The Charlie Kirk Show - A Call to Spiritual Arms to Save the American Church

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, this episode is brought to you advertiser-free by all of you that support us at charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:00:05.000 If you want to support our program and feel moved by the work we're doing, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:00:10.000 And this is my conversation I had with a good man, a great American, Alec Rowlands, in Edmonds, Washington.

00:00:16.000 I hope you enjoy it.

00:00:17.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:18.000 Here we go.

00:00:20.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:22.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:24.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:27.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:30.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:31.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:32.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:00:34.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:00:39.000 Turning point USA.

00:00:41.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:00:50.000 That's why we are here.

00:00:52.000 And now I'd like us to get to our guest, the real reason that you're here tonight.

00:00:57.000 And just to begin by asking Charlie, would you, obviously, I think we've all seen you in different settings in a way sounding the trumpet for pastors and churches in the nation.

00:01:12.000 And one of my things, one of the things I'm curious about is what has brought you to this?

00:01:17.000 What in your life?

00:01:18.000 Obviously, there have been some trigger moments that have guided you.

00:01:23.000 What have those been?

00:01:24.000 Well, first of all, thank you for having me.

00:01:26.000 It's awesome to be here.

00:01:27.000 And it's truly.

00:01:29.000 And I'm so touched by your words.

00:01:35.000 I grew up in a Bible-believing church in the suburbs of Chicago.

00:01:39.000 Prior to that, I gave my life to Christ when I was in fifth grade at Christian Heritage Academy, founded by Wayne Grudem.

00:01:46.000 You might know Wayne, a very famous theologian who actually has become a very dear friend. 0.80

00:01:51.000 And I was always told that politics and the Bible don't mix, that government and the Bible are at odds with each other and just do the gospel all the time.

00:02:01.000 And that's it.

00:02:02.000 And so I started Turning Point, a very long story short in June of 2012.

00:02:11.000 Instead of going to college, I took a gap year and it's been eight and a half gap years.

00:02:16.000 So it's been a very unusual, very blessed journey.

00:02:21.000 And a couple years ago, I met my now pastor, Rob McCoy, who is terrific.

00:02:28.000 And some of you might follow him on YouTube.

00:02:31.000 He's friends with Jack Hibbs, and I got to know Jack through Rob and a lot of our mutual friends, Steve Smotherman, all of them kind of came through that.

00:02:39.000 And Rob was speaking at an event, and I had no idea who he was.

00:02:43.000 And then he finished his remarks by saying, Oh, I got to go speak, you know, go give a sermon at church.

00:02:48.000 I said, Wow, I've never heard a pastor talk like that before.

00:02:51.000 So we got to know each other.

00:02:52.000 And he said, Charlie, I want to challenge you.

00:02:55.000 He said, You're a Christian, and I want to tell you that not only does the Bible say a lot about civil government, not only does the Bible say a lot about how we should interact with our leaders, but I think you should talk more publicly about that.

00:03:10.000 And I said, Well, Rob, I was taught in the church that we don't do that.

00:03:13.000 And he's like, I'm going to have you pray for that.

00:03:15.000 So we started talking, and I realized that there's an immense amount of scripture and biblical backing.

00:03:23.000 And so, just so you know, of why I believe what I believe, I believe in the inerrancy of scripture.

00:03:27.000 I believe in the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

00:03:32.000 I believe in the triune God and the basics of the Nicene Creed.

00:03:36.000 I am not a theologian.

00:03:38.000 I don't go around talking about eschatology or anything.

00:03:41.000 I leave that to the experts.

00:03:42.000 But I'm unafraid to talk about my faith.

00:03:45.000 And I go to college campuses, so you don't have to.

00:03:48.000 And I bring this message of truth to sometimes the darkest places, even darker than Seattle at times, believe it or not.

00:03:55.000 But what really brings me here is, as I, last year, about a year and a half ago, I started speaking at churches, and it was the most nervous I ever was.

00:04:05.000 Just because I grew up in a church environment where I knew that if you got one thing wrong, it could be a very judgmental thing.

00:04:14.000 And especially around this idea of politics in the church, I just thought I'd be the first person ever to do that.

00:04:20.000 Politics is not the right word, just government, values, morals.

00:04:23.000 I'm just using a filler word for that.

00:04:25.000 And so then I started to get invited to more churches.

00:04:28.000 And I realized that when I was giving these speeches at churches all across the country, over 75 of them in the last year during the lockdown, because it was the only places that were open across the country.

00:04:41.000 When I was giving these speeches, people were not listening to me.

00:04:46.000 They were waiting for me to tell them what to do.

00:04:49.000 Is that the body of Christ was awakening into an active posture, saying, Charlie, I feel my values, my morals, just being steamrolled on a daily basis.

00:05:02.000 Just a cultural onslaught, if you will.

00:05:04.000 Tell me what to do. 0.80

00:05:06.000 And I realized as I dug deeper into the history of our country, and I do two podcasts a day, and I do two hours of radio a day, and I spend two hours a day just studying and diving deep into the history of our country, that I was really never taught the proper history of America, which this country was founded by activist pastors, the Black Robe Regimen.

00:05:26.000 It was improved upon by activist pastors.

00:05:29.000 It was saved by activist pastors like Billy Graham, who called communism Satan's religion in a crusade he did in 54, 56, and 58 all across the country.

00:05:39.000 Most people don't know that about Billy Graham, that he was an ardent anti-communist, one of his most beautiful sermons.

00:05:45.000 And that one of the reasons we're in the place that we're in right now is that the counselor to the king is silent.

00:05:52.000 And the counselor of the king is the body of Christ.

00:05:55.000 And the counselor to the king is the pastors in the churches.

00:05:58.000 And while we've been doing budgets and baptisms and bigger buildings, the secular humanists, they've been taking terrain.

00:06:05.000 And I'm so just encouraged by what you're doing here, Alec, truly, because this is the time for us to rise and stand. 0.52

00:06:11.000 And the Bible says very clearly to occupy till I come.

00:06:15.000 And we have truth, and it's time that we start expressing it and communicating it to a dark world because, boy, does the world need it.

00:06:30.000 You talk to churches around the country, and I'm sure most of your audiences, most of you are here because you are already sympathetic to what you know Charlie stands for.

00:06:42.000 But can you talk to us about a church like Westgate that has been very careful to stay separated from government and the political arena, but is beginning to awaken to what we are losing?

00:06:56.000 I saw a video the other day of the police in the UK literally breaking into a Roman Catholic mass and arresting, handcuffing, and arresting the priest and taking him out in front of his people.

00:07:08.000 And like I've heard you say frequently, that's going to be coming to a church near you sooner than we anticipate.

00:07:16.000 And that's not conspiracy theory because it's happening in Canada.

00:07:20.000 It's happening here in America.

00:07:22.000 I'll tell you about Calvary Chapel San Jose with Mike McClure, who's a dear friend of mine, who's facing $2.8 million in fines because he opened his church last May.

00:07:30.000 Never closed.

00:07:31.000 So do what you're doing right now has cost him $2.8 million over the last year.

00:07:36.000 But he says, you know what?

00:07:38.000 I'll pay the fine.

00:07:39.000 You could take my house because the people we've brought to Jesus in the last year is worth it.

00:07:43.000 Wow.

00:07:44.000 Wow.

00:07:45.000 And so let me tell you just biblically and scripturally why I believe what I believe.

00:07:51.000 I believe that we as Christians are called to impact all things for God's purpose.

00:07:55.000 That includes the arts, athletics, business, and yes, government and civics.

00:08:02.000 We have a very special thing here in America.

00:08:04.000 We take it for granted.

00:08:05.000 A constitutional republic that was founded by people that were Bible-believing, regular church-attending, spirit-filled activists.

00:08:15.000 We don't talk enough about that.

00:08:17.000 The Black Robe Regiment of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield and Roger Williams giving thousands of sermons all throughout America that really got the American population in a posture ready to seek liberty and to say that our rights come from God, not from King George.

00:08:32.000 But it says very clearly in the scriptures, Jeremiah 29, 7, to say, to seek, which is a Hebrew word, badrash, which means desire, demand the welfare, shalom, shalem, the peace of the city of which you are in.

00:08:46.000 So that's, that's a very, and then it goes on to say that your welfare is tied to the city's welfare.

00:08:53.000 So that's a really heavy verse.

00:08:54.000 Let's unpack that.

00:08:56.000 Basically what the Lord is saying while they were in exile, by the way, this is why they were not in Israel.

00:09:02.000 It was Jeremiah 29, 7, that if you don't get involved in what's around you, your welfare, your ability to worship your Creator, your ability to bring more souls into eternity, which is our mission statement, is all of a sudden going to become a lot harder. 0.93

00:09:17.000 We know this to be true.

00:09:18.000 We know this just through a very, very basic reading of history over the last 100 years. 0.74

00:09:24.000 We know this from the Soviet Union.

00:09:25.000 We know this from Cuba.

00:09:27.000 We know this from China.

00:09:29.000 There is, just so you guys know, the window for religious liberty is shrinking in the world, not widening. 0.62

00:09:35.000 Let me say that again.

00:09:36.000 The window for religious liberty is shrinking.

00:09:39.000 That it's becoming harder and harder to be able to gather, to be able to worship, whether it be in the Middle East, in Europe, in parts of Africa, that oppressive authoritarian-type regimes see the church as a threat, and they're doing everything they possibly can to go after it.

00:09:57.000 I also will say that all throughout the Old Testament, people that we will revere as heroes, Daniel, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, Joseph, Esther, Mordecai, they all sought to influence secular government for God's purpose.

00:10:10.000 And I believe that's what our mission should be.

00:10:13.000 We need to be the counselor to the king.

00:10:15.000 And the founding fathers wrote extensively about this in the Federalist Papers.

00:10:18.000 You know, John Adams, the second American president, a good man who had a phenomenal son, John Quincy Adams, our sixth president and a phenomenal thinker and one of the first abolitionists in the 1830s to really speak out.

00:10:31.000 He said the Constitution was written only for a moral and religious people.

00:10:36.000 It is wholly inadequate to the people of any other.

00:10:39.000 And what they're getting at, and they've talked about in the Federalist Papers, is look, we're betting on the church.

00:10:46.000 The church stops, the country folds.

00:10:49.000 So what, you guys ever do a trust fall where you just kind of just fall backwards?

00:10:54.000 Well, through the first great awakening, the second great awakening, third awakening, and fourth great awakening, America was in free fall.

00:11:00.000 Maybe because of alcoholism in the 1820s, slavery in the 1860s, or even secular Marxism in the 1950s or 1960s.

00:11:08.000 And every time it was the church that caught the country and brought it back into its proper place.

00:11:14.000 And we as Christians, we've had it really, really good the last couple decades.

00:11:20.000 We haven't had to worry about police officers walking in because of mandates, the local government or the local county or the local medical official.

00:11:27.000 We haven't actually had to have robust discussions of men are men and women are women.

00:11:32.000 Huh.

00:11:35.000 That's not hard.

00:11:39.000 And so now all of a sudden, things that we used to say are common sense, which is really Western sense, which is really biblical sense, it's not very common any longer.

00:11:50.000 And there's a lot of reasons why this is happening.

00:11:53.000 And so, from a strictly biblical perspective, I'll also give you one final verse that I really want you to pray on and reflect on.

00:11:59.000 It's one of the most famous verses that almost every single church will be able to finish the sentence for me.

00:12:04.000 But I'm going to challenge you to go back to the Greek and maybe reconsider it.

00:12:07.000 It's when Jesus brought his disciples up to the mouth of the Jordan River, Caesarea, Philippi.

00:12:11.000 I've been there before.

00:12:12.000 Many of you in Israel have been there.

00:12:13.000 And he says, Who do men say that I am?

00:12:16.000 And the famous dialogue goes back and forth.

00:12:19.000 And they say, oh, some say you're John the Baptist, some say you're Elijah.

00:12:22.000 And it ends, of course, with him pointing at Peter, and he says, on this rock, build my, we say church, but the Greek word is ecclesia.

00:12:31.000 Now, an ecclesia was a very specific thing.

00:12:36.000 They did not say synaguge, did not say temple, but an ecclesia was a community gathering in ancient Greece.

00:12:44.000 It was a place where people went to talk about what was happening in their local area.

00:12:49.000 An ecclesia was basically a city council meeting.

00:12:53.000 It was a place where people prayed and fasted before they walked in.

00:12:56.000 And there were two big Greek words, by the way, when people used to have an ecclesia: Eleutheria and isonomia, the two Greek words for freedom and equality.

00:13:04.000 I wonder what country has those two words as desired purposes.

00:13:09.000 I believe what Christ was saying as it's translated into Koinier Greek was arguing for not compartmentalized Christianity.

00:13:18.000 Not a Christianity where we have the truth, but we're going to hope they eat us last, and this is like a hurricane, and we're going to pray that it passes by.

00:13:25.000 No, bold Christianity, go out into the streets and proclaim the truth and the gospel. 0.72

00:13:30.000 We know it's going to cost us. 0.52

00:13:31.000 That's part of the guarantee of being Christians.

00:13:34.000 We know we're going to get persecuted.

00:13:37.000 That's part of the deal.

00:13:38.000 But this is not the end game.

00:13:40.000 We know how the book, we know how it all ends.

00:13:42.000 We know the back of the book.

00:13:44.000 And so I believe that we're called to push forward God's purpose in all different realms.

00:13:50.000 And that includes, especially right now, governments, leadership selection, and calling right from wrong in especially dark times.

00:13:59.000 How do we do that?

