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May 25, 2023 - The Charlie Kirk Show
37:09
Thriving in the Belly of the Beast with Pastor Russell Johnson and Pastor Jurgen Matthesius
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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TPUSA Faith Pastors Conference 00:01:41
Hey everybody, Danny Charlie Kirk Show live from our TPUSA Faith Pastors Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.
Super thankful and proud of the work that the team is doing at TPUSA Faith.
You guys can check it out at tpfaith.com.
That's tpfaith.com.
Fabulous team and organization.
They're doing such a great job.
God bless them.
Email us freedom at charliekirk.com.
We have a couple of guests.
We have Pastor Jürgen and Pastor Russell Johnson.
If you go to a church and your church is not speaking out, this is the episode for you.
And I think it will really hopefully compel you to speak out more boldly or have your pastor speak out more boldly, especially for such a time as this.
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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.
Supporting The Charlie Kirk Show 00:04:31
That's why we are here.
Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at AndrewandTodd.com.
We are live here in Nashville, Tennessee for our TPUSA Faith Pastor Summit.
Joining us now is Russell Johnson.
Again, welcome back to the program.
Hey, thanks so much for having me.
I think I told you this.
I first became aware of you in your videos.
My wife saw your stuff on Instagram.
She's like, you got to get involved in this funny.
So she's a big fan, and I am too.
And it's kind of, I got to be very honest with you.
If you were to just kind of stereotype, you're not supposed to do it.
You look like a wokey.
But you talk like a based biblical.
So you got to explain that one to me.
Well, listen, we're in Seattle.
So there are still a few believers left in Seattle, Washington.
And we're in the belly of the beast with a tip of the spear in the Northwest.
And we're having a lot of fun causing a lot of trouble.
But yeah, you know, we're going for it.
In fact, I was just on the phone with the Seattle Times this morning.
We're getting ready to take out a full-page ad next month to celebrate Roe v. Wade being aware of.
Oh, wow.
Praise God.
We're going to be doing that in the Seattle Times.
And we just have fun harassing everybody in the Northwest.
So, yeah, I mean, look, you're in an ideological, theological, and spiritual minority in the Northwest.
There's some great people there.
But, you know, I hear from pastors all the time.
They say, I can't speak out on these issues.
It's too controversial.
How do you navigate that?
Because I'm sure there's always somebody in your ear, positive, negative, somewhere in the middle.
I mean, it isn't, you've decided to not take the easy way, but the biblical way forward.
How and why did you come to that decision?
You know, the Apostle Paul calls the church the pillar of truth in society.
And so it's my conviction that when the church loses her voice, the world loses her mind.
And that is evident in our world and in our culture today.
And so for me, I just refuse to buy into kind of the ideological narrative that the church best serves society by blending in, not rocking the boat, not saying anything controversial.
God forbid, we got to protect our platform and our influence.
And, you know, the net result of that is we actually do a disservice to the people that, you know, we're called the reach and we're called the shepherd and steward.
So, you know, for me, there's a battle going on for worldview, and it requires competent people to speak in both an intellectual, but also an unashamed and unafraid way to address some of these cultural issues.
And, you know, if we don't speak up now, we're going to find ourselves, you know, really, like Reagan said, one generation away from losing the freedom and the values that we enjoy here in this part of the world.
So what I maybe you can help navigate it.
Why is it most pastors don't have the clarity that you have on this?
Most pastors are silent.
They're unwilling to talk about anything.
I mean, for example, the fact you have the boldness and the courage, say, I'm going to send out a full-page advertisement in the Seattle Times celebrating, thanking God for his intervention in our land, which I believe was a miracle and was a divine intervention to give us grace so the unborn can live.
I'm sure you have a lot of pastor friends that disagree with your approach.
Can you just give me a little bit of insight of what their argument is?
Yeah, I think, you know, for some folks, you know, they have developed an entire value system around being liked by people who don't share their values.
And then they have made that kind of the ultimate apex of what success looks like.
