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Sept. 6, 2020 - The Charlie Kirk Show
34:57
Can California Turn Red with Pastor Rob McCoy

Charlie sits down with his pastor, Rob McCoy of Godspeak Church Calvary Chapel in Thousand Oaks, California, to discuss the topic of one of the most emailed topics we get at Freedom@Charliekirk.com: Can California be saved? Can it ever...

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Pastors Confronting Tyranny 00:08:34
Thank you for listening to this Podcast 1 production.
Now available on Apple Podcasts, Podcast 1, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcast.
Hey, everybody.
Happy Sunday.
Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, exclusive conversation between Pastor Rob McCoy and I.
We ask, can California be one?
You might be really surprised by the conversation we have.
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Can California turn red?
You will love this answer in this conversation, everybody.
Buckle up.
Here we go.
We are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
And I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country.
He's done an amazing job.
We are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
I am rejoined by my pastor, Rob McCoy.
Hey, Rob.
Hey, Charlie.
Rob is the pastor at Calvary Chapel Thousand Oaks.
He has heroically kept his church open during all this nonsense.
I have said, if your church has not yet opened, find a new church.
And Rob has kept his church open.
He's under massive amounts of backlash from the county.
Give us an update.
Well, we had our hearing, which was contempt violation.
They had an emergency temporary restraining order that a judge had awarded the county.
And we papered that judge and got a new judge.
And then Judge O'Neill fined us $3,000 and then postponed our hearing to the end of September.
And we're putting together our expert witnesses for the trial.
So we are in contempt.
We're still in violation of the restraining order.
So we'll see what happens.
Our trial's coming up at the end of this month.
So you're fully open and fully open.
A lot of Christians listen to this podcast.
They say, my pastor doesn't get it.
What do they do?
Yeah.
Well, when you said open your church, the interesting thing is our church went from 400 on a good Sunday to over 2,500.
People are hungry for leadership.
And I would encourage pastors out there, open your church.
And you think, well, we're stealing congregants from other congregations.
That's not the case.
The people who are coming are people who wouldn't darken the doors of a church.
They're wondering who's going to lead them out of this draconian misery that the governor has placed on them.
And even good pastors that I really appreciate who have been trying to abide by the governor's rules, the governor just moved the goalpost.
So we went from six boxes that we had to fill in a county, and we had fulfilled five of the six.
And the six box was, you know, semantics.
We'd already really covered it.
And then the governor just does this color-coded thing and now puts us in the worst category, purple.
And even these pastors who are trying to abide by the governor standards, they're not going to be able to occupy their building until late fall, early winter.
And even if they did everything to the best of their ability, they could only have 50% occupancy of their facility if they get to the yellow, which is the fourth box.
And it's not going to happen.
The governor has no interest.
He doesn't consider the church essential.
And we have to push back.
So why are so few pastors fighting back?
So few churches reopening?
Yeah, I think they hoped for the best from the governor, but now they're starting to realize the governor has no interest in the church.
And now they're starting to awaken.
At one point, we were kind of the tip of the spear in regards to opening, but hundreds of churches are opening in California.
We had the C3 churches with Pastor Jürgen Mathesius.
Those C3 churches open.
John MacArthur's open.
Jack Hibbs has been open.
Mike McClure's up in San Jose.
He's getting beat up.
They've got $30,000 in fines that the county up there is assessing on them.
And another Baptist pastor in Santa Clara.
But pastors are opening up all around.
Even in Ventura, we've had at least three churches that I know of who've joined us in opening.
So it's starting to awaken.
But what do you say to people that are all across the country, not just California?
I get so many messages.
Charlie, you've really helped lead me to Christ and lead us to the right path, but my pastor won't open.
Yeah, and the pastors are going to realize, I would say, like you said, go find another church and vote with your feet.
Because, you know, going to church via the internet is like watching a fireplace on your computer screen.
There's no warmth.
And, you know, Hebrews 10 says, do not forsake fellowshiping with the saints.
This is critical.
And the church is essential, especially in time of pandemic.
And I want to say to the listeners, the viewers, that we've been open since May 31st.
We haven't had a single case of COVID.
If you're worried about COVID, we've got ionization machines and UV lights in our air systems, and we wash our hands.
There's no social distancing, no masks, because there's no empirical data to support that.
And they're trying to muzzle the church.
Liberty is not man's idea.
It's God's idea.
