The Charlie Kirk Show - Becoming Courageous in Christ — LIVE from Grace Church in St. Louis

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, happy Easter.

00:00:02.000 God bless all of you.

00:00:03.000 I hope you're having a wonderful Easter.

00:00:04.000 This is a conversation I had at Grace Church in St. Louis with Wes Martin, the lead pastor at Grace St. Louis.

00:00:10.000 What a phenomenal church.

00:00:11.000 What a healthy church.

00:00:12.000 What a strong church.

00:00:13.000 A great time that we had together.

00:00:16.000 I hope you have a wonderful Easter, everybody.

00:00:18.000 Get involved with TurningpointUSA at tpusa.com.

00:00:21.000 Email me your thoughts as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:24.000 And please support our program at charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:00:29.000 And if you want to get involved, it's tpusa.com.

00:00:32.000 But most important is he has risen.

00:00:33.000 Have a wonderful Sunday and enjoy this podcast, this conversation that I gave at Grace Church.

00:00:39.000 Great, great people in St. Louis.

00:00:41.000 Make sure you subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast and enjoy.

00:00:44.000 God bless.

00:00:45.000 Buckle up. 0.96

00:00:46.000 Here we go.

00:00:46.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:48.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:50.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:53.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:57.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:58.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:59.000 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.

00:01:07.000 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.

00:01:16.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:20.000 Well, I wanted to jump in before we jump into the weeds.

00:01:24.000 There's some people here, believe it or not, because not everybody has access to all the awesome videos and content that you're producing.

00:01:31.000 But who is Charlie Kirk?

00:01:34.000 Who are you?

00:01:35.000 And how in the world did you get to the point where you're at at 28 years old?

00:01:38.000 Depends who you ask, I guess.

00:01:40.000 There's a couple different answers to that.

00:01:42.000 First of all, I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.

00:01:45.000 Most important decision I made in my life.

00:01:47.000 I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.

00:01:52.000 So in the state of Illinois.

00:01:54.000 Now you're going to have to now hear my Illinois deal.

00:01:57.000 You guys all know this.

00:01:58.000 You see, in Illinois, we have term limits, a little different than most states.

00:02:01.000 One term in office, one term in jail.

00:02:06.000 See?

00:02:07.000 You guys get it.

00:02:09.000 They get it in Missouri.

00:02:10.000 I'll tell you what.

00:02:11.000 All right.

00:02:11.000 How about, see, when we asked for our governor's cell number, we born and raised in Chicago, Illinois.

00:02:25.000 Started this whole effort to try to save America and save Western civilization.

00:02:30.000 When I was 18 years old, I wanted to get into West Point, didn't get in.

00:02:33.000 It was the best thing that never happened to me.

00:02:35.000 God has a plan for all of us.

00:02:37.000 And I thought I knew what I was doing, and I didn't.

00:02:39.000 And so I started this effort with no money, no connections, no idea what I was doing when I was 18 years old in the suburbs of Chicago.

00:02:47.000 And I felt a need, a deep urge that the people of this nation needed to wake up, especially students and young people.

00:02:55.000 I felt that we were given this incredible constitutional republic and we were making decisions, self-inflicted decisions, to turn this country away from righteousness and towards decay and despair.

00:03:07.000 And again, it was a clumsy first couple of years starting at Turning Point USA.

00:03:11.000 I had some amazing support along the way.

00:03:14.000 The Lord really had his hand on this organization and has had his hand on this organization all along.

00:03:20.000 And 10 years later, we are now the nation's premier organization for young people, pursuing and defending American values on high school and college campuses across the country.

00:03:32.000 And, you know, a little bit, I do three podcasts a day, a couple hours of radio a day.

00:03:39.000 I traveled 330 days last year all across the country.

00:03:42.000 I've been over all 50 states twice over.

00:03:45.000 I have difficulty sitting still.

00:03:47.000 So this is like my third or fourth event today.

00:03:49.000 I love it.

00:03:50.000 I'm the most blessed person on the planet because I get to do what I love and know it makes a difference.

00:03:55.000 I really am incredibly blessed in what I get to do.

00:03:59.000 And what kind of brings us here was an unexpected detour that has now turned into one of the great blessings in my life.

00:04:05.000 I was a Christian my whole life.

00:04:06.000 I don't have one of those stories where you say, you know, I walked away from the Lord.

00:04:09.000 I came back.

00:04:10.000 That's actually not my journey.

00:04:11.000 I know some of you can resonate more with me, and you'll hear everyone's testimony different.

00:04:14.000 I never doubted God.

00:04:15.000 I never had one of those things where I looked up to God and said, Are you actually there?

00:04:19.000 That was never my story.

00:04:20.000 At certain times in my life, I had more enthusiasm and energy than others.

00:04:24.000 I think we can all sympathize with that.

00:04:26.000 But I was always told something growing up that Charlie, that politics thing is fine, but you better not bring it towards the church.

00:04:33.000 You keep those two things separate.

00:04:34.000 That was fine.

00:04:34.000 I was like, okay, no problem.

00:04:36.000 I grew up in a Bible-believing Bible-based church in the suburbs of Chicago, where it was expositional, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, deep into the word.

00:04:45.000 I believe in the inerrancy of scripture.

00:04:46.000 Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.

00:04:49.000 I'm unafraid to espouse that on college campuses, high school campuses, podcasts, and radio.

00:04:54.000 And I was doing that for the first eight years of Turning Point USA, but I was always told, hey, there's got to be this dividing line.

00:05:00.000 Don't cross that line.

00:05:02.000 And then my life really changed, and my premise was challenged when a pastor in California spoke at an event right before me, my now pastor, Pastor Rob McCoy, and he talked about how the two are actually never supposed to be separate.

00:05:17.000 That these are questions of morality, of truth, about what is good, what is true, what is beautiful.

00:05:23.000 Like Philippians 4:8, that says, whatever is right, whatever is good, whatever is true, whatever is praiseworthy, think on these things.

00:05:30.000 That's Paul writing.

00:05:31.000 And tonight we're going to think about these things.

00:05:32.000 We're going to live out Philippians 4:8 tonight.

00:05:34.000 We're going to think about the things that are true and praiseworthy and what things are not true and praiseworthy.

00:05:40.000 And he really challenged me because I was under this assumption that America might have had some Christian roots at one point, but it basically was always a secular nation.

00:05:51.000 And I didn't believe it as bluntly as that, but I definitely had some of those talking points beat into me, all the while being a Christian and being a constitutionalist.

00:06:00.000 And I couldn't have been more wrong.

00:06:02.000 The deeper I dove into our nation's history, I realized that 55 out of 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were Bible-believing church-attending Christians.

00:06:11.000 I realized that the Constitution is a divinely inspired document that espouses biblical principles of consent to the governed and separation of powers and the independent judiciary.

00:06:19.000 I realized how exceptional America was from the beginning because of the problem America sought to solve.

00:06:25.000 And then I realized that it was the church that didn't just inspire, but it was the church that was the reason why America was founded in the first place.

00:06:32.000 And so that rocked my world.

00:06:37.000 I grew up in a world where you didn't say that at church, or you get kind of uncomfortable.

00:06:41.000 You start sitting around like, what is the pastor saying if they're doing that, right?

00:06:44.000 And I really went into a time of prayer and reflection and eventually repentance because I asked God for forgiveness why I didn't actually push this forward the first eight years at Turning Point USA of everything I was doing.

00:06:56.000 All the while I was never turning my back on the Lord, but I was trying to be like, yeah, that's not the place, not the time, place, or manner.

00:07:02.000 And then 2020 hit.

00:07:04.000 We locked down the church.

00:07:06.000 We decided it was non-essential, one of the worst mistakes our civilization ever made.

00:07:11.000 And we'll get into that tonight, trust me, in detail.

00:07:15.000 And I started to speak at more churches across the country.

00:07:17.000 And pastors were asking me for advice, me for advice, on how to talk about CRT.

00:07:22.000 Asked me, what is this wokeism thing, Charlie?

00:07:25.000 Should we ever comment on this stuff?

00:07:27.000 And I found that more and more pastors were desiring to speak righteousness into their community and into their congregation.

00:07:36.000 And so you asked, who is Charlie Kirk?

00:07:38.000 First and foremost, a Christian, saved by Jesus Christ.

00:07:40.000 My husband, amazing wife, got married just about a year ago.

00:07:45.000 When you meet my wife, you'll realize I'm the luckiest person.

00:07:48.000 I totally out-kicked my coverage.

00:07:50.000 I owe way under what, let's just say, I'm not qualified for that whole deal when you meet my wife. 1.00

00:07:58.000 He's amazing.

00:07:59.000 And I'm a patriot, unapologetic.

00:08:00.000 I love my country.

00:08:02.000 But I want to make sure that this is very clear.

00:08:05.000 Look, we as Christians, we believe in hierarchies, hierarchies of order, hierarchies of beauty, hierarchies.

00:08:10.000 The most important thing in my life is Jesus Christ.

00:08:12.000 That will never change.

00:08:15.000 And this is a very important thing.

00:08:16.000 The church should never get that hierarchy mixed up.

00:08:19.000 And we'll talk about tonight about how to properly communicate that, where it comes involved in the church.

00:08:24.000 But if you remain silent on the issues of patriotism and civic engagement, oh, that doesn't matter.

00:08:30.000 Well, then we're all going to have to open prison ministries, everybody, because we'll be sharing the gospel from somewhere that is not as nice as this room right now.

00:08:37.000 That's not an exaggeration.

00:08:38.000 We can go through examples of that.

00:08:39.000 So that's who I am, and that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

00:08:43.000 We like the story.

00:08:47.000 So just to clarify, then, so you have turning point that is focused mostly for like colleges and high schools.

00:08:55.000 But then a couple years ago, or however long ago, this faith kind of lagged, right?

00:08:59.000 To where you're focused in mobilizing churches.

00:09:03.000 So give us some hope.

00:09:04.000 Like, are you seeing the church begin to wake up and not be afraid to speak into these issues?

00:09:11.000 I am.

00:09:11.000 And so, yeah, look, all the different components of Turning Point USA seek to accomplish the same thing in different ways.

00:09:17.000 We want to set the captives free.

00:09:19.000 God does not want his people to live under tyranny.

00:09:22.000 He doesn't want people to live under tyranny eternally or here on earth.

00:09:25.000 It's not his wish for his people.

00:09:26.000 It's why he delivered people from Egypt. 0.97

00:09:28.000 It's why he delivered his chosen people every single time from slavery and serfdom.

00:09:32.000 It's why he sent his son, Jesus Christ.

00:09:34.000 He wants us to be free.

00:09:35.000 That's why I'm living.

00:09:36.000 That's why I'm wearing the shirt right now, live free.

00:09:39.000 It's God's wish for you to live free, free from sin, free from bondage, free from guilt.

00:09:42.000 And yes, free from authoritarianism, petty tyranny that tells you what to do with your life when it gets in complete contradiction with your values.

00:09:50.000 God's wish for his people is for you to live free.

00:09:53.000 And so, yeah, to answer your question, at Turning Point USA, we started at his high school and college campuses.

00:09:58.000 That is growing like you wouldn't believe.

00:10:00.000 More and more young people are attending our events.

00:10:02.000 They're starting chapters all around this quest for liberty, which is harmonic, by the way.

00:10:07.000 It is completely alongside in parallel with what we're doing here tonight.

00:10:11.000 We're trying to talk about liberty, and we're going to talk about it through a strictly biblical lens.

00:10:15.000 But it's the same sort of thing when a college kid shows up at one of my events, either at the University of Arkansas, which we just did a couple nights ago, or, you know, Auburn, where we just did an event a couple nights ago.

00:10:24.000 And these kids are searching.

00:10:25.000 They're looking.

00:10:26.000 They're looking to see, is there a natural law out there?

00:10:29.000 Is there any sort of rhythm to the cosmos?

00:10:31.000 Because they've been told there isn't.

00:10:33.000 They've been told that there is no God and there is no meaning.

00:10:35.000 There is no love.

00:10:36.000 There is no beauty.

00:10:37.000 So all of us tonight have two things in common.

00:10:40.000 Every single person here tonight agrees with these two things.

00:10:43.000 There is a God and you are not him.

00:10:49.000 Now, the importance of those two things is that the predominant view on most college campuses, they believe there is no God.

