The Charlie Kirk Show - Why I Am a Christian—The Case for Jesus

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, on this most holy day of the year, I wanted to share an episode I did about why I'm a Christian, why I believe what I believe.

00:00:08.000 The gospel in four words, three words, two words, one word.

00:00:11.000 Jesus took my place, him for me, substitutionary atonement, and grace.

00:00:15.000 I go through a rational, logical argument why you should believe that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world, why he died and rose again.

00:00:23.000 Share this episode with your friends.

00:00:24.000 Spend a lot of time and energy on it.

00:00:26.000 Some of you might remember a similar episode last year.

00:00:30.000 And email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:33.000 There's no advertisers on this episode.

00:00:35.000 So please go to charliekirk.com/slash support if you want to support us.

00:00:40.000 Happy Easter, everybody.

00:00:42.000 He is risen.

00:00:43.000 Share this with your friends so that they too may believe.

00:00:46.000 Enjoy.

00:00:46.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:48.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:50.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:54.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:57.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:58.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:59.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:01:06.000 Turning point USA.

00:01:07.000 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.

00:01:16.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:19.000 He is risen.

00:01:22.000 What does that even mean?

00:01:24.000 He is risen.

00:01:25.000 I'm doing this podcast on Easter Sunday to communicate to everyone who's listening, obviously, but to Christians, to non-believers, atheists, people in the secular world.

00:01:36.000 I think we as Christians, and yes, I am a Christian, I'm a proud Christian, we don't talk about why we believe what we believe enough and exactly what does Easter mean and the gift that it is to every single person in the world.

00:01:50.000 I mean no offense by anything I'm going to talk about in this podcast at all, but I'm going to give you a very rational, analytical, fact-driven, compelling case of why you should believe in Christianity.

00:02:04.000 I'm going to start with talking about the spiritual side and the argument for an existence of the Almighty.

00:02:12.000 And then I'm going to get pretty granular.

00:02:14.000 I'm going to get pretty technical.

00:02:15.000 I'm going to talk about the one thing that the entire Christian faith hinges on.

00:02:20.000 And that's the thing that we're celebrating today on Easter Sunday, which is the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, who was killed, executed for three days, rose from the dead.

00:02:34.000 So we as Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

00:02:38.000 We believe that Jesus was the fulfilling of a promise and a fulfilling of the covenant.

00:02:43.000 If you're familiar with the composition of the Bible, it is the greatest book ever to exist in the history of the world, the most important book ever to exist in the history of the world.

00:02:52.000 And I believe it is the word of God, not just a piece of literature.

00:02:56.000 It has 66 books and 35 authors for my Catholic friends out there.

00:03:00.000 They have a higher number than that.

00:03:02.000 And we have a lot of respect for the Catholic faith and tradition.

00:03:05.000 And we had a great conversation with Michael Mowles in a previous podcast.

00:03:09.000 But in the beginning portion of the Bible, we call it the Old Testament as Christians, talks a lot about God promising that a Messiah will come and save the Jewish people and the people of the world.

00:03:22.000 Specifically, you can go to Isaiah 53, which is some of the most explicit imagery of the Messiah coming like a root out of dry ground.

00:03:35.000 And you go through Ezekiel.

00:03:37.000 You can go through Daniel and a lot of the prophecy of the Old Testament through the major and minor prophets talked about that there would be a Messiah that would come to save the people of Israel, God's chosen people, but also save the people of the world.

00:03:52.000 And for those of you that just might dismiss this podcast as being, oh, this is just another religious talk, bear with me.

00:03:59.000 Just let the podcast run and listen to it.

00:04:02.000 Even if you don't think you'll be convinced, which hopefully I'll be able to convince some people, and if there's Christians listening to this podcast, I hope I can strengthen you in your faith and fasten you in your faith throughout this podcast.

00:04:14.000 But even if you don't think you'll be convinced, you as an informed citizen of America should know all of these things.

00:04:20.000 You should know the arguments for and against the authenticity of Jesus Christ, the execution, and so on and so forth, Jesus and so on and so forth.

00:04:30.000 So we believe that Jesus Christ was a gift from God.

