The Charlie Kirk Show - Making the Bible the Bedrock — LIVE From Trinity Church

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, happy Sunday.

00:00:01.000 My conversation at Trinity Church in Lubbock, Texas.

00:00:04.000 I think you'll enjoy it.

00:00:06.000 Get involved with Turning Point USA today at tpusa.com and attend amfest at amfest.com.

00:00:11.000 That's amfest.com, A-M-F-E-S-T.com.

00:00:15.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:16.000 Here we go.

00:00:17.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:19.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:00:21.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:25.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:28.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:29.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:30.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:00:32.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:00:38.000 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.

00:00:47.000 That's why we are here.

00:00:51.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.

00:00:59.000 Let's welcome Charlie Kirk to Lubbock, Texas.

00:01:14.000 Yeah, man.

00:01:15.000 Good to have you.

00:01:20.000 Yes.

00:01:22.000 So officially, Charlie, welcome to Lubbock, Texas.

00:01:25.000 Thank you.

00:01:26.000 Thank you, everybody.

00:01:27.000 Great to be here.

00:01:28.000 Thank you.

00:01:28.000 Unfortunately, he's a duck.

00:01:33.000 And I was supposed to be here this morning, and I was going to rub it in that the Red Raiders beat the ducks, but that wasn't the outcome.

00:01:40.000 So I'm still trying to understand why people were throwing tortillas at me on that.

00:01:46.000 It was really amazing community.

00:01:48.000 Thank you.

00:01:49.000 And, you know, my whole family went to the University of Oregon, my dad, my uncle, my aunt.

00:01:54.000 And so we try to go to a couple games a year.

00:01:56.000 And so I go there.

00:01:57.000 There's a lot of interesting things that you guys do at your stadium.

00:02:03.000 But no, I have nothing against Texas Tech.

00:02:07.000 And it's very funny.

00:02:10.000 Oregon's down nine.

00:02:11.000 And all of a sudden, the fans next to me, because I'm not feeling great about the game.

00:02:16.000 And I'm like, oh, boy, the church service.

00:02:18.000 Everyone's going to be rubbing it in.

00:02:20.000 And very Christ-like.

00:02:23.000 And all of a sudden, the fans next to me in a timeout, they're like, oh, we're going to blow it.

00:02:27.000 I'm like, oh, cool.

00:02:31.000 And everyone tells me that's kind of the Texas Tech way.

00:02:35.000 Well, we rebuke that in Jesus' name.

00:02:40.000 So do you have any advice for us?

00:02:43.000 Just any advice?

00:02:44.000 I mean, I don't know.

00:02:46.000 What's funny is usually Oregon blows the game.

00:02:48.000 So it was really, you know, fun to not be in that spot.

00:02:50.000 But honor to be here.

00:02:51.000 Great community.

00:02:52.000 I love Lubbock.

00:02:53.000 Second time in the last couple of years being here.

00:02:55.000 And you have a great church here and really being led well.

00:02:58.000 So honor to be here and excited to get into it.

00:03:00.000 So Charlie, let's do that.

00:03:02.000 Let's get right into it.

00:03:02.000 So for the people that might be hearing you or being introduced to you the very first time, give us the elevator pitch of Turning Point USA.

00:03:09.000 Sure, first and foremost, the most important thing in my life is my relationship with Jesus Christ.

00:03:14.000 I gave my life to the Lord when I was in fifth grade in the suburbs of Chicago.

00:03:18.000 It was the most important decision I made.

00:03:20.000 As I get older, I realize more and more what that means, coming in a personal relationship with our Lord and Savior.

00:03:27.000 So everything I do starts from that understanding that Jesus sets the captives free, that we're in a spiritual war, understanding that the culture around us, really we are living in enemy-occupied territory, as C.S. Lewis would call it.

00:03:42.000 As I grew up, though, I was told that my political views and my relationship with Christ, you never mention those two things together.

00:03:50.000 You keep them separate.

00:03:52.000 And I believe that.

00:03:54.000 I never would be afraid of my faith, but I would never try.

00:03:57.000 I didn't think there was anything that overlapped, if you will.

00:04:01.000 And so I started Turning Point USA in 2012, really to try to bring the ideas of liberty, American exceptionalism, the Constitution, to university campuses across the country.

00:04:14.000 And for about 10 years, many of you probably know, we've become the premier campus outreach organization in the country, spreading, praise God.

00:04:24.000 And again, if I was ever asked about my faith, I wouldn't cower away, but I was not, I didn't quite understand what was politics.

00:04:35.000 What did our founding fathers believe when they built this country?

00:04:38.000 And then COVID happened, and I stared right into the camera of my podcast, and I made the worst prediction in the history of American podcasting.

00:04:46.000 You could look it up.

00:04:46.000 It's unbelievably embarrassing.

00:04:49.000 I looked into the camera, and I said, it was March of 2020, and I said, hey, guys, listen, the church, they're not going to lock down.

00:04:56.000 They're not going to do any of this stuff because the church loves liberty. 0.80

00:05:02.000 And that was really dumb to say because most of the American church doesn't love liberty. 0.90

00:05:07.000 They don't. 0.97

00:05:08.000 And I was shocked where that the number one adherence to unconstitutional, immoral lockdowns were churches.

00:05:16.000 Now, there were a lot of churches like this one that stood up and, you know, didn't really cower in the face of tyranny.

00:05:22.000 So I don't mean to insult anybody, but 95% of American churches remained closed for Easter, closed for Pentecost, closed through that summer while America was going through an unprecedented suicide crisis, unprecedented drug addiction crisis, loneliness epidemic.

00:05:35.000 Yeah, while other establishments and other businesses were open.

00:05:38.000 Precisely, when marijuana dispensaries were open, liquor stores dry.

00:05:41.000 And I know that this part of the world was more enlightened than others, but large parts of the country remained completely locked down.

00:05:47.000 And then in summer of 2020, it continued where we decided to burn down our country around a lie from the pit of hell that somehow we were systemically racist and that if you have white skin color, you have to atone for your skin color.

