Russell Brand is joined by producer Jake Chapman and writer Joe McCann to discuss the fallout from the Charlie Kirk murder and the Jimmy Kimmel Show being cancelled. They also discuss the ban on smoking in public places in America and the implications for the UK.
00:00:35.000And in some cases, claiming I too am Charlie Kirk.
00:00:38.000So today we're talking about the repercussions of his murder and how it relates to other cultural matters, notably and specifically the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel.
00:00:48.000Jimmy Kimmel show got cancelled because of that.
00:00:50.000And whilst Charlie Kirk's murder, you could just say, you know, quite succinctly, that's a tragic murder of a person killed because of their views.
00:00:57.000And why you could say that the Jimmy Kimmel cancellation is simply the cancellation of a television show that was likely to get cancelled soon because late night don't have the audience anymore, and people are marketing in different ways and the culture's collapsing and imploding.
00:01:09.000There's a significant conversation to be had that hasn't been had yet, and that's the conversation around revival.
00:01:15.000What does it mean for a rational modern person to accept the living Jesus Christ as a reality?
00:01:22.000As if we're people in Nazareth, thousands of years ago.
00:01:26.000As if we predate the internet, modern communications, even the printing press, that we somehow require the Christ of millennia ago, the eternal Christ, the spirit that moved across the water.
00:01:41.000Peculiarly our culture of endless operations within now and constant conflict has led us to a through and via the precipice of bewilderment to the edge of eternity and perhaps to a kind of eternal awakening.
00:01:55.000We're going to be looking at the last great revival in your country that was the prominent figure that most people identify with that is Billy Graham.
00:02:02.000We're going to be looking at some of Billy Graham's interviews and footage, and we'll be talking about how this peculiar set of events might lead, curiously, and with the mysterious power that only the Lord could ever wield to a revival.
00:02:19.000I'm joined by the producer of the show, my mate Jake.
00:02:25.000And over there in America in the United Kingdom, unable to speak or even smoke, because the United Kingdom has become a kind of penitentiary, is Joe McCann, one of the best young reporters in the game.
00:03:36.000It was a very, very beautiful clip of In Thames Valley, mate, which is right up your neck of the woods.
00:03:41.000Thames Valley Police went round, not even to arrest a woman, but to really give her the opportunity to apologize for stuff she'd posted in the last couple of weeks.
00:03:52.000I couldn't even tell what she'd done wrong.
00:03:53.000But the police officer, mate, he's so funny.
00:03:55.000He's like, now listen, I wanted to offer you the chance to apologize.
00:03:59.000Like he's he's like, he looks nervous of the woman's cat.
00:04:03.000She's apparently sat there bald as a coop from chemotherapy, getting haranged by Temmes Valley Police.
00:04:08.000They're not even intimidating police officers.
00:04:10.000He's like really he's probably a really sweet and lovely person.
00:05:40.000Because we know, even just hearing you say that, we've not had that in our co like they're in our country, they talk about like the Welsh revival, and like I understand there have been different points like that.
00:05:50.000John Wesley and them, like the Methodists, they like some I've heard people that know a lot more about Christianity and the way that it has moved in the centuries since its inception, or at least since uh death and resurrection of our Lord, saying I've heard them say, Oh, there've been times in the past where Christianity's nearly died out.
00:06:08.000And isn't it weird if you think of like when I was like in my 20s and 30s, people, I mean, you lot from they're from a different background, Joe, this lot over here.
00:06:16.000No one was talking about Christ than Christianity.
00:06:18.000Now you look at that massive, extraordinary Charlie Kirk memorial, and JD Varnes is saying more people are talking about Jesus to me than ever before.
00:06:25.000Tucker's up there talking about Jesus, everyone's talking about Jesus, so something's going on, and I've felt like something was going on for a while.
00:06:31.000And dear Joe's one of the beloved Baptists, Joe and Bear Grills are the two men that baptize me, as a matter of fact.
00:06:39.000So, like we got a different reference.
00:06:40.000We don't like you lot had revivals in the 60s and stuff like that, haven't you?
00:06:44.000I mean, I even look at when we're Billy Graham's kind of been around everywhere.
00:06:49.000I mean, he was in the UK, friends with the Queen, all kind of stuff.
00:06:53.000So that's an interesting correlation between a person like that back in the day, and he was involved in culture, meeting with presidents, meeting with the Queen, and now we're sort of seeing like a new wave of connection between politics and Christianity.
00:07:10.000And then intertwining all that are all these real stories of actual life change happening.
00:07:18.000You guys just met some people and did some baptizing.
00:07:21.000Oh, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.
00:07:22.000I've been baptizing people even over the weekend.
00:07:25.000I like giving people a good baptizing when the weather's right, when the weather's fine, when it seems like the right thing to do.
00:07:30.000What I know is that people will be saying that the real fit fret is theocracy, that people say that Margaret Atwood's handmaid's tale, and that's actually a pretty sacrilegious reference to the holy mother there, actually, in it, even in the title.
00:07:44.000So that people will use resurgent Christianity to create autocratic and centrally controlled tyrannies.
00:07:50.000Whereas my personal fear has been these last 10, 20, 30 years or so, that the culture, the state, uh, via its propaganda machines within the culture, has been operating as a kind of dark counterfeit god for a long, long time.
00:08:03.000That's where the murder of Charlie Kirk and the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel collide to help us tell the story of this most modern revival.
