00:01:05.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:12.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:29.000And actually, I just wrote a book about all of that, which we could touch on maybe a little bit later.
00:02:34.000And so my wife is in Arizona here, and we got married in May of last year, and we just had a baby girl, which we are super thrilled about.
00:02:44.000And the most important part of my biography is I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade at Christian Heritage Academy in the North Shore of Chicago.
00:02:52.000Some of you might be familiar with that school.
00:02:54.000It's actually founded by Wayne Grudem, who's a fellow Arizonan here, phenomenal Bible teacher and scholar.
00:02:59.000Most important decision I made in my life was in fifth grade.
00:03:02.000It has meant more and more to me as I got older.
00:03:05.000And it really is the driving force of everything that I do.
00:03:08.000Everything is about the Bible and God's plan and liberty, which is God's idea, not man's idea.
00:03:15.000And I try to lace that into everything that we do at Turning Point USA and college campuses, on high school campuses, and what we do at TPUSA Faith, our radio show, our podcast, and everything in between.
00:03:26.000And so, yeah, we're doing our best to try to fight for what we believe are God-given rights and principles.
00:03:33.000And what I personally believe, and I believe there's more than overwhelming evidence, a nation that was divinely inspired into existence and something that has never happened before in human history, which is an experiment in self-government for the people and by the people, separation of powers, consent to the governed, independent judiciary.
00:03:50.000These things are very rare to ever see implemented.
00:03:53.000They're biblical in nature, derived straight from God's word.
00:03:57.000And I believe we as Christians have a moral prerogative to make sure that civilization continues to flourish.
00:04:04.000So I try to put myself into the shoes of people that disagree with what we're talking about.
00:04:13.000And so like right now, if somebody's watching this and they just heard this audience clap at what you just said about the divine origins, the biblical origins of the country, and then before talking about teaching students to love their country and not hate it, some would listen to that and go, that's not what Christians are supposed to do.
00:04:33.000Christians are just supposed to save souls, and that's it.
00:04:36.000And so could you help us walk through that?
00:04:42.000Well, like, for example, Jeremiah 29, 7, the Lord is speaking to his chosen people, and he says, demand the welfare of the nation that you are in, because your welfare is tied to your nation's welfare.
00:04:53.000That's God's teaching in Jeremiah 29, 7.
00:04:55.000We are commanded to care about our nation.
00:04:58.000Daniel fasted and prayed for his country.
00:05:00.000Esther, Mordecai, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, all sorts of figures in the Old Testament sought to be counselors to secular government for God.
00:05:10.000Not to mention, all throughout the scriptures, we see this struggle, this question of how should man be governed in the earthly realm.
00:05:17.000Of course, we know that Christ is king and is the chairman of the board of everything we do in our life, but we have to form some form of government.
00:05:24.000So our founding fathers wrestled with this question, and they didn't do so lightly.
00:05:27.000So when they came with the three branches of government, they were inspired by Isaiah 33, which is God is the lawmaker, God is the judge, and God is the king.
00:05:36.000That sounds like our three branches of government.
00:05:39.000The founding fathers said very clearly that only God should have all three of those powers together.
00:05:43.000We have to do our best to separate them into three different branches.
00:05:46.000How about in the Declaration of Independence, where it mentions God four times, and it says explicitly the laws of nature and nature is God?
00:05:54.000One of the most beautiful statements ever to be written.
00:05:56.000And the Declaration of Independence that laid the framework for Western civilization as we know it to allow to grow and flourish.
00:06:02.000But let's pretend none of that is convincing to you.
00:06:34.000It's actually private property-based entrepreneurial capitalism that is the funding mechanism of all the ministries that we love to support.
00:06:42.000But you need something to be able to buy airplane tickets, be able to give goods out in all this work that you're doing.
00:06:48.000The world is a better place because of the experiment of America.
00:06:52.000In fact, the kingdom of God has spread to more nations, more corners, more people have been able to give their life to the Lord because of the United States of America than any other country in the history of the world.
00:07:05.000So yeah, I think we should care about America.
00:07:17.000I mean, if God wants this country to be run by tyranny, well, then we should just submit to the tyranny that's happening, right?
00:07:27.000Yeah, so that would be a misapplication of the teaching of Romans 13, right?
00:07:32.000So Romans 13, written by Paul, important context before he was obviously imprisoned and eventually killed by Roman leaders, he says that you must submit to all of those in authority.
00:07:44.000It's the longest writing in the New Testament when it comes to politics.
00:07:49.000So if we were in communist China or if we were in North Korea, I would have a different approach to this verse.
00:07:55.000But we actually were given a gift by the founding fathers.
00:07:58.000And it's very simple, which we need to ask ourselves the question, who is the governing authorities in America?
00:08:14.000Romans 13 was violated by the mayors, the congressmen, the governors, all those people that decided to take our God-granted natural rights away.
00:08:22.000The sloppy, civically ignorant way of reading Romans 13 is to say, you must listen to the mayor, but the mayor is not in charge.
00:08:30.000You gave your power up to the mayor in an election when you elected them.
