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Hey, everybody, happy Sunday, please.

To be able to share with you a speech I gave in Grand Rapids, Michigan, just a week ago with a friend of mine, Pastor Cody. You guys are going to love this episode. Before we get started. This episode is brought to you advertiser free. It is a Sunday by those of you that support us at Charlie Cook Dotcom Slash support. We have a supporter call coming up for those you that support us at Charlie Cook dot com slash support monthly this week.

So it's not too late to get in on that call if you guys support us monthly. Charlie Kirch, dotcom slash report. Buckle up, everybody. Happy Sunday. Here we go.

Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Cook is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Cook, Charlie Cook run in the White House. I want to thank Charlie's an incredible guy, his spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created. Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

That's why we are here.

Great to be here. Happy Sunday. It's great to be back in front of human beings. Right. And it's terrific. So good morning. It's I've been traveling the country the last couple of weeks and speaking at a church almost every Sunday. I was in Maine last weekend. I was in California before that. And God's doing some very exciting things in this country right now. I'll tell you. We'll talk about that and we'll talk about how we're kind of a lot of different ways.

Having a conversation in our country right now of what is the role of church, what is the role of the word of God and the people of God. And it's really fascinating because right now we're experiencing one of the greatest threats and one of the greatest attacks of religious expression in the history of our country. Recently, we saw in Las Vegas the Supreme Court incorrectly ruled that Caesar's Palace can remain open with thousands of people. But Calvary Chapel, Las Vegas can't have more than fifty people.

An extraordinary discrimination against the assembly of believers. The church, I think, went above and beyond in the month of March, April and May to abide by guidelines to make sure that they that we as Christians, we're not trying to to contribute to the spread of the virus. But then in late May and early June, we looked as our cities were filled with millions of people, many of whom were not wearing masks at all, just deciding to gather next to each other.

We said, that's weird. Why is it that you can just go into the streets and do that? But church is somehow deemed not essential. And so as I've traveled the country of recognizing, I've realized that a lot of these power grabbing politicians, they are basically counting on the decency and the reasonability of a lot of Christians. And I think it's long past time that we make the case that not just church is essential, but salvation is essential.

In fact, there's nothing more important than salvation. Right. And what ended up happening during the course of all this is that for reasons that are hotly debated and we can do that for the years to come, the most important day on the Christian calendar was taken from us, Easter and all. You talked to any pastor go to any church across the country. They'll tell you that that day more people give their life to Christ than almost any other time in the entire calendar.

Right. So imagine how many millions of people that would have gone to church on Sunday, on Easter Sunday would have given their life to Jesus Christ. And that was taken away from them. Now, for some reasons that are again debated and there's a conversation around it. But if we look at what's happening in our country right now, we need to take a very serious pause. And it's not an economic crisis. There's all those things are real, but there's something much more structural happening.

And we need to get to the root reason of it. We all know what that is. A recent CDC report came out just a couple days ago that said one out of four young people under the age of 25 seriously considered suicide in the last 90 days. Seriously, we are on pace to have 500000 less children this year than last year. We are on the verge of a population collapse, marijuana usage, drug usage, online Internet usage of all the worst activities you can imagine are all up exponentially.

Cocaine usage, everything. And some of these social psychologists are trying to figure out why this is the case. And I think it's pretty ridiculously obvious when you don't allow 25 million people to go worship every Sunday, all of a sudden people are going to replace man search. Meaning for hedonistic practices, and so now we are actually realizing how a central church actually is and I'm going to say something very bold and it's on many headlines, churches more than a YouTube livestream.

It's Ekklesia. It's the gathering of believers, right? It is fellowship. It is. Oh, my goodness. That person is having a tough week. Let me go help that person. That person needs some mentorship or some guidance or some counseling. It's very difficult to do that through digital consumption. I'm not discounting that for people that need that sort of stream of communication, but we also believe in this idea of liberty. Right. And it says very clearly in the scriptures that were the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.

But if you do not give people the liberty to worship, then all of a sudden some people then have that meaning completely disconnected. So now we're living in a cultural, chaotic moment. I think that's a very agreed upon observation. And one of the main reasons is that the church has basically abdicated their role and their responsibility to say, look, we for six weeks, for eight weeks, we played by the rules. But the minute that you say that abortion clinics and marijuana dispensaries can remain open, but churches can't, I am not going to follow by those guidelines and we are going to open our church doors.

So thank you, Cody, for continuing to do that. Thank you. Now. The church is supposed to be a little bit rebellious against the culture of the early church and acts was by definition pushing up against the grain and a lot of different ways. The church now today, absent this beautiful church we're here gathering, has kind of almost become like a rock and roll concert paired with a TED talk. Right. It's almost trying to be part of the times instead of trying to signal against the Times.

I talked to some of these pastors, your incredible pastor not being one of them. And they say, Charlie, you're we don't want to offend other people. And I don't think you should ever seek to offend people. I think that is actually rooted in divisiveness and in immorality. However, if you're saying something that is true and that offends somebody, that is not your problem. Actually, Jesus said very clearly that it will turn father against son, that the word of God will divide necessarily.