00:08:11.000Let's have a look at uh Pastor Mark Driscoll describing what a revival is for those of you that might be uncertain.
00:08:17.000The reason I'm interested in a revival is because left and right are perhaps at the end of the line.
00:08:23.000The ideas of the last century are broken, the new technologies demand a new model.
00:08:28.000Wouldn't it be extraordinary if it was something arcane?
00:08:30.000Once Brett Weinstein said to me that the resurgent Christianity is a culture's attempt to reboot the last thing that worked.
00:08:36.000But I would say eternity is reaching continually through time through the cross.
00:08:41.000Let's have a look at what Mark Driscoll's saying.
00:08:42.000Revival is a surprising touch of the Holy Spirit that accelerates kingdom ministry.
00:08:49.000The Holy Spirit shows up in a unique and powerful way.
00:08:53.000We see this throughout the Bible, where the Holy Spirit falls on a group of people and just ignites them with a sense of passionate urgency for the things of God.
00:09:39.000But at the end of the day, until people are filled with the spirit and have a love for God, things won't change until God changes the people.
00:11:11.000I was listening to Father Mike Schmidt's the other day, I think it was, and he said that you know it's God that's in the dark, it's us that's putting God on trial continually.
00:11:25.000And as people sort of more and more move towards worshiping their own identity, you can see how it's becoming extreme or at least more novel.
00:11:34.000But worship of the self and worship of the individuals be is the culture's main device, I argue, for converting people out of God consciousness.
00:11:44.000And like I've said before in this show, like I realize that the role that I've played in that is a particular one.
00:11:50.000Like you get cast into the culture that I don't mean it's so nefarious as to you know require sort of shadowy participation of organized elite groups.
00:12:02.000Like I recognize that my own fame, celebrity, and success, which at the time felt like the result of my own excellence and my own endeavor, was simply that I was able to be utilized in the culture as a representative of certain set of values, like, oh look, he's a sort of somewhat sanitized bad boy advocating for selfishness and promiscuity and godlessness in a in a peculiar way.
00:12:25.000But do you know it's been mad since I become Christian?
00:12:27.000How many people have said, I was praying for you, I knew you'd find Jesus.
00:12:29.000I've been praying for you for a long time.
00:12:41.000I think it's interesting in a clip like this where he's talking about how revival starts with the younger generation, what younger people, ultimately, that's where the fire what's which the same thing was true when you were in the culture.
00:12:53.000You were appealing to a younger crowd, everyone watching MTV.
00:12:57.000So there's this always a battle between the cult and the people who can make an impact over the longest period of time.
00:13:03.000So what's awesome about Turning Point and everything that Charlie Kirk was doing and what they are building.
00:13:08.000I mean, we saw it 5,000 students when we went to Tampa for that event.
00:13:14.000Fired up, excited, talking about the things of God.
00:13:20.000But what I felt to the point of um is it of Mark Driscoll here is that turning point was and presumably will remain, Explicitly and overtly a Republican organization, and Mark Driscoll here is saying that it don't matter who's not saying it doesn't matter who win elections because these are the arguments people on the left make.
00:13:41.000Like when I select when I said oh there's no point voting for anyone because you get the same type of government anyway.
00:13:46.000I remember people saying stuff like, Yeah, but the Labour government are gonna introduce this welfare bill for disabled people, and are you gonna tell to my brother who's disabled that it don't matter that he's gonna get this thing?
00:13:56.000And people that are Republican might say, Well, you know, like we've taken a real stance on pro-life, and are you saying that that don't matter because that's the most important thing, and you know, even is that child sacrifice versus you know, like people will happily not happily but willingly remain within the confines of the existing argument.
00:14:15.000And what's happened to me late happened to me really Charlie Kirk's death makes it more vivid, but it was happening with some peculiar poetry anyway, because that morning when we were doing the show, I felt like, and I hope it's not sort of wrong to tell you this explicitly.
00:14:32.000This we can't just keep talking like this.
00:14:34.000We can't just keep talking about cracker barrel logo, and we can't keep talking argument, even about something that's massive and significant Israel-Palestine.
00:14:42.000Can't just keep being in a washing machine of these opinions the whole time.
00:14:48.000And I've started to feel that we need to participate in this directly and explicitly.
00:14:55.000I don't want to talk about anything other than the salvation of souls and a real and present Jesus Christ, and to talk about it in a way that's not hokey, where I'm not governed by my own fear around money and finances and reputation and power, and where we're not shilling and it's not exploitative, you know.
00:15:14.000And I know that an all-powerful God is going to direct us and use us and is going to do what he wants.
00:15:18.000And but like I'm trying away, I'm working in what is clearly a liminal space.
00:15:23.000Our situation is changing, it's changing really quickly.
00:15:27.000And I know that the you know, for the that that how like me to make it sort of selfish, but as well, that's my way of that's where I can measure it.
00:15:35.000I can measure it where it's hitting me.
00:15:38.000And that's where I guess ultimately revival starts is with the individual, the actual change, the the realization that I don't want to just keep playing these games anymore, I don't want to keep going back to the systems that I thought were my hope.
00:15:52.000I want to go to the source, I want to go to God, I want to genuinely be changed.
00:15:57.000In the end, faith's gonna be obedience.
00:16:00.000I keep coming to things that are quite hard.
