'I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist' with Apologist Frank Turek LIVE from Dream City Church
In this exclusive conversation brought to you by TPUSA Faith, Charlie is LIVE from Dream City Church in Phoenix, Ariz. with Christian Apologist Frank Turek, author of "Hollywood Heroes: How Your Favorite Movies Reveal God" and founder of CrossExamined.com. Charlie begins by remembering and memorializing the historic Supreme Court win overturning Roe v. Wade. Charlie explains why it's the perfect example of why we need to have faith enough to overcome the really big challenges in the country that sometimes take decades to accomplish, and remembers those who went before us who prayed, fasted, argued, and reasoned to get us to this point. Charlie and Frank then spend the rest of this incredible discussion laying out the psychological, logical, historical, emotional, and scientific proof for the existence of the Christian God. Complete with Q+A, this is a must listen to episode if you are looking for encouragement in your faith or for advice in sharing your faith with those who may not yet believe. Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Strengthen Your Faith Today00:04:27
Hey everybody, happy Sunday.
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It's brought to you by TPUSA Faith or TPUSA.com.
Hope to see all of you at SAS.
It's my conversation with Frank Turek.
I don't have enough faith to be an atheist, and we take questions from the audience.
This should strengthen your faith.
If you're down and depressed and anxious and you don't know if you believe in God, I think this episode will fire you up.
I think you'll learn a lot.
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So buckle up everybody.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk Charlie Kirk's running the White House.
Folks, I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country.
He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
Turning Point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
Thank you everybody, thank you boy.
What an amazing presentation that was, by the way, wasn't that incredible?
That was so special and um, i'm sure you're, you're with me.
I was getting emotional throughout that and as I was watching that, I had actually kind of a two emotions going on at once.
I was moved by the presentation and emotional, and I think some of you also were kind of getting angry that our beautiful country is being destroyed in front of our very eyes.
Right, I mean that just being very honest with you is just hard to kind of that tension of emotions, because what a gift we've been given from the lord honestly to live in this country um, and the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world, and we're going to change it.
That's why we're here tonight.
We're going to, we're going to take it back and we're going to make some appropriate changes.
So I want to, I want to touch on a couple things.
Um, first of all, of course, Dream CITY Schools.
Check out Turning Point Dream CITY Schools, a Turning Point Academy.
Check it out.
Now enrolling students for the fall.
Some super exciting updates that will be coming.
In fact, we're about to announce two more branches of Turning Point Academies coming in hopefully in the next days and weeks, including homeschool curriculum, pod schooling curriculum, as well as some very exciting new programming that will be done to be able to make it easier for parents to be able to no longer have an excuse.
Our vision for Turning Point Academy nationwide is for parents to no longer say, you know what, I don't like my local government school, but there's no option.
We want to make sure that the options are always in front of every parent that wants to be able to pull their kid out of government schools.
That is our vision for what we're doing at Turning Point Academy.
And Angel beat me to it, but what an incredible last month when it comes to the Supreme Court.
We'll talk about this tonight with Frank, but in this kind of news cycle we live in where everything seems so overwhelmingly negative, wasn't it remarkable to finally see the Supreme Court do something courageous and bold and constitutional as well, by the way?
Expanding Services for Families00:08:38
And I would be remiss if I did not mention the people who helped make that possible.
You see, the Supreme Court is a lagging indicator, it's not a leading indicator.
So the Supreme Court usually bears fruit of fights that happened generations ago.
So these are judges that were put in place by prior administrations or justices because of past elections or arguments that, quite honestly, were won or lost before a lot of us were engaged in the fight.
And so that decision was the work of 40 or 50 years of prayer and fasting from churches like this one, from leaders like Pastor Tommy, from leaders like Billy Graham, leaders like Rush Limbaugh, leaders like Antonin Scalia.
And I think it would be a mistake not to mention the multi-generations of warriors like Phyllis Schlafly, who went in the trenches and said, you know what?
This decision can be overturned.
And we must recognize that it didn't happen overnight.
How often have we said that here at Freedom Night throughout the last year?
Big and bold and important things are going to take sometimes years to get done.
But guess what?
Rush Limbaugh and Billy Graham are smiling from heaven saying, I told you guys to keep fighting for that.
And there's so many things that we must unpack in this.
And this shows how incredible the church that Dream City is because Dream City passed what I kind of put forward as the two-part test of the Roe versus Wade reversal.
So the first one is, did your pastor mention it happened?
That's the first thing, right?
Most did not.
Most pastors just acted as if it was just another day at church.
Or they said, you know, I know this is a very difficult issue.
Sorry, your pastor, it's not a difficult issue, okay?
Maybe if you were a secular humanist running some sort of philosophy class at a local university, it's a difficult issue, not difficult for a pastor, right?
We're made in the image of God.
Life is sacred.
It needs to be protected, period.
Every pastor needs to say it.
And so that's the, so there were a lot of pastors that passed the first part, but the second part is equally as important, which is we now need to step up and recognize and realize those of us that have been advocating for an end to abortion in America need to expand our services, our charities, our nonprofits like the Dream Center to be able to equip and empower and support every woman in America that is now going to be bringing life into this world.
It's not on us because look, the other side, they're going to be saying the argument they always make is: we need abortion because it's too expensive.
We need abortion because it's too costly.
We need abortion because there's no options.
And that's one of the reasons why we partnered with Choices here in Arizona, amazing organization, by the way.
And so now it's incumbent on us as Christians to step up to the plate to support these charities even more with our time and our treasure and our resources and our prayer, because there is going to be an overwhelming amount of first-time mothers.
And by the way, we know that just because in Texas, when the six-week abortion ban went into place, abortions went down by 70 to 80%.
Now, mind you, this was always an argument that the abortionists made.
They said, you can outlaw abortion, but it's not going to decrease abortions.
It's just a lie.
Actually, when you outlaw things, people reconsider it.
It's like a really weird thing, right?
I know.
When it's not legal, people say, well, maybe it's illegal for a reason, or maybe do I really want to do this?
And look, some people are going to be motivated to go across state lines.
That's still going to be legal in our country for the time being.
They'll go to New Mexico or California.
But some people will reconsider it.
And they'll say, maybe I don't want to do this.
Maybe I'll get an ultrasound.
Maybe I'm going to hear a heartbeat.
And what an amazing opportunity for the church to say welcome, to say that we're here to support you.
We're here to help you.
Judgment-free zone.
We're not going to condemn you.
We're not going to speak harshly to you.
I think it's one of the greatest evangelist opportunities the church has ever had to be able to support the people that need this support.
And so I just want to encourage us to lean into that moment.
And so that's the two-step test in Dream City passed both of them.
I was watching very carefully.
You could see a lot, some of these wokey pastors, right?
They would tweet stuff out that was just so amazing.
And I won't say any names.
I promise I won't.
But they were like, you know, nowhere in the Bible does it say abortion is wrong.
Like, yeah, nowhere in the Bible does it say dropping an atom bomb on Berlin is wrong, but you kind of deduct that from thou shalt not murder, right?
I mean, that's probably pretty obvious, or I knew you before you were in the womb, or very basic things.
And basically, what it comes down to is courage.
And this issue has always made some people cowardly, that we're going to offend others, that we are not going to be able to win people over.
And in fact, the data is showing the opposite.
The data is actually showing this nation is becoming more pro-life.
That it's actually showing that the more we talk about this issue, the more converts we actually make.
And so the only argument they ever had was, my body, my choice.
After the vaccine mandate thing, I don't take them seriously anymore.
I just, I'm sorry, we're done.
Like the whole bodily, and by the way, it's a silly argument.
It's not your body, okay?
It's somebody else's body, separate DNA, not your choice.
But still, that was the one kind of compelling nature of the whole thing.