Success in the pulpit looks like being liked and affirmed by people who don't share our values.
And I'm not trying to go around and intentionally be disliked.
I mean, nobody likes to be disliked.
I mean, you're disliked more, you know, in this position than maybe you've ever been in your entire life.
But the reality is, is that you have to, you've got to, you've got to crucify your need to be liked by people who don't share your values.
And so for me, like the altar we bow at is not influence.
The altar we bow at is truth.
And I felt like the Lord spoke to me and he said, if you will be a truth teller and if you will guard your heart, I will guard your influence.
And so we've got to get the order of operations right as it pertains to our role as ministers in the nation.
And so for me, it's my conviction that if I will do and be what God has asked me to do and be, then he'll open doors no man can close and he will establish my way.
Scripture says, if you will humble yourself under the mighty hand of the Lord, he will promote you in due time.
God's promotion is permanent.
Man's promotion is temporary.
And so for me, it's just like, it doesn't matter how much influence you have if you're not willing to use it on stuff that matters.
And the devil doesn't care how big your church is as long as you stay inside of it.
And so for me, I'm like, what are we here to do?
I'm trying to make a dent on the world around me.
God's Permanent Promotion 00:05:56
The culture is going to hell in a handbasket.
And the church is the canary in the coal mine of culture.
And if we don't find the strength and the resilience to be voices that point people in the right direction, then we are nothing more than echoes of whatever culture's most popular heresy is.
And I just refuse to do that.
Well, praise God for your courage and your conviction on that.
How has this been received from your congregation?
Yeah, you know, during COVID, we made a decision to stay open.
The attorney general came after us.
The governor came after us.
Labor and industries came after us.
They said, we're going to lock you up in jail for 90 days.
We're going to find you, do all these types of things.
You know, we decided that Caesar is not the head of the church.
Christ is.
And it was that conviction that led the church to grow about 6X in like 18 months.
And so we went from a church of 500 to a church of 3,500.
And so, you know, at the same time, we've lost a lot of people on the way to it.
We've gained more than we've lost.
But I think that there are, you know, people that are in the region who are looking to be a part of something that was bold, audacious, and unapologetic in our approach to the public square of civic engagement.
And so, you know, we've got a lot of folks who have come out of the woodwork to say, hey, we're with you.
We're cheering you on.
At the same time, some of the most resistance that we have gotten have not been from secularists.
No, no, no.
It's been from religious folks.
Yeah, so let's go through.
Sorry to interrupt.
Can you just go through one or two of the top objections you get from other religious folks?
This is helpful for our audience to hear and how we should respond to that.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, I think that the probably top objection we get is: well, if we were just more winsome, and if you were just nicer, and if we would just kind of play it safe, and you don't have to say things the way that you say them, we don't have to comment on the issues of pro-life, LGBTQ plus, so on and so forth.
If you would just package this in a less abrasive, non-offensive way, you know, we'd be able to win more people.
But I think oftentimes people are making that commentary based on a cultural era that is no longer existing in the West.
You know, this is not the Sunday school generation of the 80s.
This is not the evangelical generation of the 90s.
This is an all-out ideological cultural conflict for the future of the nation.
And so for me, I'm just like, yeah, you know, of course, you use wisdom in the way that you say things.
And of course, you know, you want to cast a wide net and bring in as many people as possible.
But the reality is, is that if our value system is built around the idea of every time the boat is rocked, something must be wrong, then what you develop is a bunch of people who are scared to death of their own shadows.
They never say what's right.
They never step out.
They never give voice to some of the crucial cultural moments.
And in doing so, what happens is our people go underdeveloped.
And we actually wreak havoc.
Silence in the pulpit is dysfunction in the pews.
Dysfunction in the pews is chaos in the culture.
We are in that moment now.
And so I'm just not willing to, you know, for the sake of being winsome, you know, not tell the truth.
I just, I just refuse to do that.
Yeah, look, and there's a shallow, there's a shallowness to that if you don't speak out on it.