00:16:01.000Like in the end, faith will be obedience.
00:16:03.000That if you are truly faithful, you'll be obedient, you'll do what you're told.
00:16:07.000But because my whole life has been defined by a kind of disobedience, because I don't trust authority, I don't trust that like that comes natural to me.
00:16:15.000It comes natural to me to go, you liars.
00:16:18.000Like, I really feel that about like the media, and like that's in a way what I like most about Trump is this person that's willing and able to have these confrontations.
00:16:29.000But what is being revealed, and what Mark Driscoll's already pointed out is that a revival contained within political systems will be limited.
00:16:37.000You're not gonna get a real revival or real revolution, you're just gonna get manoeuvring of one kind or another.
00:16:42.000What's fascinating about this memorial of Charlie Kirk's is how overtly and explicitly Christian it is, and how of course his explicit Christianity is now at the absolute forefront.
00:16:52.000But that don't mean that people ain't gonna try and exploit it and make it about what we used to call the Christian right, the thing that Margaret Atwood is talking about in the Handmaid's Tale, is oh, they're gonna say it's about Christianity and Jesus, but what they're gonna do is they're gonna use that to legitimate control, and that ain't nothing new.
00:17:08.000People never more gleefully murder one another than when they believe they're doing it on behalf of their holy father, whether that's modern day Israel or the British and Americans when invading Iraq, you know, but like people get proper up for militant action when they say we're not doing this because of some subjective resort resource argument, we're doing this because it's God's will.
00:17:31.000That's when people get crazy, no watch for that.
00:17:37.000Yeah, I think I mean that's gonna happen.
00:17:40.000The only thing you can put your trust in that is truly solid is God.
00:17:58.000I'm watching like sort of like the what I'm interested in in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's murder, is when we watch something like a seemingly innocuous and potentially banal as Mark Ruffalo, the you know very good actor on Rain Wilson's podcast, I can see in him a kind of I I recognise what he's feeling.
00:18:20.000He's feeling a kind of a despair and confusion, but he's still someone, like say Barack Obama or whatever, that's invested in the maintenance of the existing basically commercial, codified materialist culture.
00:18:37.000Like that's what the offering is of the neoliberal left.
00:18:40.000We are ultimately about cowtowering to corporations and bureaucracies, but we're gonna do it while pretending to be kind of nice to vulnerable people or whatever, and we'll find some tokenistic way of demonstrating that, and that's just breaking because it's not real, it's not got anything real in the midst of it.
00:19:14.000Yeah, that's that's what they're going.
00:19:15.000Oh, this isn't that, and they're confused by all of it, because it's all falling apart.
00:19:19.000The other side will argue that Trump's a kind of god, won't they?
00:19:21.000They also that that the to the right, Trump's a kind of god, and and that the process that's under unfolding here, even around Charlie Kirk, is about um a sort of deification, a kind of canonization.
00:19:31.000But what again, when watching people's reaction to Kimmel and taking it like I people being all passionate about it, Joe, right?
00:19:37.000I just watched some people like going, it's disgusting that Jimmy Kimmel, this is your free speech.
00:19:41.000Like, have you ever watched Jimmy Kimmel?
00:19:43.000It's just it's just chatting about like normal sh like top ten things like they're not talking about anything of any, it's not about meaningfulness, and that's another thing.
00:19:51.000Like whether you hated Charlie Kirk or l uh or loved him, he was a demonstration that the culture was moving closer to issues that are relevant.
00:20:03.000Even if you absolutely reject Christ or you absolutely reject conservatism, now there's this entire movement talking about those issues.
00:20:14.000Like when, like just 20 years ago, it was like a Brittany Spears has got that fucking snake round her neck and she snogged Madonna, or like Usher's said a thing, you know, like you know, like now, like don't it already seem like who cares if Kanye West is saying the N-word or whatever?
00:20:30.000Like, you know, don't things are hastening, like it's getting fast, it's getting fast.
00:20:35.000Like what the point that I made earlier or yesterday in the show was when you saw um Kamala Harris using the conventional means of electioneering, going on Oprah Winfrey and getting a bunch of movie stars, whereas Trump went on Joe Rogan and people affiliated with him went on a bunch of podcasts.
00:20:52.000Even though if you only looked at the superficial data, on one side it was middle-aged white men, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, that's the sp tip of the spear of new media.
00:21:05.000There's a new game, and Charlie Kirk has been murdered, I think, in part because you know, I'm not saying from a conspiratorial, more of a sort of a phenomenological perspective because he is he's the first person like that of note where something weird and radical has happened, and that's without getting into you know who did it and for what reason.
00:21:24.000It's almost beyond that at this point, is one of the things that's sort that we've been discussing.
00:21:28.000Joe, mate, I wonder, like when you went as you did for us to the British Patriot March there, and I've already spoken to people since then that like, isn't it a bit racist, all this thing, and it's only about migration.
00:21:40.000Tell me a few things, or like tell me, do you think that it's different from any other social movement that you've been affected by or impacted?
00:21:48.000Do you feel like there's something about it that's authentic and real and deep, or do you think it's just another exploitable thing that'll end up leading to a more nationalistic political leader getting in in England?
00:22:01.000I mean, like it's interesting you say that about the car Charlie Kirk stuff, because there was a lot of people holding up signs and memorials to him and stuff like that, and even a few people walking acrosses and stuff, like there's a real revival starting to happen, and it's like an awakening, you can feel it, and talking to people there, man.
