The Charlie Kirk Show - Pastor John MacArthur Stared Down Los Angeles and Won

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00:00:08.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:09.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:00:12.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:15.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:18.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:19.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:20.000 His 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.

00:00:29.000 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.

00:00:37.000 That's why we are here.

00:00:41.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:42.000 Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:45.000 I am so honored to be joined by Pastor John MacArthur.

00:00:50.000 Pastor MacArthur has been a hero of mine for a couple years.

00:00:55.000 I actually heard him originally on Moody Radio in Chicago.

00:01:00.000 They were rebroadcasting one of his incredible sermons, and he has made news recently where he has reopened his church in defiance to Governor Newsom's orders.

00:01:11.000 And he is someone that I look to for such inspiration for theological and spiritual clarity.

00:01:17.000 So, Pastor MacArthur, thank you so much for joining the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:20.000 No, thank you so much for those kind words, Charlie.

00:01:23.000 I'm grateful to be with you.

00:01:26.000 Well, thank you.

00:01:27.000 So, can you give us a little bit of an update and a backdrop of what your church has been going through and some of the decisions that you have made recently to reopen your church?

00:01:39.000 Well, I'm going to give you an exclusive that just happened.

00:01:42.000 Today, we had a court hearing, and we had basically posted an injunction against the county of Los Angeles and the health department to prevent them from shutting down our church altogether this coming Sunday.

00:01:58.000 They filed against us to go ahead and ask the court to shut us down, and the judge ruled today in our favor.

00:02:06.000 So, it was an incredible win for the church.

00:02:10.000 And the judge said, outside, no restrictions at all.

00:02:15.000 With children, no restrictions at all.

00:02:17.000 They can go back to Sunday school and classes.

00:02:20.000 The only thing we ask is that when you go into the worship center, you observe social distancing and masks.

00:02:27.000 And, you know, that's okay because that doesn't invade the freedom that we have to worship in our church.

00:02:34.000 If we have to look silly for three weeks, he said for the next three weeks and conform to that, that's good.

00:02:41.000 He ruled in our behalf and basically against the county trying to shut us down.

00:02:47.000 And I understand that he wanted to make sure that he protected our First Amendment rights, but he didn't want to play doctor because the conventional wisdom is, hey, maybe social distancing and masks helped.

00:02:58.000 So do that for a few weeks.

00:02:59.000 And on September 4th, we'll have a full and final hearing.

00:03:03.000 But we were very, very grateful for that.

00:03:06.000 So we can get out of the parking lot and go back into church.

00:03:09.000 And if you want to stay out, we have outside seating as well.

00:03:12.000 You can stay outside without a mask or any social distancing.

00:03:15.000 Well, Pastor, so this was a result of you suing the county.

00:03:20.000 Is that correct?

00:03:21.000 That is correct.

00:03:23.000 So some Christians that I have spoken to, they have some confusion around Romans 13.

00:03:30.000 You wrote a beautiful letter getting some clarity theologically on how and when a Christian should challenge their government.

00:03:38.000 I think this is one of the most misapplied pieces of scripture, especially during this time.

00:03:44.000 Can you give some clarity on that on why you chose to take this action to sue the county government and reopen your church?

00:03:52.000 Because essentially, Charlie, the government shut us down.

00:03:58.000 They said, Well, you can meet outside, but here are the rules.

00:04:01.000 There were at least 50 of them.

00:04:03.000 For example, one rule was that you have to maintain a six-foot perimeter around every person.

00:04:08.000 And if you get inside that perimeter for more than 15 minutes, everybody inside that perimeter is quarantined for two weeks.

00:04:15.000 Now, we have 7,000 people here last week.

00:04:18.000 That was just absolutely absurd.

00:04:20.000 Then they said parking in every other parking space, one person in a restroom.

00:04:24.000 It just went on and on and on.

00:04:26.000 It was impossible.

00:04:27.000 So, for the last number of weeks, we just met anyway.

00:04:31.000 We were basically in defiance of the health bureau's orders.

00:04:35.000 We didn't know what else to do.

00:04:37.000 We started out when the pandemic was launched, and we were told millions are going to die.

00:04:43.000 And so, we thought, wow, we don't want to be responsible for somebody's death.

00:04:46.000 So, I preached live stream in an empty auditorium for a few weeks.

