The Charlie Kirk Show - "Our Best Days Are Still Ahead" — LIVE from Calvary Chapel Chattanooga with Pastor Frank Ramseur
Aired: 2022-05-01
Duration: 01:43:18


=== Consolidation for Righteous Causes (14:50) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, happy Sunday.
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[00:00:27]  Get involved with TurningPointUSA today at tpusa.com.
[00:00:30]  That is tpusa.com to get engaged and get involved in the most important fight, which is the education of our children.
[00:00:37]  That is tpusa.com.
[00:00:40]  This is my conversation with Pastor Frank Ramsoor from Calvary Chapel Chattanooga.
[00:00:44]  If you live in Tennessee, you should come to his church.
[00:00:46]  It's amazing.
[00:00:47]  He's a phenomenal guy.
[00:00:48]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:00:49]  Here we go.
[00:00:50]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:00:52]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:00:54]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:00:57]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:01:01]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:01:02]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:01:03]  His spirit, his love of this country.
[00:01:05]  He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:01:11]  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.
[00:01:20]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:23]  Great group.
[00:01:24]  Great to have you back.
[00:01:26]  We are really honored to have you back.
[00:01:28]  And you might not have seen when I had folks raise their hand, but I think a larger portion of the folks that are here tonight were not here when you were here two years ago.
[00:01:38]  So you're all in for a great treat.
[00:01:41]  But I want to say to you something publicly that I shared just briefly.
[00:01:46]  And that is it was about two years ago in a very peculiar time in my life where I was introduced to you, your podcast, to a much broader audience because of the kinds of people that you interact with.
[00:02:01]  I was introduced to all kinds of ideas that hadn't fully sort of formulated in my mind, but now I understand the wellspring of where those ideas come from.
[00:02:10]  So your own, and I would call what you do a ministry.
[00:02:14]  Whenever you're out dispensing truth that combats lies, I think that's a ministry.
[00:02:19]  So I know that Turning Point USA is this incredibly, you know, this incredible growing organization where you're taking conservative ideas that you and I both know have their origin in biblical ideas.
[00:02:33]  And you're passing these on to another generation.
[00:02:36]  And for that, we're all incredibly grateful.
[00:02:39]  But personally, you just may not have much of an idea of how much you have really impacted me, impacted me and this fellowship.
[00:02:47]  We've been introduced to some top-notch thinking men because of your influence and because of your courage and your boldness.
[00:02:55]  So I just want to say thank you publicly and keep doing what you're doing.
[00:03:02]  Stay safe.
[00:03:04]  We will.
[00:03:07]  Stay safe.
[00:03:09]  So two years ago, you were here about six weeks prior to the 2020 election.
[00:03:16]  We felt like we had to engage this congregation in a much more intentional way.
[00:03:24]  I think it was 2008.
[00:03:26]  I came to the church and said, you know, folks, I think it would be good if you vote with your Bibles open.
[00:03:30]  I thought that would be enough.
[00:03:32]  And then 2012 rolled around and I thought, well, after four years of that, like, folks, it would be good if you voted with your Bibles open.
[00:03:39]  And then that went the way that it went.
[00:03:41]  Then we got to 2016 and I thought to myself, some of the men that I were listening, that I was listening to at the time, one said, the 2016 election is the most consequential election the world had ever seen.
[00:03:53]  And I thought, not our country, but the world.
[00:03:55]  And I thought, okay.
[00:03:57]  I had just finished Eric Metaxas' book, If You Can Keep It.
[00:04:02]  Heard him speak live.
[00:04:04]  He was asked the question two days before the election.
[00:04:07]  What can we do?
[00:04:08]  And he goes, in two days, it might not matter.
[00:04:11]  There may be nothing to do.
[00:04:12]  This is where we're heading.
[00:04:13]  So we get to 2020, and I'm thinking we've got to get, we've got to try, as a pastor who's called not simply to lead people to faith, but to lead them to maturity, right?
[00:04:26]  To shepherd the flock.
[00:04:27]  I've got to help these folks think through these ideas.
[00:04:31]  I think I've been criticized for trying to tell people what to think.
[00:04:34]  I disagree completely.
[00:04:35]  I've been trying to say, let me introduce to you these ideas.
[00:04:39]  And then you make your own choice from there, spirit-filled, Bible-believing Christian.
[00:04:44]  You make your own choices from there.
[00:04:46]  So you came and spoke, and it was just that it was the kickoff to about a six, eight-week endeavor up to the election.
[00:04:56]  So here's my question for you.
[00:04:58]  And I don't know that I'm going to get the microphone back.
[00:05:00]  Okay.
[00:05:03]  So we got what we got with this election.
[00:05:05]  2020 is election.
[00:05:07]  We've got a new administration for how many months now?
[00:05:11]  16, 17.
[00:05:13]  Yeah.
[00:05:15]  So, yeah, too long.
[00:05:16]  So, so where are we at now, 16 months into this new administration?
[00:05:23]  What are you most concerned about?
[00:05:25]  Why should the church, what are a handful of things that you go, church, you should be concerned about this.
[00:05:31]  You might want to be concerned about this.
[00:05:33]  This also is a problem.
[00:05:35]  I mean, this is historically horrific.
[00:05:39]  You're right.
[00:05:39]  You'll never get the mic.
[00:05:42]  So, I mean, just give us an overview of where we are.
[00:05:46]  And again, what concerns you most?
[00:05:50]  Give us a few bright spots and then I'll just sit back and get away with that.
[00:05:53]  Well, look, first of all, what a wonderful pastor in a great church.
[00:05:57]  It's incredible.
[00:05:58]  So if this is not your church home, you should make it your church home.
[00:06:05]  This church is special.
[00:06:06]  And it's not easy to do events like this, but it's necessary.
[00:06:10]  And it equips believers to know what's happening in the world and what they can do about it.
[00:06:15]  Before we go any further, just want to make sure everyone knows I'm a Bible-believing Christian.
[00:06:19]  It's the most important thing in my life is my relationship with Jesus Christ.
[00:06:22]  I believe in the inherency of scripture.
[00:06:25]  I believe in the Nicene Creed.
[00:06:27]  I believe in the ministry, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
[00:06:32]  And it's the most important thing in my life.
[00:06:34]  And so everything we're going to talk about tonight goes through that prism, goes through that lens.
[00:06:39]  And I believe that if you have not given your life to Christ, I'd highly encourage you to do that.
[00:06:42]  We could talk about that later throughout this conversation.
[00:06:45]  So I think back to when we were here in September, October 2020.
[00:06:49]  And I think, boy, I'd give anything to go back to that period of time, right?
[00:06:53]  And what's so funny is if you go back and re-listen to our time together, I was saying, boy, I'd do anything to go back six months ago.
[00:07:00]  And it really is kind of this example of we really have no limit to how far we can destroy this beautiful country that we've been in, that we live in.
[00:07:10]  And so where are we at?
[00:07:11]  I mean, yeah, we're in trouble.
[00:07:12]  We know that.
[00:07:13]  I could go on endlessly about our porous open border, about the oligarchy running our public discourse, about inflation, about the ever-deteriorating rule of law in our country, the lawlessness from the people who are supposed to make laws themselves.
[00:07:26]  So I could go through all those things, happy to explore that.
[00:07:29]  But look, I'll take more of a kind of optimistic turn of what I think is happening because we could dwell on the problems all night and you could all add to them.
[00:07:37]  In fact, we'll have some question and answer, you know, CRT, you know, not being able to define what a woman is, like all this sort of stuff, right?
[00:07:43]  Very basic things.
[00:07:45]  But I'm starting to see a consolidation, though, and a very promising consolidation of forces that otherwise would not be working together for righteous biblical causes.
[00:07:57]  One, for example, is just the right to speak, which is obviously fundamental.
[00:08:01]  We as Christians believe we are the speaking beings.
[00:08:04]  So we believe we're made in God's image.
[00:08:06]  Every Christian believes that.
[00:08:08]  And so in the two, the one creation story told two different ways in Genesis and John, it says the same thing, that God spoke into existence.
[00:08:15]  So when we create, we speak.
[00:08:17]  Speech is fundamental to who we are.
[00:08:19]  When you lost your voice, literally, you're pretty irritated because that's how you create things.
[00:08:24]  Speech is how we reason.
[00:08:25]  It's how we communicate.
[00:08:27]  And if we're unable to speak in our society, in our civilization, I believe it makes us less human and easier to control.
[00:08:33]  And there's been an a lot of assault, both through corporations, through governments, through cultural pressures to shut us up.
[00:08:39]  Whether or not we are Christians, constitutionalists, patriots, whatever you might want to call us, there's been a concerted campaign to make it harder to be able to express our ideas.
[00:08:48]  So we're starting to see this unprecedented alliance, and I call it the winning team, the A team, team reality, whatever you want to call it, of people that have different political views, religious beliefs, but they're all contesting for moral righteousness, whether they know it or not.
[00:09:03]  And they're all opposing what I would consider to be demonic and satanic forces.
[00:09:06]  So here's kind of the, you kind of, you take a step back and it's necessary to do this.
[00:09:11]  Things are so bad and they're trending in the wrong direction so quickly.
[00:09:14]  People that otherwise would not be kind of together are starting to happen.
[00:09:17]  So you have the most popular podcaster ever, Joe Rogan, alongside the world's richest man, Elon Musk, alongside the number one cable television show ever, Tucker Carlson, alongside Bill Maher, who's like a smug, arrogant atheist comedian, all saying the same thing, that if we do not reject, repudiate this woke, secular, nonsensical, anti-reality agenda, it really does, none of the disagreements will matter because we're all going to live in kind of this technocratic dystopian nightmare.
[00:09:45]  And I look at that and I say, that is very similar in a lot of different ways.
[00:09:49]  You could use the analogy of King Cyrus, who was not a Christian, but did righteous things for the people of God, where we're starting to see this movement, and it's a material movement, it's philosophical, it's economic, where finally I think there is some massive pushback to what we have felt to be outnumbered for the last 10 or 15, 20 years.
[00:10:10]  So there's two steps to this, right?
[00:10:11]  The first step is identifying what is the clear and present danger, which is what you've asked.
[00:10:15]  So in kind of the hierarchy of what concerns me the most, obviously inflation, obviously gas prices, all that stuff, open borders is a immediate concern.
[00:10:25]  But I'm a little bit more worried about kind of like the civilizational turning issues, which is, and we use this colloquially like just the term woke, but it really is the biggest threat to our existence.
[00:10:35]  Like if we don't get this right, and if we do not completely kick out this idea that we should have black only dormitories and that men can become pregnant and like all these things, which is now a predominant view in elite society, then it really doesn't, inflation and gas prices will kind of be a secondary thing.
[00:10:53]  So, you know, we as believers, we live on team reality.
[00:10:57]  We don't just believe in truth.
[00:10:58]  We believe in the truth.
[00:11:00]  And so whenever reality is insulted publicly or politically, we should be insulted by that.
[00:11:05]  And we shouldn't put up with it.
[00:11:06]  So when you have someone that wants to go to the U.S. Supreme Court and she's asked a very basic question, hey, what is a woman?
[00:11:13]  And she says, I don't know.
[00:11:14]  I can't answer that.
[00:11:15]  I'm not a biologist.
[00:11:16]  And by the way, Tennessee's own Marsha Blackburn asked that question.
[00:11:19]  God bless her for doing that.
[00:11:21]  We should be like, wait a second, if you can't answer that question, then the more complex, more important things from that point forward, you won't even be able to decide from that perspective.
[00:11:30]  Here's where Christians in the church need to rise up.
[00:11:33]  And I think we're starting to see that, especially at this church, is that we have the truth.
[00:11:38]  And that includes truth from God created man and woman to, you know, the truth of, you know, Jesus Christ and what he did for us.
[00:11:45]  And yet so many Christians are dividing this, not you.
[00:11:48]  And they say, oh, okay, what's happening politically is different than what's happening religiously and spiritually.
[00:11:52]  And that is such, that's a sloppy and dare I say, satanic view of news.
[00:11:57]  They're exactly together.
[00:11:58]  I mean, do you think Satan rejoices or he is disappointed when someone says they can't tell you what a woman is?
[00:12:05]  Of course he wants that.
[00:12:06]  He wants confusion in every arena of life.
[00:12:09]  And so whether we like it or not, and some Christians say, well, Charlie, I don't like the politics thing.
[00:12:13]  Well, tough.
[00:12:14]  Like, that's, it's not up to you what you like.
[00:12:16]  It's what are you commanded to do?
[00:12:18]  And in Jeremiah 29, 7, it says that you need to demand the welfare of the nation that you are in because your welfare is tied to your nation's welfare.
[00:12:25]  So are you caring about the nation that you are in?
[00:12:28]  Your county, your city, your state, your country?
[00:12:31]  And that, and the question is, all of you are, but a lot of churches and pastors like, I don't do that.
[00:12:35]  I just do the gospel.
[00:12:36]  We, you know, we do the TED Talk with the, you know, rock concert music, skinny jeans, nice shoes.
[00:12:42]  You get a pass, don't worry.
[00:12:44]  And it's okay.
[00:12:50]  He defied the stereotype.
[00:12:52]  It's fine.
[00:12:56]  And I'm just not going to talk about it anymore.
[00:12:59]  And a pastor at his best is what Frank is doing, what this church is doing, where they put Jesus Christ first, always.
[00:13:10]  And then they say, wait a second, what are the preconditions to make sure we could spread the gospel?
[00:13:14]  Are there any preconditions?
[00:13:16]  And this is what always bothers me about some of these non-political pastors.
[00:13:19]  I don't want to call them non-political, but they're just silent.
[00:13:21]  I mean, persecution is all throughout the Bible.
[00:13:24]  And yes, persecution is guaranteed for those of us that spread the gospel, of course.
[00:13:28]  But we learned in the book of Acts that you don't, when persecution comes your way, you should not act indifferently towards it, right?
[00:13:37]  You should actually try to create communities or structures or governments where religious freedom is able to be spread, especially you saw in Acts 5 that we're going to obey God and not man.
[00:13:45]  It's said so beautifully.
[00:13:47]  And so what I think has happened, though, is why the church has remained quiet, unfortunately, for the continuance since you and I were here this, you know, this last time, is that some are afraid because of some of the backlash.
[00:13:57]  Some are uncertain about how to talk about some of these things.
[00:13:59]  And it's a mixture of all of that.
[00:14:01]  But I'll kind of close on this and we can kind of riff back and forth on that question, which is despite all of that, there is some, I believe the spirit is moving with such high velocity right now and that people are rising up and the citizen, the regular everyday person, the plumber, the engineer, the mechanic, the police officer, the veteran, the mom that's showing up at school board meetings.
[00:14:22]  Finally, ownership of the country is being demanded back.
[00:14:26]  It's like, I actually want to be in charge of what happens in our nation and I'm not going to put up with some unelected health bureaucrat continually telling me what I can and cannot do.
[00:14:36]  I'm not going to put up with that anymore.
[00:14:37]  And I'm really pleased to see that.
[00:14:40]  So one of the great, I could go to the greatest threat.
[00:14:43]  The woke thing has to be rejected.
[00:14:45]  It has to be rejected at the ballot box, at your local schools, at every single turn.

