The Charlie Kirk Show - A Case Study in the Engaged Church with Pastor Gary Hamrick LIVE from Freedom Square

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody, happy Sunday from Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

00:00:04.000 No advertisers in this episode.

00:00:05.000 So I'm only going to mention a couple things.

00:00:07.000 Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of you that are generously stepping up and supporting our program at charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:00:14.000 Thank you, thank you, thank you for that.

00:00:16.000 CharlieKirk.com/slash support is the way you can get behind our work.

00:00:21.000 Make sure you're coming to AmericaFest, everybody.

00:00:22.000 tpusa.com/slash A-M-F-E-S-T, December 18, 19, 2021.

00:00:28.000 I'm going to keep on plugging it because I want to see you all there.

00:00:30.000 It is going to be the biggest event of the year.

00:00:33.000 You don't want to miss it.

00:00:35.000 Buckle up.

00:00:36.000 Here we go.

00:00:37.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:39.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:00:41.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:44.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:48.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:49.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:50.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:00:58.000 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.

00:01:07.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:11.000 Thank you.

00:01:12.000 Boy, it's great to be here.

00:01:14.000 And, you know, we have a lot of competition tonight for everyone's attention happening right now.

00:01:20.000 And it's a perfectly understandable excuse if people are filtering in from there or they had to be there instead.

00:01:27.000 The Scottsdale Unified School District has a school board meeting tonight.

00:01:31.000 So I think that's the reason why some of my favorite faces are doing something that's, I think, more important.

00:01:37.000 You know, they could catch it on the live stream back.

00:01:40.000 But all kidding aside, I got hundreds of emails from moms that said, Charlie, I'm going to the Scottsdale Unified School District board meeting tonight.

00:01:47.000 I'm going to talk about that in a second because, and it ties perfectly into my really good friend that we're going to be introducing in just a second.

00:01:56.000 Because what's happening at the Scottsdale Unified School District feels very similar to what we just saw in Loudoun County just a couple weeks ago.

00:02:06.000 And so we're going to be talking about that.

00:02:08.000 But first, I just want to thank you guys.

00:02:09.000 What a year this has been.

00:02:10.000 This, a year ago, Freedom Square did not exist.

00:02:14.000 A year ago, this was just an idea.

00:02:17.000 And we went out to, you know, the Barnetts and I, we went out to lunch at the Henry.

00:02:22.000 And I said, what if all of a sudden we could organize thousands of people in this local area, Christians and believers, around what it takes to actually influence our local community?

00:02:37.000 And, you know, Pastor Luke and Angel immediately said, We wanted to do something like this.

00:02:41.000 And just credit to Dream City and Dream City Church for stepping into action and for hosting this.

00:02:48.000 Let's just, let's just remember in May, we kicked this off as just a total kind of an unknown idea.

00:02:56.000 How is this going to work out?

00:02:57.000 We went through the dog days of summer here in Arizona.

00:03:00.000 We heard from Jack Hibbs, we had Rob McCoy, we had Eric Metaxas, which was wild, as you guys remember.

00:03:07.000 And what was so amazing, I just want to share with you some of the success stories that have come out of this gathering.

00:03:13.000 We have dozens of people that are now running for local office, for school board, for city council, inspired from this gathering.

00:03:22.000 You might remember a couple months ago, we had Jack Hibbs up here, and I was getting pretty worked up when I was hearing story after story of young nurses that were going to be losing their jobs because they did not want to take the vaccine.

00:03:36.000 Well, I'm happy to say that some of those young ladies that shared those stories because of Freedom Square have found employment in other places because people said, hey, I'll mire you.

00:03:49.000 Not to mention the hundreds, if not thousands of stories of people that have said, Charlie, now I know I'm not alone.

00:03:55.000 Now I know that we can talk about the issues that matter most as Christians and as believers.

00:04:02.000 And so this is the last Freedom Square of the year for many different reasons.

00:04:07.000 Dream City, as many of you may or may not know, kind of changes into a Broadway musical act, I guess you could say.

00:04:15.000 So half of my conversation the last 20 minutes was trying to understand how elephants used to come on the stage.

00:04:22.000 I'm still not quite understanding that.

00:04:24.000 I'm told it will be pretty miraculous, though.

00:04:26.000 So you can see everything's already getting ready for Christmas here.

00:04:29.000 And so I said, you know what?

00:04:30.000 And by the way, and I do want to make sure I mention this, we have a pretty big month too at Turning Point USA in December.

00:04:36.000 We have America Fest coming up.

00:04:39.000 And that's coming at the Phoenix Convention Center in just a couple of weeks, December 18, 19, 2021.

00:04:45.000 I don't know if we have a graphic or not.

00:04:46.000 I probably forgot doing too many things at once.

00:04:48.000 But if any of you guys register and use promo code Freedom Square, you guys get a significant discount there.

00:04:55.000 We have Tucker Carlson coming.

00:04:56.000 We have Kaylee McEnany coming.

00:04:58.000 In fact, let me read all the speakers coming out here in Phoenix.

00:05:01.000 And we want to make sure we bless you guys so that you guys are able to come.

00:05:06.000 It's incredible when you see the amount of kind of talent that we've been able to have.

00:05:11.000 Jesse Waters, Greg Gutfeld, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Madison Cawthorne, 12 members of Congress, Kaylee McEnany, many others.

00:05:21.000 So if you guys want to come, it's tpusa.com/slash amfest.

00:05:25.000 You can't miss it, promo code Freedom Square.

00:05:27.000 But more importantly than that, everyone should come to the Dream City Christmas celebration.

00:05:31.000 Okay, that's more important than what we're doing.

00:05:33.000 But this is the last Freedom Square of the year, and we're going to kick it back off in a hurry in the new year.

00:05:40.000 And I could say this: that this gathering has really put people in an active posture to do what it says that we need to do in Jeremiah 29, 7, which is to demand the welfare of the city that I've put you in, because your welfare is directly tied to your nation's or your city's welfare.

00:05:59.000 We as Christians are called to care about the city that we are in.

00:06:03.000 My wife and I got married back in May, and I said, this is our home.

00:06:06.000 I'm not going to sit idly by and just kind of, you know, be a spectator as this entire thing falls apart.

00:06:12.000 So I want to share two things.

00:06:14.000 I want to talk about the Scottsdale Unified School District, and then I want to talk about an experience I had in the last 72 hours of someone I had an opportunity to hang out with and kind of learn from.

00:06:25.000 And you don't always get to learn from people that are significantly younger than you.

00:06:30.000 I guess some of you might.

00:06:31.000 I don't know.

00:06:31.000 That may or may not be true.

00:06:33.000 At least for me, that's not always true.

00:06:34.000 But the last couple of days were pretty impactful.

00:06:37.000 So let me start with the Scottsdale Unified School District.

00:06:40.000 For those of you that have sent emails, showed up at meetings, and had prayer and concern about this.

00:06:44.000 Thank you, thank you, thank you.

00:06:46.000 Some of you might not even know what's happening at the Scottsdale Unified School District.

00:06:50.000 So a couple weeks ago, because of the persistence of parents, one of the school board members, a man by the name of Jan Michael Greenberg, emailed a Google Drive link to some of the parents, kind of in outrage and disgust, saying, basically, trying to prove them wrong.

00:07:09.000 Now, I'm by no means a technology expert.

00:07:12.000 My team will make fun of me.

00:07:14.000 I kind of have boomer knowledge when it comes to technology.

00:07:16.000 No offense, okay?

00:07:18.000 We're all in it together.

00:07:19.000 By the way, I'm transgenerational, okay?

00:07:21.000 I get to choose what generation I'm in.

00:07:22.000 I disavow the millennials, okay?

00:07:26.000 And so I don't know technology that well, but there is this Google Drive link that then the parents logged into, and what they discovered soon made national news and was met with outrage from many people in this room.

00:07:41.000 That one of the school board members, likely in concert in collusion with the superintendent, was collecting dossiers, private information, hiring private investigators around moms and dads, you that might have showed up at school board meetings.

00:07:57.000 What was found in this document was school board meetings that were less concerned about the fact that Scottsdale Unified School District enrollment is going down, less concerned about how math and test scores are going down, less concerned that unfortunately teachers at Chaparral are sexually assaulting special needs kids.

00:08:15.000 I don't know if you saw that story recently, but that teacher just got arrested.

00:08:19.000 No, no, no.

00:08:19.000 The concern of the Scottsville Unified School District was creating dossiers, creating watch lists for you, the taxpayers.

00:08:30.000 And so I'll read just some of the information.

00:08:33.000 47 parents had in-depth research papers done on them.

00:08:38.000 Divorce records, social security numbers, vacation homes, pictures of them coming in and out of their cars.

00:08:44.000 This is what your school board is doing locally here in Scottsdale.

00:08:49.000 Mortgage data, traffic tickets, family members, and included pictures of multiple pictures of eight-year-olds.

00:08:56.000 Now, the Scottsdale Police Department and the Arizona Attorney General's office is investigating.

00:09:01.000 Thankfully, I don't know if this breaks any laws.

00:09:03.000 I can't imagine that this is in perfect compliance with the law.

00:09:06.000 It should be.

00:09:08.000 Thankfully, one step in the right direction has been taken, where the rest of the school board, with one dissent, decided to vote Jan Michael Greenberg, who by the way, was the president of the school board.

00:09:21.000 He was the president.

00:09:22.000 He is no longer president of the Scottsdale Unified School District Board, which is great.

00:09:26.000 And he is still a member of the school board, okay, still a member of the school board.

00:09:33.000 But right now, I know a lot of people are at that meeting and they are going to stand there till midnight to make sure their voice is heard.

00:09:41.000 And we have to demand the full and total resignation of this individual.

00:09:46.000 This is beyond uncalled for.

00:09:49.000 My experience with this, and all of you have this experience, if we've discovered this, it's probably worse than that, right?

00:09:56.000 That there's probably even worse behavior happening and occurring.

00:10:00.000 And we unfortunately learned from Loudoun County, which we're going to unpack tonight, that the depths that these school board members are willing to go to target parents and to almost criminalize parents who, by the way, you are the stakeholders of your kids' education, make no mistake, is really remarkable.

00:10:18.000 And so I do know that there are some recall petition efforts underway.

00:10:24.000 And if you live in Scottsdale and you have not yet signed those petitions, please go find the people that are responsible for that.

00:10:30.000 I was told they were going to be mingling around.

00:10:32.000 I don't know if they're outside or not, but it's incredibly important that we as citizens let our voice be heard and speak out in this local area.

00:10:40.000 I know I'm not going to put up with it.

00:10:41.000 In fact, I tried everything I possibly could to speak there tonight and be here, but I said, you know what, we're still trying to figure out the two places at once thing.

00:10:50.000 But and then it's come out in other details.

00:10:53.000 We know this, all the other nonsense happening in Scottsville Unified School Districts.

00:10:57.000 But I just want to encourage all of you, you have a voice on it.

00:11:01.000 Keep the pressure on.

00:11:02.000 If emails are read by these people, any sort of chatter you could create and say, this is unacceptable, I'm a taxpayer.

00:11:10.000 I'm not going to put up with this.

00:11:12.000 Whether you have kids or not in the district, think about the kids who are your fellow citizen, who are your fellow countrymen that have to be subjected to this sort of behavior and nonsense.

00:11:22.000 So that's the first thing.

00:11:23.000 The second thing that I just want to share from a personal perspective of the last couple of days, which actually was a rare kind of victory in the news cycle.

00:11:33.000 And I'm sure some people have differing opinions about this, but I think we can all agree on the general conclusion that Kyle Rittenhouse did not deserve to go to jail for the rest of his life.

