The Charlie Kirk Show - The Epidemic of Cowardice in Christianity Inc.

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:01.000 Today I wanted to air a speech that I have given in Rockland, California, where reporters couldn't possibly believe that I spoke to 1,400 people in person, no social distancing, no masks.

00:00:12.000 It's a great conversation.

00:00:13.000 Please consider supporting us at charliekirk.com/slash support, which makes this conversation and so many like it possible.

00:00:19.000 This conversation was actually done with my friend, Pastor Greg Farrington from Rockland, California at Destiny Church.

00:00:27.000 You guys are going to love it.

00:00:28.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:29.000 Here we go.

00:00:30.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:32.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:00:34.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:38.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:41.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:42.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:43.000 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.

00:00:52.000 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.

00:01:00.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:06.000 Charlie?

00:01:09.000 I love a good old-fashioned name like Charlie.

00:01:12.000 Yes.

00:01:12.000 Thank you.

00:01:13.000 Yeah.

00:01:14.000 It's two Scottish names.

00:01:16.000 Charles Kirk.

00:01:17.000 Well.

00:01:17.000 Charles Kirk.

00:01:18.000 Kirk means church in Scottish, actually.

00:01:20.000 Wow, I learned something. 0.91

00:01:20.000 It does. 0.91

00:01:22.000 Well, you're going to learn a lot.

00:01:23.000 We owe a lot to the Scots, actually, that we could do a whole sermon on that, but it's probably.

00:01:27.000 For the Scottish.

00:01:28.000 Well, it's interesting.

00:01:28.000 Yeah.

00:01:30.000 A lot of our philosophy, a lot of our civilization was inspired by the poorest country on an island that no one ever knew about.

00:01:37.000 Adam Smith, William Tyndale, who is the English translator of the Bible, who was actually burned at the stake.

00:01:45.000 I didn't anticipate to go through Scottish history today, but I'm happy to do that with you.

00:01:49.000 Braveheart, right?

00:01:50.000 Well, it's actually really interesting.

00:01:53.000 So I guess here we go.

00:01:54.000 Yeah, I'm actually, I can trace my bloodline back to part of the Klan that William Wallace was in.

00:02:01.000 And William Wallace was, of course, a fighter and really kind of started the birth of Western civilization.

00:02:06.000 And that's, yeah, exactly.

00:02:08.000 We Scots are very disagreeable by nature.

00:02:11.000 We want to arm wrestle right now.

00:02:12.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:02:13.000 And so I'll finish the Scottish portion of our conversation right now.

00:02:19.000 But the American founding onto actually the people that have served most in the military are disproportionately Scots-Irish.

00:02:28.000 There's been literature written about this.

00:02:29.000 And so we always love a good fight.

00:02:31.000 And so that's great.

00:02:34.000 That is great.

00:02:35.000 So as we found out first service, we don't have enough time to do everything that we need to do.

00:02:41.000 And I'm just kind of the guy that's trying to direct the conversation.

00:02:44.000 They didn't come to hear me.

00:02:46.000 They came to hear what God has given you.

00:02:48.000 This phenomenal gift of your intellect, your ability to reason.

00:02:52.000 And so I'm just kind of set the ship in one direction and I'll let you just go.

00:02:57.000 So as we said, we've been open 26 weeks since May 31st.

00:03:02.000 Yeah, praise God.

00:03:04.000 We've done that.

00:03:07.000 And in your estimation, as you travel the nation, there are pockets of people who are saying, hey, we're going to do what is right.

00:03:16.000 Biblical mandate to open, you know, First Amendment right together.

00:03:21.000 So as you've seen pockets of people who are emerging, but the vast majority of pastors have shrunk back in this moment.

00:03:29.000 They haven't opened their doors.

00:03:31.000 Why do you think that's so?

00:03:32.000 Yeah, it's a question I struggle with.

00:03:35.000 I said this in the first service, and I'll say it again.

00:03:37.000 The kind of grace side of my interpretation of this, I'm kind of, I'm running low on grace for some of these pastors that still haven't opened up their church.

00:03:48.000 You know, when I started speaking, and Shannon Grove has heard me give this speech, you know, in June and July, I said, maybe you guys should open your church now.

00:03:56.000 You should open.

00:03:57.000 We're in November.

00:03:58.000 We know how this virus operates.

00:03:58.000 Yeah.

00:04:00.000 We know what it's done to people.

00:04:01.000 We know how people need the physical assembly.

00:04:05.000 We need that suicides are up, mental health, depression, spousal abuse.

00:04:10.000 We know the cost of our reaction to the virus, the lockdowns.

00:04:13.000 And yet, in this moment of crisis, the American Christian church, large in part, and there's exceptions: Rob McCoy, Jack Hibbs, James Cadiz, Juergen.

00:04:21.000 There's some great pastors here in California, but they're definitely the exception, not the rule. 0.83

00:04:26.000 And the rule is an incredible epidemic of cowardice in the American church.

00:04:32.000 And I use that word intentionally.

00:04:34.000 And it tells us a couple things.

00:04:38.000 It tells us that a lot of these pastors are solely focused, ironically, on just budgets, baptisms, and buildings.

00:04:46.000 Three B's.

00:04:47.000 Yeah, the three B's. 0.71

00:04:48.000 And that's kind of the way that American Christianity has always framed their profit motive.

00:04:52.000 What's really interesting is that if they actually opened their church, they would actually have more baptisms and bigger budgets and be able to buy more buildings, which is the great irony of the whole thing.

00:05:01.000 Is that a lot of these pastors say, well, I'm afraid of what my congregation will say.

00:05:07.000 And it's just, they're supposed to be the leaders in this moment, right?

00:05:10.000 They're supposed to be the shepherds, and they're not.

00:05:12.000 And so I asked this question: if a pastor hasn't opened their church, why are you a pastor?

00:05:18.000 I mean, come on.

00:05:19.000 Why are you a pastor if not in this moment?

00:05:22.000 And you're called for the moments of controversy and crisis to make clarity out of confusion.

00:05:28.000 That's why you are a pastor.

00:05:30.000 And we have completely just forgotten and forsaken the entire idea of liberty and responsibility.

