The Charlie Kirk Show - Is America on the Verge of Another Great Awakening? With Pastor Greg Denham

00:00:00.000 Thank you for listening to this podcast one production.

00:00:02.000 Now available on Apple Podcasts, Podcast One, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

00:00:08.000 Hey, everybody, Chris Cross in the country, as always.

00:00:10.000 I'm excited to share with you an exclusive conversation now made public that I did at Rise San Marcos Church, Rise Church in San Marcos with Pastor Greg Denham.

00:00:20.000 You guys are going to really enjoy this conversation.

00:00:22.000 We talk about what young people are missing on the moral landscape right now, how to get your life together, and also what is socialism and how we fight against it.

00:00:31.000 Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com.

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00:01:01.000 You guys are going to love this conversation.

00:01:02.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:01:03.000 Here we go.

00:01:05.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:07.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:01:09.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:12.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:15.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:16.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:17.000 His spirit is love of this country.

00:01:19.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:01:24.000 Turning point USA.

00:01:26.000 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.

00:01:35.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:38.000 Charlie, thank you so much for being with us.

00:01:40.000 I could have sat and listened to you for another couple hours.

00:01:42.000 Oh, thank you so much.

00:01:43.000 Charlie, you're on a Sunday.

00:01:45.000 Thank you so much.

00:01:45.000 My children are here, and that's going to go a long way.

00:01:49.000 Charlie, listen, I have heard you say that you see atheism on the rise.

00:01:54.000 Of course, the idea of atheism is that, you know, we came from nothing, we are nothing, we're headed nowhere, or we came from mindless nature at best, educated beefsteak, and there's no authoritative, there's no authoritative answer to the meaning of life.

00:02:09.000 I'd like for you to talk to us a little bit about this rise of atheism that you see and why it matters.

00:02:17.000 Why it's important we understand and what maybe we can be doing about it.

00:02:20.000 Yeah, first of all, it's honor to be here.

00:02:22.000 Thank you.

00:02:22.000 And I love, yes, I mean that.

00:02:24.000 And so I love coming to California and I love being around California Christians and conservatives because you're in such the ideological and spiritual minority.

00:02:32.000 It almost warrants a more exciting and more bold form of Christianity and conservatism.

00:02:36.000 So God bless you guys.

00:02:37.000 I love that.

00:02:38.000 So it's awesome.

00:02:42.000 I mean, I do love speaking in Wyoming, but it's a little different, right?

00:02:48.000 Everyone's conservative and Christian.

00:02:49.000 So there's something rebellious and exciting about advancing the kingdom and, I don't know, our country in California.

00:02:55.000 It's really exciting.

00:02:56.000 So that's number one.

00:02:57.000 First of all, I want to divide atheism into two categories.

00:03:00.000 I think that there's an evangelistic atheism in our country.

00:03:03.000 And then I think there's kind of a passive atheism.

00:03:05.000 And I've said this before, and I'll say it again: that the fastest growing religion in our country is atheism.

00:03:12.000 And if you've sent your kid to public high school or to university, they have been proselytized by people that are trying to get them to believe in nothing.

00:03:19.000 And when we really boil it down, it's a very depressing worldview.

00:03:22.000 And we don't talk about this enough.

00:03:25.000 We that are Christians, we're not just talking about something that is true, because we are.

00:03:29.000 We're not just talking about something that is moral.

00:03:31.000 We're also talking about something that's very exciting and full of joy.

00:03:34.000 But if you believe in nothing, there's no afterlife.

00:03:36.000 There's no creator.

00:03:38.000 You're never going to see your loved ones again.

00:03:39.000 Justice is nothing more than an aberration.

00:03:42.000 And if you extrapolate that, it gets very quick into nihilism, which is a belief in nothingness.

00:03:47.000 Well, and if you believe in nihilism, then you'll very quickly get into hedonism, which is self-indulgence.

00:03:53.000 You see that all across our country, right?

00:03:56.000 Where people are just trying to find the next substance or the next alcohol or the next drug that is going to give them that high.

00:04:03.000 And so I think that we as Christians have a couple learning lessons here.

00:04:06.000 And I go to campuses all across the country, so you don't have to, right?

00:04:10.000 I mean, I've spoken at Brown, Stanford, UCLA, Boulder.

00:04:14.000 You name a campus I've been there.

00:04:15.000 I've spoken at more campuses in the last five years than any conservative in the country.

00:04:20.000 And I run a whole organization represented on college campuses. 0.94

00:04:23.000 And I can tell you that the Christians on campus have nowhere near the evangelistic zeal that the atheists have. 0.98

00:04:30.000 And there should be no reason for that, right? 0.84

00:04:32.000 It should be that the atheist, I always, I have some fun with atheists.

00:04:36.000 I have some friends that are atheists that are actually, I think they're really trying to seek out truth.

00:04:40.000 They just come from the wrong default position. 0.96

00:04:43.000 And then there's also bitter and arrogant and deceitful atheists. 0.97

00:04:46.000 I want to make sure that that distinction is very clear. 0.99

00:04:49.000 But I always joke around with atheists, and you want to drive them nuts.

00:04:52.000 You say, without God, there would be no atheists.

00:04:54.000 Like, they can't understand that, right? 0.99

00:04:58.000 And at all.

00:05:01.000 That's a really nice way to frame the beginning part of the argument, right?

00:05:05.000 Without God, you would not be able to believe that there is no God.

00:05:09.000 And so the second part of it, which is very, I could dive into it further, but is it, do you want to believe in atheism?

00:05:20.000 It's a very important point, right?

00:05:21.000 And Dennis Prager, who's an American treasure, he really is, he taught me this, and he has so much wisdom, which is so lacking.

00:05:29.000 And he said it so well.

00:05:30.000 Another thing he would say, which is without God, there is no wisdom.

00:05:33.000 We have no God, therefore our culture has no wisdom.

00:05:35.000 And which is, you ask an atheist, do you hope you're wrong?

00:05:39.000 It's a very important question.

00:05:41.000 Because a lot of atheists should hope that they're actually incorrect about the world, right?

00:05:46.000 They should hope that they actually do want to be able to have eternal life and that love is something that is real.

00:05:52.000 It's not just a combustion of chemicals.

00:05:54.000 But here's a really interesting question for an atheist.

00:05:57.000 And maybe there's an atheist watching on our live stream that's here tonight.

00:06:00.000 I just want to first say that your life has meaning. 0.99

00:06:03.000 You are more than a collection of atoms and chemicals.

00:06:05.000 You have a spirit.

00:06:06.000 God wants to come in a relationship with you and that there is hope for you.

00:06:10.000 And we should say that more often and more clearly.

00:06:12.000 Really?

00:06:13.000 Well said. 0.99

00:06:14.000 But let me say one final thing, though, which is which the atheists don't have an answer for this. 0.64

00:06:20.000 They have theories.

00:06:20.000 They've written books on this, but it's something that a first grader can understand, which is what is music?

00:06:27.000 What is music to an atheist?

00:06:28.000 And we don't think about this.

00:06:30.000 Have any of you ever cried after you hear a certain song?

00:06:32.000 Of course you have.

00:06:33.000 The longest book in the Bible is the book of Psalms, which is literally a book of songs.

00:06:41.000 The last part of the book of Psalms, last chapter, is to praise God using instruments and drums and trumpets.

00:06:48.000 Music is not just a passive activity.

00:06:50.000 I really believe that God gave us music to be able to tap into the higher levels of spirituality.

00:06:57.000 I really believe that.

00:06:57.000 It's not something insignificant.

00:06:59.000 But for the atheists, what is music? 0.85

00:07:01.000 Why do people feel something outside of themselves when they listen to music? 1.00

00:07:05.000 Explain this to me, and they can't.

00:07:07.000 Because for them, it's just nothing but just chemicals firing.

00:07:10.000 And the reason why, when you hear a beautiful concerto from Mozart or from Bach, that you feel something that is beyond what your words can possibly put into articulation is because God gave it for a reason to be able to demonstrate his love, his mercy, his compassion, something that is broader than just linguistics can dive into.

00:07:33.000 So they'll say, well, it's animals use music.

00:07:36.000 That's not correct.

00:07:37.000 So birds, there might be songbirds, but the social Darwinists, they cannot explain that they might, the songbirds might make noise, but they don't make music.

00:07:47.000 It's something very different.

00:07:49.000 And so I love that as an example because we have an answer to that. 0.99

00:07:53.000 There's so many things that the atheists have to answer for. 0.98

00:07:56.000 And I say this, we as Christians have a couple things that are tough for us to answer. 0.97

00:08:00.000 And we do have answers for them.

00:08:01.000 Natural disasters, why certain people are born with certain troubles.

00:08:04.000 We struggle with them.

00:08:05.000 And rightfully so, and we admit that as Christians, but we have answers for those things.

00:08:08.000 We do. 0.97

00:08:09.000 The atheists, they have to answer for everything else.

00:08:12.000 They have to tell us what love, mercy, compassion, why this world that we have. 0.98

00:08:17.000 What is math?

00:08:18.000 Why do things...

00:08:20.000 Why are we able to make sense of the natural world?

00:08:22.000 Where does this come from?

00:08:23.000 What is anatomical physics?

00:08:24.000 Why do we have the laws of nature?

00:08:26.000 Maybe there was a God that put in the laws of nature.

00:08:28.000 Why do we have the perfect composition of oxygen and nitrogen in the air so that we're able to be able to breathe and we're able to actually thrive in this world?

00:08:38.000 Maybe it's because God breathed us into existence that we're able to breathe ourselves.

00:08:42.000 And so the final point I'll say with this is that we as Christians need to, I think, take a step back to go a step forward.

00:08:50.000 And in a lot of different ways in this secular world that we're living in, because it's very, very secular, we have lost the zeal and the passion and the excitement of the early church.

00:09:02.000 We've almost gone into a position of negativity and defensiveness. 0.89

00:09:07.000 And when I see more people that are committed to bringing people to believe in nothing, the atheists, than Christians, I know that's a problem. 0.96

00:09:15.000 And so I'm happy to talk into where this actually leads us societally, but this is really something that's happening in our country, which is a theological debate in our country.

00:09:23.000 And this is something that is very missed.

00:09:25.000 People say, oh, we're so politically divided.

00:09:26.000 I say, no, we're not.

00:09:27.000 We're theologically divided.

00:09:29.000 It's either you're going to worship God or worship man.