00:05:59.000 And I thought this was just, I mean, I know what it was.

00:06:02.000 It was critical race theory, race Marxism, all this stuff.

00:06:05.000 And so I decided to speak out against this as someone who's been in this for the last 10 years.

00:06:10.000 And so I started to speak at churches across the country.

00:06:13.000 And the more scholarship I did, the more I realized that liberty is not man's idea.

00:06:17.000 It's God's idea.

00:06:19.000 And that if we are not going to contest for the basic fundamental rights given to us by God, not by government, that these are not political issues.

00:06:25.000 These are biblical issues.

00:06:27.000 That Jesus comes to set the captives free.

00:06:29.000 And that one of the through lines of the word is that we may live free.

00:06:35.000 John 10, 10 is one of my favorite verses because it summarizes one of the promises of the word of God so beautifully.

00:06:42.000 The enemy comes to lie, steal, cheat, and destroy.

00:06:45.000 But I have come to give life and life more abundantly.

00:06:48.000 It's that Christ gives us life to set the captives free.

00:06:51.000 That is the story of the Exodus.

00:06:52.000 That is why we need Jesus Christ.

00:06:54.000 God's plan, his desire, his heart for you is not to live under an unconstitutional tyrant or autocrat.

00:07:00.000 And so during COVID, I saw, in the lockdowns, I just felt more compelled to get into the arena to speak out against it.

00:07:06.000 And so now we have TPUSA Faith, which we have over 2,000 church partnership members across the country.

00:07:12.000 We're going to have 1,100 pastors at our pastor summit next week, where we are going to be really encouraging pastors to be more like you, Pastor Carl, speaking out, bold, courageous, biblical.

00:07:24.000 Again, I get mislabeled as trying to bring politics into the church.

00:07:28.000 That is not true.

00:07:29.000 I'm trying to bring the Bible back into the church.

00:07:31.000 That's right.

00:07:32.000 That's why we're here.

00:07:32.000 That's my call.

00:07:35.000 You know, Charlotte, we so appreciate what you're doing and the voice that God has given you.

00:07:39.000 You're still 29 or did you ever bring it up?

00:07:41.000 Yeah, so I'm 29 and going to be 30 soon, so I'm holding on to my 20s as long as I have to.

00:07:46.000 Yeah, my son's 28, and I'm just so thankful for young leaders and what God is doing.

00:07:51.000 You know, here at Trinity, we believe that we're a spiritual intersection, where moral, cultural, social issues collide with biblical truth.

00:07:57.000 We believe that we have a biblical mandate, you know, to speak the truth of God's word to the powers that be.

00:08:02.000 And we base what we do here at Trinity on 1 Chronicles 12:32, where it says the sons of Issachar understood the times in which they live, and they knew what they should do.

00:08:10.000 So we want our people two things.

00:08:12.000 We want them to be informed, to know how to pray, so they can be, number two, empowered to act, to do something.

00:08:17.000 And I would like for us in the time that we have, Charlie, to look at really three areas: culture, the church, and then the Christian.

00:08:24.000 And so, Charles, Charles Taylor, he has that classic book, The Secular Age.

00:08:30.000 And he outlines how secularism didn't just come upon us.

00:08:33.000 It's been a 500-year journey, Renaissance, the Enlightenment.

00:08:37.000 And I came across an article from a reputable website from a liberal theologian, and they were arguing the point, and I'm quoting, that the greatest threat to Christianity in the United States is not outside forces.

00:08:49.000 Instead, it's white Christian nationalism.

00:08:53.000 Would you address that for us?

00:08:55.000 Yeah, I mean, that person is more liberal than he is a theologian to believe such a thing as that. 0.61

00:09:00.000 I mean, first of all, it's a fake villain, white Christian nationalism. 0.52

00:09:06.000 This is exactly how the enemy operates, okay?

00:09:08.000 No one here walks around and they're like, hey, how are you doing?

00:09:11.000 Great.

00:09:11.000 How's your Christian nationalist activism going on?

00:09:14.000 So, I mean, it's so repulsive, right?

00:09:17.000 You know what the biggest threat to American Christianity is? 0.93

00:09:20.000 A weak church that rolls over when secular godlessness spreads across the land.

00:09:27.000 So I'll address that, but let's make sure we understand the biblical base of why we're here, right?

00:09:31.000 It says that you must care about your nation.

00:09:33.000 So I would ask that theologian, that liberal theologian, does he agree with Jeremiah 29, 7?

00:09:39.000 When the Lord is speaking to Jeremiah, demand.

00:09:42.000 Badrash is the Hebrew word.

00:09:43.000 Seek, demand, find.

00:09:44.000 It's an active Hebrew word.

00:09:46.000 The welfare, the shalom of the city or the nation that you are in, because your welfare is tied to your nation's welfare. 0.58

00:09:52.000 That is God telling you to care about the government, the city, what is happening around you.

00:09:58.000 How about the book of Deuteronomy?

00:09:59.000 The book of Deuteronomy is one of my favorite books of the Bible.

00:10:02.000 Most pastors don't even open the book of Deuteronomy because they can't spell Deuteronomy.

00:10:08.000 And it's Moses' farewell address.

00:10:11.000 So this is, it's an amazing book.

00:10:13.000 I encourage you guys to study it because this is Moses' final, hey guys, before you enter the promised land, the land of Canaan, here's all the stuff that we've gone through and God is speaking through Moses.

00:10:24.000 Do you know that Deuteronomy was the most quoted book by the founding fathers, secular or religious, when they were founding the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, the Declaration?

00:10:34.000 55 out of 56 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Bible-believing church-attending Christians.

00:10:39.000 And so what they call Christian nationalism, we call reasserting the biblical role of being counselor to the king.

00:10:47.000 Understand, this is Esther, Mordecai, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Joseph.

00:10:51.000 Was Joseph being ungodly when he counseled the Pharaoh to pursue godly actions?

00:10:57.000 You see, this idea that Christians must not care about their government is not founded anywhere, it's not found anywhere in the scriptures.

