Pastor Alan Jackson joins The Charlie Kirk Show to talk about his story of how he got started in ministry and how he and his wife started a church that started in a tent. He also shares the story of when his mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer and the miracle that saved her life.
00:00:58.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. 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.
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00:02:08.000I serve a congregation just outside of Nashville.
00:02:11.000I've been there for almost 40 years, from a tent until today, so we've seen a lot of change there.
00:02:18.000Really, since COVID, I think we've been a lot more engaged with culture.
00:02:22.000You know, it felt like the curtain got pulled back when COVID happened, and places that I had trusted for information, places that I thought were like rock solid, like the CDC, proved to be a little less so.
00:02:32.000And it really started me on this adventure of trying to engage our culture from a biblical worldview.
00:02:36.000And so your voice is such an important part of that.
00:02:39.000It's an honor to have some time with you.
00:03:48.000So she's flying to Mayo Clinic and she said a prayer that if there was a God, he would let her know the truth before she died so she could tell her sons to be Jewish or Baptist or Catholic, whatever that truth was.
00:03:57.000She didn't have any imagination that God could heal.
00:04:00.000And they did a four-day workup at Mayo and the doctor came in her room late at night and said, Mrs. Jackson, you had cancer.
00:04:18.000That started our journey into Christianity.
00:04:21.000And so my dad brought us to Middle Tennessee for the Tennessee Walking Horses and started a vet practice, and they opened their home for a Bible study.
00:04:29.000And when we moved to Middle Tennessee, the schools were still segregated.
00:04:32.000It was a very different place than it is today.
00:04:36.000It looked like the Isle of the Misfit Toys.
00:04:38.000People from different nations, different colors.
00:04:41.000Most of their lives had some pretty gaping holes.
00:04:44.000And that was the genesis of the church.
00:04:46.000So for two or three decades, I just put my head down and served people.
00:04:51.000And then I really, I didn't like television ministries for a lot of apparent reasons that we could probably all talk about.
00:04:58.000And I certainly didn't want to be one of them.
00:05:01.000And I understood that the assignment was directed that way, so I started to change some of my behaviors and patterns, and we started getting involved with some things in the media.
00:05:10.000But at the end of the day, it's hard to see people engage with God.
00:06:12.000And when I came to understand that spiritual change is as intentional as making a medical diagnosis or putting together an effective political campaign.
00:08:29.000We got so confused, we were reluctant to say that there's only two biological sexes.
00:08:34.000And I mean, that's like Bible 101A. That's not political.
00:08:38.000That's like fundamental Christian stuff.
00:08:40.000And so we've got to bring life back into that biblical worldview or the political changes that we're seeing happen in Washington are not sustainable.
00:08:47.000If we don't have heart change amongst the people...
00:08:50.000This will be a very temporary blip on the radar.
00:08:53.000If we have one of those seasons where there's a significant realignment along values and character and family, then I think what we're watching could actually bring wonderful things for our children and our grandchildren.
00:09:08.000The battle between good and evil seems to be escalating.
00:09:11.000It is easy to blame politicians, government or poor leadership, but behind all of that is a spiritual battle.
00:09:18.000Pastor Alan Jackson's new book, Angels, Demons, and You, talk about the reality of this battle and the spiritual realm that exists around us.
00:09:36.000You can find them playing a variety of roles throughout the Bible, and they're still influencing the world today.
00:09:41.000We don't need to be afraid, but we do need to be aware and prepared.
00:09:45.000Angels, Demons, and You provides valuable insight, practical tools, and biblical truth to help you recognize the spiritual battle around us and become a difference maker in our generation.
00:09:58.000Get your copy today at alanjackson.com slash angels.
00:10:03.000Hear from people whose faith directly impacts our culture on Pastor Allen's Culture and Christianity Podcast.
00:10:09.000Find it wherever you get your podcasts.
00:10:14.000Let's talk about the church, which is a big category.
00:10:19.000There's some that are true and courageous, some that are trembling and fearful, some that are traitorous, I could even say, that are against God's wishes.
00:10:30.000Give me your analysis of the landscape of the current Western or American church.
