Charlie's Martyrdom and Revival + Luxury Beliefs and Zohran Mamdani
Pastors across America are reporting real surges in attendance, interest, and spiritual energy the past two months, and it all goes back to one cause: The immense inspiration and example provided by Charlie Kirk's heroic life and martyrdom. Pastors Greg Laurie and Lucas Miles talk about the Charlie revival. Plus, Charlie's final long-form interview guest, Rob Henderson, returns to discuss the election of Zohran Mamdani and how he reflects the "luxury beliefs" of higher-income New Yorkers. 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.
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All right, welcome back, hour two of the Charlie Kirk Show.
I'm Andrew Colvett, executive producer of this fine show.
Joined as always.
Well, not as always.
You've been traveling a bit lately.
Blake Neff, one of the producers here, as well as Rob Henderson, author of Troubled and substack writer of Rob Henderson's newsletter.
Correct?
Did I get that right?
Yep, that's right.
All right.
So, Rob, I'm so glad you're here for multiple reasons.
I'll just say the top two right now.
You were Charlie's last long-form interview.
Yeah.
Which is, which is a, I don't even know how that makes you feel.
I don't know how it makes me feel, but it's just noteworthy.
And tell us about meeting Charlie.
I don't think you'd met him before you came in.
Yeah, that's right.
No, I told him, I think when I first shook his hand and then when we parted ways, that it was an honor to meet him.
And now it was just a surreal moment when I learned that I was his last long form interview, you know, because some time had passed between our discussion and then what had happened later.
And I presumed, you know, he's an extremely busy guy.
But yeah, I learned the same day as everyone else.
Oh, this was his last long form.
And, you know, then I felt this internal, I don't know what it was, this grieving.
Like, all of the feelings of that day came back of, you know, meeting him, knowing him, and then realizing like, you know, that was the last long discussion that he'd had.
And it made me think of how he was during that interview, as he is in all interviews, you know, inquisitive, curious, sharp, thoughtful.
You know, I'd been interviewed by a lot of different people.
And one thing that stood out to me is how sharp he was.
I would reference a study or a book, and I would see him writing things down.
He would ask follow-up questions.
And he asked me questions that I'd never been asked before in other interviews.
And I could see, like, you know, it's different to see it, you know, like everyone else on YouTube and the podcast.
Like, yeah, he's a great interviewer.
But then to see him at work in person was just amazing.
He was such a professional.
Yeah, and I'm so glad it was, I mean, I'm not glad it was his last interview.
It was a good topic for this final interview because it was hitting on some of the stuff that mattered most to him, not just in an immediate politics sense, but the really big picture things.
You know, Erica said in her speech at the memorial that if Charlie had entered politics, his biggest goal would be revive the American family.
And we talked a lot about the state of the family, the success sequence, what the impact is that we don't have intact families in America anymore and what could conceivably bring those back.
Absolutely.
Those are the really enduring issues he cared a lot about.
And that's a multi-pronged issue, right?
There's an economic front, there's a values front, there's a faith front, there's a policy front, obviously.
And you are sort of famous because you coined this term luxury beliefs, right?
And I remember you guys' interview.
I actually watched it happen live over, they connected me.
So I was watching it on a Zoom feed.
And, you know, I think it's really key that you're here today.
And Blake was like, hey, you know, he's going to be in town.
We should have him back in.
And it's going to be the day after Mom Donnie likely becomes the next mayor or gets elected to become the next mayor of New York City.
So when you pair some of the writing and the thinking and the work that you've done on luxury beliefs and you think about that in relation to Mom Donnie just getting elected in New York City, I mean, he's the living embodiment of what it means to have a luxury belief, I think, in some ways.
Or you could argue the opposite, right?
Like his supporters are going to argue the opposite.
Yeah.
Well, you know, one thing that I had spoken about with Charlie was, you know, I'd written multiple pieces expressing my concerns about the possible election of Mom Donnie.
And in one of those pieces, I said, this is, you know, think about the most obnoxious person you could possibly run into at an Ivy League Hamas encampment.
And, you know, what should come to mind is someone like Mamdani.
Like, that is the person.
And he, you know, at that time, he was about to be elected.
And now he is going to be the mayor.
And yeah, it was alarming.
And he is the luxury beliefs candidate.
You know, socialism has always appealed to highly educated people.
And he is unapologetic about it.
And a lot of his ideas globalize the Intifada, city-run grocery stores, free public transport.
A lot of, I mean, these ideas are just empirically going to make things worse.
But in his mind and in the mind of a lot of his supporters who are so disconnected from reality, they've just decided to go this route, luxury beliefs, which I define as ideas and opinions that confer status on the credentialed and the affluent while inflicting costs on the lower classes.
And a core feature of a luxury belief is that the believer is sheltered from the consequences of his or her beliefs.
And of course, Mamdani is kind of an archetype of this type of person because he was raised by a filmmaker and an Ivy League professor.
He went to Bowdoin, which his alma mater has more students from families in the top 1% of the income scale than the entire bottom 60%.
He spent his whole life cocooned in affluence.