00:11:04.000 Now, when Jesus at the mouth of the Jordan River, when he said, on this rock build my church, it's actually a Greek word that means ecclesia, which means on this rock build my community gathering point, the place that influences culture.

00:11:17.000 What I would say to this liberal theologian where he says, oh, well, you know, white Christian nationalism, let me just take a time out.

00:11:22.000 Why does this liberal theologian have to racialize everything?

00:11:25.000 Does it not say we are all one in Christ Jesus?

00:11:25.000 Yeah.

00:11:28.000 Neither slave nor Greek nor Jew?

00:11:30.000 I see an amazingly diverse audience here.

00:11:32.000 I don't care about your skin color. 1.00

00:11:33.000 I care about your soul.

00:11:34.000 Amen.

00:11:35.000 And so for these liberal theologians to throw around race all the time, I think it's so cheap.

00:11:41.000 It's so tribal. 0.87

00:11:43.000 It's so shallow, honestly.

00:11:46.000 We're a lot As a body of Christ, we should reject these siren songs of racial tribalism.

00:11:55.000 But this idea of Christian nationalism, the Marxists are so good at this. 0.96

00:12:00.000 They create a term that creates toxicity to any sort of proper righteous action.

00:12:07.000 Where people say, well, you know, I don't believe in that.

00:12:09.000 Let me ask you a question.

00:12:10.000 Should you fast and pray for your nation?

00:12:12.000 Paul told you that you should.

00:12:12.000 Of course you should.

00:12:14.000 Is that Christian nationalism?

00:12:16.000 No, we are Christians who love our country, but we love Christ first.

00:12:19.000 And we love our nation because we love our neighbor.

00:12:22.000 Jesus Christ said, you know, he's asked by the prophets, which is the greatest of all the laws?

00:12:26.000 And he said, all the laws of the prophets, two, fall on it.

00:12:29.000 Now, if you were to ask an everyday Christian, where in the Bible do you find love your neighbor as yourself?

00:12:34.000 Leviticus 19.

00:12:36.000 In order to get to Leviticus 19, you have to get through like priestly garments and like killing animals the right way.

00:12:42.000 And all of a sudden, boom, hidden in Leviticus.

00:12:45.000 Leviticus 19 is love your neighbor as yourself.

00:12:47.000 And then he says, of course, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, in Deuteronomy 6, I believe.

00:12:53.000 And so what that goes to, you have these two incredibly powerful verses.

00:12:58.000 How do you love your neighbor as yourself?

00:13:00.000 My life's call, what I do in my life, is to make sure that my neighbor does not have to live under tyranny.

00:13:07.000 That's not the most important thing.

00:13:08.000 I understand that a lot of people, you're called to win souls for Christ.

00:13:12.000 I do that too.

00:13:13.000 But my number one life's calling is to make sure that my neighbor can live in a free society.

00:13:17.000 That is love.

00:13:19.000 Because more people die.

00:13:20.000 Their souls are crushed.

00:13:21.000 More people's dreams, their ambitions, their goals, their desires are destroyed if there's an authoritarian government.

00:13:28.000 Look no further than Exodus.

00:13:30.000 One of the most powerful parts of the Bible is you have Joseph who does all these favors for the king of Egypt, the Pharaoh, right?

00:13:37.000 And then the turning point of the whole Torah is when a king of Egypt rose to power who did not know Joseph.

00:13:45.000 No memory, ingratitude.

00:13:46.000 And then tyranny came in.

00:13:48.000 The story of Exodus is what happens when you get a bad leader, a ruler, that reigns tyranny over the land.

00:13:56.000 God's heart is not for his people to live under authoritarianism, under secular, godless Marxism.

00:14:02.000 How many pastors are speaking out against it?

00:14:03.000 Very few.

00:14:04.000 You know why?

00:14:05.000 Because they are the recipient of pastors who cared.

00:14:10.000 They have the luxury not to care because Billy Graham did that work for them.

00:14:14.000 Wow.

00:14:15.000 Because the pastors of a previous generation fought communism and Marxism in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

00:14:21.000 Because the first great awakening of Jonathan Edwards and Jonathan Mayhew and Whitfield.

00:14:26.000 We are in a new era of Christianity where we have things so good, where we are so comfortable, where we are allowed to have pastors lecture us that you should not care.

00:14:35.000 It's not biblical.

00:14:36.000 It's not correct.

00:14:37.000 It's not righteous.

00:14:38.000 In fact, it creates some really bad preconditions that only allows the worst influences and aspects of society to grow.

00:14:44.000 What Dietrich Granoffer, he said, you know, not to speak is to speak against.

00:14:51.000 And silence in the face of evil is itself evil.

00:14:54.000 So did we not learn any lessons, you know, from Nazi Germany and how the church was silent?

00:15:01.000 And what causes so many churches, you know, to remain silent in these terrible times?

00:15:06.000 It's a powerful question.

00:15:08.000 First, you have to ask the question, what is a human being?

00:15:10.000 A human being is not an accident of millions of years of Darwinian evolution.

00:15:14.000 A human being is designed with intentionality and purpose and a soul in the image of God, Genesis 1.26 and 1.27.

00:15:19.000 But then you have to ask the question, is a human being naturally courageous or naturally a coward? 0.87

00:15:24.000 Human beings are naturally cowards, and that includes Christians. 1.00

00:15:28.000 We have to fight our nature to be cowardly. 0.98

00:15:32.000 And we have to be honest.

00:15:35.000 And by the way, that's why it says be strong and courageous repeatedly in the scriptures, Joshua 1.9.

00:15:40.000 Let's think about it.

00:15:41.000 So Numbers, I think it's Numbers 14.

00:15:44.000 I could be wrong.

00:15:46.000 It's the most unbelievable.

00:15:49.000 This happens repeatedly.

00:15:51.000 You'll never find a group of ancient people that complain as much as the Jews. 1.00

00:15:55.000 It's unbelievable, right?