00:10:59.000So if you accept the authority of Scripture as being our rule of faith and practice, and you believe in the uniqueness of Jesus, the incarnation, that He was the incarnate Son of God, that He died on a cross, that He was raised to life again, that's the redemptive work of Jesus.
00:11:39.000But absent the authority of Scripture and absent the uniqueness of Jesus, it doesn't meet the biblical standards for church.
00:11:45.000And that's an awkward place because we have major expressions now of mainline American Christianity, evangelicalism, that are denying the authority of Scripture.
00:12:25.000There's been a tremendous amount of cultural—you know better than I do how much cultural pressure there has been to go along.
00:12:30.000I shouldn't be shocked, but I would think in the greater Nashville area, churches wouldn't be embracing homosexuality.
00:12:38.000You would think that, but the reality on the ground is we have.
00:12:42.000And I've been in more than 20 cities in the last 12 months, 18 months, doing pastor's conferences.
00:12:47.000And when I go in with the message that the church has to engage our culture with biblical authority and the truth of this, not in an angry way, not in a belligerent way or a condescending way, none of those things.
00:12:59.000The audiences are about 50-50, about half accept it and half get mad.
00:13:03.000Sometimes they follow me the car and say, you offended all of us.
00:13:08.000Pastors will say that because they've been educated that way.
00:13:11.000In the same way, I think the challenge we have in education is our teachers have been educated in universities where they have a woke ideology far too often.
00:13:20.000Many of our pastors have been educated in systems where they don't respect biblical authority.
00:16:01.000It's A-L-L-E-N. I want to make sure we plug it throughout, alanjackson.com.
00:16:05.000When you deal with pastors, do you come walking away with the opinion that the problem with Capital C Church is their boards, the seminaries, or the pastors themselves?
00:16:16.000Because we've diagnosed the problem, but what is the root cause of such problem?
00:18:06.000No, it's like we landed on the island and we burned the boats.
00:18:08.000If we were going to have anything good, we had to make it for ourselves.
00:18:12.000And most people aren't in that circumstance.
00:18:14.000So typically, though, throughout the history of the church, the awakening, the renewal, the vibrancy does not come from with the institutional system.
00:18:23.000Right now in our culture, the voices for truth, for the biblical worldview, are not rising mostly from the churches.
00:18:32.000Brandon Tatum, Allie B. Stuckey, I mean, this band of merry people that you spend so much time with, they're speaking more truth into our culture right now than most of our pulpits.
00:18:42.000And it's biblically-based stuff for the most part, but they're engaging culture with the truth that will bring a better future to the kids and the grandkids, and they're having to do it because the church has failed.
00:18:51.000And that really is closer to the model of how God's brought renewal to His people in every generation.
00:19:11.000It was the moral authority that made the American Revolution possible.
00:19:14.000Without the Great Awakening, no America.
00:19:16.000Second Great Awakening precedes the Civil War.
00:19:19.000We had a moral change of heart that gave us the courage and the fortitude to do the hard work that the Civil War represented to change the trajectory of our nation.
00:19:28.000I think we're at another one of those pivot points.
00:19:32.000But I think it's one of those inflection points.
00:19:34.000I think what's happening in Washington today, as wonderful as it may be with Doge, I don't believe it's sustainable unless we have a heart change of equal and greater magnitude.
00:19:57.000I know you need the majority in the election, so I don't want to diminish that at all.
00:20:01.000But the truth is there is an authority when the truth is told.
00:20:06.000One of the most recent examples to me that I thought really was when Trump said about Gaza, what we've done in Gaza for 70 years hasn't worked.
00:20:54.000By the time you get to Acts chapter 4 and 5, they're bringing in Jesus' closest friend saying, if you don't stop saying this, we're going to do to you what we did to him.
00:21:03.000And they said, you do what you need to do.
00:21:05.000We're not going to stop telling the truth.
00:21:07.000The 21st century edition of the church needs the same courage as the 1st century edition of the church did.
00:21:13.000And I'm excited to be able in some way to be a small part of that.