And now he's positioning himself as a man of the people, a man of the working class.
But that was not the demographic that came out for him.
The exit polling showed that when you break down the results by education level, 57% of college graduates came out for Momdani versus only 38% of working class, non-college educated voters.
So one thing you might have some insight on, do you think it is a sort of cocooned elite that is voting for him?
Because another argument people have made is, yeah, they're higher on the income scale, but they're also the very precarious high-income ones where maybe they make a six-figure income, but they also can't afford a flat in New York.
They can't live the way they probably lived growing up in suburbia with their parents.
And so they feel very downwardly mobile, even if they're in the upper half or upper fifth of New York's incomes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and I've been posting about this too, that obviously, you know, Mamdani did not win the working class and people have countered by saying, you know, like, yeah, there's their, maybe they have college degrees and they're comfortable, but they don't see a path on to owning a house or something along those lines.
And I just think it's important to point out that there is a very strong difference between actual poverty versus the kind of genteel poverty of a young person, a young college educated person in New York.
Because yes, maybe at the moment they're struggling, but they have options.
They don't have to live there.
They have a degree.
They have contacts.
They have cultural capital.
They have options in a way that a blue-collar working class person in New York City doesn't.
And so they're not in the same boat.
You know, people will say, oh, well, yeah, I have a degree, but I'm still working class.
Like, that's not how sociologists would define class.
Yeah, let's put up 305.
This is which best describes your education.
So Mom Donnie got 39% of never attended college.
If you go all the way up to advanced degree, he got 57% of bachelor degree and 57% of advanced degree.
So he is essentially, but here's what's interesting.
I mean, he's pushing forward tax hikes for wider and wealthier neighborhoods.
But, you know, even Kathy Hochl's saying he's not going to be able to get these things done.
But he's promising free stuff.
This is free stuff populism.
You could call it socialism.
I mean, we could quibble on terms, but essentially this is a left-wing populist candidate, right?
What is it about these people that do not, that they don't seem to make the connection that he's going to cost them?
Is it just basically, I want to help the lower class, and this is how I'm going to do it?
Like, what's the motivation behind people that he's actually going to target?
His policies are going to hurt, but they're voting for him.
Right.
Well, I think what's going on here is that people never consider themselves a member of the elite or the upper class.
It's always the people who are ahead of them.
Those are the people who are going to be taxed or who are going to have to pay excess penalties.
And they themselves will be sort of safeguarded from this.
Sometimes I'll talk about if you track Bernie Sanders' speeches over the last 10 years, back in 2015 during the Democratic primaries, he would always talk about the millionaires and the billionaires and the millionaire class and the billionaire class.
And then you go through 2017, 2019, and now he just talks about billionaires because at some point in the last 10 years, he became a millionaire and now he exempted himself.
And now, no, the millionaires are going to be safe.
But now we're just going to go after the billionaires.
If your family, your dad is worth $100 million, he's going to be protected because he doesn't have a billion dollars.
It feels like there's something a little bit different with Mamdani versus Bernie Sanders' socialism of 2016 or 2020.
And I think it's what comes up when people describe him as kind of having this third worldist edge, which partly that's just that he is of immigrant origin.
But I think there's, maybe you can weigh in on this, there's something to the idea that he represents this attitude that does want to punish the West, sort of.
Like there's almost this attitude of wanting to lay low, you know, like historic, you know, the wealthier, whiter neighborhoods, as it were.
I mean, it's like a grievance.
It's some sort of grievance.
It's a grievance.
This is a full mask off moment where he's laying bare the actual motivations of the, we could call it DSA or the communists.
And he's not hiding from it.
What do you make of that?
I mean, this is a really, it does feel like a mask off moment where they realize, at least in a city like New York City, that they can be outright about what their true motivations are, right?
There's no sort of dog and pony show.
There's no sort of words for everyone thing anymore.
It is much more overtly.
We're going to hurt that for some people who deserve.
Yeah, you know, some people call this the Green-Red Alliance, right?
Green meaning sort of Islamist and then red meaning communist.
And there's this sort of anti-colonialist streak.
Mamdani's father recently wrote a book singing the praises of Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator who was responsible for massacres of his people.
And because he was on the progressive left, and I don't know, maybe that wasn't real socialism or whatever it was, right?
There's always this apologetic stance whenever these ideologies go awry.
But yeah, I think that attitude, right?
That the, you know, go back to the Ivy League and Moss encampment type of person where they want to punish the West and they believe that, you know, there's some kind of a restitution that's due.
And, you know, this is one path to get there.
But what's interesting to me is that, you know, if you break down the exit polling data from the election, Momdani also, he won white voters.
Barely.
Yes.
And by the way, if Sliwa wouldn't have gotten, I think he got 8% of the white vote.
Sliwa and Cuomo would have, but the fact that it was basically, they split it between Cuomo and Momdani.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
And, you know, many of those white voters are, you know, they went through the education system and they were taught that, you know, the West is irredeemably flawed and that we need to revamp the entire system, that we, you know, need to change everything.
Well, here's a clip from Charlie, actually, 254, talking about just that.
254.
