'Male and Female He Created Them' with Pastor John MacArthur
Charlie welcomes Pastor John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, Calif. where he's been the senior pastor since 1969. He's also the host of Grace to You, a nationally syndicated christian teaching radio and television show and chancellor emeritus of Masters Seminary. What was originally recorded as part of a TBN special, this is the full-length, unabridged interview available only here on The Charlie Kirk Show address the gender, identity, and the "trans" topic. If you are confused how to talk about this topic with friends and family, or if you're losing your way yourself, this is a must listen to episode rooted in timeless wisdom from one of the fathers of the church. Pastor MacArthur recently had a video censored on YouTube for simply stating the biological fact that there are only two genders. So what does the Bible say about trans people, if anything? What message must we bring to a new generation that according to studies, is the most gay, trans, and bisexual in American history? Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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God's Wrath on Culture00:14:59
Hey everybody, happy Sunday.
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My conversation with John MacArthur, which is from a special that we did with TBN Trinity Broadcasting Network, we talk about Romans 1.
We talk about what's happening in our country and the war on children.
It's John MacArthur, who's just terrific.
I think you're going to really enjoy it.
If you want to email me your thoughts, you could do so.
Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.
That's freedom at charliekirk.com.
If you want to support our show, go to charliekirk.com slash support.
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John MacArthur is here.
Buckle up.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
Pastor John MacArthur, thank you so much for joining us.
You know, recently, it seems that YouTube labeled one of your sermons as hate speech.
Tell us about that.
It was such an extraordinary move.
Well, yeah, they labeled it hate speech because I said there are only two genders, male and female.
That was essentially it.
That was over the top.
That was not tolerable in our culture.
I was actually surprised because I've said far more volatile things than that many, many times.
But, you know, I touched the current sacred cow.
It sure seems that way.
So, Pastor, you know, you gave this sermon.
It was very well received.
And you mentioned that term sacred cow.
It seems that the Overton window has been changing and moving throughout the last couple years.
To even say that there are only two genders, to have a video removed, it's such an extraordinary measure.
I mean, now Apple iPhones, they have emojis of pregnant men.
Just talk a little bit about in your many years of ministry, how you've seen this moral decline and with it, the gender confusion that is plaguing America.
Yeah, you know, I think, Charlie, it really is what you see described in the first chapter of Romans, where the Apostle Paul talks about the wrath of God being revealed.
And it's cyclical.
The way it lays out, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.
So societies have essentially a certain amount of truth regarding God and righteousness and truth in general and all of that.
But because of their desire to rebel against God, they turn away from God.
They turn away from his word.
And Romans 1 says the first thing that happens is God gives them over to sexual immorality, to fornication.
And then a couple of verses later, it says, and he gives them over to homosexuality.
And then the third aspect of this form of wrath, God gives them over to a reprobate mind, which in the original means a mind that doesn't function.
So when you look at a culture and you see that there has been a sexual revolution followed by a homosexual revolution followed by insanity, you have seen the evidence of that wrath of God unfolding in that culture.
And I think it's just part of the obvious insanity and utter irrationality to say men aren't men and women aren't women, which is the most obvious reality in human existence.
And even saying that, and certain college campuses could have you kicked out.
That's such an interesting point about Romans 1.
I actually haven't heard it articulated that way.
And yes, it did start in the 1960s, but you started even before that, but at least in the American context of the sexual revolution, and then you had the gay rights movement, and now the latest variation, which you articulated perfectly, which is kind of a gender confusion movement.
And so, Pastor, some Christians feel uncomfortable talking about this.
You don't and I don't.
Some Christians believe that we must be tolerant of all people.
Some Christians would come to me and say, Charlie, it's not your business whether or not a nine-year-old thinks they're a man, if they're really a woman, or vice versa.
What would be your response to that?
How should Christians properly approach these issues?
Well, I believe there's a reason that we're still in the world, that the Lord didn't catapult us out of heaven when we came to salvation.
And that was to proclaim the truth to people who are lost in sin so they can turn from their sin and be saved and come to the knowledge of Christ and escape eternal wrath and enter the joys of heaven.
