00:00:01.000This is an exclusive conversation that you'll find only on our podcast, advertiser-free, with Pastor David Engelhart, pastor of King's Church in New York City, the big apple.
00:00:10.000If any of you live in New York City or are near New York City, go to David's church.
00:01:02.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:03:15.000So introduce yourself because our audience has nearly quadrupled since the last time you've joined our podcast, which was back in December when you came on the panel and then before that.
00:03:27.000So just introduce yourself and then let's get into some fun stuff.
00:03:38.000And then I went to, got my degree in philosophy.
00:03:42.000And then I was on staff at a couple of churches for about 10 years in the Northwest between Portland, Oregon, and a couple of places in Washington.
00:03:52.000And then at that point, I went to law school, really felt a call of God to transition and go to law school.
00:03:58.000And, you know, some great preachers have gone to law school.
00:04:01.000Charles Finney, the great revivalist, he was a lawyer.
00:04:04.000And there's something about using that analytic ability in the scripture.
00:04:08.000You know, a lot of our preachers are very passionate, compassionate, and passionate.
00:04:14.000But if Jesus, you know, one of the things he said to the Pharisees, Pharisees, he said, you know neither the scripture nor the power of God.
00:04:22.000There's a combination between the power of God, that life, power, passion, and like an analytic ability to understand the scriptures, not just on a surface level, but go into what does it actually mean.
00:04:34.000So that training was really, really valuable.
00:04:36.000And I think it's really was, I mean, to get it to be in New York City and to be a pastor and say, you know, a lot of people think like a pastor's degree is like a degree in fairy dust, right?
00:04:46.000So now we have guys that are really, you know, all over the place with finance and science and law and a lot of high-end people.
00:04:55.000And they see a legal degree as something that's a little bit more, has a little bit more weight to it than a standard M. Div.
00:05:01.000And while I have theological accreditation, really what's sharpened me in the word, believe it or not, has been the ability of law to go in there and chop it up.
00:07:23.000And instead, the exact opposite is John 1.
00:07:25.000In the beginning, God created all of this through his meaning.
00:07:28.000Every part has meaning inside God's plan.
00:07:32.000And so this is what's called the common noun miracle.
00:07:36.000And not to harp too much on Aristotle, but it's hard not to when we talk about things that make sense because that's really what he focused on.
00:07:43.000So sometimes I'm in private groups and people say, Charlie, explain to me what Aristotle argued.
00:07:52.000And again, none of our teachers talk about this properly, but this is exactly what we're talking about.
00:07:57.000So, for example, if I said, David, go in the other room and find me a pen.
00:08:03.000You've never seen that pen before, but your mind has the ability to know what a pen is, and then you'd be able to recognize it easily, get it, and bring it back to me.
00:08:11.000This is light work for human beings, but it's a common noun miracle.
00:08:16.000No other species except human beings are able to organize things based on their meaning, therefore the good.
00:08:23.000And then you have philosophers that, you know, they leave the basic, like guys like Aristotle had such a profound understanding of ideas like good and virtue.
00:08:33.000You come into, you know, our last century, you got guys like Wittgenstein that are saying, like, meaning is only a, it's a beetle in a box.
00:08:40.000And you say, well, what is the beetle?
00:08:41.000And the answer is, in Wittgenstein, it doesn't matter.
00:09:06.000And Nietzsche, probably better known for kind of pioneering this.
00:09:12.000And Nietzsche's philosophy only makes sense if you accept his proclamation that God is dead.
00:09:19.000Nothing else that he says about creating the Ãœbermensch, the superhuman person, the will of a person, that what you the way he described the will in German was not even the way we understand it.
00:09:33.000It's this almost supernatural desire to bring yourself from the random chaos of particles to something above yourself.
00:09:42.000And we have an entire generation now that has basically been fed Nietzsche and not the idea of ethics or virtue or God-breathed existence.
00:09:52.000Yeah, I can't remember the entire quote, but a God is dead.
00:10:01.000It was written in a fictional narrative, screaming to the skies.
00:10:04.000It's often quoted, but people don't actually know the framework that it was in.
00:10:08.000Yeah, and it's our fault in the context of humanism, in the context of rejection of God, rejection of morality, and this sense of self now, experience, and flesh being all that we have, and there's nothing that goes beyond.
00:12:03.000You deal with people in a city that is about climbing a social ladder, living in a small apartment and trying to be very, very either rich or important.
00:12:17.000And you're ministering to broken people.
