The Charlie Kirk Show - How The Church Can Engage In and WIN the American Culture War with Pastor Rob McCoy
Aired: 2021-05-02
Duration: 36:53

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, happy Sunday.
[00:00:01]  Should Christians get involved in politics?
[00:00:03]  What do the scriptures say about getting engaged with the fight right now?
[00:00:08]  Well, this conversation with my pastor, Rob McCoy from Calvary Chapel Thousand Oaks, I think is one worth listening to and passing around.
[00:00:15]  Rob McCoy fully opened his church in May of last year in Thousand Oaks, California.
[00:00:19]  No masks, no social distancing, fought the governor, mobilized his congregation to fight for freedom and liberty in his local area.
[00:00:26]  And he has won.
[00:00:27]  They have dropped his lawsuit.
[00:00:29]  And he is winning and he's incredible.
[00:00:31]  Many of you heard Rob before.
[00:00:32]  You're going to love the Sunday episode of the Charlie Kirk Show brought to you.
[00:00:35]  Advertiser-free.
[00:00:36]  And again, I want to thank those of you that support us at charliekirk.com slash support that helped make this podcast possible.
[00:00:42]  Get involved with TurningPointUSA at tpusa.com.
[00:00:45]  We just announced we are doing our student action summit in July at tpusa.com slash SAS.
[00:00:52]  We also have our young women's leadership summit coming up in early June in Dallas, Texas, tpusa.com slash YWLS.
[00:00:59]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:01:01]  Here we go.
[00:01:02]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:01:04]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:01:06]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:01:09]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:01:13]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:01:14]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:01:15]  His spirit is love of this country.
[00:01:16]  He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:01:23]  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.
[00:01:32]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:36]  Hey, everybody.
[00:01:36]  Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:01:38]  Back with us today is my pastor, Rob McCoy.
[00:01:41]  Good to be with you, Charlie.
[00:01:42]  Hey, you guys have some really exciting news to share.
[00:01:45]  We do.
[00:01:46]  As many of your listeners probably know, our church has been attacked by the county of Ventura.
[00:01:55]  They applied an emergency restraining order on us because we've been open since May 31st.
[00:02:01]  No social distancing, no masks.
[00:02:05]  We've been accused of being super spreaders and the whole like.
[00:02:07]  There's no evidence as such.
[00:02:09]  And they wanted to cite, give citations to a thousand congregants or visitors, and they also named me in the suit.
[00:02:18]  And they asked the judge to allow the sheriff to lock our doors and arrest people.
[00:02:25]  The second judge that we papered, the first one was political and predictive, but the second judge denied that, but still allowed the fines for the restraining order in violation of it in contempt of the restraining order.
[00:02:38]  And we've been doing that since late August.
[00:02:40]  And two days ago, the county folded.
[00:02:45]  We did a cross-complaint.
[00:02:47]  We asked for over 100 documents, and the county voted unanimously to pull their lawsuit against us.
[00:02:55]  And they quit.
[00:02:57]  They're out.
[00:02:58]  When it came time to show their cards, they folded.
[00:03:01]  And they did all this at the taxpayers' expense.
[00:03:05]  They attacked houses of faith.
[00:03:06]  They've destroyed businesses.
[00:03:08]  And they don't get a mulligan on this one.
[00:03:10]  We're still pursuing our cross-complaint.
[00:03:14]  We have in our county a 99.87% survival rate on this virus.
[00:03:20]  We still don't have the data on who has died from COVID and who's died with.
[00:03:24]  When I was with the judge and we had the Freedom of Information Act at the time, a little over 100 deaths in our county, only two of them had died from COVID: a man in his 90s and a woman in her late 80s.
[00:03:35]  So we're looking at calling the health officer and everyone else, and we want to depose them.
[00:03:43]  And they lifted the lawsuit, but they didn't apologize.
[00:03:48]  They didn't offer to pay the legal fees that they've caused us to incur.
[00:03:52]  And businesses are getting upset.
[00:03:54]  And there's a recall effort on the lead county supervisor that started this.
[00:03:59]  And I had nothing to do with it.
[00:04:01]  This is businesses in Ventura that are just tired of the tyranny and the overreach of officials who have violated our Bill of Rights.
[00:04:10]  The First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, taking property without remuneration, violating the church's right to peaceably assemble.
[00:04:19]  Largest number of opioid overdose deaths in the history of our country in a 12-month period.
[00:04:25]  In addition, the figures I've received, child abuse in our county is up 300%.
[00:04:31]  So to say the church isn't necessary while they allow abortion clinics and cannabis distributors to be essential, and then to violate our First Amendment over a virus that has a 99.8% survival rate is unconscionable.
[00:04:44]  And they don't get them all again on that.
[00:04:46]  So you're continuing your suit against the county.
[00:04:48]  Yes.
[00:04:49]  Should Christians sue?
[00:04:50]  Yeah.
[00:04:51]  Tell us why.
[00:04:52]  Well, I mean, obviously, as Christians, we have a higher law that we can work things out through the scriptures themselves.
[00:05:00]  But if folks don't recognize the authority of God and this idea that these inalienable rights come from God and we don't operate in that context, then we go to a court.
[00:05:12]  Granted, God is the one who gives perfect justice.
[00:05:16]  But at times, you have to go to man's law and his court and you have to contend there.
