God's Hand at Work with Jurgen Matthesius and Rob McCoy
Charlie sits down for an important conversation with Pastors Rob McCoy and Jurgen Matthesius, venturing into critical areas of theology and political philosophy that the church too often avoids discussing outside of their own denomination. Dominionism vs Reconstructionism, post-millennial vs. pre-millennial, charismatic continuationism vs. cessationism -- if you've had questions about these concepts or just wonder what they mean and why they're important to restoring liberty and true unity, this is an absolutely can't miss episode. Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Hey, everybody.
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Hey, everybody.
Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
And if you're watching this, it also might be on Godspeak YouTube channel.
Boom.
Is that right?
That's right.
Double posting, as always.
We are here at an undisclosed location fighting for freedom with my two good friends, both of them pastors with courage, my pastor Rob McCoy and my good friend, Jürgen Matusius.
Yeah.
Did I say that right?
Yeah, Matessius Matisius.
Okay, I was within the margin of error.
Massively in the margin of error.
Get as close as you can to the margin of God.
Okay.
Done and done.
There you go.
Matessius.
I'm going to just take notes while you guys teach.
So, Rob, what's on your heart?
Well, I think as we're navigating these waters, and I had brought this up to Jürgen, that the moniker we get participating in politics is we're labeled by the press as Dominionists.
Now, I don't know, you know, there's hard dominionists, soft dominionists, and anywhere where you have somebody participating in politics, they label you that.
So, just a lot of our listeners don't have the gospel is let alone dominionism.
I understand.
So, dominionism is this idea that Christians are to take dominion of the earth.
It's out of Genesis 1:28.
And we're to have dominion over all creatures.
So, the two schools of thought in Christendom is that we speak the word, similar to your sermon last night.
You speak the word and you obtain dominion over it.
And here at the table, Jürgen would be a hard Dominionist.
I would be labeled a soft dominionist.
I believe Christians should be involved in politics.
I'm a medium to be aware.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I would probably.
Yeah.
I'm kidding.
It's a child.
You're right.
I got you.
Well, you're in the middle.
We knew that.
I don't know what to do now.
But the idea is, I do believe Christians should be in politics and this idea of speaking it into existence.
There's differences in Christendom in relation to that.
So that's a fun one.
But the one thing that the two of us, even though we're different in our theology, the one thing that we have in common is realization that however you look at it, we need to be involved.
Yeah.
Would you agree with that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's so funny because I got saved on a beach.
So, you know, my theology is kind of first-hand revelation from Christ from reading the scriptures and then, you know, maybe having arguments as I went through theological seminary.
So, you know, what I see in the scripture, and I believe that a lot of what is, you know, maybe called soft dominionism, I think what dominionism really means to break it down and make it simple is that God created sons and daughters to have authority over the earth.
And the Bible teaches, sadly, that there's the wicked and the righteous, and that there's a war, there's a battle over the planet.
And I honestly believe that the areas where the wicked rule, it's not because of a lack of God, but really an apathy or an indifference or a disengaging.
So Hosea 4:6 says, my people are destroyed from a lack of knowledge.
So I believe that we, you know, we are fools to not be engaged in politics.
We're fools not to be front foot on being engaged in culture, being engaged in education, in praying and understand, understanding our authority, the weapons of our warfare.
The Bible says in Christ are not weak, they're not carnal, but they're mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.
And so I've seen that, you know, so God works on two dimensions simultaneously.
He works on a micro level and a macro level simultaneously.
And, You know, when we look under a microscope at the intricacy of a snowflake, the detail, the design is amazing.
And then when we look through a telescope into the vast expanse of the cosmos, the detail is mind-blowing.
So God works both at the same time.
And so I've found that there's a congruency on what works for me personally is also what works for me family, community, city, nationally, globally.
So if I could ask a question as a devil's advocate, because I have two pastors around, so I have to use the term devil's advocate.
It's a good one.
This is so funny you forgot to laugh.
Jurgen laughed.
I get this question a lot.
We get it emailed twice.
Anyone watching can email us alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.
When you're saying devil's advocate, I thought you were talking about me.
That's why I'm worried.
It looks funny.
It's an expression of the advocate of the opposite position.
I love it.
Is a question I get all the time, Jürgen.
And we've talked about this and we've looked at it all different ways, but it's still predominant.
Christians stay away from politics, not worthy.
At least pastors will kind of say, go vote your values.
I'm not going to preach this from the pulpits.
Why is this not biblical?
Well, first of all, nowhere, and any pastor that says to you, you should vote your values is misleading you.
Yeah.
Vote God's values.
Always vote God's values.
You know, Jesus said, that's a good word.
When the disciples said, Lord, teach us to pray, like John taught his disciples to pray, he said, it's very simple.
Our Father, not my Father, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
So the earth reflects heaven the most when God's will is done.
When God's will is rejected, when you go to places where there's oppression and violence and poverty and trafficking and exploitation and destruction and misery, guess whose will's not happening?
God's will.
And so, and that happens because people voted their values, not God's values.
So, you know, Rob and I would agree that man is hopelessly flawed.
The Bible says that we are born with a bent towards sinfulness.
That's why we've got to be regenerated.
We have to be born again of God's Spirit and allow his regenerative power, which is called sanctification in the Bible.
It's the making of us wholly purifying.
So don't vote your values, vote biblical values, and you'll see biblical results.
And just outside of voting, because voting is just the very minimum, which not even every Christian does.
And I find this be a really perplexing point where a lot of people email us.
They say, I'm never voting again because I think the system is broken.
And I say, well, how long does it actually take you to vote?
Like 15 minutes at most?
So what kind of selfish outrage is that?
Let's pretend your vote is invalidated.
Just from a very simple, logical, just a logical equation, the upside of voting could potentially be making the difference in an election, like in Iowa.
The downside of not voting could be making the difference in the other direction.
The downside of voting would be that my vote doesn't count, which means I would have wasted 15 minutes.
It's one of the worst arguments ever.
I can guarantee you that the not voting will have a negative impact.
I can't guarantee you that the voting will have a positive impact.
It's actually one of the most simple and one of the most simple logical constructions I could think of.
Like, I'm not voting again.
That was a waste of time.
It's 15 minutes off your life at most if you go vote early.
Like, that was a real thing I'm never going to do again.
Yet you'll wait an hour and a half and in and out burger to go get a pile of calories that will require an angioplast.
Come to the side of Lipitor.
That I'm going to do again.
But the double-devil, hello.
Come on.
It's worth 30 minutes.
Of course it is.
Your republic is worth more than a double double in our children's future.
Just minor details.
Minor details.
How many people?
The point is that, and by the way, it's not a small amount of people.
They say it's just so broken.
I'm never voting again.
Yes.
And we got to stop that.
Yeah, it's apathy.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I even think it's an apathy and it's a discouragement.
That's what we had after this election in our church because I knew a number of people that actually helped organize a lot of the Trump boat rallies and even one of the boat, excuse me, the Trump car rallies.
And they had 34 miles, 30, never seen in California before.
And, you know, and many of these people came up to saying, oh, Pastor, you know what?
You know, we're kind of down with voting.
What's the point?
And I saw that they weren't doing that because they just needed re-encouragement and they need that word.
Hey, you know what?
There may be so much fraud in the system that it may be invalidated, but don't quit.
That's what they want.
They will win if you don't vote.
Let's not give them that.
Let's take that 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, even if it's an hour of your life.
It's worth it.
They won't have to do any shenanigans if you never show up.
That's right.
It's that simple.
It's to be present.
If you decide not to show up, then you have just given them what they've always wanted.
Yeah.
Which is your apathy becomes their monopoly on power.
Right.
So, with the idea of what he was talking about with dominionism and then how you described it.
So he would be a kingdom now theology.
I'm more of a reconstructionist.
But either way, wherever we're kind of placed, the fascinating thing about it is both Jürgen and myself believe Christians should be involved in the governance of the nation.
Now, the left is going to label us all dominionists and somehow try to make that term.
Why do they do that, Rob?
Because they want, in a sense, to shame us or mock us into us wanting to have a theocracy over the land as opposed to participating in a pluralistic society to contend.
But that's not what Jürgen believes.
No, no.
So that's more of a misinterpret.
It's an interpretation.
Yeah, it is a misinterpretation.
I'm working alongside the viewers.
Now, if you go with, if you go with, is it Bill Johnson at Bethel?
Yeah.
If you go with his idea, it's a little for me, it's an area I struggle with, quite frankly.
And I don't even want to get into it.
Sure.
I don't find Jürgen anywhere near that.
But the two of us together find commonality because we believe Christians need to be involved.
Now, the idea that non-Christians can be in government, I accept that.
That's the Galatians 3 model, where the law is a school teacher to point us to Christ and keep us safe until faith comes.