00:12:20.000Do we have a purpose crisis in our country?
00:12:23.000I think we have a wrong purpose crisis.
00:13:34.000And it's interesting, the most godly parts of America are actually the places without the big buildings.
00:13:40.000You know, J.R.R. Tolkien in his masterpiece, the trilogy, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I was reading some of this Catholic thinker, his name is Benjamin Weicker.
00:13:50.000He wrote a book called The Ten Books Every Conservative Must Read.
00:14:59.000He says, we love, Chesterton says it really clearly.
00:15:01.000We love our country because we love our family.
00:15:04.000And because I love my family, I love my community and I love my city and I love my nation.
00:15:08.000And of course, like we like America also because of the ideal.
00:15:11.000But I hope if I lived in Ireland, I would still love my family and my neighborhood and my country.
00:15:17.000Like we were talking about that earlier, about Paul in Romans 9 through 11, the incredibly deep love.
00:15:23.000It was so deep that he said he had for Israel that he said, I would be willing to give up my salvation for these people, that I would be damned for them.
00:15:53.000They've been given the law, et cetera, et cetera.
00:15:55.000But Paul is speaking, you know, in the book of Romans, he's talking about how much he loves personally the nation of Israel in an incredibly deep and passionate way.
00:16:04.000Now, you've got to remember the context of this.
00:16:06.000They have just completely and totally rejected Christ, except a very, very small sliver of them.
00:16:12.000And that small sliver will essentially lead into the Gentile world, and the Gentile world will go ablaze with Christianity, not the Jewish world.
00:16:30.000The applicable context to us is we're, it's also godly for us to have a burden for our nation, for our people, for our, again, mothers, brothers, sisters, family.
00:16:42.000And that's that's a Christian ethic to love your land, to love the place that God gave you.
00:16:50.000And so in Jeremiah, and I actually don't know the context of this verse, and I should, but I think it's Jeremiah 29.
00:16:58.000But the essence of what is being said, and you hear this quoted probably quite often, is show concern or seek, right?
00:17:07.000Which comes from the Hebrew word, I think, badrash, the welfare, shalem, or shalom of the city of which you are in, or the nation of which you are in.
00:17:15.000Because your welfare is tied to the welfare of the nation.
00:17:18.000And we actually know that's a true biblical principle.
00:19:00.000And so we have a culture that's totally ejected justice.
00:19:04.000And we have, you know, for instance, we have people.
00:19:09.000I just read a story in Vodie Backham's new book, Fault Lines, about a young black lady that she alleged really incredibly dark, racist allegations against this other white person in her school.
00:19:25.000And they found out they were totally false.
00:19:36.000I think in Leviticus, it says, to the person that does that with bearing false witness, whatever punishment they were trying to bring on that person, bring it back upon the person that did it.
00:19:48.000So the fear of the Lord will come and you'll get rid of that darkness from the land.
00:19:52.000And that's a darkness that we're allowing.
00:19:54.000We're saying, well, there was slavery.
00:19:55.000So I guess we're going to allow injustice to run freely in our nation.
00:20:38.000Meaning there is a reaction to an action.
00:20:40.000And God, Charlie, is perfectly just, which is why every man and woman will get what they deserve ultimately.
00:20:49.000Which is eternal damnation unless they received the grace or mercy of God through the gift of Jesus Christ, who took that punishment because God, if God is good, then he's perfectly just and everyone gets exactly what they deserve.
00:21:09.000So a young person listening to this right now, one of our turning point USA high school chapter leaders, maybe one of our turning point college leaders, they just had to hear their college professor tell them, we need social justice.
00:21:59.000So he looks at private property held in the United States and he says, well, you know, 60 to 70% of white people have private property and only 30 to 40% of black people.
00:22:07.000So what would be social justice is if you took from the landowners and you gave it to all the people that are renters so there's equal, so there's equality in home ownership.
00:22:17.000Because there's not equality in home ownership, it proves that there's racism in the system.
00:22:22.000It's unbelievably shallow and it's more than that.
00:24:16.000That's a thing now in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
00:24:18.000Just for everyone listening, it's legal for three fathers to get married and have a child in Harvard, right near Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
00:24:27.000And you know what's funny about the Trinity is you have three distinct entities that are separate in position and unified in relationship.
00:24:37.000And that makes like you think about a chord, a triad that has three different parts, like right, a C, an E, and a G, and it makes this beautiful sound.
00:24:46.000If it's all the C note, it doesn't sound good.