00:21:20.000If you are a patriot in this audience, And you have private student loan debt, or your brother does, or your niece does, or your nephew does.
00:21:28.000Maybe you're just thinking back to Christmas or Thanksgiving, and someone's like, oh my gosh, I have these student loans, and I took them out, and I shouldn't have, and it was a private loan.
00:21:36.000And boom, you're just thinking like, wait a second, I remember that.
00:22:25.000So you make a very profound point that the voice of, let's just say, moral guidance, with the gospel also peppered in, which I do, but it's not the only thing I do, is coming from a community of podcasters, social media influencers.
00:22:41.000Thankfully, church attendance is going up slightly.
00:22:43.000Slightly, we've seen the last couple years, but I wouldn't give the church any credit for that.
00:22:47.000I think it's a work of the Lord, if anything else.
00:22:49.000You and I both, I almost assuredly agree that...
00:22:52.000In order to have revival, you must have repentance.
00:22:55.000In your, what, 30 years of ministry, 40 years?
00:23:00.000When you see mass repentance amongst the people you deal with, what message do you deliver to be able to prompt repentance from your congregation or from any individual?
00:23:31.000So together, Greek's the New Testament language, Hebrew's the Old.
00:23:35.000Together, repentance is a change of how we think about something and then how we behave.
00:23:41.000Without repentance, there really is no significant change.
00:23:45.000You may get caught doing something and there's punishment, and so you think, well, I don't want to keep doing that for the moment, but I'm not going to stop doing it.
00:23:53.000So the biblical prescription for a better pathway is repentance.
00:23:57.000If you're engaged in some behavior that's self-destructive or some relational habit that's punishing a family, the reason we're invited to repentance is not to diminish our fun.
00:24:07.000It gives us a change of thought and a change of behavior that puts on a pathway towards a better outcome.
00:24:13.000And it's what's been missing in our culture.
00:24:16.000When the mainstream media screams for three years, Russian collusion, and it's proven to be completely false, there is no repentance.
00:24:24.000Nobody comes forward and says, we were thinking the wrong thing and we said the wrong thing.
00:24:29.000So we try to live through our mistakes.
00:24:33.000And if you live through your mistakes, you carry the baggage of them.
00:24:36.000You're like Jacob Marley when he came to visit from the ghost of Christmas past.
00:24:41.000You're dragging all the chains of your sins along with you.
00:24:44.000And the beauty, the invitation of our faith is that if you will say, I was thinking wrong, and that led me to behave in a wrong way, you can be free.
00:24:52.000You can have new thoughts and new behaviors and a new future.
00:24:56.000And I think that's what we're all striving for.
00:24:58.000We want to see our kids educated in a way that sets them up for the best possible future.
00:25:03.000We want to see some of the absurd things that have been dominating the public conversation for too long now to be turned back.
00:25:17.000It's not just what Alan thinks or Charlie thinks or what we sit down at the desk and hammer out.
00:25:21.000There's an authority beyond ourselves that we have embraced.
00:25:25.000Because we believe there is a God and that he is the creator of heaven and earth.
00:25:28.000And there's a lot I don't know, but there is some I do know, and I'm going to build my life plan based upon that.
00:25:34.000And from there, so repentance is such a powerful thing.
00:25:38.000If we could just say as a nation, we've been uniquely blessed.
00:25:41.000We've had more freedom and more liberty and more opportunity, and we have squandered it in the most selfish, absurd ways.
00:25:47.000But we would like to come back and accept the responsibilities of those freedoms and liberties so that the generations who follow us have even greater opportunities than we had.
00:25:55.000I think we'll see God move in a way that will change not only our communities, our nation, but it'll impact the world again in a positive way.
00:26:02.000Is there a sermon or a message that you give, and I'm asking for a reason, where you see repentance that follows?
00:26:09.000What is the essence that a pastor needs to say or teach?
00:26:24.000You know, seeing Mr. Trump willing to say the clear truth, the plain truth, is so disruptive because we've lost that ability.
00:26:31.000And we've got to bring that back into our churches.
00:26:34.000We've had a gospel of salvation that we've said to people for a long time now, if you'll repeat this sentence after me, you will have accomplished your God business.
