00:00:00.000Today in the Charlie Kirk Show, Senator Jim DeMint has a very important message, and he's talking about something that I think is so important for all of us, which it's about a book that he's written called Satan's Dare.
00:01:08.000And if you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, go to tpusa.com and we will see you in December at AmericaFest at tpusa.com slash A-M-F-E-S-T, tpusa.com/slash A-M F-E-S-T.
00:01:54.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:14.000It's a place where you can consume timeless information, big ideas, and books very quickly and seamlessly.
00:02:22.000Thinker.org/slash Charlie will allow you to consume information like The Case for Christ, a journalist's personal investigation into the evidence for Jesus, one of my favorite books ever written.
00:02:34.000Lee Strobel uses his award-winning journalism and skills to interrogate Christianity's central claim about the resurrection of Jesus by conducting hours worth of interviews with leading New Testament historians, theologians, and philosophers.
00:02:48.000He began his project as a cynical skeptic that ended two years later with the conviction that Jesus Christ was exactly who he claimed to be.
00:02:56.000The case for Christ provides some of the arguments and evidence that led Strobel to judge the resurrection as a reality.
00:03:02.000You'll be able to go into the gospel of Jesus Christ and be able to learn ideas.
00:03:13.000Some of the insights, the embarrassing honesty of the gospel accounts is a mark of authenticity.
00:03:18.000The accounts of Jesus were not, after the fact, mythical fabrications, but news flashes in terms of timing.
00:03:24.000Accounts outside of the Bible corroborate key details of the story of Jesus and the fact that there was a body in the tomb and that there wasn't, that needs explanation.
00:03:33.000Circumstantial evidence doesn't prove the resurrection happened, but the supernatural explanation is the most compelling.
00:04:11.000Well, Charlie, it's a novel, but as Josh McDowell said, there's more truth in it than just about any other nonfiction.
00:04:18.000I'm just convinced that America is declining because the Christian church is declining.
00:04:24.000This country was founded on Judeo-Christian ideas, which come right out of the Bible.
00:04:29.000And I don't see too many Christians today who have the confidence in their faith to defend the truth of the Bible.
00:04:36.000And so, this is a story of people who are dealing with suffering and tragedy in their lives and asking a lot of questions.
00:04:43.000But there's several debates in the book between science and the Bible.
00:04:48.000But the whole point for me is to prove that the Bible is true, and science actually proves that it's true.
00:04:55.000And everyone I've talked to who's read it said they came out with a lot more confidence in what they believe.
00:05:02.000And even skeptics are asking some more serious questions.
00:05:06.000So the connection with politics is we're dealing with symptoms in Washington and the symptoms of no truth, a loss of freedom.
00:05:16.000We're told that truth and freedom begin with the knowledge of God.
00:05:20.000And so we just need to remember that if we want to keep our country.
00:05:24.000Well, tell us more about kind of the book.
00:05:26.000I know it's written from a fictional standpoint, but just kind of talk more about that and kind of all the different themes that you incorporate.
00:05:35.000Again, the book is called Satan's Dare.
00:05:38.000Yeah, the title comes from the first chapter of Job, where Satan dares God to remove Job's blessing, saying that if he did, Job would curse God.
00:05:48.000And one of the theories in the book is that we have to go through this physical world to prove Satan wrong.
00:05:55.000We all have tragedy and suffering in our life.
00:05:58.000And if we continue to praise and worship God through the whole process, we prove Satan wrong.
00:06:22.000And they're debating science versus the Bible and what's true and what's not.
00:06:26.000And they discuss a lot of different theories in the Bible.
00:06:30.000But the whole point is to convince readers that what they believe is true if they're Christians and hopefully to challenge skeptics.
00:06:39.000But it's a love story because couples go through this together, but they're asking a lot of questions that I think a lot of Christians are afraid to ask.
00:06:49.000So let's go through some of the specifics.
00:06:51.000It says that it's a story of love, tragedy, suffering, failure, mercy, justice, and redemption.
00:06:57.000And it follows a diverse group of characters.
00:06:59.000And the book uncovers hard questions believers and non-believers face together.
00:07:03.000It leaves readers with questions like, why did God create a world filled with suffering and pain?