And so that's something that we need to have a conversation about, which is are we pushing the boundaries of this broken culture enough? And we're not, in fact, a lot of different ways. We're trying to conform to the way that things are instead of trying to stand for truth in opposition to them. And this is natural. This is predictable. The scripture said this was going to happen, that we are going to try to conform to the how the way that the worldly inclinations were.

But what do exactly we do we do about it? Well, number one, we have to understand why Christianity from a psychological perspective is different than any other religion. We fall into this trap that Christianity is like every other religion and sometimes you don't push back against it. Now we can go through the inherent authenticity of the scriptures about the historical and archaeological evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, about how the Bible is the greatest book ever to exist in the history of the world, how the Bible is the only book ever.

The more you read it, the more it reads you why the Bible is the living word of God and why everyone should read the Bible every day. And this is a side note to that. We wonder why a lot of our children have lost direction. Well, maybe it's because you removed the Bible from all of our schools across the country. Maybe that was one of the reasons why we have this moral gap in our country. It's not that hard to figure out.

However, as we look at all of that, we have to understand that the Christian faith is a commitment to truth, that unlike any other religion that's ever existed, Christ didn't just say true things. He was the embodiment of truth. That is why in the Book of John, he is described as Logo's. The pursuit of all that is true and is right in the world. Understand the opposition that wants to shut down our churches. They believe that truth is subjective, that everyone has their own version of truth.

This is what when you send your child to college, they're probably being taught some version of this or a public school that there's no such thing as truth. You only have your own version of truth. This is a war on Christianity. You understand that when they're saying that they hate truth, they're saying they hate Christ. They're saying that they hate Jesus because that is the ultimate truth, the way and the life. And so what is very important to articulate and understand is that when you say there's no such thing as absolute truth, you will bye bye, you will necessarily dive into chaos and then tyranny will take over.

It's always the case. So what does chaos look like? I think we've witnessed that. And first, Timothy, it says, pray for our leaders that we might live quiet and peaceable lives. Basically, he was describing the opposite of Portland or the opposite of Seattle. Right. Quien peaceable are not those cities right now or in Chicago, quiet and peaceful. So we may have to have children and be able to raise, you know, families in this world.

So when you look at the numbers and you say we are on pace to have 500000 less children this year than last year, every single one of us should take pause and say there are multiple crises is happening in this country. The virus, of course, being one of them. But we're on the we are on the verge of a civilizational collapse if we think that five hundred thousand less children is a good thing and a sustainable thing. So this is happening for a couple of reasons.

And this is considered to be, you know, a a penalty, a penalty and groupthink on college campuses. So I say it anyway. I don't really care. There is a concerted and deliberate war on men in our country, and it's something that we need to have a real conversation about. This should concern all people, men and women. It is the hyper feminization of our country where young men in particular are taught that they're wrong for even existing, that they exist in a patriarchal tyranny.

Young women. The number one complaint I get from young women, and we have thousands and thousands of listeners on our podcast every single day, as I can't find a man that I want to marry, I can't find someone that I want to lead me into the world or I want to pour into a lot of reasons for this. No. One, as I mentioned, I think that we have an entire culture that is not correctly understanding the biblical blend of the masculine and the feminine, which is something that the scriptures talk about so beautifully.

But number two, I think even more concretely than this is that a lot of men have almost. Become as I kind of use this term, they've almost become mature infants, it's almost like it's it's no different than the story of Peter Pan. A lot of you guys have seen this before where you never mature. You almost become the king of the Lost Boys on Pleasure Island, where you're not responsible for anything, where you don't actually you're not able to burden you're not able to shoulder a burden that has any meaning.

The consequence of this is that we are on pace to have more people that are single in the millennial generation than are married with children. Well, what what kind of what does that look like? Well, when you don't have a family and you don't go to church and you don't believe in God, God puts this yearning for meaning in our heart. We know that that has to be replaced, has to be by something. And unfortunately, that is now being replaced by civilizational insurrection.

Basically, people are now finding their meaning and toppling the world around them because they themselves have discontent and misery. That is right now a crisis in our country. So a lot of churches, this one and I want to thank you guys for having me speak at your church and for whatever reason, considered to be controversial, to speak at churches. I think I just talk about the Bible and talk about our country. But anyway, so thank you for that.

Some churches, they say we are not going to engage on these issues. They say it is not the role of the church to get involved in the public square. I completely disagree with that. Sometimes they give and this is a very fancy word and eschatological excuse as to not getting involved. What does that mean? They say next Wednesday is basically when Jesus is coming, none of this actually matters. It's like deck chairs on the Titanic. I want to make sure me and my family are saved.

We're perfectly positioned. None of this is right and I always challenge I. So you might be right then start fasting now, if you're so confident in that. Right, like, why eat another meal, right? If the physical world no longer matters and everything around us is immaterial, then the fasting should start. Right now, if it's really next Wednesday, go do it. I'm a big fan of fasting, but fasting for more than 40 days is really, really hard to do.