00:11:42.000 I think we can all agree.

00:11:44.000 And so I had the opportunity to have dinner with him Saturday night.

00:11:51.000 And I had the opportunity to spend all yesterday with him.

00:11:54.000 And we have a whole episode discussion out with him that you guys can listen to.

00:11:57.000 I encourage you to do that.

00:11:59.000 And, you know, so the question is, why should we as Christians care about what happened there?

00:12:04.000 Well, it says in the Bible very clearly, let me just read a couple verses, which Proverbs 21, 15, when justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous, but a terror to evildoers.

00:12:16.000 Boy, does that explain the news cycle the last 10 days.

00:12:19.000 You had the right people cheering and the wrong people all of a sudden saying, no, the federal government needs to investigate this young boy.

00:12:27.000 And I use that word boy intentionally.

00:12:29.000 He was 17 years old when this entire thing happened.

00:12:31.000 I'm going to tell you a little bit about Kyle.

00:12:32.000 I got to know him.

00:12:33.000 He dropped out of high school as a sophomore to support his single mom with three jobs to try to supplement income.

00:12:41.000 Graduated high school online in nine months.

00:12:44.000 Then he enrolled at Arizona State University, by the way.

00:12:46.000 I'll get to that in a second.

00:12:47.000 I don't know if you've been following that whole circus, but that's a whole different saga that I'll get to in a second.

00:12:53.000 He was, he lived in Antioch, Illinois, northern Illinois.

00:12:56.000 A lot of you might know that.

00:12:57.000 Traveled to Kenosha often.

00:12:59.000 That's where his father lived and many of his friends lived.

00:13:03.000 Of course, none of this should have happened.

00:13:05.000 We know that.

00:13:06.000 The National Guard would have been called and we didn't have the open destruction of our cities.

00:13:11.000 Then all of a sudden you don't have 17-year-olds getting tangled in places they shouldn't be.

00:13:15.000 Kyle admitted he shouldn't have been there.

00:13:16.000 He said, I wish I wouldn't have gone.

00:13:18.000 That's not the point.

00:13:19.000 You don't put people in jail for not going places they shouldn't be, right?

00:13:22.000 Half of the Scottsdale kids would be that's not the point.

00:13:27.000 I'm so tired of hearing people, well, he shouldn't have been there.

00:13:29.000 Police, okay?

00:13:30.000 Enough of them.

00:13:31.000 The point is this.

00:13:32.000 He was walking down a street, and we all saw that video very clearly.

00:13:35.000 He was attacked multiple times by a mob and his life was put in jail of guns being drawn on him.

00:13:40.000 And he had a choice.

00:13:41.000 He had a decision.

00:13:41.000 Am I going to defend my life, which is a moral, it's a moral necessity to defend your life when it is imminently posed against?

00:13:49.000 And Kyle did defend himself.

00:13:50.000 And how was he met?

00:13:51.000 This is the amazing part of the story: he ran to the police after that happened.

00:13:56.000 I want you to think about that.

00:13:57.000 He's just a criminal.

00:13:58.000 He runs to the police and tells them, hey, this just happened.

00:14:03.000 And you know what they say?

00:14:04.000 Go home, kid.

00:14:05.000 He was arrested a couple of days later in Antioch, Illinois, where he spent 87 days in jail.

00:14:11.000 87 days in jail.

00:14:13.000 Eventually, he was released in shower for three weeks.

00:14:16.000 You guys heard a lot of these stories.

00:14:17.000 And all of a sudden, then he was met with the full force of two nearly unstoppable forces, the criminal justice system and the activist media.

00:14:27.000 He was called a white supremacist with no evidence by our now president.

00:14:31.000 He was smeared nonstop on cable news as being a militia member.

00:14:34.000 He doesn't know what a militia is.

00:14:36.000 He doesn't.

00:14:36.000 I asked him.

00:14:37.000 I said, what's a militia?

00:14:38.000 He says, I don't know what a militia is, I've never, 18-year-old kid.

00:14:42.000 And he had a decision to make.

00:14:44.000 Either he was going to fight for what was right, fight for himself against lies.

00:14:48.000 It says in Romans, hate what is evil, love what is good, or he's just going to kind of roll over.

00:14:52.000 He made a decision to fight.

00:14:54.000 And we all saw that trial.

00:14:55.000 I think a lot of people in this room might have been a little skeptical at first.

00:14:58.000 Like, what is this?

00:14:58.000 I was told he's a terrible person.

00:15:01.000 And all of a sudden, we saw what very well could have been some people in this room could have been you, your son, your daughter, your kid or grandkid.

00:15:09.000 Someone wrongly accused that got in a tough situation that decided to defend himself.

00:15:13.000 And despite all of that, you heard the arguments, like, well, it's not self-defense if you bring the gun to the situation, all these ridiculous things.

00:15:19.000 And in a rare moment, all of a sudden we saw, wow, we saw justice actually be served.

00:15:27.000 In a very rare moment, we said, you know what?

00:15:29.000 And here's the lesson.

00:15:31.000 And I'll close with this.

00:15:32.000 The lesson is why did they come to that decision?

00:15:36.000 That decision was made because it involved normal people.

00:15:40.000 I want you to think about this.

00:15:41.000 This is a takeaway that so many people I think on television have been missing.

00:15:45.000 You had people with no agenda that looked at things as they were, that had no motive other than to do what was right.

00:15:51.000 And that gave me hope in some sense.

00:15:54.000 I said, man, as broken as you might think this country is, as backwards you think it is, you get a fair and prudent and sober hearing of facts.

00:16:02.000 All of a sudden, it doesn't matter what MSNBC says.

00:16:04.000 It doesn't matter they're trying to threaten the jury.

00:16:06.000 It doesn't matter about that.

00:16:07.000 You slow it down.

00:16:09.000 And all of a sudden, I think that the American people, the normal people, I'm talking outside of the activist press and the people that run the CIA and Facebook and all that.

00:16:18.000 No, just the normal person says, you know what?

00:16:21.000 I don't think it's right to all of a sudden destroy someone's life for self-defense.

00:16:25.000 And isn't that a common theme?

00:16:27.000 The common theme of what's actually moving America back to a place of righteousness.

00:16:32.000 It's the moms and dads showing up with school boards that are doing it right now in Scottsdale that did it in Loudoun County.

00:16:37.000 It's the regular people that spoke out at the jury and said, you know what?

00:16:40.000 No, I'm not going to put up with this.

00:16:42.000 You know, I don't think that we should lock someone up in jail just because they defended themselves.

00:16:47.000 The point is this: the hope is in the people.

00:16:50.000 It's the hope, the hope is, of course, in the Lord, obviously, but the hope, as far as what we're talking about, of how we are going to get our country back on track, it involves every single one of you.

00:17:01.000 And there's no better example than that of another story that I want to mention.

00:17:05.000 And I think a lot of you enjoyed going to bed at 2:30 in the morning with a smile on your face, where all of a sudden you were like, man, it feels good to be in America.

00:17:13.000 And we say, in, let's just say, a very left-wing state, otherwise known as Virginia, all of a sudden, you stayed up late and you saw out of nowhere a total reversal of what was supposed to happen in Virginia.

00:17:27.000 Now, let me tell you about that.

00:17:29.000 The untold story of Virginia is our guest tonight.

00:17:32.000 It is the church in the county that actually flipped Virginia.

00:17:36.000 Now, I don't even mean flipped politically because tonight's not even, I don't even talk about politics.

00:17:40.000 I'm talking about spiritually.

00:17:42.000 I'm talking about culturally.

00:17:43.000 I'm talking about morally, a church that stood for righteousness that had dozens of people run for school board in the critical Loudoun County, Virginia.

00:17:52.000 I'm talking about the man who gave the opening prayer at the celebration victory for the now next governor of Virginia, Mr. Youngkin.

00:18:01.000 And so it is with great pleasure and an honor to have my friend here tonight, the man who runs, in my opinion, the most influential church in Virginia, who I think could tell us a lot here in Arizona.

00:18:13.000 Like, what you do in Virginia, maybe we can implement it here in Arizona.

00:18:17.000 He's a wonderful person and has a lot of courage when he received a lot of different backlash for standing for what was right.

00:18:23.000 But please join me in welcoming Pastor Gary Hamrick.

00:18:30.000 Thank you.

00:18:31.000 That was, thank you.

00:18:33.000 Who said that?

00:18:35.000 That was a little over the top.

00:18:38.000 You know, I'm reminded of Winston Churchill when he was given a great introduction.

00:18:43.000 And they asked him, weren't you flattered by that?

00:18:46.000 And he said, not really, because I know if I were being hanged, there would be twice as many people here.

00:18:53.000 That's funny.

00:18:55.000 Not really.

00:18:55.000 The guy was a little bit more.

00:18:56.000 Yeah, I'm telling you.

00:18:57.000 I processed that.

00:18:58.000 But I don't know how many people would show up.

00:19:01.000 Actually, probably more people would show up to my hanging.

00:19:02.000 I'm not uplifting note, Gary.

00:19:05.000 Thank you for being here.

00:19:06.000 And welcome to Arizona.

00:19:08.000 Thank you.

00:19:08.000 It's a joy.

00:19:09.000 And I have been a longtime admirer of Pastor Tommy Barnett, his son Luke.

00:19:14.000 Love your church.

00:19:14.000 Love you, Pastor Barnett.

00:19:16.000 Thank you.

00:19:18.000 And so you guys have had a pretty exciting month in Virginia.

00:19:20.000 A little bit.

00:19:22.000 Not much is going on in Virginia.

00:19:25.000 So just walk us through it.

00:19:26.000 Let's start this last spring.

00:19:29.000 Talk about at your church locally.

00:19:31.000 Started hearing rumblings about local school boards.

00:19:35.000 Just talk about how all of a sudden that started to develop, started to unfold, and where your church started to get involved in that.

00:19:42.000 Yeah, do we remember the days when you didn't really care who was running for the school board?

00:19:47.000 And now you want to know every local election, national election.

00:19:52.000 I mean, our people are much more engaged today.

00:19:55.000 And we've had to become that way because of the nonsense that is happening.

00:20:00.000 And it's gotten to the place where people are just basically saying, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.

00:20:05.000 And the way that it first started for us is I'm watching our local news, which ended up going national, when this PE teacher in Loudoun County Public Schools, Tanner Cross, stood up at a public school board meeting, which was called for the purpose of giving public input on what was the proposed transgender policy.

00:20:25.000 The transgender policy would allow children to decide, of course, whatever gender they wanted to be.

00:20:30.000 And then the teachers were forced to honor the language that that student wanted.

00:20:36.000 And the classmates had to honor it too.

00:20:38.000 So Tanner Cross, PE teacher, gets up at a public school board meeting that was inviting public comment and says, Hey, as a Christian, this is against my faith.

00:20:49.000 I can't deny God's beautiful design of a child's biological gender by deferring to whatever they want.

00:20:57.000 I can't do it.

00:20:58.000 It's against my faith.

00:20:58.000 It's against God.

00:20:59.000 And it's doing a disservice to children.

00:21:01.000 I'm kind of paraphrasing what he said.

00:21:03.000 And for that, he was put on administrative leave.

00:21:07.000 And then in that week, I found that he went to my church.

00:21:10.000 I didn't even know that he and his wife Angela went to our church.

00:21:13.000 And so I met with them.

00:21:16.000 And my wife Terry and I, who's here, by the way, too, my wife Terry on the front row.

00:21:22.000 So Terry and I met with Tanner and Angela and we prayed for them and walked them through all that.