00:08:34.000It starts with we the people, not we the politicians.
00:08:37.000That is a game-changing type of civilizational bedrock principle.
00:08:42.000The founding fathers inverted the entire way government was done.
00:08:45.000Before America, absent maybe a little Athenian democracy, a Roman republic that blew up, every single country in the history of the planet was an empire trying to take more lands, trying to subjugate more people, trying to get more people under their oppressive rule.
00:09:02.000You fought other people's wars, and if you were lucky, maybe you were able to have children if they survived, you know, which was a very difficult process for thousands of years.
00:09:45.000This nation was founded by the Black Robe Regiment, by Jonathan Mayhew, by John Knox, by Jonathan Edwards, by George Whitfield, by the sermons of a pastoral community that cared so much about fighting for liberty and self-government.
00:09:58.000And then we come in the 21st century, some Christians, not all, and they say, no, I don't care about all of that.
00:10:23.000Christians that cared enough to create an experiment in self-government.
00:10:27.000And so, look, I reject all forms of apathy.
00:10:30.000I believe the Bible is an anti-apathy document in every single corner, whether it be how you eat, how you treat your neighbors, how you raise your children.
00:10:39.000The Bible is a blueprint of how to do everything.
00:10:41.000And yes, how to care about politics and how to vote and what type of government we should live under.
00:10:45.000So I can't remember your devil's advocate question, but I'm sure that helps out of folks.
00:10:54.000Yeah, John Adams was asked who were the most influential people behind the revolution, and he named four preachers.
00:11:02.000And he said, those are the four men that had more to do with anything happening in the American Revolution than anybody else.
00:11:08.000And then when you go back and read the Declaration of Independence and you go back and read the sermons 15 years before the revolution, you find that the entire Declaration of Independence is just sermon topics in the colonies 15, 20, 15 years before the actual Declaration.
00:11:26.000Yeah, and the Declaration of Independence is such a beautiful document.
00:11:29.000We don't teach it to our children anymore, where it says, when in the corseum and events becomes necessary, one people to dissolve the political bands that have tied them to the never deriving the equal station of power of which they derive the laws of nature and nature is God.
00:11:42.000And it goes on to say, of course, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that all men are created equal.
00:11:46.000I mean, these statements we take for granted.
00:11:50.000But why was it that Thomas Jefferson was able to so eloquently put that?
00:11:54.000It's because for decades prior, there were those activist preachers.
00:11:58.000George Whitfield gave anywhere between 26 to 28,000 open-air sermons along the eastern seaboard.
00:12:05.000So, yes, we celebrate 1776 and we should, but we forget that the soil was tilled by the American church, colonists that started to wrestle with the idea, how would God want us to live?
00:12:18.000And they started to realize that God's orders and God's rules for life mattered more than King George.
00:12:23.000That's a literally a revolutionary concept.
00:12:27.000And with it was the outgrowth of Western civilization, of which we are able to enjoy and flourish in today.
00:12:33.000There's plenty of malevolent forces that are trying to take it down.
00:12:36.000And if I could just kind of go a little bit further, my patience wears thin when I have to hear from Christians that I don't care about such a civilization.
00:12:46.000It is, and if I offend anybody, great.
00:12:54.000You are so blessed that God allowed you to live in such a civilization.
00:12:58.000And to say it means nothing to me or that doesn't matter to me, I believe it is the opposite of what Christ called us, which is to be good stewards.
00:14:58.000It's a single letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Convention, actually assuring them that the government wouldn't come after them.
00:15:35.000They know the power of what the church could potentially do if it actually rose up and got focused on it, which I believe it's in the process of happening.
00:15:41.000But you do make an important question, though, right?
00:15:52.000I believe in churches that at times talk about political, cultural, and philosophical issues if it's consistent and harmonic with the word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ.
00:16:02.000I don't believe in political churches.
00:16:04.000I believe in churches that glorify God.
00:16:06.000It's a very important thing that the political church is a pejorative that people throw.
00:16:10.000They say, oh, that's a political church.
00:16:35.000So to answer another question, though, which is, are there examples of people in the Bible that we revere that cared about government?
00:16:45.000And as I mentioned, of course there are.
00:16:47.000I mean, there's numerous examples of Old Testament prophets and thinkers inspired by God wrestling with what is the best form of government.
00:16:56.000And this is another thing that Christians must understand, which is, you know, they always say, oh, you know, don't legislate my morality.
00:17:21.000Because society has decided morally that going 45 miles an hour out of a school might endanger children, so we make it illegal to do so.
00:17:31.000All laws are a reflection of morality.
00:17:33.000The question is: do you want the secular humanist morality or the Judeo-Christian word of God morality to live under?
00:17:39.000And so if you are just kind of agnostic to it, then how are we also being salt and light, which are two things that change the environment of which they are in?
00:17:50.000Salt and light go to something that is a certain way and changes it to be completely different.
00:18:43.000Or how about the part where Jesus said on this rock, when we all say church, he said, on this rock, build my, it's actually a Greek word, ecclesia.
