00:01:08.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:09.000You have a new book out, which I want to talk about, Letter to the American Church, which reminds me of kind of the church needs to push back against tyranny.
00:02:17.000The church needs to push back against all this despotism.
00:02:21.000And to kind of get us ready for that, let's play cut 40 of refusing to play along.
00:03:10.000I don't have to wear anything I don't want to wear.
00:03:12.000Eric, I just love the idea that you were able to do it.
00:03:17.000You and I are both huge Seinfeld fans.
00:03:19.000And I just got to say that before the world went utterly insane, mainstream comedy made fun of this kind of fascist bullying that has now become the norm all across America.
00:03:33.000But Charlie, you understand every book I write, I write for everyone except this book, Letter to the American Church.
00:03:40.000I wrote specifically for people who call themselves Christians because there are people out there who are convinced that their Christian faith means they should not be political.
00:03:52.000What that really means is that they should not be political along the lines of, you know, MAGA, America-loving, whatever it is.
00:04:02.000And it is, this idea has infiltrated the church.
00:04:08.000I talk in the book about how, because, you know, we can joke about you're a ribbon bully, right?
00:04:14.000But that's literally how it started in Germany.
00:04:17.000That's why I found it perfect, though, is I found that as kind of a comedic intro, right?
00:04:21.000Of that kind of political egalitarianism, right?
00:04:24.000It is, it starts that way that says, if you don't do this, there's something wrong with you.
00:04:28.000I mean, look, in my book, A Fish Out of Water, I talk about when I was at Yale, this happened to me at Yale.
00:04:33.000I don't think I ever told you this, but we were supposed to wear a ribbon at graduation to show that we were against apartheid in South Africa.
00:04:42.000We were supposed to wear another ribbon.
00:05:03.000And we are now in a place in America where, except for a few places like this program or my program, there are people going along with things.
00:05:11.000And a lot of these people are going to churches where the pastors are being utterly silent on these issues that concern every American that concern the future of America.
00:05:22.000And I wrote the book to try to reach those pastors that are being silent, to try to reach those Christians that are going to those churches or that are theologically confused as though this is the Christian thing to do.
00:05:33.000This is not the Christian thing to do.
00:07:42.000They've inured themselves to anything unpleasant.
00:07:44.000But the reason I wrote the book and the way I wrote it is to reach those who might be persuaded, who are confused enough to say, well, I'll see what he has to say.
00:07:53.000And the reason I wrote it, Charlie, is because there are other people writing books saying exactly the opposite.
00:07:58.000And it's astonishing to me that they are saying the church shouldn't be political.
00:08:03.000I mean, just to get specific, it's a misunderstanding of what faith is.
00:08:07.000It's a misunderstanding of what Romans 13 says about how we're to obey the governing authorities.
00:08:11.000There are various misunderstandings that are, here's the key, the precisely the same misunderstandings of the German church in the early 30s.
00:08:20.000So you have to forget about what happened for a second in Germany, and you have to go back to where it was before they knew this could ever happen.
00:08:29.000Good people, Christians, pastors who love God, whatever, were persuaded that silence was the right godly option.
00:08:38.000And the reasons they were persuaded that are the same reasons people are persuaded today.
00:08:43.000When you see those parallels, that's when you'll think, oh, oh, well, then I guess it could be happening right now.
00:08:50.000So you have to see what the parallels are.
00:08:51.000So we're going to buy a bunch at TPSA Faith and we're going to distribute them.
00:09:55.000And then I'm going to read some of the objections from people in institutional corporate Christianity that write these things comfortably smug as the evil unfolds again in front of our very eyes.
00:10:07.000Only the church could rise up and stop this.
00:10:10.000If the church does not rise up, it is all over.
00:10:28.000I give Eric a very hard time and he gives me a hard time, but it's because we have such respect for each other.
00:10:34.000And I could tell you, this is one of the most important books out there right now.
00:10:36.000And it is rage-inducing when I see churches that have been so blessed with big buildings and huge staffs and they say, well, we don't do that around here.
00:10:43.000We're just going to let the society decay and the civilization crumble.
00:10:50.000Right now, Bank of America has just lowered its 2022 forecast for the SP 500 by a whopping 900 points to 3,600.
00:11:00.000Saying we're headed for a recession this year, it said the new year target is the lowest on the street.
00:11:05.000This is not good news for those of you stuck in equities or anything tied to stock markets.
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00:11:22.000No call centers, no scripted response, no bull, just a straight, honest run through options so you can decide.
00:11:28.000And by the way, they're giving away a beautiful one-tenth of an ounce gold American Eagle coin with every qualifying IRA or 401k rollover this month.
00:11:48.000Hey, Eric, uh, what do they call a quarter pounder in France?
00:11:53.000Uh, oh, oh, it's like uh deluxe or something, it's a royale with cheese, you know, because they're on the metric system.
00:12:04.000All right, so uh, we have I'm here, I'm here till for somebody who's on the spectrum, you seem very normal.