=== Rejecting Dangerous Deconstructionism (06:46) ===

[00:14:50]  If we don't get this right, then everything else downstream will be ruined.
[00:14:56]  Satan would love nothing more than having your five-year-olds believe that they could change their gender at a win.
[00:15:02]  The enemy would love nothing more to believe that there's no such thing as absolute truth.
[00:15:06]  Love nothing more than divide people based on the melanin content in their skin, which is completely irrelevant.
[00:15:11]  I couldn't care less about the skin color of somebody and you shouldn't either.
[00:15:14]  People that care about the skin color of people are racist.
[00:15:16]  We have words for those people.
[00:15:18]  You shouldn't care about it.
[00:15:19]  And so this is where the church shouldn't just, it's not like a suggestion.
[00:15:23]  It actually is an imperative.
[00:15:24]  Here's how it works.
[00:15:25]  If the church does nothing, the civilization falls apart.
[00:15:28]  And one of the greatest gifts to mankind, the United States of America, will be in the history book as something that used to exist.
[00:15:34]  If the church rises up and starts to get engaged, get involved like it is here in this church, local level, state level, proclaiming truth and righteousness, America, I think our best days are still ahead.
[00:15:45]  And even if you don't believe that, even if you're like, hey, Charlie, I think Jesus is coming next Thursday.
[00:15:50]  It's the end times, then you're still biblically commanded to occupy till he comes, to be salt and light and to contest at every corner, regardless of the headwinds against you.
[00:16:03]  So when you talk about the sort of this woke ideology that is the great threat that we've got to push back on, we have been talking about it.
[00:16:11]  You referenced both Genesis and John.
[00:16:14]  We talked about the fact that, you know, in the beginning, as we taught through John chapter one, in the beginning, it was the word, the word was with God.
[00:16:21]  And so, and was God.
[00:16:23]  And so we've been talking about the fact that whether it is, so what we're dealing with is in a simple assault on words, right?
[00:16:31]  That's right.
[00:16:32]  Right.
[00:16:32]  Just a simple assault on words.
[00:16:33]  So now a man isn't a woman, a woman isn't a man.
[00:16:35]  This is all gets, you know, incredibly confusing, confusing.
[00:16:38]  Can you walk us through?
[00:16:40]  So I had one of my staff members came to me the other day and we were talking about this sort of woke ideology and he goes, what is woke?
[00:16:46]  Sure.
[00:16:47]  And so maybe just, could you maybe, when you maybe unpack a few of the buzzwords that you find in corporations, that you find everywhere in the community, so that people can understand, like, oh, that's actually tied to this thing that we must defeat.
[00:17:07]  I'm so glad you asked that because I sometimes go so fast.
[00:17:10]  I just assume everyone knows.
[00:17:11]  And so let's just talk where the word came from.
[00:17:14]  The word is a filler term that just caught on, okay?
[00:17:16]  No one who's woke actually calls themselves woke, okay?
[00:17:20]  Except one protester that wore a shirt.
[00:17:22]  I can't remember his name.
[00:17:23]  He was an anti-police guy, and he had a shirt called woke.
[00:17:26]  And then there was a thing on Twitter in 2016, 17, and 18, basically being called get woke.
[00:17:32]  And it was a short-term phrase to say that you have to awaken to all the injustice, all the racism, and all the suffering, and therefore you are woke.
[00:17:42]  Okay.
[00:17:42]  Now we have actually turned that into a pejorative that no one wants to be called woke anymore.
[00:17:48]  That's a good thing, just so you know.
[00:17:49]  So it went from like a label of kind of I'm cool to like no one wants to be called that anymore.
[00:17:55]  So just so you understand, these are people that at the fundamental level believe in deconstructionism.
[00:18:00]  We'll talk about that.
[00:18:01]  They believe in postmodernism.
[00:18:02]  We'll talk about that.
[00:18:04]  And then critical race theory, which we'll talk about.
[00:18:06]  But my friend James Lindsay was here who does a much better job on the CRT issue than I ever could.
[00:18:10]  In fact, I've learned so much from him, but we'll touch a little bit about that.
[00:18:13]  So first, deconstructionism.
[00:18:15]  There's deconstructionists in everything.
[00:18:17]  There's deconstructionist Christians.
[00:18:19]  In fact, you probably know some pastors that are telling you to stop reading the Old Testament and that, you know, maybe it's not what it says it is.
[00:18:27]  In the heart of deconstructionism is it's not analytical.
[00:18:31]  It is by definition, it's arsonistic.
[00:18:34]  It's trying to take apart what is the truth of what is being said and trying to poke holes and trying to say what you think is true is actually not true.
[00:18:44]  Now, this is a very dangerous game to play, especially with young people because they don't really know much as it is, right?
[00:18:49]  So if you're trying to teach deconstructionism to a fifth grader, there's really not much to deconstruct.
[00:18:54]  In reality, you're just creating endless doubt about any sort of thing they might believe in.
[00:18:59]  Now, deconstructionism can be helpful in elevated legal circles or for pastors that are trying to get, you know, get through seminary to really challenge to see if they really believe what they believe.
[00:19:11]  But deconstructionism is a tool of the enemy.
[00:19:14]  It's questions of persecution and mockery and things that we're not always expected or not always able to answer at face value.
[00:19:21]  I'll give you a great example, which is it's the nagging voice in your ear.
[00:19:24]  How do you know the Bible's true?
[00:19:25]  Come on, they're old documents.
[00:19:26]  Who's to say they say what they say?
[00:19:28]  Come on, God isn't real.
[00:19:29]  That's deconstructionism at its core, right?
[00:19:31]  The constant nagging, never satisfied questioning of trying to debase what you know is true.
[00:19:38]  Now, if you actually go back to what words mean, which is, I'm so glad you mentioned it, Satan, satan, in Hebrew, literally means prosecutor, right?
[00:19:46]  It means someone who taunts, someone who is trying to attack you.
[00:19:49]  So that idea of deconstructionism is literally in the Hebrew term of Satan.
[00:19:54]  So that's deconstructionism.
[00:19:55]  Woke also is postmodernism.
[00:19:58]  We don't have to spend too much time on this.
[00:20:00]  If you're interested, you can ask more questions about it.
[00:20:02]  Postmodernism came from the Frankfurt School in Germany.
[00:20:06]  It is a neo-Marxist belief.
[00:20:09]  Basically, it came with a guy by the name of Jacques Derrida into America, French guy, who was, and also a group of others, Michelle Foucault and I'm trying to think who else.
[00:20:22]  Herbert Marcuse was the German guy who brought it over.
[00:20:24]  Thank you, who brought it in.
[00:20:26]  And it's a belief that what we are now in the modern age, but we need to now go into the postmodern age, right?
[00:20:33]  So if you look prior to Enlightenment, they would say that would be antiquity, and then there's modernity, and then there's postmodernity.
[00:20:41]  And they would get as fundamental to say that men and women are, there's no differences between the two of them, that good and evil is merely an opinion, very outright.
[00:20:51]  Now, you might say, who could believe something as nonsensical as this?
[00:20:54]  Go to the University of Tennessee.
[00:20:55]  I could show you plenty of people that believe something.
[00:20:58]  This is taught institutionally now in our schools.
[00:21:02]  So postmodernism is very dangerous.
[00:21:04]  It is neo-Marxist at its core, and it's a philosophical, it's a philosophical movement underneath all of it.
[00:21:10]  Then finally, critical race theory, which is to believe that racism is everywhere.
[00:21:13]  It's normative, that you're all racist without even realizing it, that the only way to get rid of racism is to now be in order to get rid of discrimination that used to happen, you need discrimination today.
[00:21:25]  And so the term woke is kind of a catch-all term of all these things.
[00:21:29]  Now, the way that I am framing it, though, is that we have two teams.
[00:21:33]  I don't like binary choices, but guess what?
[00:21:35]  The Bible is binary, okay?

=== Flawed Humanity Needs Jesus (03:13) ===

[00:21:37]  So the Bible is you go to heaven or you not.
[00:21:39]  You don't, right?
[00:21:40]  You believe in Jesus or you don't, right?
[00:21:41]  Unfortunately, there's some binary choices in life, okay?
[00:21:44]  You believe in God or you do not believe in God.
[00:21:46]  So the way that we have to frame it is we have team reality, right?
[00:21:50]  And then you have team woke, team insanity, whatever you want to call them, right?
[00:21:53]  And so team reality, these are people that believe that you don't get to like wish the existence just because you say it.
[00:22:00]  Like a really easy example economically, money does not create wealth, okay?
[00:22:04]  Printing dollar bills does not create wealth.
[00:22:06]  We all know this to be true.
[00:22:08]  Yet the regime in Washington, D.C. is like, there's another $6 trillion and things will get better.
[00:22:13]  That's not living on team reality, right?
[00:22:15]  In fact, we admit, we have the humility that we are tied to the pesky shackles of reality, those little pesky shackles that are always keeping us down.
[00:22:23]  Like, actually, yes, we do believe that the laws of gravity are going to prevent us from flying, right?
[00:22:29]  We do believe in certain natural laws.
[00:22:32]  And so with an examination of the founding fathers, which is just so amazing, and they don't teach this in our schools at all.
[00:22:38]  And when they teach it, they don't teach it well at all, which is the founding fathers versus the French Revolution.
[00:22:43]  In the Declaration, they said we are bound to the laws of nature and nature is God, that there's limitations to what we can do.
[00:22:50]  So there's certainly going to be limitations to the type of government we try to create.
[00:22:54]  The current kind of apparatus, because they've all been educated at these hyper-elite institutions, they believe that there's no limit to them as long as you keep on giving them power, right?
[00:23:07]  That we can re-engineer human beings themselves, which goes to a more fundamental question about what the church should engage in on this topic and this issue, which is what is the raw material that you're dealing with, right?
[00:23:20]  So when you're dealing with human beings, then you should know from the outset you're dealing with rather flawed raw material.
[00:23:28]  The Bible tells us that rather bluntly.
[00:23:30]  This is not something that's debated in Christian circles.
[00:23:33]  We believe in original sin.
[00:23:35]  We believe we need Jesus Christ for our salvation.
[00:23:37]  And we believe that we're going to keep on sinning and we need to keep on coming back to him for redemption.
[00:23:42]  That is not a debated topic.
[00:23:44]  And yet, for whatever reason, so many churches remain silent on one of the most important issues, which is, do you believe human beings are naturally good or naturally bad?
[00:23:53]  This is what is defining almost all of our political decisions, by the way.
[00:23:56]  If you believe human beings are naturally good, which is an insane thing to believe, then you have to explain all the suffering.
[00:24:04]  How do they explain the suffering?
[00:24:06]  Well, it's capitalism's fault.
[00:24:07]  It's borders' fault.
[00:24:09]  It's gender norm's fault.
[00:24:11]  They're always blaming the external.
[00:24:14]  Whereas we, as Christians, should be like, no, no, no, you got a soul problem.
[00:24:18]  You got a spirit problem here.
[00:24:20]  Not just not a civilization can have some changes, but you need to get right with Jesus before we're talking about abolishing capitalism.
[00:24:26]  Like, okay, like go to church, right?
[00:24:29]  Or start to improve your own life.
[00:24:31]  Now, this is a really important distinction because when you have an entire political movement that is all about blaming the external and not about the refinement of who you actually are as a person, the consequences that follow are rather dramatic and extreme.
[00:24:46]  And that's something where I think some pastors could easily give that sermon and they just refuse to.

