00:00:02.000What a wonderful day it is to be alive.
00:00:03.000I hope you are thankful for a lot, and you should be.
00:00:06.000We do a whole hour on gratitude, the moral need to be thankful, and we are joined later in this episode by my friend Pastor David Engelhart from King's Church in New York City.
00:00:16.000If you live in New York City, you guys should all go to King's Church.
00:00:36.000tpusa.com slash amfest, Tucker Carlson, Kaylee McEnany, Greg Gutfeld, Ted Cruz, Jesse Waters, Candace Owens, Jim Jordan, Donald Trump Jr., Pete Hegseth, Madison Cawthorne, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Rand Paul, Jack Pesobic, Benny Johnson, Kat Kamick, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gates, Louis Gommert, Burgess Owens, Sean Foyt, Sarah Palin, Brandon Tatum, Michael Chandler, Devin Nunez, Byron Donalds, and more.
00:01:01.000My goodness, Andy Biggs, James O'Keefe, tpusa.com slash AMFEST, Brantley Gilbert, Dustin Lynch, Raylin, and more.
00:02:23.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:04:56.000I'm not a huge fan of them, but if you want to play them in your own time, whatever.
00:05:00.000So, and he said, how could you possibly say the goal is gratitude?
00:05:04.000Now, I think that there was probably a communication breakdown that they thought that I was saying that the goal of education was learning to say thank you, which is not incorrect.
00:05:17.000No, no, what I was saying is that if you have a citizenry that is unthankful instead of thankful for the nation they live in, then bad politics will follow.
00:05:28.000Gratitude is necessary to live a happy, full, and complete life.
00:05:36.000When you are thankful, which is hopefully something we're going to be doing the next couple days, you are appreciative and less likely to want to tear down what came before you.
00:05:49.000I have diagnosed America as suffering from Alzheimer's.
00:05:54.000America is currently suffering from Alzheimer's.
00:05:56.000We do not know our identity, what came before us.
00:06:00.000We don't know our history, tearing down statues of Thomas Jefferson this week.
00:06:05.000And if you've ever dealt with anyone that has dementia or Alzheimer's with no memory of what came before, what do you get?
00:06:12.000What is the number one adjective to describe a patient with Alzheimer's?
00:08:51.000You see, gratitude does not mean you have to self-induce your own existence with hopium.
00:09:00.000It doesn't mean you have to convince yourself that you're in a better circumstances than you actually are.
00:09:07.000Instead, gratitude allows you to have context and understand that as long as you have breath in your lungs, you have something to be thankful for.
00:09:18.000And if you are living in the United States of America, you have more than something.
00:10:06.000Now, I'm not saying that every leftist is going to boycott Thanksgiving tomorrow.
00:10:11.000I'm sure they're going to enjoy pie and turkey.
00:10:13.000But do you think that the discussion amongst a true leftist tomorrow is going to be one of wonder and adoration and respect and appreciation or one about complaining, one about forming coalitions to change things?
00:10:34.000Now, trust me, I'm not saying that we don't have to fix anything in this nation.
00:10:38.000What I am saying, though, is that the awe and wonder of the citizen-led, checked-and-balanced, independent judiciary, consent to the governed system that we live in, granted from God, not by government, is one that every person should be in awe and wonder of tomorrow.
00:10:59.000And of course, thankful for family, thankful for getting through the last couple years.
00:11:08.000Every bad idea that is currently being discussed on the international stage, every bad idea that killed over 100 million people was rooted in ingratitude.
00:11:19.000Do you think Joseph Stalin was a thankful man?
00:11:22.000Do you think Mao Cedong was a thankful man?
00:11:26.000Do you think Benito Mussolini was a thankful man?
00:12:19.000If you don't, you'll pay a price the next morning, which leads to debauchery.
00:12:24.000Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.
00:12:30.000Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:13:48.000So this Thanksgiving, I encourage all of you to be thankful for the sacrifices that came before you, the nation you live in, the Constitution, the Declaration, the greatest generation, but no.
00:14:02.000MSNBC, they say that it's really all about genocide and violence.
00:15:10.000Many of us are still waiting for white Americans to bring some value, still waiting for white America to match the mythology of Thanksgiving.
00:15:18.000Freedom, justice, equality, reparations for 2.5 billion acres of stolen native land, reparations for 246 years of stolen labor, reparations for stealing native children.