00:07:08.000And how do people receive eternal life?
00:07:10.000It also provides a framework for Christians to search for truth, including how there are science, statistics, and common sense, all prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that God created the physical universe.
00:07:21.000What are some of the things that you touch on this book that show that science, statistics, and common sense shows that this universe was created by God?
00:07:30.000Well, that's actually an easy one, even though a lot of people are denying it today, is because statistically, it is impossible for the complexity of life and even physical matter to have been created by accident, just out of some big bang.
00:07:45.000The big bang defies physics in the sense that you can't create energy and light out of nothing.
00:07:51.000But we just bring in a lot of scientific evidence here of what actually happened and how the Bible is consistent with that.
00:08:00.000And we look at different interpretations of the Bible.
00:08:03.000Is it six-day creation or is it six periods of time and align that with what some of the most credible science says?
00:08:12.000But you come away from this knowing that, I mean, it's hard to look at anything in this physical world and say that happened by accident.
00:08:20.000And the fact that you say it might have evolved over billions of years without any intelligent design or planning, that is just so improbable that it's hard to believe that people actually believe it.
00:08:34.000But Charlie, we're teaching that in our schools.
00:08:36.000We're not teaching our kids that there was a God who created this earth.
00:08:44.000Nations can't rise without his support.
00:08:47.000We're teaching them this happened by accident and that they are accidents of an evolutionary process.
00:08:53.000And that has a fundamental change on how we see ourselves and particularly our country.
00:09:00.000Our founders told us that this constitution that they gave us would not work except for a righteous and religious people.
00:09:10.000We can't throw religion out when this whole country was built on biblical Judeo-Christian ideas.
00:09:17.000So we can not only prove that God created this earth, we can prove that he continues to have a role in everything that we do.
00:09:25.000Well, and so you write in this here, why you wrote Satan's Dare, that sometimes Christians actually get this wrong.
00:09:32.000You went to a sermon on Easter Sunday and you were moved that the pastor said it didn't actually matter if it was true, only that we believed it was true.
00:09:41.000And it reminded you of a sermon this Easter Sunday when Raphael Warnock, the pastor, said the meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
00:09:53.000Well, it's kind of how the left thinks today.
00:09:55.000And when we start thinking that way in the church, that it doesn't matter if the Bible is really true as long as we believe it, that's ridiculous.
00:10:02.000And as Paul in the Bible says, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then we're basically pitiful people here believing something that's not true.
00:10:11.000But today, truth has lost its value in America.
00:10:16.000The left is saying, if you believe it, it's true.
00:10:33.000And we talk a lot about freedom in America, but we don't connect it with truth and where truth comes from.
00:10:40.000And so, again, while the book is not political, I think folks will read it and see the love story.
00:10:45.000I think they'll see themselves in the character, characters in every situation in the book, because we all go through a lot of this.
00:10:53.000But the end of all of this is I want a group, a remnant of Christians around the country who have bold confidence in what they believe.
00:11:02.000And they're not going to sit still anymore for people teaching their kids in schools things that aren't true, things that are statistically impossible.
00:11:15.000And so many Christians, though, are kind of falling prey to this, unfortunately, and pastors as well.
00:11:21.000And so writing this book, you know, kind of being once the most conservative senator in the Senate and then now getting into kind of the novel world.
00:11:32.000That's an interesting development, kind of going from being, you know, the fighter in the Senate for conservative values to writing novels.
00:11:41.000Yeah, well, I'm still in the fight here in D.C., as you know, with the Conservative Partnership.
00:11:47.000And our job is just to support conservatives here.
00:11:50.000And part of that's a ministry because you'll find that most of the strong conservative fighters here are also strong believers.
00:11:58.000But I've been working on Satan's dare for more than 10 years, started out with just a lot of research on science, biblical evidence, archaeology.
00:12:08.000And my publisher told me after a couple of years of showing him what I was doing that this was just too much in the weeds, that I needed to develop a story around it with real characters asking the questions.
00:12:19.000questions and resolving it themselves so that the people could relate to it.
00:12:28.000But Charlie, you've written a lot, but when I got to the end of it, I feel like I lost my friends because I got to know the characters so well over so many years.