Let us all row in that direction.
Laws of nature, nature's God, revealed knowledge so that we can instruct children without, you know, that the law can be used in such a capacity to see God.
All creation speaks of the glory of God, so they start to see him.
And we want to govern our lives in such a way to flourish.
And we do have that picture of an Imago Day that we're created in His image and we want to obtain excellence.
But the secular progressive left labels us dominionists to somehow dismiss us as people who want to conquer and destroy anyone else's.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
It's the Christian worldview that creates a pluralistic society.
That's what I was going to say.
They're throwing homosexuals off buildings in the 1040 window, longitude and latitude, where 90% of the Muslim world exists.
But here you have freedom.
Yes.
Now, freedom can lead to bondage, but that sorry.
I interrupted you yourself.
No, I thought you were pausing there.
I was just going to amen what you were saying.
I was just changing clips.
Oh, and it was a good clip change.
But you go right around the world, Charlie, and it's what they accuse is the biggest lie of the devil because it's Christianity that actually, because we believe in free will.
So I was speaking two Sundays ago in church, and probably one of the most provocative revelations I've ever had is the first thing that God does with man is he gives man life.
The Bible says in Genesis 2 that God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, and Adam went from an inanimate to an animate, like he was animated.
Everything, all the systems, his central nervous system, his immune system, digestive system, respiratory, every system, it comes alive.
The next chapter, God puts him in a garden and says, of all the trees of the garden, you may freely eat except for that one.
You can't eat off that tree because it's mine.
So a lot of people say, well, hang on, why would God do that?
The reason God did that was because he was showing Adam, not only have I given you life, but I've given you freedom.
Because if you don't have the freedom to choose wrong, you're not free.
This is how powerful, this is how secure, this is how magnificent, and this is how benevolent and gracious and good our God is, that he gives us free will, knowing that we could have the option to reject him if we wanted to.
So we have some people that email us and they say we do not, they would call themselves Calvinists.
Yes.
Do you agree with that?
Yeah, look, honestly, that's probably my book, Push, Pray Until Something Happens, I wrote because of the massive problem that I have with five-point Calvinism.
Because they talk about the depravity of man and that we have no influence over God.
And yet all the way through the Bible, what are you talking about?
God was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.
Abraham intercedes and God recants.
Jonah gets out at Nineveh and preaches, yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown.
And today we'd kind of be on YouTube claiming that Jonah was a false prophet because God spared Nineveh and his prophecy didn't come to pass.
So we see God moved again and again by men.
In fact, Ezekiel 22, 30, God said, so I sought for just a man among them who would build a wall, stand in the gap, cry out to me on behalf of the land that I might not destroy it.
So even in my devotions today, God is speaking to Moses and he calls Moses up on the mountain.
This is so funny.
I love God.
God is brilliant.
Calls Moses up onto the mountain.
So Moses trudges up to the top of Mount Sinai.
He gets up there and God says, now listen, this is what I want you to do.
I want you to go back down and tell the people not to come up.
He's like, you couldn't have told me.
So he's going to go all the way back down, tell all the people don't come up.
So then God says to him, and this is why, lest the people haven't sanctified themselves and the Lord break out against them.
So God saying, they can't come up lest I break out against them.
Then you fast forward a few chapters in Exodus 33, the Bible says, 34, Moses says to the Lord, Lord, show me your glory.
Show me your glory.
And the question that he's asking is beyond, beyond.
But God is so accommodating.
God says, you know what?
There's a place by me.
You'll stand on the rock, and I'm going to put you in the cleft in the cliff.
There's a crack in the cliff.
They're going to put you there, and I'll cover you with my hand so that as I pass by you, my face you won't see.
No one can see my face and live.
But as I pass by, I'll proclaim just my goodness, just one aspect of God, like a tiny little fraction of God, I'll reveal.
But the reason that God covered him with his hand was to protect Moses from God.
Because God is perfectly gracious, but he is also perfectly holy.
So the Bible says that righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
Mercy and truth go before him.
Judgment Day is truth undiluted.
Judgment Day is you stand before truth and there is no mercy because you rejected mercy when Christ came.
Christ hanging on the cross is God's mercy.
The truth is, I deserve to go to hell for all eternity because I'm a sinner.
I was present at every single transgression, at every single violation of God's law that I committed.
But Christ came and hung on a cross and he took the wrath and the judgment.
So when I stand before God, I am covered by his mercy.
So the truth is blocked by his mercy.
And so judgment day is where we've rejected the mercy and now we have to stand in truth.
So there's these two dimensions.
So I go all the way back to the people that say that human beings have no really need to go back and read the Bible.
So what they've done is they've thrown out scriptures with a doctrine or a theology.
And I think that if you have a theology that has contradictions with scripture, you've actually got to change your theology rather than change the scripture.
What do you make of that, Rob?
My studies show me that Calvin was an attorney by trade, and he wanted to take indulgences and salvation out of the hands of man as the Catholic Church had held that over humanity's head.
So he worked backward on tulip.
So you have total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and preservation of the saints.
Starting backwards, he wants to preserve the saints.
How do we keep that out of the hands of man and keep it completely with God?
And so the tulip works backwards.
And the one area that I struggle with is limited atonement.
And it's John 3.16 that I struggle with that.
But, you know, like with our group of pastors, you got Sam Musgrave and Vishal, I believe, is a Calvinist as well.
So again, we're all in opposition and different views, although we're more aligned.
And you have Calvinists that are probably very different than us, but we all agree we need to participate.
Now, I do know this, that man has free will.
How can God be completely sovereign and man still have a free will?
I don't know.
I have no idea how to explain that with a temporal mind, nor can I explain the Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
The three are one and they talk to each other and answer each other.
But yeah, that gives me a, you know, I get stretch marks on my brain.
I can't explain that either.
But if I could explain it, that means God's only as big as my brain.
And trust me, he's not worth worshiping at that point.
Let's just give it up.
So I'm not a Calvinist.
I'm not an Arminiist.
I'm a biblicist.
Arminian was a theologian who really emphasized the free will of man in the same way to the detriment of the scriptures, avoiding and taking scriptures out of context to put the free will of man in such a profound place.
And that would boil down to where you stand on that spectrum of Calvinism and Arminianism.
That's where you're going to be a strong Dominionist or a Reconstructionist.
Calvinists are typically Reconstructionists that we can participate in that process because that's where God calls us.
We set up his kingdom on the earth.
We're observing.
So it's varied.
I'm not a Calvinist.
I'm not an Arminius.
I'm a biblicist.
But this is the last thing.
We are lots of time.
Well, I know.
But I hate this topic.
So this is why I think you guys brought it up there.
He did.
He did.
No, I'm just taking morning.
I know.
It's good.
I'm going to throw something out there.
It's going to be very provocative in a second.
Well, let me just say this last part.
For the record, I'm learning.
I don't know about any of this theology stuff.
Nothing about it.
And I would say that I'm scraping the surface of it.
I don't go that deep.
But the older I get, I'm 56 now.
The older I get, the more I see the sovereignty of God.
And I'm not a cessationist, which cessationist means that you believe that certain gifts died with the apostles.
I'm not a cessationist, although I was educated early on in my Christian walk to be a cessationist.
I've seen the gifts used, the ones that they say are no longer here.
I've seen them used, and I believe them.
Although I'm not, I don't practice in that realm.
Sure.
I just haven't thrown them out.
Your group of churches, or I would say your fellowship, does practice in those.
You're not going to hear anyone speaking in tongues in our fellowship, although we believe the gift is for today.
You're not going to hear anyone speaking in tongues in our church, but in your church, they will.
If we do, we'll have an afterglow where there's interpretation and there's prayer language, all this stuff.
Growing up, I longed to have that supernatural gifting and that connection.
But the more I've engaged in the political process and just the day-in and day-out grind, I've come to rely on his sovereignty and his presence.
It's an interesting progression or transition in my life.
And you were going to say a game changer.
What are you going to do?
It's a provocative statement, Jürgen.
So if you really want to mess with people's heads and begin a really, really great, a really great conversation.
That's what podcasting is for, a long-form podcasting.
In a provocative way is.
And this is not just shortened snippets.
So here's a truth that will certainly create some controversy.
The most powerful force in the universe is the will of man.
The will of man, this is how God created it.
The will of man can shut down the will of God.
And I'll explain.
The Bible says that God is not willing that any should perish.
In Matthew, Jesus says that hell was not prepared for human habitation.
That hell was prepared for the devil and his angels.
And yet we know that human beings will end up in hell.
That there are humans that are in hell.
But they are not in hell because God willed for them to go there.
They are in hell because they chose with their will to reject God.
So let me just dig down deeper, just, you know, because I know that people are going to be emailing in.