00:16:54.000It means Thanksgiving is a necessarily humble day where you say, I didn't do this all myself, but there's something bigger than me that allows this all to occur.
00:17:06.000With us right now is a friend of mine and pastor of King's Church in New York City, Pastor David Engelhardt.
00:17:14.000We're here to talk about Thanksgiving, how the Puritans were not genocidal maniacs, and also the moral imperative to be thankful.
00:18:07.000They actually were indentured servants for seven years just in order to get to the New World, to pay their way kind of early on to get on the ships to get over there.
00:18:18.000And they, their desire, I mean, they were essentially, they were fleeing the persecution of the Church of England, but they fully expected to go to the New World and set up a city on a hill, which is the famous sermon given by their leader at the time.
00:18:38.000And that they believed that if they walked in righteousness, if they walked in love and mercy and grace, they spread the gospel that God would bless them and peace would go with them.
00:18:50.000And then if they ever left those basic elements, that then God would curse them and they would be destroyed.
00:18:56.000They weren't the first missionaries there, Charlie.
00:18:59.000There were other, a lot of Jesuit Catholics were moving throughout Huron land and throughout North America spreading the gospel.
00:19:06.000There was a guy, Father Brabuff, and this Jesuit priest was spreading the gospel.
00:19:13.000He had a vision of a cross in the sky.
00:19:38.000He didn't even cry out because he didn't cry out.
00:19:41.000They heated up the heads of hatchets and they tied the hatchets around his neck as a glowing kind of chain of red hatchet heads, burning him.
00:19:53.000He was standing as a representative of God and didn't want to, you know, look cowardly before them.
00:19:58.000They peeled off his skin and ate it in front of him and he still didn't cry out.
00:20:03.000And then they tore out his heart and ate it because they wanted the courage that he was walking in.
00:20:08.000And these were the Christian missionaries, the Jesuits, who are the precursors to the Puritans that were moving throughout this land and attempting to bring the gospel, which is obviously, I mean, to say it's a religion of peace is to actually say it too small.
00:20:24.000It's the kingdom of heaven to be applied to earth.
00:20:27.000And the Puritans came in with exactly the same spirit.
00:20:30.000And by the grace of God, they met Squanto, who had been converted by one of these Jesuit priests.
00:20:37.000And Squanto, they said, was a gift of God given to them.
00:20:41.000Squanto loved the Puritans so much that he lived with them after they landed for the rest of his life.
00:20:48.000They weren't tying up Indians by the feet and dragging them out of the woods and, you know, doing whatever crazy stuff that the Smithsonian and the other liberals say they were doing.
00:20:58.000They were really establishing a place of peace where they could worship God.
00:21:02.000And as you know, Charlie, as we both know, the world says the exact opposite.
00:21:08.000There's a story in the Smithsonian that cites Bernard Bailyn.
00:21:12.000The Smithsonian says he's the greatest historian in America, like the number one guy.
00:21:20.000His analysis is, I don't look at their writings.
00:21:32.000He didn't look at really what they did.
00:21:34.000He just said, I'm going to place myself in their mind and then I'm going to extrapolate what I think their mind was, which is Antichrist, apocalypse, devil, all this stuff.
00:21:45.000And these are the roots of the left's rage.
00:21:49.000They believed the Puritans were these evil demon people because this historian has said, instead of reading their words, I'm going to go into their minds and derive what I think happened.
00:21:59.000So instead of looking at what the Indians were actually doing, the indigenous people were actually doing, he looks into the minds of people with an apocalyptic sense and derives all this nonsense.
00:22:10.000So the whole story has been completely backwards.
00:22:13.000I highly recommend anyone to read The Light and the Glory by Marshall and have your mind blown by the actual historical documents and statements by the settlers.
00:22:23.000And so talk, how did the idea of thanksgiving then come to be, of the idea of giving thanks to whom?
00:22:29.000And then what is, as anyone out there, why should we be thankful?
00:22:35.000What is the moral case to be full of gratitude?
00:22:39.000Yeah, I mean, the first point of thankfulness is the Puritans were on a ship and they all thought they were going to die.
00:22:44.000And so they were like, God, please get us out of here.
00:22:47.000And God did and then provided them food and all this, these partnership with Squanto and others.
00:22:53.000And so they were saying they were thanking God.
00:22:56.000You know, it's a funny thing because secular people, they like to use the terminology thankfulness, but to who?
