services to the people. And guess what? They had surveys where it says that the people that attend the church during the pandemic were less likely to get into depression and it’s suicide, having divorces.

And so I said, “We are going to open.” I asked my board for the approval. It was unanimous. We talked about it. Then we created perfect conditions and we protected our people. We created six feet bubbles around each person in the sanctuary. One of the questions that I asked the governor and the mayor here, I said, “How do you respond to the availability of space issue?”

(25:22):
“You’re saying that we can only have services with 10 people.” This is an insult. We have almost a thousand member congregation, and with 10 people, I cannot even record the service online. So where’d you get that? And if we have 800 seats in the sanctuary, why don’t you consider the availability of space? It’s not just the room, it’s a large sanctuary. We sanitized the whole facilities of the church. We called the professional company. We took temperatures at the entrance. We offered masks and gloves, and we did all necessary to protect the people.

(26:12):
But then they started to be very abusive. What they did the next Sunday, when we came to church on a Thursday night, I saw posts on the trees, five blocks around the church. They said, “On Sunday, you cannot park here.” And they sent postal cards to all the neighbors saying, “On Sunday, you are not going to be able to park on the streets because this church does not abide by our mandates, stay at home order.”

And they wanted to incite people to hate us and to attack us. It didn’t happen, but imagine on a Sunday in Chicago, not having a parking space on the street, it is vital for the citizens of this city. And what happened at seven o’clock in the morning, in the 40s, raining, people had to come out of their houses five blocks around the church, move their cars. Guess what happened?

(27:27):
Some people came to church, said, “We support you, ” and gave us a donation. Wow. By the afternoon, the officials understood they couldn’t hurt us because they didn’t know we were using a private parking lot at a bank nearby. And what did they do? They committed an illegality. They blocked the entrance at five o’clock. We started the service at six o’clock in the evening. At five o’clock, they blocked the entrance to the parking lot.

It’s a private property. The police cannot do that unless they suspect a crime being committed in that space. Who’s going to commit a crime in an empty parking lot at five o’clock, an hour before service flood? But our people are resourceful. They came in front of the church, their families came inside the sanctuary, then the fathers would drive around, find the parking space even far away, and they walked back.

(28:35):
And we had a service just as we had it in the morning. They sent us citations. In the end, they were dismissed, and then they threatened us with summary abatement. They turned the health department against us. What summary abatement is? They say you are a hazard to public safety, and in the worst case scenario, they can demolish your facilities. Wow.

But our people were very courageous. I’m very proud of our congregation, extraordinary people and families. We had our backs, each other’s backs, and not only we survived, we thrived during the pandemic. And trust me, we were not worse off than churches that stayed close as far as the effects of the pandemics were concerned. As a matter of fact, we fared pretty well.

Dr. Jeff Myers (29:38):
Good. Yeah. Wow. This is so chilling to hear the lengths to which the city went. When you talked about, they could do things all the way up to demolishing your facilities, it just reminded me of what happens to churches in China.

Cristian Ionescu (29:58):
Yes. See, as I said, we had liberty council all the way through. We had a lawsuit against the governor with another Romanian Baptist Church, and it went up to the Supreme Court. One of the justices of the Supreme Court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, had asked the governor for a report for answers to some of his questions about our situation. And three hours before the governor had to respond to the Supreme Court justice, he relaxed all the rules in Illinois.

And from the most oppressive state in the Union, we had become the most free state in the Union as far as religious services were concerned. And it was such a blessing and such a victory for us. And since then, they never bothered us again. But I have to mention something very important. And I forgot to mention the infiltration of the media by these forces. They took over the media, which is absolutely crucial in total control of a society.

(31:22):
In Romania, the first thing the Red Army did when they invaded, they took over the media. Right. The media coverage in Chicago was surprisingly positive. In the least, it was neutral. So I thank God, and I’m very optimistic, because we’ve expected an onslaught against us in the media, and it never happened. These people were very balanced, were very favorable. They gave us time. They listened to us. They let us have our say in the media. And I’m very grateful for that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (32:10):
Well, I’m so glad. So the charges were dropped essentially because you went the route that’s available to all citizens to go to the courts to solve problems. It’s part of the Constitution. You went that route with the help of Liberty Council. And it was at that point that the charges against you were dropped and you began to see the change. What if you hadn’t? I mean, what if you hadn’t stood up?