And I think we saw in the reaction, which was so amazing and a compliment to all of you and an encouragement that I think more victories are going to come in the years and decades to come, is that the hours after the decision of the reversal, we won the narrative war.
I totally anticipated us losing the narrative war, by the way.
But they started to put people on television saying, you know why we need abortion?
Because special needs kids are hard to raise.
Literally, Ana Navarro goes on CNN and saying that.
Or they say, you know what, we need less people on earth.
Really?
And so they just kind of completely imploded.
And it's a very interesting issue because it mixes biology, science, morality, metaphysics, emotion.
And so I just want to just encourage everybody, because there will be some people that say, Charlie, stop talking about this issue.
It's a losing issue.
First of all, who cares?
It's right or wrong.
I don't take a popularity test of that.
But even if that's actually not true, though, that's the point, is that it happens to be the lie of the enemy, where the nation is now more pro-life than ever before.
The more people learn about it, the more people say, you know what, this is wrong and we have to put an end to it.
And so, if it was not for active churches like Dream City, it's very important.
If it was not for active churches like Dream City throughout the years, this never would have got done.
But also, we need to make sure we understand it.
If it wasn't for somebody else, this would not have got done.
And I know everyone has different opinions of this individual, but this is a fact, and you don't have to like what I'm about to say.
Okay, you don't have to like it, but if you like babies and you like the unborn, then this is a fact.
That, um, how do I put this?
Someone who lived a colorful life from New York City, who was once pro-choice himself, who once supported Planned Parenthood, God had a call on his life for maybe just one or two or three reasons.
But to go down a golden escalator and win an election, he was not supposed to win.
And again, you don't have to like the guy.
I'm not saying you have to like it.
It's a fact of life that God can use anybody for any reason.
And he did a highly suspicious thing.
He actually did what he said he was going to do.
I know we're not used to that.
Makes us all very freaked out, right?
And we got Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh.
And I want to say, Kavanaugh's ruling on immigration was somewhat disappointing, but if you survive an assassination attempt on your family and you still rule correctly on Roe v. Wade, that's worthy of appreciation and applause.
It really is.
That's courage.
So it's a big moment for the church.
We must now step into this and help the people that need our help and see this as a great opportunity.
I'm going to tell you about our guest tonight.
So I first became aware of our guest when I was in a hotel room in Spokane, Washington.
We were talking about Spokane earlier.
I just got done speaking at Washington State University in Pullman, which is far, not far, but it's a ways from Spokane.
And I turned on local television, and there was this incredibly articulate presenter talking about how atheism is actually irrational, talking about the case for the resurrection.
I'd never heard of any of this before.
Is Christianity Truly Reasonable00:08:19
And I said, who is this guy?
So I started to look up his YouTube videos.
I was so moved by it.
And actually, his entire podcast and his show is called, I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist.
In fact, that's the name of his book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist.
And so he does what I do, but just a little bit differently.
He goes to college campuses and takes questions all about Christianity, all about atheism.
And he is one of the most gifted and charismatic apologists of our time, someone who makes the case for Christianity.
He also has a new book out called Hollywood Heroes, which is terrific.
I'm actually going to have Frank on our show tomorrow to talk about this on our radio program and our podcast.
And I've got to know Frank over the last year, year and a half, pretty well.
And we trade texts and have dinners every so often and do just kind of are there for one another, and I deeply appreciate it.
But I think you're going to be really moved by the rational case for Christianity.
And this is something that we don't always present, which is the archaeological evidence, the rational evidence, the natural law evidence of how, if you look at things, even supporting the Bible, that it confirms biblical truths themselves.
So please join me in welcoming the incredible Frank Turek.
Charlie Kirk, ladies and gentlemen, right here, Charlie Kirk.
So talk about articulate, huh?
Right here.
Very kind.
So Frank, welcome.
We've been talking for a while to get you out here.
I'm so glad it worked.
Sorry about the weather, but it's actually a cool day today.
So Frank, let me play devil's advocate.
It is reasonable and rational to be an atheist.
There's no evidence for God.
What do you mean you have no faith to be an atheist?
Faith is for you religious people.
Well, first of all, you're wrong.
The atheists are now saying things like, I just lack a belief in God.
Have you heard this yet?
When atheists will say, I lack a belief in God, that's their new way of saying that you have faith and I don't.
And I simply ask them this question: Here's a proposition: God exists.
Do you agree with that proposition?
And if you do, then you're a theist.
Do you disagree with that proposition?
In that case, you're an atheist.
Or don't you know you're an agnostic?
You know what they always say?
I don't know.
I said, What's all this lack of belief stuff?
You just don't know whether there's a God or not.
I think there's evidence for God.
Can we go into some of that?
So, so, yeah, let's get into that, Frank.
What evidence could there possibly be for God?
People say, I've never seen God, I can't touch God.
What evidence could there possibly be?
If someone ever asked you, why do you know that God exists?
I think you ought to say this: I know God by his effects.
In other words, there are effects of God everywhere.
And what we're doing, just like a scientist does when they're trying to figure out what particular cause caused a particular effect, they're reasoning from effect back to cause.
So, let's go through a few effects.
First of all, the universe is an effect.
The universe exploded into being out of nothing.
Once there was nothing, and then the entire space-time continuum leapt into existence.
What could have caused space-time and matter to come into existence?
The only thing I think that could cause space, time, and matter to come into existence is something that is spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful to create the universe out of nothing, personal in order to choose to create, because to go from nothing to a state of creation, someone has to make a choice, and only persons can make choices.
The cause would also have to be intelligent to have a mind to make a choice.
So, I always ask audiences: I say, when you think about a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, personal, intelligent cause, who do you think of?
Who do you think of?
God.
You say, Well, how do you know it's the Christian God?
And my answer is, we don't yet.
We haven't done enough research yet.
This could be Allah at this point, Charlie.
This could just be a generic God that, say, Thomas Jefferson talked about.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
He didn't mention it was Jesus, he just said a creator.
But if we keep looking at the evidence, we're going to realize that the same being that walked out of the tomb 1,989 years ago is the same being in whose divine nature created the universe out of nothing.
But we have to look at the evidence for the resurrection for that.
So that's one effect.
Yeah, and so we'll get deeper into this, Frank.
But I think that the argument for atheism is so patently insane.
The only way that someone could be an atheist or believe atheism is because they want to believe it.
Yeah, they don't want to believe in God or Christianity.
In fact, here's a question I always ask people on college campuses.
Charlie goes to a lot of college campuses, as I do as well.
And if during the QA, there's an atheist or a non-believer at the microphone, and if they demonstrate any hostility at all, I'll normally ask this question.
If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?
I've had atheists stand at that microphone in front of hundreds of people and say, no.
No.
Wait, you claim to be reasonable.
I asked you if something were true, would you believe it?
And you say, no.
How's that reasonable?
How's that rational?
It's not.
The problem is in here.
The problem's here.
They don't want it to be true.
They don't want there to be a God.
Why?
Because they want to be God of their own lives.
They're not on a truth quest, ladies and gentlemen.
They're on a happiness quest.
And they're just going to believe whatever they think is going to make them happy.
Here's the problem.
You can make yourself happy over the short term at college, maybe.
But over the long term, it's a disaster.
If you just try to do stuff that's going to make you feel good, it's going to help you in the short term, but over the long term, it's a disaster.
And everyone in this room and watching out there who's over 40 knows what I'm talking about.
And Charlie, who's well beyond his years, already knows it too.
Because if you just try and make yourself happy without regard to other people, you're going to wind up depressed, lonely, full of anxiety.
The only way to get true contentment and happiness is to go straight through truth, and Jesus is the truth.
Amen.
Now, let me mention one other thing regarding this.
I found that most people are looking for God like a criminal is looking for a cop.
They're not interested.
So you always need to stop and ask them if Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?
In fact, can I do a little survey here?