Right. And so and of course, you call that bluff and it really comes down to the eschatological argument or the end times argument is sometimes of a facade for not wanting to get involved in really difficult and hard conversations. You see, the church is supposed to be the place where believers don't become converts, but they become disciples to totally different things. Right. Jesus said to make disciples of all nations, not converts of all nations. Now it's hard to get disciples about converts.

You need the first and then the second book ends up happening. And I've seen this. Some of the biggest churches in the country is they're so focused on new conversions, new conversions, new conversions. If someone comes and gives their life to Christ and they start listening all the Christian music and they really turn their life around. But six weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, three months later, they come to their pastor and they say, hey, they're at my local public school.

A man who says he's a woman is now going to be showering with my daughter. What do we think of that as a church? And the pastor says we don't take stances on that. What is that person supposed to make of that is all of a sudden the place that's supposed to give them answers biblically that's supposed to say this is right and this is wrong? They kind of get a little less enthused and they get more confused. You see, the church is not supposed to be the culture's best friend.

It's supposed to actually weigh in on some of these issues, the first of which right now is we need this is the moment to do it. My goodness, is make the case to the entire country that what we're doing today is not just essential. It's probably one of the most important, if not the most important thing that we do that. OK, I guess the home improvement store is important, important Lowe's or you know, I went to Best Buy yesterday.

I guess that's important. But what could be more important than giving people ultimate salvation, then giving people meaning? And we've completely failed if we're honest with ourselves. We as Christians have had our worst moment in the last six weeks. Awful. Some people have sued, but most churches in this country have said we are going to submit, we are not going to open our doors and we are going to just abide. Boy, so they say it's because of Romans 13, if you're familiar with the text, Romans 13, Paul was writing a letter and he said to submit to leaders of authority and I'm paraphrasing here, but the essence is that so that people that tyranny, as long as tyranny does not exist, the innocent are not taken advantage of.

However, that mandate has been completely violated. But let's look even deeper. What makes our country different? You see, when Paul was writing that letter, the sovereign was the emperor of Rome. It was Nero, mind you, before the persecution of Christians, a very important historical note. Who's the sovereign in our country? It's not the president. It's not Congress. It's actually us. So when our rights are violated, the sovereignty, the compact we have with our government, all of a sudden Romans 13 is completely invalidated because our religious liberty, our natural rights are blown apart.

That's why the founders were so ahead of their time. They said rights. They don't come from government. They come from God Almighty. You understand how incredibly how much of a leap forward that was like. Most of human beings lived in some form of destitute serfdom for thousands of years. We take so much for granted in this civilization. It's actually incredible that the norm the norm is that you worked on a farm, you got enrolled into some silly war.

You die by the age of twenty eight. And if you were lucky enough, you lived to thirty five to have a couple of kids. That was human history, historical norm. And then the Enlightenment popped up and the Protestant Reformation came with Martin Luther, where was actually the number one reason we were able to have Western society, because people could read. Why could they read. Because they were given the Bible. More people learned to read from the Bible than any other text in the history of the world.

And then this entire idea was like, well, maybe we start a government and a civilization that recognizes these rights that God gave us. Right. Understand that our entire system of government was inspired by the Bible. Everything that we have is straight from the text. The idea of being able to freely express your religion. Now, mind you, people say separation of church and state. They say that a lot. Right? First of all, it's not in the Constitution.

It's not. It's in a singular letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Convention. If you look more critically at the Constitution, what they were worried about was having a national church. What they were worried about was having an Episcopalian or a Catholic or a specific stream of Protestant. It was never a question as to whether or not the country was going to embrace first biblical principles. It wasn't. In fact, George Washington was a prayerful, Bible believing individual that this idea of liberty, it was never a question as to whether or not we're going to recognize it.

It was like we have to make sure we articulate where it comes from. So we have a birth certificate in our country, the Declaration of Independence, and in it, it says, we recognize the laws of nature and nature's God. So when they send that letter and they sent it off to King George, all of a sudden King George is like, you're trying to tell me I'm not the most important person in the world. The answer is you're right.

That's exactly right. That there's actually the divine right of kings is being disrupted because we need to go honor the true king. Now, understand that there is an awakening that preceded the American Revolution. Do you know how we're able to have this civilization? Because there are pastors like you have today that went and spoke truth, and they went to church by church on the Eastern Seaboard and they said that we we need to understand what tyranny is, where liberty comes from and the actual inspiration of freedom.

So the civilization starts and we're actually on a very predictable path of where we are, where now we have grown so content and so apathetic with the wealth and luxury around us that we are now disconnecting from the liberty giver, the liberty giver being God Almighty, understand that it is very it is very unlikely that we're actually able to live in the luxury that we have. It's more likely that we screw all this up, understand that it's and we know this biblically.

Right? I mean, just look in the Old Testament, what is the story of Israel, the story of Israel six times that come out of the wilderness. They start some form of meaningful government. They rise from a middle power to a great power. They start to get a little bit too full of themselves. A profit comes is like if you keep doing this, you're going to end up back in the wilderness. They completely ignore it. And then they fall back into the and then they do it again and then they do it again and they do it again.

