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Aug. 2, 2020 - The Charlie Kirk Show
51:57
Open the Church! In Depth with Jack Hibbs

Charlie sits down with Pastor Jack Hibbs, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, to discuss the urgency facing America to open up the nation's churches, regardless of the edicts from governors and mayors.

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Essential Sunday Planning 00:15:14
Thank you for listening to this Podcast 1 production.
Now available on Apple Podcasts, Podcast 1, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcast.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
Turning point USA.
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.
That's why we are here.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to this special episode of the Charlie Kirk Show with my dear friend, one of the few fighters in the country for Christ, for truth, liberty, and our country, Jack Hibbs.
It's great to be with you.
You've been indirectly on our program before when we talk on stage, which we are going to do, and that will be rebroadcast.
But every time I talk about the crisis in Christianity, I always have asterisks.
I say, accept Pastor Rob McCoy, Pastor Jack Hibbs, and Jerry Falwell Jr. from Liberty University.
You have your church open right now.
Yeah.
You had a couple people show up recently?
Just a few.
There's been a few people showing up on Sundays and Wednesdays.
14,000, you said?
We probably had 14,000 total last Sunday.
And so the edict in California, you're in Chino Hills, California, is that you should stay closed, that you have to shut down.
You have decided to open, and you're one of the very few that have made this decision.
What has the response been amongst, first and foremost, and most importantly, the people that attend every Sunday?
The people that attend every Sunday are literally walking into the building, smiles huge, tears flowing down their face, the need to worship, gather together again, quite frankly, shocked me.
It shouldn't have shocked me, but they're overwhelmed.
I mean, jaw-dropping thankfulness to God, which is translated in their attentiveness to the message, the volume and participation of their singing and worship.
30 years of ministry, never seen it like this before, Charlie.
So, but you also offer social distancing in the courtyard?
You can do anything here, whatever is your flavor.
We have social distancing in the courtyard, social distancing out on the grass.
We have a big lawn area.
If people want that.
If they want that.
They can watch online.
They can watch online.
They can watch and listen inside of their car in the parking lot.
We stream FM frequency to the parking lot in their vehicles, or they can just do normal, which is full-blown.
And that's we give them everything that can possibly be experienced.
Jumbotron screen outdoors if they want that.
Yet we're still in violation of Governor Newsom's edicts, you know, and there's like our attorneys told us, there's no way you can please him.
There's just no way.
So what do we do?
Shut down the church?
No, that's impossible.
Jesus said, I've set before you an open door, not a closed one.
So I don't have the authority to close the doors to the church.
Only Jesus has that.
So we're open.
We'll continue to stay open.
And we've made it known that if we are shut down, Charlie, they're going to have to honestly chain the door shut.
And then we have a plan B. Our plan B is to actually take it out on the streets or in the parks and do services.
We actually have that.
You have courage and a backbone, unlike most pastors in our country.
A lot of our listeners email us at freedom at charliekirk.com.
Charlie, my pastor, has remained closed, but interestingly, he opened momentarily for a BLM moment of silence to take a nean all this.
There's real things we get.
I'm in an interesting position, Jack, because I take a very firm stance on these issues, and I hear from people all across the country.
And there are people that are searching for leadership right now.
How have you've obviously had the backlash?
That's something that you just are used to.
Tell us some of the positive stories, though, that have come out of this.
The rewards, not just for you, but for the church and the kingdom.
Yeah, well, we preach a very clear gospel here.
You're not going to come here for three weeks and wonder what we're talking about.
You're going to know the first 20 minutes walking into this place.
So the rewards have been this.
People who never visited us before, because we're open, they've come in and they have said, last Sunday, for example, this woman came.
It's her third week to church.
She is a Jehovah's Witness.
She was taught that Jesus is not God incarnate all her life.
She saw Bible.
She saw teaching and preaching from the scriptures in these last three weeks.
And she was out in the foyer last Sunday bawling because she said, I see Jesus now for who he is.
He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
And her life's been completely transformed.
That's one person, Charlie.
We were seeing people driving from Ventura, people driving from Santa Barbara, people driving from San Diego.
And every service is packed out.
So when I talk about you and Pastor Rob McCoy, some of the weak Christian pastors, and I can be more critical than you can towards these pastors just because I'm not completely in that community, but some of these weak Christian pastors, they say, but Jack Hibbs and Rob McCoy, they make an idol out of politics, and it's a political first church.
First of all, they're just wrong.
That is a falsehood.
It is a Christ-first church.
Can you talk about that?
Yeah, listen, I actually, I'm not saying this to be sarcastic in any way.
Actually, I understand where they're coming from.
What are they going to do as they look around at their flock?
I say look around, as their flock emails them saying, when are you going to open up?
And the pressure from the flock, because they're hungry and they want to get back to fellowship.
They may have a board breathing down their neck or what I do not know.
But the bottom line is this.
Those pastors need to open up now because it is the church.
Gavin Newsom is not the head of the church.
It's Jesus.
And people want to put the church, every government wants to put the church either in a essential or non-essential category.
Our governor makes it very clear the church is non-essential.
We refuse to be categorized like that.
We believe from the Bible that the church is transcendent.
It is a living, breathing organism.
It's not of this world.
It is not subject to government in that capacity.
And what's funny is for years, people have said, separation, church and state.
You guys shouldn't be doing this.
You shouldn't be doing this.
Well, the interesting thing is that the government now, they don't see that separation.
They step in and they say, we're going to lord our confused, let's be honest, our confused agenda, even over the church.
We don't know if you should wear a mask this week or not.
We don't know if you should be six feet apart or three feet.
We don't know if we should open or not.
Listen, people are dying.