00:04:51.000 And then, when the narrative didn't seem to hold water anymore, our people started coming back.

00:04:56.000 They began to realize that there weren't dead bodies in the streets.

00:04:59.000 And it became pretty clear that the death rate in California from COVID is 0.02, and the average age of the person dying is 78.

00:05:08.000 And the average age of a person who dies without COVID is 78.

00:05:12.000 They began to put the two together and say, This doesn't make any sense.

00:05:15.000 So, they started coming back to church.

00:05:17.000 So, there were hundreds, and then there were a few thousand, and then there were 6,000, there were 7,000.

00:05:22.000 We weren't telling them to come, but the city was saying they can't come unless they make a reservation, turn in their name and address, get their temperature coming in, stop them at the gates, and then all these impossible rules.

00:05:37.000 So, it was so onerous.

00:05:39.000 And of course, our great confession is: Jesus is Lord, he's the head of the church, not Governor Newsom, not Mayor Garcetti, and not the Health Bureau.

00:05:48.000 We have protections by the First Amendment.

00:05:50.000 We all know that the government doesn't give us the right to worship.

00:05:53.000 The government exists by the Constitution to protect a God-given right to worship.

00:05:58.000 And so, our people just said worship matters to us.

00:06:01.000 They calculated that there was a very negligible risk from COVID, but there was a huge risk in not gathering together as the people of God.

00:06:11.000 And I've said this, Charlie: I'm not nearly so concerned about the flu as I am eternal punishment.

00:06:20.000 Everybody's going to die.

00:06:21.000 I'm much more aware of the fact that everyone dies, and after that, the judgment, and the only escape from judgment is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

00:06:31.000 So, we want to stay open, preach the gospel, and be a shining light in the world.

00:06:36.000 And our people just kept coming back and coming back.

00:06:38.000 And then the order came, stop.

00:06:41.000 And we have in this system of government an opportunity to appeal that in an injunction against the county.

00:06:48.000 And the judge upheld that and said, You can meet.

00:06:52.000 Not only can you meet, there are no restrictions outdoors.

00:06:55.000 And if you go indoors just for the next three weeks, the judge mandated that we wear masks and social distance in families, they can all sit together.

00:07:05.000 And I thought, you know, that's reasonable.

00:07:08.000 That's not an infringement on our right to worship.

00:07:12.000 And we were so thrilled with the judgment itself.

00:07:15.000 And it leads us down the right path to what's to come when the COVID slows down, because that's a court declaration that we have the right to meet, and that can't be impinged on by any government agency.

00:07:27.000 Well, praise God, because the Supreme Court, I think, ruled incorrectly in the Las Vegas decision, where they said interestingly enough, Charlie, the judge today said he was disappointed in the ruling of the Supreme Court, and he even named the one justice that we thought would vote for the church and voted against it.

00:07:53.000 Yeah, Neil Gorsuch in his dissenting opinion had a repudiation of the majority opinion, where he basically said, How could Caesar's palace have more rights to gathering than the Calvary Chapel in Las Vegas, where the First Amendment clearly states there is the free exercise of religion and the establishment clause, and those are two different things, but there is no constitutional right to gaming at all.

00:08:21.000 And it was just an incredibly puzzling decision.

00:08:24.000 So, Pastor, I guess the question that I struggle to answer, though, is just going verse by verse and word by word in Romans 13.

00:08:34.000 Some people think that is a reason for Christians never to challenge their government.

00:08:39.000 I do not hold that view.

00:08:41.000 When is it correct for Christians to pause and say this is infringing on our God-given rights and I will not submit?

00:08:50.000 Because that is the word that is thrown around a lot sometimes in Christian circles as to why we shouldn't question authority.

00:08:59.000 Yeah, and I think the answer is pretty simple.

00:09:01.000 Romans 13 basically says that government, the powers that be, are ordained by God, and they have two purposes: to protect those that are good and to be a terror to those who are evil.

00:09:14.000 So that's a very clear-cut moral definition.

00:09:18.000 They are to protect those who do good works, and there will be a terror to those that do evil.

00:09:25.000 And he gives them a weapon.

00:09:26.000 God literally says they have the sword and they don't carry it around for nothing.

00:09:30.000 And the sword was not something you use to tap people on the back.

00:09:34.000 It was basically capital punishment.