00:04:34.000 That when Jesus was brought into this world, it was the fulfilling of the covenant, fulfilling of the promise, and a new covenant was made.

00:04:42.000 Now, we as Christians, first you have to realize that accepting a gift can be really hard.

00:04:47.000 Jesus Christ lived a perfect life.

00:04:49.000 Yes, he was a teacher.

00:04:51.000 Yes, he was a rabbi, and he was a carpenter, too.

00:04:55.000 That's a little fast fact for you around the Easter dinner table.

00:04:59.000 Yes, Jesus was all of those things, but he was also a sacrifice, a sacrifice and a gift that we do not deserve.

00:05:08.000 We did not earn.

00:05:09.000 We did not work for it.

00:05:11.000 And we won't even act well enough to get even close to it.

00:05:15.000 So everyone listening to this podcast, I'm sure many of you have looked up to the stars or looked up to the moon.

00:05:21.000 And sometimes you just ask very simple philosophical questions.

00:05:25.000 Who am I?

00:05:27.000 What happens when I die?

00:05:29.000 How should I act?

00:05:31.000 How should society be organized?

00:05:34.000 Does God exist?

00:05:36.000 Is love something more than just a chemical reaction?

00:05:40.000 Why are we here?

00:05:42.000 What matters?

00:05:44.000 Well, we as Christians actually have answers for every single one of those questions.

00:05:48.000 I won't be able to answer all those questions in this podcast today on Easter Sunday, but I am going to get to the most important question that any human being can ask themselves.

00:05:57.000 And we have answers to those questions in the Holy Bible.

00:06:00.000 We have an answer to the question of who you are.

00:06:03.000 Does God exist?

00:06:04.000 What is love?

00:06:05.000 How should society be organized?

00:06:07.000 How should I act?

00:06:07.000 We have answers to all those questions.

00:06:10.000 But the one that is more important than any other, the one that is the top of the tributary that flows to every other question, is the question of who is Jesus Christ.

00:06:22.000 Was Jesus Christ just a rebellious Jew that kind of overstepped his bounds and was killed by Pontius Pilate, the Roman governing authority at the time, because of the orders of the Sanhedrin and the ruling class, if you will, of the Jewish intelligentsia?

00:06:41.000 Or was Jesus Christ something more than that? 0.58

00:06:43.000 Was he a magic man that maybe had an above-average connection?

00:06:48.000 Was he a Messiah?

00:06:51.000 Yes, but he was more than that.

00:06:53.000 We as Christians believe that he is the Son of God.

00:06:58.000 So you can be the Son of God and also a Messiah, but it's possible to say that you're the Messiah, but not also be the Son of God.

00:07:06.000 Big distinction there.

00:07:07.000 And this is a lot of the reason why Jesus stirred up, quote-unquote, so much trouble while he was doing his witness and his testimony throughout Judea and Samaria.

00:07:18.000 So that now if you say, who is Jesus Christ?

00:07:20.000 I say he's the Son of God and the resurrected fulfilled promise as a Son of God.

00:07:28.000 But even more than that, the entire quote-unquote case for Christianity, the apologist Lee Strobel talks about this better than almost anyone else.

00:07:38.000 And his own personal faith journey was around him as an atheist and a Chicago Tribune legal award-winning reporter trying to disprove Christianity.

00:07:49.000 And he's zeroed in on the entire question as if I can disprove the resurrection, I can disprove Christianity.

00:08:01.000 Easter Sunday, everybody, our whole faith, the faith of over a billion people worldwide, hinges on this day.

00:08:08.000 This is the most important day in Christianity and the most important day in the history of the world.

00:08:14.000 Whether or not a miracle-working individual who was wrongly executed rose from the dead or not.

00:08:26.000 The gospel in four words, three words, two words, and one word.

00:08:29.000 We as Christians believe that, yes, Jesus took my place.

00:08:34.000 Four words, three words, him for me, two words, substitutionary atonement, one word, grace.

00:08:41.000 So that when Jesus came here and died for our sins, it was something that we didn't work for.

00:08:46.000 It's something you have to surrender and accept.

00:08:49.000 I'll get more into that in just one second.