We're here for the sole purpose of confronting people in their lostness, in their confusion, in their transgressions, in their iniquities, exposing that and then showing them the remedy and the salvation that is in Jesus Christ.
When the church decides it won't confront sin, even at that obvious, blatant level, it has forfeited its purpose in the world.
And we're seeing it increase.
For example, a recent Arizona Christian University study said that over 40% of young people are either gay, bisexual, or transgender.
So, Pastor, even when I was growing up, we were told that people that are gay are about 3 to 5% of the population, nothing more.
But now that number seems to have increased.
It almost seems to be a selective lifestyle choice for some people.
Now, this makes some Christians, as I mentioned, very uncomfortable because they say, well, Jesus loved everybody.
Jesus dwelt among the sinners.
Can you make sense of that for us?
Can you offer some clarity?
Because I think there's some confusion of between showing compassion, but also not tolerating sin.
Well, Jesus said this, I am come to call the sinners to repentance.
He didn't say, I'm coming to make them feel good about their sin, but rather to confront and call them to repentance.
And Jesus' direct attacks on sin by definition are crystal clear, starting with any level of religious hypocrisy and going from there in every direction.
But what he was intending to say when he said he came to call sinners to repentance was, I really can't offer anything to the self-righteous.
I can't offer anything to people who won't admit they're sinners.
So he said, I can't call the righteous, quote unquote, to repentance because they think they're okay.
So unmasking sin in every form is the purpose of Christians in the world so that we can bring them the saving message of Christ.
So part of this conversation, I think we as Christians need to be celebrating the differences between men and women, that we were born differently and created differently.
Talk a little bit about that because it seems as if there's a blurring of the lines of not just in the transgender sense, but also in this idea that men are men and women are women.
What does the Bible say about that?
Well, clearly there is man and woman.
God created man and then he created woman and he designed them to come together in a marriage, which was essentially for life and to procreate.
And I mean, that's God's design.
And the fact is, that's still the reality.
We haven't yet created any kind of hybrid between men or women, and we haven't created any kind of third kind of human.
So men and women are the basic divine design.
Let me say something that I think is so very important at this point.
If you are lost on that, which is the most obvious reality in human existence, you have no hope of protecting yourself from lies and deceptions and fantasy.
And you're going to go down a path of destruction because you are a victim, probably in more danger than any other person, because you basically are living, affirming deception.
So you're a target for every other deception.
And I think that's why this particular lifestyle ends up with exponential numbers of suicide, chaos in people's lives, tremendous disappointment, disillusionment, unfulfillment.
And with many people we're finding who try to make some surgical corrections to fit their mental gender, they wish they could undo it and go back because they did that when they were immature and under evil influence.
So if you don't get that right, you're going to be a victim your whole life of every insanity that comes down the line.
That's really well said.
And this is an attack by the enemy.
And I want to talk to you a little about that, the spiritual component of this.
It would make sense based on what you said for the enemy to try and have you doubt the one thing that you objectively can see as true, one of the many things, but also just that men are men and women are women.
Because if you doubt that, then you start to doubt other metaphysical truths.
And so talk about how the enemy is trying to trip up children, especially on this topic.
There's a lawsuit happening in California right now.
You might have heard of it, where a mother is alleging that a local public school teacher was actually recruiting her daughter to become transgender and did so effectively.
Talk about how this is a plot by the enemy to only sow more confusion and chaos and disorientation in our culture and world.
Well, Charlie, let me say, first of all, I'm wrapping up a book called The War on Children.
And one of the chapters deals with this issue.
I would just throw in another illustration of this, the Canadian Bill C4, the bill that disallows anyone to do any quote-unquote gender therapy to anyone who has chosen an alternative gender.
And if you try to bring them back to a normal gender, you have violated the law and you could serve up to five years in jail.
I think the goal of that is primarily children.
I think that whole design is to give freedom to those people who are in that trans community to go after children and have parents have no possible way to stop it.
I think they're after the kids.
I think what they want to do is get this going in the school system as early as possible.