=== The Ferguson Effect Explained (07:21) ===

[00:24:50]  Why?
[00:24:50]  I'm not so sure I have my guesses.
[00:24:52]  So anyway, that term woke is kind of a catch-all term for all those sorts of things.
[00:24:56]  So here's a good test.
[00:24:58]  If you look at it and it makes no sense, it's woke.
[00:25:01]  Okay?
[00:25:02]  So it's just a very, it's a very easy catch-all term.
[00:25:06]  Okay.
[00:25:06]  So you're like, wow, I don't think men can menstruate.
[00:25:10]  Woke.
[00:25:11]  Huh?
[00:25:11]  Why are there black-only dormitories at Western Washington University?
[00:25:16]  Isn't that segregation?
[00:25:17]  Woke.
[00:25:18]  Like, why is it that United Airlines says that the pilots they're going to be hiring, 50% of them, are going to be black pilots and they're going to elevate skin color above whether or not they're a good pilot.
[00:25:30]  That doesn't make any sense.
[00:25:31]  And that certainly doesn't make me want to fly United anytime soon.
[00:25:34]  Nothing against black pilots.
[00:25:36]  No one has a, I just want people that can land the plane that are selected to be a pilot because they're a good pilot.
[00:25:41]  Like just basic things.
[00:25:43]  Like that's probably not going to end well.
[00:25:44]  Like when you go in for heart surgery, I guarantee you you're not asking, you know, whether or not your doctor satisfied the diversity, equity, inclusion guidelines of, you know, the local BLM chapter.
[00:25:56]  That's probably not going to be a priority for you.
[00:25:59]  And when you elevate diversity over competency, you can start to see when these things start to fall apart.
[00:26:05]  You're like, yeah, that's probably not smart.
[00:26:07]  And I believe anyone can succeed at any position, obviously.
[00:26:11]  But when you mandate it, you're like, that's probably not going to be sustainable.
[00:26:15]  And by the way, this is bad in the clouds, like bad in the abstract.
[00:26:20]  But then let's talk about how it's bad in the streets, okay?
[00:26:23]  So the movement that I opposed from day one, which is BLM, you know, post all the Floyd stuff in the summer of 2020, what do they have to show for?
[00:26:32]  Well, before BLM, about 5,500 blacks were getting killed in the streets across America.
[00:26:38]  Post-BLM, 7,800 blacks are now being killed every single year in the streets.
[00:26:42]  So 2,000 more.
[00:26:44]  So they had a full monopoly over the American political discourse, right?
[00:26:48]  Defund the police.
[00:26:49]  Everything is racist.
[00:26:50]  Okay, we shortened police funding.
[00:26:53]  We defunded them in a lot of districts.
[00:26:54]  We pulled them away.
[00:26:56]  What's the result?
[00:26:57]  More blacks dead than before.
[00:27:00]  And so we, of course, tried to warn about this and all this.
[00:27:02]  It's called the Ferguson effect, right?
[00:27:04]  Where, believe it or not, criminals are going to keep on committing crimes.
[00:27:07]  In fact, they're going to commit more crimes so you don't have police on the streets.
[00:27:10]  And so this is why I say the woke thing is the mind virus.
[00:27:15]  It is a pathogen.
[00:27:16]  It is a cancer.
[00:27:17]  I could use any one of these filler terms.
[00:27:19]  I cannot overstate how big of a threat this is.
[00:27:21]  I can't.
[00:27:22]  Because you see it just in the black death statistics.
[00:27:25]  And here's the thing, because it's not rooted to reality, there will be no stopping it once it's implemented, right?
[00:27:32]  It will, by definition, only destroy when the snake eats itself.
[00:27:36]  That's the only, when, when rock bottom will be just a complete and total just devastation of all of civilization and society.
[00:27:44]  So I can go about how we can defeat it, which I think is actually easier than people realize.
[00:27:48]  But you mentioned another thing, which I think is really important.
[00:27:51]  How they describe it is a lot different than how I describe it.
[00:27:54]  This, right?
[00:27:55]  Which is totally different, right?
[00:27:56]  And this is, this is what I love.
[00:27:58]  I call them, I call them the tolerance Taliban, right?
[00:28:02]  Which is, you know, you must tolerate me or I was going to bomb your village.
[00:28:06]  Like, really?
[00:28:06]  Okay.
[00:28:08]  That's so tolerant of you.
[00:28:09]  And they don't say it that way, but it's awfully close, right?
[00:28:12]  They're the most tolerant people in the world that are the ones that are trying to shut people up.
[00:28:17]  And it's, I'll give you a great example, right?
[00:28:19]  It's like forced tolerance.
[00:28:21]  And there's this whole idea of tolerance and whether or not, you know, we should embrace tolerance or not.
[00:28:26]  I have a contrarian view on that.
[00:28:28]  I'm not a big fan of tolerance or the English, what it actually means.
[00:28:31]  Separate topic if you want to get into it.
[00:28:32]  But so I tweet out something about how the undersecretary for health used to be a man and then thinks he's a woman or whatever, right?
[00:28:40]  Twitter bans me because forced tolerance, right?
[00:28:43]  We must punish the non-believers.
[00:28:45]  I'm like, wow, the tolerance crowd is like really willing to use force if you say something that might be out of alignment with their hyper-specific, super radical, like dark worldview.
[00:28:58]  But they use these words.
[00:28:59]  Tolerance is one of them.
[00:29:00]  Diversity, equity, inclusion is another.
[00:29:03]  Anti-racism is one of them.
[00:29:05]  And they're really, really good at branding.
[00:29:08]  And these are catch-all terms.
[00:29:10]  They're so agreeable, right?
[00:29:12]  Like who would possibly want to be against anti-racism, right?
[00:29:15]  I mean, anyone who would oppose that, you just probably are an awful person.
[00:29:20]  And so I think we're actually getting a lot better at branding on our side, right?
[00:29:23]  When we're talking about like parents' rights and all this sort of stuff, I think we're getting a lot better at that.
[00:29:27]  But when you go a level deeper, these nice bumper sticker sound bites, these things that they use, have incredibly malevolent intent and purposes, right?
[00:29:36]  And so like this one that they're using now in Florida, where they're like, we want to protect transgender children.
[00:29:42]  It's like, okay, no, you don't, first of all, okay.
[00:29:44]  That's not even close.
[00:29:46]  You're like super worried that a five-year-old isn't hearing about gender transition opportunities as if it's like a career fair, right?
[00:29:53]  Like you're going around to five-year-olds like, hey, you know, you could change your gender too.
[00:29:56]  Like, really?
[00:29:57]  And like, they're giving up puberty blockers all across the country without parental consent.
[00:30:02]  And God bless Ron DeSantis for holding the line.
[00:30:04]  I mean, he's just been so unbelievable on what's happened in Florida.
[00:30:07]  It's just incredible.
[00:30:09]  So, but this is a mind virus.
[00:30:13]  And we're all like super experts in viruses now, right?
[00:30:15]  Yeah.
[00:30:16]  Great.
[00:30:16]  And so I could talk about how we can inoculate ourselves against this virus.
[00:30:21]  But it goes showing, though, that the major places of power in America, they've all been captured by this virus.
[00:30:29]  The cancer, the tumor has metastasized.
[00:30:32]  Disney, Goldman Sachs, every major college and university, the CIA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Harvard, the New York Times, CNN.
[00:30:41]  But here's, and if you go a level deeper, and we cover this on our podcast, is that again, when we believe in those pesky shackles of reality, right?
[00:30:49]  We believe what goes up must come down.
[00:30:51]  We believe in the second law of thermodynamics, which is the inevitable law of decay.
[00:30:55]  And so what ends up happening when you go woke?
[00:30:58]  Yeah, like CNN Plus has been around for like 21 days and now they're, they just scrapped the entire thing.
[00:31:03]  Like, it's not going to happen.
[00:31:06]  And, you know, Netflix comes out and Netflix literally two weeks ago, they came out with a new special saying that he's expecting the pregnant man.
[00:31:14]  Netflix's stock is down 38% of trade in the last 24 hours.
[00:31:19]  And so there is this check and balance, right?
[00:31:23]  Disney is experiencing huge backlash.
[00:31:25]  They're going to get $200 million of their special tax loopholes rescinded in Florida.
[00:31:29]  A lot of people are no longer using Disney Plus.
[00:31:32]  And so what I'm saying, though, is that the virus that they've implemented in these institutions is actually wildly unpopular with you, with normal people.
[00:31:42]  And I think there's going to be this incredibly unexpected check and balance against this almost invasion of what we know to be good, true, and beautiful in our country.
[00:31:54]  Good.
[00:31:54]  Well said.
[00:31:55]  Something that we're, maybe just take a brief moment on this because you spend so much time on college campuses and you're dealing with, you spoke at length last time about Yes, exactly, which was fantastic.
[00:32:08]  I meant it was eye-opening for a lot of people.

