A Revival of Christian Men is Necessary — Live with Steve Deace at Dream City Church
What kind of men do you have around you? What kind of men are you raising? What kind of man are you becoming? Charlie and Steve Deace have an incredible conversation at Dream City Church about his wild testimony, how to find a strong church, spiritual warfare, and more. Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com! Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
My conversation with Steve Dace live from Dream City Church.
We talk about demons, angels, the afterlife, heaven, hell, and more.
My friend Steve Dace brings the thunder in this very important conversation.
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We go.
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NEWS.
Thank you, everybody.
Please take a seat.
Uh this will be brief because we have a very special guest, and I could listen to our special guest talk all day long.
But I just want to reiterate something that Pastor Tommy said.
Everybody, it's been four years of doing Freedom Night in America.
Can you believe it?
Four years.
It's just been extraordinary.
And um I believe it's really made a big impact here locally.
Every day I have people come up to me and they say, you know, I'm running for school board, I'm getting involved, I'm a better Christian, better father, I'm a better student.
And this is exactly what the Bible tells us to do.
In the scriptures, it tells us in Jeremiah 29:7, which is what we originally said when we started this together with the Barnett's.
Seek the welfare of the nation that you are in because your welfare is tied to your nation's welfare.
We are called to care about our city, to call about our state, to care about our nation.
And everybody, this church and what Dream City has done has been a leader to other churches in the valley.
You know that before we do this, I want to just praise and single out other pastors come from across the valley for a round table beforehand.
And please raise your hands, guys.
They do an amazing job.
And they're here to get resources filled up in any possible way.
Because if we're serious about saving America, it must start with the church.
And we're gonna talk about that tonight.
And so I want to make sure I give you an appropriate trigger warning for tonight.
If you put Steve and I in a room together, it starts to get a little bit uh, let's just say aggressive, but it's always rooted in the truth.
Because look, we could spend our entire time here together tonight doing a victory lap, everything's great, we won in November, and praise the Lord we did.
But let's be honest, the American church is nowhere nowhere near as bold or courageous or strong as it should be.
And Steve is uniquely positioned.
In fact, I think he's one of the most equipped voices in the country to talk about this.
You can see him on the blaze, his podcast is awesome.
We're really gonna sit to talk about some, let's say, some love in truth, some truth in love, I should say, some hard truths about how the church needs to fight harder and fight stronger in the spiritual battle that we're in.
Give it up, everybody, for Steve Dace, everybody.
Thank you.
Welcome, Steve.
Thank you very much.
So uh both Steve and I literally talk for a living.
Uh so this is gonna be fun.
Is there a clock?
Because I am trained to fill airtime.
So I will just keep going unless someone has an alarm.
I I I will I will cut you off.
Uh fair enough.
Or you cut me off.
Okay.
So Steve, why don't we just why don't you introduce yourself?
Where are you from?
Your life story.
Sure.
I'm Steve Dace.
I do the show on the Blaze.
I'm on After Glenn Beck, which, if you're Gen X or older, is a little bit like if you were doing the show after Cheers or Seinfeld on NBC.
Like you're gonna have to really be terrible at this not to hold some form of that audience, right?
So I I get to kind of you know, gravy train off of Glenn.
Um, but um there is literally nothing in my background that would indicate I would ever be here whatsoever.
Uh I'm a kid born to a 15-year-old mom.
Uh my mom found out she was pregnant uh at 14 from her high school senior boyfriend uh over Thanksgiving break in 1972, and several of her friends had already had abortions, and she had contemplated doing the exact same thing.
Um, My paternal father's family were very prominent Democrats in Des Moines at the time.
My uncle was on the city, or my great uncle was on the city council.
My grandfather was a very powerful district court judge, and they tried to bribe my mom and my grandmother with $500, which was the cost of an abortion at the time, to abort me.
They did everything they could.
They pressured them everything they could to get my mom to murder her baby, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it.
And so on July 28, 1973, at age 15, she had me.
Um she took that $500, actually, her and my grandmother did, and moved out to California where they didn't start their life all over again.
And I wish I could tell you things were great.
She met a Navy shoreman while she was out there.
That's where I get my last name.
He came from a very dysfunctional family as well.
His dad was an alcoholic, very abusive.
He modeled a lot of that to us as well.
So, you know, my biological didn't bother.
My my stepdad um thought that he could uh emulate Robert uh, you know, uh Duvall's great Santini as a model of fatherhood.
So I didn't come into this with a lot of great masculine role models or anything at all.
Um I was a good student and a decent athlete growing up, but then after I went to college, and like a lot of young men of this era, I was aimless, um, overexposed to pornography, aimless, um, uh just no purpose, nothing going on whatsoever.
Um, and then I met a girl, and she's my wife now, and that gave me my first real direction, this idea that I've I've got to do more than work in the mail room here for the rest of my life.
And and that'll but that only took me so far, right?
And and then sooner or later I was at a promise keepers eventually almost over 20 years ago in Kansas City, an event that the day they announced it at the church we were going to, I thought, whatever else is happening on September 18th, 2003, I need to be there.
And then the day before the event, I felt like I don't care what is going on at that event.
I shan't, I I should not go, I can't go.
It's the worst place in the world, I shouldn't go.
And it was at this event that uh the Lord converted me.
Uh and my wife would tell you that she's on her, she's on her second marriage now.
It just so happens the guy had the same exact first and last name both times, you know, and and my wife and I basically met in the in the AOL dial-up chat room version of Tinder.
Okay, we we did we did not think we were gonna be born-again believers with like minivans who homeschooled our kids.
The joke was on us, right?
We were just trying to sin, frankly, and the Lord had other ideas.
What we meant for evil, God used for good, and so now we've been married now for 28 years.
My wife is a liberty grad and has a professional Christian counseling service.
I put the fun and fundamentalism on the blaze every single day, and we have three kids, and they all love the Lord.
Nobody hates America, right?
Nobody's hair is blue, so we must be doing something right, okay.
I I love that story for a variety of reasons, and I just also want to pause.
Think about how many Steve Daceas are aborted every single year in our country.
It's just there's a heaviness to that.
And also, it should be hopeful that for every life that we're able to save from abortion, it could be somebody that impacts millions of other people.
Every life is precious in the eyes of God.
Secondly, Steve, I love that story because it shows the American dream is still alive.
Yes.
And I just want to make sure that your story is so uniquely American.
Born to a 15-year-old mom, you travel across the country, not a great father figure, and you still figured it out.
Yep.
The Lord met you.
You you now have material success, you have a big platform.
Only in America is a story like that possible, everybody.
And we we must fight to the end to defend that hope and that truth.
And amen.
So, Steve, let me ask you when you gave your life to the Lord, the Promise Keepers event in 2003.
Walk us through what provoked you with that.
Was it it was obviously an overly masculine type event, that's how they operate.
And do you think that the church is missing some of what you actually saw in that event back in 2003?
So you know, we started going to church because we had our first child, Anastasia, who shows up on my show every now and then.
And now as an adult, and she's married.
Uh, her husband uh is in the military, they have a beautiful granddaughter, Autumn.
She is cuter than your grandkids, and I will fight you when this is over that.
And um when we brought Anna home from the hospital, Charlie, I remember the first time we brought her home.
We were in our crummy two-bedroom apartment.
I had just started out.