People are emotionally distraught spiritually in the desert.
Isn't that the most important time to have church?
Absolutely.
What in the world are we doing when we shut down a living, breathing organism that brings stability, comfort, and frankly, logic to the illogic of what we're living through right now?
But listen, our governor absolutely sees it different.
And many other governors agree at that.
Two points on that.
The first of which, some Christian pastors will say, but Romans 13 says we must go right out of time.
Agreed.
What does that mean?
Absolutely agree.
We did that.
In fact, if anybody has a chance, they should read John MacArthur's letter to the California churches.
He articulates it perfectly.
When President Trump asked us to shut down for 15 days, we did it.
Then Trump came back, remember, and said, well, sorry, let's do another 15 days because we've got to flatten that curve.
We did that.
Then Trump wisely, I didn't like it, Charlie, but wisely, Trump honored states' rights and gave jurisdiction over to the governors.
And our governor just doubled down on his true colors and feelings about the church in California.
So we petitioned his office saying, where are we?
What phase are we in?
No response, no response.
Just kicked the can down the road when the church was asking, what about us?
So what we did, listen, we obeyed the law, but when it became evident to us that we had a governor that was going to keep the church, and he's going to still keep the churches that are closed, Charlie, he's going to keep those churches closed until some advantage comes his way.
So we did obey Romans 13.
When it became clear that it's time to obey God rather than man, we respectfully parted ways with that restriction.
Yeah.
And it's also important to remember that the sovereign in our country is not necessarily Gavin Newsom, it's the people.
That's right.
We absolutely.
And it's a very important philosophical distinction.
Second part is this.
The Supreme Court just said that church is not essential.
Should we listen to that?
No, absolutely not.
So how do we reconcile that with Romans 13?
It's the same argument.
It's the same argument where they are making a ruling regarding, you're referring to the Nevada.
Yeah, with John Roberts, who decided to side with casinos and other churches.
He's seen lately on a lot of topics, hasn't he?
But anyway, I could go into that extensively.
Again, that's one of those things where it doesn't matter how black the robe is.
It has to do with obeying the gospel in the commission.
So, for example, Jesus says I've opened the church, so tell me where he says to shut it.
Now, somebody might say, but don't you love people?
If you love people, you'll shut your doors.
Well, wait a minute.
That is a value statement.
What do you mean, love people?
Well, if you love people, you should shut down because you don't want anybody to get sick.
We don't want anybody to get sick, but we do know something.
People do get sick every day.
In fact, Charlie, what are they telling us?
128,000 are dead now from COVID?
Not true.
They've not backed out the numbers of those who have died from diabetes.
It's dying with and dying from.
Exactly.
So the number is skewed, but my point is this.
When we talk about, well, we need to love one another.
I can't think of a greater way to love someone out of suicide, love them out of a broken marriage, love them out of the dilemma.
It's not, listen, 90 plus percent of people who contract COVID survive.
Here's what I tell people: is one of the most misrepresented parts of Christianity is when people say, trust your neighbor as yourself.
You know, love your neighbor, treat other people the way you want to be treated, love your neighbor as yourself.
Exactly.
And so I think that it gets misrepresented at times where people say, What does that actually look like?
I think love is trust, right?
If you actually think about it, a true loving relationship is a trustworthy relationship, right?
Trustworthy marriage, a trustworthy business.
And so because of that, if you have love, you trust people to hopefully make informed choices.
I don't think that if you say we have to keep things endlessly closed, I don't trust my congregation to make good choices.
I think part of love is liberty, too.
That's right.
Because in order to trust, you must make choices.
Therefore, you must have liberty.
And so I'm of the opinion that there is going to be a foolish human being that does something silly today.
Yeah.
That will happen.
Absolutely.
It could be someone that drinks too much at a bar and then gets into a car.
It could be someone that does something abusive to a spouse or a family member.
That stuff happens in the parameters of our broken world.
That's right.
It is inexcusable to then say we are going to then centrally plan human behavior by shutting the doors to the one place where moral order is actually given.
So there might be someone that walks into your church that does something.
They might walk into the non-socially distanced area, and maybe they shouldn't be doing that.
That's going to be a price that they're going to have to pay.
And that's liberty.
And so we are going to love on them.
We're going to treat them well.
But in some ways, you have to be able to say part of liberty is responsibility.
Charlie, we're at a moment right now in our nation's experiment where there's a whole generation that thinks that they're doing the more, the more republic thing, the more responsible thing, the more Christian thing by staying sequestered and staying wrapped and staying out of life.
But the truth is, and you said it, you know what?
You said it recently.
It was either one of your podcasts or Eric Metaxa's podcast.
You had given a great, great logic, a great argument about how the very need that the church can bring to a culture that is protesting.
Remember that?
And rioting, where, oh, go out and ride it.
You don't have to be social distancing.
You know, just throw your Molotov cocktail in the right direction.
But no church.
Yes.
And you had a great, do you remember that?
Can you comment on it?
Because it was great.
Well, I think I said this to Eric, who's an American hero.
He's phenomenal.
I said, there's a direct connection between social unrest and churches being closed.
I believe it.
And if people are not going to churches, and we believe that communion is a sacrament, and we do believe that you should be able to take the blood and body of Jesus Christ, but even beyond that, if you remove the celebration of the risen Christ, if you remove Easter and Palm Sunday, and all of a sudden, five weeks later, you have complete and total turmoil.
Well, maybe there was something actually to celebrating Easter.
Maybe there was something for the one person who might go to church a year.
That might be the only service I go to.
They dress up in a full suit and tie.
They dress up all their daughters in dresses and all their kids in suits.
They go to Easter and they sit through a 90-minute service.
