Frank Turek on Charlie Kirk, Faith & Today’s Battle for Truth - SF643
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Ladies and gentlemen, Russell Brand and Russell trying to bring real journalism to the American people.
Hello there, you awakening wonders.
Welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand, wherever you're watching.
Let's make your way to Rumble and join us there for my conversation with Frank Turek.
Frank Turek, of course, was in the company of Charlie Kirk when he was murdered.
And in our conversation, we talk about the implications and repercussions of Charlie Kirk's murder and the exploitation of his death by in a sense institutions and various bodies across the culture.
I, in particular, am interested in the distinction that exists between Christ's message and the political message of the Republican Party, because those are two separate things.
Let me know in the comments and chat what you think about that perspective.
I guess that's where I started.
Over the course of the conversation, we get into it, and towards the end, he talks in more detail about his feelings around some of the conspiracy theories and the utilization and mobilization by many different groups when it comes to the identity of the shooter.
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I count some of them among my friends.
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Anyway, let's get into this conversation between me and Frank Turek.
I hope you enjoy it.
What town are you in?
I live in a place called East Point, Washington, which is sort of parallel coastally to Seaside.
But where Seaside is the Gulf side, I live on the bayside.
Yeah, it's a great area.
I love the panhandle.
I love the people.
Yeah, I just adore it here.
I'm so happy.
And I came here by the holy hand.
I have no intention of living here.
Really?
I thought I'd live somewhere, you know, plausible in Florida, you know, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, maybe even Sarasota, Tampa.
You know, not this place, but we came here on vacation.
My wife used to come here.
It went right well.
And I met people that I just loved.
And I've come here because of the people and to be in the church here.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Well, your conversion's inspirational, man.
I love how you speak about the faith and the Holy Spirit and the fact that you feel like your old life is over and your new life in Christ is just flamboyant.
I love that.
Thank you.
Actually, as a matter of fact, that's a good place for us to move forward into our conversation with.
Thank you for joining us.
And for me, the presence of a you know, I hope it's not misleading when I say a kind of psychedelic Christ.
What I mean by psychedelic Christ is that, well, gosh, one might say that with normal, the kind of normal social consciousness, the normal cultural consciousness that I reckon the state and the culture would like you to have, i.e., worshiping false idols, beginning with yourself, ending with perhaps some expression of a personal urge, false gods in the culture.
The idea that Jesus Christ died, rose again, that I can participate in the consciousness of Christ through the Holy Spirit right now while talking to you.
So it seems like the very kind of thing I was grasping at as a crack and heroin addict for a good many years.
And indeed, the kind of bliss through carnality that as a sex addict, certainly, I suppose you might say an active sex addict, once a sex addict, always a sex addict.
You know, while I was pursuing carnality and the flesh, what I was longing for was this deep intimacy that I'm starting to receive in the most surprising but empirical and undeniable ways.
And I'm very grateful to have our conversation, which I reckon is obviously, how can it not center around the recent murder of, I'm assuming, your friend Charlie Kirk, a man that I knew a little.
But of course, may God rest his eternal soul.
And I hope that you are recovering from what must be a staggeringly traumatic event.
And my sincere prayers for you.
Thank you, Russell.
Thank you.
I want to ask, though, this.
Already, Charlie Kirk's death is not Charlie Kirk's life.
Charlie Kirk's death could be regarded as a sort of a coin, a token, and sort of an object that's being moved around in the culture in surprising ways.
Someone that knew Charlie Kirk well, you must surely be surprised at the extraordinary impact of his death, even when you take into account the extraordinary impact of his life.
And anything that might be regarded disproportionate in terms of condemnation or celebration is, I would say, cause for analysis, unless it is the legitimate expression of holy and divine alliance.
Because here is where Charlie's death is maybe like any other object in the culture, aside from the magnitude, which I'm not disputing or even querying.
I'm talking about the exploitation of events by the culture, how an event like a virus that might only affect people that are, you know, gosh, put quickly and bluntly, going to die anyway, is utilized to assert massive social control and move around wealth and exploit people.
I wonder what your perspective is on the response to Charlie's death.
Of course, I think we all recognize the things that are beautiful.
Erica Kirk's astonishing and bold forgiveness of the murderer.
And of course, I'm fascinated by the numerous theories.
I'm interested in stuff like that.
But what do you feel about the way that his death has been used by the culture?
I think that it's best summed up by my friend, Pastor Jack Hibbs.
He said when he first learned of it, his granddaughter was crying and he was crying.
How often do you have a figure, Russell, who is loved by at least three generations?
A grandchild, a parent, and a grandfather are all crying over someone's death.
That rarely happens.
And Charlie was the same person off the stage as he was on the stage, except when he was on the stage, he was so confident in what he was saying because he was prepared.
But when he was off the stage, his humility was the only thing that exceeded his intelligence.
And that's why he was asking people like me and others to mentor him.
And it could be hard, Russell, to mentor somebody smarter than you, but not with Charlie, because he was so humble that the few things I knew that he wanted to know, he asked me to teach him because he was so humble.
And that's why he was so effective.
He was so effective across generations because he was urging the younger generation to grow up.
And he was also urging the older generations to actually help the younger generations grow up and to find meaning and purpose in their lives in Christ.
That's what he was all about.
He was all about Jesus, number one.
All the politics stuff was an outflow of his love for Jesus.
In fact, he just said about a month ago, politics is peanuts compared to Jesus because politics is temporary, but Jesus is eternal.
By the way, that's one of the biggest differences between the Christian worldview and the Marxist worldview.
In the Marxist worldview, they think the state is eternal.
Therefore, the individuals are expendable.
In the Christian worldview, the individual is eternal, and therefore the state is ultimately expendable because the state is going to go away.
So Charlie knew that as much as he loved politics, because he knew that politics affected policy and policy affected people.
And as a Christian, he had to be concerned with people.
As much as he loved that, his first love was Jesus.
That's very beautiful.
Thank you, Frank.
So Any subsequent ceremony or cultural paraphernalia that centers on Charlie's relationship with Christ, we can therefore say is a benefit, a benefit to the kingdom.
I'm interested in particular of discussing anything that is outside of that category.
You've just said that Charlie said that politics is peanuts, and yet there's no question that there's been a political response to Charlie Kirk's death.
Here are some examples of that.
The politicians, the many politicians that attended his memorial, the many political and cultural figures that have been critical, condemnatory, and sometimes profane about Charlie.
But of course, as someone who loved Charlie Kirk, it's easy, of course, for you to appreciate the figures that were politically aligned, perhaps rather than spiritually aligned, with Charlie Kirk participating in the grief that this bereavement has brought about and the subsequent ceremonies.
And it's very, of course, in a way, it's also easy to criticize.
But of course, after Erica Kirk's example, ultimately forgive people that have said crazy, rude, hurtful, mad, dismissive things about Charlie.
But what interests me mostly is the exploitation, the political exploitation.
And that's what I'm curious about.
The political exploitation and what that might mean.