[00:05:22]  And it's what we've been given in our Constitutional Republic.
[00:05:26]  Why have so few churches done this?
[00:05:29]  Well, you know, you and I have had a chance to discuss this over the time.
[00:05:33]  And at first, you know, love hopes all things.
[00:05:37]  And I look at pastors as peacemakers, not wanting to confront.
[00:05:42]  But what they don't comprehend is that this critical race theory is so nefarious that it's infiltrated every one of our institutions, including the church.
[00:05:51]  And when they hear the word social justice, I get it.
[00:05:54]  There's social ills in our nation, and we want justice for that.
[00:05:59]  But the critical theorists, they don't interpret it the same way.
[00:06:04]  They're saying that racism is systemic and white people and the Enlightenment thinkers and absolute truth don't exist.
[00:06:16]  And their approach is truth is only defined by your political power.
[00:06:21]  And so semantics and words mean nothing to them.
[00:06:24]  There's no truth to them.
[00:06:25]  Truth is power.
[00:06:27]  And so now the church abdicates its responsibility in the public square, thinking that we can appease them.
[00:06:33]  And they use terms that will cause us to want to be endeared to them, such as social justice.
[00:06:39]  But in reality, they are creating racial wars that need not exist.
[00:06:44]  And we have to stand up and define this and educate ourselves.
[00:06:49]  And I just think pastors are uneducated in really the problem we're facing in America.
[00:06:57]  I totally agree.
[00:06:58]  And so the church got shut down.
[00:07:00]  Many churches are still shut down.
[00:07:01]  Yep.
[00:07:01]  Which is just hard to even begin to understand.
[00:07:07]  And quite honestly, most of America didn't miss the church.
[00:07:11]  What does that say?
[00:07:12]  Yeah.
[00:07:12]  Well, they thought that they could do it over the internet.
[00:07:15]  And watching church on the internet is like watching a fireplace.
[00:07:18]  You can see it and hear it, but you can't feel the warmth.
[00:07:21]  And the depression, the things that they haven't even taken into consideration with their tyrannical draconian measures is the devastation they've done to our children and the psychological and spiritual devastation that they've wrought upon our state.
[00:07:34]  And medically speaking, it hasn't done anything to make California better than any state that didn't lock down.
[00:07:43]  As a matter of fact, Florida has a higher median age than California does, and they've had less deaths in California.
[00:07:48]  Yes.
[00:07:48]  Per capita.
[00:07:50]  Per capita.
[00:07:51]  And so you're trying to get the church back involved.
[00:07:54]  We both are.
[00:07:55]  We're doing this turning point faith initiative.
[00:07:56]  It's going to be very exciting.
[00:07:58]  And we know a lot of churches that are standing out and stepping out.
[00:08:02]  And I think it's a very interesting moment for the church in a variety of different ways.
[00:08:08]  And I'm still trying to process how people can be pastors and still be okay with some of this stuff.
[00:08:16]  Maybe I'm never going to find an answer to that.
[00:08:17]  Well, no, we will.
[00:08:19]  Like I said, Love Hope's all things.
[00:08:21]  And we play good cop, bad cop.
[00:08:22]  And I love the back and forth we do because there's times where I'm in your camp and I'm frustrated by these guys.
[00:08:29]  And then we switch.
[00:08:30]  And we're processing it.
[00:08:34]  I look at these pastors that have yielded and they quote Romans 13, but they don't understand that Romans 13 doesn't call for unlimited submission.
[00:08:43]  The sermon done by Jonathan Mayhew, who died in 1766, John Adams said that that was the sermon that started the American Revolution because he pointed out in Romans 13 that you do submit to authority, but because that authority is appointed by God.
[00:08:58]  But he goes on to say they're there for our good.
[00:09:00]  When they cease to do good, they cease to be the authority.
[00:09:04]  And so disobedience to tyrants is obedience to God.
[00:09:07]  And that was long before we had a constitutional republic.
[00:09:10]  Now we have one.
[00:09:12]  And when you read Romans 13 in a constitutional republic, it says the authority is appointed by God.
[00:09:17]  The authority in America now is the first three words of the preamble.
[00:09:20]  We the people.
[00:09:21]  And those who govern govern by our consent, and they're bound by the seven articles of the Constitution.
[00:09:26]  And they swear to defend that Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
[00:09:30]  One of the reasons why I stepped down as a sitting city council member that I worked hard to get that seat is because I refuse to be a part of a council that would not stand in defense of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
[00:09:42]  It's our right and our duty to push back.
[00:09:44]  I swore to defend that Constitution.
[00:09:46]  And the governor has no right to say the church is non-essential.
[00:09:51]  While he's declaring abortion clinics essential, why they rip apart the child in his mother's womb, flush their parts into the sewer systems of our nation.
[00:09:58]  We lead the nation abortion in California.
[00:10:01]  And he says cannabis distributors are essential.
[00:10:03]  Liquor stores are essential, but not the church.
[00:10:06]  And now we're watching this emotional, psychological, and spiritual devastation.
[00:10:10]  Many churches will never reopen.
[00:10:12]  Their attendance has dropped significantly.
[00:10:15]  And most people are just not going to go back to church.
[00:10:17]  And our school systems, even worse, we have millions of kids that are unaccounted for that don't do the online.
[00:10:23]  They don't even know where they are now.