Is it okay to do a little survey?
I want you, ladies and gentlemen, to think of somebody you know who's not a Christian, whom you'd like to be a Christian.
Everybody got somebody?
All right, don't point at them.
All right.
Okay, here's my question about the person you're thinking of.
Is the person you're thinking of on a relentless pursuit of truth?
They want to know if Christianity is true, or are they apathetic or maybe even hostile to Christianity?
How many people say the person I'm thinking of is on a relentless pursuit of truth?
They want to know if Christianity is true.
Can see your hands, please.
Two.
Two.
How many people say the person I'm thinking of is apathetic or hostile?
Okay, look around the room, ladies and gentlemen.
People are not interested.
You know what you do with such people?
You love them, you pray for them, you plant seeds, and then you wait.
Because what's going to happen?
It happens to all of us.
Someday a tragedy is going to occur, and your phone is going to ring, and that person is going to be on the other end.
They're not going to call their atheist friend when things go wrong.
What's the atheist going to say?
There's no rhyme or reason to life.
This stuff just happens.
No, they're going to call you.
When the student's ready, the teacher will appear.
If they're ever going to be ready, it's when tragedy strikes.
So, Frank, one of the kind of, I would say, idea pathogens that is infecting the minds of our nation's young people is the virus of subjectivism or subjectivity.
And it's nothing new.
It's been around for quite some time.
The great C.S. Lewis, and I encourage all of you to read C.S. Lewis at least once a year: Screwtape Letters, Miracles, Mere Christianity.
There Is Only One Truth00:02:50
Narnia is great to read to your kids and grandkids, super biblically based.
Abolition of Man, which is terrific.
C.S. Lewis is almost an unlimited reservoir of wisdom here, but he really pinpointed the danger in subjectivity.
So, the best way that we could describe subjectivity is what you'll hear on a college campus and maybe from your grandkids when they come back from a semester on a college campus that you're going into debt to go pay for is when they come home and they say, No, that's my truth.
And everyone has their own truth.
Now, mind you, this is what's the heart of the transgender movement, isn't it?
That I have a different material truth than you do, and that we can't have any sort of agreed-upon precepts.
So, Frank, what would be the proper response when someone says, Okay, no, no, but I have my own truth, I have my own beliefs, I chart my own course, my own destiny.
There's no such thing as truth.
Everyone has their own story they tell themselves.
In fact, nothing is absolutely true.
Yeah, great question.
When somebody says there is no truth, you ought to ask them, is that true?
Is it true that there's no truth?
Because if it's true that there's no truth, the claim there is no truth can't be true, but it claims to be true.
Did I say that right?
I know that can give you intellectual constipation if you think about it, because this is known as a self-defeating statement.
A self-defeating statement doesn't meet its own standard.
If I were to say I can't speak a word in English, what would you say?
You just use English to say it.
When people say there is no truth or they say there are no absolutes, they're uttering self-defeating statements.
They're saying it's absolutely true.
There are no absolutes.
Is that an absolute?
If they say all truth is relative, what are you going to say?
Is that a relative truth?
No, it's an objective truth.
When people say, I have my truth and you have your truth, there is no the truth.
You want to ask them, is that the truth?
That there is no the truth?
Do you see the problem?
It defeats itself.
Actually, when people say they have their own truth, you might as well say to them, I know this is not popular in today's culture, but there's no such thing as your truth or my truth.
There's just the truth.
I mean, if you're going to say you have your own truth, you might as well just say, I have my own math.
I mean, imagine if Charlie were to hire me to do something.
He said, hey, Frank, I'll give you $15 an hour.
Do the job and then let me know what I owe you.
So I work for 10 hours and I come to Charlie.
I go, Charlie, it's great working for you here at Turning Point USA.
I've worked for 10 hours and you said $15 an hour, so you owe me $15,000.
Charlie's going to say, what?
I don't owe you $15,000.
I owe you $150,000.
And I go, oh, no, no, you don't understand.
I have my own math.
All right.
Now, Frank, in all fairness, this is the idea that's running our government right now.
That's true.
This is not an outrageous proposition.
No, it's silliness to say you have your own truth.
Why You Need Miracles Now00:15:57
There's just the truth, not your truth, not my truth.
It's self-defeating to say there's no truth.
It's like when people say don't judge.
What should you say to them?
Well, then why are you judging me for judging?
See, it's a judgment.
Jesus didn't say don't judge.
He said, judge not, lest you be judged.
By the same standard you judge others, you be judged by that standard.
So before you try and take the speck out of your brother's eye, you hypocrite, which is a judgment.
You notice that?
You hypocrite.
Take the log out of your own eye first, and then you'll be better able to help your brother.
Is this a command not to judge?
No, it's a command on how to judge.
He's telling you to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
That involves making a judgment.
He's simply saying don't judge hypocritically.
If you've got that problem, fix it, then go help your brother.
It would be completely ridiculous to say don't make judgments.
Why?
The people who are telling you not to make judgments, they're the most judgmental people in society.
Charlie deals with them all the time.
They give me such warm welcomes when I go to Berkeley.
I have to tell you, they just love hearing from me.
You went to UCAL Berserkly?
Yeah, multiple times.
You did.
UC Berkeley, Stanford, Boulder.
So Frank, let's talk about the moral implications if there is no God.
And so I feel as if we're living through the beginning stages of this moment right now in America, because if everyone gets to determine their own truth and determine their own morality, well, then who's to say what is right or wrong?
Why should children not be exposed to highly pornographic material?
What difference does it make?
Who's to say my truth says differently?
What are the societal moral implications when you do not believe in first a God or at least a moral giver or a moral law that is absolute and not something that is relative?
Well, this is another one of those effects that I mentioned earlier.
When someone says, how do you know God exists?
You're reasoning from effect to cause.
So we've reasoned from the effect known as the universe back to a spaceless, timeless, immaterial cause.
Now when we get a moral law written on our hearts that, say, Thomas Jefferson would say is self-evident, that the Apostle Paul said the Gentiles and have the law of the law written on their hearts, that's from Romans chapter 2.
These laws that are pressing on us are effects.
The question is, what caused these effects?
The effect for a moral law is a moral lawgiver.
So we're reasoning from effect back to cause.
And so that's another way we know that God exists.
Here's the ugly truth.
If there is no God, then nothing is ultimately right or wrong.
Everything's just a matter of opinion.
It's just your opinion against, say, Hitler's opinion.
It's just your opinion against Putin's opinion or whoever you think is evil.
It's your opinion against anyone that says something is right or wrong if there's no God.
Everything's just a matter of opinion.
Well, we know murder is not just a matter of opinion.
We know rape is not just a matter of opinion.
We know that those things are really objectively morally wrong.
And if they're objectively morally wrong, there must be a standard of rightness that defines what goodness is.
And any deviation from that standard would be what we would call evil, like murder or rape or theft or whatever those things are.
In fact, I think it's the most powerful argument today for the existence of God.
Because no matter where you go, Charlie, whether you're dealing with an atheist, an agnostic, or a Christian or a Muslim, whoever you're dealing with, they think certain things are morally right and certain things are morally wrong.
And so, Frank, I think we're starting to see in our society an entire generation that has been plagued by the inability to differentiate what is real and what is not.
And it's a term that I'm workshopping, but it really is kind of this plague of the imagination versus reality.
What do I mean by this?
You have a generation that is staring at screens where they just see photons all day long, whether it be video games or hypergraphic pornography or just talking to friends that quite honestly don't exist in the metaverse.
And then they have to come into the world that isn't as stimulating as that video game.
And their entire neural profile is completely messed up.
And they ask the questions, what is even real?
And this is where they say, well, I know God for sure is not real because I can't see God like I can see the video game in front of me.
I know this is a silly and elementary argument, but could you just for a brief second talk about how silly the argument is when people say, I can't see God, therefore God does not exist?