00:15:56.000 God delivers them from Egypt, all these miracles, and they're like days. 0.79

00:16:00.000 They're days from the Red Sea being parted.

00:16:03.000 And they're like, we want to go back to Egypt slavery because we had meat, leeks, cucumbers, melons, even though quail and manna has been blown off course.

00:16:13.000 Carly, answer your question.

00:16:15.000 The scriptures tell us that people don't want to be free.

00:16:18.000 COVID taught us that.

00:16:20.000 People want to be taken care of.

00:16:22.000 You have to teach the value of freedom.

00:16:25.000 You have to teach them that they need Christ Jesus to set them free of their broken nature.

00:16:30.000 Here is, here's one of the most important struggles happening in America.

00:16:34.000 Freedom is not easy.

00:16:36.000 It requires responsibility.

00:16:38.000 It requires waking up earlier, saving money, not going out and drinking with your friends all the time, delaying gratification.

00:16:45.000 It requires putting the holy over the profane.

00:16:49.000 It requires putting the long-term over the immediate, the child over your own indulgence.

00:16:54.000 That's a message that most Americans don't want to hear.

00:16:56.000 They want to hear of, I want to be safe, I want to be happy, or I want to be comfortable.

00:17:00.000 And to answer the question, is most churches have been infected by this secular mind virus of instant wins, instant gratification.

00:17:08.000 And so we have to fight our own personal human nature.

00:17:11.000 And honestly, you know, history shows us that if it's not for the church, what institution will stand for those ideas?

00:17:18.000 None.

00:17:19.000 No secular institution will tell you this as boldly.

00:17:23.000 This is why Western civilization is the greatest ever created, because the church breathed in, ex nihilo, this remarkable civilization where all of a sudden you have groups of people that say, you know what?

00:17:38.000 I want it better for my kids than for me.

00:17:41.000 That's a profound insight.

00:17:43.000 And so it really goes back to that question.

00:17:45.000 I ask people all the time, do you want to be free?

00:17:48.000 And we learned in the last couple years, the majority of Americans, they would rather be taken care of.

00:17:53.000 Well, we know there are three phases of freedom, right?

00:17:55.000 There's the acquiring of freedom, Revolutionary War. 0.63

00:17:58.000 There is the maintaining of freedom, you know, the Constitution, Bill of Rights.

00:18:04.000 But then there's the sustaining of freedom.

00:18:06.000 It has three phases.

00:18:07.000 And all freedom ultimately leads back into bondage because we begin to take those freedoms for granted.

00:18:12.000 So someone once said, we need the statue of liberty on the East Coast, but we need the statue of responsibility on the West Coast.

00:18:20.000 We have to balance freedom with responsibility or it becomes a license.

00:18:24.000 Yes, exactly.

00:18:25.000 And the Founding Fathers called this licentiousness, which is exactly what you're talking about.

00:18:28.000 So let's go through this kind of easy examples here in America today.

00:18:34.000 Far too often, we, through our cultural institutions and through our broadcasts, we do not teach this idea of saying no to indulgence, to pleasure, and to immediate gratification, even though when it's not good for you, whether it be how we save money, how we eat, how we deal in relationships.

00:18:56.000 And the Jews went through this as well.

00:18:58.000 See, for 400 years, the Hebrews lived without a standing army and without a government because the law was the center. 0.93

00:19:05.000 And where did they end up going?

00:19:07.000 They said, God, give us a king.

00:19:08.000 Here's what's so amazing.

00:19:10.000 I get asked all the time, Charlie, how is it that bad tyrants like Mussolini, like Stalin, like Biden, like Hitler, are able to get into power?

00:19:24.000 Oh, I'm sorry, did I say something?

00:19:28.000 How is it?

00:19:29.000 Because there's a broken part of our nature that yearns for the strong, strong leader to just solve the problem for us.

00:19:40.000 To just get in there and give me free stuff and to clean it up and to make everything better.

00:19:45.000 Self-government is hard.

00:19:47.000 Self-government is a daily toil.

00:19:50.000 Discipline.

00:19:50.000 It's discipline.

00:19:51.000 It's responsibility.

00:19:53.000 It's, I'm going to be able to feed my family.

00:19:55.000 And this is, by the way, they want you to be weak.

00:19:59.000 They want weak men in this country. 0.69

00:20:01.000 That's why they're trying to turn men into women. 0.99

00:20:02.000 Our testosterone rates are going down.

00:20:04.000 And there's a war on men in this country like we've never seen before.

00:20:08.000 They want you to not own property.

00:20:11.000 They want you to not be informed.

00:20:13.000 That's why I love what you're doing at this church.

00:20:14.000 An informed citizen is a dangerous weapon against an illegitimate tyrant or an autocrat.

00:20:20.000 Because then you know truth from fiction.

00:20:22.000 You know righteousness from error.

00:20:25.000 You know, bread and circuses.

00:20:26.000 You know, Caesar understood, give the people bread and circuses.

00:20:30.000 Give them what they want, right?

00:20:32.000 Until the time will come when you will begin to tell them what to want.

00:20:36.000 And that's what we're seeing happening in our country today.

00:20:38.000 And we have a generation of political schizophrenics, right? 0.99

00:20:44.000 Christians, political schizophrenics. 1.00

00:20:46.000 They call themselves Christians, but then they vote like heathens. 1.00

00:20:49.000 Yeah, amen.

00:20:51.000 And I, look, and I'm not even going to be here to, I'm not even going to tell you how to vote today.

00:20:56.000 If it's really that hard to figure out, I would love to meet you.

00:21:01.000 I mean, look, let's just get down.

00:21:03.000 Let's just get down to one issue.

00:21:04.000 And it's not even the abortion issue, which is pretty clear, okay?

00:21:07.000 How about this?

00:21:08.000 Let's not vote for the political party that says men can give birth. 0.64

00:21:12.000 Like, how about let's start like with that?

00:21:16.000 And you might say, well, Charlie, that's not true.

