The Glenn Beck Program - August 12, 2020


Best of The Program ｜ Guests： Kelly Shackleford & John MacArthur ｜ 8⧸12⧸20


Episode Stats


Length

37 minutes

Words per minute

160.70576

Word count

6,063

Sentence count

433

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

24

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, First Liberty Institute President and CEO Kelly Shackelford joins Glenn and Stu to talk about the government cracking down on the First Amendment rights of Americans and their right to freedom of speech and freedom of worship.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Welcome to the podcast today. Kamala Harris is the VP pick for Joe Biden. We go into that and what she's going to do for the campaign. 0.72
00:00:07.620 Ilhan Omar won her primary. I'm sure you're very excited about that. We'll get into that.
00:00:11.480 Jason Buttrell joins us on tonight's program on Blaze TV with Glenn Beck and on Glenn TV.
00:00:18.000 That's one you are not going to want to miss. We have a preview of that show.
00:00:20.960 We talked to teachers and pastors today about all the crazy stuff, the way the government is cracking down and the way the teachers are being told they have to do all sorts of crazy things to teach kids about critical race theory.
00:00:38.760 The truth there is absolutely insane. Get into the podcast every single day at on any of your podcast apps.
00:00:47.200 You can also get Stu Does America and subscribe and rate and review both of those podcasts if you wouldn't mind taking a quick second.
00:00:54.120 Tonight is the night on Wednesdays where it's back to back on Blaze TV.
00:00:57.680 It is Stu Does America right into Glenn Beck, Glenn TV.
00:01:02.980 And you can always get your subscription at blazetv.com slash Glenn. Use the promo code Glenn. It'll save you 10 bucks.
00:01:08.280 It's also on Pluto TV if you have that. It's free there.
00:01:11.200 And on YouTube, if you go to YouTube, search for Stu, you'll find my show.
00:01:14.280 You can start there and then go to Glenn right after. Check out the podcast today. Here it is.
00:01:29.280 Kelly Shackelford is a good friend of the program. Been on several times.
00:01:36.700 He is doing well. I mean, he's doing God's work literally and figuratively, and it was a really great three years.
00:01:46.580 And then in the last three months, it is really kind of turned a nasty corner.
00:01:51.760 President and CEO of First Liberty Institute, chief counsel of First Liberty Institute.
00:01:57.100 This is a group that works on protecting the First Amendment, our first liberty and religion.
00:02:07.460 Kelly, welcome to the program.
00:02:09.580 Thanks for having me, Glenn. Happy to be on.
00:02:12.400 Am I, is it an overstatement to say we've gone from the best of times to the worst of times?
00:02:18.500 Yeah, in some ways. I mean, obviously, the short term is just vicious.
00:02:25.140 I mean, I even think back eight years ago, I think we had 48 cases that year.
00:02:29.580 We had 300 this last year.
00:02:32.680 It's just ratcheting up, and people see it, right?
00:02:35.320 I mean, you've got their decapitating statues of Jesus.
00:02:38.380 I mean, the best example, and we've had hundreds and hundreds of churches calling us during this, you know, coronavirus attack on churches going on around the country.
00:02:49.060 But I thought, and I don't know if you saw this, Glenn, I bet you did.
00:02:53.260 What happened in Portland two weekends ago, I thought was the visual of the entire, you know, last four months,
00:03:00.000 which was they took a stack of Bibles and used those to ignite them to light the American flag.
00:03:08.220 And to me, that was the visual, is if you're going to take America down, you've got to get rid of the church, of religious freedom, 0.87
00:03:16.300 because that kind of moral constraint gets in the way of oppressive governments.
00:03:23.000 So, Kelly, there's a few things.
00:03:25.920 First of all, no one is really even speaking out about the literal attacks on the churches.
00:03:35.940 As you said, churches have had statues of Jesus desecrated and beheaded.
00:03:42.200 You've had all kinds of destruction being done to our churches, and nobody is saying anything.
00:03:49.680 And that is not a coincidence when you have Marxists marching in the streets.
00:03:54.200 And then we also have the government not recognizing all of the First Amendment.
00:04:02.780 They'll say, oh, you have a right to protest if you're on the right side,
00:04:05.960 but you don't have a right to make your own decisions when it comes to church.
00:04:11.880 And the worst place this is that I have found, New York and California.
00:04:15.940 We've had more protections put in and the Constitution strengthened on the First Amendment over the last three years, thanks to Donald Trump.
00:04:30.720 But it doesn't seem to matter right now what the Constitution says.