New York City is about to elect a Muslim socialist and went totally viral.
People said, what are you talking about?
No one's even heard of this guy.
His base of support are the people that have been educated to a place of stupidity.
I wrote the entire book, The College Scam, for a reason because I said the colleges are introducing idea toxins and philosophical pathogens that will deteriorate and will destabilize the United States of America.
His base are the people that have the most college degrees.
So basically, the people that are the richest, the most sheltered, and the most out of touch with the everyday concerns.
And that's really the dynamic that you're seeing: you're seeing people without college degrees went Cuomo, went Sliwa.
Yeah, and the people with the degrees and with the advanced degrees went for Momdani.
And I haven't seen any data on this, but I would be willing to bet some non-trivial sum of money that if you looked at the selectivity of the college, how expensive the college was, the more expensive the college, the more likely they were to vote for Momdani.
You know, the state schools and others, I don't think those people were nearly as enthusiastic.
And you see that pattern all throughout the higher education system that the more expensive the college, the more likely you are to see encampments and protests and locking themselves in the president's office and agitating.
And those are the schools.
I mean, they select for that type of person.
You know, the Ivy League schools have their choice for, you know, they have thousands of applicants who have perfect SAT scores.
And that's what they're, that's not what they're optimizing for.
They're optimizing for revolutionaries.
This was made explicit.
I think in 2020 or 2021, Yale, one of their admissions staff, openly stated that we are selecting for students who are, you know, want to revamp society, want to change everything, have this forward-thinking vision, you know, this kind of coded language, but essentially they were selecting for people who were on the far left.
You know, you guys know about the Ivies more than I would.
You guys are both Ivy Leagues, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Regrettably.
Whatever.
You guys are part of the problem.
I want you to know that.
That does seem interesting, though, that it's almost like it's, I think of how in Mexico, you know, the PR party, a party of like institutional revolution or like perpetual revolution, that to define sort of a certain class of American society, the elite educated part, as you definitionally have to sort of want to tear down or radically change society.
And it just strikes me as something that could be really destructive over time if, you know, okay, well, we did the easy things to tear down.
What are the harder things to tear down now?
And I think of that with Mamdani, where he wants to close Rikers and mess up New York's public schools.
There's a lot of damage he can do to that city.
Right.
Instead of just being a good steward, right?
Like being like, I mean, that's, you know, ideally, you would want your elites and aspirational elites to be good stewards for the city, the country that they're governing.
And instead, it's, well, let me find all the flaws and then introduce all these policies that have historically always failed.
All right.
So this has been, I mean, I think the luxury reliefs piece plays into this beautifully.
So I'm so glad you're here.
But there's also this concept of a dark triad that we should talk about.
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Go for it, Blake.
All right, we're talking about dark triads.
Yeah, so we were saying, you know, this is a mask-off moment, but actually, what if the mask is on?
How much can we, how I guess, how genuine is Zoron Mamdani?
And are there some of these psychological concepts we've talked about?
To me, he strikes me as a fundamentally sort of phony person.
Like he's adopted.
I think he's a con man.
He's adopted this ideology because it is sort of the uniform of being this, you know, Ivy League immigrant type person that he is.
Well, I think he's embarrassed by that.
I think he's trying to, he's trying to front like he's part of the working poor that he says he's the champion of.
But I'm sorry.
And I want you to explain what Dark Triad is.
But you do not code switch.
You do not accent switch like Zoron Mamdani does.
But if you haven't seen the videos, you got to go find Mamdani switching accents constantly.
He will be anything to anybody if he thinks he can get ahead.
I mean, that's pure narcissism and manipulation.
But explain what the Dark Triad is and what do you see in Mamdani?
Yeah.
Well, so last night in Mamdani's victory speech, the first words out of his mouth, he quoted the American socialist Eugene Debs, who's an early 20th century socialist.
And so, you know, it's sort of mask off and mask on, right?
Like he's not going to moderate.
He is openly quoting socialists.
You know, you go back through his Twitter feed and he quotes people like Marx and so on.
So I don't, you know, he's not hiding it.
But it's an interesting question about the authenticity of his beliefs.
So I've written at length about the Dark Triad, which is a personality trait, or rather, a constellation of three different personality traits.
So the Dark Triad, first you have narcissism, which is entitled self-importance.
Then you have psychopathy, which is basically a callousness, a cynicism, disregard for other people.
And then you have Machiavellianism, which is strategic exploitation and duplicity.
And, you know, those three traits, you know, the core of these traits are antagonism, you know, willingness to manipulate, relatively unfeeling, and also this kind of performative aspect where there's often a kind of a horrific void beneath people who have elevated dark triad traits and there is no actual identity underlying it.
They will shape-shift.
They will behave in ways that will garner them approval, material rewards, social rewards, professional rewards, sexual rewards, and political rewards as well.
And how could that man, if we are correct, how could that manifest now that he's actually the mayor of the city and he's not just a candidate?
Well, so generally, I would assume that most elected officials probably have some elevated levels of narcissism, but it's those other two traits that are more alarming.
Psychopathy is often described as the darkest of the three dark triad traits because that often predicts interpersonal conflict and violence and criminality and that kind of thing.