00:18:49.000And thanks to Tyndale, who was actually killed for doing such an interpretation, killed by the Catholic Church at the time, we understand that ecclesia actually was a Greek equivalent of a political gathering.
00:19:02.000Jesus said, on this rock, build my ecclesia.
00:19:05.000And ecclesia was a place where all the Greek citizens in a local area would meet.
00:19:10.000And there were two big words when they used to meet, two Greek words that meant eleutheria and isonomia, two Greek words that meant freedom and equality.
00:19:20.000Wonder what country has that as two aims and ambitions.
00:19:23.000So instead of not on this rock, build my church, it's on this rock, build my community gathering point, of which you all know the two unifying principles are freedom and equality.
00:19:34.000That's a lot different than a lot of people would say.
00:19:37.000So wait a second, Jesus was referenced, because he could have said, on this rock, build my synagogue.
00:19:49.000Maybe because Jesus did not want compartmentalized Christianity, he wanted comprehensive Christianity.
00:19:55.000He didn't want to run to the hills and not care about what's happening in the world.
00:19:58.000He wanted to bring the truth to all facets of human life.
00:20:03.000So, when it comes to pastors encouraging people, encouraging Christians to stay out of politics, do we have any historical parallels to that?
00:20:41.000In a country where there was a lot of institutional Christianity, mainline Protestantism was very well established in Nazi Germany.
00:20:50.000It was not the majority belief, majority was agnostic, but it was 30 to 40% of the country.
00:20:55.000And if you want to really all of a sudden challenge your view of what a political pastor is, go read Eric Metaxas' book on a Bonhoeffer.
00:21:05.000It will challenge your belief to the core of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who did everything he possibly could to try to stop Hitler because he saw what was happening of God's chosen people that were being systemically murdered.
00:21:17.000But the American, not the American, the German church at the time said, we're going to do nothing because it says in Romans 13, we must submit to Adolf Hitler.
00:21:30.000But I am saying that we're definitely on a trajectory of tyranny and the same sort of language is being reintroduced very, very generously.
00:21:37.000And it's not just there, though, by the way.
00:21:39.000It's country after country that we see where the church agrees to co-opt itself.
00:21:44.000Another example would be Stalin's Russia.
00:21:46.000You know, the Russian Orthodox Church was not shut down by Stalin, even though Stalin was an atheist who actually went to seminary and rejected it completely and wholeheartedly.
00:22:01.000Stalin knew that if he could just purchase the basically the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church, pay them off, have them loyal to the government, let them still worship, but don't get too rambunctious and never, ever, ever speak against the Soviet government, then just keep it in its place.
00:22:21.000Now, of course, we have no examples of American Christianity taking money, I don't know, from the CDC or from NIH or from being purchased by secular SOARs-funded nonprofits.
00:22:32.000The American church, of course, is not for sale.
00:22:38.000If you look at history, some of the great atrocities ever committed was not because there were no Christians, it's because Christians that were there did nothing.
00:22:46.000So, since you went there, Charlie, can you can you be more specific about what you just said?
00:22:54.000Christian pastors, Christian leaders being bought off in order to because here's the thing: Christians, like right now, we will get slammed for having an event that would geared more towards the right politically.
00:23:11.000If we had an event, if this is the right, then we're messed up.
00:25:09.000Mostly bigger buildings and bigger budgets, by the way.
00:25:12.000And most pastors do not want to disrupt the business model, okay?
00:25:16.000And talking about these issues mean that people might leave, they might stop tithing, they might stop offering.
00:25:21.000And what an unbelievably coward disservice to the kingdom of God and to what God has given us in this country to work, well, I might lose somebody because they get upset that I say that there's men and women were created.
00:26:08.000The courageous churches are growing in number and they're also being blessed by the Lord with, ironically, more tithes, more offerings, and more attendance.
00:26:18.000In fact, it's the churches that have taken a stand the last couple years that are flourishing and being blessed, and it's the ones that have gone completely off the reservation that actually are seeing a decline in attendance and tithing and offering.
00:26:30.000So the first are the courageous churches.
00:27:10.000You should find the coward and take them out to lunch and take them out to dinner and challenge them and try to build them up to try to be able to find the courage that God gives them.
00:28:07.000Do you maybe talk about how that might impact what's happening around you?
00:28:10.000These are very important questions, by the way, that cowardly pastors will be very clumsy in answering because deep down they know you're right.
00:28:38.000Churches that seize on this are growing because you are being propagandized every day by secular culture on how to believe what to believe in the news, transgenderism, your kids are on TikTok, all this stuff.
00:28:48.000And the pastor says, I'm not going to give you a clarifying biblical lens to make sense of what's happening.
00:29:46.000That's perverting the word of God for your own purpose, whatever that very well might be.
00:29:51.000They're actually not the majority of the churches.
00:29:54.000They're growing in certain areas, but it is the intentional perversion of the word of God for a secular, humanist, progressive, quasi-demonic political agenda.
00:30:05.000And those churches need to be called out.
00:30:23.000And the complicit, we must draw the line in the sand and call them out what they are, which I believe the teachers that are complicit teachers are the exact false prophets that we are warned about in 1 Peter, and I believe they'll be treated appropriately.