Yeah, well, there's a lot of things you can't see that you believe in.
For example, you believe in the laws of logic.
You can't see them, touch them, taste them, but you're using them right now.
You believe in your mind.
Have you ever seen your mind?
You're using it right now.
You believe in justice.
Have you ever seen justice?
Oh, you may have seen people being treated justly or unjustly, but you've never seen justice in itself because justice is not a physical thing you see.
You believe in love.
Have you ever seen love?
Oh, you may have seen people love.
You may have loved, but you've never seen love in itself.
In fact, years ago, I had a debate, a couple of debates with Christopher Hitchens.
You remember Christopher Hitchens?
He was a brilliant British atheist who sounded more brilliant than he was because he had a British accent.
Yeah, use really big words.
Anyway, in one of our debates, someone from the audience, a student at the college in New Jersey, asked Christopher, Christopher, what is love?
And Christopher, being a materialist, meaning all he believed that existed were molecules in motion, he had to come up with a materialistic answer for love.
So he thought about it for a minute and he said, love is a chemical.
And I said to him, Christopher, don't say that to your wife.
Honey, do you love me?
Yeah.
Why?
Because I got the chemical.
You know, today I have it.
Maybe tomorrow I won't.
No, love is not a chemical, yet you believe in it because it's part of the nature of reality.
It's an immaterial virtue grounded in the nature of God.
By the way, here's another thing you believe in you've never seen, gravity.
Oh, Frank, there's gravity right there, right?
That's the effect.
Yeah, you're not seeing gravity.
You're seeing what?
The effect of gravity.
You're seeing the effect of gravity.
You know, we don't even know what gravity is.
You realize that?
You're not seeing gravity.
You're seeing the effect of gravity.
You've never seen George Washington.
Yet you believe in him.
Why?
Because he's left effects behind that are best explained by a man who lived from 732, 1732 to 1799.
He's left effects behind.
Some of them are behind us right now that cause you to believe that this man existed even though you have never seen him.
Same thing is true with Jesus.
You haven't seen Jesus physically, but you believe he existed because he's left effects behind that are best explained by the God-man known as Jesus, who rose from the dead 1,989 years ago.
Now, that's a perfect segue, Frank.
So some people say, okay, Frank, I agree with you, but I'm spiritual, okay?
I'm not religious.
And this is kind of a new phenomenon amongst a lot of our nation's young people to say, okay, I believe in a God, but I believe in a Unitarian God or a Buddhist God.
And the Bible, it's full of inaccuracies and Jesus has been debunked.
And what evidence is there, Frank?
I mean, come on, these are old manuscripts, and they were written by people that wanted it to be true to confirm Old Testament prophecy.
How could you, Frank, the hyper-rational person, believe in such a thing like that?
When people say things like this, first of all, there's like eight different objections in there.
Thank you.
You're welcome, Frank.
You have to narrow it down.
First thing you want to ask is, when they say something like this, is, first of all, what do you mean the Bible has been proven inaccurate?
What evidence do you have that it has?
They typically might say something like, I mean, come on, you're trying to tell me you'll be swallowed by a whale sometime soon.
They'll take some of the more, let's say, miraculous interventions of God that you and I believe in.
So I might ask, so you don't believe in miracles, why not?
Because I've never seen such a miracle is what they would say.
Or they'd say it defies the laws of nature.
Okay.
And then I would ask, this universe that you're living in, this universe is a miracle.
Do you know that?
I mean, you don't believe in miracles?
This universe is a miracle.
It exploded into being out of nothing, which is, by the way, why when people say they don't believe in miracles, I normally say, look around, you're living in one.
But I also ask them, what is the greatest miracle in the Bible?
And normally they'll say something like Jonah or Noah or the resurrection.
And I'll go, no, the greatest miracle in the Bible is the first verse.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
If that verse is true, ladies and gentlemen, every other verse is at least possible.
I mean, if it's true that God created the universe out of nothing, can he raise Jesus from the dead?
Can he do the Jonah miracle, the Noah miracle?
Can he part the Red Sea?
Can he turn water into wine?
These things are easy if the first verse of the Bible is true.
Well, here's the interesting thing, ladies and gentlemen.
Even atheists are admitting the evidence for the first verse.
They're admitting that space, time, and matter had a beginning out of nothing.
If space, time, and matter had a beginning out of nothing.
Now, they don't think it's God, but what else could it be?
It's got to be a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, personal, intelligent cause, as we mentioned earlier.
If that is true, every other verse in the Bible is at least possible.
And when people say, well, I haven't seen a miracle, I said, you shouldn't expect to see a lot of miracles.
If any, why?
Because miracles, by definition, have to be rare if they're going to get our attention.
If miracles were occurring all the day, all the time, we wouldn't consider them miracles.
We'd say, hey, this stuff just happens all the time.
Well, and think about the miracles that do happen that we take for granted.
Oh, yeah.
Like life or our ability for all of our organs to work without us having to consciously think about it, right?
For your pancreas and your liver and your heart and breathing while you sleep.
These are miracles, inexplicable.
And we don't even talk about it.
In fact, it's evidence of that.
You're exactly right.
In fact, how many people in here, and every mother should raise their hand, how many people in here have seen their own flesh and blood born?
Some of the dads, too, right?
Now, when you see your own flesh and blood come out of another human being or yourself, you don't go, evolution!
You go, this is amazing!
How does this happen?
Now, it happens every day, and we don't call it a miracle.
But to Charlie's point, in fact, a biologist, Ariel Roth, once said, God never did a miracle to convince an atheist because his ordinary works provide sufficient evidence.
Like birth, childbirth.
But let me go back to the point about miracles.
They have to be rare.
Imagine if resurrections occurred routinely.
What would the resurrection of Christ mean to us?
Nothing.
You go to some guy and you go, hey, Jesus rose from the dead to prove he was God.
And the guy goes, so what?
Uncle Leroy just rose from the dead two weeks ago, right?
Now I got to give the inheritance back.
No, it's got to be a rare event if it's going to get your attention.
So miracles, if they, first of all, let's clear up one thing.
I believe miracles occur today, but they don't have to occur today for Christianity to be true.
There doesn't have to be one miracle since Jesus and the apostles for Christianity to be true.
So if some atheist says, well, I got to see a miracle to believe in Christianity.
No, you don't.
First of all, the universe exploded into being out of nothing.
Secondly, Jesus rose from the dead.
There's great evidence for that.
If those two things are true, Christianity is true.
Mark it down.
And so, Frank, some of the other objections, I'll try not to put eight in a box, is how can we trust Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?
Is that we're told if it's old, it's unreliable.
From a historical standpoint, how accurate, how exceptional are the first manuscripts that we have of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?
Well, that's called chronological snobbery.
That's a C.S. Lewis point where he says, just because it's old doesn't mean it's wrong.
In fact, we got to get back to the old.
That's what we're doing here at the Dream City Church, right?
With the Turning Point Academy.
What do you call in the Academy, by the way?
Dream City Christianity Turning Point Academy.
Turning Point Academy, okay?
We're going back to the classics, ladies and gentlemen, right?
But look, the manuscript evidence is incredibly strong for the New Testament.
If you were to take all the manuscripts we have for, say, an ancient Greek writer, somebody like Josephus, and stack them up, they would be about four feet high.
If you were to take all of the manuscripts for the New Testament and stack them up, they would be over a mile high.
Because the scribes copied the New Testament, and of course, the Old Testament scribes copied the Old Testament.
The Jewish scribes did.
We know what the original said.
There's no real doubt there.
The bigger question is, how do we know the original is telling us the truth?
That's the more interesting question.
We can deal with that if you want.
And just an interest, I want to dive in on one point that for me was super, let's just say persuasive.
When the gospels go through the story of Jesus being, you know, discovered post-resurrection, who discovers him?
