Fighting for Truth in an Era of Counterfeit Unity with Pastor Jack Hibbs
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Hey everybody, happy Sunday.
I am pleased to share with you an exclusive conversation with my friend, Pastor Jack Kibbs.
You guys are going to love it.
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I know you will enjoy this conversation.
Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Jack Kibbs is here, everybody.
Buckle up.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
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, you guys, welcome to a special edition of Real Life.
And the Charlie Kirk Show.
What's up, everybody?
It's awesome.
Listen, we are colliding today.
It is not rehearsed.
It is not planned.
We have no plots.
Unscripted.
It's unscripted, which is always dangerous when we get together.
But we believe that the Lord will lead us.
Charlie, before we get going right now, something dear to me: it's 2 Timothy chapter 2.
You, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Jesus Christ.
And he goes on to say, You, therefore, I love that, that stress must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
No one engaged in warfare entangles himself in the affairs of this life, that he may please him, speaking of Christ who enlisted him.
That is you, Charlie, as a soldier.
And I want to thank you for standing for what's right, standing for what's good.
We love you.
The nation loves you.
That's it.
And yeah, well, I mean it with all my heart.
And the context of that verse is Paul, one of the last things Paul ever wrote before standing trial and eventually being crucified, literally killed, to young Timothy, who was really kind of trying to find his way.
Paul is going to write in chapter four that he has lived his life looking for the coming of the Lord Jesus.
It's the first time in Paul's authorship where he surrenders that blessed hope joy and expectancy when he says that I know that what is laid up for me is a crown of righteousness that the Lord our God will give to not only me, but to all those who have loved his appearing.
Paul was able to do so much for the kingdom of God because he believed that every day could be the day that he met Christ.
And there's a joyous, beautiful sense of urgency.
Amen.
And we're living that time right now.
I think so.
And look, people interrupt me all the time.
On, you know, I'm just traveling or they email me.
They say, Charlie, I'm so depressed.
I'm so down right now.
I say, look, this is the time to be more joyful than ever before.
This is the moment we're built for.
I mean, do you want to be so true?
Do you want to be just when the church is the most popular thing and you're building big buildings and all these sorts of things?
No, this is the moment of persecution that we are promised, trained for, that will test our faith.
Listen, it's easy to be a Christian when things are cush.
It's easy when everything's happening.
But we, listen, we know something that the year that passed, 2020, what did we see?
We saw the church being purified.
We saw the pulpits being purified.
We saw people's faith being tested.
And now we come out of the year with, I think, a refined church.
Now we enter into the new year.
And I do believe that we're in phase two, if I can put it that way, of the church's refining.
James chapter one.
James chapter one is the perfect verse.
There's so much said in that James chapter one.
First, it says, ask for wisdom and God will give it generously.
James 1:5.
It says very clearly that you should be thankful for your persecution.
I'm paraphrasing.
But the essence is that you will be persecuted and it will strengthen your faith.
And that there's also a promise that after the persecution, you're going to be stronger and more fulfilled and closer to God because who doesn't want to get closer to God?
Isn't that the hole in our heart that we all have?
We pray, Lord, draw me closer.
Lord, I want to know you more.
And the Lord goes, That's what trials are for.
Exactly.
Temptation.
Listen, friends, temptation comes from Satan, the world, and our flesh.
That's also in James 1, that God will never tempt you.
Exactly.
God cannot tempt us with sin.
He doesn't do that.
That's a super important point.
What's awesome about that, again, the world, Satan, our flesh, tempts us.
The Lord will try us, try us so that our faith comes forth as gold.
And we're entering into that time.
And that's okay.
That's completely fine.
Amen.
So, Charlie, with all that's going on, and I'm just breathing a big sigh of relief.
Even though, honestly, the results of the election didn't go the way that I would like, Jack.
Or that you would want.
Here's the amazing thing: as believers, and a lot of people don't get this, Charlie.
Man, within hours, seriously, within 24, 36 hours, I had 11 or 12 interviews.
You name them, they came calling.
But they all had this question.
They all had this same question.
It's like they conspired together.
Colluded.
Colluded together.
And they asked, What is evangelical Christianity in America going to do now without Donald Trump?
And I said, What?
Come on.
You got to ask a better question than that.
No, no, no, we mean it.
Well, first of all, we're going to keep doing what we've always done for 2,000 years.
You've got to remember, our faith and following Jesus defeated the Roman Empire.
Nero was just a blip on the radar, and here we are still.
Our faith was never in a man.