Because of course, if there's, you know, the truth is, is while all of us, it would seem to me, are important to Christ, although he has no favorites, and none of us are any more or less important than one another at all.
That's part of what I find sort of humbling and glorious.
So any attempt to mobilize, utilize, expand, or fetishize the event, I think it's interesting to contemplate and to consider.
There's no question there's a good deal of very sincere grief, such as you described, the three generations affected.
And I've met lots of young people, old people that have been very affected by Charlie Kirk's murder.
And those things are understandable and in a way, not, if I can be blunt, not interesting because they are understandable immediately and obviously.
What is interesting to me is anything where one might sense that it is being exploited by anybody to generate hate or to generate momentum.
Right.
Well, I think Charlie would appreciate the fact that people now want to be more politically engaged to help people through the law because the law is a great teacher and the law protects innocent people from evil when it's done properly.
It also hurts people when it's done improperly, when bad laws are put into place.
So I don't think Charlie would in any way be upset with people saying, look, we need to vote more conservatively to protect innocent people from evil.
That's the purpose of government anyway.
You know, as James Madison famously said, if men were angels, no government would be necessary.
We wouldn't need a government if we all acted in an angelic way.
We only need a government because we're fallen and we need a government to punish wrongdoers and therefore protect innocent people from evil.
If the thing that I find troubling about some exploitation, Russell, is this.
There are people on the left who called themselves progressive Christians and they're out there saying, okay, yeah, we saw that a lot of people were preaching the gospel and a lot of people were praising Jesus, but beware of conservative politics that flows from this.
Instead of these people saying, I'm rejoicing that the word of the Lord is getting out to the biggest audience probably in history, these people are worried that their political position may not win the day now because of this, which shows me that Jesus is not number one to them.
Politics is number one to them and exposes them.
Instead of being at all excited, you know, you know what Paul says?
He says in one of his letters that people are preaching the gospel with false motives.
And he says, you know, I really don't care.
As long as the gospel is getting out there, I don't care what motive is behind it.
Yet these people, these leftists, are upset that their political position is not winning the day while the gospel is going out to millions of people.
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Yeah, I was reading that the other day.
Jesus must be number one.
Jesus, always Jesus, only him.
So I was thinking about, you know, Romans 13 versus Revelations 13, that we fight against rulers, against authorities.
And it seems to me that human institutions have long and variously been captured by, I wouldn't hesitate to say past from Frank, excuse me, Frank Tommy Cue, Frank, like by demonic forces, by demonic forces.
Sure.
And I feel that where I've am currently, where I am currently is, you know, like the sort of the aspect of, say, Marxism, what does the state use to leverage its power that we require the state to protect us?
What does the state kind of seem to require of us?
A sort of infantilization.
It wants us to be as little children to enter the kingdom.
It wants us dependent on it, sometimes literally and financially in a very observable way, but through it wants us to be dependent on the state always through its cultural edicts, its new kind of spontaneous hadiths and adjustments and amendments to the way that we must see ourselves and one another.
And I wonder if this Charlie's awful murder is an isn't I think we'll be failing dreadfully if we allow partisanship of any variety to color or inform the interpretation of Charlie Kirk's terrible murder.
And what I believe is why I'm so happy that Christ found me and that I found him because now I've never been in a position like this before.
What I think doesn't matter.
I've lived my whole life thinking that what I thought or felt or wanted or feared mattered.
It is irrelevant.
It doesn't matter what I think or feel or want.
He loves me.
I love him.
That's what I'm here to do.
Even when I'm frightened and I'm regularly frightened, even when I'm angry and I'm pretty regularly angry, it's irrelevant, really.
I'm irrelevant.
I'm the thief on the cross.
I'm the woman at the well.
I'm blessed that I know him.
I'm blessed that I know him.
And all I want to do now is love him more.
And the thing that I resisted my whole life was surrendering to the man aspect of Christ and the aspect of Christ that I think has long been exploited and utilized to create conformity and convention and exploitation.
And I feel that if we hold ourselves to account in Christ, it's going to be revolutionary.
I mean, I know that he don't need us and there's nowhere that it says in the Bible, would you please go out and overthrow the government?
All we're meant to be doing is vigilantly preparing and waiting for his return and loving one another as he loved us, which means up to the point of death.
And one of the things that moved me about Charlie's death is I reckon he's a person, I think I've seen you say this actually publicly, that would have done it anyway, even if he'd known.
And I've heard Erica Kirk subsequently say that the materials that he left, it seems like he was preparing for it.
But even I didn't know Charlie Kirk very well.
I knew him a bit.
And I'm, you know, I, like any sane person, mourn the death of Charlie Kirk for the reasons that are obvious.
What I'm interested in is the cultural artifacts now, Frank, which is not, you know, in the most brutal terms, is not Charlie Kirk, because Charlie Kirk is a man, you know, a human being that loved Christ, that used bathrooms, that was an exceptional in many ways and normal in a bunch of other ways.
And like all of us, his greatest tributes are filthy rags before the Lord, as it says in Isaiah.
So I'm interested in how is the culture going to use this to exert more control and create more division?
Let's sit and watch.
Because if we remain true, faithful, if we follow the line of Christ here, it can only create love.
Not to say that we won't be haunted and tormented and damned, but it will only create love if we're doing what we're instructed to do.
Russell, take a look at the response to Charlie's death versus the death of George Floyd.
What did we see in George Floyd?
We saw a lot of people get killed.
We saw buildings destroyed.
We saw towns destroyed, a lot of rioting.
In Charlie's death, we had a worship service.
There couldn't be a starker difference between the things of God and the things of Satan, because Satan came to kill, destroy, and steal, as Jesus put it.
He said, Jesus said about Satan that he's a liar and a murderer.
And the cultural fallout of George Floyd has been division.
I'm praying the cultural fallout of Charlie Kirk will be the kingdom growing and growing more and more.
You're always going to have adversaries.
Not everybody's going to agree, but I pray that the kingdom continues to grow and that people who are on the left see the beauty of Christianity.
And as you did, you repented and accepted the free gift of salvation that Christ has provided.
I can't make it to God on my own.
You can't make it to God on your own.
Nobody can make it to God on our own.
That's why Jesus had to come.
He lived the perfect life in our place.
He's our substitute.
In fact, that's what I said at the memorial service.
I went through many great things that Charlie did, but then I said, Charlie is not in heaven because he sacrificed himself for his savior.
Charlie is in heaven because his savior sacrificed himself for Charlie Kirk.
He's our substitute.
And until we realize that, Russell, nothing's going to make sense.
He's our substitute first, Jesus says.
Then he's our example.
And then we follow him out of love.
And I can see in your life, you're following Jesus out of love.
Obedience comes from love, not from drudgery.
Obedience comes from your love for him.
That's why you want to follow his commandments.
He said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments.
That's what Jesus said.
And that's what I hope comes out of it.
Right.
Yes.
I love that.
Now, this is see George Floyd.