And why does this actually validate the truth of the gospel?
If you were trying to create a lie, this would be the dumbest lie you've ever created.
Yeah, this is a great point, Charlie.
We have it in both books.
I don't have enough faith to be an atheist and that's really good.
There's something known as the principle of embarrassment.
It goes like this.
If there's something embarrassing to the author or authors, it's probably true.
Why?
Because you're not going to invent things that make you look bad.
You might invent things that make you look good, but not bad.
In fact, let me ask you guys a question.
How many people in here have ever lied to make yourself look good?
If you don't have your hand up right now, you're lying to make yourself look good.
And it's not working.
We know you're lying.
All right.
How many people in here have ever lied to make yourself look bad?
Yeah, you don't do that.
You might lie to make yourself look good, but you don't lie to make yourself look bad.
Now, the New Testament documents, and this is true of the Old Testament as well, but the New Testament documents are filled with embarrassing details they never would have invented.
Charlie just mentioned one of them.
First of all, the New Testament writers depict themselves as cowards, right?
They run away at the crucifixion.
And who are the brave ones that go down to the tomb and discover it's empty?
The women.
That's right, ladies.
You can give yourselves a hand.
I am woman.
Hear me roar.
Now, who wrote the New Testament documents down?
Men.
Now, what man is going to invent that he was hiding for fear of the Jews why the women went down and discovered the empty tomb?
Would any man in here invent that?
No, if I was inventing it, I'd make myself look good, wouldn't you?
I mean, I'd write down something like this.
Let's see, we marched right down there and we overpowered that elite Roman guard.
Yeah, that sounds good.
John said, get out.
Peter, roundhouse, kicked him.
Thomas said, we'll be back.
No doubt.
And then on Sunday morning, we marched right down to the tomb and we saw Jesus who congratulated us on our great faith.
And then we went and comforted the trembling women, right?
The Power of the Resurrection00:10:20
I would never say it was Mr. Sissy Pants why the women went down and discovered the empty tomb.
And what Charlie's pointing out is in that culture, a woman's testimony was not considered on par with that of a man.
So if you're making up the New Testament story, you'd only have the men be the first witnesses.
But all four gospels say the women were the first witnesses, which is telling us what they really were, as embarrassing as it was to the men, and how it didn't help their case at all.
In fact, one of the women was a formerly demon-possessed woman.
Oh, gee, what a great witness, huh?
She's very credible.
They're not making this up.
In fact, I had a lady once come up to me once, Charlie.
She said, Frank, I know why Jesus appeared to the women first.
I said, why?
And she said, because he wanted to get the story out.
I said, that is an excellent point.
I had not thought of that.
Because, ladies, when your man comes home from work, does he say much?
There could have been a nuclear explosion down at the plant.
He's not going to tell you.
You'll see it on the news before you hear it from him.
You'll be watching the news going, hey, hi, whatever.
Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you.
The nuke blew up.
I've been hot for three days.
What's for dinner?
He's not going to tell you.
There's tons of this stuff, embarrassing stuff they never would have invented.
They're not making it up.
And so it has to be true because it also from it took several women for even it to be considered to be true in a court of law.
And so it actually shows the authenticity of the gospels.
So we don't have a lot of time before we go to question and answer.
But another objection, Frank, and I'll just throw two or three at you, is that maybe Jesus was never actually killed, that he was still alive when he was put in the tomb.
Or the second one, his body was stolen by his believers.
Or the third one is that this was kind of a vast conspiracy, right?
So I know that's a lot, but.
Let's deal with the conspiracy first.
In fact, it was Justice Antony and Scalia who, in one opinion, said this.
We all know that the bumbling apologists or the evangelists, these are the people that wrote down the New Testament, invented the resurrection story in a sinister text, in a sinister attempt to get themselves all martyred.
I mean, like, why would you invent a story that's going to get you killed if it's not true?
It makes no sense at all.
First of all, the empty tomb was empty because Jesus came out of it.
It wasn't because his disciples stole the body.
Why would they steal the body and then say he had risen from the dead again to get themselves kicked out of the synagogue and then beaten, tortured, and killed?
That doesn't make any sense.
There were Roman guards on duty.
And by the way, do you know that you know what their explanation was for why the tomb was empty?
It was the disciples came and stole the body while the guards were asleep.
Now, if you think about that for more than five seconds, you realize how stupid that is.
Number one, if you're a Roman guard on duty and you fall asleep on watch, what happens to you?
You're executed.
Number two, if you're a Roman guard on duty and you fall asleep, how do you know what happened?
What happened?
Well, we were asleep, see?
And while we were sleeping, we noticed that the disciples came right down here.
No, that doesn't make any sense at all.
And number three, why steal the body to get yourselves killed?
In fact, here's a really important point we need to make.
A lot of people say, well, are there any non-Christian writers who talk about Jesus and the apostles?
There are.
I don't have time to get into it now.
It's all in the book.
But you know what the question implicitly assumes quite frequently is that you really can't trust the New Testament writers because, you know, the New Testament writers were biased because you see, they were believers.
You only got to look at the non-Christian writers to really know what the truth is.
Think about that, ladies and gentlemen.
That is silly.
Why?
What did the New Testament writers, who were all Jews, by the way, with the exception of Luke?
Luke is the only Gentile.
All the writers of the New Testament are Jewish believers in Yahweh who thought they were God's chosen people.
Why would they invent the resurrection story, a story they didn't believe could be true, because they didn't believe a man could claim to be God.
That would be blasphemy.
And they didn't believe someone could resurrect in the middle of time.
They knew we would all resurrect at the end of time, according to Daniel 12.
These are things they didn't believe.
Why would they say Jesus rose from the dead and claimed to be God if he didn't rise from the dead and didn't claim to be God?
What did they get out of this?
You know, a friend of mine, a mutual friend, you may know, Jay Warner Wallace, he's a cold case homicide detective.
He's been on dateline more than any other homicide detective because he solves murders decades old.
He's also written a book called Cold Case Christianity, where he applies his homicide skills to the greatest homicide of all time, the homicide of Jesus.
Anyway, he says when he finds a murdered body, he says there's only three reasons why that guy's dead.
Not a thousand reasons, just three or a combination of these three.
There was either a sex issue, a money issue, or a power issue.
Sex, money, and power are the three things that can motivate people to murder.
In fact, they're the same three things that cause any of us to sin.
Why?
Sex, money, and power are great things, but they're so great that sometimes we'll take shortcuts to get them.
And so Jim says, if you're going to say these writers made it up, you got to find one of those three motivators.
So let's look at the New Testament writers for a minute, ladies and gentlemen.
Did the New Testament writers, the apostles, get real popular with the ladies for saying Jesus had resurrected from the dead?
No, they didn't get sex.
Did they get money?
No, they weren't on TV asking for money.
Did they get power?
No, they got persecuted.
Paul had power when he was a Pharisee persecuting the church.
As soon as he becomes a believer, he's persecuted.
They didn't get sex.
They didn't get money.
They didn't get power.
Why did they say it was true?
Because it really happened.
In fact, this is going to sound really weird.
Stick with me.
I believe the Bible's inerrant, and I know you probably do too, but this is going to sound almost heretical.
It's not.
Stick with me.
Christianity is not true because a series of documents we put under one binding we call the Bible says it's true.
In fact, Christianity would be true if the Bible never existed.
You go, how can that be?
Ladies and gentlemen, do you realize there were thousands of Christians before the line of the New Testament was ever written?
Why?
Because they witnessed the resurrected Jesus.
They wrote it down later.
In other words, Christianity did not originate with a book.
Christianity originated with an event, the resurrection.
And then as a result of the resurrection, these guys who were Jews wrote it down and went to their deaths saying it was true.
In fact, you could put it this way.
The New Testament writers did not create the resurrection.