00:30:44.000So can you, we see it every day, so I'm not asking you to do anything that we don't already know a little bit about.
00:30:51.000But can you paint a picture for just how serious the situation is right now, just nationally?
00:30:58.000Yes, and let me also comment on something you also said earlier, which is it's a temptation for those of us that read our Bibles, and I believe we have to be very careful about this, which is it's the temptation of the overemphasis on eschatology.
00:31:13.000Now, eschatology is the study of the end times.
00:31:16.000And some of you here tonight are probably like, Charlie, this is all great and good, but Jesus is coming next Thursday.
00:32:17.000Eschatology can be a comfort in the midst of conflict, meaning that you know there's a broader plan, you know that God is working sovereign in a sovereign fashion, so it could comfort you, but it should not allow you to be inactive.
00:34:07.000I mean, here we have people that many Christians look to and go, those are heroes.
00:34:12.000John Knox and John Calvin, like these are heroes.
00:34:15.000These are people that we put their pictures on our walls or we look back at history and go, man, I wish I could have an ounce of their courage.
00:34:34.000I mean, Tyndale in particular is a very interesting one.
00:34:37.000If you've never studied Tyndale, you don't know who he is.
00:34:40.000You have the King James Bible thanks to Tyndale.
00:34:43.000So Tyndale was hunted down, literally, for deciding to translate the Bible for the common folk.
00:34:50.000I believe Tyndale is the least appreciated figure that led to the birth of Western civilization, America, and the commoner being able to get in a relationship with Jesus Christ.
00:35:01.000And so what Tyndale did is he rejected, not rejected, he questioned and was skeptical of some of the Latin translation that the Catholic Church had.
00:35:11.000So he got his hands on a Bible and he said, wait a second, I'm a little bit skeptical here.
00:35:16.000So he went to original source manuscripts to the Koigne Greek, taught himself Koigne Greek.
00:35:21.000You didn't have all these websites back then where you could learn Koigne Greek, okay?
00:35:25.000And he literally became a master to be able to get back to what was it, what was it really saying?
00:35:32.000Also, obviously going back to the Hebrew in mostly the Old Testament, but the New Testament is written in Koine Greek, spoken in Aramaic, but translated and written Koine Greek.
00:35:42.000This was not a small piece of rebellion.
00:35:45.000This was an act of treason against the government to do.
00:35:49.000But he believed that everyday normal people, in particular his native country, Lil Bias, Scotland, wanted, you know, needed it, that everyday people needed to have a relationship with God.
00:36:53.000His final words before he died was something like, it was after the king or something was very sharp that he said before he died that was prophetic.
00:37:02.000I'll remember it or someone will look it up.
00:37:04.000Tyndale's last words was just beautiful.
00:37:06.000Anyway, so this idea that the Christianity that we enjoy was just created by rule followers is just not true at all.
00:37:16.000Now, we have to be careful, you know, what rules we break and how we break them.
00:37:19.000That's where the Holy Spirit comes in and praying and fasting comes in.
00:37:25.000I mean, we obviously mentioned Bonhoeffer and the founding fathers and so many others, not to mention, you know, George Washington, who was a godly man who prayed and fasted for his nation, a stoic figure filled with wisdom and godliness that was the father of our nation.
00:37:42.000And there's so many things that happened, the founding fathers did, inspired by biblical Christianity, that we just totally and completely take for granted, not the least of which should be, why did we all of a sudden decide to abolish slavery?
00:37:59.000Nine out of 13 colonies by the time the Constitution was ratified in 1787 abolished slavery.
00:38:05.000Thomas Jefferson wrote extensively in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, admonishing King George for bringing the slave trade to America.
00:38:12.000Benjamin Franklin, who was called a deist by some people, he might have had a conversion to Christianity at the end of his life.
00:38:18.000It's not proven, but his best friend was Whitfield, who was a pastor, so it makes you think.
00:38:22.000He chaired the first anti-slavery convention in the world in Philadelphia in the year of 1775.
00:38:28.000The question should not be, why was there slavery?
00:38:46.000It was also the British force, which was literally led by William Wilberforce, a Christian leader who abolished the British slave trade, actually before us technically, and cut in line while we were simultaneously struggling with the exact same thing.
00:39:00.000And so, look, there's a multitude of examples.
00:39:03.000But here's something, and this is why you ought to be careful sending your kids to government schools.
00:39:07.000If you see something historically noteworthy, a Christian was probably behind that.
00:40:51.000Is it your opinion or is there a moral objective standard?
00:40:53.000So all these things are helpful, right?
00:40:55.000Instead of telling people something, ask questions.
00:40:57.000Put them on a journey towards learning.
00:40:59.000That's at least my experience the best way to do that.
00:41:02.000Now, I'm sure you'll see a multitude of YouTube videos of someone that isn't that sweet in asking a question, which is if someone on a college campus comes and they're just full of venom and hatred, we have fun.
00:41:17.000And again, it's all about if they're insulting you and all this, then okay, then we're going to have a little bit of a back and forth and let the best ideas and the better communicator win.