00:21:28.000 But yeah, he was put on administrative leave.

00:21:30.000 Alliance Defending Freedom came to his defense.

00:21:34.000 Yeah, praise God for them.

00:21:35.000 So Mike Ferris, who's the president and CEO of ADF, goes to my church.

00:21:39.000 He's one of my elders, actually.

00:21:40.000 So they took up the case.

00:21:42.000 They won in circuit court.

00:21:44.000 And so Tanner had to be reinstated.

00:21:46.000 But what happened was at the same time, people who were not even a part of our church, who just were part of the community and were sick and tired of, you know, what I found, Charlie, was that people who didn't even say they were Christians were realizing that the traditional American family values were eroding.

00:22:05.000 And so they started, you know, being upset by all this.

00:22:08.000 So I got contacted at the same time that Tanner Cross was going through all this.

00:22:12.000 I got contacted by some people in our community saying, we want to recall school board members.

00:22:17.000 Will you allow signatures to be gathered in your church?

00:22:20.000 And at first, I was a little reluctant because I thought, you know, as pastors, we have to pick and choose our battles, which ones are important enough for us to engage in and not.

00:22:29.000 And so when this happened with Tanner, I stood up in front of our congregation.

00:22:33.000 We invited Tanner and Angela up on the stage to pray for them.

00:22:36.000 And then I said, Guess what my decision is about recalling school board members?

00:22:40.000 We're going to be taking signatures in the back of the sanctuary today.

00:22:43.000 And so, yeah, that's how we got engaged.

00:22:46.000 That's how it all started.

00:22:48.000 So then all of a sudden, there was more and more activity.

00:22:52.000 Talk about how on a certain May school board meeting, a father shows up and gets arrested at that meeting.

00:23:00.000 That made national news.

00:23:02.000 And what was he complaining about?

00:23:05.000 And what was the kind of underlying story behind that?

00:23:08.000 So what happened was at another school board hearing to allow public input, the school board was very controlling about public input.

00:23:19.000 They wouldn't even allow people to applaud.

00:23:21.000 You had to do these jazz hands.

00:23:22.000 It was just like, it's ridiculous.

00:23:24.000 Yeah, I'm not kidding.

00:23:26.000 You could only go to the school board meeting if you like something and do jazz hands.

00:23:30.000 What is that?

00:23:31.000 It's interesting.

00:23:32.000 I got in trouble once at a college campus for clapping.

00:23:35.000 I could do not.

00:23:36.000 It's offensive to the hearing disabled.

00:23:39.000 Is that right?

00:23:40.000 So you have to do this.

00:23:42.000 I guess that would be offensive to the blind.

00:23:44.000 Yeah, I don't know.

00:23:46.000 I could.

00:23:47.000 I identify as a clapper, so I want to be able to clap.

00:23:50.000 But anyway, so, but what happened?

00:23:53.000 Well, you do too.

00:23:54.000 But what happened.

00:23:56.000 So what happened is they decided after these parents were justifiably outraged about stuff that was happening, transgender policies, CRT, all the stuff, different stuff that was being introduced into the school system.

00:24:10.000 And by the way, also sexually explicit material, pornographic stuff that was approved a part of reading.

00:24:17.000 And so these parents were outraged and they were, you know, they were justifiably upset.

00:24:22.000 Well, so the school board cut down public and cut off public input, no more, because the parents were so outraged.

00:24:29.000 Well, one of the dads, who then didn't get to give public input, was outraged because, come to find out later, it hit national news, his daughter had been sexually assaulted in a restroom by a young man wearing a skirt who took advantage of transgender identity to be able to go into the girl's bathroom, identifying as a female, sexually assaulted her.

00:24:55.000 We've come to find out since because of FOIA with emails that the school board knew that that happened and they covered it up because they sent the student to another school where he repeated a sexual assault on another female student.

00:25:11.000 So these parents are coming unglued and for good reason.

00:25:15.000 Yeah, and so it started to kind of become ground zero for all the school board drama.

00:25:21.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:25:23.000 And then you add into the mix a seemingly unwise arrogance from Virginia political leaders that were like, oh, by the way, parents, you think you're in charge?

00:25:36.000 You're not.

00:25:37.000 Talk a little bit about that.

00:25:38.000 Because that wasn't really smart on their behalf.

00:25:41.000 No.

00:25:41.000 And you know what they even did?

00:25:43.000 Because I prayed for Tanner and Angela.

00:25:46.000 And I, just as a pastor, said, listen, Genesis 1.27 says God created male and female in his image.

00:25:53.000 There aren't 70 genders.

00:25:55.000 There are two.

00:25:56.000 Okay?

00:25:57.000 And so now, but at the same time, look, you know, as a pastor, I have compassion for people who struggle with gender identity.

00:26:06.000 And so there's counseling, but you do a disservice to people by pretending that it's not an issue that needs to be treated and then just embrace it and celebrate their confusion.

00:26:16.000 That's doing a horrible disservice to people.

00:26:18.000 So when I prayed for Tanner and Angela, and I don't know if I can, it's kind of unpolitically correct, I suppose, but the Loudoun Democratic Party put out a press release against me asking me to recall, to recant my statements, my statements that God created male and female.

00:26:35.000 That's what they wanted me to recant.

00:26:37.000 So I said, I can't recant this.

00:26:38.000 But in the meantime, then, of course, the Justice Department starts to get in, and they're labeling parents as domestic terrorists.

00:26:46.000 And the AG just, you know, had to kind of backtrack some of that.

00:26:52.000 But yeah, so these parents have been labeled as domestic terrorists.

00:26:55.000 They're just fighting for their children.

00:26:58.000 They're fighting for their children.

00:27:00.000 What better cause than to fight for young children?

00:27:04.000 And it's such an important point because they kept repeating Terry McAuliffe when he was then running.

00:27:12.000 He said, look, I don't know who gets this idea of the parents being in charge of the, I'm paraphrasing, but it was as if, like, who do you think you are?

00:27:21.000 Yeah.

00:27:21.000 Type thing.

00:27:22.000 No, he actually said, I don't think, because Glenn Yunken loved the soundbite and made it all part of his ad campaigns.

00:27:29.000 You know, but because Terry McAuliffe actually said parents should not have a say in what their teachers are teaching, and that went viral.

00:27:37.000 And so it, it, you know, so again, that became a huge issue.

00:27:41.000 That was a turning, no pun intended, that was a turning point.

00:27:44.000 Perfect, Derek.

00:27:45.000 That was a turning point in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

00:27:48.000 That was my next question.

00:27:49.000 What was the turning point?

00:27:51.000 You on that turning point.

00:27:53.000 That's right.

00:27:53.000 So then let's connect a couple dots then.

00:27:57.000 Yeah.

00:27:57.000 Because all this school board energy is happening.

00:28:00.000 Your church kind of becomes this incubator.

00:28:03.000 Is that fair to say?

00:28:04.000 Kind of a place where a lot of this activity, from a righteousness perspective, was allowed a platform.

00:28:11.000 Is that right?

00:28:11.000 Yeah, sure.

00:28:13.000 Because there's a few different issues happening.

00:28:15.000 So you have the school board, all of this stuff happening.

00:28:18.000 You have there's a gubernatorial election, and you have, see, I'm over 50 now.

00:28:25.000 So now what was the other thing that you have going on?

00:28:27.000 Oh, you have new election laws in the Commonwealth of Virginia, which check this out.

00:28:32.000 You know, remember the day it used to be?

00:28:34.000 You had to show up on election day, show an ID, and vote in a precinct at your local precinct.

00:28:41.000 In the Commonwealth of Virginia, I don't know what it is here in Arizona, but in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

00:28:45.000 It's a mess.

00:28:46.000 Yeah, okay.

00:28:46.000 It became a 45-day voting spree.

00:28:49.000 It's not that bad here.

00:28:50.000 Okay, 45 days.

00:28:52.000 And here's the deal.

00:28:53.000 But we capitalized on it because churches could serve to collect ballots.

00:28:59.000 So an individual could ask for an absentee ballot, even if you weren't absent.

00:29:05.000 It used to be you could only get an absentee ballot if you're like overseas or something.

00:29:08.000 No, no, no.

00:29:09.000 If you just don't want to go to the polls, I can be an absentee voter.

00:29:12.000 So you get an absentee ballot to your home, and then they could bring it to the church.

00:29:17.000 We could witness it, receive their ballot, and deliver it to the county election office.

00:29:22.000 So I stood up in front of our congregation.

00:29:24.000 I said, guess what?

00:29:25.000 We're handing out ballots, and you go home and you vote and come back.

00:29:29.000 And we're going to collect massive ballots.

00:29:29.000 We'll witness it.

00:29:31.000 Oh, you talk about people were so outraged.

00:29:33.000 You're like, this is illegal.

00:29:34.000 We're like, no.

00:29:35.000 We went to the state board of elections and we said, here are a bunch of ballots from our church.

00:29:39.000 They're like, you can't do this.

00:29:40.000 This is not legal.

00:29:41.000 They had to call Richmond.

00:29:42.000 And Richmond said, no, it's legal.

00:29:44.000 You can take them.

00:29:45.000 And so we were engaging our people in voting and recalling school board members.

00:29:51.000 Love it.

00:29:52.000 And so, yeah, it was a great scene.

00:29:54.000 And so your church, talk a little bit about your church.

00:29:57.000 When was it founded?

00:29:58.000 You're right in Loudoun County.

00:30:00.000 You're right there.

00:30:00.000 Yeah.

00:30:01.000 We're 30 miles west of Washington, D.C.

00:30:04.000 So we're the land of politics.

00:30:07.000 That's two Greek words, poly meaning many, and tics meaning bloodsuckers.

00:30:11.000 But anyway, so that's we're in the shadow of the nation's capital.

00:30:16.000 We're a suburb community, you know, bedroom community, a lot of commuters into D.C.

00:30:20.000 And our church, we started it 30 years ago, my wife and I, with 18 people, and it has like six, 7,000 now.

00:30:26.000 If you're ever in D.C., it's the most incredible church.

00:30:28.000 Wonderful people.

00:30:29.000 We had a great event.

00:30:30.000 Yeah, we did.

00:30:31.000 We were similar to this.

00:30:32.000 And it was a lot of fun.

00:30:33.000 Now I get to ask you questions.

00:30:35.000 And so, but also over the summer, there was not a lot of chatter about who was going to be the next governor.

00:30:43.000 It was kind of assumed.

00:30:44.000 Yeah, it was.

00:30:45.000 Isn't that fair to say?

00:30:46.000 Terry McAuliffe's going to win.

00:30:48.000 This is a left-wing state.

00:30:49.000 Okay, that's very cute, moms and dads in Loudoun County, enough.

00:30:53.000 Talk about how all of a sudden this turned into an annoyance to the ruling class to all of a sudden to a legitimate political channel.

00:31:00.000 Yeah.

00:31:01.000 Well, not to be partisan, but just as a factual statement, there had been no Republican elected to statewide office in Virginia the last 12 years.

00:31:10.000 And so, and Terry McAuliffe and the Clinton machine, you know, they were running a lot of stuff.

00:31:15.000 And in fact, on election night, we kept wondering, some ballots are going to show up in a trunk somewhere at 3 a.m.

00:31:20.000 You know.

00:31:21.000 Well, I was so upset at Gary and that whole team.

00:31:23.000 I wanted to go, I was up to like 3:45.

00:31:26.000 I was like, okay, it's 1 a.m., call it.

00:31:28.000 And the paranoia was impressive, I have to say.