00:26:43.000And perhaps we'll chase that with a dip in a pool.
00:27:21.000Life creates enough stress points that if you'll talk to people truthfully when there's points and say there's a better way than keep doubling down on stupid, you can make life great again.
00:27:40.000So there's a big pastor, Rick Warren, whatever, and I followed him growing up, and he'll always say, hey, I'm responsible for 130,000 baptisms or whatever.
00:29:08.000And I think the mistake we've made is we've said to people, if you'll do this, if you'll walk to the front of the church with me and you'll say this prayer, which I believe in conversion, initiation, salvation, the new birth, whichever label is preferred.
00:29:20.000But that's the beginning point for a journey of growing up spiritually.
00:29:24.000And we have been reluctant to say that to people because we have this microwave culture that we want everything in a drive-thru bag, supersized.
00:29:35.000Then we want to move on to the next thing.
00:29:36.000And we don't really want God intruding on us.
00:29:40.000And so I think we've got to have the courage to come back and go, no, this, you know, the ground at the foot of the cross is level and it's free access, but it's not cheap.
00:29:50.000There's so many things where we've capitulated to the culture.
00:29:54.000People say to me frequently, you know, Jesus came to bring unity.
00:30:01.000And, you know, we've wanted so badly to be accepted by the culture that we've stopped confronting the culture with the truth.
00:30:07.000It's like a doctor that doesn't want to tell any of his patients bad news.
00:30:10.000We call that malpractice, and we'll pull your license.
00:30:14.000And we have been operating as people of faith, and we don't want to say to the culture around us, that's a destructive habit.
00:30:20.000You know, all of us have weaknesses and failures and struggles, and, I mean, none of us have a perfect resume, myself included, for certain.
00:30:28.000But that's why we are stories of redemption, and that's the hope that we hold out to the world, that no matter what broken place you find yourself, it's the ironic part of Mr. Trump.
00:30:39.000And I don't think there's any question God's using him to make an impact in our nation.
00:30:52.000And he had this moral character that maybe you didn't want your kids always to completely duplicate, but God used him in a powerful way to bring freedom to people.
00:31:01.000And we're watching that, and I'm most grateful for it.
00:31:06.000So the message to people is, we're not asking you to submit to a set of rules.
00:31:11.000We're asking you to choose a way of life that will bring a hope and a vitality to you and your future that you can't find any other way.
00:31:21.000If you want to make sense of the change and the chaos happening around us, you're going to need God's help.
00:31:26.000That's why Alan Jackson Ministries, a friend of mine, created the Culture and Christianity Podcast, the Culture and Christianity Conference, and their weeknight news show, Alan Jackson Now.
00:31:37.000Millions of people also listen to Pastor Alan Jackson's powerful sermons each week, I do, on radio, television, satellite, and online.
00:31:45.000In today's world, there's desperate need for truth, and Alan Jackson Ministries feels a sense of urgency to deliver God's truth and a biblical perspective to anyone who will listen.
00:31:59.000Their mission is to help people become more fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ, which is the most important thing, giving your life to the Lord, including here on The Charlie Kirk Show.
00:33:06.000And that's an unintentional downstream effect.
00:33:11.000And I will agree with what you said earlier, that we're not pastors, and I am not a pastor, but the result or the fruit is things that pastors should be doing.
00:34:03.000And almost every culture has had a transition point.
00:34:07.000I was in Kenya, and I spent some time with the Maasai, those warriors that you see on National Geographic that jump like they have springs in their shoes.
00:34:17.000And they've stopped it now because of our conservation.
00:34:20.000But there was, for hundreds of years, when a young man was a Maasai, When he was going to move from being a boy to a man, they gave him a spear and he had to go kill a lion.
00:34:28.000The Spartans had a similar initiation.
00:34:57.000Men have three primary assignments in life, as I understand it, to be the spiritual leader of their home, to provide for their family and to protect them.
00:35:05.000The conversation between men and women is not about better or worse, greater or lesser, weaker or stronger.
00:36:08.000And again, when you rage against the design of something, you're not going to get to the best outcome.