00:08:52.000 But why would, but Charlie, you're so rational.

00:08:55.000 I love listening to your podcast because you're so fact-driven.

00:08:59.000 We get a lot of those emails.

00:09:01.000 We get a lot of that feedback.

00:09:03.000 And I could just hear right now people saying, oh, here goes Charlie into that hocus-pocus mysticism mythology.

00:09:09.000 I think Charlie's out on a reservation here and convincing himself of something that isn't true.

00:09:16.000 But let me make the case for you.

00:09:18.000 Humor me.

00:09:19.000 Give me a couple minutes.

00:09:21.000 We, of course, have the four gospels.

00:09:23.000 The first three gospels are called synoptic gospels.

00:09:27.000 They were written roughly in the order of Mark, Matthew, then Luke, then John, but it's debated whether or not Matthew or Mark came first.

00:09:35.000 I can tell you and make the case for Christianity by using the three E's.

00:09:42.000 And we'll go one by one.

00:09:44.000 First and foremost, we have to dispel this myth that, well, maybe Jesus didn't actually die.

00:09:53.000 Maybe Jesus was wounded, put inside of a tomb, and then he came out afterwards.

00:10:01.000 But between independent scholars, there is no dispute that Jesus actually died.

00:10:06.000 Did you know that we have five ancient non-biblical sources from Tacitus, Josephus, Lucian, and even the Jewish Talmud that does not dispute the fact that Jesus was executed, that Jesus died.

00:10:21.000 This dispels the idea that Jesus was just wounded.

00:10:28.000 In the Bible, it tells us Christians that Christianity must be an investigative faith, that the more we look into it, the more we are going to find that this is true.

00:10:38.000 In John 10, 30, Jesus Christ said that I and the Father are one. 1.00

00:10:45.000 What Jesus was really saying is that I am the divine.

00:10:48.000 This is what caused so much backlash and eventually led to the execution of Jesus Christ.

00:10:58.000 The next E, if you will, if we accept that, okay, Charlie, got it, Jesus was executed.

00:11:04.000 And to go even a step back, just to understand some of the nonsense that is taught about Christianity, there is a Jesus truther movement that even questions whether or not Jesus Christ existed at all whatsoever. 0.75

00:11:16.000 This is total balderdash and nonsense.

00:11:19.000 We have multiple ancient sources. 0.98

00:11:22.000 Just to put this into perspective, not only do we have Tacitus, Josephus, Lucian, and the Talmud independent outside of the Bible, but we have the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that were written by Jews, mind you, that had no reason to go out of their way to try to defend the veracity and the authenticity of the story of Jesus Christ.

00:11:44.000 So this idea that Jesus didn't exist, some people believe it.

00:11:48.000 Even true, committed atheists say, okay, I'll give you Jesus existed.

00:11:55.000 But to give you some context for how much ancient sources we have to corroborate the story of Jesus Christ, do you believe Alexander the Great existed?

00:12:06.000 Do you believe Alexander the Great did what you're taught in school?

00:12:10.000 Well, did you know that the first biography of Alexander the Great was not written until 400 years after his death?

00:12:19.000 Yet we accept the teaching.

00:12:20.000 Yeah, Alexander the Great, young ruling king.

00:12:23.000 He was taught by Aristotle, didn't really take his teachings, and 400 years later we write the book.

00:12:29.000 Yet with Jesus Christ, this is the next E, early, we have early accounts that Jesus rose from the dead.

00:12:36.000 This dispels the whole idea that it was a legend and mythology and it grew over time.

00:12:42.000 Within one to three years after the execution and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Paul converted to Christianity, who wrote the majority of the New Testament.

00:12:52.000 Paul then went to Jerusalem and met with Peter and James, who were eyewitnesses to the resurrection.

00:12:59.000 We'll get to eyewitnesses in just one second.

00:13:01.000 The reports are early.

00:13:04.000 Some skeptical scholars say, well, Jesus wasn't actually buried.

00:13:08.000 You know, they used to let people on crosses just be eaten by the crows.

00:13:13.000 They just let them to just stay on the cross.

00:13:16.000 By the way, a crucifixion was the most brutal, public, awful way of killing somebody of that era.