I don't think in a way it's a fair example, except when you use political criteria.
And we don't want this to be a political event.
We want this to be a spiritual event for the kingdom.
So already we're setting it up as a sort of a political comparison.
George Floyd was not a spiritual leader or a political activist.
He was a, I feel like maybe a drug user who got into an altercation with a policeman and through the, I would say, aggressive policing there, you know, which might be understandable if you're continually policing difficult situations.
You know, George Floyd, you know, I think the verdict was he was murdered.
Now, the subsequent rioting versus ceremonial services, I just feel like the opponents of the political, well, it's very, it seems like it's difficult to Extricate the political component of Charlie Kirk and Charlie Kirk's death.
Impossible, really.
Like, Charlie Kirk weren't, he's a Christian, and that's all we know about him.
He's like, he loves Jesus, and like, I don't care about any of these political subjects.
You know, like, and I'm really interested.
I'm really, but please don't.
Can I say something about that, though, Russell?
Let me say something about that.
I think as Christians, we have to care about the political subjects.
Because I mentioned earlier, politics affects policy and policy affects people.
And if we're supposed to love our neighbor, we have to care about how the government treats our neighbors.
So we have to be in.
But our position of care, if our position of care isn't undergirded by robust theological principle, then it's meaningless.
So that's my point.
Now, it would seem to me that in a position that we're in now, so that the death of George Floyd was no doubt exploited by people who had intentions beyond creating the kind of kingdom that Martin Luther King, who I would see as a Christian, and I bet he saw himself as a Christian above all else, and that his leadership flowed forth from his Christianity and his rhetoric flowed forth from his Christianity.
And his belief that we should be treating one another with love and not seeing color flows forth from his Christianity.
I see it and I feel it.
And maybe, you know, the way that our culture works, even the brokenness of Dr. Martin Luther King would be forgiven and redeemed through his love of Christ and through his Saviour Sam is your savior, my savior, Charlie Kirk Savior.
Now, when George Floyd was murdered, it was exploited in order to sort of create social division.
And I would be concerned, even though the vigils and the wakes and the candlelight in it are a much more appropriate, beautiful, holy, and humble expression of grief than rioting and despair.
I'm trying to imagine the counter-argument because I don't like to spend too much time just doubling down on stuff I already think.
I try to explore and understand new things.
And I wonder if they might say, well, you know, we didn't have the cultural support for this movement.
And again, it's actually a difficult comparison to make because it's all inadvertent and accidentally.
George Floyd's just a person that got inadvertently murdered, who is on drugs and stuff like that.
He's not a social activist or anything like that.
He's a symbol.
So I suppose we can talk about them as two symbols.
And that's actually what I'm trying to do, trying to extract Charlie Kirk because it's too painful to think about like the father and the man and the husband and all that.
And I can only get through it by thinking about the Christian.
And I reckon what I'm trying to say is that isn't it our role, therefore, then as Christians who like you plainly, I suppose I'm guessing, are aligned with Charlie Kirk on most things politically.
I'm like my political opinions and beliefs, I'm only interested in what Jesus Christ would think.
Anything that I reckon, I'm willing to just throw it on the fire instantaneously because I know what I think does to my life and the life of people around me.
It's hazardous and pointless and a waste of time.
And I always deviate back to selfishness and self-centeredness and wanting attention.
And if you left me alone long enough without the light of Christ, I'd start wanting sex and drugs and money and fame and attention.
I've seen what I do.
I know what I do.
Without him, I'm nothing.
I'm broken.
And all I want to do is be with him, in love with him forever.
My love of my children, my love of my wife through him, and my love of my enemy, my love of my neighbor, and my love of Christ, if he does, you know, some things that it seems that define the biblical ministry of Christ, and I suppose that's the only one we know.
So maybe that was an unnecessary qualifier.
Is the reduction of limited lie, the removal of limited liability when it comes to what constitutes a neighbor and the removal of limited liability when it comes to what we should do for others up to the point of death, everybody.
Now, what I was going to say then is that's why, contrary to popular opinion, Christians need to care about people in every area of their lives.
We're to be Christians not only at church, but also at work and also at home and also online and also in the voting booth.
Everywhere we're supposed to be Christians.
We're supposed to be salt and light.
We're supposed to love our neighbors.
And Charlie wanted to put those two things together.
He wanted to eradicate this false idea that only the atheists are supposed to run the country.
I don't know where we got that idea from, Russell, but somehow we got that idea.
Secularism from secularism.
Yes.
And it's silly.
You know, the whole separation of church and state thing has been misunderstood.
What that means is we don't want the Pope to be the president.
We don't want the governments to be the same.
But that doesn't mean the Christians ought not be involved in influencing the government or even serving in the government because we want to put laws in place that protect innocent people from evil.
And Charlie was all about that.
He knew the importance of government, but it wasn't as important as the gospel.
And that's why Jesus was always number one to him.
Everything flowed from Jesus with Charlie.
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Yes.
And I wonder then now, see, I suppose it would be difficult to envisage an Israeli government that was not impacted by Judaism and not impacted by the articles and artifacts and of the Jewish faith.
It's difficult to imagine a Muslim country that's not impacted by the Quran and articles of their faith and ideology.
And I suppose my personal belief, and you please help me with this, is that secularism comes out of Enlightenment thinking.
And it's the idea that the pinnacle of human authority, of all, of actually of all authority, is human authority.
That reason is our absolute God.
And I think where we now find ourselves at odds, say from for me, I'm English, so I grew up with the Church of England.
And even as I say the phrase, church of England, I can see where the church is and I can see where England is in that power dynamic.
And I believe that there is no basis for authority unless the principles have come from God.
And I suppose if one political party is making the claim that it's going to do a better job of representing the kingdom, then it's going to have to be pretty accountable across the board and not just where convenient.
Of course, any Christian, it's written there that life is sacred.
So we all know where we would stand on a subject like pro-life, pro-life, pro-choice, euphanasia.
But there's also quite a lot of instruction that seems to suggest that you better put down everything you own and follow me.
You better be willing to sacrifice, give up everything.
Now, it's pretty clear to me that there is no political party in the United States of America that adequately represents the principles of Jesus Christ.
And I'll go a little further.
I mean, I'd say the Vatican doesn't go far enough in representing the principles of Jesus Christ.
So I've got no problem saying the Republican Party doesn't do it.
Because if I can sit here and say, I've been the Vatican, I've seen the Caravaggios of St. Matthew being appointed and if not anointed, appointed.
And then I've seen the Caravaggio of him having his skin flayed off.
And then I've gone to the Vatican and it's kind of like a gift shop.
And I love the Catholic faith.
I love it.
I say the Rosary.
I love the Holy Mother and I believe we eat his flesh.
I'm down with all of it.
But what I also feel like is that human institutions over time have become peculiarly diabolical.
And if we are true Christians, I think it makes us revolutionaries and radicals.
And for me, that means anywhere we sense that the kingdom of God and Jesus Christ is not being served.