00:09:37.000 And even Jesus said to Peter, put your sword away.

00:09:40.000 If you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

00:09:42.000 So our Lord actually affirmed capital punishment as it was basically established in Genesis chapter 9.

00:09:48.000 So government is one of those critical entities that carries a huge threat and is a terror to those that do evil.

00:09:57.000 Here's the problem: when that government flips that over and starts punishing people who do good and abetting and aiding people who do evil, it forfeits its right to that authority.

00:10:14.000 I can give you an illustration of that.

00:10:16.000 We say a father biblically has authority in the family.

00:10:16.000 It's like a father.

00:10:20.000 He has some authority and leadership lovingly over his wife and over his children.

00:10:25.000 As long as he exercises that authority for their good and their well-being and their benefit, then we honor him as a father. 0.99

00:10:32.000 If he says to his wife, I want you to become a prostitute. 0.99

00:10:36.000 If he says to his daughters, I want you to go sell yourselves. 1.00

00:10:40.000 If he says to his son, I think you have feminine characteristics. 1.00

00:10:44.000 I think I want to take you to the doctor and have you surgically altered so you can be a woman. 1.00

00:10:50.000 You would immediately say, they don't have to obey that. 1.00

00:10:53.000 Of course, they don't have to obey that.

00:10:54.000 The father is a protector and a savior.

00:10:56.000 The father is one who has only good intentions for his children.

00:11:00.000 It's that same perspective that is in government.

00:11:04.000 And from our standpoint, we see that entity as the police.

00:11:10.000 They are the ones that have the sword.

00:11:13.000 They are the ones that protect those who do good.

00:11:16.000 And they are the ones that punish those who do evil.

00:11:19.000 And if I can expand that for just a minute, Charlie, there's a way to understand that that's a little bit broader.

00:11:25.000 So we're a bunch of colliding sinners in the world.

00:11:28.000 All of us are fallen.

00:11:30.000 How does society flourish?

00:11:32.000 How do we survive in this world?

00:11:33.000 Something's got to be around to mitigate sin.

00:11:37.000 And God has established four barriers to the sinfulness of man so that he doesn't completely destroy himself.

00:11:44.000 Barrier number one is the law of God written in the heart, and the weapon is the conscience.

00:11:49.000 So, everybody knows innately what is right or wrong.

00:11:52.000 That's what violation of that produces guilt and anxiety and even panic attacks.

00:11:59.000 So, the weapon of the conscience strikes the one who violates the law in the heart.

00:12:04.000 That's the first restraint.

00:12:06.000 In our society, we've destroyed the law of God in the heart.

00:12:09.000 People don't know what's good, what's bad.

00:12:11.000 Everything's turned upside down, inside out.

00:12:14.000 And if you have a guilty conscience, you ought to send it away because you shouldn't feel any shame no matter what you do.

00:12:20.000 So, that whole restraint has been completely obliterated in this society that looks like the Jerry Springer show.

00:12:28.000 The next restraint is family.

00:12:31.000 And what do you have in family?

00:12:32.000 You have parents passing righteousness and truth from one generation to the next.

00:12:38.000 And what weapon do they carry?

00:12:39.000 The Bible says they have a rod.

00:12:41.000 What is a rod?

00:12:42.000 It's a way to discipline children so they realize there are consequences to bad behavior.

00:12:48.000 And those consequences need to be somewhat painful so children learn not to do that.

00:12:54.000 The family is the next barrier.

00:12:56.000 That is destroyed. 1.00

00:12:57.000 This culture has obliterated the family in every sense.

00:13:01.000 The next restraint is the police.

00:13:04.000 The weapon is the sword, the threat of punishment.

00:13:08.000 And they try to keep civil order.

00:13:11.000 What are we seeing today?

00:13:13.000 Defund the police.

00:13:14.000 I mean, we're so far down the line that destroyed the law of God and conscience and the family.

00:13:19.000 The next to go is the police.

00:13:22.000 Get rid of them.

00:13:23.000 And oh, by the way, like Governor Newsom, open up the prison doors and let several thousand prisoners loose, 18,000 in the culture. 0.87

00:13:33.000 Okay, that leaves one final restraint, and that's the church.

00:13:37.000 And the church is salt and light in the world.

00:13:39.000 And the church has the ultimate weapon that not doesn't punish but transforms, and that's the word of God.