The resurrection created the New Testament writers.
Well said.
So in closing here, Frank, before we get to some questions here, can we talk about some of the implications that the kind of death of God, as Nietzsche would put it, have politically especially?
You've written and spoken openly about socialism, about totalitarianism.
Can you talk about how important it is that we frame this in a biblical context as then we get to some questions and answers?
A lot of times, as a result of the Roe v. Wade decision, people are going to say, this is not a theocracy.
You can't impose your religion on people.
Let me point one thing out.
We're not imposing religion.
We're not legislating religion.
We're not telling people where, when, how, or if to worship.
We're not telling people they have to be part of a church or they have to believe in certain things about God.
We're not trying to legislate religion.
We are trying to legislate morality.
And all laws legislate morality.
Every law declares one behavior right and the opposite behavior wrong.
In fact, the people who say they have a right to an abortion, that's a moral position.
They're trying to put that into law to say a woman has an absolute right to basically kill her child.
I think what we ought to start saying here, Charlie, is this, on this whole abortion issue.
If your solution to your problem is a dead baby, you have the wrong solution.
That's the shortest way you can say it.
There is never a solution if it requires a dead baby.
That's not a solution.
So we're not trying to legislate religion.
We are trying to legislate morality and all laws legislate morality.
25 years ago, Dr. Geiser and I wrote a book called Legislating Morality.
That's what it's all about.
And one of the most articulate defenders of the moral point of view, without having to say you have to be a believer, is sitting right next to me.
He does this every day on the air around college campuses, around churches.
And so I'm privileged to be here at this event.
And I want you guys to continue to support Charlie because the work he does is so important.
But to go to the core of your question, if we lose self-evident truths grounded in our Creator, there's only two ways to govern.
You can govern by the truth by principle or you can govern by power.
And if you notice, the left is governing purely by power.
It's not principle.
It's power.
We will shut you up because we don't want to hear your principles.
We don't want to hear your truth.
We don't want to have a debate.
We want to cancel the debate and just impose our will on you.
You notice that they don't want to debate.
They don't want to really defend their view.
They just want to impose their view because they can't defend their view.
Without God, without self-evident truths, there's no way to say you have a right to anything.
Everything's just a matter of opinions.
What are they going to do?
They're going to impose their opinions on you.
Using power.
Defending Self-Evident Truths00:05:59
Isn't Frank great, by the way?
Super incredible.
So let's start lining up for some questions, everybody, if we can.
I want to just plug the books again for the live stream.
It's I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, which is just phenomenal.
And it goes into just some just terrific detail about the resurrection, about the Bible, and about any questions you might have about Christianity.
And then Frank's new book called Hollywood Heroes, which is how your favorite movies reveal God.
We're going to be doing a whole thing together on that.
So if you guys want to line up in these two aisles here for any questions, and do we have a first taker in either of the lines?
I think we've answered everything.
By the way, the books are available on the book table.
I want you guys to know that all the proceeds from the sale of the books will go to feed needy children.
Mine, just so you know.
That's very funny.
All right, we'll start here.
All right.
My name is Sarah, so I am the children's pastor here at Dream City Church.
And you touched on something earlier.
You talked about how some of the stories in the Bible, like Jonah and the well and different stories and miracles that happened in the Bible, and how people say they don't believe in God because how could these things have really happened?
Right.
And we've heard that in kids' ministry several years ago, we had kids that were saying, these are not true stories.
These are make-believe.
So now we start out by saying, this is true.
This is God's word.
God's word is true.
But my question is, and I hope that there's a lot of other pastors and leaders listening today, but my question is, why is it so important that we teach the truth, that we communicate correctly to our kids at an early age that the Bible is true?
I think we want to show them why it's true, not just claim it's true, because then they get to those stories and they say, well, I haven't seen this, as Charlie said earlier, or this seems outlandish to me.
Look, why do I believe that Jonah, the story of Jonah, is true and the story of Noah is true?
Because Jesus believed it was true.
And I just have a personal policy.
Yeah, he mentioned it, applied it to his own life.
I just have a personal policy.
If somebody predicts and accomplishes his own resurrection from the dead, I just trust whatever the guy says.
Okay?
So it's on Jesus's authority that I believe the Bible's inerrant.
It's not just because I can answer every possible objection, although many of them we can answer, but it's because Jesus said the entire Old Testament was the word of God and he promised the New Testament.
So it's on Jesus' authority.
Look, the whole thing is contingent on Jesus rising from the dead.
If he's risen from the dead, Christianity is true.
If he hasn't risen from the dead, we're wasting our time here today.
As the Apostle Paul actually said in 1 Corinthians 15, he says, if Jesus hasn't risen from the dead, your faith is in vain.
So we teach evidence that Christianity is true.
And on Jesus' authority, we say the Bible's inerrant.
Yeah, and I'll kind of piggyback on that.
For it depends how young they are.
I mean, seven, eight, nine-year-olds.
I can't imagine you're getting super critical backlash.
That would be something new.
But someone should talk to them about some things they believe around Christmas, too, but that's a separate issue.
But yeah, I will say this: that for me personally, the more I learned about biology and physics, actually the more it strengthened my faith.
When you really dive deep into how complexly made we are, it is the most patently insane, improbable argument to say there was not an intelligent designer behind it.
Just how our systems work together from the brain itself to our conscious and unconscious mind.
It's just, it goes on and on and on.
And so, look, I'm not professing to say how to communicate that to a seven, eight, or nine-year-old, but what Frank is saying is totally true, which is laying the framework and the foundation is, hey, human beings, what you're looking at, this is a miracle.
This is way more incredible than going into a whale.
You're talking about an autonomous being that has consciousness, agency, the ability to reason.
You don't have to think about any of the natural things you have to do.
Digestion, breathing.
blood flow.
Do you have to think to have your heart beat?
No, it just happens automatically.
Those systems built together to say that came through a roll of the dice or an accident, it's not even illogical.
You're living on a different planet.
And so you just look at the human being and you say, whoa, if that can be designed, yes, the Red Sea can be parted.
Yes, water can be walked on.
Yes, disease can be cured.
Because this, in my personal opinion, is the great miracle that is standing right in front of us that we're choosing to ignore.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi.
Thank you for everything.
But my question, a friend of mine today said that she was talking to a five-year-old, I think it was a grandchild, and said something about Jesus.
And the little girl said, who's Jesus?
And she was floored.
So that, and then there's a lot of people that are grandparents, not me, thank God, but their kids don't believe in Jesus and they don't know how to talk to their grandkids about Jesus.
Or can you talk to that?
Yeah, that's a really difficult problem.
As a grandparent, if you're trying to educate your grandchildren and the parents aren't interested in your beliefs being shared with them, that's a hard, really hard problem.
I might want to talk more to the parents and ask them.
I'm reminded of what C.S. Lewis famously said.
Guiding Kids Through Chaos00:05:23
C.S. Lewis said, Christianity is either the most important fact in the universe or it's irrelevant.
One thing it can't be is moderately important.
Look, think about that.
If Christianity is true, if Jesus really rose from the dead and by trusting in him, your sins can be forgiven and you can be in eternity with him and your loved ones who have also trusted in Christ.
If that really is true, then what could be more important than eternity, right?
If it's not true, it's irrelevant.
So I always ask people, if it were true, would you become a Christian?
And I would ask that of my, I've asked that of my own kids, obviously.
They are Christians, but you get the idea.
And it's this idea that you're going to let your kids make up their own minds.
First of all, kids are going to make up their own minds anyway, but you have to guide them.
If you don't guide them, guess what's going to guide them?
This glowing rectangle that we all have.
Do you realize that I know we have a big problem of fatherless homes in America, but even homes with fathers in them, that an average teenage boy will in a week spend 30 minutes in meaningful conversation with his father while he spends 44 hours watching TV, surfing the internet, or playing video games?