It is our duty to be willing to die for that principle, to be a prisoner for Jesus Christ in chains for as long as is required in order to bring about the kingdom.
And I think that gives us a pretty clear instruction on how what our attitude should be is to war and vice and money and faith and the pandemic.
I mean, everything like, and I wonder what you think this unique moment offers us.
I don't like, if Charlie Kirk's legacy is, so that's why you should vote Republican, then I think, I don't know that Jesus is up there like, yay!
That's what I meant.
I should have called it Republicanism.
That's what I meant.
If all that comes out of this is a political revival, that's going to be short-lived and it's not going to build the kingdom.
It has to be a spiritual revival first.
The political revival flows from the spiritual revival.
If it's the other way around, it's not going to work.
And the number one thing, again, in Charlie's life was Jesus.
He wanted to get people saved and sanctified.
And so that's what he wants to happen.
The political revival, properly understood, will flow from a spiritual revival.
And we should want good laws put into place.
We should want people protected from evil.
We should want babies that are protected from death.
We should want kids that are protected from child mutilation.
We should want kids that are protected from child sex trafficking across an open border.
We should want that to end.
We should want religious freedom.
We should want all this protected.
We should want those laws in place.
But if those laws are put into place and we're still going to hell anyway, what's the point long term?
Yeah.
There is a point long term.
I want to add to that list as well, that we should want big food to be accountable and to stop poisoning our food, big pharma.
Let's make America healthy again, man.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I'm down with that.
I'm real down with that.
And do you feel that the principles of the local churches are a better basis for local government than the principles of centralized authority?
You know, I was reading something from about Pliny.
I'm sorry, about Justin Martyr.
Justin Martyr was martyred for his faith in the mid-100s.
And he had a long passage about what church was like in the second century.
And it was pretty profound, Russell.
It was all about how people would get together, they would pray, they would expound the scriptures, and then they would give to take care of widows and orphans and to take care of anybody that needed help at that time.
It was just pure religion, as one New Testament writer talks about it, that this is true religion, that we take care of widows and orphans.
He's not talking about the government taking care of them.
He's talking about the church, that we care for one another, that we have been so transformed by Christ that we're just not going to consider our own interests, but the interests of others.
And unfortunately, in America, we've gotten into the idea that the people that take care of the widows and orphans is the government.
We've ceded that to the government when that's what the church is supposed to do.
And so we've lost some of that.
And of course, as Jesus said to the Pharisees, you've neglected the word of God on account of your tradition.
Your tradition has overpowered the word of God.
And that happens.
That's what you said earlier, pretty much when you said these human institutions have gotten far away from the word.
That's one of the reasons Martin Luther wanted to reform the Catholic Church because they had gotten away from the fact that we're saved by faith.
We're saved by grace through faith.
And you don't have to give to the church to have your mother's soul pop out of purgatory.
It was being taught, you know, in the 1400s and 1500s.
That's why Luther came along.
And we need that same reformation now.
We need to get back to what the Bible says, that Jesus is the way.
Jesus is the life.
Jesus is who we rely on.
We don't rely on ourselves.
We don't save ourselves.
He saves us.
And because he saved us, we're going to live following him and following his commands, including what we do in society, including what we do in politics.
That's all that we can give you now on YouTube.
So click the link on the description.
Join us over on Rumble.
And where that leads me, and I wonder where it's going to, it leads me here.
We lived for a long time in a world that was dominated by necessarily centralized institutions.
In the post-industrial age, it made a lot of sense to centralize government.
I mean, you know, feudalism is a form of obviously centralized government.
And even your magnificent country, and I'm very grateful to be living here, by the way, like your magnificent country, which is an evolution on the principles of the country that might be argued, certainly I saw Charlie Kirk argue, see now, though, it seems we are, as a result of technology and instantaneous communication in a very different moment.
Andrew Breitbart is fond of saying that politics is downstream of culture, but all things are downstream of God, and technology sits in this interstitial place ahead of culture, I would say, because certainly now it would seem to me that mass and instantaneous communication has necessitated mass surveillance, has necessitated, and at least has been used to justify mass censorship, the creation of new categories, misinformation and disinformation.
In that peculiar and dark pandemic era, one of the things that was notable was the closing down of churches and the foreclosure of the right to worship.
For me, a clear indicator of the presumed superiority of the state over Christ and his church.
I wonder, therefore, if we should perhaps now reject the terms of the existing power dynamic, thusly, that once again, the church should be the center of power, but that doesn't mean a centralized nationalist authority.
The nations are as drops in the bucket.
And I believe that the body of the church, founded on the local church, should be the very center of our cultural life.
And that means the center of our economic life.
That means the center of our political life.
That means any institutions that are unable to yield because of their inert position and their entrenched traditions must be overcome.
You know, it reminded me of a trip I took to Switzerland about 15 years ago, Russell.
I noticed that in every town, the center of the town was a church.
I'm sure you've been there.
It's just amazing.
Of course, the churches are dead now because people have gotten away from God.
In one of the most beautiful countries in the world, where you see God's majesty just screaming out all around you, somehow they've gotten dull to that, and now they think they are the authority.
As you pointed out a minute ago, if we are the authority, then there's nothing ultimately right or wrong.
There are no rights, right?
It's just my opinion against yours.
It's just Mother Teresa's opinion against, say, Hitler's opinion if there is no God.
And that's the problem.
Russell.
And yet, and yet we know Mother Teresa was closer to the truth than Hitler.
Why?
Because that truth exists and it's God's nature.
And even Jefferson, you know, you talked about the Enlightenment.
Jefferson knew that he couldn't go completely with no God and have peace.
He knew that he needed to combine God-given moral rights and yet no sectarian religion in order to have a free society.
So he said that we're going to have self-evident truths that come from our creator.
These rights come from our creator.
But he's not saying that you have to be a part of a particular denomination in order to access these rights or to be a citizen.
That was the genius of Jefferson.
He didn't want the Church of England again, but he wanted the rights guaranteed by God that the Church of England had without saying you had to be a member of the Church of England.
That's excellent.
That's excellent.
Yeah, because in fact, you can't undergird a concept like rights without God.
It just all falls apart.
There's no foundation.
Everything is up for reasonable discourse and subject to the most dreadful sophistry.
Anything can be undone by just a disobedient tongue.
And we're said something earlier.
I want to amplify.
Remember how you said that it really doesn't matter what I think?
Yeah.
It matters where Jesus thinks.
I had that.
I was at the University of Michigan.
And this was like 15 years ago.
And someone asked me what I thought about homosexuality.
And my answer was, it doesn't matter what I think about homosexuality because I am not the moral arbiter of the universe.
What matters is what God thinks about it.
So what I think about, I don't determine right and wrong.
I discover right and wrong.
We don't determine right and wrong.
We discover it.
If we determine it, there are no rights.
It's just my opinion against yours.
And until people realize that we're going to have people claiming they have all sorts of rights, but they have no right giver.
Do you know if there's no God, there's not only no right to abortion, there's no right to life.