How could a loving God send me?
I'm already getting the emails and we haven't published the episode yet.
So watch this.
What is hell?
What is hell?
So a lot of people, well, you know, it's a fire, it's Gehenna, you know, and so most people go immediately to try and find explanation through, you know, through biblical words.
But hell is very, very simple.
And if you take the whole counsel of scripture, hell is the place where God isn't.
So, you know, people say, you know, how could a loving God harden Pharaoh's heart?
Well, if you actually read the story, Pharaoh hardened his heart first.
Romans 1 tells us that because they did not, God gave them over to.
And then because they did not, God gave them over to.
So here is where the fear of the Lord comes for me, that God will ultimately give me whatever I want.
And so the people that end up in hell are the people that don't want God.
So God gives them what they want.
He gives them a place where he isn't.
So the Bible says in his presence is fullness of joy.
So guess what's not in hell?
There's no joy in hell.
There's weeping.
There's gnashing of teeth.
The Bible says that God is light and in him there is no darkness.
Hell is a place of darkness so thick that it can be felt.
God is peace.
Hell is a place of torment.
So hell is the one part of the universe that God has removed his presence.
So even the people that end up in hell go, but human beings, when God gave us free will, our free will.
So Jesus, you know, Rob and I would agree that Jesus had no sin, no sin.
Yet Jesus in Gethsemane has to pray three times.
Father, if it's possible for this cup to pass by and me not drink it, please, nevertheless, not my will.
Your will.
Thy will be done.
So even Jesus saw that his will had the possibility of canceling out the will of the Father.
It's a good little provocative thought.
Rob, do you have a response to that?
Because then I have an interesting wrinkle.
The response I would give would be, I would think a Calvinist response would be that would be a very troubling statement to take the sovereignty of God and subject it to being less powerful than the free will of man.
And that's, you know, that's obviously a vernacular that they would use less powerful.
Yeah, and that pendulum would swing over where they're going to say, I'm not putting that in the hands of man.
And that's why they create Tulu.
Yeah, so I would say that I'm physically more powerful than my wife.
But if I have to overpower her for her to do my will, then I'm not a good husband.
I get that.
But we could go deeper and kind of tear that or pick that apart a little bit, but I. What were we going to say?
No, I just, I find all of this very interesting.
And that's a profound thought process.
And I don't know if I agree or disagree with you.
No, and there's going to be people listening that immediately are going to be burdened by it.
I'm a very my Christianity is the inerrancy of scripture.
Good man.
The deity of Christ.
The deity of Christ.
The Trinity of God.
Death, resurrection of Christ.
Yes.
Death, burial, resurrection.
It's interesting.
And what I find to be so fascinating about all this is we have this group of pastors that, boy, if they were all sitting here, that would be.
It's eclectic.
There would be so much disagreement.
But there's a point to it, which is that, and as I've been in the political world as a Christian, now coming into the Christian world, I find that the principle that did keep the conservative movement together post-Reagan has not been applied to the Christian world because it just didn't have to be, which is, you know, if someone is 80% your ally, don't make them 100% of your enemy or adversary or whatever.
Yes.
And I think that a lot of these theological disputes, which again, I'm not well-versed enough to go to Hosea 4, 6 or Ezekiel 22, 30.
Maybe one day I will be.
Now you're good.
And what I think that is really interesting, though, is we're starting to see pastors of all different theological views and denominations now all of a sudden uniting on something they can all agree on.
Yes.
And that is the, I want to say the basics because it sounds so trivial, but the big stuff.
Yes.
And then also, what do we do now?
Okay.
We got different eschatologies.
We got different beliefs on the will of man or do you actually have will?
Is it an aberration?
Is it a trick?
But then we also, but we're all agreeing, though, on action.
Yes.
Is that a fair way to do that?
Desperation brings inspiration.
And when the grass is high, the fences disappear.
And so in a sense, we all come to this.
as we're being challenged as the bride of Christ, which I believe is a multifaceted diamond.
And there isn't a denomination that has it right.
Now, there are denominations that think they have it right, and they're going to be shocked to see some of us there.
And that's the arrogance.
As soon as someone says, I have the only or the most correct, the arrogance, the hubris to say that, we'd agree.
So what this has done is we're all figuring it out.
Well, but we're all being forced to be unified and find commonality, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.
So you're seeing guys at a table, and if we brought that group of pastors together that are growing across the country, it would be crazy.
But all of us are saying, wait, we'll never have these discussions around the table if liberty in this nation is gone.
Yeah.
Well, and look, here's something that I've learned, that when you have something as true, which is the total truth of Jesus, something as powerful as the word of God, it's inevitable you're going to have different splinters and wrinkles and variations.
You're not going to be able to get around that.
You're not going to get around that.
And even if you look at, so Ephesians 4 is, so there's three sets of gifts because, you know, the Trinity.
So you have the, in Romans 12, you have the motivational gifts.
In Corinthians 12, you have the spiritual gifts by the Holy Spirit.
And then in Ephesians 4, you have Christ who gives the ascension gifts.
And if you look at the five of those, you know, it's called the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.
So if you look at that, the apostle says, hey, you know what the church needs to do, Charlie?
The church needs to, we need to be planting more churches.
It is proven that number one form of evangelism, most effective evangelism is church planting.
We need to plant more churches.
And the prophet says, hang on, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Before we plant more churches, we need to start bringing truth.
We need to start bringing correction because we got people, they're living wayward lifestyle.
They're making dumb choices.
And then the evangelist says to the prophet, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on.
You're down this road of teaching the people.
Man, do you know there are people lost on their way to hell?
We need to do everything we can.
We need to redirect all the budget.
And then the teacher says, hang on a minute.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
We're not even.
And then the pastor says, we just got to love it.
Do you know how many people are in hospital?
How many people right now?
And so are they all wrong?
No, they're all right.
And Jesus set it up.
He throws five different giftings with five different viewpoints together.
So in Genesis 11, we see the first picture of unity in the Bible.
And unfortunately, it's the unity of the wicked.
So that's why you'll find that the Democrats, they can get behind the most crazy.
They unify.
And yet the righteous, the Republicans, we eat each other.
You know, we're not holy enough, not right enough, whatever.
And that's why Psalm 133 says how good it is, how blessed it is when brethren dwell together in unity, for there the Lord commands a blessing.
God will actually bestow a blessing if we can put our differences aside and focus on what we have.
When I went to Rob's church, I didn't look at any theology.
You know what I saw?
I saw a man who loved his God, who loved his country, who loved his beautiful bride, his beautiful family, and poured truth and grace.
Like I'd hardly seen to his congregation who were drinking from this fountain.
I thought, my God, this is one of the richest springs in California, if not in America.
And I thought, I just immediately fell in love with the McCoy's.
And I'm like, you know, and of course, you know, and that's, I think that's how God wired us.
You know, He's going to have a different experience with God, a different encounter with God, and I can learn and it sharpens me and it gets me to go back and revisit.
And I think that's how God wanted us.
If He made us all cookie-cutter and all cookie-cutter theology, I think there's something broken.
There's an old adage when He put pastors in a room, it's called the porcupine theory.
And you got a lot of great points, just keep them away from me.
That's right.
And the quills have to come down, and it doesn't mean at the expense of truth.
And of course, as you describe these different offices, you know, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
And every strength comes with a weakness, an unguarded strength is a weakness.
And so we endeavor to keep that union of spirit in the bond of peace.
And vice versa.
When I went to your fellowship, things I'm unfamiliar with in my own fellowship, but blessed beyond measure, knowing that we're a kindred spirit, knowing we're knitted.
We'll work out the details later.
We believe in the deity of Christ, the Trinity, the inerrancy of scripture.
And as we venture into these different areas of theology and someone's going to want to slam you and play whack-a-mole, calm down.
We got work to do because we got to roll in the same direction for the sake of the nation.
What I feel called to do, though, is, and we're starting to see it, is start to motivate and organize these pastors to have unified purpose because you don't have robust theological debates of dominion, dominionism versus reconstructionism or soft dimensionism or dispensationalism in North Korea.
It just doesn't happen.
That sort of debate, if you don't get the fundamentals right of the society that allows you to do those things, pretty much nowhere in the 1040 window, longitude, latitude, 90% of the things.
So let's get into that.
Why is the Christian church then?
Let's just say generally, I mean, you guys, again, we're not going to get into the disagreements.
You have different churches, different ways of doing it, but you agree on the big things.
Why all of a sudden are you two finding yourself to be totally in agreement and lockstep on action items?
What changed?
This would not have happened a decade ago.
Let me jump on this one.
Yeah, please.
Yeah.
I was hoping you would.
It comes down to the church for the last 50 years has been doing church.