[00:10:25]  And this is the devastation that's been brought by these tyrannical measures saying that this is an emergency.
[00:10:30]  And so our cross-complaint, Freedom of Information Act, we want to know how you can justify doing what you did to our county.
[00:10:38]  And you know who my biggest supporters are?
[00:10:41]  I just spoke at the Brave Coalition in Oxnard.
[00:10:45]  I didn't know much about them.
[00:10:46]  It was a bunch of business owners who have defied the county orders because they were 65% of our restaurants, it's been estimated, will never reopen in our county.
[00:10:55]  And so these folks said, look, we're opening because we're going to lose either way.
[00:11:00]  Let them find us.
[00:11:01]  And so I came and spoke.
[00:11:02]  The room was packed.
[00:11:04]  And business owner after business owner with, they were choked up crying, saying, thank you for opening.
[00:11:10]  You inspired us to do this.
[00:11:12]  And they were so deeply moved.
[00:11:14]  And these are people that would never darken the doors of a church.
[00:11:17]  And they're in the front row every Sunday.
[00:11:19]  And the testimonies from what had occurred was amazing.
[00:11:21]  How's your church doing year over year?
[00:11:23]  So on a good Sunday prior to this whole mess, 350 people.
[00:11:29]  February of 2020.
[00:11:30]  Yeah, 350 people on a Sunday.
[00:11:32]  Now we're over 2,000.
[00:11:34]  That's like that coin that I can't pronounce.
[00:11:37]  Yeah.
[00:11:38]  That's pretty good.
[00:11:39]  Yeah.
[00:11:41]  People want freedom.
[00:11:42]  And liberty is not man's idea.
[00:11:44]  It's God's idea.
[00:11:45]  The entire scriptures, including Exodus, God has come to set the captives free.
[00:11:51]  And man does not give us our rights.
[00:11:53]  God does.
[00:11:54]  And the church must be on the forefront of defending that truth.
[00:11:58]  And to say Romans 13, an unlimited submission, it was the number one verse quoted in Nazi Germany.
[00:12:03]  These pastors need to wake up and realize it's not unlimited submission.
[00:12:08]  They are not allowed to infringe on our worship of God.
[00:12:12]  Period.
[00:12:12]  So there's been three inflection points in the last year, and the church has failed them all miserably.
[00:12:17]  You've passed them all.
[00:12:18]  Number one, the lockdowns.
[00:12:20]  Number two, the race riots.
[00:12:22]  Number three, the election.
[00:12:24]  Yep.
[00:12:24]  We've lost more liberty and freedom in one year because of those three events.
[00:12:28]  It's because the church wasn't there in a trust fall position to catch America and put it back where it belongs.
[00:12:34]  It's the speech that I gave at Dream City, which is this idea that America is always going to be in free fall.
[00:12:39]  It's the natural position of human beings to fall.
[00:12:42]  But it's the church that's upright that's supposed to catch it and put it back into its proper place.
[00:12:47]  You pass the lockdowns.
[00:12:48]  Let's focus on the race riots.
[00:12:50]  You wrote Cynical Theories by James Lindsay.
[00:12:54]  Amazing.
[00:12:54]  It's a great book.
[00:12:56]  James Lindsay's terrific.
[00:12:57]  You've heard him on our podcast before.
[00:12:59]  And do you think that every pastor in the country should read that book?
[00:13:02]  Absolutely.
[00:13:04]  A self-proclaimed atheist has defined this better than any pulpit in America.
[00:13:10]  Except maybe Vodie Bakken, but he's not American.
[00:13:13]  And so James Lindsay does a history of postmodernism, goes into critical theory, cynical theory.
[00:13:20]  He lays out the realization that they don't look at absolute truth, which is a nefarious weapon to destroy the church.
[00:13:31]  And the church is not contending.
[00:13:32]  Instead, they're embracing BLM Inc.
[00:13:35]  And they think that they're participating in social justice, which these critical theorists have, that is not the issue.
[00:13:43]  They want to remove absolute truth.
[00:13:46]  They want to say that whites are systemically racist because of the Enlightenment thinkers, that the scientific theory and everything that came with modernism was a result of all of our ills.
[00:14:00]  And to look at empirical data, to come to understand the laws of nature, nature's God, that truth can be known, they want that removed.
[00:14:07]  Yes.
[00:14:08]  Because they say that's a white man's constraint on society.
[00:14:11]  And now they're saying intersectionality where these victim groups find their power or find truth by the power that they exert within the political arena.
[00:14:24]  And that's devastating because a church abdicated its responsibility in the public square.
[00:14:29]  We think we're not supposed to do politics, even though the word is both you and I know in Matthew, when he says, upon this rock, I'll build my ecclesia, public square.
[00:14:38]  Go build my political group.
[00:14:39]  Yeah, I'll contend in the public square and push back the gates of hell.
[00:14:43]  And the law is a guardian, Galatians 3, a school teacher and a guardian to point us to Christ until faith comes.
[00:14:50]  So most evangelicals look at the law, you know, Levitical law.
[00:14:55]  So we have moral law with a decalogue, the Ten Commandments, and from that come civil laws.
[00:14:59]  You read Leviticus.
[00:15:01]  And most ministers look at that and say, well, the law is there just to show us we can't keep it.
[00:15:05]  And they realize that we're saved by grace through faith.