00:21:20.000 Right now, the Biden regime says birthing people, CDC, Center for Disease Control, the Biden regime has said that biological men can take lactating drugs to chest feed.

00:21:32.000 By the way, it kills the baby if they do this, and they're okay with it.

00:21:35.000 To be able to pander to the alphabet mafia, right? 0.94

00:21:38.000 The purple-haired jihadis, so that they can get their lactating drugs. 0.93

00:21:43.000 Like, let's just start with that issue. 0.54

00:21:45.000 Why do we not have 100% of American churches saying, look, put politics aside, God created man and woman. 0.99

00:21:52.000 This trans thing is from the pit of hell, and we're not going to tolerate it. 1.00

00:21:56.000 Like, how can we not agree on this? 1.00

00:21:59.000 Right?

00:22:00.000 And I get criticized where people say, well, you know, Charlie, that's full of hate.

00:22:07.000 It's like, look, read the Bible.

00:22:10.000 In Deuteronomy, it says that if a man is to wear a woman's garment or a woman is to wear a man's garment, it's an abomination to the Lord.

00:22:19.000 An abomination to the Lord.

00:22:21.000 God created differences between men and women, clearly. 0.69

00:22:26.000 And I have to be very honest with you.

00:22:29.000 We have lost what love actually is.

00:22:33.000 We conflate love with allowance and acceptance of evil and sinful behavior.

00:22:41.000 You cannot have love without truth, and truth.love is harsh, cold, and legalistic.

00:22:46.000 You must have both.

00:22:47.000 And sometimes, I think largely in American Christianity, we have lost the idea of correcting error with truth.

00:22:55.000 The most loving thing you can do is to tell somebody the truth when they need it the most.

00:23:01.000 You don't have to do it in a cold way or a cruel way, but to put your arm on somebody who might be in this transgender lifestyle under this demonic hold and say, God has a better plan for you, that you're probably dealing with some underlying issues. 0.97

00:23:15.000 Let's talk about it.

00:23:16.000 Were you abused?

00:23:17.000 Were you lied to?

00:23:19.000 And by the way, that's how we should handle that.

00:23:21.000 We should try to correct the error with truth.

00:23:23.000 You know what we shouldn't do?

00:23:24.000 We shouldn't give the 14, 15, or 16-year-old irreversible surgery drugs that sever their private parts.

00:23:32.000 And I'm going to be very nice because we're in a church and we have young people.

00:23:34.000 I mean that.

00:23:35.000 But if just understand, this is the most medieval witch doctor practice that we've seen sweep our land right now.

00:23:40.000 And so you asked about culture as kind of our primary thing.

00:23:43.000 The culture will push the civilization as far as the church lets it.

00:23:47.000 That's profound.

00:23:48.000 And right now, the church is allowing the culture to do whatever they want.

00:23:56.000 So it's not incompatible to be a Christian and to be a patriot.

00:24:00.000 And before you respond to that, I think my dog is patriotic.

00:24:04.000 Yeah, get this, you know, when Vice President Harris is on the television, she starts to howl for some reason.

00:24:12.000 And then if President Biden comes on, she rolls over and plays dead.

00:24:16.000 I'm like, nobody taught her this.

00:24:18.000 I think she's patriotic because then when the cowboys come on, she jumps up and down.

00:24:22.000 She hops up and down.

00:24:24.000 The cowboys are out there.

00:24:24.000 That's tonight.

00:24:25.000 That's right, that's right.

00:24:26.000 Hey, all kidding aside, how do we meld our Christianity, which does always come first, but patriotism?

00:24:33.000 Yeah, so, look, I believe in a, I believe in moral hierarchies.

00:24:37.000 I believe, everyone does, by the way, anyone who doesn't say they believe in moral hierarchies, obviously taking care of your kids is more important than mowing the lawn, right?

00:24:46.000 I mean, mowing the lawn is important, but if you had to choose, there's a crisis of kids.

00:24:49.000 So hierarchies is how we build life.

00:24:51.000 Aristotle talked about this.

00:24:52.000 Aquinas talked about this.

00:24:53.000 And so the hierarchy is this.

00:24:54.000 Jesus Christ comes number one all the time.

00:24:56.000 And so I get criticized a lot by Christians who say, Charlie, you're politicizing things.

00:25:01.000 You're bringing the politics into the church.

00:25:03.000 And I'm always clear.

00:25:04.000 I say this at every speech.

00:25:05.000 The most important thing you and the church can do is win souls for Jesus Christ.

00:25:09.000 Number one.

00:25:11.000 But what's the second most important thing?

00:25:13.000 To make sure you could do the first thing.

00:25:16.000 That's my life's work.

00:25:17.000 To make sure that the church is never deemed non-essential again.

00:25:20.000 Wow.

00:25:21.000 To make sure that we have religious liberty and freedom.

00:25:24.000 That your local school that you have here, that your local school is not going to have the Department of Education come in and say you have to use pronouns or have transgender curriculum.

00:25:36.000 That's my fight.

00:25:37.000 You're fighting the good stuff.

00:25:38.000 Everyone has different fights.

00:25:39.000 And this is what I think, you know, we have allowance for people that do, you know, evangelistic work in Nicaraguan and Vietnam.

00:25:45.000 Praise God, we need that.

00:25:46.000 You know, we have worship ministries, right?

00:25:49.000 But we also need to understand that there is a place in the diverse body of Christ for those of us that are called to be in the warfare of the public square.

00:25:58.000 And you guys get this, but it's almost, it's considered dirty, right?

00:26:03.000 At least that's how I'm treated by the intelligentsia of Big Eva.

00:26:06.000 I don't care.

00:26:07.000 I don't come from that world.

00:26:09.000 I don't try to win over the likes of Andy Stanley or Rick Warren.

00:26:13.000 I don't care.

00:26:14.000 I do what's right.

00:26:15.000 I'm accountable to only God and God alone.

00:26:18.000 I really don't care.

00:26:20.000 However, it would do a lot of good for the kingdom if they would realize that there's a place for this.