00:31:30.000 It's like, we've been through this before.

00:31:33.000 They're about, nope, we're not doing 2020 again.

00:31:35.000 I get it.

00:31:36.000 But I mean, you guys waited for like every single day.

00:31:39.000 We did.

00:31:40.000 We waited for a long time.

00:31:41.000 But Terry McAuliffe had been governor before, and you can't have successive terms.

00:31:47.000 So you have to at least take a term off.

00:31:49.000 And so he was running again.

00:31:50.000 So people already knew what they were going to get with him.

00:31:53.000 But there was just this rising discontent.

00:31:57.000 And it's very similar across the nation.

00:32:00.000 A rising discontent for a lack of righteousness.

00:32:03.000 And even if somebody's not a Christian to know what that term means, a lack now of good American family values.

00:32:12.000 And that rising to the surface, people were tired of it.

00:32:16.000 And so they came out and drove.

00:32:18.000 And I really believe that the evangelical church turned the tide.

00:32:21.000 And you gave me a little too much credit, but I really, it's not our church.

00:32:24.000 Really, the evangelical church in the Commonwealth of Virginia turned the tide and went with a man who professed Christ.

00:32:30.000 Glenn Yunkin makes a very direct public profession of faith.

00:32:37.000 And I knew him personally because we both served on the board of the Museum of the Bible.

00:32:41.000 And so, in fact, when he told me, hey, Gary, I'm going to run for governor.

00:32:46.000 Inside, I was just like, okay, I'm going to run for president, whatever.

00:32:50.000 Are you, Gary?

00:32:51.000 No, I'm not.

00:32:51.000 No, But, you know, the Lord just had his hand in it.

00:32:57.000 And I think really the evangelical community came out and turned the tide for that election.

00:33:01.000 Well, I'll give you the credit because I know you won't receive it publicly.

00:33:04.000 What I saw at Gary's church was a motivated, engaged church so similar to this.

00:33:10.000 And it was in, talk a little bit about, and again, we want to be careful not to make this, you know, explicitly political for many different reasons.

00:33:18.000 But talk about how in Virginia there was a feeling you were outnumbered.

00:33:22.000 Talk about that, where some people, I'm sure you heard some form of the incantation, Gary, it's over.

00:33:29.000 Yeah.

00:33:29.000 Virginia's the new California.

00:33:31.000 Stop it.

00:33:32.000 Yeah.

00:33:33.000 Did you hear that a little bit?

00:33:34.000 Like, it's over.

00:33:34.000 What's the point?

00:33:36.000 Well, when you look on a map of Virginia, the suburbs around Washington, D.C. are extremely progressive.

00:33:43.000 I never know what that term means.

00:33:44.000 Like, what are you progressing to?

00:33:45.000 But anyway, you know, yeah, yeah, that's true.

00:33:48.000 And did they hear that on your mic?

00:33:50.000 I don't know.

00:33:51.000 You said hell.

00:33:51.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:33:53.000 And so, but progressive ideology, I mean, listen, what I've tried to say to our people when they think you're getting too political, you're getting too political.

00:34:00.000 This is what I say.

00:34:02.000 I have just stayed true to where I've been for decades.

00:34:06.000 When people start to veer in this progressive direction, then they look at me and they're like, why are you being so political?

00:34:12.000 I'm not being political.

00:34:13.000 I'm staying true to God's word right where I've been for decades.

00:34:19.000 The only difference is that now I have to be more vocal about these issues because everybody in our congregation is dealing with these kind of issues.

00:34:28.000 And if we stay silent, where are they going to hear truth?

00:34:31.000 And so as I start saying, hey, listen, this is what God's word says.

00:34:35.000 You know, we love everybody, but we need to understand what is right and what is wrong.

00:34:39.000 Listen, Isaiah chapter 5 talks about what are those who call good evil and evil good, and who substitute light for darkness and darkness for light, and sweet for bitter and bitter for sweet.

00:34:47.000 We're living in the days of Isaiah 5 because we're now living an upside-down world where things that used to be called wrong a few decades ago are now called right and celebrated and vice versa.

00:34:59.000 And it also reminds me of the period of the judges where it says it was the time when there was no king and everybody did what was right in his own eyes.

00:35:06.000 And we have a very relative world right now where people think they can determine what truth is.

00:35:11.000 Listen, God determines what truth is.

00:35:13.000 And so when people say, when people say, well, you're just getting too political, no, I'm just getting very biblical.

00:35:20.000 I'm just talking about right and wrong issues as God lays it out.

00:35:24.000 And when the culture starts veering in a different direction, then it looks like we're becoming so super political.

00:35:29.000 No, we're just being very biblical.

00:35:31.000 And I'm so glad you mentioned that.

00:35:33.000 So let's talk about a component of that where some people say, well, I'm a pastor.

00:35:40.000 If I speak out on this, it's going to destroy my church.

00:35:42.000 Since you've spoken out on these issues, or you've always, has your church grown?

00:35:47.000 Very much.

00:35:47.000 Now, what I say to people is for every family that leaves, probably three families come.

00:35:52.000 Because when somebody gets offended, you know, there's always somebody else who's looking for just somebody tell me the truth.

00:36:00.000 You know, I will have people come to our church.

00:36:02.000 They may not necessarily agree with me at first, but they're hungry for somebody just tell me the truth.

00:36:08.000 I just want to hear a straight talker, just somebody who's not going to be playing games with words.

00:36:13.000 Just give me the truth.

00:36:14.000 Let me tell you where it really started for me, Charlie.

00:36:17.000 In 2008, because I bought into, you know, I drank the Kool-Aid about pastors shouldn't be political, you know, separation of church and state, all that nonsense, where people think that that's actually in the Constitution or the Declaration.

00:36:29.000 It's nowhere in our founding documents at all.

00:36:31.000 A letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802, that's another story.

00:36:34.000 But here's the deal.

00:36:35.000 I just thought that that's the way the churches should be, non-political.

00:36:40.000 Okay, 2008, I had David Barton come to my church.

00:36:43.000 It was an awesome guy, president and founder of Wall Builders.

00:36:46.000 It was an election year in 2008.

00:36:49.000 He and his wife Cheryl took me and my wife Terry out for dinner.

00:36:51.000 We're at Outback Steakhouse.

00:36:53.000 And he says to me, do you ever preach election sermons?

00:36:56.000 I said, I don't even know what an election sermon is.

00:36:58.000 He says, yeah, do you know that for the first like couple hundred years of American history?

00:37:03.000 And in fact, he turned me on to a two-volume set called American Political Sermons of the Founding Era from like 1730 until like the mid-1800s.

00:37:13.000 And I had the volumes in my library at home where pastors would get up and preach election sermons and call out the candidates and even say things like, this candidate is standing for truth.

00:37:24.000 This one isn't.

00:37:25.000 Now you know who to vote for.

00:37:26.000 Don't vote for this guy.

00:37:27.000 Vote for this guy.

00:37:28.000 I'm being very direct.

00:37:30.000 Well, what has happened since is, see, 1954, you have the Johnson Amendment, when at the time, you know, Senator then, LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson, convinced the Senate and the whole Congress, and it was signed into law, that a 501c3 organization cannot officially endorse a candidate.

00:37:48.000 So that's one thing that stands, you know, pastors then are intimidated by that.

00:37:53.000 And then you have the separation of church and state clause.

00:37:55.000 And so again, pastors become intimidated, like, I can't wade into this fray.

00:38:01.000 But the reality is, and the reason why Jefferson wrote that letter in 1802 to the Danbury Baptist Convention was because the Baptists were asking a question about their freedom as their religious freedom.

00:38:15.000 And he wrote in his letter, and he used that phrase that there's a wall of separation between church and state.

00:38:22.000 But in the context, he was reassuring the Baptist at the convention that the First Amendment was to protect the church against government intrusion.

00:38:32.000 It was to keep government out of the church, not the church out of government.

00:38:37.000 And look what we're living through today.

00:38:39.000 Yeah.

00:38:40.000 That the government is coming into churches and shutting them down.

00:38:42.000 That's right.

00:38:43.000 It's the same fear.

00:38:44.000 It's the same fear.

00:38:45.000 And so when I say to pastors, because I was in the boat of what I would say was ignorance, it's either negligence of your pastoral duty to engage people in the political process because it's part of being salt and light.

00:38:58.000 I truly believe that.

00:38:59.000 Every aspect of life, we are to have an impact and influence.

00:39:03.000 That's salt and light.

00:39:04.000 That's what we're called to.

00:39:05.000 Why all of a sudden do people say, well, just don't take it into the political arena?

00:39:09.000 No, that's part of it.

00:39:11.000 So it's either negligence that we're not pastorally doing what we're supposed to do, or it's ignorance.

00:39:16.000 We don't know that we have the freedom to do this.

00:39:18.000 And so, yeah, so I was up in the camp of ignorance.

00:39:22.000 And then in 2008, David Barton challenged me.

00:39:26.000 And so in 2008, 12, 16, and 20, I've preached election sermons.

00:39:30.000 And I've gotten a little more direct with each passing election cycle.

00:39:34.000 And in 2012, I had our U.S. Congressman Frank Wolfe.

00:39:39.000 He served one of the longest serving Congressmen in congressional history, like 36 years.

00:39:43.000 And he called me up in my office.

00:39:45.000 He was still in office.

00:39:46.000 He called me up at the church.

00:39:48.000 And he introduced himself, Congressman Frank Wolf, and which I knew.

00:39:51.000 He was my congressman.

00:39:52.000 But I didn't know him personally.

00:39:54.000 And he said, somebody gave me a copy of your election sermon.

00:39:57.000 And I want to know how you got away with it.

00:40:00.000 And I thought I was in trouble.

00:40:01.000 I thought, like, he's he's, he's, but he's a good guy.

00:40:04.000 He loves the Lord.

00:40:05.000 I mean, I knew that much about him.

00:40:06.000 I'm like, why is he challenging me like this?

00:40:08.000 And I'm like, well, and I kind of explained, you know, just some of the things that I've already shared.

00:40:12.000 And then he pauses and he goes, well, I just think it's great.

00:40:15.000 Keep it up.

00:40:15.000 So, I mean, he just emboldened me.

00:40:18.000 And ever since, I've just continued to just try to help people understand here are the policies.

00:40:24.000 Listen, you can even strip the word politics out of it for the purpose of and equipping the body of Christ.

00:40:32.000 Just talk about the policies.

00:40:33.000 What do the different parties stand for in terms of policies?

00:40:37.000 Because politics shapes policies.

00:40:39.000 Policies shape a nation.

00:40:40.000 And there goes your family with it.

00:40:43.000 So it's important that we are educated, equipped, informed, engaged, because the voice of the evangelical church should be loud and strong in the United States of America.

00:40:58.000 And so as a pastor, talk about how, as you stand for righteousness and stand for these issues, you say there's only two genders, for example, which is considered to be a thought crime in America today.

00:41:11.000 It actually helps you win people for Christ, though, that it's the Galatians 3 model, that the law is a school teacher to Christ.

00:41:20.000 Is that your experience at your church that it actually fastens and strengthens your congregation?

00:41:26.000 Because they come to you then and the scriptures for guidance, not TikTok or whatever.

00:41:31.000 Yeah, right.

00:41:32.000 I'll answer that question with an email that I got.

00:41:34.000 I got an email from a guy who's president of a pharmaceutical company in Roslyn, and he emailed me and he said that he and his wife and their four daughters have been coming to Cornerstone for a few years.

00:41:46.000 And he said it this way.

00:41:47.000 He said, Gary, we love coming to Cornerstone because it helps me and my wife know we're not going crazy.

