00:00:41.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:00:52.000And now I'd like us to get to our guest, the real reason that you're here tonight.
00:00:57.000And 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.
00:01:12.000And one of my things, one of the things I'm curious about is what has brought you to this?
00:01:35.000I grew up in a Bible-believing church in the suburbs of Chicago.
00:01:39.000Prior to that, I gave my life to Christ when I was in fifth grade at Christian Heritage Academy, founded by Wayne Grudem.
00:01:46.000You might know Wayne, a very famous theologian who actually has become a very dear friend.
00:01:51.000And 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.
00:02:02.000And so I started Turning Point, a very long story short in June of 2012.
00:02:11.000Instead of going to college, I took a gap year and it's been eight and a half gap years.
00:02:16.000So it's been a very unusual, very blessed journey.
00:02:21.000And a couple years ago, I met my now pastor, Rob McCoy, who is terrific.
00:02:28.000And some of you might follow him on YouTube.
00:02:31.000He'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.
00:02:39.000And Rob was speaking at an event, and I had no idea who he was.
00:02:43.000And then he finished his remarks by saying, Oh, I got to go speak, you know, go give a sermon at church.
00:02:48.000I said, Wow, I've never heard a pastor talk like that before.
00:02:52.000And he said, Charlie, I want to challenge you.
00:02:55.000He 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.
00:03:10.000And I said, Well, Rob, I was taught in the church that we don't do that.
00:03:13.000And he's like, I'm going to have you pray for that.
00:03:15.000So we started talking, and I realized that there's an immense amount of scripture and biblical backing.
00:03:23.000And so, just so you know, of why I believe what I believe, I believe in the inerrancy of scripture.
00:03:27.000I believe in the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
00:03:32.000I believe in the triune God and the basics of the Nicene Creed.
00:03:42.000But I'm unafraid to talk about my faith.
00:03:45.000And I go to college campuses, so you don't have to.
00:03:48.000And I bring this message of truth to sometimes the darkest places, even darker than Seattle at times, believe it or not.
00:03:55.000But 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.
00:04:05.000Just 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.
00:04:14.000And especially around this idea of politics in the church, I just thought I'd be the first person ever to do that.
00:04:20.000Politics is not the right word, just government, values, morals.
00:04:23.000I'm just using a filler word for that.
00:04:25.000And so then I started to get invited to more churches.
00:04:28.000And 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.
00:04:41.000When I was giving these speeches, people were not listening to me.
00:04:46.000They were waiting for me to tell them what to do.
00:04:49.000Is 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.
00:05:02.000Just a cultural onslaught, if you will.
00:05:06.000And 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.
00:05:26.000It was improved upon by activist pastors.
00:05:29.000It 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.
00:05:39.000Most people don't know that about Billy Graham, that he was an ardent anti-communist, one of his most beautiful sermons.
00:05:45.000And 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.
00:05:52.000And the counselor of the king is the body of Christ.
00:05:55.000And the counselor to the king is the pastors in the churches.
00:05:58.000And while we've been doing budgets and baptisms and bigger buildings, the secular humanists, they've been taking terrain.
00:06:05.000And I'm so just encouraged by what you're doing here, Alec, truly, because this is the time for us to rise and stand.
00:06:11.000And the Bible says very clearly to occupy till I come.
00:06:15.000And 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.
00:06:30.000You 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.
00:06:42.000But 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?
00:06:56.000I 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.
00:07:08.000And like I've heard you say frequently, that's going to be coming to a church near you sooner than we anticipate.
00:07:16.000And that's not conspiracy theory because it's happening in Canada.
00:07:22.000I'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.
00:08:17.000The 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.
00:08:32.000But 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.
00:08:46.000So that's, that's a very, and then it goes on to say that your welfare is tied to the city's welfare.
00:08:56.000Basically what the Lord is saying while they were in exile, by the way, this is why they were not in Israel.
00:09:02.000It 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.
00:09:36.000The window for religious liberty is shrinking.
00:09:39.000That 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.
00:09:57.000I 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.
00:10:10.000And I believe that's what our mission should be.
00:10:13.000We need to be the counselor to the king.
00:10:15.000And the founding fathers wrote extensively about this in the Federalist Papers.
00:10:18.000You 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.
00:10:31.000He said the Constitution was written only for a moral and religious people.
00:10:36.000It is wholly inadequate to the people of any other.
00:10:39.000And what they're getting at, and they've talked about in the Federalist Papers, is look, we're betting on the church.
00:10:49.000So what, you guys ever do a trust fall where you just kind of just fall backwards?