And what happened to that woman in California is the incident that hit the national news, but it's happening all over the place.
I hear about it all the time.
So I think what Canada has done now is empower the trans community who are in educational influential positions with children to say anything they want, drive children down that disastrous path, and literally make it a felony for the parents to do anything to stop and reverse that.
So it not only goes after the children, but all of a sudden the child is weaponized to destroy his own family.
Well, I want to ask you more about that topic of the war on children.
I'm really interested in it.
I'd love to actually have you back on and discuss that at greater length.
But it seems as if there is a theme, which is the war on children seems almost trying to get rid of the idea of children altogether.
There are multiple professors that have come out in recent weeks that have said that they don't see anything wrong between an adult and a child having a sexual relations.
A professor from State University of New York just recently said that, as if the kind of just the forsaking of the innocence of the child is now a hotly debated issue in America.
I mean, it's hard to believe this is even a topic, Pastor, that we have to defend and explore, that we have to say that the weak or the young deserve protection from the strong and the old.
Talk a little bit about this and how do we make sense of this as Christians?
Personally, as a Christian, this just strikes me as completely diabolical.
Well, we knew it was coming, didn't we?
I mean, we said that before it arrived.
We said, okay, if you throw out all biblical morality, if you throw out everything the Bible says about morality at an adult level, then what's left?
What's next?
And, you know, we were having this discussion two, three years ago, when is pedophilia going to be okay?
Because if there is no authoritative moral standard, if there is no God, if there is no divine revelation, if it doesn't matter how you live except the way you choose to live, then why would it stop at transgenderism?
Why wouldn't it become pedophilia?
And that's exactly where it's gone.
So this is very predictable.
The enemy will push as far as the enemy can possibly push to do as much damage and devastation as he can.
And I know people sometimes don't think about a cosmic power, but according to scripture, this is not random sinful people doing things.
This is orchestrated at a supernatural level.
These kinds of movements have supernatural power behind them.
So there's no stopping this.
Supernatural Movements Against Children00:13:46
Another way to look at it is the first assault on children comes from the people who basically don't want to have any.
I mean, the assault starts when you get a dog instead of a son or a dog instead of a daughter when you don't even have the normal human inclination to fill your home with the joy of children and pass on everything that you love and believe in to those precious gifts.
The growing disinterest in even having children is where the war starts.
And then the children that are conceived have to survive the womb.
And if they can survive the womb and come out, then who knows who's going to get them when they get to school and drive them down another pathway of destruction.
So obviously they are the most vulnerable.
They are the most unable to defend themselves.
They are the weakest.
And they can be most easily and most readily attacked.
That's why the frightening reality is that when the media starts buying into these immoral trends and start twisting cartoons and Disney programs and those kinds of things that are directed at children and embedding them with all of these deviant kinds of personalities,
only making them lovable and likable, there's a direct purpose in going after those that are the easiest to twist, and that's the kids.
So, Pastor, I want to talk a little bit about the role of the church in all of this.
And I just want to thank you on this program for the stance that you took to keep your church open, how articulate you were in saying that Christ was the head of the church.
I know personally from the work that we do across the country on campuses and churches, we had so many pastors reach out to us and referenced your sermon and your explanation as to why the church needs to open.
And you did it beautifully while addressing what it says in Romans 13.
So I just want to thank you for that.
But unfortunately, so many churches did remain closed and continue to remain closed, not so much in America still, but across the world.
But when it comes to this particular issue of protecting children and gender confusion, I look at certain churches.
For example, a major church in Atlanta where a major pastor brought a gender confused person, a man who thought he was a woman, on stage and said, this is one of the bravest people that I've ever known.
I could give multiple examples of churches flying these LGBT flags outside of their church.
So it seems that it's the media that is pushing this.
But unfortunately, it's more and more American churches that are also embracing this.
How do we make sense of that?
Well, I think you make sense of it in one sense, because the church 20 years ago decided it needed to accommodate the world.
It decided it needed to win the culture.
It decided it needed to be able to market its message.
So you had this sweeping pragmatism take over the church.