00:05:40.000 No one is being forced to be here today.

00:05:42.000 You come knowing the risks of this virus, knowing your own health situation.

00:05:46.000 You know that there's a chance that you might interact with someone that is a carrier, and you're willing to take that responsibility.

00:05:53.000 That's what liberty is all about. 0.99

00:05:54.000 It's so different than the European model, which is where you completely surrender to civil servants and bureaucrats and politicians.

00:06:03.000 And as soon as we just turn our back on American liberty, which is what we're doing in our country, and the American church will not actually communicate where liberty comes from, because liberty is not man's idea, it's God's idea, then we're in a very troubling moment in America.

00:06:18.000 And the American church has missed the greatest evangelistic opportunity in the history of our country the last six months.

00:06:24.000 They have.

00:06:25.000 And the American church, first of all, they were very quick, many of them, to speak out in favor of BLM Incorporated, critical race theory, and poorly crafted political positions.

00:06:39.000 Yet they wouldn't dare challenge Gavin Newsom.

00:06:42.000 Whereas today, a judge in San Diego has said strip clubs are essential, but church is not.

00:06:48.000 They say abortion factories can remain open.

00:06:50.000 They say that marijuana dispensaries can remain open.

00:06:52.000 They say that you can go to home improvement stores. 0.82

00:06:55.000 And yet, the assembly of believers is something that they deem non-essential. 1.00

00:06:59.000 There's a reason for that.

00:07:01.000 Is that when you have millions of people in the state of California that are gathering around an agreed concept that Gavin Newsom is not the most important authority in our life, that bothers them.

00:07:14.000 And it does.

00:07:15.000 And so the unstated principle of American Christianity always has been that we have a vertical relationship with power that is beyond even the earthly governmental structure, that it's a God-first governing structure, right?

00:07:31.000 And so this bothers the central planners and this bothers the leftists so much because it puts barriers and limits on their power by definition.

00:07:41.000 So Gavin Newsom becomes incredibly less important the more you go to church.

00:07:45.000 We don't say that enough, right?

00:07:47.000 So, when you go to church and you're celebrating Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you're appreciating the inerrancy of scripture, and you're worshiping a loving God, Gavin Newsom just kind of becomes a little bit of just kind of a speed bump on the road to your life, right?

00:08:03.000 Where he belongs, by the way.

00:08:06.000 And so, and I'm singling out Gavin Newsom intentionally because we're obviously in California, and he's just the typical ruling class politician.

00:08:19.000 Goes to the French laundry, no mask, no social distancing.

00:08:24.000 Wiley, you are not allowed to have Thanksgiving.

00:08:26.000 It's just the perfect picture of the kind of country they want to create, which is rules and orders that you have to live by, but the rulers actually don't have to.

00:08:34.000 But what the American church doesn't understand, and part of it's because of really, how do I say this correctly?

00:08:43.000 Seminaries that have been teaching bad politics and bad theology, youth pastors that have been believing and infiltrating a lot of these churches and teaching young people bad theology and bad politics, and then senior pastors that have no courage of their convictions to actually communicate to their church, what are we supposed to do in politics?

00:09:02.000 Should Christians be involved in politics? 0.50

00:09:03.000 And if so, how do we encounter with this?

00:09:05.000 And so, now this testing moment came for the American church in 2020.

00:09:09.000 And you passed it, and you guys passed it, and Rob McCoy passed it, and Jack Hibbs passed it, and so many, but 99% of American churches failed miserably.

00:09:17.000 Where not only did they not open the church, not only did they not communicate the truth of what's really happening here, they did something even worse.

00:09:25.000 The only political statements a lot of these churches did was to pander to the most malevolent political forces in the country, where it's around racial politics and insurrectionist forces and looting is essential and all this total nonsense that we saw in the last six or seven months of our country. 0.55

00:09:41.000 And so, if Christians founded this country by being activists in the pulpit, this country was founded by activist pastors in the first great awakening, which preceded the founding of our country.

00:09:54.000 We don't talk about this enough, but it was Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards that were talking about how human beings need to take responsibility for their life and that King George is not the ultimate authority.

00:10:05.000 King Gavin, King George.

00:10:06.000 You get the comparisons here, right?

00:10:08.000 And so, and that's all of a sudden when people started to think that way, they started to dive deeper into, well, if all of a sudden we get our rights from a loving and good God, all of a sudden there's a natural law that is not within what the British Empire tells us, then why exactly do we have to listen to King George with all authority?

00:10:28.000 Because just because he has the divine right of kings, which is an unbiblical concept.

00:10:32.000 And then the American founding ensued.

00:10:34.000 And so the inverse is now happening.

00:10:36.000 It's the exact opposite is now happening.

00:10:38.000 So the Christians that started this country and kept it alive in the first, second, third, and fourth great awakening, there's at least four great awakenings.

00:10:44.000 Some people say there's been five or six.

00:10:46.000 Let's just say four.

00:10:47.000 Now all of a sudden we're seeing the opposite, which is the great silencing of the American church.

00:10:52.000 And instead of actually stepping up, instead of actually leaning in, opening their doors, and where we could have saw an awakening that would make Billy Graham's revival look like, you know, a little blip on the radar, we have now decided and surrendered and agreed that we are not essential.

00:11:09.000 That, and again, I say this generally, you guys being the exception, but just be honest, and you guys know this, you're in the 1% of 1% of churches, right?

00:11:16.000 99% of all churches across the country are not doing this.

00:11:19.000 They have no courage to their convictions, and they're not being courageous in this moment.

00:11:24.000 Well, then the country will then decay.

00:11:26.000 That's the honest truth, is that the guiding principles and the behavior that starts a civilization and maintains it, when it fails to maintain, then it will absolutely disintegrate.

00:11:37.000 And don't be surprised all of a sudden when the church is cowardly and then you see increases in suicide, depression, alcoholism, spousal abuse, businesses, all of a sudden, the moral order that kept this entire experiment going, when they stop speaking and stop assembling, of course you're going to see the country start to go into chaos, which is exactly what we're seeing.

00:11:57.000 The biblical worldview of the church is that he's going to build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail.

00:12:03.000 It means we're aggressive in our approach.