00:41:54.000 That's what he said.

00:41:56.000 And I read that email and I thought, you know what?

00:41:58.000 If for no other reason that people who are now so confused, listen, don't allow the culture to steal the narrative.

00:42:07.000 Like we know what is right and what is wrong.

00:42:09.000 We know what's up and down.

00:42:10.000 We know what's true and false.

00:42:12.000 We can't allow the culture to shape the narrative.

00:42:15.000 We have that narrative.

00:42:17.000 We own that because it's based on God's word.

00:42:19.000 So God defines all that.

00:42:21.000 And so what I was encouraged by the email about was just the idea of just being truthful.

00:42:27.000 It helps people know, hey, I'm not going crazy.

00:42:29.000 You know, when you hear all these nonsensical ideas that are floating around out there, and then I come to church and I can get centered.

00:42:37.000 I can get centered vertically, right?

00:42:40.000 And I can get centered horizontally with one another.

00:42:43.000 And so I can leave knowing I'm not going crazy.

00:42:45.000 And so it has emboldened our congregation in a way that is, you know, and I and I try to tell people, look, you know, let this passion bring you to a place where you are going to be more useful to the Lord for the sake of the kingdom.

00:43:01.000 Don't let it make you so angry that all you want to do is go turn over tables, you know?

00:43:06.000 And so if you just become a table-turning Christian, you're probably not going to be very influential in the world.

00:43:12.000 But if you retain the zeal And you filter that in a godly way, then we can have a great impact to change the culture rather than the culture changing the church.

00:43:22.000 I think that's, I mean, it's well said.

00:43:24.000 So let's, there are some, there's some people in this room that are new believers or people that aren't believers.

00:43:31.000 You've been a pastor for a while now.

00:43:34.000 Talk about how you got into this.

00:43:38.000 Talk about also the need for everybody to give their life to Christ and to live for Christ.

00:43:44.000 And what does that mean in today's America with all this nonsense happening around us?

00:43:50.000 So a few months ago, as I was just praying through how to navigate some of the craziness, there were two words that came to my heart.

00:44:01.000 One is proclamation, and one is refutation.

00:44:06.000 That as a pastor, I have to still be focused on the proclamation of the gospel because it is the word of God and a relationship with Jesus that will change people's lives.

00:44:17.000 But I also have to recognize that there are some things worth refuting in our culture so that people know that some things are not right.

00:44:27.000 Now, if I become only proclamation, this is how you get saved, and it's about a relationship with Jesus.

00:44:36.000 And that is my passion to see people come to faith.

00:44:39.000 But if that's all that I talk about, then somebody might get saved, but not know really how to apply it.

00:44:45.000 In day-to-day life, I'm talking about how do you live out your faith?

00:44:48.000 How are you, salt, and light in a relationship with Jesus to influence your world?

00:44:53.000 If I only talk about refutation, you know, just we're going to refute this, we're going to, we're mad about this, we're angry about this, I'll create a congregation of, remember those two old guys who would sit up in the balcony on the Muppets and all they'd ever do is complain and they're griping and they're angry.

00:45:11.000 I don't want a church like that either, right?

00:45:13.000 So I don't want to be known for just this angry church.

00:45:15.000 You're refuting everything.

00:45:16.000 You're against everything.

00:45:17.000 So we have to be for, we have to be for Jesus, right?

00:45:20.000 We have to be proclaiming the gospel.

00:45:22.000 We have to also balance that with refuting the nonsense and the lies that are out there and helping people to apply the gospel in their daily walk with Christ to real life.

00:45:31.000 And so, yeah, I mean, I would encourage you, if you don't know Christ as your Savior, I mean, you heard Pastor Tommy before we came up here just encouraging you to, you know, take that, take that leap of faith and trust him as your savior.

00:45:44.000 I'll say this just to add to it.

00:45:46.000 When we started taking signatures, when I said, okay, we're going to allow recall petitions to be signed for the school board members, which, by the way, we recalled one.

00:45:55.000 We had enough votes and she decided to quit.

00:45:58.000 Tragically, another member that we were recalling died in the middle of that.

00:46:02.000 I don't celebrate that at all.

00:46:03.000 I'm just saying, you know, so we've removed two and we're still, you know, trying to remove others.

00:46:09.000 But here's what happened: we had non-Christian, non-church-going people who, again, just love America and love their kids come to the church because we were having the petition signed in the atrium, and they would stay.

00:46:22.000 They'd come into the church service.

00:46:24.000 And those people have been getting saved and they have come into a relationship with Jesus.

00:46:28.000 So wonderful things that God is doing.

00:46:31.000 And that's the most important thing: coming to faith in Jesus Christ.

00:46:34.000 So I have a question for you.

00:46:36.000 I should ask this of every speaker.

00:46:37.000 What's your favorite book of the Bible?

00:46:39.000 My favorite book personally is the book of Psalms.

00:46:42.000 So it's the longest book?

00:46:44.000 Not for that reason, but because it is the longest book of the Bible.

00:46:50.000 But I find it in a chaotic world where I can easily go to bad places being frenzied and hurried and worried and all caught up in the craziness.

00:47:04.000 I find Psalms just soothes my soul.

00:47:07.000 Talk about the context of how Psalms was written.

00:47:09.000 What was David doing?

00:47:10.000 Was he living the high life?

00:47:12.000 Yeah, right.

00:47:13.000 So, David, I mean, David wrote like three-fourths of the Psalms, but he was a man after God's heart.

00:47:19.000 He had great victories, and he had very low points, too.

00:47:24.000 You know, he's the shepherd boy who kills Goliath, but he's the man who falls into adultery.

00:47:30.000 And by the way, he was not a young man when he fell into adultery.

00:47:34.000 When you look at the chronology of his life, he was about 50 years old when he fell into adultery with Bathsheba.

00:47:41.000 But he was a man who was a warrior.

00:47:43.000 What I love about David was he was a man's man because he was a warrior, but he wasn't afraid to cry and to show emotion.

00:47:49.000 So you see through the Psalms the strength of a warrior who at sometimes he's saying, Lord, kill my enemies.

00:47:55.000 And at other times, he's saying, Lord, you see me when I lie in my bed and weep at night.

00:48:02.000 And so I just love just the raw, genuine, you know, just the tough and the tender guy of David and how the Psalms, I think, appeal to all aspects of our lives.

00:48:13.000 For new believers, what one or two books do you really recommend the most?

00:48:16.000 Not Leviticus.

00:48:17.000 No, not, although, although I'm going to tell a Leviticus story, but I'm going to answer your question first.

00:48:22.000 I have a Leviticus story, too.

00:48:23.000 Okay.

00:48:24.000 The answer to the question is: typically we say the Gospel of John, it's a great book to start to read first if you're a new believer.

00:48:31.000 But so one of our sons played t-ball with a buddy, and his parents said to me, one time, so Terry and I were sitting in the stands or watching Austin playing ball, and this wonderful family, not churchgoers, not believers, came and said, Hey, we heard you, Pastor Cornerstone, we need to start coming to your church.

00:48:51.000 And I'm like, okay, great.

00:48:52.000 Now, if you are familiar with Calvary Chapel, we are affiliated with Calvary Chapel.

00:48:58.000 So Chuck Smith was my pastor until he passed away several years ago.

00:49:02.000 And one of the things that Calvary Chapel churches do, well, Jack Hibbs, he's another good friend of mine.

00:49:06.000 And Mart Ramikoy, yeah, we teach straight through the Bible.

00:49:08.000 We go Genesis to Revelation, then we start over.

00:49:10.000 Yeah.

00:49:11.000 And so when the Flinton family said, we're going to come to your church, I was in the book of Leviticus.

00:49:15.000 And I'm like, no, right?

00:49:18.000 I'm like, you're going to come and you're going to hear about mold and mildew and diseases and pus.

00:49:22.000 And oh, this is not, you've been wanting to come to church and now you're going to come to Leviticus.

00:49:26.000 And I was like whining.

00:49:27.000 And then, and then my Lord like convicted me and like, my word will not return void.

00:49:31.000 I'm like, oh, great.

00:49:32.000 You know, and so God nailed me on that.

00:49:35.000 So the first Sunday that they came, I'm talking about like Levitical rites and the feast.

00:49:41.000 Disposing of bodies.

00:49:42.000 I mean, it was almost that bad, right?

00:49:45.000 They got saved that first Sunday in the book of Leviticus.

00:49:49.000 So God's word will not return void.

00:49:51.000 I love it.

00:49:51.000 Love your Leviticus story.

00:49:53.000 Well, my Leviticus story is how I knew the founding fathers were awesome because they put Leviticus on the liberty belt.

00:49:59.000 I mean, that means they really knew their Bible.

00:50:00.000 That is true.

00:50:01.000 I mean, they could have put like Genesis or God.

00:50:03.000 Yeah, that's true.

00:50:04.000 Yeah.

00:50:04.000 They put Leviticus, Leviticus 25, proclaim liberty of which the lamb are in.

00:50:10.000 I also just love learning about the founding fathers.

00:50:12.000 I mean, John Adams spoke fluent Hebrew.

00:50:14.000 Every founding father knew their Bible.

00:50:16.000 They knew the implications of it.

00:50:18.000 But yeah, I always joke around with Dennis Krager.

00:50:21.000 I say, when's your Bible commentary on Leviticus going to come out?

00:50:24.000 Yeah.

00:50:26.000 It's a tough one.

00:50:27.000 I mean, he jokes around.

00:50:29.000 25,000 words he's dedicated just on the verse on homosexuality, just on that verse.

00:50:34.000 Wow.

00:50:34.000 So it's a heady one.

00:50:36.000 Okay.

00:50:36.000 One or two more questions, and we'll open it up for the audience.

00:50:39.000 Yeah, that's okay.

00:50:40.000 Just talk more broadly about someone out here that might be struggling, a believer that gave their life to the Lord, and they're going through a tough time right now.

00:50:47.000 You know, I'm getting a lot of emails like this.

00:50:49.000 I have a pretty good sense of where people are politically, but not just politically, though, just kind of where people are.

00:50:56.000 People are run down right now.

00:50:58.000 There's this thing called the great resignation.

00:51:00.000 Like people are just kind of looking for purpose, young people in particular.

00:51:04.000 What's your word of encouragement if there's someone who's a believer?

00:51:07.000 Like, okay, Pastor Gary, I did the altar call thing.

00:51:10.000 What now?

00:51:11.000 Yeah.

00:51:12.000 You know, what I try to tell people is the Christian life is not a sprint.

00:51:17.000 It's a marathon.

00:51:19.000 And that it doesn't matter what kind of a start you got.

00:51:22.000 What matters is how well you finish.

00:51:25.000 And that there's going to be times in the course of running a marathon where it's going to be painful and you're going to feel like giving up.

00:51:32.000 But one of the things that God rewards is perseverance.

00:51:36.000 And sometimes when we become Christians, we want everything to just be wonderful.

00:51:41.000 And what I try to remind people is this is not heaven.

00:51:45.000 This is earth.

00:51:47.000 Our citizenship is in heaven.

00:51:48.000 We're looking forward to a day when we're going to be there.

00:51:51.000 This is why Paul said, I consider my present sufferings not worth comparing to the glory that awaits me in Christ Jesus.

00:51:57.000 Because we can't lose sight of the fact that there will be valleys and there will be mountains in this life.

00:52:03.000 There's going to be ups, there's going to be downs.

00:52:05.000 There's going to be times where we feel discouraged.

00:52:07.000 But that doesn't mean that God has left you or forsaken you because I will never leave you nor forsake you, is what he says.