00:09:31.000 It's that simple.

00:09:32.000 And we choose to worship God.

00:09:34.000 I love that.

00:09:34.000 Awesome.

00:09:35.000 Fantastic.

00:09:40.000 Charlie, I want to talk to you about ecclesia, but I want to get a little running start.

00:09:40.000 Beautiful.

00:09:45.000 Here's the reality.

00:09:46.000 The reality is we have no idea who God is, and we have no idea who we are and why we're on planet Earth unless he reveals it to us.

00:09:55.000 So let's get a little running start to a little different aspect of faith because as Charlie will talk a little bit about, ecclesia is a community of those who worship God, a community of faith and the true and living God.

00:10:10.000 Okay, so just track with this real quick.

00:10:13.000 I mean, when we talk about faith, we're going back to a father, Father Abraham, who's been in the news these days because of this Abrahamic kind of pact now that Israel is entering into with the UAE and the Bahrain.

00:10:29.000 Okay, but look, the Lord has revealed himself.

00:10:32.000 There's a plan unfolding from eternity past to eternity future, through Abraham, through David, in the Messiah of the Lord Jesus.

00:10:41.000 When we receive communion as Jesus Christ's followers, we are celebrating this genius plan from eternity past to eternity future through Israel and the Messiah of Israel, and ultimately believing that Jesus is returning to Israel where one day the nation of Israel live her full potential among the nations.

00:11:02.000 Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

00:11:06.000 Are you guys tracking with me on this?

00:11:08.000 Okay, so watch this.

00:11:09.000 So there's a divine plan that, in fact, is unfolding.

00:11:13.000 It leads to, like, where is it now?

00:11:18.000 And it leads to this generation, it leads to ecclesia.

00:11:24.000 And I would like Charlie to talk to us about that.

00:11:27.000 What is ecclesia?

00:11:28.000 Do we have a clear picture of it?

00:11:30.000 What is the responsible, what's the responsibility of ecclesia in this generation?

00:11:35.000 Well, yeah, it's such an important question.

00:11:37.000 And actually, this is now being really the forefront of the conversation in Christianity in our country and around the world.

00:11:43.000 And my pastor, Pastor Rob McCoy, is here, who's an American hero, by the way.

00:11:46.000 He's opened up his church.

00:11:48.000 He's phenomenal.

00:11:50.000 And We need to talk about this term ecclesia.

00:11:56.000 Let me be very clear in just simple language.

00:11:59.000 The church is more than a YouTube live stream.

00:12:01.000 The church is more than just sitting Sunday morning, 11 a.m. and turning on your television screen and watching your pastor.

00:12:10.000 What's happening tonight is ecclesia.

00:12:12.000 Do not forsake the gathering of believers.

00:12:14.000 Now, let me talk about a technical reason why this is true, because somebody tonight is going through something very difficult, and you're going to confide in somebody else tonight that will hopefully be able to help you.

00:12:28.000 See, what happens in church is it's more than just the 90 minutes or the two hours of the service.

00:12:34.000 It is congregants helping congregants through real-life problems.

00:12:37.000 All that is shattered completely when you just decide that the church is nothing more than a live stream.

00:12:42.000 Now, I am not saying that certain people need to listen to the radio to be able to consume service.

00:12:47.000 Everyone should have the liberty, which means you have responsibility, the agency to make the decisions that you see fit.

00:12:52.000 The problem is when you shut down all the churches and say, we know what's best for everybody.

00:12:56.000 No, you don't.

00:12:57.000 Have the liberty, open your doors, and trust your congregation to assemble.

00:13:01.000 And if they do, then they're making the right choice.

00:13:04.000 All of a sudden, what we've seen, and I've been very excited about certain pastors like yourself and like Pastor Rob McCoy, they've been opening their church.

00:13:13.000 And also, I'm challenging some of these other pastors in Southern California that are not opening their churches.

00:13:18.000 And I'm saying, you understand that this right now that we're living through is the greatest opportunity in our country's history to advance the kingdom of God that we have ever lived through.

00:13:30.000 And so, explain to me, and by the way, there's a remarkable and horrendous double standard right now.

00:13:39.000 Remember, if the left did not have double standards, they would not have any standards at all.

00:13:43.000 And so, which is they're allowed to have 600,000 people march down the streets of Los Angeles because they say the right phrase.

00:13:51.000 They're allowed to do whatever they want because looting, I guess, is an essential activity in the new world that they're trying to create.

00:13:57.000 However, the gathering of believers is something that they don't want. 0.68

00:14:01.000 I got very frustrated, and I have to stop myself and just kind of pray. 1.00

00:14:06.000 I was flying cross-country yesterday to be here with you guys, and every single seat on an airplane was taken up, every single seat.

00:14:12.000 And people were right on top of each other.

00:14:15.000 And I looked down the row and I said, this is coming from Chicago.

00:14:19.000 I was going to Arizona, going to Arizona, then connecting through to California. 0.58

00:14:23.000 But in California, Christians can't gather, and in Chicago, Christians can't gather. 0.99

00:14:27.000 But everyone is allowed to be slobbering on top of each other for four hours across the country in a confined air circuit. 0.98

00:14:34.000 Somehow, this is essential, and church is not.

00:14:37.000 Maybe it's because you're being targeted.

00:14:39.000 Maybe it's because they want the believers not to assemble.

00:14:42.000 And for pastors not to realize that for thousands of years, we've had ecclesia, which, and this is a very important thing.

00:14:51.000 Ecclesiastic means assembly.

00:14:53.000 Saints assemble.

00:14:54.000 That's what saints do.

00:14:56.000 And Christ said, on this rock, build my church.

00:14:59.000 But it really was ecclesia, which is together we're all one.

00:15:03.000 When you heard that worship earlier, you realized I'm actually feeling something, a higher connection than if I was just sitting in my living room right now.

00:15:12.000 And if you didn't feel that, then okay, but I'm sure a lot of you did.

00:15:15.000 And there's a reason for that.

00:15:17.000 It's because when two or more are gathered, we should not forget that.

00:15:23.000 Here's the call to Christians across the country.

00:15:25.000 If you go to a church and your pastor hasn't opened, look them clearly in the eyes and say, open your church.

00:15:32.000 It's that simple.

00:15:33.000 Open your church.

00:15:34.000 Yeah, let me say something real quick.

00:15:35.000 I love it.

00:15:37.000 Good job.

00:15:42.000 So we were talking about how at times the way forward is the way back.

00:15:46.000 Sometimes to get right perspective, it's good to go back to the early church, get context, which gives us clarity to the course that God has intended for our lives.

00:15:54.000 So if we go back 2,000 years, just real quick, you had Jewish followers of Jesus who were being mistreated.

00:16:01.000 They weren't the only ones being mistreated, but they were being terribly mistreated, terrible injustice, some being put to death.

00:16:06.000 So that was the trial.

00:16:07.000 And James writes about the first book pinned in the New Testament is believed to be written by the half-brother of Jesus, Yaakov, James.

00:16:15.000 So he addresses a trial, which is something we fall into, adversity, pushback, difficulty.

00:16:20.000 Then he addresses temptations, actually, which is different, which is an enticement, which is like a lure, but there's a hook in it.

00:16:27.000 And it's enticing me to go outside of original design or my conscience or the will of God.

00:16:33.000 But sometimes trials can lead to temptation.

00:16:35.000 So watch.

00:16:36.000 The trial was pushback persecution, trying to marginalize Christians.

00:16:40.000 The temptation was don't gather with other believers.

00:16:45.000 That's why the Hebrews writer said, don't forsake the fellowship of the brethren.

00:16:51.000 So watch this.

00:16:52.000 Today, the trial is COVID.

00:16:54.000 The temptation is not to gather.

00:16:58.000 And that cannot be the case.

00:17:00.000 We are the church.

00:17:01.000 We are a counterculture to a culture that is breaking down.

00:17:05.000 A culture and community that Jesus is building for which will last forever.

00:17:11.000 So this is an important perspective.

00:17:13.000 In fact, Timothy, Paul wrote to Timothy, said, the church is the pillar and ground of truth.

00:17:17.000 And I want to lead to something else I'd like you to comment on.

00:17:21.000 And that is, look, here's the thing.

00:17:22.000 God has given us a conscience that accuses or excuses our actions, but only it works as if, only if it knows what is right or wrong.

00:17:31.000 We live in a culture that is increasingly relativistic, and that the conscience that God has given us to protect us is not even operating properly.

00:17:42.000 Therefore, it's one of the things that we have to understand as Jesus Christ's followers, we are a conscience.

00:17:46.000 We are the conscience to a generation that is breaking down.

00:17:52.000 So look, here's the thing.

00:17:54.000 We're part of a very big, beautiful, unfolding plan.

00:17:58.000 In the West, we have a way of making Christianity so consumer-driven.

00:18:02.000 We are part of a covenant, an unfolding plan, guarantee that is in the sun.

00:18:11.000 That's an important perspective we must never lose.

00:18:14.000 Can I hear an amen to that?

00:18:15.000 So I'd like to ask you, your response to Martin Luther King's statement, kind of what we're talking about.

00:18:15.000 Okay.

00:18:20.000 And that is, the church must be reminded that it's not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.

00:18:27.000 It must be the guide and critic of the state and never its tool.

00:18:31.000 If the church does not recapture the prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.

00:18:38.000 Your thoughts.

00:18:39.000 Sounds like what we're living through generally in the Christian landscape in our country with obvious exceptions, and that's Jack Hibbs and that's yourself and Pastor Rob McCoy and Ken Graves and so many other terrific pastors and Pastor Jürgen down the street who's doing an amazing job.

00:18:52.000 And when I say this, List, it's not an exhaustive list, but they are the exception, not the rule.

00:18:57.000 Look, he's onto something here, and we have to be very clear about our history in our country.

00:19:01.000 I went to public high school in the suburbs of Chicago.

00:19:04.000 So I know what your children are learning if you've sent your kids to public school.

00:19:07.000 I debate the products of left-wing indoctrination at the highest levels of colleges.

00:19:13.000 I've spoken at Brown.

00:19:15.000 I've spoken at Stanford.

00:19:16.000 I know what your kids are learning. 0.99

00:19:18.000 And they are learning that our country never has been, never should be, anything close to a Christian nation. 1.00

00:19:24.000 This is wrong. 0.96

00:19:25.000 We were founded right after the first great awakening.

