The Charlie Kirk Show - The Strength of Salvation in an Era of Anxiety

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, happy Saturday.

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00:00:43.000 This episode is a conversation I had with my pastor, Pastor Rob McCoy, and Pastor John Randall from Calvary Chapel, San Juan, Capistrano, or is it Capistrano?

00:00:54.000 Whatever it is.

00:00:55.000 It's a fun place.

00:00:56.000 Great guy. 0.90

00:00:57.000 We talk about Christianity.

00:00:59.000 We talk about politics.

00:01:01.000 We talk about Joe Biden.

00:01:02.000 We talk about depression.

00:01:04.000 We talk about even a little bit of my life story and so much more.

00:01:07.000 This episode is very important.

00:01:09.000 And again, thank you for supporting us at CharlieKirk.com slash support.

00:01:14.000 John Randall, Rob McCoy, answers to your questions.

00:01:17.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:01:19.000 Here we go.

00:01:21.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:23.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:01:25.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:28.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:31.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:32.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:34.000 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.

00:01:42.000 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.

00:01:51.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:54.000 And here we are.

00:01:55.000 So thank you guys.

00:01:58.000 Thank you guys for being here, both of you.

00:01:59.000 And Charlie, thanks for taking time to be here with us.

00:02:02.000 And I want to start out because I thought what we could do is I want to begin the discussion speaking on a personal level.

00:02:10.000 And, you know, Charlie, I want to get a little bit of background about you personally.

00:02:13.000 I mean, I've heard so much about you from my kids.

00:02:15.000 In fact, I was asking questions and they were answering.

00:02:17.000 I was like, don't tell me.

00:02:17.000 I want to ask Charlie that question about himself.

00:02:19.000 But I guess one of my questions was, where did you grow up and who was it that instilled this passion in you to do the work that you do?

00:02:27.000 Because it's really a blessing.

00:02:29.000 Well, thank you.

00:02:29.000 First of all, it's awesome to be here in person with all of you.

00:02:31.000 It's just such a blessing.

00:02:32.000 It's awesome.

00:02:33.000 And you have a phenomenal pastor here who is really leading you guys wonderfully.

00:02:40.000 And I can tell you that is something that you're not finding a lot right now.

00:02:46.000 You're seeing some pastors that are not doing things that I think they should be doing, not opening their churches.

00:02:50.000 This is a great, great pastor.

00:02:52.000 So I'm honored to be here tonight.

00:02:53.000 It's such a blessing.

00:02:54.000 So I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, was saved right around when I was in fifth or sixth grade.

00:03:01.000 I said the words, but I didn't really quite understand what it meant.

00:03:04.000 But saying the words actually wasn't meaningless because that was kind of a very specific pivot point in my life.

00:03:10.000 And then as I grew older, the words started to mean a lot more when you start to realize the suffering that you kind of have to endure, the difficulty you have to go through in life.

00:03:18.000 And the harder you try, the more you're actually going to slip up and fall in what grace actually means.

00:03:23.000 And so, you know, I speak on college campuses quite often, really haven't the last nine months for obvious reasons.

00:03:30.000 And I get asked about all sorts of different things.

00:03:32.000 Obviously, we lead with the political side and the philosophical side, but people ask me all the time about kind of religion and why I believe what I believe.

00:03:42.000 And, you know, what is exactly what Christians just like, Christianity is just like every other religion is what I get from a lot of people.

00:03:48.000 And I'm sure there's some people here tonight or might be watching on the live stream or outside that might not yet be saved.

00:03:53.000 And so it's just, there's a real simple way that I'm able to distill the gospel.

00:03:57.000 I didn't come up with this.

00:03:58.000 I heard a pastor say this like 10 years ago, and I never forgot it.

00:04:02.000 And so, whoever that guy is, thank you.

00:04:03.000 I'd love to meet this guy.

00:04:04.000 But it's the gospel in four words, three words, two words, one word.

00:04:08.000 In four words, the gospel is Jesus took my place.

00:04:11.000 Three words is him for me.

00:04:12.000 Two words is substitutionary atonement.

00:04:15.000 And one word is grace.

00:04:16.000 And grace is, you should approach.

00:04:20.000 And grace is a word we throw around a lot, but there's a really easy way to explain grace.

00:04:26.000 There's justice, mercy, and grace.

00:04:29.000 And so justice is you get exactly what you deserve.

00:04:32.000 So you sin, you slip up and fall.

00:04:34.000 You're going to pay a punishment for that.

00:04:36.000 Mercy is you get a little bit of an alleviated sentence.

00:04:40.000 Grace is you screw up and someone serves that prison sentence for you.

00:04:45.000 That's what grace is: is that you get something you don't deserve.

00:04:49.000 You get something that you're not worthy of.

00:04:52.000 And so that means more and more to me as I grow older.

00:04:55.000 And it has been an amazing journey, you know, being able to do this.

00:04:59.000 It's been a phenomenal blessing in my life.

00:05:03.000 Turning point USA has just grown beyond our wildest expectations.

00:05:06.000 We've now been doing podcast radio for just about a year and a half.

00:05:10.000 And that has just been a phenomenal venture for us.

00:05:13.000 We're now on about 200 radio stations across the country.

00:05:16.000 Our podcast is ranking amongst the top out there.

00:05:19.000 And so, you know, we're doing everything we possibly can to spread the good news and spread truth.

00:05:25.000 And a couple years ago, I met Pastor Rob McCoy, who's my pastor.

00:05:29.000 We did three services this morning in Thousand Oaks, which was awesome.

00:05:34.000 And then we came down here to all you guys.

00:05:35.000 We did three services.

00:05:36.000 Yeah, well, I had a lot to say.

00:05:39.000 Go figure.

00:05:40.000 And we're, you know, I told John, we'll go overtime if you guys want.

00:05:43.000 Like, I got a lot.

00:05:44.000 We got a lot to say tonight.

00:05:45.000 So, see, there you go.

00:05:48.000 But it's a three-day weekend, so we're good, Charlie.

00:05:51.000 Yeah.

00:05:54.000 And so this is a defining moment for our country and our time.

00:05:59.000 And, you know, for a lot of young people out there that are looking, you know, for what do I want to do next in life?

00:06:04.000 And what do I, you know, where do I go from here?

00:06:07.000 You know, my story is one where I found something that I had a little bit of a talent in and a passion in.

00:06:14.000 I just went and did it.

00:06:15.000 Never went to college.

00:06:17.000 Probably won't one day.

00:06:19.000 So I'm on my ninth gap year now.

00:06:24.000 So, so, but it's been an unbelievable blessing.

00:06:30.000 And our story, I wish I could take credit for, but it's just been all of God's favor.

00:06:34.000 Oh, man, Charlie, that's so powerful.

00:06:35.000 How many of you listen to the podcast?

00:06:36.000 I just want to see.

00:06:37.000 Wow.

00:06:38.000 Okay, there you go.

00:06:40.000 Fantastic.

00:06:41.000 Hey, something else, which is pretty exciting.

00:06:43.000 And this is like, this is another chapter in your story.

00:06:47.000 And that is congratulations on your recent engagement.

00:06:51.000 Thank you.

00:06:51.000 Hey.

00:06:53.000 Thank you.

00:06:54.000 Now, when I heard that, I was thinking to myself, man, what kind of, this girl must be strong.

00:06:59.000 I mean, just as I observe your life and watch what you go through, I think, man, she must just be like awesome.

00:07:06.000 I want to know what it was about this young lady that you knew that's the girl for me.

00:07:11.000 And then also, could you let us know how you asked her to be your wife? 0.97

00:07:15.000 Yeah, and so I'm definitely marrying up.

00:07:18.000 That's a good piece of advice for all men out there. 0.82

00:07:21.000 And no, I mean that.

00:07:23.000 She runs an unbelievable ministry that's called Proclaim Street, where I saw some people actually wearing the shirts around here.

00:07:30.000 Really high-quality American, made in America, fabrics and threads.

00:07:33.000 It's awesome.

00:07:35.000 She does a Bible and 365 ministry where she walks people through the Bible every single day, sending them different verse.

00:07:40.000 So you subscribe to that.

00:07:42.000 You'll be able to read the whole Bible an entire year.

00:07:45.000 She's a speaker.

00:07:46.000 She does podcasting.

00:07:48.000 Not to mention, she already has her master's in Jewish jurisprudence, getting her doctorate.

00:07:52.000 So I'm way underqualified for this deal here.

00:07:55.000 And not, but she's also, she's so incredibly loving, but she's also tough.

00:08:02.000 And she knows what we're going into.

00:08:03.000 She knows, you know, kind of this partnership that we're forming is going to be one that is going to obviously be under a lot of attacks from the enemy, right?

00:08:17.000 And she's a gift from God.

00:08:19.000 I can honestly say that.

00:08:20.000 So cool.

00:08:22.000 So how did you propose?

00:08:24.000 Because I want the, what's the proposal story?

00:08:27.000 How did you do that?

00:08:27.000 Yeah, so I did the right thing.

00:08:30.000 I asked her a couple months ahead of time, kind of how do you want to be proposed to?

00:08:34.000 Because, well, because I was a recipient of so many of her complaints of other people's proposals, right?

00:08:42.000 Not complaints, but let's just say critiques, right?

00:08:45.000 The pictures weren't right.

00:08:46.000 So I got a list of things that she wanted or didn't want.

00:08:49.000 She didn't want a lot of people. 0.81

00:08:51.000 She wanted really, really good pictures.

00:08:53.000 She wanted to be surprised.

00:08:56.000 So I kind of put all that together.

00:08:57.000 I said, got it.

00:08:58.000 Not a lot of people.

00:09:00.000 Okay, so I surprised her in the midst of a photo shoot.

00:09:02.000 So good pictures, right?

00:09:04.000 So that got that done.

00:09:06.000 And so we have incredibly high quality pictures of the moment and a video of it. 0.92

00:09:11.000 And she didn't want a lot of people.

00:09:13.000 So it was just us and like two or three other people that she was really close to.

00:09:17.000 And so, you know, we're super blessed.

00:09:20.000 You got to ask him how they started dating.

00:09:23.000 And seriously, this guy is like, he's to the point.

00:09:25.000 You got to hear that.

00:09:26.000 How did that start?

00:09:27.000 No, yeah, it was a lot of fun.

00:09:30.000 So we actually, one of our people at Turning Point USA, Tyler, originally wanted to hire Erica to come work for us at Turning Point USA, which started as a job interview.

00:09:43.000 I ended that like five minutes in.

00:09:45.000 I was like, yeah, that dog's not going to hunt here.

00:09:48.000 So let's get on to like other business here.

00:09:54.000 And so I was very direct at the end of the conversation.

00:09:59.000 And I was like, look, I'm not going to hire you, but I'd like to date you. 1.00

00:10:05.000 No, by the way, I tell young men all the time, be this direct because women now, they're not used to it now because everyone's playing games. 0.96

00:10:12.000 They're doing all this weird social media stuff. 0.99

00:10:15.000 All right.

00:10:16.000 Okay.

00:10:18.000 And I felt, but obviously be respectful.

00:10:20.000 You don't have to be, you know, disrespectful or anything, but just be very, you know, tell, say what you mean and say what you want.

00:10:27.000 And, you know, it ended up being an amazing, you know, amazing thing.

00:10:31.000 Yeah, I asked my wife after 19 days to marry me and she said yes.

00:10:34.000 Amazing.

00:10:35.000 So anyway.

00:10:37.000 All right.

00:10:37.000 Charlie, you've also written a book and it's called the Mega Doctrine.

00:10:41.000 I believe it's the New York Times bestseller.

00:10:43.000 Yeah.

00:10:43.000 And can you tell us about, yeah, it's really exciting.

00:10:46.000 Can you tell us?

00:10:46.000 Oh, I see one.

00:10:47.000 Can you tell us?

00:10:48.000 I'll design it for you.

00:10:49.000 Okay.

00:10:50.000 Awesome.

00:10:51.000 Can you tell us what the book is about and what inspired you to write it?

00:10:55.000 Yeah, it's so I want to segue into the obviously the political part of this discussion with that.

00:11:02.000 So thank you.

00:11:04.000 I think the book is actually more applicable now than it was when I even wrote it, which was a year ago.

00:11:10.000 So I wrote it for a variety of different reasons.

00:11:12.000 It's called the MAGA Doctrine.

00:11:13.000 It's the only ideas that will win the future.

00:11:15.000 We were so blessed.

00:11:16.000 We sold almost 100,000 copies and it was awesome, beyond anything I could have imagined.

00:11:21.000 And really what bothered me is that the way that Trump's supporters and President Trump was being described at the time was as if there's no philosophical basis for anything he's doing.

00:11:31.000 It's just all just people that are following him that are less than desirable and he has no idea what he's doing.

00:11:37.000 I said, there's a lot more to this.

00:11:39.000 There's an economic anxiety and there's a lot of positives that he wants to put forward for the country.

00:11:43.000 And I thought he's actually changing the Republican Party for the better and what those ideas actually were.

00:11:48.000 And so We wrote the book, and it was more quite honestly to make the case in the midst of an election, right?

00:12:00.000 And now that the election's over, people say, Oh, that book is irrelevant.

00:12:03.000 Actually, and look, I do want to just get this out of the way.

00:12:06.000 Rob has this wonderful term called hope and opium, called hopium.

00:12:11.000 What drives me nuts more than anything else is when someone in a position of authority intentionally misleads you.

00:12:17.000 And so, I'm going to tell it to you bluntly: Joe Biden's going to get sworn in on Wednesday, okay?

00:12:21.000 If you're reading something other than that, you're getting misled.

00:12:23.000 So, we just got to get that out of the way because we had a whole discussion about that earlier today.

00:12:28.000 So, when Joe Biden gets sworn in as president, the question is: what's going to be the opposition party?

00:12:33.000 What is that party going to believe in?

00:12:35.000 And do we want to go back to the Republican Party prior to Donald Trump?