00:12:12.000I just want you to know that, yes, missed an interval of um intervention this morning.
00:12:17.000You were challenging me before that whenever you bring up the Nazis, people go, Oh, yeah, the Nazis, Nazis.
00:12:23.000Look, they're always going to be people, and it's useless to try to argue with them.
00:12:28.000They're not interested in hearing the truth.
00:12:31.000They want to use a label to shut you up, they'll call you a white supremacist or a Christian nationalist or a racist, or you're being political.
00:12:39.000They just want to use words to shut you up.
00:12:41.000But if there's anyone interested in the truth, I just turned to the page in my new book, Letter to the American Church, where Bonhoeffer himself, it's amazing that he wrote these words.
00:12:51.000He wrote, He says, He was so disgusted with the German church.
00:12:56.000This is in the mid-30s already, that he said it is high time we broke with our theologically based restraint toward the state's actions, which after all is only fear.
00:13:10.000He was calling out the German church, and he saw that they had these theological reasons for saying nothing while the world is going to hell, while Jews are being rounded up.
00:13:21.000And they say, Well, sort of not my problem.
00:13:23.000I'm just going to go into my church and worship my God and preach my weak little gospel.
00:13:28.000And I have to say, every one of the parallels is the same today.
00:13:33.000Charlie, it's astonishing and it is horrifying to hear people say exactly what German Christians said then because we know the results.
00:13:47.000And it's not just Germany, it's the Soviet Union, right?
00:13:50.000I mean, so the church in the Soviet Union was paid off.
00:13:52.000It was a little bit different, but it was very similar.
00:13:55.000Well, here's the thing: of course, it's similar, but it's only because I know in detail the German story, because my family lived the German story, and because I spent a lot of time researching that, that I know that what happened is so dramatically similar because Germany was a Christian nation.
00:14:14.000The church in Germany absolutely had the power to push back against the Nazis.
00:14:30.000Hang out a swastika flag, say, tell me what to do so I don't get in trouble.
00:14:35.000In other words, they were not concerned with being heroic, standing for God and God's truth for the sake, not just of their fellow Germans, but for the Jews in Germany and the Jews.
00:17:48.000The style of what you write, you're trying to get people to do something.
00:17:52.000Well, I'm trying to get people to see that this is not really complicated.
00:17:58.000In other words, there is no doubt that when we see evil, we in the church are obliged by God to speak against it, to work against it, to do what we can.
00:18:10.000There's a false message out there that we're hearing a lot, that we're only supposed to quote unquote preach the gospel, only stick to gospel-related issues.
00:18:57.000It's super easy to celebrate the fruit of a tough struggle, but when you're in the struggle, Christians run away.
00:19:03.000I mean, well, that's the point is that everyone today says, I would have spoken up if I was in Wilberforce's day.
00:19:09.000I would have spoken up if I was in Bonhoeffer's day.
00:19:12.000It's total baloney unless you're speaking up now.
00:19:16.000And the issues are the same because when you see evil happening, we don't even, we hardly know where to start when we talk about evil happening.
00:19:25.000Five million strangers coming across our border.
00:19:29.000We don't know what's happening in the country.
00:19:31.000We don't know who's leading the country.
00:19:33.000We have cultural Marxism infiltrating our schools, infiltrating the culture.
00:19:39.000If the church of Jesus Christ doesn't speak against these evils, God will judge us.
00:19:52.000In the book, I actually talk about how that safe religious path, it's like when the Gestapo comes to your door and they say, are you hiding a Jew in the basement?
00:20:01.000And you say, well, I don't want to lie because then I might get in trouble with this, you know, fake God that I claim to worship.
00:20:08.000And so I'm just going to say, yes, I'm hiding a Jew.
00:20:11.000Come help yourself and murder the Jew.
00:20:13.000As though God is that kind of a God, that he just wants us to be fussy, religious, not to care about what his heart cares about.
00:20:21.000When we see people struggling, when you see, let's talk about communities of color.
00:20:26.000If you care about them, you will speak against Black Lives Matter, this organization, critical race theory.
00:20:50.000You know, I have a neighbor whose daughter is going through that.
00:20:52.000That is exactly why God commands you to speak up, because truth is truth and because it will bless those people, not because it will hurt those people.
00:21:17.000I've never heard that because they're hearing the blather that you're getting from places like Christianity today or whatever it is, which is frankly deceiving millions.
00:21:39.000I lay the blame of where we are in this nation at the foot of the church in America.
00:21:46.000If the church were vocal on these issues and brave and understood our duty to speak truth and to be a voice for the voiceless and to be the conscience of the nation, if we lived that out fearlessly as God commands us to do, we would not have an America that's going down the tubes.
00:23:07.000If you do not do what you can, just because the party and politics is messy and whatever, when you start playing that game, you're playing into the enemy's hands.
00:24:00.000There are a hundred ways that we can do something about this.
00:24:04.000And when people say, like, I'm afraid of being allied to a political party, where do you draw that line?