00:19:29.000 We were founded because of activist pastors and churches that all of a sudden talked about it's sinners in the hands of an angry God.

00:19:36.000 You guys want to watch?

00:19:37.000 You guys want to listen to a sermon tonight that will just wake you up?

00:19:41.000 Go read that sermon.

00:19:42.000 Jonathan Edwards, who was preaching activistically across the eastern seaboard, it was the sons and daughters of the Great Awakening that all of a sudden took these Christian ideas and principles where we saw the greatest return to the kingdom where alcoholism was on the rise, where debauchery was on the rise, where criminality was on the rise, but it was the great awakening outside of the state.

00:20:03.000 And you saw the British monarchy be very confused by this new evangelistic Protestant religion that was growing throughout the colonies.

00:20:13.000 But then what happened was this.

00:20:15.000 There was a direct connection.

00:20:16.000 This is something that we have to do a much better job of explaining to the general population. 0.54

00:20:21.000 But first and most importantly, explain it to Christians. 0.68

00:20:23.000 Is when you all of a sudden believe that we're all made in the image of God, that we're depraved by nature and we need Jesus Christ to literally raise us from the dead, then all of a sudden we're all equal in sin.

00:20:34.000 We're like, huh, why is King George bossing us around so much?

00:20:37.000 Who gave him a mandate to control us?

00:20:39.000 All of a sudden, this idea of first principles articulated by John Locke started to make real sense.

00:20:44.000 Where then all of a sudden people that were reading, that were writing, because everyone had the Bible then.

00:20:49.000 Thank you, Martin Luther, for distributing the book that allowed literacy to grow at such an exponential rate.

00:20:55.000 All of a sudden, a monarchy became something that was very easily challenged.

00:21:00.000 Thomas Paine in February 1776 publishes Common Sense for the Working Man, the highest and best-selling book per capita.

00:21:08.000 It sold hundreds of thousands of copies when there was like only 10 million people in all of America.

00:21:13.000 Okay, this guy was prolific.

00:21:16.000 Thomas Paine argued very clearly that it has now come time to rebel against this tyranny, but only worked because the people had the moral foundation for it.

00:21:27.000 And then Ben Franklin said it so perfectly.

00:21:29.000 You just couldn't have captured it better.

00:21:31.000 When all of a sudden the Constitutional Convention was ending in Philadelphia, they come up to him to write the newspaper.

00:21:37.000 They say, so, Benjamin Franklin, what is it?

00:21:39.000 Is it a democracy?

00:21:40.000 Is it a dictatorship?

00:21:41.000 Is it a constitution?

00:21:43.000 Is it a republic?

00:21:44.000 And he says, it's a republic, if you can keep it.

00:21:47.000 If you can keep it.

00:21:49.000 And what he meant by that, and it's so clear what the founding fathers said.

00:21:53.000 They said in the Federalist Papers, this thing's going to work only if you guys stay on a moral track.

00:21:57.000 You guys can screw this up really easily.

00:21:59.000 This thing is just basic firewalls that if you guys make some mistakes, it should hopefully catch you.

00:22:03.000 But here's the elemental and fundamental point is the church that has always prevented us from allowing these Marxist insurgent forces from taking root in our country.

00:22:13.000 We've taken this for granted.

00:22:15.000 This is why the Soviet Union, this is why Italy and other countries that did not have the Protestant ethic built within it were so quick to follow Marxism and communism. 0.64

00:22:25.000 It was activistic pastors. 0.62

00:22:26.000 It was the communal gathering of believers.

00:22:29.000 It was ecclesia.

00:22:30.000 All of a sudden, if you forsake that, in 90 days, have you felt like your country has turned in a direction you never have seen before?

00:22:36.000 Maybe it's because we shut down the church and we stopped gathering.

00:22:39.000 Maybe it's because we muted the pastors.

00:22:42.000 We turned it into a YouTube live stream.

00:22:44.000 They took Easter and Palm Sunday and in a lot of churches, Pentecost from us.

00:22:48.000 So it's very important that we speak clearly that where do we get liberty from?

00:22:53.000 Of course, it's from God.

00:22:54.000 God is the source of liberty.

00:22:56.000 And we throw around this word, oh, yeah, I love liberty.

00:22:59.000 We love liberty.

00:23:00.000 Of course we do.

00:23:01.000 But it says very clearly that where the Spirit of the Lord is present, there is liberty.

00:23:04.000 We are free because Christ sets us free.

00:23:07.000 We forget that.

00:23:08.000 You can lose everything that you love in an instant.

00:23:11.000 The church built this country, and God willing, it'll save this country.

00:23:14.000 I love that.

00:23:15.000 Fantastic.

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00:24:20.000 Dennis Prager said, I was shocked in a way when I heard this.

00:24:25.000 And maybe I shouldn't have been shocked, but he said the church will be the deciding factor to the survival of America.

00:24:30.000 Without the church, it's over.

00:24:32.000 Let's talk about ecclesiastic in a little different way.

00:24:35.000 And that you mentioned just a little bit, but in our history, in our history, do we understand the significance of how Jesus Christ's followers or the church have impacted the civilization in which we know?

00:24:52.000 And are we, I think you may mention this, but are we on a verge of another great awakening?

00:24:58.000 Which actually I actually believe, because I believe that's what the Holy Spirit is doing.

00:25:01.000 Awakenings aren't like gold rushes.

00:25:03.000 You don't discover them.

00:25:04.000 You have to work at it.

00:25:05.000 You have to open your church.

00:25:06.000 You have to talk to people.

00:25:07.000 You have to get up early and stay up late.

00:25:09.000 Like, oh, I found a great awakening.

00:25:11.000 Like, that's not how it works, okay?

00:25:13.000 You have a little skin in the game.

00:25:15.000 You travel the country.

00:25:16.000 You put a little on the line.

00:25:17.000 You risk a little bit.

00:25:19.000 We act as if it's like, oh, I found it.

00:25:21.000 Okay, it's not that way.

00:25:22.000 So we have to understand that.

00:25:25.000 That's the first part.

00:25:26.000 The second is this.

00:25:27.000 I love that.

00:25:29.000 Hey, listen, would you come back here on a Sunday morning preach?

00:25:31.000 I sure would appreciate it.

00:25:32.000 Okay.

00:25:33.000 Oh, you said yes.

00:25:34.000 Okay, I'm calling Sarah.

00:25:36.000 I will speak at any church that will have me.

00:25:37.000 I mean that.

00:25:38.000 Okay, very good.

00:25:39.000 Not every church will have me.

00:25:40.000 That's a different conversation for a different time.

00:25:44.000 So we live in a very short experiment.

00:25:48.000 We live in something called Western civilization.

00:25:50.000 We don't talk about this enough.

00:25:52.000 I said in my RNC speech that President Trump is the bodyguard of Western civilization.

00:25:57.000 Immediately, it just like volcanic reaction from the activist media.

00:26:03.000 It's very delightful to see in real time.

00:26:08.000 I wasn't sure what part of it they hated the most, the bodyguard or the Western civilization or the President Trump part, but it was just like a beautiful, just perfect, right?

00:26:20.000 So, but what is Western civilization?

00:26:24.000 It is, it's really this incredible experiment of self-governance where we have created the government that we're the sovereign, we the people.

00:26:36.000 It's a republic, values private property rights, biblical.

00:26:40.000 Abraham bought land in Hebron.

00:26:42.000 You guys can go visit it in Israel. 0.85

00:26:45.000 Free enterprise, biblical. 0.96

00:26:46.000 Where's your favorite place to visit?

00:26:48.000 I'm curious.

00:26:49.000 One and two.

00:26:50.000 Just rank them.

00:26:51.000 No, your favorite trips that you take.

00:26:53.000 Yeah.

00:26:53.000 Rank them.

00:26:54.000 The best trip I ever took was to Israel, and the second best trip I ever took was to Israel.

00:26:58.000 And I've only been there.

00:26:58.000 Okay, there you go.

00:26:59.000 I've only been there twice.

00:27:02.000 So free enterprise, which is biblical.

00:27:04.000 Happy to dive into the biblical defense.

00:27:05.000 And I'm announcing tonight that Charlie and I are going to take a tour to Israel leading it.

00:27:09.000 And Charlie and I are going to do it, right, Charlie?

00:27:12.000 Okay, no, there we go.

00:27:13.000 It's such an opportunity.

00:27:13.000 No, sorry.

00:27:14.000 It's okay.

00:27:14.000 I had to throw that in.

00:27:15.000 No, it's great.

00:27:16.000 No, go ahead.

00:27:17.000 So the hundreds and then eventually thousands of years for the West to be born.

00:27:26.000 But really, The fuel, the gasoline on the fire, I guess you could say, was the Protestant Reformation, where all of a sudden you had the widespread dissemination of the word of God, which actually allowed for literacy rates to expand dramatically.

00:27:41.000 And as people were able to read, they were able to question.

00:27:43.000 And then you saw the Enlightenment, both you had the Scottish Enlightenment and what we consider to be the traditional Enlightenment.

00:27:48.000 But then the West was this incredible fusion of reason and revelation, right?

00:27:54.000 So revelation and the Word of God, but not forsaking our capacity to be able to make sense of the natural world.

00:28:02.000 So this is something that's very important.

00:28:04.000 So if you go to India, for example, they have three religions that are bigger than Christianity, or at least they used to be in traditional times: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam.

00:28:15.000 Now, in India, if you go to Calcutta or Hyderabad, you will see, up close and personal, human suffering that we in the West would never tolerate.

00:28:27.000 Now, some people will say it's because of colonialist rule or it's because of the lack of resources.

00:28:35.000 While there might be some merit to that argument, they also do not have the same sort of moral-centeredness that we have in the West. 0.96

00:28:42.000 Unfortunately, because of the Hindu moral construct, if someone's on the side of the street in the caste system, they're meant to be on the side of the street. 0.96

00:28:50.000 In fact, there's some value in that. 0.94

00:28:52.000 We don't have that in a Christian worldview.

00:28:54.000 We say, it is my duty to go help that person.

00:28:57.000 I'm going to go out of my way to compassionately and lovingly lift that person up.

00:29:01.000 We take that so much for granted.

00:29:03.000 The rest of the world, not the rest of the world, most of the world, whether it be in China, the world's largest country, or India, the world's second largest country, lives without Western values.