00:10:56.000 And if there was one, I would be him.

00:10:59.000 Very dangerous things happen at that moment.

00:11:01.000 So we started this program, TP USA Faith, back in August.

00:11:06.000 And look, I'm an entrepreneur.

00:11:07.000 If something doesn't work, I'm not going to keep on doing it.

00:11:09.000 There's been plenty of projects in the 10 years of this.

00:11:11.000 I was like, whoa, that doesn't work.

00:11:12.000 Shut that down, right?

00:11:14.000 That doesn't work.

00:11:15.000 I've been blown away since August.

00:11:17.000 We now have a field team across the country that's working with pastors, working with churches.

00:11:21.000 And the success, the momentum, the curiosity, the interest of churches that otherwise would have been on the sidelines, they want to say, hey, I want to do that biblical citizenship class.

00:11:29.000 Or they might reach out to us, say, hey, Charlie, do you have a pastor summit coming up, which we do coming in August, where we're going to have pastors from all across the country come to our summit and hopefully empower them and equip them with the information and just encouragement in general to keep on speaking out on this.

00:11:44.000 But I'll tell you, there are so many churches that are now speaking openly about these issues and about what's happening here.

00:11:50.000 And I feel just we're calling this entire calendar year the rise of the citizen.

00:11:56.000 We are seeing regular, normal, everyday people that otherwise would have just been either complacent or they would have been apathetic.

00:12:04.000 They're starting to break out of their mold and they're starting to challenge authority and tyranny and reclaim what is rightfully theirs.

00:12:11.000 And it all starts with the church.

00:12:14.000 Now, I'm sure there are several pastors in the room or viewing online.

00:12:20.000 And this whole, I just want to stay here for a little bit longer.

00:12:22.000 This idea of the separation of church and state, we found ourselves on the front page of the St. Louis Post Dispatch a few weeks ago for influencing, dare to influence the school board elections, which, by the way, are Tuesday, if I didn't mention that earlier.

00:12:36.000 Tuesday, we're all voting in St. Louis County and St. Charles County.

00:12:41.000 But you've got a few examples out there of, I know, from Jack Hibbs' church, Rob McCoy's church, of really this idea of having our 501c3 revoked or all of this stuff.

00:12:53.000 Just speak into that just a little bit more.

00:12:55.000 Yeah, let's first start on this line, separation of church and state.

00:12:57.000 It's okay if you believe that's in the Constitution.

00:13:00.000 I did too.

00:13:01.000 And then I read the Constitution and my head was spinning.

00:13:03.000 I realized it's not in here.

00:13:04.000 So then I read the Federalist Papers.

00:13:06.000 It's not in there either.

00:13:06.000 Read the Declaration of Independence.

00:13:08.000 It's not there either.

00:13:09.000 Like, where did this thing come from?

00:13:11.000 So the separation of church and state was referenced once by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Convention, taken out of context, then re-referenced in a Supreme Court decision in the 1960s.

00:13:20.000 I think it was either the Warren or the Burger Court that said there must be this wall between the church and the state.

00:13:26.000 So let's just take that at face value for a second.

00:13:28.000 Let's pretend it is right.

00:13:29.000 It is the law of the land.

00:13:30.000 Okay, let's pretend that is what governs us.

00:13:33.000 Well, then hold on.

00:13:34.000 Let's keep the state out of the church. 0.97

00:13:37.000 Like, wait, hold on.

00:13:40.000 Why is it that they can tell the church when they could do Easter or not?

00:13:44.000 Why is it they could tell the church whether or not you need to wear a mask when you go to worship?

00:13:48.000 Why were they able to shut down hundreds of thousands of churches across the country?

00:13:51.000 I thought they were separate.

00:13:53.000 No, no, no, no.

00:13:54.000 They always meant the separation to be a one-way separation.

00:13:57.000 They always meant that the state could do whatever they want to the church, but the church better not question the state.

00:14:01.000 It was an unconstitutional, immoral, and I believe a tactic of the enemy to try to keep the church submissive and wrongly so.

00:14:10.000 And so the country was founded by churches being in the public square.

00:14:15.000 It was saved many times by churches in the public square in the 1820s, the 1860s, the 1950s, the 1980s.

00:14:23.000 And so there is this fear that the church must remain completely and totally silent.

00:14:27.000 So there's a spectrum, right?

00:14:29.000 So you could be as cavalier as Jack Hibbs and Rob McCoy.

00:14:32.000 So Jack Hibbs, God bless him, he will endorse candidates from onstage.

00:14:36.000 He will record it and then mail the recordings to the Internal Revenue Service asking them whether or not they want to make a judgment against his church.

00:14:44.000 Now, that's that's that's a 10, okay?

00:14:49.000 I'm not even recommending it.

00:14:50.000 I'm just letting you know the spectrum out there, okay?

00:14:54.000 Now, you could kind of do a middle ground where the pastor says, these are my personal opinions, not that of the church, and we're going to tell you what the Bible says.

00:15:01.000 It's perfectly fine under the IRS code to do that, by the way.

00:15:04.000 That is safe harbor no matter what.

00:15:06.000 Or you could just even do something even more vanilla and say, I'm just going to tell you word for word what the word of God says about the 10 biggest issues happening.

00:15:14.000 I'm not even going to mention the election.

00:15:16.000 That is 100% safe harbor, okay, no matter what.

00:15:20.000 So there really is no legal excuse as to why to not do it.

00:15:24.000 We must understand the enforcement mechanism is the Johnson Amendment, what was put forward by Lyndon Baines Johnson to try to shut up a pastor he didn't like in Houston, Texas for the sole purpose of trying to make the church uninterested and not involved in this.

00:15:36.000 But let's play this out for just a second.

00:15:39.000 I think it's important to just take the threat at face value.

00:15:42.000 So let's say that the church were to lose its tax-exempt status.

00:15:45.000 The question is, would that momentary earthly penalty be worth pursuing righteousness?

00:15:51.000 Of course it is.

00:15:53.000 So the question is, you're afraid of losing a government certificate because you'll only say what is true if the government certificate will remain intact.

00:16:01.000 That's a bad reason to do anything, by the way.

00:16:05.000 Now, I'm not saying, don't be, I'm not saying be imprudent.

00:16:09.000 You don't have to be the, I love Jack Kibbs.

00:16:11.000 He's such a dear friend.

00:16:13.000 He's leading the charge.

00:16:14.000 And by the way, by doing so, he's also creating space for other churches to be able to do a little bit less to use that as a reference point.

00:16:22.000 And he does it publicly.

00:16:23.000 He does it enthusiastically.

00:16:24.000 He says, Charlie, they could take away my tax exempt status tomorrow.

00:16:27.000 We'll just open up an LLC.

00:16:28.000 We'll keep the books open to our congregation.

00:16:29.000 We have backup plans for all this stuff.

00:16:31.000 Now, I'm not saying that's what you should do.

00:16:33.000 I'm not.

00:16:34.000 You have real estate stewards of buildings, legacy gifts.

00:16:36.000 I get all that stuff.

00:16:37.000 But I think there needs to be a question of, are you preserving a business model or are you trying to pursue righteousness?

00:16:46.000 That's an interesting question, right?

00:16:48.000 And every church board needs to pray on that and fast on that and reflect on that.

00:16:52.000 But understand, the spirit of fear is not what Jesus has given us.

00:16:56.000 And so if we are operating every decision under the spirit of fear, well, they might send a letter and they might do this.

00:17:02.000 You're right.

00:17:02.000 All of that, we live under a regime that kicks down doors of journalists they don't like.

00:17:08.000 We live under a regime that calls moms and dads that show up to school board meetings domestic terrorists.

00:17:13.000 So look, the freight train's coming, everybody. 0.90

00:17:16.000 And, you know, I call some of these people, you know, it's kind of like will-the beast Christians. 1.00

00:17:24.000 It's like, you know, they're walking around and they're like, well, we didn't get eaten today.

00:17:28.000 And it's like, at least it's not us.

00:17:30.000 Look, we know what's happening here, right?

00:17:32.000 It's coming very quickly.

00:17:34.000 And the only thing that could stop it is courageous and passionate Christians proclaiming truth from the bottom up.

00:17:41.000 And if you feel like you're losing your civilization or losing your country, you're right.

00:17:46.000 It is going in the wrong direction.

00:17:47.000 I see a lot of positives.

00:17:48.000 We can get into those.

00:17:49.000 But the only solution is you.

00:17:51.000 The only solution is the church. 0.94

00:17:52.000 They know that.

00:17:53.000 That's why they've done everything they possibly can to try to make you afraid, silent, and submissive.

00:18:00.000 Come on.

00:18:05.000 I really want us to turn this issue into an issue of prayer.

00:18:08.000 You know, we have several prayer meetings a week here, and we're praying just for the pulpits of our city to be bold, to be bold and courageous.

00:18:15.000 Okay, I don't know what direction you want to go.

00:18:17.000 I have several.

00:18:18.000 Go ahead.

00:18:19.000 So politics is also seemingly incredibly moral issues in the day.

00:18:24.000 So if we don't speak up for the sake of the standard of morality, then it seems as if the political land is trying to establish what morality is for us.

00:18:35.000 So we have to engage these waters.

00:18:38.000 And is that an exaggeration?

00:18:39.000 No.

00:18:40.000 And so this is an open question, and this is fine, and you should ask yourself that question.

00:18:45.000 Does the Bible say anything about us caring about our government?

00:18:48.000 And the answer is, of course.

00:18:50.000 Jeremiah 29, 7, the Lord is speaking to his people where he's saying directly, you must demand the welfare, the shalom, of the city or the nation that you are in, because your welfare is tied to your nation's welfare.

00:19:02.000 So let's ask ourselves the question, is that true?

00:19:04.000 Is your welfare tied to your nation's welfare?

00:19:07.000 Of course it is.

00:19:08.000 Pastors are being arrested in Canada for having church.

00:19:11.000 It's a real thing.

00:19:12.000 It's happening right now.

00:19:13.000 If you don't have good government and you stop caring about your government, your welfare will be impacted.

00:19:18.000 That's the Lord speaking to his chosen people in Jeremiah 29, 7.

00:19:21.000 So how about the narrative of the Old Testament?

00:19:24.000 Do we have any examples of people trying to influence secular government for God's chosen purpose?

00:19:28.000 Esther, Mordecai, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, just to name a few.

00:19:32.000 In fact, we have a pattern.

00:19:33.000 We have more than one person that fasted and prayed for the nation that they were in, Daniel being one of the most vivid examples of that.

00:19:40.000 So the question is, what is politics?

00:19:42.000 We have an association with something that is messy.

00:19:45.000 Well, everything that human beings touch is messy, the church included.

00:19:49.000 We are fallen beings predisposed to sin.

00:19:52.000 Everything we touch will be messed up in one way, shape, or the other, including politics.

00:19:56.000 The question is: Should we try to pursue a better politics, a better form of government?

00:20:00.000 So, some Christians say, Charlie, all form of governments are the same. 0.83

00:20:04.000 How unwise to say such a thing, to say that our form of government is the same as North Korea's, the same as China's, the same as Iran.

00:20:12.000 Do you know the history of humanity, more people live under the reign of the few than of the many?

00:20:18.000 We have a brief opportunity where we, the many, get to rule the few.

00:20:22.000 The question is, which is biblical?

00:20:24.000 The answer is, of course, when the many rule the few, the few.

00:20:28.000 We do not believe that leaders are anointed by birth by some sort of birthright.

00:20:31.000 We believe in the sovereignty of the individual.

00:20:34.000 We believe that the collective power that we put forward, as enumerated in Kings and in Leviticus, is there only because of our consent.

00:20:42.000 That is a very difficult principle to enact into government.

00:20:46.000 And let me tell you why.

00:20:47.000 The Bible answers the most important question.

00:20:49.000 Because when you ask yourself, what kind of government are we forming?

00:20:52.000 Well, you have to ask yourself, what's the raw material I'm dealing with here?

00:20:55.000 Human beings.

00:20:56.000 Are human beings naturally good or naturally predisposed to sin?

00:21:01.000 This is why I get so enthusiastic when the church finally speaks up against this, and I get so upset when the church remains quiet.

00:21:09.000 If you're not willing to tell your congregation that human beings are predisposed to sin, then stop being a pastor.