00:41:29.000So it's all about who you're dealing with.
00:41:31.000And I really believe this, and I believe you have to be discerning, but it's whether or not you're dealing with somebody in good faith, too, right?
00:41:37.000If somebody is just trying to be a troll and if they're just trying to waste your time, I'm a big believer in just walking away.
00:41:44.000And I know some people might disagree with that, but if someone is just trying to irritate you and not really trying to learn, then just say, forget it.
00:43:17.000And when we understand the spiritual dimension, when you're dealing with a usurper, a deceiver, which is a very real spiritual being of Satan, which again, some churches decide not to talk about Satan ever, right?
00:43:31.000It's always like this one-sided equation as if there's not, it's not, we're not dealing with these very demonic spiritual dimensions that are always trying to bring us down.
00:43:41.000Then we have to understand that you say something true, you will all of a sudden receive backlash and you'll receive spiritual opposition from the deceiver who hates truth itself, which is Jesus.
00:45:28.000If you say there's two genders and if you believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and you believe that life begins at conception, you're not going to have a lot of friends in the media, in the culture, or in all of that, okay?
00:47:04.000Paul called Satan the God of this world.
00:47:07.000Jesus called him the prince of this world.
00:47:09.000So by definition, this principality that we are in is currently being governed by the evil one.
00:47:18.000So if that principality starts to give you approval and you're like, yeah, and kind of, I'm going to do this kind of bait and switch, and that's going to get them to give their life to the Lord and all this.
00:47:27.000Like, okay, if you water down everything and they become a member of your church and then one day they open up the book of Deuteronomy and they have a question like, well, I didn't know you guys have in your book that, you know, that homosexuality is wrong.
00:47:41.000Well, then you have to do what Andy Stanley does, right?
00:47:43.000Who's, you know, calls himself a pastor.
00:47:45.000Sorry if I'm going to get you in trouble here.
00:49:54.000America is an experiment in self-government, spired by the Bible, thanks to courageous Christians, that believes that one person, one party, one group of people should not be able to have the power over others without their consent.
00:50:08.000You believe power should be separated.
00:50:13.000You believe in private property rights, all of which are biblical values.
00:50:16.000But more than all of that, there's a spirit, there's an Americana spirit that makes us, in my personal opinion, different, which is Americans have always stepped up to a challenge when there's one in front of us.
00:50:43.000Instead, no, Americans step up to the challenge.
00:50:46.000And there's an uncomfortable truth behind this at times.
00:50:50.000And this is why I believe the Bible, you know, you need to read the parts about warfare, because at times, things can get a little messy to defend good.
00:50:58.000Sometimes you got to all of a sudden kind of get into the game a little bit.
00:51:03.000Remember, Paul used the imagery of the armor of God for a reason, okay?
00:51:11.000But you got to get into combat and be willing to do something about it, which is this: which is all of us are able to go home tonight and still enjoy the last gasp of a free and civil society because of a couple generations ago, the greatest generation that was willing to step up and face evil and exterminate it from the planet.
00:51:31.000And to be consistent, if a Christian pastor says we shouldn't get involved in politics, we shouldn't care about it, then what they are doing, and you should challenge them on this, is they're saying the greatest generation was wrong to go away to go to war in the Asian and the European theater.
00:51:46.000That's what they're saying, because that was a political move.
00:51:50.000When they stormed Normandy Beach, that's a moral and political move, saying that's evil, and we're going to sacrifice and we're going to do what's necessary to stop it.
00:51:59.000Pastors that say don't get involved in politics are basically saying the greatest generation was wrong.
00:52:09.000You had a second part of the question you wanted to ask?
00:52:12.000Well, no, I want to build off of the Alzheimer's thing because I think it's definitely Alzheimer's, but there's also a sense of fear of losing my comfort.
00:52:48.000So we should have comfort in Christ, but not comfort in the world.
00:52:52.000It's really interesting you pinpoint that word comfort.
00:52:55.000It's been actually a fascination of mine the last couple of months.
00:52:58.000There's a secular book that's written that has biblical truth all throughout it called Comfort Crisis.
00:53:03.000It's a phenomenal book for any young person you have right now that might be dealing with depression or anxiety.
00:53:07.000It's not a biblical book, but all throughout it has biblical truth.
00:53:10.000And the argument that he makes, he makes it from a Darwinian point of view, but you could easily change it to that of a creation point of view, which I believe, which is he thinks we evolved to be it.
00:53:19.000But I believe that God created us to not be comfortable.
00:53:26.000That it's bad for the soul, that it's bad for our body, it's bad for our mind.
00:53:31.000That waking up every single day and having three meals you don't have to think about in your air-conditioned car, right, not having to work for any form of pleasure, I actually think it's deteriorating our mind, body, and soul together.
00:53:44.000And so there's kind of parlay that theory and that thesis of which Michael Easter writes in the book Comfort Crisis to what you say, which is, is that also the same thing as being comfortable in relationships and just comfortable not to offend?
00:54:09.000The freest people I know, the happiest people I know, the people that are closest to the Lord, that are most joyful, are the people that are always doing something adventurous and risky and pushing forward for the kingdom of God.