There's not only no right to same-sex marriage, there's no right to natural marriage.
There are no trans rights, human rights, Christian rights.
There's no rights of any kind unless God exists.
Yeah, that's right.
And I reckon sometimes, don't you, Frank, that I want to summon to him, the figure, the God in skin, the man God.
Because, you know, when we get caught in the cultural war, which I can think of kind of as a phony war, to tell you the truth.
You know, like, I've got people ideally love that are gay, but I've read the Bible.
So, like, you know, for me, I'm not gay.
So the stuff about that was pretty lascivious and lustful.
And I did make sex my idol.
I worship sex.
I was at the high altars, man, worshiping Baal, you know, every hour he sent.
In fact, I wouldn't have even acknowledged he sent it.
And I see it actually now for what it is.
Self-worship, self-worship.
I was God in my life.
I would not have told you that because I'm kind of clever and I might not even have understood it.
And in fact, I'm a person that's, you know, I'm from a different route than you, of course.
I'm English for a start, but I'm like a new age, you know, my background's like a new age dude.
You know, that's dirger that are tattooed on me like about, I don't know, eight years ago or something to celebrate my two daughters and my wife.
She's a good goddess, you know, she was a tiger and bold and empowers women.
Fantastic.
Then I've got like chakras on me here.
And I like these ideas of, you know, systems of flow that aren't so distinct from the living water.
Now, when I came to the Lord, oh, he came to me, I think it feels more like he came to me, I suppose.
And I finally, you know, once he had me by the throat, I was willing to listen.
I went from a kind of new age belief and I was shown that the problem with a new age approach of a little bit of Sufism, a little bit of Sartre, a little bit of Kabbalah, a little bit of Nietzsche, is at the middle of it is me, the problem.
The problem is still in charge.
The guy that causes all of the chaos.
Yeah.
And I was shown it, Frank, empirically.
Like I was shown it in two ways.
Two festivals, funny enough.
One that I was leading, like had my own festival, of course, in the UK.
And like I had some really illustrious and very brilliant people like Callie Means, who works for the government now under Secretary Kennedy.
He was there.
And Vandana Shiva, a brilliant, powerful teacher who's willing to come out and say, like, she will literally say Bill Gates is worse than Hitler.
Here's the numbers.
Like, she's a fascinating woman.
But I was like, like, literally strutting around that place.
I mean, look, I'm not dumb.
So I know that I know how weak I am.
I know how flawed I am.
I know how insufficient and ridiculous I am.
But still, I was rejecting Christ for the most ridiculous reasons of like, I don't want to bow down to Jesus.
And that's who my nan worshipped.
And like dumb people in other countries, you know?
And then when I was- What was the tipping point?
What was it?
What happened?
What was the tippy point that where you surrendered?
What happened?
Well, I simultaneously got accused of rape in my country, the UK, while my son was having open heart surgery, like sort of out there simultaneously.
I mean, at the same time, it was all over the newspapers, and my son was in Great Woman Street Hospital.
Everything broke apart.
And it was so poetic and amazing for this, because it was the two weeks before October the 7th.
And in the UK, I was all over the news, 2023, the year of the attacks and atrocities there.
So in the two weeks after that, I was the newspaper every day.
You know how it is when the news get hold of something.
It was like every single day, every single day, every single day, advertising for complainants, you know, new revelations, documentaries.
It was like unbelievable.
The machinery of media and state turned demonetization, political figures talking about it.
You know, like the reasons for it, we could get into.
And it's sort of irrelevant now, and I don't care anymore because now I know who was behind it, really.
And like the two gods that I'd worshipped up until that point, curiously, as I suppose, a sort of pantheonistic pagan.
And as Jordan Peterson once said, if God is everything, then God is anything.
I had been worshiping sex and fame.
Those were the two things I'd been worshiping.
Sex and fame.
Well, it was as if somehow he used for good what the devil intended for ill and shows me, this is what happens.
Oh, you want to worship sex and fame, do you?
How about being famous for rape?
Like, oh my God.
Oh, Lord.
And like, but simultaneously, while all this, you know, newspaper ink and magazines and TVs and people giving announcements and people talking about it in parliament, simultaneously, I'm dealing with my little boy, my 12-week old son.
So I have to go, well, this is a lot, but it's not real.
It's not important.
I know that underneath all of this stuff is not me coercively imposing myself sexually on someone.
I know there's a lot of self-indulgence and exploitative, selfish, greedy, sinful behavior that I'm fully well aware of.
But this is real.
It's pretty real to go in there and, you know, like to give her the consent.
And this is the 5% chance of this and 10% chance of that.
You know, frankly, my wife took care of that.
I didn't even have to deal with that conversation.
But, you know, I went in there and like the sort of mad spaghetti of cables and wires and tubes and inflation and like the machines and intensive care and thank God he made it.
And in the midst of all of that, here is Christ.
Here is Christ.
Here is the cross.
It comes in geometry.
It comes in compassion, beyond and deeper than language, a familiarity, a sense that it's always been there.
That I've been trying to stiff arm an arm's length, the one thing that could save me, the one man that could save me, the one truth that could save me.
And it's kind of like retrospectively, now are you ready?
Now do you see?
Do you see your brokenness?
Do you see your hopelessness?
Do you see the pointlessness of everything?
And like, and then it just, boom, it just rushed in like a sort of a black hole.
I start to understand all of it.
It comes.
It comes.
And I read the word and I read the scripture and I'm told I'm getting baptized and I'm like, I'm not getting baptized.
It all happened so extraordinarily quickly.
Like I read in Rick Warren's book, you will probably start reading the Bible.
I'm not reading the Bible.
You will probably get baptized.
I'm not getting baptized.
You'll find a church shouldn't take on service.
I'm not doing any of those things.
I do all those things now.
I've been baptized.
I have a church.
I've read the Bible.
You know, I understand all of it.
And like today, when I was reading Philippians 2.3 is where it was.
Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit.
So every time I'm doing something now, I'm like, is this selfish ambition or conceit?
And sometimes it is.
I'm still doing stuff like that.
But in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself.
Let each of you look not only for look out not only for his own interest, but also for the interests of others.
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made him, who did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men.
I prefer the other translation.
What translation is that?
I think I prefer.
That's probably the NIV, the nearly inspired version.
Yeah.
Well, you know, he's been transformed.
He gave up his privileges of deity to come to earth and suffer for us.
But in your case, and in so many cases, Russell, sometimes we only look up when we're on our backs.
And that's what happened to you.
And a lot of people are coming to Christ because of what happened to Charlie.
They're realizing the fragility of life.
They're realizing that there's real evil out there.
And if there's real evil out there, there has to be good.
In fact, Charlie and I have a mutual friend.
His name is James Lindsay, who is an agnostic, but he's really a good critic of critical theory.
A couple of years ago, he texted Charlie and he said, hey, Charlie, I've got a pretty good argument for Satan.
When I look at the 100 million people that were murdered by communist regimes in the past century, that's a good argument for Satan.