00:21:15.000 It takes like a hundred words to figure out human beings are predisposed to sin in the Bible.

00:21:20.000 Now, why does that matter?

00:21:21.000 Well, because in Federalist 51, Alexander Hamilton writes it beautifully, or as it might have James Madison.

00:21:26.000 I'm sorry.

00:21:27.000 In Federalist 51, one of the most important sentences that you should ask any Christian that says we don't do that around here.

00:21:33.000 Human nature never changes.

00:21:35.000 I'm paraphrasing.

00:21:36.000 If all men were angels, government would not be necessary. 0.78

00:21:39.000 And if angels govern men, none of this would need to happen.

00:21:43.000 The Constitution he's referencing.

00:21:45.000 He's making an indictment of human nature.

00:21:47.000 He's saying, we know what we're dealing with.

00:21:49.000 They're acknowledging the fall.

00:21:52.000 The fall is biblical.

00:21:53.000 We know it.

00:21:54.000 We know we are sinful creatures.

00:21:56.000 And yet, half the country believes that human beings are naturally good.

00:22:00.000 This is one of the most important questions in our society right now, by the way.

00:22:03.000 We believe human beings are naturally bad.

00:22:06.000 So therefore, if you believe human beings are naturally sinful, let's just not use that word bad.

00:22:10.000 Let's just say sinful.

00:22:11.000 Then what's the most important thing you can do?

00:22:14.000 Prevent the sinful people from having power over everybody.

00:22:18.000 That's logical, right?

00:22:20.000 Prevent the sinful people from having absolute power over everyone.

00:22:23.000 So this is a great thought exercise to use a third grader or a fourth grader.

00:22:27.000 Highly rational and it works.

00:22:28.000 What's the worst thing a human being can do?

00:22:30.000 And they'll say murder.

00:22:32.000 Say, that's bad.

00:22:34.000 What else?

00:22:34.000 And they'll go on stealing and all that.

00:22:36.000 Like, no, no, no.

00:22:37.000 The worst thing you could do is institute murder for everybody.

00:22:41.000 It's bad enough to murder one person.

00:22:43.000 It's another thing to institutionalize it.

00:22:45.000 Now, even worse than this, one of the Ten Commandments exhibits this explicitly.

00:22:49.000 Now, we read this wrong because we don't go to the original Hebrew.

00:22:53.000 The original Hebrew, we would say, is, do not say the Lord's name in vain.

00:22:57.000 That's not what the Hebrew says.

00:22:59.000 It says, do not carry the Lord's name in vain.

00:23:02.000 What does that mean?

00:23:03.000 Do not do evil in the name of the Lord.

00:23:06.000 So do not do evil things while saying you are doing it in the name of God.

00:23:10.000 So it goes to another question.

00:23:11.000 Do human beings naturally want to be free?

00:23:14.000 I used to say yes, and I was wrong.

00:23:17.000 The Bible answers that question for us, though.

00:23:20.000 When God delivered his chosen people out of Egypt, he didn't want them in serfdom. 0.99

00:23:24.000 He didn't want them in slavery and brought them to freedom.

00:23:27.000 Amazing miracles parted the Red Sea.

00:23:29.000 Moses does the incredible.

00:23:31.000 How do the people of Israel, how do they act?

00:23:35.000 Well, after a couple of chapters, despite the fact that quail was blown off course and manna came from heaven, the people of Israel started to complain.

00:23:43.000 And they said, who's this Moses guy anyway?

00:23:46.000 And I'm paraphrasing, but I'm not far off.

00:23:49.000 And they say, we want to go back to Egypt, slavery, because at least there we ate meat.

00:23:57.000 People don't want to be free.

00:23:59.000 Some people want to be free, specifically people that are born free and new by Jesus Christ.

00:24:04.000 We demand freedom more in our life because we're free eternally and spiritually, but most human beings don't desire freedom.

00:24:10.000 So what you're living through in this system right now is so rare, it's so unique, it's so exceptional, and it's fragile.

00:24:17.000 Because right now, we're living through the Israelites in the wilderness desert. 0.98

00:24:22.000 Who's this guy in office?

00:24:24.000 I want the stimulus check.

00:24:27.000 Who's this guy in office?

00:24:28.000 Just shut everyone down, make them wear a mask, and force the vaccine.

00:24:33.000 It's human nature, and we have to fight that.

00:24:36.000 In fact, it takes effort to fight that human nature.

00:24:39.000 If we just indulged in the flesh and indulge our human nature, we'd sit at home all day and do nothing.

00:24:43.000 It takes effort to do the other.

00:24:45.000 And guess what?

00:24:46.000 It's only the Christian. 1.00

00:24:47.000 It's only the Bible that will show the secular lost world how to fight that fleshly nature. 0.99

00:24:54.000 And I'm starting to see more and more Christians start to do that. 0.90

00:24:56.000 And when churches remain silent on that, just on the issue, do you think human beings want to be free?

00:25:02.000 Do you believe that human beings are naturally good or bad?

00:25:05.000 That's it.

00:25:06.000 That's not a political sermon.

00:25:07.000 But informing your congregation correctly on that will create a better citizen no matter what.

00:25:13.000 And yet they remain silent on that.

00:25:14.000 Or maybe they haven't thought that deeply about it.

00:25:16.000 But the proper answers to those questions will all of a sudden answer all your political questions correctly.

00:25:24.000 Yeah, I feel convicted.

00:25:25.000 I feel that we have to.

00:25:27.000 No, I really do.

00:25:28.000 I feel like we have to, as teachers, as Sunday school teachers, as moms and dads discipling our kids, we have to get in the game.

00:25:37.000 Let's talk about education for a second.

00:25:39.000 You know, we do have school board elections coming up on Tuesday.

00:25:43.000 And you're spending time on high schools.

00:25:45.000 And because, you know, I get feedback from my friends like, no, no, no, no, this is exaggerated.

00:25:50.000 It's not that bad.

00:25:51.000 There is not perversion.

00:25:52.000 That's not happening.

00:25:54.000 But I think you have a different opinion.

00:25:56.000 What you're seeing on school and even at the university level.

00:26:01.000 Well, I mean, this framework, this worldview has to start somewhere.

00:26:05.000 So where is this happening?

00:26:07.000 So that's a phenomenal question.

00:26:08.000 I have a slightly different take.

00:26:10.000 I think it's being underreported and so misunderstood.

00:26:15.000 So let's start with one component of this.

00:26:18.000 And I'm going to take a little pivot from education and go to something that is in the open, that's universal, and that probably half this room willingly or unwillingly is subsidizing.

00:26:29.000 And that's the Walt Disney Company.

00:26:29.000 Okay?

00:26:31.000 Okay?

00:26:32.000 Let's just start there.

00:26:34.000 You're starting to step on us now.

00:26:34.000 Easy now.

00:26:36.000 Easy.

00:26:37.000 Let's start there.

00:26:38.000 If you are unaware of what's happening at Disney, we're going to go through that.

00:26:42.000 So that's a form of education, by the way.

00:26:42.000 Okay?

00:26:46.000 Your children are learning values and morals and right and wrong more from watching Disney Plus than probably at school for the first five years of their life.

00:26:54.000 So Disney's a $250 billion company.

00:26:58.000 Disney has benefited tremendously through corporate carve-outs, loopholes.

00:27:02.000 They have, I think 15 million families subscribe to Disney Plus.

00:27:07.000 And I'm sure some families in here, I'm not trying to make you feel bad.

00:27:09.000 I'm not.

00:27:09.000 We're all victim to get Netflix subscriptions, all that.

00:27:12.000 I'm going to challenge you to stop doing that tonight.

00:27:14.000 I will.

00:27:14.000 We're going to walk through why.

00:27:16.000 So Disney decided to come out against a very vanilla, very mainstream bill in Florida where Governor Ron DeSantis, God bless his courage, decided to, seriously, decided to sign a piece of legislation that was wrongly labeled the Don't Say Gay Bill.

00:27:38.000 Doesn't say that in the law at all.

00:27:40.000 Very simple piece of legislation that says basically that parents should be able to know their children's medical records and history, and that five, six, and seven, and eight-year-olds should not be taught about gay or lesbian sex in schools.

00:27:53.000 Okay?

00:27:54.000 Pretty simple.

00:27:55.000 I don't think this is something that should be wildly controversial.

00:27:58.000 In fact, it went a step further to say that all sexual matters should be left to the parents until at least 12 years old.

00:28:03.000 Okay?

00:28:04.000 So very simple, right?

00:28:07.000 And the media lost their mind.

00:28:10.000 We expected that, right?

00:28:12.000 All these different groups lost their mind.

00:28:14.000 But then out of nowhere, because Disney World is the number one employer in Florida, 68,000 employees, they thought they could flex their muscle.

00:28:23.000 So I want you guys to play along here with a thought exercise.

00:28:26.000 I want you to imagine if Anheuser-Busch decided to try to kill a bill here in Missouri.

00:28:30.000 It's a big deal, right?

00:28:32.000 They have a lot of clout here.

00:28:34.000 That's the equivalent of what happens with Disney decides to speak out in Florida.

00:28:38.000 So the courage it takes to stand up against Disney is the same as like standing up to Wall Street in New York or standing up to the oil companies in Texas.

00:28:46.000 You get the analogy, right?

00:28:47.000 It is a big employer.

00:28:49.000 But Disney, for whatever bizarre reason, run by this new CEO, Bob Chapik, decided to play into the most insane allegations around this thing, dedicate $5 million to the human rights campaign, which is nothing more than a hate group, and say they're going to do everything they possibly can to repeal this bill.

00:29:08.000 And it went even further than that.

00:29:09.000 That's just the first step.

00:29:10.000 Wait till you hear Saga 2, 3, and 4 of this whole thing.

00:29:12.000 So Ron DeSantis doesn't care.

00:29:14.000 He's not in the mold of kind of these other weak knee politicians, signs it in the law, God bless him, and says, what are you going to do?

00:29:20.000 Everyone already hates me on that site anyway, and kind of holds the line.

00:29:23.000 But then all of a sudden, you started to see Disney employee walkouts.

00:29:26.000 You saw all these sort of protests.

00:29:28.000 And so I watched a couple videos of these Disney employee walkouts.

00:29:32.000 So I'm going to make a generalization, and it's an open question.

00:29:34.000 And I want an answer to the question.

00:29:36.000 How many Disney employees that are protesting this have families?

00:29:40.000 Probably very few.

00:29:43.000 So you have the people creating the content protesting against this that probably a lot of them don't have families.

00:29:48.000 You see them, they're late 20s, early 30s-somethings.

00:29:50.000 They have a significant homosexual population of people that work for Disney Company.

00:29:55.000 They're in the arts, whatever.

00:29:57.000 That's not even a criticism.

00:29:58.000 It's just a fact, okay?

00:29:59.000 And so they lose their mind because they believe the media narrative.

00:30:02.000 So then Disney realizes that they need to even compensate for this more.

00:30:08.000 So they have a Zoom call five days ago.

00:30:10.000 You might not have heard about this, where in the Zoom call, they said with all their executives, they have a not-so-secret gay agenda that they're pushing forward at Walt Disney Company.

00:30:20.000 Here's a couple facts: what's happening at Disney.

00:30:22.000 By the end of this year, 50% of all of their movies will have lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender characters.

00:30:30.000 And if there's romantic scenes involved, there'll be gay and lesbian kissing. 0.81

00:30:33.000 Now, what is with this weird and perverse obsession with corrupting children? 0.96

00:30:38.000 Answer.

00:30:39.000 They always want to try to break the bonds of children from their parents and from their country. 0.98

00:30:45.000 That's the answer.

00:30:46.000 They understand that if they can, and by the way, this is biblical.

00:30:51.000 What is the only one of the 10 commandments that comes with a promise and involves your country?

00:30:55.000 Honor your mother and father so you might live long in the land of which you are in.

00:30:59.000 You want your country to live?

00:31:01.000 Make sure your children honor their parents.

00:31:03.000 Very simple.

00:31:04.000 So Disney understands if they can break that bond, if they can interrupt that flow of values, they're going to run the country.

00:31:11.000 Now, regardless of your politics tonight, I'm sure we have people all across the board.

00:31:15.000 I think it's fair to say that Disney Plus, a $250 billion company, espousing that they have a not-so-secret gay agenda, saying they want more like transgender Cinderellas or whatever.