I went to tell that newspaper that I said that our delight was in his policies, which honored the God of the Bible.
It wasn't the man, it was the positions that were God honoring.
That kind of position, Charlie, is going to generate what Paul says here is a warfare, is a spiritual, emotional, and sometimes, God forbid, it's sad, but even in some areas, people would take that violently, which is never the Christian.
And I denounced it as it was happening.
So did you.
Absolutely.
And violence is not the way to do this.
And I will add to what you're saying here.
This is going to be the greatest either blessing or it will be either the greatest stumbling block for the American church.
And here's why.
That's right.
The American church has been so incredibly blessed by the Lord financially, politically.
It's the dominant religion, right?
So what does that mean?
Got a lot to lose.
You got a lot of endowments.
You've got a lot of tithes.
You got a lot to lose.
And that's why you're a hero, Jack, because you say, I give it all to the Lord.
It's all the blessings of Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills.
I'm going to keep on stepping out.
I'm going to keep on doing this.
Where some of these other pastors, if you really get down to it, they say, boy, Charlie, you really speak out quite a lot.
I'm like, well, why don't you?
Well, you understand, I have to.
I have a bank note I have to fulfill.
I just signed on to this whole thing here.
And that's going to be a trying moment.
Are you going to stand up for truth?
Amen.
In this moment, I mean, let's give a great example right now.
Right now, as we're doing this podcast, Calvary Chapel, San Jose.
I spoke there in October.
Mike McClure.
Mike McClure is facing $1.5 million fines, possibly a judge-ordered bank confiscation against his assets of his church and potentially prison time for just opening up his church.
That's right.
There are 350 Calvary Chapels south of Anuis.
Where are they all standing up, mobilizing their congregations to go stand with Mike McClure?
You are.
Rob McCoy is.
James Cadiz is.
John Randall is Calvary Chapel Juan Capistrano.
Few and far in between.
When a brother in just the Calvary circuit.
And yet, you know what those other San Jose churches are doing?
They're saying, huh, what a fool.
What a fool.
Mike obeyed Jesus' command.
And he still is.
And he still is.
And that command is, behold, I've set before you an open door, Jesus said, that no man can shut.
Think about this.
Again, phase one, 2020, the church is being tested.
And we all, when we heard about COVID, nobody knew what it was.
That's right.
In fact, in many ways, China staged photos of Chinese laying in the streets of dead people.
Nobody died of COVID like that in mass in the streets.
It's a total stunt.
But we fell for the clip.
We fell for the 15-second image.
We didn't know what we were getting our hands into, our bodies into.
And then as time went on, and you've not only copied, or not copied, but recorded this well, but you spoke out very clearly about this, that something was up.
And then how we handle it.
There's one way that a government handles it.
It's one way a family handles it.
But we already had the roadmap as to how the church was to handle it.
And sadly, the injunction of Jesus and of scripture to not forsake the assembling together unless you could get sick.
Do not forsake the assembling together unless there's threats going out against you.
I think that's where we're heading now.
What happened was the COVID experience went boo to the Christian community and it almost folded.
And now the next wave is going to be in France.
In fact, Charlie, let's get out ahead of it.
I hope I'm wrong about this, but where we're at right now in this political environment, the church is going to be the target.
Of course.
And the church is going to be the tip of the spear for attack.
If we couldn't stand against a virus that we couldn't see, what are we going to do when we see a government that visibly will be coming against us?
It depends on the will of the pastor that's running the church and also whether or not that congregation is willing to actually do what that word of God says.
Is it just kind of an allegorical document?
Is it kind of like a life improvement book?
Or is it actually something you believe is the word of God?
That's actually an important thing.
That's actually the bottom line.
That's actually what we're at here right now.
Is it some form of, like, do you believe like the God of Oprah, where it's like some sort of amphibious, like Eastern meditative God?
Or do you believe in the God of the Bible?
The God of the Bible that sent his son to go save you?
This is actually the question that we're grappling with.
This is really what it's about.
And a lot of modern day Christianity actually believes in the God of Oprah, which is like this unspecified kind of like this not monotheist, like it's like this kind of Eastern spiritual God.
And then if you kind of meditate to get closer to it, and really Christianity is not that different than any other religion, that has seeped into massive parts of the American church.
That is a pantheism that is well entrenched within Christianity.
And I say the God of Oprah because she's like championing this.
No, really, truly.
But all of this stuff about what are you going to do if you've sat in a church all your life and you were told that God loves you, he does, but nothing bad is going to happen to you because his thoughts toward you are good.