00:13:26.000 But even the enemies of Jesus Christ during the time admitted that he was put in the tomb.

00:13:32.000 Why?

00:13:33.000 Well, because the Pharisees and the members of the Sanhedrin, they didn't say that, oh, the tomb was never filled with anyone.

00:13:40.000 Instead, they said, oh, the disciples probably stole the body.

00:13:44.000 So even the early accounts, when they tried to discredit the resurrection, they said, no, no, no, no.

00:13:51.000 The tomb had somebody in it, but the disciples came and stole it.

00:13:55.000 But it's important to remember, the disciples didn't have the means to even go and do this.

00:14:00.000 It was a heavily guarded tomb by the modern-day equivalent of the Roman Secret Service was protecting this tomb.

00:14:10.000 You're trying to tell me that former fishermen in the middle of the night challenged the Roman secret service and rolled away a multi-ton rock, stole Jesus without any of the Roman soldiers able to tell about it?

00:14:24.000 I don't think so.

00:14:25.000 Another theory out there is that the Roman soldiers were paid off.

00:14:29.000 Well, the disciples were notoriously poor.

00:14:32.000 And also, the Roman soldiers were super well compensated by Pontius Pilate.

00:14:37.000 And they were not motivated and incentivized to try to allow the narrative of a stolen Jesus or a resurrected Jesus to continue.

00:14:46.000 This goes to the next E, which I think is the most compelling of them all, which is eyewitnesses.

00:14:53.000 Now, who was the first person to see Jesus Christ alive, according to the Bible?

00:14:58.000 Who were the first people to see Jesus Christ alive? 0.98

00:15:01.000 It was women. 0.70

00:15:03.000 Now, if I was trying to create something that wasn't true back then, would I use women as a way to try to create a narrative?

00:15:11.000 Of course not. 0.99

00:15:12.000 Women were widely discredited in a court of law equivalent back in Jesus' time.

00:15:18.000 Women were not taken seriously.

00:15:20.000 Women were considered to be secondary in society. 1.00

00:15:24.000 It was a highly misogynistic or chauvinistic way of structuring society back then.

00:15:32.000 So if I was trying to falsify a narrative to say that Jesus Christ was risen from the dead, I wouldn't use women witnesses at all. 0.99

00:15:41.000 I would stay away from women witnesses. 1.00

00:15:43.000 Those were the first eyewitnesses of Jesus. 0.99

00:15:45.000 Did you know, according to biblical and non-biblical accounts in the four gospels, Jesus Christ was seen by over 550 people over a dozen times by men, by women, in daytime and nighttime, all across Judea and Samaria.

00:16:03.000 There is no rhyme or reason to the people that saw Jesus after he was killed, the resurrected Jesus.

00:16:08.000 So if I was trying to create a conspiracy, It would be really hard to get 550 people to agree that, especially men and women and daytime and nighttime.

00:16:18.000 Nine ancient sources corroborate the different eyewitnesses that said they saw Jesus.

00:16:24.000 Now, a skeptic would say, oh, Charlie, people believe silly stuff all the time.

00:16:28.000 Yeah, maybe they saw Jesus, but maybe they really wanted to use this as a way to enrich themselves, as a way to get power.

00:16:37.000 That argument might stand with some footing if the new founded religion of Christianity was met with wealth and power, prestige, and royalty.

00:16:47.000 Instead, early Christians were persecuted and murdered for what they believed.

00:16:52.000 Even worse than that, the individuals that believed it most fervently, that were spreading the good news of Jesus Christ, the disciples, almost all of them died a brutal death.

00:17:05.000 So it's one thing to believe a lie, but who would willingly die for a lie?

00:17:11.000 Who would willingly go to the very last breath and be given a chance to denounce something they knew was a falsehood?

00:17:19.000 We also know in 1 Corinthians 15, 3, the immediate creed of the early Christians, where they recited over and over again, Jesus Christ died for our sins and he was risen from the dead.

00:17:34.000 Early, the eyewitnesses that said they believed in Jesus and they saw Jesus rise from the dead suffered a brutal and horrible demise.