00:31:27.000 That's a step too far for all of us.

00:31:29.000 And I'm just kind of hitting the surface.

00:31:30.000 There are other things they're doing.

00:31:31.000 They're no longer going to be calling people in movies boys and girls, but they're going to have the proper pronouns.

00:31:36.000 They're no longer saying at Disney World, boys and girls, welcome to Disney World.

00:31:40.000 They're going to say, welcome the person's the Disney World.

00:31:42.000 They're not taking a stance on whether or not women can become pregnant.

00:31:45.000 They say they're birthing people at Walt Disney Company.

00:31:48.000 They're saying that anyone can become pregnant.

00:31:50.000 This is all things that Disney is doing.

00:31:52.000 And what's so amazing, and this is something I'm going to be pushing this hard, right?

00:31:56.000 Because Disney, I believe, this is a great opportunity.

00:32:00.000 I haven't seen one like this in a long time, where they got rich being the family-friendly company.

00:32:07.000 They got rich being the family-friendly safe haven.

00:32:10.000 So now if they want to be kind of the safe haven for all of these incredibly controversial and dare I say, like perverse ideology for five, six, and seven-year-olds, then they're going to have to respond to when 75 to 80 million or 90 million people refuse to buy their products, go to their amusement parks, and their streaming services.

00:32:34.000 And so you asked about education.

00:32:39.000 So if anyone thinks it's not that big of a deal, just walk them through that Disney example I just did.

00:32:44.000 Okay?

00:32:45.000 Just walk them through that.

00:32:46.000 So how bad is it in the education space?

00:32:48.000 Depends where you are.

00:32:49.000 But before you move on, we got to make sure I heard what you said because you said something very powerful about Disney.

00:32:56.000 And it is a form of education that is absolutely establishing a narrative in our kids at a very young age.

00:33:04.000 I mean, just as parents, I got four kids, 14 down to seven.

00:33:08.000 And I'm just thinking, okay, how many times, you know, just for the sake of time, oh man, you'll put this movie on the tablet, put that on the tablet, put this DVD on in the car.

00:33:16.000 And we need to get convicted.

00:33:18.000 There needs to be not, because I'm not, I don't ruha around it so much in the cancel culture part, but we're going to have to cancel them because they're doing this.

00:33:24.000 What stung me was you said, no, no, no, this is about pushing back on what is seeking to educate my kids.

00:33:32.000 That's exactly right.

00:33:33.000 And so education comes from a Latin word, which means to lead forth.

00:33:36.000 And you want to lead your child forth to righteousness and to truth and to light and to Jesus.

00:33:41.000 And just ask yourself the question, is 50% of movies Disney publishing with lesbian and gay kissing scenes going to be closer to getting your five or six or seven or eight year old closer to truth and righteousness?

00:33:53.000 I say no.

00:33:54.000 I think that's wrong.

00:33:55.000 I think there's something really perverted with that.

00:33:57.000 I also think the obsession of trying to push that on children is a whole different level that I can't quite explain.

00:34:03.000 And you're right.

00:34:04.000 And I've said this for a while, and I'm glad you brought that up because I need to reinforce this more, which is because of the hyper-technological society, less children playing outside than ever before, which I think is a tragedy.

00:34:14.000 We used to just go outside.

00:34:15.000 I know, like 15 years ago when I was a kid.

00:34:17.000 I know things have changed so quickly.

00:34:20.000 We just went, we had imaginations, and now these kids are staring at these screens all day long.

00:34:24.000 It's doing such damage to our children.

00:34:25.000 It really is.

00:34:25.000 It's so sad to see.

00:34:28.000 But look, the teacher, when it's not the teacher in school, when it's not you as the homeschooling, it's the teacher on the tablet.

00:34:34.000 And Disney has been bragging in their shareholder meetings that they are the leader in family-centered programming.

00:34:41.000 They're making money off of you.

00:34:43.000 And now they think they have such a monopoly on this that they'll be able to push their incredibly controversial and I believe degenerative agenda on a seven, eight, and nine-year-old.

00:34:55.000 And I don't think we should really be shy about talking about divesting from it and doing that.

00:35:00.000 But yes, it is a form of education.

00:35:03.000 And there's other alternatives.

00:35:04.000 There's peer flicks.

00:35:05.000 There's all sorts of different things you could do.

00:35:08.000 And I'm happy to go into the Daily Wire's coming out with a new child programming thing.

00:35:12.000 There's a lot of different ones.

00:35:14.000 PragerU does some stuff with some children programming.

00:35:17.000 We're starting to get into it at Turning Point USA.

00:35:19.000 There's other alternatives to Disney.

00:35:23.000 But the Disney thing aside, you asked how bad is it in education in general?

00:35:28.000 That's a universal one that impacts everybody.

00:35:31.000 It's really bad in public schools across the country.

00:35:33.000 It's really bad in private schools, largely because of the accreditation agencies.

00:35:37.000 The National Association of Independent Schools has highly corrupted our private schools, including a lot of our Christian schools.

00:35:42.000 And what do I mean by bad?

00:35:44.000 I mean that they're being taught diversity, equity, inclusion from critical race theory, from CRT.

00:35:48.000 We are teaching five and six and seven and eight-year-olds that race matters, that skin color is important.

00:35:54.000 That creates little racist, is what it does.

00:35:56.000 It does not create people to care about the character.

00:35:59.000 Here's a couple universal principles that we as Christians believe.

00:36:02.000 And we should be unafraid to talk about them in any setting whatsoever.

00:36:05.000 We care more about the invisible than the visible, and we care more about what you can change than you can not change.

00:36:11.000 Those are two things we care about.

00:36:13.000 So I care about things you can't see.

00:36:15.000 What are those?

00:36:16.000 When someone walks in the room, I care more about what I can't tell at a moment's notice.

00:36:20.000 I want to get to know the person, and you should too.

00:36:23.000 Not like, oh, I got them all figured out.

00:36:25.000 They're white, so they have privilege. 0.63

00:36:26.000 What a sloppy argument, by the way. 0.85

00:36:28.000 Like, really?

00:36:29.000 Like, that's it?

00:36:29.000 Like, you're worth like your currency?

00:36:31.000 Is that like, no, I want to know about you.

00:36:33.000 Like, have you given your life to the Lord?

00:36:34.000 Like, what are you struggling with?

00:36:35.000 No, instead, it's like, nope, got you totally profiled.

00:36:37.000 It's sloppy.

00:36:38.000 Something the enemy would do, actually.

00:36:40.000 The second thing is, we care more about things you can change and you can't change.

00:36:43.000 Do we care about the things that happened prior that can't be changed?

00:36:47.000 Or the story of, hey, I want to give my life to Christ.

00:36:50.000 That's the whole program of being a Christian, isn't it?

00:36:52.000 So the question is: if we had someone that came in and they're like, hey, I need help, would we fixate endlessly on everything they've done wrong?

00:37:00.000 Like, keep on reminding them every single week, you're a drug addict, you're a drug addict, you're a drug addict, you're a drug addict, you know you're a drug addict, you know that you're a drug addict.

00:37:07.000 It's kind of depressing.

00:37:08.000 In fact, they'd walk away.

00:37:09.000 No, we'd tell them, you have redemption.

00:37:10.000 You could break free of that sin.

00:37:11.000 In fact, our whole, the entire promise of Christianity, which is true, by the way, is that you don't have to be who you were.

00:37:19.000 It's unbelievable, right?

00:37:21.000 And so, but instead, diversity, equity, inclusion, and all this stuff, it's built on a structure to hyper-focus on the things you can't change.

00:37:32.000 It's like, okay, we're just going to talk endlessly on what your ancestors, who may or may not have been related to you, did.

00:37:38.000 And in fact, the way we even talk about the history is wrong, and we're going to make you feel guilty and ashamed.

00:37:42.000 So here's another good rule for life: any organization that makes you feel guilty after the speech is over should be abolished.

00:37:51.000 I want you to think about that.

00:37:53.000 Christianity is the opposite of making you feel guilty.

00:37:56.000 After a good sermon, you feel free.

00:37:58.000 You feel redeemed.

00:37:59.000 Only Satan makes you feel guilty.

00:38:02.000 Jesus doesn't make you feel guilty.

00:38:04.000 And yet, the entire white privileged CRT regime is: I have to go feel guilty for the rest of my life because I've had like unrealized racism.

00:38:13.000 Now, let me be very clear: if you are a racist or have racist tendencies, you got work to do.

00:38:17.000 You got a lot of apologizing to do. 0.87

00:38:19.000 But just the melanin content in your skin, your mere existence, does not mean you've been expressing, you know, this white supremacist superstructure.

00:38:27.000 And so this is all throughout our educational system.

00:38:29.000 It's all throughout our college, all throughout education.

00:38:31.000 And it's at direct odds with what we as Christians believe.

00:38:34.000 It says neither slave nor Greek nor Jew.

00:38:36.000 We are all born one in Jesus Christ.

00:38:39.000 And so I, and this is really personal for me.

00:38:41.000 And the reason I think that, you know, God put me in this moment during all this stuff is I've been like super unafraid as like a white Christian, which you're not supposed to, you know, talk about these issues, because I grew up in an America 10 years ago where none of this stuff was a big deal.

00:38:57.000 Where it's like no one talked about race all the time.

00:38:59.000 I went to a high school that was 53% Hispanic, where as white people in my school were like 18% of my school, and we had people from all different walks of life in all countries.

00:39:07.000 We got along with each other.

00:39:08.000 No one talked about race.

00:39:10.000 And if someone said something indelicate or immature, you handled it.

00:39:12.000 You're like, that's not cool.

00:39:13.000 Stop it.

00:39:13.000 And that was the end of that.

00:39:15.000 And it's kind of like immaturity, right?

00:39:17.000 What happens if you're 16 or 17?

00:39:19.000 But we had a culture 10 years ago that was built on the promise of Martin Luther King.

00:39:24.000 And now we're doing the opposite.

00:39:26.000 And I got to tell you, this is a virus, to use a term we're all very familiar with, that is infecting every major institution in our country.

00:39:34.000 It's infiltrated a lot of churches.

00:39:36.000 It's infiltrated the military.

00:39:37.000 It's infiltrated corporate America.

00:39:39.000 It's infiltrated Congress.

00:39:40.000 You can call whatever you want, CRT, diversity, equity, inclusion, wokeism, whatever it is.

00:39:44.000 It's wrong.

00:39:45.000 And so, what does it actually mean in practice, right?

00:39:47.000 So, let's, if I, okay, so let's take it out.

00:39:51.000 All right, okay.

00:39:52.000 So, let's take it out of the abstract and into practice, right?

00:39:55.000 So, some people will say, oh, it's just thought exercises.

00:39:57.000 It's going through the philosophical muscles of you trying to realize how terrible a person you are.

00:40:01.000 Okay, let's talk about it in practice.

00:40:03.000 Here are four or five examples.

00:40:04.000 At Columbia University in New York City, they have black-only graduation ceremonies.

00:40:10.000 Over 100 universities across the country have black-only dormitories.

00:40:15.000 So, we should ask ourselves the question: didn't we fight to end segregation?

00:40:18.000 But according to Henry Rogers, otherwise known as Ebermax Kendi, who's kind of like the archbishop of critical race theory, he says that we need segregation today to try to fix segregation from yesterday.

00:40:30.000 Here's a good universal principle, and I will fight on this till I die.

00:40:35.000 Segregation is evil. 1.00

00:40:36.000 I don't care who does it, segregation is evil.

00:40:44.000 I'll give you, I could keep on going with more examples.

00:40:46.000 There's a black-only high school where white kids are not allowed to apply in the suburbs of Portland.

00:40:51.000 United Airlines has said they want 50% of all their new pilots to be black pilots, and they're going to elevate diversity over competency.

00:40:59.000 Now, I don't know about you, I'm all for anybody becoming a pilot, but I want to know that my pilot is hired based on the ability to land the plane, not the melanin content in the pilot's skin.

00:41:16.000 At State Street Capital Partners, which is one of the largest money management firms, you're only allowed to hire a white male through unanimous approval of the hiring committee.

00:41:27.000 I could go on and on and on.

00:41:29.000 So, those are real-world implications, right?

00:41:31.000 So, this is not just textbook, this is not just privilege walks, it's not just, oh, we need to make five-year-olds feel really bad or expand their horizons.