00:22:19.000It was you know, I spoke to a priest, there was a priest there, and he was saying we need to bring Christ back, bring him back into government into schools.
00:22:27.000We need to see a change, Christian values again, And I think that's what's starting to happen.
00:22:34.000Yeah, and again, like just 20 years ago, it was ridiculous.
00:22:38.000Like I suppose, see, we're one of the um metrics or devices we're using in my own interfacing with celebrity and fame and what we might call the culture.
00:22:48.000And when I um hosted the MTV VMA awards, which is a kind of Babylon pinnacle, certainly for me it was, like in 2000 and whatever, uh, you know, 2005, 6, 7, 8, around that time.
00:23:00.000Like, I the Jonas brothers were a big deal, and people were super fixated on their virginity, but it didn't seem like and the same with a lot of them Mickey Mouse club stars, like promise rings, they had the promise rings, they had the promise rings, and I'm a joke I made, is that they don't mean much unless they start wearing it on their dicks.
00:23:17.000That's one of the jokes I made um at the time.
00:23:19.000And like, um, and people have always been sort of fascinated with like the chastity, excuse me, I'll give myself cramp there, uh, like with the chastity of um Brittany Spears, like and um all of them.
00:23:31.000Like, why are they so interested in Miley Cyrus's virginity and why are they so interested in that?
00:23:36.000And like in our country with Charlotte Church, people get into it, like even chastity gets sexualized and perved over a little bit, it gets perved over.
00:23:45.000They're not looking at it from a spiritual perspective, i.e.
00:23:50.000the act of uh creation is where we are most like gods, and a special sanctity is reserved for sexual behaviour, and it requires guidance because it's a potent portal to an energy that can get misdirected.
00:24:04.000The other thing that I said at them VMAs was um, as well as them silly jokes about the chastity rings of those lads there, was about George W. Bush.
00:24:12.000I got a bunch of death threats, and what but what I can tell you is the things about it that were Christian, I remember there were critiques of George W. Bush and Tony Blair at the time, people were like asked whether or not they prayed together, like whether Blair and Bush prayed together about the bombing of Iraq.
00:24:25.000That was one thing where Christianity was discussed, and of course, when I was briefly studying religion and politics, I heard that in a way you could regard that as Christian violence, that you know, if you want to, you know, if you're gonna because the critique they were offering is if you're gonna say that 9-11 is Muslim extremist violence, and we all know that there's some a lot more complications to that story these days, that perhaps you could say it's Christian violence when a Christian in vote commons country goes and bombs the Middle East in order to get resources or whatever, and that's a sort of an interesting argument.
00:24:55.000But what I'm the point I'm trying to make is that it seems to me now that people are actually interested in a very Christ-centered version of Christianity, i.e., the living figure, the living resurrected figure, Jesus Christ, and how that has a kind of like we've talked about this before, a sort of a trippy impact on you.
00:25:15.000Like when me and Jake and Dave were at the Bible Museum, the sort of feeling you get is a kind of like when looking at this uh ceramic mural floor recently uncovered in Israel from the second century AD,
00:25:32.000where the symbol of the fish is used, yet martyrs female are named, and in Greek it inscribed is Christ is God, you get a kind of sense of oh my god, Jesus is in the room.
00:25:46.000It's like a weird psychedelic feeling.
00:25:48.000And the reason I'm bringing that up and the reason I'm using the word psychedelic is I can't rationally justify an adult man in the modern world, educated in the way that I've been educated, not to a high standard, but sort of within the terms of the culture and an autodidact that's read philosophy, suddenly accepting something, and I become aware of this because like you know, I'm Christian now, so I'm surrounded by Christians, and it's normalized, Christianity's normalized.
00:26:12.000Sometimes it ain't vitalized enough, but it's normalized.
00:26:15.000But where when I'm talking to people in England, they're like, you know, like sometimes I don't know if you guys ever get this, where you might feel a bit embarrassed, like, yeah, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian when you're talking to someone that's like, so what do you mean by what you actually believe that God came to earth and then he died for your sins?
00:26:31.000I don't know how how does that work, and then he rose again, and now because of that you're gonna know eternal life, you sort of feel like, yeah.
00:26:39.000You're like, well, that's a fairy story, you idiot.
00:26:42.000You know, that's what you feel like you're believing some, but it's because it's supernatural and it's outside the our ability to appreciate reality, and that's why when you study the word, you s it's you get the historical gut punch.
00:26:55.000It's one of the things West Huff is good at is like, oh God, oh my god, here's like they're just talking about someone they knew.
00:27:00.000Like Peter's talking about someone he knew, John's talking about somebody new, Paul is talking about someone he encountered, and then you feel like, oh my god, it's not that long ago.
00:27:09.000Like it's a sort of a that's the aspect of it that people need to reach for, otherwise they may reach for the sort of arsenal within it, the weapons within it, the mo the ability to use it.
00:27:18.000What will Charlie Kirk's legacy be used for?
00:27:21.000Will it eventually come to mean vote JD Vance?
00:27:24.000Or will it mean surrender to Christ Jesus, never trust any human power?
00:27:34.000How crazy is it that you are a Christian now?
00:27:37.000Like if you thought about it back then.
00:27:40.000Like you ever imagine that you would be a believer.