00:12:40.000 And what was that party?

00:12:42.000 And that book makes the defense that we shouldn't, that we should actually re-embrace this really exciting new movement that has emerged.

00:12:50.000 And what is that movement?

00:12:51.000 Well, first of all, it's a movement that wants to give a voice to people that shower before work and after work.

00:12:57.000 It wants to give a voice to people that didn't necessarily go to Ivy League schools, to police officers, to firefighters, to military veterans, to carpenters, to welders, to entrepreneurs, to people that might have quote unquote been in flyover country, that were always kind of the pawns of the political elite in both parties.

00:13:17.000 It's a party that, quite honestly, is a little bit sick and tired of these endless wars while we can't even take care of our own affairs here at home, or we're playing war games in the Middle East without any sort of desire, any sort of specific outcome being able to detail.

00:13:29.000 It's a party that understands that without a vibrant manufacturing base, you actually don't have a country.

00:13:35.000 It's a party that actually wants immigration policy to benefit the American people and American citizens, not some weird esoteric bumper sticker from some person in Malibu that has the comfort and the ability to say that we should just open up our country to every single person always, regardless.

00:13:51.000 Why they live behind the house of games?

00:13:52.000 Yeah, precisely.

00:13:53.000 And so, but more than anything else, it's a movement and a party now that the president will be exiting office.

00:14:00.000 Hopefully, that will be able to keep and moving forward is that listens to the people and listens to their concerns and their anxieties.

00:14:06.000 And one of the reasons why President Trump was able to get elected in the first place is that you had multiple decades of people that had valid concerns that were completely and totally ignored and silenced.

00:14:18.000 Like, shut up person in Ohio, it doesn't matter your factory is closed.

00:14:22.000 Like, shut up person in Maine, it doesn't matter your kid is overdosing on meth. 1.00

00:14:26.000 You know, shut up person in El Paso, Texas, doesn't matter if the border remains wide open and children are getting sex trafficked across the border. 1.00

00:14:32.000 Like, you don't matter. 0.98

00:14:33.000 All that matters is corporate tax cuts.

00:14:35.000 And President Trump, in his very unique style, came onto the political scene and really highlighted three big issues that the Republican Party never wanted to talk about, which is immigration, trade, and corporate skepticism.

00:14:50.000 And those three things I think are very, very healthy, especially right now.

00:14:54.000 And so that's really what the book is about.

00:14:57.000 And it's more important than ever because this, the kind of the argument over the Republican Party is already beginning.

00:15:03.000 Like, what kind of party are we going to be?

00:15:05.000 I want to be a party where President Donald Trump gets called all these awful things.

00:15:05.000 Who are we going to be?

00:15:10.000 He, as a Republican, won more of the black and the Latino vote of any Republican running for office since 1960.

00:15:17.000 That's amazing.

00:15:18.000 And that's something that we as the Republican Party should learn from.

00:15:20.000 Like, how did we do that?

00:15:23.000 And so he was the first candidate as a Republican since Reagan to win these traditionally Democrat areas where people predominantly worked with their hands, where people were in the manufacturing, the trades.

00:15:42.000 And so that's something that I think is really, really important.

00:15:45.000 And also, I want to say this as well: President Donald Trump was the most pro-life president in American history, and he deserves a lot of credit for that.

00:15:53.000 And I have a whole part in my book about this where, albeit at times, it can be very confusing for certain people that haven't really understood it and studied it in the Christian world saying, how could a three-times married, twice-divorced guy who used to donate to planned parent to be so pro-life?

00:16:11.000 It's like, well, maybe God was working really significantly in his life where he was courageously pro-life.

00:16:18.000 First president ever speak at the March for Life.

00:16:19.000 And so the kind of party in the movement I want to be in is a party that is unapologetically pro-life, that believes the church is essential, that wants to protect the dignity of the American worker, that wants to end these senseless foreign wars, that actually wants to challenge big tech with their crackdown on free speech in this country.

00:16:38.000 That's the type of party that we want.

00:16:40.000 That's good.

00:16:41.000 Good stuff.

00:16:43.000 We'll come back to more of that in a minute, but I'd like to, for a moment, kind of discuss, if we may, gentlemen, the subject of the pandemic.

00:16:51.000 And I just want to talk a little bit about that.

00:16:52.000 Of course, we've had people, maybe you have, people who have been hospitalized.

00:16:56.000 We've had people who have lost loved ones who either died from COVID or died with it.

00:17:03.000 And so many have been affected by this.

00:17:06.000 And I'm just curious what your perspective is, Charlie, on this pandemic, obviously, how it's affected our country and why this has become so polarizing, so political in the days that we've been living the last eight, nine months.

00:17:23.000 I also want Rob to comment on this because he's been keeping his church open and has dealt with a lot of this.

00:17:29.000 Look, it's a real virus with real life consequences.

00:17:33.000 I've lost friends with it.

00:17:34.000 And I don't think anyone should say it's not real or anything.

00:17:37.000 However, let's talk about the facts of what we're dealing with, who's actually at risk, and what is the cost of any measure to try to mitigate that risk, which is what a mature society and a civilization should be doing.

00:17:49.000 Where as soon as after two weeks to slow the spread, which we're still doing, I guess, right?

00:17:52.000 We're still in this two weeks to slow the spread nonsense, where we should have asked ourselves the question: okay, now we know how it works and operates.

00:17:59.000 How much individual liberty and multi-decades of economic progress are we willing to throw away?

00:18:05.000 And what can we actually prove the lives we're going to be saved through the lockdowns?

00:18:11.000 And a mature society would have weighed those costs and benefits and would have said very simply and clearly that if you're over the age of 65, you should take this unbelievably seriously.

00:18:20.000 And maybe you should stay at home.

00:18:22.000 You make your own decisions.

00:18:24.000 That's the whole idea of liberty with responsibility.

00:18:26.000 But especially if you're under the age of 25 and schools should never have been closed anywhere.

00:18:31.000 That is just, it is an absolute moral outrage.

00:18:36.000 And so then the question is: well, what about 30 to 50?

00:18:40.000 That's where nuances start to come in.

00:18:42.000 You understand?

00:18:42.000 The mark of a mature civilization is the capacity to communicate nuances to its people.

00:18:47.000 Well, maybe some people have preexisting conditions.

00:18:50.000 Maybe some people are willing to encounter the risk because they want to live freely.

00:18:54.000 That's part of what a free society is all about.

00:18:57.000 We decided to do the opposite.

00:18:59.000 We tried to kill a mouse with a Tomahawk missile.

00:19:02.000 And the cost to our society Because of the lockdowns, not just the virus, will take decades, if ever, to be able to untangle from suicide, mental health, depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, job displacement, business closures, all of it.

00:19:18.000 And not to mention the cost that it did on just the psychological, sociological, and even spiritual health of so many people.

00:19:27.000 And so, one of the reasons why it became so divided, unnecessarily, is because you saw a lot of governors, like the governor you have in this state, that quite honestly awful that never followed the science.

00:19:43.000 He followed the scientists that he liked.

00:19:45.000 And Rob was fighting up against it so much.

00:19:48.000 Rob, do you want to?

00:19:49.000 Yeah, Rob, I'd like to ask that because that's a very good question that segues into something I was wondering.

00:19:54.000 As you look at the different governors, as you pointed out, our governor and all that he's done, or I should say hasn't done.

00:20:00.000 I don't know what he's doing, but you would assume that those who ran for office and got in genuinely cared and were concerned about their citizens.

00:20:10.000 But this is what I'm struggling with.

00:20:12.000 What is the benefit of closing it down and crippling your economy in a state like ours?

00:20:17.000 Like, do you think you're keeping people safe?

00:20:19.000 Rob, why keep everything shut?

00:20:22.000 Why all this?

00:20:24.000 So I was a city councilman in the city of Thousand Oaks April 3rd.

00:20:29.000 And I had been the mayor when we'd had a shooting, the borderline shooting.

00:20:33.000 12 of our young people were killed by gunmen.

00:20:35.000 Two of them were from my congregation.

00:20:36.000 I buried them both.

00:20:38.000 I love my city.

00:20:39.000 And I was the mayor when we buried them and dedicated the park the year later.

00:20:43.000 So I love my city.

00:20:43.000 I don't want any harm to come to my city.

00:20:45.000 I ran for that office.

00:20:47.000 On April 3rd, I resigned.

00:20:49.000 And the reason why I resigned is because April 4th was Palm Sunday.

00:20:52.000 It was our holy week.

00:20:54.000 Our sacrament in the church is communion, first Sunday of the month.

00:20:58.000 The governor said the church was non-essential.

00:21:00.000 We couldn't be open, even if we followed CDC standards.

00:21:02.000 Because at the time, we didn't know the severity of the virus.

00:21:04.000 Costco, abortion clinics, cannabis distributors, but not the church.

00:21:08.000 So I resigned from my seat because I knew I'd be censured.

00:21:11.000 And I opened the church on the 4th and we did communion where our sanctuary holds 400.

00:21:15.000 I had 10 seats.

00:21:19.000 Good.

00:21:20.000 Good.

00:21:22.000 So it took us three and a half hours to do communion with 10 chairs.

00:21:25.000 And the press came out like we were killing everybody.

00:21:28.000 But they, to their credit, they saw that we were cleaner than any Costco or Trader Joe's.

00:21:32.000 But as we went along, we got the data.

00:21:35.000 Our county, for example, we have 856,000 people.

00:21:38.000 We've done over 800,000 tests.

00:21:41.000 And of the entirety of the population today, we've had 412 deaths.

00:21:47.000 That's four one-hundredths of 1%.

00:21:51.000 So the death rate is 4100s of 1%.

00:21:54.000 And yet, we have adversely affected 100% of our community.

00:21:58.000 65% of our restaurants in Ventura County will never reopen.

00:22:02.000 We've quarantined the abused with the abusers.

00:22:05.000 We've shuttered our schools.

00:22:07.000 And in the history of the United States, a 12-month period, the largest number of opioid deaths in our nation's history.

00:22:18.000 And then we get this from them that we don't love our neighbor.

00:22:22.000 And the judge, when I had to sit before him when we violated the restraining order, he said, you need to look at the second greatest commandment: love your neighbor as you love yourself.

00:22:28.000 And I said, that's great.

00:22:29.000 Thanks, Judge.

00:22:32.000 And what book of the Bible is that in, Judge?

00:22:34.000 Could you tell me what?

00:22:36.000 But my point to him, and I said it in the court, is I said, we do love our neighbors.

00:22:40.000 And it's coming at great cost.

00:22:41.000 We're being fined by a tyrannical government every Sunday that we're open.

00:22:45.000 And it's immunity by community.

00:22:47.000 And at that point, we hadn't had a single case, let alone a death in our church.

00:22:51.000 Now, folks have gotten COVID.

00:22:53.000 They got it here, there.

00:22:54.000 We had one death.

00:22:55.000 It's a person who never attended, hasn't attended our church in over two years, but they're a congregant.

00:22:59.000 I went and visited them.

00:23:00.000 So we've gone through the pain.

00:23:01.000 And I'm not dismissing the 412 tragic deaths. 1.00

00:23:05.000 But what I am focusing on towards my neighbors is the fact that we have devastated Californians with this tyrannical stupidity that is unacceptable. 1.00

00:23:15.000 And we really have to govern better. 1.00

00:23:18.000 That's right.

00:23:19.000 You know, Charlie, we were talking about how up in San Jose we were dialoguing about what's going on up there at Calvary San Jose and what they're experiencing.

00:23:26.000 Yeah, and I just want to add on to Rob's point.

00:23:29.000 That's 412 deaths under a lockdown, right?

00:23:32.000 And so the virus still spread in the midst of a lockdown.

00:23:36.000 And so what the public health officials never were able to clearly communicate, because they've never been grilled correctly, because you have a one-party rule in this state, is what does success look like?

00:23:46.000 Give us exactly what you believe a lockdown will achieve.

00:23:51.000 And then also tell us the costs: suicide, overdose, addiction, alcoholism, abuse, weigh them against each other, and then we'll have a better informed decision.

00:23:59.000 Instead, it's we must lock down at all costs.

00:24:02.000 And just so we in America are so unbelievably blessed, we will get out of this because of our incredible amount of ingenuity, entrepreneurship, wealth, and all this.

00:24:13.000 Just so everyone knows, hundreds of millions of people across the world have re-entered absolute dire poverty and starvation and famine because we shut down, not because they shut down.

00:24:23.000 Why?

00:24:24.000 All the supply chains got screwed up, all of it.

00:24:26.000 And they were dependent on the Western world being open.

00:24:30.000 You want to look after the least of these?

00:24:32.000 Go explain that to people in Honduras and Nicaragua and El Salvador and all across Africa that are now going back into 1940s-style poverty that took decades to break them out of because you shut off the Western supply chain.

00:24:48.000 I can't think of anything more immoral than that.

00:24:50.000 You know, I question on this too, because obviously, for some of you believers attend church and so forth, you know, Rob, this comes up, and maybe Charlie can weigh on this too.

00:24:57.000 You know, you heard a lot about the Romans 13.

00:24:59.000 Hey, you guys are, and so the church being attacked by the church, which I found difficult.

00:25:04.000 I thought we were on the same team, but we couldn't disagree agreeably.

00:25:07.000 But that came up, and you're not loving your neighbor, and also you are violating Romans 13.

00:25:13.000 You want to put that in context for us so we understand, you guys, exactly what that means.

00:25:17.000 Maybe you've heard that.

00:25:18.000 Anyone heard that argument?

00:25:19.000 Anybody?

00:25:19.000 Okay, all right.

00:25:20.000 You've heard it too.

00:25:21.000 All right, Rob?

00:25:23.000 Yeah, I get that across the country.

00:25:24.000 So Romans 13 says that you're to submit to all positions of authority.

00:25:27.000 They're appointed by God.

00:25:28.000 And I'm in full agreement with that understanding of it.