00:14:00.000 Well, that's part of what I want to commend you.

00:14:02.000 So many churches are just sitting idly by.

00:14:05.000 And you're doing something courageous here.

00:14:07.000 You really are.

00:14:08.000 And I want to just say that again.

00:14:10.000 And I want to just say, and this is what I look forward to the questions because none of this stuff is easy.

00:14:17.000 And we've done a lot of thinking.

00:14:18.000 And by we, I mean those of us that are speaking out on these things and other pastors of why we believe what we believe from everything from what does the Bible say about economics?

00:14:28.000 What does the Bible say about private property?

00:14:29.000 What does the Bible say about marriage?

00:14:31.000 What does the Bible say about transgenderism? 1.00

00:14:34.000 That one's pretty easy. 1.00

00:14:35.000 The other ones take a little bit, you know, God created man, God created woman.

00:14:39.000 Like, okay, we're good.

00:14:41.000 And the other ones are a little bit more obviously detailed.

00:14:45.000 But how do we do that?

00:14:46.000 And this is the thing that I think that Christians need to really pray and reflect on, which is if we are saved by grace, if we have eternal life waiting for us, and we don't recognize that the second most important thing you can do is to make sure you can do the first important thing.

00:15:06.000 So if the most important thing you can do is give your life to Christ, the second most important thing is to make sure you can do the first thing.

00:15:13.000 And if the position is, hey, we're not going to impact that, then I think that's the wrong position.

00:15:18.000 So what does that look like?

00:15:19.000 That looks like all of a sudden we got to get into the ecclesia, the public square.

00:15:23.000 We all of a sudden got to start to speak out and say that, you know what, women's sports deserves to be protected. 0.91

00:15:29.000 That gender reassignment surgery is something that taxpayers shouldn't be able to fund.

00:15:34.000 In fact, we do not believe gender reassignment surgery is something that should happen for people under the age of 18. 1.00

00:15:40.000 We should be unafraid to say that.

00:15:42.000 That we believe life begins at conception and all lives are worthy of protection in our country.

00:15:54.000 And so part of it is just opening up the dialogue, right?

00:15:58.000 And once the body of Christ starts to wake up and starts to ask questions about this, we're going to have spontaneous action begin.

00:16:09.000 So we're in a Kairos moment in America right now.

00:16:12.000 So the Bible talks about, in Greek, they had two different words for time, chronos and kairos.

00:16:17.000 So kronos is chronological.

00:16:19.000 That's where we get the word chronological from in English.

00:16:21.000 Literally, what time is it?

00:16:23.000 Okay, 6.27.

00:16:25.000 And by the way, time is of the Lord.

00:16:26.000 We were just talking about this.

00:16:29.000 I always get in these fun debates with these postmodernists and these secularists because they think time is a made-up construct.

00:16:36.000 Well, where do you think we got the seven-day week from?

00:16:39.000 Genesis, obviously.

00:16:41.000 Where do you think we get the idea of time?

00:16:43.000 Just so you guys know, when the French Revolution happened, they took over the French government. 0.63

00:16:47.000 They redefined time. 0.97

00:16:49.000 They did.

00:16:50.000 They went to a 10-week calendar.

00:16:52.000 They said, we do not need this biblical seven-week calendar.

00:16:54.000 So even little things like that, we should understand where they came from.

00:16:58.000 And they're actually literally at war with time.

00:17:00.000 So Kronos, but then there's Kairos, which is all throughout the book of Mark.

00:17:04.000 And Kairos is a very interesting word, which means a time of action, a time unlike any other, a time that will impact future time.

00:17:12.000 A time that what you do will actually leave an imprint on how your grandchildren will live.

00:17:19.000 If you were here 15 years ago, you were not living in a Kairos moment.

00:17:24.000 You were living and enjoying the peace and prosperity and living on the coattails of the greatest generation.

00:17:29.000 And God bless them for what they did for our country. 0.99

00:17:31.000 That was a Kairos moment. 0.92

00:17:33.000 Pearl Harbor, World War II, that was a Kairos moment.

00:17:35.000 What are we going to do up against that existential threat? 0.97

00:17:39.000 And just so that's part of the kind of mindset we have to have.

00:17:45.000 And there's a lot of different ways we can unpack on what that looks like.

00:17:47.000 Yeah.

00:17:48.000 Daniel certainly had a Kairos moment, didn't he?

00:17:51.000 I love the story of Daniel.

00:17:52.000 And I'm so glad you mentioned it.

00:17:55.000 Daniel 6, whole conspiracy being launched against Daniel.

00:17:58.000 Daniel's a perfect example of counselor to the king, by the way.

00:18:01.000 Daniel counseled multiple people.

00:18:02.000 Many kings, yeah.

00:18:04.000 That's what we as Christians should be in America.

00:18:06.000 Always trying to counsel the king for God's purpose.

00:18:09.000 Now, Daniel, there was a whole conspiracy against Daniel, Daniel 6.

00:18:12.000 And they said, we want to get this guy locked up. 0.99

00:18:14.000 We want to kill him. 1.00

00:18:15.000 We want to get him to the lions. 1.00

00:18:16.000 And so they said, okay, make it illegal for him to worship his God.

00:18:20.000 I'm paraphrasing, but the essence is this.

00:18:23.000 So Daniel hears about this.

00:18:24.000 So what does he do?

00:18:25.000 Does he shut down the church?

00:18:27.000 Does he become just a YouTube live stream?

00:18:31.000 No.

00:18:33.000 No, no, no, he doesn't.

00:18:34.000 Instead, he goes into the apartment of his home and opens up the window for the whole city to see and says, I'm going to worship my Creator and come and get me.

00:18:42.000 Yeah.

00:18:44.000 Yeah.

00:18:45.000 And he went, he then faced judgment and survived, obviously.

00:18:52.000 And Daniel was in that kind of a Kairos.

00:18:56.000 So from your perspective, you see a lot of things developing from Washington, D.C. to local state capitals.

00:19:05.000 And you've watched, maybe as a spectator, what's happened to the church.

00:19:11.000 What do you think the design is?

00:19:14.000 Is there a purpose?

00:19:16.000 Is there a thread to the assault on what I feel is the assault on the church?

00:19:22.000 Do you see it happening nationally?

00:19:24.000 And what's the agenda behind that?

00:19:26.000 Yeah, that's a great question.

00:19:29.000 Yes, there is an agenda.

00:19:31.000 The church is the only thing standing in the way.

00:19:34.000 They control everything else.

00:19:36.000 Now, you can fill in they with whatever term you want.

00:19:38.000 Secularist humanists, chaos artists, whatever.

00:19:42.000 Okay?

00:19:43.000 But let's just go through the list: corporations, athletics, colleges, all of academia, the civil service, most of the justice system, the FBI, the military, foreign intelligence, graphic designers.

00:19:58.000 You know, like, I'm half kidding with that one.

00:20:00.000 But the point is that it's basically everything.

00:20:03.000 But the one thing that they always have been trying to either weaken or try to be obedient or infiltrate is the American church.

00:20:11.000 So I want to reinforce what I said about Billy Graham.

00:20:13.000 All of our lives have been touched by Billy Graham.

00:20:16.000 God bless that man because he brought tens of millions of people to Christ around the world and just started a whole ministry around open air commitment, open-air revivals and commitment to Christ.

00:20:28.000 But he was able, a very important question I think we should ask is: why didn't communism work in America in the 1950s?

00:20:37.000 Because they tried. 0.52

00:20:38.000 I mean, the Soviet congressional record showed that they brought spies, they tried to infiltrate, they did everything they could.

00:20:45.000 Why was it kind of dead on arrival? 0.63

00:20:48.000 Well, an answer that some people would say, well, it's because of all the World War II generation and there was no appetite for it.

00:20:54.000 Nah, that's not right.

00:20:56.000 It's because every time anyone would bring up one of these issues, you had a pastor in some church in Janesville, Wisconsin, or in North Dakota that would say, no, no, no.

00:21:09.000 We in this church believe that rights come from God and that communism is really a materialistic philosophy that is at odds with our worldview.

00:21:19.000 And so we're everywhere else where communism caught on like wildfire, whether it be Vietnam, China, parts of almost all of Southeast Asia, Rhodesia, which then became Zimbabwe, or all the Soviet Union, there was that Protestant Christian kind of component missing.

00:21:37.000 We were founded by Protestant Christians from the Mayflower on forward.

00:21:41.000 Happy to dive into that if there's interest, because it's a beautiful history.

00:21:44.000 It really is.

00:21:45.000 And so, look, the agenda is very clear.

00:21:47.000 The agenda is that it's one of control, it is one of permanent political power, and you're already starting to see it manifest.

00:21:57.000 I'll give you a great example of this, right?

00:21:58.000 Which is, you've all heard about these calls to abolish the police, right?

00:22:02.000 Let's just use this as a very simple example.

00:22:04.000 They do not want to abolish the police.

00:22:05.000 Okay, this is the greatest linguistic trick ever pulled on the American people.

00:22:10.000 They do not want no police.

00:22:11.000 They never have.

00:22:12.000 They want to get rid of local police and replace it with national police.

00:22:19.000 They want to manufacture a crisis where crime goes up, and then you can bring in federal whatever to then ones that they can control and ones that are on their side.

00:22:29.000 The idea of a local sheriff gives them great concern.

00:22:32.000 It's always bothered them.

00:22:33.000 That's just one example.

00:22:35.000 Now, I believe this is a spiritual battle.

00:22:37.000 Let me be very clear.

00:22:38.000 This is a spiritual battle between light versus dark, and we've seen this replicate every single form or fashion imaginable.

00:22:46.000 We're in a theological debate right now in our country.

00:22:49.000 Okay?

00:22:49.000 So we believe two things that the other side does not.

00:22:54.000 Very simple.

00:22:55.000 There is a God, and you are not Him.

00:23:06.000 Yeah.

00:23:09.000 We gather here every Tuesday night, have for 29 years with about 300, at times up to 500 people, just for one reason only, and that's call on the Lord.

00:23:21.000 And it's a genuine prayer meeting.

00:23:23.000 It's not a Bible study that is called a prayer meeting, but we do about 20 minutes of worship, and we have the microphones down at the aisles.

00:23:33.000 And we pray, we believe that prayer changes things.

00:23:36.000 That's why I'm so glad to hear you say this is a spiritual battle.

00:23:41.000 But I think where we're at as a local congregation, I can't speak for your church, obviously, but where we're at is we realize that, like James says, faith without works is dead, that we've got to pray and we've got to be engaged.

00:23:57.000 We've got to keep calling on God, believing that revival is the only hope that we have.

00:24:04.000 And one of the most expensive books I've ever bought is a little book called written in 1904 called England Before and After Wesley.

00:24:15.000 And it was a look at that first great awakening and the conditions in England were actually, believe it or not, worse than what we're experiencing now.

00:24:25.000 And yet, when the revival broke out, the transformation was so real that it had an immediate impact on things like child labor laws.

00:24:35.000 It changed the whole attitude towards slavery.

00:24:39.000 Wilberforce did a great job, but he did it.

00:24:42.000 I was disturbed or I was disappointed in the book and in the movie Amazing Grace because it gave no credit to Wesley and Whitfield and others that laid the spiritual foundation that allowed people like Wilberforce to get traction in the abolitionist movement.

00:24:59.000 So what I'm beginning to see and what is making some people at Westgate nervous right now is that I think we've got to keep calling on God, believing that only God coming and reviving his church is going to change anything.

00:25:15.000 But we've also got to be willing, like I've heard you say so often, to run for the Edmonds City Council, to put people into the Edmonds School District School Board.

00:25:27.000 We've got people here that need to be serving on the school board so that we've got folks who are bold enough to speak the truth that you are talking about.

00:25:37.000 So any assistance.

00:25:39.000 Yeah, and I just want to encourage that thought process, which is, you know, if you're uneasy about getting involved in these things, that's okay.

00:25:51.000 That's understandable.

00:25:54.000 And but fear is not of the Lord.

00:25:58.000 And it says it 365 times in the Bible for a reason: do not be afraid, once for every single day.

00:26:04.000 It says it in Joshua 1, stand and be courageous.

00:26:07.000 And then he says it again, and then he says it again.

00:26:09.000 It's like, stand and be courageous.

00:26:11.000 By Joshua 1:9, he's repeated himself almost to a point where, like, okay, I get the point.

00:26:17.000 So that fear, you're not the first person to be afraid.

00:26:19.000 Let me just be very clear.

00:26:22.000 And you have to pray.

00:26:25.000 And it says in James 1:5, and one of my favorite verse in the whole Bible, which is to pray for wisdom, and God will give it generously.

00:26:34.000 So, wow, anything that God promises to give generously, we should take really seriously.

00:26:39.000 So you should pray for that wisdom.

00:26:41.000 Say, hey, am I called to just kind of do nothing in a moment like this?

00:26:48.000 Or maybe I'm being called to just do a little bit to run for the water reclamation district board or the mosquito abatement thing.

00:26:59.000 But let's start there. 0.80

00:27:01.000 Maybe this church should go take over the mosquito abatement board. 1.00

00:27:06.000 Something, right? 1.00

00:27:07.000 They decide something.

00:27:09.000 And I'm being facetious, of course, because let's start with just something that's not as controversial.

00:27:14.000 But what I'm getting at here, though, is what is the downside?

00:27:18.000 Is the downside someone saying, oh, now you're political?

00:27:23.000 Well, Aristotle said that politics is the highest form of community because it combines morality and sociability.

00:27:30.000 You know, we've really gotten that word politics as a negative word, but politics is really just values if you're thinking about it.