But how would this manifest itself in running a city?
Well, I think very rapidly you'll find that once people acquire power, their coalitions start to fray.
Because if you are a leader, you need to have strong alliances.
You need to build trust.
And if you are high on the dark triad, you can build coalitions temporarily if you have an end goal in mind.
But often, once those people acquire power, the corruption starts to proliferate and people will start to abandon ship.
So we'll see what happens there.
But one characteristic of the Dark Triad as well is that they will essentially adopt opinions and views that will make them look good.
And this is often calculated and explicit.
And I think this makes sense when you track Mom Donnie's evolution.
He's a millennial.
He's been online his whole life.
You can see that he would post the kind of woke boilerplate nonsense five years ago.
Defund the police is a queer feminist issue and all that kind of stuff.
It was very, you know, there was that picture of him with his gloved hand giving the Christopher Columbus statue the middle finger during the peak of the pandemic.
And saying, the caption was tear it down.
So he was very much in that vein of tear the statues down, very much in the kind of woke revolutionary mindset.
And once he saw an opening to become the mayor, he pivoted toward more sort of left-wing populism, as you guys are saying, pivoting over to affordability and concentrating on affordability.
And whenever he's pressed on his previous statements, you know, his kind of Marxist and Marxist Jason statements, he says, oh, I'm just, I'm just focused on affordability.
And then five minutes later, he'll say, oh, I'm going to shut down the gifted programs of the New York City high schools.
And I'm thinking, okay, what does that have to do with affordability?
So I think you're absolutely right.
You're going to see a shift in tone.
And I don't think we have this video yet.
So I apologize.
I'm just going to read this.
CNN Van Jones last night says, I think Mom Donnie, we saw on the Cam Train campaign trail, calmer, warmer, more embracing, wasn't present in that victory speech.
He missed a chance to bring more people into the tent.
His tone was sharp, almost yelling.
And he says, the warm, open, working-class guy wasn't on stage tonight.
And you saw that towards the end of his campaign where you started seeing a harsher tone when he thought he had it in the bag.
Right.
Yeah.
And he started to castigate people for, you know, talking about his aunt after 9-11 and this kind of thing.
He started to use guilt and manipulation again.
You saw those traits surface.
Go ahead.
So, one last question.
You live in New York right now, in the five boroughs, correct?
That's correct.
So are you in for the long haul?
Or what would it take for you to take flight?
You know, I just renewed my lease.
This was maybe three or four months ago when I still had some hope.
And now I'm locked in for that reason.
I plan to stay as a resident.
I imagine I'll be traveling more frequently.
Obviously, if the city starts to rapidly deteriorate, which some people are predicting, then I may just leave early.
But I'm in a position to do so.
And so is everyone else who, or maybe the people who voted for him.
Luxury belief.
Like they're the ones who will, you know, I tweeted this the other day, half jokingly, was, you know, you can ruin your city with this one weird trick, which is create a hub where lots of money can be made.
Progressive college graduates will flock there, and then they'll start to vote for the policies that have historically failed.
And then when things get really bad, they can leave.
And you saw a version of that happen in San Francisco.
Yeah, it's really, it's interesting with a city like New York because it does have a long history.
It is a wonderful city in so many ways, right?
I mean, probably our audience is groaning at me saying that.
But if you hang out in New York, it's a city that works.
It's a city that's like massively compact, but you can get places, enjoy good meals.
I mean, the cultural aspects, there's so many things to actually really enjoy about New York.
And so, and people have histories there and family histories there.
And it's like, you know, a lot of people are going to stay and fight.
And you don't want a country where people have to flee their home, where their families are, where their grandparents are buried.
You don't want that country.
And increasingly, in places like California and New York, conservatives or just sort of pro-America, pro-capitalist people are increasingly being confronted with a very difficult decision about what to do with their families and their and I hate that.
We don't want that country.
People should be able to live and thrive where they were born.
Yeah, no, I agreed.
And most people do.
You know, there was a study a few years ago, which found that the average American lives 17 miles from their mother.
You know, most people do.
You know, they want roots, they want to stay put.
Cities are weird because there's a lot of transplants and a lot of churn.
But New York is a great city.
You know, I remember as a kid growing up watching The Apprentice, and it took place in New York.
And you would see Donald Trump saying, you know, America is a great country and New York's a great city.
This is where the American dream was born with all this, you know, the camera angles of the Statue of Liberty.
And it was really, as a kid, New York was like this.
It was iconic.
It was a dream.
It was also just a few years after 9/11.
And so, you know, it's just amazing.
Not even San Francisco has ever elected a socialist.
So this is just surreal for me.
We've got to rotate in our next wave of guests, but I just want to thank you for coming in and encourage everyone to check out his interview with Charlie.
It came out on Sunday.
It's Luxury Beliefs with Rob Henderson, Charlie's last long-form interview.
Give it a look and give a look to his sub stack as well.
It's the Rob Henderson newsletter.
So pretty easy to remember that.
And check out his book, too.
Yeah.
Thanks, man.
Thanks.
