On this episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, host Andrew Colvett is joined by Rob Henderson and Blake Neff to discuss the tragic passing of Charlie's good friend and mentor, Robert "Troubled and substack" Henderson.
00:00:56.000The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:01:09.000All right, welcome back, hour two of the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:01:12.000I'm Andrew Colvett, executive producer of this fine show.
00:01:52.000No, I told him, I think when I first shook his hand and then when we parted ways, that it was an honor to meet him.
00:01:59.000And now it was just a surreal moment when I learned that I was his last long form interview, you know, because some time had passed between our discussion and then what had happened later.
00:02:11.000And I presumed, you know, he's an extremely busy guy.
00:02:13.000But yeah, I learned the same day as everyone else.
00:02:19.000And, you know, then I felt this internal, I don't know what it was, this grieving.
00:02:23.000Like, all of the feelings of that day came back of, you know, meeting him, knowing him, and then realizing like, you know, that was the last long discussion that he'd had.
00:02:34.000And it made me think of how he was during that interview, as he is in all interviews, you know, inquisitive, curious, sharp, thoughtful.
00:02:42.000You know, I'd been interviewed by a lot of different people.
00:02:45.000And one thing that stood out to me is how sharp he was.
00:02:50.000I would reference a study or a book, and I would see him writing things down.
00:03:10.000Yeah, and I'm so glad it was, I mean, I'm not glad it was his last interview.
00:03:14.000It was a good topic for this final interview because it was hitting on some of the stuff that mattered most to him, not just in an immediate politics sense, but the really big picture things.
00:03:24.000You know, Erica said in her speech at the memorial that if Charlie had entered politics, his biggest goal would be revive the American family.
00:03:33.000And we talked a lot about the state of the family, the success sequence, what the impact is that we don't have intact families in America anymore and what could conceivably bring those back.
00:04:15.000And it's going to be the day after Mom Donnie likely becomes the next mayor or gets elected to become the next mayor of New York City.
00:04:23.000So when you pair some of the writing and the thinking and the work that you've done on luxury beliefs and you think about that in relation to Mom Donnie just getting elected in New York City, I mean, he's the living embodiment of what it means to have a luxury belief, I think, in some ways.
00:04:38.000Or you could argue the opposite, right?
00:04:39.000Like his supporters are going to argue the opposite.
00:04:42.000Well, you know, one thing that I had spoken about with Charlie was, you know, I'd written multiple pieces expressing my concerns about the possible election of Mom Donnie.
00:04:52.000And in one of those pieces, I said, this is, you know, think about the most obnoxious person you could possibly run into at an Ivy League Hamas encampment.
00:04:58.000And, you know, what should come to mind is someone like Mamdani.
00:05:19.000And a lot of his ideas globalize the Intifada, city-run grocery stores, free public transport.
00:05:26.000A lot of, I mean, these ideas are just empirically going to make things worse.
00:05:31.000But in his mind and in the mind of a lot of his supporters who are so disconnected from reality, they've just decided to go this route, luxury beliefs, which I define as ideas and opinions that confer status on the credentialed and the affluent while inflicting costs on the lower classes.
00:05:45.000And a core feature of a luxury belief is that the believer is sheltered from the consequences of his or her beliefs.
00:05:50.000And of course, Mamdani is kind of an archetype of this type of person because he was raised by a filmmaker and an Ivy League professor.
00:06:00.000He went to Bowdoin, which his alma mater has more students from families in the top 1% of the income scale than the entire bottom 60%.
00:06:09.000He spent his whole life cocooned in affluence.
00:06:11.000And now he's positioning himself as a man of the people, a man of the working class.
00:06:17.000But that was not the demographic that came out for him.
00:06:19.000The exit polling showed that when you break down the results by education level, 57% of college graduates came out for Momdani versus only 38% of working class, non-college educated voters.
00:06:34.000So one thing you might have some insight on, do you think it is a sort of cocooned elite that is voting for him?
00:06:42.000Because another argument people have made is, yeah, they're higher on the income scale, but they're also the very precarious high-income ones where maybe they make a six-figure income, but they also can't afford a flat in New York.
00:06:53.000They can't live the way they probably lived growing up in suburbia with their parents.