00:13:45.000 So if you've wiped out the law of God in the heart and the conscience and you've wiped out the family and you're taking down the police, guess who's next?

00:13:53.000 The church.

00:13:54.000 So we're not surprised at this, but we're grateful that we have constitutional provision for us to say, whoa, you've gone too far.

00:14:03.000 The police love Grace Church.

00:14:05.000 I'll tell you that all last week we had them here for training.

00:14:08.000 I talked to the chief of the police in LA.

00:14:11.000 He said this to me: There's no scenario that I can imagine in which the police would ever come against Grace Community Church.

00:14:19.000 We are concerned with the law, not with health ordinances.

00:14:24.000 They're our friends.

00:14:25.000 We've been their friends for years.

00:14:27.000 I just received another plaque from the LAPD for the service we render to them and have for many years.

00:14:33.000 So they feel like they're under attack by the politicians who are supposed to be the fathers of the society, but they're murderous.

00:14:43.000 You know, they're killing babies at 364 a day in California in the womb, which is the most obvious case of premeditated murder there is.

00:14:54.000 And they're turning over every righteous standard in this society that they can.

00:14:59.000 So they have forfeited the right to call themselves a government that protects the good and is a terror to the evil.

00:15:07.000 They've flipped that.

00:15:09.000 The police, for us, are the last agency of that.

00:15:12.000 We're standing with them as they're being attacked and with the church's right to continue to meet to be salt and light in the world.

00:15:21.000 That is so beautifully said, and the best articulation of Romans 13 that I have heard.

00:15:27.000 So thank you for that.

00:15:28.000 And I think it's so courageous what you did and are doing.

00:15:32.000 And you are a leader in the Christian world.

00:15:37.000 And people have drawn inspiration by your courage during this time.

00:15:41.000 And there are other pastors as well, Pastor Rob McCoy and Pastor Jack Hibbs, that are in similar types of battles right now and definitely exception to what's happening.

00:15:54.000 So I want to dive into young people in our culture and kind of the crisis that's happening with this next generation.

00:16:02.000 A study came out yesterday, according to the Center for Disease Control, a multi-million dollar study that they commissioned.

00:16:08.000 25%, one out of four of young people under the age of 30, seriously contemplated suicide during the lockdown.

00:16:16.000 This is a generation that has whatever they need at a moment's notice, whether it be a meal, a movie.

00:16:22.000 However, it is the most miserable, directionless generation that is looking for truth, that has been taught a secular postmodernist narrative that they can indulge themselves up to some level of, as you put it, perfectly guiltless joy, which we know, of course, really any sort of joy can only come in Jesus Christ.

00:16:43.000 Can you talk about the crisis that's happening with young people right now and kind of how you have looked at this and your approach to it?

00:16:50.000 I'd probably shock you a little bit, but I'd like to quote Maya Angelou.

00:16:54.000 She said, a young cynic is the most hopeless of all people because they go from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

00:17:05.000 Wow.

00:17:06.000 That's a formula for nihilism.

00:17:08.000 That's a formula for desperation.

00:17:09.000 That's a formula for emptiness.

00:17:11.000 First, you don't necessarily go immediately from knowing nothing to believing nothing to nihilism.

00:17:17.000 You usually go to hedonism before there.

00:17:20.000 You just throw yourself randomly into every possible lustful fulfillment to see if you can satisfy your soul.

00:17:29.000 And what that does is drive you deeper into despair because you have no meaningful relationships.

00:17:34.000 And while your conscience has been attacked, it's still there and it produces guilt and guilt produces sadness and emptiness.

00:17:42.000 So, yeah, the real problem is you have a generation of kids who start out knowing nothing and end up believing nothing.

00:17:51.000 That is a formula for absolute nihilistic despair.

00:17:55.000 And it becomes so severe that they contemplate ending their lives.

00:17:59.000 There's no hope and there's no future because there's no truth.

00:18:05.000 If I could bring anything to this age of millennials, and I think you're a tremendous illustration of what is happening in this country, and I'll tell you where the divide comes.

00:18:15.000 Conservative millennials are seeking truth.

00:18:19.000 They're seeking truth.

00:18:21.000 You're there to provide that truth for them.

00:18:24.000 Liberal millennials are seeking power and revolution.