00:10:54.000Well, through the first great awakening, the second great awakening, third awakening, and fourth great awakening, America was in free fall.
00:11:00.000Maybe because of alcoholism in the 1820s, slavery in the 1860s, or even secular Marxism in the 1950s or 1960s.
00:11:08.000And every time it was the church that caught the country and brought it back into its proper place.
00:11:14.000And we as Christians, we've had it really, really good the last couple decades.
00:11:20.000We 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.
00:11:27.000We haven't actually had to have robust discussions of men are men and women are women.
00:11:39.000And 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.
00:11:50.000And there's a lot of reasons why this is happening.
00:11:53.000And 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.
00:11:59.000It's one of the most famous verses that almost every single church will be able to finish the sentence for me.
00:12:04.000But I'm going to challenge you to go back to the Greek and maybe reconsider it.
00:12:07.000It's when Jesus brought his disciples up to the mouth of the Jordan River, Caesarea, Philippi.
00:12:12.000Many of you in Israel have been there.
00:12:13.000And he says, Who do men say that I am?
00:12:16.000And the famous dialogue goes back and forth.
00:12:19.000And they say, oh, some say you're John the Baptist, some say you're Elijah.
00:12:22.000And 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.
00:12:31.000Now, an ecclesia was a very specific thing.
00:12:36.000They did not say synaguge, did not say temple, but an ecclesia was a community gathering in ancient Greece.
00:12:44.000It was a place where people went to talk about what was happening in their local area.
00:12:49.000An ecclesia was basically a city council meeting.
00:12:53.000It was a place where people prayed and fasted before they walked in.
00:12:56.000And 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.
00:13:04.000I wonder what country has those two words as desired purposes.
00:13:09.000I believe what Christ was saying as it's translated into Koinier Greek was arguing for not compartmentalized Christianity.
00:13:18.000Not 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.
00:13:25.000No, bold Christianity, go out into the streets and proclaim the truth and the gospel.
00:14:18.000And 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?
00:14:28.000What does the Bible say about private property?
00:14:29.000What does the Bible say about marriage?
00:14:31.000What does the Bible say about transgenderism?
00:14:46.000And 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.
00:15:06.000So 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.
00:15:13.000And if the position is, hey, we're not going to impact that, then I think that's the wrong position.
00:18:34.000Instead, 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.
00:19:43.000But 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.
00:19:58.000You know, like, I'm half kidding with that one.
00:20:00.000But the point is that it's basically everything.
00:20:03.000But the one thing that they always have been trying to either weaken or try to be obedient or infiltrate is the American church.
00:20:11.000So I want to reinforce what I said about Billy Graham.
00:20:13.000All of our lives have been touched by Billy Graham.
00:20:16.000God 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.
00:20:28.000But he was able, a very important question I think we should ask is: why didn't communism work in America in the 1950s?
00:20:56.000It'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.
00:21:09.000We in this church believe that rights come from God and that communism is really a materialistic philosophy that is at odds with our worldview.
00:21:19.000And 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.
00:21:37.000We were founded by Protestant Christians from the Mayflower on forward.
00:21:41.000Happy to dive into that if there's interest, because it's a beautiful history.
00:22:12.000They want to get rid of local police and replace it with national police.
00:22:19.000They 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.
00:22:29.000The idea of a local sheriff gives them great concern.
00:23:09.000We 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.
00:23:23.000It'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.
00:23:33.000And we pray, we believe that prayer changes things.
00:23:36.000That's why I'm so glad to hear you say this is a spiritual battle.
00:23:41.000But 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.
00:23:57.000We've got to keep calling on God, believing that revival is the only hope that we have.
00:24:04.000And one of the most expensive books I've ever bought is a little book called written in 1904 called England Before and After Wesley.
00:24:15.000And 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.
00:24:25.000And yet, when the revival broke out, the transformation was so real that it had an immediate impact on things like child labor laws.
00:24:35.000It changed the whole attitude towards slavery.
00:24:39.000Wilberforce did a great job, but he did it.
00:24:42.000I 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.
00:24:59.000So 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.
00:25:15.000But 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.
00:25:27.000We'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.
00:25:39.000Yeah, 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.
00:27:41.000And let's just say, like, what do we believe and why do we believe it?
00:27:44.000And what are we willing to do, at least on the local level, to contest for those beliefs where it matters.
00:27:51.000And the school board's a great example.
00:27:53.000Because some of you might say, well, my kids don't go to these local schools.
00:27:57.000Well, 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.