Gee, which is going to have more influence?
So we're going to have to make a concerted effort to reach our kids and then our grandkids as well.
We have resources on our website, crosexamine.org, that can help you do that.
TPUSA Faith has resources as well.
This school right here, the Dream City School, has resources.
So use those resources to try and reach them, young.
And I'll just kind of say one or two things on top of that, which is really important.
What is education?
So education comes from a Latin word, which means to lead forth, lead forth into truth.
The way we educate young people today, and Dream City Christian at Turning Point Academy is going to be the exception to this, is we kind of democratize the education where we ask eight-year-olds or 10-year-olds or even 12-year-olds, 15-year-olds, what do you feel about this?
A completely irrelevant question, by the way.
And many of you have heard me say this before.
It does not matter what a young person thinks about anything.
What matters is, is it true?
What matters is what is beautiful?
What is good?
Now, some of you might say, well, Charlie, that's rather insensitive.
If you extrapolate, what does an eight-year-old feel?
Then yes, you're going to have a bunch of men who think they're women by the time they're 14.
If your feelings are the most important thing, then you will lie yourself into oblivion.
Now, you see this in a lot of kind of the mental health issues as well, where people say, well, I feel depressed.
I feel a certain way.
Now, they might have a chemical imbalance, but I believe personally, 95% of those issues are misdiagnosed as complete, let me just put it this way, lifestyle choices that completely throw off dopamine, serotonin rewards, and ways that young people have no idea how to navigate reward and risk and their place or purpose.
And so, you know, I've done a real deep dive in this in the last couple of weeks.
I was fascinated by this because we get a lot of emails, freedom at charliekirk.com, thousands of emails a day.
And there's been this massive uptick in the last couple of weeks of people that say, Charlie, my kids are depressed.
My grandkids are depressed.
They're anxious.
And I just said, there's got to be, I think there's a spiritual dimension, of course, to this, obviously, but there has to be something that is just kind of chemically that we're missing here.
And if you just do just an hour-long just study on dopamine and how God gave us dopamine as a reward chemical, it makes perfect sense why these 14, 15, and 16-year-olds are depressed.
And basically, dopamine is a reward chemical that is supposed to incentivize you to push harder and work harder.
And you get it when you have chocolate.
You can get it released when you have, you know, take cocaine or amphetamines, or you play highly addictive video games or pornography, or you live in a fantasy land of kind of social media where a 14 and 15 and 16 year old, their baseline of where dopamine gets released in their brain will be so altered that they think they're living in a depressed state.
And you could see this in literal meth addicts and cocaine addicts.
They feel that there is no meaning.
There is no purpose.
And you read the literature of what these 16 and 17 and 18 year olds are saying, it is identical to a brain that has been burnt out on drugs by the time they're 30.
It makes you think, what exactly are we doing here?
We're handing them these digital pacifiers, not realizing their entire brain, their risk, reward, and their purpose vehicles will be completely and totally burnt out.
And so, and I, so that's just, that's just one other thing.
I know it's a little bit of a sidetrack on that, but I just had it in my heart to share with you guys for just some of the audience response we've had.
And then look, the final thing is be a disagreeable grandmother too, for all of you out there.
Play to win.
Those are your grandkids.
You know, offend your kids.
Who cares?
You know, if your kids went off the beaten path, no, see, I mean this.
Grandparents can save a kid's life.
Social Justice in Education00:07:02
I mean this.
Grandparents can save a grandkid's life.
And so you always, you could be the sweet one, give candy away and all that stuff, but profess truth.
And guess what?
When the chips are down and they need some advice, they're going to come to grandma's house or grandpa's house, not their parents' house.
Not that you want that, but all of a sudden it's like, hey, you know, I have to make a decision whether or not to go away for the weekend of this party up an hour and a half north.
What do you think I should do?
My parents think it's fine.
But there's a check in their spirit and they come to see grandpa or grandma.
So don't be ever absent and be disagreeable if your kids are teaching total garbage and always preach the truth.
My grandma would have said, Can I go?
That's right.
Exactly.
God bless you.
Thank you so much.
And by the way, if there's a question on this side, we also have a line.
If you guys have one, so we'll go here.
Hey there.
You might not remember, I was here a couple of months ago.
Victor Marks prayed for me.
I'm back on track with God.
Thank Jesus.
Praise God.
That's amazing.
And we're going to have Victor Marks back, by the way.
Wasn't Victor great?
He's so incredible.
And with all that, God gave me my calling and He wants me to go and teach in secondary education.
And so when I signed up with GCU, one of the classes that I have to take is social justice for educators.
And I was wondering if either of you had any kind of advice for dealing with this at GCU?
At GCU.
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me.
Yeah, GCU's gone off the reservation a long time ago.
So, yeah.
So social justice is something that, let me put it this way: it is, you could say it's a Trojan horse, a wolf in sheep's clothing, all this sort of stuff.
Look, social justice, there's only justice to God.
There's not environmental justice.
There's not racial justice.
There's not social justice.
There's not gender justice.
Here's what they view the world through, though.
They view the world through a prism of oppressor and oppressed, right?
So all throughout social justice and education, they're going to be teaching you unbiblical, woke terms such as diversity, equity, inclusion, right?
They're going to be teaching you this idea of white privilege.
I'm sure will be laced throughout it.
Have you started the class yet?
Or September, it starts.
It's in September.
Yeah.
If only Hillsdale was able to educate every single one of our future educators.
So, oh, yeah, come to Dream City, come to Dream City Christian.
And by the way, I mean, there's some wonderful things that are happening at GCU.
I don't mean to offend anybody, but the amount of stories of what has happened at GCU of how woke they've become, I'm honestly tired of them getting a hall pass.
Like everyone plays nice with GCU.
They're super woke.
Just be honest about it, okay?
I hope they improve.
I hope things get better, but they've gone off the reservation a long time ago.
I really hope it gets back on.
You know, there's something you can do if you get in the class.
You have to take the classes.
Just ask questions.
And the three questions you ought to ask are questions you can use for almost any issue.
The first question is: what do you mean by that?
So, as they say, social justice, what do you mean by social justice?
Can you define those terms for me?
Second question: How did you come to that conclusion?
In other words, why do you think this is a good thing and a right thing and a true thing?
What evidence do you have for that?
And then the third question is an opportunity for you to provide some evidence back, such as, have you ever considered that there really isn't social justice or racial justice or gender justice?
There's just justice.
Okay, so those three questions, by the way, we have an app, the cross-examined app, two words in the app store.
We have those questions.
And the question I mentioned earlier, too: if Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?
It's easier to ask questions, it's hard to answer them.
And if you ask enough questions, you're going to be able to drill down on the other person to the point that they're not going to be able to support their position because there really isn't intellectual justification for their position.
So always ask questions.
What do you mean by that?
How'd you come to that conclusion?
Have you ever considered?
By the way, parents, these are questions you can use for anything, not just Christianity or politics.
I mean, you can use it with your kids.
Like, for example, your son calls you one night and says, Dad, I'm not going to be home by 11 like you wanted me to.
Don't panic.
Just first question, what do you mean by that?
Second question, how'd you come to that conclusion?
Third question: Have you ever considered if you're not home by 11, you're grounded for two weeks?
Be right home, Dad.
By the way, husbands, husbands, husbands, never, ever, ever use these questions on your wife.
Because if she calls you an idiot, don't say, what do you mean by that?
You know, how'd you come to that conclusion?
Because my wife's going to have a list 36 years long.
All right.
And look, the Bible is very clear.
In Leviticus, I believe it says that in dealings of justice, you do not favor the poor man or you do not penalize the rich man.
Justice is blind.
Our idea of justice derived from the Bible is, and that's literally why lady justice is blind in our court proceedings.
It's blind to the rich man, blind to the poor man.