00:27:36.000 All right, so just throw out Republican, Democrat.

00:27:39.000 I'm a critic of both of them.

00:27:40.000 Let's just forget all that stuff.

00:27:41.000 And let's just say, like, what do we believe and why do we believe it?

00:27:44.000 And what are we willing to do, at least on the local level, to contest for those beliefs where it matters.

00:27:51.000 And the school board's a great example.

00:27:53.000 Because some of you might say, well, my kids don't go to these local schools.

00:27:57.000 Well, you might fund them, but even if they don't, you should say, you know what, I'm going to do everything I possibly can to make sure that correct history is taught in our schools, that critical race theory is not taught in our local schools, that we are not having graphic sex education taught to innocent children.

00:28:14.000 That's something that should bother you.

00:28:16.000 And so we should always try to impact government for God's purpose.

00:28:22.000 Remember, counselor to the king, which is replicated time and time again throughout the scriptures.

00:28:27.000 And if you don't know how to do it, that's okay.

00:28:30.000 There's a lot of great organizations, ours included, that can show you how to make a positive difference.

00:28:35.000 The problem is not the how, though.

00:28:37.000 The problem is that gap that is missing, which is courage, which is saying that I am willing to step out.

00:28:46.000 So here's a good question: What is courage?

00:28:48.000 We talk about it a lot.

00:28:50.000 It's kind of a cliche.

00:28:51.000 We need more courage in our country, right?

00:28:54.000 Well, courage is doing the right thing when you don't know how it's going to work out.

00:28:59.000 One of the reasons why we have a crisis in courage in our country is because the country has become so secular.

00:29:06.000 Is that when the men that were storming Normandy Beach, almost every single one of them, according to historians, was praying, was in contact with their creator.

00:29:16.000 I mean, that was an act of absolute courage.

00:29:19.000 By the way, they were going and invading a distant country halfway around the world to go abolish an evil that was not directly impacting American citizens.

00:29:27.000 I don't think about that.

00:29:28.000 I'm not asking you to storm Normandy Beach.

00:29:30.000 Let me be very clear.

00:29:31.000 But again, we are living on the coattails of that greatest generation that went so above and beyond to create the modern world where we have the luxury to even have to debate this.

00:29:41.000 Like, oh, should we get involved?

00:29:42.000 Should we get engaged?

00:29:44.000 You know how lucky we are even to have that discussion?

00:29:47.000 This, even this little snapshot that we can gather.

00:29:51.000 And so I understand it because we have grown up, myself included, with the best that America has to offer, where we get stressed and upset when the Seahawks don't win.

00:30:05.000 Okay?

00:30:06.000 When we live lives of luxury, we have more plastic stuff than we know what to do with in our homes.

00:30:11.000 When our concern is not starvation, but getting overweight and obesity.

00:30:16.000 I get it.

00:30:18.000 But now, all of a sudden, for the first time, this life of luxury that we have enjoyed is all of a sudden being put not just in jeopardy, but a different type of America is starting to set in.

00:30:28.000 And so that's where the church has to rise up.

00:30:32.000 And I can just encourage you guys, though.

00:30:34.000 I'm going to tell you about a couple churches across the country that have decided to take bold steps like this and what's happened.

00:30:39.000 I'll tell you about one.

00:30:41.000 Pastor Rob McCoy, my pastor, Calvary Chapel Godspeak in Thousand Oaks, California.

00:30:45.000 If you think this place is tough, try going to Thousand Oaks, California, and do something meaningful.

00:30:51.000 Rob McCoy ran for mayor as a pastor of a church.

00:30:54.000 He won.

00:30:55.000 He was the mayor during the baseline shooting when nine people in his community and two of his congregants were shot senselessly.

00:31:02.000 But that community needed a pastor at that moment to be mayor of that city.

00:31:06.000 And hundreds of people dedicated their lives to the Lord because a pastor decided to go become a mayor of a local city.

00:31:12.000 Then all of a sudden he decided to get his congregation even more mobilized and active.

00:31:16.000 And last year they said the church is not essential.

00:31:18.000 So he says, well, you're going to have to come arrest me.

00:31:20.000 He opened up his church, no social distance, no max, no mass, nothing, May 1st of last year.

00:31:25.000 And he'd been sued by the county, criminalized, followed through the streets.

00:31:28.000 Well, just last week, Ventura County dropped their lawsuit against Rob McCoy.

00:31:35.000 And Rob McCoy would say, listen, I can preach a church down to a manageable size.

00:31:41.000 That's his terms, not his.

00:31:43.000 They were a church of 400 people.

00:31:44.000 They're now busting at the seams of 3,500 to 4,000 people.

00:31:48.000 How about Jack Kibbs, Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills?

00:31:52.000 Speaks out on these issues, very similar to you, having these types of forums.

00:31:57.000 They're getting 10,000 to 12,000 people a weekend.

00:32:00.000 Their tithes, their offerings, are through the roof.

00:32:02.000 I can tell you about Ken Graves in Banger, Maine, Calvary Chapel out there, being criminalized by the governor, under attack.

00:32:09.000 They're suing, and their lawsuit is probably going to be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court.

00:32:13.000 You and I are kind of following that together.

00:32:16.000 Their church is busting at the seams.

00:32:18.000 I did three services with them this last week.

00:32:20.000 Cody Kuhl in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a great church out there, opened up fully, and everyone came down, and they were always struggling to fill one service.

00:32:31.000 Now they've added a third service of 500 people at every single service.

00:32:34.000 What I'm getting at here is that the Lord will bless you when you take public, courageous stances in this time.

00:32:41.000 The Lord is testing his church right now.

00:32:45.000 And we can continue to explore that.

00:32:52.000 Yeah.

00:32:54.000 I got more examples.

00:32:55.000 I can keep going.

00:32:57.000 Yeah.

00:32:57.000 And this church, too.

00:33:00.000 We're sort of at a pivotal point here at Westgate, just being very candid, and a lot of Westgate folks out here, but this is such a shift for us.

00:33:13.000 And I think we have bought in over the years, and a lot of it's my fault, to the notion that there has to be a separation, that there's a mandate even for a separation.

00:33:26.000 We bought into that.

00:33:27.000 Can I comment on that?

00:33:28.000 Yeah, please.

00:33:29.000 So the separation of church and state.

00:33:30.000 And by the way, it's not your fault.

00:33:32.000 I want to just, I want to, you do not, no, no, seriously.

00:33:35.000 I want to just, I want to say this because you were doing a wonderful job winning souls for Christ, and you were doing what you prayed over and what you were guided to do.

00:33:45.000 And the moment was different, but now you're in it.

00:33:48.000 And no more apologies.

00:33:50.000 You're doing the right thing.

00:33:51.000 All right.

00:33:51.000 I just want to commend you for that.

00:33:54.000 But it says a lot about you that you're willing to say that.

00:33:57.000 And that's just, it really, really touches me.

00:34:00.000 So separation of church and state.

00:34:02.000 First of all, that's not in the U.S. Constitution.

00:34:04.000 Let me just be very clear.

00:34:05.000 Okay.

00:34:06.000 It was by the Warren Court issued this opinion.

00:34:08.000 It is, however, in a singular letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Convention in January of 1803.

00:34:15.000 I might have my months a little bit confused, which is taken completely out of context.

00:34:20.000 Interestingly enough, Jefferson allowed church service to be conducted in the Capitol Rotunda.

00:34:25.000 He allowed Christmas services to be done in the Supreme Court building.

00:34:28.000 The Founding Fathers always talked about a robust involvement of faith-filled people in church, but you might say, well, Charlie, the First Amendment says Congress shall establish no religion.

00:34:38.000 Yes.

00:34:39.000 Let's read the Federalist Papers.

00:34:40.000 What were the Founding Fathers really worried about?

00:34:42.000 They were worried about an Episcopalian, Catholic, Presbyterian, or Anglican church being the dominant religion.

00:34:50.000 So they were worried about a singular church being a national church.

00:34:53.000 Now, we live in a pluralistic, multicultural society, not in a theocracy.

00:34:58.000 But in a constitutional republic, to say through our laws and our doctrines that God is absent, well, that's just not even close to being true.

00:35:06.000 Let's start with the Declaration of Independence.

00:35:08.000 The Declaration of Independence, God is mentioned four times.

00:35:11.000 And so the Declaration is a beautiful document.

00:35:13.000 So it starts with the universal, then it gets to the specific, and then it ends with the universal.

00:35:18.000 So the universal, it says, so clearly, when in the course of human events, what does that mean?

00:35:23.000 This is applicable at all times.

00:35:25.000 This is not just for the moment.

00:35:28.000 This is a universalist type document.

00:35:30.000 It becomes necessary for one people to dissolve ties with one another.

00:35:34.000 And it goes on to say the laws of nature and nature is God.

00:35:38.000 So, whoa, they're challenging King George.

00:35:40.000 They're like, hey, you're not in charge.

00:35:43.000 Like, there's an order here that we're appealing to.

00:35:45.000 And in fact, it says that explicitly at the end of the Declaration of Independence.

00:35:50.000 It says, we appeal to a higher power at the end of the declaration that says that.

00:35:55.000 Now, why was God mentioned four times?

00:35:57.000 What's right out of Isaiah?

00:35:58.000 God over everything, and God, the judiciary, God, the legislator, and God the executor.

00:36:03.000 That's where we got our three branches of government from.

00:36:05.000 So then we go to the U.S. Constitution, and I'm going to get to the separation of church and state, and I'm going to tie it all together.

00:36:11.000 Which it says very clearly: we, the people, in order to form a more perfect union, it goes on to say that these rights that we have are not bestowed upon us or granted to us by government, but they are natural, which of course is granted by a creator. 0.60

00:36:27.000 So, this idea of separation of church and state, let's pretend that they're right with their unconstitutional belief. 0.64

00:36:36.000 Let's pretend they're right. 0.75

00:36:37.000 Let's grant them their premise.

00:36:38.000 I'll do that for a second. 0.95

00:36:40.000 And let's keep the state out of the church. 0.99

00:36:43.000 Let's keep the state out of the church.

00:36:46.000 See, they've always been worried about the church taking over the state, when in reality, the state's taking over the church.

00:36:54.000 So, all of a sudden, let's use their own reasoning against them.

00:36:57.000 If we want separation of church and state, then county health officials have no business walking into a church.

00:37:02.000 If all of a sudden, if they're the that's their own reasoning, right?

00:37:07.000 And so, it's a very simple thing, which is that in this constitutional republic that we have, which is by the people and for the people, consent to the governed, which is a unique attribute of the U.S. system, is that it really allows, man, is the Constitution such a beautiful document.

00:37:27.000 It allows for people to be able to exercise not just their voices, but their values in a way that just a very simple European democracy wouldn't.

00:37:38.000 So, what do I mean with that?

00:37:39.000 Well, the states created the federal government, the federal government didn't create the state.

00:37:42.000 So, the state-based model, I know that it might be very infuriating here in Washington to live under the current stuff that you're living under, but it really decentralizes any form of tyranny, right?

00:37:53.000 So, the founding fathers knew that one of the laws of the Bible and one of eternal knowledge, of which is wisdom, the things that do not change, is that a small group of people are always going to try to abuse their power.

00:38:04.000 And that is just, that's just that's that is replicates itself no matter who is in charge, right?

00:38:10.000 Whether it be killing firstborn children tyrannically in Egypt or trying to go after firstborn sons to try to kill Jesus Christ later on in the New Testament, we that that pattern replicates itself from the Romans to the Chinese to the British Empire.

00:38:23.000 It is in the deep, it is in the broken nature of human beings to say, I have power and I'm going to tyrannize other people.

00:38:29.000 It comes from a Greek word, tyrannos, which means master over.

00:38:32.000 I'm going to dominate.

00:38:33.000 So, the founding fathers said, Well, what's the best way we can make sure that doesn't happen?

00:38:37.000 Let's try to spread out the power as far as possible.

00:38:40.000 So, then you become in touch with that power and you could do something against it.

00:38:44.000 And so, I hear this idea that we're wrestling with this idea of the separation of church and state.

00:38:53.000 And so, but now I think that they've even crossed their own line. 0.61

00:38:56.000 And so, insofar that they are now imposing their views in almost a religious way against us, when it comes to gender, when it comes to freedom of expression, when it comes to HR5, which is pending in front of the United States Senate, which would shut down faith-based adoption agencies in many schools across the country unless they adopt the view of homosexual marriage.

00:39:17.000 That would expand the Civil Rights Act to include people that are suffering with gender dysphoria, that are confused about what gender they were born with.

00:39:26.000 Like that would use the full force of the government to go after that. 0.98

00:39:30.000 Is that I hear and I sympathize with that.

00:39:34.000 And I think that you guys are at this inflection point, which must be done, of course, with prayer and fasting and asking the Lord for wisdom, which is like, hey, we look at this beautiful arc of American history and where we are right now, and we just happen to be in that moment when we can contribute even slightly in fixing or saving that trajectory.

00:39:52.000 And my position is obviously very public and very clear, which is that we have a moral prerogative to do that at this moment.

00:39:58.000 Yeah.

00:40:05.000 When you consider what Rand Paul did in his interview with the Assistant Secretary of Health and talked about we're actually sanctioning the mutilation of children, it is unconscionable.

00:40:20.000 I think that those are the kinds of things that have stirred me in ways that I know have made some folks uncomfortable.

00:40:28.000 But to think that a mother taking a 13-year-old son or daughter into the doctor is ushered out of the doctor's office.

00:40:37.000 These are things.