00:54:38.000No, I mean, the gospel of Jesus Christ, as we know it today, was made possible by people that were constantly not caring about comfort but caring about courage.
00:54:47.000I think that's a really insightful point that you focus on.
00:54:50.000But boy, this is the great irony and the paradox of everything I just said about the greatest generation, though, right?
00:54:56.000They were such a great generation that they created a civilization that allows us to be comfort without effort.
00:55:03.000They were so great, they're almost too great that we haven't had to really do anything of meaning that is above and beyond us for the last 60 or 70 years.
00:55:15.000Thank you for your service, police officer, all this.
00:55:16.000But let's be honest, what they did in a short period of time was civilizationally so beyond heroic versus anything that's happened in the last 70 years.
00:55:24.000It was so beyond, it was so unbelievable that we've kind of been able to be at homeostasis for the last 70 years.
00:55:30.000And now we have to ask the question: does that mean I might have to miss Sunday night football?
00:56:30.000The greatest untapped political asset that has yet to be mobilized is the American church.
00:56:34.000And they are terrified that if the American church did exactly what it did in the 1980s with Falwell and others, did what it did with Billy Graham, they know that they'll be displaced from political power at every single level of government very quickly.
00:57:06.000And all of a sudden they're like, Christian nationalism is the worst thing ever.
00:57:08.000What they're trying to say is they're trying to stop what they see is the last gasp of the guardians of Western civilization, the very group of people that actually founded the country, caring so much to actually go and vote and mobilize and do things.
00:58:03.000It means that you love your nation and you want the priorities of your fellow citizens to be put above that of international interests and crony self-dealing, and you believe that there's a social contract in place to look after your nation.
00:58:32.000So if you get the order right, that's the way.
00:58:34.000But what they're really saying is, this is the scary group of Christians that are going to put their morality into government.
00:58:40.000Wait a second, our morality, wait, you mean the, like, let's be very clear: the morality that we put into government is this: that nine-year-olds shouldn't be able to get gender mutilation surgery.
00:58:51.000The morality that we'll put into government is pornographic curriculum should not be in public schools, that the unborn need to be protected.
00:58:59.000If that's all of a sudden legislating morality, then buckle up, I suppose, because I will do that enthusiastically.
00:59:08.000And if you think that the Bible is, you know, the Bible is the source of that, but it's all kind of a very big fear and scaremongering campaign.
00:59:18.000And I'll just kind of talk a little more politically for a second, and this might turn some people off, but that's okay.
00:59:23.000Which is the church is the only institution the American left has not completely taken over.
00:59:30.000Corporations, academia, government, FBI, and all of this.
00:59:35.000And it's the church built this country.
00:59:38.000The church has saved this country at every single corner in turn.
00:59:41.000Billy Graham, who I consider to be the great evangelist of the last 100 years, gave a sermon where he said socialism, collectivism, and communism is Satan's religion.
00:59:51.000If Billy Graham is willing to say that, I think every other American pastor should be willing to say that right now.
00:59:56.000If the church decides to wake up and rise up, the country could be realigned politically in a matter of days.
01:00:04.000So what's keeping that from happening right now?
01:01:17.000So I think just as a practice of that, and then also it's, and I know this has been a recurring theme, but it's, it's been, there has not been up until COVID, up until the lockdowns, all of these things that happened, the church has not necessarily felt threatened.
01:01:30.000So most pastors felt like they could just kind of skate by.
01:01:34.000And not to mention, how about CRT in the church and postmodernism and all these things?
01:01:39.000The church is now under direct attack.
01:01:42.000And so I think it is a time where the church is and can wake up from it, but it's why is it not happening?
01:01:51.000Because it's comfortable to do nothing.
01:02:57.000This is one of the most amazing just kind of leaps forward of the American Revolution that Thomas Jefferson hit perfectly, which is where do rights come from?
01:03:06.000He very well could have described it as an abstraction in the Declaration of Independence, but he said the laws of nature and nature's God.
01:03:27.000And that is stemmed, of course, from a philosophical and religious and theological belief from the Protestant Reformation that you don't have to go through conduits, that I can deal directly with God.
01:03:37.000You kind of see the similarities and the synergies where all those things start to percolate.
01:03:42.000But citizenship requires being aware of the nation that you are in.
01:03:49.000It requires you to care and to be invested and, of course, vote and all those different things.
01:03:54.000And it requires you, the best way I could say it, being a citizen, a good citizen, is the equivalent of being a good steward, is what it is.
01:04:03.000And it also is being invested in the passing down of values, traditions, and customs to the next generation.
01:04:11.000And so biblical citizenship, the idea of biblical citizenship that you could wrestle with is what does God want for me when it comes to the citizenship context and from this kind of context here.
01:05:14.000Before Christianity, you were not an image-bearer.
01:05:17.000You were a specimen that could be owned, bought, sold, transported, taken advantage of.
01:05:23.000But if you're made in the image of God with dignity and worth, if you are not just a mind and a body, but also a soul, then that necessitates a different legal construct.