00:12:05.000 We're not the prey.

00:12:06.000 We're the predator.

00:12:07.000 But we're going after on that.

00:12:10.000 My wife says it this way: that we're part of a nation that is under God, not under government.

00:12:15.000 And I believe that that is true.

00:12:16.000 That we're under God, not under government.

00:12:22.000 So the government kind of kicked down the doors of the church in March and April and stepped right inside the church and say, hey, we're going to give you the dictates because of this thing called COVID.

00:12:35.000 So we want to talk a little bit about COVID, right?

00:12:37.000 And because it's re-emerging, you even said in first service that, you know, we thought maybe they'd go away after the election.

00:12:45.000 No, it's just getting more, you know, prevalent as far as the fear piece of it.

00:12:51.000 And so COVID, it's a real virus.

00:12:55.000 It's a flu.

00:12:57.000 It's very contagious.

00:12:59.000 But there is a political agenda behind it.

00:13:02.000 Can we talk a little bit about COVID and where you see it going?

00:13:05.000 Yeah, I'll do it in a tighter way than earlier because we spent like 30 minutes on it earlier. 0.93

00:13:10.000 But look, of course it's a real virus, and it was probably manufactured in a laboratory in China. 0.85

00:13:17.000 It was either intentionally or unintentionally released, but it was definitely covered up by the Chinese communist government and definitely spread with intentionality across the planet. 0.79

00:13:27.000 That we know for sure.

00:13:28.000 They didn't allow inspectors in.

00:13:30.000 They didn't allow the WHO, who they even control, to tell the truth about it.

00:13:35.000 But we have to be very careful in our language.

00:13:39.000 And I think that one of the main reasons why America is in the condition that it's in is because of the sloppiness of how we communicate.

00:13:46.000 And we have to be much more precise in understanding that words matter.

00:13:49.000 I mean, you go back to the Bible.

00:13:51.000 One word had such weight that it could make you go to war.

00:13:56.000 It could make you go to peace.

00:13:57.000 I mean, words really have significance.

00:13:59.000 And one of the great disservices that we've done to young people is we act as if words don't have weight.

00:14:04.000 So when we talk about the state of the country, we have to be very clear about what the virus has done and what our reaction to the virus has done.

00:14:11.000 Those are two completely different things.

00:14:13.000 They're categorically different.

00:14:14.000 And so the virus is one frame to look from.

00:14:19.000 And there's a lot more complexity to the data.

00:14:22.000 For example, some people are dying with and then from the Chinese coronavirus.

00:14:26.000 Those are two completely different things.

00:14:28.000 Some people have other pre-existing health conditions.

00:14:31.000 And this was, you know, this triggered responses to it, right?

00:14:35.000 The other part is this, which is what was our reaction to it?

00:14:40.000 So our reaction to a very real virus and a very real threat was probably doing the worst thing we could have possibly done.

00:14:47.000 Instead of heroically stepping up and protecting people that were at risk, we put infected people into nursing homes and then we shut down the schools, which was the worst thing we could have possibly done.

00:14:58.000 Instead, we should have told young people, your schools are not closing, your proms are not getting canceled, your homecomings are not getting canceled, and you have summer sports, and some of you might get infected.

00:15:08.000 However, you have a much higher chance, if you're a young person, of dying from an accidental firework discharge than from the Chinese coronavirus.

00:15:14.000 It's true.

00:15:15.000 And by the way, I want to be very clear.

00:15:20.000 That is not the case if you're 65 and older and overweight and you have a pre-existing health condition.

00:15:25.000 You should take a different sequence of choices.

00:15:28.000 You should make a different sequence of choices.

00:15:30.000 And that's part of liberty responsibility, being self-aware and saying, I'm not 18 years old.

00:15:34.000 I do have an underlying health condition.

00:15:36.000 I'm going to make different choices.

00:15:37.000 However, what we've done is intergenerationally robbed young people for no reason whatsoever.

00:15:42.000 Zero.

00:15:43.000 And so then people say, well, they might go see their grandparents.

00:15:48.000 Well, then that's a completely different argument.

00:15:52.000 And having young people be able to go to school amongst themselves or have social clubs or sports is different than young people visiting nursing homes.

00:15:59.000 Like that, that's not the same argument that we're making.

00:16:02.000 And what we've seen is an almost beyond alarming, shocking, stunning, and chilling escalation in teenage suicide, social isolation, antidepressant medication.

00:16:13.000 And we are going to have decades of untangling the problems that we did.

00:16:17.000 I want to be very clear.

00:16:18.000 The virus did not do that.

00:16:20.000 We did this.

00:16:21.000 And so you could blame the virus for a certain component of it.

00:16:25.000 Very real suffering, all of that.

00:16:27.000 But then 90% of the problems that we are now going to have to sort out for the next couple decades is self-inflicted because it was fear-based, anti-scientific.

00:16:36.000 They say we have to trust the science.

00:16:38.000 They've never trusted the science.

00:16:39.000 They trust the scientists they like.

00:16:41.000 It's a very big difference.

00:16:43.000 They find a couple scientists they like and they trust them.

00:16:47.000 And again, here's the here: in order to make a good choices, get yourself informed.

00:16:53.000 That's it.

00:16:55.000 We have supercomputers in our right-hand pocket.

00:16:57.000 Just learn about it.

00:16:58.000 Go read the Dana study where it says there is no correlation between mask wearing and the spread of the virus.

00:17:03.000 In fact, people that wear.

00:17:04.000 Again, but if you think they work and you have other studies, that's fine.

00:17:07.000 That's what liberty is all about.

00:17:08.000 I'm not actually here to shame you into whether you're wearing a mask.

00:17:10.000 That's actually not my point.

00:17:12.000 I actually really love liberty because maybe you have a certain condition where it does help you.

00:17:17.000 Just don't make me wear one.

00:17:18.000 That's the whole thing, right?

00:17:18.000 Like, don't impose it on me.

00:17:20.000 That's a completely different argument, right?

00:17:22.000 And so, and I mean that with all seriousness: that if you have a certain condition and you do have data to reflect it, wearing a certain thing or taking a certain thing or not going to a certain thing, then we shouldn't get in a position where we shame people or do that.