00:25:31.000 And I agree with my brothers who bring it up.

00:25:33.000 And I say to them, we're in agreement.

00:25:38.000 The only problem is you're ignorant of the government in which you live and you don't know who the authority is in Romans 13 because the first three words of the preamble of the Constitution defines that authority as we the people.

00:25:58.000 And in this form of government, which is unlike any in this 6,000 years of recorded history, where it's bottom up and the authority is given to the people, and those who govern govern by our consent.

00:26:10.000 They govern by our consent.

00:26:12.000 And it says in our birth certificate that if they violate that, it's our right and our duty to push back.

00:26:18.000 And they're constrained by the seven articles of the U.S. Constitution that they swore to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

00:26:24.000 So when the governor says to me that the church isn't essential, he's in violation of the First Amendment.

00:26:32.000 And I have to stand and push back.

00:26:35.000 And he's governing by our consent, and I don't consent.

00:26:39.000 Now, give me what I'll face, but I will take you on because I do love my neighbor.

00:26:44.000 I love liberty.

00:26:46.000 And I am not in violations of Romans 13.

00:26:48.000 The folks that are not pushing back to tyranny are in violation of Romans 13.

00:26:53.000 There you go.

00:26:57.000 You know, it's good.

00:26:59.000 This is helpful.

00:27:00.000 You know, Charlie, I want to ask you this question.

00:27:02.000 Um, why do you suppose that people say, and I get this from time to time, even having, you know, you hear tonight, there's those out there that say, hey, Christians shouldn't talk about politics, and especially pastors should never have an opinion or be involved.

00:27:19.000 Don't you know the separation in the church and state?

00:27:22.000 What are you doing, Pastor John?

00:27:23.000 Charlie's coming to you.

00:27:24.000 Why are you?

00:27:25.000 Can you just please help these people understand what's going on?

00:27:27.000 First of all, yeah, yeah, let's help unpack that.

00:27:30.000 And thank you.

00:27:31.000 You know, what's amazing is these pastors never say this to me.

00:27:34.000 It's always about me and behind my back.

00:27:36.000 I'm like, what are you guys so afraid of?

00:27:38.000 So, yeah, first of all, separation of church and state is not in the U.S. Constitution.

00:27:42.000 It's in a singular letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Convention.

00:27:48.000 However, let's just take that premise.

00:27:50.000 I want to keep the state out of the church.

00:27:53.000 Like, let's just start there.

00:27:56.000 Like, let's take your flawed premise.

00:28:00.000 That's why we're here tonight, so that Newsom doesn't come into the church.

00:28:05.000 Like, that's part of why we're here.

00:28:10.000 So, they can't even defend their own faulty premise.

00:28:13.000 The second is this: it takes, it is hard to be, it's hard to be a Bible-believing Christian and actually believe that statement.

00:28:23.000 Esther, Mordecai, Daniel, Jeremiah, Joseph, as just that list is just the beginning of people that went after to influence secular government for God's purpose, all throughout the Old Testament.

00:28:37.000 It is a story repeating of people trying to be the counselor to the king to influence secular government for God's purpose.

00:28:43.000 And those people are viewed as heroes in the biblical narrative time and time again.

00:28:48.000 So, we're called to do this.

00:28:49.000 Not to mention, one of the most famous verses that I think is sometimes misunderstood from a scriptural standpoint is when Jesus Christ goes up to Caesarea Philippi and he says, On this rock, build mine.

00:29:03.000 And people say, Church, right?

00:29:05.000 Well, it's a little more actually complicated than that.

00:29:08.000 That's the filler word we use.

00:29:10.000 However, Tyndale, when he was translating the Bible, which ended up getting him killed, actually, it was hung and then burned.

00:29:17.000 Yep, for just translating the Bible, late 1500s, early 1600s.

00:29:22.000 It's actually led to the King James Version of the Bible, 1613, 1617, right around there.

00:29:27.000 He was translating the Bible, which was an act of rebellion against the Catholic hierarchy at the time, where he said, I'm going to go back to the Koine Greek, and I'm going to translate it to English, and I'm going to not translate it from Latin to English.

00:29:41.000 Understand, he was going back to the original texts, right?

00:29:44.000 Which, because he wanted to skip the middle step.

00:29:47.000 And this was a big no-no, especially at this verse.

00:29:51.000 This verse was the breaking point, right?

00:29:53.000 Because if all of a sudden this verse said something other than hierarchical structure located in Rome with a papal authority, that all of a sudden a lot of that whole governmental structure gets questioned.

00:30:08.000 So this was a no-fly zone for the rulers of the time, but he did it anyway. 0.91

00:30:12.000 And English was the language of the peasants.

00:30:14.000 I hope everyone understands that.

00:30:15.000 English came from Old English, which was kind of a kind of a weird mixture of Germanic tradition and kind of Highlander kind of tribal speak.

00:30:26.000 And English went to Old English to English, but English was not a sophisticated language.

00:30:31.000 In the 1500s, 1600s, it was spoken by our people, right?

00:30:34.000 It was a bunch of Scots up in and so Tyndale went to translate.

00:30:40.000 So, anyway, he goes to the original text, and Jesus Christ said, On this rock, build my ecclesia.

00:30:47.000 And it didn't say church.

00:30:48.000 Now, church can be a filler word for that.

00:30:51.000 It can be, but it's actually not a complete and total, it's not a comprehensive, it's not a comprehensive view of that.

00:30:58.000 So, what was an ecclesia?

00:30:59.000 An ecclesia is what you're doing tonight.

00:31:01.000 An ecclesia was an actual thing that took place in ancient Greece, which was basically a local government meeting when people met and fasted beforehand about local events, local affairs, how to improve their community with two desired objectives.

00:31:19.000 And it's the Greek word for isonomia and eleutheria, which means freedom and equality.

00:31:24.000 Freedom and equality.

00:31:25.000 I wonder what country has those two things built into the charter documents.

00:31:30.000 So Jesus, as written very clearly, didn't use the term synagogue, didn't use any sort of secular terms.

00:31:38.000 He used the secular term ecclesia, which I believe and Rob believes that just goes to show that Jesus wanted comprehensive Christianity, not compartmentalized Christianity.

00:31:51.000 And so here's the other question I have, and I push back against pastors that say this, and I mean this as lovingly as I can.

00:31:56.000 They're so unbelievably wrong about this.

00:31:59.000 And I will talk to any of them about it because I want them to, okay, so tell me what else we're not supposed to be involved in as Christians.

00:32:06.000 So are we not supposed to be involved in sports?

00:32:08.000 How about marriage?

00:32:09.000 How about business?

00:32:10.000 How about financial counseling? 0.99

00:32:12.000 I want to know specifically where all of a sudden Christianity is not supposed to go, right? 0.96

00:32:16.000 So not supposed to go to government, not supposed to go to politics. 0.81

00:32:20.000 It is a coward's way out for just trying to build a church and stay popular without saying something that might offend anyone.

00:32:27.000 That's really what it is.

00:32:29.000 Okay, so Charlie was at our church, and he needs to get here.

00:32:34.000 And we're going to drive together, and John knows I'm driving.

00:32:37.000 He says, Hey, why don't you come?

00:32:39.000 You can sit on the panel.

00:32:40.000 And I said, I'll do whatever you want, but the reality is I'm his driver and I'm your biggest fan, so whatever.

00:32:46.000 And as Charlie and I are sitting in the front row and we see that you put up Sanctity of Life Sunday, I want to say something about your pastor.

00:32:53.000 He's one of the few pastors in the country that understand that the greatest moral tragedy in this nation is the obliteration of a million babies a year.

00:33:02.000 And he's standing in defiance to tyranny and death, and he's doing it bravely.

00:33:07.000 And he's up here trying to articulate to the rest of the Christian community what is necessary.

00:33:13.000 Men like him are few and far between.

00:33:23.000 He also hates it when you do that.

00:33:26.000 It's called humility.

00:33:29.000 When all this lockdown happened and we have a virus that has over a 99% survival rate, nobody is questioning the intensity of this virus.

00:33:38.000 But to use it as justification to call the church non-essential.

00:33:44.000 I met John's wife, Michelle, and she happens to have the same name as my wife, Michelle.

00:33:49.000 You, you, yeah, okay.

00:33:52.000 Relax there.

00:33:53.000 All right.

00:33:54.000 Yeah, Michelle.

00:33:55.000 All right.

00:33:58.000 The church, the ecclesia, is the bride of Christ. 0.66

00:34:02.000 And you're going to say it's non-essential.

00:34:03.000 You come to me and tell me my wife of 30 years is non-essential, you'll be picking up your teeth with your broken arm.

00:34:10.000 Where are the shepherds defending the bride of Christ?

00:34:16.000 Right there.

00:34:17.000 Right there.

00:34:19.000 Yeah, praise the Lord.

00:34:22.000 Which brings up a good question.

00:34:24.000 Charlie, I want to ask you this, and I appreciate the fact that you're so you're loving and but straightforward.

00:34:30.000 What do you say?

00:34:31.000 And again, this is not to offend our brothers, but what do you say to pastors who are not opening their doors?

00:34:36.000 And I want to tell you what I've observed just from my take.

00:34:38.000 You know, I think of the words of Jesus when it says he saw the sheep were sorry, this always gets me when I talk about this, but weary and scattered.

00:34:47.000 And we see people coming, you know, people who have shut their doors until people come in and they show up at a service and they just break.

00:34:54.000 They break because they say, my pastor won't open the door.

00:34:57.000 My pastor won't open the door.

00:34:59.000 So I'm asking you, Charlie, what do you say to pastors out there tonight who are still shut?

00:35:04.000 What do you say to them?

00:35:05.000 What should they be doing?

00:35:05.000 And if you can lovingly.

00:35:08.000 Yeah, I mean, I'm going to be honest.

00:35:11.000 I'll first just say, I'm surprised this thing's still going on.

00:35:15.000 Like, I'm going to be honest with you guys.

00:35:18.000 Like, I'm so disappointed and not even angry.

00:35:25.000 Like, that was a different phase.

00:35:28.000 That was like me, Jack Hibbs in July, right?

00:35:30.000 Now, you guys can go look that up, right?

00:35:33.000 That was angry.

00:35:34.000 Now I'm just saddened and I'm disappointed.

00:35:37.000 And that's why heroes need to be lifted up like these two men.

00:35:40.000 But I'll tell you, here's why it's a realization that is a very important one for everyone here, which is that the natural state, the temptation from the enemy is to resort and retreat to fear, not towards liberty.

00:35:58.000 And actually, our default condition being naturally sinful because of original sin, we're always going to screw it up, is actually to resort towards what is easy, what is safe, and what can be not necessarily rooted in what takes responsibility or liberty.

00:36:13.000 And so for pastors that are still closed, as lovingly as I can, you know, articulate this, it's, do you trust your congregation or no?

00:36:23.000 It's come down to that point.

00:36:25.000 It's no longer about the severity of the virus.

00:36:29.000 Everyone knows exactly how it works, their risk.

00:36:34.000 They're making their own risk decisions every single day.

00:36:37.000 And so, but they say, well, I don't want to become a place where it might possibly spread.

00:36:43.000 That's not your intention.

00:36:44.000 God knows your heart.

00:36:45.000 You're not opening your church to become a super spreader.

00:36:47.000 So you won't be judged for opening your church for that.

00:36:50.000 Instead, you're going to open up your church for people to find Christ, have the ecclesia, and be able to gather.

00:36:56.000 And so, and here, here's the way it works at Rob's Church and Greg Farrington's church up in Sacramento and Jack Hibbs' church, which is, and you guys know this tonight.

00:37:08.000 There's a risk you can get it.

00:37:09.000 There's some people here that have already had it, which is basically better than being vaccinated, right?

00:37:14.000 And so it is.

00:37:18.000 I mean, getting it, you know, you have natural antibodies built up against it.

00:37:24.000 And so here's the question for pastors: which is, is liberty a value that you are willing to contest for?

00:37:34.000 And so, based on their current opinion, they should never reopen and they should just have a live stream.

00:37:38.000 They should become a YouTube show.

00:37:41.000 They should close.

00:37:42.000 No, I mean that.

00:37:43.000 They should close their church permanently.

00:37:45.000 Because now that we are almost 10 months into this thing, that they can't be open in any form or fashion, whether they need to have different spacing agreements or whatever it might be, then the message that that tells me is that they are resorting to total fear and they actually don't trust their congregation to know that there is something going on to make informed choices leading up to it.

00:38:08.000 I'll tell you that, you know, we hosted probably the largest event of the entire calendar year in 2020 in Palm Beach, our Student Action Summit.

00:38:16.000 Thank you.

00:38:17.000 And it was an amazing event.

00:38:20.000 And we had thousands and thousands of young people.

00:38:23.000 And it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life.

00:38:26.000 And it wasn't hard for the reason you might think fighting city council, restriction, like everything you could imagine, right?

00:38:32.000 And it was, you have the whole national media coming on to you and all this stuff.

00:38:37.000 But I was really glad we did it because there were fellowships and relationships made for a lifetime and people that had breakthroughs and all these amazing things.

00:38:44.000 People found Christ there.

00:38:46.000 It was awesome, right?

00:38:48.000 But then the reason we did it more than anything else, and the first thing I said at the opening night was that if you are afraid of getting the virus and getting the virus and dying from it, you should leave.

00:39:01.000 Like, this is a place of people that are making the conscious decision that they know the cost and they are willing to go through that anyway.

00:39:09.000 That's what matures, that's what a mature society does.

00:39:12.000 And so, um, I really encourage every pastor to fully open the doors.

00:39:15.000 We said it in May, we said it in July, we said it in September, and now we're saying it in January.

00:39:20.000 So, I pray they'll reconsider.

00:39:22.000 You know, I was going to say such a good word.

00:39:24.000 You know, here, the truth is, here at this fellowship right here, and like Rob and Jack and others, we have open and remained open.

00:39:32.000 And, you know, it hit us like a wave.