And again, we can name names on it.
And kind of the, I actually, I love your take on it if you've seen it or not, this Hellsong thing on Hulu, where, you know, I'm not a fan of Carl Lenson at all.
But I actually think some of the, if you actually, have you seen it?
Have you seen it?
No, I haven't yet.
No.
But part of it is that they think that the church wasn't woke enough.
That was Hulu's whole thing, is that they didn't go far.
It's hilarious because they're obviously one of the woker places.
But there's almost an expectation from the culture that if you're even going to be a church, we're not going to attack.
You have to be full BLM, full LGBT, full trans, full whole thing.
They're never going to like you.
So stop trying to win them over, right?
You have to follow the word.
I want to talk about that because I feel, and again, we have an audience that is very engaged and very communicative and unbelievably honest.
And they call me out when I'm not as precise as I should be in my language or whatever I'm doing, is there is a hunger.
Would you agree that I've never seen the church population congregation so hungry for truth?
And I think there's a famine happening right now.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, it reminds me of the era in which Samuel lived, where scripture says the word of the Lord was rare.
And people are starving for somebody who will just be bold enough to tell the truth.
In a culture built on lies, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
And we are committed to being revolutionaries in this era.
And that requires you to be able to tell the truth.
And the reality is, is that culture is always going to have another heresy and another sound, another hashtag, another flag that you must bow at to gain their approval.
This slippery slope is proved to be true, especially on the social issues.
If you want to bow on the BLM, that's not enough.
You want to bow on the LGBT, it's not enough.
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Now I know two good churches in Snohomish, Washington.
Is it called the House?
There's the rock.
The house, the rock, the shack.
Yeah, you know, there's a couple different things.
Good guy there.
Revivals And Reformation 00:04:35
And then your church pursuit Northwest, which is great.
Okay, so are you preaching in Sodom or Nineveh?
Man, you know, it's week to week, a little bit of both.
You know, I mean, I'm hoping for Nineveh in the sense that there's a saves the city.
That's what we all want.
You know, but Seattle and Portland are in a competition on who can be, you know, more leftist and broke and dysfunctional.
And so, you know, depending on the week and what legislation they pass, it's an ever-growing challenge there in the Northwest.
So you're going to be speaking here at our pastors conference, TPUSA Faith, here in Nashville.
You're going to be speaking to pastors that agree with you, pastors that need more encouragement, and then some pastors that are not yet speaking out.
What is your message going to be?
What are you planning on sharing?
Yeah, you know, for me, I think we need to reframe our pastoral roles in light of scripture and in light of historical moments by which God has used members of the clergy to stand up, speak to some of these great cultural issues, and in doing so, shift the spiritual landscape of the nation.
You know, in the midst of a lot of darkness that's happening in our nation, there are bright spots of moves of God, revivals, reformations, things that are happening that are really incredible.
And so I haven't lost hope by any means.
But my encouragement to some of these pastors and leaders is that really the church in America functions as the neck of the nation.
And as the church goes, so goes the culture.
And so for me, it's like I want to encourage people to begin to see themselves in light of the scriptural authority that they have to help instruct, teach, develop, and disciple this nation.
And in doing so, take that role seriously because it has never been more crucial than it is right now.
Yeah, and so there's, so some Christians say, but this world is not our home.
Why should we even care?
Yeah, you know, and I think that type of like fatalist eschatology has led us to some of the problems that we have today.
And so really, you got two choices.
You can build a bunker.
You can buy a bunch of canned food.
Which you should do at mypatriotsupply.com, but that's a separate.
That's a sponsor.
But anyways, you know, you can live in a bunker and try to outlast and wait for the apocalypse, or you could operate with a mandate that as long as I got breath in my lungs, I've got purpose here on the earth.
And so, you know, we have this kind of redemptive mandate is for the redemption of regions and cities.
And I believe that when a church prospers, a city can prosper.
And so, you know, I know that there is a blessed hope and there is a reality beyond this place.