00:04:34.580 Yeah, I really do think it's a dichotomy right now.
00:04:39.540 I mean, we're in, let me sort of, bad news, good news, I guess.
00:04:42.920 Bad news is we're in a huge battle right now for whether the government controls, you know, the church,
00:04:49.200 whether the government controls the First Amendment.
00:04:52.100 If, I mean, we started out at First Liberty, we, I mean, people can go, Glenn, if they want, thefirstliberty.org.
00:04:58.240 And we have a list of all our victories.
00:05:00.020 We've won every case we filed during the pandemic.
00:05:03.020 And we filed smart lawsuits.
00:05:04.720 We knew how difficult it would be to win when judges are going, well, I don't want to overrule somebody who's trying to protect public health.
00:05:10.860 But, you know, we waited, we filed the right ones, and we established a lot of good law.
00:05:16.100 Well, then a lot of people started filing lawsuits that weren't so smart.
00:05:20.260 And you had some bad judges that were filed in bad places.
00:05:23.280 And now it's just a mess.
00:05:24.940 Nobody knows whether the Constitution is going to protect them or not.
00:05:30.320 And so we're fighting this out.
00:05:32.480 I hope eventually we get a good case to the Supreme Court and we can clear this up.
00:05:37.420 But in the meantime, right now, it's just chaos because there are a lot of crazy lawsuits and crazy judges
00:05:43.720 and crazy mayors or governors that are doing things that are clearly unconstitutional.
00:05:50.360 But, you know, you've got to get into the courts and you've got to get these things corrected.
00:05:55.360 And unfortunately, it takes time.
00:05:57.580 And right now, we don't know where we're going to end up at the end of this.
00:06:00.560 Because I'll tell you this, if the rule is that if a government official declares an emergency, then your rights are gone,
00:06:08.580 then none of us have any rights because any government official can declare an emergency.
00:06:12.400 And so things like, you know, you can't sing at church because that's a danger for spreading the virus.
00:06:23.320 But you can scream with, you know, 10,000 people at a protest.
00:06:27.620 I mean, that's just complete nonsense.
00:06:29.180 And it's clearly discriminatory and it's clearly unconstitutional.
00:06:34.560 But that's what's happening out there.
00:06:36.660 We had one situation, Glenn, where they were going to have a worship outside and the county was telling them that it was illegal for them to worship outside on the beach.
00:06:49.040 So there's a lot of stuff going on.
00:06:52.120 I will tell people, though, we are winning these lawsuits if you file them, if you're smart.
00:06:57.560 And I think we're going to eventually win them.
00:06:59.440 Define smart.
00:07:01.800 What does that mean?
00:07:03.580 Well, for instance.
00:07:04.300 What is a smart lawsuit?
00:07:05.500 You've got to know, I mean, take good facts.
00:07:08.940 There are tons of these.
00:07:09.960 And, for instance, let's take the very first one.
00:07:12.480 When we hit at this pandemic, we knew this was very dangerous.
00:07:16.160 There is no case law on what the Constitution says in a pandemic.
00:07:20.660 I mean, we've never had that before.
00:07:22.280 We've gone into court.
00:07:23.440 We were watching, you know, fathers throwing a baseball with their sons being arrested, you know, hand-cut in front of their children, right?
00:07:32.200 And everybody was like, well, does the Constitution apply anymore?
00:07:36.260 And so we knew the first case had to be the right case.
00:07:39.880 And so we filed a lawsuit.
00:07:42.280 We thought this was the right case.
00:07:43.660 It was right before Easter Sunday.
00:07:46.100 And it was a church in Louisville that was actually told they could not drive in their cars.
00:07:52.880 They were trying to have a service some way on Easter.
00:07:55.460 That's right.
00:07:56.220 So they came in their cars.
00:07:57.980 They listened over the radio to the pastor.
00:08:00.960 You can't pass the virus from car to car, right?
00:08:03.940 And not only did they outlaw it, the governor of Kentucky had said they're going to go to every parking lot on Sunday, church parking lot,
00:08:12.580 right down the license plate of every person, and they were going to be visited, their home, by police and told that they had to be quarantined.
00:08:20.960 So this is like something from China.
00:08:23.160 And so we filed a federal lawsuit.
00:08:25.880 We got Judge Justin Walker, who really laid the wood to the Louisville mayor and what they were doing there and said, that is not what we do in this country.
00:08:37.860 The Constitution does apply.
00:08:40.020 And it was a great sort of reminder or bringing back the Constitution.