00:39:36.000 And I remember it was right before Thanksgiving.

00:39:38.000 It's like it came in, and boom, there was one wave.

00:39:41.000 If you're a surfer, you know what a set is.

00:39:43.000 And it just came in one set.

00:39:44.000 And I was like, okay, that cleared out some people.

00:39:46.000 Then the next set.

00:39:47.000 And then, like the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, you'd think that we were starting the church over.

00:39:53.000 It was crazy.

00:39:54.000 And I sat here at this pulpit, and I remember there was, it was, and I thought, oh, Lord, you know, and what was amazing to me, and I've been preaching to our church: listen, the only way that we're going to come through this is by going through it.

00:40:05.000 We've got to come through this, we've got to go through it.

00:40:09.000 What?

00:40:10.000 And here's the awesome thing.

00:40:13.000 I just testify and give glory to God on this point.

00:40:16.000 People got sick.

00:40:17.000 We had guys in the hospital, and I was on my knees saying, God, do not let them die of COVID.

00:40:23.000 And you know what?

00:40:23.000 They didn't.

00:40:24.000 They didn't.

00:40:25.000 But listen, and I want to say this, I want to shout out.

00:40:28.000 I won't say his name, but one of the brothers I texted him and who's an older gentleman in our church is a seasoned saint.

00:40:32.000 I love this brother.

00:40:34.000 And I said to him, I said, hey, he was in ICU.

00:40:36.000 I said, what do you want me to do?

00:40:37.000 I said, well, how can I help you?

00:40:38.000 What do you want me to do?

00:40:39.000 He said, here's what I want you to do.

00:40:40.000 I want you to keep the church open.

00:40:41.000 I want you to keep doing it.

00:40:42.000 I'll see you in two weeks.

00:40:47.000 That's what I'm talking about.

00:40:49.000 And you know what?

00:40:50.000 The church now, guys, is so much stronger.

00:40:52.000 I feel like our faith is stronger because a lot of us were like, that was it.

00:40:57.000 I couldn't taste and smell.

00:40:58.000 I'm not downplaying some of the more serious symptoms, but like, hey, I ate by faith through Thanksgiving.

00:41:03.000 Like, I just, I ate from memory.

00:41:07.000 It's funny.

00:41:07.000 I thought, like, maybe this will stop me from eating, but actually, it didn't.

00:41:11.000 I thought, you know what, God, just miracle, Lord Jesus, do it now.

00:41:15.000 Do it.

00:41:15.000 And he didn't.

00:41:16.000 He didn't.

00:41:18.000 But that's all right.

00:41:19.000 I made it through.

00:41:20.000 So we're stronger because of it.

00:41:21.000 So thank you for saying that, Charlie.

00:41:23.000 I so appreciate that, brother.

00:41:24.000 It's a good word, isn't it?

00:41:27.000 Okay.

00:41:28.000 I want to get into something now.

00:41:30.000 I want to get into a little more of the political realm, if you don't mind.

00:41:34.000 And, okay.

00:41:36.000 And I'm sure this is on some of your minds.

00:41:38.000 Charlie, please help us understand, okay, how?

00:41:42.000 How?

00:41:46.000 How did it happen?

00:41:47.000 75 million people, you know, a thousand people watching on YouTube for, you know, who I'm talking about.

00:41:55.000 Biden coming in, like, and then there's the steal.

00:41:58.000 What happened?

00:41:59.000 And then all the lawyers and all the evidence.

00:42:01.000 And we're thinking, like, can you please help us?

00:42:04.000 What happened?

00:42:05.000 Can I help you?

00:42:05.000 How did it happen?

00:42:06.000 So, yeah, let's, I'm going to kind of repeat something I said earlier at Rob's Church, which is, what an awful last week and a half.

00:42:17.000 And I've actually enjoyed having the first like 40 minutes not be about that, to be honest.

00:42:21.000 But now we just kind of got to get back to reality, right?

00:42:24.000 Which is this last week and a half has been awful in more ways than one.

00:42:28.000 And from the Capitol tragedy to the impeachment to swearing in of Joe Biden coming on Wednesday, the NRA declared bankruptcy.

00:42:38.000 Sheldon Adelson passed away.

00:42:40.000 Social media is like a complete horror show now.

00:42:43.000 And so that's just the beginning, right?

00:42:45.000 And so that's all the stuff to unpack.

00:42:46.000 So let's just take a step back.

00:42:49.000 And sometimes when you're down and things are going terribly, it's actually really useful just to kind of take an inventory for a damage report.

00:42:56.000 And so I think that's what we should do for a minute here.

00:42:58.000 And so let's go back to the election, right?

00:43:01.000 I think that there were three factors that mainly played in, which is the mail-in ballot nonsense, the signature verification issue where ballots were going all over the place.

00:43:12.000 And we were woefully unprepared.

00:43:15.000 for the tactical and infrastructure side of really what was happening there.

00:43:19.000 The second thing, and I could get deeper into that, but I love this church.

00:43:23.000 I don't want your YouTube channel to disappear.

00:43:25.000 And I'm not kidding.

00:43:26.000 So if you guys want to go deeper into that, I'm actually not kidding because I'm actually not in the business of getting people's YouTube channels taken off.

00:43:34.000 So if you guys want to really go deep into that, you guys can go into all my podcasts.

00:43:38.000 I did literally 50 hours of research on this, as you guys might know.

00:43:41.000 And I could talk about this at length.

00:43:43.000 But if I talk about it right now, then we're all going to get digitally assassinated.

00:43:48.000 So, no, no, no, but I'm going to assume it's.

00:43:50.000 No, no, okay.

00:43:51.000 He knows what he's talking about.

00:43:52.000 Yeah.

00:43:52.000 So, but there's a way, I'm going to frame this in a way that we can still talk about it, right?

00:43:56.000 And so there's a couple other things I think that really went wrong, which is the first is we completely, as Republicans, conservatives, ignored, and not necessarily all of you, but our leaders did, the social media tech issue for far too long.

00:44:13.000 I mean, this, they, they, they, you want to talk about interference in the election?

00:44:18.000 I mean, this was the greatest act of private corporate election interference in the history of our country. 0.95

00:44:23.000 And so let's just take a super easy example that everyone agrees with, which was grotesque, yet no one got held accountable for this, which is incredibly, you know, the coke head, Hunter Biden, left the left a laptop. 0.94

00:44:37.000 And that's what he is. 0.93

00:44:38.000 Like, I mean, I don't, I mean, I'm sure he's a nice guy, but like, you know, and he left, he left a laptop at, you know, in some repair shop, and Rudy Giuliani stumbles upon this, you know, laptop, and Mr. Costello, his lawyer, gets it.

00:44:54.000 And all of a sudden, you have the laptop of the, you know, the guy who's running for the Democrat Party's son, you're not allowed to talk about any of it, right?

00:45:00.000 So you talked about it in the month of October, you got kicked off of Twitter, you got kicked off of all that sort of stuff, right?

00:45:06.000 And out of nowhere, we all of a sudden saw this new kind of political reality set in where you weren't allowed to criticize the power structure.

00:45:17.000 And social media played a massive role in all of this.

00:45:20.000 And now we've seen that this is their big kind of, this is their blue terror, if you will, where they're going through and they're just taking out accounts.

00:45:27.000 The president doesn't have access to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, like he was going to use that.

00:45:33.000 Spotify, like, I mean, just like, really, that was something that needed to get done.

00:45:38.000 Huge.

00:45:38.000 Yeah, it's like huge.

00:45:40.000 I would have loved to have, in a stunning turn of events, Donald Trump creates a TikTok to communicate to his constituents.

00:45:48.000 So they kicked him off of that, which was just, you know, terrible.

00:45:53.000 And so that's another part of it.

00:45:55.000 I think that the other aspect is this, though, going back to the election, which is that the president could have had a better first debate performance.

00:46:05.000 I think that there was a lot of momentum building and he got the virus.

00:46:10.000 And then the first debate, he might have had the virus or not, but I do not think that was his best performance.

00:46:16.000 And I say this was a friend to someone of his, but just looking at it analytically, I think that that set some things back.

00:46:23.000 But more than anything else, the question is, how are we going to conduct elections from this point forward?

00:46:31.000 And here's something to actually kind of work a little bit of optimism, if you will.

00:46:35.000 Does anyone here think the election in Florida was stolen?

00:46:38.000 No.

00:46:39.000 Oh, wow.

00:46:40.000 So not everything was stolen.

00:46:40.000 Okay.

00:46:42.000 So let's just like slow down here.

00:46:42.000 Right.

00:46:45.000 Who won Florida?

00:46:46.000 Oh, Trump by 470,000 votes.

00:46:49.000 So let's, how did that happen?

00:46:51.000 Okay. 0.99

00:46:51.000 Florida used to be a horror show. 0.99

00:46:53.000 It used to be a circus when it came to elections.

00:46:58.000 Yeah, in Miami-Dade County and Broward County back in 2018, a woman by the name of Brenda Snipes used to run the elections there.

00:47:06.000 Ron DeSantis wins narrowly.

00:47:08.000 He asks for her resignation and changes the way elections are done for the better.

00:47:12.000 And so none of us are questioning what happened in Florida.

00:47:16.000 It's the third most populous state.

00:47:18.000 And all of a sudden, a Republican, President Trump, won by 470,000 votes.

00:47:24.000 So what's the lesson from there?

00:47:25.000 Is that these elections can be reformed.

00:47:28.000 These elections can be fixed.

00:47:30.000 And especially in Georgia and Arizona in particular.

00:47:33.000 It is inexcusable that those states are still doing these backwards practices with not intent signature verification, voter registration nonsense and all that sort of stuff.

00:47:43.000 So that's something that we really, really have to focus on.

00:47:46.000 And then there's the Georgia runoff, which was a little bit in some ways different.

00:47:51.000 It was similar but different.

00:47:52.000 Definitely shenanigans and tomfoolery happening around all of that.

00:47:56.000 But there were just some parts of Georgia where people didn't show up, where just people did not show up on election day because they were either told not to vote, they were uninspired by the candidates, but the Democrats showed up in massive numbers.

00:48:08.000 And also the churches were completely on the other side in Georgia, where you had Lecrae, I don't know if you know who that is or not, a Christian rapper who was doing events with Raphael Warnock, who is outwardly advocating for pro-abortion Raphael Warnock, Lecrae, the Christian rapper.

00:48:30.000 And so it really makes you pause and say, you know, how exactly did that come together?

00:48:34.000 And here's kind of the biggest lesson for all of us from some of this, as kind of tightly as I can put it, that persuasion matters a lot.

00:48:43.000 The amount of money you spend, all that stuff matters.

00:48:45.000 But now really, we have to get into how elections themselves are conducted, which is something that has always disinterested us, right?

00:48:52.000 We're like, well, it doesn't really matter, but you send in your ballot or whatever.

00:48:54.000 Like, no, now it's the practice of how you vote is going to be more important than either can you get your message out.

00:49:01.000 But then we can't even do that because of social media.

00:49:03.000 And so that's one of the biggest lessons and the takeaways here that unfortunately I think that resulted in Democrats having unified government.

00:49:16.000 But at the same time, there's an incongruency here where Republicans were supposed to lose 20 seats in the House, and yet we gained 17 seats in the House, and they only have a seven-seat majority.

00:49:29.000 We were supposed to lose state legislatures, and we flipped three state legislatures in one governor mansion.

00:49:34.000 And so we were supposed to get our clocks cleaned, and Michelle Steele and Young Kim won and Mike Garcia won.

00:49:39.000 And so it feels like we got our, you know, completely run over, but we have a lot of victories.

00:49:48.000 And there were some counties that need forensic examinations.

00:49:53.000 I mean, real examinations and hopefully some form of a criminal investigation, but I don't know if that's ever going to happen at this point, to be honest with you guys, that will go into exactly what happened in these five counties in these four states that suddenly and dramatically changed the trajectory of all these votes.

00:50:10.000 To give you an idea of how just perplexing a lot of this is, Joe Biden will be the first president since 1907 to be winning the White House while losing 10 or more House seats for since 1907.

00:50:22.000 Usually those are really tied together.

00:50:25.000 And so Trump won, I think it's 28 of 29 bellwether counties across the country, the ones that usually dictate the rest of the race around the country.

00:50:34.000 You win Florida by four points, you win Ohio by eight and a half points, and then you win Iowa by seven points.

00:50:40.000 And so the question is, is who's actually verifying the ballots?

00:50:43.000 Who is registered to vote?

00:50:45.000 Who's overseeing it?

00:50:46.000 And so that now needs to be the top focus, especially in Arizona and Georgia.

00:50:51.000 Yeah.

00:50:52.000 Do you think, again, I think some of us were maybe trying to watch what we, I think you question everything that you see.

00:50:58.000 Well, I don't know if that's real or not.

00:51:00.000 Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

00:51:01.000 I'm not sure.

00:51:03.000 But with all the evidence that the lawyers were presenting, and my question too is, I was kind of, again, I'm, what happened to the DOJ?

00:51:11.000 It seemed like, hey, they had his back, and then it's like they disappeared.

00:51:14.000 They didn't want to investigate it.

00:51:15.000 Why didn't they investigate it?

00:51:16.000 What happened with that?

00:51:17.000 I was always wondering.

00:51:18.000 Yeah, I mean, I'll talk more about the courts because I don't really know with the DOJ stuff.

00:51:23.000 And so with the courts, though, they are inherently apolitical and they don't like the idea of overturning an election.

00:51:32.000 And that's the way it was framed to them, despite the fact that there were so many outstanding questions and so many things that warranted cross-examination.

00:51:41.000 What we consider to be evidence, the court doesn't.

00:51:44.000 And they say to themselves, okay, these affidavits mean nothing, which I think is ridiculous.

00:51:50.000 And they basically say, where is the forensic evidence?

00:51:54.000 Well, we're never given access to that, right?