00:40:38.000 I mean, I remember when I was pastoring in Cedar Rapids, that was 35 years ago.

00:40:43.000 And one of our board members' daughters got pregnant at 13.

00:40:48.000 And the school health nurse back then in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, ushered her, brought her out of class and told her, we can have you down to the University of Iowa clinic and have your abortion, and you'll be back before school is over, and your parents need never know.

00:41:07.000 Listen, I was 30 years old as a pastor back then, and I wasn't very wise, but I told the congregation, if they did that to my daughter, who was then six and eight, they did that to one of my daughters, this church better have a prison ministry because I'll burn that place down.

00:41:30.000 And then a week later, I went scrambling for the tape to try to erase that.

00:41:36.000 So we're at a point where we can entertain your questions.

00:41:41.000 That prompted a question I'd love to have you comment on before we go to these questions.

00:41:46.000 And that is, what's your take on public education and on higher education?

00:41:56.000 And what should people do who are in this congregation who are either teaching in public school or engaged in higher education?

00:42:09.000 Yeah, so that's a great question.

00:42:12.000 So now I'm really going to offend people.

00:42:13.000 So, no, as you know, I have some very outspoken views on this stuff.

00:42:18.000 And I'll walk you through rationally why I believe what I believe on this.

00:42:21.000 So I tend to call them government schools because they haven't, in my opinion, done a great job of serving the public good in this last year, especially with the school lockdowns and what I have seen happen across the country.

00:42:34.000 I'm a huge believer in school choice and homeschooling in particular.

00:42:38.000 And I think we have to double our homeschooling population in the next five years.

00:42:41.000 I really do.

00:42:42.000 And for, let me say this, though, that I don't think we on the philosophical bend that I'm on, we do a good enough job of appreciating teachers.

00:42:54.000 I had some really, really good teachers growing up.

00:42:57.000 I went to public school after I went to private Christian school.

00:43:01.000 So sixth grade through senior year in high school, I was in public school.

00:43:05.000 And I had some teachers that were phenomenal, that really got me interested in U.S. history.

00:43:10.000 And I had some teachers that should not have been teachers.

00:43:14.000 So if I were to just say, I think we need to pay good teachers more and fire bad teachers, I've said this before, that the good teachers need to be incentivized and the bad teachers need to be let go.

00:43:24.000 And so that's a lot easier said than done.

00:43:27.000 But let me just, you asked me about the teacher side of it.

00:43:29.000 Okay, so the higher education, that's the one that I really focus on.

00:43:32.000 I just want to also give a little shout out to our Turning Point USA students that are here.

00:43:37.000 Can you guys raise your hands?

00:43:38.000 You guys are awesome.

00:43:39.000 Thank you for being here.

00:43:44.000 And they know my stance on this issue a lot, and they always chuckle because they're actually in college.

00:43:50.000 So just, I never went to college.

00:43:53.000 Again, I took a gap year, decade, whatever.

00:43:57.000 Ended up being the right thing for me.

00:43:59.000 So I'm the best and the worst person to talk about this topic.

00:44:02.000 I'm the best because I could talk about the success of not going to college.

00:44:05.000 I'm the worst because I never actually went to college.

00:44:07.000 With that being said, I've spoken over 150 colleges across the country, and I'm pretty in touch with what's happening on campuses based on our pretty impressive college network.

00:44:18.000 We have way too many people going to college in our country.

00:44:20.000 Way too many people.

00:44:22.000 College is generally a scam.

00:44:25.000 And so, and so I'm saying the private part out loud.

00:44:29.000 I'm going to be very honest with you: that we have a whole generation of young people that's borrowing money they don't have to study things that don't matter to go find jobs that don't exist.

00:44:36.000 And we have, I said I'm going to start offending people, so I'm just going right into it, right?

00:44:42.000 The political thing, now all of a sudden, but look, I'm going to tell you why I believe it, I believe.

00:44:45.000 And I'll go through the numbers.

00:44:47.000 41% of kids that go to college don't graduate.

00:44:50.000 41%.

00:44:51.000 All of you know a college dropout.

00:44:53.000 We don't talk about it.

00:44:54.000 Could you imagine if you went to the local Chili's or outback, they're like, hey, there's a 41% chance you're going to get food poisoning tonight.

00:45:02.000 They would be closed for by the Better Business Bureau.

00:45:05.000 They've been investigated by state authorities.

00:45:07.000 41% failure rate.

00:45:09.000 And those kids that drop out, they drop out with debt, lower self-esteem, lower confidence, and less direction.

00:45:14.000 Why did they go in the first place?

00:45:16.000 So out of college graduates, are they succeeding?

00:45:18.000 Are they thriving?

00:45:19.000 Well, the average borrower of student loan debt in this country has anywhere between $32,000 and $40,000 on average, some of which have anywhere between $70,000 to $80,000.

00:45:28.000 And for what?

00:45:29.000 Well, the vast majority of people that go to college are not actually getting a skill.

00:45:34.000 They have a piece of paper in something.

00:45:37.000 And so it might be psychology.

00:45:39.000 It could be North African lesbian poetry.

00:45:41.000 It can be North American migratory bird studies, whatever that is.

00:45:44.000 That's fine.

00:45:45.000 But the studies show that less than 50%, actually more than 50% of people that graduate aren't even finding a job that's correlated to their major.

00:45:55.000 And so I think we've done a real disservice in this country.

00:45:58.000 And so if anyone tries to build a home recently, we have a massive deficit in manual labor in our country.

00:46:05.000 And here's why.

00:46:06.000 We need more plumbers, electricians, and construction workers.

00:46:09.000 We need more police officers, firefighters, and entrepreneurs.

00:46:12.000 Now, but here's why.

00:46:14.000 We all cheer, and we should.

00:46:16.000 But a lot of you don't want to see your kid become a plumber.

00:46:26.000 It's true.

00:46:27.000 Some of you, yes.

00:46:28.000 But no, I want you to pray on that tonight.

00:46:30.000 Are you okay if you tell your neighbor that your kid became a plumber?

00:46:34.000 And you're laughing because, no, no, but think about it.

00:46:37.000 Because deep down, no one in the upper middle class of this country wants to justify to their friends that your kid's working construction.

00:46:46.000 You'd rather have your kid lose his values or her values than have to tell your friends that they're working construction.

00:46:54.000 It's true.

00:46:55.000 The number one reason why kids say they go to college is because of parents, not because they want to.

00:47:00.000 And yet we have this manufactured cycle of indebtedness, of bad ideas, of evangelistic nihilism, of unemployment, of suicide, of depression.

00:47:10.000 And it's making a lot of college professors very rich and administrators endlessly powerful, politicians that, quite honestly, have no concern for the future of our country that just live off the albatross of this system.

00:47:22.000 We have Hunter Biden that just became a college professor at Tulane and Peter Strzzok, who's a college professor at Georgetown.

00:47:27.000 No, seriously.

00:47:28.000 And then, and so then, so anyway, I'm being like 5% provocative and 95% truthful, but provocative, because I wanted to get your attention because it's a serious problem in this country.

00:47:38.000 It really is.

00:47:39.000 And so, look, college can be a good answer for some people, but you have to be able to answer a couple questions.

00:47:44.000 What skill are you going to get?

00:47:46.000 Not what are you going to study?

00:47:48.000 What is your skill?

00:47:50.000 I'll tell you what's a skill.

00:47:51.000 I was interviewing a young man from university, he went to University of Southern California, and I said, he studied political science.

00:47:57.000 I said, what's your skill?

00:47:59.000 He said, well, I studied political science.

00:48:00.000 And I said, no, I got that.

00:48:01.000 What's your skill?

00:48:02.000 It's like, well, I graduated this in my class.

00:48:04.000 I said, I know, what can you do that a high school kid can't do?

00:48:07.000 No one's ever asked him that question before.

00:48:09.000 And I said, I really, nice kid, all that.

00:48:13.000 I said, but what's your differentiator?

00:48:15.000 It's like this piece of paper.

00:48:16.000 I said, that means nothing to me as an employer.

00:48:19.000 I care about character and work ethic, not if you studied Frederick Nietzsche.

00:48:24.000 Like, I got that.

00:48:25.000 It's completely irrelevant.

00:48:27.000 I said, now.

00:48:28.000 And I just said, let me just teach you kind of how I look at things.

00:48:31.000 I said, we have some exposed wiring here at our office.

00:48:34.000 We had a water leak.

00:48:35.000 I got to call an electrician.

00:48:37.000 He's going to be here in 30 minutes.

00:48:38.000 I can't fix this thing to save my life.

00:48:40.000 That's a skill.

00:48:41.000 And I'm going to go pay him.

00:48:42.000 He can invoice me for whatever it is.

00:48:44.000 And he's got me over a barrel because I need that thing fixed.

00:48:47.000 That's a skill.

00:48:49.000 And so this is a different way to view education in our country that we haven't done.

00:48:53.000 And let me be very clear: the current college model hurts minorities and lower income earners the most.

00:49:00.000 They're the ones that end up with the most amount of debt and the least likely to actually climb the income ladder in this country.

00:49:05.000 So I'm going to keep on going around the country saying that the muscular class in our country, the people that work with their hands, they deserve more dignity and respect, and that we should say we need more people in that part of the American population.

00:49:24.000 I like this question because it's someone who's getting ready to do something.

00:49:29.000 I won't have you stand up, but I'm meeting this local school board this Tuesday about CRT.

00:49:38.000 Any suggestions you can give me and my husband?

00:49:42.000 Well, first of all, whomever that person is, thank you for your courage to go talk to your school board members.

00:49:47.000 I want to just encourage you for that.

00:49:49.000 Truly.

00:49:51.000 That's a great thing.

00:49:53.000 I think you had Star Parker here recently, right?

00:49:55.000 Yes. 0.98

00:49:55.000 Yeah, she's terrific. 0.98

00:49:57.000 And so I don't want to repeat anything that she went over, but if anyone was not here, then I'm just going to kind of give a quick summary of CRT, if that's okay.

00:50:06.000 Please.

00:50:06.000 So critical race theory is a very tricky thing because it preys on Christians' best intentions.

00:50:15.000 It's a very, very tricky thing. 0.99

00:50:18.000 It's tricky because they use words and phrases you've never heard, and it sounds so foolish that you think you might be the fool. 0.95

00:50:27.000 And truly, you think, like, well, maybe if a bunch of smart people believe this, maybe everything is racist. 0.98

00:50:33.000 Maybe I am an awful person.

00:50:35.000 And so, look, it started as an extension of an economic philosophy that's best known as Marxism, obviously written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, two Germans with way too much time on their hands, who, and there's a great book that talked about the connection between communism and Satanism.

00:50:54.000 It's a terrific piece of literature that's been written where Satan only cares about the material and Marx only cared about the material, where Marx cared about the full liquidation of religion.

00:51:04.000 In fact, you know what Marx called religion?

00:51:05.000 The opiate of the masses is what Karl Marx called religion.

00:51:09.000 He said it makes you feel good, but it does no good.

00:51:11.000 And the sooner you can get religion out of society, everything will get better.

00:51:14.000 So Marxist philosophy, he got some things right, very few things, not even worth talking about.

00:51:20.000 But if anyone's interested, we could talk about that.

00:51:22.000 But Karl Marx basically believed everything in life is a power struggle, whether you realize it or not.

00:51:28.000 And basically, the power struggle that he diagnosed as the most important is the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie, right?

00:51:35.000 The people that own the companies and the people that work at the companies.

00:51:39.000 That's where he focused his time.

00:51:41.000 So Karl Marx wanted a complete and total abolition of private property.

00:51:45.000 His end goal was a utopian state on earth.

00:51:48.000 He believed human beings were naturally good.

00:51:51.000 He believed in a Rassoian view of human nature, which is at total at odds with the biblical worldview.

00:51:56.000 Okay?

00:51:56.000 We do not believe people are basically good.

00:51:59.000 Let me say that again.

00:52:00.000 We do not believe people are basically good.

00:52:02.000 You all need Jesus Christ, no matter how good of a person you think you are.

00:52:06.000 Now, that's not an inconsequential thing.

00:52:08.000 Because how you believe human beings are in nature actually is the most important guiding principle of how you construct your political philosophy.

00:52:18.000 Well, if you think people are naturally good, then how do you explain all the suffering?

00:52:21.000 Oh, it's because it's the police.

00:52:23.000 Or it's because of private property or capitalism.

00:52:25.000 You start to see how these things start to manifest in the political beliefs.

00:52:28.000 So anyway, fast forward to the 1930s and 40s, this Marxist economic belief of the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat, the workers versus the employers, if you will, or the people that own businesses.

00:52:39.000 There was a guy by the name of Herbert Marcuse from the Frankfurt School in Germany who realized that this wasn't, the Marxist view economically wasn't the only way to try to revolutionize a country.

00:52:53.000 And it wasn't working in the West.

00:52:55.000 It wasn't working because of religion. 0.54

00:52:57.000 It wasn't working because of Christianity.

00:52:58.000 It also wasn't working because of markets, because people were generally getting wealthier.

00:53:02.000 So he came up with this belief called critical theory.

00:53:05.000 It's also a sister or a cousin of postmodernism.

00:53:09.000 You ever hear of this thing, I'm my truth, not your truth.

00:53:12.000 There is no such thing as absolute truth.

00:53:14.000 All of this is kind of in that ecosystem of postmodernism.

00:53:17.000 But critical race theory was really pioneered by a woman who's still alive in California by the name of Angela Davis.

00:53:26.000 I encourage all of you to do some independent research on her.