We need to lead folks and be the instrument of that and set the captives free.
So I would say to folks attending a church that is unwilling to open, find a church that is and go attend.
Why are pastors so afraid of the state?
You know, Love Hope's All Things.
I've told you this.
I don't know that they're afraid of the state.
I get this question all the time.
That's why I'm asking you.
Yeah.
I don't know that they're afraid of the state as much as they want to be peacemakers.
They don't like conflict.
And that's the nature of most pastors.
But they're starting to realize that this governor, especially in California, and I can say other states around the country, this governor has no interest in the church.
This is, in my estimation, it's diabolical and it's draconian.
He wants to shut the church down.
So, pastors, you may have, Love Hope's All Things, you may have the best of intentions and believe the most in the governor.
But I can tell you as a previously elected official, I knew this from the beginning.
The governor is not interested in your church surviving.
It's time to open up and push back.
And it's happening all across the country.
Christians are in a state of confusion right now where they say, my church won't open.
It's been six months.
They're saying, let's wait another couple months.
Some churches have gone completely virtual.
Andy Stanley did a live stream where he said the church shouldn't open.
I don't know Andy Stanley.
I can't make a comment on him as an individual, but the position he's taking, I would contend fervently.
I would be willing to debate him on that.
I think that is the wrong message to be sending to the church in America.
The absolute wrong message.
So you guys are flourishing like never before.
Absolutely.
And they say, well, you know, we want to protect the preaching of the gospel.
Well, you know, the gospel is the most important thing, but the second most important thing is protecting the government that protects the preaching of that gospel, which you continually said, Charlie.
You have been an advocate for freedom.
More importantly, liberty.
Freedom comes when you establish liberty.
The Apostle Paul said, stand fast therefore in the liberty for which Christ has set you free.
He said that in prison.
And then here we are enjoying freedom, but we have to exercise that liberty for the sake of our congregants because, again, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty.
And if the church isn't going to stand upon that, an oligarchy, whether it's fascism, communism, any ism where the few rule the many, they're going to shut the church down because that's the one entity that declares that our rights don't come from man.
They come from God.
These are inalienable rights.
And I believe we are called to confront tyranny.
And one example of this is Moses confronting Pharaoh.
Yep.
And Moses wasn't exactly the most charismatic person.
Well, he was at one point in his life in the first 40 years, but then the second 40 years, he became this tongue-twisted.
Yeah, tongue-twisted, kind of like Jim and Taxi or whatever the guy's name is.
That's why he had Aaron.
Yeah, exactly.
He had a sidekick who spoke for him.
But when he goes to Pharaoh and he says, God says, let my people go.
Pharaoh says, who is God that I should obey him?
That's how all these folks, you know, Governor Newsom, I don't know his faith background, if there is one, but I do know that he has no interest in anything being essential in regards to the church.
Well, it's a perfect story, Moses Pharaoh, I think, for what we're going through right now, because it's a contention of who's the actual authority in the story.
And Moses was saying, There's actually an authority above you.
And it was hard for Moses to get his words right and to look at him in the eye.
And that could be, that's true on the micro level.
The Left-Wing Awakening 00:16:20
It's true on the macro level.
That when you have oppression that supersedes God in a society, you must stand up against it.
Exactly.
I mean, they were contending for the three to five million Jews that were enslaved by Pharaoh.
And God said, let my people go.
Liberty.
Liberty.
And that was the whole contention.
I mean, this is the longest-running family meal in world history, which is the Passover, which is setting captives free.
And Christ came that we'd know the truth and the truth would set us free.
During Passover, which is amazing.
Well, Christ rose during Passover.
Amen.
Which is a fitting for all of it together.
So I want to talk politically.
Yeah, I love that.
You know, there's a lot of conversation right now of happening in our country, what's happening in our country.
I made a point earlier that you and I were talking privately, and I'm really excited about a couple things.
I'm worried about a lot of things too, but I like talking about the exciting things as much as the worrying and worrisome things.
I think it's actually moral to do that too.
I don't think you should be self-defeating.
I think it's actually, that's not the right way to live life.
So I think it's really exciting that we at Turning Point Action, our 501c4 political arm, we, alongside many other groups and the Trump campaign as well, are in Minnesota contesting for this state of Minnesota.
Unbelievable that that's in play.
There's been five polls that have come out that show that Donald Trump's in striking distance in Minnesota.