And as you've articulated with the concept of ecclesia in Matthew 16, upon this rock I'll build my ecclesia, my assembly.
And liberty and equality are above the doors on a secular term.
Hundreds of years ago.
Isinomia and Loutheria.
Isinomia and Eleutheria.
Long before Jesus had used that term, it was a secular term.
He didn't say synagogue, he didn't say temple, he didn't use a religious term.
So we're to engage in the public square.
And from the public square, then we can have this debate and reason together on pre-trib, pre-millennial, post-trib, you know, pan-trib, where it all pans out in the end.
We can go through all these different aspects.
We can argue our eschatology, the sovereignty, Calvinism, Arminianism.
But we will never be able to have that debate if there's not freedom.
Yes.
Yes, exactly.
And freedom comes.
Yes.
Freedom is a byproduct of liberty.
I always say that when the Apostle Paul says, stand fast, therefore, in the liberty for which Christ has set you free, he wrote that in prison when he wrote that to the church in Galatia.
He wrote that from prison.
So liberty isn't freedom.
Freedom is having choices.
Liberty is doing what's right.
Proclaim liberty throughout the land, the law, the wise restraints that make men free.
Free, when you have restraints, then you have options.
Meaning, you apply restraints towards evil in order to pursue excellence.
You'll be able to enjoy things at a level never before obtained by man because you applied restraints.
And the illustration I use is Patrick Mahomes, you know, Super Bowl win, unbelievable game.
And while he was playing and enjoying football at a level of excellence I would never attain to, the reason why is because I watched it from a comfortable chair with a big bowl of potato chips and a big Coke.
And I wasn't practicing every day watching game films.
And he took it to a level that very few could achieve because he applied restraints when others wouldn't get up in the morning to exercise or to lift weights or to watch the game films.
He did.
We know that as human beings.
And so all of this, regardless of Calvinism, Arminianism, Biblicist, Dominionist, Reconstructionist, whatever they label, we all know this.
It's critical that liberty is God's idea, not man's idea.
And as his bride, we must contend in the ecclesia for that.
And so we're rowing in the same direction.
Yes, amen.
Does that help, Charlie?
It does.
I would even just add on to that that, you know, Jesus said this, and it was so beautiful.
He said, a new commandment I give you.
You know, Jesus says, a new command that I give you.
By this will all men know that you're my disciples if you have love for one another.
And what we saw in the body of Christ is we saw the elevation of our, you know, what we perceive were our theological differences.
And our differences defined our denominations.
You know, the Baptists believe that they have baptism right because they believed in full immersion baptism.
And you got to baptize backwards, not forwards.
Yeah.
And so it just got out of control.
Whereas Jesus said, by this will all men know you're my disciples if you have love for one another.
So what I found, you know, being married 29 years is that Leanne has some things that, you know, I'm just not, you know, like I like sport.
Her sport is shopping.
And I, you know.
Is that going to be the Olympics this year?
Probably.
I mean, my wife would win gold if it was an Olympic sport.
But she loves.
If I go shopping with her, and I'm telling you, after 10, 15 minutes, I am, my brain is already done.
Like with me too.
But she loves it.
And so because I love, because I love her, and I think when it comes to the body of Christ, what I like, I love.
And when, you know, quite often not, I love people of all these denominations because I see the fruit of what they're doing.
I see the heart and I see the heart they have for Christ.
And they preach Christ and Christ crucified.
And they're boasters in the Lord.
And you see the hand of God.
And then I love, because I come from such a dysfunctional, broken family.
I look at the pastor and the next thing I look not very far, I look to his left and right.
And I look at his bride and his kids.
And, you know, when I met Michelle and when I met, you know, just Mikey, I mean, just stunning.
So I fell in love with Rob.
He could have all kinds of crazy, I love him.
It's not going to change.
And for me, in fact, I'm going to look forward to sitting at the table.
And I think that, you know, that's something that I've learned, but I've learned it because it's a value of Christ that we should have love.
And this will.
No, go ahead, please.
But people, you know, I think when we start ostracizing different people from different denominations, are we exercising love?
Look what we're saying, though.
This is the funniest thing, is that we've been told to stay away from politics.
Politics is not bringing the church together.
It is.
Isn't that the craziest thing?
Come on, give me something.
That's a good word.
But that's the whole point is that Jürgen, Rob, Cadiz, Ken Graves, Engelhardt, John Randall, Hibbs, Phil Green, Frank Farrington, Greg Franklin, Farrington, all the kind of like we love Jesus, we love God, we believe in the Nicene Creed.
I don't think you guys believe that Nicene Creed.
And all of a sudden, it's like, oh, we have a beautiful country.
We're losing it.
Let's start to act.
All of a sudden, what if in a unique twist of events, politics is now going to be the unification of the church?
Well, the ecclesia is what we're supposed to be pushing back the gates of hell on.
So the church is operating in its wheelhouse.
And I would also add last night when you gave that screaming message, and it was phenomenal.
I've never seen so many people come to an altar.
Oh, I couldn't believe it.
It was so great.
But you pointed out, you talked about how Christianity is a bottom-up religion and that our founders created a government that are so...
It's bottom-up.
But I thought about something, Jürgen.
I thought when I shared with you prominent and preeminent, that there are some prominent individuals in Christendom that are preachers, musicians.
They're prominent.
They're gifted and they're prominent.
They have followers.
They've got a social media presence.
They sell and they fill buildings.
They're prominent.
But their followers and their prominence and their popularity is more important to them than the preeminence of Christ.
Yes.
Because to take a stand on certain issues that would lose your prominence, you compromise that.
And I would say this, when you said that Christianity is bottom-up, it's so good.
And the problem that we're facing in America is we have a top-down government now where everything is being centralized to federal, where they wanted to push it down to the individual, we the people.
From the pulpits of America, we got to be careful.
We talk about an anointing on an individual.
Push it out to the people.
Yeah, exactly.
When we start to equip the people to be the sovereign of the nation, we the people, when we equip them to be disciples, to understand how we live together, you don't lie, cheat, steal.
These are necessary moral knowledge.
And then all of a sudden the church finds unity and commonality.
But when we are wanting to centralize it and make it about an individual and the popularity and the prominence of that individual, then we have to define ourselves.
We're not like them.
We baptize backwards, not forwards.
And we'll show you this.
But the cool thing is that the political fight right now, the ecclesia as it's meant, the well-being, maybe that's why that word was used because all of a sudden you're seeing churches acting more cooperatively in a way you've never seen before.
And so, you know, let's really get into that where we have a lot of people and my heart breaks for them, but we're going to solve this problem for them where, first of all, a lot of people that have come to your church because of politics, a lot of people that have come to your church because of politics, and politics, which is the highest form of community, according to Aristotle, because it morality and sociability.
That's right.
And we could do a whole podcast on Aristotle at a different time, which there's a lot there to unpack.
But what the interesting thing is, a lot of people, we're going to fix this.
A lot of people email us.
They say, I live in South Carolina.
I live in New York.
Go to Engelhart's church.
I go to Rhode Island.
My church isn't open.
My church isn't political.
They're staying away from it.
What do I do?
What's amazing to me is that we need to get more pastors active on this.
We got to get more people.
And so let's just take this right here.
Right now, someone is listening to this on our podcast in the state of Wisconsin.
I don't know one pastor who's open or conservative in the state of Wisconsin.
I'm sure there is one.
But like, let's just, what do they do if they're going to a church that isn't currently political and they're they're discouraged?
What do they do?
Well, I'll answer that question.
Let me just make this shout out.
Okay.
Yeah, if you're a pastor in Wisconsin and your church is open and you don't have mass and there's no social distancing, would you please contact us?
And you're teaching Bible-based.
Yeah.
Yeah, you hold to the essentials, the deity of Christian energy scripture.
I know someone in Albuquerque, Steve Smotherman.
Yes, come on.
We got Albany in Charlotte.
Charlotte.
Troy.
Troy Maxwell.
Yeah.
Yeah, we know.
Freedom House.
So we're starting to build that network.
And as we build the network, and then for the folks that can't find it, the Equilisia network.
Come on.
I love that.
The Ecclesia Network.
The Ecclesia Network.
Yeah.
That's solid.
I like that.
Or the Wisconsin thing.
Yeah, I just picked that on my hat, right?
Yeah.
I would say the first thing you do is tune in to one of the folks whose church is open.
Don't live stream a church that is only doing live streams.
I totally agree with that.
Don't reward that.
Yeah, don't reward that.
Tune into a church that is and then contact us and then we'll reach out to you and then we'll also do our best to find you a pastor that's open.
We will find you one.
Yeah.
And so I just had someone in New York and they said, hey, who do I go to?
Engelhardt's Church.
King's College.