00:41:37.000 No, no, no, no, this is what it looks like in practice.

00:41:40.000 In practice, it looks like we have black-only dormitories.

00:41:43.000 In practice, it looks like in Columbia University, they have black-only graduation ceremonies.

00:41:48.000 And so, that's where it's not just where it's leading, it's where it is.

00:41:51.000 And so, this is a direct result of this kind of educational regime that has been pushed forward to us.

00:41:57.000 But here's what gives me hope, and where I just want to encourage you, right, is that this is deeply unpopular with the American people when they actually learn about it.

00:42:05.000 Most Americans do believe in this promise of valuing the invisible over the visible.

00:42:10.000 They believe in the promise of valuing what can change versus what cannot change.

00:42:14.000 And they believe that the people in charge who are pushing this are radically changing the country that they were raised in and the country they want for their children.

00:42:22.000 But here's the problem, and it goes to the trans issue, which we could talk about afterwards, because we haven't been controversial enough tonight, obviously, so we can get right into that, which is it's an imbalance.

00:42:31.000 And the imbalance involves a lot of you.

00:42:33.000 It certainly involved me for part of my life.

00:42:35.000 The imbalance is this: 95% of the country believes that black-only dormitories are insane.

00:42:42.000 95% of the country is afraid to talk about it.

00:42:46.000 And this is why.

00:42:47.000 It's because the current people in charge have been incredibly effective.

00:42:51.000 In fact, they're masters at weaponizing name-calling.

00:42:54.000 We've not gotten out of the second grade.

00:42:56.000 We haven't.

00:42:57.000 They will call you a name, and you'll say, Where do I donate?

00:42:59.000 I'll put the yard in my sign.

00:43:01.000 Please stop harassing me.

00:43:04.000 It's a real thing.

00:43:05.000 And I'm not diminishing it.

00:43:06.000 Because some of you are probably going to ask during QA, Charlie, I could lose my job if I speak out against this.

00:43:11.000 Of course, you can.

00:43:12.000 That's absolutely true.

00:43:13.000 They control everything.

00:43:14.000 I'm not saying that you should get fired from your job.

00:43:16.000 I'm not telling you should put your family's meals in jeopardy, especially as uncertain as our economic circumstances are today.

00:43:24.000 But I am going to tell you that if 5 million people value that over telling the truth, and that's how you get the country you have.

00:43:29.000 That's just how it is.

00:43:30.000 And so, and I could talk about the trans thing too.

00:43:35.000 Keep going, man.

00:43:36.000 Okay.

00:43:36.000 All right.

00:43:36.000 You're doing great.

00:43:37.000 You're doing great.

00:43:37.000 All right.

00:43:38.000 Okay.

00:43:38.000 There's only been one mishap, though, so far.

00:43:40.000 Did you catch it?

00:43:41.000 No.

00:43:42.000 So that can put the yard in my sign, I think.

00:43:44.000 That's what you said.

00:43:45.000 It's been a long week today, everybody.

00:43:47.000 Okay.

00:43:49.000 I caught that, though, just for the record.

00:43:50.000 So I'm a yard.

00:43:51.000 I'm a pretty sharp guy.

00:43:52.000 It's been a long month this week.

00:43:54.000 Boy, I've been everywhere.

00:43:56.000 But I do want to say, though, I am human, I promise.

00:43:59.000 I do believe we're in an early stage of testing for the church to be able to stand for truth.

00:44:06.000 Because standing for truth for a long time hasn't been costly.

00:44:10.000 And we're entering into a time of where it's going to be costly.

00:44:15.000 And it's a gift, actually.

00:44:16.000 It's a gift from the Lord to say, you know, if it's going to cost you, we have to understand that God meets us at that cost with a profound grace that touches the heart, it touches the mind to be courageous and bold.

00:44:29.000 Yeah.

00:44:30.000 Amen.

00:44:30.000 And so there's one other issue I want to explore with you guys on that topic of courage, which ties into something that's involving me.

00:44:37.000 And then we can get to some Q ⁇ A, if that's okay. 0.84

00:44:40.000 And this is something where the church should be just front and center.

00:44:44.000 I mean, this is something where the church should be the most vocal.

00:44:47.000 Not a lot of mystery in the scriptures around this topic.

00:44:49.000 I know it's a question that have a lot of you scratching your head at times that even the top level of our government can't even answer.

00:44:56.000 What is a woman? 1.00

00:45:02.000 Where a woman, at least I think she's a woman who wants to go on the U.S. Supreme Court, was asked by Senator Marshall Blackburn, what is a woman? 1.00

00:45:10.000 And she said, I can't answer that.

00:45:11.000 I'm not a biologist.

00:45:13.000 Now, look, I'm not a veterinarian.

00:45:15.000 I know a cat when I see one.

00:45:16.000 I'm not a meteorologist.

00:45:17.000 I know when it's raining.

00:45:20.000 I'm not a biologist, and I know a woman when I see one. 1.00

00:45:23.000 I was at least glad to know, at least she was saying a biologist would be able to, hopefully.

00:45:28.000 Yeah, and I think that's an interesting take.

00:45:32.000 The problem is a lot of biologists nowadays believe that gender and sex are not related because the entire institutions have been corrupted.

00:45:39.000 So, look, this is something where the church should be like, wow, do we believe in the Bible?

00:45:44.000 A lot of churches say they don't.

00:45:46.000 They say they do, but they really don't.

00:45:47.000 Bad politics is rooted with bad theology.

00:45:50.000 Never forget that, okay?

00:45:51.000 So do you believe God created man and woman, or do you believe that God created man and woman and the 95 other genders, according to Brown University?

00:46:00.000 And so the church is silent on this issue, largely not this church, but a lot of churches.

00:46:05.000 And we're living in a moment right now where this is kind of like the premier issue.

00:46:10.000 And part of it is to distract us, but I actually think the insignificance of being able to answer basic questions allows us to answer complicated questions.

00:46:18.000 That if we can't answer what a woman is, then we probably can't figure out, and we shouldn't, by the way, get involved in wars in other countries. 0.72

00:46:25.000 This has been my argument the whole time.

00:46:27.000 And I'm like, listen, you want to go, you want to send troops where?

00:46:30.000 We can't agree as a society on what a woman is. 1.00

00:46:33.000 And you want to go launch Tomahawk missiles 5,000 miles away in a country most people can't pinpoint.

00:46:38.000 They're like, oh, they're not related.

00:46:39.000 Oh, they're totally related.

00:46:40.000 They're related in that if you can't get the building blocks of your society right, you're not a country ready for war, let alone anything.

00:46:46.000 And so this is a very important thing.

00:46:51.000 So God created man, God created a woman. 0.98

00:46:52.000 You don't have to overthink it.

00:46:53.000 You don't have to be a biologist to talk about this.

00:46:56.000 So where do we stand with this issue today?

00:46:58.000 Well, so I tweeted out something where I said Richard Levine was born a man, had a family, 54 years old, had kids, transitioned.

00:47:08.000 I was probably being overly generous, by the way, when I said that, to Rachel Levine, and is now the woman of the year, right?

00:47:15.000 According to USA Today.

00:47:17.000 And so I got banned from Twitter for that.

00:47:20.000 And so because I deadnamed Levine, if you don't know what dead naming is, I didn't know it either until I did it.

00:47:26.000 You're not allowed to use the birth name of someone who's transitioned.

00:47:29.000 It's considered harassment.

00:47:32.000 So this is the new rules.

00:47:34.000 Yeah.

00:47:34.000 So I got banned from Twitter on this.

00:47:36.000 So then Twitter offers you this opportunity, very Maoist show trial.

00:47:40.000 So they say, okay, if you delete the tweet and acknowledge you engaged in our hateful policy, you get your Twitter account back.

00:47:47.000 So I refuse to delete the tweet.

00:47:49.000 I did nothing wrong.

00:47:49.000 I'm not going to tell somebody I lied when I told the truth.

00:47:55.000 And what a hypocrite I would be to come to this church and say, you know, it's going to cost you something while I privately like delete the tweet and go back to Twitter. 0.74

00:48:03.000 It's going to cost you something while I tell my turning point USA students to keep on fighting hard. 0.98

00:48:07.000 It's going to cost you something.

00:48:08.000 No, cost me my Twitter account for now.

00:48:11.000 1.7 million followers reach tens of millions of people every week.

00:48:13.000 Whatever.

00:48:14.000 We're on pause with that.

00:48:15.000 Twitter's going to have to decide whether or not they're going to back down.

00:48:18.000 They probably won't.

00:48:18.000 I may never get access to Twitter again.

00:48:20.000 Yeah, big loss for society, right?

00:48:22.000 Whatever.

00:48:22.000 But it's going to cost everybody something, right?

00:48:24.000 It's the little stuff that amounts to the big stuff.

00:48:26.000 But the more important point is, how do we get to a place where this entire kind of like bully and intimidation group of the transgender people are able to like control whether or not I use the proper name of you were born, even though I used the right name later in the tweet. 1.00

00:48:45.000 And so I just want you to understand, I just want to take pause, and this is where I really want the church to do more because it's because of the church's silence this is happening.

00:48:53.000 What's happened in the last week?

00:48:54.000 So we have the Florida thing with Disney and Ron DeSantis, but then also in the last week, you saw someone who was born by the name of William Thomas, who was the 462nd best swimmer, was born a man, and then transitioned to a woman and won the NCAA championship as a woman.

00:49:10.000 And I would bet there's still people in this room that had never heard that story yet, where a man born as a man competed as a woman and beat other women, went from the 462nd best man and competed as a woman and basically destroyed women's sports as we know it, and it's only going to continue. 0.52

00:49:26.000 And so how does this happen?

00:49:28.000 Very simple.

00:49:30.000 What is true?

00:49:32.000 What's true is what the Bible tells us about everything.

00:49:36.000 So if all of a sudden the organizations, the pastors who are in charge of communicating that truth go silent, especially on the most important issues, then where's society going to find truth?

00:49:46.000 Without God and without Bible, right and wrong is merely an opinion.

00:49:51.000 And that's where we're at.

00:49:53.000 So we have, so the NCAA meets and they say, well, who's to say that William Thomas can't be Leah Thomas?

00:50:02.000 And most mega church pastors, too focused on building bigger buildings, bigger budgets, and having more baptisms, which I'm in favor of all those things, but they put the church business model above righteousness, where this church put righteousness above the church business model, and the Lord has blessed this church, I think, immeasurably because of that, is most pastors did not even mention the fact that biological reality in women's sports was completely destroyed in the last couple weeks.

00:50:27.000 And it's another one of those issues where 95% of the people believe this is crazy and 95% of people are afraid to speak out about this.

00:50:34.000 And so you get to this moment where the question is, how do we communicate about this?

00:50:42.000 And look, I want the best for Thomas, this person, right?

00:50:46.000 William Thomas, Leah Thomas, whatever we want to call that person, right?

00:50:49.000 I refuse to call Thomas a man.

00:50:51.000 Oh, no.

00:50:52.000 I refuse to call Thomas a woman.

00:50:54.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:50:55.000 I get so confused.

00:50:56.000 If you're confused, I'm confused.

00:50:57.000 Trust me.

00:50:58.000 I refuse to call Thomas a woman.

00:50:59.000 Okay, now we got it right.

00:51:01.000 And the reason being is I refuse to tell a lie, but I want what's best for Thomas.

00:51:05.000 Counseling, therapy, hopefully a pastoral advice to bring that person to be able to bore anew, right?

00:51:11.000 Romans 12, 2, do not conform to the ways of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

00:51:16.000 I believe that mental condition that Thomas has, which is a mental condition called gender dysphoria, can be changed by the renewing of their mind.

00:51:23.000 The promise of Romans 12, 2 is applicable to all people.

00:51:25.000 I really believe that.

00:51:27.000 And so now, the second part.

00:51:33.000 I don't like cheating.

00:51:35.000 And you don't either. 0.88

00:51:36.000 And Thomas is a cheater.

00:51:38.000 And we should not put up with cheating.

00:51:40.000 So the individual suffering and the plight of Thomas needs to be separate from what society reorganizes for the individual.

00:51:50.000 Those are two separate things.

00:51:53.000 So love, compassion, mercy, truth, all that stuff for Thomas as a person.

00:51:58.000 But that doesn't mean you reorient society for the person who's suffering.