00:26:27.000 That there's a place for contesting for righteousness and virtue in the public square, in the ecclesia.

00:26:33.000 And again, it's not the most important thing.

00:26:36.000 But here's what's happening.

00:26:37.000 Church attendance has gone down dramatically the last 20 or 30 years.

00:26:41.000 Why?

00:26:42.000 Why?

00:26:43.000 And they say, oh, it's because of an overwhelming secular culture.

00:26:46.000 You know what's funny is that when I go to churches, they're almost always packed.

00:26:50.000 And it's not because of me.

00:26:51.000 It's because here's what's happening.

00:26:53.000 And most of the moderate pastors who don't touch these issues are missing it.

00:26:58.000 It's because you see what's happening in the world around you.

00:27:01.000 And you're begging, you're asking, you're demanding, you're pleading with your pastor.

00:27:05.000 Can you just take the word of God and tell me how to think about what's happening in the news cycle, please?

00:27:12.000 And a pastor says, man, we only do the gospel here.

00:27:18.000 You know, Charlie, the book of Jonah teaches us that if you want to win people, you have to warn people.

00:27:24.000 So you have so many pastors in America, well, we're about souls, right?

00:27:27.000 Or pietism, right?

00:27:28.000 We're about practicing holiness and living out our holy life.

00:27:32.000 And it's us four no more, and the rest of the world could basically just go to hell.

00:27:36.000 But if you want to win people, you've got to warn.

00:27:38.000 Jonah was sort of reluctant to warn them, but then he ended up winning them.

00:27:42.000 And they actually listened, which is what the most of them actually ended up repenting, which is what's amazing.

00:27:47.000 I always joke around.

00:27:48.000 I say, I go to college campuses, which are much closer to Sodom, and I would like to think churches are closer to Nineveh. 0.82

00:27:56.000 So you can.

00:27:58.000 I hope that's true.

00:27:59.000 So I hope that's true.

00:28:02.000 Look, you got to get repentance is so important.

00:28:05.000 I think repentance is the necessary precondition for revival.

00:28:09.000 And because repentance means you're humble, you believe there's a God and that you are not Him.

00:28:12.000 There's a lot that happened.

00:28:14.000 There's a lot that goes into repentance.

00:28:15.000 But yes, I want to reinforce this point, though, of why should the Christian care? 0.98

00:28:23.000 And this shouldn't be hard, unfortunately, it is.

00:28:26.000 So you have a couple different camps.

00:28:27.000 Number one, I don't think it's as big in this part of the world.

00:28:30.000 This is very big in California.

00:28:32.000 And I speak at a lot of these churches.

00:28:33.000 And some churches get the balance right, some churches get the balance wrong.

00:28:37.000 There's a term called eschatology, which means the study of the end times or the study of Christ's return.

00:28:42.000 Now, let me be very clear: I believe Jesus Christ will return to this earth on his throne.

00:28:47.000 And then the next question says, Well, Charlie, are you pre-trib, pre-tribulation rapture, or post-tribulation rapture?

00:28:55.000 I say, I'm pan-trib.

00:28:56.000 It's all going to pan out in the end, okay?

00:28:59.000 I'm on the welcoming committee, not the planning committee.

00:29:02.000 Okay, amen.

00:29:05.000 So, and some people find that very offensive because they say, Charlie, I know when Jesus is coming.

00:29:12.000 And I say, well, no, you don't.

00:29:14.000 Jesus said the hour and the day is unknown.

00:29:15.000 You can look at the signs of the time, but get to work.

00:29:17.000 Occupy till I come.

00:29:19.000 So there's a portion of American Christianity that believes the world, but they tell me things are not falling apart.

00:29:23.000 They're falling into place.

00:29:25.000 Just Jesus is coming next Thursday, and it creates inaction.

00:29:29.000 Boy, if I was Satan, I would get righteous Christians to do nothing using the biblical promise that Jesus is coming. 0.98

00:29:40.000 Again, remember, Satan knows the word, but he misrepresents it.

00:29:42.000 We know that in Matthew 4, when Satan and Christ are talking in the desert, he's quoting scripture back to Christ, misquoting it, just as Satan would do.

00:29:51.000 Did God really say that?

00:29:53.000 That's what Satan does best.

00:29:55.000 So do not allow your eschatology to be an excuse for inaction.

00:29:59.000 Okay?

00:29:59.000 I do believe Christ will come again.

00:30:02.000 What do you want to be caught doing when Jesus returns?

00:30:04.000 But what if Jesus comes 400 years from now?

00:30:07.000 What if Jesus comes 500 years from now?

00:30:10.000 What are we going to be doing to really passing down our values and building something that matters?

00:30:15.000 And then finally, it's this idea of salt and light.

00:30:17.000 Salt and light change the environments they come in contact with.

00:30:22.000 They are change agents by definition.

00:30:24.000 They do not conform.

00:30:26.000 Romans 12:2, do not conform to the ways of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, testing to God's perfect and pleasing will.

00:30:35.000 So Romans 12, 2 tells you to not conform.

00:30:37.000 We're supposed to change it, but here's where, this is just how I'm built, right?

00:30:41.000 And I'm built to go to places where I'm hated, where my ideas are not welcome, and to challenge them, and then to strengthen those people that agree with me to be able to be more bold, strong, and courageous.

00:30:52.000 That's not everybody's calling, okay?

00:30:54.000 I totally understand that.

00:30:55.000 Some people's calling is to do marriage rehabilitation ministries, prison ministries, right?

00:31:01.000 Shepherding the lost.

00:31:03.000 But is there a place where we say, you know what, you as a Christian should be daily fasting and praying for your nation.

00:31:09.000 You, as your Christian, should be, of course, voting, running for political office if you're called that, holding your political leaders accountable.

00:31:15.000 Why is the culture falling apart?

00:31:17.000 I believe it's falling apart because we've abdicated our role to be counselor to the king.

00:31:21.000 You know, there's no saying that when the church sleeps, the devil sweeps.

00:31:25.000 And Jesus said in Luke 19:13, he said, occupy until I come.