00:53:29.000 She's actually a communist.

00:53:30.000 Like she's an avowed public communist.

00:53:32.000 I don't even have to use that as a pejorative.

00:53:35.000 She says she is one.

00:53:36.000 And she traveled the country with Marcuse.

00:53:38.000 And there were other people that influenced this belief system.

00:53:41.000 Jacques Derrida, Michelle Foucault.

00:53:43.000 So here's what critical race theory is, which all of your children are probably learning if they're in government schools.

00:53:48.000 It's on Nickelodeon.

00:53:50.000 It's in athletics now.

00:53:51.000 It's everywhere.

00:53:52.000 Here's just a couple of beliefs of critical race theory.

00:53:55.000 And again, I apologize if I'm being repetitive to the previous speaker, but okay, so I don't want to lead in a direction that might be okay.

00:54:01.000 Thank you.

00:54:02.000 So number one, there's no such thing as individuals.

00:54:05.000 You are not your own human being.

00:54:07.000 You're a member of a group.

00:54:09.000 You're a member of some group, most importantly, a racial group.

00:54:13.000 Number two, that everything in life is not about the bourgeoisie of the proletariat, but oppressor versus oppressed.

00:54:20.000 There's a power struggle going on.

00:54:22.000 And whether you realize it or not, there's some people in charge and there's some people not in charge.

00:54:27.000 And critical race theory says that white Anglo-Saxon men, me, are in charge and everyone else is on a hierarchy of being oppressed down from there.

00:54:36.000 Critical race theory says math and science is a Western created tyranny.

00:54:42.000 Your children are learning this.

00:54:44.000 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding this idea that math is racist, that 2 plus 2 does not equal 4, that the scientific method is false, that Newtonian physics is westo-sisto-normative tyranny.

00:54:58.000 This is very serious, guys.

00:54:59.000 This is not a joke.

00:55:00.000 They believe dialogue is evil.

00:55:02.000 That speech is a white man-created construct.

00:55:07.000 I know, laughing is the only way I can cope with it, too.

00:55:11.000 It's very, very real.

00:55:13.000 That speech, dialogue, which is one of my favorite English words, dialogue comes from two Greek words, logos.

00:55:20.000 First, there was the word, and the word was God, and the word became flesh.

00:55:25.000 And then dia through, through logos, through reason, through the word.

00:55:29.000 Dialogue is something they have big trouble with.

00:55:32.000 So they hated Christ's ability to communicate, to empathize, to speak.

00:55:37.000 No, no, no, no.

00:55:38.000 They take a different view.

00:55:40.000 They say there's only power.

00:55:41.000 Speech is nothing more than a way to try to get white people in control.

00:55:46.000 And then finally, they believe racism is everywhere.

00:55:50.000 It's in the air.

00:55:51.000 It's in the buildings.

00:55:52.000 It's in the food.

00:55:53.000 It's in the laws.

00:55:54.000 It's in your politics.

00:55:55.000 It's in your movies.

00:55:57.000 So if you believe that, basically they're saying the only thing that could be done is a widespread revolution.

00:56:03.000 Now, I said at the beginning it's a little tricky.

00:56:06.000 Why is it tricky?

00:56:07.000 Because they prey on your best intentions.

00:56:09.000 That's why. 0.99

00:56:10.000 So they use the Christian ethic against you.

00:56:14.000 They use the Christian ethic of your desire to try to be peacemakers, your desire to try to seek a better world, your desire to try to atone for anything you've been wrong.

00:56:26.000 So the reason why it's one of the greatest tricks that Satan has played on the American population is that they don't reject the premise of the Christian ethic.

00:56:35.000 They take something that America believes and uses it against you for a satanic purpose.

00:56:41.000 I want you to think about that.

00:56:42.000 Instead of saying, go indulge yourself all the time, they say, no, If you want to create a better world, then you must do these certain steps in these things.

00:56:53.000 So what do you talk about critical race theory?

00:56:55.000 Well, if you're talking to the school board meeting, I would just slide a book across the table.

00:56:59.000 It's written by an atheist, a liberal by the name of James Lindsay.

00:57:02.000 It's a book called Cynical Theories.

00:57:05.000 And he and I are very good friends, and we agree on very little theologically, like nothing.

00:57:11.000 However, he writes the book, and it's a little infuriating, and I've told him this, from a liberal perspective, okay?

00:57:17.000 Which actually might be very helpful for this general area, okay?

00:57:20.000 His belief is that true liberalism, small L liberalism, freedom of speech, tolerance, the capacity to empathize with others, will be completely obliterated because of critical race theory.

00:57:34.000 So it's actually a really helpful piece of literature for anyone that actually might want to learn this and persuade other people because it's written by one of their own.

00:57:42.000 It's not written by me, who's a very outspoken Christian conservative.

00:57:46.000 But I find the piece of literature to be phenomenal and wise because he diagnoses it perfectly.

00:57:52.000 Where it comes from, where it's going, its limitations.

00:57:55.000 Again, it's called Cynical Theories by James Lindsay.

00:57:58.000 I've probably sold him like 30,000 books.

00:58:00.000 I mention it everywhere I go.

00:58:02.000 And by the way, I want it to be spread because it's a great piece of literature.

00:58:05.000 Let me just say the final thing is that I want to double down and commend whomever this person is for talking to your school board.

00:58:11.000 That's the next best thing you could do besides running for a school board is communicate, have meetings, have a meal, look at these people in the eyes and say, look, man, I've been in this community for 18 years. 0.98

00:58:22.000 Politics aside, this stuff is rubbish. 0.98

00:58:25.000 It's bad. 0.99

00:58:26.000 It makes children think about race all the time.

00:58:28.000 It makes them hate each other, hate our country, and hate themselves.

00:58:32.000 And so I'm really passionate about this, and I'm moved by all these flags because it actually reminds me of the high school I went to.

00:58:37.000 I went to Wheeling High School in the suburbs of Chicago, where we had over 85 different nations represented at the high school I went to.

00:58:44.000 It was 53% English as a second language.

00:58:46.000 As a white Christian male, I was a minority in the high school I went into.

00:58:51.000 And a really amazing thing happened in our high school is that we were always taught that skin color meant nothing and values meant everything.

00:58:57.000 We all really got along.

00:58:59.000 There was no racial problems.

00:59:00.000 And I kid you not, and I mean, and I really reflected hard on this.

00:59:04.000 And I even went back to journal and diary entries that I did when I was in high school.

00:59:08.000 Letters I used to write to my grandma.

00:59:10.000 I wrote over 400 of them just because I wanted to catalog what I was thinking.

00:59:13.000 And it's really, I encourage all young people to do this because they're really helpful.

00:59:18.000 I never mentioned race once.

00:59:21.000 Ever.

00:59:21.000 I never said my best friend who is black was black.

00:59:26.000 I never said that the person I was walking home with was Latino or Hispanic.

00:59:32.000 Look at them as a human being.

00:59:33.000 Ever did we ever look at skin color? 0.99

00:59:35.000 Now, just so you guys know, though, that beautiful success story of looking at values and character, they intentionally ended it. 1.00

00:59:41.000 That high school is a disaster.

00:59:44.000 Privilege walks, taking a knee, critical race theory, sensitivity trainings.

00:59:49.000 They destroyed all of it.

00:59:51.000 And that's why I'm so passionate about this, honestly, because I didn't go to your typical white upper-middle-class private school.

00:59:57.000 I went to a school that really looked like America.

01:00:00.000 And we cared about the things that should matter.

01:00:03.000 And now I see it just going in such a troubling and awful direction.

01:00:06.000 So I know that was a little bit of a longer-winded response, but I think the issue necessitates that.

01:00:11.000 And just out of curiosity for everybody, each of these flags, there are 62 of them, represent people at Westgate who are born outside the United States, which is a wonderful thing.

01:00:23.000 But some of the things we've talked about, particularly Star Parker, is costing us.

01:00:29.000 Some of the folks from some of those nations have left because they feel like our position, just like Charlie just said, they feel like the positions we're taking are antithetical to their concerns as people of color.

01:00:45.000 So you can see the struggle.

01:00:47.000 This is why churches and families are so divided right now and why we have to have these kinds of discussions so we can clarify.

01:00:55.000 We're absolutely concerned about what you're going through as a person of color, but the only hope for any of us between the races is the gospel of Jesus Christ, right?

01:01:06.000 That's the only hope we have.

01:01:13.000 So here's another question. 0.55

01:01:15.000 What is the best strategy for a biracial public school teacher working in a very liberal, woke school district that promotes using pronouns, critical race theory, and hanging gay pride flags? 0.56

01:01:30.000 Yeah. 0.72

01:01:31.000 Jeez, man.

01:01:35.000 We have a prayer room over to one side here. 1.00

01:01:40.000 Just slip out. 1.00

01:01:42.000 Salt and light, everybody.

01:01:43.000 I'll tell you.

01:01:44.000 Be salt and light.

01:01:45.000 No, look, you have an opportunity. 1.00

01:01:47.000 And if you're biracial, I would be then, I would just say, look, de-emphasize your race. 1.00

01:01:55.000 That's my advice to you. 1.00

01:01:56.000 Just tell other people that your race is sort of inconsequential to yourself and it should be to you.

01:02:02.000 And I think that opens up an opportunity, quite honestly. 0.79

01:02:05.000 Just de-emphasize it.

01:02:06.000 Look, I'm going to tell you what's happening next.

01:02:08.000 And I have a, I know this.

01:02:10.000 It's really sad.

01:02:11.000 It's tragic.

01:02:12.000 And it's so contrived.

01:02:14.000 It's so plotted.

01:02:14.000 Here's what's happening.

01:02:15.000 Okay.

01:02:16.000 So everyone starts talking about race.

01:02:18.000 Okay.

01:02:18.000 And the white guilt thing kicks in.

01:02:20.000 And you start to see a lot of upper and middle class people fly the BLM flag and you do all this.

01:02:26.000 But here's the next move.

01:02:27.000 They're forcing it.

01:02:27.000 And they know this.

01:02:29.000 You're going to see real radicalism rear its head in the next five years.

01:02:32.000 They want that, by the way.

01:02:34.000 You're going to see a real white identity politic group pop up.

01:02:38.000 And that's not a good thing.

01:02:39.000 I hate it.

01:02:39.000 That's why I'm trying to de-emphasize the racial conversation.

01:02:42.000 Let me be very clear. 0.95

01:02:44.000 Because as soon as you go into tribes, it's a really bad thing. 0.77

01:02:50.000 The Christian ethic is anti-tribal, neither slave nor Greek nor Jew.

01:02:53.000 We are all one in Jesus Christ.

01:02:55.000 And again, I'm so passionate about this because I saw this work in my high school.

01:03:01.000 I grew up in this America 10 years ago, where I know it's exactly, it's like 10 years ago.

01:03:08.000 I feel like I'm talking about a different civilization.

01:03:11.000 And I'm seeing it just being unwound by, quite honestly, just misrepresentations and lies.

01:03:17.000 And whether it be the lie of policing or all these different things that's just so pathological and emotive. 0.69

01:03:23.000 And so then here's what happens: is then the 56% of the country that's white, part of that is all of a sudden they're like, you know what, we're going to go form our own identity politic group. 0.69

01:03:32.000 And then we're really done. 0.76

01:03:34.000 And then everything starts to unravel.

01:03:35.000 But unfortunately, I'm afraid that's actually kind of they want to force that hand.

01:03:39.000 And I'm not going to be part of that.

01:03:41.000 Let me be very clear.

01:03:42.000 I'm going to try to de-escalate all this racial conversation.

01:03:45.000 And I'm somewhat of a, I'm pretty outspoken on this.

01:03:50.000 You know, someone will come to one of our events and they'll say, you know, I'm black. 0.97

01:03:54.000 And it's like, I really don't care about your skin color. 0.96

01:03:56.000 I don't. 1.00

01:03:57.000 Like, I don't want to hear about it.

01:03:59.000 I don't.

01:04:00.000 And insofar that is the most important part of your identity, I really suggest that you care more about your spirit than how you look.

01:04:11.000 And I know where identity politics lead us.

01:04:16.000 It leads us to tribal warfare, and it will tear us apart.

01:04:22.000 And I refuse to participate.

01:04:25.000 One of the things we're hearing even here is how many pastors and churches are being misled.

01:04:31.000 And I think your explanation helps shed light on the why because of the Christian ethic.

01:04:37.000 But a lot of churches are buying into critical race theory.

01:04:40.000 And to criticize it is anathema in those environments.

01:04:44.000 Yeah, and I would encourage people to go check out Vodi Bachman's book on this.

01:04:48.000 It's really good.

01:04:50.000 It's terrific.

01:04:51.000 And yeah, I see a lot of churches engaging in this as well.

01:04:56.000 And it really saddens me and disappoints me.

01:04:59.000 But again, my explanation is that I'm trying to offer some grace here that they're very wrong for the right reasons.

01:05:09.000 Again, I'm going to offer like a couple month window of grace here, which is very hard for me.

01:05:14.000 I'm going to be honest, because I know where this stuff leads.

01:05:17.000 And I'm asking these churches to stop, pivot, and repent because they have got to reconsider this stuff.

01:05:24.000 They have to.

01:05:25.000 Take down the flags, read about critical race theory, and just really, really pray about what you're doing.

01:05:31.000 I don't know if that's going to happen or not.

01:05:33.000 And let me just say one other note here is that I believe firmly that it's an unusual thing because some of these churches used to say, like, we don't do politics, we don't speak out on this stuff.