00:18:29.000 They're trying to find something to live for because they're totally empty.

00:18:35.000 They have bought every lie that everything has to be torn down.

00:18:40.000 You and the conservatives believe they want to pour their lives into building up, into making things better.

00:18:48.000 But if you have nothing to live for, you're the most dangerous person in the world because you're risking nothing.

00:18:54.000 You're risking nothing.

00:18:56.000 And the answer to all of this is not some different philosophy.

00:19:00.000 You already said it.

00:19:01.000 It's the Lord Jesus Christ.

00:19:03.000 He becomes the raison d'être.

00:19:05.000 He becomes the reason we live and move and look forward to the future.

00:19:10.000 Look, I'm a lot older than you, obviously.

00:19:13.000 And my life is so full and so rich.

00:19:16.000 Every day of my life is an incredible adventure, full of joy, full of hope, because not only do I understand what I'm doing in this world and why I'm doing it, I understand where I'm going.

00:19:27.000 And once that eternal issue is settled, joy backs up into the temporal life as well.

00:19:32.000 It's about the truth.

00:19:33.000 And I just want to be a proclaimer of the truth.

00:19:37.000 That's what I live for.

00:19:40.000 And it is a generation right now that has been sold this idea through pop culture, through our school system, and the lack of religion that they can almost become their own God and that they are the most important thing ever to exist.

00:19:54.000 And this is why you see a generation that is very willing to destroy everything that came before them.

00:20:00.000 They believe, many of them, that the church is just an obstacle to their power grab and their revolution.

00:20:08.000 At a very fundamental level, these movements are made up of individuals.

00:20:12.000 We must remember this.

00:20:14.000 Group identity is very misleading.

00:20:17.000 These are individuals that all individually have bought into a very dark triad of bitterness, arrogance, and deceit.

00:20:24.000 And you combine those three things, of which Christ is the opposite of all three of those things.

00:20:30.000 Not bitter, arrogant, or deceitful, but instead rooted in peace, love, and joy.

00:20:36.000 Well, only that comes through Jesus Christ.

00:20:39.000 What I call the disintegrationists or the cultural arsonists, they do not believe even truth exists.

00:20:47.000 And so looking more broadly, you've dealt with young people throughout your church and ministry for quite some time.

00:20:54.000 There's a lot of young people listening to this program.

00:20:57.000 Hundreds of thousands of young people are going to hear what we have to talk about.

00:21:01.000 What is your analysis of either young Christians or what young people can do practically and pragmatically right now in this time of chaos and crisis?

00:21:12.000 First of all, you have to have something to anchor to.

00:21:15.000 You have to have a foundation of your life.

00:21:17.000 And that is the truth.

00:21:18.000 It has to be the truth.

00:21:19.000 You can't believe lies and survive.

00:21:22.000 And you can't believe deception and survive.

00:21:25.000 And the bigger your group of liars and deceived people, the more compounded your angst is.

00:21:31.000 And it would be one thing to just be all by yourself and feel like you didn't have a reason to live.

00:21:36.000 But if you join a group, then you're bearing all the burdens of all the rest of the people who have nothing to live for.

00:21:42.000 And all that ends up in is just sin and unfulfillment and dissatisfaction and sadness.

00:21:49.000 And you become a danger to everybody around you because you can't lose anything if you die.

00:21:54.000 In fact, that might be gain for you because you're out of your misery.

00:21:58.000 So I think you can't fix the human heart in any other way than by transforming it.

00:22:04.000 The natural man understands not the things of God. 0.54

00:22:07.000 They're foolishness to him.

00:22:10.000 We all sin. 0.92

00:22:11.000 There's not one righteous, no, not one.

00:22:13.000 We have no fear of God in our hearts, the Bible says.

00:22:17.000 The problem that we have is the problem of sin dominating our lives and not providing any remedy or any way out.

00:22:25.000 And you can't work your own way out by your own strength and your own power because the disease is too comprehensive.

00:22:32.000 You can't self-cure.

00:22:34.000 You got to turn to somebody who can transform you from the inside out.

00:22:40.000 And that's the promise of the Lord Jesus Christ, that through his death and resurrection and faith in him, you become a new creation.

00:22:48.000 Old things pass away and you become completely new.