00:06:57.000And so they feel very downwardly mobile, even if they're in the upper half or upper fifth of New York's incomes.
00:07:04.000You know, and I've been posting about this too, that obviously, you know, Mamdani did not win the working class and people have countered by saying, you know, like, yeah, there's their, maybe they have college degrees and they're comfortable, but they don't see a path on to owning a house or something along those lines.
00:07:21.000And I just think it's important to point out that there is a very strong difference between actual poverty versus the kind of genteel poverty of a young person, a young college educated person in New York.
00:07:34.000Because yes, maybe at the moment they're struggling, but they have options.
00:08:57.000Well, I think what's going on here is that people never consider themselves a member of the elite or the upper class.
00:09:02.000It's always the people who are ahead of them.
00:09:04.000Those are the people who are going to be taxed or who are going to have to pay excess penalties.
00:09:10.000And they themselves will be sort of safeguarded from this.
00:09:13.000Sometimes I'll talk about if you track Bernie Sanders' speeches over the last 10 years, back in 2015 during the Democratic primaries, he would always talk about the millionaires and the billionaires and the millionaire class and the billionaire class.
00:09:26.000And then you go through 2017, 2019, and now he just talks about billionaires because at some point in the last 10 years, he became a millionaire and now he exempted himself.
00:09:34.000And now, no, the millionaires are going to be safe.
00:09:36.000But now we're just going to go after the billionaires.
00:09:38.000If your family, your dad is worth $100 million, he's going to be protected because he doesn't have a billion dollars.
00:09:45.000It feels like there's something a little bit different with Mamdani versus Bernie Sanders' socialism of 2016 or 2020.
00:09:52.000And I think it's what comes up when people describe him as kind of having this third worldist edge, which partly that's just that he is of immigrant origin.
00:10:00.000But I think there's, maybe you can weigh in on this, there's something to the idea that he represents this attitude that does want to punish the West, sort of.
00:10:11.000Like there's almost this attitude of wanting to lay low, you know, like historic, you know, the wealthier, whiter neighborhoods, as it were.
00:10:34.000I mean, this is a really, it does feel like a mask off moment where they realize, at least in a city like New York City, that they can be outright about what their true motivations are, right?
00:10:52.000We're going to hurt that for some people who deserve.
00:10:56.000Yeah, you know, some people call this the Green-Red Alliance, right?
00:11:00.000Green meaning sort of Islamist and then red meaning communist.
00:11:05.000And there's this sort of anti-colonialist streak.
00:11:09.000Mamdani's father recently wrote a book singing the praises of Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator who was responsible for massacres of his people.
00:11:18.000And because he was on the progressive left, and I don't know, maybe that wasn't real socialism or whatever it was, right?
00:11:24.000There's always this apologetic stance whenever these ideologies go awry.
00:11:31.000But yeah, I think that attitude, right?
00:11:34.000That the, you know, go back to the Ivy League and Moss encampment type of person where they want to punish the West and they believe that, you know, there's some kind of a restitution that's due.
00:11:47.000And, you know, this is one path to get there.
00:11:51.000But what's interesting to me is that, you know, if you break down the exit polling data from the election, Momdani also, he won white voters.
00:12:14.000And, you know, many of those white voters are, you know, they went through the education system and they were taught that, you know, the West is irredeemably flawed and that we need to revamp the entire system, that we, you know, need to change everything.
00:12:32.000Well, here's a clip from Charlie, actually, 254, talking about just that.
00:12:43.000His base of support are the people that have been educated to a place of stupidity.
00:12:47.000I wrote the entire book, The College Scam, for a reason because I said the colleges are introducing idea toxins and philosophical pathogens that will deteriorate and will destabilize the United States of America.
00:13:00.000His base are the people that have the most college degrees.
00:13:03.000So basically, the people that are the richest, the most sheltered, and the most out of touch with the everyday concerns.
00:13:11.000And that's really the dynamic that you're seeing: you're seeing people without college degrees went Cuomo, went Sliwa.
00:13:18.000Yeah, and the people with the degrees and with the advanced degrees went for Momdani.
00:13:22.000And I haven't seen any data on this, but I would be willing to bet some non-trivial sum of money that if you looked at the selectivity of the college, how expensive the college was, the more expensive the college, the more likely they were to vote for Momdani.
00:13:36.000You know, the state schools and others, I don't think those people were nearly as enthusiastic.
00:13:41.000And you see that pattern all throughout the higher education system that the more expensive the college, the more likely you are to see encampments and protests and locking themselves in the president's office and agitating.
00:14:08.000I think in 2020 or 2021, Yale, one of their admissions staff, openly stated that we are selecting for students who are, you know, want to revamp society, want to change everything, have this forward-thinking vision, you know, this kind of coded language, but essentially they were selecting for people who were on the far left.
00:14:26.000You know, you guys know about the Ivies more than I would.
00:14:37.000That does seem interesting, though, that it's almost like it's, I think of how in Mexico, you know, the PR party, a party of like institutional revolution or like perpetual revolution, that to define sort of a certain class of American society, the elite educated part, as you definitionally have to sort of want to tear down or radically change society.
00:14:59.000And it just strikes me as something that could be really destructive over time if, you know, okay, well, we did the easy things to tear down.
00:15:07.000What are the harder things to tear down now?
00:15:09.000And I think of that with Mamdani, where he wants to close Rikers and mess up New York's public schools.
00:15:14.000There's a lot of damage he can do to that city.
00:15:16.000Instead of just being a good steward, right?
00:15:18.000Like being like, I mean, that's, you know, ideally, you would want your elites and aspirational elites to be good stewards for the city, the country that they're governing.
00:15:27.000And instead, it's, well, let me find all the flaws and then introduce all these policies that have historically always failed.
00:17:54.000Well, so last night in Mamdani's victory speech, the first words out of his mouth, he quoted the American socialist Eugene Debs, who's an early 20th century socialist.
00:18:04.000And so, you know, it's sort of mask off and mask on, right?
00:18:11.000You know, you go back through his Twitter feed and he quotes people like Marx and so on.
00:18:14.000So I don't, you know, he's not hiding it.
00:18:18.000But it's an interesting question about the authenticity of his beliefs.
00:18:24.000So I've written at length about the Dark Triad, which is a personality trait, or rather, a constellation of three different personality traits.
00:18:32.000So the Dark Triad, first you have narcissism, which is entitled self-importance.
00:18:37.000Then you have psychopathy, which is basically a callousness, a cynicism, disregard for other people.
00:18:44.000And then you have Machiavellianism, which is strategic exploitation and duplicity.
00:18:49.000And, you know, those three traits, you know, the core of these traits are antagonism, you know, willingness to manipulate, relatively unfeeling, and also this kind of performative aspect where there's often a kind of a horrific void beneath people who have elevated dark triad traits and there is no actual identity underlying it.
00:19:10.000They will behave in ways that will garner them approval, material rewards, social rewards, professional rewards, sexual rewards, and political rewards as well.
00:19:21.000And how could that man, if we are correct, how could that manifest now that he's actually the mayor of the city and he's not just a candidate?
00:19:29.000Well, so generally, I would assume that most elected officials probably have some elevated levels of narcissism, but it's those other two traits that are more alarming.
00:19:41.000Psychopathy is often described as the darkest of the three dark triad traits because that often predicts interpersonal conflict and violence and criminality and that kind of thing.
00:19:51.000But how would this manifest itself in running a city?
00:19:55.000Well, I think very rapidly you'll find that once people acquire power, their coalitions start to fray.
00:20:02.000Because if you are a leader, you need to have strong alliances.
00:20:43.000You can see that he would post the kind of woke boilerplate nonsense five years ago.
00:20:51.000Defund the police is a queer feminist issue and all that kind of stuff.
00:20:55.000It was very, you know, there was that picture of him with his gloved hand giving the Christopher Columbus statue the middle finger during the peak of the pandemic.
00:21:04.000And saying, the caption was tear it down.
00:21:07.000So he was very much in that vein of tear the statues down, very much in the kind of woke revolutionary mindset.
00:21:14.000And once he saw an opening to become the mayor, he pivoted toward more sort of left-wing populism, as you guys are saying, pivoting over to affordability and concentrating on affordability.
00:21:24.000And whenever he's pressed on his previous statements, you know, his kind of Marxist and Marxist Jason statements, he says, oh, I'm just, I'm just focused on affordability.
00:21:32.000And then five minutes later, he'll say, oh, I'm going to shut down the gifted programs of the New York City high schools.
00:21:36.000And I'm thinking, okay, what does that have to do with affordability?
00:21:47.000CNN Van Jones last night says, I think Mom Donnie, we saw on the Cam Train campaign trail, calmer, warmer, more embracing, wasn't present in that victory speech.
00:21:56.000He missed a chance to bring more people into the tent.
00:23:01.000Like they're the ones who will, you know, I tweeted this the other day, half jokingly, was, you know, you can ruin your city with this one weird trick, which is create a hub where lots of money can be made.
00:23:10.000Progressive college graduates will flock there, and then they'll start to vote for the policies that have historically failed.
00:23:16.000And then when things get really bad, they can leave.
00:23:18.000And you saw a version of that happen in San Francisco.
00:23:21.000Yeah, it's really, it's interesting with a city like New York because it does have a long history.
00:23:29.000It is a wonderful city in so many ways, right?
00:23:33.000I mean, probably our audience is groaning at me saying that.
00:23:36.000But if you hang out in New York, it's a city that works.
00:23:40.000It's a city that's like massively compact, but you can get places, enjoy good meals.
00:23:45.000I mean, the cultural aspects, there's so many things to actually really enjoy about New York.
00:23:51.000And so, and people have histories there and family histories there.
00:23:55.000And it's like, you know, a lot of people are going to stay and fight.
00:23:58.000And you don't want a country where people have to flee their home, where their families are, where their grandparents are buried.
00:24:06.000And increasingly, in places like California and New York, conservatives or just sort of pro-America, pro-capitalist people are increasingly being confronted with a very difficult decision about what to do with their families and their and I hate that.
00:25:11.000We've got to rotate in our next wave of guests, but I just want to thank you for coming in and encourage everyone to check out his interview with Charlie.
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00:26:32.000President Trump is fighting for America's future.
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00:26:39.000All right, so as I said, Pastor Greg Lorry is in the house.
00:26:43.000Pastor, you are one of the most, I'm going to say it, you're going to, you don't have to say it, but you're one of the most famous evangelists in the country.
00:26:52.000You do Harvest Crusades at Angel Stadium all over the country as well.
00:26:57.000Thousands and thousands of people come to faith in Jesus Christ.
00:28:04.000And so, you know, looking back in retrospect, and we made a movie about it called Jesus Revolution, or actually John Irwin, the director, had the vision to make this film.
00:28:14.000And so people say, do you think we're having another Jesus revolution?
00:29:12.000But and I'm, you know, I'm humbled and honored to be in the studio where he would sit in the seat right next to me and do what he did so well.
00:29:21.000But it's like rocket fuel has been poured on a pre-existing fire.
00:30:57.000God can cause all things to work together for good to those that love God.
00:31:02.000And as Joseph said to his brothers who betrayed him, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
00:31:07.000So we see God working despite the tragedy.
00:31:11.000And I like to make that distinction, despite the tragedy.
00:31:15.000And I'm thinking if I'm Charlie in heaven, I would rejoice knowing that this was happening after I was called home to glory.
00:31:24.000And so I think that's probably the greatest tribute that, you know, this is a man that lived a godly life, a life of integrity, a life of passion, a life of purpose.
00:31:35.000And a lot of people who never even heard his name before are now going, who is this guy?
00:32:15.000I think you summed up so much of what I'm seeing, what I'm noticing.
00:32:20.000But I'm curious, Lucas, like you are the tip of the spear when it comes to TPSA faith and building out, you know, the church network.
00:32:29.000And we've seen this tremendous growth.
00:32:31.000I think we went last last data point I saw, and it's probably bigger than that now, but it was, yeah, we had 4,000 churches in our network.
00:32:40.000So tell us what you're seeing on that front.
00:32:42.000Yeah, I mean, first off, I will say, as, you know, because I am a pastor myself, I still have a church in Indiana and then also head up the faith department here.
00:32:49.000And that was something that Charlie and I, you know, as we were kind of designing my role, felt like if I'm going to call on the nation's pastors, it's important to do so, you know, as a pastor.
00:32:58.000And my own church has doubled in size during this time period.
00:33:01.000And I've heard that same report from churches throughout our network.
00:33:05.000I mean, you know, in the last 60 days, countless text messages from pastors saying we're up 10%, we're up 15%, we're up 30%, we're up 40%.
00:33:14.000And it's been absolutely remarkable to see.
00:33:16.000And it's not, you can't fabricate revival like this.
00:33:20.000You know, you can't throw advertising dollars and get just change hearts for people to start buying Bibles and showing up to church and everything else.
00:33:27.000And it was, there was, you know, the catalyst was the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk.
00:33:32.000And when Charlie, when Charlie lost his life and the instantaneous reaction, obviously grief, obviously horror, obvious, obvious, you know, pain, but the immediate aftermath was, I need Jesus.
00:33:50.000And people just started showing up to church.
00:33:52.000I mean, we had a guy who had never been to church in his entire life show up.
00:33:55.000And, you know, I think the thing that this also does, and we had talked about this a little bit, is it drew a line in the sand for pastors.
00:34:03.000If your pastor was silent during COVID, silent during all the trans stuff in the schools, now silent during the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk, you talked about that those righteous men, you know, grieved Stephen's death.
00:34:17.000And we had a lot of clergy that did not even talk about this.
00:34:21.000And just as a pastor, you know, how horrified I was to see, you know, other quote-unquote men of the cloth not know how to navigate that moment and to miss the opportunity for revival in this nation.
00:34:32.000Well, and this is why I'm so glad to have you on, Greg, because, you know, I was talking with a pastor recently who said that he thought that there, I don't know if I can't remember if he said there was judgment on big Eva, big evangelicalism, or that the revival was going to bypass the pulpits this time.
00:34:47.000And you're one of those pastors that I would not include in that prescription.
00:34:59.000And so I guess my question out of that thought is, what does the church need to do to capture this moment, this energy?
00:35:09.000Because I do think there is a potential where, you know, people were going to Charlie on social media.
00:35:14.000They weren't necessarily, even in life, we saw that church attendance was starting to click up, that Bible sales were clicking up.
00:35:21.000After years and years of decline, we saw that balance out.
00:35:25.000So, what is your call to pastors that find themselves in a position to harness this energy?
00:35:30.000Well, the problem, Andrew, is sometimes pastors are answering questions people are not asking, and they're not answering the questions that are being asked.
00:35:37.000This is a moment in time, and we need to seize the moment.
00:35:40.000And like you said, Lucas, so many people coming to church, and specifically young people.
00:35:46.000And this is what I see as a parallel between this moment and the Jesus movement.
00:35:51.000The Jesus movement was a youth revival.
00:35:59.000Gen Z kids coming back to church and specifically Gen Z boys.
00:36:04.000And that I've never heard of that before.
00:36:06.000Because usually, let's be honest, women lead the way in spiritual things.
00:36:10.000But for to see young men starting to come in, I think of voices like Charlie's and others that have, you know, Jordan Peterson, other voices that encourage men to embrace their masculinity, biblical masculinity.
00:36:25.000But I think even more to be men of God.
00:36:28.000And so I think this is a moment in time.
00:37:04.000And as pastors, we have a responsibility to educate them biblically.
00:37:08.000What does the Bible say about these things and offer theology without apology?
00:37:15.000So, you know, even in the Democratic Party, they're decrying the extremism in it.
00:37:21.000And that is what seems to be influencing the party more and more right now, as we've seen in the election in New York for mayor and other areas.
00:37:32.000But we need to be overt and outfront and direct in what we believe.
00:37:39.000And if our founding fathers had coward, we wouldn't have an America to celebrate this freedom in today like we have right now.
00:37:47.000So this is a moment you've got to stand up because I want to encourage my fellow pastors to do that.
00:37:53.000But here's the most important thing: preach the gospel.
00:37:56.000You know, I interviewed Frank Turk the other day for my podcast, and he said, Charlie said to him, you know, what we do politically is it's small potatoes compared to the gospel.
00:38:07.000And one of the last things Charlie talked about before he was killed was Jesus.
00:38:12.000And he talked about that openly because that's why I didn't think it was fair to describe him a political activist.
00:38:18.000I mean, in a way, he was that, of course.
00:38:20.000But I saw him as a Christian leader that influenced everything that he did, including politics, as it should.
00:38:26.000But I think that we need to preach the gospel boldly and call people to Christ.
00:38:32.000I'm going to go to UVU on November 16th, and we're going to preach the gospel on that campus and call them to Christ.
00:38:42.000If you're a listener to the Charlie Kirk show, you know that Charlie built an amazing community through conversation.
00:38:49.000And that was online, that was in person, it was everywhere.
00:38:52.000We're able to go very viral about what we're able to do on TikTok, billions and billions of views.
00:38:59.000TikTok offers opportunities for respectful exchanges of ideas.
00:39:04.000And through that, opportunities for community, not to talk over each other, but to talk with each other.
00:39:09.000On TikTok, you'll find creators who teach and encourage a carpenter passing on his craft, a mom explaining how to make a budget stretch, or a gardener showing us how to bring a backyard back to life.
00:39:20.000Different stories, but the same drive.
00:39:22.000The desire to connect and to understand.
00:41:07.000And, you know, not only to see people get up there, you know, preachers say these things, but to see people like Marco Rubio and Pete Hexeth and others who are influenced by the people.
00:41:56.000And you see, you know, people, all they want to talk about is they want to talk about Israel.
00:42:01.000They want to talk about foreign policy.
00:42:02.000There's this infighting that you're seeing within the church, within the conservative movement.
00:42:08.000And, you know, I couldn't help but think about that as the results were coming in last night is that, man, if we could focus some of this energy on winning elections or, you know, building unity as opposed to division.
00:42:20.000So, Lucas, you are at, in some ways, at the tip of the spear on some of this church-based stuff, right?
00:42:37.000Because there's just a lot of infighting.
00:42:39.000You know, anytime you work with pastors across different denominations, you have certain hot-button issues that make unity difficult, okay?
00:42:48.000I shared with my staff, we all got together at the night of the memorial afterwards.
00:42:52.000We got together for a dinner and just fellowship together and just kind of cried and prayed together.
00:42:56.000And I told them, I said, this moment of unity that we're seeing right now, I want to prepare you for.
00:43:02.000The enemy does not want to see this continue.
00:43:04.000And there's a potential for, you know, the next phase is going to be factions and division and everything else that can potentially come because the enemy's predictable.
00:43:12.000We're not unaware of his schemes in that way.
00:43:15.000You know, the issue of Israel is obviously one of those.
00:43:18.000You have, you know, there's other things like, you know, views of spiritual gifts and, you know, once saved, always saved, Calvinism versus Arminianism.
00:43:25.000You know, we could look at those things.
00:43:26.000But I think this issue of Israel has become a very big dividing point, you know, for people right now.
00:43:32.000And unfortunately, the conversation is being driven really by people that aren't very theological.
00:43:37.000They don't have a doctrinal approach to this.
00:43:39.000They see this as there's only one or two options.
00:43:42.000You're either, you know, taking money from Israel and you're bought and paid for, and that's why you're a dispensationalist, or your replacement theology and Israel doesn't matter at all.
00:44:14.000And so I'm sorry, Lucas, but this idea that you're either for or against the nation of Israel.
00:44:20.000I'm like, do you have any idea how off-putting that binary is?
00:44:23.000And that people on both ends of the spectrum that are pushing you to accept one or the other.
00:44:27.000And I'm like, there's about 100 iterations between 100%.
00:44:31.000You know, it's like, so I just, I think the whole discourse has been really tainted and corrupted, and it's not productive, actually.
00:44:39.000The question, obviously, you know, defining Israel is a thing we have to do, recognizing their purpose and place in history, all these sorts of things.
00:44:48.000And theologically, we have answers for that throughout this spectrum.
00:44:51.000And so when we say, you know, the idea of what's God's view of Israel, the unifying view is this, you know, because we're not going to get dispensationalists and replacement theology guys to agree on everything theologically.
00:45:02.000But what we can agree with is God loves people.
00:45:08.000And he wants to win over people for the sake of the gospel.
00:45:12.000And when you start with that framework and then start building from there, these things start making a lot more sense as you navigate through it.
00:45:18.000So, Pastor, the floor is yours on this very contentious issue.
00:45:22.000Well, I am one of those dispensationalists, and I believe that God has placed the Jewish people in the land.
00:45:38.000And when you read Romans 9 to 11, you see that he made a covenant with Israel.
00:45:42.000And so I think that, yes, you have to understand Israel in the light of the Holocaust.
00:45:47.000You know, when I was in Washington, D.C. recently, I went to the Holocaust Museum, and to think of the suffering these people have gone through.
00:45:55.000And so they returned to their homeland against all odds.
00:45:58.000And I believe also the prophetic time clock started ticking on May 14th, 1948, when Israel became a nation.
00:46:06.000Having said that, that doesn't mean that I have to agree with everything that the modern state of Israel does, but I don't agree with everything that the United States does.
00:46:15.000But I still support the Jewish people.
00:47:21.000So how do we, in this moment where this has become such a flashpoint, by the way, our voters are telling us or screaming at us that they want to focus on the economy, that they want to focus on affordability of housing.
00:47:34.000They're sick of talking about foreign policy.
00:47:36.000They're sick of us seemingly focusing on it.
00:47:39.000Now, I think there's arguments that you need to bring to bring peace abroad so that you can sort of have you can focus on domestic issues and domestic tranquility.
00:47:51.000JD Vance actually tweeted out something like that.
00:47:53.000Hey, we do need peace abroad so that we can really focus on this.
00:47:57.000So we got three years left in the Trump 2.0 administration.
00:48:04.000We've got to focus on domestic issues, but this issue is not going away.
00:48:08.000So how within the church circles, within faith circles, do we bring, what should our heart posture be towards our brothers in the church that have differing opinions about Israel?
00:48:21.000Well, there's room for disagreement in this.
00:48:23.000And I have plenty of friends that don't see things the way that I see them.
00:48:27.000But I do believe, you know, the next event in the prophetic calendar is what is called the rapture of the church.
00:48:32.000We'll be caught up to meet the Lord in the air.
00:48:34.000I think an antichrist figure is going to come.
00:48:36.000A tribulation period is going to happen.
00:48:38.000I believe then the second coming takes place and so forth.
00:48:42.000But I think Israel is a fulfillment of what Ezekiel prophesied of the people returning to their homeland.
00:48:49.000And it happened on the heels of the Holocaust.
00:48:51.000However, okay, so maybe you would say, oh, well, I don't see that in quite that way.
00:49:11.000And I hear people addressing theological issues who don't seem to understand, to your point, Lucas, what the Bible actually says about these.
00:49:18.000However, there's room for difference in that.
00:49:22.000But certainly it's the only democracy in the Middle East.
00:49:26.000And we want to, and I do believe the promise of God that says God will bless those that bless you and curse those that curse you.
00:49:34.000I believe one of the reasons the Lord has blessed America is because we have stood by the Jewish people and the nation Israel.
00:49:42.000And President Truman was, we were the first to come out and say, we stand by this new nation that is now declared itself.
00:49:50.000But, you know, yes, in the church, we have to find, we can disagree agreeably.
00:50:17.000We can disagree, but not for anti-Semitism.
00:50:20.000But maybe you have differing views on how much support we should send to the state of Israel.
00:50:24.000Okay, we can talk about that, but we still understand everything we have has come to us through the Jewish people, including our Bible.
00:50:32.000And God has established a covenant with them.
00:50:34.000However, we don't want that to divide over those things.
00:50:38.000Well, and listen, I've studied all of these scriptures a lot.
00:50:42.000I'm not a theologian, but I've read all the verses that are the hot button verses about this stuff, and I've read them in context and tried to read them.
00:50:51.000Listen, if you think this is like, I mean, I get how people conclude different things on this.
00:51:18.000And I think we need to have unity on that.
00:51:22.000And I think, you know, we have to remember that our Savior is a Semite.
00:51:26.000You know, it's like, you know, he's a Jewish person.
00:51:28.000So I think that's a good place to end it.
00:51:30.000Pastor Greg Lorry, thank you for your wisdom and just your consistency, your steadiness, your focus on bringing people to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.
00:51:40.000You have been a legend and a pillar of Christianity in America and the world, evangelicalism, certainly.
00:51:46.000And in California, you're holding it down.