[00:15:07]  It's a gift of God, not of works that say any man should boast.
[00:15:10]  I'm all about that.
[00:15:12]  But to remove the law and our responsibility to implement that and those ideas and a constitutional republic found in Exodus, when Jethro says to Moses, appoint godly men over thousands, hundreds, fifties, tens who fear God and are not covetous and love truth.
[00:15:31]  And we have to realize Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
[00:15:35]  In the beginning was the word.
[00:15:36]  The word was with God.
[00:15:37]  You can't mess with semantics and change the meaning of words and justify your truth based on your intersectionality of your victim group.
[00:15:47]  Words mean something.
[00:15:50]  And all it is is reverse racism and an attempt as they're doing these ethnic studies in California to try to pit races against one another and destroy this beautiful constitutional republic.
[00:16:02]  And the church has to wake up to this.
[00:16:04]  But so many pastors are not just okay with it, they're involved in it.
[00:16:08]  Like that Judah guy, Judah Smith, I think his name is Levi Lusko, so many, I could name it, and Andy Stanley.
[00:16:15]  I named them for a reason because enough.
[00:16:19]  Enough.
[00:16:20]  Come on our program.
[00:16:21]  Talk to me.
[00:16:22]  Yeah, let's talk it through.
[00:16:23]  But they run.
[00:16:24]  They don't talk.
[00:16:25]  They don't believe in it.
[00:16:26]  And I am done with these pastors.
[00:16:29]  I'm done with these musical artists.
[00:16:31]  I'm done with these people posting the squares, saying these things, and they won't even talk to me.
[00:16:36]  And then I have to be lectured by Lecrae, who's a very racist person, by the way, that I'm a white supremacist.
[00:16:44]  And so, Rob, what's happening in the Christian world?
[00:16:47]  I'm not in the Christian world.
[00:16:48]  I'm in the conservative world.
[00:16:50]  I'm a Christian in that world.
[00:16:51]  And I'm looking in and I say, what an ingrateful group of people generally for our nation and our republic.
[00:16:58]  I'm losing patience.
[00:16:59]  It's a year.
[00:17:00]  We failed every test as a church.
[00:17:02]  Again, I'm going to go through the three inflection points, right?
[00:17:04]  The lockdowns, the race riots, and just the racialization of everything and our election.
[00:17:11]  Why are we putting up with this?
[00:17:13]  Good questions, Charlie.
[00:17:15]  I'm not alone in this.
[00:17:16]  No, and I understand the position you're taking.
[00:17:22]  But the Bible says be anxious in nothing, in all things through prayer and supplication.
[00:17:25]  And people aren't the enemy.
[00:17:26]  They're the opportunities.
[00:17:27]  The ideas that are the enemy.
[00:17:29]  And these folks are woefully confused.
[00:17:31]  They really are.
[00:17:32]  They think that they're accomplishing social justice, but they don't understand critical theory.
[00:17:38]  And they're woefully ignorant of this.
[00:17:40]  And when they awaken to it, Love Hopes All Things, I'm believing they'll start to understand this.
[00:17:44]  And congregations need to awaken and start to educate their pastors.
[00:17:49]  And, you know, they're going to be moved by the departure of their congregants.
[00:17:54]  Our church grew, and those folks came from somewhere.
[00:17:58]  And they want to be led.
[00:17:59]  They want to understand whatever things are true.
[00:18:01]  We need to focus on those with this intersectionality.
[00:18:05]  And this is what the pastors need to understand.
[00:18:07]  They take these victim groups that call good evil and evil good.
[00:18:13]  And so the hierarchy in this critical theory, if you want to be at the top of the food chain, you would be a black female lesbian pagan.
[00:18:22]  In a wheelchair.
[00:18:23]  In a wheelchair.
[00:18:24]  Unable to see her.
[00:18:25]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:27]  But the bottom line would be pagan or anything other than Christian.
[00:18:30]  The lowest on that food chain is going to be a white male heterosexual Christian.
[00:18:36]  Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
[00:18:37]  Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
[00:18:39]  So the idea is: don't look at the stuff at the top.
[00:18:42]  Just reverse it.
[00:18:43]  This is a war between God and man, meaning that man wants God removed from the culture.
[00:18:51]  It doesn't matter that I'm white.
[00:18:53]  It doesn't matter that I'm heterosexual.
[00:18:54]  It doesn't matter.
[00:18:55]  That stuff's irrelevant.
[00:18:57]  They want the theories of truth.
[00:19:00]  Enlightenment thinkers.
[00:19:02]  Sir Isaac Newton, René Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Edmund Burke, all of them.
[00:19:07]  All established by biblical principles.
[00:19:08]  Emmanuel Kants, most of them.
[00:19:10]  Yes.
[00:19:10]  All this idea of the pursuit of truth.
[00:19:11]  You're right.
[00:19:12]  They want those that have pursued truth, remove that ideology.
[00:19:17]  It doesn't matter if it's white.
[00:19:18]  It doesn't matter if it's heterosexual.
[00:19:20]  It doesn't matter if it's male.
[00:19:21]  They just want the truth side.
[00:19:24]  This is a war between either man's going to enslave man or God, we're created in his image in the Imago Day and we're going to be set free.
[00:19:33]  Well, let's talk more about the Enlightenment because it's misunderstood.