00:52:02.000 You know what that's like?

00:52:04.000 It's like saying we got to suspend all driving because there's some alcoholics out there that might ruin it for the rest of us.

00:52:10.000 You don't do that.

00:52:11.000 Of course not.

00:52:12.000 You don't all of a sudden make other people less free because of a small group of people that can't handle themselves.

00:52:19.000 It's such a simple moral principle.

00:52:23.000 And so, and I wish more people communicated this in this way because I think it resonates with 99% of the population.

00:52:31.000 Because it's not about, and I do, I have a spot for all people that are suffering, but Thomas is also making the decision to cheat and to get into the field and to still compete and all that.

00:52:42.000 But that's always going to happen, okay?

00:52:44.000 So the question is this.

00:52:45.000 This was the question when banks were being robbed in the early 1900s.

00:52:49.000 Who's at fault?

00:52:50.000 So at first, there were people like, well, the bank robbers are at fault.

00:52:54.000 No, it's the people that aren't protecting the banks that are at fault.

00:52:57.000 You're always going to have bank robbers.

00:52:59.000 You're always going to have cheaters.

00:53:00.000 The question is, are you protecting the resources?

00:53:03.000 Are you protecting the women?

00:53:05.000 So who's at fault?

00:53:06.000 The guardians of society are at fault.

00:53:08.000 The NCAA is at fault.

00:53:09.000 We're at fault for putting up with this nonsense.

00:53:12.000 And so we have to have a total reframing of, wow, this is a societal question, right?

00:53:18.000 And I want everyone to get the help they need.

00:53:20.000 But when all of a sudden your therapy becomes the disenfranchising of other women, that's basically the argument they're making, by the way.

00:53:28.000 That if this person can't compete against other women, you are basically interrupting that person's therapy. 0.57

00:53:34.000 I refuse to believe that we need to destroy all norms in society to go give therapy to a minority of the minority of population to go destroy the ambitions and the dreams of biological women.

00:53:47.000 We shouldn't put up with it.

00:53:48.000 We shouldn't put up with it.

00:53:55.000 Good.

00:53:57.000 Okay, we're going to do some Q ⁇ A here for a second.

00:54:00.000 So we've got two floor mics right here.

00:54:01.000 I believe we've got a couple of people here that's going to help us man those mics. 0.96

00:54:05.000 Where are they at?

00:54:07.000 Yeah, good.

00:54:08.000 Okay, let's go ahead and jump up there, if you will.

00:54:10.000 Here they go.

00:54:11.000 Here they come.

00:54:12.000 I want to shout out to Sonny, by the way.

00:54:13.000 Sonny's one of your guys, but he's one of our local guys here.

00:54:16.000 We're going to be seeing a lot more of this guy.

00:54:18.000 Anyways, okay, so a couple ground rules.

00:54:21.000 We're going to do some Q ⁇ A for a little bit, but look around.

00:54:24.000 You see how many people are here.

00:54:25.000 So there's a few things you can't do.

00:54:27.000 Number one, I'm going to ask you not to come up and make comments.

00:54:30.000 As many comments as I know, and we love this guy.

00:54:32.000 We'll just all say it right now.

00:54:33.000 Charlie, thank you for coming in.

00:54:34.000 We love you.

00:54:35.000 Okay.

00:54:36.000 We said that.

00:54:38.000 So, and you can start lining up, by the way.

00:54:42.000 But here's a couple ground rules, okay?

00:54:44.000 We're not standing right there.

00:54:46.000 Right here in the two aisles.

00:54:47.000 Don't make comments.

00:54:48.000 Let's go right to questions and one question because you can look behind you.

00:54:53.000 There's going to be a line.

00:54:54.000 And so if we do two, three, four, five questions, that's not fair.

00:54:57.000 So you can ask one question.

00:54:58.000 If you have another one, just simply go to the back of the line and then we'll start there.

00:55:02.000 Okay, we'll jump right over here with you, Sonny.

00:55:04.000 We'll go for it.

00:55:06.000 Does the church have a role in securing future elections?

00:55:11.000 That's so, you listened so well.

00:55:11.000 Great.

00:55:13.000 God bless you for that.

00:55:15.000 Usually when pastors do that, they get right into like a five-minute rigmarole.

00:55:19.000 Okay, absolutely yes.

00:55:20.000 Look, so it's a moral question, right?

00:55:23.000 So, the way that you put people in power matters.

00:55:26.000 The way that we give up our power as people to the people in charge, the many giving up their power to the few, the process of which that is done matters.

00:55:35.000 And so, if there are questions in how that process unfolds, then the church, I believe, must be involved in not a political issue, but an issue of election integrity, from poll watching to doing things the right way.

00:55:47.000 And I don't think we have time here tonight to get into this.

00:55:49.000 I just want to highly encourage you to check it out when it comes out.

00:55:52.000 Dinesh D'Souza's upcoming movie, 2,000 Mules, which is going to be very informative.

00:55:58.000 If you're a skeptic, I love skeptics, by the way, I do, about what happened in the 2020 election.

00:56:03.000 Just humor me and watch that movie.

00:56:07.000 Just humor me and watch the video after video of people coming at 3:30 in the morning, wearing latex gloves with 100 ballots in each hand, stuffing the ballots into ballot drop boxes on video from state video in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, every state that bylaw forbids ballot harvesting.

00:56:26.000 Just watch it and tell me what you think afterwards.

00:56:29.000 And you should refer it to your skeptical friends.

00:56:31.000 But the answer is yes.

00:56:32.000 The church should be involved, in my opinion, in restoring the integrity of how we put people in power.

00:56:38.000 Because here's a really bad thing that I'm afraid we're getting close to.

00:56:41.000 If you don't trust the way we put people in power, then you're not going to trust who's in power.

00:56:47.000 And then you certainly won't trust what the people in power are doing.

00:56:50.000 And therefore, you're going to be more cynical.

00:56:52.000 And quite honestly, the whole system starts to fall apart.

00:56:55.000 Look, I'll be very honest.

00:56:56.000 When Barack Obama was elected twice, I believe he was elected twice.

00:57:00.000 I do.

00:57:01.000 I believe Barack Obama had a majority support from the people against John McCain and Mitt Romney.

00:57:06.000 I think Barack Obama was one of the worst presidents in American history.

00:57:09.000 But I never doubted.

00:57:10.000 I never doubted for a second that he had approval from people, ever.

00:57:13.000 It never phased me.

00:57:15.000 I have a lot of doubt right now.

00:57:17.000 I have a lot of doubt.

00:57:18.000 And I believe, whoa, and I believe that the system of how we do elections, from mass mail and balloting to Zuckerberg putting $430 million into our elections, should at least beg the question of was this done the right way?

00:57:32.000 I want to trust who, I want to say, you know what, I might disagree, I don't like you, but you're there because you did everything the right way and the systems work the way they did.

00:57:40.000 You should all desire that, by the way.

00:57:42.000 In fact, I believe our country was less fractured when we said, you know what, not a fan of Obama, but he won that way and so be it.

00:57:51.000 So it really kind of does beg that question.

00:57:53.000 Okay, next question.

00:57:54.000 Hi, I'm a youth pastor actually in Grand City.

00:57:57.000 I'm just wondering, I've read a few articles saying that we're a generation away from this next generation of Christianity and the church almost being non-existent.

00:58:05.000 What would be kind of your advice or steps of faith for pastors or people who are practicing faith to kind of step in and bring it in that next generation?

00:58:12.000 I love youth pastors.

00:58:13.000 God bless you.

00:58:14.000 It's such an important job, especially right now.

00:58:16.000 Seriously.

00:58:16.000 So thank you for what you're doing.

00:58:18.000 So for young people in particular, I tell this to youth pastors all the time, the ones that will talk to me, which is not a lot.

00:58:25.000 A lot of youth pastors can tend to be somewhat woke, unfortunately.

00:58:28.000 So thank you for being here tonight.

00:58:30.000 You've got to be relevant to young people.

00:58:31.000 Look, students want order right now.

00:58:34.000 They don't know it.

00:58:35.000 They can't articulate it, but they're living in this perpetual sea of chaos, of moral chaos, of societal chaos, of political chaos.

00:58:42.000 And the people in charge have failed them at every turn.

00:58:44.000 We locked down our society unnecessarily.

00:58:46.000 We locked down our schools unnecessarily.

00:58:48.000 We told them to get shots for a virus that wasn't going to largely affect them and impact them.

00:58:53.000 We're dealing with a generation that is increasingly cynical and nihilistic and humanistic.

00:58:58.000 And so my advice would be that we need to restore young people's faith, hopefully first and foremost, in the natural law, the God that made them and desires to get to know them again, and then Jesus Christ who will wash their sins away new.

00:59:12.000 And I think it has to be done in a completely different way.

00:59:15.000 Where I don't think, and this is my own personal opinion, you're going to win over young people by cussing and swearing in your sermons.

00:59:22.000 It drives me nuts when I see that stuff.

00:59:24.000 I don't think you're going to win over young people, you know, by just kind of watering down the gospel or, you know, trying to truncate the gospel.

00:59:33.000 I think the entirety of the word of God speaks for itself.

00:59:36.000 In fact, I believe in my work, and again, my work is probably more comprehensive in reaching out with young people than probably even most youth ministries, but so be it, whatever.

00:59:47.000 I would say that a young person would much rather have bluntly spoken truth than well-tailored lies right now, because all they have received is well-tailored lies.

00:59:56.000 And so, look, there'll be plenty of young people that will go away.

01:00:00.000 A lot of them will come back.

01:00:01.000 But boy, you got to throw them a lifeline.

01:00:04.000 You got to throw them something that they can hatch on to.

01:00:07.000 And I tell youth pastors this all the time: young men in particular, I can't speak as much to young women.

01:00:12.000 Young men need to be directly challenged. 1.00

01:00:15.000 We have a generation of grown infants right now in our country.

01:00:19.000 Of the lost boys in Peter Pan is the perfect example of what's happening with young men in America right now.

01:00:26.000 Pornography is to blame for this, which is one of the great societal ills that the church really doesn't speak about enough.

01:00:31.000 There's a lot of different issues that are out there.

01:00:34.000 What is the challenge that young men need to face?

01:00:38.000 Youth pastors need to look young men in the eyes and say, it's time for you to be a man.

01:00:42.000 Stop sleeping until 2 p.m.

01:00:44.000 Get off those websites.

01:00:46.000 Stop playing video games.

01:00:47.000 It wouldn't hurt if you picked up a barbell once or dumbbell once in a while and did something.

01:00:52.000 And how about you improve your life?

01:00:54.000 They say, well, no one likes me and the girls won't talk to me and say, listen, maybe they won't talk to you because you don't got your life in order. 0.98

01:01:00.000 You have no self-control.

01:01:02.000 And they say, well, how do I get self-control?

01:01:04.000 I'm glad you asked.

01:01:04.000 It's the fruit of the Spirit.

01:01:06.000 You're not going to get self-control anytime soon.

01:01:08.000 You give your life to the Lord, you allow the Spirit to fill you.

01:01:11.000 That self-control will come.

01:01:12.000 The number one complaint I hear from young women about young men is young men have no control over themselves.

01:01:17.000 Number one complaint I hear is they say with drinking or with drugs or with language or behavior.

01:01:23.000 And look, the results speak for themselves.

01:01:25.000 We're on the verge of a population collapse in our country.

01:01:27.000 The least married generation in history, the least children ever be born, most drug-addicted, most alcohol-addicted, most suicidal, most depressed, most anxious generation in history, also the least religious.

01:01:39.000 So something we're doing isn't working.

01:01:41.000 The watered-down gospel of trying to be socially relevant, I'm going to put four-letter words in my gospel, and young people are going to like me because I'm doing it on TikTok enough.

01:01:50.000 Speak blunt and plainly speaking truth.

01:01:52.000 Write to them, and I think the results will be amazing.

01:01:55.000 Thank you.

01:01:57.000 Good.

01:01:59.000 I want to ask one other thing.

01:02:00.000 Wouldn't you ask a question too?

01:02:02.000 If you could get right up on that mic, our sound guys would really love you.

01:02:05.000 So thank you for that.

01:02:07.000 Hi, Charlie.

01:02:08.000 I am a journalism student.

01:02:09.000 I graduate next month from Regent University.

01:02:12.000 Where do you see conservative journalism going?