Um, I had moved on, I'd moved my way up to sports reporter at the Des Moines Register, and now I'm doing a local talk show, but there had never been a sports show in Des Moines, so it's not exactly Bill and Seven Figures, okay?
And my wife wants to be a stay-at-home mom with the daughter, so we're on one income, and we live in this crummy two-bedroom apartment, and the second apartment is where I had my prolonged adolescence.
All right, it's it's where I kept my porn collection.
Uh it's it's where I kept my video games and all that kind of stuff.
Well, that was the only place we had left to bring a crib to put a crib for our baby.
And I remember shortly after we brought Anastasia home, I I go into that bedroom and I see her there, and and I went from very athletic and in high school, I'm now like 400 pounds.
I mean, I've I've essentially got every malady of aimless young men of this era.
I am the proto version of it.
All right, I'm abusing food, I'm abusing sex, I'm searching for purpose, direction.
And I remember looking at Anastasia, and I just had this feeling of dread, like, this kid is screwed with me as a dad.
And and I I remember thinking, this is the one I think I have found the one thing Hillary Clinton is right about.
It is going to take a village to raise this kid, okay?
And and I can see and look back on it now and see that was the wooing process.
That was the Holy Spirit calling me, trying to get my attention.
And you know, when I went to that Promise Keepers, this said about two years, it took two years from that moment to get to that promise keepers.
And I remember being there and walking in the arena, and these guys are holding hands and singing songs, and I'm like, Nope.
No.
Nope.
That's not happening.
Okay.
And then um, the very first speaker was a guy named Joe White.
And he's doing this talk where he's erecting these life-size crosses, and he's, I see a head nodding over there, right?
And he's talking about, and somehow he parlays parlays this, these three men at the cross, Jesus, and then the two criminals.
And and and then essentially they're archetypes of different forms of manhood and masculinity, both fulfilled and dysfunctional.
And he parlays this into the damage that fathers do to their sons.
And I remember looking around this arena, there's 12,000 people in there that night, and I'm like, who told this cat I was coming?
All right, like this whole thing is like to set me up, it's to ambush me, right?
And then they take an altar call.
And I remember thinking, man, altar calls are only for really bad Pentecostal television, okay?
Which is funny now, because I go to a Pentecostal church, and my Pentecostal minister is in the audience with me here, so God has a sense of humor, okay.
And and I remember thinking I need to get up and answer this call.
And and I, and then I thought, no, I'm not gonna do this.
I'm not gonna prove God you were right about me.
And so I set my size back then, size 50 genes, back down into that, well, more like squeezed, back into that seat.
And the next thing I know, I am I've gone from the upper deck of Kemper Arena in Kansas City, I'm on the concrete floor, sobbing.
Just years and years of tears of sins that I have committed that have been committed against me.
It's like I am purging darkness.
Now, here's the thing, though.
For that to take root, one plants and other waters, God gives the increase.
For that to take root required a community of men who came around me after that.
And some of and some of those men, I just got a text from one of them on my ride over here.
He just lost his job.
Now we don't even see each other anymore all the time because we're busy now, and it's been 20 years.
But 20 years later, he knows.
20 years later, he knows he can text me right away and say, Can you pray for me?
I need some help.
Can you call me when you get back from Phoenix?
Because I've got to pick my life up again, you know, at age 50, and I don't know what I'm gonna do.
Do you have those kinds of men around you, men?
Because I can promise you, your chances that you're gonna reach the finish line and hear, well done, good and faithful servant, decrease and diminish if you do not.
You need to seek that community.
Our churches.
Our churches, you can tell a lot about a church by the condition of its men's ministry or the lack thereof.
Because frankly, a lot of pastors don't want a vibrant men's ministry.
So, ladies, forget that you're in the room for a second, and I'm just gonna talk to the guys.
We are not like them.
We don't want to perpetually sit around and talk about what's going on in our lives.
We will once or twice come to a barbecue or a steak fry, and we'll purge our sins to our brothers.
And then after that, we're like, okay, cool, I've got things to do.
Are we gonna go to war or not?
If we're not gonna go to war, I don't have time to do this every week.
Because we're not like them.
Just the purging of emotion doesn't do for us what it does for them.
We want results.
What is the bottom line reason why I'm doing this?
And so a lot of times a church does not want a vibrant men's ministry because the men are like that, because the men will say, okay, cool.
I came forward, I confess my sins, the Lord's doing a work in my life.
So when do we go to work, Pastor?
When's the I mean, the shooting's already started?
When do we go to the front?
When do we go to the war?
And instead, I'd rather have most pastors.
I'd rather have my sweater vests, my pleated khakis, my Hawaiian shirts, and I'd rather be really comfortable in my pottery barn church where I've where I've got an evangelical monasticism in the middle of this suburb that I don't intersect with at all.
And if you approach my campus at two o'clock on a Tuesday, nothing is happening except somebody on a riding lawnmower mowing the lawn.
And that's why get in a church that engages the men, that organizes the men.
Men need structure, men need a mission, men need to be challenged, right?
Most one of the reasons why we need women in our lives, you guys give us direction.
You guys give us a purpose, we need competition.
And the church, because the family has fallen apart, frankly, the church is gonna have to provide a lot of that structure for the next generation of men.
Everything was done in the last generation of church growth inc, which I would send to the lake of fire if I could.
Everything was done in the last generation of church growth ink to reach Karen.
Every Christian music network has it has a composite of Karen, whose biggest struggle every day is will I will I get to my drop the kids off from school in time to reach my Pilates appointment?
And that's why the music has to be uplifting and hope-filled.
It is time to reach Ken.
It's time to reach Charlie, it's time to reach Steve.
Because here's the way the principle of headship works.
And this is how it works.
If you reach the men, you know, C.S. Lewis once said, aim for earth, aim for aim for earth, or aim for heaven, you'll get earth thrown in.
Aim for earth, you'll get neither.
If you aim for the men, you'll get the wife and the kids too.
If you leave the men alone, you'll get neither.
We need to now make it a purpose to go after the men.
They're clamoring for direction, ways they haven't for a couple of generations.
So the question now is will the church answer that call.
We're honored to be partnering with the Alan Jackson Ministries, and today I want to point you to their podcast.
It's called Culture and Christianity, the Alan Jackson Podcast.
What makes it unique is Pastor Allen's biblical perspective.
He takes the truth from the Bible and applies it to issues that we're facing today.
Gender confusion, abortion, immigration, doge, Trump, and the White House.
Issues in the church.
He doesn't just discuss the problems in every episode.
He gives practical things.
We can do to make a difference.
His guests have incredible expertise and powerful testimonies.
Each episode will make you recognize the power of your faith and how God can use your life to impact our world today.
The Culture and Christianity Podcast is informative and encouraging.
You could find it on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast.
Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes.
Alan Jackson Ministries is working hard to bring biblical truth back into our culture.
You can find out more about Pastor Allen and the ministry at Alan Jackson.com forward slash Charlie.
So I have a two-part question.
Number one, when and why did that change?
Because the church used to be really good at this.
And then number two, why is it that the evangelical church seems so hostily uninterested in picking up the one trillion dollar bill on the sidewalk?
You guys understand right now, this is the greatest growth opportunity ever for the Catholic church With young men.
It's like growing like crazy.
They don't want to come to evangelical churches.
They tell us that.
We were just talking about this backstage.
They're like too weak, too woke, too feminine, too feelings-based.
I want something that doesn't change.
I want tradition.
I want sick, I want something sacred.
I don't want modernity.