00:28:14.000That's something that should bother you.
00:28:16.000And so we should always try to impact government for God's purpose.
00:28:22.000Remember, counselor to the king, which is replicated time and time again throughout the scriptures.
00:28:27.000And if you don't know how to do it, that's okay.
00:28:30.000There's a lot of great organizations, ours included, that can show you how to make a positive difference.
00:28:51.000We need more courage in our country, right?
00:28:54.000Well, courage is doing the right thing when you don't know how it's going to work out.
00:28:59.000One of the reasons why we have a crisis in courage in our country is because the country has become so secular.
00:29:06.000Is 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.
00:29:16.000I mean, that was an act of absolute courage.
00:29:19.000By 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.
00:29:31.000But 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.
00:29:44.000You know how lucky we are even to have that discussion?
00:29:47.000This, even this little snapshot that we can gather.
00:29:51.000And 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.
00:30:18.000But 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.
00:30:28.000And so that's where the church has to rise up.
00:30:32.000And I can just encourage you guys, though.
00:30:34.000I'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.
00:32:18.000I did three services with them this last week.
00:32:20.000Cody 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.
00:32:31.000Now they've added a third service of 500 people at every single service.
00:32:34.000What I'm getting at here is that the Lord will bless you when you take public, courageous stances in this time.
00:32:41.000The Lord is testing his church right now.
00:33:00.000We'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.
00:33:13.000And 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.
00:33:32.000I want to just, I want to, you do not, no, no, seriously.
00:33:35.000I 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.
00:33:45.000And the moment was different, but now you're in it.
00:34:06.000It was by the Warren Court issued this opinion.
00:34:08.000It is, however, in a singular letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Convention in January of 1803.
00:34:15.000I might have my months a little bit confused, which is taken completely out of context.
00:34:20.000Interestingly enough, Jefferson allowed church service to be conducted in the Capitol Rotunda.
00:34:25.000He allowed Christmas services to be done in the Supreme Court building.
00:34:28.000The 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.
00:34:40.000What were the Founding Fathers really worried about?
00:34:42.000They were worried about an Episcopalian, Catholic, Presbyterian, or Anglican church being the dominant religion.
00:34:50.000So they were worried about a singular church being a national church.
00:34:53.000Now, we live in a pluralistic, multicultural society, not in a theocracy.
00:34:58.000But 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.
00:35:06.000Let's start with the Declaration of Independence.
00:35:08.000The Declaration of Independence, God is mentioned four times.
00:35:11.000And so the Declaration is a beautiful document.
00:35:13.000So it starts with the universal, then it gets to the specific, and then it ends with the universal.
00:35:18.000So the universal, it says, so clearly, when in the course of human events, what does that mean?
00:35:58.000God over everything, and God, the judiciary, God, the legislator, and God the executor.
00:36:03.000That's where we got our three branches of government from.
00:36:05.000So 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.
00:36:11.000Which 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.
00:36:27.000So, this idea of separation of church and state, let's pretend that they're right with their unconstitutional belief.
00:36:40.000And let's keep the state out of the church.
00:36:43.000Let's keep the state out of the church.
00:36:46.000See, they've always been worried about the church taking over the state, when in reality, the state's taking over the church.
00:36:54.000So, all of a sudden, let's use their own reasoning against them.
00:36:57.000If we want separation of church and state, then county health officials have no business walking into a church.
00:37:02.000If all of a sudden, if they're the that's their own reasoning, right?
00:37:07.000And 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.
00:37:27.000It 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.
00:37:39.000Well, the states created the federal government, the federal government didn't create the state.
00:37:42.000So, 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?
00:37:53.000So, 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.
00:38:04.000And that is just, that's just that's that is replicates itself no matter who is in charge, right?
00:38:10.000Whether 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.
00:38:23.000It 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.
00:38:29.000It comes from a Greek word, tyrannos, which means master over.
00:38:33.000So, the founding fathers said, Well, what's the best way we can make sure that doesn't happen?
00:38:37.000Let's try to spread out the power as far as possible.
00:38:40.000So, then you become in touch with that power and you could do something against it.
00:38:44.000And so, I hear this idea that we're wrestling with this idea of the separation of church and state.
00:38:53.000And so, but now I think that they've even crossed their own line.
00:38:56.000And 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.
00:39:17.000That 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.
00:39:26.000Like that would use the full force of the government to go after that.
00:39:30.000Is that I hear and I sympathize with that.
00:39:34.000And 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.
00:39:52.000And my position is obviously very public and very clear, which is that we have a moral prerogative to do that at this moment.