00:25:22.000Because you're well, if we look at the Old Testament, God says, here's the set of rules, right?
00:25:27.000And then if people break these rules, this is the punishment that you have to give them.
00:25:32.000When justice is not done, what the people deserve does not take place.
00:25:38.000So let's take our criminal justice society for instance.
00:25:42.000We have these mass institutions where thousands and thousands and thousands of mostly fathers, right, mostly adult men are incarcerated for mostly their life.
00:25:52.000Do you know in the Hebrew system of law, there were no prisons?
00:25:55.000Do you know if you search the Hebrew scriptures, there aren't any prisons.
00:25:59.000They don't have prisons in God's order.
00:26:04.000If you punch somebody in the face, you get punched in the face.
00:26:08.000You received, remember, justice is receiving what is owed to you.
00:26:13.000So if, you know, if you do something wrong, that wrong is either done or you replace the wrong with right because you've taken something.
00:26:20.000And so when justice doesn't take place, and we just say, well, we're just going to throw you in a cage and throw you in a cage and throw you in a cage and throw you in a cage.
00:26:26.000We have whole societies that are fatherless, right?
00:27:44.000The founders believed in freedom, right, from tyranny, and they believed in freedom to contract, and that inside of those systems, the actual community would execute justice on an individual that was acting out of accordance or congruence with the community.
00:28:00.000The other thing about the fathers, founding fathers, is the local churches were so strong that you would be disciplined because you would be a part of a church community.
00:28:08.000You may be kicked out of not only the church, but really relationship with the whole community for not acting in accordance with basic scriptural integrity, like holding fast to the vows of marriage that you made before the whole world.
00:29:52.000And it's the hope, it's the hope of the world.
00:29:54.000There is no legislation that, you know, Biden's going to pass.
00:29:58.000There's no legislation that second term Trump's going to pass.
00:30:01.000There's no legislation that, you know, whoever your favorite politician is going to get up there and pass that's going to fix the soul of the nation, right?
00:30:09.000Was it Franklin that said, you know, when the culture becomes more tyrannical or becomes more corrupted, it necessitates the need of more masters to dominate, which is more and more law, more and more regulation.
00:30:25.000It slows down the corruption, hopefully, hopefully.
00:30:29.000But the heart is an internal and personal issue that is dependent upon only the individual, which is why the CRT stuff, which is why the BLM stuff, which is why blaming people seven generations doesn't work.
00:30:41.000Because we can't fix society unless we fix our own hearts, which is what Jesus said.
00:30:45.000Why are you pointing at the speck in your neighbor's eye?
00:30:47.000The real issue is the giant beam in your own eye, right?
00:31:43.000I love lasers, but lasers, smoke, all this stuff is a mousetrap to get unsaved people in to say a prayer, and they think that's a conversion experience.
00:31:51.000And it's just, first of all, it's not a conversion experience.
00:34:40.000And to close a point on that, Madison and Washington, when they convened the Constitutional Convention, and these were prayerful Christian men.
00:34:46.000Don't let anyone tell you any different.
00:34:48.000They were deliberating about the Ninth Amendment, which I think is one of my favorite amendments.
00:34:52.000And no one ever talks about the Ninth Amendment.
00:35:42.000But you have to make an amendment to make sure that it's known that this is not an exhaustive list because we have a right to our sacraments.
00:36:09.000Now, that's in the Constitution, right?
00:36:10.000That's religious, free expression clause, and the right, the free expression clause and the establishment clause.
00:36:16.000But the point is that natural rights and how we are made in God's image is such a difference that we have this recognition in our country versus any other.
00:36:28.000And so, anyway, I can't remember how he got on the Ninth Amendment issue.
00:38:53.000We're standing up against, you know, and people just want to do church and be left alone.
00:38:58.000And I talked to you about this last summer, Charlie, but, you know, when we had this kind of Black Lives Matter explosion, I just had a snapping point.
00:39:05.000And I said, I don't care what anyone thinks ever again.
00:39:08.000I'm just going to preach the truth of the gospel.
00:39:11.000In New York City, and I'm not going to pull any punches at all.
00:39:14.000And when I'm preparing my message and I feel like I should pull a punch on any cultural issue, I actually double down on it to fight against that oppression.
00:39:59.000He says we're going to have this amendment, and in the amendment, we're going to say that racism, in their definition, which is ubiquitous, right?
00:41:35.000You tell me what well, the short summary is it's this idea, and he was really into psychedelics and all this, but not exactly one of my favorite writers.