And yes, we are citizens of heaven, but we have responsibility and authority below.
And so Jesus tells the disciples, all authority I have given you.
Now go and make disciples of all nations.
And so for me, there's a reason why you didn't immediately die when you got born again and go to heaven.
You were left here on earth for purpose, with purpose to do something.
So I'm not just going to complain about the darkness around me.
I'm going to do something, light a candle, spread the truth.
And ultimately, when you get people born again, when you get people spirit-filled, when you get people on track in their relationship with Christ, watch how it transforms their decision-making process, their ability to engage in public policy, the way that they think about issues they're framing.
If we can win the war for worldview, getting people born again, watch how that will have a downstream effect on all of these issues that we talk about in culture.
Final thought here.
Somebody's in the audience and say, wow, I wish my pastor was as courageous as Russell.
What advice do you have for people attending churches to influence their pastor?
What is persuasive to pastors?
Yeah, you know, for me, engaging them in dialogue and then being able to use case examples, because I think a lot of pastors are scared to death.
Like, if I speak out on this, I'm going to lose the little that I have left.
And hey, we're barely hanging on.
We're barely making budget.
The church is declining.
And if I position myself in a more controversial fashion, you know, I could lose what I have left.
And, you know, for me, it's that type of kind of defeatist mentality that keeps people silent.
It keeps people held back.
It keeps people reserved.
And so, you know, one of the things that I love about what God is doing in the Pacific Northwest is it's proof.
If God can do it in Seattle, he can do it anywhere.
And so if God can see it fit to raise up a church filled with young and old alike, led by a pastoral team of people who are unafraid to speak out on these cultural issues, if it can work in the Northwest, I promise you it can work anywhere.
And so, you know, I love the idea that the church that I lead has, in one sense, become like an encouragement and an example to other churches and other communities around the nation who are saying, hey, you know what?
Actually, if we speak out on this, I think God will honor us and I think God will bless it.
Challenging Woke Banks 00:03:50
You're doing six services now?
Yeah, we are.
Yeah, we're doing six.
We're about to add a seventh.
And so don't burn out, man.
That's true.
You got to stay, you know, you got to stay, make sure you have endurance for the race.
So, I mean, hundreds of people at each service.
Is that where you're at now?
Yeah, you know, we were run about 3,000 on the weekend and it's just, you know, it's just growing.
You're now one of the biggest churches in Seattle at those numbers, if I'm not mistaken.
You're right up there.
Praise God.
Well, I hope to visit one day.
You do a great job.
Look forward to your message here.
Thank you for being here, man.
Thanks, Bob.
God bless you.
I want to tell you guys about something every single one of you can benefit from, and you guys need to change.
It's who we use when we go to get mortgages.
Look, I balance a lot of stuff.
I'm traveling all the time, my show, and I recently needed to get a mortgage to get something figured out.
And it was a tough one.
And I didn't want to go to those woke banks.
I, you know, I did previous, my last mortgage we did, it was with a woke bank, and they were just, they were bureaucratic and they donate the BLM and the gay agenda and all that stuff.
And I said, what can I do to actually, and I said, of course, duh, hello, andrewandtodd.com.
They're Christian.
They're conservative.
Our worldviews are aligned.
They're fabulous people.
When I needed a mortgage, of course, I went to my friends, Andrew Delray and Todd of Aiken at Sierra Pacific.
And look, there's the first time I used them because, you know, we were just recently started doing stuff on the show and partners.
I said, okay, let's see how it is.
You know, we do a lot of things together.
It's blown away.
They respond within minutes.
They walk me through everything.
They took care of all those details I didn't have time for.
And I said, boy, guys, I now see how great you guys actually are.
Responsive.
And yes, no more of this woke stuff.
Stop using the woke banks.
Oh, I want to refinance my home and I'm going to go to a bank that hates me.
Stop doing that.
Instead, go to andrewandod.com.
So if you or someone you know is moving from blue states to red states, androidtodd.com.