00:40:05.000When 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.
00:40:20.000I think that those are the kinds of things that have stirred me in ways that I know have made some folks uncomfortable.
00:40:28.000But to think that a mother taking a 13-year-old son or daughter into the doctor is ushered out of the doctor's office.
00:40:38.000I mean, I remember when I was pastoring in Cedar Rapids, that was 35 years ago.
00:40:43.000And one of our board members' daughters got pregnant at 13.
00:40:48.000And 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.
00:41:07.000Listen, 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.
00:41:30.000And then a week later, I went scrambling for the tape to try to erase that.
00:41:36.000So we're at a point where we can entertain your questions.
00:41:41.000That prompted a question I'd love to have you comment on before we go to these questions.
00:41:46.000And that is, what's your take on public education and on higher education?
00:41:56.000And what should people do who are in this congregation who are either teaching in public school or engaged in higher education?
00:42:12.000So now I'm really going to offend people.
00:42:13.000So, no, as you know, I have some very outspoken views on this stuff.
00:42:18.000And I'll walk you through rationally why I believe what I believe on this.
00:42:21.000So 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.
00:42:34.000I'm a huge believer in school choice and homeschooling in particular.
00:42:38.000And I think we have to double our homeschooling population in the next five years.
00:42:42.000And 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.
00:42:54.000I had some really, really good teachers growing up.
00:42:57.000I went to public school after I went to private Christian school.
00:43:01.000So sixth grade through senior year in high school, I was in public school.
00:43:05.000And I had some teachers that were phenomenal, that really got me interested in U.S. history.
00:43:10.000And I had some teachers that should not have been teachers.
00:43:14.000So 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.
00:43:24.000And so that's a lot easier said than done.
00:43:27.000But let me just, you asked me about the teacher side of it.
00:43:29.000Okay, so the higher education, that's the one that I really focus on.
00:43:32.000I just want to also give a little shout out to our Turning Point USA students that are here.
00:43:53.000Again, I took a gap year, decade, whatever.
00:43:57.000Ended up being the right thing for me.
00:43:59.000So I'm the best and the worst person to talk about this topic.
00:44:02.000I'm the best because I could talk about the success of not going to college.
00:44:05.000I'm the worst because I never actually went to college.
00:44:07.000With 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.
00:44:18.000We have way too many people going to college in our country.
00:44:25.000And so, and so I'm saying the private part out loud.
00:44:29.000I'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.
00:44:36.000And we have, I said I'm going to start offending people, so I'm just going right into it, right?
00:44:42.000The political thing, now all of a sudden, but look, I'm going to tell you why I believe it, I believe.
00:44:54.000Could 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.
00:45:02.000They would be closed for by the Better Business Bureau.
00:45:05.000They've been investigated by state authorities.
00:45:19.000Well, 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.
00:45:45.000But 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.
00:45:55.000And so I think we've done a real disservice in this country.
00:45:58.000And so if anyone tries to build a home recently, we have a massive deficit in manual labor in our country.
00:46:28.000But no, I want you to pray on that tonight.
00:46:30.000Are you okay if you tell your neighbor that your kid became a plumber?
00:46:34.000And you're laughing because, no, no, but think about it.
00:46:37.000Because deep down, no one in the upper middle class of this country wants to justify to their friends that your kid's working construction.
00:46:46.000You'd rather have your kid lose his values or her values than have to tell your friends that they're working construction.
00:46:55.000The number one reason why kids say they go to college is because of parents, not because they want to.
00:47:00.000And yet we have this manufactured cycle of indebtedness, of bad ideas, of evangelistic nihilism, of unemployment, of suicide, of depression.
00:47:10.000And 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.
00:47:22.000We have Hunter Biden that just became a college professor at Tulane and Peter Strzzok, who's a college professor at Georgetown.
00:47:28.000And 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.
00:48:49.000And so this is a different way to view education in our country that we haven't done.
00:48:53.000And let me be very clear: the current college model hurts minorities and lower income earners the most.
00:49:00.000They'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.
00:49:05.000So 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.
00:49:24.000I like this question because it's someone who's getting ready to do something.
00:49:29.000I won't have you stand up, but I'm meeting this local school board this Tuesday about CRT.
00:49:38.000Any suggestions you can give me and my husband?
00:49:42.000Well, first of all, whomever that person is, thank you for your courage to go talk to your school board members.
00:49:47.000I want to just encourage you for that.
00:49:57.000And 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.
00:50:35.000And 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.
00:50:54.000It'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.