00:51:56.000 So you keep running up against these different obstacles.

00:51:59.000 And then in Georgia, you have a Secretary of State, Rothensperger, who says this election was perfect.

00:52:04.000 There's nothing to see here.

00:52:06.000 And so the byproduct of all of this is then people are going to start losing trust in all the institutions of how we elect our leaders.

00:52:16.000 Therefore, then they're going to lose trust in the leaders themselves.

00:52:19.000 And that's not a small thing.

00:52:21.000 That's how civilizations all of a sudden fall apart.

00:52:24.000 That's how they basically untangle.

00:52:26.000 And so the courts, they don't want to get involved in this.

00:52:30.000 The Supreme Court, though, I think that a disservice to this country to not at least hear that case, in my opinion, to and let's just put all this other stuff aside.

00:52:41.000 Let's just get to a very constitutional argument, if you will, just a strictly constitutional one.

00:52:46.000 What Georgia did to change election law without the consent of the state legislature is unconstitutional.

00:52:53.000 You can't do that.

00:52:54.000 You cannot change election law, federal election law, without the consent of the state legislature.

00:52:59.000 So let's get, let's just, let's just say all this other nonsense and shenanigans put aside.

00:53:05.000 That's the one where the Supreme Court should have come in and they should have said, you're right.

00:53:09.000 It does say in the Constitution very clearly that the state legislature shall decide how the electors are delegated or are apportioned.

00:53:20.000 And that wasn't the case.

00:53:21.000 You had out-of-court settlements with Rothensperger, with Stacey Abrams, settling the way that this was done.

00:53:29.000 In Pennsylvania, you had the same sort of thing.

00:53:31.000 In Pennsylvania, it says very clearly in the Pennsylvania state constitution that mail-in balloting must only be used under extenuating circumstances.

00:53:40.000 The state legislature just ignored it.

00:53:42.000 They were like, oh, we're going to do universal mail-in balloting under emergency provisions under the pandemic.

00:53:48.000 Of course, you can go in a BLM protest.

00:53:49.000 You can go to Home Depot, Lowe's, Abortion Clinic, Canada. 0.99

00:53:52.000 You're like really going to be a threat and menace to society. 1.00

00:53:52.000 You go and vote. 1.00

00:53:55.000 And so they saw that as an opportunity to have universal mail-in balloting.

00:54:00.000 And so to give you an idea of just the scale of what we're dealing with here, Georgia used to have about 250,000 mail-in ballots every single year.

00:54:08.000 That's a lot.

00:54:10.000 1.3 million this last November.

00:54:14.000 So just think about any of you that run businesses.

00:54:16.000 I want you to think about it just from a church standpoint, right?

00:54:18.000 So that's a scale up of a six times multiple.

00:54:22.000 So I want you to imagine if you have your normal attendance every Sunday, and then the next Sunday, unexpectedly, six times the amount of people show up and they all want seats.

00:54:31.000 And you just need to discover the infrastructure to do that.

00:54:34.000 That's what happened in Georgia, right?

00:54:36.000 It's like they did not have the practices and the methods to be able to do this.

00:54:41.000 Now, here's why Florida is such a great example: is that Florida did mail-in balloting the correct way for 10 years.

00:54:48.000 He was like, How is that?

00:54:49.000 Well, because they have an elderly population, a lot of people voted by mail, and they also had really good state and local leaders.

00:54:54.000 And Ron DeSantis cleaned it up.

00:54:56.000 He said, Okay, we'll do vote by mail.

00:54:58.000 But you got to photocopy your ID when you send in your ballot.

00:54:58.000 That's fine.

00:55:02.000 You got to do a 96% signature match.

00:55:04.000 You have a chance to cure it.

00:55:06.000 And if you vote by absentee via mail and vote in person, you're going to jail for 10 years.

00:55:11.000 And we're going to publicize all these prosecutions.

00:55:13.000 No tolerance.

00:55:14.000 And so, and so in Florida, they made it work.

00:55:21.000 In Georgia, it's been the wild west.

00:55:24.000 And so you have a six-time scale up of mail-in balloting. 0.96

00:55:28.000 And couple that with the apathetic churches, the motivated, you know, black base, and all that sort of, all those things have just combined into a worst possible storm for that. 0.89

00:55:40.000 And so I just, I guess my biggest kind of piece of advice to all of you, though, is don't translate this frustration to cynicism, is that we have to now translate it into action, to real reform, because there are states that do this right. 1.00

00:55:57.000 This is not one of them.

00:55:58.000 But even in this state where you guys do things however you do them, Mike Garcia still won despite all of that.

00:56:06.000 I mean, Young Kim still won, and Michelle Steele, you don't think that they wanted those seats?

00:56:10.000 You don't think that they wanted to do everything they possibly could?

00:56:13.000 And that goes to show that you can, and part of the reason was after 18, there was such outrage and such a spotlight in Orange County, especially with Young Kim.

00:56:22.000 Maybe some people are a little more gun-shy, right?

00:56:24.000 Maybe some people are a little more skittish.

00:56:26.000 And so that's why the focus matters a lot.

00:56:28.000 But my personal, the one that I'm really most upset about is the Georgia ones.

00:56:33.000 The Georgia, Arizona, we're going to figure out.

00:56:35.000 We're headquartered in Arizona. 1.00

00:56:36.000 The Georgia one is unacceptable. 1.00

00:56:38.000 It really is.

00:56:39.000 Because not only did they screw up the presidency, but then the Georgia runoff, and their tone and their hostility, those Brian Kemp and Rothensperger, the way that they handled themselves, in my personal opinion, through the month of December, was outrageous.

00:56:53.000 Where they called any of us that had questions to be just like awful human beings.

00:56:57.000 And I just, I think that they had a month to all of a sudden say, you know what?

00:57:02.000 Maybe we weren't prepared for a six-time increase of mail-in balloting.

00:57:05.000 Ron DeSantis, can you come help us?

00:57:07.000 Like, I would have respected them if they would have done that.

00:57:09.000 Seriously.

00:57:10.000 Instead, it was pride is the downfall.

00:57:12.000 We know that. 0.96

00:57:13.000 And they had this very prideful, just arrogant, smug attitude.

00:57:17.000 And look at the results.

00:57:19.000 Georgia, which used to be a deep red state, has two Democrat senators and they sent their electors to Biden.

00:57:25.000 Charlie, in light of what's happening with the recent elections and now seeing the differences, can you explain to us what it means in Congress in light of the House and Senate and how that affects conservatives and what we believe and all of that?

00:57:40.000 Can you explain that and why it was such a give us some assessment on that?

00:57:45.000 So I'm going to give you guys some hope because I think we all need some hope, right?

00:57:48.000 Real hope, right?

00:57:50.000 Real hope.

00:57:51.000 And it's a biblical principle, Genesis 11, which is that which is built without the blessing of God will crumble and will get scattered and confused.

00:58:02.000 Power of babble.

00:58:03.000 It's a biblical truth.

00:58:06.000 Paraphrasing, but yeah.

00:58:08.000 I got you.

00:58:08.000 I was good.

00:58:08.000 Yeah.

00:58:10.000 But, right, Rob?

00:58:12.000 That's a good one.

00:58:12.000 Yeah, I like it.

00:58:14.000 Let me look it up.

00:58:15.000 Yeah.

00:58:17.000 What do I mean by that? 0.80

00:58:18.000 The Democrats are going to miraculously screw this whole thing up.

00:58:21.000 And I know it's there's, look, there's the law of the thermodynamics.

00:58:25.000 There's the laws of Newtonian physics.

00:58:28.000 Force equals mass time acceleration.

00:58:29.000 Object at rest will stay at rest.

00:58:32.000 And then there's the laws of the left.

00:58:33.000 And the law of the left is they destroy everything they touch.

00:58:35.000 Right?

00:58:36.000 And so everything.

00:58:38.000 And it is their default, their default position is absolute corrosion, parasitic intrusion of things at work.

00:58:46.000 And so look at California, you look at New York, you look at Illinois, and they don't build, they, by definition, destroy everything they touch.

00:58:55.000 And so they are going to screw this up.

00:58:57.000 And it's going to take probably 200 days for them to do it, maybe less.

00:59:01.000 Here's the second thing of hope that I'm going to give you.

00:59:04.000 That was very hopeful.

00:59:05.000 No, but I'm hopeful.

00:59:06.000 No, but it's good.

00:59:08.000 Only 200 days.

00:59:09.000 No, but it's a logical sequence.

00:59:12.000 You'll see.

00:59:13.000 So it actually, it ends well.

00:59:15.000 The second thing is they're going to fight like wild.

00:59:17.000 Okay.

00:59:18.000 They're going to act like they have 56 seats in Congress.

00:59:20.000 They have a 50-50 tie, right?

00:59:22.000 They have also some blue dog Democrats, Manchin, Mark Kelly, all that.

00:59:26.000 They're going to fight over the feast, okay?

00:59:28.000 And let them. 1.00

00:59:29.000 Let them fight over transgender bathrooms and like federal buildings, whatever the thing that gets them their base excited, right? 1.00

00:59:37.000 Whatever. 0.86

00:59:37.000 And so they're going to have committee hearings about pronouns or something, right? 0.86

00:59:41.000 And so, no, seriously, this is the type of stuff we're going to have to.

00:59:49.000 It's the type of stuff we're going to have to endure.

00:59:50.000 And so, but here's the third thing.

00:59:51.000 Here's the hope, okay?

00:59:52.000 I'm listening to you.

00:59:52.000 Yes, thank you.

00:59:53.000 Because scatter confusion, collapse.

00:59:57.000 All of a sudden, the people are going to quickly, and I mean quickly, they're going to all of a sudden say, we want Republicans back in charge quickly.

01:00:06.000 Where are the Republicans?

01:00:08.000 It's going to happen, as Ernest Hemingway said, gradually than suddenly.

01:00:08.000 And it's not going to happen.

01:00:12.000 And because of the, here's the amazing brilliance of the founding fathers, is you actually can't take over this country in less than six years.

01:00:21.000 Think about it.

01:00:22.000 You have to win every federal election on the House, state, and presidential level for six years straight with your agenda reinforced to get something very big and bold done.

01:00:34.000 Even the Civil Rights Act took nine to 10 years to get done with broad-based consensus.

01:00:39.000 The founding fathers intentionally put in these provisions and these safeguards to slow down the process, everybody.

01:00:46.000 As Scalia said, fall in love with the gridlock, right?

01:00:49.000 No, seriously.

01:00:50.000 Like, just because we get mad sometimes when we can't get our agenda through, but then we have to remind ourselves if we ever in the minority, we're going to love the fact that there's the ability to sue the Supreme Court, states' rights, constitutional republic, 50-50 tie, right?

01:01:03.000 All of a sudden, now we're going to kind of geek out at all these different trapdoors and these provisions.

01:01:08.000 And thank you, God, for giving us the brilliance of the founding fathers to do that.

01:01:12.000 So here's the point is that the people, the citizenry is going to basically say, hey, we want, at some point, we want Republicans back in charge.

01:01:25.000 And it's going to happen quicker than you can imagine.

01:01:27.000 The question is this.

01:01:28.000 There's two ways that can kind of go.

01:01:31.000 Either we're going to be a conservative Christian Republican kind of movement community that will have given up in January of 2021 and will have no candidates, no infrastructure.

01:01:43.000 We'll just have given up.

01:01:44.000 And all of a sudden, all these people are going to come back to us.

01:01:45.000 We're like, oh, I thought it was over.

01:01:48.000 Like, I thought it was done.

01:01:49.000 And all these people are like, no, no, no, we actually want you back in charge.

01:01:52.000 What do you got?

01:01:53.000 Like, do you guys have vibrant schools and churches and business?

01:01:56.000 Like, if we disconnect, or we can start building now with the faithful expectation that the people are going to come running back to truth very, very quickly under the current power structure.

01:02:08.000 And that's what gives me hope.

01:02:11.000 Their agenda right now is to break your will.

01:02:14.000 Their agenda right now, because they want you to raise the white flag and say, I surrender.

01:02:18.000 That's what they want.

01:02:19.000 They want to break your will at all costs.

01:02:22.000 And so as long as we keep that resolve, that grit, that will, that perseverance, and we build new at this moment, we strengthen our commitment to this.

01:02:32.000 I'm telling you right now, thanks to the beauty of our system and we fix some things on the elections, I really believe that our brightest days are happening.

01:02:38.000 You also pointed out that the folks that are on the tip of the spear, we need to build community and stick together.

01:02:43.000 You know, you and I, though we met in passing, I am now your best friend.

01:02:53.000 I'm not leaving your side.

01:02:57.000 Thank you.

01:02:58.000 I'm so, I don't know what to say, speechless.

01:03:01.000 Thank you.

01:03:02.000 I love you, man.

01:03:03.000 I want to say too, because this is kind of segues, and I think, Rob, as a pastor, you can answer this also, but because this is a question that I have a lot of times from where I sit and from what I do on a regular basis, and of course, Rob and you interact.

01:03:16.000 And how do we live as Christians with a new administration that brings in things that we are opposed to?

01:03:27.000 And, you know, it just seems in one sense like there's not a lot we can do about it.

01:03:32.000 But how do we live as Christians in the midst of an ungodly world and with an administration coming in pushing things that we are completely opposed to?

01:03:42.000 How do we respond in a way that honors God and maintains the witness?

01:03:47.000 Because the natural tendency sometimes is, you know, you want to respond with anger and you want to overcome evil with evil.

01:03:55.000 But the Bible says overcome evil with good.

01:03:57.000 So help us understand the good that we can overcome the evil with.

01:04:01.000 How do we do that?

01:04:02.000 Amen.

01:04:05.000 I'm an eternal optimist.

01:04:07.000 And I'm with Charlie where he's laying out all this stuff and you're like, wow.

01:04:10.000 And you think the hope is, well, in spite of the events, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

01:04:20.000 But Charlie and I look at the horizon and this is God's handiwork.