00:31:29.000 And then he even said this.

00:31:30.000 He said, when the Son of Man returns to the earth, will he find faith on the earth?

00:31:34.000 Will he find faith?

00:31:35.000 So is it apathy?

00:31:37.000 Is it apostasy that's plaguing the church, or is it both?

00:31:40.000 So I think it's a couple, great question, right?

00:31:42.000 There's a couple different categories.

00:31:44.000 The people that say Jesus is coming soon, they believe the word, right?

00:31:48.000 But I think that they're allowing their fear and then their belief, their fear of what's happening around them, their belief that Jesus is coming soon, to say, I'm going to go run to the hills with my kids and wait till Jesus comes.

00:32:00.000 House is on fire.

00:32:01.000 I'm getting out.

00:32:02.000 And I said, why don't you put the fire out?

00:32:05.000 Why don't you try to make the place a little bit better?

00:32:07.000 That's number one.

00:32:08.000 Number two, there are courageous churches.

00:32:10.000 I don't want to make it seem bad.

00:32:12.000 This is a great church.

00:32:13.000 We have 1,100 pastors coming to our pastor summit this week at TPUSA Faith.

00:32:19.000 And they're going to get some fastballs of liberty.

00:32:22.000 Let me tell you.

00:32:24.000 It's amazing.

00:32:25.000 So there's a remnant.

00:32:26.000 I don't want to make it seem over, but then there's the majority, okay?

00:32:30.000 60 to 70% of American churches are in this category.

00:32:34.000 I only preach the gospel, right?

00:32:36.000 I kind of, you know, weave in the middle.

00:32:39.000 Their services feel more like a TED Talk and a rock concert than actually a church service, right?

00:32:46.000 They usually wear skinny jeans, and you guys pass the test.

00:32:51.000 You're fine.

00:32:55.000 And they mean well.

00:32:57.000 But if you're in the ministry, you're held to a different standard.

00:33:03.000 It's what the book of Titus tells us.

00:33:05.000 Ezekiel says, you don't warn the wicked to turn from their wicked ways.

00:33:07.000 Amen.

00:33:08.000 And the kind of subtext, it doesn't say this explicitly in Leviticus, but it's like if you're in the work of the holy, different rules.

00:33:14.000 So that's a fair takeaway from Leviticus.

00:33:14.000 Right?

00:33:16.000 It goes on for like 200 pages, basically, right?

00:33:19.000 So if you are in the administration of that which is holy, you have different rules.

00:33:24.000 So here's my take.

00:33:25.000 If you're in the ministry and your job is to communicate God's word, you're held to a different standard.

00:33:33.000 And I totally understand that if you're a pastor and you're afraid, go resign and go do something else.

00:33:42.000 I don't mean to mean this like coldly or unlovingly, but you do not get to be a pastor and get the perks of being a pastor while not also being in the spiritual war and teaching our congregation.

00:33:55.000 So excuses I hear, Carl, I know we're running out of time.

00:33:57.000 But I'm going to lose ties and offerings.

00:33:58.000 I'm going to have people walking.

00:34:00.000 So my board of elders, you know, they're going to vote me out.

00:34:03.000 These are real challenges.

00:34:04.000 And they're going to vote you out for teaching the Bible?

00:34:07.000 You don't know your Bible if you're not talking about the politics of the dead, period.

00:34:12.000 I know that's a statement, but you do not know what the Bible says.

00:34:14.000 So the gospel in nature is political.

00:34:16.000 Jesus and Paul preached a kingdom other and a king other than Caesar at that particular time.

00:34:21.000 Amen.

00:34:21.000 So, like, I mean, for example, civil disobedience.

00:34:23.000 If they try to do masks again and they quote Romans 13, Romans 13, Romans 13, right?

00:34:29.000 Which is, submit to all leaders in authority that have been put there for your good.

00:34:32.000 Okay, 30 seconds or less why American Christians get, pastors get Romans 13 wrong.

00:34:37.000 Leaders in authority.

00:34:39.000 Okay, in America, who is in authority in America?

00:34:43.000 The people are.

00:34:46.000 Oh, so who submits to who?

00:34:48.000 The mayors submit to the people.

00:34:50.000 The state reps submit to the people.

00:34:51.000 We don't submit to the mayors.

00:34:55.000 100%.

00:34:56.000 The most misquoted verse in the last two years because when that was written, there were kings and monarchs.

00:35:01.000 Exactly.

00:35:02.000 Well, what Judeo-Christian ethic brought into, which you alluded to earlier, is liberty and freedom.

00:35:07.000 And that's not even reading into the text.

00:35:08.000 That's not exegetical.

00:35:10.000 Yes, it's looking.

00:35:11.000 And so all of a sudden, people say, well, you have to submit to your leaders.

00:35:15.000 Yeah, I agree.

00:35:16.000 Our state rep should submit to the will of the people.

00:35:19.000 But you know, that was the most quoted verse in Nazi Germany for inaction.

00:35:24.000 So how about this?

00:35:25.000 Civil disobedience.

00:35:26.000 I got in a debate with a pastor during COVID.

00:35:28.000 They said, Charlie, Romans 13, nowhere in the scriptures does it say that we should disobey authorities.

00:35:33.000 Well, first of all, in Acts, it says we shall obey God, not man.

00:35:36.000 But let's go to the first act of civil disobedience in the Bible.

00:35:39.000 Anybody?

00:35:40.000 The midwives, Egypt. 0.97

00:35:40.000 Anybody? 0.97

00:35:42.000 Pharaoh says, kill the firstborn kid. 0.99

00:35:44.000 And the midwives said, no. 0.97

00:35:46.000 Now, we don't know if they're Egyptian or Hebrew midwives.

00:35:49.000 It's not clear.

00:35:50.000 And what does it say clearly in Exodus 1?

00:35:53.000 Their actions were pleasing to the Lord.

00:35:57.000 God likes when you defy tyranny for righteousness.

00:36:03.000 How about Daniel?