00:52:13.000 But we have to run the race with perseverance so that we can receive the crown which he has provided for us.

00:52:19.000 And that perseverance is sometimes hard.

00:52:22.000 It is hard.

00:52:23.000 But everything that is worth the victory is worth the endurance to get there.

00:52:28.000 And, you know, ask any athlete, anybody who's gone into training, it hurts, it's painful, it's difficult, but the reward is worth it in the end.

00:52:37.000 And so that's what we have to keep our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross and suffered for our sakes so that we might enjoy that eternal life with him.

00:52:48.000 We've got to keep that eternal perspective.

00:52:50.000 You could be a pastor.

00:52:52.000 I try to be.

00:52:53.000 I try to be on self-did you ever get that before?

00:52:55.000 Once in a while.

00:52:56.000 Just like Jerry Jones over there.

00:52:58.000 Yeah, Jerry Jones.

00:53:00.000 Season tickets, by the way.

00:53:02.000 It's so funny.

00:53:04.000 We were catching up backstage and he showed me his card because the dream conference at the bottom, it said Jerry Jones.

00:53:09.000 And I looked at him.

00:53:09.000 I was like, are you actually Jerry Jones?

00:53:11.000 I was like, looks so much like Jerry Jones.

00:53:14.000 So let's get ready for some questions here.

00:53:17.000 And if we can, the best way to do this.

00:53:20.000 Students get priority.

00:53:21.000 Let's please just keep it to questions, not public proclamations or public announcements or gatherings you're having.

00:53:28.000 I really want to get to as many as we possibly can.

00:53:31.000 But as we're kind of getting into line here, anything else on your heart, Gary, you want to share with this audience before we open it up to?

00:53:37.000 I just appreciate how engaged I can tell you already are.

00:53:40.000 That's why you're here.

00:53:41.000 So thank you for being here.

00:53:42.000 I'll try not to be as corny as Eric Metaxas, though.

00:53:45.000 I saw when you were.

00:53:46.000 Because we're friends too.

00:53:47.000 Eric was a real problem.

00:53:48.000 He's a real problem.

00:53:49.000 I've had him speak at my church twice, and every time I'm scared, what is going to come out of his mouth?

00:53:53.000 And the way he dresses is just ridiculous.

00:53:55.000 Yeah.

00:53:56.000 He's going to the beach or something.

00:53:58.000 Okay.

00:53:59.000 You, my young friend, you are up.

00:54:02.000 Hi, my name is Micah Stevens, and I wanted to ask your opinion on how the Biden fraud and how there was this secret thing where they counted the balance over again, and they were actually Trump, and he won by a landslide.

00:54:32.000 You don't watch CNN, do you?

00:54:34.000 So smart.

00:54:39.000 Are you Chris Pomo?

00:54:40.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:54:41.000 No, he's been suspended indefinitely.

00:54:44.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:54:45.000 Look, so to answer your question, there was so much shenanigans back in 2020.

00:54:50.000 We need to make, in my own personal opinion, it needs to be a priority to find out what happened and fix 2020.

00:54:57.000 It needs to be priority number one.

00:55:00.000 I can go into great detail about it.

00:55:02.000 We have the footage from what happened in Atlanta of the ballots magically being discovered under the table.

00:55:09.000 But the most thorough reference that is irrefutable and is very well researched of a woman that I really respect, Molly Hemingway.

00:55:20.000 Her latest book called Rigged is incredible.

00:55:23.000 I encourage everyone to check it out.

00:55:25.000 If you have family, friends that are skeptical, like, oh, why are you still talking about 2020?

00:55:30.000 Go read that book.

00:55:31.000 It will go through all of this.

00:55:33.000 It'll go through the late-night ballot dumps.

00:55:35.000 It'll go through the signature verification issues.

00:55:37.000 It'll go through Zuckerberg putting in $420 million for the Center for Technology and Civic Life.

00:55:42.000 And she's done a terrific job.

00:55:44.000 And she's a legitimate journalist.

00:55:46.000 She's very fair.

00:55:47.000 I'm sure you've seen her on television a lot.

00:55:49.000 She's not a sensationalist.

00:55:50.000 She's not going above and beyond.

00:55:53.000 But I do hope that there's going to be some continued investigations into this, especially here in Arizona, because there's a lot of open questions still here in Arizona.

00:56:03.000 Gary, you want to comment on that at all?

00:56:05.000 No?

00:56:06.000 Plead the fifth?

00:56:08.000 God bless you.

00:56:08.000 Okay.

00:56:09.000 Thank you for being here tonight.

00:56:10.000 Okay.

00:56:12.000 My name is Jamie McPeak.

00:56:14.000 I'm 10.

00:56:16.000 And my question is: so my friend is not Republican.

00:56:23.000 He's Democrat.

00:56:24.000 And so he's been in his house for a while for a long time.

00:56:28.000 He's been online for my school.

00:56:31.000 And he finally comes back and doesn't play with me.

00:56:35.000 And I just wanted to know: do you have any tips on it?

00:56:39.000 Yeah.

00:56:40.000 First of all, you guys are 10, so tell them to cut it out.

00:56:43.000 I mean, it's ridiculous.

00:56:45.000 Seriously.

00:56:46.000 And the parents should get involved and be like, we can hate each other.

00:56:50.000 Our kids are 10.

00:56:51.000 Okay.

00:56:52.000 But what you're highlighting is not surprising.

00:56:54.000 It's tragic.

00:56:56.000 When I was 10, I didn't know what a Republican or a Democrat was, okay?

00:57:00.000 Let alone what my friends.

00:57:02.000 And this is a real thing.

00:57:04.000 And Gary, I want your thoughts on this.

00:57:06.000 That if you think the nastiness that you see is only going to be between 50 and 60 year olds, no, no, that river goes all the way down to 10 year olds.

00:57:17.000 It is destroying the lives of every single American citizen.

00:57:20.000 And you said something very interesting.

00:57:22.000 You would like to play with him, wouldn't you?

00:57:25.000 Yeah, but he doesn't want to play with you.

00:57:27.000 It's interesting how that works, right?

00:57:29.000 It's that unfortunately, 99% of the time on the left, and maybe 1% on the right, I'm sure all of you have this, friends that stop talking to you, family members that stop talking to you.

00:57:42.000 It seems as if it's in the operating system and the programming on the left that if there's an idea or there's a worldview that they disagree with, immediate dismissal.

00:57:51.000 That is where cancel culture came from, by the way.

00:57:53.000 And I want to broaden this to the whole audience.

00:57:55.000 If friends leave you, you know, blessed subtraction, right?

00:58:00.000 But you shouldn't leave friends over politics.

00:58:02.000 You should not leave friends and don't do this.

00:58:02.000 You shouldn't.

00:58:05.000 If they leave you, whatever.

00:58:07.000 Like, don't fight for that.

00:58:08.000 You know, like, whatever.

00:58:09.000 Have a nice day, okay?

00:58:10.000 I've done that plenty.

00:58:12.000 But you shouldn't allow something as a difference of, you know, worldview of how you think things should operate as be like, I'm never going to talk to you because of this.

00:58:21.000 Instead, especially as Christians, we're not called to do that.

00:58:25.000 Gary, do you have any thoughts on that?

00:58:26.000 Well, one of the things that struck me was that you said your friend is Democrat and stays in his house all the time.

00:58:33.000 Is your friend Joe Biden?

00:58:37.000 That's the first thing that I thought.

00:58:39.000 The second.

00:58:40.000 You wouldn't be 10, Gary.

00:58:42.000 That's debatable.

00:58:44.000 But anyway, I'm going to get over.

00:58:47.000 See, I get to leave.

00:58:48.000 I get to clean up your mess.

00:58:50.000 I did this at your church.

00:58:51.000 No, no.

00:58:52.000 I'm not going to have you back because you'll repeat.

00:58:55.000 But seriously, though, what I find so tragic is that the people who talk about tolerance the most are the least tolerant.

00:59:04.000 And why is that?

00:59:06.000 It's so sad.

00:59:06.000 It really is.

00:59:08.000 But I would just encourage you, you know, you do your part to love your friend and be a good friend and, you know, pray for your friend, but we can't control our friends.

00:59:18.000 And so all you can do is try to be a good friend yourself.

00:59:22.000 And the last piece of advice I'll give you is try to mend it.

00:59:22.000 Yeah.

00:59:26.000 Try to keep friends regardless of political differences.

00:59:29.000 Don't fall into that habit at a young age.

00:59:32.000 It's not a good way to live.

00:59:34.000 You end up siloing yourself off.

00:59:34.000 It isn't.

00:59:36.000 There will be people that leave your life, but especially for 10-year-olds, I don't want to live in that type of country.

00:59:41.000 God bless you.

00:59:42.000 Thank you for being here tonight.

00:59:43.000 Thank you.

00:59:47.000 Hi, my name is Sandra Christensen, and we're going through some school board shenanigans.

00:59:53.000 Paradise Valley Unified School District, pornography of the schools and things of that nature.

00:59:59.000 There's a governing board meeting on Thursday.

01:00:02.000 So my question is, as a person who's going to be running for governing board next year, how can I keep my Christian values and fight the good fight without having to tear people down?

01:00:15.000 Because they're trying to tear us down.

01:00:18.000 Yeah, that's a great question.

01:00:21.000 You know, Jesus said, blessed are you when people persecute you and say all manner of evil against you.

01:00:29.000 They did the same thing to the prophets, right?

01:00:31.000 But great is your reward.

01:00:32.000 And I would just say, as long as you are truthful and season it with grace.

01:00:39.000 Amen.

01:00:40.000 And a lot of times, especially married men have heard this before.

01:00:45.000 You're newly married.

01:00:47.000 Have you ever heard this, Charlie?

01:00:48.000 It's not what you say.

01:00:50.000 It's how you say it.

01:00:51.000 Have you ever heard that?

01:00:51.000 Once or twice.

01:00:52.000 Once or twice?

01:00:53.000 Okay.

01:00:54.000 I've heard it once or twice myself, too.

01:00:56.000 And so I would encourage you, it's not always what you say.

01:01:00.000 You might be factual, but it's how you say it.

01:01:05.000 And just, you know, let the love of the Lord Jesus come through, but don't compromise the truth.

01:01:11.000 And God will honor you for that.

01:01:13.000 And this is something that's important.

01:01:16.000 Now, if you get into the business of principalities and you get into the business of politics, you are now making a spiritual decision to play offense in a domain that, according to Paul and according to Jesus, is dominated by the enemy.

01:01:32.000 This is a theological position that Christians don't like talking about openly, but it's what the scriptures say, right, Gary?

01:01:38.000 It's that you're now playing, you're not, you're now going to play offense in Satan's sandbox, right?

01:01:43.000 So that means you have to understand and be equipped with the spiritual tools and weaponry to know what you're getting into.

01:01:50.000 What does that mean?

01:01:50.000 Praying, fasting, going to church, being around fellow Christians, right?

01:01:55.000 Asking God for wisdom and he'll give it to you abundantly, James 1, 5, always self-assessing, like, was I Christ-like in that situation?

01:02:02.000 At the same time, did I tolerate evil in that situation?

01:02:06.000 Right?

01:02:07.000 That's a balance, isn't it?

01:02:08.000 As you say, proclamation, refutation.

01:02:10.000 And look, it's important to remember that, and C.S. Lewis said it best where he said, we need to launch a sabotage campaign in enemy-occupied territory because we're living in enemy-occupied territory.