So evangelicalism is falling out of favor.
And evangelicalism is a catch-all term for just what we all believe here, right?
Solo scriptura, you know, just whatever you want to fill it in.
Falling out of favor with young men.
We could talk about the Catholic thing separately, but when and why did this change?
And then just more interesting and curiously, why does the evangelical world just seem so just like, yeah, we don't need men?
They're not, they're doing nothing to reach them.
Nothing.
Well, you know, it's it's interesting.
I was um I was on uh America Family Radio with the American Family Association earlier this week, and and I said on their network, I said, when Don Wildman founded this ministry, he understood that he was downstream from the church, and that ultimately the church did the job of basic discipleship and catechesis, and then people needed specific marching orders of where they were called now to take their gifts and what they had learned and go impact the world for Christ with it.
And they went to parachurch organizations like the American Family Association.
What's happened in the last generation now since Don passed away, and Tim has taken over, is the American Family Association is now doing the Bible teaching that the church used to do.
I will tell you the number one piece of feedback I get on my show, other than why are you like this?
Okay, the other number one piece of feedback I get is why don't I hear more like this in my church?
Why am I getting more of this from a podcast than uh from you than I'm getting from my church?
And and ultimately, we have made two uh Faustian bargains in the last generation.
Number one, the American pastorate is more full of Esau's than Jacob's.
Instead of troubled, flawed men who are actively though, wrestling with God, they have a call on their life, they have a purpose, they have a plan, they're not perfect, they can fall away.
Jacob's name literally means schemer, by the way.
Usurper.
And so instead of troubled men who have a call that they seek to fulfill.
Instead, we're Esau's just going after the birthright, filling our bellies right now.
What will draw them in today?
What will fill the pews today?
What will pay the bills today?
What's the path of least resistance today?
We don't have elders anymore, we have boards of directors, we don't have creeds, we have mission statements.
And church now, on Sundays in most evangelical churches is for the unbelievers.
And if you really want to be discipled, come back on Sunday night, and then maybe it'll happen.
But we collect the tithe and make sure the lights are on and the bills are paid on Sunday morning.
Evangelism is part of what the church does, but your primary mission is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.
That is discipleship.
So on one hand, the church has become heavily corporatized, and and then what happened in the counterculture made it convenient and incentivized it.
Feminism was the greatest thing that ever happened to boys who can shave.
You mean I can get sex with women with no requirements, no responsibilities whatsoever?
And then the woman's not stigmatized anymore either for acting out immorally, but now that's a asserting her femininity.
The Babylon Bee ran a headline the other day.
You might get mad at me for saying this, I'm gonna warn you.
Um, but the Babylon B ran a headline the other day about Nancy Mace.
All right, who wanted to who okay, okay, good, all right, all right.
And and and who's just an absolutely craven politician who's actually now showing nude pictures of herself in the Congress.
And and and the headline was Nancy Mace vows to keep showing naked pictures of herself until she finally stops the exploitation of women.
All right, I mean, this is what feminism has wrought.
Men who want to be sons of Adam, you know, we always we always read the story about Eve being tempted and succumbing.
You ever wondered what's Adam doing the whole time?
Just sitting there with his hands in his proverbial pockets, I got nothing, nothing, nothing's going on.
And notice later, by the way, after the fall, God does not call Eve Eve forth in the garden, does he?
Who does he call?
Adam.
You ever wondered what how history might have changed if Adam would have said, Listen, I had one job.
You gave me headship here, you gave me a dominion mandate, I fell down.
This is on me, I accept responsibility.
What do I have to do here to make penance and atonement?
Instead, Adam says, Well, it's this woman you gave me and makes excuses.
We follow in those footsteps.
As men, we want to make excuses because here's the thing we really understand about headship, but we don't want to admit.
We think it's about authority.
It is not.
It's about responsibility.
There already is an authority in this world.
It's God.
We don't want the responsibility of that authority then coming to us first.
When that family falls apart, when he comes to us first and says, uh, Adam, what you doing?
Steve, what you doing?
Richard, what you doing?
Mark, what you doing?
We don't want that authority.
And so feminism and all the isms and social pathologies of the last generation gave us a let's get out of jail free card.
And then what the church has done internally in the last generation with its theology is we have taken the the two greatest commandments that Jesus summarized, the Ten Commandments, right?
Moses comes down the mountain with two stone tablets.
The first is the vertical relationship between us and God, the second, the horizontal relationship between one another.
Right?
So the first is love the Lord your God while your heart, soul, strength, and mind.
What does that look like?
It's the first five commandments.
And then the second is just like it, love your neighbor as you love yourself.
What does that look like?
Well, it's the next five commandments.
What the last generation of the evangelical church has done is said, Love your neighbor as you love yourself is actually the greatest commandment.
People are now in the place of primacy where God is.
Now listen, people are important.
As far as we know, the only thing in the cosmos made in the likeness and image of the Creator are people.
I am a systematic theology nerd.
I will sit here and theo nerd out with you all night long, okay?
But Jesus did not die for a theology, he died for people.
There is nothing more important in the kingdom of God, all right, that he has given us in his creation other than us.
People are important, but they're not God.
And so we have made offending our neighbor worse than offending God.
So we will inject all forms of cowardice, all forms of heterodoxy, if not flat out heresy, into the church because I might drive somebody away.
God has placed their entire salvation.
Jesus went to the cross, he did it all, pronounced it finished.
But by golly, if you don't put the right frosting on Jesus' cake, people won't get saved.
It's all on you.
They're all up in heaven now, waiting to see if you'll do your job.
That's not how this works.
That's not how any of this works.
There is no way for your church.
There's just the way in his name is Jesus.
You're not a way, you're a human being.
And start fearing the one who can destroy the body.
Start fearing the one who can destroy the body and cast the soul into hell.
Amen.
There is not enough fear of God.
There is a lot of trifling with God.
There's a lot of, well, God will just overlook things and let things go.
No, he won't.
And ultimately, we have to make that first commandment great again.
Love the Lord your God while your heart, soul, strength, and mind.
And then you will understand what it means to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Now, Charlie, I will tell you this though.
I am concerned there is an emerging movement in the church that is reaching the young men that agrees with everything I just said, but I am fearful that without proper guidance, they will actually fall into the opposite heresy in our time, which is they will stop loving their neighbor as they love themselves.
And they will turn people into ideological constructs.
Listen, I was born white trash to a 15-year-old mom.
I met my wife in the Tinder version of America online.
There was nothing in my background at all that would have indicated I'd be here doing this tonight, having this discussion with you.
So we still need to give the Lord's grace room to work.
Amen.
Alright?
The loving our neighbor as we love ourselves is eternally important.
But I think it's way past time that we stop being way start being way more concerned with offending God than offending the pagans.
And there are some churches that are getting it right.
Dream City here, some of the churches here present.
There is a remnant.
But explain to me, Steve, why is it that the church has slipped and has fallen so significantly from what the church should be.
I have my own theories.
It's because it actually comes down to a first principle question.
They have a different definition of what a church is.
And therefore, also, secondly, the other first Principle error, a category error is we have a different definition of what a pastor is.
So if you can't answer those two questions, then the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh sequence, you're gonna be completely off chart, of course.
Please.
I mean, if you want to be a pastor, your job description is very simple.
Feed the sheep and shoot the wolves.
That is the job description.
Jesus says to Peter, if you love me, you will what?