Cristian Ionescu (32:41):
I can say that a high percentage of the American churches are still closed. Those that open as a very low percentage compared to what they had before the pandemic. And some churches had shut down completely. I know a pastor in Portland, Seattle, Washington area. He closed down the church. And when he wanted to reopen it two or three months ago, nobody came back. So the church was closed. I believe it was a war of annihilation. It was a death sentence for the church.

And with the help of God and our people who stood with us, the church is thriving. We’re so very glad to have inaugurated, had the great opening of our new facilities, state-of-the-art facilities. And during the pandemic, the contributions and the donations were even higher than before. So we fared very, very well. Had we not stood up to the government, first of all, I don’t think we would’ve kept the favor of God.

(34:09):
I don’t think God will give favor to people that don’t stand up for him and his kingdom. And for the pastors that shut down their churches and kept them closed for such a long time, I think this was a treacherous action. It was high treason against the kingdom of God, and they deserve to be fired by their congregations because they should never be the representatives of the government in front of their churches.

They should be the representative of their churches in front of the government, fighting for the interest of the church, not the interest of the government. I’m not saying that we should disobey government, but there is a time where we have to obey God rather than men. And this was such a time.

Dr. Jeff Myers (35:06):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s clear from the teachings of the Apostle Paul. But even when the Apostle Paul says, obey your authorities in this country, as Abraham Lincoln said, it’s government of the people by the people and for the people. We don’t serve government authorities. The government serves the people. And so I really appreciate your courage in standing up and the courage that this gave to others.

We will only know on the other side when we’re in heaven, but I want to say thank you for being willing to experience, to be willing to undergo persecution if necessary. And I’m just sorry for our country that we couldn’t recognize it, that it had to be recognized in the Midwest by people who grew up in the Midwest. It had to be recognized by a pastor who grew up under communism and began to see what is happening here.

(36:06):
So you’ve been a prophetic voice in that way, and I’m very grateful. I’m wondering, Pastor Nescu, as we close, if you’d be willing to speak to just the rising generation, young adults who are finding socialism so compelling, what would you say to them by way of warning?

Cristian Ionescu (36:31):
We have a young generation that is very emotional and I’m sorry to say less rational about things. And you are easily deceived. Obviously, no system in the world would come to you advertised as evil.

(36:56):
You can never have God being duplicitous and good pretend to be evil. It’s always evil pretending to be good. These people had proven themselves to be malicious, to be intimidating, to take away our freedoms, to be dismissive of criticism, and of sound questions. And it has an element of worship also. If you remember in the beginning, they always said, “Believe in science.” And I had chills down my spine because it really brought kind of a religious add-on to all this hysteria.

We have to believe in God, and we have to understand that these people are godless. They preach immorality. They want to bring about the demise of this society. They don’t have our interests at heart. Look at their duplicitous activity during the pandemic. Everybody should wear masks. They wouldn’t. Everybody should stay home. They didn’t. Nobody can cross the border of the state, the governor and his cronies could.

(38:25):
So it was such hypocrisy on display. And I would ask the young generation to look at the past of this country, how amazing it had been, how great the prosperity and the blessings of this country had been. And they were given by God on two premises, freedom and support for the state of Israel. I believe that America is a projection of Archangel Michael, the protector of the people of Israel.

For as long as America would stay the course and would protect freedom around the world, it would be a country based on Judeo-Christian values. And for as long as this country would stand with Israel, America will continue to be great. The very moment America will abdicate from these mandates, not by men, but by God, I believe America will fall. So I’m praying that America will understand what its destiny is, because this destiny comes with prosperity and blessing.

Dr. Jeff Myers (39:45):
Pastor, thank you. Thank you for being on the show today and for sharing this. This is a sobering message, but I’m grateful and thank you for your courage.

Cristian Ionescu (39:54):
Thank you, sir. I appreciate the opportunity.

Dr. Jeff Myers (39:58):
A special thanks to my guest today, Pastor Cristian Ionescu for coming on the Dr. Jeff Show. You can read his story online. You can follow him on Twitter at, I’m going to spell it out for you, I-O-N-E-S-C-U. The Bible has a lot of stories of faithful believers who resisted tyranny, whether it was in Egypt, to Syria, Babylon, the Roman Empire, while they learned how to live wisely in their particular age. So I’m thankful to people like Pastor Ionescu who can offer insights on how we can do the same thing in the time at which we live. See you next week.

(41:17):
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(42:21):
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