00:08:45.400 That's a smarter lawsuit. 1.00
00:08:48.000 You know, let's get victories.
00:08:50.220 And let's not do the sort of Hail Mary type things that, you know, unless you get the right judge, you're not going to win because this is a new thing for a lot of these judges.
00:09:01.180 And so we have to come forward with good facts, with good arguments, and really file them in the right place because this is a very important battle for the future of our country.
00:09:11.460 What does it mean if Donald Trump is not the president and we have the left take over with as many vacancies that are going to be on the Supreme Court, and they could even pack the court?
00:09:29.160 What does that mean to freedom when we're so close to losing it with this president and with the Constitution?
00:09:39.280 Yeah, I would tell people, like you said, Glenn, before the pandemic even, I mean, we were really turning the corner on – we've gotten so many good judges in that the law is starting to change.
00:09:52.000 We're going back to the words of the Constitution.
00:09:55.260 We had a significant victory a year and a half ago at the Supreme Court in one of our cases that really was a major change, positive change for religious freedom.
00:10:03.940 And so the good news is we were really starting to turn things around, and I think what would have been maybe 40 or 50 years.
00:10:13.000 If we can keep that going, obviously that's wonderful for our country.
00:10:17.000 But like you said, if they pack the court, then the court is no longer a court.
00:10:22.120 It's just a political body because whoever comes in next time, they'll just add people to the court too. 0.99
00:10:27.480 And so now it's a political body.
00:10:29.720 It's not a legal body.
00:10:31.280 It's just whoever you want to vote in, and it would destroy our Supreme Court and the rule of law for that matter. 0.74
00:10:37.120 I have to tell you, I think with John Roberts there, it is a political court now.
00:10:42.000 I mean, you can't make sense.
00:10:45.240 They're heads or tails of his rulings because it just seems to – wherever the wind is blowing, and it's crazy.
00:10:53.480 Kelly, thank you so much for everything that you do.
00:10:55.860 If you are looking to support an institution that really is making a difference, and we need our First Liberties more than ever,
00:11:05.660 that we've got to protect the right of free speech, the right of religion, First Liberty is on it, and they could use your support.
00:11:14.320 It's firstliberty.org, the firstliberty.org.
00:11:20.340 This is the best of a Glenn Beck program.
00:11:25.860 We have with us now an anonymous teacher from California that feels it is crucial to raise the alarm in California,
00:11:41.400 and I think this applies to every school district all around the country.
00:11:47.120 She's a teacher.
00:11:50.180 She is joining us now.
00:11:51.680 We're not going to get into any of the other details because this is how hostile of an environment it is now to speak out if you're a teacher.
00:12:02.480 Welcome to the program, and thank you for your courage.
00:12:05.540 Thank you.
00:12:06.120 Thank you so much for having me on.
00:12:08.580 You're welcome.
00:12:09.300 So, tell me what happened to you just a few weeks ago that made you say, wait, wait, hold it.
00:12:17.800 What's happening now?
00:12:20.460 Well, to be honest with you, the wait, wait, hold on, what is happening has been over a decade in the making.
00:12:26.980 So, but just specifically a couple weeks ago, I started noticing, you know, I'm watching the news, and it's all about race, and they stopped using the term civil rights, and they started using the term critical theory.
00:12:41.500 And I went, what is critical theory, which I think a lot of the country is going, okay, I mean, it's probably just kind of race theory.
00:12:49.080 There's more research done.
00:12:50.220 Well, it didn't sit right with me, so I listened to a couple podcasts about it, I did my own research online, and I found out it's founded by Karl Marx.
00:13:00.060 Red flag, red flag, okay?
00:13:02.800 It's safe.
00:13:03.480 Literally.
00:13:04.200 It's safe.
00:13:04.880 Yeah.
00:13:06.260 Facts, data, and the scientific method are a white concept.
00:13:11.280 So, if you use facts and data to disprove an argument against a black or an oppressed person, you are proving you are racist, because, again, facts and data are, quote, false whiteness.
00:13:24.040 I want to reiterate, critical race theory, it holds, and I'm quoting, data, facts, and the scientific method are whiteness and inherently racist. 0.72
00:13:40.480 Therefore, if you use data to disprove an oppressed person's narrative, you are proving your ties to racism by using facts.
00:13:48.880 So, this is why we can't have conversations, because as soon as you say, well, you know, I hear you on the police thing, I hear you on the shootings, but let's talk about black-on-black crime, which exponentially has a higher death rate.