01:05:45.000 And then the instant that this mass social movement happened, they weighed in on that, which I found to be very perplexing.

01:05:51.000 Yeah.

01:05:52.000 I read, I just got back from vacation and read Vadi Bakum's book on there.

01:05:56.000 And the thing that was most amazing to me, he's an African-American Southern Baptist theologian currently heading up a university, a seminary for African pastors in Cameroon or Zambia, you're right.

01:06:12.000 Zambia.

01:06:13.000 Yeah, thank you.

01:06:15.000 And one of the things that was so alarming to me is I watch very little news anymore on the mainstream news outlets or even a lot of the cable outlets.

01:06:28.000 I watch very little news.

01:06:29.000 And so I was unaware of the way they are systematically really reframing the details of the things that we're seeing on the news.

01:06:41.000 So I worry that a lot of these pastors, if they're just relying on what the news outlets are saying, are buying into a narrative that has no bearing in relationship to the truth.

01:06:54.000 And he points that out.

01:06:56.000 Yeah, and let me just, and I have to do this because, look, one of their narratives is that blacks are being disproportionately killed by police in this country.

01:07:08.000 It is one of the biggest lies ever told on the American population.

01:07:11.000 The Washington Post themselves, they put together a database of unarmed black people being killed by police.

01:07:18.000 And their number at the highest level was 16.

01:07:21.000 And out of those 16 people, about 10 you could say they were either driving a car, they threatened that they had a weapon.

01:07:28.000 Very complex and nuanced situations.

01:07:30.000 And then out of the six remaining, four of them have already been tried for murder.

01:07:33.000 So there's about 385 million police interactions in our country every single year.

01:07:39.000 And cops, on average, will kill a thousand people in our country, most of which, by almost all of them, are justified or warranted or useful means of defense against a perpetrator or criminal that has a deadly or lethal weapon.

01:07:51.000 And so one of the big issues, they say, is that there's a bias in racial policing.

01:07:56.000 Well, a Harvard professor last name Breyer did an entire study of 400 different police departments across the country.

01:08:03.000 A black economist at Harvard University, and he found zero evidence of racial bias in any single police department across the country.

01:08:10.000 In fact, he found the opposite.

01:08:12.000 He said that police officers are more restrained when it comes to black suspects and they're more likely to use force against white suspects. 0.95

01:08:18.000 In fact, a police officer is 18 and a half times more likely to be shot and killed by a black person than a black person is to be shot and killed by a police officer. 0.96

01:08:27.000 Now, some people will say that black people are more likely to have interactions with police. 0.93

01:08:31.000 Well, again, a politically incorrect thing to say, which is completely true, is that because of other socioeconomic reasons, as the black community in certain parts of this country, there's just more crime happening. 0.98

01:08:41.000 There's more black-on-black crime. 0.99

01:08:42.000 There's more gang-related crime. 0.79

01:08:44.000 You have more crime.

01:08:44.000 You're going to have more police interactions.

01:08:46.000 And I'm going to say this very boldly.

01:08:48.000 In New York City, when Rudy Giuliani, who obviously is going through a separate chapter of controversy right now, he was a terrific mayor of New York City.

01:08:56.000 He tripled the police population in New York City, and New York City was experiencing, on average, well over 1,600 black homicides every single year in New York City.

01:09:06.000 He nearly tripled the police force on the streets of New York City.

01:09:10.000 It went from nearly 1,600 a year down to 300, and Bloomberg got it down to 100.

01:09:15.000 Those are black lives that were being saved because of an increased police presence.

01:09:19.000 Now, I'm all for understanding a piece-by-piece, situation-by-situation, admitting when a tragedy or atrocity happens.

01:09:26.000 But excuse me when I don't indulge in a national narrative when I have to see my hometown of Chicago bury 500 black people every single year because of black-on-black gang-related violence, when seven-year-olds are being shot in drive-thrus, going to McDonald's by gang by gang violence.

01:09:42.000 Excuse me when I don't indulge in that national narrative, which, by the way, police are saving more black lives than they ever are given credit for.

01:09:50.000 And so, I just have to say that.

01:09:57.000 And there's a great book written by Heather McDonald, which is War on Cops.

01:10:02.000 It's a terrific book.

01:10:04.000 And I encourage anyone that might be interested in looking at the data yourself and go where the facts lead you.

01:10:10.000 And so, a lot of that narrative is built around that.

01:10:13.000 Yeah, wrong.

01:10:14.000 If we're just buying the public, the media narrative, we're in shaky growth.

01:10:20.000 That's right.

01:10:21.000 So, another question: How can the modern conservative movement reconcile the inflexibility of the Bible's text and the flexibility of modern social morals?

01:10:34.000 Wow, that's a really good question.

01:10:38.000 Would you like me to answer it?

01:10:39.000 Yeah, why don't you?

01:10:40.000 No, no, why don't you kids?

01:10:43.000 I want to answer correctly.

01:10:44.000 Why don't you start?

01:10:45.000 No, no, I was absolutely kidding.

01:10:49.000 That's really good.

01:10:51.000 Yeah, boy, I think that, I mean, we'll just take one example.

01:10:55.000 I think the conservative movement, to the best capacity that it can, should try to remain to the inflexibility of the scriptures.

01:11:02.000 Let's just talk about the life issue, right?

01:11:05.000 I mean, the life issue, it's pretty clear that the Lord knows when life begins, that science only reconfirmed what the scriptures said, that I knew you before you were in the womb.

01:11:14.000 That it said very clearly that the baby, the human being, jumped in, I believe it was Mary's, Elizabeth Womb, that's exactly right.

01:11:22.000 Elizabeth's womb's in John 2 or John 3.

01:11:24.000 You would know the scriptures far better than I would.

01:11:27.000 And that's a human being that's deserving and worthy of protection.

01:11:31.000 And so I'm pretty outspoken on this, that the conservative movement should have a non-negotiable position when it comes to life.

01:11:38.000 And that is that a million abortions a year is a moral stain on our country.

01:11:44.000 And so, but I'm not exactly sure the specifics of what they mean by the sliding social morals.

01:11:53.000 I mean, I'll be very honest that, you know, I'll give you an example on this, right?

01:11:58.000 Where I just drew the line and I got all sorts of fun feedback.

01:12:01.000 And I've met Jenner many different times, and I think Jenner's a very nice person. 0.78

01:12:06.000 But the Republican Party should not be the party of gender dysphoria. 0.73

01:12:10.000 We should not be the party where we are platforming someone that is confused about their own gender identity and putting that up as a spokesperson or a role model for our children or for the rest of the party. 0.75

01:12:20.000 So I'll just use that as an example.

01:12:22.000 And again, very nice person, probably agree on a lot of different issues.

01:12:28.000 I'm just drawing a line.

01:12:30.000 And sometimes we have to do that.

01:12:33.000 Sometimes that line is going to win us disfavor.

01:12:35.000 Sometimes that line is going to get mean things said at us.

01:12:39.000 But so be it.

01:12:40.000 The other political party can be the party of constantly changing the goalposts and moral relativism and chaos. 0.99

01:12:47.000 I do not believe the conservative movement should openly embrace a transgender person running for public office. 0.99

01:12:52.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:12:53.000 Yeah.

01:12:59.000 Let's talk for a moment, if you don't mind, about the whole issue of partisan politics, which was one of the things that kept me from being very vocal here about some of these issues.

01:13:10.000 But really, if a pastor or a believer, forget pastors, if a believer wants to be true to God's word, and if we're not going to be true to God's word, then why bother being a follower of Jesus Christ?

01:13:24.000 Amen.

01:13:24.000 And if the word of God is inflexible on certain things, I heard the other day someone say, well, Jesus never addressed homosexuality.

01:13:32.000 Well, maybe not directly, but in several of the Gospels, he addresses very clearly and specifically Genesis and that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife.

01:13:46.000 And the language that Jesus used is directly out of Genesis.

01:13:51.000 So it might not be a direct reference to homosexuality, but Jesus is very clear.

01:13:57.000 And of course, we believe that all of Scripture is Holy Spirit breathed.

01:14:02.000 So whether it's Jesus' literal words or whether it's the Apostle Paul in Romans 1, there is an inflexibility to scripture.

01:14:11.000 And we're called to lovingly and gracefully stand there.

01:14:17.000 Otherwise, what have we got to stand on?

01:14:20.000 Yeah, and so let me kind of tell you, if I can just talk just pure politics, just three things I think every Christian should take seriously when they vote or support candidates, if that's okay.

01:14:30.000 Number one, which is pretty simple, that you should support candidates that believe in an open church and that church is essential.

01:14:37.000 The candidates that are willing to say that the church is the most essential institution in the country, of which I believe.

01:14:42.000 That there is no church, there is no ability to congregate or gather.

01:14:46.000 First Amendment for a reason, free expression clause, and the establishment clause, that that should be something that is pretty much a non-negotiable.

01:14:54.000 I already talked about life, when life begins.

01:14:56.000 It's a pretty important thing for a society to get right.

01:14:59.000 And the third thing, and again, I just, you know, we've talked about this, but it just happens to be forefront that it's just a non-negotiable position, that you have a chromosomal structure that God made you in, man and woman, and we're going to stand on that.

01:15:11.000 And so whatever that party lands you, whatever party believes those three things, then so be it.

01:15:16.000 And you're right, there is an inflexibility to scripture.

01:15:20.000 And we kind of have this new movement that's happening that kind of thinks of Jesus as kind of this hippie figure.

01:15:28.000 that kind of thinks of Jesus as kind of like in the meadows and in the fields and kind of like this Eastern meditative Buddhist Jesus.

01:15:35.000 You guys kind of heard about this recently?

01:15:37.000 When, look, Jesus is 100% grace.

01:15:41.000 He was also 100% truth.

01:15:43.000 What did Jesus say about messing with children?

01:15:46.000 Let's just talk about that for a second.

01:15:49.000 Not only did he say, don't do it, but he said it's better for you to have a millstone wrapped around your neck.

01:15:55.000 What did Jesus say about the promise of fathers and sons?

01:15:59.000 He said, my message will turn a father against a son.

01:16:02.000 What did Jesus do about people trading in the temple for profit and gain?

01:16:07.000 Went and turned those tables over.

01:16:09.000 What I'm getting at here is that Jesus was very clear when he was calling right and wrong.

01:16:14.000 Very clear.

01:16:15.000 And this kind of like John Lennon Jesus, like we're all going to kind of just like, you know, just run through the hills and everything.

01:16:23.000 We're going to embrace everyone always, it's just not even close to the Jesus of the Bible.

01:16:28.000 It's not even close.

01:16:30.000 Yeah.

01:16:31.000 That's the challenge today.

01:16:32.000 That really is the challenge for pastors.

01:16:35.000 How do we, and this goes along with this, how do we reach those who believe in progressive Christianity and buy into what the world has been selling?

01:16:44.000 Yeah, look, I'm going to say something very clear.

01:16:46.000 Progressive Christianity is not biblical Christianity.

01:16:49.000 And so, just not.

01:16:52.000 And so it starts with something that you're an expert at, and this is why Wayne Grudem is a mentor of mine.

01:17:01.000 You got to get your theology right.

01:17:03.000 It really is important.

01:17:05.000 And so if you believe that theology is not inerrant, maybe it's allegorical.

01:17:11.000 Maybe it's figurative.

01:17:12.000 Yeah, then maybe Jesus was a social activist.

01:17:15.000 Right?

01:17:16.000 All of a sudden, you could impart whatever you want.

01:17:18.000 So I really think it starts there.

01:17:20.000 But look, I'm going to offer just some grace and maybe progressive Christianity.

01:17:24.000 I think that they want to see the world be made a better place.

01:17:27.000 Some of them really want to see the world be made a better place and may have been convinced through whatever other forces or any other institutions that the best way to make a better place is through a heavy hand of government, through an intrusion in people's lives.

01:17:41.000 So let's just say that we have two Christians that have different political views, one that is conservative, one that's progressive, and they both want to make the world a better place.

01:17:49.000 Well, that's a really good question.

01:17:51.000 How do we make the world a better place?

01:17:53.000 What do we know empirically makes the world a better place?

01:17:56.000 Well, that's an easy answer.

01:17:58.000 It's the easiest answer, which is private property rights, markets, capacity to speak, being able to educate children to read, not having fathers leave the home, the replication of your values, the building of a nuclear family, a strong and vibrant church, a charitable backbone to a nation, the ability to have borders and to enforce.

01:18:20.000 And those things have proven the test of time to always be the best thing for humanity.

01:18:26.000 And so I'm going to just offer just a bridge.

01:18:28.000 You know, if there is progressive Christians, they say, you know what, I want the best thing for the world. 0.62

01:18:32.000 And I would just ask very simply, you know, maybe they are open to socialism.

01:18:37.000 Didn't work for the apostles right after Jesus.

01:18:39.000 It didn't.

01:18:40.000 They actually tried to live in a commune and it failed terribly.

01:18:42.000 Didn't work for the pilgrims and the Mayflower, the Mayflower, after the Mayflower in the Plymouth Plantation, great book written by either Roger Williams, I'll think of it in a second.

01:18:54.000 And fell apart completely.

01:18:56.000 Socialism also violates two out of the 10 commandments: thou shalt not covet and thou shalt not steal.

01:19:01.000 But even beyond that, let's just look at what works.

01:19:03.000 What benefits humanity?

01:19:05.000 What actually is the driving force for medical advancements, for people, ability to have a higher standard of living?

01:19:12.000 Is it a heavy hand of government or is it the entrepreneurial driving force?

