00:00:05.000As always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:08.000Text this episode to your friends and get involved with Turning Point USA and come to our young women's leadership summit at tpusa.com slash YWLS.
00:00:39.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:48.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:16.000And I asked the question, I mean, there might be a larger pastor summit than this, but this many pastors in one room from so many different denominations, and you're still all playing so nicely together, that's pretty amazing.
00:01:28.000So I agree with Rob with what was said earlier.
00:01:33.000There's a lot of denominational diversity, and I think that's beautiful and wonderful.
00:01:38.000We believe Jesus is the center of it all.
00:01:41.000We believe in the inerrancy of scripture, and we want to spread Jesus to as many people as possible.
00:01:47.000It's the most important thing that we're going to talk about these next couple of days.
00:01:51.000The second most important thing is to make sure we can do that first thing.
00:01:54.000To make sure that the church is never labeled non-essential again.
00:01:57.000To make sure that strip clubs and marijuana dispensaries and liquor stores don't remain open when the church is closed.
00:02:05.000I want to thank you for taking the most valuable thing, time, to be here.
00:02:09.000I hope that these two days we have planned blesses you.
00:02:12.000It's going to be a lot of programming, a lot of speakers.
00:04:17.000And, you know, there's some of you in this room who deserve a tremendous amount of credit.
00:04:22.000And Pastor Rob McCoy and Jack Hibbs and so many people.
00:04:26.000And I want to make sure that you know that we notice you, but you were in the minority, and you know you're in the minority.
00:04:31.000The vast majority of churches coward in fear to a tyrannical agenda from state, local, and federal governments based on a lie to keep us masked, to keep our kids at home, socially isolated.
00:04:43.000We saw depression rates go up, suicide rates go up, alcoholism, drug addiction, Easter and Pentecost taken from us.
00:04:49.000As it says in the scriptures, do not forsake the gathering of believers.
00:04:55.000And I was confused because I thought the church believed certain things widely.
00:04:59.000Of course, some of you did the right thing and you remained open and you fought the local and county governments.
00:05:03.000And I was starting to receive emails from people that people said, Well, Charlie, my pastor said Romans 13, and we're not allowed to open because we have to submit to the local governor.
00:05:17.000And when you study this stuff for many couple years in a decade, and you fight these people on campuses, you start to see patterns of language and behavior.
00:05:26.000And he said, no, this is not about public health.
00:05:32.000This is about isolating people to make them unfamiliar with one another to try to make the Pulitzer, the Leviathan, the fourth branch of government, more powerful, of course, in an election year.
00:05:43.000And for saying those things, you get labeled all sorts of different names and awful stuff.
00:05:49.000Started to travel to some of your churches and learned that there was a remnant, that there were pastors that were fighting back.
00:05:57.000And it started to spread, and people started to open.
00:06:00.000But then, then I realized, okay, we have a serious problem, okay?
00:06:05.000Because it was bad enough that it was lockdowns, that people would just, they'd be giving these sermons to empty congregations on live streams.
00:06:13.000And I would be told, hey, Charlie, live streams exactly the same thing as having people in church.
00:06:17.000And our response would always be, you know, giving a sermon on a YouTube channel is like watching a fireplace on YouTube.
00:06:24.000You get all the effects, but there's no warmth.
00:06:28.000So speaking to an empty congregation, I had to hear pastors that because they saw a five-minute Facebook video or Instagram video, they became subject matter experts on race in America.
00:06:43.000I had to all of a sudden see a video after video of hearing that America is systemically racist and BLM is the most important organization ever.
00:06:51.000And while there's looting and arson and we see all of the things that tie us together start to fall apart, I start to see pastors that have told us not to be political for years become extraordinarily political on every issue that they have no idea what they're talking about.
00:07:08.000These are the same people that get mad at us because we talk about life.
00:07:40.000And so, look, doing it for at that point, nine years, going to campuses, debating professors, reading the literature, understanding who Herbert Marcuse is, and Jacques Derrida, Michelle Foucault, and Antonio Gramscian Cultural Marxism and reading intro to critical race theory.
00:07:55.000I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, American church broadly.
00:07:58.000You have no idea what you are introducing into your seminaries, into your pews, into your.
00:08:05.000You are about to bring in a Luciferian, unclean spirit under the guise of diversity.
00:08:11.000And that's where I said, okay, the Rubicon is crossed.