00:17:36.000 That's not what it's about. 0.91

00:17:37.000 That's not Christian. 1.00

00:17:37.000 That's not it. 1.00

00:17:38.000 But at the same time, it's not compassionate.

00:17:40.000 At the same time, don't use an authoritarian, totalitarian position to say that every single human being must do what I think is correct.

00:17:48.000 And I see, even though, because there's really conflicting and in fact, different studies that have come out about this.

00:17:55.000 And so here's where the church really needs to step up right now.

00:17:58.000 And every single church should have its doors fully opened and trust their congregation to make the choices that you guys are all experiencing right now.

00:18:08.000 That if you're okay with gathering inside and worshiping our God, then you should be able to have that right to do that.

00:18:14.000 This has been the greatest violation of religious liberty in American history.

00:18:17.000 Amen. 0.70

00:18:21.000 So it's interesting to me, you know, God's ways are not our ways.

00:18:28.000 But, you know, I'm not saying that God was in charge of this at all. 0.88

00:18:32.000 But in a country, China, that silences the church, they sent a virus to America where we're supposed to have liberty, but it silenced the church. 0.90

00:18:43.000 There's a spiritual correlation between the two. 0.94

00:18:47.000 And there's a political agenda attached to silencing the church.

00:18:52.000 And we have been very vocal.

00:18:54.000 In fact, I've been criticized by my peers, pastors, even saying I'm just preaching to a base of people, calling us cowards, because I believe everything's political now.

00:19:06.000 Of course it is.

00:19:07.000 Everything is political.

00:19:08.000 So when you come inside the church, we cannot divorce ourselves and the people separate for separation of church and state and all that stuff.

00:19:16.000 But I don't believe that we're in that hour right now.

00:19:18.000 I believe that we're not in a peacetime moment.

00:19:21.000 We're in a wartime moment.

00:19:23.000 And the church has to engage in the public square.

00:19:27.000 So we have done that.

00:19:29.000 Rocks have been thrown at us.

00:19:30.000 Names have been called.

00:19:33.000 What should be the church's response in this moment to engaging in the political arena?

00:19:41.000 Well, first of all, I want to encourage you and your church.

00:19:43.000 You'll be blessed by taking the political stances that you took.

00:19:46.000 You will.

00:19:47.000 And I want to tell you that.

00:19:48.000 And I'm going to tell you why.

00:19:51.000 Any pastor that does not engage in the political arena might as well take his scissors to their Bible.

00:19:57.000 Take out the story of Esther and Mordecai.

00:19:59.000 Take out Nehemiah and Jeremiah.

00:20:00.000 Take out Daniel and Joseph.

00:20:01.000 Take out Moses. 0.80

00:20:02.000 Take out every example of God's chosen people influencing secular government.

00:20:06.000 All throughout the Old Testament, God's chosen people were called to influence secular government for his purpose.

00:20:12.000 Also, every single pastor needs to go get a pair of scissors and take out the great commission that everyone likes to reference, but very few people actually understand.

00:20:23.000 On this rock, build my, we say church.

00:20:26.000 Let's dive deeper into that.

00:20:27.000 You said a term that actually better describes it.

00:20:29.000 Ecclesia is the term that is used in the Koigne Greek.

00:20:33.000 And now, for those of you that attend church with great regularity, you'll be able to really dive deep into this kind of deeper theological point here, which is so incredibly consequential.

00:20:45.000 So, in the writing of the New Testament, written mostly in Greek, almost all in Greek, and Jesus spoke Aramaic, when William Tyndale translated the Bible back to the original manuscripts.

00:20:56.000 William Tyndale, who was killed and burned for this translation, by the way, because the Bible was almost all in Latin all across Europe.

00:21:05.000 So, why is that important?

00:21:08.000 Well, the good Scottish people only spoke English.

00:21:11.000 English was the peasants' language, everybody. 0.82

00:21:13.000 English was the barrier because the only way they could get the word of God was from a priest who understood Latin, who then translated it for them. 0.94

00:21:24.000 So, William Tyndale is like, I'm going to cut out the middleman.

00:21:26.000 I'm actually going to go on the most ambitious and illegal Bible translating project in history.

00:21:32.000 So, William Tyndale did just that. 0.68

00:21:33.000 He ended up getting his life for that.

00:21:34.000 And that was right before the King James translation came out, right in the early 1600s.

00:21:39.000 But one of the most significant breakthroughs, and again, I mean, no offense to any Catholics here because this is a fundamental disagreement that we have with the Catholic Church, which is what is the church?

00:21:48.000 What is the hierarchy?

00:21:50.000 Where does it come from?

00:21:51.000 Is this word ecclesia?

00:21:52.000 It's actually one of the most important words in the entire Bible.

00:21:55.000 And Jesus said, On this rock, build my ecclesia.

00:21:59.000 He didn't use synagogue or temple.

00:22:01.000 And so I started, and my pastor Rob McCoy got me onto this, and I started to do deep thinking of what was an ecclesia.

00:22:08.000 So an ecclesia was a well-known political gathering that Greek citizens used to hold.

00:22:16.000 They were like city council meetings.

00:22:19.000 An ecclesia was a political meeting that Greek provinces would hold around the political well-being of their area.

00:22:28.000 Now, when they would gather, everyone had a vote.

00:22:31.000 It was the closest thing to a democracy that we can think of.

00:22:34.000 But they also unified around two big words in Greek: eleutheria and isonomia, which means freedom and equality.

00:22:42.000 Think about it.

00:22:43.000 So Jesus goes out of his way to use this term, ecclesia, or the equivalent of it, not synagogue, not temple.

00:22:51.000 I would make a very good argument that Jesus called us to be in that public square.

00:22:55.000 Amen.

00:22:56.000 To called us to be actually caring for the welfare of our nation.

00:22:59.000 And any pastor that doesn't get involved in politics, explain to me in Jeremiah where it says, pray for the welfare of which the nation you are in.

00:23:06.000 How are you supposed to reconcile that?

00:23:08.000 And their explanation is that politics divides.