Feed my sheep.
One of my favorite quotes from Augustine.
There are many sheep without, but many more wolves within.
Alright, we we, you know, how now here's the thing though.
Because we do want it, we are, after all, event evangelical, so it kind of means we're supposed to be evangelic evangelistic, right?
That's kind of in the brand, right?
Okay.
So how do we know who's a sheep and who's a wolf?
Boldly proclaim the truth in season and out of season.
The consequences of how that truth is received is not your responsibility as a church or a pastor.
That is not your responsibility.
All right.
But you'll find out a sheep will say, Oh man, I didn't know.
I was talking to uh one of your guys, Sloan tonight before we came over here.
Yep, great guy.
And he was telling me about his wife, and that his wife was originally a card-carrying New York City Democrat.
And then she did this thing where she read the Bible cover to cover.
And she's like, Oh, God hates that, hates that, hates that, hates that, hates that.
I'm on the wrong side.
The last great revival of the Jewish people is led by a king named Josiah.
But it doesn't start with him.
There is a priest named Hilkiah who one day is cleaning out the temple, and they've got all the pagan relics they've allowed to infest God's house, the starry hosts, all the baal worship, all the Asherah poles, all of the disgusting filth is in there.
And one day he stumbles upon this dusty scroll and he picks it up.
It's the word of God.
It's the Torah, it's the law, and it ends in Deuteronomy with Moses saying, I've set before you blessing and cursing, choose life so that you may live in the land.
And he's like, Oh, snap.
And he takes this to King Josiah.
And Josiah now does not just reset the festivals and the law, but Josiah is the final king of Israel that goes to the high places and tears down the idols to Asherah and the sex cult that bedeviled the Jewish people for hundreds of years.
Alright?
Open, I've got a I'm gonna do I do strategy and messaging for a living.
I do it on my show.
I've done it for political campaigns.
Um people pay me, I think I'm pretty decent.
I'm gonna give you a freebie though, if you're a pastor, okay?
Here's my bright idea.
Walk into a pulpit, open the Bible, read it out loud, and tell people what it says.
That's what I got for you tonight.
And you will be amazed at the transformation that takes place.
The the greatest weapon of mass destruction in any spiritual cultural war is a man of God with the courage to open up that book and tell people what it actually says, come what may.
And ultimately, and ultimately, that is what is lacking the most.
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The sheep will respond and say, Wow, like Sloan's wife, we didn't know.
The wolves, you'll find out, they already knew.
They just didn't care.
Throw the wolves out and feed the sheep.
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What is your message to somebody in this audience that is currently attending a weak or a woke church?
What is the threshold for which they should leave and go to a church like Dream City or go to one, you know, a much better church that is biblically grounded.
Talk about your experience because the objections that we'll receive are this.
I got married in this church.
I have memories in this church.
They have a great kids' ministry.
They make great coffee.
The parking is very organized.
I like their worship music.
There is some great coffee out there if we're gonna be there.
But I mean, it's part of what I hear, right?
And so I I mean I hear the whole gamut.
And however, all those are excuses.
The one excuse that I do have a little bit of a tenderness for, and I want you to just go into it and you could obliterate it is Charlie, I have a relationship with the pastor, and I'm making progress, and I think I can, you know, get this towards a better conclusion.
I say, okay, after five years through COVID and Floyd Apalooza and the 2024 election, you're still, you know, we're not there yet.
It might be time to move on.
So you understand my question, Steve.
It's very important.
We're gonna post this on podcasting streaming.
Millions of people listen to this, and yet still there is a stubbornness in our audience that does not want to leave weak or woke churches.
Steve.
So the church we used to attend was not woke at all, uh, but it was weak.
And frankly, I thought it's what I needed.
I don't know if you guys have picked this up in the last 20 minutes.
I'm a little intense.
All right.
I I have actually tried to keep it fairly subtle for you guys tonight, since he's the main event and I'm just the undercard.
All right, but um, this is me on the down low, okay?
And so I actually thought that a softer church would be good.
I was always concerned with our kids, that the fact that dad's job was the culture war would make the faith almost overbearing to them.
All right, and so I thought maybe I needed to actually downplay some of the formalities and of our liturgies so that the kids had room to breathe and work out their own salvation.
Totally definitely.
Yes.
And so I thought maybe it was therapeutic for me just to go to a church, you know, on Sundays and not hear the culture war.
And then we get to the summer of 22, and Roe v.
Wade is overturned.
And in the middle of that message, my church made me feel like, as you know, I helped lead the fight in my state for passing one of the very first heartbeat bills in America in America.
And I mean, I I got to sign the proclamation of my state legislature the day that passed our legislature.
And and and that's one of the bills that was used to overturn Roe.
And I'm and my pastor's making me feel like I'm some kind of a freak show because I devoted, you know, the my faith and ministry to this cause.
And then he basically apologized for the overturning of Roe.
Hey, we're a pro-life church, but then he said, but we understand not everybody here agrees.
And I thought, why are there people in this room who think child sacrifice is okay?
Why are they why are they not made uncomfortable by feeling like this?
And I I loved our pastor.
I still, he's a dear dear man.
And and I had the same thing.
I was meeting with him, I thought I was making some progress.
And then one day we got an invite for a guy named Preston Sprinkle.
That name ringabelled anybody?
Oh, he's the he's the pro-tranny youth leader for um Campus Crusades.
Yes.
Yeah, he's the guy.
Yeah, yeah, I'm he's on the Rob Bell character.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I I that's right.
I've always wanted to attack him publicly.
So please continue.
So I'm like, it's weird.
I don't know who this guy is.
And with all due respect, my show's not as big as Charlie's, but it's a pretty big audience.
I've got a lot of connections in the evangelical world, and I kind of think if we're inviting a speaker and I've never heard of him, who is this?
So I called up a buddy of mine who's the pastor of apologetics for Jack Graham's church in Dallas.
Uh Jeremiah Johnston.
Jack is great.
Yep.
And I called him up and I said, Hey, do you know a Preston Sprinkle?
And as soon as I got the words out of my mouth, Jeremiah goes, Oh.
So I know what that means.
He goes, do not let that camel's nose in under your tent.
Don't let him in.
He goes, he is absolutely sent by the enemy to disarm our churches.
He's gonna gain enough of a beach head, and then once he's got enough influence, just like Rob Belly told me, that's when he's gonna write his love wins and show he was a heretic all along.
Okay?
So I'm like, uh-oh.
All right.
So I go to our pastor, and he's like, yeah, but you know, my daughter handles that, and she thinks new voices would be good.
It was just very clear that the number one doctrine of this church was non-confrontationalism on every front.
And at that point, I'm I'm kind of the Holy Spirit's working on me, and I go home one day, and um at this point our daughters are grown, now moved out on their own, so it's just me, my wife, and my son, and he's 16, and I call them together and say, hey, you know, I know you guys are ultimately gonna say, you believe in me, it'll be my decision, but I want your input, all right?
I'm thinking it might be time to change churches.
And my son jumps right up right away.
He says, Dad, I I've I'm I'm so glad you said this.
I go, I I respect you too much that I've just not said anything for the last few years, but I don't ever want to go back there again.
And he said, Dad, can we please go to a church where I don't think I can beat up the pastor?
Those were his literal words.
And um, the next weekend, I thought I would check out Pastor Jesse's church because one of my one of my uh good buddies from my original men's group when we all got saved together at that promise keepers goes to his church.