And Charlie texted back to him, you're right.
But if there's a Satan, there must be a God.
And then James texted back, that would follow.
Yeah, if there's evil, there has to be good.
Because you see, evil is a lack in a good thing.
Evil is like cancer.
If you take all the cancer out of a good body, you've got a better body.
What happens if you take all the body out of the cancer?
You got nothing, right?
Evil can only exist in a good thing.
And what we mean by good is God's nature.
So evil does not disprove God.
It shows that maybe there's a devil out there, but it can't disprove God because evil can only exist if good exists and good can only exist if God exists.
And so when you saw all this evil coming at you, whether it was the sickness in your son or you saw these false rape charges coming at you, you realize that you can't control all that.
And God is the one in control.
He's the source of good.
So you surrendered and here you are now.
Now you're a great light to so many people.
Thank you very much for saying thank you.
I'm trying to understand it.
I'm trying not to revert to the old ideas and I'm trying to understand what my function is.
You know, like I was scheduled and I'm scheduled to do some turning point events.
Obviously, they were scheduled prior to Charlie's murder and obviously you'll be familiar with the subsequent posthumous planning.
And I suppose I'm working out what role he would have me play, our Lord, because I know that it is not, as a person that's, you know, a recovering addict, as a person that is formerly, you know, a Hollywood actor and an entertainment figure.
And as a person that I would say is has an empirical as well as articulate understanding of contemporary paganism, I feel that my mission and ministry will, if it's his will, be in those areas.
I'm not from a, you know, Charlie's background and your background, I suppose, might be felt in your particular expression of your own ministry, I'm guessing.
Russell, you're much more interesting than I am.
God is going to use you.
You're much more interesting, particularly to our culture.
And God used his personalities.
He used Charlie.
Yes, we're all created equal, but we don't all have equal gifts.
And God uses personalities and he uses gifts for his glory.
So some people are going to make more of an impact than others.
And you're in a position to make more of an impact than just the average person out there.
So I pray that God gives you those opportunities to do that.
I mean, he's already doing that through what you're doing now, but certainly through Turning Point.
You know, Charlie and I were both, we're supposed to go to UC Berkeley together.
I'm still going to Berkeley.
I'm just bringing Rob Schneider with me now rather than Charlie Kirk.
Actually, Rob, I'm the guest of Rob because Rob is now the lead on it.
So we're going to Berkeley and doing what Charlie would have done.
And you would be great on a college campus because you're going to relate to those kids in a way that I can't.
So we're going to need you next month.
Well, I want to participate.
I'm going to one next month.
I've already, I had a, you know, I'd agreed to it prior to Charlie's death.
And obviously, I'm sure you're aware, Turning Point, we're in touch again.
You know, they're still doing everything that Charlie intended.
So I'm going to something on the, I think I can't remember where, but I'm going to something on the, you know, on the 15th.
And what I'm, you know, I'm wondering, you know, what kind of form it takes now.
And again, like, look, when I last spoke at Turning Point, I spoke at it in Tampa and I had a conversation.
That's the last time I saw Charlie Kirk.
And it's the last time we spoke.
And I, you know, addressed that conference, you know, there.
And all I could talk about was Jesus.
And all I could talk about was, look, I don't see my personal, personally, the deeper I go into Christ or the more that I feel intimate with our Lord, for me, what that presents is a greater duty to be very inquisitive about the nature of power.
And I've got to tell you, I'm much more Revelation 13 than Romans 13.
I'm very cynical about government.
Not like a, like, I'm not an anti-Trump person, by the way.
I think Trump was what the world kind of created and required.
And I think the Democrat Party were an appalling bunch of globalist imperialists bringing about Satan's havoc and his dark kingdom.
But I don't think those are the only two options.
I think that there's another way.
I think there's another way.
I think there's another way.
You know, it's kind of ironic, Russell.
Weren't you, didn't you play the professor in Despicable Me?
Oh, yes.
Dr. Nafari owns who I play.
Film Frank.
Do you see?
Do you see how God has brought you to this place?
Because here you are saying, I'm despicable me.
I know myself.
And if we're all honest with ourselves, we're with you.
We're all like, we're all fallen.
We don't have it all together.
We can't save ourselves.
We're selfish.
We're after fame.
We're after fortune.
We're after all those things.
You're just willing to admit it more than the rest of us.
And so you were in that movie before you became a Christian or in those movies before you became a Christian.
And it's ironic now that you're saying, I'm despicable me.
If you knew me, you knew I couldn't.
I didn't have it all together.
I can't save myself.
That's why I need Jesus.
That's pretty good.
I might use that.
I'll use that again.
Despicable me.
That's good.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm just going through some of the, for the first time actually in our 52 minute 48 second conversation.
I'm looking at the notes that has been kindly prepared by Tony, who was graciously organized for us to speak today.
And gosh, I can't bear to talk about the day of Charlie's murder.
It's too awful.
I wonder what you feel about some of the subsequent rumors about Charlie's murder.
Because that's what I was sort of trying to get to in the beginning, Frank, is that people are trying to use it.
Like, look, the best, like, for one second, even though the belt of truth is the first thing we put on in our armament, I recognize that.
For one second, I try to think of things in a qui bono, qui bono type way.
Who's benefiting from this murder?
Who is going to benefit from it?
If we could choose, would you have a, like, I believe we should have no preference about a subject like that.
You shouldn't say, I would rather it was an Israeli agent than it was a trans activist, or I'd rather it was a disillusioned MAGA person than it was a mentally ill loner.
I'd rather it was a Muslim.
If you've got any preference about who did the murder, that tells you something.
And I can tell the culture has got preferences.
The culture has.
Yeah.
You know what the problem is from your countryman, C.S. Lewis?
He said this many years ago.
He said, and I'm paraphrasing, I can't remember the exact quote, but he said, if you are rooting for someone to be the bad guy and you're happy you find out they're worse than you thought, you've got a problem.
Yeah.
You don't want to look at people in a worse light.
You should want to be relieved that they weren't as bad as you thought.
Now, as we see it now, Russell, it looks like it was a trans activist, but let's just wait for all of the investigation to occur.
This Friday, I'm going to have on my podcast Jay Warner Wallace, the cold case homicide detective.
I had him go look at some of the conspiracy theories there about a second shooter.
I was 25 feet from Charlie when he was shot.
And some people are trying to say there was a second shooter from behind me and that it came into his, the back of his head and exited here.
I did not see the back of his head.
I literally was giving him CPR and I was looking down at him from the front.
I don't know if he had an exit wound or not.
I don't know.
And people are trying to say, well, there was no autopsy.
And my friend Jay Warner Wallace told me yesterday, he said, in every murder, there is always an autopsy.
So Charlie was in that hospital for many hours after he was murdered.
I was there for, I mean, he was there until I left, and that was six or seven hours after the murder.
So all this is going to come out later.
In the meantime, people are going to try and get clicks and trying to say, oh, I see this angle.
I see that angle.