=== Courage Beyond Wokeness (15:49) ===

[00:32:11]  But one of the things that we're dealing with here in our community is, so let's, let's, when you say that the way you speak about woke ideology is very different than those who don't want to be called woke, but are speak about these things.
[00:32:26]  So can you provide a practical, is there any practical angle?
[00:32:35]  So we've heard here recently, even in some of our own schools here, that we're going to talk about critical race theory as the Southern Baptist Conventions decided to sort of keep it.
[00:32:45]  Listen, for a training tool.
[00:32:48]  Can you just sort of unpack that a little bit?
[00:32:50]  And maybe there's a parent here who's starting to discover that their school is beginning to head down this sort of path.
[00:32:59]  Give us some guidance on that.
[00:33:01]  I always, I laugh because we experience all this stuff, right?
[00:33:04]  And some parents say, well, or school board members that are woke, they'll say, look, we need to expose kids to CRT and we need to get them exposed to us.
[00:33:14]  Like, really?
[00:33:14]  So like, do you think doctors should like go through a course in bloodletting?
[00:33:18]  Like, do you think that, you know, if we're going to try to, like, if we're going to try to create astronauts, should we like introduce them to the flat earth theory as well?
[00:33:27]  I mean, is that what we're doing now?
[00:33:29]  Like, well, we need to have a buffet of every idea that's possibly out there, right?
[00:33:33]  No, of course, that's insane.
[00:33:34]  You don't, you don't teach things that are not true to people you care about, especially precious young people that are going to be the inheritors of this nation.
[00:33:42]  And so, look, there are some big tells.
[00:33:44]  There's like 10 questions you can ask.
[00:33:46]  I could spot a woke person very easily, right?
[00:33:48]  It's very simple.
[00:33:49]  Like, do you wear a mask when you shower?
[00:33:51]  Like, it's very, very.
[00:33:56]  That's the first one.
[00:33:57]  No, I'm kidding.
[00:34:00]  And no, but like some other ones, which is very simple, right?
[00:34:03]  Which is like, do you think skin color matters?
[00:34:05]  It's a very simple introductory one.
[00:34:07]  Do you think skin color matters?
[00:34:09]  Do you think what matters more to you?
[00:34:11]  What can be changed or what cannot be changed?
[00:34:15]  So we as Christians, we as constitutionalists believe what can be changed is far more important.
[00:34:20]  If you don't believe that, you're not a Christian.
[00:34:22]  It's that simple.
[00:34:23]  We believe that you must give your life to Christ and that being saved is a decision.
[00:34:27]  It's a choice.
[00:34:28]  And therefore, what can be changed is more important, right?
[00:34:31]  How many times do we say at the altar call, it's not who you were, it's not who your father was, not what you did.
[00:34:36]  It's the decision you're going to make today.
[00:34:38]  That is inherent in Christianity.
[00:34:39]  And by the way, that's the promise for all of us, isn't it?
[00:34:42]  That you could be better, that you can improve, that you can get closer to Creator.
[00:34:45]  Like, that's the coolest thing ever to be able to brag about and to be able to bring other people to be able to do themselves.
[00:34:52]  CRT does the opposite.
[00:34:53]  Wokeism does the opposite.
[00:34:54]  It's an overemphasis on what you cannot change.
[00:34:56]  Skin color, background, history, family name, who your father was.
[00:35:00]  None of that stuff matters to God.
[00:35:01]  None of it.
[00:35:02]  And in fact, that was neither slave nor Greek nor Jew.
[00:35:04]  You're all one, free in Jesus Christ.
[00:35:07]  That's number one.
[00:35:07]  Number two, a more kind of blunt one is, do you care more about things you can see or things you can't see?
[00:35:15]  And we as Christians believe more in things you can't see with your eyes.
[00:35:18]  We care more about your soul and your spirit.
[00:35:20]  Example.
[00:35:20]  Now, you can see them over a period of time through actions and through word choice and all of that, but do you believe you should be able to judge someone within 10 seconds of meeting them?
[00:35:28]  I say absolutely not.
[00:35:30]  The woke believe they could have you all figured out based on just the color of your skin as soon as you walk in.
[00:35:35]  I think that's wrong.
[00:35:36]  It's immoral.
[00:35:36]  It's against everything we believe.
[00:35:38]  If you want to go into a caste system where they're like, hey, you're that color, therefore you're that person, and that's what you mean to me.
[00:35:43]  That's a completely different system of government.
[00:35:45]  It's anti-biblical and it's anti-West.
[00:35:47]  So those are two good framings, right?
[00:35:48]  Do you believe in things you can change versus you can't change, visible versus invisible, right?
[00:35:53]  And are we creating an educational culture that values the things that could be changed and the invisible versus things that can't be changed versus the visible?
[00:36:00]  The answer is no.
[00:36:02]  Most school districts are elevating the opposite, which is creating a bunch of super depressed, like kind of quasi-racist kids.
[00:36:11]  And now I'd be surprised, but it's like, if you're just thinking about skin color all the time, you're going to create more racism.
[00:36:17]  It just, and by, it's going to be anti-white racism or any sort of other type of racism that might spring from it.
[00:36:22]  But there's other kind of questions you can ask of the woke.
[00:36:25]  And this is another one, which is like, do you believe an absolute truth?
[00:36:29]  And if they say no, then you should respond like, do you believe that absolutely, right?
[00:36:33]  So, which is like the great inherent contradiction of the deconstructionists, right?
[00:36:38]  I don't know what I believe or what I am.
[00:36:39]  Like, maybe you should get that figured out before you run for school board, probably, right?
[00:36:43]  Like that, probably be able to, you know, tell me if North is actually North before you're telling our kids whether or not, you know, what they should believe and how they should believe it.
[00:36:53]  But yeah, look, here, and we, I'm happy to go through this.
[00:36:55]  I'm happy to, you know, reference some other guides of like how to spite, how to spot a wokey from at least 100 yards away, right?
[00:37:03]  And by the way, wokeys are, they're opportunities, right?
[00:37:08]  People are not obstacles, they're opportunities, right?
[00:37:10]  We should look at them that way.
[00:37:12]  You should have grace with them.
[00:37:13]  You should have compassion with them.
[00:37:14]  But also, there's a difference between them as a person and which we should totally look at that as like, wow, I want to help you and all that.
[00:37:21]  And then what they do with power.
[00:37:22]  That's two different things, right?
[00:37:24]  And so it's one thing if you just kind of like a woke person showing up to church, asking questions, all that awesome opportunity.
[00:37:29]  It's another thing where that wokey is like, I'm now going to be mayor and you're going to live under my like, no, okay, now you've crossed the line.
[00:37:35]  Now you're allowing your like perverse, satanic, demonic ideas to now be applied to everybody else.
[00:37:40]  That's where I'm going to draw the line.
[00:37:41]  Does that make sense?
[00:37:42]  So two totally different things.
[00:37:43]  Opportunity, then it's like, okay, now you're going to all of a sudden make me live under this sort of like weird quasi-tyranny where you're going to, I don't know how bad it is in Chattanooga.
[00:37:52]  You could tell me with some of this stuff.
[00:37:54]  I know that in other states and cities across the country, it's gotten totally out of control, whether it be black-only schools now in Portland, right, defunded the police, like all this stuff that's just so crazy.
[00:38:04]  So yeah, I think that's some important nuance to pack into it.
[00:38:08]  But look, this is the fight of this generation.
[00:38:10]  I hope that you all realize that.
[00:38:13]  I know this is a shock to somebody.
[00:38:14]  I say this, the media loses their mind.
[00:38:17]  I don't like Vladimir Putin.
[00:38:18]  He's a scumbag, all that sort of stuff.
[00:38:19]  But the American woke community is a far bigger threat to you and your grandchildren than Vladimir Putin.
[00:38:24]  It's not even close.
[00:38:26]  It is a far bigger threat.
[00:38:27]  And people don't want to say that out loud.
[00:38:29]  It's like not even, it's not even remotely close.
[00:38:31]  And I'll prove it to you, okay?
[00:38:33]  If the woke get their way, which they are, they're infiltrating our military, who's going to go fight Vladimir Putin exactly?
[00:38:39]  Like, right?
[00:38:39]  It's like, oh, it's my opinion that missile might fire.
[00:38:43]  Really, that's instilling confidence.
[00:38:45]  Just so you know, CRT is all throughout the military.
[00:38:48]  It's all throughout Central Command.
[00:38:49]  It has infected every single tenant.
[00:38:51]  And so this is something that we have to defeat.
[00:38:55]  We could talk about how to do that, which I think, do you want me to touch on that?
[00:38:59]  Okay.
[00:39:00]  So look, the question is, does the Bible tell us anything about how to defeat lies?
[00:39:06]  And this is the other thing.
[00:39:07]  So if you believe wokeism, again, that term I don't love, but let's just call it for what it is, is evil.
[00:39:13]  What does the Bible say about evil?
[00:39:14]  Well, there's this wonderful verse in Psalms, I believe, where it says, if you love God, you must hate evil, which is like my verse to justify everything I do every single day.
[00:39:25]  It's like, I'm commanded to do this.
[00:39:27]  Like, it's great.
[00:39:28]  And we should hate evil.
[00:39:29]  And you think about it, not everyone hates evil.
[00:39:33]  I know it's pretty obvious, right?
[00:39:35]  But that's actually not.
[00:39:37]  Most people actually are okay with evil as long as it pays them.
[00:39:41]  Hey, if it pays the bills, I'm okay with evil.
[00:39:43]  As long as it doesn't put me in prison, I'm okay with evil.
[00:39:45]  You're supposed to hate evil regardless of the circumstances.
[00:39:49]  That's a high bar.
[00:39:51]  That's a big threshold, isn't it?
[00:39:53]  And so, look, the Bible tells us a couple of things.
[00:39:56]  And we have to be willing to tell us, we have to be willing to pay a price for the journey that we're on against these sort of ideas and against this ideology.
[00:40:08]  There is kind of this fairy tale that's told a lot of Christians that we're somehow going to win this battle and you're going to be able to keep everything the way it is.
[00:40:16]  No, you're going to have to lose something.
[00:40:18]  Lose friendships, lose relationships, lose business contracts, lose social credibility.
[00:40:23]  Now, you'll get all of that back and then some, because the Lord will bless courage, but it's very, very necessary.
[00:40:30]  And then there's other things we have to do to defeat this.
[00:40:32]  We're already seeing this with Elon Musk and we're seeing this Rogan and all of the Elon has it right.
[00:40:37]  Elon is, look, I'm going to just buy the most important marketplace for ideas, and that's how I'm going to defeat this mind virus.
[00:40:45]  And look, I got a lot of problems with Elon.
[00:40:47]  Does way too much business in China.
[00:40:48]  His Neuralink stuff is all wrong.
[00:40:49]  However, I think we should applaud when the world's richest man decides to come in and just cause a total chaos for these censors.
[00:40:56]  That's what I love it.
[00:40:57]  I love the entire part.
[00:40:58]  I love it.
[00:40:59]  It's terrific.
[00:41:00]  And so that's part of it.
[00:41:02]  So we have to create new things.
[00:41:04]  We have to take new risks.
[00:41:06]  And then it's going to take a willing citizenry and population to be, to kick these ideas out of public discourse and differentiate the person from the idea and have zero tolerance whatsoever for the idea.
[00:41:21]  And that's where that idea of tolerance, I really bother.
[00:41:24]  People say, Charlie, where's your tolerance?
[00:41:26]  And I always ask, like, should some ideas be tolerated?
[00:41:30]  And they say, oh, all ideas should be tolerated.
[00:41:32]  Like, really?
[00:41:33]  So you think like the Greeks idea of child pedophilia, which was institutionalized at the highest level, that idea should be tolerated?
[00:41:39]  Of course, not no one believes that.
[00:41:40]  And if you do, then there's a whole political party for you that you could go join, right?
[00:41:46]  And I wish that was an exaggeration, but that's what they're now saying.
[00:41:49]  The decriminalization of pedophilia is a massive push in the American left.
[00:41:53]  It's happening in California.
[00:41:54]  It's happening all across the country.
[00:41:56]  So yeah, that's part of it.
[00:41:58]  And then this is something where Christians get really uneasy.
[00:42:00]  And I'll be very honest.
[00:42:02]  This is not uneasy for me.
[00:42:04]  We have to be willing to win and we have to be willing to get into the arena and dust ourselves up a little bit.
[00:42:09]  And this is something where Christians think like, well, look, you know, I don't want to get into the combat of all of this.
[00:42:15]  And look, it might not be for you, but I can say comfortably, I have not, I've many times I've said things I regret and I've definitely sinned in some of my commentary about, you know, some of our American political leaders.
[00:42:28]  But I could say that in my conscious, deliberate actions, I have not done anything in this battle that I would consider to be unethical or what these other people do.
[00:42:38]  My biggest problem is like basically insulting people that are destroying my country.
[00:42:42]  I struggle with it.
[00:42:42]  If you listen to my podcast, I have to hold myself back.
[00:42:45]  But people, that does not mean we have to all of a sudden do the lie cheating and stealing that they do in order to win.
[00:42:51]  Okay.
[00:42:52]  In fact, I believe that God will bless our victory if we just do the one thing that is necessary, be courageous and be willing to lose something, right?
[00:42:59]  So we got to get in the arena.
[00:43:01]  That's what's necessary.
[00:43:02]  And that requires the not so happy message of you might lose something.
[00:43:07]  That's we talked recently about two enemies that the church faces, no doubt culture faces.
[00:43:14]  And one, I think, is worse than the other.
[00:43:17]  And you've highlighted the, in a sense, the sort of existential crisis that woke ideology poses to civilization.
[00:43:29]  But what would you say is worse, wokeness or weakness?
[00:43:32]  Oh, wow.
[00:43:33]  So if we've got to find courage.
[00:43:36]  Yes.
[00:43:37]  Because if we see our school's going to teach our kids critical race theory, they're going to expose our kids to gender ideologies and we tolerate it, not willing to do the one thing that you just said we've got to do, call out the truth and then be willing to pay the price for it.
[00:43:58]  Speak to me real quick about courage, where it would come from, and what the last two years dealing with this COVID crisis has taught us about where the current sort of courage meter in our country really is.
[00:44:12]  Would you say high or not so high?
[00:44:15]  So yeah, so I think weakness is a far bigger threat than wokeness because if we weren't weak as a society, I don't think the woke would be nearly as powerful as they are.
[00:44:25]  And I'm not saying you're weak.
[00:44:27]  I'm just saying that generally as a society, I think we can agree a weakness has plagued our land, right?
[00:44:32]  I think that is an inarguable fact.
[00:44:34]  And look, Aristotle spoke at great length about courage.
[00:44:39]  He argued that courage is the first virtue because without it, there are no other virtues.
[00:44:44]  And he's totally right.
[00:44:45]  If you're not willing to actually fight for what you believe in, then it's completely irrelevant what you believe in, right?
[00:44:51]  Is that if you're not willing to do something, if you're not willing to pay the price, and you look at it like that the New Testament tells us that to be true, right?
[00:44:58]  Paul was incredibly courageous, like unbelievably courageous to the point where they stoned him to death, right?
[00:45:04]  I mean, the early disciples were courageous enough to push back against multiple government institutions to spread the gospel.
[00:45:10]  And everywhere they went, they faced persecution.
[00:45:13]  That's courage.
[00:45:14]  Think, would the early church have existed without courage?
[00:45:17]  And the answer is no, of course not.
[00:45:19]  Now, where does courage come from?
[00:45:21]  Conviction.
[00:45:23]  What motivated James, the half-brother of Jesus, or Paul or Peter to act with courage?
[00:45:29]  Because they were convicted because they walked alongside the risen Christ.
[00:45:34]  So your relationship with Jesus directly impacts your courage or your lack thereof.
[00:45:39]  Now, let me be clear.
[00:45:40]  If you're not courageous and you're a Christian, I'm not doubting your faith.
[00:45:44]  I'm saying start to put your faith into action is what I'm saying, okay?
[00:45:47]  Is that you have to pray for God to, and courage is not the absence of fear.
[00:45:51]  Courage is doing the right thing, even though you are afraid.
[00:45:53]  Now, George S. Patton said very clearly that moral courage is the most necessary yet absent characteristic in man.
[00:46:00]  I want you to think about that.
[00:46:01]  Necessary yet absent.
[00:46:02]  And here's what's so great about courage, and my favorite thing about courage is how difficult it is to predict.
[00:46:11]  Anyone who's been to war will tell you sometimes the tough guy in basic training is the least courageous once the shots start firing.
[00:46:19]  And one of the things we love about battlefield literature that really speaks to our soul is that anybody can be courageous.
[00:46:26]  You think about that.
[00:46:27]  It doesn't take the strongest person.
[00:46:29]  It doesn't take the biggest person or the smartest person.
[00:46:32]  But courage is something that everyone has access to at all times.
[00:46:36]  That's an amazing thing, right?
[00:46:37]  That should empower you right now.
[00:46:39]  But we know that it is rarer than it is common, right?
[00:46:44]  So you asked a question, wokeness versus weakness.
[00:46:48]  And then what do you say about, you know, getting actually people courageous?
[00:46:51]  Well, here's the cool thing.
[00:46:52]  Courage begets courage.
[00:46:53]  Once one person is courageous, other people follow.
[00:46:56]  It requires someone to kind of pierce that darkness, right?
[00:46:59]  And if you think you are alone, you're not.
[00:47:01]  Other people want to follow you.
[00:47:04]  Again, another patent quote who I just happen to love, lead, follower, get out of the way, right?
[00:47:09]  And if you know anything about Patton, you could see him saying that like every single day.
[00:47:13]  And so that's kind of one characteristic in that whole sense.
[00:47:18]  But kind of a final thought on courage that I think is really important that I want to touch on is without courage, what exactly would happen next?
[00:47:30]  Right.
[00:47:31]  So, and if you also think about it in this kind of formulaic standpoint, it's the only thing that's missing, right?
[00:47:38]  So we have truth, right?
[00:47:40]  We have numbers, we have agreement, we have saturation of the message.
[00:47:44]  The only thing we don't have is the courageous action that is missing.
[00:47:48]  So you might say, okay, give me an example of courage.
[00:47:51]  Okay.
[00:47:52]  I'm sure a lot of people right now, understandably, are afraid to speak their mind about these issues at work because you will get fired.
[00:47:58]  Okay.
[00:47:59]  I understand that.
[00:48:00]  I sympathize with it.

=== Risk and the Cost of Truth (05:13) ===

[00:48:01]  I'm not telling you to do this.
[00:48:03]  But what if every single one of you decided to do that?
[00:48:06]  That would change things.
[00:48:07]  It would, whether you know it or not, right?
[00:48:09]  Now, you might get fired.
[00:48:10]  Of course, you might get fired.
[00:48:11]  Totally, right?
[00:48:12]  That's not the point.
[00:48:13]  The point is whether you do that.
[00:48:14]  So the best definition of courage I can give you here is doing what is right when you do not know how it's going to work out.
[00:48:23]  You cannot be courageous without risk.
[00:48:26]  It's impossible.
[00:48:27]  Just kind of waking up and having a cup of coffee is not an act of courage, right?
[00:48:32]  That's why I can't stand about some of these self-help tapes.
[00:48:35]  You're being so courageous.
[00:48:36]  Actually, no, you're not, actually.
[00:48:38]  You're not.
[00:48:39]  Like you're destroying the word of courage, actually.
[00:48:41]  Courage is when there's a risk.
[00:48:43]  That's why the most courageous people are the people that we, again, think of the battlefields, right?
[00:48:49]  When they go into the gunfire, they don't know when one in four people at Omaha Beach were mowed down.
[00:48:55]  That's courageous.
[00:48:56]  That's something that should inspire you.
[00:48:58]  And so if you're looking for that time, like, where can I be courageous?
[00:49:01]  Where can I do that?
[00:49:02]  That's where, that's where you're like, I don't know how it's going to work out.
[00:49:05]  That's where it's going to take.
[00:49:06]  Okay, so you asked about the courage meter.
[00:49:08]  I will say, and I know this room is right on pace with this.
[00:49:13]  The amount of new courage and courageous acts I've seen in the last year is very inspiring.
[00:49:18]  I will say this.
[00:49:19]  Regular, normal, everyday people at a record rate are starting to dig deep and they're starting to take a stand.
[00:49:25]  And I want to just encourage you for the moms that show up at school board meetings, God bless you.
[00:49:30]  For the parents that have taken their kids out of public schools and are homeschooling, God bless you.
[00:49:34]  For those of you that go to churches and had the courage to confront woke pastors about this stuff, God bless you.
[00:49:40]  I mean that.
[00:49:40]  For those of you that own businesses and you're like, I'm not going to do business, you know, unless people know my values, all that stuff takes courage.
[00:49:46]  I'm seeing that happen at record rates.
[00:49:49]  And we need more of it.
[00:49:50]  We really do.
[00:49:51]  But I want to just say that it's not that it's not happening.
[00:49:58]  Okay.
[00:49:58]  The final thing that you asked, what have we learned with COVID?
[00:50:01]  I learned a lot with COVID.
[00:50:03]  I learned a lot from Dennis Prager as well in the midst of COVID.
[00:50:06]  I know Dennis was here.
[00:50:07]  Dennis is my rabbi.
[00:50:08]  He's my teacher.
[00:50:09]  He's phenomenal.
[00:50:10]  And I just think so highly of him.
[00:50:12]  He's so special.
[00:50:13]  He knows the Old Testament better than almost anybody.
[00:50:15]  And he knows it from a rational basis.
[00:50:18]  His rational Bible series is terrific.
[00:50:21]  I really encourage you guys to check it out.
[00:50:22]  So Dennis said this.
[00:50:24]  And when he first said it, I didn't know what to think.
[00:50:27]  Where he said, I learned during COVID that people do not want to be free.
[00:50:35]  And I'm not sure if he touched on this when he was here or not, a little bit, but it's worth repeating because it's really profound.
[00:50:41]  So it is this question, right?
[00:50:43]  Which is, do people want to be free?
[00:50:45]  So I've nuanced my answer.
[00:50:47]  I think some people do want to be free, but I think most do not.
[00:50:51]  And the Bible tells us this.
[00:50:53]  When God delivered his chosen people out of Egypt into the wilderness and they needed and wanted for nothing, and he blew quail off course and manna from heaven, it took them like 20 minutes before they start complaining again.
[00:51:06]  And they're like, who's this Moses guy?
[00:51:08]  And why are we in the wilderness?
[00:51:10]  Bring us back to Egypt, slavery, because we ate better and at least we had meat.
[00:51:16]  That's the human condition playing out right there.
[00:51:19]  So freedom is hard.
[00:51:20]  Liberty is hard.
[00:51:22]  It takes an informed citizenry.
[00:51:25]  It takes a courageous one.
[00:51:26]  But I do believe that once you have kind of a little bit of a dosage of this kind of petty totalitarianism, that's where you're going to start to see more and more people demand freedom and demand liberty and demand kind of a release from this kind of authoritarianism that we're living through.
[00:51:43]  So look, courage is the most important thing.
[00:51:46]  It is.
[00:51:47]  And you might say, Charlie, how do I be courageous?
[00:51:49]  Last thing I'll say about this, you choose.
[00:51:52]  You make a choice right now.
[00:51:53]  You make a choice to go run into a direction where you do not know how it's going to work out.
[00:51:58]  It doesn't take you to read a book.
[00:51:59]  It doesn't take you to go listen to a podcast.
[00:52:01]  It doesn't take you to go, you know, go through a training.
[00:52:05]  You do it.
[00:52:06]  And it's a choice.
[00:52:07]  And every single person could do it.
[00:52:09]  Fantastic.
[00:52:10]  Really good.
[00:52:11]  Really, really good.
[00:52:15]  Maybe take a moment and maybe take a moment if you can and weave together.
[00:52:21]  So when you talk about the, you know, we're dealing with a woke ideology.
[00:52:25]  It is existential.
[00:52:26]  We've got to put it down.
[00:52:27]  We put it down by knowing the truth, that these aren't just other ideas.
[00:52:32]  They're dark, demonic ideas.
[00:52:34]  They're destructive ideas.
[00:52:35]  The truth combats those ideas.
[00:52:37]  But we've got to have enough courage to actually stand up when we see it and stand against it or not.
[00:52:42]  We allow it just to continue to go.
[00:52:47]  So when you take a look at what we've dealt with in the last two years, can you sort of draw a thread?
[00:52:55]  I mean, has this been a season where it's just like a perfect storm and this hit Or to you, do you see any sort of, I wouldn't call it a divine thread, maybe a darker thread that's actually running through it all?