00:24:10.000Are you afraid of being called a Satanist?
00:24:13.000Like, what label do people throw at you to shut you up?
00:24:16.000And the fact of the matter is that if that's all people need to do, if that's all evil needs to do, is to get you to say, oh my goodness, I can't, I don't want to sound like I'm for one political party.
00:24:26.000If one political party is for the butchering of children, if one political party has opened the door to godless cultural Marxism and to transgender and to bringing incredibly perverse ideas to little children in school, if you don't have the guts to speak against this, it is obvious you don't believe what you say you believe as a Christian.
00:24:48.000If you really believe what the Bible says and the truth of God, you're not going to worry so much about what people say about you.
00:24:54.000You're going to worry about the people who are suffering, just as Wilberforce cared about the African slaves.
00:24:58.000And so he spoke out despite people coming after him.
00:25:01.000If you love people, you're going to speak out against this.
00:25:04.000And people are more worried about making a little mistake or saying something or being accused of something than they're worried about people suffering horrors, which is exactly what is happening now and will continue to happen if the church continues to remain silent.
00:26:06.000You might be able to guess who this is, which is we must be very careful when it comes to blurring the distinctions between the kingdom of God and any nation or party on earth.
00:26:16.000The one is perfect and pure-headed by God.
00:26:18.000All other kingdoms and nations and organizations and parties and movements are flawed and mixed at best.
00:28:44.000Well, look, people who are saying things like what you just read, this is the reason it becomes diabolical is because a lot of people would say, well, yeah, that sounds right.
00:29:03.000We have to be a little bit discerning here.
00:29:05.000You can say things that are true in a spirit of falsehood.
00:29:10.000You can use good ideas to deceive people.
00:29:15.000And so people are getting on the bandwagon that I shouldn't get political.
00:29:19.000I just want to say God is going to judge us for our silence when we see what is happening.
00:29:24.000And again, the idea is you set up a straw man and you say that there are these people that all they care about, you know, they're chest-banging MAGA maniacs.
00:29:34.000As a Christian, I'm not interested in making an idol of politics.
00:29:37.000As much as I love Donald Trump or anybody who's being brave, I don't make an idol of them.
00:29:43.000I worship Jesus, but it doesn't mean that I sometimes don't need to be political or don't need to oppose evil.
00:29:52.000There are times when politics become so clear.
00:29:55.000We didn't used to be in this world, you know, in the 1980s or whatever, but we're living in a time when not to be somewhat political tells you everything.
00:30:02.000What would the ideal action points be then for a pastor or a church?
00:30:08.000We never actually asked for this guy's answer to this guy's question.
00:30:11.000Said, okay, our church is biblically based, but we don't talk about current events.
00:30:16.000What pastors can we point to that are doing this right?
00:30:18.000Obviously, Rob McCoy, David Engelhart, Jack Hibbs, Pastor Juergen, Angel and Luke Barnett, you know, Steve Smotherman off the top of my head.
00:30:26.000This brings me to the title of one of the chapters in this book, Letter to the American Church.
00:30:31.000The title is of the chapter is the idol of evangelism.
00:30:37.000There are people who are so focused on the idea of evangelism that they have been silenced on anything that might conceivably push someone away.
00:30:50.000And I say this because there's a great irony, Charlie.
00:30:53.000If you're worried about losing people by bringing up important issues, like if you're against the slave trade or you're against Nazis, you know, butchering Jews or you're against the unborn being ripped apart, you say, well, we don't want to talk about these unpleasant things.
00:31:09.000We're just going to preach the gospel.
00:31:11.000Ironically, the people who are doing that in those churches, the numbers are fading.
00:31:17.000People are saying, things are too crazy for me to waste a couple of hours on Sunday morning listening to nothing.
00:31:33.000I want somebody who's bold and courageous.
00:31:36.000And those pastors who are being bold and courageous, who are not afraid to talk about something that might be called political or any of these controversial issues, those churches are increasing in number.
00:31:49.000And there are tons of non-believers, just patriots, good people, who are saying that kind of church, that's what I've been looking for all my life.
00:31:56.000I've been disgusted with the Namby-Pamby, religious, effeminate kind of Christianity that I'm a guy and I'm trying to live my life.
00:32:04.000They tend to be attracted to the churches that you just mentioned, all those pastors.
00:32:10.000And I find this very ironic because it is precisely because a lot of these pastors are afraid of losing people that they've silenced themselves on these issues.
00:32:19.000And so part of what I'm trying to do is to help people understand that this idea of preaching the gospel or evangelism, there's more to being a Christian than that.
00:32:28.000We are supposed to be a voice for the voiceless.
00:33:57.000Those who are preaching in churches will lose the ability to preach even their little gospel that they are willing to talk about now because they're not able to speak about because they don't dare speak about these other things.
00:34:11.000Even that will be taken away from them.
00:34:13.000And that this is all sound and biblical.
00:34:17.000Otherwise, I wouldn't say this is not political.