00:14:04.140 That person would say, well, you're false, you're using facts, my feelings are worth more, which is craziness to me.
00:14:12.880 So, that was the first huge red flag, okay?
00:14:15.860 So, then I dug a little deeper.
00:14:17.140 Capitalism is racist, also, because it was developed by whites and does not force racial equity. 0.77
00:14:27.240 So, these are the foundational principles of critical theory.
00:14:31.600 I about fell off my chair, but, so I've been feeling really passionate about just getting this out here, but, I mean, I knew it was kind of creeping into the educational system.
00:14:41.120 I haven't seen that term used yet, but I've seen little things like that happening.
00:14:45.900 So, anyway, a couple weeks ago, the week before school starts, we have to have a training, and I noticed that the training is on race, and I'm thinking, oh, man, I'm in California.
00:14:56.560 They better handle this well, right?
00:15:00.560 I open up the training, and right across the top, it says critical race theory.
00:15:05.380 Glenn, I wanted to quit on the spot, or go on a crusade, or text all my friends that have their kids in public school just going, get out now.
00:15:15.920 I cannot believe what I'm seeing.
00:15:18.080 But, of course, I want to read through it, give them the benefit of the doubt, because maybe the people who developed this don't know what critical theory is.
00:15:25.500 So, here are the main points that they taught us.
00:15:30.740 Now, this is in the training document for California teachers.
00:15:36.120 Not all California teachers, but I can tell you that it is endorsed by the California Department of Education, the California School Board Association, the Association of California School Administrators, Bay Area Schools, the California Conservation Corps, and a bunch of other districts who have hired them to train teachers.
00:15:56.920 And you're not in a small school district in California, so it's a large number.
00:16:07.180 I'm in a small-ish district, small enough to where I'm nervous that I'm going to be identified.
00:16:12.760 So, people know me, so I'd rather, you know, stay anonymous.
00:16:18.020 So, in the training, it's called Epic Education.
00:16:21.920 You can go on their website and look everything up.
00:16:24.440 Here are their main points.
00:16:26.920 Owning property is whiteness. 0.95
00:16:29.640 It must be abolished.
00:16:32.000 So, no one should own property.
00:16:34.740 Okay?
00:16:35.960 White people will only help a black person if it is in their own self-interest. 0.97
00:16:42.680 Jeez.
00:16:43.820 That, to me, I mean, let's just flip that back.
00:16:46.780 A black person will only help a white person if it is in their own self-interest. 0.99
00:16:51.200 If you said that, you'd be called a racist up and down.
00:16:53.940 But if you flip the color of the skin of the person you're talking about, you're a compassionate person.
00:17:00.880 Right.
00:17:01.660 And because of critical race theory, you defending that by saying flip that around proves that you are a racist.
00:17:14.000 Exactly.
00:17:16.220 Exactly.
00:17:16.880 That's why we're not getting anywhere.
00:17:18.460 That's why we can't agree to disagree.
00:17:20.560 That's why we can't talk about the real issues of what's going on.
00:17:24.100 That's why we can't talk about, I mean, I am a white female teacher.
00:17:27.900 And I have had reverse racism against me multiple times in my own classroom.
00:17:33.500 I walk on eggshells around my students of color because I want to make sure that they know that I love them, that I care about them, that I want them to succeed.
00:17:41.480 Because I've had more experiences than I can count where if a black student doesn't get the grade they want, they're storming my door. 1.00
00:17:50.580 I've been cussed out.
00:17:51.660 I've been almost fired.
00:17:53.360 Parents have gone to the superintendent to try to get me out.
00:17:56.360 Even when I have documentation proving why that student got the grade that they got, nope, it's because you're white. 1.00
00:18:02.840 It's because you're white. 0.98
00:18:05.120 And I'm going, if I said that about you, I'd be thrown in jail.
00:18:09.060 You know what I mean?
00:18:10.400 It's just insane.
00:18:12.340 So, okay, the other points are racism is inherent with all white people from birth. 0.90
00:18:18.940 They can't help it, and they are unaware of it.
00:18:22.320 Wow.
00:18:24.420 Racism is permanent.
00:18:26.240 So, in my mind, if they believe it's permanent, why are we talking about it?
00:18:30.300 Why are we trying to solve it?
00:18:31.560 Well, it's permanent in white people. 0.99
00:18:35.920 Yes.
00:18:36.440 Well, and I'm a Christian.
00:18:38.040 I believe we all have sin, right?
00:18:39.880 But to say that your sin is that you are racist just because you're white, it takes the individuality out of it.