01:02:16.000 First of all, we need more conservative journalists.

01:02:18.000 That's a big deal.

01:02:19.000 I'm working on it.

01:02:23.000 So let me tell you: I'm going to speak directly to you, which I rarely do when someone asks a question.

01:02:29.000 Okay, I try to generalize it, but I think it'll be applicable.

01:02:33.000 The other side, whatever you want to coin the other side, 99% of their bad deeds don't get reported on.

01:02:40.000 And so I would encourage you to be a top-tier investigative journalist.

01:02:45.000 We do not have enough people doing the tough work of investigation.

01:02:48.000 Now, investigation could be FOIA requests, Freedom of Information Act.

01:02:51.000 It could be showing up at city council meetings and asking questions.

01:02:54.000 It could be waiting all day at the airport till your congressman lands and just waiting for them to get off the plane and respectfully asking a question.

01:03:00.000 It's not done enough nowadays.

01:03:02.000 In fact, it's kind of reposting the same articles and doing the same things.

01:03:06.000 So I just want to encourage you: where do I think it's going?

01:03:08.000 And I don't even want to use the word conservative.

01:03:10.000 I'm a conservative, I'm a constitutionalist.

01:03:12.000 Let's just generalize it.

01:03:13.000 How about like the non-degenerative side of America, right? 0.99

01:03:17.000 Whatever that is.

01:03:17.000 That's us, right?

01:03:18.000 Like team reality, non-degenerative.

01:03:20.000 Woo-hoo, like that's us, whatever.

01:03:21.000 Great.

01:03:21.000 Big coalition, right?

01:03:23.000 Which is this, which is challenge authority, challenge tyranny.

01:03:27.000 Journalism at its best challenges the powerful.

01:03:31.000 What have you noticed in the last couple of years?

01:03:33.000 Journalism not covering the news, but they're covering up the news.

01:03:39.000 Instead of covering the Hunter Biden story, they actively covered it up.

01:03:44.000 Instead of challenging the FBI and the CIA, challenging CNN, challenging the most wealthy people, instead of challenging Zuckerberg, who put $430 million, they put your church on the front page of the local newspaper because that's the threat, right?

01:03:59.000 Yeah, like, yeah, where's your expose on the Zuckerberg money that came into this county?

01:04:02.000 Like, nice try, right?

01:04:03.000 Of course, they won't report on it because they view their role as protecting the institutional power regime.

01:04:10.000 So, every person going into journalist, journalism is super important.

01:04:13.000 Now, let me broaden it for the room.

01:04:14.000 So, thank you for that.

01:04:15.000 Let me broaden it.

01:04:16.000 All of you could become journalists.

01:04:18.000 No offense to the person who spent a bunch of money to go to the journalism degree, but so I'm going to, all of you could do this.

01:04:24.000 All of you can find a story and break it.

01:04:27.000 All of you can challenge power.

01:04:29.000 You could put a smartphone in someone's face lovingly and gracefully.

01:04:32.000 Why'd you vote that way?

01:04:33.000 Why'd you vote that way?

01:04:35.000 I don't get it.

01:04:35.000 Why are you doing that?

01:04:36.000 You see him at the grocery store.

01:04:38.000 You see them on the street.

01:04:38.000 Have the courage to do it.

01:04:39.000 Don't be a jerk. 1.00

01:04:41.000 Don't make a fool of yourself. 1.00

01:04:42.000 Just ask questions. 0.97

01:04:43.000 Ask questions.

01:04:44.000 Every single one of you can immediately turn into citizen journalists.

01:04:48.000 That is one of the great ways to push back against the power that seems just like completely unstoppable in our country.

01:04:55.000 But I have so much respect for you to go into journalism.

01:04:58.000 We need better people in journalism.

01:05:00.000 We really do.

01:05:00.000 God bless you.

01:05:06.000 Hey, Charlie, I agree with you wholeheartedly that the church is the answer for the things that you were talking about today.

01:05:16.000 But by and large, the church culture doesn't seem to really have the ministry and the things going on in the ministry to address those things.

01:05:28.000 We got like children's ministry, singles ministry, but not things that are really geared to address the things that you discuss today.

01:05:37.000 Not by and large, anyway.

01:05:39.000 How would Charlie Kirk consult such a church in helping them to start implementing these things?

01:05:46.000 What a great question.

01:05:47.000 That's a terrific question.

01:05:48.000 And you basically, you took my one-liner right out of my mouth, which is: so we have children's ministries, some prison ministries, we have financial counseling ministries, women's ministries, men's ministries, but a lot of churches don't have ministries to be able to make, to have their congregation make sense of the news or what's happening around them.

01:06:09.000 So this is part of what we're trying to do at TPUSA Faith and kind of the team that we're creating.

01:06:13.000 We do a once-a-month thing that can be done at any church at any time called Freedom Night in America, where it's an open setting for questions to be asked, for people to come to get advice from their pastors on these issues.

01:06:25.000 I'm so incredibly encouraged to hear you guys have a civic engagement ministry.

01:06:29.000 That's such an important step.

01:06:31.000 It's awesome.

01:06:32.000 That's so cool.

01:06:34.000 And that's not political.

01:06:35.000 That's just getting engaged and making the decisions that you want to make.

01:06:39.000 So in the best case scenario, I believe a church should have a full-time pastor where their full-time job is to be the go-to person for every contentious issue.

01:06:51.000 So that person is the, hey, raise your hand on every Sunday.

01:06:54.000 You got a question about the trans issue.

01:06:56.000 You got a question about CRT.

01:06:57.000 That's the guy.

01:06:58.000 Schedule lunch or coffee.

01:06:59.000 And their calendar all week is dealing with your needs, wants, and concerns and clarification.

01:07:03.000 That's it.

01:07:05.000 And they're the one that can come to us and be the liaison.

01:07:08.000 Hey, Charlie, they're asking questions about Jacques Derrida and the roots of postmodernist thinking.

01:07:12.000 Perfect.

01:07:12.000 We know how to do that.

01:07:14.000 How much?

01:07:14.000 No, seriously, that's my lane.

01:07:17.000 I live in that lane.

01:07:17.000 I spend two hours a day reading those books.

01:07:19.000 I can help.

01:07:20.000 There's not a question we haven't encountered.

01:07:23.000 And I'm not saying that braggadociously.

01:07:24.000 It just happens to be, you know, our expertise.

01:07:27.000 That actually shouldn't be the expertise of the church.

01:07:30.000 You got a lot of other stuff to do, right?

01:07:32.000 You got marriages to keep together, right? 1.00

01:07:34.000 You got young people to hopefully get married, right?

01:07:36.000 You got children to rise up.

01:07:38.000 It could be overwhelming, right?

01:07:40.000 Because it could kind of monopolize.

01:07:41.000 I actually think dedicating a pastor to that full-time actually makes it so much less controversial.

01:07:49.000 In the sense where, and you got a problem with it, just talk to him.

01:07:51.000 You got a problem?

01:07:52.000 Talk to him.

01:07:53.000 You have a reference point.

01:07:54.000 There's a place for it to grow, to flourish, right?

01:07:57.000 And also, you're emphasizing that it's a part, but it's not the whole church, right?

01:08:02.000 That it's a part of the church.

01:08:04.000 And so I've seen this work wonders at other people's churches.

01:08:07.000 Jack Hibbs has this.

01:08:07.000 Rob McCoy has this.

01:08:08.000 Greg Farrington has this.

01:08:10.000 Steve Smotherman has this, where they have a go-to guy that just handles it.

01:08:13.000 So that would be my ideal.

01:08:14.000 And I think that it's an incredibly important thing.

01:08:17.000 And then I would encourage doing biblical citizenship classes, which we can help you with.

01:08:22.000 The TPUSA Faith is helping do all these different sorts of things.

01:08:26.000 But the willingness is the most important thing.

01:08:28.000 And this church has the willingness.

01:08:29.000 And I just want to say, I know this sounds silly, but the fact that you guys are having me speak, it's a big deal in the sense most churches wouldn't get near this.

01:08:38.000 They wouldn't.

01:08:39.000 And that says a lot about this church.

01:08:41.000 It really does.

01:08:41.000 Thank you.

01:08:47.000 Hi, Charlie.

01:08:48.000 So I'm 17 years old, and I've been trying to be very outspoken about my beliefs, been called all the names you can think of, racist, homophobic, transphobic, has had death threats put against me.

01:08:59.000 And I feel like I'm doing a lot to try and help the students in my high school or high schools around me, but I feel like I'm not doing enough.

01:09:06.000 So my question is, what is your advice to people like me who can't vote to try and help change the hearts and minds of my very woke generation?

01:09:17.000 17 years old.

01:09:18.000 She's wondering about her country.

01:09:31.000 Be encouraged.

01:09:32.000 Be encouraged.

01:09:33.000 Stay the course.

01:09:37.000 I think you found a few friends in your corner.

01:09:45.000 I just, I love it.

01:09:46.000 It gives me so much hope, everybody.

01:09:48.000 And if you ever come to a Turning Point USA event, you'll see one young person after another that's just on fire for this.

01:09:55.000 So you've been called six-turb, sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, right?

01:09:59.000 You know, racist, bigoted, the whole deal. 0.94

01:10:01.000 That's the acronym that could be used for that.

01:10:06.000 So look, I'm going to give you some honest advice.

01:10:08.000 You wouldn't want me to tell you anything but that.

01:10:10.000 So you're going to keep on being called names.

01:10:13.000 You're going to be kicked out of social circles.

01:10:15.000 You cannot be openly young and conservative and Christian without losing your friends and without being kind of outcast.

01:10:23.000 It's not possible.

01:10:24.000 Okay.

01:10:24.000 Welcome to America.

01:10:25.000 We seek to solve that at Turning Point USA, where the Turning Point USA chapter has 150 kids or 250 people.

01:10:32.000 And next thing you know, that's the most popular thing in the high school or the college.

01:10:36.000 And all of their tactics don't work and backfires on them.

01:10:39.000 And we're on pace to have 1,000 high school chapters across the country at Turning Point USA, an incredible accomplishment that our field team deserves so much credit for.

01:10:48.000 So look, stay involved with Turning Point.

01:10:51.000 Be encouraged.

01:10:52.000 But I just also want to say this, which is you're going to be a tougher and stronger person because you're making the decision now to do what is right over what is easy.

01:11:04.000 The younger you make that decision, the less phased you'll be when all of a sudden it says, well, I'm going to fire if you speak out.

01:11:10.000 Whatever.

01:11:10.000 I'm used to it.

01:11:12.000 When I was 17, I went through it.

01:11:14.000 And shouldn't we be worried as adults about whether or not we're creating tough and strong young people?

01:11:21.000 Isn't that the goal?

01:11:23.000 And so we should want that for our kids.

01:11:26.000 We should want to have young people speak out with this.

01:11:29.000 And because I would rather be on the side that has the 17-year-olds that are still standing, regardless of the cultural pressure, than the other side, which is actually they're a very weak movement.

01:11:40.000 They've never had a fight for anything.

01:11:41.000 They never had to be called names.

01:11:43.000 Which one long-term is going to win?

01:11:45.000 This is the movement that's going to win.

01:11:47.000 Just a matter of time.

01:11:49.000 Thank you, and God bless you.

01:11:54.000 Hi, Charlie.

01:11:55.000 I remember a while back when I first started listening to you, you were talking about you were writing a book about why your kids shouldn't go to college.

01:12:03.000 That's right.

01:12:04.000 I remember thinking, wow, that's really controversial.

01:12:07.000 But now I have been awakened and I see the need.

01:12:13.000 And so I'm wondering if you're still working on that.

01:12:15.000 It's coming out in either August or September.

01:12:17.000 It's called The College Scam.

01:12:19.000 And it's intentionally written.

01:12:22.000 It's written as a 10-count indictment against college, as if I was presenting this to a jury to try to persuade you, because you're right.

01:12:29.000 Most people think college is wonderful.

01:12:31.000 I'll riff on this for just a second.

01:12:33.000 If you follow me, you kind of know this whole kind of deal that I think about for college.

01:12:39.000 College is right for some people.

01:12:41.000 I'd say 5% of the population should go to college.

01:12:44.000 95% should not.

01:12:46.000 Most people, if you may be a doctor or a lawyer or engineer, most people don't go to college for that reason.