00:23:13.000 And I say, well, again, you're going to need to take out that pair of scissors again and cut out the part where Jesus said, the word of God came here not to unite, but to divide, to take father against son and sibling against sibling.

00:23:25.000 I'm paraphrasing, of course.

00:23:27.000 But this kind of hippie Jesus that we teach sometimes, where it's like Jesus was nothing but for the birds and the feather, like, and the, and the flowers.

00:23:37.000 Like, there were plenty of harsh teachings that Jesus talked about hard truth for a few in a time of crisis.

00:23:46.000 And Jesus was truth.

00:23:47.000 He didn't just say true things.

00:23:48.000 He was the embodiment of truth.

00:23:50.000 And what I think has happened, which has been an unfortunate sequence of events for Christianity in one sense and fortunate in the other, is that Christianity has kind of become the predominant culture in our country.

00:24:02.000 And so they're afraid of losing it.

00:24:04.000 And so institutional Christianity or Christian Inc., as I call it, which is some of the megachurches in this area, they're like, if I start all of a sudden talking about political stuff or civic government, I might have 10% people walk out.

00:24:18.000 That's the point.

00:24:20.000 The point is to say things that might be disagreeable.

00:24:23.000 Love it.

00:24:27.000 And what ends up happening is this, and this is this unspoken invisible handcuff that all of a sudden pastors come under, right?

00:24:35.000 So Adam Smith had the invisible hand.

00:24:37.000 I coined the term invisible handcuff, where these pastors all of a sudden work from a political correct framework where they're like, I can't comment on elections.

00:24:47.000 They give some tax status reason.

00:24:49.000 It's nonsense.

00:24:49.000 That's not true.

00:24:50.000 But then all of a sudden they're like, well, I'm afraid I'm going to offend people on this.

00:24:53.000 First of all, the Bible says very clearly what type of government that we should have.

00:24:57.000 The Bible says very clearly how we're supposed to interact on everything.

00:25:00.000 And what I find to be so flummoxing is a lot of these churches, they'll tell you how you should marry, how you should parent, how you should save your money, how you should work, how you should communicate, how you should travel, how you should eat.

00:25:12.000 I saw a biblical series a week before the election, one pastor was like, the biblical diet.

00:25:17.000 Like, really?

00:25:18.000 That's important.

00:25:19.000 That probably could have waited until December.

00:25:21.000 Okay?

00:25:22.000 That's important.

00:25:24.000 But yet, no comment whatsoever on how to vote. 0.98

00:25:28.000 And I think it's so unbiblical, and it's rooted in ingratitude. 0.77

00:25:32.000 First of all, that we do live in the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world.

00:25:35.000 We just do.

00:25:37.000 And it's also rooted in this idea that there's no clarity for the times.

00:25:42.000 That's what other pastors, well, it's kind of messy, right?

00:25:45.000 Where they say, you know, both parties are bad and there's really not, you know, a better option.

00:25:49.000 Okay, so first of all, better and perfect are two completely different things, okay?

00:25:54.000 I'm not saying that there's a perfect option, but yeah, I would say that the party in California that passed SB 145, right, Shannon, which decriminalizes pedophilia in this state into law.

00:26:05.000 And by the way, your local churches here that didn't speak out against SB 145, they'll be judged by their creator for not saying anything about pedophilia.

00:26:15.000 They will.

00:26:17.000 And I just want to, just so you guys know, and most people in the state don't know, in the midst of a pandemic, all the problems, Gavin Newsom goes out of his way to pander to the pedophile lobby, passes SB 145 that decriminalizes pedophilia in this state.

00:26:31.000 It's in law now.

00:26:33.000 Most people don't know that.

00:26:34.000 And the church basically did nothing to rise up against it generally.

00:26:38.000 And yet pastors a week before the election were like, well, there's really no difference between the two parties.

00:26:42.000 Okay, there's one party that believes that life begins at conception.

00:26:45.000 There's one party that believes in post-birth abortions.

00:26:47.000 There's one party that believes in this evangelistic commitment to transgenderism.

00:26:52.000 And there's one that believes there's only two genders and that God created man and woman.

00:26:56.000 It's basically that simple.

00:26:57.000 There's another party that believes in open borders and doing nothing against child sex trafficking.

00:27:01.000 There's another party that's actually trying to do something about it.

00:27:03.000 I could go on, right?

00:27:04.000 There's another party that believes church is essential.

00:27:05.000 There's other party that believes that strips club is essential.

00:27:08.000 Okay, again, not exactly a perfect fit.

00:27:11.000 Plenty of Republicans that don't know what they're doing.

00:27:13.000 I got that.

00:27:14.000 Do not tell me there's not a better fit, okay?

00:27:17.000 The Republican Party is absolutely the better fit.

00:27:20.000 Real quickly, how can a local church like this be involved?

00:27:25.000 You mentioned in my office, what you should suggest we do.

00:27:27.000 Yeah.

00:27:28.000 And so I think there's this myth and this lie that sometimes conservatives have, which is what I do doesn't matter.

00:27:37.000 And man, if Mike Garcia pulls this off, 50 votes or 20, if he does, I could say that every single person that did something in that district absolutely mattered.

00:27:46.000 I mean, so, first of all, we're already seeing increments of very tight races that are being decided by 20 votes or 30 votes and all that.

00:27:54.000 But also, I'm a big believer that everything that you do must be a reflection as if your personal action can actually make a macro difference.

00:28:04.000 And as soon as you lose that belief, then your entire civilization will crumble.

00:28:10.000 And it's a great, we call the greatest generation the greatest generation for a reason.

00:28:15.000 They were, of course, the most heroic generation.

00:28:17.000 They served in war, but all of them had this belief, which is a biblical belief, which is why they believed it, is that my singular commitment to the war effort, whether it be on an assembly line or as a medic or storming the beach of Normandy or fighting an Ibojimi, Iwo Jima, my singular commitment through death or through sacrifice or through it's actually going to make a broader difference.

00:28:41.000 And that's a really poetic and beautiful thing that we've lost.

00:28:46.000 We've lost it, where most people actually think what they do makes no difference whatsoever.

00:28:53.000 And that's exactly why we're in the state that we're in.

00:28:56.000 It doesn't matter if I get drunk the night before, someone else is going to cut up the slack.