00:18:48.060 And just, you know, this is a group sin.
00:18:50.600 I don't care if you've been a kind person to every black person that you've ever met. 1.00
00:18:55.340 I'm telling you, I've gone way out of my way to make sure that they feel loved.
00:18:59.100 And not that I'm perfect.
00:19:00.020 I'm sure that I've screwed up many times.
00:19:02.440 But to say, just because you're white, you are racist.
00:19:05.580 It is exactly what caused, it's exactly what caused or allowed slavery to happen, is we say, we said blacks are different, they're different than us, they have some sin or some mark or whatever, and that's, they can never achieve. 1.00
00:19:25.660 Yeah, that's how you do it.
00:19:28.580 That's because your skin is dark. 1.00
00:19:30.540 You are going to be my slave because you're not as intelligent as me.
00:19:35.320 You know what I mean?
00:19:36.140 All of these things, I mean, it just flips the other way.
00:19:40.080 It's just amazing.
00:19:40.860 So there's a couple more.
00:19:43.420 Children should be raised by a tribe, not a nuclear family with two parents. 0.89
00:19:48.920 So that's where you see parental rights being taken away slowly in school.
00:19:52.400 So that's what I mean by this has been a slow kind of fade away from, I mean, don't talk to your parents about, you know, if you feel like you have homosexual feeling.
00:20:04.600 Don't talk to your parents if you feel like you're a boy and you're really a girl. 0.90
00:20:07.600 And teachers will tell you, and to some extent, I agree, there is a safety thing with parents at home because you don't know how parents are going to react to that.
00:20:16.420 There might be abuse going on there. 0.89
00:20:18.240 But in this training, they actually said, do not talk to your parents about this because they might not be enlightened enough to realize their own racism within them.
00:20:29.660 So let's just see this between us.
00:20:33.620 Yes.
00:20:34.100 And I've been reading article and article and article now about teachers being worried because now we're all at home learning that parents, when they get their curriculum at home, they're going to go, wait, my kid's being taught this and they're going to be outed.
00:20:49.560 So I have a tweet thread from Matthew K.
00:20:53.580 He's a teacher.
00:20:54.280 So this fall, virtual class discussions will have many potential spectators, parents, siblings, et cetera, in the same room.
00:21:00.640 We'll never be quite sure who's overhearing the discussions.
00:21:04.660 What does this do for our equity inclusion work?
00:21:08.780 How much have students depended on the somewhat secure barriers of our physical classrooms to encourage vulnerability?
00:21:15.520 How many of us have installed some version of what happens here stays here?
00:21:19.320 While conversations about race are in my wheelhouse and remain a concern with a no walls environment, I am most intrigued by the damage of the helicopter snowplow parents who can do honest conversations about gender and sexuality.
00:21:34.480 I mean, conservative, he goes on, conservative parents are my chief concern.
00:21:40.080 Yeah.
00:21:40.700 I mean, they're threatened.
00:21:42.800 Yes.
00:21:43.080 And the thing is, is, you know, this is America.
00:21:46.340 We should be able to have these hard conversations.
00:21:49.620 I strongly agree with this.
00:21:51.420 I strongly disagree with it.
00:21:52.880 And that's what we've lost.
00:21:54.480 It's no longer let's hear both sides, which is actually in this training.
00:21:59.160 Maybe we want to talk about the counter story.
00:22:01.280 And they give the example of, well, we're tearing down the monuments because George Washington was a slave owner.
00:22:06.420 They're the real story is, you know, he owns slaves.
00:22:09.280 He didn't really deserve to be, you know, in history.
00:22:12.460 And so, OK, what about the counter narrative about reverse racism?
00:22:17.260 You know, we can't we can't talk about both sides.
00:22:20.180 And their whole point is, let's talk about the other side.
00:22:22.980 It's just unbelievable to me.
00:22:24.580 So tell me how many other teachers feel this way, like you do, that you're just you've seen the slow boil, but now you realize this thing is boiling over.
00:22:38.160 It's complete.
00:22:39.200 It's teaching now dangerous things.
00:22:41.540 It's become a cult and you're in it.
00:22:46.520 Are there teachers?
00:22:48.620 Are there teachers that agree with you or are you in the minority?
00:22:52.600 What?
00:22:52.860 Oh, I am definitely in a very small minority.
00:22:58.340 I reached out to a few of my colleagues after this training because it was all on Zoom.
00:23:03.680 And you have to be really careful.
00:23:05.340 I texted them, hey, how did you feel about that training that we just did?