00:51:04.000In fact, you know what Marx called religion?
00:51:05.000The opiate of the masses is what Karl Marx called religion.
00:51:09.000He said it makes you feel good, but it does no good.
00:51:11.000And the sooner you can get religion out of society, everything will get better.
00:51:14.000So Marxist philosophy, he got some things right, very few things, not even worth talking about.
00:51:20.000But if anyone's interested, we could talk about that.
00:51:22.000But Karl Marx basically believed everything in life is a power struggle, whether you realize it or not.
00:51:28.000And basically, the power struggle that he diagnosed as the most important is the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie, right?
00:51:35.000The people that own the companies and the people that work at the companies.
00:52:00.000We do not believe people are basically good.
00:52:02.000You all need Jesus Christ, no matter how good of a person you think you are.
00:52:06.000Now, that's not an inconsequential thing.
00:52:08.000Because how you believe human beings are in nature actually is the most important guiding principle of how you construct your political philosophy.
00:52:18.000Well, if you think people are naturally good, then how do you explain all the suffering?
00:52:23.000Or it's because of private property or capitalism.
00:52:25.000You start to see how these things start to manifest in the political beliefs.
00:52:28.000So 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.
00:52:39.000There 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.
00:53:52.000Here's just a couple of beliefs of critical race theory.
00:53:55.000And 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.
00:54:22.000And whether you realize it or not, there's some people in charge and there's some people not in charge.
00:54:27.000And 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.
00:54:36.000Critical race theory says math and science is a Western created tyranny.
00:54:44.000Bill 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.
00:56:10.000So they use the Christian ethic against you.
00:56:14.000They 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.
00:56:26.000So 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.
00:56:35.000They take something that America believes and uses it against you for a satanic purpose.
00:56:42.000Instead 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.
00:56:53.000So what do you talk about critical race theory?
00:56:55.000Well, if you're talking to the school board meeting, I would just slide a book across the table.
00:56:59.000It's written by an atheist, a liberal by the name of James Lindsay.
00:57:05.000And he and I are very good friends, and we agree on very little theologically, like nothing.
00:57:11.000However, he writes the book, and it's a little infuriating, and I've told him this, from a liberal perspective, okay?
00:57:17.000Which actually might be very helpful for this general area, okay?
00:57:20.000His 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.
00:57:34.000So 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.
00:57:42.000It's not written by me, who's a very outspoken Christian conservative.
00:57:46.000But I find the piece of literature to be phenomenal and wise because he diagnoses it perfectly.
00:57:52.000Where it comes from, where it's going, its limitations.
00:57:55.000Again, it's called Cynical Theories by James Lindsay.
00:57:58.000I've probably sold him like 30,000 books.
00:58:02.000And by the way, I want it to be spread because it's a great piece of literature.
00:58:05.000Let 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.
00:58:11.000That'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.
00:58:22.000Politics aside, this stuff is rubbish.
00:58:26.000It makes children think about race all the time.
00:58:28.000It makes them hate each other, hate our country, and hate themselves.
00:58:32.000And 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.
00:58:37.000I 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.
00:58:44.000It was 53% English as a second language.
00:58:46.000As a white Christian male, I was a minority in the high school I went into.
00:58:51.000And a really amazing thing happened in our high school is that we were always taught that skin color meant nothing and values meant everything.
00:59:51.000And that's why I'm so passionate about this, honestly, because I didn't go to your typical white upper-middle-class private school.
00:59:57.000I went to a school that really looked like America.
01:00:00.000And we cared about the things that should matter.
01:00:03.000And now I see it just going in such a troubling and awful direction.
01:00:06.000So I know that was a little bit of a longer-winded response, but I think the issue necessitates that.
01:00:11.000And 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.
01:00:23.000But some of the things we've talked about, particularly Star Parker, is costing us.
01:00:29.000Some 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.
01:00:47.000This is why churches and families are so divided right now and why we have to have these kinds of discussions so we can clarify.
01:00:55.000We'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?
01:01:15.000What 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?
01:02:55.000And again, I'm so passionate about this because I saw this work in my high school.
01:03:01.000I grew up in this America 10 years ago, where I know it's exactly, it's like 10 years ago.
01:03:08.000I feel like I'm talking about a different civilization.
01:03:11.000And I'm seeing it just being unwound by, quite honestly, just misrepresentations and lies.
01:03:17.000And whether it be the lie of policing or all these different things that's just so pathological and emotive.
01:03:23.000And 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.
01:05:25.000Take down the flags, read about critical race theory, and just really, really pray about what you're doing.