Democrat operatives on the ground in Minnesota say they've never seen anything like this before.
Six Democrat mayors in Minnesota have just come out and endorsed Donald Trump.
Some of them spoke at the convention.
Record riots.
They say it's Minnesota nice.
They're nice until they burn your church down.
Exactly.
And you can be Minnesota nice.
However, there's a mechanism to check tyranny, and that's called the voting booth.
Amazingly, in 1984, Ronald Reagan won the most convincing electoral landslide.
Prior to that, Richard Nixon won a pretty incredible one in 1972.
Richard Nixon lost just one state, Massachusetts.
Ronald Reagan lost just one state, Minnesota.
Minnesota, yeah.
And also Washington, D.C., and out of state.
And so Donald Trump now, in an amazing way, if you would have told me five years ago, 10 years ago, Republicans would be contesting in a presidential election for Minnesota, I'd say, what are you talking about?
So now the industrial Midwest is the Iron Belt.
Yeah, the Iron Belt is now all of a sudden trending in a way that none of us could have anticipated.
I think you have a lesson here, though.
It's really interesting.
Yeah.
That you're deriving from it.
I am.
And that is.
There's hope for California.
Tell me why.
Well, you're describing Minnesota.
And my hero, my mentor, when it was pastors being in politics, was obviously Mike Huckabee.
And Mike Huckabee ran for office as a pastor.
He runs for the Senate.
And he loses.
And he loses in a presidential election year.
And the governor, so Clinton ends up winning the presidency.
He's no longer governor.
So the lieutenant governor becomes governor and they have a special election for lieutenant governor.
Now, there hadn't been a Republican elected to lieutenant governor in Arkansas before Reconstruction.
And he runs as a sacrificial lamb because he just ran the Senate race.
And he ends up winning, and they lock him out of his office.
And he has to get court orders to occupy the office he was elected to.
And when he ran, there was a 135-seat legislature in Arkansas with a handful of Republicans, far less than what California is facing.
The entire state was Democrat.
And by the time, of course, what happens, similar to Illinois, Arkansas, the governor gets indicted and sent to prison, and Mike becomes the governor and then wins re-election.
And turns out, by the time he leaves office, the entire legislature has changed to Republican.
All the federal seats are Republican.
And we're looking at California, which has, what, 15,280,000 evangelicals.
Half have not been registered to vote.
I've gone through the data.
And half of those don't vote.
And half of the ones that are registered don't vote.
There's no listeners here.
The half of the ones that are registered don't vote.
And then 12% only vote in a non-presidential election.
And now you're watching the church being oppressed by the governor, and these churches are awakening.
And pastors who you would never consider being mindful of the political landscape are now engaging.
I mean, massively engaging.
And Hispanic pastors, I'm going to be speaking Saturday to a whole bunch of Hispanic pastors down in San Diego.
Those are typically a Democrat voting bloc, and they're moving in droves.
And so this awakening is occurring.
And with an awakening comes a revival.
And I really do believe that there's hope for California down the stretch, especially when you're watching Nancy Pelosi go in and get her hair done.
I mean, what an optic.
And you just see the duplicity of these elitists.
And you see that optic, and people just say, you know what?
I'm tired of this.
And the people, I don't know if you saw the live stream I did with the previous mayor of Nevada City, Renette Senim.
She's a secular progressive, lesbian.
And here we are on a live stream together, a right-wing evangelical fundamentalist, you know, pastor, whatever, however they label me.
And the two of us, we're getting along swimmingly.
Now, granted, our faith positions are wholly different.
And yet we're in complete agreement to the draconian measures of the governor and what he's doing to the economy of our state.
And this is an awakening left, middle, and right.
And it's exciting because liberty is that source that people are drawn to and they find that the source is Jesus.
And I think I totally agree.
And the fact that Republicans are contesting in Minnesota shows that any state can be in play at any time.
That's what it tells me.
Oh, well, look at California, what, 25, California congressional district, Mike Garcia.
But not just, you have a pyramid.
So you have Mike Garcia who wins the first time.
10 points?
10 points.
It's been held by Democrats.
Yeah, Kitty Hill's seat.
It's been held over 20 years by Democrats.
And then you look at the state Senate seat, Scott Wilk is below him.
And then below that, you had an Assembly seat that was held by Democrats.
And in the primary, two Republicans won in a jungle primary.