00:17:46.000 Why would anyone die for something that you know is a lie?

00:17:51.000 So when you talk about ancient sources, see, we don't debate the authenticity of Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle or the autobiography of Alexander the Great.

00:18:02.000 We don't debate Homer's work, the Odyssey.

00:18:06.000 We might debate the contents, but we don't debate that's what they wrote.

00:18:10.000 We don't debate that that's what Homer was actually the one that said these things or believed these things.

00:18:17.000 When it comes to the Bible, we have by far the most independently corroborated and authenticated sources of any considered ancient document to exist.

00:18:30.000 Early eyewitnesses, the resurrection.

00:18:35.000 Was Jesus who he said he was?

00:18:38.000 Well, he definitely did something that no other historical figure ever did in the history of the world.

00:18:45.000 He rose from the dead.

00:18:47.000 And not only that, we had eyewitnesses.

00:18:49.000 We have eyewitnesses that went on the record to go and prove it.

00:18:53.000 So now another skeptic argument is, well, Charlie, the Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we can't really trust it.

00:18:59.000 We can't really trust when it was written and how it was written.

00:19:03.000 And I have a lot of respect for Joe Rogan, but Joe Rogan miscategorized the Bible in one of his podcasts where he said, well, it was written hundreds of years after Jesus' life.

00:19:13.000 That's just not true.

00:19:15.000 The letters that Paul wrote were in the early church as soon as a decade or two decades after the death of Jesus Christ.

00:19:23.000 The Gospel of Matthew and Mark were written 30 or 40 years after the death of Jesus Christ.

00:19:30.000 So that would basically be like somebody writing today a book about Ronald Reagan.

00:19:36.000 They would get a lot right about Ronald Reagan if they were in their 20s, if they served the administration under Ronald Reagan.

00:19:43.000 So, just that adds some very important context.

00:19:47.000 So, that's just a small picture of the evidence that we have of just the resurrection.

00:19:53.000 And I went through some of the skeptical arguments, but it gets to something deeper than that.

00:19:59.000 That's about the resurrection.

00:20:01.000 But for some people listening to this podcast, I hope that was instructive.

00:20:04.000 I hope that was informative.

00:20:06.000 But the other question is: well, Charlie, how can I believe in that if I don't even believe in God?

00:20:12.000 And I commonly say I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.

00:20:15.000 So I come from the belief that there is a God.

00:20:21.000 And then I ask myself, when has God revealed himself before in the world?

00:20:25.000 And where do we have firm documentation of that revelation of himself?

00:20:29.000 And that's why I believe the Bible.

00:20:32.000 And then I also ask myself the question: what makes Christianity different than all these other religions in the world?

00:20:38.000 And I'm sure many of you have that question because when it comes to religion, you have to have origin, meaning, morality, and destiny.

00:20:47.000 Those are the four things you have to have.

00:20:49.000 And people say, well, Christianity is similar to Buddhism.

00:20:54.000 Christianity is similar to all these other world religions.

00:20:56.000 I'm going to tell you how Christianity is different.

00:20:59.000 Christianity is different because every other religion in the world is about what you do to grow closer to God.

00:21:08.000 In Buddhism, it is the multi-levels of enlightenment as you try to get up to the Buddha.

00:21:15.000 In Islam, it is following the commandments that are put forward, whether it be praying five times a day or honoring halal, whether it be implementing Sharia law in certain practices of Islam.

00:21:31.000 In Hinduism, it's all about performing good enough in this life so that in the next life I can get to a better caste, essentially a spiritual caste system. 0.91

00:21:42.000 What's so different about Christianity is, of course, God gives us specific ways of how we should act. 0.83

00:21:48.000 Jesus was explicitly clear about how you should treat the least of these and you should tell the truth and the type of thoughts that you should have and not have. 0.96

00:21:58.000 God is explicitly clear of that in the Bible.

00:22:03.000 But it's not a tally card for you to accept Jesus Christ.

00:22:09.000 I'm a sinner broken by sin.

00:22:12.000 And if you're listening to this podcast right now, you're also a sinner.

00:22:17.000 Have you guys felt like you're not enough at times?