01:12:51.000 Most people go to college to go study the humanities where they learn to hate themselves, to study sociology, where they learn to hate everybody, or they study some other unspecified thing where they learn to hate the country.

01:13:04.000 And so the culture that's been created on campus is one thing, but let's just talk about the pragmatic sense of it, right?

01:13:11.000 Which is we have a generation of young people that are borrowing money they don't have to study things that don't matter to find jobs that don't exist.

01:13:18.000 And we act as if this entire cycle works, the cycle of indebtedness.

01:13:22.000 And I'm in the business of hiring young people.

01:13:25.000 A college degree means nothing, absolutely nothing.

01:13:30.000 And I know this is, this might be controversial.

01:13:32.000 I don't, again, you know me well enough to not care and to trust me when I say this, which is if most parents, and this is, this is some, this is the controversial part.

01:13:40.000 They don't want to hear this.

01:13:41.000 Most people go to college because their parents are forcing them, right?

01:13:44.000 Even though it's the students that are the ones borrowing the money.

01:13:47.000 And so you say, well, Charlie, you know, what should they do instead?

01:13:50.000 Okay, well, first of all, gap years are great.

01:13:50.000 Right?

01:13:52.000 I took a gap year, ended up during a gap decade, okay?

01:13:55.000 Gap, we have nowhere near enough entrepreneurs in our country right now, nowhere near enough entrepreneurs.

01:14:01.000 We need more young people to start businesses and take risks.

01:14:04.000 Instead, we're saying go through this secular humanist mill where they have sex week and they have this degenerative culture. 0.92

01:14:10.000 I'm not kidding. 0.94

01:14:11.000 You think you know what's happening on college campuses.

01:14:14.000 You play Russian roulette with your kid or grandkids' values when you send them to a college campus.

01:14:19.000 You may never see them again.

01:14:22.000 And we have a generation of young people that, you know, they're kind of sick and tired.

01:14:26.000 They're like, look, I went to college.

01:14:27.000 I borrowed the money.

01:14:28.000 I did what I was told.

01:14:29.000 I studied North African lesbian poetry and my life is not better.

01:14:34.000 And we wonder why this whole system is so messed up.

01:14:39.000 I'll finish with this.

01:14:41.000 And I think this will be applicable: is that we have a war that's been waged on the muscular class in our country. 1.00

01:14:48.000 And we treat the people that work with their hands as stupid. 0.99

01:14:52.000 You might not, but our society does. 1.00

01:14:54.000 We treat them as like the smelly, deplorable Walmart people. 0.92

01:14:57.000 You know who I'm talking about.

01:14:58.000 The plumbers, the electricians, the welders, the police officers.

01:15:01.000 You realize that we have a 3 million person deficit in the trades right now in our country?

01:15:05.000 Why?

01:15:06.000 Well, here's the blunt truth.

01:15:09.000 Because a lot of suburban moms and dads didn't want to tell their neighbors that their kid works construction. 0.81

01:15:15.000 They'd rather tell their neighbors that their kid is an atheist lesbian that went to University of Missouri and is working as an accountant at Ernst Young, doesn't share any of their values, but at least they're not working construction. 0.99

01:15:25.000 You know it's true, by the way.

01:15:27.000 You know that's a big driving force.

01:15:29.000 And so what are we really doing here?

01:15:31.000 Answer, destroying a generation for a parent's ego.

01:15:34.000 That's wrong.

01:15:35.000 So anyway, it's right for some people.

01:15:41.000 If every college like Hillsdale College, my opinion would be different.

01:15:44.000 Colleges are cesspools, very little redeemable value. 1.00

01:15:48.000 I visit them.

01:15:49.000 I visit over 150 of them.

01:15:51.000 So yeah, the book's called The College Scam.

01:15:53.000 Keep an open mind.

01:15:54.000 When it'll be out, we're going to be publicizing it big time.

01:15:57.000 Do a whole book tour.

01:15:58.000 But let's just talk about it from a Christian standpoint.

01:16:01.000 More Christian families have lost their children to secular colleges than any other institution.

01:16:07.000 So let's just talk about the future of the kingdom.

01:16:09.000 College has done more damage to American Christianity than anything else we could ever possibly imagine.

01:16:15.000 So that's just a teaser.

01:16:18.000 Thank you.

01:16:21.000 Two more? 0.74

01:16:22.000 Yeah.

01:16:23.000 So the next presidential election and your influence on young people is absolutely amazing.

01:16:33.000 Are you willing, Charlie, to endorse a candidate so that our young people who don't study and understand the candidates like you do, so they'll have a better chance of choosing correctly?

01:16:47.000 And then more specifically, if the Republican nominations come narrowed down to Governor DeSantis and Donald Trump, would you be willing to verbalize your show?

01:17:02.000 Too many hypotheticals, man.

01:17:03.000 We got a midterm election coming up in November, I got to be honest.

01:17:06.000 So answer, through our 501c4, we ran Students for Trump.

01:17:10.000 I was probably the most enthusiastic supporter for the president back in his first term.

01:17:15.000 Too many hypotheticals.

01:17:16.000 We'll see who's going to run.

01:17:17.000 Trump's probably going to run, and we'll see if anyone steps up against him.

01:17:20.000 But he has my support.

01:17:21.000 If he runs again, he's earned it.

01:17:22.000 He was a phenomenal president.

01:17:24.000 And so, and that's not a bash against anyone that you mentioned or anything.

01:17:32.000 But yeah, look, we run our 501c4 turning point action.

01:17:35.000 Turning point pack is coming up.

01:17:36.000 And I appreciate the kind words about the influence of young people.

01:17:39.000 Okay, it's getting late.

01:17:40.000 Last question.

01:17:41.000 Hey, what's going on, Charlie?

01:17:42.000 I just want to break the rules for a second and appreciate you.

01:17:45.000 Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, all you guys.

01:17:47.000 Thank you.

01:17:47.000 Appreciate you.

01:17:47.000 Thank you guys.

01:17:49.000 My question is going to be a little different than everybody else's.

01:17:52.000 So my question is: people, we see people coming from New York down to North Carolina and the southern states, from California over into Texas, and they're starting to make these states blue.

01:18:00.000 We watched North Carolina flip multiple times in the last election.

01:18:04.000 How do we combat that?

01:18:05.000 Yes, that's a great question.

01:18:07.000 So make your state you live in one they don't want to move to.

01:18:12.000 And so let me give you some words of advice.

01:18:18.000 When they see guns on the back of pickup trucks, they don't like that.

01:18:27.000 I'm being honest.

01:18:31.000 Pro-life laws, they don't like that stuff and all that.

01:18:33.000 So make it in the image that you want.

01:18:35.000 And you're right.

01:18:36.000 You're seeing a big move from the north to the south.

01:18:38.000 It's happening in record numbers.

01:18:40.000 So, all right, let me close with just one thing.

01:18:42.000 So I'm just going to ask you guys to help me out in a free of charge way.

01:18:45.000 I'm banned from Twitter, which is not fun.

01:18:48.000 So tomorrow morning at 9 a.m., I'll be back doing three podcasts a day.

01:18:53.000 So we do three podcasts a day from a biblical perspective.

01:18:56.000 It's totally free of charge.

01:18:58.000 If you guys would subscribe to our podcast, it would be amazing.

01:19:01.000 So here's how you do it.

01:19:02.000 You take out your smartphone, and there's a couple ways you could do it.

01:19:05.000 You could go to the QR code on the screen and it will, if you have an Apple phone, so if you don't know what a QR code is, you open up your camera and then it will all of a sudden have a link on the top of your screen.

01:19:17.000 It will transport you to a podcast page.

01:19:20.000 Once you're on that podcast page, you could subscribe by hitting the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner.

01:19:26.000 Pretty simple.

01:19:27.000 And so I want to deputize all the eight-year-olds who could help everyone around here.

01:19:32.000 They're trying.

01:19:33.000 I can see it.

01:19:34.000 They're trying.

01:19:35.000 And so if that was, if that's too confusing, I understand.

01:19:40.000 So you might have a podcast app on your phone.

01:19:42.000 This helps us so much, everybody.

01:19:44.000 It helps us prevent from being canceled.

01:19:47.000 It's a big deal.

01:19:48.000 When you guys subscribe, it sends a message to the tech companies that millions of people are behind us and that we're less likely to be censored.

01:19:55.000 We already are banned from Twitter.

01:19:57.000 And so, again, take out your camera, go there, QR code.

01:20:00.000 It blesses us.

01:20:01.000 And then once you're on that page, you hit that subscribe button.

01:20:04.000 It really helps us out.

01:20:05.000 So thank you.

01:20:06.000 Okay, so one last thing in closing.

01:20:09.000 Is that okay?

01:20:09.000 Do you have any thoughts?

01:20:11.000 I just wanted to do, as you close, give us a charge for Tuesday is vote day.

01:20:17.000 It's a big day here in St. Louis County, St. Charles.

01:20:19.000 All right, guys.

01:20:19.000 So let's close on a high note, everybody.

01:20:22.000 There's so much that we can cover.

01:20:24.000 So the American founders and framers gave us an incredible system.

01:20:28.000 Most people ever to live live as subjects or as serfs.

01:20:32.000 We get the opportunity to live as citizens.

01:20:35.000 Being a citizen is unique.

01:20:36.000 It takes you to be active, aware, and alert.

01:20:39.000 Challenge authority.

01:20:40.000 Challenge tyranny. 0.98

01:20:41.000 Be in the streets.

01:20:42.000 Be voting.

01:20:43.000 Be active.

01:20:44.000 Be optimistic.

01:20:45.000 You hear things about the great reset.

01:20:47.000 You hear what's happening all over.

01:20:48.000 I see what's happening, though.

01:20:49.000 I traveled 330 days last year.

01:20:51.000 I'm on the road nonstop.

01:20:53.000 There's a common theme, people that are asking questions and showing up at our events.

01:20:56.000 There are people that have never come to these events before that are starting to show up.

01:20:59.000 People that are realizing that, I got to do more.

01:21:02.000 The country's falling apart.

01:21:04.000 My kids are being taught this nonsense.

01:21:07.000 I got to get into what's happening.

01:21:09.000 There's this rise of the citizen that is all of a sudden shaking the ground of the regime and what they think they can do to you.

01:21:19.000 They are being filled with paranoia.

01:21:20.000 They're resigning in record numbers.

01:21:22.000 They're not sure what happens next.

01:21:24.000 You know, in physics, we learn that for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

01:21:29.000 And I tell you right now, for all the injustice, for all the tyranny, I'm starting to see you retake the country.

01:21:36.000 I'm starting to see everyday people start to say, it's still we, the people, that governs our constitutional republic.

01:21:44.000 The enemy wants you to be hopeless.

01:21:46.000 The enemy wants you to be cynical.

01:21:47.000 I know a lot of you do everything you're told.

01:21:49.000 You watch Fox News, you bought the pillow, you've done everything that you've been told to do.

01:22:00.000 By the way, promo code Kirk at mypillow.com, okay?

01:22:09.000 But now it's time for you to pray and fast and do more.

01:22:12.000 This country is such a gift from the Lord to have a constitutional republic.

01:22:18.000 The prosperity, the wealth, the freedom that we have.

01:22:22.000 And we're right on that line.

01:22:24.000 And if it's not for you, look to your grandkids and say, it's worth it for you for me not to give up.

01:22:30.000 If not for you, for the 17-year-old that asked the question, I want you to live in a free country.

01:22:34.000 And here's what I can promise you, that there's thousands and hundreds of thousands, millions of people just like me and just like you that are dedicating everything they got at it.

01:22:43.000 And I'll tell you what, the Lord is going to honor that.

01:22:45.000 The Lord is not going to forsake his people when they stand with courage for righteousness.

01:22:51.000 Now is the time to rise in more ways than one.

01:22:54.000 I just want to say, what an amazing church.

01:22:56.000 We are going to win, everybody, and the bad guys are going to lose.

01:22:58.000 God bless you guys.

01:22:59.000 Thank you so much.

01:23:05.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

01:23:07.000 Email us your thoughts.

01:23:07.000 It's always freedom at CharlieKirk.com.

01:23:09.000 Thank you so much for listening.

01:23:10.000 God bless.

01:23:16.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 17, 2022

Becoming Courageous in Christ — LIVE from Grace Church in St. Louis

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript