The Charlie Kirk Show - November 20, 2022


FLASH EPISODE: Reaching the Middle East through Armenia with Missionary Jacob Pursely


Episode Stats

Length

19 minutes

Words per Minute

182.31174

Word Count

3,470

Sentence Count

347


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Jacob Persley is a minister doing work in the Middle East on behalf of Armenia, a wonderful country. He spent 15 years in Turkey and then the last 5 years in the country of Armenia. His main job is to mobilize people, young people, and the churches there to love their neighbors as Jesus taught us to. And one of the ways we can do that is by taking Christian faith to Muslims.

Transcript

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00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody, a flash episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, a special conversation I had with a minister doing work in the Middle East on behalf of Armenia, a wonderful country.
00:00:08.000 His name is Jacob Persley.
00:00:10.000 I think you'll really enjoy it.
00:00:12.000 He's a great person, and I really think you'll like this Saturday episode.
00:00:16.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.
00:00:21.000 Open up your podcast app and type in Charlie Kirk Show and get involved with TurningPointUSA at tpusa.com.
00:00:28.000 Come to AmericaFest at amfest.com.
00:00:31.000 That is amf.com, amfest.com.
00:00:36.000 As always, you can email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:40.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:41.000 Here we go.
00:00:42.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:44.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:00:46.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:49.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:52.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:53.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:00:54.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
00:01:01.000 Turning point USA.
00:01:03.000 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.
00:01:11.000 That's why we are here.
00:01:15.000 My name is Jacob Persley.
00:01:16.000 I'm from Northwest Arkansas.
00:01:18.000 And but that's not the extent of your ministry or your work.
00:01:21.000 You spend a lot of time in a far-off distant land that people need to learn more about Armenia.
00:01:26.000 That's true.
00:01:26.000 Yeah, I spent 15 years in Turkey and then been the last five years in the country of Armenia.
00:01:32.000 What work do you do there?
00:01:34.000 So in Armenia, our main job is my main work is to mobilize.
00:01:38.000 It's very similar to you.
00:01:39.000 I mobilize people, young people, and the churches there to love their neighbors as Jesus taught us to.
00:01:46.000 We need to love our neighbors as ourselves.
00:01:48.000 And one of the ways we can do that is by taking Christian faith to Muslims.
00:01:53.000 So it's really a lot of missions work.
00:01:55.000 So I mobilize, I speak in front of audiences, and then we equip them, mobilize them.
00:02:01.000 I'm a dean of a university for doing this type of work.
00:02:05.000 And then we send them to the surrounding Muslim nations so that they can declare the gospel and plant new churches.
00:02:10.000 So let's start with the country of Armenia, which I find to be a really important thing that most Americans don't know about.
00:02:15.000 Oldest Christian country in the world.
00:02:17.000 Yes.
00:02:18.000 I grew up with a bunch of Armenians.
00:02:19.000 I love them.
00:02:20.000 They're great people.
00:02:20.000 Yes.
00:02:21.000 They're also incredibly talented business people, great family people.
00:02:26.000 They're a wonderful addition to the American project.
00:02:29.000 Oh, absolutely.
00:02:30.000 Some of the most generous, some of the most philanthropic, some of the most creative people have come from Armenia.
00:02:35.000 But most people don't know about this history of Armenia and especially the Armenian genocide, which really doesn't get the coverage in the history books that it deserves.
00:02:47.000 You know, it's really sad.
00:02:48.000 I went to four, I went to four different schools, four different seminaries for my education.
00:02:53.000 We maybe covered the Armenian church at one paragraph.
00:02:58.000 But as you said, it was the very first declared Christian nation in 301 AD.
00:03:05.000 And that's a big deal.
00:03:06.000 And if you're learning church history, that's something that we should have focused on, but we did not.
00:03:11.000 And they've retained their Christian identity since that time, even with Ottoman or Islamic suppression and Soviet suppression.
00:03:18.000 They've maintained their Christian roots.
00:03:21.000 And the values, as you said, they're very similar to Americans because of the shared faith that we have.
00:03:28.000 They have a lot of shared values.
00:03:30.000 So it's true.
00:03:32.000 Tell us about the Armenian genocide.
00:03:34.000 So in 1894, there was a massacre of around 200,000 Armenians.
00:03:42.000 And this was done by Sultan Hamid II.
00:03:44.000 And he basically, the Christians living in the Ottoman Empire at that time were under this thing called Dimi-status, under Demitude.
00:03:53.000 And they had different laws they had to adhere to as second-class citizens.
00:03:58.000 So if any Arminian would transgress their law, they were collectively punished by the Ottoman government.
00:04:06.000 Not individually, collective punishment.
00:04:09.000 Because let's say, for example, it was illegal to share the gospel with a Muslim.
00:04:13.000 Or if you had a church and the cross kind of fell, if you wanted to put the cross back up, that was illegal.
00:04:20.000 You had to go through all of these.
00:04:21.000 There's a whole list of laws, a dimitude laws.
00:04:24.000 And they were not allowed to own weapons.
00:04:27.000 to defend themselves.
00:04:28.000 Their testimony was worth half than a Muslim.
00:04:31.000 So they had a lot of oppression.
00:04:33.000 And there was an incident happened in an area of Turkey where the Ottomans saying, we're just going to massacre these people.
00:04:39.000 And they did.
00:04:39.000 That started in 1894 to 1896.
00:04:42.000 Systemic planned murder.
00:04:45.000 Right.
00:04:46.000 And then there's this group that you have heard of called the Young Turks that come along.
00:04:49.000 I've heard about, I don't know if you know this in America.
00:04:52.000 Oh, yeah.
00:04:52.000 But there's a media organization called the Young Turks.
00:04:55.000 Oh, yeah.
00:04:55.000 When I heard along very well.
00:04:57.000 I was shocked, Kirk.
00:04:58.000 I was like, that's like calling your organization the Nazi, the Hitler Youth.
00:05:03.000 We're Nazis.
00:05:03.000 It's that bad.
00:05:04.000 Oh, it is that bad.
00:05:05.000 Absolutely.
00:05:06.000 And then this group, I was like, what is our Americans just ignorant?
00:05:09.000 We don't know about this.
00:05:10.000 I'm sorry.
00:05:10.000 No, it's okay.
00:05:11.000 And not to take too big of a tangent.
00:05:13.000 That group, they're some of the nastiest left-wing commentators that have a moral equivalent label of Hitler Youth.
00:05:18.000 Yeah, it's too bad.
00:05:20.000 Is that right?
00:05:20.000 Is that too far to say or no?
00:05:22.000 Well, are you talking about the original ones?
00:05:24.000 Well, like the young Turks.
00:05:25.000 Yeah, the original young Turks, they deceived the Armenians saying, we want egalitarianism, we want equality, we want this and that.
00:05:33.000 And the Armenians are like, oh, look, look at they're going to help us in our plight.
00:05:37.000 And then they lied and they shifted.
00:05:39.000 And they're the ones that initiated the true massacres that took place in 1915 to 1923, where they killed over 1.5 million Armenian Christians, but we cannot forget the Aramaean.
00:05:51.000 That's those that speak Aramaic.
00:05:52.000 Which was the same.
00:05:53.000 And also that's exactly right.
00:05:55.000 Also the Greek Christians, and that's another 500,000.
00:05:57.000 So we cannot exclude them.
00:05:59.000 Let me just pause here, though.
00:06:00.000 So these numbers, we just can't gloss them over.
00:06:03.000 No.
00:06:03.000 These are extraordinary numbers.
00:06:04.000 That's right.
00:06:05.000 Maybe you'll finish this in the story, but why does it not get the attention?
00:06:10.000 I mean, these numbers are shocking.
00:06:12.000 This should be right up there with the Holocaust in terms of our memorial, our recollection, and our introspection.
00:06:20.000 Well, it has to do with Turkey's status, I think, with the United States, because they're a NATO country.
00:06:27.000 And after World War I, they kind of went neutral.
00:06:32.000 And it became a democratic republic, no longer an Islamic Sharia law-led Ottoman empire.
00:06:39.000 And so I think that there was a lot of things that happened in that time.
00:06:42.000 So it wasn't really talked about in the United States one.
00:06:48.000 I would just say that would be that.
00:06:49.000 But another thing, too, is that, you know, you have to remember that Hitler actually said, he said this when he was planning a mass, the Holocaust.
00:06:58.000 He said when he was in his council, this is recorded.
00:07:01.000 You can go find this.
00:07:03.000 The council said, you know, we can't just do this like this.
00:07:06.000 We can't just do this Holocaust.
00:07:07.000 He said, well, who remembers the Arminians?
00:07:09.000 Nobody remembers them today.
00:07:11.000 So he used them as an impetus, as a reference point to do what he did to the Jews.
00:07:16.000 But can you just finish the totality of the murder and the suffering, the senselessness the Turks did against the Armenians?
00:07:24.000 Yeah, I mean, they did marches.
00:07:26.000 They actually marched Arminians in the desert and killed them along the way.
00:07:30.000 They marched them down to Deirzor, Syria.
00:07:33.000 And this is where Hitler learned to do gas chambers because the Ottomans would put them into caves and put poison gas in the caves and massacre them in a mass execution.
00:07:46.000 And I have actually seen some of these graves.
00:07:48.000 I've been in Syria.
00:07:49.000 I've been in Pakistan.
00:07:50.000 I've been all over that region.
00:07:51.000 And I remember one day I was with one of my friends in that region of Syria and there was this huge mound.
00:07:56.000 Then I saw bones sticking out.
00:07:58.000 I saw a human skull and bones.
00:08:00.000 I said, what is this?
00:08:01.000 And he said, oh, these are Armenian graves.
00:08:04.000 And I said, they're just sitting here like this?
00:08:06.000 And nobody's done anything?
00:08:08.000 He said, no, we just, we haven't done anything.
00:08:10.000 There was goats climbing on the bones of the Armenians in this region of Syria.
00:08:14.000 It was horrible.
00:08:16.000 Still there.
00:08:16.000 I mean, the crime scene is still there.
00:08:18.000 What was the total number of people killed in the Armenian genocide?
00:08:23.000 I mean, if you start in 1894, there was sporadic massacres.
00:08:28.000 There was also one in 1909 that happened in Adana, Turkey.
00:08:32.000 You're looking at over 2 million, maybe 2.5 even.
00:08:35.000 And so you're saying that would Turkey dispute any of the facts you just said?
00:08:40.000 Absolutely.
00:08:41.000 It is illegal in Turkey to say there was a genocide because you are defaming Turkishness.
00:08:46.000 God of Turkishness.
00:08:47.000 Turkishness, the idea of being...
00:08:49.000 But this is important for people to...
00:08:51.000 So Turkey is not a talked about country very often, but there is this ancestral narrative to try to restore the power of the once supreme Ottoman Empire.
00:09:02.000 That's true.
00:09:03.000 Since Tayyip Erdogan, the current prime minister, actually, he's kind of like a Putin.
00:09:07.000 He's been in power since 2002.
00:09:09.000 Very corrupt elections.
00:09:10.000 I mean, I don't know how that's actually allowed to happen now 20 years later.
00:09:14.000 But he started Islamifying Turkey.
00:09:17.000 And he started to say around eight to 10 years ago, in 2023, we are going to change Turkey.
00:09:25.000 And why is that significant?
00:09:27.000 Because when Mustafa Kimal Ataturk, the founder of modern-day Turkey, he disbanded the caliphate.
00:09:32.000 That's the secession of caliphs from Muhammad, Muslim leader, right, up until that time.
00:09:39.000 So from Muhammad up until Mustafa Kimal Ataturk, there was this line of caliphs that was unbroken.
00:09:46.000 And all of a sudden, Ataturk just changed the Islamic world.
00:09:51.000 And now he's saying, we're going to bring back this neo-Ottoman empire.
00:09:55.000 And he's wanting to unite Turkey with Azerbaijan, with Turkmenistan.
00:10:01.000 And he has this thing, even a portion of Iran, they call it the Turkish Golden Bridge.
00:10:06.000 And that's the northern part of Iran that they want to take over.
00:10:09.000 And this is common knowledge.
00:10:10.000 This isn't conspiracy theory.
00:10:12.000 Iran can't be in favor of that.
00:10:13.000 Of course not.
00:10:14.000 But the problem is the area that they want to take over, there are 20 million Azeri Turks living in that region.
00:10:21.000 So it's very possible that it could happen because of the ethnic makeup in that region.
00:10:26.000 So if I'm not mistaken, Turkey uses a lira, is that right?
00:10:29.000 That's correct, yeah.
00:10:30.000 Yeah, and it's crashed terribly.
00:10:31.000 It's absolutely, I've never seen it.
00:10:33.000 It's 18 to 20 lira per dollar.
00:10:36.000 I mean, the economy is crashing.
00:10:38.000 People are in a crisis.
00:10:40.000 Same in Iran.
00:10:40.000 It is absolutely a nightmare there right now.
00:10:42.000 Wow.
00:10:43.000 How does that impact Armenia regionally?
00:10:46.000 That can't be good for Armenia.
00:10:47.000 No, it's not because you have Azerbaijan to the west, excuse me, to the east, Turkey to the west, and they have attacked the little tiny country of Armenia that has 3 million people.
00:11:00.000 And these countries have 110 million people surrounding them, and they've been attacking them, trying to take over land, trying to take over cities.
00:11:09.000 And it's been largely ignored in the Western media.
00:11:12.000 This is a Christian country that needs to be defended.
00:11:14.000 But let me zero in on something.
00:11:16.000 So you said that one of the reasons that Turkey is not held accountable for this genocide is because they're in NATO and their proximity to the United States.
00:11:28.000 Well, yeah, I would say that.
00:11:29.000 They've also threatened.
00:11:30.000 I remember when the Syrian Kurds were coming to Turkey as refugees, basically Tayyip Erdogan threatens the West and Western Europe and saying, if you don't do what we do, we're going to release them all to you.
00:11:42.000 Let them go into your countries.
00:11:44.000 We're not going to take them anymore.
00:11:45.000 No, they don't.
00:11:46.000 Because our Christian prolongs.
00:11:47.000 That's right.
00:11:47.000 Our ministry was primarily among Kurdish people.
00:11:50.000 That's northern Iraq, right?
00:11:52.000 They're in northern Iraq, but there's more Kurds living in Turkey than any other.
00:11:55.000 It's kind of this like crescent-shaped Kurdistan.
00:11:58.000 Right.
00:11:58.000 That's right.
00:11:59.000 Yeah.
00:11:59.000 Very old.
00:12:00.000 Of course, predated these country boundaries.
00:12:03.000 Well, that's right.
00:12:04.000 Well, and the Kurds, the Armenians, and the Persians were the original land owners, not the Turks.
00:12:08.000 The Turks came from southwestern China, the Uyghurs, and so forth.
00:12:12.000 Really?
00:12:13.000 Absolutely.
00:12:13.000 Yeah, we're talking about Selchuk's 1300, 13th century.
00:12:18.000 Okay, so, but I totally believe this, by the way, that the United States has made a major mistake in kind of making a deal with the devil of honoring Turkey's wishes to not talk about the Armenian Genesis while they get some intelligence partner, I guess.
00:12:37.000 There's a lot of very sloppy, very sketchy things that are laundered through Turkey.
