00:00:56.000Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
00:01:06.000Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at NobleGoldInvestments.com.
00:01:32.000And this is now becoming kind of a tradition.
00:01:37.000Independence Day weekend, and so I'm gonna do similar to last year.
00:01:41.000You know, it's very, someone earlier said, Charlie, you could just give the same message as last year if people forget.
00:01:45.000But no, no, I hold myself to a higher standard.
00:01:47.000So we're gonna read part of the declaration today.
00:01:51.000We're gonna talk about what it means to celebrate independence.
00:01:55.000And before I go any further, though, I just wanna make sure that everyone here understands and realizes we're gonna talk about this tonight.
00:02:03.000We should just be in a constant state of gratitude these last couple of days, especially, because think about where we were a year ago.
00:02:15.000And on July 13th, you all remember where you were, I hope, on July 13th, where just a couple millimeters determined the future of our country, and I think for much better and for far worse.
00:02:28.000We can say that it's all about how hard we worked or what we did.
00:02:33.000God is not done with America, everybody.
00:02:35.000God is at work in this country, and God is not done with this country.
00:02:40.000So this weekend, we celebrate Independence Day.
00:02:43.000And that is the signing of our birth certificate.
00:02:46.000Now, far too often we talk about the Declaration, but we don't actually read it.
00:02:51.000Now, at Dream City Christian and at Turning Point Academy and at real schools in this country, they're learning the Declaration of Independence.
00:02:59.000They're going word by word, they're going paragraph by paragraph, and we're going to do that partially here today.
00:03:06.000It's a long document, it's a beautiful document.
00:03:08.000But I want to first kind of frame the context of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
00:03:15.000Because I think it's lost on us exactly what was happening.
00:03:18.000So, some people think the signing of the Declaration of Independence was the beginning of the war against the British Empire.
00:03:51.000And we weren't even sure how long this was going to continue.
00:03:54.000The Battle of Bunker Hill that we all remember learning about growing up, that was in June of 1775 before the Declaration of Independence was written and signed.
00:04:04.000Now, after that, our founders were so pious and they were so Christian, blessed are the peacemakers, they wrote what is called the Olive Branch Petition.
00:04:13.000So they sent a letter to the king trying to end the war in August of 1775.
00:04:19.000The king responded and said, Nope, you guys are in rebellion and I'm going to crush you.
00:04:24.000So the founders were like, okay, I guess we have a war on our hands, and we didn't invite it.
00:05:00.000That is a port city, and they're in a room with no air conditioning.
00:05:05.000At any moment, the British Empire could have arrived because it was a port city.
00:05:09.000They could have gone into Independence Hall and they would have arrested all 56 men and they would have hung them, every single one of them, for treason, one by one.
00:06:32.000That was how the odds were stacked against it.
00:06:35.000The British Empire, they were well trained.
00:06:37.000They were bringing in Prussian mercenaries from Germany.
00:06:40.00036,000 British troops had already occupied New York and Boston.
00:06:45.000This thing looked like the rebellion was about to be quelled.
00:06:49.000If you were looking for all the young men out there, if you were looking at the draft kings or the, let's just say, the poly market betting odds, it was like 99.9 to 0.1 that America or the colonies were going to survive.
00:07:05.000The guys that were kind of taking wages didn't look good.
00:07:08.000Again, some of the older folks are like, What are you talking about?
00:07:51.000This is the part of our birth certificate and our birthday as Americans that's not talked about in the media.
00:07:58.000It's not talked about in our public schools.
00:07:59.000They'll only maybe talk about the founding, and then they'll be, oh, they were a bunch of slave owner terrible people.
00:08:04.000But they don't talk about the 10 years before the founding.
00:08:07.000Did you know that there were 25,000 sermons given over a decade to the population of the 13 colonies, delivered by people like Whitfield and Jonathan Mayhew and Jonathan Edwards?
00:10:35.000And we're going to give the colonies, our people that are fighting, their why.
00:10:41.000We are going to now form and birth a new nation founded on ideals that are totally incompatible with what the monarchy believes.
00:10:49.000And this is our nation's birth certificate, but it might be our death certificate.
00:10:55.000And I'm going to build that out for a second because it's lost on so many of us.
00:10:58.000Including myself when I was doing research for this, just how much these men and their families and their wives were risking.
00:11:05.000Because the wives also don't be talked about enough.
00:11:07.000These wives understood they may never see their husbands again, that their kids, that their sons and their daughters may never be raised by a father.
00:11:16.000And so they decided, like, hey, who's, you know, they looked around the room and here was like, I think he was 27 or 28, Thomas Jefferson, like, hey, he's smart.