00:41:45.000But he was right about this where people are going to sacrifice freedom for pleasure.
00:42:22.000You know, somebody said to me one time, he said, people think of the mark of the beast, 666, and the world, chaos, chaos, chaos, you know, government takeover, shooting Christians in the street.
00:42:33.000He said, 666 is man at its height of perfection, absent God.
00:42:39.000So you take man and all its best technology and all his best ideas, absent God, throw God away, and that's what you have.
00:43:59.000The thing on my head, the substance in my body.
00:44:02.000And so what is sometimes described as a political issue is actually a spiritual issue, and I'll prove it to you.
00:44:09.000A nation that's regularly attending church, a nation that understands the biblical value of work would be repulsed by everyone getting a stimulus check just because a politician's offering it.
00:45:25.000Not to mention the release of the interest rates.
00:45:27.000And by the way, that's just an economic example of a spiritual problem, which is that if people were somewhat correctly rooted or oriented, they'd be repulsed by it.
00:46:00.000And you say, what is the form that God gave?
00:46:03.000And how can we, as close as possible, that's exactly what they did.
00:46:07.000They said, oh, it looks like in the book of Judges, it looks like there was very, very limited government.
00:46:13.000There was a set of law that you had to obey.
00:46:15.000But as far as governance, the judges only functioned when there was a military incident or when there was a civil action that made its way up, just like an appellate court, all the way up to the top judges.
00:47:22.000Well, the church needs to rise up in a couple of ways.
00:47:24.000The first way that it is always the same way every time is personal repentance.
00:47:29.000Like the church doesn't first rise up by fixing the culture.
00:47:32.000The church first rises up by me repenting that I'm not seeking the peace of the city, that I'm not living in God's way, that I am living only for my own dopamine rush, that I am seeking my own pleasure at all times.
00:47:45.000I need to repent of that first, and then God can direct me in righteousness to be a change unit in my community and culture and all those other things.
00:47:54.000So, every person first needs to repent themselves.
00:48:21.000I talked to a pastor in my city of a church, of a multi-thousand person church, and he said, David, I realized what we were doing.
00:48:26.000He essentially said, David, I realized what we were doing was not right.
00:48:29.000We were only trying to get salvation and grow the church.
00:48:32.000And now, through he said this, he said, through the last six months, I've seen people totally leave not just my church, but relationship with God at all.
00:48:40.000And I realized we weren't doing it right structurally.
00:48:43.000So they were doing converts, not disciples.
00:49:43.000And that's why, like, right now, the curse of God is upon our nation.
00:49:46.000I don't mean that in some kind of horrible, gross way.
00:49:48.000I mean that we have corruption, sin, chaos, debauchery, debauchery, wicked leadership, people doing gender mutilation to children, trying to pass it in Congress.
00:51:04.000And if I repent, God will bring his blessing upon my life.
00:51:08.000That's how, that's, that's the formula.
00:51:10.000And so that's something, I mean, I've been so in attractional churches, Charlie.
00:51:15.000Like I, I was like preaching like happy Jesus messages for years.
00:51:19.000I'm saying I actually have to preach repentance.
00:51:21.000I have to start walking into the dark room of bringing the sword upon self and saying, Lord, will you let your word cut me?
00:51:30.000The word is sharper than any two-edged sword, divides between soul and spirit, the thoughts and intents of the heart, that it shows me my dark intent, that it shows me my, you know, malicious ways.
00:53:34.000And that allows me to live in God's freedom and blessing in my city, my neighborhood, and my nation.
00:53:39.000And then in a generation, you're going to look at my neighborhood in New York City called the Two Bridges, and you're going to see it flourishing with life, family, righteousness, because we're there calling people to walk in God's goodness.
00:54:12.000Yeah, I want to, I want people to understand that God, like in the evangelical world, we sing the song, Good, Good Father, and He is a Good, Good Father.
00:54:20.000But goodness doesn't only hug, it also kills the enemy at the gate, right?
00:54:25.000Paul says that when I leave, wolves will arise among you, savage wolves from your own flock, not sparing, not sparing the body.
00:54:35.000In your own midst, wolves rise up to consume yourself.
00:54:39.000And good needs to bring a sword at times and stand up against woke theology and CRT and these crazy issues.
00:55:16.000This episode is brought to you, advertise your free for all of you that support us, charliekirk.com/slash support and get involved at TurningPointUSA, tpusa.com.