[00:19:36]  The Enlightenment inspired by the Protestant Reformation more than anything else was this idea that there is a God who loves us.
[00:19:45]  We're made in his image.
[00:19:46]  And we start thinking, because it says in Isaiah, let us reason together about the natural world around us.
[00:19:53]  And what are the rules of this natural world?
[00:19:56]  And some really honest questions started to be asked about a lot of different things.
[00:20:00]  Human behavior, scientific inquiry, gravity, force equals mass times acceleration, thermodynamics, and things that we just take for granted.
[00:20:09]  They were not created.
[00:20:11]  They were discovered.
[00:20:12]  Huge difference.
[00:20:13]  So all of a sudden, you had Adam Smith, who was...
[00:20:16]  They were created by God, discovered by man.
[00:20:17]  Of course.
[00:20:17]  Yeah, they were not created by man.
[00:20:19]  Yes.
[00:20:19]  That's exactly right.
[00:20:20]  They were not created by men.
[00:20:23]  Adam Smith didn't create the free market.
[00:20:25]  Exactly.
[00:20:26]  But he discovered it and he described it.
[00:20:28]  The laws of nature and nature is God.
[00:20:30]  That's what that sentence is all about.
[00:20:31]  Exactly.
[00:20:32]  In the declaration.
[00:20:33]  And it doesn't matter if you're Protestant, Catholic, agnostic, atheist, just like with James Lindsay.
[00:20:36]  Here you have a self-proclaimed atheist that understands that there is absolute truth that can be discovered.
[00:20:44]  And with this approach to academia, we've accomplished great things in the modern world.
[00:20:52]  But with the postmodern thinking, they're looking at it and with the absence of God and you have abundance, people become cynical.
[00:21:00]  And then you have nihilist mindsets and people start getting depressed.
[00:21:06]  And then you want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
[00:21:09]  It's time we return to truth.
[00:21:11]  And what I say to folks that come to the church, and the church, we've witnessed an unbelievable awakening and revival in our church.
[00:21:19]  And the folks that are awakening to it are the ones that have lost their liberty.
[00:21:22]  Their streams dried up.
[00:21:24]  Skaters whose skate parks were filled with sand by the government, surfers whose beaches were shut, business owners who'd never darkened the doors of a church had their businesses shut down.
[00:21:33]  Their streams of liberty dry up.
[00:21:34]  They go upstream.
[00:21:35]  They come into a church and they say, how do you guys have freedom?
[00:21:39]  And we say, our freedom doesn't come from man.
[00:21:41]  It comes from God and we're exercising that.
[00:21:43]  Let Caesar do what he's going to do.
[00:21:45]  Let him fine us.
[00:21:45]  Let him imprison us.
[00:21:46]  But we're going to stand on these inalienable truths.
[00:21:49]  Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
[00:21:51]  No man takes that from us.
[00:21:53]  And liberty is like muscles.
[00:21:55]  If you don't exercise it, you lose it.
[00:21:56]  And they look at us and they say, What gives you that freedom?
[00:21:59]  2 Corinthians 3, where the spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty.
[00:22:03]  Liberty is God's idea.
[00:22:04]  You come to the source.
[00:22:05]  It's Christ.
[00:22:06]  Now, granted, I'm speaking to a pluralistic society, but liberty is intrinsic in every human heart.
[00:22:14]  We want it.
[00:22:15]  We just don't want to fight for it.
[00:22:17]  And the entirety of scripture from Exodus all the way to Revelation is Christ has come to set the captives free.
[00:22:24]  Three to five million Jews set free from slavery in Egypt with a deliverer contending with a tyrant.
[00:22:31]  And you look at the book of Exodus and you realize: is man going to rule or is God going to rule?
[00:22:36]  Because man will enslave man, but God comes to set us free.
[00:22:41]  And when he gives us the moral law, those are the wise restraints that make men free because we're living on his earth, breathing his air, you know, living on his dirt, drinking his water, and eating his food.
[00:22:53]  We're to live by his rules.
[00:22:55]  And the laws of nature and nature is God.
[00:22:57]  If we break those laws, those laws will break us.
[00:23:00]  Gravity works for an atheist as much as it works for a Protestant Christian.
[00:23:05]  Those are the laws of nature.
[00:23:08]  And when we start to understand these laws and we pursue truth, then we come to faith.
[00:23:14]  But this critical theory wants to remove all that empirical data, wants to remove the pursuit of truth and exchange it for political power.
[00:23:23]  And all that is is tyranny.
[00:23:26]  And it's growing in the church quicker than anything else.
[00:23:29]  I did this example when I was at a church.
[00:23:31]  Had the pastor stand up in front of his congregation, and I said, turn to the right.
[00:23:37]  And he turned to the right.
[00:23:38]  I said, my right, stupid.
[00:23:41]  I mean, I called their pastor stupid in front of him.
[00:23:43]  I said, my right, stupid.
[00:23:45]  And what I was saying to him is, I didn't communicate clearly with words because words have meaning.
[00:23:52]  And you obeyed what I said, but I'm demanding that you understand my culture and the way I'm communicating, even though I wasn't clear.
[00:24:02]  You're stupid and I'm in charge.
[00:24:04]  And that's exactly what you do when you mess with the language.
[00:24:08]  People say, no, that's not what I meant.