00:36:13.000And I think the church hasn't had the courage to say to the men, I think the reason we got to the point where we have men and women competing in sports together is the church didn't have the courage to talk about gender roles.
00:37:17.000And you may want your daughter to play with the local high school football team, but the principle that you're putting in place is what has landed us at the place.
00:37:26.000Well, now we're at the theater of the absurd watching men and women boxing in the Olympics.
00:38:18.000If you don't start with a moral base, if you don't have an absolute that's guiding your decisions, you wind up in these absurd places.
00:38:26.000And it's been the church's absence in the dialogue, because we've understood that our buildings were conflicted, that we had people that were not consistent, and we didn't want to lose any of our audience, so we would avoid the discussion.
00:39:09.000Well, I think you have to decide the audience that you are working on behalf of.
00:39:14.000You know, who is it you're trying to please?
00:39:18.000If the message that I'm delivering, I think, honors God, and it's in accordance with the principles of Scripture, then I have to tell the truth and find an audience that wants that message.
00:39:30.000If you look at your audience and you take a poll and then decide what you believe, you can be welcomed into the uniparty, but you're not going to be welcomed into the church.
00:39:38.000And unfortunately, we've all been behaving that way.
00:39:59.000For weeks I walked around and go, we've got a lot more work to do than I understood.
00:40:03.000In fact, Pastor, we estimate at TPUSA Faith, based on some research, it's not too in-depth, About 80% of churches didn't say anything.
00:40:15.000In fact, we could point to more churches in Phoenix that gave a, I know this is a very traumatizing week for you, sermon, than a hallelujah, hallelujah, praise the Lord, hallelujah.
00:41:27.000And if we can help people come back to that, you can be free of guilt and shame, no matter how dark the past, no matter how far we have wandered, no matter how intentional the misbehavior, we can be free.
00:41:45.000And the church is going to have to have the courage to bring that back to the forefront and lead with our faith in all the arenas of our lives.
00:41:51.000We've got to bring it back to the corporate boardroom?
00:41:56.000I'm ashamed that on my watch, the years that I have provided a voice, that we so quietly withdrew from the public arena, the corporate boardroom, academia.
00:42:07.000You know, they said to us, if you bring your faith to work and one person raises their hand and says they're offended, that you should withdraw.
00:42:16.000And yet we found ourselves today where the corporate setting or the academic setting or the political setting, they all bring a worldview.
00:42:22.000And they drive it down the heart of the organization, the institution, professional sports.
00:42:28.000And I think they've got more determination promoting their worldview than I had promoting mine.
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00:43:06.000Many clients aren't even able to make the minimum monthly payment on their private student loans when they first contact YREFI. Go to YREFI.com.
00:43:35.000So they provide you with a custom loan payment.
00:43:37.000If you have private student loan debt, if your brother, your sister, your friend, your aunt, your uncle, you've heard them talk about it recently.
00:43:43.000You're like, oh, I just can't get out of this.
00:44:00.000There's this belief that Christians must be nice, which is a word that does not exist in the Bible, and that somehow there's—and I was raised around this hypothesis of modern Christianity.
00:44:13.000So this was in the suburbs of Chicago, gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade, Christian Heritage Academy, amazing institution.
00:44:20.000The guy who ran it now works for us at Turning Point, amazing.
00:44:22.000But as I started to get a little bit older, the kind of cultural Christianity—here was the equation.
00:44:56.000We'd be having a different discussion.
00:44:58.000But we see the almost complete deterioration of the family.
00:45:01.000We see our educational system failing.
00:45:05.000There's a verse in Isaiah that says, truth has fallen in the street.
00:45:08.000In our culture, whether it's politically, it's in the media, we don't even recognize the truth any longer.
00:45:14.000We don't even imagine that's the standard that we strive for.
00:45:18.000All of those are failures of the church because we have accommodated evil.
00:45:21.000That's why I think we have to talk in terms of a true church and a false church, not based on denominational labels.
00:45:27.000Not based upon styles of worship or the wardrobe of the person leading the room, but on our orientation towards the Scripture and our orientation towards the role of Jesus.