And six times basically more or less. It's not a and so. And that's no different, by the way, than your own human experience, by the way, right. Like, you start to get on top of something, you start to forget where you come from. It's actually archetypical, really perfect for your own personal life. But then but then God changed the entire game by sending Christ. Everything changed right. Where it wasn't about forming a perfect government to please God.

It was like, we're actually not enough. We're broken by nature. We know that. And that's what's happening here today in our country. You see where I think we've really missed the opportunity and it's not over yet. We can still seize it is that we have an opportunity to actually have a conversation on human nature in our country right now where there's actually a lot of people that believe human beings are naturally good. It's actually the predominant viewpoint of an entire political system.

We know it took us like three and a half chapters in Genesis to screw it up. Right. Not even like it was not that hard. Right. It was like the first time we got seriously tempted were like totally gone. We're depraved by nature, original sin. We believe this theologically that it doesn't matter how many good things we do, it doesn't matter how many boxes we check. Like none of that is unless you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.

That's the only thing that matters. And I say this on college campuses and kids don't always like to hear it because it actually is an admission that they might not be the most important person on the planet. You know, it's like as soon as like they're not their own God. And I'm going to get to that in a second. But the gospel in four words, three words, two words, one word. I did not coin this, by the way.

I don't I don't remember where I heard it, but I'll never forget it. Four words as Jesus took my place. Three words is him for me. Two words substitutionary atonement. One word grace. Four, three, two, one. That's the easiest way I can summarize it. But what we as an admission before we even take Christ is our Lord and savior. And all of you know, this is it's a surrendering. It's like I'm not even close to being OK to operating in this world right now.

And I need something else. The other side doesn't believe that. You have to understand that. The atheistic humanist actually think human beings are great in the state of nature. And so they believe that human beings are phenomenal, it's everything around us that has screwed us up. This is what they teach a lot of our kids, by the way. You know, you start to see kind of how things hopefully the dots start to get connected. You see, if you say and you teach people you're depraved by nature, they're going to seek something that hopefully will heal that broken nature.

If you tell people you're awesome and everything around you, you're not going to go seek divine power, you know, burn everything around you, because that's the problem, right? The problem is the statue's the problem is the police. The problem are the prisons. You can always find another enemy, but in reality, we know it's a spiritual brokenness from within. And so this was theorized by a couple of French philosophers, don't get me started on French philosophy.

My goodness, the damage they have done to our civilization is can't even put into words. I've so many French jokes, I won't get into it. But they've invented two things the ticket and the white flag, and that's about it. So I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I got somebody who understood, but I don't mean any offense by any French people out there. But anyway, this guy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, had done more damage to our civilization where he argued that human beings are terrific by nature, that he preferred the infant over the civilized, the primitive, over the infant, over the adult, the primitive, over the civilized.

And so he said actually in our state of nature were terrific. He challenged. He said the Christians are wrong. He said that this needs to be thrown out. And if you put people in their natural condition, they're going to be phenomenal. That's what we're dealing with right now. Understand right now the others, whatever side you want to talk about it. And there are sides, right? We have to be very clear that people like, well, why are we so divided?

And our country and I don't seek division. I don't. But it doesn't bother me because if the other side is saying they don't believe in God and they don't want higher meaning or higher purpose, it's really not my concern as to whether or not we're, like, unhappy to be divided on that. Like, I'm happy to say that salvation is essential and God is real and all these sorts of things, not exactly a concern, but that's that's one of the things that we are most up against right now.

And so it's so it's so incredibly obvious that human beings are broken by nature. We know this. I mean, any of you that have raised children, you don't teach your child to lie, cheat or steal. They just happen to figure out a way to turn parents against each other. Right. You don't teach them to cry. You don't teach them to make a scene. They just kind of have it within them. Right. It's just kind of something that is built into their DNA.

In fact, if human beings were good, why do you have to teach goodness to children? Why do we have to pour into young kids? And that's biblical, by the way. Right. Teach a child in its ways and that and so forth. It will go they will go and paraphrase in the scripture the essence of that. And so. If this is not confronted, the civilization we love today will not exist. I've said this for four years.

People used to say I was alarmist by saying this. They said all your hyperbolic think it's pretty. I think there's a wide agreements now amongst reasonable people. There's something different happening in the last couple of months that we've never seen before. When you have, as I mentioned, a fourth of my entire generation that has seriously considered suicide, more and more young people have died of suicide by a multiple in the state of California than from the virus. When you have all these sorts of things happening, you have to ask yourself the question why?

The first of which is that Christianity has basically agreed that we're not essential. That's the first thing, is that instead of leaning into this moment where the church opening its doors in a flooding way and being able to say we are going to be more bold, more courageous than ever before, we've abdicated it, we basically said, yeah, maybe there is something to this secular humanism. Maybe casinos are more important than the church, maybe a huge mistake, and they yearn for it.

But why do they want the church closed? Let's go a level deeper. Why is that? Understand, the more people assemble and agree that there's a higher power than the government. That bothers totalitarians, it does they will never allow a power to be greater than themselves, and we've seen this time and time again, in fact, the church has always been the firewall against totalitarian power grabs, always because when people gather and they worship God and they worship an ultimate power, the king of kings and the Lord of Lords, all of a sudden a power grabbing governor is like maybe she needs to be put in check, maybe who is exactly she getting power from?