And, you know, I heard one of those well-known megachurch pastors just say yesterday, we offer people exactly what they already want.
Isn't that wonderful?
Well, the problem with that is if you're an unconverted person, you don't want what is right.
You don't want what God wants for you.
But churches have decided that in order to be accepted, in order to be popular, in order to be full of people, in order to attract crowds, they've got to give the culture what the culture wants or what the culture tolerates.
And so they have tolerated all kinds of things.
This is, I mean, this is the definition of compromise.
And it comes because there was a shift away from the church being the agency of God that confronts the world to becoming part of the world itself to accommodate the world.
And if that's your goal, you're on a fast track to go wherever they go.
Because if your design is to give them what they want and tell them what they want and make them feel good about themselves so you can draw them in, you're going to go where they go.
And whatever's next, you're going to have to find a way either to be silent about it or eventually even to affirm it.
I find that to be totally correct.
And, you know, churches such as yours and so many of my other close friends' churches that take these tough stands, you'll be called names and some people might leave.
But however, I do think there's a growing interest, though, from the population for truth and not to be lied to and to try to make clarity out of confusion.
Can you talk a little bit about how God does not want us to be in a state of confusion?
That is a tactic that is authored by Satan, who is deceitful and the author of lies.
And if there's someone watching this right now that's in a state of either personal confusion or cultural confusion, you know, a Bible-based church is the answer.
Yeah, Charlie, look, the church is the pillar and ground of the truth.
That's what the Bible says.
All we've got is the truth, but that's all we need.
We are in the world, the source of divine truth.
On everything that's revealed by God in his holy word, the church must speak.
That's our entire mission.
Where the Bible begins, we start.
Where the Bible ends, we stop.
And that's our mission in the world.
Speaking the truth.
All divine truth, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is transformative.
And it is what desperate people need.
And I'll tell you this.
Our church has literally exploded in the last two years.
I've never seen anything like it.
And I've been pastoring here for over 50 years.
Just Sunday night, for example, 125 people joined Grace Church.
And that's not an untypical Sunday night that we welcome that volume of people in.
The place is just overflowing.
When we opened the church to children well over a year ago after being a little bit careful almost two years ago now with the COVID thing, the first Sunday we opened this church, a thousand elementary kids showed up here.
They were so weary of being isolated and kept away from school and kept away from their friends.
And we had balloons and lollipops and there never been any masks or anything like that.
And we've literally had thousands of children.
And let me tell you something.
You want to get a family to come to church, win their children, provide a safe and joyful experience for their children.
So, yeah, I just think telling the truth and Sunday after Sunday after Sunday now for two years, I've tried to tell the truth about what's going on in the world.
Normally, I might be teaching through the book of Romans, but I've just been doing one sermon after another, navigating the issues that our people are facing.
And it's just drawn massive amounts of people.
And of course, then you have live stream and then you have people downloading sermons at a clip of, I think we're at about 2 million a month.
Wow.
And it's staggering how people are saying, I want to know the truth.
And even obviously people who are disturbed, because look, if you're lost and you're deceived and you don't know the truth, there's a huge, huge hunger in your heart.
Even though you may have chosen a lifestyle, if it's destructive, there's an ache in your heart that wants to know, is this right?
What is the truth?
And that's what the church is in the world to proclaim.
Amen.
And your church is flourishing.
I visited actually for a pro-life ministry recently, and it was just busting at the seams of just amazing people that were volunteering also for the ministry event, but also just talking about such great things about your leadership and what you've been able to do.
So, in closing here, I want to just kind of reinforce this message of hope.
There's a lot of young people that watch this program and listen to our program that are being fed contradictory messages.
They might be hearing this, but in the back of their ear, they're saying, ah, there's no such thing as absolute truth.
My college professor told me that you make your own truth, that you kind of just chart your own way, or you just kind of find the middle ground.
Talk a little bit about that just directly to our nation's young people, the most suicidal, depressed, alcohol-addicted, drug-addicted, lost, confused, childless generation in history.
What's a message of hope for them?
Well, first you could start with human reason and the law of non-contradiction.