00:11:26.000So Thomas Jefferson wrote this in his 20s.
00:11:30.000And I'm going to talk about that in a second, but first, I want to just remember the signers of the declaration that we don't always recount.
00:11:39.000We talk about John Hancock, we talk about Thomas Jefferson.
00:11:43.000I'm going to list some names of some people that did sign their death certificate.
00:11:51.000It's very easy for us in the year of the Lord, 2025, to look back at 1776 and enjoy our pool parties and our burgers and our hot dogs, which you should, and our fireworks and our ice cream.
00:12:02.000But I want you just today at church to just imagine what it would be like to sign a document against the world's largest power and your house, your kids, your livelihood, your 401k, your second home, whatever could be snatched away from the world's largest power.
00:12:51.000If you had a house, you were a rich person, you had land it could produce, and the British, in a form of torture, would make your entire life be burned in front of your eyes.
00:13:04.000The British troops plundered his estate, drove off all of his cattle, and destroyed his property.
00:13:11.000Carton Braxton, signer of the Declaration, a wealthy Virginia planter and merchant, he lost all the ships, he saw his fortune ruined, he got so depressed by all that he died in debt and never saw the end of the war.
00:13:23.000Thomas McKean was hunted by the British, had to move his family five times, and died penniless.
00:13:29.000Five times in the span of three years with no cars and no planes, constantly moving, being hunted by the British.
00:13:36.000Abraham Clark, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, two of his sons were captured by the British and brutally treated and tortured in prison ships, and one nearly starved to death.
00:13:47.000Or John Hart fled into the woods to escape the British troops.
00:13:51.000His wife died while he was on the run.
00:13:55.000And his 13 kids were scattered, his farm was ravaged, and he never saw his kids again.
00:14:08.000His wife was imprisoned for months, tortured by the British, and died shortly after release.
00:14:13.000He died with nothing, totally impoverished.
00:14:16.000Or Richard Stockton, captured by the British, imprisoned, abused, starved, and released only after swearing never to fight again.
00:14:22.000He never recovered and died before the war ended.
00:14:25.000Or John Morton, alienated by all of his friends.
00:14:28.000Understand when you signed this document, almost two thirds of the entire colonies were against this war.
00:14:34.000One third were neutral, one third with the British, and only one third were support.
00:14:39.000Only 3% ended up fighting, and a small percentage of that actual fighting force were like the ones that drove it forward.
00:14:46.000So imagine if you think you were outnumbered for not taking the vaccine, if you think you were outnumbered for not wearing a mask when you showered, if you think you were outnumbered.
00:15:14.000You became someone that all of a sudden you are.
00:15:16.000And we in 2025, I want you to understand signing your name back in the ancient world was as close, there was almost no equivalent in the modern era.
00:16:18.000And we should honestly just remember these founding fathers that died and gave up everything.
00:16:26.000And I want you to understand it'd be one thing if you go and die for a war and you still have your land, you could die at least somewhat at peace that your kids are going to be okay.
00:16:35.000These kids that all entered into poverty, this guy, 13 kids, nothing.
00:17:05.000This was not, by the way, this was not like them skimming it.
00:17:08.000This was not like a DocuSign or the terms of service on Apple when you get a new iPhone and no one reads that stuff and you go all the way to the bottom, like, okay, great, yeah.
00:17:28.000It begins with when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them.
00:17:43.000A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation.
00:17:50.000Now, some of that is written in a little bit of Old English, so it's hard to quite understand what Thomas Jefferson is saying.
00:17:57.000Here's what he's saying King George, it's not just that it's right for us to separate from you.
00:18:02.000All people in all time, anywhere around the world, deserve to be free, not under someone like you.
00:18:22.000I'm taking it right now, and you got to check it out.
00:18:25.000So, before Charlie ever stepped into a debate stage or behind a microphone, he understood something important.
00:18:30.000If you want to lead, you have to first learn.
00:18:32.000Charlie believed that ideas shape character and conviction and courage.
00:18:36.000And that's why he spent so many years studying the classics, the American founding, and the Bible.
00:18:40.000And he did a lot of that through Hillsdale College's free online courses.
00:18:44.000These are real college courses taught by actual Hillsdale professors.
00:18:48.000They're amazing, the best academics in the country.
00:18:51.000One of those courses, like I just said, is Great Books 101, Ancient to Medieval, where you'll study foundational authors like Homer, Augustine, Dante, Chaucer, writers who shape Western civilization, and they still speak to the deepest questions about our human nature, courage, family, and government.