01:05:31.000I don't know if that's going to happen or not.
01:05:33.000And 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.
01:05:45.000And then the instant that this mass social movement happened, they weighed in on that, which I found to be very perplexing.
01:05:52.000I read, I just got back from vacation and read Vadi Bakum's book on there.
01:05:56.000And 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.
01:06:15.000And 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.
01:06:29.000And so I was unaware of the way they are systematically really reframing the details of the things that we're seeing on the news.
01:06:41.000So 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.
01:06:56.000Yeah, 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.
01:07:08.000It is one of the biggest lies ever told on the American population.
01:07:11.000The Washington Post themselves, they put together a database of unarmed black people being killed by police.
01:07:18.000And their number at the highest level was 16.
01:07:21.000And out of those 16 people, about 10 you could say they were either driving a car, they threatened that they had a weapon.
01:07:30.000And then out of the six remaining, four of them have already been tried for murder.
01:07:33.000So there's about 385 million police interactions in our country every single year.
01:07:39.000And 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.
01:07:51.000And so one of the big issues, they say, is that there's a bias in racial policing.
01:07:56.000Well, a Harvard professor last name Breyer did an entire study of 400 different police departments across the country.
01:08:03.000A black economist at Harvard University, and he found zero evidence of racial bias in any single police department across the country.
01:08:12.000He said that police officers are more restrained when it comes to black suspects and they're more likely to use force against white suspects.
01:08:18.000In 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.
01:08:27.000Now, some people will say that black people are more likely to have interactions with police.
01:08:31.000Well, 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.
01:08:44.000You're going to have more police interactions.
01:08:46.000And I'm going to say this very boldly.
01:08:48.000In 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.
01:08:56.000He 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.
01:09:06.000He nearly tripled the police force on the streets of New York City.
01:09:10.000It went from nearly 1,600 a year down to 300, and Bloomberg got it down to 100.
01:09:15.000Those are black lives that were being saved because of an increased police presence.
01:09:19.000Now, I'm all for understanding a piece-by-piece, situation-by-situation, admitting when a tragedy or atrocity happens.
01:09:26.000But 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.
01:09:42.000Excuse 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.
01:10:21.000So, another question: How can the modern conservative movement reconcile the inflexibility of the Bible's text and the flexibility of modern social morals?
01:10:51.000Yeah, boy, I think that, I mean, we'll just take one example.
01:10:55.000I think the conservative movement, to the best capacity that it can, should try to remain to the inflexibility of the scriptures.
01:11:02.000Let's just talk about the life issue, right?
01:11:05.000I 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.
01:11:14.000That it said very clearly that the baby, the human being, jumped in, I believe it was Mary's, Elizabeth Womb, that's exactly right.
01:11:22.000Elizabeth's womb's in John 2 or John 3.
01:11:24.000You would know the scriptures far better than I would.
01:11:27.000And that's a human being that's deserving and worthy of protection.
01:11:31.000And so I'm pretty outspoken on this, that the conservative movement should have a non-negotiable position when it comes to life.
01:11:38.000And that is that a million abortions a year is a moral stain on our country.
01:11:44.000And so, but I'm not exactly sure the specifics of what they mean by the sliding social morals.
01:11:53.000I mean, I'll be very honest that, you know, I'll give you an example on this, right?
01:11:58.000Where I just drew the line and I got all sorts of fun feedback.
01:12:01.000And I've met Jenner many different times, and I think Jenner's a very nice person.
01:12:06.000But the Republican Party should not be the party of gender dysphoria.
01:12:10.000We 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.
01:12:59.000Let'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.
01:13:10.000But 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?
01:13:24.000And if the word of God is inflexible on certain things, I heard the other day someone say, well, Jesus never addressed homosexuality.
01:13:32.000Well, 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.
01:13:46.000And the language that Jesus used is directly out of Genesis.
01:13:51.000So it might not be a direct reference to homosexuality, but Jesus is very clear.
01:13:57.000And of course, we believe that all of Scripture is Holy Spirit breathed.
01:14:02.000So whether it's Jesus' literal words or whether it's the Apostle Paul in Romans 1, there is an inflexibility to scripture.
01:14:11.000And we're called to lovingly and gracefully stand there.
01:14:17.000Otherwise, what have we got to stand on?
01:14:20.000Yeah, 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.
01:14:30.000Number one, which is pretty simple, that you should support candidates that believe in an open church and that church is essential.
01:14:37.000The candidates that are willing to say that the church is the most essential institution in the country, of which I believe.