00:22:19.000 Have you guys felt like you're just barely keeping it all together?

00:22:23.000 Trust me, we've all been there.

00:22:26.000 Are you feeling that, man, how many more times do I just have to search for that next high?

00:22:33.000 Whether that be drinking alcohol or doing drugs or going after other nefarious activities?

00:22:40.000 And it just, you might have come to the conclusion recently, man, this is not making me happy or fulfilled.

00:22:46.000 The more I choose to do this stuff, the more I suffer.

00:22:49.000 You choose to sin, you choose to suffer.

00:22:52.000 Well, there's a gift waiting for you.

00:22:55.000 A real thing that happened in the world.

00:22:58.000 Not a hocus-pocus Rapunzel story, but something that actually happened.

00:23:04.000 When you go to Jerusalem, you can literally go and walk the Mountain of Olives where Jesus Christ walked.

00:23:12.000 You can literally go to the church of the Holy Sepulchre where Jesus was buried.

00:23:17.000 You can go walk the stations of the cross.

00:23:19.000 This is a real thing I'm talking about.

00:23:22.000 And yes, Jesus represents metaphorically things as well.

00:23:28.000 But there is actual blood spilled for you.

00:23:32.000 And I'm sure some of you say, oh, Charlie, I can get to that religion thing later.

00:23:36.000 I've never really heard of a great response to that other than you're wrong.

00:23:41.000 No one knows when their time is, especially during this time where we see such unpredictable amount of death happening around all of us.

00:23:49.000 But even beyond that, it's either you have to come to the internal decision that I am not the most important thing ever to exist in the history of the world, that I'm not enough.

00:24:01.000 And I could tell you this, and this is more just a personal testimony.

00:24:05.000 When you accept Jesus Christ into your life, you get less angry.

00:24:14.000 Things start to actually make sense.

00:24:16.000 There's a harmony to the world.

00:24:20.000 There's a rhythm that begins to be apparent to you.

00:24:24.000 People say, Charlie, how do you stay so still when these leftists come and scream in your face?

00:24:29.000 And the honest truth of it is there's a stillness when you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

00:24:36.000 Of course, I still lose my temper at times.

00:24:38.000 Everybody does.

00:24:39.000 You're going to sin.

00:24:42.000 But you're going to then revert back to the salvation that you have within you, which is Jesus Christ.

00:24:49.000 So here's what we believe as Christians.

00:24:52.000 Every single person listening to this podcast can accept Jesus Christ right here and now.

00:24:59.000 And maybe some of you aren't ready to do that yet.

00:25:01.000 That's fine.

00:25:02.000 I just recommend then, just read the Bible for five minutes.

00:25:06.000 If you think you're better than the Bible, you're not.

00:25:08.000 It's the most important, most instructive, most informative book ever to exist in the history of the world.

00:25:12.000 Just read the Bible for five minutes tonight and then ask yourself the question: how could these authors be so committed that this is true and I could be on the opposite side of it?

00:25:20.000 Maybe there's something that's in it that's true.

00:25:22.000 But the most important question about Christianity for all of this, for skeptics out there, is, would you believe it if it was true?

00:25:33.000 Now, the obvious answer should be, yeah, of course.

00:25:35.000 Really?

00:25:37.000 You would change your life right now if I could show it to you that it was true.

00:25:42.000 That's the most important question.

00:25:45.000 Most people have been talked out of Christianity because most people have never been talked into Christianity.

00:25:53.000 My great friend Frank Turek says that a lot on his podcast, Cross-Examined, and we're going to have him on our podcast sometime soon.

00:26:01.000 For every skeptic question you have about Christianity, there are really good answers about it.

00:26:07.000 But I think a lot of the reasons why people don't accept Christianity is outside of the technical, rational, historical, archaeological mountain of evidence that out there.

00:26:16.000 Quite honestly, it's people that don't want to change their own specific lifestyle and get on their knees and just say, I've been really screwing this whole parade up.

00:26:26.000 I surrender.

00:26:27.000 Help me.

00:26:29.000 And what Jesus did when he died on the cross for us is he allowed us to say, I'm never going to get there.