00:29:12.000 They have hundreds of millions of people that do not have freedom of dialogue, speech, or basic technology that we hold near and dear. 0.91

00:29:19.000 For example, if you go to an African village and a woman has to wake up before the crack of dawn and walk six miles to go get water and walk back six miles, we in the West say, that's not right.

00:29:31.000 However, unfortunately, some cultures would say, why is that not right? 0.96

00:29:35.000 That's just the way it is.

00:29:36.000 Well, no, it's not right because you're not able to spend the time necessary for your kids, not able to lift yourself up to a higher socioeconomic status.

00:29:43.000 So I could go chapter and verse of exactly how the West was created, but without diving too far into the philosophy of it, what we're experiencing right now is so miraculous, we don't even realize it.

00:29:52.000 In fact, we are at the later end of modernity where we have things so good, so incredibly abundant, where we throw more food away than we consume.

00:30:02.000 We have an obesity problem, not a starvation problem.

00:30:06.000 We have more information out there, yet we're lacking in wisdom.

00:30:10.000 We have piles full of plastic in our garage so incredibly overwhelming.

00:30:15.000 We have dollar stores to sell us that garbage back to us.

00:30:20.000 And then we have garage sales where we ask people to sell it away from us.

00:30:24.000 And then we have a whole cottage industry of self-storage where we're like, I have so much garbage from the last decade, I just need to go find another place to go put on my garbage.

00:30:32.000 And so we should not forsake that there have been incredible developments in Western society, thanks to free enterprise, that has made life sweeter and better.

00:30:42.000 But life is not sweeter and better because of those developments.

00:30:45.000 For example, the ability to operate on a brain tumor, have open heart surgery, be able to eradicate polio, diagnose infant mortality, make that go down.

00:30:53.000 All those things are positive things.

00:30:55.000 However, that's the reason side of it, right?

00:31:00.000 Now, if you just focus simply on the mechanical and the technological advancement, then what do you get?

00:31:05.000 Well, you get a society with a bunch of stuff and no soul.

00:31:10.000 So that's where the West always was.

00:31:12.000 It was that blend of the reason and the revelation.

00:31:15.000 And you could see where the society goes when it loses that moral-centeredness.

00:31:20.000 That moral relativism is chaos.

00:31:23.000 I can give you two examples in the last week, if that's okay.

00:31:26.000 The new Netflix series called Cuties and SB 145 here in California.

00:31:33.000 If you do not have a moral center in your society, protection of the innocent, protection of children, understanding the passage of a young woman or a young man to adulthood, then all of a sudden you're going to have the sickest people that I can think of all of a sudden to take levers of power in culture and in politics.

00:31:56.000 And that's what's happened here in California and also in Hollywood.

00:31:59.000 This is not a mistake.

00:32:01.000 It's not a surprise.

00:32:02.000 And it will only intensify and worsen.

00:32:05.000 And so I'm here to tell you the optimistic part of it is that we have such joy to sell.

00:32:11.000 We really do.

00:32:12.000 Sell is the wrong word, but to be able to communicate the troubling truth.

00:32:16.000 So this is just the very beginning of a country and a civilization that is losing its moral center.

00:32:22.000 And you could see this playing out.

00:32:23.000 And I see people that message me and say, Charlie, I thought you were alarmist two years ago, but this cuties thing on Netflix is just too much for me.

00:32:30.000 And I say, good that you have woken up.

00:32:33.000 Now it's time to do something about it.

00:32:36.000 Because just this is not a spectator sport.

00:32:38.000 The West, you have to be involved in everything that you do.

00:32:41.000 Happy to comment on that more.

00:32:42.000 One final thought on it, though.

00:32:44.000 It is the Bible and the teachings of the Bible that built Western civilization.

00:32:49.000 Here is the evidence for that.

00:32:51.000 Here's the evidence of that.

00:32:54.000 Countries that do not have a biblical worldview and have nothing but technological advancements will get into a state of chaos and will not be able to get the same sort of socioeconomic and also moral success with being able to join the West. 0.87

00:33:08.000 Beautiful.

00:33:08.000 Thank you so much.

00:33:09.000 Hey, you know, it's interesting to me.

00:33:12.000 I know you love the book of James, James chapter 1, verse 5: that the Lord, if we ask Him, He'll give us wisdom, which is like right application for life, He'll do so generously.

00:33:21.000 You know, it's interesting in that context, the first application of a genuine faith, righteous shall live by, could someone tell me, faith, can be informed by the truth of who God is, His genius plan in His Son, in the personal work of Jesus.

00:33:35.000 Jesus, the evidence of that will be the movement towards protecting and fighting for the most vulnerable and needy amongst us.

00:33:46.000 Pure and undefiled religion is to care for widows and orphans.

00:33:51.000 Now, 2,000 years ago, I mean, those were the poster children, I hate to use it that way, but of vulnerability and need, okay?

00:34:00.000 So I would like to ask you, like, in terms of application today, we look at the landscape of our culture.

00:34:09.000 If it's in the context of James, that the first application of a genuine faith, in other words, being rightly aligned with the true and living God, that it would then translate to a horizontal level to care for, to fight for, to protect the most vulnerable and the most needy.

00:34:29.000 What do you think that looks like in application today?

00:34:31.000 Well, that's such a good point.

00:34:33.000 And that's contesting in the public square.

00:34:36.000 And this is something that I do.

00:34:37.000 So I want to be very clear.

00:34:38.000 My day job is politics.

00:34:40.000 It is two podcasts a day, one on Saturday, one on Sunday, traveling to college campuses, working through our political vehicle.

00:34:46.000 And I'm a Christian while doing it, right?

00:34:48.000 And so I'm in the political space.

00:34:51.000 And the reason why I'm speaking in as many churches as I can is I'm saying, guys, why is the church generally so silent and non-active and non-mobilized when you have the truth, you have the comfort of knowing what comes next?

00:35:07.000 You should be the most mobilized and the most active and the most vocal on every single one of these issues.

00:35:13.000 And so What it looks like applicationally is this, is that every church in the country and every Christian should be doing something about the fact that in California they have passed SB 145 to normalize and decriminalize pedophilia in this state.

00:35:30.000 That should bother you so beyond anything I could put into words as a Christian, as an American, any with a moral center, then do something about it.

00:35:38.000 How they got that passed is they obsessed in a religious fervor, by the way.

00:35:38.000 Because you know what?

00:35:44.000 Every single day they met, they gathered, they focused, and they got it done.

00:35:48.000 And so while we rightly gather around biblical truths of what the text tells us, if there's no application in the public square or the decaying world around us, I do not believe it is fully living out the great commission that Christ gave us, truly.

00:36:04.000 Number two is this, which is, what does it look applicationally?

00:36:10.000 I think that in a lot of different ways, Christians and the church, and let's just talk about just Americans in general.

00:36:18.000 And I talked about this a little bit.

00:36:20.000 It can't be a spectator sport, right?

00:36:22.000 And so many of you, and this is why I want to call out Pastor Rob McCoy, who opened his church, who has been criminalized by the city, state, and local government, and has just been punished for fully opening his church and has taken a stand and has refused to back down from these tyrants because that's what they are at every single turn.

00:36:43.000 And this is Rob McCoy.

00:36:46.000 Pastor Rob McCoy, stand up, turn around, let him see who.

00:36:54.000 Yeah.

00:36:57.000 And so, look, it's here's the long and short of it. 0.96

00:37:02.000 How about we live out those Instagram buzzwords that all those Christian Instagram accounts are always posting?

00:37:07.000 Be bold in your faith.

00:37:08.000 How about you do it?

00:37:10.000 Okay?

00:37:13.000 Be fearless.

00:37:14.000 Totally agree.

00:37:15.000 Like Daniel and the Dennel Lions. 0.86

00:37:16.000 Great.

00:37:17.000 Why is your church closed?

00:37:18.000 Yeah.

00:37:19.000 We know how this all plays out.

00:37:21.000 Do you?

00:37:22.000 Why is your church closed?

00:37:24.000 I'm going to speak, proclaim truth on the mountains.

00:37:27.000 Okay, why is your church closed?

00:37:29.000 Do you get how I get it?

00:37:30.000 How about you apply these sound bites that you wear on the shirts that you post on social media?

00:37:37.000 And this is a great trial.

00:37:39.000 And you said it best.

00:37:40.000 It is a trial.

00:37:41.000 And I understand that you have to pray and you have to reflect.

00:37:45.000 But now that we're in mid-September, everybody, right?

00:37:49.000 I could tell you this.

00:37:50.000 I get messaged, thousands of messages on my podcast every single week.

00:37:53.000 And the messages that get me the most angry are from people that are searching for Christ, that have been, all of a sudden they have some interest.

00:38:01.000 And they send me, they say, Charlie, I now have interest to commit my life to Jesus Christ.

00:38:08.000 One problem.

00:38:09.000 There's not a church open with a hundred mile radius of me.

00:38:12.000 So for the pastors that have kept your doors closed, you are complicit in secular people not finding the kingdom.

00:38:19.000 It is that simple.

00:38:20.000 It is that simple.

00:38:21.000 Love it.

00:38:29.000 Charlie, thank you so much.

00:38:30.000 Listen, I'm really excited because we got a bunch of other questions.

00:38:33.000 So I would like to ask you, give a little perspective because I have a dear friend in Israel, and he's a leading rabbi.

00:38:40.000 He's an Orthodox Jew.

00:38:42.000 He's a dear friend.

00:38:42.000 I love him so much.

00:38:43.000 And so I told him that you're coming.

00:38:46.000 And he was so excited about it.

00:38:48.000 And he says, you know, Ben Shapiro next?

00:38:50.000 And I'm thinking, I hope so, you know, but you know, I mean, only if Charlie could get him here.

00:38:54.000 I mean, I don't think I could.

00:38:56.000 Anyways, John, I want to ask you, you're on the front lines during the university.

00:39:01.000 And I want to ask you this too.

00:39:02.000 Do you see a rise of anti-Semitism?

00:39:04.000 Do you see a rise of anti-Israel?

00:39:07.000 And would you just comment briefly on that?

00:39:10.000 Of course.

00:39:11.000 And what can we do about it?

00:39:12.000 That's one of the questions.

00:39:13.000 There's a huge rise of anti-Semitism.

00:39:15.000 It's a massive problem in our country.

00:39:18.000 And I've been to Israel twice.

00:39:20.000 I understand the issue of Judea and Samaria and the nation-state of Israel and not just its geopolitical importance, but its moral importance in the world.