=== Unraveling a Darker Thread (14:34) ===

[00:53:14]  What are we really facing sort of on the high, you know, meta idea of what's connected and what's behind what's connected?
[00:53:23]  I mean, you've got COVID, you've got this January 6th issue, you've got all some of the things that you mentioned earlier on.
[00:53:31]  What's connected?
[00:53:32]  What are we facing?
[00:53:33]  What are we?
[00:53:35]  That's such a good question.
[00:53:36]  So I'm going to try to do this quickly because that's great.
[00:53:39]  Look, what comes after courage?
[00:53:41]  It's a great segue, right?
[00:53:42]  Well, after courage, if people act courageously, you will get peace for a period of time.
[00:53:48]  It will happen eventually.
[00:53:49]  And the most courageous generation, the greatest generation, gave us peace and prosperity.
[00:53:53]  And peace and prosperity post-60s and 70s, things were really good in America.
[00:53:58]  I mean, we had problems, but then we had the sexual revolution.
[00:54:01]  We had economic catastrophe eventually in the 70s.
[00:54:05]  But generally, there was kind of this long overarching theme of kind of this soul searching of what does it mean to be an American.
[00:54:12]  Now, in the 80s and 90s, we got in kind of the sugar high that it meant to be kind of an American to kind of like ship all of our jobs overseas and we got a bunch of plastic in return, which was an awful deal, obviously.
[00:54:24]  And we were ever so slipping.
[00:54:26]  And 90s happened, early 2000s, financial crisis, 9-11, war on terror, and this kind of hypersecurity state that was deployed, you know, domestically.
[00:54:35]  But the through line from all of this was kind of this, not, it kind of happened, as Ernest Hemingway would say, it happened gradually than suddenly, where all this kind of culminated all these different forces in a short period of time in like this combustible engine when we decided to lock down our country.
[00:54:53]  And boy, you know, there will be, there will be an unlimited amount of literature written about, you know, the Chinese Fauci coronavirus and kind of our reaction to it, which was the worst mistake ever made, I think, in American history.
[00:55:04]  Not the worst, the worst mistake.
[00:55:06]  It's a very important thing, not the worst thing ever to happen, but we did it to ourselves.
[00:55:10]  I want you to think about that, right?
[00:55:11]  It was a conscious decision to do it to ourselves.
[00:55:15]  But what is the through line, right?
[00:55:16]  The through line from post-World War II to now, albeit there were some ups and downs and some resurgence and some declines, is that we want the, so in the 1950s, the many ruled the few, okay?
[00:55:31]  Ever since the 1950s, there's been a campaign to change that, to get the few to rule the many.
[00:55:37]  And what happened in COVID is finally the dream of those people was given was by definition, you have to give up all your power because there's an invisible virus that might kill you.
[00:55:47]  So the few people have to go rule the many and give them these emergency powers.
[00:55:50]  But it wasn't just that.
[00:55:51]  I mean, you saw all the other kind of social ills come front and center.
[00:55:56]  And so the most depressed generation, alcohol-addicted generation, drug-addicted generation, the most, the saddest generation, most depressed generation, all kind of happened at this high velocity.
[00:56:06]  And so what was shocking to me in the through line of all of this, it's all about trying to make you individually less free.
[00:56:13]  It's trying to make your society crumble and weaken from within.
[00:56:17]  And there are global forces behind this.
[00:56:19]  Again, I won't spend too much time on this, but make no mistake, like the Great Reset World Economic Forum that is putting pressure on this country, COVID, they wrote the book, The Great Reset in the Midst of COVID.
[00:56:33]  Now, I'm not saying that the World Economic Forum deployed the virus, okay?
[00:56:38]  Although there is some evidence that there was some funny business.
[00:56:40]  You have your own opinions on that.
[00:56:42]  What is inarguable, though, is that they saw it as an opportunity to get done what they wanted to get done for many decades.
[00:56:50]  And that is very simple.
[00:56:51]  That America is special.
[00:56:54]  Okay?
[00:56:55]  America, because of our structure, our system of government, who we are as a people, our history, and our culture, is that we were the first benevolent superpower ever to exist.
[00:57:05]  Never happened before and will never happen since.
[00:57:08]  A country with as much power as we have, as much wealth, as much prestige, actually goes around trying to do its best to do good around the world.
[00:57:15]  We have a, okay, pretty bad track record the last 30, 40 years, but still, it's this, what, beacon of light.
[00:57:21]  It's a shining city on the hill.
[00:57:23]  Well, what is a hill actually, you guys have a hill right outside at your church?
[00:57:26]  What does that actually kind of imply?
[00:57:28]  That one country actually might be better than the others.
[00:57:31]  The globalists don't like that.
[00:57:33]  They hate the idea that they want flat, okay?
[00:57:36]  Wouldn't like Tennessee at all.
[00:57:38]  They want very flat.
[00:57:39]  I'm talking metaphorically, of course.
[00:57:41]  And so it's been a campaign, a multi-decade campaign from within our institutions and externally around the world to destroy the United States of America as we know it.
[00:57:51]  So there's two big ways they're trying to do it right now.
[00:57:53]  The most easy way is to destroy our currency.
[00:57:55]  Obviously, they're trying to deteriorate the purchasing power of the dollar and keep our borders completely and wide open.
[00:58:00]  But what is the through line?
[00:58:02]  They want you to be disempowered, disempowered through food shortages, disempowered through how you actually treat the Chinese coronavirus, disempowered by how you send your kids to school, disempowered by whether or not we can control your breathing and putting a mask on your face, right?
[00:58:18]  That is the through line.
[00:58:20]  And would God or Satan want you to be disempowered?
[00:58:25]  That's the most obvious question, isn't it?
[00:58:27]  Which is, God always wants to set people free from tyranny, spiritual tyranny and earthly tyranny.
[00:58:35]  He doesn't want you to live in hell and he doesn't want you to live in the slavery of Egypt.
[00:58:40]  God will go to great lengths to deliver you and his people from bondage.
[00:58:45]  Satan will do the opposite.
[00:58:47]  He'll go to great lengths through our nature.
[00:58:49]  Hey, bring us back to Egypt.
[00:58:51]  Bring us back to Egypt to go back to bondage and slavery.
[00:58:54]  And that's been unfolding in America in the last 50 or 60 years, and it all kind of came front and center.
[00:59:00]  But here's the thing.
[00:59:00]  What man will try to use for evil, God will use for good.
[00:59:03]  The unexpected promise and positive of COVID and all this is they reached way too far too quickly.
[00:59:11]  Is that, hey, I'm still alive.
[00:59:13]  I got breath in my lungs.
[00:59:14]  I'm not putting up with this, okay?
[00:59:16]  I have a memory of freedom, which most countries don't, by the way, right?
[00:59:20]  They want to try to get rid of a memory of freedom.
[00:59:21]  This is why they want to mask kids.
[00:59:23]  Masking children is child abuse.
[00:59:24]  It's civilizational abuse as well.
[00:59:26]  They want a kid to have no memory of what it was like to be free.
[00:59:29]  That's why China doesn't do a revolution.
[00:59:30]  They have no memory of freedom.
[00:59:32]  A country that has no memory of freedom has nothing to go back to.
[00:59:35]  Therefore, the country will always be totalitarian.
[00:59:37]  Okay?
[00:59:37]  That's why they want to mask kids.
[00:59:39]  The kids will end up being 18.
[00:59:40]  They're like, well, I've worn masks my whole life.
[00:59:42]  I've never been free.
[00:59:42]  So what am I going back to?
[00:59:45]  Most pastors, I think, missed the whole kind of point on that one.
[00:59:47]  So look, the through line is this.
[00:59:49]  The through line is the same spiritual battle that unfolded in the garden.
[00:59:53]  It's the same spiritual battle.
[00:59:55]  It's good versus evil, light versus dark, truth versus lies.
[00:59:59]  It's deception versus promise.
[01:00:01]  It's all unfolding around us.
[01:00:04]  And the question is, what do we do about it?
[01:00:06]  I think all of you have made that decision there.
[01:00:08]  But here's the cool thing, and I see it happening, is that the demonic forces that have had such a monopoly, they're all of a sudden, they're being spooked all around.
[01:00:17]  They're finally in retreat.
[01:00:18]  They're on defense.
[01:00:19]  And it's time for those of us that have the light to play offense like never before.
[01:00:26]  So maybe about 10 more minutes, and then we'll let the folks fire away with some questions.
[01:00:33]  I wanted to think coming back to the sort of the through line of it all, a loss of freedom.
[01:00:42]  You know, what happens?
[01:00:44]  So we spoke about a little bit earlier.
[01:00:48]  We do seem to be, and it is a sad thing that there is a little, there's division outside.
[01:00:53]  There's division everywhere is a great tactic of our adversary.
[01:00:59]  The church also is a bit divided.
[01:01:02]  So we have, as we talked about earlier, this idea that what it is that we're doing right now is somehow just so outside the pale.
[01:01:11]  It's so inappropriate.
[01:01:13]  I'm actually being derelict in my duty.
[01:01:16]  I've exchanged the American flag for the gospel.
[01:01:20]  But you look on and you think, I look on and think, if this is what it is that we're facing, as you've just articulated, if it is darkness, and the only people on the planet that can really do anything or have to band together to do something about it are those that are filled with the light that's greater than the darkness, which is God's people.
[01:01:41]  Talk a little bit about what you're experiencing as you are.
[01:01:43]  You're starting to see a bit of an awakening within the church and within church leaders.
[01:01:50]  So talk a little about some of the brighter things that you're seeing.
[01:01:53]  You talked about the fact that there's a coalition of sort of strange allies.
[01:01:58]  Yeah, strange Bethels.
[01:02:00]  But share with us what you're experiencing in college campuses, what you're experiencing.
[01:02:04]  I mean, there is an awakening to the idea that our freedoms are being slowly eroded or quickly eroded.
[01:02:15]  Yeah, totally.
[01:02:16]  And this, I mean, most pastors are the worst evangelists ever.
[01:02:18]  So think about this.
[01:02:19]  So think about this.
[01:02:20]  You have tens of millions of people that are like happy to get their freedoms back.
[01:02:24]  And most pastors aren't like, what a great opportunity to teach them where freedom comes from.
[01:02:29]  Are you in the evangelist business?
[01:02:31]  Are you trying to, I mean, hello?
[01:02:32]  Like you have a bunch of people celebrating that mask mandates are repealed.
[01:02:36]  What a great opportunity for some mega church pastor to come in and say, let me tell you what true freedom actually is, right?
[01:02:43]  Let me show you what now that you're celebrating being liberated from bondage.
[01:02:47]  And they're like, oh, no, we don't do that at this church.
[01:02:49]  Like, oh, okay, but you were super quick to lecture me that we have to go to BLM marches because what a great evangelistic opportunity it is.
[01:02:57]  Oh, okay.
[01:02:58]  So you'll dance with demons, but you won't actually go try to evangelize the lost when it matters the most.
[01:03:03]  Got it.
[01:03:04]  Okay, sure.
[01:03:05]  And like, do you elect in your duty?
[01:03:07]  Like, how many times have we mentioned the gospel here?
[01:03:09]  Like, I don't know, every 30 seconds, right?
[01:03:11]  I mean, about light versus darkness and the most important thing.
[01:03:15]  And I find that so insulting, Frank.
[01:03:17]  Not you, obviously, but when people say that, I was like, you should come to a turning point USA event.
[01:03:21]  Yeah, we're a secular organization.
[01:03:23]  But I'll tell you what, you should come to one of our 8 a.m. church services we have before our event at AmericaFest.
[01:03:30]  And you'll see 3,000 kids there.
[01:03:32]  And then you'll see hundreds of kids give their life to the Lord that have never heard a sermon in their life, like weird youth pastor that tells me that we're not doing our job.
[01:03:40]  Like, actually, no, you know what salt and light have in common?
[01:03:43]  They change the environments that they go into.
[01:03:46]  That's what salt and light have in common.
[01:03:48]  And yet I have to be lectured by, you know, the same sort of people.
[01:03:51]  They send me these emails like, Charlie, you're not a real Christian.
[01:03:54]  Like, okay, thanks, pal.
[01:03:55]  But like, how about you come with me?
[01:03:57]  Because you want to know what I did last week?
[01:03:59]  I went to Colorado University Boulder, UC Berkeley, and Cal State Fullerton in a span of 72 hours, said the exact same stuff I'm saying here, sat at a table on UC Berkeley for two hours, having to like literally tell them during Holy Week that there is a God who loves them.
[01:04:16]  You want to talk about like going into the lion's den?
[01:04:19]  I'll put that up with like a missionary trip to Haiti.
[01:04:21]  And I'm not exaggerating.
[01:04:23]  Okay.
[01:04:25]  So I'm just, I'm just kind of exhausted with these people, these pastors that like just throw these bombs at us.
[01:04:30]  And, you know, they all have one thing in common because they know one thing they will not do.
[01:04:36]  They will never confront me directly.
[01:04:38]  They will never do it because they know that I won't put up with it.
[01:04:43]  I won't put up with the lies and all that.
[01:04:44]  So I'm sorry you have to experience that and all that.
[01:04:47]  You could have them as a guest on the Charlie Kirk show at any time.
[01:04:50]  Won't happen.
[01:04:53]  So anyway, you asked a question about what I'm seeing.
[01:04:56]  I'm seeing such great promise across the country.
[01:04:59]  When we visit college campuses at Turning Point USA, we have a big problem.
[01:05:03]  We can't find rooms big enough to be able to fit all the kids that want to show up to our events.
[01:05:10]  At Berkeley, Cal Berkeley, everybody, the liberal epicenter.
[01:05:15]  And look, I'm very sensitive to spiritual oppression.
[01:05:18]  When you go to Berkeley, I literally brought a guy that does deliverance with me, Victor Marks.
[01:05:23]  You might know him.
[01:05:24]  He's special.
[01:05:24]  Has he ever spoke at this church?
[01:05:26]  Oh, he should.
[01:05:27]  He's great.
[01:05:28]  I brought my own deliverance guy, okay?
[01:05:31]  Some people will bring like a personal trainer.
[01:05:33]  You got to bring a deliverance guy when you go to Berkeley.
[01:05:36]  And we, there were people knocking on the windows trying to get into our event at Berkeley that wanted to hear what we had to say.
[01:05:43]  Couldn't find a room big enough.
[01:05:44]  Same problem at Boulder.
[01:05:45]  Same problem at Fullerton.
[01:05:48]  Where was I last night?
[01:05:49]  Oh, yeah, in Milwaukee last night with Candace Owens.
[01:05:52]  And we had so many people, the great Candace Owens.
[01:05:56]  And we had so many people wanting to come in.
[01:05:58]  And the polling shows this, by the way.
[01:06:00]  The polling shows that most young people are dissatisfied with the regime, 21% approval rating of Joe Biden, but it's deeper than just the politics, right?
[01:06:07]  That's just kind of their, you know, their complaint against what's happening.
[01:06:11]  There is a curiosity.
[01:06:12]  There's a yearning.
[01:06:14]  But there's something else that I think that, again, the church misses this completely and wildly.
[01:06:19]  You know, they're like, well, we're going to do the exact same thing we did in 1980s, the Jesus loves you movement, right?
[01:06:24]  And they're the first ones to lecture me about how you have to kind of adjust to the times, obviously by their incredibly skinny genes and all that weird stuff that they do.
[01:06:35]  But then they're the ones that don't actually ever think to themselves, huh?
[01:06:40]  What are young people experiencing?
[01:06:42]  Like, how about this?
[01:06:43]  You want to get a young man's attention?
[01:06:45]  Talk about the negative effects pornography has on their life.
[01:06:48]  Like that'll get their attention pretty quick because most young men in the church are addicted to pornography.
[01:06:53]  Most pastors are addicted to pornography.
[01:06:55]  And most young men are considering like drugs or suicide because most churches are like, well, that's too extreme for us.
[01:07:01]  Like, really?
[01:07:02]  That's interesting.
[01:07:02]  Like, if you're not going to take a stance on that, what exactly will you take a stance on?
[01:07:05]  Right.
[01:07:06]  And so, yeah, look, the opportunity is multifaceted, right?
[01:07:11]  There's a political opportunity, and the most important, obviously, there's a spiritual opportunity, but it's the Galatians 3 model, right?
[01:07:17]  Where it's the law is a school teacher to Christ.
[01:07:20]  And so for a lost generation, they just want something to make sense before they're willing to kind of take that leap of faith.
[01:07:26]  And you have to understand, if you send a kid to college, not all college, most colleges, they will beat them down.
[01:07:31]  They will deconstruct them so much that they will challenge their very existence.
[01:07:36]  And you think that's an exaggeration?
[01:07:37]  Come with me to a campus and sit with a couple hours and you'll see it for yourself.
[01:07:41]  In fact, you can see the footage that we post, hundreds of hours of footage that we post on our social media where people will say, I don't even know if I'm actually alive.
[01:07:48]  I don't know what a human is.