A cannot be A and non-A at the same time and the same place.
In other words, two opposing realities cannot be true.
So, let's take religion.
The Bible says there's only one God and there's only one Savior and there's only one way of salvation.
If that's true, then all other ways are false.
So, you have to come to the foundation of all understanding of truth is not everything can be true.
And there is absolute truth.
If you question absolute truth, my suggestion to young people is jump off a building and see which way you go.
You're going to go down because the law of gravity is inexorable and you can't alter it.
You may mitigate it a little bit if you had a parachute, but there are fixed laws in the universe.
We live under these fixed laws in the material universe.
Why would we assume that the God who created all of this created a material universe with fixed laws?
But when it comes to the spiritual realm, it's some kind of bizarre free-for-all.
That's just inconsistent with the nature of God.
He is as ordered and as fixed in his truth in the spiritual realm as he is in the material realm.
And I think the only way that you'll know that is to be exposed to the truth.
The truth defends itself.
I don't even defend the truth.
The truth is like a lion.
You don't defend a lion.
You open the cage.
It'll take care of itself.
I suggest to young people, go to someone who says they're speaking the truth from the word of God and listen and decide if that doesn't have the ring of truth.
And that isn't, in fact, what your heart cries for in the chaos and the confusion.
The only way I'll ever know is to hear, because faith in the truth comes by hearing the truth.
And so many students and young people are just told to reject it, don't even get anywhere near it.
And just talk for a moment, just the hope of Jesus Christ.
I know for some people watching this, they've already given their life to the Lord, but we have a lot of followers, Pastor, that follow our organization that are getting closer.
They're starting to drink from the streams of liberty, but they want to find its source.
They know there's something that isn't quite fitting in their life, but they're looking for salvation.
You do it better than anyone else.
Tell them about the hope of Jesus Christ.
Well, look, whatever may be wrong with you in terms of your ignorance, whatever may be wrong with you in terms of your economic status or the disappointment in your career or your life or broken relationships are minor details.
The big issue with you is you're a sinner.
That's the big issue.
And that sin is an offense to God.
And that sin will be punished.
And every sin will be punished.
Every sin ever committed by every person who's ever lived will be punished.
Scripture says it'll either be punished on the sinner eternally or the punishment will fall on Christ.
And what we believe is that Jesus Christ died on the cross to carry the punishment.
for the sins of all the people who will believe on him through all of human history.
When we're talking about Christ, we're not talking about ethics, although he's the most ethical human who ever lived.
We're not talking about being compassionate, although he was the most compassionate person who ever lived.
We're talking about one who died to pay the penalty for all your sins.
And having paid that penalty, can offer you forgiveness forever and the promise of everlasting eternal joy and life in his presence.
That's what Christ is about.
It's not about an ethical model, though he is that.
He is a savior.
And what you need more than anything else is to be delivered from eternal death, to be delivered from the power and the presence of your sin.
And that's what Christ offers.
And that's why he died and proved that he accomplished it because he rose from the dead triumphant.
Christ Offers Eternal Salvation00:01:22
Amen.
Pastor, just give our audience a way they can follow you or connect with you.
Or maybe they live in Southern California.
And how would they come by your church?
Yeah, we're in the San Fernando Valley Grace Community Church on Roscoe Boulevard.
Easy to find.
You can just look up gracechurch.org.
And the sermons that I give and a lot of the other resources are at gty.org.
That's Grace2U Radio.
We're on the radio all across the world.
gty.org will access all the material that's available.
Well, thank you, Pastor.
And I look forward to reading your upcoming book, War on Children.
Again, you've been such an inspiration for me personally.
I know for thousands of pastors across the country.
And just thank you for taking these stands.
And don't take it too personally when YouTube takes you off.
I know you don't.
It's happened plenty of times to all of us.
And so we're with you.
And thank you for proclaiming truth.
And thank you for joining us today.
That's my joy, Charlie.
And I'm glad to be in good company.
Thank you so much.
God bless you.
Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
Have a great Sunday.
And you can always email me, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thank you so much for listening.
God bless.
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