00:12:43.000 Unfortunately, that's true.
00:12:44.000 You know, they always say a stopped clock is right twice a day.
00:12:49.000 Well, it was right once a day with Biden because he actually did acknowledge the genesis.
00:12:55.000 I don't know if that was a gaffe, if he even knew what he was saying, but he did acknowledge it, but there was nothing to back up the acknowledgement.
00:13:02.000 And that's true that there's been nothing.
00:13:06.000 And we have an Air Force base there, but after a little bit...
00:13:08.000 You have an Air Force base in Armenia?
00:13:10.000 No, no, in Turkey.
00:13:11.000 Oh, yeah.
00:13:12.000 In Turkey, we have an Air Force base there.
00:13:13.000 And we also, this is one thing that I saw is that I would watch the news.
00:13:18.000 I read six newspapers every day when I was living in Turkey for 15 years.
00:13:23.000 And I speak Turkish fluently, of course, Kurdish and Armenian.
00:13:26.000 But when I would read the papers, they were like, get out of here, America.
00:13:31.000 We don't want you.
00:13:31.000 You are the enemy.
00:13:33.000 They would say our top enemies are Israel, Germany, England, and America.
00:13:37.000 Introduce your organization too for our people listening.
00:13:39.000 Absolutely.
00:13:41.000 I grew up in the PCA Church, Presbyterian Church of America.
00:13:44.000 I'm sent by my home church from Fayetteville, Arkansas to the Middle East to proclaim the gospel.
00:13:52.000 I'm also supported by many other denominations, and I love them all.
00:13:56.000 And the thing that has united all of us Christian denominations is one thing, the mission, to spread and advance the kingdom of God through spreading the gospel and starting churches.
00:14:05.000 So I work interdenominationally with so many churches.
00:14:09.000 And so.
00:14:09.000 So you say that you're seeing the gospel spread in Iran?
00:14:13.000 Yes.
00:14:14.000 Absolutely.
00:14:14.000 You know, one of the, so my PhD is in intercultural studies.
00:14:18.000 It's another way to say missiology.
00:14:21.000 And so I get to look at statistics, but I also get to see firsthand what is happening and how the gospel is spreading.
00:14:29.000 And we see converts from Islam to Christianity every day right now.
00:14:33.000 And this is the most liberal number, the most conservative number they would say is 500,000.
00:14:38.000 But I think that's much too low.
00:14:40.000 We have around 7 million converts in Iran to Christianity.
00:14:44.000 And that is significant because when the last 40 years, they've been under this Islamic suppression under Sharia law.
00:14:52.000 And these young people are looking at this saying, if this is what God is like, I don't believe in God.
00:14:59.000 They're turning to atheism, but it's not atheism in America.
00:15:03.000 It's Muslim atheism.
00:15:05.000 And as soon as they're introduced to Jesus.
00:15:07.000 Yeah, Muslim atheism is that they're rejecting the God of Islam, which is not the God of the Bible.
00:15:12.000 And because that's what they've grown up with.
00:15:14.000 What is the difference then?
00:15:15.000 The difference is that the Muslim God is a monotheistic God.
00:15:19.000 In all of the Quran, God is not mentioned as love one time.
00:15:24.000 Is that right?
00:15:24.000 Not one time.
00:15:26.000 And he's only mentioned as kind once, but that is in the context of that when you go to heaven, you get virgins.
00:15:32.000 So God is kind, because that's the context.
00:15:35.000 That's the only good thing you can see there about that.
00:15:38.000 And it's also a religion of conquest by the sword.
00:15:42.000 It's by jihad.
00:15:44.000 And in the Bible, it's the opposite.
00:15:46.000 You go, you love your enemies even.
00:15:48.000 You pray for those that persecute you.
00:15:50.000 And Islam is the opposite.
00:15:51.000 If you truly want to be a fundamental conservative, real Muslim, then you're going to apply it the way that is.
00:15:56.000 It's a God that requires submission.
00:15:59.000 That's right.
00:15:59.000 Right.