00:27:44.000When I was married to Katie Perry and her dad and mum are like sort of pastors, I remember just thinking it was like some sort of eccentric quirk of hers that she'd grown up in that environment.
00:27:55.000And when I met Christians, I only liked the ones that could talk about it in a kind of mystical way.
00:28:01.000But now I know that in itself is a sort of a pretty deep tradition and has well, it's obviously mystical and entirely mystical, but someone like Thomas Merton who will help me to understand it, or or Brother Lawrence, like T or Augustine or Aquinas, like they help you to understand the philosophy of it and the beingness of it, the ontology of it.
00:28:21.000Like when I'm irritated and angry and frustrated about my day, like of how am I gonna, where is Jesus now?
00:28:27.000How am I gonna move towards Christ now?
00:28:32.000It's ridiculous because I was an addict, Dave.
00:28:34.000I'm an addict, and it's very difficult to get past the layers of worship of addiction, like literal drugs and alcohol, chemical addictions, but then the more subtle forms of addiction, like uh sex and sleeping around.
00:28:48.000And I feel so blessed now to be really well schooled in that, to be really, really well schooled in addiction and the consequences addiction, the fallibility of addiction.
00:28:58.000It was a long time ago, someone like I was making when I was um I think it might have been even before allegations and accusations, like I was just married and living there for a monogamous life, and I was like, I won't say the name because it would be wrong and potentially liable.
00:29:14.000But I was thinking about another famous person who likes sleeps with lots and lots of women who's super famous but married and high profile married, and I was like, ah come easy allowed to do that.
00:29:21.000And so I went, yeah, but that's like being jealous of someone that's still using drugs or someone that's still drinking.
00:29:27.000That person's living in in deception and delusion.
00:29:31.000And it's there is a grief in letting go of worldliness.
00:29:35.000There is a grief in letting go of carnality, and I think all of us feel around the edges of our life, the kind of pull of well, I want money, I want control, I want power.
00:29:45.000And but like the thing about what's happening right now at this moment with the death of Charlie Kirk and with what looks like the death froze of a culture in a way, and I don't mean you know, I mean like the the Jimmy Kimmel stuff, like they were gonna cancel that dude anyway because the the viewers were in decline, but that's and I don't think it's a free speech issue.
00:30:02.000I think they're making it a free speech issue so that it's got some juice in it.
00:30:06.000I think both sides will get off on that.
00:30:07.000Who gives there was no relevant free speech going on on late night TV?
00:30:11.000They're saying sit in your chair, vote for one of these two parties, preferably this one, buy these products, take that vaccine, shut your mouth.
00:30:20.000Yeah, because even uh you know, uh if the left gets cancelled or the right gets cancelled, like uh Roseanne, people are using the Roseanne example when she got cancelled, then who decides who gets cancelled when?
00:30:35.000Because they'll the left will say, Well, that's justified, they got cancelled, the right will say that's justified, he got cancelled, but even that it's gotta go further than that.
00:31:00.000We need to surrender, we need to die to ourselves.
00:31:03.000So the Charlie Kirk thing is a shat it's uh it's like glass shattering, and I think there are it's this it's this facade that's being broken down, and so I think in the midst of all that, there's gonna be people that are gonna try to use it for political power.
00:31:19.000There's gonna be people that are gonna try to use it to gain more followers.
00:31:23.000All of that's gonna happen, but I also hope, and I see it in the midst of all that, there's still a lot of genuine things happening that God's stirring hard.
00:31:34.000So it's so God's presence will use it, will have sort of appear in it like iron filings round a magnet, which is the image of the cross that I start to feel as I came to our Lord or as our Lord came to me.
00:31:45.000And it I suppose, Jake, what we're interested in is not the mobilization of ideas to win an argument as demonstrated when, oh yeah, no, it's okay to like people on the right saying, Well, it's okay to cancel Jimmy Kimmel because actually Jimmy Kimmel was making a joke about that.
00:32:01.000When you see it, it's pretty innocuous, really, and pretty sort of meaningless and trite.
00:32:07.000Um, but instead, what you want to see is a sort of the glimpse of eternity, because how can any well, as you just said, very clearly, where is authority derived from?
00:32:17.000What is your basis for even making the claim that there's such a thing as right and wrong?
00:32:23.000I watched the other day that film from ages ago, some you know, The Martian, and in the film The Martian, it's clearly a celebration of man's scientific endeavour.
00:32:30.000Matt Damon's astronaut character gets left on Mars uh but as something goes wrong on a mission, and as a botanist, he's able to sustain himself for a couple of years until the ingenuity of his colleagues at NASA facilitates his rescue.
00:32:42.000In one very notable scene, he pulls apart the crucifix of his departed colleague in order to create he has to create an explosion for some sort of agricultural reason and to you know separate water and stuff like that.
00:32:54.000Anyway, the film delights in the idea that it's in fact human endeavour that saves us and human ingenuity that saves us.
00:33:01.000But even in a film that clearly prizes those ideas, the allegiance of the of the astronauts that return to rescue their colleague comes from what?
00:33:17.000And even when atheists, and that God knows there's some real clever atheists out there, say I don't need a God in order to behave correctly, that isn't the argument.
00:33:27.000The argument is you need a God in order to claim there's such a thing as correctly.