Jack, 30 years, how many people on Easter Sunday have given their life to the Lord?
I'm sure you have examples.
Right?
I can't even count.
Exactly.
Beyond.
Every pastor I talk to agrees with this, whether they remained open or closed.
They say, you know what, that's a good point.
So how many lives did not get committed to the Lord April 12th?
I think that was Easter this year.
And so then all of a sudden you extrapolate that a month and a half later, these protests happen.
We ask ourselves, huh?
Six weeks earlier, we decided the most important day on the Christian calendar doesn't matter.
And all the ripple effects, right, where they go back to their community and say, hey, guys, I'm a new person because I'm born new in Jesus Christ.
We cut that off.
Now, some people did it digitally.
I'm anti-digital.
I just am because I think we're over-digitized in our society.
And I think it means less.
It's not meaningless.
I think that people can still give their life.
I think it's great.
And the numbers and the hits and the views.
I think there is something irreplaceable to going into a physical place around the person next to you who's crying and they're having their own experience.
All of a sudden, there's that ecclesia of the gathering of the world.
Absolutely.
100%.
And so we have fooled ourselves.
We say, I wonder why America is, what's going on here?
It's very simple.
There are 25 million people that are not going to church every single week.
It's not that hard.
That's exactly correct.
This kept our republic together for 200 years.
It's what our French friend, what was his name?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Spiritual Powers Behind Conduct 00:15:14
No.
He's not a French.
De Tocqueville.
Oh, Alexis de Tocqueville.
De Tocqueville.
I looked around for America's greatness.
It wasn't in our harbor.
It was in the pews of the church.
It was in the pews and the pulpits.
Yes.
And so, listen, you bring this up.
So we have been seeing 100, 200 people a week giving their hearts to Christ since this reopening.
So you make a very, very good point.
Where are these people?
What has led them to make this decision?
The dynamic, the pain, the sorrow.
People are now listening who otherwise were not listening before.
But to stress the point that you're making is this, that if you believe in spiritual things, I do.
I'm a Christian.
I believe in the Bible.
You mentioned this shutdown happening at Easter time.
The attack against the church across these states, senseless.
You can have more people in your casino, but you can't do your church.
Or your strip club or your strip.
Or your marijuana decision.
Hey, how about this?
No singing.
Governor Newsom says no singing.
No singing.
No gathering, no singing.
Weird.
But go get an abortion.
We're still open.
You can still go get an abortion.
Okay, don't tell me that that is just bad decision making.
I think there are spiritual powers behind such conduct.
Of course.
And when you begin to unpack and look, look at the confusion that's out there today.
Confusion is a tool of the Amen.
Yes.
Absolutely.
And so I don't want to sound like a party pooper, but we're being played.
People have been completely disabled because of fear.
People are afraid of things that don't even exist.
Oh my gosh, I forgot my mask.
Oh, it's okay.
Listen to Fauci.
Your mask doesn't work.
Even Fauci said your mask doesn't work.
Oh, what about this?
Go out.
It's okay.
If you're scared, go outside.
COVID lasts six to 32 seconds in UV light.
Go outside.
No, no, no.
Stay indoors.
That confusion should tell people something's up.
Oh, and by the way, Charlie, it's going to get real worse as we approach November.
Yeah, I'm afraid you're right.
But I have a theory, and the Republican establishment isn't saying this.
I think that the thing we should focus on most is getting churches open.
I think if churches open, all of a sudden moral order just goes.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's a subtle moral order, right?
And so what Christians have basically decided, and again, I've been very vocal against this.
I've talked to a lot of pastors about this and all sorts of different traditions.
And I get emails of people that think I'm, you know, out in left field here.
They say, you're not a pastor.
You don't know what you're talking about.
It's like, oh, yeah, I guess you must be reading a different book than I am.
Sorry.
Sorry, I don't have like a special access.
Truth is there.
Like, okay, I guess you can tell me something I'm missing.
Yeah, of course I'm missing it.
I'm a mighty oral.
I'm sure I'm missing something, right?
He's like, please give us the wisdom from on high.
Anyway, the point is this.
They say, well, you know, we must wait this out.
I mean, there was some guy, some megachurch pastor, he said, we're going to stay closed till February or something crazy.
I can fix that in a second.
Yeah, and so then it's, but then I ask myself the question, what you're basically saying is you're pricing yourself out of existence.
I mean, and they're basically making the argument that a live stream is equivalent.
And I'm a big believer in the person that comes to church and they see a friend and all of a sudden they have a common moral connection and they might need a loan or they might need a job or their kid might need a ride to the airport.
That is all just gone now.
Not in your church, but it just gets disappeared.
And then so you say 100 to 150 people giving their lives to Christ every single week.
Well, you extrapolate that to the churches across the country.
How many people would have been in the kingdom of God this calendar year if churches would have remained open?
Wow.
That's like that's an absolutely petrifying thought.
But it's just that that should just drive chills down everyone's spine.
The mathematics of this is there's arguably hundreds of thousands of lost souls that would have been baked into the statistical pie.
And every church has it into their, you know this, that they're going to have a certain amount of conversions, hopefully every year.
I know they're not happening at a lot of different churches.
Listen, you can know that there's a new movie coming out.
There's a movie with Tom Hanks and it's coming out.
Well, we can't go to the theaters, so we can watch it on Hulu or Netflix.
We'll just get some popcorn, sit at home and watch it.
It's no big deal.
It might even be better that you stay at home and watch it.
The weird thing about church, for those who have experienced church, and this is why church will never be replaced, you can create the greatest technologies in the world.
You can have all the AI you want.
It ain't going to take the place of church because there is something called koinonia.