Have an aging family member that needs financial relief because you may be a reverse mortgage, andrewandodd.com.
Are you self-employed and finding it hard to qualify?
Or first-time homebuyer?
AndrewandTodd.com.
Again, what I love, again, I'm just friends with them.
So I could tell you, I have no other reason to say this except that it's true.
They're fabulous.
They work hard.
We go out to dinner together.
They're great people.
So don't depend on those woke banks, the big banks.
They do a terrible job, by the way.
They're funding all the destructive stuff.
They want centralized bank digital currency.
They're all part of the great reset.
This is a group of guys.
They do a great job.
And stop depending on woke banks for what I needed.
I saw it firsthand.
They got it done for me.
And it was very complicated.
It was a ficket.
It was a maze.
It was a labyrinth.
And they said, oh, you got to do this and this.
And I'll make this phone call.
We'll do this and this paperwork.
And again, these other banks that I deal with, it's like, here's 955,000 pages to sign and they don't call you back and they don't work weekends.
I had a problem with one of the things on the process because it was one thing that wasn't filled out.
And they respond on a Sunday within minutes.
You're trying to get a response from a woke bank on a Sunday.
You'll say, sorry, no response.
So check it out.
It's AndrewandTodd.com, AAA, 888, 1172.
That's how you call them and say, Charlie Kirk sent you.
You might actually get them on the phone.
Again, they're value-aligned, honest, trustworthy, wonderful people.
I use them.
You should use them too.
Super responsive, blown away.
And I could say, if they're good for me, they're good for you.
Love these guys.
AndrewandTodd.com, 888, 888, 1172.
And finally, some of you might say, oh, Charlie, bad time to buy a home.
I don't know about that.
You should look what's happening.
Commercial real estate is one thing.
Private single-family home ownership, it might actually stabilize and go up in the next year.
If you're young, it might be the time to get in.
Think about it, pray about it.
But most importantly, go to AndrewandTodd.com for all your mortgage needs.
Great guys, AndrewandTodd.com.
Joining us now is Pastor Jürgen, who is the man behind Awaken in San Diego and now in Idaho and Utah.
Trump As A Gift From God 00:15:18
So Jürgen, you were saying in the break that you guys are growing so fast and you ignored all the advice.
Tell us about it.
Yeah, it was so funny.
It's literally when people say, How have you grown?
Like we were five campuses in 2020 with about 6,000 people showing up on a Sunday.
And then when the lockdowns shut down, everything, you know, Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, like you name it, when all of that hit, we took a biblical position and lost probably 95% of our friendships, relationships in the ministry circle.
People would, you know, it was close to begging us to not be strong, not be open, not stand for biblical values, take the safe road.
This is no time.
It's a pandemic.
It's an epidemic.
The nation is divided.
It's crazy.
And so we did the exact opposite.
We literally felt like because, you know, I grew up, my dad was an atheist.
So I had an encounter with God, and I just knew I couldn't forsake him in this time.
So I said, you know what?
And I said to my staff, I said to my wife and my team, I said, we may lose everything, but I cannot back up from the God who has stood with me through thick and thin all these years.
And so we stayed open.
We preached truth.
We preached, we lost some people, but we gained people.
So today we have nine campuses.
Unbelievable.
12 to 14,000 people coming.
We had 16,000 people at Easter.
It's just crazy.
It's just what God is doing.
Bigger than you could ever imagine, right?
Beyond.
And I can tell you, I speak at a lot of churches, and I divide churches between the healthy and the unhealthy.
Awaken is one of the healthiest churches.
They're engaged.
The spirit is there.
They're committed to the word.
They love on people.
Jesus is the center of it all.
It's a great church.
And Jürgen, so let's go back to that period of time.
Not only was it the lockdown pressure, but it was also the wokey pressure, right?
Of Floyd Apalooza and that racial nonsense.
I think you had me speak that summer, if I'm not mistaken.
No mass, no social distancing, none of that.
And we were talking about CRT and all this.
And it was really received well.