So regardless of the outcome of the general election, there's going to be a Republican in that seat.
And Mike Garcia is the only race we have of any sort of indicator of what's going on in this whole era.
And it's a 10 point to the Republicans.
And so I tell people to say, is California lost?
They say, well, it might be temporarily difficult right now, but how did we get Minnesota into play?
How did we do that?
And you answer that question for me.
The playbook, I mean, I come from the Midwest.
My family's from Austin, Minnesota from a couple generations ago.
I know these people.
And it's really interesting.
It's because Minnesota was the home of Garrison Keillor.
It was the home of Mondale.
It was the home of the most Democrat farmer labor union.
They called it DFL up there.
And these guys were left of left, but they were actually really pro-gun.
They were strict on immigration.
They loved God and they loved faith.
But when it came to agriculture, when it came to economics, they were very much protecting a way of life.
So they call themselves the Democrat Farmer Labor Union, a DFL.
They were part of the Democrat Party.
Then Trump comes along and actually resonates with everything they've always been saying.
And the Democrat Party completely left.
And what's really interesting is that now there's an entire part of the American population that it's going to be a little bit of a slow move, but it's happening where they realize they look around.
This is not the Democrat Party I grew up with at all.
The Democrat Party is pandering to foreign nationals, corporate CEOs, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Manhattan, and Malibu celebrities.
I don't want to associate with them.
And so Minnesota is the middle-class state in America.
It is.
If there is a state that just represents what the middle class looks like, it's Minnesota.
A lot of Swedes, a lot of Norwegians, which in a lot of ways actually believe in an egalitarian lifestyle, where they're very slow to want kind of a brand, kind of a grandiose life, right?
Even though there's plenty of wealthy people in Minnesota, it's just the, it's very much like a middle, it's a middle-road state.
It really is.
But they still have some of the greatest companies on the planet, 3M, Target, Best Buy, all came out of Minneapolis.
And so now you see an opportunity where these decent, reasonable people, I don't, I'm not represented by the foreign national, illegal immigrant, gun-grabbing, anti-church party anymore.
And what's been amazing, here's the incredible thing, and this is the learning lesson for everyone.
If it was Mitt Romney's party, we'd lose Minnesota by 12 points.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
If it was a party of socially liberal, fiscal conservatism, corporate tax cuts, they'd say, I don't want that.
But now the party of Donald Trump, we're supposed to say that Trump is the worst thing ever.
If you're contesting in Minnesota, you're doing something right.
Yeah, something's clicking.
My big concern with California, and I'm probably going to alienate a number of folks.
And this is a personal position that I am trying to navigate and understand.
But in California, you have a libertarian mindset.
And we're watching a number of movements in the state where they want to split the state.
And one in particular is New California.
There's another one where they want to break California into a number of different states.
Five states.
Five states.
And I understand the mindset because certain segments of California are highly conservative and they're underrepresented in the state legislature and they're beat up.
And it's mostly farm communities in the San Joaquin Valley.
I'm a graduate of Fresno State, and those are good people, and it's a conservative realm.
Devin Nunes and all those come from that area.
And I know why they want to do it, but it's also, in my estimation, and here is my opinion.
In my estimation, it's troublesome because you're putting a lot of effort in an election year to do conventions and rallies to start a new California when we should be walking precincts and trying to break the supermajority in the legislature.
And I know that they feel underrepresented.
I get that.
But they feel as though it's rigged and they want to abandon it.
I don't know that it's necessarily beyond accomplishing to win the legislature back.
I think that there is an awakening in California.
And if we focus our efforts and row in the same direction, we can pull this off.
But if we split our forces and try to split the state, I just don't know that that's the wisest measure.
I don't bemoan why they want to do that.
I get it.
But I think we have to, politics is done by addition and multiplication, not by division and subtraction.
So we need to be rowing in the same direction come this election year.
If you want to do the split California thing, do it after the election, but don't put all your energies and put all your finances in it right now until after November.
Do you know one of the reasons why I think California can be flipped eventually?
Tell me.
I'm listening to voted for Bernie Sanders, not for Joe Biden.
Think about it.
People that vote for Bernie Sanders, some of them are traditional left-wing socialist Bolsheviks, but some of them are just mad at the system.
Bernie Sanders is the ultimate outrage vote.
Yeah.
It means you're just upset with everything.
It's almost like the left-wing equivalent of Donald Trump.