01:02:22.000 And so when you're getting into that fight, some Christians don't realize that different than almost anything else, if you're going to run for office, you're going to come under arrows and attacks and backlash.

01:02:33.000 And so you have to then come into that posture.

01:02:35.000 It's like, okay, especially if you're going to proclaim righteousness and be disagreeable with the ways of the world, as it says in Romans 12, 2, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that you might be able to see God's perfect and goodwill.

01:02:51.000 The second part of the verse, I'm paraphrasing.

01:02:53.000 That's the essence of it.

01:02:54.000 And the point is that the do not conform comes with a promise, but that's hard.

01:02:58.000 And that comes the total transformation of it.

01:03:00.000 So, I just want to encourage you and commend you and keep on showing up to Freedom Square if you can, because you have a whole room of people here that are going to want to support you.

01:03:09.000 But also understand, it comes with a price, but a price worth paying.

01:03:13.000 So, God bless you.

01:03:14.000 Thank you for being here.

01:03:18.000 Hi, Charlie.

01:03:20.000 My name is Maverick.

01:03:22.000 It's a great name.

01:03:23.000 Thank you.

01:03:24.000 I have someone that I deeply care about who.

01:03:28.000 thinks that Kyle Rittenhouse should still be charged with something.

01:03:33.000 They haven't told me what, but with the killing of those people.

01:03:38.000 And I've seen the trial, at least a good portion of it, sorry, where I didn't see anything wrong.

01:03:47.000 And I was wondering if you have anything to say about it.

01:03:50.000 Yeah, I mean, boy, did they try to lock him up for something?

01:03:54.000 Weapons charge got thrown out.

01:03:56.000 Let me try to tie this in biblically.

01:03:58.000 You know, someone said, Charlie is a Christian.

01:04:00.000 It says, thou shalt not kill.

01:04:02.000 Now, interesting, if you go into the Hebrew, it says, thou shalt not murder.

01:04:05.000 It's a very big difference.

01:04:08.000 And Kyle did not have the intent to take life that night.

01:04:11.000 But self-defense is time and time again articulated and defended in the Bible.

01:04:17.000 And Gary, do you want to talk about that?

01:04:19.000 That's exactly right.

01:04:20.000 That there's a distinction in the Ten Commandments between murder and killing.

01:04:23.000 Because some people have asked me, law enforcement, military, hey, I've had to kill people.

01:04:28.000 In the line of duty, you're an arm of the government.

01:04:31.000 You are doing something that is not murder.

01:04:34.000 Sometimes there's killing, but that's different from murder.

01:04:38.000 So, yeah.

01:04:39.000 And especially, so you take the military example, our rules of engagement are supposed to be almost all a self-defense posture.

01:04:44.000 But let's just talk about Kyle Rittenhouse, right?

01:04:46.000 What on earth in the criminal code can they throw at him?

01:04:50.000 And then let's just say the politically incorrect part out loud: that for whatever reason, there was that picture of Kyle Rittenhouse with his mouth open and his hat backwards, wearing a green camo color and the AR-15 strapped.

01:05:03.000 And he all of a sudden fit into a stereotype of a young white man that is inspired by Donald Trump and wants to commit violence.

01:05:11.000 And for whatever reason, they need to keep that narrative going.

01:05:14.000 They don't care whose lives they destroy.

01:05:16.000 They don't care if they have to lock up entire families.

01:05:19.000 And that's wrong.

01:05:20.000 That's tribal politics at its worst.

01:05:22.000 Because you notice every time they try to attack Kyle Rittenhouse, they insert race where no one's actually thinking about it, right?

01:05:30.000 They all of a sudden are like, oh, he's a white supremacist.

01:05:32.000 How on earth do you say something like that?

01:05:33.000 You know, his best friend in the world and the father figure to him is a black man.

01:05:37.000 Does anyone actually even know that?

01:05:39.000 Of course not.

01:05:40.000 The media won't tell you that.

01:05:41.000 No, instead, they basically say that.

01:05:43.000 And because, and I did this on our radio show on our podcast today, and this is an analogy that might make sense to it, might not.

01:05:50.000 So I just apologize in forgiveness, for forgiveness ahead of time, which is that the media is in the mosaic creating business, okay?

01:05:59.000 So if you look at a mosaic, it's thousands of independent little tiles that go create a bigger picture, right?

01:06:05.000 So if you zoom in on just one part of a mosaic, it just looks like a tile.

01:06:08.000 You zoom out, it's a bigger picture.

01:06:10.000 But the media refuses to put a tile or a collection of tiles in their mosaic picture if it doesn't fit the type of thing they want you to see.

01:06:20.000 Does that make sense?

01:06:21.000 And so Kyle Rittenhouse was a big part of their picture.

01:06:26.000 It was like the middle part of America's a terrible place and white people are hunting down people in the streets.

01:06:32.000 And all of a sudden you have to remove that.

01:06:34.000 That's a mea culpa.

01:06:35.000 That's a, oh, it's actually not as bad as you might think.

01:06:38.000 Like, oh, actually, all that outrage was unwarranted.

01:06:41.000 And they don't want to have to do that.

01:06:42.000 So look, you asked a very specific question.

01:06:45.000 I'll give you a specific answer.

01:06:46.000 I would ask your friend, what on earth in the U.S. Criminal Code could he be charged with?

01:06:50.000 Because they tried to do everything, you know, he and he was found not guilty by a jury of his peers under a very intense prosecution, by the way.

01:06:59.000 Some of the most unfair and I would say belligerent prosecution that I have seen in recent memory that really wanted him locked up.

01:07:06.000 Thank you so much for being here tonight.

01:07:09.000 Yeah, can I just give a flip side to the tragic labeling of the white supremacist thing?

01:07:15.000 And she's kind of gone under the radar, but she's getting more notoriety now.

01:07:20.000 But people talk about how Young became governor, but the lieutenant governor elect Winsom Sears.

01:07:29.000 So, first black female ever elected to statewide office in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

01:07:37.000 She's a conservative Christian assault weapon-carrying Marine.

01:07:42.000 And that on her campaign literature, she has an assault rifle on her campaign literature.

01:07:48.000 She stopped by our church two weeks ago.

01:07:50.000 I brought her up and prayed for her.

01:07:51.000 People gave her a standing ovation.

01:07:52.000 So there's a good, again, we can talk about how the narrative is just like so, you know, racially divisive, but there's some good things happening too.

01:08:01.000 And she's a great example of some good things happening.

01:08:03.000 It's so funny.

01:08:04.000 She went on Twitter and she said, all my followers think I'm base.

01:08:08.000 Okay, I am base now.

01:08:09.000 It's like, it's so funny.

01:08:11.000 You guys, it's a political nomenclature thing.

01:08:14.000 So she's terrific, and we're going to try to have her at AmericaFest.

01:08:17.000 So, yes.

01:08:18.000 Hey, welcome to Phoenix.

01:08:20.000 Charlie, I consider myself, like a lot of people here, pretty well-read.

01:08:25.000 We listen to podcasts.

01:08:26.000 There's a lot of information.

01:08:28.000 And while the left has been lifting up the word racist and the accusation of racist, there's one thing I haven't heard.

01:08:34.000 And can you explain why I don't, at least I have not heard any reminder and restoration or restatement of all the advances that we made during the civil rights movement.

01:08:50.000 No references to Letter from the Birmingham Jail, Medgar Evers.

01:08:56.000 That was a church history moment and it was an American moment.

01:09:00.000 And I've not heard any rhetoric to remind us of the bridge that we built.

01:09:05.000 Did I not hear it?

01:09:06.000 No, I think that's smart.

01:09:08.000 I will say, though, that when we say that, we're told that America is just as racist as it was back then and there was no progress made.

01:09:16.000 That is the belief of the media orthodoxy and the academic orthodoxy.

01:09:20.000 I'll prove it to you.

01:09:22.000 Derek Bell, who is the leading critical race theorist, or at least previously, in 1991, wrote an essay where he said the black man is just as unfree as he was in 1865.

01:09:38.000 He wrote that in 1991.

01:09:39.000 That started this argument that any progress was actually not real progress.

01:09:44.000 This is preposterous, obviously, for anyone with eyes to see or ears to hear, whether it be Major League Baseball, sporting schools, anything, to imagine that there's no progress at all whatsoever.

01:09:57.000 I think that's a smart point, though, because the civil rights movement is actually not taught the way you would think it would be taught in most public schools.

01:10:06.000 Most public schools have a de-emphasis on Martin Luther King's vision of a colorblind society, and they have an overemphasis on Malcolm X's society of a hyper race, Malcolm X's vision of a hyper-racialized society.

01:10:23.000 So let's take out Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. for a second.

01:10:26.000 There are two other black intellectuals that are really important.

01:10:29.000 That's Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois.

01:10:33.000 Okay.

01:10:33.000 So Booker T. Washington, he believed that we want to try to have a colorblind society, that the spirit and the soul of a man is the most important.

01:10:41.000 Booker T. Washington was articulating what Martin Luther King Jr. said beforehand.

01:10:46.000 W.E.B. Du Bois said, race is the most important thing in the world, that race is what moves history.

01:10:52.000 And so, just so you understand that if I say that, they'll just dismiss it.

01:10:57.000 But I think that's smart.

01:10:58.000 We do need to do a better job of talking about the civil rights movement and really what came out of it.

01:11:03.000 I think that's highly, I think it's highly beneficial.

01:11:06.000 Gary, do you have any thoughts on that?

01:11:07.000 Yeah, I mean, just highlighting the positive, I think, will go a long way to speaking against all of the divisiveness.

01:11:17.000 So that's one reason why, like when Winsome Sears said, Can I come to your church?

01:11:21.000 Absolutely, but I'm wanting to pray for you up on the stage because the more we highlight the good things that God is doing in terms of racial reconciliation, then that'll push out the darkness.

01:11:33.000 But we do have to do more of it.

01:11:35.000 Yeah.

01:11:35.000 Sometimes I find that we're so spending so much time trying to fight against the false narrative and the lies and the divisiveness that we're not highlighting what the truth is.

01:11:47.000 So sometimes we get caught up in that game.

01:11:49.000 It's true.

01:11:50.000 Yeah.

01:11:50.000 Thank you.

01:11:51.000 Yes.

01:11:51.000 Smart point.

01:11:52.000 Good to see you again.

01:11:54.000 Great to see you again as well.

01:11:55.000 First of all, I want to say I love the progress that you guys are doing in our culture, but my question comes to the role of the church.

01:12:01.000 Since right now, we're doing so much politically and the idea of activism.

01:12:06.000 You were talking about earlier, Gary, how you had even congressmen asking, How did you get away with it?

01:12:12.000 So if the left uses more than what I call their collective brain cell, they'll find out that we're doing things like the petitions and things like that.

01:12:18.000 So how far can we bend the rules and for how long can we get away with it until the left really starts to attack us?

01:12:26.000 And then what should we do in response to that?

01:12:29.000 Yeah, well, the left has already attacked us.

01:12:32.000 And I guess implied in your question is that there is a limit.

01:12:38.000 And I'm not sure that there is, only in this sense, only in this sense, because I don't want a church to become hyper-politicized.

01:12:47.000 Like I said, proclamation and refutation has to be a balance.

01:12:51.000 But I also believe that the church has been silent way too long.

01:12:57.000 Way too long.

01:12:59.000 And a friend of mine, Dr. Erwin Lutser, used to pastor Moody Church in Chicago.

01:13:05.000 He wrote a book years ago called When a Nation Forgets God, Seven Lessons to Learn from Nazi Germany.

01:13:11.000 And the church remained silent during the days of Nazi Germany.