Jürgen, our audience is very engaged.
And I'm sensing from the American church, the population, the congregation, a huge hunger.
And they're not being fed.
Most of their pastors are not feeding them.
And yet what you're saying, Jürgen, is that you stood out and you've been blessed because of doing everything people told you not to do.
Yeah, it's amazing.
You know, the Bible says, and it's in 1 Samuel chapter 2, that God will honor those who honor him.
And because we honor God, the whole mess of the world goes all the way back to Genesis 3.
Has God really said?
And when Eve kind of bought into and then introduced Adam into that, everything got divided.
So everything is a theology war.
Has God said or has God really said?
So I love when Jesus came because Jesus just doubles down on the devil.
First temptation doubles down.
You know, hey, if you're the son of God, turn these stones into bread and I love Jesus.
He goes, Let me just tell you something.
It's written.
He doesn't even say God has said.
He says, Let me tell you, you know who you're speaking to?
You're speaking to a Jew.
You know who we are.
We're the people that didn't just believe what God said, but we wrote it down in the Torah, the Tanukh, and we meditate on it.
According to Deuteronomy to Satan, yes.
He quoted Deuteronomy.
And then he says, Man doesn't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds.
In other words, I ain't moving unless God speaks.
And so we literally just took that kind of position that people right now are confused.
They're wondering, has God really said, you know, that race does not exist in the Bible.
The Bible talks about nations, talks about peoples, but the Bible says that God has made all peoples from one blood.
So there's no such thing as racism or race in the Bible.
That God has made all people from one blood.
And so we just took biblical, we just kept standing biblical, standing biblical.
And we found that we needed to.
The chaos, the confusion, the fear, the angst.
And we found that as we stood strong, yes, the first wave was persecution, but after that, it was freedom, it was deliverance, it was salvation.
You know, we had 31 people in 2019 in our drug, alcohol, porn recovery program.
In 2020, with the lockdowns, it went from 31 to 380 people just because people weren't doing well isolated.
People weren't doing well separated.
First thing God said wasn't good, man, to be alone.
So we found that if we side with God, it's amazing how God sided with us.
And so, Jürgen, you're definitely in the minority, right, of most pastors.
We have a pastor summit here, and it's going to be different groups of people.
There's some people that are not yet speaking out, some people that are speaking out quite a lot.
And so we have to get more pastors to speak out, though, right?
Jürgen, how do we do that?
At this point, if they're still not speaking out, I'm perplexed at what it's going to take.
Yeah.
And again, Charlie, first of all, I love you.
Thank you for you.
Thank God for Erica.
Thank God for your beautiful little princess.
Thank God for Turning Point.
Thank you for Turning Point Faith.
There's over 1,100 pastors who are going to be here.
It's the biggest in the country that we know.
Biggest in the country.
And I think that there's an awakening definitely happening.
And, you know, I would just say that where we are today is the result of the last two decades.
Over the last two decades, we, as the church, really switched out a discipleship mantra, an empowering of people, a standing against, or standing up for truth, standing against the spirit of the world.
What we did was, hey, Jesus is coming back.
It could be by 2020.
You know, the Y2K thing, everything's going to collapse.
Jesus is probably going to come back.
So let's just do away with discipleship and let's just do everything we can to get people saved.
And then what happened is we began to, the church began to ask itself, well, hang on, what's keeping people from getting saved?
Well, you speak out on abortion or you speak out against homosexuality or you speak out against this.
And so we, so the church began to remove all these things.
So we thought, and then we had, you know, the pop-up churches and literally some of these churches, it's like, you know, you don't even need God.
You know, you just need clever marketing, a really slick logo, you know, a great team, a beautiful haircut, CrossFit.
CrossFit always helped.
And you could have this pop-up church, but they were powerless churches.
And I think what happened in 2020, the church got caught with its pants down because she had no power.
She had no answers.
One of the most powerful stories is when the Queen of Sheba comes to Solomon.