00:23:08.900 And every single one of them called me and said, why do you ask?
00:23:13.920 Because they didn't want to put it in writing.
00:23:16.040 They didn't want they wanted to know why I wanted to know.
00:23:19.020 They wanted to know if I was a safe person to talk to.
00:23:22.420 And I just kind of phrased it like, you know, there were a couple of things that jumped out at me.
00:23:26.140 Like, I would only help a black person if it was in my own self-interest that rubbed me the wrong way.
00:23:32.340 And owning property is a white idea. 0.73
00:23:35.520 And no one should own property like that.
00:23:38.080 It didn't want to sit right with me.
00:23:39.560 And as soon as I said that, a bunch of them opened up going, yeah, this was garbage.
00:23:44.040 But they couldn't put their finger on why.
00:23:46.500 They just knew that there were these little bullet points in here that, oh, that didn't really sit with me.
00:23:50.860 Because, again, especially on the Zoom call that we had where we had the actual trainee speaking to us, it's all about compassion.
00:23:59.820 It's all about why wouldn't you want to lift up your black students?
00:24:03.660 Why wouldn't you want to support them more?
00:24:06.120 So they're phrasing it that, I mean, if you're just unaware that you've been hurting them for decades.
00:24:12.700 So let's talk about that.
00:24:14.060 Let's root that out.
00:24:15.440 But, again, the scary part was they never actually defined what critical theory is, which talks about, like I said in the beginning, the scientific method is false.
00:24:27.100 Capitalism doesn't force equity.
00:24:29.440 So this is communism.
00:24:31.020 And it says right there it's developed by Karl Marx.
00:24:33.560 But, again, to go back to your question, there are people in my district that, I mean, I just talked to them on the phone the other night.
00:24:39.420 And they all said, I can't believe you're even going on the Glenn Beck show, because I would be terrified.
00:24:45.900 I mean, we don't even know who each other are at my district.
00:24:49.500 I commend you for your courage.
00:24:54.460 And we all have to understand that freedom is not free, and this is our generation's battle.
00:25:02.720 We are going to lose it unless people have the courage to stand up.
00:25:07.380 I encourage any teacher that is experiencing these kinds of things to call in.
00:25:13.960 We will protect your identity, but your voice must be heard, even if it is augmented like it is now.
00:25:20.280 Your voice must be heard.
00:25:22.320 People have got to start talking about it and letting others know they're not alone.
00:25:29.560 Thank you again.
00:25:30.440 And I hope that we have a chance to meet at some point in the distant future, or I'm not outing you.
00:25:37.560 And I hope we can stay in touch.
00:25:39.980 Thank you.
00:25:40.660 Yeah.
00:25:41.220 God bless you.
00:25:43.880 This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:25:46.560 Also, we have John MacArthur.
00:25:53.880 He is a legend, if you will, in the ministry business.
00:26:02.160 He is the pastor of Grace Community Church, and I think he is going to be even more legendary because of the steps that he is taking now.
00:26:10.600 He is in California, and he has deemed that church is essential, and I want to play his opening this past Sunday.
00:26:20.240 This is what he said to his congregation.
00:26:23.920 Good morning, everyone.
00:26:24.800 I'm so happy to welcome you to the Grace Community Church Peaceful Protest.
00:26:31.440 Welcome to the program, John MacArthur.
00:26:40.600 How are you, sir?
00:26:42.120 Well, I'm very fine.
00:26:43.960 I'm chuckling when I hear that because we normally begin with prayer.
00:26:47.140 That was a little bit of a different approach to start a service.
00:26:50.800 Yes.
00:26:51.200 But it is, in California, it is crazy that your First Amendment right to gather and have the services that are essential, I believe, to the soul of each individual and soul of our nation, that's not okay.
00:27:11.800 But if you decide to engage in a peaceful protest, which looks an awful lot like a riot, you're fine.
00:27:19.880 Yeah, that's absolutely right.
00:27:23.060 The hypocrisy of it is, well, I guess you couldn't even call it hypocrisy.
00:27:26.660 It's just blatant double talk because they're out front with it all.
00:27:31.720 So we are targeted.
00:27:34.180 There's no question about it.
00:27:36.360 I go back to the fact that 364 babies are aborted in California every day.
00:27:42.580 We lead the nation.
00:27:44.000 We'll have about 140,000 abortions this year. 0.93
00:27:47.740 There's no moral high ground.
00:27:49.120 The governor basically had a decree a year or so ago in which he invited people who couldn't get an abortion in another state to come to California.
00:27:57.400 You could get it here.