00:39:28.000 And what's incredible to me, and I've joked around with Dennis Prager, who's amazing and Ben Shapiro about this, is when I go to college campuses as an evangelical Christian, I have to debate American Jews about why Israel should exist.

00:39:40.000 Like, how did this happen? 0.73

00:39:41.000 It's like, that's weird.

00:39:45.000 That is weird.

00:39:46.000 But that's a whole different issue.

00:39:48.000 That's a completely different issue, but it's a real thing.

00:39:51.000 And so, look, there's just talking about the state of Israel and why we have to continually defend it and the rise of anti-Semitism, or your question was, is that there's a great book that Dennis Prager wrote called Why the Jews?

00:40:06.000 And it talks about the historical repeating of the persecution of the people of faith and the people of the law.

00:40:13.000 It's a phenomenal book.

00:40:14.000 And it talks about that this is not a mistake, is that the Jewish people have been long persecuted for multiple different reasons.

00:40:22.000 But I believe that we as Christians have a moral prerogative to defend anyone that is persecuted, to defend anyone that is wrongly accused.

00:40:32.000 In the public square today, you go to a college campus and they say, We stand against hate.

00:40:40.000 I hear all their buzzwords, right?

00:40:42.000 We stand against any sort of bigotry.

00:40:46.000 And five minutes later, you could turn to your right and see the boycott divestment sanction Palestinian authority, Muslim Brotherhood group walk through campus with a eliminate Israel from this river to the sea, which is a euphemism for basically destroying all of Israel.

00:41:04.000 And it's so Orwellian.

00:41:06.000 I thought to myself, Didn't you just say there's no hate allowed on campus?

00:41:10.000 And they say, Well, but Israel's an apartheid state.

00:41:13.000 Don't you understand that? 0.98

00:41:15.000 Which is one of the biggest, most disgusting lies. 1.00

00:41:18.000 Everyone's up in Israel. 0.84

00:41:19.000 It's just such an easy way to dispel this apartheid state thing.

00:41:22.000 So I was driving from Jerusalem to Hebron, and I was with my amazing girlfriend. 0.63

00:41:26.000 And I'll never forget, I didn't get that much sleep the night before.

00:41:28.000 And we were driving down, I was asking our great guide from Im Tritsu, which is a great group in a pro-Israel group.

00:41:34.000 And it was this yellow sign, and I don't speak Hebrew.

00:41:36.000 And I said, That's a really graphic sign.

00:41:38.000 It was a line in the middle with a red line to the right and a red line to the left.

00:41:43.000 And I asked him, I said, Well, what does that mean?

00:41:45.000 And he said, Well, we keep going straight, everything's fine.

00:41:49.000 And he said, If we, and he said, We go left, we die. 0.82

00:41:52.000 We go right, we die.

00:41:53.000 It's like, what are you talking about?

00:41:54.000 We die.

00:41:56.000 It's like, so blunt. 0.82

00:41:57.000 And he's like, we get killed.

00:41:59.000 I said, what do you mean we get killed? 1.00

00:42:01.000 And he's like, like a Westerner, like right in your face. 1.00

00:42:04.000 Like, I know I only have four hours of sleep, but this is a lot to comprehend.

00:42:08.000 And so he said, he said, well, that's controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

00:42:11.000 And he said, if we drove another mile down that road, past one more warning sign, they'll throw rocks at our car.

00:42:19.000 200 people will come in and they'll kill us and they'll drag us through the streets and we'll be left to fend ourselves.

00:42:23.000 It is a no-go zone for the Israeli Defense Force. 0.55

00:42:26.000 I said, what happens if an Arab goes into Jerusalem or into Israeli occupied area or Israel? 0.96

00:42:32.000 And he's like, well, we probably give him the right to vote and some food and some welfare.

00:42:36.000 This nonsense that Israel is an apartheid state is such a lie that is sold to overly privileged, clueless Western students that have no idea what oppression actually is.

00:42:48.000 No clue at all whatsoever.

00:42:49.000 It is Israel that allows the three monotheistic faiths to openly express their religion, to be represented in the Knesset, to visit their holy sites. 0.87

00:42:57.000 The Palestinian Authority, which is nothing, they are no greater morally than the Mexican cartel run by a money laundering maniac by the name of Mahmoud Abbas, who has not been democratically elected in over a decade, who has laundered the West's money, played victim while launching rockets at Israeli children while subsidizing terrorism. 0.85

00:43:18.000 We have to do a much better job of explaining what's happening in the Middle East because we have totally abdicated our role in that. 0.91

00:43:24.000 And I believe Christians have a moral responsibility to contest for that and to go against the ugly and disgusting movement of anti-Semitism that is now normalized and funded at the top levels of Hollywood culture, athletics, and education.

00:43:39.000 Fantastic.

00:43:40.000 I love that.

00:43:41.000 Excellent.

00:43:42.000 A moral and theological responsibility.

00:43:46.000 Proud of you.

00:43:46.000 Beautiful.

00:43:47.000 Hey, listen, we're going to transition and talk about courage, okay?

00:43:50.000 So let's talk about courage.

00:43:52.000 You know, I just think it's interesting.

00:43:53.000 Like, the Lord told Joshua, you know, in this transition to lead the children of Israel into the promised land, speaking of the land of Israel, unfolding plan, that he told him three times to be courageous.

00:44:06.000 You know, and I, even though he's like, I'm fully backing you, Joshua, it's just like set your feet on the piece of real estate and it is yours.

00:44:13.000 But the implication is because he's saying, you know, have heart that you're not necessarily always going to be feeling like this rush of adrenaline.

00:44:22.000 Like, to be honest with you, because we had some coffee before we got here, you know, in the morning, I feel particularly courageous after I had about four shots.

00:44:29.000 You know what I mean?

00:44:30.000 And so, but he's saying, look, you may not feel great or what you see may be stumbling you, but you need to press in and press on.

00:44:38.000 And I believe that we are living in a season the Lord is calling us to courage.

00:44:44.000 It was asked, John Wayne, you know, what is courage?

00:44:47.000 And he said, it's being scared to death, but saddling up anyways.

00:44:50.000 You just got to keep moving forward.

00:44:50.000 You know what I mean?

00:44:53.000 And it's been said you can't steer a parked car.

00:44:55.000 We need to keep moving.

00:44:57.000 My question to you is: what are the components to courage?

00:45:01.000 Why is courage so important today?

00:45:05.000 I think it's probably the most lacking of the greater traits in America today.

00:45:12.000 And you think about that.

00:45:15.000 There's a lot of things lacking.

00:45:16.000 I think we're lacking honesty, integrity.

00:45:19.000 I think we're lacking all sorts of things that we consider to be fruits of the Spirit.

00:45:24.000 But boy, are we lacking courage right now?

00:45:26.000 And I'm not saying that there's not courageous people, but a courageous nation is one that, first and foremost, you have to know what you're fighting for.

00:45:37.000 So that helps when you know truth, right?

00:45:39.000 The second thing is, I get asked this question a lot.

00:45:42.000 You know, I was at a meeting recently.

00:45:44.000 I've just traveled the country.

00:45:46.000 I was just, where was I?

00:45:48.000 I'm having a Joe Biden moment.

00:45:50.000 So, oh, yeah, that's right.

00:45:55.000 So I was in Arizona, Florida, Virginia.

00:46:03.000 In my defense, I've actually left my basement in the last month.

00:46:07.000 So all across the country.

00:46:10.000 I was at an event in Virginia, and I was either in Virginia or somewhere else, and someone asked me, they said, Well, Charlie, do you think we are going to win?

00:46:17.000 I knew exactly why they were asking the question.

00:46:19.000 I could see it because I've been asked this question many times.

00:46:21.000 I speak over 300 times a year.

00:46:23.000 What they were really asking is: if you answer no, can I stop fighting?

00:46:28.000 Oh, yeah, right, right, right, right.

00:46:30.000 That's why they were asking the question.

00:46:32.000 So, before we judge whether or not we are going to get involved in this very brutal but necessary struggle for our civilization, we have to just disregard the probability of winning or losing as a completely irrelevant metric.

00:46:50.000 It does not matter.

00:46:52.000 Courage is putting aside the probability of whether you're not going to win and proceeding anyway.

00:46:57.000 That's what courage is.

00:46:59.000 Yeah, it's good.

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00:48:03.000 So there are values that are of value, and that's why we value them.

00:48:10.000 I mean, right?

00:48:11.000 Life is not like always a means to an end.

00:48:13.000 I mean, did that make sense?

00:48:15.000 Yes.

00:48:15.000 Okay.

00:48:16.000 And so, like, love is an end in itself, really.

00:48:20.000 I mean, we should love because it honors God and because God is love.

00:48:23.000 We are to forgive.

00:48:24.000 We're to be pure.

00:48:26.000 We're to make the gospel known.

00:48:29.000 These are right, we do it because it's the right thing, right?

00:48:34.000 And therefore, we're committed to it.

00:48:36.000 That's partly what you're saying, isn't it?

00:48:37.000 And also, in Matthew 5, I think 28, I'm paraphrasing here, but Christ has one of the greatest mic drop moments in the Sermon on the Mount where he says, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he says, Blessed are you who are persecuted and condemned.

00:48:51.000 And then it's the dot, dot, dot, because of me.

00:48:53.000 And so you should consider a blessing if you're being attacked right now.

00:48:56.000 And if you're not being attacked, why aren't you being attacked right now?

00:49:00.000 Yeah.

00:49:00.000 And let me just say, you know, remember, remember when the Lord said, you must pick up the cross, deny yourself, and follow me.

00:49:08.000 In context, I mean, he's speaking to the Jewish boys who are following.

00:49:13.000 I call them boys because, you know, I'm much older than they were.

00:49:16.000 And he's saying, look, here's the thing.

00:49:19.000 You think this is going to be a popular movement initially, but the reality is, is this movement is going to start like a grain of mustard seed. 1.00

00:49:28.000 And you think I'm going to go to Jerusalem and I'm going to knock out the red coats and establish my kingdom or something. 1.00

00:49:34.000 And no, first I'm going to give my life. 1.00

00:49:36.000 I'm actually, I'm going to defeat the darkness behind the darkness because the core problem of man is a broken relationship with God.

00:49:43.000 And that's why Jesus gave his life on the cross, really giving us the chief penicillin of what is needed for man, the cure for man.