And the Bible says, When she came and she saw the house that he had built, the entryway by which he went up from his house into the house of the Lord, when she saw the seating of the servants and their apparel, there was no more spirit in her.
And the Bible says she tested Solomon with hard questions, and there was nothing so difficult that he could not answer her.
And then she responds and she says, You know, what I heard in my country, I didn't believe, but truly the half of it was not told me.
Your excellent, blessed is your God.
And she gives him an offering, like an honorarium.
It's about between six and a half and seven billion in today's terms because she was so blown away.
In fact, she then takes Judaism back to Ethiopia.
And to this day, there's Ethiopian Jews.
Ethiopian Jews because of that encounter.
But what I love about that, Charlie, was when she came to the house of God, every difficult question that the world couldn't answer, the house of God answered.
And I think in 2020, what we got caught because we'd so backed up, so lowered the bar, so diluted the gospel that we had no answers.
We had no answers for gender reassignment, we had no answer for gender dysphoria, we had no answer for, you know, when does life begin and should we stand up for it?
We had no gender for all the LGBTQ and what if a man feels like he's born in the wrong body and you know, if a man identifies as a woman, can he follow a little child into it?
And so, and the church was just silent.
The church was like fearful and afraid.
And God hasn't given us a spirit of fear, so he cannot bless fear.
He blesses courage.
He says to Joshua, you know, three times, be strong and courageous, then you will divide, then you'll enter, then you'll conquer.
And the fearful churches are falling apart and they can't keep their doors open.
Yeah.
And so I want to talk about this article here.
I love it.
Rollingstone.com.
Charlie Kirk's turning point pivots to Christian nationalism.
They do call us a right-wing powerhouse.
Jürgen, what do you make of this?
You know what?
It's the scream of a very, very frightened devil.
So the great thing about this article, Charlie, is you have the devil afraid.
Because what they're trying to say, and who gives them the measure?
So when you read through the Bible, Charlie, it's only ever angels that have measuring rods.
If you read through the book of Ezekiel, book of Revelation, angels measure, angels measure.
Why angels?
Because they're not prone to corruption like humans.
So why would I let Rolling Stone, why would I let the spirit of the world tell me what I should and shouldn't preach?
So let me just say this: Christian nationalism, what they're saying is, hey, listen, you guys should only preach about heaven.
Heaven is secured.
If you die, heaven's a guarantee.
Or if you live and Jesus splits the sky, heaven's a guarantee.
But the earth, Satan says that the earth belongs to him.
He's a prince of this world.
Exactly.
And the contention is for the earth.
The contention is for our cities.
It's for our schools.
It's for the people that live here.
The battle is in the earth.
So Jesus says, you know, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Revelation says that Michael threw Satan out of heaven and now he's in the earth and woe to the inhabitants of the earth and see.
But we're meant to on earth as it is in heaven.
We're meant to drive the devil out of every college, every high school, of you know, every facet of society out of our government, out of our Congress, out of our Senate, out of our FBI, DOJ, wherever we recognize the devil, our job would be given authority, drive him out so that people can come out of darkness.
I was saying to one of my pastors, Pastor Samuel, I said, the reason we need to do this is because people are in darkness.
And if we don't preach the word, the word is light.
Thy word is a lamp and a light unto my.
If we don't preach the light, people are going to be in the darkness.
And in the darkness, people make terrible choices.
We need to preach the light.
We are hated for it, but that's what this is all about.
And I'm so proud of you.
Thank you.
And we know that this conference, this pastor's conference, is going to change lives, God willing.
It says here they are kicking off.
This is the Rolling Stone article.
TPSA kicks off another Christian nationalist party this week, hosting its second annual pastor summit in Nashville, Tennessee, that touts the aim of equipping and empowering both pastors and their churches to stand for biblical truth.
Continues by saying that I want to read this one quote for you in particular, Jürgen, because I've been looking for it here.
Most of this is just kind of the typical nonsense.
They pick, or they want to say, ah, here it is.
You ready?