But when you remove that, all of a sudden they get a lot more importance in the eyes of a citizenry. And the church has always been that firewall. You remove the church, all of a sudden tyranny is allowed to spread like wildfire. And you see this in every single 20th century experiment. Right. And again, I'm not trying to be I'm not alarmist. I'm being incredibly clear that you can lose something good very quickly. Very quickly.

There is a assumption that, oh, this will never happen in America. This will. I've heard this so many times. Makes my head spin. This will never happen here. I say I don't know what historical construct that you are operating from, but you can lose something good and pure like that quickly. And that is the Bible tells us this. So what is the church supposed to do? What is that people say? Well, Charlie, what can I do?

I agree on all and No one. The education of our children must be taken more seriously than ever before. I'm a massive fan of home schooling, by the way. I'm a huge fan of home schooling. We need to double or triple our home schooling population. That's number one. Number two, the church needs to get more active and more involved in promoting, supporting and mentoring young people to get married and have children. It could not. It's one of the most important things to happen right now, and it's not happening.

Christians, on average, are now only having one point seven kids per family. That is down dramatically. And I understand it for a lot of ways. It's more expensive than ever to have children. It is stressful to have I get all those things. However, when you look at what we are commanded to do and especially the culture around us, my goodness, it's incredibly concerning. The third reason why it's also hard not to mention is that a lot of people can't find suitable people to marry.

And that's something that is much more structural and much harder. The third thing we can do is we got to get serious, as I mentioned earlier, about the war on men. And it's a very, very real thing. Now, mind you, a civilization can get too masculine and it can get too feminine. A civilization needs to be balanced between the two young men in particular, need a call to action and to be challenged to be responsible for something young men are responsible for.

Nothing in this culture generally, by the time they're twenty seven, they're in basements. They don't have jobs, they don't have girlfriends. A lot of them are living alone and it's been subsidized by the culture. Young men need that call to action more so young women have a different set of issues. I'm not saying it's young women do not have issues in this country, but if you right now, it is such a slanted agenda to try to destroy the American male that the byproduct of that is the state will eventually take the place of that.

And so that kind of call to adventure where you tell young men that it is cowardly to take advantage of the innocent, that it is not heroic to sit in your basement till 4:00 a.m. to do nothing endlessly, that we challenge young men to be better versions of themselves. So people say, well, what is responsibility? The best way that I can define responsibility is another person would have a bad day if you didn't show up. That's what responsibility is, right?

Like somebody else will have a bad day or a bad week or a bad month for young men. If they don't show up, no one's life gets changed. Usually that means you're not responsible for anything like find some person on the planet that will be disappointed if you don't show up. That's what responsibility is because you actually matter. You actually have something to contribute to this broken and dark world. And because a lot of these were like, well, I just I'm I'm just going to endlessly meander.

Well, that is not good for you. It's not good for the society and it's not actually meaningful. The other thing is this is that and I'm very careful the way I word this, but the church needs to be very clear on where it stands on the biggest moral issues of our time. Right. And this is something that I talk about churches all across the country. And so a couple of things. We have a million abortions in our country every single year, one million abortions every single year.

A moral tragedy, the church, this church being not one of them, but generally the Christian church. And it was it was really a bizarre thing because I follow a lot of these megachurch pastors. Right. And. Some of them are phenomenal, some of them have decided never to speak out on these issues. In late May, though, in early June, when a lot of these uprisings took place, a lot of Christianity Inc spoke out more than ever before on these very divisive, remarkably complex issues that have lots of nuance and are statistically misleading if you just follow a lot of the narratives in the mainstream, remarkably so.

And I was watching a lot of these pastors do this and pour into it. And I say, man, I've never heard them say one thing about the one million abortions every single year. But that's the issue that you decide to speak out on, to go post a black square at this moment and think that's bizarre and. I've processed this and I've thought about this, I've prayed about it and I said, my goodness, why is that the case?

Some of it was an abdication just to the narrative, second of which was like, we don't want to, you know, have to get involved in anything other than, like, my silence could be, you know, misconstrued as being complicit. But a lot of it is a byproduct because for years we've just completely uninvolved. The church in these matters is what it's been. And that's actually, in my opinion, not treating the flock correctly is that then you have confused parishioners that are like, well, exactly how do I process these issues?

How about this? It's biblical to never judge someone on the color of their skin. Like, that's a pretty easy way to interpret it, right. It's also biblical to say that every single life matters from the womb to a fully grown adult to all the way to the last moments. These are all biblical ideas to say that all life matters. That's not a controversial thing. And it's also evil to judge anyone based on their immutable characteristics, things that can't change, that includes any sort of individual saying when our children have to say that all white people do X, Y, Z, that's engaging in sinful narratives and behavior and that should be rejected wholeheartedly.

Yet, unfortunately, a lot of times the church that has dived into this and so that's where the church, I believe, has to get more active than ever before. And the public square ever in talking about these issues and saying we are going to contest for biblical truths every single day for liberty, for freedom of speech, for dialogue, for religious expression, for life, for traditional marriage, and also for personal property rights, private property rights, freedom of commerce.