01:05:33.000That means that you have the rights of due process, to own property, to protect yourself, and to speech.
01:05:39.000You see how all those things all of a sudden come together?
01:05:42.000But if you believe that you're just, and this is the secular humanist view right now, by the way, that kids are learning in schools, which again, if Christians don't weigh in on this, the secularists win these arguments, right?
01:05:52.000If you don't believe there's a soul within you, if you're just a mind and a body, then why should you not be able to exterminate them?
01:06:08.000We can always create more if we need them, as if we're nothing more than ants.
01:06:12.000But whoa, if you're an image bearer with a purpose and a plan and design by the sovereignty of God, that all of a sudden you have a retreat and you treat that being completely differently.
01:07:30.000It's only conspiracy theory if it's false.
01:07:33.000So, yeah, I mean, by the way, the term conspiracy theory is actually a CIA term that was introduced to the American Zeitgeist as a way to try to suppress ideas and questioning authority.
01:07:45.000You should just take five minutes tonight and just study the origin of the term conspiracy theory.
01:08:15.000And that used to be called a conspiracy theory.
01:08:17.000Okay, so yes, kind of one thing on this.
01:08:21.000Next Friday and Saturday, if you're at all interested and this topic intrigues you, we have a very short summit happening at the Arizona Grand Hotel all about the Great Reset.
01:08:31.000So we do a lot of events at Turning Point USA.
01:08:33.000We host our annual convention in December.
01:08:41.000We're going deep, very deep into the origins of the Great Reset and what you can do about it.
01:08:46.000World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, who's that sinister-looking bond villain up there.
01:08:54.000Again, if I was a globalist, I would not have a German run my operation.
01:09:03.000A German who talks in a very deep, Germanic bond villain accent.
01:09:09.000Up there's Bill Gates and Trudeau as well.
01:09:11.000We believe there's a global game going on to destroy American sovereignty, to try to get in the way of our private property rights, to try and deteriorate the American currency.
01:09:21.000And it's all about defeating the Great Reset.
01:09:23.000What's hilarious is that they say the Great Reset is a conspiracy theory.
01:09:27.000On the desk where I do my show every single day, and I have it just kind of referenced, is the book by Klaus Schwab.
01:09:35.000It's a book called COVID-19, The Great Reset.
01:09:40.000It's actually their new strategy, which is brilliant.
01:09:43.000It's called Hiding in Plain Sight, where they publish all the crazy things they're going to do.
01:09:47.000And therefore, people don't pay attention because they would think that if it's really that bad, they wouldn't publish it, even though it's right in front of you.
01:09:53.000And they say that they're going to try to turn you on the robots and all this crazy stuff.
01:10:21.000It's next Friday and Saturday, and it'll be highly educational.
01:10:25.000And if I could just kind of talk more broadly on that and less about the event, which is, look, the World Economic Forum, the Great Reset, they've come forward with some very specific promises and things that they think the world will look like by 2030.
01:10:37.000You'll own nothing and you'll be happy.
01:10:39.000Western values will be brought to a breaking point.
01:10:42.000America will no longer be the world's superpower.
01:10:44.000Almost everything that is happening in our world today should be viewed through a lens of the World Economic Forum.
01:10:49.000There's a bigger game happening than what's happening in Washington, D.C.
01:10:53.000I think you'll find it actually encouraging and liberating to know what's happening, what they're doing, why they're doing it.
01:11:39.000People like Charlie get us fired up about everything.
01:11:42.000We can't be fired up about everything.
01:11:43.000And so I'm just going to wait for the really big thing.
01:11:46.000That's the fight I'll get in, but it's not this one.
01:11:50.000Yeah, I mean, if we do nothing, there will be a body count that will make the 20th century look like child's play.
01:12:01.000I just want that to sit over the room.
01:12:06.000Now, why is that not just speculation?
01:12:14.000Let's remember what we just lived through.
01:12:16.000We just lived through one of the great manipulations of truth and perversions of reality in front of us.
01:12:24.000I mean, look how our world has changed, and we largely allowed it to happen.
01:12:29.000We have a generation of teenagers where the leading cause of death is them killing themselves.
01:12:34.000We have a generation of young people that have speech impediments and development because we've thrown masks on them.
01:12:41.000We've completely inappropriately thrown, you know, a vaccine on eight, nine, and ten-year-olds, not even knowing what the side effects could potentially be.
01:12:50.000And so, I mean, that was just a trial run.
01:13:34.000If we do nothing, there will be a body count that makes that look like child's play.
01:13:39.000And I don't know how they'll do it, but boy, they're willing to do anything.
01:13:43.000Lock us down, lie to us, pervert us, try to pervert the truth, go after dissident doctors, shun us on social media, call us all conspiracy theorists, raid apartments and homes of political dissidents.
01:13:58.000They're playing a ballgame here, right?
01:14:01.000So, yeah, maybe, maybe you want to do nothing.
01:14:06.000I'm not willing to face God and tell him I did nothing.
01:14:17.000So, any words specifically to the men in the audience?
01:14:47.000Yeah, it's actually when I say it, when I say that it's fun to be around people that believe in men and women, I speak at campuses all the time.