01:19:16.000 Is it the risk-takers, the daring people?

01:19:19.000 Is it the people that employ others?

01:19:21.000 What gives people a capacity to have dignity in a workplace?

01:19:24.000 Well, it says very clearly in the Bible: a man does not work, he does not eat.

01:19:29.000 It does not relish being slothful, being stationary, taking from other people.

01:19:36.000 In fact, it talks about creation.

01:19:37.000 Even Jesus went to work.

01:19:38.000 He's a carpenter.

01:19:39.000 So these are really important conversations to have.

01:19:42.000 And I think at the root of some progressive Christianity, I think, is this belief of mass social change and this idea that the world is so unequal, that there's so many inequities.

01:19:53.000 When I just come at it from such a different perspective, which is like, hold on a second, we have it better than any other people ever to exist in the history of the world.

01:20:00.000 And that any of the decay that you're seeing is actually largely attributable to us turning our back on biblical constructs.

01:20:07.000 Any inequities you see, I think is one of the inputs to the disparity that you might see, for example, in the black community, is because 77% of black Americans are raised without a stable father in the home.

01:20:18.000 And it's a biblical idea to have a mother and a father and a nuclear family.

01:20:22.000 That is something that has stood the test of time.

01:20:24.000 And so that's how I would communicate with progressive Christians.

01:20:28.000 I can't get many to talk to me, which is something that is open for the dialogue.

01:20:36.000 I really am.

01:20:37.000 And I think that a lot of them really do want to see the world become a better place.

01:20:41.000 I really do.

01:20:42.000 They just have a vastly different way of going about that.

01:20:44.000 And I think the fact pattern of what Western civilization has been able to do for humanity is pretty overwhelming.

01:20:51.000 Whether it be the liberation of human rights, the capacity to speak, medical advancements, you name it.

01:20:57.000 I think the West has a pretty good track record with this stuff and totalitarian collectivist mindsets.

01:21:03.000 They got a lot of explaining to do.

01:21:05.000 Every single continent that collectivism and totalitarianism has tried leaves a pretty bad track record, whether it be Zimbabwe with Rhodesia that murdered tens of thousands of people, all the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, you guys know the list.

01:21:21.000 But it's not something that we should forget.

01:21:23.000 It's something we should repeat because that sort of bend towards the inevitable utopia on earth, the progressive trajectory.

01:21:30.000 It almost always gets captured and hijacked by self-interested despots and dictators that want to remake the world in their image.

01:21:37.000 It almost never actually results in the best intentions of the activists, ever.

01:21:43.000 There's a reason for that.

01:21:44.000 There's a reason.

01:21:45.000 It's because you're going to get a sociopath that is going to use that power for their purpose and not for your end desire.

01:21:52.000 That is replicated always. 0.97

01:21:55.000 You're going to have the activists that are like, yes, the Romanovs are corrupt. 0.99

01:21:59.000 They have not been representing our interests in the farms in Russia. 1.00

01:22:03.000 There's some truth to that, by the way. 0.97

01:22:04.000 The Romanovs were basically out of touch with the Russian agrarian class. 1.00

01:22:08.000 There was a lot of truth to the complaints.

01:22:10.000 But then you get a sociopath, Vladimir Lenin, who takes power. 0.65

01:22:13.000 And all the Bolsheviks are like, wait, what happened to the worker rights thing? 0.76

01:22:16.000 What happened to making the world a better place? 0.92

01:22:18.000 Like, no, no, no, now we're in charge. 0.99

01:22:19.000 Red terror, we're going to kill our political opponents. 1.00

01:22:21.000 Boom. 0.97

01:22:22.000 Same thing happened in Mao's China with the Cultural Revolution. 0.91

01:22:25.000 We are going to reprogram people. 0.82

01:22:27.000 That is not preventable.

01:22:28.000 Let me just say that again.

01:22:30.000 And this is something that some of the progressives will say, like, no, we're going to do it better because we're in charge.

01:22:34.000 Like, really?

01:22:35.000 Like, that's like the ultimate act of pride.

01:22:38.000 Like, everyone else except me was a bad dictator.

01:22:41.000 Just give me a bunch of power and we're going to figure that out.

01:22:44.000 Like, excuse me while I say, no, we're going to limit power in all forms and fashion.

01:22:49.000 And so I do want to seek to bridge between the body of Christ because I think this is something I am actually really looking forward to one day talking to a progressive Christian and seeing their biblical backing of it.

01:23:04.000 I just hope they'll take up my office.

01:23:06.000 I think some of their points that I've had to deal with here is that they don't see in the New Testament, like you mentioned, Daniel, Esther, but they don't see in the New Testament the engagement of the apostles or disciples in the ways that we're talking about engagement here.

01:23:25.000 Yeah, so let me comment on that.

01:23:27.000 I mean, they're going to have to explain the word ecclesia, which, again, that's a very big word that is commonly quoted, which was a political gathering in Greek times.

01:23:36.000 And so either that's inerrant or it's not, right?

01:23:40.000 So on this rock, build my ecclesia.

01:23:43.000 So that's something they're going to have to explain.

01:23:45.000 They're also going to have to explain in 1 Timothy, one of the last things that Paul ever wrote, is pray for the leaders in authority that you might live quiet and peaceable lives.

01:23:53.000 Well, what Paul is saying is the goal is a quiet and peaceable life.

01:23:57.000 So if you don't have it, should we do something about it?

01:24:00.000 And so these are really important questions, I think, to wrestle with, which I think the answers are rather clear.

01:24:00.000 Yeah.

01:24:06.000 And I'm going to go to one that I think is actually misunderstood, if that's okay, which is when Jesus holds up the coin and he says, render under Caesar what is Caesar, render under God's, what is God's?

01:24:15.000 Now, this is largely said, Jesus was kind of staying out of government.

01:24:20.000 I don't think that's the correct interpretation.

01:24:22.000 Wayne Grudem would agree with me here, who again was on the board of translating the English Standard Version.

01:24:27.000 If Caesar heard Jesus say that, he would have had him hung for treason.

01:24:31.000 Because what Jesus was saying is that there's an authority above Caesar, that this idea of naturally granted rights, this idea of this earthly government is not the most important thing, what I would argue Jesus is saying is that we should demand a government, any government that recognizes the ultimate purpose.

01:24:53.000 And so I would push back against one of the kind of their reading words, and then of course there's Romans 13, which is probably the most quoted, misunderstood piece of the New Testament.

01:25:04.000 If you'd like, I can comment on that.

01:25:06.000 And again, if you guys have any problems with what I'm saying, just take it up with Wayne Grudem.

01:25:09.000 Good luck.

01:25:10.000 Okay, that's all I have to say.

01:25:11.000 You know, he's really good because everything that I say scripturally comes from him.

01:25:16.000 But it says there very clearly, and I'm going to push some of these pastors here to really pray and think about this, which is, I'm paraphrasing, but it says, submit to the leaders in authority because God put them there.

01:25:28.000 Okay.

01:25:29.000 Basically, submit to the sovereign.

01:25:32.000 Well, who's the sovereign in the Constitutional Republic?

01:25:36.000 Yeah, the people are.

01:25:37.000 That's an interesting thing.

01:25:39.000 So Governor Inslee is actually not the sovereign.

01:25:47.000 So this is a, now, mind you, this is a contrarian, but I believe truthful view of Romans 13.

01:25:58.000 I'm just going to say that again.

01:26:00.000 This is a contrarian, I believe, truthful view of Romans 13.

01:26:04.000 Now, this would not be the way that you could read Romans 13 in the Chinese Communist Party or in North Korea.

01:26:09.000 I believe that there's a different way to unpack that there.

01:26:12.000 But let's just talk about our own country, which is that the rulers, the people in charge, are actually you.

01:26:18.000 Therefore, if your natural rights are violated, then Governor Inslee is violating Romans 13.

01:26:24.000 You're not violating Romans 13.

01:26:27.000 And so it also says that they're put there for your good.

01:26:30.000 And so, insofar that that no longer is the case, then that very well might be broken.

01:26:37.000 And so I can understand that there is a struggle with that with pastors, but I also would just push back and just ask for some examples.

01:26:43.000 And I think they have some explaining to do.

01:26:45.000 Like, was Rosa Parks in defiance to biblical text when she decided to push back against segregationists in the American South?

01:26:53.000 That's a question that if they believe in non-political involvement, that they have to answer.

01:26:59.000 I would say, no, of course she was doing the moral thing.

01:27:01.000 That act of civil disobedience was the correct thing, similar to Christ very clearly speaking truth and being able and willing to accept the punishment.

01:27:12.000 So there's a different doctrine here, which is civil disobedience, which I believe is biblical and which I believe is moral, and then which is being intentionally defiant and being civilly discord.

01:27:23.000 What do I mean by that?

01:27:24.000 Well, being civilly disobedient means you must be willing to accept the punishment. 0.88

01:27:27.000 Rosa Parks was willing to accept the punishment.

01:27:30.000 But some would say that that was not the biblical thing to do.

01:27:35.000 I completely disagree with that.

01:27:37.000 And so I also said, you know, the founding fathers had many different quotes.

01:27:41.000 One would say that the obedience to tyrants is not ever in any way in accordance to the gospel.

01:27:51.000 Now, how do you know a tyrant?

01:27:54.000 I think that's a pretty self-evident thing.

01:27:57.000 But again, the entire New Testament is a gospel of liberation and is of freedom.

01:28:05.000 And then you just want to get to a pragmatic, just like utilitarian argument, which I hate making, right?

01:28:09.000 I just, I don't like making these arguments.

01:28:12.000 But if we don't do anything, it's going to get harder to spread the gospel.

01:28:16.000 And so that's a pretty pragmatic argument, right?

01:28:18.000 That's going to be just, I think, inarguable.

01:28:20.000 And they didn't have, the disciples and apostles did not have the levels of redress that we have, that we've been given, which is a privilege for those of us that live in a representative republic.

01:28:35.000 We've been given avenues like our vote and our involvement that really is a privilege that the New Testament apostles didn't have.

01:28:44.000 There was no redress.

01:28:46.000 You had no way to express concern for what was happening.

01:28:52.000 But just to go back to Jesus' own words, he calls Herod a fox, which when you look into the Greek there, really means the word fox means a sly deceiver.

01:29:07.000 And so Jesus was not so disengaged himself that he didn't recognize some of the broken leaders in his day for what they were.

01:29:18.000 Yeah, no doubt.

01:29:19.000 And so I'm going to use another parable that I think is applicable to our country.

01:29:25.000 And some pastors completely disagree with what I'm about to say.

01:29:29.000 So I'm definitely going to say this because I think it's true, which is the parable of the talents, right?

01:29:35.000 Which is, and you guys all know this.

01:29:38.000 I mean, boy, I assume so many heads nodding.

01:29:39.000 You've done a good job teaching the Bible.

01:29:41.000 I've got to tell you, sometimes I got to start from, so this is the New Testament, this is the old.

01:29:46.000 You'd be surprised.

01:29:47.000 Some churches don't go verse by verse, and they don't.

01:29:51.000 And so I want to commend you for that.

01:29:52.000 You've done a great job.

01:29:54.000 Parable of the talents, very put very succinctly, is a parable that Christ was talking about a relationship between an owner and, I think he used the word slave.

01:30:08.000 I think it might be servant, not slave, in the original Greek.

01:30:11.000 Anyway, that each one of them gets doled a different talent, which was a currency.

01:30:15.000 And it's like, what did you do with what I gave you?

01:30:17.000 So one of them hid it and did nothing.

01:30:19.000 One of them moderately increased it.

01:30:20.000 One of them maximally increased it.

01:30:23.000 And Christ has some of the harshest words in almost all of the New Testament for the person that did not do anything with that which was given to them.

01:30:32.000 And so it says very clearly in the Bible that nations will be judged, that nations will be judged.

01:30:38.000 I think we are going to be judged, and I think that we'll be held account to what we did with the most generous, affluent, and free constitutional republic ever to exist.

01:30:47.000 And I believe that we're going to have to hold account to this, because this is not the human norm.

01:30:50.000 What we're experiencing right now is the human exception, our access to medicine, transportation, communication, education, capacity to gather, to clothe ourselves, sanitation.

01:31:01.000 I mean, we're living a really good life.

01:31:03.000 And if we're all of a sudden going to kind of hide that under a rock and act as if this is normal and do nothing at all to preserve or protect that, I think that is actually being completely defiant to a gift that the Lord has given us.

01:31:21.000 I'd like to have you wrap up with this comment.

01:31:26.000 Sort of a two-part question.

01:31:29.000 Seeing what you see with the eyes that you look at the current situation with, and what you believe and what you know, part one of the question, do you have hope for the future?

01:31:44.000 And secondly, what do you see of the condition of the church?

01:31:48.000 You rattled off earlier tonight a bunch of churches that you have gone to that are obviously you wouldn't be invited to if they weren't already engaged and wanting to learn how to get more engaged.

01:32:02.000 Other than those churches, what do you see of the condition of the church?

01:32:06.000 Do you have hope?

01:32:07.000 And what do you see is happening in the church?

01:32:09.000 Yes, so I absolutely have hope.

01:32:12.000 Of course I do.

01:32:13.000 Yes.

01:32:13.000 And I think it's important to say why, because it's easy not to have hope in the condition that we're in.

01:32:23.000 I'm a big believer in the power of human action.

01:32:26.000 I think that's what makes Americans different.

01:32:28.000 It's a uniquely American attribute that we have. 1.00

01:32:33.000 You know, the French, they're very good at retreating. 1.00

01:32:36.000 The Italians are very good at pleasure. 1.00

01:32:38.000 I mean, I know, I'm sorry. 1.00

01:32:41.000 The Brits are very good at complaining.