Yeah, Dasa sign in David Engelhardt.
That's a good German name.
That's right.
Oh, yeah.
And I had somebody else email me from right in North Georgia and I connected them with Frank's Church.
Yeah.
Calvary Chapel, Chattanooga.
And someone just emailed me about your church in San Diego, literally an hour ago.
And they were like, where do I go?
I was like, is Jürgen there?
I was like, Awaken Church.
Go.
And now we got Pastor Burnett right here in Arizona.
Phoenix.
Dream City Church.
Dream City.
Wide open, great.
Let's go a level deeper, though.
Okay.
And this is the other question we get because we have really active listeners.
They say, Charlie, I'm burdened.
This pastor has been teaching me for 15 years.
I've tied to this church.
They've helped my marriage.
They helped my finances.
And now we are not seeing eye to eye on this.
What are they supposed to do?
All right.
That's a tougher question.
Well, it's not a tough question.
They helped you for a season.
Thank them for that input into your life.
Be gracious.
And lovingly and kindly say, at this season in my life, I don't see this church operating to restore and maintain our nation.
And I don't see that you feel that this is important.
I love you.
Thank you for all you've done.
We're not leaving in anger.
We're just leaving.
What would you say, Jurgen?
Yeah, you know, I would agree.
I think I would maybe at least have a conversation maybe prior to that one with that pastor because the nature of a pastor is, you know, he's the shepherd.
And the shepherd loves the sheep, has the smell of sheep on him, cares for the sheep.
So, like, like Pastor Rob was saying before, you know, a hammer sees everything as a nails.
Every strength also has a weakness.
And so if we identify that the weakness of a pastor, like a good pastor really cares for his sheep, but the weakness is that you can care too much what the sheep think or say.
And so there's a lot of pastors right now who, because of the mask mandates, the mystery with the COVID, the BLM stuff, all the deaths, the spiking, Dr. Fauci, you know, like all of this kind of stuff have felt like, my God, I am not, am I not protecting my sheep if I'm not open, if I'm not stepping back, if I'm not.
Yes.
And I think what we need to do is we need to, because courage is infectious.
When I went and saw what they were doing at God Speak Church, that courage leapt into our spirit.
We went down resolute on how we were going to move forward.
And despite the bullying and the intimidating of our city and the hit and smear pieces that are still pretty much every week in the media, we're not flourishing.
And we're flourishing, but we're not changing track.
We are open without masks, without social distancing.
Now we've got polar ionization units.
We've got temperature check as people walk in.
There's something more important than that, though.
You have liberty.
We have liberty.
We have freedom.
That's why we're here, right?
We're not here to be locked away and thrown out.
And the longer we go is.
By mandate.
Yes.
And as Pastor Rob says, the longer we go on this thing, the more we find out.
It's 99.98% recovery rate.
Why are we killing shattering businesses and wrecking our children's education and mandating the wearing of masks?
But I would just say have a conversation with your pastor and just say, hey, listen, would you listen to Turning Point USA?
Would you listen to Charlie Kirk?
Would you go and podcast Godspeak?
Would you listen to some of their podcasts?
Because their podcasts, with the people that he's interviewing, who are in the medical field, who are in the political field, who are behind the scenes.
These are people who are working day in, day out.
The information is out there.
There's almost no excuse.
And what pastors just need is they need courage and they need camaraderie.
And I think that's what the Ecclesia network is going to produce.
I think it would be real helpful and qualifying.
We've had that question before.
And I did share what Jürgen shared: that you go and approach the pastor and try to reason with him.
But I was assuming that the question, forgive me, I thought assuming the question was, they've already tried to do it.
And a lot of those questions, they have.
Yeah.
So I would add that it would be good that we put on an Ecclesia pastors conference.
And in addition, we put on an Ecclesia congregant conference where they can come and be educated in understanding a realm that has been neglected by the body of Christ for over 50 years and revisit the things that we're planning.
I know we are.
I was just priming the pump, Charlie.
I love it.
San Diego, I hear, is nice this time of year.
It's a wonderful time of the year.
It's pretty much nice all year.
And so a lot of Christians got fired up through both of you.
You guys have congregants that came to you and all of a sudden they're like, you know what?
I'm into this political thing.
June of 2020, I'm going to do it.
You know, they started to give money, maybe to Trump.
They started to knock on doors.
And then all of a sudden they saw, we lost.
I don't like that.
And they're saying, I'm never doing this again.
I'm not going to get involved.
I'm not going to do this.
Can you guys speak to the long-term nature of the commitment to save the Republic?
Because there's some people that got on the political sugar high, as I call it.
Yeah.
Right?
They took a lot of sugar in.
They're like, whoop, I love this thing.
Yeah.
Right?
We're going to see a real win.
Yeah.
Love America.
And all of a sudden, for me, I'm a little unfazed by it because this is a multi-generational struggle.
Yeah.
Can you guys speak to that?
I'll jump on it because for our congregation, I had prepared them because I'd already run four times for office.
I'd won three of the four elections.
And they were used, being in California, and Jürgen can testify to this, we're used to losing.
Everything we vote for loses every election.
But we know that we're in this for the longer haul.
And what it did is the people that were on a sugar high realized it was idolatry.
So how do we make sure that Christians getting involved don't make an idol out of politics?
Because they never get discouraged to continue.
They keep at it because what they do, they do is under the Lord.
That's exactly what it is.
So let me throw this.
I've got four kids.
My youngest two, Tommy, is now here at GCU.
He's 19.
Zoe's 12.
And in Tommy's last couple of years in high school, he was playing high school football.
And he was kind of like a second or third string wide receiver.
And that kid worked so hard in the summer.
And the summer of 2017 was brutal.
I mean, hot.
Like, you know, we were having the Santa Ana's 100 degrees and he's there twice a day, 6 a.m. and then back there at 2 in the afternoon, practicing till 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock at night in his sweats.
He would come home and his football gear stank.
You could wring his shirt out.
And he got, in the first five or six games, I think he had maybe three minutes of game time.
And I could see he was discouraged.
And they, and the coach kept playing running games rather than throwing games.
And we had a really brilliant quarterback, but the coach, his disposition is running.
He doesn't do throwing.
And so even many of the parents, you know, angry.
Anyway, so we're in the car going home, and I could see he's discouraged.
He's worked so hard, and he's got so little to show for it.
But it was such a powerful teaching time that, son, it's part of the team.
It's part of what we do.
And the discipline of that.
I remember Zoe worked really, really hard to play volleyball.
And their first game, they got obliterated.
I mean, destroyed, three games to zip by, and what they did was they played last year's champions in the very, very first game.
And this was Zoe's first year playing volleyball.
Well, she's crying in the car.
She doesn't want to play anymore.
She's no good at it.
And so we just had to teach.
And I think, you know, one of the things we've got to remember as we go down the theology road, that there was probably no greater theologian and Rob will agree than the Apostle Paul, wrote two-thirds of the New Testament.
He says this.
He says, you know, you guys have got a thousand instructors, so a thousand people who can teach.
Remember, he's a Pharisee, so he's used to the scribes and the chief priests.
Because you guys have got a thousand instructors, but you have very few fathers.
And he saw one of the deficits is they had theology coming out, the wazoo.
But he says, what's missing right now is the spirit of fathers.
When God wanted to overthrow Sodom and Gomorrah, you know what he did?
He sent in a father.
Avram means exalted father.
When Jesus taught us to pray, he didn't say omnipotent creator.
He taught us to say our father.
And I think that what we've got to recognize is that our congregations, yes, we're the pastor, but even more than that, there's a spiritual father.
And that absolutely, they worked all summer.
And they came home with dripping wet from door knocking.
And yeah, we took a licking.
But it's all part of the process.
And this is what teamwork looks like.
And it's just that father encouragement.
Just keep going.
This is good for you.
The discipline.
We're going to get a win.
You're going to get a game, Tom.
We're going to have a, it might be a small victory.
We may win on a school board.
We may win a local election.
But I think it's just that spirit of father.
Well, and the left has been doing ecclesia while we've been doing church.
I agree that Paul was the greatest theologian, but Luke wrote more of the New Testament than Paul did.
Luke and Acts, more pages.
Oh, more pages?
Paul wrote more books, but just saying.
Shut up, Rob.
The porcupine thing.
Yeah.
Porcupine.
And that's the reason why there's Protestant ministers is because the position of Pope is taken.
We want to prove to everybody that we're right.
You know, we're just, it's crazy.
I have a relative whose name I'll leave out, Navy SEAL, training with the boats during Bud's week.
His team was always behind.
They carried these boats, small team, but I think seven guys to a boat, carried them on their head.
They had to run everywhere in Coronado with these things.
They had a weak link on that.
They got rid of that guy, got another one in.