=== An Intergenerational Opportunity (06:49) ===

[01:07:49]  Who's to say?
[01:07:49]  I mean, it is so deconstructionist, it will create misery.
[01:07:53]  And so if you can even just get them to have a little bit of a buildup of what is reality, then finally you could point them to ultimate salvation, which is a God that loves them and sent his son to die for them.
[01:08:04]  And so there's this great opportunity.
[01:08:05]  There is this awakening and there is a spiritual awakening to all of this.
[01:08:10]  So what are we to do about it?
[01:08:13]  We have to look at this in our, at this moment, say, wow, what a tough couple of years, unnecessarily tough, right?
[01:08:19]  You take a pause, say, hmm, what a great opportunity.
[01:08:23]  What other time would you rather live in with a generation, young generation that's so lost, so depressed, so miserable?
[01:08:30]  It is the most suicidal generation in history, most depressed, saddest, blah, Like that, if you look at just like a market opportunity, the church should be like, all right, Marshall Plan, all the resources we can.
[01:08:41]  We're going to fix this.
[01:08:42]  And I don't see that.
[01:08:43]  I don't.
[01:08:43]  Instead, it's kind of the same old kind of stuff that obviously doesn't work.
[01:08:47]  So, but then just from a general standpoint, this is what really gives me hope is that citizens of all ages are now asking not like, hey, what are you going to do for me?
[01:09:00]  Like, what do I have to do?
[01:09:02]  Right.
[01:09:03]  And look, I know all of you have done what has been asked of you the last couple of months and years.
[01:09:08]  You watched Tucker Carlson, right?
[01:09:11]  You bought the pillow.
[01:09:13]  Like, you've done everything that's been asked of you, right?
[01:09:19]  You have like a closet full of silver.
[01:09:22]  Like you have that weird chair that goes up this.
[01:09:26]  You don't even know what it does, but you bought it.
[01:09:28]  You reverse mortgage your home.
[01:09:30]  Like you've done everything, right?
[01:09:33]  And you've given all your friends pillows.
[01:09:35]  I don't even know what these pillows do, but he keeps telling me to buy the pillow.
[01:09:40]  And now you're like, okay, now it's what I'm going to do beyond that.
[01:09:44]  I'm going to run for office.
[01:09:45]  I'm going to homeschool my kids.
[01:09:46]  I'm going to learn about what's happening around me, right?
[01:09:49]  I'm going to contest for righteousness.
[01:09:50]  And I know that this is going to be a long-term project.
[01:09:53]  And that is the kind of takeaway, isn't it?
[01:09:56]  Which is the news that you might not want to hear, but for the grandparents out there, you might not see this whole thing get back to where you want to see it.
[01:10:05]  And that might not be what you came to hear tonight.
[01:10:08]  But not seeing God's chosen people come to the promised land happened to one of our most favorite figures in the Bible.
[01:10:17]  But you just look at your grandkids and say, are you worth it?
[01:10:20]  Because I want them to go live in a free country, right?
[01:10:23]  But here's the brutal honest truth.
[01:10:25]  The insidious forces of darkness we're talking about, they've been plotting for multiple decades with what they're doing right now.
[01:10:31]  You think this woke stuff just happened overnight?
[01:10:34]  No.
[01:10:34]  They built institutions.
[01:10:35]  They infiltrated.
[01:10:36]  We are now just finally waking up.
[01:10:38]  That is the unintended benefit from COVID, is this great awakening.
[01:10:43]  Is where finally people are like, wow, I didn't realize how far gone my country actually was.
[01:10:48]  Wow, I didn't realize they were teaching this in our schools.
[01:10:50]  And then having the memory not to forget and the action to do something.
[01:10:53]  But don't get me wrong, there will be successful battles along the way, but it might take 5, 10, 15 years, and we sometimes have to work backwards.
[01:11:02]  And so what does success look like?
[01:11:04]  Front page of the New York Times in 2040, unexpected right turn in America attributable to enlightenment and awakening post-COVID.
[01:11:14]  That's what success looks like, right?
[01:11:16]  And look, I get golf claps for a reason, because some of you know you won't be alive.
[01:11:22]  I'm not kidding.
[01:11:22]  I know it sounds morbid, but that's the way it is.
[01:11:26]  And that's the way they've thought.
[01:11:28]  They've thought to plant trees that they know will never be able to see it all go through.
[01:11:33]  And so we have to look at this intergenerationally, and we also have to stop lying to ourselves.
[01:11:38]  Stop lying to ourselves that just one more election is going to fix the country.
[01:11:42]  Stop lying to ourselves that, you know, Air Force One's going to swoop in and solve all of our problems.
[01:11:47]  I'm already looking at kids, you know, that are 8, 9, and 10, 11 years old and being like, I have to try to raise them up as early as possible to try to fight for this stuff.
[01:11:54]  And look, we're in this fight for as long as God keeps on giving us breath and life, right?
[01:11:59]  But I also think that's kind of freeing, isn't it?
[01:12:01]  It's kind of freeing to know you might not see this entire fight play out, right?
[01:12:05]  It's kind of freeing in some sense because it's also like, maybe, maybe I'm going to do what I can do, and then I'm going to pass down the baton to the future generation and continue this in any way, shape, or form and leave the rest up to God.
[01:12:19]  And so, look, I'm comforted by the fact that I'm seeing people of all different generations, all different ages, all different mindsets rise up in a powerful, meaningful, and significant way.
[01:12:31]  And I could tell you, the other side, they are trembling.
[01:12:34]  So if you're at Caesar's Palace and you're trying to make the odds, who's going to win in the next 20 years?
[01:12:40]  Team reality and team liberty or team woke and team insanity?
[01:12:43]  Well, let's see.
[01:12:44]  Our team has the truth, the Bible, the will of the Lord, Jesus Christ, and also on the earth, the world's richest man, the most popular podcaster, the most popular cable news channel, the pillow guy, and many others, right?
[01:13:03]  They, they have Supreme Court nominees that can't tell you what a woman is.
[01:13:10]  They have CNN Plus, which won't exist in like nine days because it's just done.
[01:13:15]  I'm going to bet on team liberty and team reality.
[01:13:18]  I'm telling you, the forces and the momentum is overwhelming, everybody.
[01:13:22]  We are going to win.
[01:13:26]  Love it.
[01:13:29]  Where are my microphones?
[01:13:30]  So yeah, right on my left.
[01:13:31]  We'll take a couple questions.
[01:13:33]  Adam and Ann are right there.
[01:13:36]  Yeah, do you want to set up the questions well, Charlie, because you always make sure that you put a little cap on.
[01:13:43]  Let's not turn this into.
[01:13:45]  Yeah, we had a great event last night in Milwaukee, and I forgot to do this part.
[01:13:49]  And this guy just went on for like five minutes.
[01:13:50]  Just please keep them to like 20 to 30 seconds.
[01:13:52]  We want to get to as many questions as possible.
[01:13:54]  If you have a question, you guys can line up at the mic.
[01:13:58]  If you guys go way off the reservation, we're just going to cut you off.
[01:14:00]  I'll be very honest.
[01:14:01]  So just, you know.
[01:14:04]  Don't go off the reservation.
[01:14:05]  And you might say, Charlie, what's off the reservation?
[01:14:08]  You know it when you see it.
[01:14:09]  Like, you know, it's just kind of the whole thing.
[01:14:13]  So, but yeah, whatever you guys want to ask, we'll be happy to do that.
[01:14:16]  We'll stay for as long as you'll have me.
[01:14:19]  And so, yeah, if you want to start lining up there and there, we'd love to get some student questions as well.
[01:14:24]  So we'll just start right here.
[01:14:26]  Okay, hi.
[01:14:26]  Thank you so much for coming.
[01:14:28]  My name is Shelby.
[01:14:29]  I just wanted to ask, as I've gotten more and more involved in politics and watching podcasts, I listen to like two or three podcasts a day, oftentimes.