00:22:52.000 What I love to see is a young person with all that anxiety, all that fear, all those endless ideas that were thrown at him in a university experience, none of which carries the weight of truth, none of which is convincing, and he becomes a cacophony of voices and his heart is empty.

00:23:10.000 I love to see that kind of person meet the Lord Jesus Christ, be totally transformed from the inside and be filled with joy and peace and a reason to live.

00:23:21.000 And I'm surrounded by them all the time.

00:23:24.000 Our church is just full of young people.

00:23:28.000 There's probably a thousand college students here every Sunday morning coming to hear the word of God.

00:23:33.000 And this is a dynamic part of our church life.

00:23:36.000 So I love to see that happen when the Lord Jesus gets a hold of a heart and transforms them and takes them out of darkness into his glorious light.

00:23:46.000 And young people right now, more than any other generation, need the word of God and need renewal in Jesus Christ.

00:23:55.000 And I think that it's come to a place, an apex point, where the kind of nihilism that you articulated is so widespread.

00:24:04.000 And you're right.

00:24:05.000 Typically, there is a bridge, and that's the hedonistic bridge.

00:24:09.000 And some of them, at a younger age than ever before, kind of played around in some form of hedonism in high school or in college.

00:24:16.000 And then they get into almost a Nietzsche-like belief in nihilism, that there is nothing and nothing I do actually matters.

00:24:24.000 And then the only thing they can find meaning in is the destruction of somebody else's meaning.

00:24:29.000 And this is what was always so concerning about me, concerning to me, because the church was always supposed to be the bulwark against societal nihilism.

00:24:39.000 And when you remove the ecclesia, the gathering of believers, and then six weeks later, your civilization gets lit on fire, there's probably a direct connection between not having widespread church services and people then all of a sudden turning their back on the entire society and God and on Jesus Christ.

00:25:01.000 Looking at things culturally right now and where your church is, I believe, what is your opinion on the state of Christianity in America?

00:25:12.000 I believe we are on the precipice of another great awakening and revival.

00:25:16.000 I have the greatest optimism that is about to happen.

00:25:19.000 What do you see the Lord doing right now?

00:25:22.000 I see the Lord building his church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

00:25:28.000 The Bible says Jesus wins.

00:25:30.000 We always triumph in Christ.

00:25:32.000 I will build my church, he says.

00:25:34.000 So I know the Lord is doing that.

00:25:35.000 And I'm always excited and always joyful, even in the midst of this darkness, to be a useful tool that he can use to do that.

00:25:43.000 At the same time, Charlie, in all honesty, I think in many cases, the church has been reduced to a rock and roll concert followed by a TED Talk.

00:25:52.000 And that's just telling sinful people what their heart desires as if that's the way to bring them to salvation.

00:25:59.000 By giving the unconverted sinner what the unconverted sinner wants is not how you bring him to salvation. 0.64

00:26:05.000 The way you bring him to salvation is to expose the corruption of his heart and show him something far better than what he wants in his natural condition. 0.88

00:26:14.000 And I don't think the church is just to be a sentimental experience where it's a feel-good about Jesus thing.

00:26:22.000 I think it's just the constant pouring out of the truth.

00:26:26.000 The power is in the truth.

00:26:28.000 Scripture says the word is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword.

00:26:35.000 And if you just turn the word of God loose, the word of God is like a lion.

00:26:39.000 You don't need to defend a lion.

00:26:40.000 Open the cage and let it out.

00:26:42.000 It'll be fine.

00:26:43.000 It'll do whatever it's going to do.

00:26:44.000 And the word of God has done that.

00:26:46.000 You know, I came to Grace Church 51 years ago, and people said, well, you know, what are you going to do?

00:26:51.000 And I said, I'm going to teach the Bible.

00:26:53.000 I can't improve on the Word of God.

00:26:55.000 The Word of God is powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword.

00:26:58.000 All scripture is inspired by God and profitable.

00:27:01.000 And so I'm just going to open the Bible.

00:27:03.000 51 years have been opening the Word of God, and I've watched it work in incredible ways.

00:27:10.000 And to get back to kind of the original statement you made about the Lord doing things around the world, I've spent 50 years in one spot, and I've watched in 50 years the development of the internet.

00:27:22.000 First it was tapes, then it was cassettes, then it was downloads in the internet.

00:27:26.000 And I've watched the truth of the gospel circle the entire world.