They began to win every race.
The Buds instructors were yelling at my relative, saying, you know, you need to be in the front.
So he runs out in the front instead of pacing his team.
He gets back and wins the whole thing, puts the boat down, and the instructor says, we didn't tell you to put the boat down.
Makes them do lunges with the boat until they're exhausted, lets everyone go.
The next team comes out.
They have to do lunges with old misery, which is a big 700-pound oak log.
And he realizes he's let his whole boat crew down.
They're all going to DOR.
They're going to drop on requests.
They're done.
And he feels responsible for it.
Finally, when it's all said and done, and they're doing lunges and they're exhausted, they let him go to the chow hall.
They get there.
The instructors come over.
They won the thing and they were punished.
And all these guys, you know, he's destroyed his team.
They get to the chow hall.
The instructors come and they think they're all going to get demerited and get in trouble.
They write him up positively.
And they said, and this was the instruction, when it doesn't make sense and it's overwhelming, you didn't quit.
And as my relative, nephew, his point was, if I'm ever going to go to war, I'm going to go with those guys.
Yeah.
Because I know they won't quit even when it's crazy.
And our entire congregation through each of these things has been strengthened.
Yes.
Amen.
And it's all part of the equipping.
It's okay.
Did you ever, on that, I just had my brain, forgive my brain.
There's still parts of it that God is still redeeming.
Did you ever see that Olympic gold that Australia should have won in the rowing?
No.
And they were like literally 50 yards out.
They were like almost three quarters of a boat ahead.
And then one of the rowers quit.
One of the Australian rowers?
One of the Australian rowers in the female.
To celebrate?
No, she just quit.
She just quit.
And then she got peed that the teammates were upset with her.
And then because we have a very left-wing media, they were saying...
Through a sexist or something?
Well, it was all females, but it was like that the left-wing media came out defending her and she has the right.
She doesn't have to.
You know, if she wants to quit, she has it.
And it's like, well, don't compete in the freaking Olympics.
But she literally, if you watch it, it's, I won't say her name, but she became a household name.
The media had one spin, like she's the victim.
The rest of Australia were like, what a jackwagon that you are like literally 50 yards from the finish line and then she just kind of collapses and doesn't just like she doesn't just stop rowing she lunges back on the rower behind her and takes the takes her Out as well.
So they got no medal.
So they end up silver instead of gold.
Silver instead of gold because she quit.
And so, you know, it literally divided the nation.
Again, what year was this?
It's going to go back maybe a dozen years or more.
But watch this.
When they say that, you know, America is divided.
But Baden's Beijing Olympics.
When they say America is divided, you know where the division is?
The division is between the elites and we the people.
They're trying to make us believe, oh, no, the division is amongst we the people.
Oh, no, it's not.
No, it's not.
You come to my church.
We have 135 different nationalities in our church.
They're a very diverse church.
Very diverse.
And they all get on a Sunday.
What are you talking about?
There's no, what are you talking about?
There's no division between the elites.
Yes.
And we're seeing it right now.
Oh, we've got to have re-education camps.
Oh, we've got to do something about the only division is in the elites and we the people.
That's where the division is.
It's not fragmented here.
And I think we've got to just keep encouraging our people that, hey, we may lose some battles before we win, but every loss we're learning, every loss we're getting closer.
The difference in the church, the division in the church is part of the church sees Christ as prominent.
He's preeminent.
Yes.
Can you talk about the difference?
Well, the difference is it doesn't matter if we lose every battle.
We're told to do it.
And Christ is preeminent, and my job is to be obedient.
You know, when Jim Elliott died at the hands of the Akaw Indians, and you have a Christian programmer saying to Elizabeth Elliott, isn't it wonderful that they all came to Christ?
His death wasn't in vain.
Yeah, wow.
And she stopped him and she said, had not one Indian come to Christ, his death wouldn't have been in vain.
He was obedient.
Yes, exactly.
I mean, like, just humbled the guy right there.
And Elizabeth Elliott was a force to be reckoned with.
The prominence is you're prominent in the Christian music world.
You are gifted.
You've got talent.
You've got followers.
Like a certain liberal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
And you know what?
I don't, honestly, I don't know the man.
Sure.
But he's prominent.
Yes.
His music's prominent.
But when an immutable trait, a God-given, immutable trait is used to define racism.
That's not biblical.
No.
And so you're prominent.
Yeah.
But Christ is no longer preeminent.
You're following and your concern over what others will think has taken precedent over God's word, which is preeminent.
That's a problem.
That's a problem.
And what it comes down to, Charlie, is the Bible talks about the glory of the Lord shall cover the earth or the glory of the Lord shall fill the earth.
But it's amazing because the devil offers human beings fame.
So we were created to walk in fellowship with God, to experience the glory of God.
And my pastor in Australia says this.
He says, the beautiful thing about God is God never lets the glory rest.
The Son glorifies the Father.
The Father glorifies the Son.
They never let it rest.
And yet, human beings, we think we can handle the glory.
We can't.
And so the devil offers fame.
If you view all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and their splendor, if you will bow down before, I will give all of these to you.
And what happens with people with success, and this is the kingdom of Nimrod, which is the spirit of the world, is that these artists become successful.
They have followings.
And it's not just artists.
It's preachers of mega churches that have mega followings.
And what happens is, and Pastor Rob's right, they make it an idol.
It becomes idolatrous.
But what they do is they stop giving all the glory to the Lord.
And they actually start looking for fame for themselves.
And so it's all about their Instagram followers, their Facebook, you know, their hits, their likes, and all that kind of stuff.
We were never created to be that.
One of the favorite stories I remember reading as a really early Christian is that of a lighthouse keeper.
And this lighthouse keeper is a young apprentice.
And there's this massive storm.
And these waves are 30, 40 feet high, smashing and literally shaking the lighthouse.
All of a sudden, one wave hits so big that it extinguishes the light.
And they know that there are ships out at sea in these massive seas trying to get into the harbor.
And they're the last lighthouse before the harbor.
If they don't get that light on, these ships are going to be smashed against the rocks.
So the lighthouse keeper says to the young apprentice, he says, we're going to have to go climb on the outside rail in the pitch black with these massive seas to manually turn the light on.
And the young apprentice says, but if we go out, we may never come back.
And at that, the lighthouse keeper puts his hand on the young apprentice's shoulder and says, we have to go out.
We don't have to come back.
And I remember it just was such a powerful story that it just resonated in my early Christianity days that what God is asking me to do, it's not pragmatic.
It's not based on guaranteed outcome.
It's based on would I be...
Many years ago, he asked me when we started our church in San Diego.
The Holy Spirit asked me crazy questions.
He asked me this question.
He says, could Judas serve on your team?
I'm like, what?
He's like, could Judas serve?
I'm like, oh, not a chance.
Not a chance.
I said, let me just tell you right now, my team are so loyal, they love me.
I said, and I know them.
And I'd sniff him out like that.
And then the Holy Ghost goes, oh, so you think I made a mistake?
And then he asked me again.
And I realized what he was saying is saying, could you pour into someone?
Could you love someone?
Can you invest into somebody?
Even if in the end they would hurt and betray you.
What he was doing, God is always measuring.
He was measuring the capacity of my heart to determine the level of ministry he could entrust me with.
And I began to realize, oh my God, forgive me.
You didn't make a mistake.
Yes, Judas could serve on my team.
I'm not serving for guaranteed outcomes.
I'm not forcing loyalty.
I'm obedient because that's what you require.
The outcome, that's icing on the cake.
Yeah.
I'm going to take that and say in my observations of you, Charlie, especially at Turning Point, you've seen people come in and out of this organization, and many have gone on to have unbelievable success and prominence.
I've been with you through some trying times, some very difficult circumstances and challenges to this organization.
And I have never heard you derogatorily speak of anyone who's left this organization, nor anyone who works at this organization.
And love hopes all things.
And people are not the enemy.
They're the opportunity.
We're going to get hurt.
We wish them well.
If they lie to us, that breaks our heart.
But everyone's flawed and we move on.
And I think that there's going to be a capacity for that in the coming days where we're going to realize if we don't stand together, we're going to fall apart.
I don't know who the Judas is in the organization.
I may be the Judas in the organization.
It's one of those things where you're like, is it me, Lord?
Is it me?
One of you betrayed me.
Well, the Judas example is even harder to comprehend because Jesus knew he was going to betray them.
Well, and none of the other guys knew it was him because Jesus treated his enemies the same way he treated his friends.
And he got to carry the money back.
And Jesus knew it.
He's like stealing.
It was crazy.
So I think that that is, that's a fair assessment for us to apply to our lives.
That I watch you.
You engage with the lowest and the highest as far as organizationally, and they're all the same.