=== Honoring the Biblical Sabbath (03:43) ===

[01:14:38]  How do you keep your heart from getting hardened and like just being like wanting to be Jesus flipping over the tables, but like 24-7?
[01:14:46]  Yeah, well, that's a great question.
[01:14:49]  I'll give you a biblical answer to it.
[01:14:51]  Last July, I was having a very difficult time with this.
[01:14:55]  So I do three podcasts a day.
[01:14:57]  I do three hours of radio a day.
[01:14:59]  I spoke at 330 places last year on the road.
[01:15:03]  We have 250 people on staff, got to raise a bunch of money.
[01:15:06]  Plus, I got to deal with all the fun people, the New York Times trying to destroy my life every single day, right?
[01:15:11]  Amongst other things.
[01:15:11]  So it's a lot, right?
[01:15:13]  And not to mention, not exactly an uplifting news cycle, the last year and a half, right?
[01:15:18]  It's just another kind of awful thing that one of the other.
[01:15:21]  And I was talking to a pastor friend of mine in New York City.
[01:15:25]  I was telling him this.
[01:15:26]  And he just asked me, he said, are you honoring the Sabbath?
[01:15:28]  I said, yeah, I like, you know, I'm kind of doing a Sabbath-ish thing, right?
[01:15:31]  Kind of very, you know, and he said, you should really consider it.
[01:15:36]  And so I did.
[01:15:37]  And so every Friday night, I take a Jewish Sabbath.
[01:15:39]  I turn my phone off completely.
[01:15:41]  I'm unreachable by the world.
[01:15:44]  And from Friday night to Saturday night.
[01:15:46]  And so I started doing it.
[01:15:47]  It was really hard at first, but I just do it religiously, regardless of where I am.
[01:15:51]  No one can contact me.
[01:15:53]  And I just read, I take notes, whatever.
[01:15:55]  And it's been an unbelievable blessing.
[01:15:57]  So let me kind of give you the Christian case for the Sabbath.
[01:16:00]  First of all, I'm not going to make a theological argument.
[01:16:02]  You're bound to the Sabbath, okay?
[01:16:04]  There's contradicting New Testament scriptures of this.
[01:16:07]  I'm not going to say that.
[01:16:08]  It's the only one of the Ten Commandments Jesus did not reinforce as far as that we have to honor.
[01:16:12]  Instead, I'm going to make a separate argument that it predated the law, which it did, and that it will bless your life significantly.
[01:16:18]  Okay?
[01:16:18]  So I believe the Ten Commandments are a gift from the Lord.
[01:16:21]  They're really the Ten Statements.
[01:16:22]  If you actually look at it, it starts with the one statement, which is, I'm the Lord your God who delivered you from Egypt, right?
[01:16:28]  He has to remind you because as humans have a tendency to forget.
[01:16:31]  And so he's like, hey, remember, I'm the guy that brought you from Egypt that came before the Ten Commandments.
[01:16:36]  And so the Decalogue says very clearly that we have to honor the Sabbath.
[01:16:41]  So, but why, right?
[01:16:42]  Well, God rested after creation, not because he needed rest, right?
[01:16:45]  But to admire his creation, but also, I think, to also show us an example that if God rested, we should rest as well.
[01:16:52]  So in the one day of the Sabbath, I could tell you, it has infinitely blessed my life before, but beyond I could ever tell you.
[01:16:58]  So not only am I unreachable, more time with my wife, more time with my family, more time with people I actually care about.
[01:17:05]  I read books that kind of get put aside for the previous week, and it makes everything I do more sustainable.
[01:17:12]  And I truly believe, and this is my personal theory.
[01:17:15]  I'm actually writing a book about why Christians should honor the Sabbath.
[01:17:17]  It's going to be my next book after my next book.
[01:17:20]  So in two books from now.
[01:17:21]  So my next book is Why You Shouldn't Go to College, which will be good.
[01:17:25]  And then that one.
[01:17:26]  So that's just, yeah, that one will be a real hit with parents.
[01:17:30]  So my Sabbath, but I believe truly that the Sabbath is the commandment that makes the other nine possible.
[01:17:40]  And so let's think about it.
[01:17:41]  If you're a parent that is growing disconnected from your child, are you having a Sabbath dinner with them with no devices on every Friday night?
[01:17:49]  Probably not.
[01:17:51]  I believe the Sabbath dinner is one of the great traditions that mankind has always had.
[01:17:55]  And whether we like it or not, Jesus had plenty of Sabbath dinners.
[01:17:59]  We know that.
[01:17:59]  And also, he had a Passover dinner.
[01:18:02]  I'm not saying that you're bound by it, but this is a thing that's in the Bible that's kind of like, wow, am I doing that?
[01:18:07]  Am I taking advantage of that?
[01:18:08]  So I call on every Christian, if you want your life to improve, maybe you don't.
[01:18:12]  Maybe you want your life to remain awful and miserable.
[01:18:14]  But if you want your life to improve, the happiest people, the least depressed people in the world are those that honor the Sabbath.

=== Protecting Our Children Next (12:43) ===

[01:18:21]  They are.
[01:18:22]  Or some form of a day of rest.
[01:18:24]  They live longer.
[01:18:25]  They're healthier, less disease, and all of it.
[01:18:28]  So for me, that's been a great blessing.
[01:18:30]  And it's a way just to totally tune out of all this kind of nonsense that's happening around you.
[01:18:34]  So, and then finally, I'll say this.
[01:18:36]  People say, Charlie, I'm too busy.
[01:18:38]  I say, okay.
[01:18:40]  I hate to pull rank on this, but if I can do it, you can do it.
[01:18:45]  Okay.
[01:18:46]  And so I highly, if you do it, try it for a month, try it for two months, and you'll find your relationship with God and your loved ones will dramatically improve.
[01:18:53]  And that hardened heart that you are worried about, I think will soften very quickly.
[01:18:57]  God bless you.
[01:18:58]  Thank you.
[01:19:04]  Hi, my name's John Baker, and I'm running for the school board at this time for District 6.
[01:19:13]  For the last four or five months, I've been studying the budgets.
[01:19:16]  I've been studying the organization.
[01:19:19]  I've been talking to people inside and outside the school system.
[01:19:24]  And when you describe the evil, the good and evil, I'm seeing that.
[01:19:29]  But what it's like is like wrestling with a cobweb.
[01:19:33]  How do you deal with that?
[01:19:36]  It's a great analogy.
[01:19:37]  Wow, I'm going to use that.
[01:19:41]  So how do you deal with it?
[01:19:43]  So you need to try to build a majority on your school board.
[01:19:46]  If you win, which is easier said than done, then you have to, before you take office, because you're not yet a school board member, is that right?
[01:19:54]  Okay.
[01:19:55]  You have to make a decision that you are going to put what is right above what is likable, okay, or what is popular.
[01:20:02]  And then you have to understand as a school board member, they will demagogue, they will delay, they will filibuster, they will do everything they possibly can.
[01:20:11]  But you as a school board member have a lot of power.
[01:20:15]  And creating an inside-out access between you as a school board member and an active parent group is what's been missing.
[01:20:23]  So you have to be getting information and then leaking it to parents to get angry at the school board meetings and vice versa, right?
[01:20:29]  Now, this is what, but think about it.
[01:20:31]  This is what they do to us, right?
[01:20:33]  So they get the teacher unions to go.
[01:20:34]  And so you have to be like, so you have to use FOIA to your advantage, but you at Freedom of Information Act, but you as a school board member, you have so much power for curriculum and for budgets and for all these things.
[01:20:46]  And so as a school board member, you should always ask for more than you actually think you're going to get.
[01:20:52]  And then be a relentless advocate for parents.
[01:20:55]  That's the most important thing.
[01:20:57]  But it's a very frustrating endeavor.
[01:21:00]  You are up against the machine in every way, shape, or form.
[01:21:04]  But do not give up.
[01:21:06]  And it's going to be gradual progress and process, but what you're doing is some of the most important work.
[01:21:12]  And your election's coming up very soon.
[01:21:14]  Is that right?
[01:21:15]  May 3rd.
[01:21:17]  And so I just want to commend you and encourage you for what you're doing here.
[01:21:21]  And finally, the last piece of advice I'll give you for when you actually get in to be a school board is don't just try to get rid of bad stuff.
[01:21:29]  Try to put positive things in as well, which is try to institute pro-American curriculum.
[01:21:35]  Try to reinstitute prayer in schools.
[01:21:37]  They'll lose their mind over that, but whatever.
[01:21:39]  Try to reinstitute good and meaningful things in the schools.
[01:21:43]  Don't just try to get rid of bad ones.
[01:21:44]  God bless you.
[01:21:45]  Thank you for being here.
[01:21:52]  Thanks for being here, Charlie.
[01:21:54]  So I have a little bit of an evangelistic question for you, I think, because I spend a lot of time wondering what it takes for the lights to come on for some people.
[01:22:04]  So I think we can all relate to that in terms of family members and friends, but I personally have a lot of colleagues that are millennial pastors, which are the worst.
[01:22:13]  They are.
[01:22:14]  It's just a joke.
[01:22:16]  But in terms of just, you know, these are good people, but then you see them doing things like shaming John MacArthur for opening up this church during COVID.
[01:22:26]  And then not only posting black squares, which early on you could understand, but then never standing up for abortion in the black communities and then never wanting to kind of distance themselves once they figured out what Black Lives Matter really is all about.
[01:22:41]  And so I guess the question is, is what have you seen be effective to really help, or is there something that you seem to be effective to kind of turn the lights on for people?
[01:22:51]  And then also too, within that, kind of a question within the question is, how much time do you spend rallying the base as opposed to winning the convert?
[01:23:03]  Because you don't want to just, you do, but you don't want to just preach to the choir the whole time and rally the base.
[01:23:08]  You want to be able to win people over to the truth.
[01:23:11]  So what's the ratio there in terms of like how often you rally the base, how often you try to win the convert?
[01:23:16]  Yeah, so great question.
[01:23:17]  Very articulate question.
[01:23:19]  Thank you for that.
[01:23:19]  So look, on the millennial pastor thing, I'm the first one to tell you.
[01:23:23]  I'm like a blunt forced instrument.
[01:23:24]  I don't really have a lot of patience for them.
[01:23:26]  You asked how effective, I don't know how effective I'm being with millennial pastors.
[01:23:33]  Probably not very, I'll be very honest.
[01:23:37]  And I'll tell you why.
[01:23:38]  Okay.
[01:23:39]  I'll tell you why.
[01:23:40]  Because I'm a Christian that is in the political world and it's kind of my day job.
[01:23:46]  So I get the politics thing.
[01:23:48]  I get the philosophy thing.
[01:23:49]  I've been doing it for a decade.
[01:23:49]  I know it pretty well.
[01:23:51]  And yet, so then, but then there's these Christian pastors that start to kind of come into my world with the kind of moral righteousness that comes with it, trying to tell me about like Rousseauian ideology or, you know, crime statistics in New York or critical race theory.
[01:24:09]  I'm like, slow down, pal.
[01:24:10]  All right.
[01:24:11]  You know, you can go do your eschatology thing and I won't disagree with you.
[01:24:15]  Okay.
[01:24:16]  Like leave the, you know, stay in your lane.
[01:24:19]  And so when they kind of cross that Rubicon, I'm like, all right, tough guy, like, you want to go tell me that America's racist to the core?
[01:24:27]  Like, that's not going to end well for you.
[01:24:29]  Now, again, they don't talk to me because they know it won't end well for them.
[01:24:33]  So I try to seek them out.
[01:24:36]  And it's come with mixed results.
[01:24:40]  But so here's what I will say is successful, though.
[01:24:42]  Again, I'm not saying I'm persuasive.
[01:24:44]  I'm not.
[01:24:44]  I struggle with this very same question, which is my impatience kind of pressure cooks into my commentary on this thing.
[01:24:53]  What I will say, though, is that all of you can be a lot more successful than I can be.
[01:24:57]  Okay.
[01:24:58]  So including you, which is take what is this huge library of content, you know, our thousand plus podcasts on these topics, right?
[01:25:07]  1,000 podcasts we've done on these topics, videos, campus events, Prager youth stuff, turning point stuff, metaxis stuff.
[01:25:16]  Take all of that, learn it.
[01:25:17]  And then you go challenge those millennial youth pastors and like really challenge them, right?
[01:25:23]  Take them out for coffee and don't take a one-liner.
[01:25:25]  Be like, no, no, no.
[01:25:26]  Come on, tell me about CRT.
[01:25:28]  Come on, man.
[01:25:29]  Like, you're talking about this stuff.
[01:25:30]  You're taking the mantle of this.
[01:25:32]  Like, I know, I've known you since you were whatever, 11 or 12 years old.
[01:25:35]  You're now in the ministry.
[01:25:36]  You know, why are you spreading deception?
[01:25:37]  That's where you guys can be very, very effective.
[01:25:39]  I've seen that work.
[01:25:40]  I've seen people that attend churches be very effective with that.
[01:25:45]  Very, very effective.
[01:25:47]  Frank can be more effective than I can because it's a pastor to pastor deal, right?
[01:25:52]  Because they're like, oh, Charlie, you're not a pastor.
[01:25:53]  I'm not going to listen.
[01:25:54]  You're like, okay, great.
[01:25:54]  Have a nice day.
[01:25:55]  Whatever.
[01:25:55]  Sure.
[01:25:56]  Even though we'll say exactly the same thing.
[01:25:59]  And then you asked the final question about how much should we focus on rallying the base versus persuasion.
[01:26:05]  Look, I will do persuasion, obviously, but I've changed my opinion on this where I used to kind of like lessen down my message.
[01:26:12]  If I go to Berkeley, look, I'm like at a 10 out of 10 no matter where I am.
[01:26:15]  Okay.
[01:26:16]  Too much time to worry about my audience and all this.
[01:26:18]  I'm going to say what's true no matter where it is, right?
[01:26:20]  Like not exactly worry about curating my message.
[01:26:23]  And you know what's amazing?
[01:26:25]  I have been more blessed in a reaction and more people agreeing.
[01:26:29]  Because here's what I learned this the heart, not the hard way, but someone came up to me after the event at Berkeley and they said, I agreed with almost nothing you said, but the way you said it and the conviction and the passion, like you're great and I'm going to follow you.
[01:26:41]  And really?
[01:26:43]  And I realized that it's not as much about agreement.
[01:26:47]  It can be, but it's actually a much bigger picture than that, right?
[01:26:51]  And are we serious?
[01:26:53]  And that's being compromising is not the answer.
[01:26:56]  Finally, ask questions.
[01:26:57]  Ask questions, ask questions.
[01:26:59]  It's how Jesus got to the bottom of the, you know, got to the truth.
[01:27:01]  So just keep on asking these questions of these youth pastors, millennial pastors and whomever.
[01:27:07]  And then finally, I think there is a reckoning coming.
[01:27:09]  I think there will be a series at some point of publicly recorded debates that have to happen between the wokeys and those of us that actually believe in the Bible.
[01:27:22]  I've been waiting for it.
[01:27:23]  I've been demanding it.
[01:27:24]  You guys should demand it too.
[01:27:25]  You would all watch that, wouldn't you?
[01:27:27]  Of all these, you know, BLM marching pastors that are so confident, yet they won't talk.
[01:27:33]  And it's kind of interesting.
[01:27:34]  You know who has the truth with who's afraid to talk to people and who isn't, right?
[01:27:39]  Like, I'll talk to anybody and they won't.
[01:27:42]  And that's because they're living in a demonic, you know, a demonic theology.
[01:27:47]  I don't say that lightly.
[01:27:48]  If you're supporting BLM, you're supporting a demonic theology.
[01:27:51]  Thank you.
[01:27:52]  I appreciate that.
[01:27:58]  Hey, thank you for the courage that you have been speaking for the last couple of years.
[01:28:04]  You mentioned earlier about, you know, how it's really painfully obvious the woke test.
[01:28:10]  But I wonder after the last two years, we've seen kind of a culmination of all these painfully obvious woke topics.
[01:28:18]  Are there some subtle things that you are seeing coming down?
[01:28:22]  It seems like, oh, there can't be one more thing, but you turn on the news and there it is, another topic that just we never thought we would see.
[01:28:30]  So there's some subtle ways that we can be proactively detecting so that they don't ultimately culminate and add to the woke test.
[01:28:41]  Yeah, it's a great question.
[01:28:42]  Yeah, let me give you some of the subtle ones, which is really important.
[01:28:45]  It's just a very basic question.
[01:28:46]  Whose children are they?
[01:28:47]  Right?
[01:28:48]  So if you don't get this question right, then you open the gateway to all the woke stuff, right?
[01:28:52]  So is it the state's children or is it your children?
[01:28:55]  The Bible tells us that it's your children and that you are biblically mandated to raise them up in the ways of which they will go.
[01:29:02]  Right.
[01:29:02]  And so that is kind of a subtle one where we debated this for years, but we didn't quite understand the significance of it.
[01:29:09]  And look at one that's unfolding all across the country, which is this idea of should you teach children this kind of radical gender ideology.
[01:29:19]  And this is what's interesting is that we're going to lose that debate if we don't actually get to the root of the issue.
[01:29:26]  So here's what I mean by that.
[01:29:29]  So we say it's not right for a five-year-old to learn about lesbian relations, okay?
[01:29:37]  But is it okay for a 15-year-old or a 20-year-old?
[01:29:41]  And we say no, right?
[01:29:43]  But most people are afraid to say that.
[01:29:45]  That's really the root of it.
[01:29:46]  The root is the same argument we had about homosexual marriage in 2008, 9, 10, and 11.
[01:29:51]  Now it's just whether or not kids should be exposed to that.
[01:29:54]  Does that make sense?
[01:29:55]  It's just move to a younger demographic.
[01:29:57]  So we will lose on that if we don't get our argument right earlier on in that.
[01:30:02]  And then there's obviously the transgender part of it.
[01:30:04]  Look, I could go on to a lot of different types of these issues that I think are kind of pressure cooker ones that are growing up throughout the system, but it will get worse.
[01:30:14]  The depths of hell have not even been touched by this.
[01:30:18]  And that's why the children are next.
[01:30:20]  They're the obvious next pivot.
[01:30:22]  And isn't it amazing how these groups that are always demanding liberation from oppression start in there and then they go immediately to trying to force evangelism of the most vulnerable, right?
[01:30:33]  So it all started with like the plight of gay marriage.
[01:30:37]  Okay, so they want gay marriage.
[01:30:39]  We believe marriage is one man, one woman.
[01:30:41]  We lost through a fiat decision in Washington, D.C. Supreme Court.
[01:30:45]  And then many of you, including me, because I was young and naive, thought we'd stop talking about all the gay issues, right?
[01:30:53]  Gay marriage is, oh, you know, it's the law of the land.
[01:30:55]  I don't like it.
[01:30:56]  I think it's wrong.
[01:30:57]  I think it's immoral.
[01:30:58]  It's unbiblical, all this, whatever.
[01:31:00]  At least that topic is over.
[01:31:02]  And yet now we're talking more about it than ever before.