00:33:58.000The patterns of the world that we're not meant to conform to, actually, the divine and sublime patterns that are in uh that are indicatively present as a result of the patterns of the world or the patterns that we ought to be pursuing, according to our Lord and uh the interpretation of our Lord's words by St. Paul, certainly in Romans, like that you can't make no claim for anything until you first accept God.
00:34:18.000And what's happening now, I think, is instead of the vaguely pagan ideas of God that the culture will afford you, and paganism will mean your identity is God, your sexuality is God, nature is God, the earth is God.
00:35:01.000Yeah, because we'll think that it's just us.
00:35:03.000Like we'll go, man, God's really moving in the three of us, and you start realising it's not the just the three of us, or the four of us with Joe, or it's more, it's happening on a bigger scale.
00:35:12.000It's something that's larger beyond just our friend group.
00:35:16.000And I think these um events like the tragedy with Charlie Kirk, sort of push things forward for what God wants to do.
00:35:25.000And it might siphon through, you know, people trying to gain different political advantages, and I think we can still, through that siphoning, get some really moving, powerful things of God to happen.
00:35:39.000If you're watching us anywhere other than on Rumble, click the link in the description and join us over on Rumble right now.
00:35:45.000We're talking about revival and we're talking about Christ.
00:35:49.000In a way, though, if you're not Christian, don't worry, because in Christianity, we love everyone.
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00:38:13.000Like the term Christian nationalism, it's a sort of high, is a thing that people have always been kind of nervous about, and it's the kind of language that I would have used once.
00:38:21.000But the kind of Christianity I'm interested in is the kind that Erica Kirk demonstrates when forgiving her shooter.
00:38:26.000Let's have a little look at that and let's talk about the concept of forgiveness and the standard that you can be held to once you declare you're a Christian.
00:38:36.000Like if you say I'm a Christian, then I suppose people can go, well, what's this shit then?
00:38:43.000And then obviously you've got ready as your uh repost, sorry for swearing.
00:38:47.000Uh obviously you've got for your repost, I'm broken, I'm fallen, or whatever, but you can't stay in your fallenness without you have to repent.
00:38:56.000That's what that's the principle of repentance.
00:38:58.000Let's um first of all have a look at uh Erica Kirk.
00:39:01.000Uh we've watched it before, um, but I think it's obviously bloody hell.
00:39:46.000Yeah, you know, she's gonna have to it's in spite of not only she gotta pass through her grief and the tragedy that she must be personally encountering, she's gonna deploy the technical skills of knowing when the bounce of her voice is coming off the back of that auditorium to wait for an applause in a pretty tricky situation.
00:40:06.000Yeah, that's a difficult situation to um to manage for sure.
00:40:54.000I suppose the reason people will be highlight quite rightly that moment is it's a demonstration of values that go beyond the values that our culture can offer us.
00:41:03.000Our culture will offer us the death penalty.
00:41:33.000That lights you up to live to that standard because you're conforming not to the pattern of this world, you're transcending the standard of this world.
00:41:39.000And when you know that this world can't ever fulfill you, you've got no choice.
00:41:44.000The Erica Kirk, she's got to go through that.
00:41:47.000What that they're you know, whenever people lose someone that they love, you have to You've got to receive the lesson, haven't you?
00:41:56.000You've got to receive whatever lesson is kind of knotted and woven and knitted into that, because otherwise, on its own terms, life becomes unlivable, unlivable.
00:42:09.000And I suppose to be able to be grateful when your life collapses, or when the unbearable or the unforgivable happens, that is presence of his supreme power.
00:42:21.000One of the things I like about Brother Lawrence and his uh little collection of writings, the practice of the presence of God is his unfussiness.
00:42:30.000He says he lives as if him and God are the only people in the world and he's in constant dialogue with God, and when he messes up, he says, I just say, says Brother Lawrence, this is as this is as good as I can do without you.
00:42:43.000This is as good as I can do without you.
00:42:47.000I like the you know, like in it like we're in this um we're being invited to participate in all of these systems and all these hierarchies, and I gosh, it's difficult for me.
00:43:00.000I find it very hard to accept just go and be a member of a church, go and just be a person, be but like it's changing in me.
00:43:13.000I don't really like I want to be with my wife and kids.
00:43:18.000I just want to be with my wife and kids, really, and I want to, and the only place I can actually do that is from a perspective from a position of connection to him and surrender to him.
00:43:29.000Again, like part of the challenge of coming to Christ is I think for people that have been coached either on cynicism and scepticism or or the worship of intelligence, is that how can I just believe in the same thing as some old lady, or like these people you see like Christians in like Africa somewhere, like that you think I can't believe what they believe, these simple folk.
00:43:55.000Now, one of the things that people like, you know, if we're we're trying to understand revival, the last significant, I suppose, uh well, you I'm sure there have been other revivals, but uh Billy Graham's name still looms large in the imaginary, obviously, Mount Rushmore of uh influential Christian teachers of the latter day.
00:44:17.000And I'm very interested in what was unique about Billy Graham.
00:44:22.000We know like a couple of his grandsons and like all of them, as you might imagine, are involved in ministry one way or another.
00:44:28.000What is it that you Billy Graham did so well?
00:45:13.000You're attending by television, the largest evangelistic gathering together in American history, the Glimactic meeting of the Billy Graham, New York Crusade.
00:45:21.000By nine this morning, the parking lot adjacent to the ballpark were filling up.