All these things are completely harmonic with the gospel because sometimes the church feels as if we can be kind of monks in the countryside. Right. And we can kind of just wait for our moment and things are going to pass us by. I think that is directly contrary to what Jesus taught us to, to be salt and light, to actually go and contest for these things. And what the really interesting thing is, and I see this from what I do, I am not a pastor.

I'm not a preacher. I speak at churches. I am a Bible believing Christian. But when I talk about organized government or I talk about the Constitution, all of a sudden we're bringing people to Christ. It's the opposite of what all the churches might tell you. Right. So the churches tell you, stay away from politics, stay away from this stuff. It's going to be it's going to pollute things. People don't get confused. I don't agree with that, but just look at what we do.

I talk about getting your life together. Getting your aim right, straighten yourself out, making sure you have a government that doesn't abuse you, that would probably be a nice way to start, right? That allows you to speak freely. That allows you to be able to own personal property without confiscation, that that embraces this free society. Then people say, well, Charlie, where does that come from? I'm so glad you asked. It's the Galatians three model that the law is a schoolteacher to Christ, that actually we have this incredible window of opportunity that we've been missing, that you can bring people to Christ through making logical arguments for civil society, do the opposite.

People said, no, stay away from that. You're going to just draw. Critics only talk about the gospel, which, of course, I think every single message or pastor should give should be surrounded by the gospel. Absolutely. And that's sometimes lost in modern day Christianity. However, there's, I think completely and totally we are missing a huge thing when people say, Charlie, I own two fitness shops in downtown Los Angeles, got broken into all my stuff, got stolen to the BLM Inc.

, you know, protests. They stole ninety five thousand dollars of the merchandise. My insurance only covers fifteen thousand dollars of it. What am I supposed to like? I'm I'm in a state of chaos. What do I do? And being able to explain very clearly what exactly chaos is without Christ being able to bring people to a sense of meaning and salvation. There's a greatest opportunity right now for revival in our country. But that's only going to happen if people respect the complete and comprehensive world view of what someone's talking about because they need to touch every single part of civil society or else it's incomplete or else it's you come here and you get say, but it's not discipleship.

Right, because people are going to ask. They're going like, well, how do I make sense of this very big picture issue? I'm like, well, we have the greatest book ever to exist in the history of the world, because thankfully and I don't want to talk about that, and I kind of mentioned it earlier and am I OK on time? OK, like, I can keep going. So I just like it's like so yeah.

OK, so I am a huge advocate and a lot of people in my political world think I shouldn't say this, I just say it louder and I don't really care. So which is that the the Bible should be required reading for every single child in this country, and if not, they should lose federal funding. It's that simple. And, you know, people find that to be I don't think that's controversial. Right. So in fact, I think that should be normative.

And people say, well, you're you're integrating religion into the state. I said, wait, hold on a second. I say. As soon as I have this is somewhat of a contrarian opinion, I believe racism as a religion. I really do. And not everyone agrees with this. I've gotten to debates the theologians about this. But atheism is absolutely a religion. A religion is a agreed upon worldview and acceptance of what happens after you die, a proselytization strategy and evangelistic strategy.

Right. They have all that right. In fact, when I go to college campuses, I. I meet more atheists and Christians, the atheists are way more bold than the Christians, by the way, and they're way more committed to persuading me. Right. So it's kind of weird. I'm like, why does this matter so much to you? Like, if you really believe you're just a combustion of cells, like you got like four or five years left to just maximize the hedonistic pleasure.

Right. And then we're all dust, like, why would you care about me? It's like that's kind of bizarre. And it just always bothers them. When I say without God, there would be no atheists like.

It's really bothersome. But the lack of teaching, the most important text in the history of the planet where more of our idiomatic moral sentences come from. You know, I love these secularists. They're like, well, it's easy to create a moral order without the Bible. So, OK, tell me what your moral order is. They say treat your neighbor how you want to be treated him like you. I wonder where he got that one from, like keep going, right.

Or honor your parents. I'm like, yeah, that's a couple of thousand years old. What else you got? Right. Well, like, tell the truth. I'm like, you're not exactly getting anywhere here, right? Like, what else you got. Right? I mean, and of course they're all deriving it from originally the law and the fulfillment of it by Christ. It's they can endlessly pursue these eastern meditative ways of trying to confront the world.

But it's all it all goes back to the original source, always, always goes back to the source. If they actually say something that is morally correct. Right, then it goes back to that. But then we don't do a good enough job of actually articulating what the Bible is. It's more than just a lifestyle book, right? I mean that it's more than just kind of like a for lack of a better term, kind of like a best practices, like ten ways to turn on your life.

Like, no, that's not exactly what the law is. It can be, but it's not exactly what it is. But I think it's also something that we don't talk enough. It's a historical document and that's something that we don't do a good enough job articulating, because if we actually believe the Bible, we believe the things actually happened. Therefore, it's history, not allegory. Right. It's a really important thing. And so if we believe it's a historical document, then why wouldn't we teach it to every single child?