And he had told me a few months ago that Pastor Jesse wanted to know why in the world is Steve Dace of all people going to a weak church, and I felt really convicted by that.
I don't think I've ever said that to Jesse actually.
And so on my own, unannounced, I went in there to check it out before I took the family, and I really just thought I could just sense, I'm like, wow.
What is the difference between we're doing church and I can really feel like the spirit is moving here?
Something is happening here.
And and we've been there ever since.
So can you distill that into a rubric or a one, two, three way of thinking about it in practice?
Let me make it very simple.
Make it very simple.
If if the trainee brigade showed up in the parking lot while service was going on and began doing drag queen story time hour in the parking lot of your church, would the pastor of your church stop service right away to assemble the elders, go out there to confront them and remove them from the premises?
If the answer is yes, remain.
If the answer is no, never go back.
And this is already happening organically, and I think it needs to accelerate.
And but Steve, what's been interesting to me, and then I do want to get to some questions.
I could by the way, you're on fire tonight, Steve.
I could listen to you.
It's amazing.
Uh are you seeing, for example, your former weak non-confrontational pastor.
Has he made any adjustments?
Did your exit change him at all?
And if not, why?
You know, now that I'm 50, I have a lot of sayings that I'm repeating over and over again that aren't as cool as I originally thought they were, but one of them is this.
No one can rise above their own worldview.
And I I just think he came out of a model and is invested in a model from another era.
You know, between Francis Schaeffer and Adrian Rogers, and Jerry Falwell Sr., essentially the men who formed the original religious right, Billy Graham, James Robson, between those people and what we have now, and and churches like this that we're at tonight, we had Bill Heibels and Rick Warren.
I grew up next to that church.
And that, and they were essentially the the bishops and the popes of American evangelicalism.
And, you know, the culture runs, the world runs on the principle of headship, that God's economy runs on headship.
As great as this ministry is, it would be broken if you found out tomorrow that the head of the ministry had been keeping a great moral failing from you all these years.
Look at what's happened to Gateway Church in Dallas with Robert Morris, for example.
That's headship.
That's why studies show that if mom takes the kids to church every Sunday and dad never goes, it's a flip of a coin where the kids will go when they're adults.
But if dad goes, regardless of what mom does, the kids will almost always go to church when they grow up.
That's headship.
That's responsibility.
And so ultimately the team takes on the identity of its coach.
And the most influential voices in evangelicalism in the last generation were guys who wore Hawaiian shirts in January and sweater vests in July.
That's how we got here.
And the church is the team, is their team, and it's taken on their identity.
You guys want to be blown away from by something.
I was listening to a sports podcast while working out the other day.
And one of the hosts was ragging on the other guy for dressing like a youth minister.
Like an evangelical youth minister.
There's never-majorative.
Yes.
There's never been anything about Christianity even alluded to ever in this sports podcast.
But yet the the uniform of the hipster uniform of the American youth pastor has crossed over into the mainstream that even the unchurched know what that knows that uniform and knows what it looks like.
Alright?
That is a problem.
We are known way more, guys, for what's on the outside of the cup than what's on the inside.
And here and here's the great irony of this era is the Pharisees are rampant.
But now they don't have the furrowed brows anymore.
They're not the furrow, well, except for Mike Pence.
They're not the perpetually furrowed brow brigade anymore.
Alright?
Now the Pharisees, they look hip, they look welcoming.
Right?
The orange juice is always crisp.
The donuts are is always fresh.
The donuts are always crisp.
Right?
And hey, if you've got donuts and juice at your church, that doesn't mean you're a bunch of sellouts, but is that what you're actually known for?
And let me say this too.
I want to make sure this point is very clear.
Mega church is not a population, it's a mentality.
Calvin preached to churches in the thousands in Paris and Geneva.
Spurgeon preached to churches in the thousands in London.
That Pentecost, 3,000 men, not counting the women and children, get saved.
By our modern measurements, that would be a mega church.
Mega church is a mentality.
Do you have elders that hold the pastor accountable or a board of directors that act like they're investors in him as a stock?
Do you have people in your church in leadership that you pretend are irreplaceable?
That they just they could never be replaced.
You know what?
Let me say this to you guys.
I said this backstage, let me say it here.
I want everybody in this room to think of the five or ten greatest evangelical teachers still alive and at work today.
And ask yourself do you know who the men are positioned in their own congregations to take their place?
Do you know who that is?
And I promise you, you're not the answer is gonna be no.
That's a problem.
The people knew that Joshua would succeed Moses.
The people knew Elisha would succeed Elijah.
The people knew there were that Jesus had apostles.
Who are the successors of this generation?
Where are they?
You're not that valuable, you're not that indispensable, nobody is.
Alright, the salvation of the people is up to the Lord between them and the Lord.
You're not if you want to, if you want to pretend that your church is an intermediary, congratulations, go back to 1516.
You just undid the reformation.
There's no more intermediaries between God and man.
The veil is torn.
We individually approach the throne of grace.
And whether even Dream City Church didn't exist, the stones would cry out.
We have forgotten that.
Get off your high horse.
You're not a brand.
You're not that important.
Alright.
One of the coolest things I ever saw in my life is after getting saved, I went to a promise keepers a few years later in my hometown of Des Moines.
And there and Chris Tomlin and his band were the music.
And they sang his song, Famous One.
And when they got done, they all, as we were all as men now, what's funny now?
At first I was like, I am not singing with these freaks.
Now I'm like singing my heart out a few years later.
Alright?
And as we're all singing along to the chorus, they all took their took their instruments, they set them down.
He put his microphone away, and they walked off the stage so they didn't take any applause.
Because it would be kind of ironic to sing a song called Famous One, that only Jesus is famous, and then take a standing ovation for that at the end.
You know what I'm saying?
We're not that important.
And here's the cool thing about that, though.
When we accept that, it is one of the most freeing things we will ever experience ever.
You mean there is a God and I'm not him.
This really isn't all about me.
This really doesn't rise and fall completely on me, really.
And and I can now sit on his shoulders.
I can rest on his shoulders, rest on him.
You know, you want to know what I do before I come out and do one of these speaking engagements?
Nothing.
I go into the men's room in the corner stall, I get prayed up, no script, no notes.
And then at that point, whatever I say is not my responsibility, take it up with him.
Alright.
That is so very freeing, and think I have to prepare all of the time, script everything all of the time.
We have a script.
Genesis to Revelation, 66 books.
Here's my big bold idea.
I'll repeat it again.
Open the book up.
Don't self-edit it.
Even the icky parts, those are the those are the most fun ones.
Open the book up, go all the way through it, and tell people exactly what it says.
If you want to make sense of the change and the chaos happening around us, you're going to need God's help.
That's why Alan Jackson Ministries, a friend of mine, created the Culture and Christianity podcast, the Culture and Christianity Conference, and their weeknight news show, Alan Jackson now.
Millions of people also listen to Pastor Alan Jackson's powerful sermons each week.
I do, on radio, television, satellite, and online.
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An Alan Jackson Ministries feels a sense of urgency to deliver God's truth and a biblical perspective to anyone who will listen.
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Giving your life to the Lord, including here on the Charlie Kirk Show.
Go to Alan Jackson.com/slash Charlie.
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Be informed, find encouragement, hear the truth delivered in a way that just makes sense.
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Alan Jackson.com slash Charlie.
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Check it out right now.
Let's do some questions.