00:19:08.000The course includes Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the epic stories of Achilles and Odysseus that have influenced the West for thousands of years, and this summer, Hillsdale College is releasing a brand new course dedicated entirely to Homer's Odyssey.
00:19:21.000Great Books 101 is the perfect way to prepare.
00:19:23.000Before the full Odyssey course launches in July, Charlie understood that learning isn't just about gaining knowledge, it's about forming the mind and character needed to face the challenges of life with wisdom and courage.
00:19:35.000So you can enroll today completely free.
00:19:37.000Visit charlieforhillsdale.com to start learning today.
00:19:45.000Learn deeply, think clearly, lead boldly, carry it forward.
00:19:52.000Now, I want to emphasize one thing he said here, which drove King George crazy.
00:19:59.000The laws of nature and nature's God entitled him.
00:20:03.000We as Christians believe that there is a God given moral law that is discernible by reason and conscience.
00:20:11.000And nations must govern in harmony with it.
00:20:14.000This is a perfect connection to what Pastor Luke said earlier.
00:20:18.000Why is it that in Los Angeles, a bunch of bums can walk into Starbucks and take as much food as they want and no one says stop?
00:20:28.000When you refuse and you reject God, all of a sudden stealing is not wrong.
00:20:33.000When you reject God, abortion is not wrong.
00:20:37.000When you reject God, there's nothing wrong with the transgenderism nonsense.
00:20:41.000Here are five things of which the natural law says in great detail.
00:20:45.000And by the way, it's connected to something that comes later in the Declaration.
00:20:48.000Number one, we believe, because the Bible teaches it and it's in the natural law, human life is sacred and every single life matters, regardless of how small or how big that life is.
00:22:25.000That they are endowed by their creator, capital C.
00:22:30.000This was not because they were doing a bunch of study of Greek and Roman history.
00:22:35.000And there are some Greek and Roman influences here.
00:22:37.000It's simply and solely a biblical worldview that expressed itself in the revolution, only in Genesis 1 26 and 1 27, which is universal human equality.
00:22:48.000That I'm not better than Luke, and Luke is not better than me, that we are all the same in God's economy.
00:22:54.000From that, then you get natural rights, and you get what birthed Western civilization.
00:23:00.000Understand that if you visit a lot of the rest of the world, go and visit India right now, go and visit the tribes of Africa.
00:23:06.000They have caste systems and intergenerational ruling structures where not all people are created equal.
00:23:12.000They believe that there's some sort of hierarchy to existence.
00:23:15.000Well, I have more money than you, then I'm better than you.
00:23:18.000Only in America do we posit in our birth certificate.
00:23:21.000Yep, you might have more money, but that doesn't mean you have more rights.
00:23:24.000Yep, you might have a nicer car, but I'm the same in God's economy, and both of us are going to have to go in front of God the judge one day.
00:23:38.000So then the king is reading this, he's getting angry and angrier.
00:23:42.000And this is where it gets so profound.
00:23:44.000That among these, oh, yeah, it's up here, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:23:50.000You cannot have liberty and you cannot have happiness if you do not protect life.
00:23:55.000Let us be a state and a country again that values life at every possible stage, from the unborn to the born to the elderly.
00:24:05.000And the founders articulated this beautifully.
00:24:07.000So I could go in all the different elements here, but let me just.
00:24:11.000Repeat something I said earlier that a rejection of the universal moral order, the natural law that was talked about in our birth certificate, the laws of nature and nature's God.
00:24:22.000We are seeing the consequences of what happens when you do not have that.
00:24:27.000In the words of G.K. Chesterton, it's not that when you have no God, people believe in nothing, it's that they'll believe in anything that men can give birth, that borders don't matter, that you could change your sex on a whim.
00:24:44.000You see, the founders, they were able to build the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world upon eternal biblical scripture and truth.
00:24:52.000And that is not just Charlie Kirk saying it.
00:24:54.000Today, this Independence Day weekend, we need to also just look at what the founders themselves said.
00:25:00.000This stuff you will not hear on CNN, I guarantee it.
00:25:04.000Patrick Henry, who is, let's just say, one of the more outspoken people of the founding generation, he was a little bit of a rabble rouser, if you will.
00:25:22.000It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded by Christians, not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ.
00:26:19.000I'm sorry, in the Ten Commandments, God says, Thou shalt not steal.
00:26:23.000There was not a parenthetical that said, However, it's less than $1,000, I think it's okay.
00:26:30.000Private property is robustly defended throughout the Bible and throughout the scripture.
00:26:36.000John Adams says, The general principles on which the founding fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.