Great having you.
Thanks, Black.
Yeah.
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All right, so as I said, Pastor Greg Lorry is in the house.
Pastor, you are one of the most, I'm going to say it, you're going to, you don't have to say it, but you're one of the most famous evangelists in the country.
You do Harvest Crusades at Angel Stadium all over the country as well.
Thousands and thousands of people come to faith in Jesus Christ.
You know, you knew Charlie.
You came to our events.
You've been supportive.
You do things the right way.
You have a long history and a really thriving church in Southern California, multiple campuses.
I've known you for years.
I just want you to help make sense of this moment.
You know, a lot of people talking about revival.
We've seen revival.
We've also seen opposition.
The floor is yours.
I mean, help us put eyes to this.
Well, I'm reminded of that first line of a tale of two cities.
It was a best of times.
It was a worst of times.
You know, both things can happen simultaneously.
And these are dark times, but they're very bright times.
And there are signs of revival.
And I don't say that lightly because I was around for the last great spiritual awakening, the Jesus movement.
You know, I didn't realize it at the time, Andrew, but I had a front row seat to an actual spiritual awakening, the last great awakening.
And of all places, in California.
And so, you know, looking back in retrospect, and we made a movie about it called Jesus Revolution, or actually John Irwin, the director, had the vision to make this film.
And so people say, do you think we're having another Jesus revolution?
I said, well, I see promising signs.
But now looking at the last just few months, I would say I see more than promising signs.
I see things happening that have not happened for a long time and things that have never happened at all.
Take baptisms, for instance.
You know, back in the heyday of the Jesus movement, we would go to a little spot called Pirates Cove and baptize a lot of people.
But in the last just few years, we've seen over 20,000 people baptized at that same spot.
The movie had a little cause and effect.
It was sort of like a case of, you know, they say a movie or whatever, art imitates life.
In this case, life is imitating art imitating life.
People said, oh, I want to be baptized in that spot, but this is a phenomenon.
And of course, since Charlie was killed, and I hate to say that, but, you know, we have to say this.
And I think it's more than just saying he died.
He was murdered.
And we all know that.
But and I'm, you know, I'm humbled and honored to be in the studio where he would sit in the seat right next to me and do what he did so well.
But it's like rocket fuel has been poured on a pre-existing fire.
And I see it intensifying.
In fact, Wall Street Journal, you probably saw this article, even commented on the upsurge of Bible sales.
And they directly attribute this to Charlie's death.
And so, you know, Andrew, you may remember that our son Christopher died in an automobile accident 16 years ago.
And so I think when something tragic happens to Christians like that, we try to, like, why?
Why did God let this happen?
And sometimes some Christians, well-meaning, but I think misdirected, will try to find cause and effect.
Like, this happened, so this other thing will happen.
I think we need to separate them, then look at them together.
Charlie being killed was a horrible tragedy, the end.
But despite a horrible tragedy, God is doing a mighty work.
And we could look at Stephen, which is a direct parallel.
The death of Stephen was a tragedy.
And to the point we even read that godly men mourned over him.
You know, so it was a tragedy for the church.
Yet the gospel went out with greater power after the death of Stephen because the church finally got the memo.
Oh, yeah, we're not supposed to hang around in Jerusalem in a holy huddle.
We're supposed to spread across the world and preach the gospel.
And that's what happened after Stephen's death.
So we can see a horrible tragedy that God is using.
Not long before Charlie was killed, he was asked, what is your favorite Bible passage?
And you remember, it's Romans 8, 28.
God can cause all things to work together for good to those that love God.
And as Joseph said to his brothers who betrayed him, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
So we see God working despite the tragedy.
And I like to make that distinction, despite the tragedy.
And I'm thinking if I'm Charlie in heaven, I would rejoice knowing that this was happening after I was called home to glory.
And so I think that's probably the greatest tribute that, you know, this is a man that lived a godly life, a life of integrity, a life of passion, a life of purpose.
And a lot of people who never even heard his name before are now going, who is this guy?
And what did he actually believe?
And they're not believing the caricature of Charlie presented by people that hate him and hate what he stands for.
But they're checking out his own videos and seeing he was actually very civil, very patient.
People would insult him to his face and he would just listen and then he would patiently respond.
And, you know, so they're seeing what this guy really stood for.
And so I think that we are seeing revival-like things happen right now.
And there's no question that Charlie's death has had an effect on this.
That's beautifully said.
I think you summed up so much of what I'm seeing, what I'm noticing.
But I'm curious, Lucas, like you are the tip of the spear when it comes to TPSA faith and building out, you know, the church network.
And we've seen this tremendous growth.
I think we went last last data point I saw, and it's probably bigger than that now, but it was, yeah, we had 4,000 churches in our network.
Now we have over 8,000.
So tell us what you're seeing on that front.
Yeah, I mean, first off, I will say, as, you know, because I am a pastor myself, I still have a church in Indiana and then also head up the faith department here.
And that was something that Charlie and I, you know, as we were kind of designing my role, felt like if I'm going to call on the nation's pastors, it's important to do so, you know, as a pastor.