And the fact that a lot of people vote for Bernie Sanders, that means they actually believe that trade actually should be in the benefit of the American people.
Bernie Sanders is awful on a lot of issues.
And also that they actually might be tired of a corporate tyranny that might be controlling their country.
These are things that Republicans are on the right side of, and Democrats are on the wrong side of.
And I think the Nancy Pelosi walking into the hair salon thing is so outrageous, but it's also emblematic of a party that doesn't think they have to earn the votes of the people they represent anymore.
You only do that.
So I'll give you an example.
When I, during the lockdown, someone is like, oh, do you want to go out to a restaurant?
I'm like, you know what?
I don't.
Because if I, you know, first of all, it's a lockdown.
It's not, this is during when we didn't know what we were dealing with, right?
For a couple of weeks.
I was like, also, I actually think there's a cost that if I get photographed at a restaurant or something, like I could suffer for that.
And I'm accountable to people, right?
I don't want to look like a hypocrite or anything.
Exactly.
So when I see Nancy Pelosi do that, I'm like, I'm actually being held accountable more than a member of the Speaker of the House, right?
Yeah.
That if I get, if I'm not, if I'm photographed in any sort of way walking through a restaurant or something on a mask on front page of something, right?
Nancy Pelosi doesn't even think that way.
No.
I'm queen.
It's a salon owner's fault.
Yeah, it's always set up.
Really?
It's a business owner's fault.
The old adage is: when confronted with sin, you can do one of three things: blame others, make excuses, or own it and repent.
And she's making excuses and blaming others.
It's well put.
Yeah.
Well, that's scriptural.
I also think, too, that in California, there is a tyrannical minority that shames you.
And when you see people come into the church, we used to be a church of 400, now we're over 2,500.
When you see people.
You're going to grow from there.
Oh, well, the building's limited and we have fire codes.
But when you see people coming in, they're just so happy to not be judged or shamed.
And to remove a mask they knew a long time ago was a waste of time.
But they can't go into a store without being shamed or ridiculed.
And it's once we can break from that, I have a feeling Californians are going to realize this.
I'll give you a perfect example.
You saw the CDC come out, 6% of all COVID-attributed deaths, 6% were from COVID.
The other 94% were with COVID.
It's the same in Ventura County.
A little over 100 deaths attributed to COVID, tragic as they are, but only two.
And I don't know the update now, but I know that only two were from COVID.
The rest, the over 100, were all with COVID.
We had an overdose guy.
He died of an overdose, but when he died, he had COVID death.
Somebody in a car accident collapsed lung, dies.
Oh, tested COVID, COVID death, because you get money for that.
And everyone's saying this is the biggest scam.
And everyone who's been opened isn't having issues.
And even if they've contracted COVID and they're younger, they didn't even know they had it.
85% of the people don't even know they've had it.
And yet they're doubling down.
The governor's doubling down.
And people are like, look, we've played your game.
We're done now.
And they're at a tipping point in California.
This could be huge.
But then the thing we have is vote by mail.
The Democrats shellacked us in 2018 with ballot harvesting.
Didn't your wife get multiple ballots?
Somebody?
Yep.
My wife got multiple ballots.
Walk us through that.
There's a lot of people listening from across the country.
Yeah.
So your wife got multiple ballots?
Yeah.
So she registered to vote.
We moved.
She sent in a change of address and we got two ballots.
And you're thinking, well, wait a minute.
I mean, that could be a Claire Claire, but that's two ballots.
Now, granted, she's a Republican.
At the time, no one knew it was a Republican ballot, but she got sent two ballots.
We only filled out one, might I add.
And now you're looking at everyone's going to get a ballot.
Everyone's going to mail it in.
And they're saying, well, Trump will win the day of the election.
But then just like it happened in California.
Yeah, with young Kim.
Here, she's elected to the Congress.
She goes for freshman orientation.
And then all of a sudden, the vote by mail ballots start rolling in.
She loses by a small margin.
She has to come back.
And then the Democrat goes.
And that's an Orange County seat.
Well, I think Californians have awakened and said, you know what?
I don't think we're going to do it this time.
We have to be vigilant.
Churches have to awaken.
It's not illegal.
Run the voter registration, see who in your congregation is registered.
Make sure that those ballots are taken to a secure setting, the clerk.
I wouldn't even put them in the mail because on our ballots, you can tell if it's a Republican or Democrat.