Well, that's true, but you're never going to get sick and you're never going to go broke.
The health, wealth, prosperity, nonsense.
Exactly.
There's been this God with several heads that have been crafted by pulpits today, or I should say for generations now, where I believe Jesus could come back at any moment.
And you can almost smell the reality of that.
Having said that, I don't know when he's coming back, but I've got to live like Paul, like he's coming back today.
So I want to hurry up and serve him.
But at the same time, I want to go about doing good.
Amen.
And that's an important thing because God gives us the law to point to Jesus.
We don't forsake the law.
That's right.
So we honor the teachings.
Right.
First of all, one of the teachings in the Old Testament is also how to handle epidemiological outbreaks, which is true.
Actually, quarantine.
You quarantine the sickness.
So, this is in like Leviticus, I think.
It's true, and you love on them.
Yes, that's right.
And so, not quarantine the healthy for the expense of the sick and not shut down entire civilizations out of fear.
And, you know, Jack, you and I have talked about this before.
What is the number one statement that is all throughout the Old Testament?
Do not be afraid.
Do not be afraid.
Why?
Now, why would God have to keep on repeating it?
Because we're prone to fear.
That's right.
Despite every time God reveals Himself, you think that at some point God was like, Wait a sec, I brought you out of Egypt, delivered you from Pharaoh, parted the Red Sea, minor details, delivered you with manna and with as much coils as you can imagine.
And still, fear, fear.
God will never use fear.
This is an important thing.
Fear is a tool of the enemy.
Always whispering in your ear.
Perfect love, the Bible says, cast out all fear.
And that doesn't mean you have to be foolish.
This is the other thing.
Some people say, oh, I'm never afraid.
I'm going to jump off the top of the building.
No, that is not full of the wisdom of James 1:5.
Exactly.
But that is the fear of the retribution of the earthly cost.
That's not something that I'm going to dominate my life.
Dominate my spirit.
So listen, as a pastor, and speaking to predominantly Christians right now, when the Bible tells us that in the last days, perilous times will come, as soon as the Bible announces that, 90% of my angst and my fear is evaporated because my Bible tells me in advance that these days are coming.
Number two, there's going to be the rise of false doctrines and false teachings.
1 Peter.
Yes, and what's interesting about that is we've always thought in our Western mind, and I get it, that it's cults and false teachings about religion and stuff.
Yes, it is.
But you know what we can also, I think, expand on is false teaching can also be, now I'm realizing that when somebody comes and says to the world, to you and I, this is what's going on, this is what you must do, and that what you must do is stay indoors, don't talk to anybody, cover your face, and detach from the culture, and they pound fear into you.
That's right.
Everything that you know down deep inside is something that is going against what God's calling you to do.
I'm not saying don't wash your hands, and I'm not saying that.
No, that's actually Old Testament.
That's Old Testament.
I'm just talking about, if you follow me, wash your hands.
That's what you should wash your hands.
Wash your hands.
But listen, if you should wear a mask, then you should wear a mask.
But you should also know the truth about masks.
But that's neither here nor there.
The fact is that when somebody, the Bible commands us to pray for those who are sick, except COVID people.
Well, no, I mean, you should absolutely pray for those sick.
We were supposed to.
I say we were.
We still can.
Pray for COVID sick people.
We're supposed to pray for everyone.
And every death is a tragedy.
It absolutely is.
Absolutely.
And also, the sacrificing of people's liberty is a tragedy, too.
And so what we've done is we've had two tragedies.
Charlie, that's a true statement.
It's always a true.
That is a true statement.
Here's the tragic thing.
People were willingly happy to give up their liberty.
This is a good conversation.
Why?
Which tells me that they never really knew or exercised their liberties much at all, so it was easy for them to surrender them.
And that's a perfect way to put it.
And I would add on to that.
You have to understand where does liberty come from?
Without a liberty giver, then liberty won't be really respected.
Absolutely.
And so an example of this is if you walked into your home every day at 5 p.m. and everything was taken care of for you.
Food, allowance money, and you don't even acknowledge where it comes from.
You just grow accustomed to that, right?
You don't start to acknowledge that there's a giver there.
However, really strong-built families where the father is working till 9 p.m. every night just to be able to bring enough food, you say, that's the guy that's bringing home what gives us the capacity to keep going.
Exactly.
And that's just a nuclear family way of describing it.
But God is the one that grants us liberty.
It's not man's idea.
It's God's idea.
But you know what the other thing about liberty?