And my own church has doubled in size during this time period.
And I've heard that same report from churches throughout our network.
I mean, you know, in the last 60 days, countless text messages from pastors saying we're up 10%, we're up 15%, we're up 30%, we're up 40%.
You know, some churches that doubled.
And it's been absolutely remarkable to see.
And it's not, you can't fabricate revival like this.
You know, you can't throw advertising dollars and get just change hearts for people to start buying Bibles and showing up to church and everything else.
And it was, there was, you know, the catalyst was the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk.
And when Charlie, when Charlie lost his life and the instantaneous reaction, obviously grief, obviously horror, obvious, obvious, you know, pain, but the immediate aftermath was, I need Jesus.
And people just started showing up to church.
I mean, we had a guy who had never been to church in his entire life show up.
And, you know, I think the thing that this also does, and we had talked about this a little bit, is it drew a line in the sand for pastors.
If your pastor was silent during COVID, silent during all the trans stuff in the schools, now silent during the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk, you talked about that those righteous men, you know, grieved Stephen's death.
And we had a lot of clergy that did not even talk about this.
And just as a pastor, you know, how horrified I was to see, you know, other quote-unquote men of the cloth not know how to navigate that moment and to miss the opportunity for revival in this nation.
Well, and this is why I'm so glad to have you on, Greg, because, you know, I was talking with a pastor recently who said that he thought that there, I don't know if I can't remember if he said there was judgment on big Eva, big evangelicalism, or that the revival was going to bypass the pulpits this time.
And you're one of those pastors that I would not include in that prescription.
I think you have been faithful.
You have proclaimed the gospel.
You have been steady and consistent.
And so I guess my question out of that thought is, what does the church need to do to capture this moment, this energy?
Because I do think there is a potential where, you know, people were going to Charlie on social media.
They weren't necessarily, even in life, we saw that church attendance was starting to click up, that Bible sales were clicking up.
After years and years of decline, we saw that balance out.
So, what is your call to pastors that find themselves in a position to harness this energy?
Well, the problem, Andrew, is sometimes pastors are answering questions people are not asking, and they're not answering the questions that are being asked.
This is a moment in time, and we need to seize the moment.
And like you said, Lucas, so many people coming to church, and specifically young people.
And this is what I see as a parallel between this moment and the Jesus movement.
The Jesus movement was a youth revival.
And I see young people coming back.
Of course, we are already seeing this trend.
Charlie even talked about it.
Gen Z kids coming back to church and specifically Gen Z boys.
And that I've never heard of that before.
Because usually, let's be honest, women lead the way in spiritual things.
But for to see young men starting to come in, I think of voices like Charlie's and others that have, you know, Jordan Peterson, other voices that encourage men to embrace their masculinity, biblical masculinity.
But I think even more to be men of God.
And so I think this is a moment in time.
I don't think we can be neutral.
The culture has encroached on the church now.
Now they're coming into our world.
And we saw it with COVID and the shutdowns.
We certainly saw it in California.
Some churches shutting down, staying closed for months on end.
And what a mistake that was.
But also, you know, pushing trans issues.
And we need to speak out for these things.
I don't think we can say anymore to our congregants, well, just vote your conscience.
No, they need to vote biblically.
And as pastors, we have a responsibility to educate them biblically.
What does the Bible say about these things and offer theology without apology?
So, you know, even in the Democratic Party, they're decrying the extremism in it.
And that is what seems to be influencing the party more and more right now, as we've seen in the election in New York for mayor and other areas.
And so, okay, fine.
But we need to be overt and outfront and direct in what we believe.
And if our founding fathers had coward, we wouldn't have an America to celebrate this freedom in today like we have right now.
So this is a moment you've got to stand up because I want to encourage my fellow pastors to do that.
But here's the most important thing: preach the gospel.
You know, I interviewed Frank Turk the other day for my podcast, and he said, Charlie said to him, you know, what we do politically is it's small potatoes compared to the gospel.
And one of the last things Charlie talked about before he was killed was Jesus.
And he talked about that openly because that's why I didn't think it was fair to describe him a political activist.
I mean, in a way, he was that, of course.
But I saw him as a Christian leader that influenced everything that he did, including politics, as it should.
But I think that we need to preach the gospel boldly and call people to Christ.
I'm going to go to UVU on November 16th, and we're going to preach the gospel on that campus and call them to Christ.
If you're a listener to the Charlie Kirk show, you know that Charlie built an amazing community through conversation.
And that was online, that was in person, it was everywhere.
We're able to go very viral about what we're able to do on TikTok, billions and billions of views.
But it was one connection at a time.
TikTok offers opportunities for respectful exchanges of ideas.
And through that, opportunities for community, not to talk over each other, but to talk with each other.
On TikTok, you'll find creators who teach and encourage a carpenter passing on his craft, a mom explaining how to make a budget stretch, or a gardener showing us how to bring a backyard back to life.
Different stories, but the same drive.
The desire to connect and to understand.
That's what makes a strong community.
A common desire to connect, to find a way forward through respectful dialogue, building trust and feeling heard.
Freedom to speak what we know and hear each other out.