00:29:00.000 It's this widespread irresponsibility that has set in.

00:29:03.000 So what does that have to do with the church and with politics?

00:29:06.000 Is that in this church right here is every single one of you needs to take responsibility for the type of country that you want to live in and also the type of civic engagement.

00:29:18.000 And so I say commonly that churches have prison ministries, marriage ministries, youth ministries, financial counseling ministries, music ministries, sports ministries, but almost no churches have any sort of political ministry.

00:29:32.000 So think about, and some pastors completely disagree at this, and I would love a chance to interface with them because they're just wrong.

00:29:39.000 And I think I can make them, and I think I can make them see why.

00:29:43.000 But what do you think causes most of the confusion in families today?

00:29:50.000 Seriously.

00:29:51.000 So the one thing that is going to be the unspoken or spoken piece of conflict is the one thing that your church will not tell you how to think about.

00:30:04.000 Think about that.

00:30:04.000 But here's the point: the church needs to offer clarity in confusing times.

00:30:10.000 And when you have married couples, when you have 15 and 16-year-olds in your youth ministry, go to youth ministries, and they say, hey, when I go on TikTok or when I go on Instagram, all I see is BLM stuff. 0.69

00:30:21.000 What are we supposed to think about that? 0.68

00:30:23.000 And when the youth minister says, oh, we don't get into that, first of all, the young person will then lose respect for the point of authority from that youth minister.

00:30:32.000 Secondly, they'll be less likely to join the church in the future because there are no longer a sense of clarity or information.

00:30:38.000 And third, they're going to believe whatever they're told because the church doesn't take a stance on that.

00:30:43.000 And so if the church doesn't take a stance on politics, then what do you take a stance on?

00:30:48.000 Exactly.

00:30:49.000 The entire country, whether we like it or not, whether you signed up for it or not, has an incredibly heavy amount of consequences based on political beliefs that you have and how you exercise them.

00:30:58.000 So in California, this gathering is deemed illegal by Gavin Newsom.

00:31:01.000 In Tennessee, that's not the case, right?

00:31:04.000 Post-birth abortion, transgenderism, SB 145, all of it.

00:31:08.000 And so the church needs to get way more involved in politics, not less.

00:31:13.000 And we need to do it through a biblical lens, always referencing scripture as the main driving force, understanding history.

00:31:20.000 All of you as Christians Have a higher degree of responsibility for how you're going to interface.

00:31:29.000 And I say this to all of our students at Turning Point USA: is that never is it permissible for anyone to engage in ad hominin attacks or slights against a person of a different political opinion or to get more heated or just get angry.

00:31:44.000 They might get very angry, but you shouldn't and you shouldn't insult them.

00:31:47.000 Instead, you should look at them not as an obstacle but as an opportunity.

00:31:51.000 And I mean, if every single person did that this Thursday, it'd be an amazing thing.

00:31:55.000 And so the church, I think, churches across the country need to hire civic pastors that can counsel the church individually on questions that they might have around politics.

00:32:08.000 So, for example, people in this church, I'm just guessing you guys have someone that does marital counseling here, right?

00:32:14.000 I'm guessing.

00:32:16.000 And you could probably, you know, sign up for it or you have classes and all that.

00:32:20.000 It's the same with politics.

00:32:21.000 People have a lot of confusion about politics.

00:32:22.000 I get it.

00:32:23.000 It's really confusing.

00:32:24.000 Can I trust this source?

00:32:25.000 Is this person correct?

00:32:27.000 What about this data study?

00:32:28.000 And that's great stuff.

00:32:30.000 The church should be at the center of that conversation, right?

00:32:32.000 People should be coming on Wednesday or Thursday nights and asking the same sort of questions they ask about financial planning, right?

00:32:38.000 They should be like, hey, I don't get this healthcare thing.

00:32:41.000 Like all my Christian friends on the left say that Republicans hate poor people because they want to take health care away.

00:32:46.000 Great.

00:32:46.000 Let's do a 30-minute deal on that.

00:32:48.000 That'd be really helpful, right?

00:32:50.000 People say I'm only pro-life because I'm pro-birth, but I don't care about people all across the rest.

00:32:54.000 I'm sure you guys have heard this before, right?

00:32:56.000 Happy to build that out now.

00:32:57.000 The point is that the church should be taking an authoritative role in that conversation.

00:33:02.000 And if we do, then we'll start to see things get a lot better. 0.70

00:33:06.000 So I got five minutes, and I want you to speak on this because I'm not the smartest guy in the room, and I'm not stupid either.

00:33:15.000 Okay. 0.90

00:33:15.000 Donald Trump won the election. 0.90

00:33:17.000 I believe that with all my heart.

00:33:19.000 I believe that he won the election.

00:33:25.000 Tell us what you know about voter fraud.

00:33:27.000 Yeah, I mean, I built this out at length in the prior service.

00:33:31.000 And so, look, it was a red wave everywhere except for four cities.

00:33:35.000 I mean, we won 28 out of 28 toss-up and competitive House seats.

00:33:40.000 We flipped three state legislatures.

00:33:41.000 We flipped one governor's mansion.

00:33:43.000 We won every single competitive Senate seat except two.

00:33:45.000 And the ones that we won, we won decisively: Susan Collins by 12 points, Tom Tillis by two points.

00:33:50.000 And so, Donald Trump won more black and Hispanic voters than any candidate since a Republican candidate since 1960.

00:33:57.000 He won the Rio Grande Valley that a Republican has not won since 1906.

00:34:01.000 He won Beverly Hills, okay?

00:34:04.000 He won Beverly Hills.

00:34:06.000 And so, as I start to, and I've spent dozens of hours poring over this data, happy to go through it at length.

00:34:14.000 We don't have time to do it.

00:34:16.000 But all of a sudden, I started asking questions very publicly, one of the few public people in the conservative movement that have actually decided to kind of call nonsense on exactly what has been told here.

00:34:26.000 And this idea that there's no widespread voter fraud is just, it's one of the most sloppy programmed lies that is ever being told.