Let's start lining up here.
Steve, uh, while we get the questions going here, how can people follow you, listen you, the that are uh moved by what you're saying tonight?
Thank you, brother.
You know, the easiest thing to do is to follow me on uh X, formerly Twitter, because that kind of centralizes all the content I put out.
That's at Steve Day Show on X, at Steve Dace show on X. Shameless plug.
Um Amazon is actually trying to shut our book down as we speak because it's never easy.
All right.
First they approved it, now they're telling us it's in review.
But I have a mock.
To me, I I think we need to bring there are some things the Catholics are right about.
For example, the old Irish Catholic saying, What the devil hates the most is to be mocked.
I think we need to make mockery and scorn great again.
All right.
I'm talking Elijah and Mount Carmel like mockery.
Like when Elijah says to the prophets of Baal while they're cutting themselves and getting nothing, and he says, Well, maybe your god's on the maybe your fake demon gods on the toilet, so he can't respond.
He's mocking them, trolling them.
Why?
Because the people need to see this isn't real power.
To quote the great prophet Rocky Balboa, he bleeds like I bleed.
They need to see there's no power in these shibbolets.
There's no power in these idols, mock them, scorn them.
That's why Elijah did that.
He wanted the people to see what they worshiping has no power.
It's not worth your fear and reverence, only God is.
And so, in that spirit, I think it's time once and for all to take Pride Month down.
And so my little effort to do that, to pull Pride Month's pants down, but not in the way that they would like, is with a new book called Richie Meets the Rainbow.
And it's endorsed it, right?
You did, yes.
And it's a children's book, but it's really for adults, and it's really for dads.
And I'll give you a hint.
The dad, when when his kid comes home and says, Dad, why is my blue-haired teacher trying to trans me and show me rainbows with only six colors?
The dad does this really cool thing.
He takes out the Bible, shares the actual story of the rainbow with his son, but then he gives an action step and he says to his son, I am going to become a very familiar presence at the local school board meetings here on out.
All right.
So we make the dad the hero at the end of this.
And so if you want to get more information about that, you can go to Richie Meets the Rainbow with R-I-C-H-I-E, Richie Meets the Rainbow.com.
Phenomenal.
Thank you, Steve.
Let's start right here.
Hey guys.
Hey, Steve Nefarious is amazing, by the way.
Just throwing that out there.
Hey, um, I just got newly activated and saved a few years ago, and I just became familiar with the book of Enoch.
And I'm wondering if you guys consider that Canon that was taken out by, I don't know, conspiracy theory stuff, because I read it's in the Ethiopian Bible, but not here.
So it's not canonical.
Do you want to start?
And I can.
Well, my understanding is, although it's we believe that Jude, we think quoted Enoch, right?
Correct.
Okay.
So my understanding is it's not canonical for the re not the reasons some of the other books are not.
In this case, it's not necessarily that they thought the church fathers thought the teaching or the Protestant church fathers at the Reformation thought the ch that the book was heretical, necessary, necessarily, but it's auth, it's authentic the authorship could not be authenticized.
And that was the big issue with Enoch and Well, yeah, but also it's not I don't know.
I could be wrong.
It's not even apocryphal.
I mean, uh meaning that even in the Catholic Bible, the book of Enoch is not.
I could be wrong.
No, I know I first and second Maccabees.
But let me say No, no, no, it's not, I don't think it is.
So for those that don't know, the book of Enoch, we we only have it because of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is only about a 60-year discovery.
There is some mysticism in the book of Enoch that's in who the sons of God are in Genesis that has some great tension with normative Trinitarian Christian theology.
Here's the one thing that we will say.
Enoch, interestingly enough, in the Bible, here's a fun trivia question.
Only two people to go to heaven besides Jesus, Elijah and Enoch.
Uh Enoch actually ascended to heaven.
The more interesting question that we need to ask is the term Enoch, who exactly was he in the first couple books of Genesis, uh, who were the Nephilim.
You guys could go, you know, into like let's just say dangerously deep rabbit holes on that.
That is what we call an open hand theological issue, not a closed hand theological issue, right?
If you think the Nephilim are like an alien race that came down to the earth, great, you might be right.
They built the Aztec temples, couldn't care less.
Most important question is who is Jesus Christ, right?
So it it you guys can kind of go in those different circles, but it's also not canonical for the reason that we as so this is a really important point.
That we as Christians and we as non-Catholics have an identical Tanakh, TNK, Torah, the Philemon and Khadetchem, of the of the Jews.
The Jews do not believe the book of Enoch is canonical.
So in about AD 80, right after the life of Christ, there was a huge meeting of rabbis where they established what we consider to be the Old Testament.
So if you go to a Jew in Jerusalem, they will have an identical Old Testament as we have.
The Catholics do not have an identical Old Testament.
They have first and second Maccabees, they have the wisdom of Ben Sarah, they have other books that I think are um like let's just say uh the extended edition.
Um, there's wisdom in those books, but they're not canonical for a lot of different reasons.
So we actually draw what we think is divine as to what Jesus was taught was divine when Jesus walked on the earth.
And when Jesus walked on earth, the book of Enoch was not central doctrinal uh theology of normative Judaism as the time.
Would that is that correct?
Right.
And in fact, you the point you made there about the rabbinical uh conclave that was held in 80 AD, uh, that reminded me, a lot of the Jewish um spiritual ecosystem at the time Christ arrived, was very similar to the world that we have today.
All right, there was a lot, remember, God had not spoken for 400 years.
Right?
So we get the we get the Dead Sea Scrolls because this sect called the Ascends go out on the Dead Sea to they're going, they're out there to copy the Old Testament, and essentially they think Messiah is coming, so they're out there to wait for him and copy the scriptures while they're awaiting him.
There was just as there's great fascination in eschatology in our day, there was great uh fascination at the time of Christ in the time leading up to it with messianic prophecy, and would it be fulfilled, when God would speak again.
There were all kinds of people claiming to be Messiah that were false messiahs.
Um there was a lot of mysticism that came out of this period, and so one of the reasons why, just like we had a council in Nicaea to correct some of the Gnosticism and Arianism that happened in the first couple centuries of the church, one of the reasons that the rabbis had this conclave in 80 AD is be around there is because they also were very concerned at the amount of error that was cropping up within Judaism at this time as well.
I you know, there's a great podcast out there called haunted cosmos by guys who are hard that are both pastors that get into this stuff biblically, and it's very fascinating.
I don't ever miss an episode.
I find it very interesting, but let's make sure we don't turn it into an idol, and that ultimately the heart of the gospel.
Now, the heart is the central organ of the body, right?
Did I say it was the only organ of the body?
And if other organs fail, your body could still die, right?
But we know if the heart fails, you will die.
We know that for sure.
Some other organs may fail, you may or may not die, but we know if the heart fails, We die, right?
Never remove the heart of the gospel, okay?
Sin, salvation, repentance, redemption, restoration.
That's the heart of the gospel.
So there should be a there, just like you have just like heart disease is the number one killer in our culture, and so there's an inordinate amount of medical care predisposed and targeted towards what's going on in terms of your cardiac health.
The amount of time you spend in the Bible should also focus and have an inverted ratio towards the heart of the gospel rather than some of these other issues, which I'm not saying are not important, but should never be a substitute for the heart of the gospel.
And last thing, so the Dead Sea Scrolls, all the attention goes to the book of Enoch.
What it shouldn't be.