00:27:58.960 Funded by tax money.
00:28:00.360 So there's no moral high ground.
00:28:04.060 There's just what we feel is a targeting of churches based on fear, based on statistics that are not believable.
00:28:13.520 You know, just before we move on from abortion, it was Kamala Harris, now the vice presidential pick that actually began the litigation against the reporter that did the uncovering of the selling of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood. 0.94
00:28:34.440 That that that was Kamala Harris in California.
00:28:38.940 So so, so, John, you you are now standing up.
00:28:45.720 And did you ever think that you might in this country be put in a position of someday following the Dietrich Bonhoeffer kind of path where you go to jail for what you believe?
00:28:58.600 Um, you know, it was a reality and increasingly so.
00:29:04.620 I've been at Grace Church 51 years.
00:29:06.600 Life was fairly benign a half a century ago in terms of the thought of persecution.
00:29:14.780 But in the last 10 or 15 years, this has been coming.
00:29:19.920 It's been coming because of the corruption of the university system, which eventually eventually puts everybody in leadership who has been jaded and sold an anti-God, anti-Christian, anti-American ideology.
00:29:32.780 So there's an inevitability to it.
00:29:34.940 And one way to understand this, Glenn, and I don't know what you're going to say tonight.
00:29:39.180 You kind of teased a little bit on that.
00:29:41.300 I don't know what you're going to say tonight, but I believe it already.
00:29:44.260 Even I don't know what it is, because you can just see the signs.
00:29:48.620 Just a simple way that I look at this from a biblical standpoint, the human race has fallen.
00:29:55.260 We know we're all sinners because everybody dies and the wages of sin is death and the soul that sins will die.
00:30:01.620 So death is the evidence of sin.
00:30:03.440 And so how does God manage to cause flourishing in this massive collision of sinners on the way to death?
00:30:12.420 He built into society four restraints.
00:30:15.180 The first one is the law of God written in the heart.
00:30:17.880 Part of being human is having the knowledge of right and wrong, and it's in the heart.
00:30:22.160 And then God gave a mechanism called the conscience, which is activated when you disobey that law in the heart.
00:30:28.360 That's why people feel guilty.
00:30:30.460 That's why there's deep fear, anxiety, depression, sometimes panic attacks over people's sinful behavior.
00:30:38.500 That's a mechanism that God gives them so they don't continually destroy the soul.
00:30:43.320 The second mechanism, by the way, the law of God in the heart has a weapon.
00:30:46.940 The weapon is conscience.
00:30:47.800 The second mechanism is the family and the father and the mother.
00:30:52.780 And believe it or not, the weapon is the rod.
00:30:54.700 The Bible talks about bear the rod and spoil the child. 0.62
00:30:58.220 What that means is that there is loving discipline for misbehavior so that misbehavior has consequences.
00:31:06.020 The third is the government.
00:31:08.320 And Romans 13 basically says the government has a sword.
00:31:12.020 That's their weapon to punish evildoers and protect those who do good.
00:31:16.340 And the fourth restraint in society are the people of God, the church, that are salt and light, salt as a quiet influence, light as a blazing declaration of truth.
00:31:26.000 So given those four restraints, am I surprised that basically the law written in the heart has been completely overturned and replaced with a corrupt, perverted law?
00:31:37.120 And if your conscience gives you any trouble, you need to silence your conscience because you don't need to take any blame for anything you do.
00:31:46.260 You shouldn't have any shame.
00:31:48.040 So the conscience and the law of God in the heart has been devastated systematically through the sexual revolution, homosexual revolution, and all the other stuff that comes with it, the Me Too movement, social justice, everything. 0.87
00:32:00.360 Then the family, the family is the next barrier, the next restraint that allows humanity to flourish.
00:32:06.860 And what's happened to the family is just complete devastation to the family to the degree that there is law being made to give some kind of normalcy to transgender people. 0.78
00:32:20.880 So the family is under assault.
00:32:23.100 Next comes the government, defund the police.
00:32:25.480 You have a generation of people milling around in the streets, destroying everything because there never have been any consequences to their behavior as they grew up.
00:32:34.600 So now we want to get rid of the police.
00:32:36.200 Well, who's next?
00:32:37.340 There's only one institution left, and that's the church.
00:32:41.240 The police have a sword.
00:32:43.420 The father and mom have a rod.
00:32:45.700 The law of God in the heart has a conscience.
00:32:47.620 The church has the truth.
00:32:48.800 That's the most deadly weapon of all to a world that wants to run from God and do everything that the sinful heart longs to do.