[00:24:10]  Well, that's why words have meaning.
[00:24:12]  You aren't allowed to mess with the dictionary.
[00:24:15]  And that's what they're doing with this term social justice.
[00:24:20]  It's not what our young people in our churches think it is.
[00:24:23]  It's not what our pastors think it is who are putting up the BLM black tiles.
[00:24:27]  They are buying in to a system that is destroying truth and destroying our nation.
[00:24:33]  And it's a cancel culture.
[00:24:35]  And they're pitting people against one another by immutable traits.
[00:24:39]  Look, take away, wipe me off the face of the earth and close me out based on the color of my skin, but stand on the principles of truth.
[00:24:48]  I don't care what you do to me.
[00:24:50]  Your children will benefit if you apply these truths.
[00:24:53]  You'll flourish.
[00:24:55]  You'll know the truth.
[00:24:55]  That truth will set you free.
[00:24:57]  Truth is critical.
[00:24:58]  Contend for that.
[00:24:59]  But don't make it about white heterosexual male.
[00:25:02]  You know what it's about.
[00:25:03]  It's about the fact that you don't want to recognize that there's a God, as our founders did, endowed by our Creator.
[00:25:11]  But pastors do recognize there's a God.
[00:25:14]  Right?
[00:25:15]  They do, but they don't understand the deep thoughts of this.
[00:25:19]  How is that possible?
[00:25:20]  Timothy Keller, for example, he's a smart guy.
[00:25:22]  Yeah.
[00:25:24]  What's wrong with that guy?
[00:25:25]  Well, you know, we've caused the gospel.
[00:25:28]  I'm just struggling, so help me and millions of others.
[00:25:30]  I got it.
[00:25:31]  They've caused the gospel to be truncated in myopic.
[00:25:34]  And so what you'll typically hear a pastor say, especially to me, and I hear it across the country, hey, bro, I just preach the gospel.
[00:25:40]  I'm not into politics.
[00:25:41]  And I go, you're into politics.
[00:25:43]  You just don't know it.
[00:25:44]  But if you're insinuating that I don't preach the gospel, you're solely mistaken.
[00:25:49]  I teach the death, burial, resurrection of Christ.
[00:25:52]  I believe salvation by grace, and I preach it.
[00:25:54]  You're saved by grace through faith.
[00:25:56]  It's a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
[00:25:58]  I call people to that.
[00:25:59]  But Christ didn't say make converts.
[00:26:01]  He said make disciples and not just disciples, but disciples of all nations.
[00:26:05]  Nations possess boundaries, borders, and compacts, agreements, statutes, constitutions.
[00:26:11]  And we're contending with these civil laws that come from moral law to protect people.
[00:26:17]  And if you're going to say open borders, then open the doors of your house.
[00:26:21]  And if you're going to use Jesus' quotes for government, remember this.
[00:26:25]  Jesus never spoke to government.
[00:26:26]  He spoke to the individual.
[00:26:28]  We're accountable to God to apply these truths that set people free and to contend in the public square for those.
[00:26:34]  For example, immigration.
[00:26:36]  If you study the scriptures, which most pastors don't, because they just, they want to call for the question to raise your hand.
[00:26:41]  God bless you.
[00:26:41]  I see your hand.
[00:26:42]  And now you're a convert.
[00:26:42]  Now you're paying a tithe.
[00:26:45]  Okay.
[00:26:45]  And those are numbers.
[00:26:46]  And you're worried about buildings, budgets, and baptisms and social media followers.
[00:26:50]  That just doesn't work.
[00:26:52]  The idea is you got to take people deeper because it's truth that will set people free.
[00:27:00]  And whatsoever things are true, we have got to make disciples.
[00:27:05]  Disciples for the public square, the ecclesia.
[00:27:07]  And as you pointed out, and we've had that privilege to study together those two words above the door of every ecclesia that occurred hundreds of years before Christ co-opted that secular term.
[00:27:17]  And then, of course, 400 years after Christ spoke in Matthew, they come up with that term church.
[00:27:22]  But Tyndale, who's hung and then burned For translating from the Greek into the English for the common language and translates that word correctly with a church that was tyrannical, he says assembly.
[00:27:36]  He talks about this public square.
[00:27:38]  And above the door of the ecclesia in the Greek world were those two words.
[00:27:43]  Tell him.
[00:27:43]  Justonomia and Eleutheria.
[00:27:45]  Yeah.
[00:27:45]  Freedom and equality.
[00:27:46]  Yeah.
[00:27:46]  Liberty, equality, freedom, equality.
[00:27:50]  This is what we're to be about.
[00:27:53]  And they're not equipped.
[00:27:55]  They're a mile wide and an inch deep.
[00:27:57]  And they have compromised everything for the sake of being able to call for the question to raise your hand.
[00:28:03]  I get they love the gospel.
[00:28:04]  I do too.
[00:28:06]  But we're not called to make converts.
[00:28:07]  We're called to make disciples.
[00:28:08]  We've got to go deeper because evil doesn't sleep and it is destroying the freedom of America.
[00:28:15]  And pastors have to understand that the church is the instrument of liberty.
[00:28:20]  It's really interesting.
[00:28:21]  They quote Romans 13, but they don't always quote Romans 12, which says, to love what is good and hate is evil.
[00:28:28]  Yeah.