01:04:25.000 Sorry about that.

01:04:27.000 It's not often I get him to laugh like that.

01:04:31.000 This is God's hand.

01:04:33.000 Because when Lincoln looked down in the second inaugural address, and I covered this earlier, where he looks out and you have a nation that's embroiled in war.

01:04:41.000 2% of the nation's population died.

01:04:43.000 That's 650,000 people.

01:04:44.000 Today, that'd be 6.5 million people in a civil war.

01:04:48.000 And in 1860, we had, what, 4 million slaves?

01:04:51.000 And that vile institution that called someone less than human based on the content of melanin was done away with.

01:05:01.000 And the price paid was 2% of our nation's population.

01:05:05.000 Every family suffered a death of someone.

01:05:08.000 And you think God's going to sit idly by while we abort a million babies a year, 320,000 of which are black children, 4.5% of our population, black American female childbearing is responsible for almost 35% of the abortion. 1.00

01:05:23.000 It's a Holocaust of the black community. 0.94

01:05:25.000 And the church is going to put a black tile up. 0.96

01:05:28.000 And they don't do what you did.

01:05:30.000 And at our church, while we're doing this, we've got Seth Gruber speaking on life.

01:05:34.000 So we need to re-engage what is important to God because as Lincoln said in the second inaugural address, they pray to the same God, read the same Bible, expecting different outcomes.

01:05:44.000 It's God's will we're looking for here, just like Joshua said to the commander of the Lord's army.

01:05:49.000 Are you on our side or theirs?

01:05:51.000 And the angel said, neither.

01:05:53.000 We need to align ourselves with what God wants.

01:05:55.000 So this is an exciting time for the church, number one, because we're awakening to what's important to him.

01:06:03.000 Two, we're being pruned.

01:06:06.000 We're getting a lot of dead weight cut off.

01:06:09.000 I mean, we're watching those videos.

01:06:11.000 People are losing attention and they're dropping their numbers and they're all showing up at your church.

01:06:16.000 And yeah.

01:06:23.000 And then here's my final point.

01:06:26.000 We always talk about the swamp.

01:06:28.000 Swamp is a geographical location where water ends up.

01:06:31.000 It's the lowest point.

01:06:33.000 You follow that water stream to its source and it just settles at its lowest place.

01:06:38.000 That's why we call Sacramento and Washington, D.C. swamps, because they are geographically and figuratively, you know.

01:06:46.000 If you want to change where it ends up, the content of what's in it, you got to go to the source.

01:06:53.000 And the source is everything's local.

01:06:56.000 Now, Bible says pray for kings and those in authority that we would live quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and reverence.

01:07:02.000 Okay, praise the Lord.

01:07:03.000 Can you name for me your five city council members and your five school board members that you pray for by name and the issues they're dealing with in your community that would allow your citizenry here to live quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and reverence?

01:07:14.000 Oh, I don't go to those.

01:07:15.000 Those are boring.

01:07:16.000 Well, today's council members are tomorrow congress member.

01:07:20.000 You need to get involved.

01:07:21.000 This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people that we've abdicated.

01:07:24.000 We haven't been in the ecclesia.

01:07:26.000 While we've been doing church, the secular progressive left has dominated the ecclesia.

01:07:32.000 And then I'll leave this with you.

01:07:35.000 This idea of engaging at the source, Jonas Clark, Lexington and Concord.

01:07:45.000 This wasn't a national movement where we got to go against Britain.

01:07:49.000 And they did a federal and the Continental Congress met together.

01:07:52.000 No, everything that they contended against Great Britain was local.

01:07:56.000 Jonas Clark was a preacher.

01:07:58.000 He preached.

01:07:59.000 He trained his congregation.

01:08:01.000 The British came to Lexington and Concord. 0.68

01:08:02.000 He got up and did it.

01:08:03.000 Every city did their part.

01:08:07.000 The grandpa's walking with his grandson on the beach after a hurricane.

01:08:10.000 All the starfish have been washed up and they're dying in the sun after the hurricanes receded.

01:08:16.000 The grandson's throwing them back, trying to keep them alive.

01:08:18.000 And the grandpa says, there's too many of them.

01:08:19.000 There's millions.

01:08:20.000 You'll never make a difference.

01:08:21.000 The little grandson says, well, grandpa making a difference for this one and for this one.

01:08:25.000 And then the two begin to do it and they double the out.

01:08:28.000 Throw your starfish back.

01:08:30.000 Quit looking at the horizon and being discouraged.

01:08:33.000 Turn off Fox News.

01:08:34.000 Turn off the television.

01:08:36.000 Spend time with your family.

01:08:38.000 Educate your children.

01:08:39.000 Go to the school board meetings.

01:08:40.000 Go to the city council meetings and be the keeper and the salt in the light of your community.

01:08:46.000 In your lifetime, this entire congregation can change this city.

01:08:49.000 And if every pastor does what you do, we'll own the state and they can't stop us because we'll light a thousand fires across the country.

01:08:57.000 Amen.

01:09:01.000 Good, God.

01:09:04.000 I also want to mention, and I want to just say to you, something that's kept me solid through this season and like many of you is understanding and having and filtering everything that we see through a biblical worldview.

01:09:22.000 I say this to our congregation on a regular basis.

01:09:25.000 Listen, if you don't filter, if you don't spend time in the word of God daily, you can go to every meeting you want, but listen, that's what's going to make the difference.

01:09:35.000 God's people, and I believe, and I was sharing with Rob and Charlie earlier, that I believe that God's doing a real sifting in the church through this process.

01:09:41.000 Through the pandemic, there has been a sifting through the political, it's been a sifting.

01:09:45.000 People are going to have to come back to foundation.

01:09:47.000 And depending on what you're building on, will determine whether or not you stand or crumble.

01:09:52.000 And I think we're seeing people crumble because their foundation is faulty.

01:09:55.000 Listen, I'm a patriot.

01:09:57.000 I love this country.

01:09:58.000 My dad went to Vietnam.

01:10:00.000 I'm all about this country.

01:10:02.000 There's no greater place.

01:10:03.000 And I've traveled to third world countries and ministered in places that it breaks me when I think about it.

01:10:10.000 But what I'm saying to you is: listen, we have to understand also that there is a real devil.

01:10:15.000 He's behind all of it.

01:10:17.000 But even above and beyond him, there is a real God.

01:10:21.000 And he's working all things according to his purpose and plan.

01:10:26.000 I know from the scriptures how this ends.

01:10:29.000 Now, that doesn't lessen my responsibility in what I've been given.

01:10:33.000 Don't go down that road and swing the pencil.

01:10:35.000 Like, and there's some believers, you know, I don't need to do anything.

01:10:37.000 I don't need to do anything man.

01:10:38.000 Jesus come back. 0.89

01:10:39.000 I'm just going to go kick it on the mountain and wait.

01:10:42.000 I'm pretty sure he said be active and occupy till I come.

01:10:46.000 And there's a lot to that.

01:10:47.000 So there has to be a balance in this.

01:10:48.000 And I'm seeing within the church, you either see people swing one way, this way, and they're not doing anything, or you see people swing this way and they got, you know, God-golden guns and barracks and they're hiding out and they're ready to charge this and do that.

01:11:01.000 And they're getting into all these conspiracies and sending them to us.

01:11:05.000 What is all of this?

01:11:07.000 What is this stuff?

01:11:08.000 No, I'm going to, can I just for a second, Charlie, you, you who know all the conspiracies and you know, about these things, and we dialogued a little bit.

01:11:15.000 Can you just clear the, what are the most popular conspiracies right now that you can just help people understand?

01:11:20.000 Stop sending these.

01:11:21.000 Yeah, and let me go ahead, Charlie.

01:11:24.000 Let me say this, though, with, and I mean this with, you know, with love and with understanding that if you are currently going through these and believing in them, it's really actually not totally your fault.

01:11:36.000 It's a symptom of the media that has misled you, a symptom of our institutions that have deceived you, of our leaders that have lied to you.

01:11:44.000 And you go and resort to anything you possibly can that might make some sense, that might have some crafting of a different narrative because you know what you're seeing on CNN is not true.

01:11:56.000 However, just because something that is not on CNN is not true doesn't mean the message board is true.

01:12:02.000 And so, look, and I think that some of these things have real life consequences.

01:12:07.000 And I'm going to be speaking out a lot more forcibly about this.

01:12:12.000 But I'm going to, you know, do a little bit of it now, which is that, look, it says in James 1:5, ask for wisdom, and God will give generously.

01:12:22.000 It's one of the few things that God guarantees he will give generously.

01:12:26.000 So before you read a news story that sounds too good to be true, just ask for wisdom before you read it.

01:12:33.000 Ask God to give you wisdom.

01:12:35.000 The second thing is, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

01:12:39.000 And the third thing is, please use some common sense.

01:12:41.000 God gave you a brain.

01:12:43.000 So let me just go through some of the stuff I've been reading.

01:12:46.000 Like, Mike Pence is not in Guantanamo Bay.

01:12:49.000 Okay.

01:12:49.000 I don't know where this one came from.

01:12:51.000 And that.

01:12:52.000 What about the barges in the he was having barges in Guantanamo Obey?

01:12:57.000 I'm sorry.

01:12:57.000 I heard that one too.

01:12:58.000 Yeah, that's not true.

01:13:00.000 The president was not in Texas last week.

01:13:03.000 I don't know.

01:13:04.000 I got in a debate with somebody and they're like, you don't know what you're talking about.

01:13:07.000 Look, I'm like, look, I don't like the whole argument from authority thing, but like, maybe you know something I don't know, but the president's not in Texas right now.

01:13:14.000 Like, I don't know how else to put it.

01:13:16.000 That he's the president's going to declare martial law.

01:13:18.000 Like, no, he's not.

01:13:19.000 Like, that's all a lie.

01:13:20.000 Whoever's telling you that is wrong.

01:13:22.000 And it's designed to make you believe something that's not true.

01:13:26.000 And so, and there's, there's, we need to all of a sudden, now that we're in this kind of damage report phase, say, like, maybe there's people that are writing these things to make you believe something so you're not active.

01:13:40.000 Because you know what the underlying promise of all those stories are?

01:13:44.000 I'm not going to have to do anything because Trump's going to serve four more years and save us.

01:13:49.000 Those message boards have created a political messianic figure out of Trump, where all of a sudden it's like, I don't have to do anything.

01:13:56.000 He's going to swoop in and our country is going to be saved.

01:13:58.000 Like, actually, I love our listeners and I get these emails and I get all this stuff.

01:14:03.000 And they say, well, what about this?

01:14:05.000 And what about that?

01:14:06.000 And I ask myself, just go through an analytic, evidence-based process of this.

01:14:10.000 And yeah, you know what?

01:14:11.000 Sometimes some of these wacky things end up being true.

01:14:14.000 Sometimes some of these things that start on the absolute fringe are a great example of it.

01:14:18.000 That's why you should entertain everything.

01:14:20.000 You should be skeptical and you should look at it.

01:14:21.000 You should ask for wisdom.

01:14:23.000 Like a great example of this, the stuff that used to be on the message boards was the Epstein thing.

01:14:27.000 Like the Epstein thing used to be kind of like an underground thing that no one talked about, but everyone thought to be true, and all of a sudden ended up being a real thing that everyone thinks that everyone knew at all times.

01:14:35.000 That used to be something called the conspiracy theory.

01:14:35.000 No, it's not.

01:14:37.000 So I'm not discounting that everything that might be entertained.

01:14:41.000 But if all of a sudden the guiding premise of it is I want this to be true more than I know it's true, then you got a problem, right?

01:14:53.000 And that's where all of a sudden your earthly will is blurring with what actually might be happening.

01:15:00.000 And so this is something that is very serious because a lot of people were told not to vote in Georgia based on a lot of these communications.

01:15:08.000 A lot of people were told, and they believed it.

01:15:11.000 And we know that.

01:15:11.000 Now, would it have made the absolute difference?

01:15:13.000 I don't know.

01:15:14.000 I think there's plenty of agreement or disagreement here.

01:15:17.000 But also, we have to understand that we as Christians, we have to be very careful with the types of news and information that we process and we spread.

01:15:28.000 And so I go through exhaustive amounts of hours talking to real life sources before I say anything on my podcast.

01:15:37.000 And people say, well, who are your sources?

01:15:39.000 Like the actual people you're talking about.

01:15:43.000 Okay.

01:15:43.000 Like, I don't know how else, like, I mean, you know, like, I don't know how else to put it.

01:15:48.000 Like, and I'm not saying that maybe I'm being misled and maybe there's this whole plan and like four-dimensional underwater chest.

01:15:54.000 And we're all like, all right, okay, Tom Clancy, slow down, right?

01:15:58.000 Like, but there's also a point to this, though, where be caught.

01:16:03.000 And again, a lot of this is not your fault of that, right?

01:16:06.000 I just want to make that very clear because you've been misled.

01:16:10.000 And when you've been misled by so many institutions, the LA Times, CNN, you want to go grab onto something else, right?

01:16:16.000 You're like, they're lying, then the inverse must be true.

01:16:19.000 It's like, no, actually, the inverse might also be untrue.

01:16:21.000 There might be something else that, you know, you know what I'm saying with that.

01:16:24.000 And so I think that we really have to get, as a conservative movement, we got to fix this problem in like the first 30 days because it's a real, real issue.

01:16:35.000 And I see it because, you know, I have a really interesting window into this because I think we have one of the more accessible podcasts and YouTube live streams out there where we take in hundreds of thousands of emails, right?

01:16:46.000 And I see what people are thinking and seeing.

01:16:49.000 And I can tell you, this is not a small thing.

01:16:50.000 These are millions and millions of people that are, if you scale it, that have told me, Charlie, don't you know Mike Pence is in Guantamano Bay right now about to be shot for treason?

01:17:01.000 And I'm like, what on what are you reading?

01:17:03.000 Like, no, I mean, this is like not, I got hundreds of emails like once about this thing.