00:45:25.000By mid-afternoon, they were overflowing.
00:45:27.000Tonight, not a seat remains unoccupied in a stadium that can hold 80,000, and others line the infield and outfield to a point of saturation.
00:45:37.000It beggars belief that one other individual can be crowded into these premises.
00:45:41.000All of the gates of Yankee Stadium have been closed.
00:45:44.000Thousands of others are milling about out on the extra perimeter of Yankee Stadium beyond the confines.
00:45:50.000One of the things about our i incessantly updating online lives these days is sometimes you'll just look at an image of a French train in 1970 or a British street in 1989, and everything already seems sepious-soaked and idyllic.
00:46:09.000But what were they looking for the thousands of people in Yankee Stadium that day?
00:46:18.000Where was America in its own trajectory?
00:46:21.000And how did that revivalist energy get directed back into self-sustaining systems of political power?
00:46:31.000Because I feel like uh you told me, Jake, that Richard Nixon, then vice president, introduces Billy Graham.
00:46:37.000So we're you know, we're prior his president prior to his presidency, prior to the murder of JFK, the Vietnam, the Vietnam War, and like you know, sort of in a sense, the what many people regard as the ending of American innocence.
00:46:49.000So just prior to that, you know, our Lord gives you Billy Graham Yankee Stadium, Satan gives you Vietnam.
00:46:59.000They pull a knife, you pull a gun, they send one of yours to the hospital, we send one of yours to the morgue.
00:47:04.000We are in spiritual warfare, and that's one of the things that I think is also pe prevail prevalent.
00:47:08.000People are sort of getting aware of what a demons real demons and angels and entities.
00:47:14.000Because when you're believing in Christianity, you're not just believing in a kind of a moral purview, you're not just believing that God came to earth, the creator of the simulation entered the simulation and paid the debt that you could never pay because debt has to get paid, it's somehow like a kind of mathematics.
00:47:27.000You're also believing in virgin births and demons and nephilim and giants and beasts and creatures and holy warfare and the end game and Armageddon.
00:47:38.000There's quite a lot, and it's very difficult to secularise, isn't it?
00:47:42.000In fact, the project of secularization is to impact and affect the canvas of reality to the point where even that conversation seems implausible and ridiculous.
00:47:51.000And think about the kind of things that the your Alex Jones is and your David Ike's your kind of early forefathers of the internet, you might call them, the conspiracy theory generators, the early adapters, the people that sort of will come on your TV set in the mid-1980s and and say, look, You know, Osama bin Laden's going to blow up the Twin Towers before 9-11, markedly and importantly.
00:48:12.000Or reptilians are in control of your kids'minds or are controlling the media.
00:48:15.000You know, it's pretty interesting that there's this potent supernatural dimension to it.
00:48:21.000And it's pretty interesting that we've been trained to reject that.
00:48:26.000Yeah, I mean, and this is crazy to see to go back in time and watch this footage and to see that this was you know a hundred thousand people all coming to see Billy Graham to hear the gospel, Richard Nixon's up there giving the introduction, it's America, but there's not a guarantee that just because a bunch of people gather and that you know Billy Graham speaks, that it's just gonna lead to some utopian state of society.
00:48:51.000There's there's a bigger picture at play that God's doing across the world, and it's also timing matters.
00:48:57.000So I wonder like we could watch all this stuff that's going on with Charlie Kirk, who you know, from all these people gathering in some beautiful moments that are even happening, worship and people turning to God, and we just have to make sure we don't try to control it, and we don't try to monetize it somehow.
00:49:18.000Then we don't try to put our faith in even if a president is up there saying Christian things, or if Richard Nixon's doing the introduction.
00:49:33.000Yeah, that's the final killing of the individualistic spirit, which I think stands in for the Judaic law that Paul is talking about when he argues with Peter for removing the necessity for circumcision for new believers.
00:49:49.000That now it's not Judaic law or Phariseism that might contain or restrict a person, me, you, whoever.
00:49:56.000But individualism, materialism, your true devoutness to the culture, like that what that where I get my personal, it's not even authority, it's simply testimony, is that I believe that I was so immersed in individualism that addiction is an expression of individualism that all you care about is how am I gonna look after this individual little god in me, the self.
00:50:20.000How am I gonna stay in self in my sinful nature?
00:50:25.000It's so curious, too, that the Lord invites us to come as little children to make ourselves innocent again and to open our hearts and to walk towards him with a not gullibility or foolishness, but with the innocence of a child, which means a kind of the casting off.
00:50:43.000Can you see it when you sit next to a child somewhere?
00:50:45.000You feel their radiant innocence, a young baby, their open-heartedness, their open eyes as they look at the world.
00:50:52.000It's very difficult to do that, to to identify with that kind of that level of d open dependency and its beautiful, fragile power.
00:51:00.000But the state demands too that you become dependent, dependent on its ideas, sometimes dependent on it financially, dependent on its ideology, dependent on its information.
00:51:09.000And in a way, the last apostles of the falling state, when you see Barack Obama saying, I don't know what we're gonna do, and we used to have goodies on both sides.
00:51:18.000They're advocating for the state is God, the state is God.
00:51:22.000I think he even alluded to the idea, a car a popular contemporary idea that your faith in God should be some private thing you do in a nook.
00:51:30.000Get off in your little nook and worship your little personal harmless God, like it's a Tamagotchi, and then get out here and spend your money with us and our real God with Mollock.