01:14:53.000I spoke at Boulder in Berkeley back to back this last spring.
01:14:57.000By the way, the same message that you hear tonight, just a lot more fun sparks, as you could imagine.
01:15:02.000And yet they don't believe in men and women.
01:15:07.000It's like word for word, if you know what I mean.
01:15:11.000So yeah, to the men out there, for young men in particular, look, we have a men's summit that we do at TPUSA, and it's growing really well.
01:15:53.000So look, for the men out there, young men in particular, chances are that if you're listening to this, you're probably addicted to something that you know that's not good for you.
01:16:02.000Stop doing the thing you know that's not good for you.
01:16:05.000And this is, we have the most addicted generation ever, whether it be addicted to pornography, addicted to drugs, addicted to video games.
01:16:12.000We have the most depressed generation, I believe, for a lot of different reasons, but for a misdiagnosis of dopamine deficiency, a topic of which has become a fascination of mine over the last year and a half, something that I personally have seen the problems of the overstimulation of dopaminergic receptors in the brain.
01:16:33.000However, I see at least 10 young men nodding their head because they know exactly what I mean.
01:16:38.000We have participated in the largest open-air drug experiment in the history of the species to give every single young person a phone, which basically completely destroys their neurological impulses and creates an anxious, depressed generation.
01:16:51.000And we just then throw psychiatric medication at them of Ritalin, benzodiazepines, Xanax, and all these things.
01:16:57.000I am not doubting that some people need these interventions, but I think we are way over-medicated in our country.
01:17:03.000And we just go directly to these medications and it causes all these other issues and all these other problems.
01:17:07.000So for young men out there, I guess my message is really clear.
01:17:10.000There's a beautiful life in front of you.
01:17:11.000Stop doing the thing you know that's good for you.
01:17:14.000I'm not trying to moralize or try to say anything.
01:17:16.000But honestly, if you are a young man, in particular, a young white man in America, you hear a lot of depressing stuff all the time.
01:17:24.000When I talk to the young men at Turning Point, they just say, Charlie, I can't get out of it.
01:17:28.000Everywhere I turn, it's something that is just overwhelmingly negative and all this.
01:17:32.000And so be a leader in your community and try to create a beautiful and meaningful life.
01:17:37.000And then just men in general, we got to start to rise up and start to push back against the mass feminization of our country.
01:18:38.000When a society gets too feminine, all of a sudden you go out of balance out of whack.
01:18:43.000And you lose heroes to step up and do the dirty work that's necessary to get bad guys off the streets.
01:18:51.000And to step up for people that can't defend themselves.
01:18:54.000Now, I'm not saying that women can also do that.
01:18:57.000But when I say that we became too feminine, most women were the ones that enthusiastically applauded because deep down, most women want to be led by godly men.
01:19:06.000And they are sick and tired of being told all the time that just kind of become a boss babe or whatever the newest thing is.
01:20:40.000You open it up, you type in Charlie Kirk Show, it's free of charge.
01:20:44.000We're constantly under censorship threats.
01:20:46.000So when people go independently to subscribe, it helps a lot.
01:20:49.000I think we have a QR code for that, if I'm not mistaken.
01:20:52.000If you don't know how to subscribe to a podcast, I saw a seven-year-old running around here somewhere that would be more than happy to help you with that.
01:21:02.000If you guys are interested or able, it does help us.
01:21:05.000We do three podcasts a day, always from a biblical perspective, giving you the news of the day, hard-hitting, unapologetic.
01:21:13.000I think we have some great guests with that.
01:21:15.000In addition, I also want to make sure you're all aware of a library of resources of an organization that we have partnered with, which I consider to be the best college in America, Hillsdale College.
01:21:36.000It's extremely easy to remember, and you will find a library of tailored online courses just for you: Constitution 101, courses about Winston Churchill, all about American history, courses about the book of Genesis, courses about David, courses about Aristotle, courses about almost every topic you could imagine.
01:22:12.000But let me just kind of finish with one greater call to action than all those little particular things, which is my heart for coming tonight was really just to try to convict you, to have all of us continue to change our posture, change our posture from a passive to an active.
01:22:28.000Now, I'm not going to give you a long grocery list of things to do.
01:22:32.000Instead, if you pray and fast for your nation, if you ask God, hey, use me as an instrument right now in this time, he will answer your prayer.
01:22:41.000It might be helping out a certain candidate.
01:22:45.000But you need to open your heart to be willing to be used and to contribute just a little bit of your time and your energy and your resources.
01:22:54.000Remember, the most important thing is proclaiming the kingdom of God in Jesus Christ.
01:22:58.000The second most important thing is to make sure we can do the first thing.
01:23:01.000And if we don't do the first thing, we are all going to be sharing our theological differences on eschatology from prison.
01:23:09.000We need to narrow in and unify the body of Christ and say this moment is about liberty and, of course, most important, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
01:23:17.000But there is a multi-dimensional pincer movement happening right now against the church, against biblical values, against Western civilization.
01:23:24.000And only the American church, only you, is what stands between it.