01:17:09.000 And then I talked against it and they said I'm a liar and all this.

01:17:11.000 Anyway, the point is that that needs to be confronted, right?

01:17:15.000 And it also goes to show that there's a gaping hole in news in this country.

01:17:19.000 And we're trying our best to fix it.

01:17:21.000 And anytime we get something wrong, we correct it on our program.

01:17:25.000 But we also go through a lot of different, because we take a responsibility of that.

01:17:29.000 And Rob, you've seen our production of our show.

01:17:31.000 We take it really seriously.

01:17:32.000 Yeah, I've been there live while someone is sending you an email stating one of those hopiums.

01:17:39.000 And he's, I won't say who he's talking to, but he's got his earpiece in with the person in question saying, they're not there.

01:17:49.000 I don't know how else to tell you that either.

01:17:51.000 I don't want to divulge all that stuff.

01:17:53.000 So a rumor is just a lie with legs.

01:17:59.000 Don't participate in that.

01:18:00.000 We're Christians.

01:18:01.000 We deal in truth.

01:18:03.000 Whatever things are true.

01:18:05.000 Do your homework.

01:18:06.000 Don't send it to your pastor and go, read this.

01:18:09.000 First of all, site source it.

01:18:11.000 Tell me where you got it.

01:18:12.000 A friend who's in the FBI.

01:18:14.000 Of a friend.

01:18:16.000 You can trust it.

01:18:18.000 I don't.

01:18:19.000 We're done now.

01:18:21.000 And then you're going to be blocked.

01:18:23.000 Seriously, stop.

01:18:25.000 Yeah.

01:18:26.000 We're Christians.

01:18:27.000 We deal and represent the God of truth.

01:18:32.000 Amen?

01:18:33.000 Yeah.

01:18:34.000 And I also, we're getting close to wrapping up here in a few minutes, but I also would like to say, in addition to what these gentlemen have said, listen, if it causes you to fear, the Bible says that perfect love casts out fear.

01:18:49.000 That's not from the Lord.

01:18:50.000 If you suddenly just get into this fear and panic, listen, I don't care who wrote it.

01:18:55.000 The devil's behind it.

01:18:56.000 He would love for you to be afraid.

01:18:58.000 And there are a lot of people who are both hopeless and afraid.

01:19:02.000 And that combination is deadly.

01:19:04.000 It's deadly.

01:19:05.000 So listen, if it's causing you to, you overcome fear with faith, go back to what God said.

01:19:10.000 Go back to his truth remains.

01:19:12.000 It's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

01:19:14.000 It's not going to fail you.

01:19:15.000 So make sure that you are majoring in the promises of God's word when you're dealing with all of these things going on.

01:19:22.000 You don't need to be afraid.

01:19:23.000 God's with you and he's for you.

01:19:25.000 Amen?

01:19:26.000 Well, a couple other things, and then we'll go charge.

01:19:29.000 You wanted to have some text in questions.

01:19:30.000 Yeah.

01:19:31.000 You guys have some questions you want to text in.

01:19:33.000 You can do that now.

01:19:35.000 And do you want to put that up on the screen?

01:19:39.000 A, it's, you can text the word Charlie.

01:19:42.000 There you go.

01:19:43.000 Hey, John?

01:19:44.000 Sir, go for it.

01:19:46.000 I want the congregation to know, really, they're already, they're blessed by you.

01:19:51.000 But Calvary started in 1968 with Chuck.

01:19:54.000 Broke away from the Four Square Church.

01:19:56.000 In 68, Bobby Kennedy Jr. was shot. 0.88

01:19:59.000 We had the Meli massacre.

01:20:00.000 Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King was shot.

01:20:02.000 The nation was in turmoil, divided.

01:20:04.000 Socialism, it was awful.

01:20:05.000 Apollo, what, eight, circles the moon and reads out of Genesis.

01:20:09.000 And then Madeline Murray O'Hare sues.

01:20:12.000 68, Chuck stays away from politics and just preaches the gospel.

01:20:16.000 And we've been doing that for 52 years, 10,000% growth across the world, 1,800 Calvary chapels.

01:20:22.000 It started here in California.

01:20:24.000 There's more Calvary chapels here than Dunkin' Donuts.

01:20:26.000 That's right.

01:20:27.000 South of Ann Is, there's 350 Calvary chapels.

01:20:31.000 In 68, we had the fifth largest GDP.

01:20:34.000 We had the water delivery system, California Aqueduct, Marvel of Engineering.

01:20:39.000 We were the state of the future.

01:20:41.000 Reagan was governor.

01:20:42.000 52 years of just preaching the gospel, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book, and that's 10,000% growth.

01:20:48.000 That's conversion growth, not transfer growth.

01:20:50.000 What do we have to show for it?

01:20:52.000 By staying out of politics.

01:20:53.000 We no longer have the fifth largest GDP.

01:20:55.000 We now have the sixth.

01:20:56.000 We have the highest gas tax, sales tax, income tax, corporate tax.

01:20:58.000 We lead the nation in debt.

01:20:59.000 We have the highest homeless and the highest poverty.

01:21:01.000 Our kids can't afford to live here.

01:21:02.000 We're the authors of No Fault Divorce, Transgender Bathroom Bills, and we've aborted more children in the state of California, the entire population of Canada.

01:21:11.000 But we don't do politics.

01:21:13.000 Well, that now changes.

01:21:15.000 We're in, right?

01:21:17.000 That's the highest form of community is politics.

01:21:20.000 And I also want to say, in light of what Rob said, you know, there's a lot of similarities to the heritage that we share.

01:21:26.000 And I think, in my opinion, and I'm seeing it, and Rob, I know you're seeing it too, that we are primed for revival in the church.

01:21:33.000 We're primed for it.

01:21:34.000 God's doing it.

01:21:35.000 We're getting to the end of ourselves, and it's bringing us to the beginning of God and his strength and his power.

01:21:40.000 So I've got a couple questions that are coming in as we speak.

01:21:43.000 But Charlie, here's one.

01:21:44.000 Someone came up with a question and they said, you know, well, here we go.

01:21:48.000 There's a pastor who shall remain anonymous, organizing a class on racial reconciliation.

01:21:57.000 Of course, hey, listen, I get it in light of everything that's happening, and they're actually embracing parts of the CRT, which you're familiar with.

01:22:04.000 Critical race theory.

01:22:05.000 Critical race theory, right?

01:22:07.000 And saying that they're going to use that as a...

01:22:09.000 Can you kind of explain what that is and why that's not a good thing to explain that?

01:22:14.000 Yeah, and I'm happy to go a couple of minutes or whatever you guys want to think for a couple of the notes.

01:22:17.000 Are you guys still good?

01:22:18.000 Everybody good?

01:22:19.000 Okay, good.

01:22:21.000 Okay.

01:22:22.000 I want to get some of these questions answered because that's my whatever you cut me off whenever.

01:22:27.000 So, yeah, look, this is a super important thing, and this is more cultural, and we have to hit this head on, which is there's a different type of virus that's spreading across this country, and it's the virus of critical race theory.

01:22:39.000 And critical race theory is an existential threat to our country.

01:22:42.000 Critical race theory comes from the critical theory written by a guy by the name of Herbert Marcuse from the Frankfurt School.

01:22:48.000 He was a communist dissident that was in Germany, came here as an expat, and started basically this new way of thinking that there is no absolute truth.

01:22:59.000 It's very Nietzschean, right?

01:23:01.000 It's this idea that all we are is just a mixture of molecules, and we're going to have to find our own meaning through power struggles.

01:23:09.000 And all there is in life is the struggle of the oppressed and the oppressor, someone in charge, and someone being oppressed.

01:23:16.000 That's basically the way they view the world.

01:23:18.000 So, while we view the world through everyone made in the image of God, individual rights necessary for protection, everyone has the capacity to improve your own life, make better decisions, climb up in life.

01:23:28.000 They look at life as you're actually always going to be in prison based solely and simply on the class that you've been born into, what you look like, and whether or not you're a man or a woman, which is weird because I thought they didn't believe in that.

01:23:39.000 But anyway, we'll get to that later.

01:23:41.000 So, there's so many inherent contradictions in this, right?

01:23:44.000 And so, this idea of critical race theory is even more dangerous than that.

01:23:50.000 It goes a step further.

01:23:52.000 And there's a couple beliefs in the critical race theory, and this is now in churches across the country.

01:23:57.000 This is now in almost every school teaches this now, by the way, every university, every high school.

01:24:02.000 And it is actually, it's not just inconsistent with the Bible, it's diametrically opposed to the teachings of the Bible.

01:24:09.000 Okay, there's a couple things that critical race theory teaches.

01:24:12.000 First and foremost, that there is no such thing as individuals, that you're not actually made in the image of God, you're actually part of a collective.

01:24:21.000 So, we're all part of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant collective, and us, us three, regardless of our decisions, regardless of any agency, we're always going to be in a position of privilege and power, regardless of anything we do.

01:24:35.000 That's one of the things, and us three, as white Christian Anglo-Saxon men are given this special mantle because of that.

01:24:42.000 Now, that's an inherently racist belief, right?

01:24:45.000 To believe that all of a sudden your skin color matters, that gives you some form or fashion of built-in privilege. 0.68

01:24:52.000 Okay, so also it's totalitarian in nature.

01:24:56.000 It's not a matter of what you do, it's what you don't do, and you're judged based on that.

01:25:00.000 Here's a great example of this, right?

01:25:02.000 And it's super relevant for a lot of the young people in this room.

01:25:05.000 It's not enough that you, during the entire kind of BLM thing, if you did nothing and didn't post, you're still called a racist because you didn't post the black square, right?

01:25:16.000 So, it's not enough that you post like a white square, okay? 0.73

01:25:21.000 They would lose it if you did that, right? 1.00

01:25:22.000 And I wouldn't, by the way, I'm not recommending it.

01:25:24.000 I'm saying that would be the opposite.

01:25:26.000 I'm just saying that, like, it's this you didn't do anything, all of a sudden you're called an awful person because you did nothing.

01:25:31.000 And it's like you must submit to us at all costs.

01:25:34.000 Like, take the knee.

01:25:36.000 Like, we are in charge, you are in, you are not, right?

01:25:39.000 Here's the third thing, and I just thought we were past this moment, and this is regressive in nature.

01:25:44.000 Um, they believe melanin matters.

01:25:46.000 I don't. 0.99

01:25:47.000 I actually think your skin color is absolutely inconsequential to who you are as a human being. 1.00

01:25:52.000 I think that your skin color is irrelevant. 1.00

01:25:55.000 Like, yeah.

01:25:59.000 And so, the fourth part of it is they don't believe in any form of dialogue.

01:26:04.000 They think speech and the expression and the exchange of ideas are actually just reinforcing pre-existing white Anglo-Saxon heteronormal logocentric power dynamics.

01:26:16.000 If you don't know what those are, good.

01:26:17.000 You haven't been to college recently, right?

01:26:19.000 It's just a bunch of nonsense that your children are learning for a lot of money going into debt to study things that don't matter to find jobs that don't exist.

01:26:26.000 But so, but so then, no, but then the last part is this.

01:26:34.000 And I could do a whole thing on college later if you guys want, but the last thing is this, which is that they don't believe in the scientific method and they don't believe in mathematics, right? 0.68

01:26:43.000 So they believe that everything, Newtonian physics to the laws of thermodynamics to, you know, the laws of trigonometry, all that stuff, those are actually just aberrations built by white men for white men to reinforce white men's power structures. 0.76

01:26:57.000 If you think this is insane, you're right. 0.71

01:26:59.000 Every single college, every high school, and most churches are now teaching this stuff.

01:27:03.000 And to give some grace to some pastors, though, they don't actually understand it.

01:27:06.000 They don't.

01:27:07.000 And no, I mean that.

01:27:08.000 I actually, I'm giving some grace to a lot of these pastors that I think they're trying to do the right thing and they're actually doing the exact opposite thing.

01:27:14.000 And so I encourage all of you, I've done a lot of podcasts.

01:27:19.000 I have the critical race theory expert who's actually a liberal atheist who's speaking out against this.

01:27:24.000 His name is James Lindsay.

01:27:25.000 I've been on my podcast twice.

01:27:28.000 He has more clarity on the subject.

01:27:30.000 He wrote a book on this that I encourage you guys to check out called Cynical Theories.

01:27:34.000 Okay.

01:27:35.000 It's written from just a pro-Western enlightenment perspective, going through how nonsensical critical race theory is.

01:27:43.000 And so, and if you guys have further interest in that, you guys can check out those episodes on it.

01:27:47.000 That's great.

01:27:48.000 That's really good.

01:27:48.000 Thank you so much.

01:27:49.000 I also want to ask, and my phone is blowing up.

01:27:51.000 Hold on, people.

01:27:52.000 We don't have all night.

01:27:53.000 Stop.

01:27:54.000 Make it stop.

01:27:55.000 Like, no.

01:27:56.000 But the question is: you know, some people are asking, you know, Charlie, if Joe Biden is to issue a national lockdown, what do we do if Biden introduces a nationwide lockdown?

01:28:12.000 How do we react in the right way?

01:28:14.000 It's a great.

01:28:15.000 Can I start with that?

01:28:16.000 And then, so I'll first just start with this idea of resisting.

01:28:22.000 And this is super important.

01:28:23.000 And I think, and I was an outspoken, outspoken critic and was condemning what was happening at the Capitol in real time.

01:28:32.000 And a lot of people, you know, were coming against me, calling me weak and all that.

01:28:36.000 Like, okay, yeah, stop it.

01:28:38.000 And actually, a lot of those people actually have come back that were listeners.

01:28:41.000 And I think they said, you know, that was, we got a little bit too heated in that.

01:28:45.000 And I believe it.

01:28:46.000 I think that what happened is wrong.

01:28:48.000 I think it's disgusting.

01:28:48.000 It's not who we are to get to violence or confrontation.