00:51:41.000Get out here and sacrifice what we want you to sacrifice.
00:51:44.000If we want you to sacrifice your your innocence, you sacrifice it.
00:51:48.000If we want you to sacrifice your children, you'll sacrifice them.
00:51:50.000If you want your but if we want you to sacrifice your bodily autonomy through injections, you'll sacrifice it.
00:51:56.000Your lives to fight in some stupid, dumb ideological war, whether that's the wars of the last century or the dumb wars of this one.
00:52:03.000They want your fealty, they want your sacrifices, they want your allegiance, and they don't even have the good grace to tell you that it's a religion that they are selling you even as they sell it.
00:52:15.000Um let's have a look at a bit more of this.
00:52:17.000Oh, we have we can't make this content without the support of our partners.
00:53:34.000I mean, that was all the time things like Johnny Cash and everybody was sort of like you have to be bold to really go for something in that time.
00:53:40.000Now it's like people don't even want real jobs.
00:54:20.000I'm gonna be in a glassy-eyed evangelist.
00:54:23.000And I will break the record set at the dust bowl.
00:54:26.000He has become America's number one ambassador of goodwill.
00:54:31.000It's been my privilege to follow in some of his footsteps in other parts of the world and found his pocket.
00:54:37.000Isn't it amazing that if you worship the culture, you'll be baffled to learn that what he's about to say is please welcome Stage Richard Nixon.
00:54:46.000Up until the modern era, he would have been the very epitome of a corrupt politician.
00:54:52.000Like he was like sort of seen as the president that it's okay to not like because of Watergate and stuff.
00:54:58.000But since then the culture's become so demonically charged that you either really really hate Obama or you really really hate Trump or you really really hate sort of everybody.
00:55:30.000It's like even when you're listening to Richard Nixon, you don't have to watch the whole thing, but him just talking, it sounds like a great guy.
00:55:41.000So that guy goes on to what he does, you know.
00:55:45.000It's possible for for any of us to do that.
00:55:49.000Also, by the way, is it like again, the whole thing, but for good and for ill is the packaging of the culture.
00:55:55.000Like Richard Nixon, one minute we need him to represent a vice president of virtue and then a president that's virtuous and part of the process of the grieving of JFK.
00:56:06.000Oh, now we kind of need him to be absolutely vilified.
00:56:09.000Now I know events take place, but what the culture is so adept and so marvelous at is the exploitation of events.
00:56:16.000It's like a big enough, loose enough network of nodes all converging on their agenda to like whether it's oh, there's been you know, some Houthis are doing some activity in the Suez Canal, uh, Venezuela have done this, oh there's a missile's gone off in Poland, oh woman's been murdered on a train, cracker barrel have changed their logo, the machine goes brom, this is how we use that.
00:56:39.000This is where we direct that energy, and it will use anyone.
00:56:43.000Like, don't you sometimes think as like much more uh deeply um uh uh educated and practiced Christians than me?
00:56:51.000That like the church gets like that's the sometimes you feel the presence of the evil one right there in them institutions, and you would, wouldn't you?
00:56:59.000If you take the Bible uh literally in the places that you're supposed to, then you would accept that the devil, the evil one, El Diablo, Bielzebub, the necromancer, the follower of the left band path, he that walks backwards, he's in charge, he's in charge of the earth, he's directing events down here.
00:57:18.000That's how he's able to offer Christ that authority.
00:57:20.000That's why Paul's telling you you're not fighting flesh, you're fighting against principalities of dark spiritual power.
00:57:26.000And like that's what I feel now, and you can't do that by the that the dark principality of spiritual power, it's not the red side or the blue side, depending on one of the things that's really good about me.
00:57:36.000Uh, I would tell you, is I've not memorized of your two political parties which one's red and which one's blue.
00:57:53.000In my country, red is like the Labour Party, red blood, red flag, communism, all of that, and the blue is the blue, blue blood, posh people.
00:58:02.000We've got a whole different sort of uh system of analysis and evaluation over here.
00:59:12.000But I I see that as like when I've been because I've been to a lot of 12-step meetings, and like 12-step meetings take on the inflections of the environment they're in.
00:59:21.000Like I've been to ones that are in rural communities in Britain, and it's of course all sort of like farmers and stuff, or you go to one in Sydney and everyone's well, I might like you know, like there's what you would expect there, a couple of gay folks, couple of like sort of tough sort of Aussies, a surfer, you know, and then I've been in New York and I've been in LA and I've been and like it bears the inflection.
00:59:41.000Um and I think the church and 12-step programs have the same challenge.
00:59:45.000That if you're not careful, the evil one is such a crafty, he's a crafty devil, Satan, be El Zabub, he walks backwards, is that what will happen is that church or 12-step programs will default to do this so that you can go back and get money.
01:00:02.000And that's one of the things I find sort of a bit odd about right now.
01:00:05.000You know, like they what happened is church will be an accompl accompaniment to your normal life.
01:00:10.000That's an accompaniment rather to your normal life.
01:00:13.000If you go to church, you might be able to get a wife and get a job and all that.
01:00:16.000If you go 12-step program, you might be able to get a job.
01:00:18.000No, if you've really believed in God, then you'll sort of be out live like St. Paul or St. Francis, just go, alright, I'm just here for a while, I'm here to make disciples and spread the message.