00:12:38.000But I think people will enjoy reading the book, but they'll also get a whole lot of profound truth out of it and a lot of just thoughtful questions that we all need to ask and pursue those answers.
00:12:53.000Can you talk about also kind of just more broadly for Christians out there, why it's important that we continue to remind ourselves of these ideas and that even the faithful need to dive into this as well.
00:13:30.000And it's, you know, the atheist in the book calls our beliefs Santa Claus God because it's we want to believe it's true, but we know it's not.
00:13:41.000And he kind of defines faith as trying real hard to believe something you know ain't true.
00:13:46.000And I'm afraid that too many Christians are kind of at that point.
00:13:49.000They're afraid to go beneath the surface because they don't know the answers.
00:13:54.000And I think the book will just show them that you can ask questions, you can find a lot of answers.
00:13:59.000And even if you don't get all the answers, your faith is confirmed as you know more and more about what God's plan is, why we need to go through this world.
00:14:09.000How do you get to the new heaven that is talked about in the Bible?
00:14:14.000And I think it's a fascinating journey for Christians.
00:14:17.000And even some who read it, who were Jewish or non-Christians, found that it challenged them to look more closely at what the Bible really says.
00:14:27.000Well, I think that's the most important thing.
00:14:35.000Well, the title came from the first chapter of Job, where Satan dare's God.
00:14:43.000But what I do is I translate that into, I think Job is really analogous to every human being and that we all go through this life.
00:14:53.000And one of the theories of the book and the debate is that by going through this life and continuing to praise God no matter what happens to us, we prove God right, we prove Satan wrong, and we answer Satan's dare in effect.
00:15:10.000And through this journey, we come up with a lot of the reasons why God's people have to go through a physical world that always ends in death and why the blood of Jesus is so essential to take us to the next world.
00:15:25.000We try to not just do this on kind of faith of something you can't get your hands on, but real answers to these questions that come straight out of the Bible.
00:15:36.000But sometimes they're non-traditional interpretations of the Bible.
00:15:39.000So, you know, I found some people who are pretty traditional in how they look at the Bible don't like some of these theories.
00:15:47.000But the characters come up with these theories honestly by what they see in the Bible and trying to find alignment with what we believe is true in the scientific world.
00:15:57.000And I just came away from my years of working on this with so much more confidence in what I believe and the truth of the Bible.
00:16:06.000And it helps me in what I do in politics as well, because I try to challenge Christians to get engaged in politics.
00:16:19.000We were given this beautiful garden called America.
00:16:22.000And it's our job to take care of it and pass it along to the next generation.
00:16:28.000And I'm afraid too many Christians don't see that as their responsibility.
00:16:32.000And part of that is just a very liberal, progressive church that has crept in in a lot of places that just doesn't believe the Bible anymore.
00:17:11.000Like we talked about before, there's really no America without God.
00:17:16.000And we were told from the very beginning that the Constitution that provides us freedom does not work unless you've got a righteous, a religious people, God-fearing people.
00:17:31.000If we forget that, Charlie, I think the biggest danger we have today is the left has become a religion.
00:17:37.000Everything they want to do is doctrine.
00:17:39.000And they really do want the government to be our God.
00:17:43.000They want us to be dependent on government.
00:17:45.000And every program they pass makes us more dependent.
00:17:49.000And that's going to draw a lot of people in if they don't have a strong faith and believe that their life is in God's hands, that the Bible is the truth.
00:17:59.000It tells us how to know God, how to know each other and ourselves.
00:18:04.000And so faith and freedom are two sides of the same coin, and we can't have one without the other.
00:18:24.000It's in most bookstores that I've checked out.
00:18:27.000And I would just encourage people, particularly believers out there today, is look at what Charlie Kirk's doing with the churches.
00:18:34.000And hopefully you'll get a chance to go to one of those programs because people have come away so inspired.
00:18:41.000But we have to have a confidence in our faith.
00:18:43.000And Satan's Dare will give you a lot of the answers to questions that maybe you're afraid to ask.
00:18:48.000So I would be very grateful if Americans would read it and get involved in not only their church, but their country and their communities, and mostly continue to prove Satan wrong by praising God no matter what happens.