The focus on fundamentalism represents a clear and present danger to democracy.
Jürgen, your reaction.
Oh, my gosh.
It's like whenever they disagree or whenever they're, whenever truth enters, truth is a threat to democracy.
I mean, every time we watch the Democrats, especially on the news media, anything that is truth, you know, wanting to defund or do a deep dive into the FBI, DOJ, it's a threat to democracy.
People protesting a stolen election, threat to democracy.
So I actually take that as another compliment.
But what they're afraid of is they're afraid of people seeing the truth.
Jesus says, you know, you shall know the truth, and the truth that you know shall set you free.
Satan's entire kingdom works on lies.
And a lie can only exist in a vacuum of truth.
When the truth comes, it not only exposes the lie, but it dissolves the lie.
And the reason that this spirit, it's an antichrist spirit, is so threatened and claims that it's a threat to democracy is because Satan has so many people bound today with all kinds of perversions and confusions.
Whereas when the truth comes, light comes, clarity comes, and freedom comes.
The reason that we preach the truth isn't because, like, you know, they try and say, oh, Awakened Church spreads hate.
And it was amazing.
We had this Christmas production down at the Radies.
It's an amazing story.
It's an amazing story.
And we had, you know, the LGBTQ crowd come up with these banners, you know, Awakened spreads hate.
And they're waving the banners with the songs.
And then the banners came down, and all our people are loving on them, giving them drinks.
And they ended up disbanding halfway through and leaving because it's the exact opposite's true.
But basically, what they've been told is because we preach truth, we must therefore be a threat to democracy.
But what happens is when we preach truth, people get free.
People get free.
You cannot have freedom without truth.
In closing here, Jürgen, you're a Donald Trump supporter.
Yes, sir.
And you are a pastor?
Yep.
Riff on it.
Tell us why.
Can I do the real honest?
Of course.
I can.
Hit it hard.
The real honest is Donald Trump is David.
Donald Trump is the David today.
He's the Lord's anointed for such a time as this.
And people, you know, got, oh, well, you know, the mean tweets and all that kind of stuff.
Right now, we're in a time of war.
America has never been under an attack like she's under right now.
We don't need a peacetime president.
We need a wartime president.
Donald Trump, when you look at his track record, the end of Roe v. Wade, that was initiated and empowered by Donald Trump.
The championing of the church and the local church, Donald Trump.
Freedom, Liberty, America great again.
So I honestly see Donald Trump as a gift from God sent from God for such a time as this.
He's under a Davidic anointing.
He's a giant slayer.
That's why they fear him.
The more the left hate him, the more I revere and love him.
And so, yes, our whole church, like, I mean, look, I wear these bands, Trump 2020, Trump 2024, make America great again.
And your church is increasing in attendance like crazy every week.
Every week.
You are defying the odds, Jürgen, and I love it.
And look, some pastors say, I don't like Trump because you have Russell Moore come out and he says he's awful.
He's terrible.
He's all these things.
Revering Donald Trump 00:01:15
And your response, Jürgen, is.
Yes, I mean, people say, oh, I don't like him because of A, B, and C. Dear Jesus, it's like, number one, if you're perfect, you cast the first stone.
Oh, you're not.
Number two, they miss the big picture.
And look, it's very easy to dislike somebody, especially when they're strong and when they're a leader.
And so, yeah, so I like Donald Trump because he's gruff, he's strong, he's truthful.
That's what we need right now.
Pastor Jürgen, everyone, check out his church, Awaken.
He also has some terrific books I encourage you guys to look at.
It's terrific.
And we are here now wrapping up our broadcast at our TPUSA Faith Pastor Summit, the largest in the country.
Our goal is to activate and equip the church and pastors to speak out against the heresy of wokeism and be able to articulate courageously and boldly the need for a revival and a restoration of American values in our country.
God bless you, Jürgen.
God bless you.
Everybody, we'll see you soon.
Email us freedom at charliekirk.com.
God bless you guys.
We'll see you tomorrow.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.
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