That's the power of TikTok.
It gives everyone a seat at the table, a place to speak, to listen, and to remind each other of what connection really looks like.
Conversation build connection, and connections build communities.
You're going back to UVU.
That's, I mean, I'll be honest with you.
I'm glad you're doing it and not me.
I don't think I'll ever go back.
I understand.
I don't think I ever will.
I flew there.
I was not there when it happened, and I flew there immediately, my wife and I.
And I mean, maybe God will change my heart, but I'm glad you're going back.
Well, there's a history to it.
We've been talking with some pastors in the area about coming and doing one of our crusades there.
And we tentatively committed to 2027.
But after Charlie was murdered, we contacted him and said, is there anything we can do?
They said, come now.
Can you come now?
Well, I said, let's just do it.
Let's go.
And we've never planned a crusade in six weeks, but that's exactly what we've done.
And now it's even closer.
And we're going to go into the arena on that campus.
And I'm going to go with Phil Wickham and Chris Tomlin, both of who played at Charlie's Memorial Service.
And coming back to that, to not mention that memorial service that reached 100 million people.
120, actually.
120 million people and counting.
I'm sure.
And by the way, yeah, probably way more.
That was just, those are our streams that our tech team was running.
Like initial numbers on.
Yeah.
It's got to be multiples more at this point.
Well, that's unprecedented.
And, you know, not only to see people get up there, you know, preachers say these things, but to see people like Marco Rubio and Pete Hexeth and others who are influenced by the people.
John Jr.
I was going to say that.
He quoted more scripture than most pastors do on Sunday morning.
By the way, I saw the ad-lib.
I was in the back of the stage watching JD Vance's speech.
Yeah.
And you can always tell when they're going off script because the guys in the teleprompter.
The teleprompter is freaking out.
Like, where is he?
When he said, I've talked more about Jesus in the last two weeks than I have in my entire public life.
And I was just like, you could tell it was almost like the Holy Spirit was speaking to him in that moment.
I want to, I'm going to go, we're going to go there, right?
Because there's a lot of blessings right now.
There's a lot of momentum.
But then you see these distractions.
And you see, you know, people, all they want to talk about is they want to talk about Israel.
They want to talk about foreign policy.
There's this infighting that you're seeing within the church, within the conservative movement.
And, you know, I couldn't help but think about that as the results were coming in last night is that, man, if we could focus some of this energy on winning elections or, you know, building unity as opposed to division.
So, Lucas, you are at, in some ways, at the tip of the spear on some of this church-based stuff, right?
And there are factions.
There are people that want this group to say this and this group to proclaim this and draw a line in the sand and this.
How are you navigating this?
Because there's just a lot of infighting.
You know, anytime you work with pastors across different denominations, you have certain hot-button issues that make unity difficult, okay?
I shared with my staff, we all got together at the night of the memorial afterwards.
We got together for a dinner and just fellowship together and just kind of cried and prayed together.
And I told them, I said, this moment of unity that we're seeing right now, I want to prepare you for.
The enemy does not want to see this continue.
And there's a potential for, you know, the next phase is going to be factions and division and everything else that can potentially come because the enemy's predictable.
We're not unaware of his schemes in that way.
And so we're seeing this.
You know, the issue of Israel is obviously one of those.
You have, you know, there's other things like, you know, views of spiritual gifts and, you know, once saved, always saved, Calvinism versus Arminianism.
You know, we could look at those things.
But I think this issue of Israel has become a very big dividing point, you know, for people right now.
And unfortunately, the conversation is being driven really by people that aren't very theological.
They don't have a doctrinal approach to this.
They see this as there's only one or two options.
You're either, you know, taking money from Israel and you're bought and paid for, and that's why you're a dispensationalist, or your replacement theology and Israel doesn't matter at all.
And there's nothing.
From a theological standpoint, there's actually a wide spectrum.
You have radical dispensationalism on one side and you have replacement theology on the other side.
And across the spectrum, from a Christian vantage point, all of those views would actually have support for Israel.
They would actually have a positive view.
I'm so glad you're saying this.
And I don't mean to cut you off.
And so I'm sorry, Lucas, but this idea that you're either for or against the nation of Israel.
I'm like, do you have any idea how off-putting that binary is?
And that people on both ends of the spectrum that are pushing you to accept one or the other.
And I'm like, there's about 100 iterations between 100%.
You know, it's like, so I just, I think the whole discourse has been really tainted and corrupted, and it's not productive, actually.
The question, obviously, you know, defining Israel is a thing we have to do, recognizing their purpose and place in history, all these sorts of things.
And theologically, we have answers for that throughout this spectrum.
And so when we say, you know, the idea of what's God's view of Israel, the unifying view is this, you know, because we're not going to get dispensationalists and replacement theology guys to agree on everything theologically.
But what we can agree with is God loves people.
He's faithful.
He wants to see promises fulfilled.
And he wants to win over people for the sake of the gospel.
And when you start with that framework and then start building from there, these things start making a lot more sense as you navigate through it.
So, Pastor, the floor is yours on this very contentious issue.
All right.