And I know you don't like this, but I'll say this one thing for folks.
I've been with you when you asked me to share Christ with a friend.
I won't tell everyone who it was, but suffice it to say, I didn't know who it was.
And most people in the world would have never have gone to a dinner with that individual to share Christ with them.
They would have gone with ulterior motives to get something from them.
And I didn't even know who he was till later.
And I've watched this, that it's always about people.
It must be because our role is to make sure that folks live in such an environment governmentally that they flourish.
And I never tire that.
Thank you for the beautiful, I mean, for someone who's 27, the level of Christ's character.
We are never more like Christ than when we forgive.
You know, the Bible says it's the glory of the Lord to overlook a transgression.
You know, the Bible says that love covers a multitude of sins.
So Christ's hanging on the cross.
The Romans pierced his wrists with nails.
Crown of thorns, mock spat, you know, the whole thing.
Now they're gambling for his clothes, and Christ says, Father, forgive them.
They don't know what they do.
Number one, they're not asking.
Number two, they're not deserving.
But Christ didn't come all that way to then all of a sudden have a character change on the cross.
Who God is is he's a forgiver.
We are never more like Christ than when we forgive transgressions.
And sadly, we're never more like the evil one than when we hold bitterness and resentment.
And life's too short.
Life's too short.
Are we going to get wounded?
Absolutely.
You know, God loves people.
When the Bible says, for God so loved the world, it's not, he didn't love terra firma.
He loved humanity.
He loves people.
They bear his image in his likeness.
And the reason that we're engaged in politics is because politics, at the end of the day, affects people.
It affects the welfare.
It affects the care.
It affects the opportunity of people.
So for a church to say, hey, I'm loving the things of God, but I'm not engaged in politics is an oxymoron.
If you love God and if you love people, you will be engaged in the political arena because it affects lives.
But if you love politics more than people, you'll compromise the protection of the people for the sake of your power from politics.
Or you become a Democrat.
Or an establishment Republican.
Or establishment Republican.
Or a rhino.
Exactly.
Well, Jürgen, you got a dash?
You know what?
I got a text message that's still going.
Okay.
Yeah.
So I've got longer if that's all right.
Yeah, of course.
So I want to keep on building that out, unless, Rob, you have to dash.
Well, I got about 10 minutes or five, 10 minutes, but I will say about Jürgen.
Very casual.
Yeah, amen.
I'll say this about Jürgen.
When you describe the picture of Christ on the cross, the thing that always hits me, he's God, right?
Yeah.
Nails don't hold God to a cross.
He's God.
Yeah.
Loved it.
Yeah.
He willingly laid his life down for us.
And we do the same for others.
Yeah.
While we were yet sinners.
Yeah.
We serve really difficult people.
So, Jürgen, I want to pick up on what you just said there.
And Rob, you can cut us off whenever you have to dash.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
Yeah, I'm good.
So keep going.
Bring it in.
It's great.
Great, bring it.
Which is that if you, and I love the way you framed it, which I think that every pastor should hear that, so we're going to make sure they do.
Which is that if you care about people, if you care about humanity, then it's almost impossible not to also care about politics.
We have to.
We have to.
And this, this kind of system of government the founders gave us, yes, which was biblical truth with enlightenment values, which is God, the realization of God's creation.
That's all the Enlightenment was: the enlightenment of what God had already created.
They didn't create anything new.
Yes.
They just discovered what was already there.
Yes.
Newtonian physics.
Yes.
They were just, oh, wow, look at all of this that's already here.
Now we can articulate it and we can better master the world around us.
The system is so good that you're allowed to not care about politics.
Yeah.
Is that now that it's changing?
All of a sudden, pastors that previously were on the fence are saying, well, maybe I have to get back in.
Where it's impossible to say you care for the welfare of the city around you.
Jeremiah 29 something.
29-11.
Well, actually, I'm going to scale through that.
Yeah, no, it says, I know the plans I have for you, but the previous verses up to 29-11.
Pray for the peace of the city.
The peace of the city, the welfare.
It's impossible to care about the downtrodden and not also care about politics.
Politics is such an overused term.
We've used it a lot on this conversation, this podcast.
I just prefer civil society.
Yeah.
And it's impossible not to care about civil society if you actually care about the welfare of the people.
And if you think you can do it outside of civil society, having a civil society, you need the framework.
Don't call it politics, it's called ecclesia.
Yeah, exactly.
Don't call it politics called ecclesia.
That's right.
Yeah, which is what it is.
And so every pastor, regardless of their fluency in government, must begin to step up and speak about this.
And the Bible says a lot about civil government.
Yeah.
Can I jump on just one thought that I think that has almost become like even the reluctant pastor, we've been able to almost like strong-arm to the table and get an exasperated agreement and alignment is around the topic of abortion.
I completely agree.
So let me give you three biblical perspectives on why just using the window of the issue of abortion, that pastors should be involved in politics if they really care about people.
Of the three, the first one I would say is this: Jesus said, Whatever you do for the least of these my brethren, you did unto me.
There is no more least than the hidden.
David writes in Psalm 139, you knit me together in the hidden in the dark, in the womb.
You skillfully wrought me together when I was yet unseen.
Jesus taught that if you are faithful in what is least, you'll be faithful in much.
But if you are unfaithful in what is least or unjust in what is least, you'll be unjust with much.
So if there's a political party saying, hey, listen, we want to slaughter and dismember in the womb the most innocent among us, but trust us with your health care.
Trust us.
We're going to look after social security.
We're going to look after Medicare, Medicare for all, free health care.
Do you really think that you can trust these people, the welfare of your health?
I guarantee you, watch this, the party, and it's happened all through history, that is pro-abortion is also the party that once they get that across the line is pro-euthanasia.
They kill at this end and they kill at this end because it's all about political expediency.
It has nothing to do with welfare.
So the first one is whatever you do for the least of it.
The second one is we should care about, you know, all the ultrasounds, all the science now tells us that life begins at conception, that there is a heartbeat, a detectable heartbeat within six days.
I mean, this is a little human being, and we should fight for all lives, even unborn lives.
And the third one is a biblical is a little bit deeper in theology.
But the third one is this.
When the children of Israel, when God finally brings them into the promised land, they've gone through the wilderness wandering 40 years.
All the naysayers are gone.
It's the Joshua and Caleb generation.
God's bringing them into the promised land.
He gives them this very, very stark, very sobering reality check.
And he says, do not think that I am bringing you into this land that I promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, a land flowing with milk and honey, because of your goodness, because of your righteousness.
He says, the reason I'm bringing you into this land is because of the transgression, the wickedness of the people in this land who caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire to Moloch, who sacrificed their children to Baal.
He says, when you enter the land, when I give you this land, be careful not to do the same things that they did because they shed innocent blood, the land vomited them out.
So Psalm 24, verse 1 says, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.
The reason the devil is so driven to bring abortion is because he knows that the righteous part of God must at some point say, enough is enough.
I have to avenge the shedding of innocent blood.
And the devil now is able to have a field day, his agenda, which is destruction driven by a hate.
Now, he hates Charlie Kirk, not because of what Charlie Kirk does.
He hates Charlie Kirk because of who Charlie Kirk is.
When he looks at you, he sees that you bear the Imago Day, the image of God, the image of the one who dismissed him from his place, and he is filled with a rage.
He hates humanity.
He hates people.
And so he wants God to lift his protection from America.
And we have to fight because we don't want people's lives to be destroyed.
We don't want to go through another Holocaust.
Hitler, 1939, when people say it doesn't matter who the president is, I'm like, obviously, you weren't around in 1939, Germany, when the National Socialistic Democrat Republic sounds very similar, party was elected to power.
But what happened in Germany should never happen again.
What happened in 1920s through Stalin should never happen in the world again.
What happened with Chairman Mao should never happen again.
What happened with Pol Pot should never happen again.
What happened with Idiot?
I mean, history keeps repeating.
When are we going to learn?
Christians have to get engaged.
Really well said.
Yeah.
I'm blessed by that.
When you were speaking of this idea of abortion, one of the fallback positions of the woke Christian, prominent Christian side, as opposed to preeminent for Christ, is that, oh, we only care about the babies in the womb, but when they're born, we don't care.
And somehow that justifies their position to be pro-choice, which is nauseating.
And it makes no logical sense whatsoever.
But this also brings together the disillusionment or the struggle of those who worked diligently in this last election and lost.
Yeah.
And they don't understand why.
Yeah.
And they saw a pro-life president.
Yes.
They saw all these things and they don't know why.
And yet we watch the church completely silent, imploding and silent on the subject, which is supposed to be the soul of the nation.
Yes.
And a man who never, I don't think he ever publicly professed being a Christian, nor was baptized nor had public membership to a church.