It's actually really scary and dangerous.
Legitimately is.
It's true.
In the wrong hands and in the wrong heart.
But liberty requires responsibility.
It requires wisdom.
You've got to manage it.
It requires management.
It has costs.
It also requires you to be alert, which the Bible tells us to be.
Very responsible.
But if you're more of a lazy posture, if you're someone that wants to be taken care of, if you're someone that wants to be sedentary, by the way, all these things are anti-biblical, then liberty is not really for you.
Liberty requires you to be alert.
It requires you to be informed.
It requires you to be self-aware.
Like, what am I putting in my body?
Is this right?
Should I really be staying up to 2 a.m. putting, you know, drinking this sublime or not?
Because liberty allows you to do it, but then there's a cost.
You see, we have completely abandoned the idea of liberty the last 11 months in our country.
And now where does this idea, what actually allows us to live freely?
This is an idea that the founding fathers grappled with.
Well, if you go to Harvard Law School, right there on the stairwell, it says, the law are the wise constraints that keep men free.
What?
Hold on a second.
Let's dissect that.
So true.
The law is a restraint, shackles, that keeps me free.
Break of shackles.
What?
That is the most inherently contradictory yet wise thing, which is the opposite of everything that you would hear in secular culture.
Check this out.
You just made me think of something which I hope becomes a good illustration.
If not, it's a bad one.
With what you just said, with the law as guardrails, listen, I drove in Los Angeles a little while ago 150 miles an hour.
Wow.
Yeah, wow, right?
Let me expound.
I drove a Porsche in Los Angeles 150 miles an hour.
You can handle it.
More specifically, I drove a Porsche on a racetrack in Los Angeles that's owned by Porsche because that's what the course is designed to do.
And you can drive Porsches around.
And I got that as a birthday gift.
And I got up to 150 miles an hour on this race course, but it had guardrails.
Are you with me?
Yes.
All of a sudden, what seemed like being lawless and out of control, when I gave context, it justified the speed.
Liberty can take you from zero to 150 miles an hour, but without guardrails, it's a catastrophe.
So where do we get those guardrails?
And this is how God blesses his followers and his children in the midst of trial.
So we know trials are coming.
So what are we supposed to do?
Let's get back to what God told us.
You tell the truth.
You stay honored.
You're in a relationship of which you are faithful to one person, right?
You honor your neighbor.
The laws that God gave us, we don't forsake them, we don't throw them out.
In fact, they will keep us.
They're the guardrails that keep us free in the midst of all these trials.
Exactly right.
I love it.
I love it.
So today, what we're watching today in our world, in our nation, forget the world, it's the nation.
We have a lawless, a very, very serious lawlessness problem.
The Bible, by the way, Jesus warns about this.
You said something earlier that's very, very powerful.
I wonder if everybody heard that.
Is if you're in a nation that is for liberty, and the founding fathers saw the First Amendment being the First Amendment because it's natural law.
John Locke articulated it, social contracts.
It's from God.
That's in man.
If that is true, and it is, and this nation stands for liberty, you said something that maybe you're in the wrong country, basically.
Think about that.
If you're here, you should love liberty.
If you're here and you don't love liberty, then this is not the right country for you.
Isn't that a radical statement if you think about it?
Totally.
But I want all the perks that this place brings me.
Okay, if you want the perks, those guardrails brought you those perks.
Amen.
And you only want the perks, not the guardrails.
Well, and you cannot have liberty without a vibrant church.
It does not work.
It's that simple.
Alexa de Tocqueville made that pretty clear.
And so, as soon as the church started to become about wealth, health, you know, increasing your bank account and making you feel nice about yourself.
And it made, and it made as its 11th commandment or its first mission: we've got to be relevant.
We've got to do everything we can to be relevant.
Relevant, relevant.
Let's have a conference.
Let's have a meeting.
And what does relevant look like?
We've got to have tennis shoes and skinny jeans, and we've got to have this and that, and we've got to be relevant.
When all the while, if we would have just stopped and slowed down to realize the Holy Spirit is always relevant, we need to follow Him and He's going to lead us through the Word, which is eternally relevant.
That's exactly equally then as it does now.
And so, the other issue with that and where the Christian church is now going to be tried, and guess what, Jack?
You're going to pass the trial because you're already in the midst of it.
It's not as if you're waiting for it to start, but there's some pastors 20 miles from here, 30 miles from here, they think that they're going to be spared.
And maybe they will in this moment, because the current power structure does not want to obliterate the American church.