The most amazing discovery in the Dead Sea Scrolls is an exact copy of Isaiah, word for word, syllable for syllable, going back thousands of years.
Basically saying, because one of the ways that they tried to refute Jesus Christ was like, oh, all these prophecies you say that he fulfilled was actually just like after editing of Isaiah.
It wasn't like virgin birth and that he came out of shrewd of dry ground.
Basically a retcon.
Yeah, exactly.
Isaiah 53.
No, no.
The Dead Sea Scrolls had a perfect intact copy of Isaiah, identical to our Isaiah, going back thousands of years, shifting the window so much that even like the Bible skeptics were like, whoa.
The fact that Isaiah was like word for word in the Dead Sea Scrolls shows that the Bible, of course, is true, but the Bible skeptics set back their argument generations.
Thank you very much.
Next question.
Hello.
Uh thank you for coming here.
Uh my name is Micah, and uh, you mentioned multiple times that we were in the last generation.
I was just hoping they could tell me what that means more.
Oh, um, well, I don't know if we're in the last generation eschatologically or not.
And the church has throughout the centuries from the very first century thought that it was in the last generation.
I do believe as as a culture, to me, the minimum stakes, if if if the current spiritual war were um were played for stakes, the minimum stakes we're playing for is what's left of Western civilization.
And if Western civilization is defeated and goes away, what will what will replace it?
Well, what came before it were the dark ages.
Now the new dark ages will not be like the old ones.
You're not gonna have you know rat droppings cause black plagues.
We've got indoor plumbing.
But the new dark ages will look like an episode of black mirror.
You want to have a black plague, you'll have black mirror.
Everything will be technocratic, you'll be governed by social credit scores.
Your electric car will be turned off if you're if they don't like what you say, right?
I mean, it'll it'll be like an episode of the Twilight Zone or Black Mirror.
And so we are in the determined generation, I believe, right now, about whether or not Western civilization is gonna survive.
Now, what is Western civilization?
It's basically what we used to call Christendom.
That's essentially what it is.
All right, it is it is countries that were greatly influenced by the Christian church and adopted those traditions into their customs to the point that it influenced their way of life, right down to the way that they adjudicated their laws, right?
And and that's you know, and and that's where America comes from.
America really is the last outpost left of Western civilization.
We are all that remains.
Now, don't be too concerned about that, though, because that's happened before.
In the greatest generation, we were all that was left too.
All that was left of Western civilization and stood between us and Hirohito and Hitler and Mussolini was us.
So other previous generations were the terminal generation, and they answered the call, they were up to the task, right?
We need to follow their example.
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Hi Charlie.
Hi, Steve.
Um, I would love to know your thoughts on the idea of corporate social responsibility.
So do large-scale companies that affect lots of people's lives have um an obligation to weigh in on social and political issues, or would everyone just be better off if they just stuck to selling.
I mean, I don't know if they could agree with us or not.
That's kind of what it comes down to.
I mean, first of all, I don't believe there's any such thing as the secular, and there are no neutral spaces.
All right.
If if if anything I said tonight, you will not remember.
Please remember this and take this with you, all right.
Someone will always rule, something will always be worshipped.
Iron law of the universe.
Someone will always rule, something will always be worshipped.
So in the last generation, secularism was introduced to disarm us.
And to make us think, yeah, our schools could just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, basic skills, and get the Christianity out of there.
That was all done to remove us so that the new religion could take its place.
All right?
And and and you see this in Europe.
About two percent of France is evangelical.
The old Catholic cathedrals are now either strip malls, vacant or mosques, because someone will always rule and something will always be worshipped, right?
So that applies to the corporate sector as well.
All right, and and this is where, you know, listen, I don't want to be smirch rush, his brother's a good friend of mine, none of us would have our jobs without him.
But this is where my Christian faith has changed me as a conservative, and I frankly sound more like JD Vance now than I sounded when I was a rush baby 30 years ago.
Because Rush used to say the only job of a corporation is to produce a profit for its investors.
And I was like, yeah, because I believed that there were moral neutral spaces.
No, there's not.
You've heard people say you can't legislate you can't legislate morality.
It's the only thing you can legislate.
Every piece of legislation has a moral basis to it.
It's just a matter of whether or not it's actually moral or not.
Well, you want a theocracy.
Every government that's ever existed has been a theocracy.
It's just a matter of who the Theo is and whether they are really the Theo or not.
Okay?
And so we have to get out of our heads that there are going to be neutral spaces.
There aren't.
We are also beyond a culture war now.
We're in a cold civil war now.
That's where we're at.
With the the social compact, meaning that which binds a people together before they they confirm it in a constitution.
If you've been married, you and your spouse had a social compact before you went to the altar.
The things that bound you together were already determined.
That wedding is not what determined those things, it's the confirmation of them, right?
So the social compact is broken.
And so we're now in a we're in a cold civil war, and just as it was either going to be the West or the Soviet Union, it will be our worldview or theirs.
It's a steel cage match.
Two worldviews are walking in, only one's coming out.
Now, I don't know about everybody else in this room.
I kind of like wars better when my side wins and their side loses, all right?
And so therefore, we're gonna have to recognize there are no neutral spaces.
Corporations will either promote their values or the our values or the values of the spirit of the age.
There is no neutrality now.
We're either selling Michael Sam jerseys or Tim Tebow jerseys.
There's no in between.
So make up your mind and fight accordingly.
And I'll add to that the only disagreement I have is that there's actually two uh allied ideologies that are trying to squeeze the West.
And one of my I just stumbled into this, I guess, because I think the church is so neutered, and I think Steve will agree.
The the theological um misunderstanding fear around Islam with Christians is so scary.
Like, okay, 9-11 happened, and everyone talked about Islam for like a decade, and now for the last decade, we're like, oh, we can get along with Islam.
Like hold on.
There is an Islamic takeover of the West that is happening simultaneously with a secular, and I call it the Great Squeeze, the red green alliance, the Marxists and the Islamists and the Muhammadans are coming together to simultaneously choke out Christendom or Western civilization.
And we've gotten really good at criticizing secularism.
I gotta give us credit.
Like we're good at that.
We are wholly unequipped at criticizing Islam.
I agree.
Like, we don't know what the Hadith is.
We don't know what the Hajj is.
We don't know the difference between the Quran or Shia or Sunni.
And it's about time you start learning.
Because if I just came from London a couple weeks ago.
I debated at Oxford and Cambridge.
Maybe you saw the video.
It was mostly mostly peaceful.
And Oxford, Oxford's coming out in a couple days.
And that is a conquered country.
And it's a city full of contradictions.
You have Yemeni, Omani, Pakistani, Afghanistan.
I mean, it is completely Islamic with gay pride flags everywhere.
Well, that makes sense, it makes perfect sense.
Because it's no different than two enemies that have taken over a land and they have a peace treaty.
I won't take down your gay stuff.
You won't go, and you just kind of say, but we're not gonna, we're not gonna allow the Westerners, the native Britons, any voice.
So we understand that it's like a peace treaty between two different competing forces, no different than Hitler and Mussolini or Hitler in Imperial Japan.
So all that to say, we have to become more equipped, and everybody, it is so glaring.
This is it is actually easier to make the theological argument against Islam to the church than even the secular one.
Because we we know this.
We it it's it's the it's the son of Hagar, it is Ishmael, it is prophesied.
We know what they believe, and it's not what we believe at all.