00:49:51.000 Can I hear an amen to that?

00:49:52.000 All right, dying for our sins, paying the debt, resurrecting from the dead.

00:49:55.000 But he's just saying, look, here's the thing. 0.90

00:49:57.000 You need to be willing to be the minority.

00:50:01.000 And your difference actually is the strength and what is needed in a generation. 0.51

00:50:07.000 You're going to be a counterculture to a culture that is breaking down.

00:50:12.000 And so just remember that our difference is what is needed.

00:50:17.000 And we need to be willing to stand alone, if you will.

00:50:22.000 Of course, we're never alone because the Lord is with us.

00:50:24.000 I just want to encourage someone.

00:50:26.000 I wouldn't be surprised if someone has come in here and is like, man, I just need some help when it comes to courage.

00:50:31.000 Just know that the Lord has not given us the spirit of fear, but power, love, and a sound mind.

00:50:36.000 That is the Holy Spirit, and that's the spirit of the risen Christ.

00:50:41.000 And we need His help to be those examples and embody that love and that courage today.

00:50:49.000 And it's available to us if we ask.

00:50:52.000 Yeah, and two things on that.

00:50:53.000 Number one, it's a lot worse in your head than it usually ends up being in real life.

00:50:57.000 Number two is you're a lot tougher than you think.

00:51:00.000 Do not underestimate how much toughness God has given you.

00:51:04.000 You can shoulder a much tougher burden than what someone might be whispering in your ear incorrectly about what you're able to do.

00:51:13.000 We are built to be able to endure a ton of suffering.

00:51:17.000 And so do not underestimate yourself.

00:51:19.000 Why?

00:51:20.000 I might be called all these names and all this.

00:51:22.000 Again, it's usually worse in your prediction than in the reality.

00:51:26.000 And secondly, you're a lot tougher than you think.

00:51:28.000 I love that.

00:51:29.000 Awesome.

00:51:34.000 I'd like you to comment on this.

00:51:35.000 You know, November 3rd is obviously the election.

00:51:39.000 And golly, how many, we have, what, 365 million people in our country.

00:51:46.000 So I divided that earlier, and I can't remember.

00:51:49.000 I'm terrible with math.

00:51:51.000 But the point is, is that there's going to be a lot of people who are really, really happy after the election.

00:51:56.000 And there's going to be a lot, a lot of people who are really, really bummed, right?

00:52:01.000 And that's just the way it is.

00:52:04.000 And it reminds us, does it not, that, and faith reminds us of this, is that, look, an idol is a God replacement.

00:52:13.000 And the reality is that we need to remember that the Lord made us to have our identity in him, right?

00:52:20.000 So no matter what happens, we have security and our identity in him.

00:52:25.000 Can I hear an amen to that?

00:52:27.000 That's very, very important.

00:52:29.000 So we need to keep marching on.

00:52:31.000 But I wanted your thoughts on this.

00:52:35.000 And that is, you know, getting back to James, interesting, which you were studying on Sunday morning.

00:52:40.000 I know you love the book of James.

00:52:42.000 One of the concerns that James had, Jesus' half-brother, is that the adversity that they were experiencing would lead to the temptation of reactive anger and that they might fight evil with evil.

00:52:57.000 All right.

00:52:58.000 So therefore, he emphasizes what the wisdom of God is, which is first pure and first peaceable.

00:53:07.000 Right?

00:53:07.000 So it does take courage to love.

00:53:12.000 You know, I think Peter and John, like when they were rebuffed when Jesus was moving through a Samaritan city and the Samaritan city would not welcome with hospitality as they were making their way to Jerusalem, they turned to Jesus and asked, do you want us to call fire down from heaven upon these liberals?

00:53:28.000 You know what I mean?

00:53:29.000 It's like, I mean, and he's like, that's not the spirit of the Father.

00:53:34.000 So I just, look, it's crazy.

00:53:37.000 We live in a time, it feels like there's these mob mentality that exists.

00:53:42.000 And as believers, we're not to get caught up in that.

00:53:45.000 Could you comment on that?

00:53:46.000 I mean, that takes courage and of itself.

00:53:48.000 I'll talk about the election too.

00:53:48.000 I'm happy to.

00:53:50.000 Look, not all elections are made the same.

00:53:52.000 And it's a hard thing to talk about.

00:53:54.000 Everyone says it's the most important election of my lifetime.

00:53:56.000 It's probably true because you want to live in the moment.

00:53:58.000 You want to live in the present.

00:53:59.000 I have a unique opportunity.

00:54:00.000 I'm 26 years old.

00:54:02.000 And so I can look at things a little bit more intergenerationally than most people.

00:54:05.000 I travel to churches and campuses.

00:54:07.000 I travel and meet CEOs.

00:54:09.000 I meet pastors.

00:54:10.000 I meet middle-class families.

00:54:11.000 I meet with 14-year-olds and 80-year-olds.

00:54:13.000 So I can look at things a little more intergenerationally.

00:54:16.000 One of my earliest childhood memories is 9-11, which we just remembered a couple days ago.

00:54:20.000 I remember the financial crisis.

00:54:22.000 I remember Barack Obama getting elected twice, being from the suburbs of Chicago.

00:54:25.000 I can tell you it truly was a political movement, having the front seat to history in 2016 and now the potential for re-election.

00:54:32.000 I can see the cultural tidal wave and the tsunami and the hurricane that is coming.

00:54:36.000 I can see what happens if these people get power.

00:54:38.000 The one thing I've learned about the left, when they tell you they're going to do something, believe them.

00:54:43.000 They're just doing it for some sort of self-healing exercise.

00:54:47.000 So when they see that, when they say that they want to double the amount of abortions in America, they actually mean it.

00:54:52.000 That's not something that they're just saying for the sake of saying it.

00:54:56.000 So first on the election, I'm a huge supporter of the president, and I'm a friend of his.

00:55:01.000 I think he gets such an awful misrepresentation.

00:55:06.000 I think that, so if I could dive into this for a second, I'm really glad you guys applauded.

00:55:13.000 For what's happening in our country, it's great.

00:55:16.000 And if you're not a supporter of the president, I'm glad you're here tonight.

00:55:19.000 Maybe I can persuade you.

00:55:20.000 And so, and I will seek to do that.

00:55:25.000 First of all, just on the kind of the idea of expressing your support for something.

00:55:29.000 For almost our whole country's history, we've agreed that you can tell someone that they can or cannot do something.

00:55:35.000 Okay, you can't sleep in the middle of a crosswalk.

00:55:37.000 That's probably a reasonable law, right?

00:55:40.000 It used to be you can't publicly do certain things in the streets of LA, but apparently now that's not allowed, right?

00:55:46.000 But for a long time, we had some sort of mechanisms of what you can and cannot do.

00:55:50.000 But what now we are really flirting with in our country is now we're telling people you can't think something.

00:55:59.000 Never happened before.

00:56:00.000 And it's not that they're proposing it governmentally as much.

00:56:03.000 They will.

00:56:04.000 But now it's, if you dare say something, I'm going to crush you. 0.99

00:56:11.000 If you don't say something, I'm going to crush you. 1.00

00:56:14.000 If you don't post that black square, I'm going to find you. 1.00

00:56:18.000 I'm going to crush you and destroy you and find your family. 1.00

00:56:24.000 We have to just kind of take a societal deep breath and then just center ourselves and say, what is going on right now? 0.99

00:56:31.000 And there's a lot of different contributing reasons to it.

00:56:34.000 But if you cannot think, as Renee Descartes said at the beginning of the Enlightenment, I think, therefore I am.

00:56:42.000 If you cannot think, you've lost your identity.

00:56:45.000 And if you've lost your identity, you will go back into tribalism, which is a dangerous, disgusting thing that Christ brought us out of quicker than you can imagine.

00:56:53.000 And so what is really happening in our country, it's not just political, it is theological.

00:56:57.000 And I'm happy to get into the president, and I'll talk about that in a second.

00:57:00.000 But this is now a referendum on whether or not you can think something that the ruling class does not think.

00:57:09.000 Can you believe something vocally?

00:57:11.000 Can you wear that hat without having your business burned down?

00:57:15.000 Without being kicked out of school, without having to worry that a brick is going to throw through your living room window.

00:57:20.000 That is now all things that we don't know.

00:57:23.000 And I can give you countless amounts of examples.

00:57:25.000 And I'm going to tell you right now that conservatives are decent and reasonable people.

00:57:30.000 It's a good thing.

00:57:32.000 But if in November it looks like the president wins on election night and all of a sudden they find a bunch of ballots to, if it's a red mirage, as the Bloomberg group said, that's a very dangerous thing for the country, I'm telling you.

00:57:49.000 And I don't want to live through that moment where people think something happens and then they reverse it almost instantaneously.

00:57:55.000 The founders gave us voting as a pressure release valve.

00:57:58.000 It's the best way that we have prevented ourselves from tearing each other apart.

00:58:03.000 Because the one thing that all of you have, you're just screaming at the TV and you say, at least I can go vote, right?

00:58:10.000 At least I can go show up and do something about the founders knew that.

00:58:14.000 But if that pressure release valve goes away, we human beings are a lot more simple in the state of nature than I think we give ourselves credit for.

00:58:22.000 And I'm telling you right now, if they are allowed, if they're allowed to just say, you can't think that, you can't do that, there's no gap between civilized society and chaos.

00:58:34.000 There's not a transitional state.

00:58:36.000 And you can see they're almost trying to provoke it in the streets, right?

00:58:39.000 Where two police officers in Compton 48 hours ago were shot.

00:58:43.000 And what did they have to hear as they were fighting for their life in the hospital?

00:58:46.000 Did you hear about this?

00:58:47.000 They were fighting for their life in the hospital.

00:58:50.000 And they could barely hear it.

00:58:52.000 And they asked the doctors, what is that? 0.97

00:58:54.000 It was 200 BLM Incorporated rioters saying, I hope you die. 1.00

00:59:00.000 I hope you die. 0.99

00:59:02.000 By the way, if your pastor endorses BLM in Inc., that's who they're endorsing, just so you understand, wishing death among our police officers. 1.00

00:59:09.000 Truth can be hard sometimes, but it's necessary. 0.79

00:59:12.000 American Christianity has embraced these people, just so you know.

00:59:14.000 The Southern Baptist Convention has embraced critical race theory.