And so in dealings, this is a biblical principle of all being equal under God in equality under the divine.
Idea of social justice, again, there might be very good people that mean like, well, we're going to help the poor and all of that.
Let's stop being naive, everybody, okay?
The two words social justice, every single time it is uttered, is being used by revolutionaries to try to bring Marxism, postmodernism, secularism, critical race theory into our classrooms.
Like, we don't have to tolerate this anymore, okay?
Instead, what we should talk about is the Western idea of equality under the law, right?
Instead of dividing people into these little sub-brackets, which again, I'm a little bit conjecturing here, but I've heard about these social justice and education courses.
Well, you must treat your black kids differently than your white kids.
Wow, that sounds like racism in education, actually, not social justice in education.
How about treating everybody as human beings made in the image of God as image bearers and not caring at all about the melanin content in their skin?
And the best way to quote unquote be just is to challenge people, regardless how they look, and say that I believe that God has a future for you and a prosperity for you, and I'm not going to subdivide you in different brackets or different buckets.
America at its best was always trying to achieve that type of nation, and those sort of narratives and those sort of classes, unfortunately, seek to unravel it.
God bless you.
Thanks for being here.
Thank you.
This will be the final question, unless there's one more over there.
Yes.
Frank.
How old are you?
How old am I?
What do you mean by that?
Yeah.
Good question.
Well, let me put it this way.
When I turned 50, my wife said, you're going to live to be 100.
I said, how do you know?
She said, because you look half dead already.
I'm 60.
I'm 68 and a half.
Frank, looking back over your life, to give you some perspective, where do you think we're going to be in five years or 10 years?
Hope and Optimism for Liberty00:07:36
As a nation?
I'm not a prophet.
I don't know.
It depends on whether...
Well, Charlie, you pick this up here because I heard you talk about this the other night that we may have turned a corner, Charlie.
Yeah, so if you're asking about the nation, kind of, right, as the country, I think that it's impossible to know, and that should be very comforting.
So I do a lot of traveling.
I do a lot of speaking.
I did 330 speaking events last year all across the country on the road nonstop.
And thank you.
No, you should be applauding my wife.
That's who you should be applauding, by the way, Erica.
And here's what I'll say: is that there is a, I believe, an unclean spirit that sometimes comes into conservative grassroots patriot circles as if they've got it all figured out and that this ship is going down and it really doesn't matter.
They're like, yeah, I'll vote.
I'll show up.
But I kind of say, oh, Charlie, come on, you've studied the Romans.
You've studied the other empires.
We're done.
And I think that is very dangerous.
In fact, I think it's wrong.
I think it's unbiblical.
I think that we must reject that totally and completely.
And I'll give you a couple of reasons why.
As long as you and I have agency, free will, and choice, I'm not going to put up with that sort of premise.
It's not going to happen.
So I'm going to do everything I possibly can.
Number two is that there's never been a nation like America, period.
And so therefore, any sort of the kind of projections or predictions, it's impossible to know how a self-governing nation will fall.
You might be able to guess, but you have zero roadmap to show that, period.
Don't lecture me about ancient Greece or about the Roman or the Roman Republic.
It pales in comparison to the experiment in liberty we have right now.
So there's a lot that we don't know.
What we do know is this, though.
When you have even a little bit of liberty, it gives you a great chance to then reclaim it a little bit.
So if we still have speech, we still have the ability to assemble and spread ideas.
I think that a revival is not just, you know, likely, I think it's inevitable.
We have too many courageous, awesome people that are speaking truth right now and finally stepping up.
I believe we're going to turn that corner.
I really do.
I believe that those of us that are Christians and conservative or whatever label you want to put on it, right, not on the other side, whatever that is, that are building things and doing things, I see great hope and optimism.
Am I being foolishly optimistic?
No, I could go on for an hour of what we're up against, right?
They control the FBI, they control the CIA, they control academia, they control big media.
Okay, Genesis 11, you try to build superstructures up against God.
God will scatter you into confusion and not take that well.
But God will always reward the courageous and the righteous.
So to answer your question, if I told you I'm super optimistic about the future of America, I said, you know what?
We got this thing in the bag.
Many of you would go home and you'd say, hey, I don't have to work.
I don't have to vote because Charlie says we have it in the bag.
If I said, hey, I'm super pessimistic about the future of America, you'd go home and say, that's it.
I'm done.
I'm just going to keep buying those pillows and that will be my contribution.
I will sleep well through the revolution.
And no back pain, thanks to Relief Factor, right?
No, the answer is we don't know.
And I think that's the most empowering thing.
But here's what I can say: the trajectory is good.
For those of us as far as where the grassroots is, I think we're going to be up against the big getting crushed in the next five years.
I think the theme we're about to see.
I think you're about to see big government be scattered into confusion, big media get scattered into confusion.
I think big finance, I think bigness is about to have its day in court.
And the small, rambunctious citizen that has been building steadily and loyally and righteously, I think is going to rise to a way that people never would have imagined.
One last thing on this.
It is not our responsibility to win anything.
It is our responsibility to be faithful.
So even if you're Jeremiah in a cistern and the whole nation is turned against you, you just keep preaching the truth and doing the truth because your sanctification is part of the whole process.
It's not just about trying to sanctify the nation.
You're trying to sanctify yourself and become more like Jesus, regardless of whether or not you're by the world standards victorious.
So just do what's right.
Leave the results to God.
Thank you for being here tonight.
Thank you.
So in closing, everybody, Frank has these books outside there.
Also, just an announcement.
We're now on three hours of local Phoenix Radio, the Charlie Kirk show.
AM 960.
We're on 9 to 10.
And then fast forward from 6 to 8 p.m.
So if you're ever in the car, supporting local radio, I think is super important.
I'll just make one pledge, just one pitch on this.
Local radio is going to be the hardest thing for the sensors to shut off, literally.
Just from a technical standpoint, radio is something that, unless they literally take down the towers, right?
And so supporting local radio, don't forget that.
It's, I think, going to actually have a revival in a couple of years.
And Frank, you're on radio stations across the country too.
Yeah, we're on the American Family Radio Network, but just go to our website, crosexamine.org.
You can see our podcast.
It's called I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist.
And we're going to have Frank's stuff all over our podcast in the coming week.
So again, if you have a young person in your life, try to recruit one student to Dream City.
Christian, a Turning Point Academy.
That's a marching order.
Find one young person.
I know that we had one that just is enrolling, right?
That's awesome.
And so try to find one young person and recruit them.
And again, everybody, we have primary season coming up and election season coming up.
We're never going to tell you who to vote for here.
We're not into that.
We're about education.
We're about spirituality.
We're about revival.
But I will say this, you should vote.
Every single person needs to vote in this upcoming primary and needs to vote in November.
What about the student summit?
Tell them about that.
Oh, that's right.
And if you want to make the trek all the way to Tampa, Florida, we have our Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, which I think is one of the most amazing collection of speakers imaginable.
We have Greg Gutfeld, we have Laura Ingram, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz.
And then we have some two smaller speakers hosted by Turning Point Action.
Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump will both be there, which will be pretty great.
So Tampa, Florida, July 23, 22, 23, 24.
If you guys want to go and get out of the desert blitz heat and get into the humidity and wish you were back into the desert blitz heat, it's July 22, 23, 24 in Tampa, Florida.
We're going to have a faith morning where a lot of young kids are going to give their life to the Lord.
It's awesome to see seven o'clock in the morning of young people that are excited to be there and young people that are regretting the decisions they made the Saturday night before at our Student Action Summit, just giving their life to the Lord.
It's really a beautiful thing to witness.
And as long as you believe in liberty, you're welcome.
It's pretty awesome.
So I want to thank the amazing Dream City Church again.
God bless you guys, and we'll see you next month.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thank you so much for listening.
God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.