00:33:00.100 So silencing the church is part of it.
00:33:02.700 So did I expect that it would come in my lifetime?
00:33:05.640 Probably.
00:33:07.300 Probably.
00:33:08.820 I don't know that this is something that has come as fast as it appears.
00:33:13.680 I think it's it's been growing for decades.
00:33:19.260 No, I think it's you know, you you've never gone in for a prostate exam and you're 70.
00:33:25.960 Well, all of a sudden you're you've got a month to live.
00:33:29.280 Well, you could have seen it coming, but you didn't look.
00:33:32.520 And many of us just turned away and we didn't look.
00:33:35.840 And and so we didn't realize we were being rotted from the inside out.
00:33:40.220 You know, I I've talked to a lot of people and I said, you know, it actually gave me a lot of hope if if Jesus were coming, because I know he could fix it and he will when he comes.
00:33:54.920 But I also wouldn't be surprised if this this was the beginning of the end of days, if you will.
00:34:01.840 So do you do you find that more and more people are going, you know, I mean, are we approaching those times?
00:34:14.480 Well, you know, Jesus said no man knows the day nor the hour.
00:34:17.720 So I'm not one to speculate, but I've never seen as many people hope it's soon as there are hoping now.
00:34:27.660 Yeah.
00:34:27.820 So but I think there's another thing to look at in the first chapter of the book of Romans.
00:34:33.440 There's a verse, verse 18, that says the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.
00:34:41.180 No nation has ever held the truth and been unrighteous at the same time to the degree that the United States has obviously founded on Christian values, founded on biblical principles.
00:34:53.060 We've held the truth for the duration of our national identity, but we have held the truth increasingly in unrighteousness.
00:35:01.080 And the Bible says God's wrath will be revealed.
00:35:03.580 And here's how it defines that wrath in that same chapter.
00:35:06.940 God gave them over.
00:35:08.200 That's a Greek term that means handing someone over to the sentence, to execution, to jail or whatever.
00:35:15.160 It's illegal.
00:35:15.980 So God handed them over.
00:35:17.880 And first of all, to immorality.
00:35:20.960 So the first way you know that a culture has been handed over by God is there will be a sexual revolution. 0.72
00:35:28.260 And God says, I'm going to turn you over to the consequences of your evil choices.
00:35:33.520 Two verses later, as God gave them over to homosexuality. 0.99
00:35:37.320 So when you see a sexual revolution followed by a homosexual revolution, you're living Romans 1. 0.87
00:35:43.880 The third statement is he gave them over to a reprobate mind.
00:35:48.240 What I used to wonder, what is a reprobate mind, a mind that doesn't work?
00:35:52.420 That's when you look at yourself and you're a man and you say, I'm a woman.
00:35:56.760 That's insanity.
00:35:57.760 And out of that insanity, it becomes impossible to go back because all rationality is gone.
00:36:04.120 So I think what we're seeing in America is the wrath of God in Romans 1 revealed on a society.
00:36:11.780 And the evidence of it is sexual revolution, homosexual revolution, followed by a reprobate mind. 0.91
00:36:16.640 So that America kind of looks like the Jerry Springer show.
00:36:21.760 It's just deviation for the sake of entertainment.
00:36:25.720 And the chapter ends by saying, even though they know these things are wrong, they not only do them, but they approve them.
00:36:33.880 They clap.
00:36:34.840 They applaud at deviation and perversion.
00:36:38.420 That's a cyclical kind of thing.
00:36:41.660 And the Bible also says God has allowed all the nations to go their own way.
00:36:45.100 So we're not the first nation who's gone down this path.
00:36:48.180 This is pretty much how history goes.
00:36:50.640 So whether this is just our end or whether this is the apocalyptic end of everything, I don't know.
00:36:57.820 But certainly the wrath of God has been released on this country.
00:37:01.480 It doesn't mean there's no grace.
00:37:03.680 There is always grace.
00:37:05.700 This is the day of salvation.
00:37:07.660 Come to Christ.
00:37:08.500 That's our message.
00:37:09.600 Escape the wrath.
00:37:10.680 Escape the judgment.
00:37:12.260 And God will show you grace.
00:37:13.600 But I think America is experiencing that judgment.
00:37:18.180 You don't hear people say those things anymore, John.
00:37:24.260 And I appreciate your willingness to stand up and say what you believe and call your church back and be willing to go to jail for the things that you believe are true.
00:37:41.020 Thank you for being on the program, John.
00:37:43.020 Appreciate it.