00:26:47.000John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, In June 28, 1813.
00:26:55.000We posit that there is a transcendent moral order above us.
00:27:01.000And what we are saying here is really at odds with a lot of the modern world.
00:27:06.000James Madison said the only sure foundation for civil liberty is the Bible, not the teaching of Aristotle, which I love, or Plato, or of Immanuel Kant, or Thomas Hobbes.
00:28:15.000And remember, Y Refi doesn't care what your credit score is.
00:28:18.000Just go to yrefi.com and tell them your friend Andrew sent you.
00:28:25.000And so, what I want you to understand is when you see those fireworks go up this weekend, is that under the surface of all the liberty that we now enjoy for 249 years, it did not happen by accident.
00:29:04.000The next richest country in the world is China, which is the opposite of almost everything we believe a total police state, hyper totalitarian, very materialistic.
00:29:21.000There is still a remnant that should be admired and encouraged of Bible believing Christians and churches like this that love God and love people and work for his purposes every single day.
00:29:34.000And we don't do a good enough job teaching our kids how great of a country that this is.
00:29:38.000We are the most generous country ever to exist in the history of the world.
00:29:42.000We give more to the poor, more to poverty, we give more to the third world.
00:30:35.000That together, the universal human equality reigns above all.
00:30:39.000That it does not matter if you're black or you're white or you're Hispanic.
00:30:43.000In God's economy, you are all human beings made in his image.
00:30:47.000It doesn't matter if you're tall or you're small, unborn or born, you're a human being.
00:30:51.000Regardless of all of it, I'm going to end with this.
00:30:54.000I could go on for like another hour, but I'm going to end with this, everybody, which is one of my favorite parts of the entire declaration the end.
00:31:04.000Because the end shows what type of nation that we are.
00:31:08.000The end shows the profundity, the depth, the weight, and the heaviness of everything in front of us.
00:31:18.000There are two types of ways that you could do relationships.
00:31:22.000You can have a contractual relationship, which is perfectly okay.
00:31:26.000When you hire your doctor, when you go to a doctor, when you buy a piece of property, when you buy a land, when you buy a car, whatever.
00:31:48.000Jesus and the church is a covenantal relationship.
00:31:52.000Throughout the Bible, there are covenantal relationships the Abrahamic covenant, the Noahic covenant, the Davidic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the covenant with Israel, and of course, the new covenant with Jesus Christ.
00:32:03.000When you enter into a covenantal relationship, here is what makes a contractual relationship versus a covenantal relationship.
00:32:09.000First of all, a covenantal relationship says that this will last as long as we are faithful.
00:32:16.000A contractual relationship is here's the terms, it ends in 10 days.
00:33:03.000I'm not trying to bash on these countries, it's just the way it is.
00:33:06.000But America was a covenantal relationship.
00:33:09.000At the end of the declaration, very similar to the book of Nehemiah, as in Nehemiah 9, when the Jews were in exile, King Cyrus sends them back, they were just a complete mess, right?
00:33:20.000And Nehemiah restores the covenant in Nehemiah 9.
00:33:24.000We are now in front of God, we're going to recommit to God, and we're under God's covering.
00:33:30.000The last part of the declaration, they say, We therefore, the representatives in all caps, the United States of America.
00:33:38.000Everybody, that's the first time that term was used.
00:34:26.000They were praying to Jesus at the end of this.
00:34:29.000And here is the kicker as to why we are all here today.
00:34:33.000They said with great prayer and reverence that at any moment their house could be burned, their wife could be kidnapped, and their kids could be tortured.
00:34:40.000And for the support of this declaration, who were they relying on?
00:35:15.000And all of a sudden they've created a triangular covenantal relationship.
00:35:19.000Everybody, that's why we beat the British.
00:35:21.000It's because when all of a sudden the British were paid mercenaries, our guys pledged to each other and to a higher power.
00:35:29.000And I'll be honest, the fact that our nation has lasted in its current form for 249 years, it is the longest lasting political document ever written in the history of the world.
00:35:39.000We are under that covenant, and we will stop being under that covenant if our faithfulness wanes.
00:35:46.000If we become a secular nation like Los Angeles is, if we go away from God, as the prophet Isaiah says Woe unto those who call good evil or evil good.
00:35:55.000In Isaiah 33 22, it says, For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king, and he will save us.
00:36:13.000We should be on our hands and knees, kissing the ground and thanking God we get to live in this great nation, which is the inheritance not of luck, not of chance, not of Buddhism, but the inheritance of courageous Christians who put everything on the line so that we can live free.