01:14:42.000That there is no church, there is no ability to congregate or gather.
01:14:46.000First Amendment for a reason, free expression clause, and the establishment clause, that that should be something that is pretty much a non-negotiable.
01:14:54.000I already talked about life, when life begins.
01:14:56.000It's a pretty important thing for a society to get right.
01:14:59.000And 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.
01:15:11.000And so whatever that party lands you, whatever party believes those three things, then so be it.
01:15:16.000And you're right, there is an inflexibility to scripture.
01:15:20.000And we kind of have this new movement that's happening that kind of thinks of Jesus as kind of this hippie figure.
01:15:28.000that 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.
01:15:35.000You guys kind of heard about this recently?
01:16:32.000That really is the challenge for pastors.
01:16:35.000How 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?
01:16:44.000Yeah, look, I'm going to say something very clear.
01:16:46.000Progressive Christianity is not biblical Christianity.
01:17:20.000But look, I'm going to offer just some grace and maybe progressive Christianity.
01:17:24.000I think that they want to see the world be made a better place.
01:17:27.000Some 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.
01:17:41.000So 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.
01:17:58.000It'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.
01:18:20.000And those things have proven the test of time to always be the best thing for humanity.
01:18:26.000And so I'm going to just offer just a bridge.
01:18:28.000You know, if there is progressive Christians, they say, you know what, I want the best thing for the world.
01:18:32.000And I would just ask very simply, you know, maybe they are open to socialism.
01:18:37.000Didn't work for the apostles right after Jesus.
01:18:40.000They actually tried to live in a commune and it failed terribly.
01:18:42.000Didn'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.
01:19:39.000So these are really important conversations to have.
01:19:42.000And 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.
01:19:53.000When 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.
01:20:00.000And that any of the decay that you're seeing is actually largely attributable to us turning our back on biblical constructs.
01:20:07.000Any 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.
01:20:18.000And it's a biblical idea to have a mother and a father and a nuclear family.
01:20:22.000That is something that has stood the test of time.
01:20:24.000And so that's how I would communicate with progressive Christians.
01:20:28.000I can't get many to talk to me, which is something that is open for the dialogue.
01:21:05.000Every 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.
01:21:21.000But it's not something that we should forget.
01:21:23.000It's something we should repeat because that sort of bend towards the inevitable utopia on earth, the progressive trajectory.
01:21:30.000It almost always gets captured and hijacked by self-interested despots and dictators that want to remake the world in their image.
01:21:37.000It almost never actually results in the best intentions of the activists, ever.
01:22:35.000Like, that's like the ultimate act of pride.
01:22:38.000Like, everyone else except me was a bad dictator.
01:22:41.000Just give me a bunch of power and we're going to figure that out.
01:22:44.000Like, excuse me while I say, no, we're going to limit power in all forms and fashion.
01:22:49.000And 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.
01:23:04.000I just hope they'll take up my office.
01:23:06.000I 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.
01:23:27.000I 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.
01:23:36.000And so either that's inerrant or it's not, right?
01:23:43.000So that's something they're going to have to explain.
01:23:45.000They'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.
01:23:53.000Well, what Paul is saying is the goal is a quiet and peaceable life.
01:23:57.000So if you don't have it, should we do something about it?
01:24:00.000And so these are really important questions, I think, to wrestle with, which I think the answers are rather clear.
01:24:06.000And 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?
01:24:15.000Now, this is largely said, Jesus was kind of staying out of government.
01:24:20.000I don't think that's the correct interpretation.
01:24:22.000Wayne Grudem would agree with me here, who again was on the board of translating the English Standard Version.
01:24:27.000If Caesar heard Jesus say that, he would have had him hung for treason.
01:24:31.000Because 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.
01:24:53.000And 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.
01:25:11.000You know, he's really good because everything that I say scripturally comes from him.
01:25:16.000But 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.
01:26:27.000And so it also says that they're put there for your good.
01:26:30.000And so, insofar that that no longer is the case, then that very well might be broken.
01:26:37.000And 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.
01:26:43.000And I think they have some explaining to do.
01:26:45.000Like, was Rosa Parks in defiance to biblical text when she decided to push back against segregationists in the American South?
01:26:53.000That's a question that if they believe in non-political involvement, that they have to answer.
01:26:59.000I would say, no, of course she was doing the moral thing.
01:27:01.000That act of civil disobedience was the correct thing, similar to Christ very clearly speaking truth and being able and willing to accept the punishment.
01:27:12.000So 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.
01:27:54.000I think that's a pretty self-evident thing.