[00:28:28]  And that word hate, you go back to the Greek.
[00:28:30]  That's a harsh word.
[00:28:31]  It's awful.
[00:28:32]  That means repulsion, rejection.
[00:28:35]  So Timothy Keller, where are you at, man?
[00:28:38]  Redeemer Church, New York.
[00:28:39]  You don't hate what's evil.
[00:28:40]  He wrote on a Facebook post that he's not really sure the best way that we should go about abortion.
[00:28:45]  He's not sure about it.
[00:28:47]  He does not hate what is evil.
[00:28:48]  He's in violation of Romans 12.
[00:28:49]  How dare he?
[00:28:51]  But he gets social media followings and he gets accepted by Christian Incorporated.
[00:28:55]  And so what I think needs to happen, you don't have to comment on this.
[00:28:59]  I think what's going to happen actually is a completely new, exciting Christianity that takes bold stances in the public square and it gets blessed for it.
[00:29:08]  And then they'll just be the kind of vichy French Christianity.
[00:29:13]  Go have fun with the tyrants.
[00:29:16]  Yeah, you know, when the scripture says speak the truth in love, I love one adage I've heard that love without truth is hypocrisy.
[00:29:24]  And truth without love is brutality.
[00:29:26]  There's a balance in it.
[00:29:29]  And people say, well, you know, Rob, you're not applying the second great commandment.
[00:29:32]  You know, the first is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.
[00:29:35]  The second is to love your neighbor as yourself.
[00:29:37]  On these two commandments hang all the law of the prophets.
[00:29:39]  You know, I do love my neighbor.
[00:29:41]  I love my neighbor to the point where it's causing us to be fined and to be given citations and the threat of jail, to be ridiculed.
[00:29:52]  I'm standing in defense of the abused who are quarantined with their abusers.
[00:29:57]  I'm standing in defense of the elderly who have to die alone with a virus that has a 99.82% survival rate and they can't see their loved ones.
[00:30:06]  I'm standing in defense of the children whose schools have been shuttered and the business owners whose livelihood has been stolen.
[00:30:13]  I'm standing against tyranny, as is our congregation, and it's the church that ridicules us.
[00:30:20]  And what are they doing to love their neighbor?
[00:30:22]  Putting up a black tile because it's socially convenient when 4% of the population, black childbearing females, are responsible for 37% of the abortions, which means it's a black Holocaust.
[00:30:33]  Where are they on the abortion issue?
[00:30:35]  They put up a black tile, but they're silent when it comes to abortion.
[00:30:39]  Yes.
[00:30:39]  So Timothy Keller, you know, there's a lot of love, but there's not a lot of truth.
[00:30:44]  And you're compromising it to the point where it becomes mushy and incoherent and duplicitous.
[00:30:52]  I'm not sure if it's love, honestly.
[00:30:55]  How could you be loving and lie to people?
[00:30:58]  I'm saying it.
[00:30:59]  You can just nod your head.
[00:31:00]  I'll nod my head.
[00:31:01]  I'm just saying, because I mean, Timothy Keller has this big church, Redeemer.
[00:31:06]  Great.
[00:31:07]  I mean, he's going, he's being morally indifferent on abortion.
[00:31:11]  Unconscionable to me.
[00:31:12]  That's not loving to those kids.
[00:31:13]  And that's not loving to the people in his congregation who are now considering abortion that he's counseling.
[00:31:20]  And he's like, you know, the Bible doesn't tell me the best way to limit abortions.
[00:31:25]  Really, Timothy, does it tell you the best way to limit slavery?
[00:31:27]  Yeah.
[00:31:28]  We abolished that thanks to activist Christians.
[00:31:30]  And Timothy Keller, you wouldn't have been part of the abolitionist movement.
[00:31:33]  You wouldn't.
[00:31:34]  You would have been indifferent.
[00:31:35]  You would have been one of the pastors that maybe joined the Confederacy, maybe did nothing.
[00:31:40]  He wouldn't have been part of the black robe regimen to found America.
[00:31:43]  So that's what we're really saying.
[00:31:44]  And, you know, my guiding thesis, you know this, Rob.
[00:31:46]  Yeah.
[00:31:47]  Is that pastors have always been the moral conscious of America.
[00:31:51]  Every massive achievement the secular world takes credit for is because of the church, every single one of them.
[00:31:55]  From the founding to the abolition of slavery to the Civil Rights Act to women's suffrage is always Christians, always.
[00:32:00]  And the secular world tries to take credit for what the church did, and the church doesn't even know their own history.
[00:32:04]  So they just go say, let's go build another building.
[00:32:06]  Yeah.
[00:32:07]  And look what we've done.
[00:32:09]  And we're successful.
[00:32:10]  But nowhere when you see the church is spoken of in Revelation, nowhere does God commend a church for the size of their buildings or the number of congregants.
[00:32:20]  It's always based on the presence of love and truth.
[00:32:24]  And we're in a season where I don't think we value liberty.
[00:32:32]  And here's the thing.
[00:32:33]  If we don't deal with this issue of liberty and we want to contend over our theological differences and the beauty of the coalition that we're putting together across the country with pastors who are standing very powerful.
[00:32:44]  We come from every theological camp imaginable.
[00:32:47]  And the old issue, the old adage is.
[00:32:48]  I'm never doing that again.