00:59:17.000 And I am not going to be patient. 0.91

00:59:19.000 I'm not going to be silent any longer for these pastors that pander to BLM Incorporated.

00:59:23.000 Not going to happen.

00:59:33.000 And I want to reinforce what you said, which is so true. 0.89

00:59:37.000 The statement, Black Lives Matter, is absolutely true.

00:59:40.000 However, it's almost semantic overload because it's three things at once. 0.96

00:59:44.000 It's a true statement, an organization that wishes for rioting and crime to happen, and also an incantation that is used so much that if you do not say that when we say it, we're going to punish you.

00:59:54.000 It's like, whoa, all these three things are happening simultaneously.

00:59:58.000 Right?

00:59:58.000 And so it's like semantic overload.

01:00:00.000 It's actually linguistic brilliance on behalf of the left, right?

01:00:04.000 We're not plastered on the NBA and you have to watch it if you watch a basketball game.

01:00:08.000 So let me just say one thing about the election really quick.

01:00:10.000 Of course.

01:00:11.000 Look, I'm a friend of the president.

01:00:13.000 I've gotten to know him over the last couple of years, and I could go on a lot about it, but there's something about him that I think gets really misrepresented in the media, which there's a caricature of him where they're trying to make it seem as if he has no care for the office or for the country, and he's just trying to either enrich himself.

01:00:36.000 It's this very bizarre caricature, right?

01:00:38.000 And I can tell you this: that I've been around a lot of politicians.

01:00:42.000 Congress and ISA is the exception to this.

01:00:44.000 But this president, quite honestly, has been so targeted by the opposition, spied on, impeached at every single turn.

01:00:53.000 And I understand it's very hard for certain Christians, and maybe there's some people in this room, they're like, well, I don't understand how a three-times married, twice-divorced, former cover of Playboy magazine is someone that I should support.

01:01:03.000 Well, he's also the most pro-life president in American history.

01:01:05.000 So go figure that one out.

01:01:07.000 He's also moved the embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Golan Heights, canceled the Iran deal, Gorsuch Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, 200 circuit court judges before the virus, the best economy in American history, lowest black, Latino, and Asian American unemployment, deregulated the American economy, gone after child sex trafficking in record numbers, first step act, VA Accountability Act, also the Right to Tri Act.

01:01:30.000 I could go on, right?

01:01:32.000 And so here's the state that we're in in our country, which is people say, well, I don't like his tone.

01:01:40.000 I don't like this.

01:01:42.000 I'll let other people talk about that because I think it's actually somewhat, I think it's such a distraction.

01:01:47.000 It's so inconsequential.

01:01:48.000 It's very simple.

01:01:49.000 Elections are binary, whether we like it or not.

01:01:51.000 We don't live in a parliamentary system, okay?

01:01:53.000 So you can either say, I'm going to invote.

01:01:55.000 I'm going to go vote for Senator Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, the most liberal senator in the United States Senate, who decides to go out of her way to go do all sorts of things that all of you know in the state.

01:02:08.000 Or you could go vote for President Trump and Mike Pence, who stand fearlessly as the most pro-life president in American history.

01:02:14.000 And presidency stands for people of faith and for the state of Israel.

01:02:17.000 I could go on through the list of accomplishments.

01:02:19.000 And so the last thing I'll say is this, is that I believe every Christian has a moral obligation to show up in record numbers in November.

01:02:26.000 Every single Christian.

01:02:27.000 I agree.

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01:03:36.000 So we're still talking about courage.

01:03:38.000 We're going to get to freedom.

01:03:39.000 I want to say this.

01:03:40.000 Look, there's no person in all of history as courageous as the Lord Jesus, right?

01:03:45.000 So, I mean, he came for a specific hour.

01:03:47.000 And I want to ask you a personal question because I want to ask you how his life, in terms of courage, that's my question, has influenced you.

01:03:54.000 But look, I just want to say, look, he knew coming into Jerusalem on Passover, biblical calendar, Nisan 14, historically, the same day that the Lord delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt, right?

01:04:08.000 So that was a precursor to the ultimate Exodus and salvation impact the entire world, which would be in the Son, in his Son, the Messiah, who John the Baptist said is the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world, right?

01:04:23.000 So he's focused in on Jerusalem.

01:04:25.000 He knows what's going to happen.

01:04:26.000 He's always going to be treated as if he committed every stinking sin in human history, from the killing fields, the Holocaust, to the rapes, the murders, to my sin, because I'm a sinner.

01:04:35.000 He knows it all.

01:04:35.000 He's going to bear the sin of the world by his stripes.

01:04:38.000 We are healed.

01:04:40.000 And despising the shame of the separation he's going to experience on the cross and being treated as if he committed every stinking sin in human history, he endures it for the joy set before him.

01:04:51.000 So therefore, from the most terrible injustice comes the greatest, beautiful shalom and healing.

01:04:59.000 And he was just like courageousness times a billion.

01:05:03.000 And I just want to say before we leave to move to freedoms, excuse me, how has Jesus's courage been an inspiration to you?

01:05:12.000 Well, the thing that we actually all have in common in our country and in civilization on the planet is that we're all going to die.

01:05:20.000 This is actually, you all have a time clock, and we don't know how long it is.

01:05:24.000 And some of you have longer.

01:05:25.000 Some of us say, we don't know.

01:05:26.000 And so actually, at the root of all of it is that there's a lot of anxiety for people that know they're going to die and they don't know what comes next.

01:05:32.000 There's a lot of malevolence that can come out of that, actually.

01:05:35.000 A lot of misery.

01:05:36.000 A lot of dissatisfaction if you have no, if you have just nothing but uncertainty.

01:05:40.000 And so then, if you also understand, in my opinion, this, a lot of what's happening in our country, again, goes back to a miscalculation of human nature.

01:05:49.000 I believe that human beings, because of original sin in the state of nature, were nasty, brutish, and short to each other.

01:05:55.000 We're worse than we could ever put into words.

01:05:57.000 That we're depraved by nature and we're dead.

01:06:01.000 And God gives us life through his son, Jesus.

01:06:04.000 Once you realize, I mean, if you kind of want to realize how broken you are, just sit for an hour by yourself, no phone.

01:06:12.000 Just think of all the awful things you've done.

01:06:15.000 Seriously?

01:06:18.000 Do it.

01:06:19.000 I tell young people to do this all the time because they hear nothing about how great they are from everybody. 0.83

01:06:24.000 Like, no, you're actually pretty awful.

01:06:26.000 And that's an awesome thing, actually.

01:06:28.000 It's very liberating.

01:06:29.000 It's actually more liberating and a better gift to be given than saying you're the best thing ever, the self-esteem nonsense that we tell our kids all the time. 0.99

01:06:39.000 It's garbage. 0.99

01:06:42.000 Think about all the things you've done wrong, all the lies you've told, all the ways you've deceived people. 1.00

01:06:46.000 And all of a sudden you realize, I'm a pretty awful person.

01:06:48.000 You're like, you're right.

01:06:50.000 And I am too.

01:06:51.000 We all are.

01:06:53.000 I'm never going to be able to satisfy the necessary prerequisites.

01:06:58.000 I'm not going to be able to get the points on the board.

01:07:00.000 I'm going to keep on falling.

01:07:01.000 I'm going to keep on just, it's non-stop.

01:07:05.000 That's why God gave us Jesus.

01:07:07.000 Jesus was God.

01:07:08.000 Where you just have to surrender and accept that gift.

01:07:11.000 And so once you truly do that, where you just not just say the words, but you're born new, that's why we call it born again to a new person.

01:07:18.000 You're given eternal life.

01:07:19.000 I think there's great comfort in that.

01:07:21.000 And so when I travel the country and I have people coming after me and all these sorts of things, I say this to Pastor Rob and to my girlfriend and people, if I wasn't a Christian, I don't know if I'd be able to do this.

01:07:31.000 I really don't.

01:07:32.000 That if I did not have Jesus and at least some sort of way to make sense of all this for myself, it'd be very hard, much harder than it is now.

01:07:42.000 And so, and if there's somebody out there right now and they say, I don't know, this is all just mythology to me and all that sort of stuff, and I don't quite get it.

01:07:50.000 And I'm happy to talk experientially or I can talk from a reason standpoint.

01:07:54.000 But here's just the, here's just something that I've learned.

01:07:58.000 Go out for a year, and if you find anything better than Jesus, tell me.

01:08:04.000 Well said.

01:08:05.000 Well said.

01:08:06.000 Excellent.

01:08:09.000 Good job.

01:08:11.000 Okay, we have a few more questions.

01:08:13.000 We're going to get to freedom now.

01:08:14.000 Earlier, we made the statement that we live in the greatest country in the entire world.

01:08:18.000 Thank the Lord for the United States of America.

01:08:20.000 But it is not the salvation of the world.

01:08:22.000 Jesus is the salvation of the world.

01:08:25.000 Okay, he brings true freedom from the debt of sin, power over sin.

01:08:30.000 In his resurrection, it's a demonstration he's making all things new.

01:08:34.000 One day he returns, and the world knows the righteousness, justice, shalom, potential that God has intended.

01:08:42.000 Now, you talk about freedom, right?

01:08:44.000 That whom the sun sets free is free indeed.

01:08:47.000 So he is the great freedom fighter times a billion.

01:08:51.000 All right, the question I have for you is this: is there a cost to freedom?

01:08:56.000 And if so, why is it important that every generation understands this?

01:09:02.000 Absolutely, there's a cost of freedom.

01:09:04.000 I mean, the natural state, as I mentioned, and Thomas Hobbes hit this perfectly, who wrote The Leviathan, one of the most important books that people understand, where man in the state of nature is nasty, shortish, and short and brute.

01:09:17.000 Nasty, short, and brutish to each other.

01:09:20.000 Okay. 0.99

01:09:21.000 So we're awful to each other.

01:09:22.000 This is written in the English Civil War. 1.00

01:09:23.000 I completely agree with it.

01:09:25.000 And actually, he found great commonality with John Calvin.

01:09:27.000 That's why you get the cartoon Calvin and Hobbes because they both, that's actually where it came from.

01:09:32.000 Because they both agreed in the state of nature, man was completely depraved.

01:09:36.000 And so when you have that belief, you realize when you create a society with first principles, when you have any sort of freedom at all whatsoever, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom to own property, we're in the rarity of human history.

01:09:56.000 So most of human history was living under a non-elected, hereditary dictator that abuses their power.