It's the work of the Holy Spirit among brothers and sisters in Christ.
It is something that people experience, which you asked me earlier, what are people saying?
They're saying this: I felt the presence of God when I pulled into the parking lot.
Amen.
I felt the presence of God even before the service began.
Are these people nuts or are they experiencing the work of God?
And here's the thing: you can stream, and some people live somewhere they need to, or you're shut in.
You know, you just had surgery.
I get it, but that's not church.
The Bible tells us in Hebrews 10:25 that we need to get together.
Yes.
Okay.
And don't forsake that.
If you can't make it to church, you can't make it to church.
But if you make it, those two experiences are, you can't even compare the two.
Watching church online or being at church, one is a supernatural experience.
Yes.
And it's being there.
And you cannot replace that.
And so we look at our country.
I think that the forces of darkness are happy the more churches are closed.
Absolutely.
Because then you have confusion.
No doubt.
You have confused people.
You have disconnected people.
You have people that de-emphasize the moral order and the moral good.
And that's why I say ahead of the election, we ought to get every church open.
And I wish every church spoke about moral issues like you do.
And I want to get into that in a second.
But even if they don't, even if they are reciting the Lord's Prayer, even if they are looking at the symbology of the cross, I'm a big believer that most of our decisions are actually made not consciously, especially for most people that don't actually do analytical thinking and human psychology.
Where most people that, even if you're attending a church, I think you're far less likely, far less likely to indulge in these humanistic nihilistic because all of a sudden they say, well, there's something great.
It's like a road sign.
It's there.
It's almost an hour-long advertisement on maybe you should reflect and maybe we shouldn't burn down everything in the world.
But when you just remove that, then something has to fill that void.
And in social protest or in burning down American cities.
Look where Charlie, look where America has gone since the removal, what, 1962, 63?
Oh, prayer and 10 commandments.
It's so perplexing to me.
I say this to journalists, and they think I'm some sort of extremist.
I say, prayer should be in every single school across the country.
If not, the funding should be pulled.
Absolutely.
And they're like, oh, you're crazy.
I'm like, well, really?
The founding fathers wouldn't open Congress without prayer.
But then also, exactly.
But then I say, and this is a deeper point, is that you guys have your own prayer.
It's like, what are you talking about?
I say, you guys recite all of BLM's nonsense, like incantation-like.
Incantations.
Or you guys put white fragility like it's 1 Peter.
I mean, it's so true.
You guys put forward Nicole Hannah-Jones in the 1619 project as if I'm reading Proverbs.
Yes.
This idea that you can remove human man's search for meaning, Victor Frankl.
Yep.
You're going to replace it with garbage.
Absolutely.
The scripture says that God has put eternity in our hearts.
So if you're a follower of God or not, you're following something because you've got that hole that you want to connect.
There's only one thing that can fill it.
Exactly.
And there's a falseness that there is a false appearance or a mirage that can fill it.
And the left tries to do that.
Absolutely.
So you are a supporter of President Trump.
I am.
As a pastor.
I am.
Of a church.
Yes.
In California.
100%.
Tell us more.
First of all, I'm committed to my state.
I know this is going to sound crazy, but I was born and raised here.
I'm very possessive of my state.
I know the history of my state.
My state, for example, has a series of missions that were planted at the same time.
The U.S. revolution was taking place against England.
California is experiencing the building and planting from 1772 to 1776 of the mission station.
That's a great point.
Right?
The gospel is being preached on this end of the continent, and there's been great revivals here.
Having said that, California is a gem for all kinds of reasons.
Here's the deal.
California has so hit the bottom.
And I know Ben Shapiro and I shared this.
Ben says, hang on to California because it's so bad.
It has to turn good.
I believe that we've hit it so bad.
When you see Democrats come to church and change their party affiliation in the courtyard in voter registration, we've never seen that before.
When you have people saying, we've gone too far, I had a chance to tell President Trump in the Roosevelt room, President Trump, please come and campaign in California.
And he said, California, it's corrupt.
I said, yes, sir, it is.
He goes, it's impossible.
I said, yeah, but rumor has it that you love the impossible.
And he said, do you think I could win California?
And they said, I don't know, but I know this.
If there's a Democrat or a Republican president that could snatch California from the Democrat grip, you're the man.
And so I do believe, I believe that California can turn around.
And we see sights of this now.
There was a bill.
We're going to announce it tonight.
There is a bill that was absolutely Charlie.
There's no way that it was going to be stopped.
They had a supermajority, and it was a $15 million funded bill that would pay, begin at the eight-year mark of a public school child.
If that child wanted a hormone replacement to change their gender, the California taxpayer was going to pay for it.
It was scheduled to go through.
Guess what happened?
We don't know why.
It was just pulled yesterday.
It was pulled.
It will not be voted on.
Did this church call by the thousands?
Yes, we know that for a fact.
Did it matter?
We don't know.
That brings us hope.
Yes.
And in the 25th district, Mike Garcia, who wasn't supposed to win, no Republican had won the 25th district.
Katie Hill resigned.
Yep.
In 53 or 55 years, Mike Garcia wins.
By 10 points or something.
Oh, it was so big that the other team didn't even contest it.
That's how big it was.
So there's hope.
California, you know, in the 60s and 70s, California was what was best about America.
That's right.
In a lot of ways, California, in the California you grew up, people really didn't care where you were from.
It was kind of a place where you could reinvent yourself.
Completely.
Exactly.
And what do you do?
That was the question that people would always ask in California.
And because no one was actually from California in the 60s and 70s, unless your grandfather was a missionary.
But it was basically.
But if you actually look at the songs and the movies that we enjoyed in the 70s and 80s, especially, it was so glamorizing California and for good reason.