00:27:30.000 Every Sunday morning when I preach at Grace Church, it's translated into Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Russian.

00:27:37.000 I don't even know all the languages.

00:27:39.000 Circles the world.

00:27:40.000 This is an amazing thing to say to you, but every month from Grace to You Ministry, 2 million sermons are downloaded on the internet.

00:27:49.000 Wow.

00:27:49.000 All around the world.

00:27:51.000 Do I think the word of God is circling the globe?

00:27:53.000 What an incredible time to be alive.

00:27:56.000 So we can say the truth is circling the world.

00:27:59.000 I am concerned that somehow it's going right by the millennials because they're tuned into something else.

00:28:07.000 And we've got to get them to the point where they're desperate enough to find truth, where their hearts are empty enough to find truth to turn to the word of God and find the truth that totally and permanently satisfies the heart.

00:28:24.000 I completely agree.

00:28:25.000 And I visit college campuses more so than almost any other outspoken Christian conservative.

00:28:31.000 And I can tell you the one thing that is the barrier is that young people have been taught that there is no such thing as absolute truth.

00:28:41.000 This is a postmodernist belief that was really pushed in the 1960s by Michelle Foucault and by Jacques Derrida.

00:28:50.000 And they tell people you have your own truth.

00:28:53.000 And if we look at it biblically, a war on truth is a war on Christ because Christ was actually truth.

00:29:00.000 He was the embodiment of everything he said was everything that human beings needed to hear.

00:29:06.000 It was the alpha and the omega.

00:29:07.000 There was nothing else that was ever needed to be said before.

00:29:10.000 And so I think that is a very important, the most important point, because what ends up millennials, for whatever reason, I'm still theorizing how this all happened generationally.

00:29:23.000 They almost either feel as if they're, and there's plenty of wonderful millennials out there that love the Lord and are doing great things, but generally feel they're too good for it.

00:29:34.000 They don't want to engage with it.

00:29:36.000 And I think the Christian movement, the last 15 years, as you talked articulated it, that got more involved in Christian celebrity culture than in teaching strong doctrine actually has done more harm to play into that sort of thing.

00:29:52.000 So can you speak to that?

00:29:54.000 Because in the last couple of months, Pastor, I have been very disappointed by some pastors that have sizable followings that for the first time they have spoken out on very divisive left-wing cultural issues, and they would never speak out against pro-life issues.

00:30:13.000 And these happen to be usually the same people that are having TED Talks at a Christian rock concert around them.

00:30:19.000 How are we supposed to make sense of that?

00:30:22.000 Well, let me just back up to say this.

00:30:25.000 I can prove in a very short conversation that people believe in absolute truth.

00:30:30.000 I ask them a simple question: go to the top of a five-story building and jump and see if there's such a thing as absolute truth.

00:30:36.000 The law of gravity is absolute truth.

00:30:39.000 Bang your head on the pavement, and you're going to know that there exists absolute truth.

00:30:44.000 For from the temporal side of things, from the physical side of things, the entire universe is run by inviolable absolutes.

00:30:53.000 I mean, Elon Musk just fired his rocket up to the International Space Station and then did something incredible, brought it back down again.

00:31:02.000 And all of that is because there are absolutely fixed laws that can be managed and monitored and worked with to do incredible things.

00:31:12.000 So, why would we assume that the God who created the world with such inviolable physical laws didn't have any spiritual laws that were absolutes either?

00:31:22.000 The laws of God are as inviolable and absolute in the spiritual realm as they are in the physical realm.

00:31:29.000 God is not a split personality.

00:31:32.000 He is absolute.

00:31:34.000 And we see that in the physical world, and we have to see it in the spiritual world.

00:31:38.000 The Bible defines those absolute spiritual laws.

00:31:42.000 It also declares that we violate those laws before God, which is not only a mistake, it's an actual affront to the holiness of God.

00:31:51.000 And therefore, we're under judgment.

00:31:53.000 And we need to be called to the gracious God who will forgive us and save us from our sins, give us eternal life.

00:32:00.000 I don't hear that in churches that are typically talking to millennials.

00:32:05.000 I think they're afraid to offend somebody.

00:32:09.000 They're afraid somebody will feel bad.

00:32:11.000 Somebody asked me the other day, does it bother you when you offend people?

00:32:15.000 And I said, no, I exist to offend people.