01:27:57.000But again, the entire New Testament is a gospel of liberation and is of freedom.
01:28:05.000And then you just want to get to a pragmatic, just like utilitarian argument, which I hate making, right?
01:28:09.000I just, I don't like making these arguments.
01:28:12.000But if we don't do anything, it's going to get harder to spread the gospel.
01:28:16.000And so that's a pretty pragmatic argument, right?
01:28:18.000That's going to be just, I think, inarguable.
01:28:20.000And 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.
01:28:35.000We've been given avenues like our vote and our involvement that really is a privilege that the New Testament apostles didn't have.
01:28:46.000You had no way to express concern for what was happening.
01:28:52.000But 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.
01:29:07.000And so Jesus was not so disengaged himself that he didn't recognize some of the broken leaders in his day for what they were.
01:29:54.000Parable 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.
01:30:08.000I think it might be servant, not slave, in the original Greek.
01:30:11.000Anyway, that each one of them gets doled a different talent, which was a currency.
01:30:15.000And it's like, what did you do with what I gave you?
01:30:17.000So one of them hid it and did nothing.
01:30:23.000And 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.
01:30:32.000And so it says very clearly in the Bible that nations will be judged, that nations will be judged.
01:30:38.000I 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.
01:30:47.000And I believe that we're going to have to hold account to this, because this is not the human norm.
01:30:50.000What we're experiencing right now is the human exception, our access to medicine, transportation, communication, education, capacity to gather, to clothe ourselves, sanitation.
01:31:01.000I mean, we're living a really good life.
01:31:03.000And 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.
01:31:21.000I'd like to have you wrap up with this comment.
01:31:29.000Seeing 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?
01:31:44.000And secondly, what do you see of the condition of the church?
01:31:48.000You 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.
01:32:02.000Other than those churches, what do you see of the condition of the church?
01:33:28.000I 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.
01:34:10.000But in a weird way, a political guy is bringing people into the church, not bringing people out of the church.
01:34:17.000And 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.
01:34:28.000Maybe 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.
01:34:38.000Because liberty is not man's idea, it's God's idea.
01:34:41.000And so, I think there's something very special happening, and the spirit is moving in a dramatic way.
01:36:51.000And I think that's just, it flows downstream from the most important stuff.
01:36:54.000It flows downstream from culture and downstream from morals and downstream from the public square, right?
01:36:59.000I 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.
01:37:10.000And then all that other stuff starts to flow.
01:37:12.000And so I think that it's going to happen.
01:37:14.000I think it's going to have to happen differently, though.
01:37:16.000I think it's going to have to happen differently.
01:37:18.000It's going to require Christians to start to contest and take terrain, to occupy till he comes.
01:37:24.000To 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.
01:39:45.000No 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.
01:39:53.000Where 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.
01:40:01.000It's like, no, no, no, no, you guys can be on the field and in the game.
01:40:04.000This is one of the few things that every single one of you can be equally participant in.
01:40:09.000Again, 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.
01:40:16.000And so no more of the kind of, hey, Charlie, I'm cheering you on.
01:40:19.000The next time I want to hear, man, Charlie, I'm right beside you.
01:41:11.000Didn'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.
01:41:20.000So on December 6, 1941, our country was under attack.
01:41:24.0005,000 people died in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor.
01:41:28.000An unspeakable preemptive strike against a nation, us, that said, we don't want to get involved in another war.
01:41:34.000We lost enough in World War I. We're going to do isolation, non-engagement.
01:41:43.000And FDR was a little bit on the edge of where he wanted to get involved or not.
01:41:47.000We 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.
01:41:56.000And they were, honestly, their pride was their downfall.
01:41:59.000They preemptively striked Pearl Harbor, day that will live in infamy.
01:42:03.000People cried in the streets of America and people all of a sudden got into that act of posture.
01:42:08.000But there was only one person that is documented to be smiling on the morning of Pearl Harbor.
01:42:14.000Only one person that had a smile a mile wide, and that was the greatest man in the 20th century, Winston Churchill.
01:42:20.000So 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.
01:42:28.000And he smiles to his war cabinet and he says, We've won the war.
01:42:33.000And his war cabinet says, What are you talking about?
01:43:20.000And I tell you here today that no matter what we're up against, that that was only 80 years ago.
01:43:27.000And those are the stories that we should tell our children.
01:43:30.000What 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.
01:43:40.000That all of a sudden, when people that were spectators, that are participants, it's over.
01:43:44.000And 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.
01:43:57.000And 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.