They'll throw them away.
Make sure that those are collected and put in a secure system.
So, do you think vote by mail is one of the impediments from taking California back?
I think it's dangerous right now, but I think we can overcome it if we're vigilant.
And you know me, I'm optimistic.
And otherwise, I would have moved out of California because more people have left the state of California than came here during the Dust Bowl.
But I'm staying because as California goes, so goes the nation.
I do believe that there can be a transformation.
And I'm watching people who are left of center move into the category of conservative principles.
Yeah, I think that there's something special that could happen.
Yeah.
I'm optimistic.
I know you are.
Hidden Votes in Wisconsin 00:02:28
So, how do you view this race right now, the election in general, Trump versus Biden?
What are you seeing?
What are you hearing?
Well, you have a pastor network all across the country.
What are you seeing?
I haven't heard one pastor declare, I'm so thrilled about Joe Biden.
I've heard others say of President Trump, I may not like the way he operates in some capacity, but he's done a remarkable work, and I am sympathetic to him.
I haven't heard anyone say, I hate the man.
And then in California, I don't see Biden signs, but I see Trump signs.
So you're in California.
Did you see Hillary signs back in 2016?
A handful, a couple of bumper stickers.
So you saw more Hillary paraphernalia than Biden?
Oh, yeah, I saw more Hillary paraphernalia than I see Biden for sure.
You saw more Obama paraphernalia.
Obama wallpapered the state.
Really?
Yeah.
And, but isn't Harris the vice president?
Yeah, nobody likes her.
Sebuaka, so you're trying to tell me that you have a California senator who's on the ballot and you don't have a grassroots display of support?
I haven't seen anything.
Do you think there's something to that?
I do.
I pray that it really is that there is this underlying hidden vote that people just don't want to say that they're for Trump because you're going to get your car keyed.
You're going to get yelled at.
I mean, there's a minority that will shame you and ridicule you, and yet some people are like, I don't care.
And you're starting to see this brazen support that they're no longer afraid and they're coming out of the shadows.
And to put up a Trump sign early on, it was detrimental to any material possession you had.
It was going to be damaged.
And now people are, hey, I'm in.
What are you going to do about it?
And you're seeing, you go through the Oxnard Harbor.
That's plus 21 Democrat in Oxnard in Ventura County.
There's Trump signs everywhere.
And no Biden signs.
No Biden signs.
Wow.
I don't know what that's going to tell me.
But when I was in Wisconsin in 2016, I came back to the church and I said, Trump's going to win this.
People are like, ah, I'm on record.
I said it on a Sunday morning because I saw Wisconsin, boarded up businesses and Trump signs everywhere.
And I said, he's going to win Wisconsin.
The last poll that was done in Wisconsin had Hillary Clinton up eight.
They didn't even bother to visit or anything.
Music Connecting Hearts 00:06:48
Yeah.
Trump wins Wisconsin.
And they broadcast out of Minnesota into Wisconsin.
It was brilliant.
I just, that was great.
Rob, it's great spending time with you.
You too, Charlie.
I've got your back.
You bless me.
And I know the folks at Godspeak are so grateful for what you're doing.
And people have been praying for you and Turning Point.
And Charlie, this is exciting because I was talking to a group of pastors that comment when they were talking about, you said he's autodidactic.
Every time I see him, he's got his nose into some thick book, some philosophy book, and you process it, and then you make it accessible for an entire generation of young people that aren't getting in it in school.
And the work you're doing is instrumental.
So grateful for you.
Keep it up.
God bless you.
Yeah.
Appreciate that.
You rock.
Thanks.
So there's one part I actually wanted to touch on we could put in, the music thing.
So, Rob, you guys have fought against masks for singing in church.
Is that right?
Yeah, you can't fellowship and sing with masks on, and you can't fellowship with social distancing.
And neither of them have empirical data, and we're not going to allow that to occur.
And we haven't had an outbreak.
But, you know, Charlie, I'm intrigued because, as I said earlier, you always have your nose in a book, and you're processing deep theological thoughts.
And you had opened up, and I want you to elaborate, if you would, on Augustine.
Yeah, St. Augustine.
Yeah, in regards to worship, talk to me about that because that was fascinating.
Yeah, it was really interesting.
I was reading Augustine, St. Augustine, who's one of the most incredibly important Christian thinkers who theorized on music.