Right. Do you know there's never been an archaeological discovery to contradict the truth of the Bible ever in the history of all excavation, do you not? The more we actually excavation archaeological digs we do, the more it actually reaffirms the veracity of the Bible. So we teach our children Homer's Odyssey, for example, right? We teach them Homer's Odyssey. And no one for a second actually believes Homer's Odyssey. You know, it's a lot of ways allegorical, but you look at the actual how the first manuscript to the replication of the duplication of the manuscript, it's hundreds, if not 800 years of a gap between that.

We have original manuscripts and texts from eyewitness accounts to the from Jesus Christ, from four different offers, never, ever contradicting anything that was said from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John from four different accounts, completely harmonic, getting a full picture of Christ of the most important person ever to exist in the history of the world. What do believe is the sun or God or not? And that's the thing we say our kids shouldn't learn, like that's the thing that we've removed.

There is zero no secular argument why the Bible should not be taught in public schools. The only reason they don't want the Bible to be taught, the only reason is it's a threat to their power grab. That is the only reason they have it, because there's no life, whether it be the construction of the first or second temple or the destruction thereof. King David, the creation of the Kingdom of Israel. King has a caia. These things actually happen.

It's really fascinating history. It is. And yet the removal actually creates this massive gap, massive gap. Sixty six books, thirty four authors. And so then kids are going to start to look for other places for meaning. And so I can test for this. I think it should be part of public policy. I think that we should completely advocate for it. I think it's a winning issue because there is no country. They say, well, we do not want the the public schools to be taken over by the church.

What are they really saying? They're really scared. The Bible actually is something that is really attractive. That's what they're saying. Like, wait a second, just like teaching, it is going to spread like wildfire. So you do agree there's something special about this. It's like it's kind of weird. Like you teach the Koran. It's not exactly like everyone's, like, really fired up about it. It just kind of, if I may say, they do teach it a lot, by the way, and which is, of course, a complete and total disintegration of their argument.

Right. And they do this I know a lot in the state of Michigan where they're teaching the four pillars of Islam, but they won't teach the teachings of Jesus Christ in public school. And then the other part of it is this, is that a lot of and I'll never forget this dialogue I had with a professor once and I was talking about the Bible, and he was he was a historical text professor and very, very confused guy, very smart, but very confused.

And he was saying that he didn't want to teach. He's like, I don't like teaching the Bible. I don't do like your historical text, professor, like this. What text could you teach that's historical, that is more important and is going into all this different stuff. And finally, he set his real agenda, came up. He's like, well, I'm afraid to teach the Bible because people actually might believe it. Like, OK, now you got like OK, like your agenda is very clear, right.

That you are worried that people actually might give their life to a higher power, that they're actually you actually might not be the most important person on the planet or in what they call higher education. And so that's another thing that's very important. And if I may talk more pragmatically on this, we need to get a lot more critical of our institutions of higher education and I mean college. I think that right now during this pandemic. What we're living through, we are starting to see the incredible fraudulent nature of college where people are going seventy eighty thousand dollars into debt for a Zoome call this semester, when we are seeing young people borrow money, they do not have to study things that do not matter to go find jobs that simply do not exist.

There has been this false promise. Thank you. There's been this false promise in our country that if you go to college, you will succeed.

Let's put that aside. I can tell you statistically why that is not true and very questionable, but I actually think that what we have done is we have surrendered the entire landscape of professional and young development to a group of very, very angry and bitter people that don't share our values, don't share our world view, and are incredibly persuasive and effective at getting your kids to believe in nothing and hate the country. Right. Obvious exceptions to this are Liberty University, Hillsdale.

And of course, however, most schools, including some in this state, they are they are professional persuasion artists to be able to convince your children that there is no such thing as absolute truth, there is no God, all these sorts of things. And so I just looked more pragmatically here. We absolutely need more plumbers, electricians, carpenters, people, HVAC, police officers, Gauthier's entrepreneurs, people that join our military. In fact, I visit I have visited the most prestigious schools on the planet.

Right. And spoke with them. I spoke at Stanford. I spoke at Brown. I've spoken all across the country. I've spoken at hundreds of schools across the country. I can tell you this. There is more wisdom in most of the American plumbing community than in the professor community at Brown University.

OK, there is this. And now I am not against people pursuing higher education for purpose.

In fact, I think that in its intent, higher education was actually founded as a biblical basis. You look at it in our country, these were all founded as seminaries on the Eastern Seaboard. Princeton was a Presbyterian seminary back when actually they had people that believed in God. And really kind of bizarre. When you go to a seminary and you're like debating the existence of God, I'm like, that's not I thought that was like an agreed upon universal, like before we go into the seminary.

Right. Like, that's probably an important precondition. Like, like the baseline, like, OK. Anyway, so and so we have to look at universities as atheistic seminaries. That's a very important thing. So as we look at some of our seminaries as ways to train up people, to go become pastors, they look at their universities as places that get people to believe in nothing to go try to radically revolutionize the entire world. And so I'm not saying not to send your child to college.