00:34:34.000 This idea that when you have 170 million people participate in something as taking over a $4 trillion government for four years that will control the entire geopolitical trajectory of the planet, that all of a sudden everyone's going to stop cheating.

00:34:47.000 People cheat on everything.

00:34:48.000 Cheat on taxes.

00:34:49.000 They cheat in monopoly.

00:34:50.000 They cheat in poker.

00:34:51.000 They cheat in traffic.

00:34:53.000 They run red lights.

00:34:54.000 Like people do lots of different cutting of corners.

00:34:56.000 But when it comes to voting, all of a sudden, everyone acts perfectly, right?

00:35:01.000 As if there's no organized crime units that won't try to actually influence an election.

00:35:05.000 And look, there's a multi-trillion dollar money laundering industry in this country.

00:35:09.000 There's child sex trafficking industries in this country.

00:35:11.000 I mean, this idea that there are not criminals that would try to influence our election is so contrary to logic and reason.

00:35:19.000 And there's so many different ways to do it.

00:35:20.000 For example, here's just a great example, okay?

00:35:23.000 In Georgia, in 2016, there were 240,000 absentee mail ballots that were sent out, okay, in 2016.

00:35:29.000 There were 1.3 million that were sent out in Georgia this election, okay?

00:35:33.000 So, and again, all I do is I ask questions, and I also point to data.

00:35:38.000 So, what assurances has the Georgia Secretary of State given us that they were prepared for a tenfold increase in mail and ballots to check for fraud and signature requests this close because they were not anticipating it a year ago because of the pandemic?

00:35:52.000 What measures did you put in place?

00:35:54.000 And if you just ask those questions, you get called a racist, right?

00:35:57.000 No, no, okay, I got it.

00:35:58.000 You had 240,000 ballots in 2016.

00:36:00.000 Now you have 1.3 million.

00:36:02.000 Did you expand your staff?

00:36:03.000 Did you check every signature?

00:36:04.000 Did you make sure that dead people weren't voting?

00:36:06.000 Did you cleanse the voter rolls?

00:36:07.000 Did you do all those things?

00:36:08.000 Because we're seeing numbers that make no sense, right?

00:36:11.000 We're seeing Joe Biden do worse in every urban area across the country except for urban areas.

00:36:15.000 We saw a 1,774% increase in 90-plus-year-olds for voter registration in Pennsylvania in the midst of a pandemic.

00:36:23.000 Okay?

00:36:25.000 We have seen, for example, Joe Biden in Dane County, Wisconsin, where University of Wisconsin-Madison is.

00:36:30.000 The campus is basically closed and shuttered, got 65,000 more votes than Barack Obama did, even adjusting for population increases.

00:36:38.000 So if you start asking these questions, all of a sudden you get called an awful person.

00:36:42.000 You can't do that.

00:36:43.000 But we know, and it's been covered in the New York Times in the year past.

00:36:46.000 They used to actually be really interested in this because they were afraid Republicans were going to do this. 0.84

00:36:50.000 It's called ballot laundering or granny farming. 0.69

00:36:52.000 And it's where you register a lot of developmentally disabled people at nursing homes through people that have a high incentive structure to try to get extra ballots and then submit them and you drop them off in these drop boxes anonymously wearing a mask so you can't tell who's dropping them off. 0.88

00:37:07.000 And then they get cleaned into the system.

00:37:09.000 And you might say, well, there's not enough to do that.

00:37:11.000 You don't know that.

00:37:12.000 It's like saying money laundering was not enough to impact the American economy.

00:37:15.000 That's an argument they used to make.

00:37:17.000 So in the 60s and 70s, when drugs really started to become prevalent in our country, the people that were against the money laundering investigations were like, money laundering's on the edges.

00:37:26.000 It's not that big of a deal.

00:37:27.000 As soon as we started to investigate it, we realized it was like a $3 trillion a year industry in our country.

00:37:32.000 Cleaning dollar bills through laundromats and restaurants and cash-run industries.

00:37:36.000 Until we started to look into it, we realized how complex this was, right?

00:37:39.000 And we already have the whistleblowers in Wisconsin that say that all of her developmentally disabled patients were forced to vote for Joe Biden.

00:37:46.000 This just came out a couple days ago.

00:37:47.000 We have the Nevada Native Project where they were literally handing out gas cards for ballots and they posted it on Facebook, which is a violation of federal law.

00:37:54.000 We know this.

00:37:55.000 And this doesn't even get into the voting tabulation problems and the lack of oversight and Dominion voting systems and Hammer and scorecard and all that sort of stuff.

00:38:04.000 But here's the significance of this.

00:38:06.000 Whether we're right or not, and I know we're on to something, the question is how much and only an investigation can tell us, is that about 60 million people think this was a fraudulent election.

00:38:17.000 That's actually a really, really bad thing for our country.

00:38:19.000 It's really bad.

00:38:20.000 Now, back in 2000, I know we're running out of time, but back in 2016, when the Democrats thought that that election was stolen by Russians, which was absolutely untrue, what did we do?

00:38:31.000 We said, that's a bad thing for our country.

00:38:34.000 Let's look into it.

00:38:36.000 So we appointed Mueller, and we looked into it, and they ended up having this roaming prosecutory authority that indicted all of Trump's friends.

00:38:45.000 But the final conclusion was, no, Russia actually didn't impact the outcome of the election.

00:38:49.000 Why did we do that?

00:38:51.000 Because being the bigger and better people, we were like, it's not a healthy thing for 40 million people to think that the Kremlin influenced this election.

00:38:58.000 Because we actually had this romantic idea of America that the Democrats actually wants what's best for America.

00:39:04.000 And now all of a sudden, you have 60 million people that think that this thing was fraudulent and stolen.

00:39:10.000 And instead of answering our questions, of which I have about 5,000 of them, we have stacks of papers.

00:39:16.000 We've been doing these live streams.

00:39:17.000 I could do, again, I could do a three-hour speech on it.

00:39:19.000 And I encourage all of you guys to check out our podcast if you have any questions about this.

00:39:22.000 Instead of answering our questions, they say, there's no evidence. 0.87

00:39:25.000 Shut up. 1.00

00:39:25.000 You're a racist. 1.00

00:39:26.000 You're a bad person. 1.00

00:39:27.000 And just let him get inaugurated. 0.90

00:39:29.000 And here's where this is headed.