00:36:05.000 We tell our kids all the time, Daniel was in the lion's den.

00:36:08.000 How did he get there?

00:36:09.000 How did Daniel get in the lion's den?

00:36:11.000 We like forget that part of the story.

00:36:13.000 King Nebuchadnezzar says, you can't worship, you can't pray.

00:36:17.000 And Daniel says, not only am I going to worship, but pray, I'm going to open up the window to the city for all to see, defy your edict and your order, trust in God, because you will not tell me I cannot worship my God.

00:36:28.000 Opens up the window and does that and goes into Lion's Den.

00:36:30.000 Where is that energy of the American church now?

00:36:33.000 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

00:36:34.000 Amen?

00:36:35.000 They wouldn't bow.

00:36:37.000 Yeah, Daniel really is a blueprint, right, for how we are to live in the series even you taught on exile, how to living in exile.

00:36:47.000 So, you know, from a young person, I'm 60, I'm an old person asking a young person questions.

00:36:54.000 What are some of the young people longing for and hungry for?

00:36:57.000 Yeah, and I think you kind of touched on it a little bit.

00:37:00.000 We, as humans, we have a human condition of progressing.

00:37:03.000 We step into childhood, we step past childhood into the adult phase of our life.

00:37:08.000 We go from a son to a husband or a daughter to a wife.

00:37:12.000 It's marked by progressing.

00:37:14.000 Then when we get a little bit older, we're taught to think progressively, that the ways that our parents have taught us are not the best, and that we need to step into the better to be able to progress further.

00:37:24.000 And I think that our cultural moment is marked by the highest virtue is tolerance.

00:37:30.000 So so many young people are tolerating so many of these crazy things that you would say are unspeakable, but to the young person, they're like, that's just on Disney.

00:37:39.000 That's just the norm.

00:37:40.000 So how would you encourage somebody who might be a Christian or stepping into the faith?

00:37:45.000 How would you encourage them to say, you know, to not just step aside and to tolerate, but to become active?

00:37:51.000 First of all, what you said is incredibly deep and insightful.

00:37:54.000 And I don't have time to build it out because I know we're running out of time here.

00:37:57.000 But there is this built-in modern bias.

00:38:00.000 And you hear it in the news.

00:38:01.000 You hear it in the literature.

00:38:02.000 You read it in literature.

00:38:03.000 And I'll do this super quick.

00:38:04.000 It's that just because we now have air conditioning, airplanes, and Twitter, that we are more advanced than people 400 years ago.

00:38:13.000 This is the idea of knowledge versus wisdom.

00:38:16.000 Wisdom is the knowledge of things that never change.

00:38:19.000 Knowledge is a bunch of facts.

00:38:22.000 If, if you have knowledge, you know, what is wisdom?

00:38:26.000 In another way, the understanding of good versus evil, how human beings operate.

00:38:30.000 This is why the Constitution was not written for the times.

00:38:32.000 It was written to stand the test of time.

00:38:34.000 Human beings do not change regardless of how much technology you put in their hands.

00:38:38.000 We're just as broken and evil and backwards. 0.98

00:38:40.000 And yet young people are taught to worship at the altar of modernity. 0.63

00:38:44.000 They say, oh, well, you know, back 300 years ago, we had slaves.

00:38:47.000 We have more slaves today in America than then.

00:38:49.000 Just go to the southern border.

00:38:50.000 But we don't care about it because we're not supposed to care about slavery on the southern border because, you know, the regime benefits from it or whatever.

00:38:57.000 And so tolerance, very insightful point.

00:39:01.000 I think it's one of the fake pagan gods of America, which is tolerance.

00:39:04.000 That's good.

00:39:05.000 Nowhere in the scriptures does it say for you to be tolerant, including Christ our Lord.

00:39:09.000 In John 8, there's this one of the most quoted stories ever, which is, but they forget the last line.

00:39:16.000 The last line is the kicker.

00:39:18.000 The last line is the crescendo, where Jesus, you know, a woman accused of adultery.

00:39:22.000 And Jesus says, of course, the first among you throw the first stone.

00:39:25.000 How does he end the dialogue?

00:39:28.000 Sin no more.

00:39:29.000 That is not tolerance.

00:39:32.000 He says, look, I didn't punish you to death, but you better stop it.

00:39:35.000 Amen.

00:39:36.000 You better get out of your sinful ways.

00:39:39.000 You better find a better way of life.

00:39:42.000 Could you imagine saying, sin no more right now? 0.95

00:39:46.000 Sin no more to somebody in the homosexual lifestyle.

00:39:50.000 Could you say that? 0.93

00:39:51.000 Sin no more to somebody that's teaching the trans delusion. 0.99

00:39:54.000 They say, well, I just want to be tolerant.

00:39:55.000 Well, I want to be like Jesus.

00:39:57.000 Okay, go around and tell people and tell them to sin no more.

00:39:59.000 That's being like Christ.

00:40:01.000 By the way, it's nice guy Christianity.

00:40:03.000 You know, nice does not appear in the Bible at all?

00:40:05.000 Not once? 0.95

00:40:06.000 And do you know that nice means dumb and ignorant in the original Latin? 0.96

00:40:16.000 We are called to be truthful and loving, long-suffering, compassionate. 0.95

00:40:20.000 All these things are correct.

00:40:22.000 But never once in the scriptures, when there is an act of evil, are we called or commanded to sit it out, to be a spectator.

00:40:31.000 If you had to summarize one of the moral teachings of our Lord in 66 books, one, when the 66 books, really one story, there's several moral teachings.

00:40:39.000 It's that the Christian, the believer, does not sit idly by when the enemy is marching.

00:40:46.000 You're involved in a spiritual war, and it's up for us Christians to stand against those principalities of darkness.

00:40:59.000 Thank you, Charlie.

00:41:00.000 Thank you so much.

00:41:03.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:41:04.000 Everybody, email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:41:07.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:41:10.000 God bless.

00:41:13.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - December 03, 2023

Making the Bible the Bedrock — LIVE From Trinity Church

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