00:26:39.000 See, Jesus took a symbol of death and public mockery and has turned it into a symbol of a gateway to eternity. 0.88

00:26:49.000 How's that for the greatest irony of Middle Eastern Roman Jewish rule? 0.68

00:26:59.000 Totally changing a symbol that was the cross, which was meant to be nothing more than a symbol of the greatest shame of a criminal when you put someone up on that cross that never committed a crime and didn't sin ever, and you turn that into a gateway to acceptance and righteousness. 0.88

00:27:16.000 So what does happen when you die?

00:27:18.000 Well, on Good Friday, we are told and we learn that salvation can be given to you in a moment's notice if you truly accept Jesus Christ as God and as king, a king over a dominion building his kingdom.

00:27:35.000 Next to Jesus on the cross was a bad guy.

00:27:38.000 And that thief next to Jesus lived a immoral life.

00:27:44.000 And Jesus granted him acceptance into eternity.

00:27:49.000 So the stakes are pretty high with all this.

00:27:52.000 And I can assure you and guarantee you that when you strip down all the earthly ambitions and dust around us, because everything, if you're an atheist or a secularist, and I don't mean this by any offense at all whatsoever, comes down to nothing more than a specific subset of chemical composition and dust.

00:28:13.000 That's all it is.

00:28:14.000 Love, your chemicals got really excited and moved faster than any other time.

00:28:20.000 Oh, you think that there's a higher purpose and meaning?

00:28:23.000 No, you don't.

00:28:24.000 But for those of us Christians, we believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, generous, gracious, good God that has given you a gift that's right on the table.

00:28:35.000 And I encourage and I pray that every single person listening to this podcast takes that gift.

00:28:41.000 It's a gift we don't deserve.

00:28:43.000 A gift of the ultimate sacrifice, of suffering, not just in the moment of the crucifixion, but the unburdening of all the sins, all the mistakes that you've ever made and the mistakes you're going to make tomorrow because you're going to continually and repeatedly sin.

00:29:01.000 It's changed my life.

00:29:04.000 I've seen Christianity transform people from alcoholic, self-centered, angry, bitter people into loving, generous, gracious, compassionate, Christ-following servants.

00:29:19.000 The gift is there for the taking.

00:29:22.000 He is risen.

00:29:24.000 Jesus was executed.

00:29:27.000 It spread early throughout Judea and Samaria.

00:29:32.000 550 eyewitnesses saw Jesus Christ after he was resurrected from the grave.

00:29:43.000 He took your place, him for me, substitutionary atonement, and grace.

00:29:49.000 The argument hinges on whether or not Jesus rose from the dead.

00:29:54.000 I know he did.

00:29:56.000 That's why today is a day of celebration, of revival, of resurrection.

00:30:01.000 And for those of you that are unsettled about the greatest questions that human beings ask themselves, there's a book for that.

00:30:08.000 There's a path for that.

00:30:10.000 Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

00:30:14.000 Only those that go through Jesus Christ can get to the Father.

00:30:19.000 And according to the Bible, those who don't, it says it does not end very well for those individuals that do not make that decision.

00:30:30.000 So accept the good news.

00:30:31.000 He has risen.

00:30:32.000 God bless you guys.

00:30:33.000 God bless our country.

00:30:35.000 This is why I believe what I believe.

00:30:38.000 It's also what informs my politics.

00:30:41.000 It's what informs my base philosophy.

00:30:44.000 Our country was founded by a group of people that believed this, that Christianity is true and that Easter is the most important day in the history of the world, that the resurrection of the Christ is something that must be celebrated and told to every individual all across the world.

00:31:06.000 Jesus is king.

00:31:07.000 Jesus is the savior of the world.

00:31:10.000 It's a gift for the taking.

00:31:12.000 I encourage you to do it.

00:31:13.000 Thank you guys so much.

00:31:14.000 Have a wonderful Easter.

00:31:16.000 God bless you.

00:31:17.000 God bless our country.

00:31:18.000 Stay safe.

00:31:19.000 We'll be back to you soon.

00:31:20.000 Thanks so much.

00:31:23.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 04, 2021

Why I Am a Christian—The Case for Jesus

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