I wouldn't say that. I don't know your life. I don't know the INS. For some people, it's absolutely the right decision. For some people, it's a dreadfully awful decision. What I am saying is understand the potential risks and costs that you may never see your child and its current form again in their current form, that they might become a bitter, vengeful, arrogant, deceitful individual because that is what is taught or almost every single university across the country.

And I always kind of joke around that parents will send their kids off to college and they'll come back by Thanksgiving like 90 days later. Right. And they walk in. They say, hey, how was school? How are things in there? Like, I'm really offended that we are celebrating Thanksgiving. It's Indigenous Peoples Day. And they're like, oh, honey, OK. What did you learn? Like, did a turkey consent to being killed?

I think that is some form of a macro oppression of the patriarchy. Like what are you like? How did that I was like, like ninety days. I'm paying for this. Right. And so the steady and constant involvement in the education of our children is so incredibly important. Right. And also, we need to dress down the appearances in our country that somehow you are a smarter person because you have a degree, OK? And that is something that I personally have lived through and I never went to college.

And other people are have I've also had the same experience. But there is a societal cultural pressure that you are less than not as smart if you don't go through this certain sequence of choices. Now, if you are prepared to go fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollars in debt, if you're prepared for all of that and you believe it's worth it, then absolutely I can. I'm not telling you not to do something. I'm just opening up a critical dialogue as to what exactly is the best choice for entire generation.

So only fifty nine percent of people that go to college graduate, 59 percent of the people that graduate, 44 percent actually are in jobs that do not require college degrees, 44 percent of the people that graduate. So I think I'm over on time. But let me close. Is that OK? OK, I got I literally talked for six hours a day so I could talk all day long. So that's what I do on my podcast. So, look, a couple thoughts.

First, I just want to thank you guys for so attentively and kindly listening today and for having me and hosting me, because it's not something that every church does. And I think that, you know, we have, you know, something to share that is important. So that's that's a couple of things. Number one, think of your current life and whatever level of activism that you are involved in, I implore you to please double or triple it.

And that doesn't necessarily just mean political activism. It's fighting for what is right and for what is good in the world. Right. And that, unfortunately, a lot of that intersects with politics and a lot of. Intersects with governmental representation, but we as Christians no longer can just sit idly by when the innocents are being preyed on, our expression and our religious liberties are completely dismantled. It is we are called I really believe I am not prepared to say you understand.

I am not prepared to face our creator and say I did nothing at the one million abortions that happen in our country every year. I'm not prepared to say I did nothing. When a casino is valued to be a central and a church wasn't in Calvary Chapel, Las Vegas, that's not something I'm prepared to do. So you can kind of figure out your own way to try to what you need to do and what what that looks like. But more concretely, it's this.

Think in your life, someone who is preying on the innocent in a position of strength. This is a form of tyranny. It's happening all across the country where people are afraid to speak their mind. They will they will have backlash and all this be more bold than you could ever possibly be, because then people say this, this is my final note. And then we'll do a pastor closely like forecloses. Right. So. Right. People say, well, Charlie, the price of speaking out is a lot.

So you're probably right. But it's a logical fallacy. It's the fallacy of the status quo. You know what? You know what it is. There's also a price to not speaking out. There's also a price to not saying anything, and somehow we think that it's actually easier to say nothing or it's better, OK? And I ask pastors all the time, where is your line? Because I want to know if you're not speaking out now, what is it?

What has to happen for you to speak? Like, I want to know concretely, what is it like?

Is it when they start arresting pastors like they're doing right now in California for hosting church, but they're letting out? Eighteen thousand criminals and rapists right now in California because that line has been crossed, but it's not enough for most pastors to speak out, is the line where all of a sudden they decide that marijuana dispensaries need to have special licenses to be open. But Easter Sunday is and I want to know the line, because I know for one that if, by the way, if some pastors say that line doesn't exist, I'll never get involved.

Well, then you would have been OK with what Stalin did when he destroyed all the churches and he killed 60 million people. Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen here. That's that would be unfair. But there's in some ways you have to have the line in your head. For me, the line has been crossed. That's why I'm traveling the country. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing. That's why I'm speaking out, because I think that moral people need to do more right now.

So.

I have I do two podcasts a day, one on every weekend, Saturday and Sunday, one way that you guys could bless me, as if, you know, you all take out your smartphone and you type in Charlie Kirk show to your podcast provider and you hit that subscribe button. That's the only thing I ask out of you guys today is a way to follow me. And it actually helps support me tremendously. And we're reaching millions of young people around these messages every single day.

The church is called for a moment like this. Let's have the boldness of Stephen and of the early church where they went out into the public square. They were unafraid of the repudiation and they stood for truth. Now is the time where we realize this is a Gideon's army moment where our forces are going to be narrowed down. But God will call us down to a smaller number, but for a bigger victory and then we will win. Thank you guys so much.

Thank you guys so much for listening. Please consider supporting us by going to Charlie Kirkconnell support to keep this episode advertiser free. Email us your questions. Free Tibet. Charlie Kirkconnell, freedom at Charlie Kirkup. Thank you guys so much for listening. God bless you. God bless our country. See you later this week.