That is not right.
This is important.
They want to get rid of the churches they don't like.
They want to get rid of the disagreeable churches.
I've read about this.
And they want obedient churches because they know if they get rid of all the churches, that will spark an uprising.
But if they have a church that does what it's told to do, if they have a church that will give the correct sermons, that will never mention life, that will never come out and talk about the biblical case for against illegal immigration, but instead will tow the party line and that will host the correct ceremonies, never get political, then that church won't get audited and that church won't be investigated.
This is exactly what happened in Romania.
This is what happened in Poland.
This is what happened in Germany.
This is what happened in Russia, where they never abolished churches.
You're exactly correct, Charlie.
They abolished some churches.
They approved some churches to stay in operation.
And it just so happens that those churches that operated even received income or support.
Stalin did not get rid of all the churches.
Neither did Hitler.
And Stalin especially had the Russian Orthodox Church.
However, you would know as you're giving, you know, in the Orthodox Church, I don't know if they call it a sermon or a homily or whatever, you would know that there might be a member of Stalin's Praetorian Guard, if you will.
Right.
That if you say one thing, it's getting reported back, and your family will disappear.
They were censors.
And never would they talk about the liberation of the individual.
Never would they talk about Christ setting you free.
No.
Instead, it would be about structure and order.
Unity.
A unity.
Would community.
Right.
So unity is a really interesting word.
We've been hearing about that a lot, right?
Well, the left believes in a Soviet definition of unity.
You know what that definition is?
The absence of opposition.
So if you get rid of everyone that disagrees with you, of course you're going to be united.
There's no one that disagrees with you.
Exactly.
That's why liberty must always precede unity.
If you're unified around the idea of liberty, that's great.
If you're unified around the idea of the abolition of liberty, time out.
That is not the unity I want.
Okay, so I got a phone call the other day, and the phone call was, hey, for 2021, are you guys willing to host the local ecumenical prayer meeting?
So what is that?
I guess it's multi-faith.
I haven't been to it yet.
I asked the guy, what is that?
Well, we gather together, all of us from these different faiths, and we pray together.
And I asked some more questions about it, and my answer was, no, it's not going to work.
Why?
Because in the prayer meeting, we were to be united.
United, he said, united, even though we have differences.
Wait a minute, my Bible tells me if I don't pray to the Father in the name of Jesus, it's not a prayer.
It cannot be heard.
So check this out.
Unity has been so elevated that the truth has been sacrificed for the elevation of unity, when that's impossible.
Because Amos 3.3 says, how can two walk together unless they're in agreement?
Two walking together means they're on the same path, in the same direction.
That's why we have Bible doctrine and that's why truth should never be sacrificed on the altar of unity.
That's exactly right, and so I think unity is idealistic, I think it is admirable.
But the question is also, what are you unifying around exactly?
Are you unifying around some sort of bizarre secular, humanist agenda?
Yeah people yeah, exactly.
I'm saying Biden said unity 50 times.
That's why we're bringing it up.
Well exactly yeah now unity unity, now.
That should be the slogan, unity obey, now obey.
What's interesting is there are going to be some people who are watching right now and they know enough of the Bible to say, how dare you two when the Bible says how blessed and beautiful it is that the brethren together that would dwell together in unity yes, that the brethren would dwell together in unity.
That presupposes doctrine, that the doctrine of God's word has united us.
We need to remember Charles Spurgeon was right when he said, regarding division in the church, there are things such things as blessed subtractions.
Not everything under the church roof is of the church, and we're coming into a year where the church, I think, is going to be tested yeah, I mean in more ways than one and the churches that stay disciplined to the word of god and are willing to stand courageously and boldly will be blessed beyond measure.
So look Charlie, I know we've got producers and stuff going crazy behind us.
We're way, way out of time.
Well hey listen, I hope you enjoyed this episode of real life with Charlie Kirk and if you'd like to find out more, you can go to Jackkibbs.com.
You could also go to Turning Point, USA.
If you just google Charlie Kirk's name, everything's gonna light up.
But thanks for watching and remember this, Jesus Christ is coming back.
He loves you.
He died on the cross for your sins and mine and he rose again from the dead.
Put in your faith in him will Never fail you.
Christ is real and he is alive and he loves you.
And he wants you in heaven with him.
Listen, until next time, God bless you guys.
We'll see you right back here at real life.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, go to tpusa.com.
Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
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God bless you guys.
Have a great Sunday.
Make sure you tune in tomorrow on the podcast feed.