It was a place that you could pick yourself up and the weather is great, but you could go create something.
You could be somebody like Steve Jobs.
Yeah.
You could actually make a company called Apple.
You could be inventors of the aerospace industry, you name it.
Yes.
Look at Elon Musk.
California was his on and on it goes.
Because now it's a place that strangles a weed.
It's dystopian now, isn't it?
Absolutely.
Now, you know, sadly, because he's not far from here as SpaceX and Tesla, but they're packing up and they're heading out of town.
So you support the president?
Yes.
Why?
Pro-life.
I start right there.
Well, I don't like his tweets.
Who cares about his tweets?
The man's policies are pro-life.
Well, I don't like his hair.
I don't care about his hair.
You know what?
The guy's strong on borders.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know if that's fair or not.
Why don't you go with us?
I've taken a bunch of pastors down to the border and took a tour, and they showed us where all the drug trafficking and all the human trafficking had to stop because they shut down with the wall, the fence, and they made it so much more difficult for these horrible human beings to traffic these drugs and humans across the border.
Ask border agents down there what they think about Trump's policy.
So pro-life, number one, I'm going to vote for Donald Trump in this election because he's pro-life.
The Bible, my God, makes it clear I need to speak up for those who have no voice, those who are destined to be destroyed.
Proverbs.
And Biden's the exact opposite.
Democrat Party, look at the platforms.
Just read the platforms.
You don't even have to get bogged down in the candidates.
Read the platforms.
If you approach a Judeo-Christian worldview, you have got to vote Republican down the ballot because of the pro-life position alone.
Yeah, but they might vary over here.
I don't care.
Let's start with the thing that matters most with God.
It's pro-life.
But when you talk about military, I'm a big military guy.
Stop and ask a man or a woman in uniform.
Trump has transformed the whole atmosphere of our military.
So go down that list.
I'm for Donald Trump.
But listen, can I say this, Charlie?
I don't believe, and it's really stupid for us to believe that, oh, I don't know if I can vote or not because what?
Well, this person, he's a little off in this area.
Listen, can we get this straight?
The Messiah is not arriving on Air Force One.
The answer is not in the State House or in the White House.
It's in God's house.
But the Bible commands us to pick for ourselves leaders.
And boy, doesn't that kind of sound like the republic we live in?
Yes.
And so go further into that.
And then I have some thoughts.
A lot of Christians say, I can't vote for Donald Trump.
And even worse, pastors are now going against Donald Trump and either being neutral or going to Joe Biden.
A lot of people listening to this have very weak pastors.
They go to churches that are not political.
Here you are pastoring a church where 14,000 people show up, a lot to lose.
You double down, triple down, and you're actually flourishing and growing.
Comment on all of that.
I think listen, pastors, I'm going to be straight up with you.
Please be very honest.
I guess you can go to seminary and get your degree and get a job, and it's called being a pastor.
Or you can go to seminary and get your degree and be called of God.
And if you're called of God, you're not going to be manipulated.
You're not going to test the breeze on social media to see if your decisions are right.
You're not going to be checking your Twitter account numbers.
You're a pastor.
Jesus made it very, very clear.
If you really stand with me, you're going to be hated.
Isn't that weird?
Jesus was the most loving human to ever grace this planet, but he's the most hated.
That's my goal, is to be the most hated and the most loving.
Why?
Because evil will hate what's good.
Evil will hate what God says.
As a pastor, I'm supposed to blow the trumpet on the wall to educate the community, the church, and beyond.
So it's not about being relevant, Charlie.
I always tell people, Christians in particular, and we're going to dive into this tonight, which is that you have to understand you're electing a government, not a king.
Living in Divine Liberty 00:11:54
And so the person that you are voting for actually is the figurehead of a movement and even a deeper philosophy.
So instead of Donald Trump versus Biden, it really should be reason versus arson of America.
And it's quite, it's unbelievably simple.
And so because you're actually electing a multi-thousand person government that is going to be staffing micro-decisions every single day.
And people say, well, I don't like his tweets.
And I say, well, that's a really bad reason to go vote for someone who is going to take a Molotov cocktail to our country.
I know this is your show, but can I ask you a question?
Of course you can.
What do you honestly think when somebody says something like that?
When they say, oh, Charlie, I can't vote for him.
I don't like his tweets.
Do you know what I think?
I think I'm talking to one of the most shallow people on the planet.
Yes and no.
I think you're probably right.
And I also think this is a problem in Christianity.
And I think you have done an amazing job of educating people against this.
And I don't know if you're a Calvinist or not, but I see this in California.
I'm like 7.92.
Are you a 7.9 Calvinist or something?
Or 4.97.
Are you all of them?
No, but I mean, I say this for a reason, though, and I, because I grew up in a lot of Calvinist circles, and there is a self-righteousness that sets in in certain Calvinist circles.
There's no doubt about that.
And so, I grew up in the Presbyterian church.
I grew up in that, and I'm no longer that.
And I'm not sure if I agree with Paul Calvin.
Exactly.
I'm kind of confused, like honestly, and I just read about it, and I think that's okay.
Because I get the big things, I think.
But I do think that the committed Calvinists, the people that literally go to Calvin College, there's a virtue signaling self-righteousness.
There's no doubt about that.
And there's an elevation to the nose that goes up.
And you see it.
And all of a sudden, it's him?
I know he's not.
Do you understand how good of a person I am?
Exactly.
Me?
Vote?
Him?
Whoa, hold on.
I'm one of the electors.
It's like they're being tainted by voting for him.
I'm elect.
He's not elect.
And they don't vocalize it, but my goodness, do they circle the wagons around it?