00:08:14.000It's one thing you guys are cowering in fear.
00:08:16.000It's another thing that you guys are now making me the enemy because I'm a white Christian male who believes that we shouldn't judge people based on the color of their skin.
00:08:26.000I said, no, no, the Rubicon is crossed.
00:08:28.000So then I started to travel the country, see that there's pastors speaking out against this.
00:08:31.000And, you know, we saw what happened in that summer of 2020.
00:08:35.000And we saw, you know, Black Lives Matter Global Network come out and they say that we want to destroy the Western prescribed nuclear family.
00:10:24.000But do you know that 95% of the American church was silent and did not even say a prayer of thanks or gratitude after the reversal of Roe versus Wade?
00:10:35.000You know, I had someone come up to me and they said, Charlie, when is God going to do a move of intervention in our nation?
00:10:41.000I said, well, Roe versus Wade is pretty miraculous, right?
00:10:55.000And then in a very uncharacteristic way, you know, God just works in amazing ways.
00:11:00.000Someone that we were supposed to hate, who lived the very color for life, came down to golden escalator, put three people on the Supreme Court, and Roe versus Wade gets repealed.
00:11:44.000I'm seeing more and more pastors be interested.
00:11:45.000There are people here that you are more than welcome that have written some very critical things about us, about me, questioning my faith and our walk.
00:14:02.000You're like the fourth reporter to call us.
00:14:03.000I mean, the Washington Post, New York Times, Reuters, AP, we've dealt with this for a decade because, you know, some Christian churches, they're like, oh my goodness, what happens here?
00:14:10.000I think that some of the last decade of what we've been through, a turning point, has been getting us ready to really not care that the media is going to try to attack the work that we're doing here, to be perfectly honest.
00:14:19.000It's just indifference really is the solution there.
00:14:22.000And look, I want to reiterate something here, which is, I think, our short-term mission that I think we can all agree on.
00:16:35.000If we don't get this right, though, and if we continue theological disputes and don't focus on liberty, then we're going to be having those theological disputes from prison.
00:16:47.000The totalitarianism they're trying to implement in America, they must go through the true church first.
00:16:55.000And so these next couple days is pretty amazing.
00:17:25.000No, you're going to be equipped to spot this seed of darkness, how to teach your congregation about it, how to have a positive vision for what it means to be a biblical citizen and the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world.
00:17:40.000Have to have an optimistic message of how to educate your congregation about what's happening in the news cycle every single day.
00:17:48.000Because if you're not educating your congregation about what's happening in the news, then they're going to go somewhere else.
00:18:46.000That you go back to your communities and you go back to your churches and you just raise the level of expectation for yourself and for your engagement and for your messages and for the people around you.
00:19:02.000It's a tremendous blessing and honor and privilege.
00:19:04.000And thank you for those of you that have kept this event in prayer.
00:19:06.000Thank you for those of you that have supported it financially and have allowed this to happen.
00:19:11.000And look, somebody asked me the other day, they said, Charlie, are you optimistic or pessimistic?
00:19:16.000I said, well, I'm ultimately optimistic because Jesus is on his throne, right?
00:19:19.000So I said, but it's about what we're going to do.
00:19:22.000And I want you to look at it as obedience to the Lord, obedience to the divine these next couple of days.
00:19:28.000And so I'm honored to be in this crucial time with you, fighting for the good, the true, and the beautiful.
00:19:35.000We've had an amazing lineup tonight, and we have some fun changes.
00:19:38.000We're going to have a panel discussion here with Pastor Rob McCoy and Sean Ellingson.
00:19:42.000And then, as a surprise, we have Michael Knowles, who many of you know, where we're going to talk about transgenderism in particular and lean into that.
00:19:48.000And then we have Dr. Hutz Herzberg, who runs Turning Point Academy.
00:19:52.000Then, if you're willing to sit through it, we have Eric Metaxas, but I totally understand.
00:19:57.000If you heard it all before, and I'm kidding, Eric is lovely and wonderful.
00:20:05.000This has grown beyond my wildest imagination.
00:20:07.000I said at the very beginning when we launched Jeep USA Faith: if we're doing something somebody else is doing, if we're doing duplicative work, we're happy to step aside.
00:20:15.000And it turns out that there's a lot more demand, hunger, and appetite for this than we ever could have imagined.
00:20:21.000God bless you guys, and we'll continue on with.