And his whole theory, which I think is completely correct, is that music is something that is spiritual in nature.
It is not physical in nature.
And you actually look at the Bible, the largest book of the Bible is Psalms, which is praising to the Lord.
All songs.
The last book of Psalms is praise the Lord with trumpets and with drums and actual instruments.
And the Darwinists and the secularists, if you actually press them, they can't actually explain what music is.
It's very interesting.
It's one of the few things they can't explain.
There's no evolutionary argument for music.
Now, some people will wrongly say, well, birds, they sing.
Well, they sing, but they don't make music, right?
And so if humans actually did have an evolutionary connection with birds, which is questionable at very, very best, then why isn't it that humans use singing as mating, right?
So that doesn't make any sense.
So the musical components, the spiritual aspect is very interesting.
And so this is actually a kind of, you can actually tell a lot about a culture, about the music that you embrace.
And so that's actually why we have such awful music today, is because there's an atonal nature to our music.
When you saw the greatest resurgence of human enlightenment and kind of that breakthrough of Western society, you had the greatest composers ever break out, Bach and Mozart.
And so as you kind of have a pursuit towards truth, by definition, you're going to have music that has tonality and rhythm.
That's exactly what Augustine said.
He said, certain music makes you feel a certain way because it actually harmonizes with your soul and your spirit.
And I actually would go as far to say, and there's a great book, this is the book that actually built your world by a guy named Vishal, an incredible last name, Pastor Ken Graves gave to me actually.
It's an incredible book where he actually argued back 10 years ago, 2010, he said, Kurt Cobain has more influence on the musical and philosophical and spiritual direction of a country.
And he said, people are more likely not to listen to Kurt Cobain than to joy to the world.
I think it's really interesting.
Kurt Cobain from Nirvana, he actually was the truest nihilist.
He committed suicide.
Nihilism in its purest form is actually that, unlike some of the other nihilistic thinkers that justified their way out of self-sacrifice.
So I think that your fight against masks is not insignificant, actually.
I think it's really important because singing to the Lord and actually knowing what music is and its rep, it's not just an activity that blows off some steam.
There's a connection to it.
There's something more than just saying the words.
And the Bible tells us that.
You commented that if birds sing for the sake of mating, well, mankind can use music towards that.
I mean, you know, just bumping music and all it is is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire, right?
But worship music at its highest level is this pursuit of excellence where the soul connects with God.
And that is critical.
So when you bring that up, Charlie, that's what floors me about the gift God's given you.
You are taking a conceptual thought, applying it scripturally, and understanding this nature that God's given man.
And it really is a desire for us to achieve excellence.
And it's a great insight and a great gift God's given you.
I'm blessed about it.
The last note on this, though, which is interesting, is that the great dictators always banned music first.
Yeah.
And that's not an insignificant conclusion.
Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, they go after the musicians.
They go after public assembly of music.
Because when you have music, people actually believe and they have a connection greater than the higher power.
And music is so accessible today.
We have it on our phone, we have it on our radio.
Music used to be something that people would travel half a year to go here.
Hear one concert in Vienna.
People would come from the countryside just to hear the sound of a violin or the sound of a piano.
It used to be something that was so rare.
And we take it for granted now.
It used to be something that people would built an entire civilization around.
I mean, Vienna was literally the home of Mozart.
So I think that it's interesting that now they're trying to get rid of music in our pews.
Literally, do not sing.
Yep.
I don't think that's insignificant.
Last thought on that.
You know, John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace, was a slave trader.
And so if you look at Library of Congress, it says words by John Newton, Melody Unknown.
And the melody is all minor keys on the piano.
And I've heard it said that the melody to Amazing Grace is a West African sorrow chant.
So as John Newton was on top of the deck of the ship hearing the groanings and the sorrow chant of these slaves, he would live with these visions in his mind and was tormented by what he'd done.
And when he gives his heart to the Lord and spends the rest of his life, especially moving William Wilberforce to end slavery in the British Empire 35 years before America, this becomes America's anthem, spiritual anthem, Amazing Grace.
And it combines these cultural realms to touch the heart of every human soul because it combines freedom, it combines slavery, it combines redemption and understanding.
I mean, what a profound, and that's the beauty of music.
So kudos.
You nailed it.
Thank you.
Well, music can explain that what words can never.
And it's just something that we kind of put aside.
Thanks, Charlie.
You bet.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
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