01:13:15.000 But, you know, there were the few exceptions, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who spoke up.

01:13:19.000 But then what happened?

01:13:20.000 He was executed at the age of 39 in 1945.

01:13:24.000 But Bonhoeffer said, A silence in the face of evil is itself evil.

01:13:29.000 And God will not hold us guiltless.

01:13:31.000 Not to speak is to speak.

01:13:32.000 Not to act is to act.

01:13:35.000 And we have to be the church engaged today.

01:13:38.000 So I'm not sure.

01:13:39.000 I understand your question, but I think the bigger battle is that churches are too passive and silent.

01:13:47.000 Not, are we going too far?

01:13:49.000 We need to get the church engaged in the conversation and make the difference in the culture.

01:13:54.000 I agree.

01:13:55.000 Nice question.

01:13:57.000 Hi, my name is Chuck.

01:13:59.000 I'd like to thank both of you guys.

01:14:01.000 Charlie, I came a couple months ago when Jack Kebbs was here.

01:14:05.000 Nice shirt, too.

01:14:06.000 That's a turning point shirt.

01:14:07.000 Appreciate it.

01:14:08.000 He was talking about the pastors in black cloaks.

01:14:11.000 And after that, I started attending church for the last month and a half.

01:14:16.000 And thanks to great pastors like yourself, Pastor Gary, defending his church and our nation.

01:14:26.000 I kind of have a question that kind of piggybacks off of Mavericks, not too much off of Kyle Rittenhouse, but what you had said, defending yourself and how it's moral.

01:14:35.000 But you said in the beginning it's a moral duty.

01:14:38.000 Can you elaborate on that a little bit more?

01:14:40.000 Yeah, I mean, I think it's a moral duty to defend yourself against imminent death.

01:14:45.000 I think that would be the same as if you were bleeding out and you had a tourniquet next to you.

01:14:49.000 Would you use it or not, right?

01:14:52.000 And that it goes to kind of this question of if you have a chance to save your life, would you do that?

01:14:57.000 Um, and the answer is absolutely yes.

01:15:00.000 Um, and that's the situation I would say with Kyle Rittenhouse.

01:15:03.000 Um, the same it would be with medicine or in self-defense or any of those things.

01:15:08.000 Um, and there's a multitude of biblical examples.

01:15:11.000 As a side note, I got into this really bizarre conversation the other day.

01:15:15.000 Um, there's these people that think they're really smart and um they pick fights with me, and it's kind of interesting.

01:15:21.000 I wish this one was filmed.

01:15:22.000 And he said, Charlie, um, Jesus, what he actually did an act of suicide by going to the cross.

01:15:30.000 This is a new thing, and again, this would take someone who's never read their Bible before because Jesus did not go willingly, he went obediently to the cross, right?

01:15:39.000 Jesus went because he knew what was going to come after them, right?

01:15:43.000 Um, and so to your question about the moral good, right, and to tie it all together from the Christian ethic, God gave us life.

01:15:51.000 Life, now, this is another thought crime, it's not a gift, it's an investment, okay?

01:15:56.000 It's a difference.

01:15:57.000 A gift means you can do whatever you want with it.

01:16:00.000 Like, if I said, Hey, what'd you get for Christmas five years ago?

01:16:03.000 I don't know.

01:16:03.000 You forget gifts really easily, right?

01:16:05.000 You don't forget investments, though.

01:16:07.000 Anyone ever here start a business, you get an investment to do it?

01:16:09.000 You remember the day that check arrived, you remember the expectation, and you remember what you have to do in return for it.

01:16:15.000 Big difference: gift versus an investment.

01:16:17.000 God invested in you.

01:16:19.000 Now, you could say life is special.

01:16:20.000 That's what people are really saying when they say life is a gift, right?

01:16:22.000 They're saying life is special, it's unique, it's ordained, you know, it's to be taken seriously.

01:16:26.000 I think that's the essence of it.

01:16:28.000 But it's also say, Hey, I have a responsibility.

01:16:31.000 So, here's the question: Is it the moral right if all of a sudden, like Mr. Rosenbaum coming up to try to kill Kyle Rittenhouse?

01:16:39.000 Do you, as a Christian, have a responsibility to defend your life?

01:16:42.000 The answer is absolutely yes.

01:16:44.000 The answer is that at that moment where your life is put in jeopardy, the life that God made an investment in you, you have a moral obligation to try to protect them.

01:16:54.000 Thank you.

01:16:58.000 Okay, so I've noticed the spirit of the Antichrist recently with all these BLM riots and last summer and the recent Christmas parade incident.

01:17:11.000 Every single time we push back, they create a new mandate or a new, yeah.

01:17:21.000 So, is there really any way we can reverse this, or is this like the beginning of the end?

01:17:27.000 Maybe that's a good question.

01:17:29.000 That's a Calvary Chapel question.

01:17:32.000 That's a great question.

01:17:34.000 You know, look, John in 1 John, he talks about the Antichrist, but he talks about Antichrist small A. In Revelation, you know, you hear about the beast and the Antichrist, capital A. There will be an actual Antichrist who rises on the world, seeing this geopolitical figure, very charismatic, who will try to unite the world into one world government.

01:17:56.000 Okay, but John in 1 John talks about the Antichrist small A because that spirit is now present at work.

01:18:05.000 And that spirit of Antichrist, small A, is always trying to war against the things of God.

01:18:15.000 And so, we have to expect that in our culture, there will be constant things warring against God, God's people, Israel.

01:18:25.000 I mean, all of it, you know, all of it is rooted in the enemy and that spirit of the Antichrist.

01:18:31.000 So, we have to recognize that that's there, but we can't become passive and check out and say, Well, John says the spirit of the Antichrist is going to be here, so we might as well check out.

01:18:40.000 Have to always fulfill our responsibility, as I said earlier, being salt and like make a difference in the world, be the representatives of Christ, be his ambassadors in the world, because just because the spirit of the Antichrist is here doesn't mean we become passive and check out.

01:18:53.000 We have to stay engaged.

01:18:54.000 I want to encourage all of you that might be interested about this topic.

01:18:57.000 Our friend Steve Smotherman gave one of the best sermons on the Antichrist.

01:19:02.000 You could type in Steve Smotherman, Antichrist, that has millions of views on YouTube.

01:19:06.000 He did a terrific job.

01:19:07.000 It's one of the best, so biblical.

01:19:09.000 But, Pastor Gary, I want to ask you a piggyback off of that.

01:19:12.000 Do you find that some people that might focus on the end times, do you think that the danger of that is an apathetic posture?

01:19:22.000 Do you see that ever?

01:19:23.000 Yeah, I mean, and this is why Jesus teaches this parable and he says, occupy till I come, because he wants us to still be engaged in our world.

01:19:31.000 Because people can just become passive and check out.

01:19:34.000 I mean, Paul even had to address this in his letter to the Thessalonians because people were deciding, well, Jesus is going to come again, so I don't need to work.

01:19:44.000 If you don't work, you shall not eat.

01:19:47.000 He's continually challenging us in scripture that even though Jesus is coming again, you still have to do your part to be his representatives in the world.

01:19:54.000 Stay engaged.

01:19:55.000 Yeah, and it's a balance, right?

01:19:57.000 We want to look at the signs of the times, what the scriptures say, and be aware and alert.

01:20:02.000 Also, admitting the day and the hour is unknown, right?

01:20:06.000 No one has it circled.

01:20:08.000 Some people are very, they're like, oh, Jesus is coming next Thursday.

01:20:11.000 I don't have to worry about anything.

01:20:13.000 Not so fast.

01:20:14.000 Some people say, the house is on fire.

01:20:16.000 All we got to do is get the kids out.

01:20:18.000 And it's like, well, maybe put the fire out.

01:20:19.000 That would be more logical, right?

01:20:22.000 But it's not to say we shouldn't care about eschatology, right?

01:20:25.000 Or care about what the end times have to say.

01:20:27.000 So I hope that's helpful.

01:20:28.000 Do you have a question?

01:20:28.000 Thank you.

01:20:29.000 Do we have a question here?

01:20:30.000 Okay.

01:20:31.000 So this will be our final question.

01:20:34.000 And then we'll call it a night.

01:20:36.000 So yeah.

01:20:38.000 How are you guys doing?

01:20:39.000 My name is Mark.

01:20:41.000 There's a five to six minute presentation called The Greatest War and the Covenant.

01:20:47.000 And it takes global warming off the table and the race card off the table.

01:20:51.000 Why isn't anybody speaking about that?

01:20:53.000 Why isn't anybody talking about it?

01:20:55.000 And I'll give you just a short expert from it.

01:20:59.000 God chooses the color of our skin and God chooses if we're a man or a woman.

01:21:04.000 And I don't judge God's choices.

01:21:05.000 And that's just part of it.

01:21:07.000 And why isn't anybody speaking about that?

01:21:11.000 It goes?

01:21:12.000 Well, I'm not familiar with the video, but it's got God all over it.

01:21:18.000 Okay, well, then we'll check it out.

01:21:20.000 So thank you.

01:21:21.000 All right.

01:21:22.000 We'll look at it.

01:21:22.000 The covenant.

01:21:23.000 Thank you.

01:21:23.000 Appreciate that.

01:21:24.000 So let me just kind of complete all this together.

01:21:28.000 Thank you, thank you, thank you.

01:21:29.000 Anyone go to every Freedom Square?

01:21:30.000 Did anyone go to every single one?

01:21:32.000 You guys are awesome.

01:21:33.000 Seriously.

01:21:34.000 And look, we are going to stay on top of this.

01:21:36.000 January, we're going to come right out of the gate.

01:21:38.000 January 4th, 4th.

01:21:41.000 Is that right?

01:21:42.000 4th?

01:21:42.000 Okay.

01:21:43.000 Yeah, we'll do it.

01:21:44.000 And I think a lot of people are in town.

01:21:46.000 I'm in town the whole month of January, so it's going to be a lot of fun.

01:21:49.000 But let's pack it up.

01:21:50.000 We're going to have some amazing speakers, amazing things.

01:21:52.000 I just want to say a couple things in closing.

01:21:54.000 Thank you again to the entire Dream City team and the Barnetts.

01:21:57.000 As you guys consider year-end giving or tithing, please consider Dream City Church.

01:22:05.000 They're doing such an amazing job on so many different fronts.

01:22:08.000 That's number one.

01:22:08.000 Number two, for those of you guys that want to come to America Fest, again, we have Tucker Carlson coming, Candace Owens coming.

01:22:14.000 We have Pete Hegsef coming, Jesse Waters, Greg Gutfeld, you name it.

01:22:18.000 They're going to be in Phoenix December 18, 19, 2021.

01:22:22.000 Just go to our website, tpusa.com, and get your tickets.

01:22:26.000 And then in closing, everybody, you guys are making a phenomenal difference.

01:22:29.000 And I don't know about you, but I was extremely inspired and convicted by what Pastor Gary shared tonight.

01:22:35.000 It was one of our best we've had.

01:22:36.000 So give it up for Gary.

01:22:37.000 And we'll see you guys next year.

01:22:39.000 God bless you guys.

01:22:40.000 Thank you so much.

01:22:47.000 Thank you so much for listening, everybody.

01:22:48.000 Email us your thoughts.

01:22:49.000 Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.

01:22:51.000 If you want to come to AmericaFest, it's tpusa.com/slash A-M-F-E-S-T.

01:22:56.000 God bless you guys.

01:22:56.000 Speak to you soon.

01:23:00.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - December 05, 2021

A Case Study in the Engaged Church with Pastor Gary Hamrick LIVE from Freedom Square

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