00:32:17.000 That's my job.

00:32:19.000 If I can't offend you, I can't expose your sin and make you realize your condition.

00:32:24.000 I can't bring you to the truth.

00:32:27.000 And if I were a medical doctor, the first thing I'd want to do to help a patient would be to diagnose what's wrong so I can bring to that patient what's right.

00:32:36.000 So no, I'm fortunately in the business of finding out what's wrong, exposing that, and then delivering the wonderful gospel of Jesus Christ that heals the soul.

00:32:49.000 That is beautifully well said.

00:32:51.000 In closing, Pastor, thank you for being so generous with our time.

00:32:56.000 Can you give a call to action, please?

00:32:58.000 Because there's a lot of searchers and seekers to this podcast.

00:33:02.000 I am an outspoken Christian.

00:33:04.000 We have one or two podcasts a week about the gospel, highlighting different pastors.

00:33:08.000 You talked about this a little bit previously, but I want people listening right now to be challenged, to do something dramatic, to accept Jesus into their life, or to make a choice right now.

00:33:21.000 Because we are, this program is typically a political news of the day and also philosophical and cultural.

00:33:28.000 But I think there's going to be someone listening right now that needs to hear this.

00:33:32.000 Can you just give a call to action to our listeners?

00:33:35.000 Yeah, I think, first of all, you need to go to the Bible.

00:33:38.000 It is the Word of God.

00:33:40.000 And the church, if you're a pastor or church leader, is to be the pillar and ground of the truth.

00:33:45.000 Every time somebody walks in the door of your church, they ought to hear the truth of God: the truth about God, the truth about man, the truth about sin, the truth about salvation.

00:33:53.000 The word of God must be proclaimed.

00:33:57.000 And I would say to this generation of young millennials: open your Bible, find a Bible, get one from your grandma if you can't find one nearby, and go to the Gospel of John, the Gospel of John, and read the Gospel of John.

00:34:11.000 Just read it and let it tell you who Jesus Christ is.

00:34:16.000 Because at the end of the Gospel of John, it says, These things are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that believing you might have life in his name.

00:34:27.000 He's offering you forgiveness of sin, life abundant, and life eternal.

00:34:33.000 That story of Jesus that leads you to that point of salvation is the Gospel of John.

00:34:40.000 21 chapters, won't take you a long time to read it.

00:34:43.000 Keep reading it until you understand who he is and then invite him into your life.

00:34:47.000 I totally agree.

00:34:48.000 I tell young people very similar things.

00:34:51.000 I say, read the book of John and do what Proverbs tells you, and you're going to have a more meaningful life.

00:34:57.000 Those are my two favorite books to recommend to young seekers and young people.

00:35:02.000 Pastor, we have your back.

00:35:03.000 Thank you for fighting and for showing us a path that we can challenge, as you put, tyrannical edicts and to protect the freedom of expression and the freedom of dialogue and worship that we have in this country.

00:35:21.000 And I treasure you as Someone who is in Christ together, but also someone who is leading so many people to truth and to eternal life.

00:35:31.000 So, thank you.

00:35:32.000 And any thoughts or anything to be aware of of ways they can support you?

00:35:39.000 Look, you can just pray for me and pray what the Apostle Paul said: pray that the word will have free course.

00:35:46.000 Just, I'm so glad at this point in my life to be able to be preaching his word and it accomplishes his purpose.

00:35:52.000 I'm just thrilled to be alive in a time when the word can circle the globe and do the work of God.

00:35:59.000 Thank you, Charlie, for what you do.

00:36:00.000 I hope to meet you in person someday and say thank you for all your efforts.

00:36:05.000 Thank you, Pastor.

00:36:06.000 God bless you, and we truly appreciate it.

00:36:09.000 Thanks.

00:36:11.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:36:13.000 Please email me your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:36:17.000 Type in Charlie Kirk Show to your podcast provider.

00:36:20.000 Make sure you subscribe, give us those five-star reviews, screenshot yourself doing that, and email it to us at freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:36:28.000 Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.

00:36:31.000 Thank you guys so much for listening.

00:36:32.000 We got some big episodes coming up this week.

00:36:35.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:36:36.000 God bless.

The Charlie Kirk Show - August 15, 2020

Pastor John MacArthur Stared Down Los Angeles and Won

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