He wrote these words, second inaugural address.
He said, both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes his aid against the other.
It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of another man's face.
But let us judge, not that we be not judged.
The prayers of both could not be answered.
That of neither has been answered fully.
The Almighty has his own purposes.
Second inaugural address, Lincoln understood, unlike the pulpits in America, this was an issue over 4 million slaves.
Wow.
And that's why we lost 2% of our nation on a field of battle.
That's right.
You don't kill a million babies a year in America and thank God to turn a blind eye.
Yes.
This is way bigger than all of us.
It's time we awaken and repent.
And also, I want to just, every Christian should take a huge stand against this line of thinking.
Like, oh, you only care about them when they're born.
Well, first of all, show me one public policy measure that the Democrats support once the baby that is born that is actually better for them.
Schools.
Yeah, exactly.
Crime.
Yeah.
Education.
Family.
Yeah.
Food stamps.
Inner city poverty.
We as conservatives have.
We as conservatives actually have the most pro-human policies after they're born, too.
Yes.
This is a bunch of nonsense.
Just because we don't want to expand the welfare state doesn't mean that we don't care about that child once they're born.
Charlie, I've been a pastor of this congregation, God speak, for 20 years, 21 years this year.
Congratulations.
It's awesome.
I've survived.
That's amazing.
What's a great congregation, too?
Good people.
From day one, I have said publicly and have been on record, and the entire congregation knows this, you know, any woman who is considering an abortion is willing to keep it because we'll help with the birth and the costs and we'll find a home for it.
Yes.
We'll take care of it.
In 20 years, we haven't had one person take us up on that offer.
Not one.
That's right.
So don't give me that garbage.
And also, pregnancy crisis centers exist.
Yes.
Most people don't know about that.
Yes.
And there is an abundant array of willing churches like both yours that would support.
And we've adopted, by the way.
But also, let's just talk.
Yeah, let's just talk about the public policy side of it.
We stand for educational choice.
Sure.
We stand for more police to stop the slaughter of 70.
You know, there were 750 homicides in Chicago last year?
750.
I mean, these numbers would stun Bogota, Columbia.
That sounds like Baghdad.
750 homicides.
Yeah.
So don't give me that nonsense about we don't care about the human being.
We are the pro-human party.
We just are.
Yeah, we are.
And we shouldn't allow that.
Because we kind of like back down where we're like, oh, I don't know.
Maybe you are right.
No, no, no.
You want more social safety nets, not to help them, but to restrict them.
Yeah.
You want, hold on a second.
You're trying to tell me you care about the child after they're born.
You want to get put in transgender curriculum?
Yeah.
You want to put in graphic sex education for that nine-year-old?
You want to put in critical race theory?
You want to tell 10-year-old black kids that you can't succeed just because you're black?
Because of their immutable characteristics?
You're anti-human.
Don't give me a human.
Yes, exactly.
The conservative agenda is pro-human from inception all the way to their last breath.
Yeah.
And that's the truth that needs to be communicated.
And again, and it comes back to don't be fooled.
The reason they want to expand welfare is not because they care about the people.
Of course not.
They want to increase because they want to increase their power over people.
That's what it's all about.
The reason why they give away free stuff is because even the cheese in the rat trap is free.
Yes, exactly.
Well, free stuff comes with a price and it's your freedom.
Amen.
When a government is giving you something for free, it's at the expense of your freedom.
Well, and this is what I tell everyone who might get a stimulus check.
If you need it, spend it as you need it.
If you do not need it and you were going to spend it on Netflix or whatever, give it away.
DoorDash.
Yeah, go give it away.
Give it to a church.
Give it to the pregnancy crisis center.
Yes.
Give it away.
Do not take that money for anything else than try to multiply the good in the world.
And if you need it, totally use it.
I get it.
A lot of businesses shuttered and shattered, and I'm not trying to diminish that.
There's a lot of people that brag about on social media, people I know in my life, oh, I got $1,200.
And, you know, if they only knew how well I was actually doing, a blah, Man, that's not moral, man.
No, that's right.
And somebody, we're paying that with inflated dollars.
Oh, man.
We're paying that with deficits that we are going to owe and debts are going to owe for a long time.
And go at least use that little, you know, mine, that's not a little, $1,200, which is significant to go maybe bless somebody else.
Yes.
You know, it's interesting on my wife and I, we both have, especially over the last couple of years, become quite a bit more vocal on our social media, especially on our Instagram.
And unfortunately, it lost us pretty severely, relationships, even 20 years of family connection gone.
And I remember this one very, very vocal from Australia got on and had been discipled many years ago in our ministry in Australia.
And now, because of the church culture there had moved away from truth into wokeness, brought up that whole argument.
Well, you know, you guys, you know, you only care about, you know, you're so pro-life.
You're so narrow in your thinking.
What about what are you guys doing after the child is born?
And what was amazing was we had, through Compassion International, asked them, what is one of the, you know, one of your biggest needs right now?
And they had an entire village that needed sponsoring in Peru.
And so we said, let us have a look.
And it was massive.
It was hundreds of thousands of dollars in infrastructure and everything.
When I brought that to the church, and this is, you know, caring for people after they're born.
When I brought it to our church, hoping that we could get our church to support this one village, our church so unanimously stepped up that right now we are supporting eight entire villages in Peru And we have five orphanages.
It's a place most people never visit.
Never visit.
We have five orphanages in Mexico, and we're about to add another three to that plus a school.
So, you know, and so when we push that, but we never heard back from that person.
I'm not sure whether maybe, you know, their feed went mute or whatever.
But we hear that argument all the time.
But here's what I would say.
And I would just say that if you think, oh, hey, because we don't care for people after, we shouldn't care before, the way to care for people after is to care before.
If you don't care about people in the womb, you're not going to care after them.
Exactly right.
In New Zealand, there was a very, very powerful Māori woman.
The Māori people, the Indigenous people.
Very, very powerful minister.
I mean, powerful minister of the gospel.
And I remember she was, and the Maori people are very spiritual, but it's demonic.
So there's a lot of casting out of demons and deliverance that happens because they're into astral travel, ancestral worship, you know, idolatry, everything.
So this particular minister who discipled my brother-in-law was in a meeting where there was a woman who had, she was abusing her little children.
She had a five-year-old, a three-year-old, and then an 18-month-old.
And they had like bruises and burns on them.
And she came weeping, this woman weeping, troubled, because she was abusing her three little ones.
And this minister immediately stopped and said, you've had an abortion.
And she breaks down, starts crying.
She goes, I've had two abortions.
Yeah, it's a spirit of murder.
Because if you'll abuse on this side of the womb, you'll abuse on this side of the womb.
Praise for her.
I mean, it was a demonstration like biblical times.
This woman fell back, her eyes rolled, and she began to growl.
And like this voice, so it's a woman, this voice, like this demonic, like a male voice starts screaming out of her.
She gets delivered and set free.
I remember that family had just joined a church.
I remember being in that church maybe two and a half years later, speaking in that church, didn't even recognize her.
She comes up to me.
The kids are grown.
She looked like a completely, she looked five years younger.
But it was just a powerful illustration that if you don't care on this side of the womb, you're not going to care on that side of the womb.
So the argument of, oh, well, you only care about that, we have to care on this side.
If we don't care on this side, we won't care on that side.
I completely agree with all of it.
It's just that talking point is nauseating to me.
It's a virtue signaling thing saying that.
It's a clinging symbol and a sound, bro.
It's like we want a Leviathan state, therefore we care about you.
No, you don't.
You want the open borders so kids can be sex trafficked.
You just want to be prominent.
You don't want Christian to be preeminent.
So I think you got a dash, right, Rob?
I do.
Everybody, you can email us your questions about this wonderful conversation, freedom at charliekirk.com.
This is on the Godspeak YouTube channel.
Yeah.
And this will also be on our podcast feed.
Jürgen, any way that people can stay in touch with you?
First of all, if they're in San Diego, they should go to your church.
AwakeningChurch.com.
We have a lot of San Diego listeners.
Oh, come on.
And then I'm just on Instagram at Jürgenmeister.
But my wife is mad with me because I've just re-overtaken her on, and she's at Leanne Matesius.
And she is so beautiful, so diplomatic, and great wisdom.
So if you've got the choice of only following one of us, follow her.
We do follow both.
Yeah.
Rob?
The real McCoy?
You know what?
We're going to be doing Vintage McCoy, but we're going to launch that in a few weeks.
I love that.
About a week and a half.
Vintage McCoy, like a beautiful vintage vehicle.
Yeah, but if you go to Godspeak.com, you'll find the YouTube channel.
Everybody, thanks so much for watching.
God bless you guys.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
If you listened all the way through, please consider supporting us at charliekirk.com/slash support.