00:15:59.000 Which literally is what the word means.
00:16:01.000 That's right.
00:16:01.000 So you say, sorry, I interrupted you.
00:16:03.000 You said Muslim atheist.
00:16:06.000 Yes.
00:16:06.000 So I call them atheists from a Muslim background.
00:16:09.000 And what happens is, is they've rejected the Muslim God because they think, well, the Christian God must be the same because they don't know.
00:16:15.000 I mean, if it's illegal to convert from Islam to Christianity, it's a capital punishment in Iran, like it is in Pakistan.
00:16:22.000 You'll be killed for it.
00:16:24.000 And so they don't have the option to even find a Bible, find a Christian.
00:16:28.000 And so when they do, they're like, oh, this is not the God of Islam.
00:16:32.000 This is a good God.
00:16:33.000 This is a God of love.
00:16:34.000 He even sent his son to die on the cross for our sins.
00:16:37.000 He loved us that much.
00:16:38.000 And it's his work, not our work.
00:16:41.000 And it changes them.
00:16:42.000 I've seen so many conversions, even in Turkey.
00:16:45.000 You know, in Turkey, we've seen, you know, since 1970, I would say, there was one Turkish Christian.
00:16:54.000 One.
00:16:54.000 Now we have over 8,000.
00:16:56.000 And we actually can quantify that.
00:16:58.000 We can do studies.
00:16:58.000 We have 175 churches.
00:17:00.000 8,000 Christians in Turkey.
00:17:02.000 That's right.
00:17:02.000 These are converts, though.
00:17:03.000 Got it, okay?
00:17:04.000 From Islam.
00:17:05.000 Are there any churches allowed in Turkey?
00:17:06.000 Yes.
00:17:07.000 Yes, there have been.
00:17:09.000 But just don't get too loud, is what they say, right?
00:17:11.000 Right.
00:17:11.000 That's right.
00:17:12.000 Stay in your corner.
00:17:13.000 They're still trying to make them live as a second-class citizen.
00:17:16.000 If you proselytize, you're going to be shut down.
00:17:18.000 Yeah.
00:17:19.000 And they try to do it a little bit in the shadows.
00:17:21.000 They don't want to have an international press problem, but they're good, right?
00:17:24.000 I don't know what Andrew Brunson, he's one of my friends.
00:17:27.000 He was in prison, a Turkish prison for two years as a missionary with the EPC church.
00:17:32.000 And it took Trump to get him out.
00:17:34.000 Obama wouldn't do a thing at that time.
00:17:36.000 That's true.
00:17:37.000 That's true.
00:17:38.000 So in closing here, do you see hope for the gospel in the Middle East?
00:17:41.000 Oh, absolutely.
00:17:42.000 There's one of my favorite verses is Jeremiah chapter 51, verse 44.
00:17:47.000 And God prophesies saying he is going to take all that the God Bel has swallowed and take them back.
00:17:54.000 He says that he's going to remove all of the worship that was going to Bel.
00:17:59.000 And Bel was a God.
00:18:00.000 You don't even know what Bel is today because God's word is true.
00:18:05.000 And I truly believe that as the gospel goes forth in these regions and it's happening, that there's going to be a day that Islam is no longer remembered.
00:18:14.000 And those that have been going to the false God of Islam, they're going to be taken back to the true God, Jesus Christ.
00:18:22.000 And I see that happening wide scale.
00:18:24.000 And this can be found on the internet.
00:18:26.000 Anybody can study this.
00:18:27.000 Your name and organization one last time.
00:18:29.000 Yeah, my name is Jacob Persley.
00:18:31.000 And I'm not with an organization.
00:18:33.000 Why should people contact you?
00:18:34.000 So I'm on Instagram at Ambassador of the King.
00:18:37.000 I'm also on Facebook.
00:18:39.000 They can follow me on Facebook and also on YouTube.
00:18:41.000 So I have channels and I do things.
00:18:43.000 Thank you so much for the Lord's work.
00:18:44.000 That's true.
00:18:45.000 I really appreciate it.
00:18:48.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:18:49.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:18:52.000 Thank you so much for listening.
00:18:54.000 God bless.
00:18:58.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.