Well, I am one of those dispensationalists, and I believe that God has placed the Jewish people in the land.
They're not colonizers.
They're the indigenous people of the land that God gave to them.
And he made promises to them.
And I believe God keeps his promises.
And when you read Romans 9 to 11, you see that he made a covenant with Israel.
And so I think that, yes, you have to understand Israel in the light of the Holocaust.
You know, when I was in Washington, D.C. recently, I went to the Holocaust Museum, and to think of the suffering these people have gone through.
And so they returned to their homeland against all odds.
And I believe also the prophetic time clock started ticking on May 14th, 1948, when Israel became a nation.
Having said that, that doesn't mean that I have to agree with everything that the modern state of Israel does, but I don't agree with everything that the United States does.
But I still support the Jewish people.
It is the land that God gave to them.
And I think that we should pray for them and stand by them because anti-Semitism is on the rise.
I just interviewed Marco Rubio at the State Department, and I raised this very question with him.
And I loved his response.
And it was that anti-Semitism is evil.
And so I think that we need the Jewish people are beginning to understand that their best friend is the evangelical Christian.
But we do ultimately pray without apology that they come to embrace Jesus as their messiah.
And the question is: okay, so not everybody's going to agree with what you just said.
How do we bring unity in spite of that?
So you said you're a dispensationalist.
There's a lot of young people that are very skeptical about our foreign policy when it comes to Israel.
All right.
And so we understand that theology can end up playing a role in foreign policy.
And I'm just trying to be ecumenical here.
So we've got 8,000 churches in our movement.
There's a lot of people that really.
There's a 3,000 views of Israel.
There's probably exactly.
So how do we, in this moment where this has become such a flashpoint, by the way, our voters are telling us or screaming at us that they want to focus on the economy, that they want to focus on affordability of housing.
They're sick of talking about foreign policy.
They're sick of us seemingly focusing on it.
Now, I think there's arguments that you need to bring to bring peace abroad so that you can sort of have you can focus on domestic issues and domestic tranquility.
JD Vance actually tweeted out something like that.
Hey, we do need peace abroad so that we can really focus on this.
Okay, so whatever.
So we got three years left in the Trump 2.0 administration.
We've got to focus on domestic issues, but this issue is not going away.
So how within the church circles, within faith circles, do we bring, what should our heart posture be towards our brothers in the church that have differing opinions about Israel?
Well, there's room for disagreement in this.
And I have plenty of friends that don't see things the way that I see them.
But I do believe, you know, the next event in the prophetic calendar is what is called the rapture of the church.
We'll be caught up to meet the Lord in the air.
I think an antichrist figure is going to come.
A tribulation period is going to happen.
I believe then the second coming takes place and so forth.
But I think Israel is a fulfillment of what Ezekiel prophesied of the people returning to their homeland.
And it happened on the heels of the Holocaust.
However, okay, so maybe you would say, oh, well, I don't see that in quite that way.
Okay, fine.
But there's no room for anti-Semitism.
Yes.
Okay.
And that is what is growing, you know, right now.
It's going from everywhere from Ivy League universities to the world of podcasting.
We're hearing about more and more.
And I hear people addressing theological issues who don't seem to understand, to your point, Lucas, what the Bible actually says about these.
However, there's room for difference in that.
But certainly it's the only democracy in the Middle East.
And we want to, and I do believe the promise of God that says God will bless those that bless you and curse those that curse you.
I believe one of the reasons the Lord has blessed America is because we have stood by the Jewish people and the nation Israel.
And President Truman was, we were the first to come out and say, we stand by this new nation that is now declared itself.
But, you know, yes, in the church, we have to find, we can disagree agreeably.
What is that saying, Lucas?
You would know in essentials unity and non-essentials.
Charity.
Charity.
No, non-essentials, there's another word.
In all things charity.
Yes, the non-essentials is liberty.
Okay, so let's call this a non-essential.
Let's say it's to have liberty here.
We can disagree, but not for anti-Semitism.
But maybe you have differing views on how much support we should send to the state of Israel.
Okay, we can talk about that, but we still understand everything we have has come to us through the Jewish people, including our Bible.
And God has established a covenant with them.
However, we don't want that to divide over those things.
Well, and listen, I've studied all of these scriptures a lot.
I'm not a theologian, but I've read all the verses that are the hot button verses about this stuff, and I've read them in context and tried to read them.
Listen, if you think this is like, I mean, I get how people conclude different things on this.
That's all I'm saying.
There's a lot there, and I understand how people of good faith come to different conclusions.
But where I totally, 1,000% agree with you on this is that there is no place for Jew hate.
And Charlie was adamant about this.
And you can feel it on people.
You can feel it in the way they frame their arguments.
So I totally agree with that.
And I think we need to have unity on that.
And I think, you know, we have to remember that our Savior is a Semite.
You know, it's like, you know, he's a Jewish person.
So I think that's a good place to end it.
Pastor Greg Lorry, thank you for your wisdom and just your consistency, your steadiness, your focus on bringing people to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.
You have been a legend and a pillar of Christianity in America and the world, evangelicalism, certainly.