00:39:30.000 If we don't have answers to our questions, you're going to have 60 million people that think the entire process is invalidated.

00:39:37.000 And we don't know where that heads.

00:39:39.000 I just know it's not good.

00:39:40.000 We don't know what the ramifications of that is.

00:39:43.000 We don't know, people say civil war and all that.

00:39:45.000 I think that's a sloppy thing to contribute to the conversation.

00:39:48.000 It might be a lot more nuanced and also a lot less predictable.

00:39:52.000 Might be people that just say, I'm never going to vote again.

00:39:54.000 That's a bad thing, right?

00:39:56.000 That's a really bad thing.

00:39:57.000 It might be 20 million Republicans that say, we're not going to pay our taxes anymore.

00:40:02.000 Okay, that would be kind of bad.

00:40:04.000 We don't know.

00:40:04.000 Like there's a sequence of unpredictable events that could unfold, none of which are good.

00:40:10.000 And so those of us that actually believe in reason and data and evidence, we would love an answer as to why there was a 1,774% increase for 90-plus-year-olds registering to vote in Pennsylvania six months before a pandemic, mostly in August, while the pandemic was raging in Pennsylvania.

00:40:28.000 Who is doing that?

00:40:30.000 Have you looked into it?

00:40:31.000 And the Bureau and the DOJ is nowhere to be found.

00:40:35.000 And there's this massive institutional distrust that is growing where people are saying, not only do I not trust the system, now I don't trust my government.

00:40:43.000 I don't trust my justice system.

00:40:45.000 I don't trust the colleges I send my kids to.

00:40:47.000 I don't trust the products I buy from these companies.

00:40:50.000 I don't trust the pharmaceutical or vaccinations that they want to push upon our public.

00:40:55.000 And so what ends up happening is you're going to have 60 or 70 million people in the country that basically are just saying to anyone that has any sort of power, I don't trust you or anything that you stand for.

00:41:08.000 And just play that out in your mind where it goes.

00:41:10.000 It's a very unhealthy thing.

00:41:12.000 And so they say they want to heal the country.

00:41:14.000 Okay, you want to heal the country?

00:41:15.000 Then just answer our questions.

00:41:17.000 That would be a really great way to do that.

00:41:19.000 Maybe there are answers.

00:41:21.000 I don't think so.

00:41:22.000 I believe with all my heart, God is not done with America.

00:41:26.000 God is not done with this nation.

00:41:28.000 There's more for what God wants to do in this nation.

00:41:32.000 So I know it's really hard.

00:41:34.000 Two minutes.

00:41:35.000 Give these people hope.

00:41:37.000 Yeah, and so I will.

00:41:41.000 And so I'm going to tell you kind of what I'm doing.

00:41:45.000 And I refuse to be nothing but optimistic.

00:41:50.000 I'm very realistic about the challenges that we have.

00:41:53.000 And I think we have to be.

00:41:54.000 However, this is the greatest opportunity to build something new.

00:41:57.000 I actually think that we're entering a building moment in America right now.

00:42:02.000 And building is hard.

00:42:04.000 Building takes planning.

00:42:05.000 It takes support structures.

00:42:06.000 It takes defending what you're building away from attackers.

00:42:09.000 But what do I mean by that?

00:42:11.000 A liberal podcaster said something so interesting the other day that I was listening to, and he said, There are zero institutions that I trust.

00:42:19.000 I said, you're exactly right.

00:42:21.000 He said, I don't trust any institution that has massive power in America.

00:42:26.000 And I thought to myself, that's unbelievably depressing, but it's actually the opposite.

00:42:30.000 It's incredibly exciting.

00:42:32.000 It's an opportunity to build institutions using biblical ideas to build new things. 0.99

00:42:38.000 And so since the entire, you know, it's kind of a barren wasteland of colleges that are going to burst, of churches that no longer stand for anything, of media institutions that are crumbling that we thought we could once trust that all of a sudden are completely backwards and wacko. 0.99

00:42:53.000 So now we have to enter a phase of we're not even going to care about what happens to those other institutions. 0.99

00:42:59.000 Gravity will take care of that.

00:43:02.000 People are already starting to defect.

00:43:04.000 Their ratings are down.

00:43:05.000 They're purchasing less of those products.

00:43:06.000 The question is, what are we going to do in this moment to first and foremost to support the good guys?

00:43:12.000 There's this, and it's going to take longer than two minutes to do this.

00:43:14.000 I'll do my best.

00:43:15.000 But there's this, and I want you to think very carefully if you've done this.

00:43:18.000 And if you have, you should really pray about it, which is there's this irresistible pattern that happens on the internet that anyone that has any form of success, there must now be a perpetual ridicule industry that goes after them.

00:43:33.000 Anyone, a podcaster, an artist, a musician, a pastor, that all of a sudden starts to break through and have any form of success, there needs to be a greater volume of people to tear that down.

00:43:45.000 What are we doing to actually support the good guys right now?

00:43:47.000 Because there are good guys.

00:43:49.000 Like Sean Fuched, or I can never say his legendary.

00:43:53.000 Sean, who's great.

00:43:54.000 Again, I don't agree with everything he says theologically, but he's definitely doing something good.

00:43:58.000 He's under vicious attack.

00:44:01.000 Let's defend him.

00:44:02.000 How about some of the truth tellers right now?

00:44:04.000 Here's the point is that if we actually rise up and build something new and support the good guys and defend right now, the way that the current trajectory is is the current power institutions are crumbling and they're crumbling really, really quick. 0.95

00:44:17.000 This is the greatest opportunity for Bible-believing Christians to lean in and to build new. 0.94

00:44:23.000 And with that, I think America's best days are ahead.

00:44:32.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:44:34.000 Please consider getting involved with Turning Point USA, where we play offense with a sense of urgency to win America's culture war at tpusa.com.

00:44:42.000 tpusa.com.

00:44:44.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:44:46.000 God bless.

00:44:47.000 Speak to you soon.

The Charlie Kirk Show - November 29, 2020

The Epidemic of Cowardice in Christianity Inc.

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