01:32:44.000 We as Americans are really good at doing impossible things when the odds are against us.

01:32:49.000 We've always done that.

01:32:50.000 That's who we are.

01:32:51.000 And I think that's a really, I think that's a really, that's something we should be really proud of.

01:32:57.000 So I do have hope.

01:32:58.000 And let me walk you through a couple of the reasons.

01:33:01.000 Number one, I look to Genesis 11, which is exactly what the people in charge of our country and our nation are doing.

01:33:09.000 And they're trying to build the Tower of Babel equivalent up to the heavens. 0.78

01:33:13.000 And the Lord will not honor that. 0.96

01:33:15.000 He will scatter them and he will confuse them amongst their ranks.

01:33:19.000 He will.

01:33:20.000 And I also have hope because the church is waking up, which answers the second part of your question.

01:33:27.000 I'm traveling the country.

01:33:28.000 I spoke with over 75 churches across the country, and I'm seeing pastors that are just rising up, and they are all of a sudden speaking clearly into these issues, and their congregations are thanking them.

01:33:38.000 Ties are going up.

01:33:40.000 Their offerings are going up.

01:33:41.000 They are having more people commit to Christ than ever before.

01:33:44.000 And I think there's a reason for this.

01:33:46.000 And so there's anyone here tonight, this is not your home church, raise your hand.

01:33:50.000 That's awesome.

01:33:52.000 That's a pretty telling thing, right?

01:33:54.000 That should be applauded, right?

01:33:55.000 And so I love asking that question because in a way that we've told not to do, I'm obviously a political guy.

01:34:08.000 I'm a Christian political guy.

01:34:10.000 But in a weird way, a political guy is bringing people into the church, not bringing people out of the church.

01:34:17.000 And so maybe this moment is a Galatians 3 moment, which is the Galatians 3 says that the law is a placeholder to keep you in place until faith comes.

01:34:28.000 Maybe it's a time where civic government and talking about moral issues clearly is a way where people are going to start drinking from the streams of liberty, and then they're going to want to find its source.

01:34:38.000 Because liberty is not man's idea, it's God's idea.

01:34:41.000 And so, I think there's something very special happening, and the spirit is moving in a dramatic way.

01:34:47.000 And so, do I have hope?

01:34:50.000 Absolutely.

01:34:51.000 And so, if I could do a shameless plug, if that's okay, and then I'm going to close with a couple things.

01:34:55.000 Totally shameless, by the way, which is we do two podcasts a day on our podcast.

01:35:01.000 Some of you guys listen, anyone listen?

01:35:02.000 Oh, wow.

01:35:03.000 Okay, well, I have nothing to plug then.

01:35:05.000 But if everyone took out their phone and subscribed, I would be immensely blessed by that.

01:35:09.000 It's free of charge.

01:35:10.000 If you don't know how to do it, go find a 14-year-old.

01:35:13.000 I'm sure there's one near here.

01:35:14.000 No, seriously, it keeps us immune from big tech cancellation.

01:35:18.000 I'm half plugging because we give marching orders, we elevate heroes, and this conversation is going to be reposted on our podcast.

01:35:25.000 Because I think if you guys want to listen to this back again, so I'd consider it a favor and a blessing.

01:35:31.000 Okay, so back to do I have hope?

01:35:33.000 Some people ask that question, not you, but some people ask that question because they want me to say no.

01:35:41.000 They want me to tell them that it's okay to give up.

01:35:45.000 They want me to tell them it's okay to retreat and say, you know what, Jesus is coming next Thursday.

01:35:50.000 Charlie said, we have no hope.

01:35:51.000 I'm getting zapped up.

01:35:53.000 See you later.

01:35:56.000 That's what some people say.

01:35:58.000 That's obviously wasn't the reason behind your point, but there is some truth to that.

01:36:01.000 Look, you know how easy my life would be if I could just go be a college football coach or something?

01:36:06.000 I wouldn't have to deal with the Antifa thing and the security and crisscrossing the country.

01:36:11.000 I give 330 speeches a year.

01:36:14.000 I have the most powerful media institutions literally waiting for me to say one thing wrong to destroy my life every single day.

01:36:20.000 By the way, I'm not complaining.

01:36:21.000 I'm just saying it's just part of what we signed up for.

01:36:23.000 And I love every single minute of it because I know that we're making a difference every single day.

01:36:28.000 I know we're making a difference.

01:36:29.000 And so I want to be very clear about the hope thing because I actually really believe we're going to win.

01:36:39.000 I know I'm like in the super vast minority minority.

01:36:42.000 And I'm going to kind of walk you through why.

01:36:46.000 And there's different types.

01:36:47.000 I don't mean political winning, by the way.

01:36:48.000 I just don't.

01:36:50.000 That stuff comes and goes.

01:36:51.000 And I think that's just, it flows downstream from the most important stuff.

01:36:54.000 It flows downstream from culture and downstream from morals and downstream from the public square, right?

01:36:59.000 I think we're going to win in a way where that revival, that awakening, that moment we're like, whoa, the Lord is moving in a way we've never seen before.

01:37:07.000 Like that's what winning looks like.

01:37:08.000 Let me just be very clear, right?

01:37:10.000 And then all that other stuff starts to flow.

01:37:12.000 And so I think that it's going to happen.

01:37:14.000 I think it's going to have to happen differently, though.

01:37:16.000 I think it's going to have to happen differently. 0.98

01:37:18.000 It's going to require Christians to start to contest and take terrain, to occupy till he comes. 0.92

01:37:24.000 To all of a sudden to start maybe run for a position, to all of a sudden maybe to start stand confidently with courage and truth and look clearly at someone who's taking your liberties and freedoms and say no more. 0.97

01:37:34.000 Maybe I'm going to file a lawsuit.

01:37:36.000 Maybe I'm going to all of a sudden push back a little bit.

01:37:38.000 Maybe I'm going to say no more and I'm going to draw that line.

01:37:42.000 And I think that that's going to kind of be the Galatians 3 awakening that's happening.

01:37:45.000 And then as a nation, people say, Charlie, the country is done.

01:37:49.000 And I say, man, if you believe that, you're absolutely right.

01:37:53.000 The greatest trick Satan has ever played is to get you to believe in the cynical view.

01:38:00.000 I want you to pray on this one question tonight.

01:38:02.000 Do you think Satan wants to see America get back to a place of greatness and revival and moral clarity?

01:38:11.000 Or do you think Satan wants to see America crumble and go into chaos and confusion?

01:38:16.000 Just pray on what you think the enemy's goals and ambitions are for a nation.

01:38:20.000 Because we know that the enemy is trying to undermine anything that can go for God's purpose.

01:38:27.000 What do you think Satan's desire is here?

01:38:29.000 Because my goodness, is this a spiritual battle?

01:38:32.000 And so, and that's at the basis of all of this.

01:38:35.000 Another question that I get, and I'm going to do a pastor's close, so this is going to be like a 10-minute deal, okay?

01:38:41.000 So, which is, and then I have like a final thing, final, thing I want to say, right?

01:38:49.000 Again, it's a pastor's close.

01:38:50.000 We're going to land the plane, everybody.

01:38:52.000 We're going to like, which is when someone says, hey, Charlie, how's it going out there?

01:38:59.000 And I always like chuckle.

01:39:01.000 I say, well, what do you mean?

01:39:02.000 Am I a running back to the Seattle Seahawks?

01:39:04.000 Am I doing?

01:39:05.000 And what they're really saying is like, hey, how's it going out there, Sport?

01:39:08.000 I've been watching you from afar.

01:39:10.000 Drives me nuts.

01:39:11.000 Because look, I'm a kid from Chicago that didn't go to college.

01:39:14.000 I'm 27 years old.

01:39:15.000 There's nothing, there is nothing I'm doing you can't do.

01:39:19.000 Nothing.

01:39:20.000 I didn't go to Stanford.

01:39:21.000 I didn't go to Yale.

01:39:22.000 I didn't split the atom.

01:39:23.000 I read a lot of books and I listen to things that matter and I spend time in the word and I work really hard.

01:39:29.000 So I don't run.

01:39:32.000 I'm not Russell Westbrook.

01:39:34.000 I don't have a special skill.

01:39:36.000 I could put words together and make arguments that make sense and I commit myself to things that are true.

01:39:40.000 What am I getting at here?

01:39:42.000 No more of the spectator type deal.

01:39:45.000 No more of the kind of thing where it's like we treat this thing that we're in, this kind of this moment, kind of like a Seattle Seahawks game.

01:39:53.000 Where we get in our lucky chair, we watch the game, and we think that we're going to cheer them on, and that's it.

01:40:01.000 It's like, no, no, no, no, you guys can be on the field and in the game.

01:40:04.000 This is one of the few things that every single one of you can be equally participant in.

01:40:09.000 Again, there's nothing special about what I do, except for the fact that I work really hard at it and I take it really seriously.

01:40:16.000 And so no more of the kind of, hey, Charlie, I'm cheering you on.

01:40:19.000 The next time I want to hear, man, Charlie, I'm right beside you.

01:40:23.000 And I'm being smeared.

01:40:24.000 I'm being maligned.

01:40:25.000 I'm being called these names.

01:40:26.000 But I just won these 10 people to Christ.

01:40:28.000 And we're winning on the local level.

01:40:30.000 And I feel you, Charlie, and I'm honored to be with you in the arena.

01:40:34.000 Yeah.

01:40:35.000 Yeah.

01:40:37.000 And then the last reason why I have hope.

01:40:41.000 First of all, you look around, you're filling up rooms like this.

01:40:44.000 We were just in a town I can't even pronounce.

01:40:46.000 Snohomish.

01:40:47.000 Yeah, it was great. 1.00

01:40:51.000 Packed room.

01:40:52.000 It was terrific.

01:40:54.000 And I closed with that story then, and I'll close with this story if that's okay, Alex.

01:40:59.000 The greatest man of the 20th century was a complicated man.

01:41:02.000 He wrote 50 books.

01:41:03.000 He was the prime minister of England when he was needed, and he was kicked out when he wasn't.

01:41:07.000 It's Winston Churchill.

01:41:09.000 Misunderstood, kicked out of history.

01:41:11.000 Didn't do everything perfect, but he explained his mistakes better than any other leader, warned about communism, and he was really, really right about the National Socialist Workers' Party.

01:41:20.000 So on December 6, 1941, our country was under attack. 0.90

01:41:24.000 5,000 people died in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor.

01:41:28.000 An unspeakable preemptive strike against a nation, us, that said, we don't want to get involved in another war.

01:41:34.000 We lost enough in World War I. We're going to do isolation, non-engagement.

01:41:39.000 Go kill yourselves, Europe and Asia. 1.00

01:41:41.000 That was our position. 0.99

01:41:43.000 And FDR was a little bit on the edge of where he wanted to get involved or not.

01:41:47.000 We did an oil embargo against Japan, and Imperial Japan thought that they could get us into the battle, which would then smoke us out, and eventually we'd never get involved in Asia again. 0.64

01:41:56.000 And they were, honestly, their pride was their downfall. 0.81

01:41:59.000 They preemptively striked Pearl Harbor, day that will live in infamy.

01:42:03.000 People cried in the streets of America and people all of a sudden got into that act of posture.

01:42:08.000 But there was only one person that is documented to be smiling on the morning of Pearl Harbor.

01:42:14.000 Only one person that had a smile a mile wide, and that was the greatest man in the 20th century, Winston Churchill.

01:42:20.000 So he went into his war cabinet with his famous cigar, probably on two hours of sleep after a half glass of whiskey, kind of very complicated man.

01:42:28.000 And he smiles to his war cabinet and he says, We've won the war.

01:42:33.000 And his war cabinet says, What are you talking about?

01:42:35.000 Have you lost your mind?

01:42:37.000 They just bombed a hospital last night in London.

01:42:41.000 We don't have a navy.

01:42:43.000 We just evacuated from Dunkirk a couple hundred thousand troops that were basically for slaughter and they don't want to redeploy.

01:42:52.000 We're losing 300 Royal Air Force members a day because of the German Luftwaffe.

01:42:58.000 They are bombing us shock and awe, and the people of London want us to sue for peace.

01:43:02.000 What do you mean we've won the war, Winston Churchill?

01:43:06.000 And he smiles and takes a puff out of his cigar.

01:43:09.000 He says, No.

01:43:11.000 The Americans have woken up.

01:43:14.000 We have won the war.

01:43:18.000 Yeah.

01:43:20.000 And I tell you here today that no matter what we're up against, that that was only 80 years ago.

01:43:27.000 And those are the stories that we should tell our children.

01:43:30.000 What he was really saying is that people that were on the sidelines that got in the arena that were pushing back against what was wrong, when that happens, it's over.

01:43:40.000 That all of a sudden, when people that were spectators, that are participants, it's over.

01:43:44.000 And Winston Churchill, being a student of history, writing 50 books before, he knew that when people that otherwise were just doing their thing got out of the seats and into what matters, it's over.

01:43:57.000 And so my call to action tonight is that if you get out of your seats and get into what matters, all of a sudden, we are going to win.

01:44:05.000 And that's why I have hope.

01:44:07.000 Yeah.

01:44:13.000 Thank you.

01:44:17.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

01:44:18.000 Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.

01:44:21.000 God bless you guys.

01:44:22.000 Speak to you soon.

The Charlie Kirk Show - May 15, 2021

A Call to Spiritual Arms to Save the American Church

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