00:45:37.000So I have just a very easy left-hand side true, right-hand side false.
00:45:43.000I could switch them, but what would be three characteristics of a true church and three characteristics of a false church for somebody in the audience to apply this?
00:45:54.000I have a little practical formula in my head, which doesn't.
00:45:57.000If you and I could disagree on a point and we would both still enter the kingdom of God, then I'll extend to you a hand of fellowship.
00:46:04.000We may disagree on when we take communion, what style of music we sing, whether we worship on Friday or Saturday or Sunday, whether we can come in shorts or we have to wear a suit.
00:46:14.000But if we disagree on who Jesus is, if I say He's the Son of God and you say He's not, that's going to change destinies.
00:46:23.000So on those points, we can't afford to disagree.
00:46:25.000We have to engage the dialogue until we understand the difference and work through that.
00:46:29.000So if I were going to give you three that define the true church, it has to do with the role of Scripture, that it is authoritative in our lives.
00:46:36.000It has to do with the uniqueness of Jesus.
00:46:38.000He said, no one comes to the Father except through me.
00:46:41.000So Jesus, Buddha, and Allah cannot be seen as equal options, many pathways.
00:46:47.000And then I think we have to understand His redemptive work, that it was something that was done on our behalf.
00:46:52.000That we don't earn it, deserve it, qualify for it.
00:46:57.000And then my life is what I'm willing to exchange.
00:47:00.000I'm willing to use my life as an expression of gratitude for that amazing gift.
00:47:05.000You have here in this prompt, and I know that we're running low on time, but I just wanted to get to two or three more topics, if that's okay.
00:47:53.000And I think my objective in the book was to help people imagine more fully that there is a spiritual dimension to our lives, that we are dimensional beings.
00:48:28.000Well, in the same way that you have a body with those physical senses, you are a spirit, and your spirit is eternal.
00:48:34.000And the theory of the book, the thesis of the book and scripture is that the spiritual world engages us on a daily basis.
00:48:42.000So rather than be frightened about it, why don't we learn about it?
00:48:45.000I think angels engage with us on a very regular basis.
00:48:49.000The Bible talks about entertaining angels and not knowing it.
00:48:51.000I can point to a number of places in my life where there were outcomes that I can't explain other than some force other than a human being was helping me get to an outcome.
00:49:22.000You know, I'll go to the doctor if I need medical attention, but I'm going to pray before I go, because I want God to be engaged in the outcome.
00:50:03.000You know, don't stop putting gas in your car or plugging in your Tesla, whatever you prefer.
00:50:09.000But to deny spiritual reality, good and evil, there are some things we watch in the world that I don't believe can be understood without acknowledging that evil exists.
00:50:17.000I went to the Israeli embassy in Washington and watched the surveillance tapes from October the 7th.
00:50:38.000I don't know how to describe that other than evil.
00:50:41.000There are things that human beings have done to one another that force us to acknowledge there are other powers involved with us than just the force of our will or social constructs.
00:50:52.000And so Angels, Demons, and You is an important manual for helping us navigate a season where there's so much discontinuity.
00:50:59.000We are trying to engineer a new future.
00:51:02.000That we think will be better for our children and our grandchildren.
00:51:05.000And we've got to bring a spiritual voice based upon the authority of Scripture back into that.
00:51:10.000A political solution alone will not bring us to the best place.
00:51:14.000Finally, you mentioned it's a perfect segue to the final topic I want to talk about here, which is Israel.
00:52:01.000Anti-Semitism, through history, has been persistent and inexplicable.
00:52:06.000I don't think you can understand the history of the Jewish people without understanding angels, demons, and you, because there's been an irrational hatred of them.
00:52:14.00015th century Spanish Inquisition, the Russian pogroms.
00:52:17.000I mean, we can walk it back as far as we want to go.
00:52:20.000We see today, one of the greatest shocks to me has been the anti-Semitism on American campuses.
00:52:25.000Universities that I used to call elite, I refuse to call them that any longer.
00:52:29.000You can't harbor that kind of hatred and refuse to address it and ask me to consider you to be elite anything.