00:24:27.000And that's what an amazing bifurcation between a position grateful, approaching the throne and presence of God or the kingdom of heaven where we find peace and life and love.
00:24:37.000Or the other side of that picture is actually the gateway to our destruction is in gratitude.
00:24:43.000Well, and so talk more about individually.
00:24:46.000So some people are going to say, look, I got nothing to be thankful for.
00:26:46.000They've been through near-death experiences.
00:26:47.000I understand the shake of the heart of a parent.
00:26:50.000But I was thinking of this other side, like, but, but also God gave you this gift of this beautiful child for seven, eight, nine, 10, however long it was, that you get to experience and love and this beautiful gift that you would never say, I wish I didn't have, because it's so valuable.
00:27:06.000So the first position to be thankful on a personal level is that we'd be thankful to God for life itself, that we say, man, this is incredible.
00:27:17.000They say, God, I look at the world and I see pain and I say, you either don't exist or you're bad because there's pain in the world rather than looking at the foundation of the earth, which is life itself.
00:27:28.000And pain is sure a part of everybody's life, but it's not the whole.
00:27:48.000So even if you had parents that were painful or abusive or all of that kind of stuff, you still should, for your own sake, say, thank you, mom and dad, that I exist.
00:28:17.000I said that you think about it, that atheism doesn't subtract from the pain, but it does get rid of any idea of hope, of eternal reconciliation, of you're here for a purpose and for a reason.
00:28:31.000I want to read a couple of scriptures as we get back, David, because I think that we need to reinforce to the audience that a thankful nation is a prosperous nation.
00:28:39.000A thankful nation is a peaceful nation.
00:28:41.000But when you have ingratitude, you have chaos, you have confusion, you have separation and division.
00:28:47.000I'm going to read this scripture to you, and I want you to walk us through this.
00:28:52.000Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, be prayer and petition with thanksgiving.
00:28:58.000Present your request to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
00:29:05.000This, of course, is the famous Philippian 4, where there's like three parts of it that people use and they should.
00:29:11.000You know, whatever is true, whatever is good, whatever is noble, what is right, whatever, you know, you think on these things, and of course, I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
00:29:19.000What's the significance of that verse?
00:29:20.000We are called to, in all circumstances, be thankful.
00:30:40.000Like, where's a better position to do that from frustration, ingratitude, emotional upheaval, or gratitude and confidence and peace to say, actually, we have a really incredible country.
00:30:54.000And from that place, I can rightly assess the world around me and then be able to accurately move forward.
00:31:00.000If I'm not listening to God's directive, which is to be grateful in every circumstance, then I'm going, I'm looking at the world really with an incorrect worldview because I'm leaving the first position.
00:31:11.000And that first position is thankfulness, gratitude.
00:31:14.000And as we said in the last segment, that life was granted to me and I'm already up.
00:31:22.000Like if I'm living and breathing and I'm in the freest country in the world, I'm massively in the black.
00:31:28.000I have this massive credit to my account.
00:31:31.000And now I have a fiduciary duty to exercise that credit to bless the world around me and to be a source of life to the world around me.
00:31:39.000And I think a lot of us, especially in the era of news, headlines, scare tactics, all that kind of stuff, we move forward not with a sense of thankfulness, but even as Christians, a lot of times they're like, I just am praying for the chaos and collapse and horrific stuff.
00:31:54.000And, you know, Charlie, you say we're not, we don't sell hopium.
00:31:58.000We don't sell hope and opium together to trick people.
00:32:03.000But even in the truth, on the darkest day, like we said, Proverbs says, it's better to be a live dog than a dead lion because a live dog can still run to the bowl.
00:32:12.000He can still have a great, he can still enjoy his family.
00:32:15.000Whatever it is, if we have life, we still have opportunity to turn to God.
00:32:20.000And then when we turn to God, then he showers us with his blessing.
00:32:23.000Life is special, but it's an investment, not a gift.
00:32:26.000You can't do whatever you want with it, basically.
00:32:44.000If we do the opposite, our life gets darker and tinier and narrower and more painful.
00:32:50.000So an anti-thanksgiving spirit is darkness, tininess, less holidays, right?
00:32:55.000You're in your garage eating cold stuffing.
00:32:58.000A thankful heart has lots of people over, lots of life, lots of gratitude, not remembering horrific things, but being thankful to mom and dad, even if things weren't perfect and blessing what God gave you to be thankful directly to him as the progenitor of life.