You know, I was part of a conspiracy theory.
I was the subject.
I don't know if you remember this.
I was the guy with the white hat that was allegedly signaling the shooter, which is so stupid anyway, because any guy looking through a scope with a 30-odd six can't see a guy standing 25 feet to the side of Charlie.
He's looking at his target.
And why would anybody need to signal to this guy?
He knew who he was after.
He knew the guy with the microphone was Charlie.
It shows you how crazy the internet is, Russell.
Why are people talking about hand signals to a shooter as if the guy didn't know who he was trying to shoot?
It's so ridiculous.
Yet people cling to this stuff.
I reckon it's because we've started to recognize that every single event is exploited by various different interests.
That's why.
So people are like, what?
Who do we trust now?
They know it.
They know that if like, oh, yeah, look, there's bombs in Poland.
Oh, this person from Hamas has been, oh, this thing.
Like, they know that whether an event is authentic or not, it will be exploited to benefit powerful institutions and groups.
Usually, I would say, demonically controlled, because the Lord's got no interest in exploitation.
He has absolute power.
He needs nothing from anybody.
So I feel that that's what drives it.
And then when anything unusual happens, like I, one of the sort of things I guess, you know, I consumed a bunch of media like anyone.
And how did the person put that rifle away?
Why are they in that shop so quickly?
I mean, I heard yesterday that they concreted over the murder scene.
I don't even know if this stuff's true anymore.
And I kind of disengage from it.
That's crazy.
I don't know.
I hope it's not true.
I hope it's not true.
I don't like, look, I, anyway, like, earlier when you were sort of listing some of the sort of, you know, I guess presumed as a person that's sort of been pretty lascivious and fallen, you know, putting it mildly, when we are like, that aspect of Christianity, Frank, that's about sort of, you know, at the wrong end is Westboro Baptist Church, you know, God hates fags type stuff.
Like.
Like, I just feel our Lord would not be down with like hates fags, you know, as a piece of language or a piece of behavior.
And I did once speak to that years ago before I came to Christ.
I spoke to the Westbury Baptist Church and, you know, I was in Los Angeles and the audience were kind of booing them.
And I was saying, no, no, no, you know, they were brave to come here and this is their beliefs.
And I had a bunch of gay people with me on stage and stuff like that.
Now, like, what I have no doubt about, what I feel is our Lord would, he would, you know, there's no one can query that he would love George Floyd.
He would love trans people.
He would love, I mean, he would love Charlie Kirk's murderer.
So I'm not suggesting anarchy.
I'm not suggesting chaos.
I'm not suggesting permissiveness.
Can I add something to that, though?
When we say love, I think a mistake the culture makes, Russell, is that we think love means approval.
Love does not mean approval.
I mean, you know, this is a father.
You don't approve of everything your kid wants to do.
If you do, you're not loving.
You're enabling the kid to hurt himself and do evil, right?
So love doesn't mean approval.
Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery that sin no more.
That's what love is.
Love is telling the person what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.
And the same message to the person who identifies as trans or same-sex or Christian or non-Christian or Buddhist or Hindu or the same message goes to all people.
Every one of us is a sinner and we are going to be judged by an infinitely just God.
You only have two choices.
You can either get justice in the afterlife or you can get grace.
Does anybody, regardless of how they identify, want justice from an infinitely just being?
I don't because I haven't been just.
I want grace.
And the only way to get grace from an infinitely just being is for him to punish an innocent substitute in our place.
That way he remains just because he punishes sin, but he justifies unbelievers like me and you.
And that's why Paul says in Romans 3, 26, that God remains just and is the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ.
So at the end of the day, either you're going to pay for your sins or Jesus is going to pay for your sins.
I don't want to pay for my sins.
Jesus is my substitute.
I trust in him and that stands for everybody regardless of how they identify.
Everybody needs that savior.
Yeah.
Thank you.
And I like that there is no distinction or discrimination.
I like that.
I like that.
And I like the opportunity of forgiveness through repentance.
But also I recognize, you know, there are sort of human systems of justice.
And if they are founded on righteous principles, then we can rely on them and trust them.
And if they are indeed judicious and reflections of him, then they're completely reliable.
But I suppose what we live in.
And again, to my point, I sort of touched upon it earlier, Frank, but we didn't really sort of explore it because we've got so much to talk about is that the culture is fragmented and fractured because fundamentally people are rejecting authority.
People are like, you know, not my president, not my system.
And there comes a point where one must question what are the political systems right down to the root that are causing or at least facilitating the expression of these problems.
And is there another way if we turn ourselves away from sin and worldliness and flesh and the devil and towards Christ, are there any other ways that present themselves or suggest themselves that we might organize society?
And what I'm, you know, this is, I'm new to this, Frank.
I've only been a Christian for 18 months.
But what it feels like to me is something that was latent, nascent within me prior was you can't trust human authority.
Human authority is corrupt.
Then I, you know, for the first time in my life, read the Bible and I come across Ephesians and I come where it says dark powers, heavenly rulers.
Then I see our Lord say, like in the second temptation or the third temptation, depending on which gospel, authority has been given to me.
The world is my dominion.
And I see Paul and John numerous times say the devil is in control in the world.
Our Lord says it.
The devil is in control.
So what does that mean?
It doesn't mean one political party.
It means the systems and institutions themselves have been captured by evil.
And we have to, we don't have to.
It doesn't actually say that.
It just tells us individually to be good Christians and as a body.
But like there's no question that we have a duty.
But the conversations I was enjoying having with Charlie Kirk until he was murdered, and God knows I would have learned a lot more had he lived, was I wonder when this becomes, if you pursue this to its conclusion, it's not enough to like, well, we tried our best.
Let's let the Republicans take it from here and becomes, wait a minute, all these people are funded by the donor class and by lobbyists and they're all captured and controlled.
We best push on.
Yeah, I think that this was the brilliance of Jefferson and our Constitution, you know, Jefferson Declaration of Independence, Madison Constitution.
They knew they needed to separate the powers because as Lord Acton said, absolute power corrupts and power corrupts and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.
So they needed this separated powers in order for one branch to check the other branch.
Whether the Republicans are in power or the Democrats are in power, we still need those checks because we're all bent toward evil.
It's easy to be bad.
It's hard to be good.
It's easy to be overcome by the temptations of sex, money, and power.
Those are the big three, sex, money, and power.
And John in 1 John 2 lists those actually, Russell.
He says, do not love the world or what's in the world because all that's in the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life, that's all that's in the world, sex, money, and power.
So we have to put checks on ourselves and we have to put checks on our government.
And that's what our Constitution does.
That's why we need to adhere to the Constitution.
But I'd also say that we have to do that individually.
We have to put barriers around ourselves of accountability so we don't fall into the temptations of illicit sex, money, or power.
If we do, we're not only going to destroy ourselves, we're going to destroy our witness for Christ.
Charlie and I were talking about that two nights before he died.
I was talking to him about sex, money, and power.
I said, have you ever heard of the Modesto Manifesto?