01:28:51.000 It's not.

01:28:52.000 And I will be clear and specific that there were different types of people that were there at the Capitol.

01:28:58.000 I've done lots of podcasts on this and delve into it, but they were agitators.

01:29:02.000 They were Antifa.

01:29:04.000 They were far-right-wing people that call themselves Trump supporters that I would never associate with.

01:29:08.000 And then there were legitimate Trump supporters that were there that seemed to have gotten caught up and, in their own words, made the worst mistake of their life, right?

01:29:15.000 So that's all kind of being looped together.

01:29:17.000 What's the point?

01:29:18.000 Is that all of a sudden people say, well, Charlie, what are we supposed to do since we can't do civil war?

01:29:22.000 I'm like, hold on.

01:29:24.000 Like, no, no, this is a thing.

01:29:26.000 Just so you're clear, that's a question I get probably a lot.

01:29:31.000 Yeah, where it's like, so what are we supposed to do now?

01:29:33.000 Like, weak man.

01:29:34.000 I'm like, wow, okay.

01:29:36.000 I actually think it takes more courage and more strength not to go act like a barbarian than to, okay?

01:29:42.000 To actually be sophisticated and strategic and, you know, ever-loving and trying to pursue dialogue and all that.

01:29:47.000 But there's also a thing that we as Christians really have perfected over the centuries, which is civil disobedience, which is completely different than civil discord.

01:29:55.000 And I want to be very clear about this.

01:29:57.000 Civil disobedience, if done for a moral purpose and done prayerfully and done with around the physical assembly of other believers and elders in a church structure, can be moral, which is what you guys are actually doing right now.

01:30:12.000 So let me tell you what civil disobedience is.

01:30:14.000 It's completely different.

01:30:15.000 It's nonviolent in nature, and it always is.

01:30:18.000 It's nonviolent.

01:30:19.000 A law of civil disobedience written by Henry David Thoreau with Emerson was you never steal other people's stuff.

01:30:28.000 You don't ruin their property.

01:30:30.000 It's number one.

01:30:30.000 You don't hurt other people.

01:30:31.000 Number two, you must be willing to accept the penalty.

01:30:34.000 This man right here is willing to go to jail.

01:30:37.000 He opened up his church, opened up his church.

01:30:39.000 They said, I'm doing this for a moral good.

01:30:41.000 Put me in prison, right?

01:30:42.000 I'm willing to accept the punishment.

01:30:45.000 So that's pushing back, right?

01:30:46.000 That's all of a sudden saying, I'm not going to do this, but you're going to have to then arrest me, right?

01:30:51.000 Nonviolently.

01:30:52.000 And the third thing is this, which is really, really important, which you must be willing to go through the entire process is you just can't cop out as soon as you go down that.

01:31:03.000 And so I want you to just do a mad, like, so let's say he does a national lockdown.

01:31:07.000 Let's just, which is unconstitutional in nature, right?

01:31:10.000 I will be leading the charge for civil disobedience.

01:31:13.000 I will.

01:31:15.000 And I will be saying, you know what?

01:31:17.000 We will.

01:31:18.000 We'll open the church and you're going to have to arrest every single one of us.

01:31:22.000 And we will go to jail.

01:31:23.000 We'll get booked.

01:31:25.000 We'll pay the penalty.

01:31:27.000 And here's what happens.

01:31:28.000 We know this is a great civil disobedient people throughout the 20th century, Martin Luther King Gandhi.

01:31:33.000 There's so many that public opinion will sway in your favor instantaneously.

01:31:37.000 Is that you want to effectuate change quickly?

01:31:40.000 Do that.

01:31:41.000 You want to lose everyone?

01:31:42.000 Go, you know, go do whatever the heck those guys were doing in the Capitol, right?

01:31:47.000 You bash windows and you storm halls and all that nonsense, right?

01:31:51.000 You see the difference between the two?

01:31:53.000 And I think that it actually takes more courage to do the civil disobedience.

01:31:58.000 So I would encourage everyone to think very carefully about that.

01:32:01.000 Rob, you actually, again, as we mentioned earlier, were instrumental in that.

01:32:06.000 And I know you, and I watched and I observed from a distance, you know, you saying over and over, I don't want to do this.

01:32:12.000 This is not my intention.

01:32:14.000 I really don't, this is not, I don't want to be the face of this.

01:32:16.000 And you were hesitant, but you were also resolute.

01:32:19.000 And when it came down to it, you said, this is what I'm going to do.

01:32:22.000 And what was it like for you to actually stand in that moment?

01:32:27.000 And you're still standing.

01:32:28.000 You're still standing.

01:32:29.000 You're still doing it.

01:32:30.000 Can you kind of share with us what you went through as a believer in the process and where you are now?

01:32:36.000 So it got serious in August when they cited me in a thousand doze, which would be congregants or visitors, with a citation.

01:32:45.000 And they wanted to enforce it with the Sheriff's Department.

01:32:49.000 And that Sunday was coming up where we were going to either open and violate it or yield to them.

01:32:56.000 And I tried to get some vacation time.

01:32:57.000 I was up at Grass Valley with my in-laws and my shoulder.

01:33:01.000 I had the worst headache.

01:33:01.000 I have a pain in my shoulder.

01:33:03.000 I couldn't do anything.

01:33:04.000 I was miserable.

01:33:06.000 I got to take the flight back that Saturday for Sunday services.

01:33:09.000 I haven't decided yet.

01:33:11.000 I call our attorney.

01:33:12.000 I go, what are the consequences?

01:33:13.000 He goes, well, you get an IRS audit.

01:33:15.000 You lose your house.

01:33:15.000 You lose the church.

01:33:17.000 You're going to get death threats.

01:33:18.000 He starts going down the list.

01:33:19.000 I go, is there anything else?

01:33:20.000 He keeps going.

01:33:22.000 About the fourth time over, he goes, I can't think of anything else.

01:33:24.000 I'm like, whew.

01:33:27.000 I said, thank you.

01:33:28.000 And then, you know, my wife and I looked at it and we said, this is a cost.

01:33:32.000 She said, Rob, I'm in.

01:33:33.000 I said, I'm in.

01:33:34.000 We told the kids, we're in.

01:33:36.000 I took it in front of our executive staff.

01:33:38.000 They were in, told the staff they were in, took it to our 15 elders.

01:33:41.000 I said, you guys have fiduciary responsibility.

01:33:43.000 You could lose stuff.

01:33:44.000 They were all in.

01:33:45.000 But I told him a little different.

01:33:46.000 I said, I said, you don't have to yield.

01:33:51.000 I'm going to do this.

01:33:52.000 And if you disagree, then you got to let me go because you've known me for 20 years.

01:33:58.000 I'm doing this.

01:33:59.000 Now, if you want another pastor, I'll quietly leave.

01:34:02.000 We're in.

01:34:03.000 And then the last was a landlord because I don't want to own property.

01:34:06.000 And the guy in Texas and I said, look, we have fiduciary responsibility.

01:34:10.000 You either can lock your building, turn off your water.

01:34:12.000 He goes, I gave that to the Lord a long time ago.

01:34:14.000 You go ahead.

01:34:19.000 So we counted the cost and I said, we're going to violate that.

01:34:26.000 And an attorney can't counsel you to break the law.

01:34:29.000 But I said, we're opening tomorrow.

01:34:31.000 He said, well, we'll be by your side.

01:34:33.000 Immediately the pain left.

01:34:35.000 My son-in-law was next to me.

01:34:36.000 I'm like, look, and I'm not that kind of guy.

01:34:39.000 I mean, it was like, it was crazy.

01:34:42.000 Now, this is the last part is after we did all that, the Lord showed me that whatever is given to God first will never be lost.

01:34:52.000 So whatever they're going to take from me, I already gave it away.

01:34:58.000 So all the fear is gone.

01:35:00.000 Take the church.

01:35:01.000 We already gave that away.

01:35:02.000 We counted that cost.

01:35:03.000 There's nothing left you can take.

01:35:05.000 Take my life.

01:35:05.000 what do you threaten me with heaven we're good to go we are free we are free We're free.

01:35:19.000 Well, there are so many more things that could be spoken of tonight.

01:35:23.000 And my goal really and my intention from the outset was to have these two gentlemen here with us tonight to be able to be equipped to understand what is the role of the church in all of this.

01:35:36.000 And I realized several things tonight.

01:35:39.000 One, I really should have paid more attention in history class.

01:35:42.000 I feel like, man, Charlie.

01:35:48.000 Now my kids say, Charlie, I know, I know he said it.

01:35:51.000 And I need to dial in that podcast.

01:35:54.000 But this is a great source of information.

01:35:56.000 And I also, I mean, I'm just so blessed by what you guys have shared.

01:36:00.000 And it's been my prayer to you tonight that you would be strengthened in your faith.

01:36:05.000 And that, as Charlie mentioned, that there would be genuine, real hope.

01:36:10.000 And ultimately, folks, and we concur with this and agree, I know that, is that there is hope.

01:36:16.000 And that hope has a name.

01:36:18.000 And his name is Jesus Christ.

01:36:21.000 Ultimately.

01:36:27.000 And let me just tell you, you can be as conservative as you like, but if you're not converted, it doesn't matter. 0.93

01:36:36.000 Listen, there's a lot of conservative people in hell.

01:36:44.000 You need to be converted.

01:36:46.000 You need to give your life to Jesus Christ.

01:36:48.000 And listen, that's what makes a difference because one day we're all going to have an appointment with death.

01:36:53.000 I stood here Saturday, Saturday afternoon, as we said goodbye to my cousin who was like a brother to me.

01:37:01.000 He was just two years older than me.

01:37:04.000 He did not yet reach 50 years of age and he died.

01:37:07.000 His life was over.

01:37:08.000 And you realize as I stood right here on Saturday, life is brief.

01:37:13.000 It is short.

01:37:14.000 And you've got one shot.

01:37:16.000 What you do with the life that you've been given by the Lord makes all the difference for all of eternity.

01:37:21.000 And so listen, redeem the time.

01:37:23.000 Yeah, things are not the way we wanted them to be or voted for them to be.

01:37:27.000 God's still on the throne.

01:37:28.000 We got work to do and let's do it.

01:37:31.000 Let's do it.

01:37:36.000 And if you're not saved, if you don't know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, if you don't know that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and then rose again on the third day, he is the way, the truth, and the life.

01:37:47.000 And nobody gets to heaven through him.

01:37:49.000 Listen, he loves you.

01:37:51.000 He died to prove it.

01:37:52.000 I would challenge you tonight.

01:37:53.000 I would plead with you tonight.

01:37:55.000 Cry out to God.

01:37:56.000 The Bible says whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

01:38:00.000 Friend, I would encourage you to do that.

01:38:02.000 What I'd like to do as we end tonight because I'm just, man, Charlie, I'm so thankful for the, and it is, it's a ministry, man.

01:38:12.000 You're helping us.

01:38:13.000 God has raised you up for such a time as this to be a voice.

01:38:17.000 And we're very thankful.

01:38:19.000 And I want to pray for this man and his future bride and what God's calling them to, and that God would expand the borders, brother, that he would just expand the borders and it would go above and beyond what you had even, you know, the Bible says that God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think.

01:38:35.000 And he's doing it and God's using you.

01:38:36.000 And hey, listen, we're behind you.

01:38:38.000 We support you.

01:38:39.000 We're excited to see how God's using you.

01:38:41.000 Amen.

01:38:46.000 Lord, pray for Charlie.

01:38:48.000 I want to pray for you.

01:38:50.000 You can sit down.

01:38:52.000 I'll be Rob, give me a boost.

01:38:57.000 These guys are so tall.

01:39:00.000 Yeah.

01:39:02.000 Father, we're so thankful for our brother here tonight, Lord, for Charlie.

01:39:06.000 And first and foremost, God, we thank you that as he shared at the very beginning, how he committed his life to Jesus Christ.

01:39:12.000 And Lord, you have put him on a trajectory with a calling that is powerful and anointed.

01:39:17.000 And Lord, there are many adversaries.

01:39:19.000 Lord, I think about what Paul said when he wrote to the church.

01:39:22.000 He said, Listen, an open and effective door.

01:39:24.000 An effective door has been opened to me, but there are many adversaries.

01:39:28.000 But Lord, I thank you that you're for him.

01:39:30.000 Lord, that he's more than a conqueror through you.

01:39:32.000 And we pray for just a greater anointing upon his life.

01:39:36.000 God, that you would give him the continued courage and boldness.

01:39:39.000 Lord, we lift up his upcoming marriage.

01:39:41.000 We thank you for his bride to be.

01:39:43.000 Lord, we pray that they would just be a formidable force, God, for what they're doing right now, that you would strengthen them, Lord.

01:39:51.000 And Lord, we're just so grateful for this young man.

01:39:54.000 And we pray that you continue to bless him.

01:39:55.000 Thank you for Pastor Rob and his ministry.

01:39:58.000 And Lord, the way that you're using him, both of these guys, Lord.

01:40:01.000 And we pray for the church at large.

01:40:03.000 God, make us bold in all of these things that we've heard tonight.

01:40:06.000 Lord, help us to be salt and light in every area, Lord, that you've called us to.

01:40:11.000 We thank you.

01:40:12.000 We love you.

01:40:13.000 In Jesus' name, amen.

01:40:16.000 Amen.

01:40:18.000 Thank you, Lord.

01:40:18.000 Thank you.

01:40:22.000 Amen.

01:40:24.000 Let's give Charlie a hand, you guys.

01:40:27.000 Charlie.

01:40:37.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

01:40:38.000 Email us your questions, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

01:40:41.000 If you want to get involved with Turning PointUSA, go to tpusa.com.

01:40:45.000 And again, thank you for supporting us at charliekirk.com/slash support.

01:40:49.000 God bless you guys.

01:40:50.000 Speak to you soon.

The Charlie Kirk Show - January 24, 2021

The Strength of Salvation in an Era of Anxiety

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