=== Loyalty Amidst Liberal Lies (03:10) ===

[01:31:05]  Isn't that interesting?
[01:31:06]  And this is the lie of liberalism, which is give me liberation and I'll leave you alone.
[01:31:12]  No, you won't.
[01:31:14]  We give you liberation, then you're going to seek revenge against the people that were bringing you down, even though they weren't.
[01:31:19]  And that's what this whole thing is, obviously, right?
[01:31:21]  It's the very same people who thought they were being oppressed now all of a sudden going like, now I have to go after your children.
[01:31:27]  Like, really?
[01:31:27]  I thought all you wanted was marriage.
[01:31:30]  And before that, it's like, all we want is civil unions.
[01:31:32]  Before that, all we want is at some point, we got to kind of wake up to the fact that they will never stop until they're stopped.
[01:31:39]  And that is at the root of modern liberalism.
[01:31:42]  Okay, next question.
[01:31:44]  Two-part question.
[01:31:45]  Two more questions.
[01:31:46]  Okay.
[01:31:46]  Two-part question.
[01:31:47]  Make it quick because we only got a couple questions.
[01:31:48]  Two-part question.
[01:31:49]  Do you have any knowledge or information on the Stew Peters documentary called Watch the Water with Dr. Brian Artis regarding Rendesivir?
[01:32:00]  No, but I've had a couple people tell me about it.
[01:32:02]  And I'm telling you, I am very passionate about the Rem Desivir topic because I know a lot of people that were damaged by the forcible use of Rem Desivir in the hospitals.
[01:32:13]  But I haven't seen it yet.
[01:32:15]  Second part?
[01:32:15]  Hopefully you can do a podcast later on down the road with it.
[01:32:20]  Second is, this one's for a friend of mine.
[01:32:23]  If Ron DeSantis runs against Trump, who are you going to vote for?
[01:32:26]  Okay, so I get this question nonstop.
[01:32:31]  And that really tells you something.
[01:32:32]  It's like the fourth or fifth time I've got that question.
[01:32:34]  Okay, I'll give you the same answer.
[01:32:35]  I'll answer it personally, not on behalf of Turning Point.
[01:32:38]  Let me answer it this way.
[01:32:39]  So Ron DeSantis very well could be a once-in-a-generation statesman.
[01:32:42]  He could be a Lincoln or a Churchill, and he's been totally phenomenal and amazing.
[01:32:46]  If they run against one another, I'm a loyal person.
[01:32:49]  I'm a loyal person to someone who I'm an honor to call a friend who I believe was a great president and would be a great president again.
[01:32:55]  And let me tell you why.
[01:32:57]  So, and this is not a slide at DeSantis, obviously.
[01:32:59]  I think he's wonderful.
[01:33:00]  I think he'd be a good president, but I know Trump was a great president.
[01:33:03]  And I'm a loyal person.
[01:33:05]  I gave him my word that if he ran again, I would support him.
[01:33:08]  I'm not a guy that does that and falters.
[01:33:10]  You wouldn't want me to be that type of guy either, right?
[01:33:12]  He's a person that when I had no following, no credibility, and kind of was just like this 21, 22-year-old, he saw something special in our movement and spoke at our events and invited me to the White House.
[01:33:23]  And he really poured energy and time and resources into our movement.
[01:33:27]  And I don't forget that.
[01:33:28]  I don't just kind of discard it.
[01:33:29]  That's not how I was raised.
[01:33:31]  And I don't think that would be the right thing to do.
[01:33:33]  And obviously you guys would make your own decisions in that regard.
[01:33:36]  But I would say this, that if you win a presidency once and then the second time you run, it's the most interfered with election in history with ballots going everywhere and Zuckerberg with $400 million.
[01:33:48]  I believe you have earned the right to run for the presidency again, especially after the mess that we're seeing all around us.
[01:33:55]  And so that would be my own personal thing.
[01:33:57]  Obviously, people have differences of opinions in that way, but I'm a loyal guy.
[01:34:01]  And I'm going to hold the line for someone that was good to me.
[01:34:03]  Okay, so next question.
[01:34:05]  Will you elaborate on so you started talking about slogans and how they impact the world at this time?

=== Challenging Transgender Messaging (06:52) ===

[01:34:15]  And so how do we in media begin to combat fire, fight fire with fire?
[01:34:22]  Yeah, so how do we in the media, basically?
[01:34:24]  Yeah.
[01:34:25]  Are you in the media?
[01:34:26]  Sort of?
[01:34:26]  I'm a graphic designer.
[01:34:27]  Oh, great.
[01:34:29]  We need more non-woke graphic designers.
[01:34:31]  So that's good.
[01:34:33]  And that's actually one of the reasons why Disney has become how it is.
[01:34:36]  All the people that work for Disney are just super far to the left.
[01:34:40]  Look, we have to get better at messaging, and I think we are.
[01:34:43]  We're seeing, for example, kind of the rise of the parents' party, right?
[01:34:46]  That's such a beautiful phrase.
[01:34:48]  Parents' rights, the parents' party is this really awesome thing.
[01:34:52]  So how do we combat it?
[01:34:53]  We just shouldn't take their words at face value, right?
[01:34:57]  The only one that I'm willing to take at face value is not diversity, equity, inclusion, but diversity, inclusion, equity, die.
[01:35:04]  If that's the one that they want to use, like, okay, I'll use the acronym die if you really want.
[01:35:10]  But we have to flip it for what it actually is, right?
[01:35:13]  We have to call their, they call it the don't say gay bill.
[01:35:17]  No, it's not.
[01:35:18]  It's the protection of children against groomers bill.
[01:35:20]  That's what it is.
[01:35:21]  And you have to continually flip it on its head, right?
[01:35:24]  And it's like, we're the parents' party.
[01:35:25]  You're the pervert party, actually.
[01:35:28]  Like, it's really creepy and weird how much you care about teaching six-year-olds about gender transitioning.
[01:35:33]  And this is something some people aren't comfortable with, but I am, which is in the arena of messaging, I'm going to take the gloves off and I'm not going to allow you to insult us and to batter us continually.
[01:35:44]  Like, I'm going to call it for what it actually is, if that makes sense.
[01:35:47]  And so, but look, it's difficult because we always kind of want, we want to play by this like book of rules that actually doesn't exist.
[01:35:56]  And their book of rules is we want to destroy them.
[01:36:00]  Here's the better way I can put it.
[01:36:01]  We as conservatives, or whatever you want to call yourself constitutionalist, we think they're wrong.
[01:36:08]  They think we're bad.
[01:36:10]  They think we're evil and we think they're wrong.
[01:36:12]  Well, actually, I don't think they're wrong.
[01:36:15]  I think that they're evil.
[01:36:17]  I do.
[01:36:17]  And I say that out loud.
[01:36:19]  And again, some people, you guys say, how Charlie, how dare you say they're all evil?
[01:36:22]  Okay, fine, whatever.
[01:36:23]  But I'll say, how about this?
[01:36:25]  The people that support the million abortions a year and puberty blockers for 10-year-olds and the confusion of most fundamental gender issues, right?
[01:36:33]  And porous open borders, I think that's immoral and that therefore means it's evil.
[01:36:37]  And I'm not going to all of a sudden act as if we're in this like kind of long-form, equally standing Socratic debate about how we all want the same thing.
[01:36:45]  It's like we actually want two completely different things.
[01:36:49]  And we have to get better about messaging about it.
[01:36:51]  So thank you so much.
[01:36:52]  God bless you.
[01:36:53]  Okay, the last question.
[01:36:55]  Thank you for coming tonight.
[01:36:57]  I had a question concerning the transgender argument.
[01:37:01]  What do I ask my peers in order to basically shut down their transgender argument?
[01:37:07]  For what reasons are it?
[01:37:08]  To shut down, sorry, the transgender argument?
[01:37:12]  Yes, sir.
[01:37:12]  Like, if they bring it up, like.
[01:37:15]  Sure.
[01:37:15]  So it's a great question.
[01:37:17]  So at the root of the transgender argument is a belief that your feelings can dictate your reality.
[01:37:24]  That is the basis of transgenderism.
[01:37:26]  It is also a rejection of the absolute description of actually who you are as a person, right?
[01:37:32]  So in order to properly expose the fraud of transgender movement or transgenderism, we must apply that to other facets of life, right?
[01:37:43]  So if you can choose your gender, can you choose your age?
[01:37:46]  If you can choose your gender, can you choose your species?
[01:37:49]  Now, people might say, well, Charlie, those things are red herring arguments.
[01:37:52]  They don't have anything to do.
[01:37:53]  Of course they do.
[01:37:53]  These are certifiable mental conditions that people have where they think they're younger than they actually are.
[01:37:58]  Should a 50-year-old who thinks that he's 50-year-old should be able to compete in a youth soccer league, you know, with eight-year-olds just because he feels that way.
[01:38:07]  So at the core of transgenderism, and I'm not making light of it, we should have compassion.
[01:38:12]  We want Jesus for all these people.
[01:38:13]  We want help and treatment for these people is a mental condition.
[01:38:18]  Believing you are a separate gender than you are assigned from birth is called gender dysphoria.
[01:38:23]  It's a very real thing.
[01:38:24]  And we've had ways to deal with it.
[01:38:26]  We've had successful treatments to show people that trauma might have induced that and that external forces might have had them confused about it.
[01:38:34]  But the most important thing is who gets to determine your reality?
[01:38:38]  Now, people, this is at the fundamental core of so many of these movements.
[01:38:42]  Hey, well, you get to determine your own truth.
[01:38:44]  Do you really?
[01:38:45]  So they say, well, you have to call me by my pronouns.
[01:38:47]  Well, if you get to choose your pronouns, do I get to choose my adjectives?
[01:38:55]  Do I get to choose that I'm rich, skinny, tall, successful, and powerful?
[01:39:01]  It's not the way it works.
[01:39:02]  We have to be anchored, again, to what we've talked about all evening, to reality, is that your wishes, your will, your demands, your feelings do not determine what you are.
[01:39:13]  And they might have that own opinion, right?
[01:39:17]  They might say, I am a man, even though they're a woman.
[01:39:19]  They might say I'm a unicorn, even though they're a human.
[01:39:22]  They could say whatever those sorts of things, okay?
[01:39:24]  There are separate psychological mental treatment that I hope they come.
[01:39:27]  And most importantly, spiritual treatment I hope that they end up getting, right?
[01:39:31]  However, the more important question is this, which is, are you going to use political power now to force other people to succumb to your incredibly radical mental disease?
[01:39:41]  And the answer should be no.
[01:39:43]  Are you going to use political power to make me say a pronoun that I know is not true and like penalize me because I used the wrong pronoun?
[01:39:49]  Are you going to now use political power to force someone with a mental condition to now be able to go into girls' locker rooms, even though that's not the biological gender that they were born with?
[01:39:59]  Are you going to now use political power to say that children can get puberty blockers without even notifying their parents, which is happening in states all across the country?
[01:40:08]  So that's an even, that's a more important issue, which is you can think whatever you want to think, right?
[01:40:12]  Okay, whatever, but now do not use the force of the state.
[01:40:16]  Do not use the guns.
[01:40:17]  Do not use the government.
[01:40:19]  Do not use corporate power to all of a sudden make me go play along with your delusion, okay?
[01:40:25]  Your delusion is not reality.
[01:40:27]  We should not redesign women's sports because a dude wakes up one day who's the 422nd best, 462nd best swimmer in the country.
[01:40:36]  He's like, you know what?
[01:40:37]  I'm a woman and we have to all of a sudden reconfigure all of women's sports as he wins the NCAA championship, disenfranchising biological women and act as if that is somehow normal and okay.
[01:40:48]  What that is, is tolerance gone wrong.
[01:40:51]  What that is, is platforming and entertaining mass psychosis from us when in reality, those people need individual treatment, individual compassion, individual help, not all of society pandering to their problem and acting as if it's okay.
[01:41:06]  In fact, it's incredibly damaging.

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[01:42:57]  Thank you, Charlie.
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