I have heard, I'm not going to say his name, but I have heard a very renowned pastor say in an interview, it was a podcast, where the interviewer, who's a national home-named guy, said to this pastor, What about we the people?
What about our First Amendment right?
And that pastor said, It was wrong for us to break with the crown of England.
Our rebellion against England was disobedience to God, and it never should have happened.
And that interviewer, who you know, you talked to him about an hour ago on the phone, he almost fell off his chair.
Well, I'm not Catholic because they overuse this term, but I'm going to use it.
That's heretical.
I mean, it is.
It is.
That's heresy.
It is.
To say that.
And the Jew that was doing the interview knew it.
He was, what?
Wow.
So we're living in a big mistake that we created out of rebellion.
I don't believe that.
I've read enough of the founding fathers' mail to see so much of what God was doing.
Well, and I also take Romans 13 in context.
It was before Nero's persecution of Christians in Rome.
And I also think that if we just study natural law, natural rights and natural law, which are two separate things, but very similar.
But the idea of natural rights came from natural law, and Aristotle was one of the pioneers.
But really, natural law is completely harmonic with the teachings of the Bible.
And so anything that you find evidentiary in the nature actually is completely consistent with how God commands us of nature and nature's gods.
Which was in the Declaration, right?
And so then I find, and you know, it's really interesting.
I got this long email from a guy that is incredibly smart.
He's actually probably too smart because he overthought, he's overthinking, right?
You know the type of person.
It's like, you're completely overthinking.
They become a legend in their own mind.
It's amazing.
Yeah, it's really, it's like, you are not Aquinas.
Like, let's just be very clear at all.
Like, what?
I'm not Renee Descartes.
Like, yes, that's correct.
You're not.
Sorry, I'm not either.
I don't pretend to be.
He says, well, I think that the American founding was, I think America and our founding has turned into idolatry when Christians get into nationalism.
And I say, well, this is my decision-making matrix.
The most important thing ever that you could do is commit your life to Jesus Christ.
Absolutely.
The next thing is to make sure you can do the first thing.
Yeah.
That's right.
Have more people been able to do that because of America?
Right.
Yes or no?
Yeah.
And to do that, you've got to have a nation's atmosphere free for you to preach the gospel.
And civil society spread like the gospel, which allowed the gospel to spread because of America.
Without civil society, there's no gospel.
But how about this?
See, people throw things out there like this.
Yeah.
Oh, you know what?
That's nationalism.
Well, you want to label it like that.
Well, it's patriotism.
It's patriotism on stairway.
What they're really trying to say is Djangoistic.
I find nothing wrong with loving your nation.
First of all, is it not found in the Bible that God says both in the book of Daniel and in the book of Acts that he has appointed the nations of the world and has established the inhabitants within those nations?
So, for example, from scripture, a Jew should be glad that he's a Jew and he should defend his Jewish state.
And so should a Saudi Arabian and so should a Canadian and so should a German.
Who says God has put that in your heart?
He has, in fact, the idea of nations, the Bible's replete with this because the Bible ultimately tells us in the end, before the judgment, he will gather together every kindred, tribe, tongue, and nation.
And Christ said, go make disciples of all nations.
And so it's a very good point.
And I think what we don't recognize, we don't teach our fellow Christians enough, and you do a great job of this, is the Declaration of Independence, which is our birth certificate, writing down to King George, who himself was a misrepresentation of the Church of England.
Yeah, what a great ruler, right?
Sure.
And by the way, the entire idea of the Anglican Church, I could get into that a different time, but let's just get into it.
But you had Protestant, freedom-seeking Christians who founded this country.
That's right.
My lineage goes back to 1620.
Alphonsus Kirk came to this country in 1620 as a Protestant-seeking freedom lover.
I can date my lineage all the way back to William Wallace and his clan, but that's a different conversation every time.
The point is, though, that the rebellion against tyranny is something that's literally in my blood.
And I think that, and again, some Christians disagree with this, but I actually think that God wants you to live in a state of liberty.
I really do think that.
It's very clear in scripture.
Can you talk about that?
Yeah, scripture tells Paul, Paul tells Timothy that we need to pray for all those who are in authority over us.
Listen for the reason.
Yeah, listen for the reason.
Listen as to why the reason.
We need to pray for all those who are in authority over us that we might live a quiet and peaceable life.
Doesn't that sound, doesn't that sound like taking a plunge into a refreshing pool right now with all the lunacy taking place in Portland and Seattle?
God wants us to live a quiet and peaceable life.
Wow.
Man.
That's awesome.
And so when you have a country that is founded on biblical principles that allows the gospel to spread like wildfire, hundreds of millions and billions of people coming to the gospel because of America.
That's true.
Civil society did not exist prior to America.
It didn't.
That's right.
The closest thing we had was a small couple examples of a couple hundred years of Israel where the law was the center and then they said, give us a king, it disintegrates.
Greece, which really got a lot wrong and eventually that disintegrates.
Rome, which went from a republic to an empire.
But America's example was so perfect because inspired by the Bible, executive, legislative, judicial.
Found in scripture, by the way.
Found in scripture.
Trinity is found in scripture.
Isaiah.
Very good.
Where God is the three things.
And it takes exactly where they're.
He's the lawgiver.
That's exactly right.
He's the judge.
And so you have this nation then founded by Christians.
And they say, well, Ben Franklin was a deist.
First of all, all of them recognized that there was a supernatural power.
Secondly, they all had their different sorts of blends and, let's just say, inclinations towards Christianity.
But the population was incredibly Christian.
I mean, there's no doubt.
You know, it's funny, Charlie, the people that want to use Franklin and Jefferson as being the most deist, Franklin and Jefferson have got some of, if not the greatest quotes as to why this nation should be quote Christian and why it was the Bible that they used.