And we could see it by their fruit.
50 plus Islamic countries and Christians aren't moving there, but they're all moving to our countries.
They don't believe in separation of mosque and state, they don't believe in private property life like we do, or freedom of speech or blasphemy laws, anyway.
So a lot that I can go there.
I just want to make sure, and it's just a pet project of mine.
I sent out a tweet the other day.
I said, Islam is incompatible with Western civilization.
60 million people saw that tweet.
Because I think I really struck a nerve because people are afraid to say that.
Let me say it again.
I'm not saying that you might not have good friends that are Muslims.
My primary care doctor is Muslim.
He's a moderate Muslim, he's amazing, Dr. Zudi Jasper.
You might know him.
Great guy.
That's not the point.
The point is Islam as a governing philosophy.
Is it compatible with the West?
And it's completely at odds with Christendom.
It's about time we start waking up to it.
Can I add one thing to what he just said?
Because I I want to make sure this if if right wing watch or any of those uh periodicals are watching.
Okay, this is just so you guys know, this is the part you should be sending your press release out about.
I'm gonna make your job easier for you.
Okay.
So just to add kids.
Yes, exactly.
Just to add to that, just as we have denominations, so does hell.
So just as we have denominations and have vehement arguments, because sometimes you'll hear conservatives say things like, well, you're holding up your queers for Palestine sign.
Have you ever tried being a queer in Palestine?
As if we like got them in some like cosmic hypocrisy they never understood or didn't know, right?
No.
What the they're part of the the same axis?
All right, hell has denominations too.
So that's why the picture from Boulder, Colorado over the weekend, with the bare chested Egyptian illegal alien, bragging about the scorched march from his Molotov cocktails on the sidewalk.
Did you guys see what was over his shoulder?
Gay cracking.
Not just that, even a tranny flag.
A tranny flag on a government building over his shoulder flying proudly.
Let me tell you, there's a that you don't get one half of that picture without the other.
And the thing you need to understand about Islam too, there is no love your neighbor as you love yourself in Islam.
So when Charlie says things like Islam is not compatible with Western civilization, well, what does that mean then?
You guys are gonna criminalize my religion, you're gonna eat.
No, we're not gonna we can't we won't do to you what you do what you do to us because we have to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
Alright?
So, no, we will grant you your you're made in the image of God too.
We will grant you your God-given rights, the accommodations that you would not grant us, but you cannot use your God-given rights in order to spread and influence our institutions for a false God.
Amen.
That is where we will draw the line.
We'll get to this question, and I'm gonna make a prediction.
If there, if if God will rise up a generation of truth tellers, the greatest revival that yet is to happen is Muslim the Christian.
They still honor Jesus, they still have some canonical familiarity.
Islam to Christianity will be one of the greatest moves of God in the next 100 years.
Mark it down, write it, and go to work on it.
I'm telling you, it's gonna happen.
Yes.
Hello, thank you guys for coming tonight.
Uh Steve, I loved your testimony and learning about your radical transformation.
What words of encouragement would you give to those who desire a change in their life but don't know where to start?
All right.
Um to me, you cannot have a more intimate relationship with God initially than with his word.
And I I'm gonna sound like a broken record, but it is the only perfect thing on the earth.
And I mentioned a name earlier, Adrian Rogers.
And when he told a story about when he first got into ministry, he did an old-fashioned Baptist tent revival, and like nobody came.
And he thought maybe I wasn't called to the ministry, maybe this is what I'm supposed to do.
I'm very discouraged.
So he said, I wouldn't recommend you do this, but I took my Bible and I went out in the woods, and I said, Lord, I need to hear a word from you.
If you have truly called me into the ministry, I'm gonna open up this Bible, and when I look down, it better speak to me.
And he randomly opened his Bible, and we looked down, and it was a verse in Ezekiel where the prophet says, Though they are a wicked and stiff-necked people, they will know that a prophet was among them.
And he said, Wow, that told me right away.
My job is not the results.
My job is just to deliver the message, right?
But he got that intimacy because he opened God's word with an expectation that God had something to say.
And that would be my encouragement for everyone within the sound of our voice.
You're watching this in here or later online.
If you want a more intimate relationship with God, open his word with the expectation he has something to say.
Amen.
Thank you.
Look, I want to get to two more.
So here and here.
Yes, sir.
Really quick.
Yeah, question for Steve.
Uh, buy, sell, or hold.
Nefarious part two, or are you in a candlelight pinner with Lindsay Graham?
You know, I'm actually wearing a suit coat that a tailor at Jack Hibbs Church had customized for me years a few years ago with the nefarious uh movie stuff in it.
So we are working on the sequel as we speak.
Um, so apparently, you know, I've got more trips to the ER in the in the in the next few years.
So tell them really quick about the movie and the spiritual warfare associated.
Oh, I mean, everything I mean, people nearly died, murdered.
Um, the movie, the devil did not want that movie to come out and did everything he could.
But you know what?
Let me do this.
Because whenever we talk about spiritual warfare, we always talk about the ominous part.
Let me share a quick story with you guys about how it's waged on the other side and how we win.
So we got done making the movie and finding an editor who could do a Christian horror film was not an easy thing to find.
And our first editor bombed, and the assembly and the and the first rough cut he sent us, they didn't want to show me as the producer because they thought this movie is terrible.
And so one day in the middle of my show, I get an email during commercial break from a guy named Brian Jeremiah Smith.
He says, You don't know me, I'm a believer, never miss an episode of your show.
I've been waiting for this movie nefarious.
I just got laid off at Netflix as their top editor.
Uh, because um I'm the only editor in the whole company, didn't take the jab.
And they were gonna fire me, but then the Supreme Court just said they couldn't do that.
And so now they don't know what to do with me, so they put me on indefinite paid leave.
I'm sure it's too late to help you with your movie.
But here's my resume.
And if you need any help one day on a future project, let me know.
I opened the attachment, his resume is all in the genre we're working on right now.
And I sent it over to my my product my producer team and said, we need to get on this guy.
They they met with him right away, and we're they were like, we can't afford this guy.
But here's the thing.
Netflix had him on, paid leave.
So, so we paid him what we could.
Netflix picked up the tab, and the scripture that says the wealth of the wicked will be stored for the stored up for the righteous.
This was fulfilled right there in our hearing.
I love it.
Last question, yes, ma'am.
Love that.
Hi, my name's Ashley.
Um, Steve, my parents are huge fans of the don't stop talking about you.
So it's so cool that you're here.
My question is for both of you.
You're both in conservative media.
What's the biggest challenge you're seeing, and what are you doing to face that and overcome it?
Real quick, the hardest challenge is knowing what information is even true to comment on.
When I first got into this, just as one example, when I first got into this business, I mean, I went to the Gospel Coalition website every day as a as a must-read to get prepared.
Now I wouldn't have my dog uh defecate on it.
All right.
So, I mean, knowing what is actually I have to do so much of my own homework and verification of information Now, to even know what is true that I'm commenting on.
That's the biggest challenge that I have right now.
Yeah, the biggest challenge that I have is I just hate seeing some of the uh petulant infighting.
My new thing is that if you have more than like two hours screen time on your social media apps, like there's something wrong.
Go for a walk and go by a lake, you know, get a girlfriend.
Like, there's just like chronically online is very bad.
And I think it creates a willingness to try to have a more provocative take and be over the top in a way that I think is somewhat destructive to the movement.