He said, no.
I said, the Modesto Manifesto was something that the Billy Graham leaders in the 1940s, while they were in Modesto, California, pledged to one another.
They said, if we fall in one of these three areas, it's going to destroy our ministry and destroy our witness to Christ.
It was sex, money, and power.
So they put accountability on one another, Russell.
They did this.
They said, we will never be in the presence of another woman alone who is not our wives.
We would always have another person there.
We don't want any temptation with sex.
Number two, we would never handle the money.
We'd have other people handle the money.
We don't want to be in any way tempted by money.
And then thirdly, whenever we did a crusade, we will never inflate the numbers.
Whatever the cops said, whenever they said that was the crowd size, that's what we said.
We don't want to fall to sex, money, or power.
And to show you how wise Charlie was, although he never heard of it, he was already doing that.
He was already doing that because we are fallen.
And so I would say we do need to respect authority, but we need to verify that authority is doing the right thing.
Because if we ignore all authority, we'll have anarchy.
Yes.
Yes.
In fact, any authority other than his authority may as well be anarchy.
And I mean anarchy in the bad way rather than a good anarchy, direct democracy that's truly representative.
Because I belong to an organization that, you know, like I'm a 12-step person and 12-step groups derived from the Oxford group.
So Christian in origin, although not explicitly Christian in practice.
But the way they are organized is every group is fully independent and autonomous, except in matters affecting other groups.
Anyone can join as long as they want to stop, you know, drinking or taking drugs or whatever the declared intention of the group is.
Our leaders are servants.
We're not allowed to make money.
It's such a beautiful system for actually ensuring that that sex, money, power, the Modesto Manifesto.
Yeah, look it up.
Modesto Manifesto.
Let me say something about sex, money, and power.
They're good things.
The problem is they're so good, we'll often take shortcuts to get them.
And that's where we sin.
God's not down on sex.
He's not down on money.
He said the love of money is the root of all evil.
But do you know what?
That all the work Charlie was doing couldn't be done unless people made money and gave him money.
Same thing in our ministry.
If people don't make money and give it to us, we can't go to campuses.
We can't reach kids.
Money's a good thing.
It's only a bad thing when it becomes the best thing.
And the same thing is true with power.
Power is a good thing if you use it for good ends.
It becomes a bad thing if you're using it for evil.
So it's not that they're bad things.
They're good things.
In fact, they're just so good and so powerful.
You've got to put, you've got to put guards around them.
They're like nuclear weapons, right?
You just can't allow them into the wrong hands.
That's great.
Thank you.
They're too good.
Pastor Frank, excuse me, thank you very much.
I mean, we finish this off with a prayer.
Let's do it.
You want me to pray?
You want to pray?
Or both?
You pray first, then I'll pray.
All right.
Father, we are blessed that we live in a country where we can freely exchange ideas like this.
I'm so thankful that Russell has found you and his family has found you and that he has such a vibrancy about his faith, such a love for you.
I pray that you would guide him in all that he does.
I pray that he would become even a greater influence than he already is for you, that you would find opportunities, give him opportunities to further share what he's learning and who he's following.
I pray you'd protect him and his family and protect us all from the temptations that we come across every day.
Help us to love you and therefore then follow you because we love you.
Help us to make heaven crowded as Charlie wanted to do.
I thank you for Charlie's life.
I pray for Erica and the entire TPUSA team.
I pray that you would keep them moving toward you, toward building the kingdom, toward making heaven crowded.
And we know that you can bring good from evil.
You're already bringing good from this terrible evil.
Help us to be participants in it so we could further your kingdom for your glory.
Father God, I ask that I can communicate with you as you know yourself to be, not my limited understanding of you, my anthropomorphic, limited understanding of you, God.
I speak to you, God, as you know yourself to be, humbly as your servant.
Give me the strength, Lord, through my weakness to be obedient through faith.
Heavenly Father, Lord God, allow Jesus Christ, your son's sacrifice for me to be felt and lived through me.
Allow the Holy Spirit to dwell in me, Lord.
Allow my body to become a temple.
Allow my mouth to become a conduit for your ministry.
I would ask, Father, that anything that Frank is carrying that has wounded or injured him through the proximity to the darkness of the events around Charlie's murder and the murder itself be healed and cast out.
And we repudiate and rebuke all demonic forces, Lord, that operate through government, particularly those that would sanitize and mask themselves.
The wolf in sheep's clothing phenomena, Lord.
Please send us shepherds.
Please send us guidance.
Please, Lord, give us access to the divine light that was present, our Lord, through your logos, through your holy word.
May we feel molecularly your divine vibration, cleanse and change us and create new patterns, Father.
Show us how we might change.
Show us, as dear Charlie said, actually, how Romans might become the Christian constitution.
Show us how this conversation can be healing and not a doubling down on the polarity that creates events of this nature, Lord.
Show us how the broken and the fallen and the damned and the damaged and the lost, Lord, those pursuing false pagan idols or false gods of any variety, Lord, will find their way back to you through the cross, the cross that resolves and absolves all.
May your blood, Holy Father, cover all things.
May your blood, like a seeping consciousness, Lord, cover every facet.
May we be cleansed by your blood.
May we be awakened by your blood.
May we be revivified by your blood.
May this revival succeed, Lord.
We pray for your return.
We prepare for your return.
Lord, we know it will be better to be with you, but we pray for those that grieve.
We pray for those that are bereaved.
May they feel the presence of the comforter.
We ask this in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Amen.
Russell.
God has given you great gifts.
You have a great verbal fluency that I think is captivating to people.
And you articulate complicated concepts so eloquently that I'm praying that God uses you and makes your ministry bigger and bigger as you continue to yield to him.
Thank you.
Keep looking for those opportunities.
I hope when TPUSA calls, you'll go because you're going to, man, you're going to be.
You're going to be quite an influence on kids for Christ.
So take that opportunity.
Build the kingdom.
I'm starting with my own kids.
If I can get them to listen, I reckon that's a good foundation.
It's the neighbor.
It's the neighbor guy that's going to influence them.
How old are the kids now, Russell?
How old are they?
I have an eight-year-old, eight-year-old, an eight-year-old daughter, Mabel, a seven-year-old daughter, Peggy, and my son, Herbie, is now two and very well from his heart surgery by the grace of God.
Oh, God bless that.
That's amazing.
So, yeah, you're in it.
That's a fun, fun period, though, when they're that age.
They're innocent.
They're sponges.
They want to be with mommy and daddy all the time.
You know, once they hit 12, then their friends become more important.
So enjoy this time while you have it.
Yes.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Pour whatever you can into them.
I will.
Whatever you can.
Hey, I want to have you on my podcast soon.
Anytime.
Do you want my number?
Reach out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So thank you.
Do you watch Russell Brand Unpacked, where I do deep dives into news issues?
Here is an episode of Russell Brand Unpacked, a deeper look at news issues.
Have a look at this quick clip.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation.
Let me know what you thought in the comments and chat.
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