You know, I don't know if people realize this, but Thomas Jefferson was tapped to study, as they all did, but Jefferson, especially, John Locke's two-volume set of government.
Yes.
And in that two-volume set, there's something like 1,400 references to Scripture.
Locke was a committed Christian, and he disagreed with Hume on this.
Hume was an atheist.
And Locke set human civilization forward a thousand years.
Absolutely.
Because he said, the Bible says very plainly, you're neither slave nor Greek nor Jew.
That means that you're made individually.
If you're made individually, Rene Descartes says, I think, therefore I am, enlightenment thinking.
The Bible's the word of God.
Why don't we have a civil government around these two things?
And that seems so ridiculously obvious, right?
Not only that, but it's in the Bible where you get private property, ownership.
Well, Abraham bought the land to be able to bury soon his son and the lineage behind it and his wife.
And think about that.
He bought him.
He's private ownership of anything.
But think about the Bible says, and look, clearly assumes ownership.
It says in the Old Testament, if your donkey goes and kicks some other person, okay, you're responsible for your donkey's actions.
Okay, and if somebody's cow walks into your land and it breaks its leg because you left a hole open in the ground, you're responsible to pay that guy back a double cow or whatever it is.
That's a great point.
Responsibility, ownership personally, it's clear through scripture.
It flies in the face.
The Bible flies in the face of this modern, bizarre putrefrication of socialism in the church.
Oh, no, no, the Bible is socialistic.
No, it's not.
Not even a stretch.
Yeah.
Well, and exactly right.
And Marx was a committed deconstructionist.
Absolutely.
And an angry, above-average, talented author at the right time who saw rapid industrialization of the European economy.
And he was actually laughed out of his circle.
He was so jealous.
Yeah, he was a jealous, envious person who didn't believe in God.
And he actually wasn't taken seriously until a power-hungering autocrat by the name of Vladimir Lenin actually applied his horrendous ideas.
And only 60 million people died in that example.
And what's really interesting, and the more I have studied and have thought about this, and I can't wait to read, I love reading and learning about this stuff, but the more I realize that God gives us these laws not because he wants to be the fun police.
You know, that's kind of how it is portrayed sometimes.
But actually, if you apply the teachings, your life is going to actually get to become quiet and peaceful.
Right.
And he says so.
Peaceable.
I'm sorry.
He said, you'll live long.
You'll live blessed.
Look, I mean, I'm not a prosperity preaching person at all, but the Bible does say that if you put him first and seek him, that God will favor your life.
That doesn't mean you're going to get rich, but it means that your life's going to have the favor of a God.
I think it's very simple, right?
I mean, I tell this to young men all the time.
Finding Peace Through Righteousness 00:08:12
And they say, well, Charlie, you know, how am I supposed to act?
I say, well, you know, protect yourself and your innocence and don't go around sleeping around with everyone.
They say, well, everyone does that.
I say, well, you're going to be miserable.
Yeah, absolutely.
And they say, well, no, that's the fun thing.
I said, no, you're going to be miserable.
Boy, that's.
And so that's the, it's like, you actually do it.
You're actually going to be more content.
Yeah.
Because God loves you and wants you to be that way.
Exactly.
And the Bible talks about that very, very thing.
It is human desire without Christ governing our thoughts.
We are constantly tempted.
We get that.
It's human desire to go be with that other person.
But that's biology.
God says morally, hey, you know what?
It's really not good for you.
Because some people think he's up there like waiting for somebody to step out.
That's exactly right.
Like he's some sort of Elizabeth Warren librarian.
He's Elizabeth Warren.
Yeah, like he's like, stop doing that.
But he's actually saying, hey, guess what?
You know what?
I made fences in this whole thing called humanity.
And you really do well when you operate within these fences.
And emotionally, you won't be broken.
If you go sleep around, I want my liberty.
Are you sure it's liberty?
Because momentarily, it's a blast, but long lived, it's total bondage.
Total imprisonment.
At Harvard, they will remove this, guarantee it.
Just you've heard it here first.
There's something at the Harvard Law School.
It says, the laws are the wise restraints that keep men free.
I'll see, it's brilliant.
Yeah, of course.
I can't remember who they're quoting.
It's at Harvard.
I mean, you know, you mentioned Harvard, which is a soulless institution.
You know, I don't, do you remember where the main entrance is?
It's kind of humble.
It's kind of humble, but it was in the day it was the main entrance.
If you walk to the main gate before you pass through the gate, there's two, this beautiful brick on either side, and there's bushes.
I know exactly.
I've been there many times.
And if you go to the right, if you crawl through the right bush, the right hand.
Yes, I have.
You go through the bush.
Listen, everybody, try this.
Go to Harvard, go to the main gate, and go to the right and separate the bush and read the plaque that's on the wall.
It says that this college, it says this college has been planted on this day, such and such a blank blank, to the furtherance of the gospel, to the equipping of ministers to this continent.
Talk about mission creeping.
It has a mission statement at Harvard and it's covered by a bush.
In the logo of Harvard.
Do you know what the logo of Harvard is?
I would say a Bible, maybe let there be light, something like this.
It's close.
It's close.
It's a Latin phrase, V-E-R-I-T-A-S.
You put that together, there, writ, OS, which means truth.
That's right.
How about this?
Who started Harvard University?
John Harvard, right?
What was his occupation?
I don't know.
A pastor!
I was going to say that, but I didn't want to swing and miss.
Ding, Every one of the Ideal League schools was founded as a separate type of seminary.
Princeton, Presbyterian.
One of the greatest thinkers America has ever produced, Jonathan Edwards.