[00:32:50]  We're never doing the theological discussion.
[00:32:53]  But the old adage is when you get a room full of pastors, it's a porcupine theory.
[00:32:56]  You got a lot of great points.
[00:32:57]  Keep them away from me.
[00:32:58]  But if you and I have both witnessed, all of us are getting along as we're endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace because we have one thing in common, liberty.
[00:33:08]  Because if we don't secure this, we're going to be arguing our theological differences from prison.
[00:33:12]  Yes.
[00:33:12]  While America, the last great vestige of the gospel, will be shut down.
[00:33:16]  And you bind the strong man and he will come in.
[00:33:20]  He will bind the strong man and they will plunder the house.
[00:33:23]  And I would just say to my fellow pastors out there, if you believe the gospel is the most important thing, amen.
[00:33:31]  But the second most important thing is protecting the Constitutional Republic that has defended religious liberty, that defends the preaching of that gospel, that is in a threat of being lost and devastated by this canceled culture and this rise of the absence of truth, but is driven by strictly political power.
[00:33:53]  And they want to pit us against one another by immutable traits.
[00:33:56]  Do not fall prey to that as an ignorant buffoon, as one of the useful idiots of their movement.
[00:34:04]  So in the short time we have remaining, Rob, I'll tell you a story.
[00:34:10]  We had someone email us.
[00:34:12]  I've 40 emails from Charleston.
[00:34:13]  They can't find a non-woke church in Charleston.
[00:34:15]  We've asked.
[00:34:16]  We can't find one.
[00:34:16]  No one knows.
[00:34:17]  Charleston, South Carolina.
[00:34:19]  They can't find a non-woke church.
[00:34:20]  I'm sure there's someone out there that has a good church in that area that we can find.
[00:34:25]  We want all of our listeners to email us the good churches.
[00:34:28]  Email us the pastors that are doing a good job.
[00:34:30]  Yes.
[00:34:30]  Enough of the negative stuff.
[00:34:31]  We got enough of that.
[00:34:32]  I could mention them all day long.
[00:34:34]  If there's a brave pastor in your life that's doing a good job, email us, freedom at charliekirk.com, and maybe even introduce us to them.
[00:34:41]  We want to get to know them and give them a platform.
[00:34:44]  And encourage them.
[00:34:46]  If they're not socially distanced and they're not wearing masks and they're standing in defiance of tyranny.
[00:34:51]  Three tests, right?
[00:34:51]  Yeah.
[00:34:52]  Give them the three tests.
[00:34:53]  Lockdowns.
[00:34:53]  Lockdowns.
[00:34:54]  The race issue and the election.
[00:34:56]  If they did the right thing on those three things, call us, please.
[00:34:58]  Or excuse me, email us.
[00:35:00]  Because God tested the church, all three.
[00:35:02]  Yep.
[00:35:02]  And the church failed miserably.
[00:35:04]  In fact, the church was worse.
[00:35:05]  It was complicit with all three.
[00:35:06]  And we need that network of churches because we're getting these people calling asking, where do I go?
[00:35:11]  So folks, please, as Charlie requested, it would be a great asset to us and those around the country who desperately want to find a place to fellowship.
[00:35:20]  So email us, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:35:22]  God speak.
[00:35:23]  If anyone lives in California, this is a church for you.
[00:35:25]  There's some other great churches, too.
[00:35:26]  Jack Kidd and James Cadiz and Joe Pettic and Jürgen, so many others.
[00:35:32]  But God speaks pretty awesome.
[00:35:33]  Shane Eidelman, all of them.
[00:35:35]  And so we are going to be training.
[00:35:37]  We are going to be helping pastors across the country.
[00:35:41]  Turning Point Faith is coming soon.
[00:35:42]  It's going to be massive.
[00:35:43]  Massive.
[00:35:44]  And we are not one to say something and not execute on it.
[00:35:47]  Just look at our student side.
[00:35:48]  It's been amazing.
[00:35:49]  We've been, candidly, being with you just in general exhausts me because you go a mile a minute.
[00:35:56]  But with this adventure that we're on, not only is it thrilling, but it is a massive move.
[00:36:02]  And I'm grateful that Turning Point's doing it.
[00:36:04]  Well, no one else is doing it at this size because I think that we think so small.
[00:36:08]  We need to think really big.
[00:36:10]  1,000 Dietrich Bonhoeffers, 10,000 churches, people in the streets, school board meetings, legislative races, you name it.
[00:36:17]  We need to just act on it.
[00:36:18]  Step into the ecclesia.
[00:36:20]  God will take care of the rest.
[00:36:21]  And if we don't stand together, we will fall apart.
[00:36:24]  Or we'll hang.
[00:36:24]  If we don't stand together, we'll hang separately.
[00:36:26]  Yeah, that's right.
[00:36:27]  Good word.
[00:36:27]  We're hanging together.
[00:36:28]  We'll hang separately.
[00:36:29]  Email us, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:36:30]  God bless you guys.
[00:36:31]  God bless.
[00:36:34]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
[00:36:36]  Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:36:39]  And make sure you get involved with TurningPointUSA, T-P-U-SA.com.
[00:36:42]  Get your kids involved now.
[00:36:44]  We've got to take back our country.
[00:36:46]  God bless you guys.
[00:36:47]  Speak to you soon.
[00:36:49]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.