01:10:04.000 You live to maybe you're 27, you're lucky you get married, and you're probably going to fight some war halfway across the continent for something foolish.

01:10:12.000 That's the arc of human history for almost all time.

01:10:17.000 And so now when you have self-government created, you see human flourishing increase.

01:10:22.000 life expectancy, medical advancements, technological advancements, not the least of which is because when you have truth as an agreed upon idea in a society, you're going to have the most patents, the most excellence, the most breakthroughs, the most entrepreneurs, because everyone's trying to find truth, which in a micro sense, of course, we know what real truth is, but also, it says in Philippians, whatsoever is true, they want to find the best way to get in the air and fly an airplane or go to the moon.

01:10:49.000 I mean, when you have those agreed upon centeredness, all of a sudden you have an entire society that gets up every day and tries to find the best way to do things, where it's a Christian principle to say that we as men or mankind are here to actually overcome nature.

01:11:06.000 That it's a good thing that you can fly halfway across the country.

01:11:09.000 That is us using technology to be able to overcome nature.

01:11:12.000 It's a good thing that we can operate and have brain tumors removed, right?

01:11:16.000 And so we're living in this very short time in human history, very short, incredibly.

01:11:23.000 And so, but here's the thing about freedom that is so incredibly important.

01:11:27.000 We do not teach our young people this.

01:11:28.000 We teach them a misapplication of freedom and a complete misinterpretation.

01:11:32.000 They think of freedom as, awesome, I'm free from my parents.

01:11:36.000 I can do whatever substances I want.

01:11:38.000 I can do whatever moral decisions I want.

01:11:40.000 I can stay up as late as I want.

01:11:41.000 We all know that that is not freedom.

01:11:43.000 It's the opposite of freedom.

01:11:45.000 And so there is a necessary precursor to freedom that we don't talk enough about, which is responsibility.

01:11:51.000 That if you do not have responsibility, you actually are never free.

01:11:55.000 And so in fact, you're always going to be in bondage to either the sin or held captive to the false promise of whatever that is going to give you.

01:12:07.000 And so the founding fathers recognized this.

01:12:09.000 They knew that if you do not have responsibility, you cannot have freedom.

01:12:13.000 That is why you have a generation, my generation, Generation Z millennial right in between it, that have been given the freedom to do whatever they want to do.

01:12:21.000 Sure, go smoke marijuana.

01:12:22.000 It's legal now.

01:12:24.000 Go on the internet and stay up to 3 a.m. 0.90

01:12:26.000 And they're the most miserable generation in American history.

01:12:29.000 One out of four of young people have contemplated suicide in the last 90 days, according to the Center for Disease Control.

01:12:34.000 Antidepressants, alcoholism, drug usage, sexual abuse, domestic abuse.

01:12:38.000 We're going to face that 500,000 less children next year than this year, but they have everything at their disposal.

01:12:44.000 Whereas 50 years ago, you wouldn't be able to commit the same sins that you could do in an hour.

01:12:49.000 It would take a year to do what you could do in an hour now.

01:12:52.000 But yet it's the most directionless, chaotic generation.

01:12:56.000 Why?

01:12:57.000 It's because so many young people are responsible for nothing.

01:13:01.000 They don't have a relationship they're responsible for.

01:13:04.000 They don't have a job they're responsible for.

01:13:06.000 And so we have to define what freedom is.

01:13:10.000 And I think we've done a poor job of that generally.

01:13:13.000 Well, excellent.

01:13:14.000 I love that.

01:13:14.000 I loved every second of that.

01:13:16.000 So we can take freedom too far, right?

01:13:20.000 I mean, well, like we broke away from King George and from the tyranny of King George. 0.87

01:13:26.000 I mean, is it possible to actually shake our fist at the Messiah king? 0.83

01:13:32.000 And is that taking place increasingly so in our culture?

01:13:36.000 And, you know, because the USC Supreme Court reflected this in the Planned Parenthood versus Casey case, at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

01:13:52.000 And it's like, whoa.

01:13:54.000 This is typical leftist wordplay.

01:13:57.000 If you want to finish, I'm not sure.

01:13:58.000 No, no, and it's almost like self has become the new sovereign.

01:14:02.000 Well, yeah, so this is a secular lie, that somehow that your liberty is found in indulgence.

01:14:09.000 Of course not.

01:14:11.000 I mean, just look at any sort of practical example of that.

01:14:15.000 If you go look at a person who lives in Skid Row in Los Angeles, are they free?

01:14:23.000 I mean, they might be free to go put heroin in their arm, but are they living on a plane of freedom?

01:14:29.000 Of course not.

01:14:30.000 And so, first of all, in order to have freedom, you cannot have moral relativism.

01:14:35.000 It's such an important point.

01:14:37.000 If you do not believe in God, right and wrong is just an opinion.

01:14:41.000 It's a very important point.

01:14:43.000 If you do not believe in God, then it's just a matter of an up or down vote.

01:14:46.000 Abortion, what do we have to say?

01:14:49.000 And then you get even a more dangerous place, which is what the postmodernists believe and what your children are learning in public school, private school, and in college, which is even more dangerous than this, where everyone has their own truth.

01:15:00.000 It's my truth, which I always love playing out.

01:15:03.000 I say, so you believe that there's no such thing as absolute truth.

01:15:06.000 They say yes.

01:15:07.000 Say, do you believe that absolutely?

01:15:11.000 That's the first thing.

01:15:11.000 The second thing is I say, okay, you believe in your own version of truth.

01:15:16.000 Let's go test that out.

01:15:18.000 Go to the top of a building and show me that gravity is just your truth.

01:15:23.000 Disprove force equals mass time acceleration.

01:15:26.000 Disprove that an object at rest will stay at rest.

01:15:30.000 Disprove that.

01:15:31.000 They can't.

01:15:31.000 Of course not, because there's the laws of nature and nature is God.

01:15:33.000 That's why in the declaration, our birth certificate, the founders put that in there, right?

01:15:37.000 Because it was that blend of reason and revelation.

01:15:41.000 Because all of a sudden they were in this time when all this scientific discovery was coming.

01:15:45.000 And guess what? 0.80

01:15:46.000 Christians loved it.

01:15:47.000 And we should.

01:15:48.000 Because the more we learn about science, the more it actually affirms what we already believe.

01:15:52.000 The more we have mapped the human genome, the more we realize that there's no way this is a mistake.

01:15:57.000 The more we learn about our environment, the more we realize there's probably a creator behind all of this, right?

01:16:02.000 The more we dive into what DNA actually is and the miracle of life.

01:16:06.000 And so I'll say this, is that that is a false idea of freedom. 0.75

01:16:10.000 I think it's actually serfdom and it is bondage.

01:16:12.000 And I know you're just quoting that, but yeah.

01:16:14.000 You know, some of you hearing the messages tonight and hearing about God and Jesus and things, I want to give you an opportunity to actually respond.

01:16:23.000 And I'd just like to private moment here, just in prayer.

01:16:27.000 And you say, Greg, what do you mean respond?

01:16:28.000 Well, and recognize what the Lord has done for you because you're not a mistake.

01:16:32.000 He loves you with everything.

01:16:33.000 You're geniusly made.

01:16:34.000 He created you.

01:16:36.000 And not only that, but he's revealed himself to us in his son at the cross and in the resurrection.

01:16:43.000 So important.

01:16:43.000 And he's coming again.

01:16:45.000 And he wants relationship with you.

01:16:47.000 He wants to give you something.

01:16:48.000 He wants to give you forgiveness.

01:16:49.000 He wants to give you hope beyond the grave.

01:16:52.000 Mostly he wants to give you himself.

01:16:53.000 And once you have him, you have those things.

01:16:57.000 And Charlie, listen, like, I just want to say, we're going to sing a song and we're going to end a few months.

01:17:03.000 Listen, you have the last word.

01:17:05.000 Would you like to share something?

01:17:07.000 Yeah, I mean, just a couple things.

01:17:09.000 First of all, thank you for having me tonight.

01:17:11.000 I mean that.

01:17:12.000 And look, the civilization that we are living in right now was built because of an active church.

01:17:19.000 It was built on biblical principles.

01:17:22.000 What we are living through is an incredible and remarkable experiment in self-governance.

01:17:28.000 And we can lose it.

01:17:30.000 We are losing it.

01:17:33.000 All it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing.

01:17:38.000 And we have ways to do that.

01:17:39.000 It's voting.

01:17:40.000 It's getting involved.

01:17:41.000 It's standing up against micro-tyranny.

01:17:43.000 It is not allowing lies to go across your radar screen without confronting them, standing straight with your shoulders back, getting your words right, looking people in the eyes and saying, that is not true, and here is what is true.

01:17:56.000 And so, as Benjamin Franklin said, it's a republic if you can keep it.

01:18:01.000 And I'm 26 years old.

01:18:03.000 I give 300 speeches a year, two podcasts a day, one on Saturday, one on Sunday.

01:18:08.000 I'm going to go down fighting.

01:18:11.000 I'm not going to let this thing disintegrate.

01:18:13.000 And so, one thing is, if you guys removed by anything I said, one thing that would be awesome is if we could stick it to the New York Times by, if you guys could subscribe to my podcast, it's free of charge.

01:18:28.000 You just type in Charlie Kirk show to your podcast provider.

01:18:31.000 Everyone did it in this room right now.

01:18:33.000 We would beat the New York Times by the morning.

01:18:35.000 I do two a day, one Saturday, one Sunday.

01:18:37.000 We talk about the gospel at least once or twice a week.

01:18:41.000 And my call to action is: whatever you're doing now, fight harder.

01:18:47.000 If we rise up, we're going to win.

01:18:49.000 God bless you guys.

01:18:50.000 Amen.

01:18:50.000 Thank you, Charlie.

01:18:51.000 Thank you so much.

01:18:56.000 Thank you so much, Charlie.

01:19:06.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

01:19:07.000 Please consider supporting us at charliekirk.com/slash support.

01:19:11.000 CharlieKirk.com slash support.

01:19:13.000 Please get involved with TurningPointUSA at tpusa.com, tpusa.com.

01:19:19.000 Thank you guys so much for listening.

01:19:21.000 Make sure to listen to our sister episode.

01:19:22.000 God bless. 0.82

01:19:23.000 Talk to you soon.

The Charlie Kirk Show - September 17, 2020

Is America on the Verge of Another Great Awakening? With Pastor Greg Denham

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