I believe, I may be wrong, but I'm really close.
He was either the president of Yale or of Princeton.
You're right.
He had some form of leadership role in the Northeast there.
We're going to talk about this, and that's why everyone has to continue to be subscribed to the Charlie Kirk show because we're going to get into this.
I really want to build out this idea that America is built on slavery.
It's one of the most nonsensical things.
But as we're kind of winding down our time here, Jack, speak to Christians right now directly that are confused and looking for clarity.
And it's a very important word, clarity.
I think we as Christians have to be, we have to get our words right better.
And you do a great job of this.
But Christ gives you clarity because Christ is truth.
Think about how fulfilling you are.
And I use this example all the time.
You're on a road trip and you say, you got to go from your Belinda to Phoenix, no map, no markings.
You're going to get lost.
You're confused, right?
But as soon as you have a GPS, you have clarity.
You have faith in your future destination, right?
That can be applied towards renewing yourself in Christ because there's no truth in not knowing where you're going.
That's exactly right.
And I think that Christ gives you such clarity to how to act, what to do, where you're going, what happens when you die, why we're here.
That's right.
How to vote.
That's right.
All this.
Can you kind of build all that out?
Yeah, listen.
Jesus said, the scripture says, first of all, that we should shine our light, which means that we are to take truth, light synonymous with truth and revelation.
So Jesus says to the Christians, go and shine your light.
So we're to do that.
So to the Christians that are listening right now, I sarcastically lay this out before you.
Where did Jesus say not to shine your light?
Well, I don't vote.
Well, you need to repent and start voting for this reason, because you sit in a nation that was given to you by the blood, sweat, and tears, and more blood of those who have fought for your freedoms.
We have been heirs of this amazing experiment.
We just celebrated 244 years of an amazing miracle, longest nation to exist in the history of man with one, the same governing document.
It's a gift.
That's exactly right.
And America is the gift to the world.
And what we need to do is we need to protect it.
And you can see what happens when we don't protect it.
We see the lawlessness and the craziness in our streets.
We need to take what God has given us.
We all have different theaters of influence, but we all have one.
And we need to do the right thing.
It's called righteousness, by the way.
Christians are mandated to do the right thing.
That means you must vote for the pro-life individual.
You must speak up in your community for what's right.
You must... hold the PTA and the school board accountable.
You must get involved.
And stop being distracted and stop letting the cultural breeze move you like a reed blowing left or right.
You've got to find how this ends.
And if it terminates, as God says, where we all will give an account for how we've lived our lives and what we did with our life for the better, that's the GPS.
We know where we started.
Exactly.
And we know now the Christian who reads the Bible knows the clarity.
They know where they're going to land.
And listen, someday, here's what's cool.
I may fight the state on an issue that's horrific and I lose.
You know what?
I stood for what's right.
In the end, I'm going to win because I stood for the thing that honored God.
But you lost.
No, I didn't.
I lost the battle.
In the end, the Bible says I win the war.
There's a terminus that is dead serious, and that's what I'm set on.
Two thoughts.
The persecution of American Christians is real, but the celebrity pastors, they don't even understand slightly what the early Christians had to go through, what the Middle Eastern Christians have to live through.
And so here's my decision-making matrix.
I try to think of things very logically.
And this is why I break it down with a Christian.
They say, well, I don't like to vote.
I don't like any of these people.
And blah, blah, blah.
I'm a Christian.
It's most important.
I say, okay, fine.
I say, do you think God cares about what you do?
They say, oh, yeah, absolutely.
Okay, God.
Good.
Is voting something you do?
Yes.
So does God care about how or if you vote?
I never thought of it.
Exactly.
They've never thought.
So God cares for, for example, would you go marry two people?
No, I wouldn't go be polygamous.
I would never do that.
That's against the teaching.
I agree.
Good for you.
Would you go and tell and pay someone to go have an abortion?
I would never go do that.
Okay.
Those are actions, right?
And you have guardrails like, I will not go do that.
That's right.
That's an action.
God doesn't want me to do that for many reasons.
First, I'll tell you moral, also.
It'll harm you, it'll harm the world, all these sorts of things.
Then explain to me very clearly why a mechanism that exists in our country, you refuse to engage in.
That is something that you do.
They say, well, I don't do it.
That means you're still doing something.
That's right.
The not doing is an act.
That's right.
Absolutely.
Silence as an Active Choice 00:01:21
It's like saying, well, I didn't stand up.
You're right.
You sat.
That's right.
You still did something.
That's right.
And so that's how I come about the enactment.
Charlie, have you ever been to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the Holocaust Museum?
No, I've been outside of it.
I haven't been inside of it.
I've been in Jerusalem a couple times.
There's a famous statement there.
I think it's by Martin Niemiller, but I'm not sure.
It could be by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
It's one or the other.
There's a statement there, and I'm going to botch it a little bit, but I'm close.
It says, when they came for the unionist, I didn't speak up because I wasn't a unionist.
When they came for the homosexual, I didn't speak up because I wasn't a homosexual.
When they came for the Jew, I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
And then when they came for me, there was nobody who would speak up for me.
And this thing about silence and not being engaged, I'm sorry.
I know we hear our dear president talk about the silent majority.
Charlie, I hope they're out there, but if they're really out there, can they stop being silent?
Amen.
We need them to speak up.
This is to be continued.
So what's your YouTube channel?
I don't know.
Real Life with Jack Hibbs.
It's Real Life with Jack Hibbs.
Check it out.
And then you also have a podcast.
Subscribe.
All of that.
Email me questions for jackfriedematcharlikirk.com.
Jack, this has been awesome.
Love you, man.
Thanks.
Incredible.
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